CHAPTER XII.
WOLF AND PANTHER AFTER BEAR.
When the rocket flared across the sky Jimmie rushed into the tent wherethe drummer was sleeping and shook him savagely.
"Get up an' blow out the gas!" he cried, as the boy gasped and sat up,rubbing his eyes. "Get up!"
"This must be the Fourth of July," the drummer grunted, as anotherrocket, this time a blue one, flashed across the zenith. "What's doing?"
"They're bombardin' us with red an' blue fire," whispered Jimmie! "Getup. I'm goin' out to see what's comin' off here. Want to go?"
"Of course I want to go," replied Peter. "I didn't come down here tosleep my head off, did I? Shall I take my drum?"
Jimmie sat down on the ground and chuckled.
"You an' your drum!" he exclaimed, being careful to speak in a tonewhich would not reach the ears of the guards.
"That is a fine drum," urged Peter, the drummer.
"What do you want to lug it around for, then?" demanded Jimmie. "Theywon't let you beat on it."
"That's what I came down here for--to drum," was the impatient reply."Think I came down here to get my hair cut?"
"You may get it cut off under your chin before you get back to theGreat White Way," Jimmie said. "This is no joke."
"I haven't had a chance to drum since I got here," complained the boy."The time you heard me is the only one. That's rotten!"
"Why did they let you drum then?" asked Jimmie.
"I just rolled it out before they could stop me."
"I was wondering," Jimmie said, with a sly smile, "if these secretservice men went sleuthing with a brass band ahead of them."
"Indeed they don't!" declared the drummer, in defense of his friends."They found me broke and lost and picked me up, which was mighty goodof them. Say," he added, with a slight scowl on his face, "this is afine, large country to get lost in."
"I should think so," agreed Jimmie. "I wasn't lost, but I hadn't anymore money than--than--than a--a--a rabbit when I found Fremont and Nedat El Paso. And my clothes looked like they'd come out of a ragbag.Wore 'em out reclinin' in my side-door Pullman."
"You're fixed up all right now for clothes," observed the drummer,looking the boy's well-dressed, muscular figure over with approvingeyes.
"George Fremont bought these," said Jimmie, looking down at his suit."All right, ain't it? I'm goin' to pay him back when I get to workingagain. I don't want anybody to give me anything."
"Lieutenant Gordon's son is a patrol leader at Washington," the drummersaid, after a thoughtful pause, "and I suppose that's the reason hehelped me out. I reckon a Boy Scout can find friends in any part ofthe world, if he is deserving of them. I found a Mexican boy, overhere in the hills, who belongs to a patrol he calls the Owl. We maymeet him if we remain about here very long."
"A Boy Scout who is on the square won't have trouble in gettingthrough," Jimmie observed, "but we've got to be moving. I imagine theguards want us to remain here, so we'll have to sneak off if we leavecamp. The guards seem to think we couldn't find our way back. We'llshow 'em."
Without further words the boys crept out of the tent, waited until theguards were at the other end of the little valley, and dashed away intoa shadowy place behind a rock, which they had no difficulty in leaving,presently, without being seen.
Once away from the tents, they turned toward the high peak from whichthe rockets had been sent up. The way was steep and rough, and it washard climbing, and more than once they stopped to rest. It was, as hasbeen said, a brilliant moonlit night, and, from the elevation where theboys were, the valley below lay like a silver-land of promise.
"It is a beautiful country," the drummer said, as they paused to reston a small shelf in the rock. "It is a rich and fertile country, too,one of the most desirable in the world, but I'm afraid the people don'tget much out of life here."
"They are selfish and cruel," Jimmie said, "and no nation of thatstripe ever prospered. What they need here is less strong drink andmore school-houses--more real freedom and less mere show of republicangovernment. We read up on Mexico in the Wolf Patrol when this troublebroke out. We always do that--keep track of what's going on in theworld, I mean."
"I know something about the country, too," the drummer said, looking inadmiration down on the beautiful valley below, bathed in the sweetmoonlight, "and sometimes I wonder that the people are as decent asthey are. Although they have never had much of a show, and althoughthey come, many of them, of rude ancestors, the people of Mexicocompare favorably with those of other countries."
The boys climbed on again, mounting higher and higher, their aim beingto gain the very top of the ridge. After half an hour's hard work theystopped and sat down, to look over the valley again.
"There are no written records of the origin of these people," thedrummer said, almost as if thinking aloud. "No one knows the origin ofthe people. Cortez found them here when he arrived with his brutalsoldiers. All that is known is that the inhabitants came from theNorth."
"Twice the country was populated from the North," Jimmie put in, thereadings at the Wolf Patrol club coming back to his mind. "Now I wonderwhy, in reading history, we always find that invaders came from theNorth?"
"I've read," the drummer went on, quite enthusiastic over the subjectin hand, "that the present North Polar regions were tropical intemperature and in animal and vegetable life, a long time ago."
"Yes, they find there, skeletons of animals which now exist only in thetropics," said Jimmie, "and tropical trees deep under the ice. Theearth, they say, shifted in its orbit and it grew cold up there. Iguess that is why we read of people always coming down from the North."
"They had to get out of the North," the drummer mused, "because duringthe Glacial period an ice-cap miles in thickness covered the world downas far as the dividing line between the British possessions and theUnited States. That is the way California and Mexico and CentralAmerica were populated, anyhow."
"You mean that the immediate ancestors of the people of those countriescame from the North," Jimmie criticized. "For all we know, the peoplewho lived before them came from the South. They left no records toshow that they ever existed, but the earth was not bare of animal lifeback of the period our scientists figure from."
"The first ones came from the East, by way of Iceland, Greenland, andBaffinland; from the Eastern continent, and about the vicinity of theCaspian sea, and so kept on South on this continent as the climate grewcolder. But we were talking of the people of Mexico. I wanted to showyou that they have never been favored as the people of our countryhave, and that they've got years of national childhood to go throughyet before they become a great people."
"Go on and tell me about it," urged Jimmie. "We may learn as muchabout what's going on here by sitting on this plateau as we could byclimbing our heads off."
The boys listened a moment, but there were no suspicious sounds about.The mountain lay as silent under the moon as if no human foot had everpressed its surface. There were lights far down in the valley, butnone on the slopes in view.
"About as far back as the books go in Mexican history," the drummerbegan, "is the seventh century, even when England wasn't much. Aboutthat time the Toltecs came out of the North and took possession of thevalley where the City of Mexico now is. They were industrious,peaceful and skilled in many of the arts. They kept their records inhieroglyphics.
"They had a year made up of eighteen months of twenty days each, theother five and a fraction being chucked into the calendar any old way.They knew about the stars and eclipses, and built great cities.
"When they build their temples, it is said, they found ruins of othertemples beneath them. And the ones who built the temples, the ruins ofwhich the Toltecs found, doubtless found ruins of temples when theybegan to dig. It is wonderful. The ages and ages that have gone by,with new civilizations growing up and dying out."
"I feel like I was in a land older than the solar system," said Jimmie."What bec
ame of the Toltecs?"
"They were crowded out by the Aztecs somewhere about the twelfthcentury. The Aztecs were warlike and cruel. It is said that theymurdered twenty thousand victims a year on the altars of their gods.They were able people, too, but murderous in all their instincts. Theywere cultivated to a degree far above the other peoples of the NorthAmerican continent at that time, but they lacked the feelings ofhumanity as expressed to-day.
"They built temples--mounds of clay faced with brick, surmounted bygreat towers where the priests dwelt. It was at the summits of thesemounds, on a sacrificial stone, before all the people who could get inview, that the victims of their religious frenzy were slain.
"Then Cortes came, in fifteen hundred and something, and the deluge ofblood began. If you have read up on the subject at all, you doubtlessknow how merciless the Spaniards were in their attitude toward theAztecs. They killed them by thousands, in open battle and bytreacherous means, and they tortured Aztec priests to force them toreveal the places where the vessels of gold used in worship were hidden.
"It is easy to see where the modern Mexican gets his ideas ofamusement, as shown in the bull fight. The Aztec-Spanish blood isstill in his veins. Of course there are cultured and refined Mexicans,but the great mass of the people are pretty primitive. Outside thecities, in many instances, old tribal relations continue, and thepeople are unsettled in habitation as well as in spirit, selfish andcruel, too.
"One revolution after another--brought about by unscrupulous leaders inthe hope of personal gain--has devastated the country. It seems easyto stir up a revolution in Mexico, for the people are volcanic intemperament, like the earth under their feet, and their eruptions donot always follow usual lines, either, but break out in unexpectedplaces and for unheard of reasons--just as the volcanoes refuse tofollow the central mountain chains, but break out in undreamed oflocalities."
"It requires a strong hand to rule such a people," Jimmie mused. "Iguess Diaz has troubles of his own."
"There is no doubt of it," the drummer continued. "In future yearsMexico will become one of the garden spots of the world. It is clearwhy one people after another selected the Valley of Mexico for theirabiding place. But blood will tell for evil as well as for good, andthe bad strain here must be thinned down. The hills are rich inminerals, and the valleys are fertile, and all the land needs is a raceof steady, patient workers--fewer bull fights and less pulque and moredays' work."
As the drummer ceased speaking, Jimmie laid a warning hand on hisshoulder and bent his head forward in a listening attitude.
"Listen!" he said. "There are men talking just over that slope."
Boy Scouts in Mexico; Or, On Guard with Uncle Sam Page 12