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In the middle of the street, lying in the shade of a house, were two dead men. A handsome Indian girl, with a sullen and unmoved countenance, was engaged in winding a serape, or blanket, round one of the bodies; but the other lay untended, certain stains upon the clothing revealing the manner of its end. On a doorstep sat a third man, much wounded about the head and face, while the barber of the village, its only doctor, attempted to remove his hair with a pair of blunt scissors, so that he might dress the cuts.

The scene was dreadful, but no one took much notice of it, for Indian life is cheap, and in those days death by violence was even more common in Mexico than it is now. On the opposite side of the street an old woman chaffered with a passer-by about the price of her oranges, while some children with shouts and laughter strove to lasso and drag away a pig that haunted the place; and a girl on her way to mass stepped over the uncovered body which lay so quiet in the shade, and, recognising it as that of a friend, crossed herself as she hurried on.