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a man die, you'd know he was dead by the way he fell.
Now I've told this story to men who were in the Civil War, beside which the
Mexican
War looks like a Sunday outing, and some of them say that's not hard to
believe. You see enough men die and you see everything. One fellow'll get both
legs blown off and sit and joke while they sew him up; the next'll get a
little scratch and die of the shock. But that one
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ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
just doesn't sound like Harris, not before or after Dona Dolores's prediction
made him reckless. What signifies to me is the date that Harris died: December
30th, 1853.
Earlier that year, Santa Anna had managed to get back into office, for the
last time. He did his usual trick of spending all the money he could find.
Railroad fellow named James
Gadsden showed up and offered to buy a little chunk of northern Mexico, to get
the right-of-
way for a transcontinental railroad. It was the Mesilla Valley, and Santa Anna
signed it over on the thirtieth of December. We didn't know it for a couple of
weeks, and the haggling went on till June but when Harris picked a fight that
night, he wasn't on Mexican soil. And you can make of that what you want.
As for me, I only kept farming for a few more years. Around about '57 the
Apaches started to get rambunctious, Cochise's gang of murderers. Even if I'd
wanted to stay I
couldn't've kept any help. Went to California but didn't pan out. Been on the
move since, and it suits me. Reckon I'll go almost anyplace except Mexico.
Because old Dolores liked me and she told my fortune many times. I never paid
too much attention, but I know if she'd seen the sign that said I wasn't going
to die in Mexico, she would've told me, and I would've remembered. Maybe it's
all silliness. But I ain't going to be the one to test it.
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