. Mrs. Dalziel really wanted me for Tony, who had never
been denied anything short of the moon that he cried for. Milly wanted
people to think that she wanted me for Tony, in order to have an
invincible, ironproof excuse for the rush to El Paso, which her friends
of the cat tribe might attribute to a different motive. She had been
rather depressed at Alvarado, but began to bubble over with wild spirits
the moment we were off for El Paso. She said that this would be the
great adventure of our lives, and she was only sorry all danger along
the border was over, as we shouldn't get the chance to show how brave we
were.

It was an interesting journey, every stage of it; and at Las Cruces and
after, we began to realize how close we were to old Mexico. Only the
river ran between us and that mysterious, ancient land, as far removed
in thought from the United States as though it were an annex of Egypt.
Here and there, too, the Rio Grande (which I'd thought of geographically
as a vast stream, wide as a lake) was a mere water serpent, writhing in
its shallow bed of mud. This, we heard our fellow passengers say,
explained the late danger of a raid. It would be as "easy as falling off
a log" for a party of ill-advised Mexicans to make a dash across the
river, and already there had been small private expeditions of cattle
stealers. Staring out of the windows at little adobe villages, their
huddled houses turned from brown to cubes of gold by the afternoon sun,
we listened to all sorts of disquieting gossip. According to the
travellers, who talked loudly to each other across the car, the "scare"
was suddenly on again. Some more Federals had escaped the
Constitutionalist soldiers, and got into Del Rio, where they had been
protected by American soldiers, and there had been some shooting from
one side of the river to the other. Carranza was threatening reprisals;
no one seemed to know what Villa's attitude would be. A few American
women who had little children had decided after all to go north. At Las
Cruces and El Paso you could no longer buy a Browning, or arms of any
kind. All had been snapped up. Las Cruces men, remembering that the
militia was composed of Mexicans, had begun giving their wives lessons
in target practice. At El Paso there was the peril of the Mexican
population to be faced in case of attack from across the river; to say
nothing of the thousand Mexicans employed in the smelting works down on
the flats, and the five th