BarbarousMexico JOHN KENNETH TURNER

88 BARBAROUS MEXICO
but ten pcsos is a lot of money, and no one would let
it go by. Besides, if one doesn't get it another will, and
even though the runaway should get out of the valley,
when he reaches Cordoba lie finds the enganchador
Tresgallo, waiting there to send him back."
"One time," another native told us, "I saw a man
leaning against a tree beside the trail. As I rode up
I spoke to him, but he did not move. His arm was
doubled against the tree trunk and his eyes seemed to be
studying the ground. I touched his shoulder and found
that he was stiff—dead. 1-le had been turned out to die
and had walked so far. How do I know he was not a
runaway? Au, Senor, I knew. You would have known,
too, had you seen his swollen feet and the bones of his
face—almost bare. No man who looks like that could
run away!"
Just at nightfall we rode into Jacatepec, and there
we found the slave gang ahead of us. They had started
first and had kept ahead, walking the twenty-four miles
of muddy trail, though some of them were soft from
jail confinement. They were sprawled out on a patch
of green beside the detention house.
The white linen collar of Amado Godaniz was gone
now. The pair of fine shoes, nearly new, which he wore
on the train, were on the ground beside him, heavy with
mud and water. His bare feet were small, as white as
a woman's and as tender, and both showed bruises and
scratches. Since that evening at jacatepec I have often
thought of Aniado Godaniz and have wondered—with a
shiver—how those tender white feet fared among the
tropical flies of Valle Nacional. "They are sending us
to our death—to our death! " The news that Aniado
Godaniz were alive today would surprise me. That night
he seemed to realize that he would never need those fine