“I had one pretty strange experience there that scared me badly at the time. One of the engineers who was superintending the job was an American and a dandy fellow, but he was pretty sharp to those Mexicans; used to make them work harder than they liked. One day he kicked a fellow who refused to dig out a grade stake for him. The greaser did not do anything at the time, but when you insult one of those fellows you ought to kill him right there, for he’ll lay for you.
“That afternoon I was asleep on a flat car while the train was running around the side of a mountain to a new work station, when I heard someone jump down onto the flat from a box car. I opened one eye and saw that it was the greaser who had been kicked. He glanced at me, thought I was asleep, and started to climb onto the next box car behind. I didn’t think anything of it till I saw that he had a knife in his hand. That woke me up pretty quick for I knew how they fought. As soon as he was up the ladder I started up after him to see what was going on.
“When I peeped over the edge of that box car there was the greaser sneaking slowly up on the engineer, who was asleep on his back. There wasn’t any time to lose and I yelled like an Indian. I never saw anything so cool as that engineer. He opened his eyes with a jerk, rolled over once to dodge the knife, jumped to his feet, and knocked that greaser off the box car down the side of the mountain with one blow. He did not even look to see where he landed. He saw me staring over the edge of the box car with my eyes hanging out on my cheeks, and said, ‘Good boy, kid.’ With that he lay quietly down on his back again. I didn’t sleep for a week but it didn’t seem to bother him any, or anybody else. There was never anything said about it.”
“Didn’t the courts investigate it?” Scott asked in surprise.
“When we finished the line we were away down in Southern Mexico; it was time for college to begin and no way to get back. I made my way across country to the nearest seaport and found a steamer just about to sail. A greaser there said she was bound for New Orleans, and I stowed myself away in the hold.
“It was stuffy in that old pit and I thought we would never get to New Orleans. My grub began to give out and I lived on half rations for four days and on nothing for two. I had just finished the last of my water, and had decided to try to get out when we docked and the hold was opened up. I managed to sneak out in the night and hid in the warehouse. I did not know much about what New Orleans looked like, but I did not think so many of the people there were Spaniards. Then I found out that it was Buenos Ayres instead of New Orleans. That pesky ship had been sailing the wrong way.”
