"Chino!" cried at least a half-dozen peons in the same breath.
Small wonder the Mexican considers the "gringo" rude. An American boss would send a peon to fetch his key or cigarettes, or on some equally important errand; the workman would run all the way up hill and down again in the rarified air, removing his hat as he handed over the desired article, and the average man from the States would not so much as grunt his thanks.
The engineers on whom our lives depended as often as we descended into or mounted from the mine, had concocted and posted in the engine-room the following "ten commandments":
"Article 1. Be seated on the platform. It is too large for the engineer anyway.
"Art. 2. Spit on the floor. We like to clean up after you.
"Art. 3. Talk to the engineer while he is running. There is no responsibility to his job.
"Art. 4. If the engineer does not know his business, please tell him. He will appreciate it.
"Art. 5. Ask him as many questions as you like. He is paid to answer them.
"Art. 6. Please handle all the bright work. We have nothing to do but clean it.
"Art. 7. Don't spit on the ceiling. We have lost the ladder.
"Art. 8. Should the engineer look angry don't pay any attention to him. He is harmless.
"Art. 9. If you have no cigarettes take his. They grow in his garden.
"Art. 10. If he is not entertaining, report him to the superintendent and he will be fired at once."
On the second day the scene of my operations was changed to the eighth level, a hundred feet below that of the first. It was a long gallery winding away through the mountain, and connecting a mile beyond with another shaft opening on another hill, so that the heavy air was tempered by a constant mild breeze.
Side shafts, just large enough for the ore-cars to pass, pierced far back into the mountain at frequent intervals. Back in these it was furnace hot. From them the day-gang took out 115 car-loads, though the chute was blocked now and then by huge rocks that must be "shot" by a small charge of dynamite stuck on them, a new way of "shooting the chutes" that was like striking the ear-drums with a club.
The peons placed in each gallery either a cross or a lithograph of the Virgin in a shrine made of a dynamite-box, and kept at least one candle always burning before it. In the morning it was a common sight to see several appear with a bunch of fresh-picked flowers to set up before the image. Most of the men wore a rosary or charm about the neck, which they did not remove even when working naked, and all crossed themselves each time they entered the mine. Not a few chanted prayers while the cage was descending. As often as they passed the gallery-shrine, they left off for an instant the vilest oaths, in which several boys from twelve to fourteen excelled, to snatch off their hats to the Virgin, then instantly took up their cursing again. Whenever I left the mine they begged the half-candle I had left, and set it up with the rest. Yet they had none of the touchiness of the Hindu about their superstitions, and showed no resentment whatever even when a "gringo" stopped to light his cigarette at their improvised "altars."