There was about me and over the world a haze of adventure. The details of this adventure were not clear, but it was one directed against the crooked Mexican government, and it involved a treasure like the treasure of the sunken Armadas. It was the alluring stuff of the storybooks. I was ready for it with these strange adventurers. This state of feeling requires a word here. After my father’s death, as I was now alone, I came down out of the great blue mountains to seek my fortune, as the storybooks say. I walked, and on the road I was overtaken by an adventure. Near a little village I passed one of those local trains, common to this country: an engine, one or two cars, and an old passenger coach. The highway passed close beside the track, and as I trudged along a fireman leaned out of the tender and called to me. “Hey, Reuben,” he said, “ring your bell when you pass.” I told him with some heat, that I would ring his neck if he came down out of his iron box, and I went on. But the thing was not ended. The train presently pulled on and, as it passed, the fireman threw a lump of coal at me. I countered at him with a stone, that missed the tender and struck the passenger car behind it. At the next village I was arrested and taken before a justice of the peace. There I was told that it was a felony, under the laws of the state, to throw a stone at a passenger train, and that the railroad intended to put me into the penitentiary. “And what are you going to do with the fireman who threw a lump of coal at me?” I said. “Nothing,” replied the justice. “He didn’t hit you.” “Then you’ll not do anything with me,” I said, and I rose. The little office of the Justice was at the end of the village. A railroad detective sat beside me; the fireman who had made the charge lolled in the door. It all happened in a moment. I threw off the railroad detective who caught at my arm and as the big fireman swung around into the door I struck him as hard as I could in the chest. He went crashing down the steps. I jumped through the door and ran. The railroad detective followed me, firing his pistol. But he was no match for my youth across the fields, and he was soon out of sight. I turned back the way I had come, crossed to another highway; and here on this afternoon I was. I did not know how far I had traveled and hardly the direction. You will see then how ready I was for any adventure—and especially if a railroad was included. It had become, by virtue of the injustice of this incident, an enemy open to revenge.