instep were buckled heavy, hand-engraved silver spurs. From the cartridge belt hung a forty-eight-calibre revolver.
We sauntered uphill to Enriquez's headquarters. Bill, the guide, Enriquez and I sat on the general's bed. The three chairs were occupied by his staff. Pelaez had been there for a conference the night before but had left for the Cowdray camp at dawn. The conversation began with Carranza and ended with the President. But most of the talking was done by an Indian general who had just returned from a thirty-five-day hunt for Indians and others loyal to Carranza. His imagination was as unlimited as the oil fields and he gloried in having a foreign audience. His last battle was his most thrilling one.
It happened in this way: The Mexican Government sent rifles and ammunition to General Mariel, one of the Carranza leaders along the Gulf of Mexico, who immediately armed the half-civilised Teptzintla and Santa Maria Indians. These wild men started to raid the outskirts of the oil district and Enriquez's Indian general with a band of troopers was sent out to halt them. In thirty-five days of wilderness fighting two hundred Indians were accounted for, and then the general entered a small town where he found seven bandits—he called the Carranza troops bandits—terrorising the village. Five were killed in the first skirmish, but the general was shot four times in his right knee and one of his soldiers was killed.
