On another such a day I turned back about dusk up the gorge on the return to the mine. The upper park where the band had played earlier was now completely deserted. The road was nearly five miles long; the trail, sheer up the wild tumble of mountains before me, little more than two. This was vaguely reputed dangerous, but I was not inclined to take the rumor seriously.
Black night fell. Soon I came upon the vanguard of the day-shift from "Pingüico," straggling down the face of the mountain, shouting and whistling to each other in their peculiar language. Some carried torches that flashed along the mountain wall above me and threw long quaint shadows of the tight-trousered legs. The grade was more than forty-five degrees, with much slipping and sliding on unseen rocks. Two or three groups had passed when one of the men recognized me and with a "Buenas noches, jefe!" insisted on giving me the torch he carried, a mine candle with a cloth wrapped around it as a protection in the strong wind. I had soon to cast this away, as it not only threatened to burn my hand but left the eyes unable to pierce the surrounding wall of darkness. In the silence of the night there came to mind the assertion of by no means our most timorous engineer, that he never passed over this trail after dark without carrying his revolver cocked in his hand. My fellow countrymen of the region all wore huge "six-shooters" with a large belt of cartridges always in sight, less for use than the salutary effect of having them visible, in itself a real protection. Conditions in Mexico had led me to go armed for the first time in my travels; or more exactly, to carry one of the "vest pocket automatics" so much in vogue--on advertising pages--in that season. My experienced fellow Americans refused to regard this weapon seriously. One had made the very fitting suggestion that each bullet should bear a tag with the devise, "You're shot!" An aged "roughneck" of a half-century of Mexican residence had put it succinctly: "Yer travel scheme's all right; but I'll be ---- ---- if I like the gat you carry." However, such as it was, I drew it now and held it ready for whatever it might be called upon to attempt.
A half hour of heavy climbing brought me to the summit, with a strong cool breeze and a splendid view of the spreading lights of Guanajuato in the narrow winding gully far below. The trail wound round a peak and reached the first scattered huts of Calderón just as a number of shots sounded not far away. These increased until all the dogs for miles around took up the hue and cry. The shots multiplied, with much shouting and uproar, soon sounding on both sides and ahead and behind me, while the whistling language shrilled from every gully and hillside. Evidently drunken peons were harmlessly celebrating their Sunday holiday, but the shots sounded none the less weirdly out of the black night as I stumbled on over the rocky, tumbled country, for the only smooth way thereabouts was the Milky Way faintly seen overhead. Gradually the shooting and shouting drifted behind me and died out as I surmounted the last knoll and descended to bed. It was only at breakfast next morning that I learned I had serenely strolled through a pitched battle between bandits that haunted the recesses of the mountains about Calderón and the town which, led by its jefe político, had finally won the bout with four outlaw corpses to its credit. It was my luck not to have even a bullet-hole through my cap to prove the story. There were often two or three such battles a week in the vicinity.