We had inspected the Barrio del Carmen, the Manillas mine of Trautman at San German, and had generally covered the terrain. We were returning once more for a last look at the basin of Carmen which contains a startling number of valueless veins when I suddenly became tired of riding a horse. Most of our horses were worn beasts, but the one I had straddled for two full days was so tight of muscle that it seemed only one more step would be needed to complete my undoing. And so I begged a mule.
That brings up the subject of cinches, and it is with sadness in my voice that I must assure you that the conquistadors had forgotten to tell the natives that a cinch belongs with a saddle, and down through the four hundred years, a cinch has been a taboo.
I mounted carelessly, placing my full weight in the left stirrup, not knowing that the mule was blind in his left eye. The saddle scurried bellyward, my field boot refused to leave the stirrup, and my right foot, rising, struck the mule a square and personal blow.
When I came to, Pedro Rojas was bending over me moaning that he had no candles or priest and that my soul was certainly purgatory-bound. I uncrossed my precisely folded arms and sat up, thereby scaring Pedro out of three shades of color, to find my ribs in a remarkable secondhand condition.
However, my plight made little difference for our work was done. We had slaved and sweated for months and we had nothing more tangible to show than a mediocre vocabulary of crude hillman Spanish. Of alluvial gold we had found nothing in payable amounts. And veins were plentiful in number but startlingly scarce in gold content.
Thus we packed up and caught the first steamer for home.
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