124         GOLD MINES OF THE PECOS AND THE GILA.
hope for him. But to think of a nation whose women are raost lecherous, most debauched !—need we be surprised at anything in such a people 1 And a beautiful woman as this was! To see her lolling her tongue—simpering with dripping lips—blinking and leering her open shame upon this tinselled miscreant— with dark large eyes that might have won back a soul even into him, had they been lit with the soft, lustrous flame of innocent
joy!
" Oh, what a mansion have the vices got, Which for their habitation chose out thee!"
But sentiment is all thrown away upon this Mexican slut. My cheeks fairly burned, though, to think that the miserable wretch, her husband, was an American, who had drawn the milk of an honest woman, and was yet alive, though so immeasurably sunk—so base a dastard as to play meek second to a scene like this. Yet this fellow could fight Mexicans and Indians, and was called a man on this frontier. Her domination over the brute was so complete, that she compelled him quietly to submit to seeing her lavish upon Davis those caresses he had sacrificed his position among his countrymen to buy. I hoped this singular passiveness might be traced to some cause more honorable to his manhood, at least; for this person had once held a station of dignity in one of the governmental institutions at home, and had received the diploma of one of our oldest colleges. I was fain to hope that, perhaps, accident, growing out of some wild frontier scene, had placed him thus inexplicably in the power of the " Euphuist"—anything, rather than believe such infamy on the part of a countryman voluntary. Crime and license can strangely distort humanity.
This agreeable trio passed on to the Rancho of the lieutenant, which was a half-mile below on the river. The Texan was in a very surly and stupid mood—the consequence of the over-night's excesses—and we could get but little out of him concerning what occurred at the old dame's Rancho after our hasty departure. A muttered fragment now and then was all we could get—such as—" There was the devil to pay when you left!—why didn't
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