BarbarousMexico JOHN KENNETH TURNER

84 BARBAROUS MEXICO
Early next morning as I was dressing I glanced out
of my window and saw a man walking down the middle
of the street with one end of a riata around his neck
and a horseman riding behind at the other end of the
riata.
"Where's that man going?" I inquired of the servant.
"Going to be hanged?"
"Oh, no, only going to jail," answered the servant.
"It's the easiest way to take them, you know. In a day
or two," he added, "that man will be on his way to
Valle Nacional. Everybody arrested here goes to Valle
Nacional—everybody except the rich."
"I wonder if that same gang we saw last night will
be going down on the train today," my companion, De
Lara, said, as we made for the depot.
He did not wonder long, for we had hardly found
seats when we saw the ten slaves and their rurale guards
filing into the second-class coach adjoining. Three of
the prisoners were well dressed and had unusually intelligent
faces; the others were of the ordinary type of
city or farm laborers. Two of the former were bright
boys under twenty, one of whom burst into tears as the
train pulled slowly out of Cordoba toward the dreaded
valley.
Down into the tropics we slid, into the jungle, into
the dampness and perfume of the lowlands, known as
the hot country. We flew down a mountain, then skirted
the rim of a gash-like gorge, looking down upon coffee
plantations, upon groves of bananas, rubber and sugar
cane, then into a land where it rains every clay except
in mid-winter. It was not hot—not real hot, like Yuma
—but the passengers perspired with the sky.
We watched the exiles curiously, and at the first
opportunity we made advances to the chief of the ruralo