A "Periodical"—Italian treachery—Bitumen extractors—The Mexican disregard for orders—In charge of the stills—A vote canvasser.

Henry Burns had once to arrest a man who was a “periodical.” He would not touch a drink for weeks, even months, at a time, then he would go on an awful spree, paint the town red, and end by shooting up the saloon. After one of these strenuous sprees, Henry told him that he had reached the limit, and that he would be arrested the next time he caused any trouble. A month later the man went on another spree and started in to enliven the town. After a while he heard that Henry was after him, so he went over to his office in the Court House (he was county clerk) and locked himself in, sending word to Henry not to disturb him or he would shoot him. Henry picked up two or three deputies and went to make the arrest. When they reached the locked door Henry made his deputies stand on either side, while he broke it down. “Now,” he said, “boys, I will go in alone and try to arrest him quietly; but, if he shoots me, take no chances, but kill him.” As he broke in the door, the man, who sat behind his desk with a shot-gun resting on it and pointing at the door, called out, “Henry, I will have to kill you if you come in.” Henry did not even draw his pistol, but walked quietly up to the desk and took the gun away. The man’s nerve failed at the last minute, and, as Henry laid his hand on the gun, he turned and jumped out of the window, with Henry after him. The drop was slight, with grass below, and he was arrested and put in jail. A month or so later he was again arrested and locked up, got into a fight with another prisoner, and was killed by the latter. His son ever after claimed that Henry had hired the man to kill him, which was manifestly absurd.

Texans, as a rule, will give a man a fair fight and some chance for his life, but all the men at the mines were not Texans, not even Americans. There were two Italians from New York, expert mastic-makers, who were sent down by the company to instal a mastic plant. One of them had trouble with the foreman and laid a trap for him. On the third storey of the mastic-house there was a balcony exactly over the main entrance. Here the Italian took his stand, leaning on the rail, and at his feet a piece of plank. When the foreman passed underneath, he timed things very nicely, tipped the plank over the edge with his foot as he turned, and went into the building, not stopping to see the result. Fortunately, some one saw the whole performance and yelled. The foreman ducked, and the plank struck him a glancing blow on the shoulder. Of course it was “an accident”; but both Italians were discharged at once.

The branch railroad on which I was employed being completed, I was put in the extractor house as apprentice to learn the work. After the rock is crushed to about two inches in diameter, it is put into large steam-jacketed extractors holding five tons each. The top is sealed down and naphtha pumped in on the rock till the extractors are full; then steam is turned into the jacket, and the hot naphtha extracts all the bitumen from the rock. After a while the asphalt-laden naphtha is drawn off; the rock is then washed with fresh naphtha, which, in turn, is drawn off. The live steam is turned in on the rock and drawn off through condensers, carrying with it the last of the naphtha. The condensed steam and naphtha are run through a settler having two pipes, one at the top to carry off the naphtha to its tank, and one at the bottom for the water. Two or three days after I started in the extractor house the man in charge let the water run too low, and thus some naphtha got out through the water-pipe into the creek, for which he was discharged. I was then put in charge, and though I hardly knew anything about the business, I dared not let the opportunity for advancement slip by me.

There were five of these extractors and two pumps to look after, and it kept me on the move. The second or third day one of the pumps went on strike, and I had to take it down and get it working again. When I got through I went my rounds, and found to my horror that I also had let the water get too low in one of the settlers. Here was an opportunity to get rid of me, and I very soon got my “time.” Then Providence took a hand in my behalf, for my predecessor had left the camp and the day man got sick. The night man took one of his shifts, and then tried to take his own, but gave out; and so at 12 P.M. the foreman came and woke me up to go back again. We had the naphtha stored in overhead tanks, and the orders were most strict against smoking or carrying matches near the works; yet one day we caught one of the extractor loaders sitting on top of the overhead naphtha tanks smoking a cigarette, endangering not only his own life but that of every man on the place.

It seems natural to Mexicans to disobey orders if they think there is the bare chance of their not getting caught; and the more danger there is the more they seem to like it. There used to be a standing order that no one was to ride on the ore cars that ran on the incline down into the pit. One day while I was still working on the crusher I saw a rather amusing thing occur through a man disobeying this order. One of the Padillas, brother of the hoister man, was riding the car down to the pit, when his brother, thinking to have some fun with him, slipped the clutch, and let the car go at a tremendous pace. When, however, it neared the switch at the bottom of the incline, where the cars branched off to the different parts of the pit, the hoister man got scared and lost his head; instead of gently slipping the clutch in, he jammed it down hard and stopped the car dead, standing his brother on his head in the car. Talking of car accidents, another happened a couple of years later, when we had enlarged the plant and built a new extractor house up on the hill. To get the crushed rock up to this house we built a double track incline 900 feet long, with a rise of about 70 feet. The ore bin was set up over these tracks, and behind the bin was a platform on struts, on which was placed a double drum hoisting engine. One day I had just come out of the pit when I heard some one shout, and, looking up, I saw that the cable had parted and the car with two tons of rock in it had started down the incline from near the top. I shouted to the hoisting man to get down out of the way, but he seemed fascinated by that car, and stood there with his mouth open watching it come. By the time it reached the bottom it was going like an express train, and the way it took the struts out from under the engineer’s platform was a sight to see. Down came the engineer, but he was up and dusting himself by the time I reached him; and all he said was, “H—l! she was sure travelling!”

I was working with Himan, the civil engineer, when we built this incline. We built the bents on the ground, marked a centre, then hoisted them upright, and while Mexicans held it steady with guy-ropes, I climbed on top and gave Himan a “sight” with a pencil, while the men moved it on the mud-sill, with bars, one way or another as he directed. I did not relish the job, as I had a very poor head for working on heights, and had little faith in the men on the guy-ropes. Himan used to laugh at me, but one day we were up in the extractor house and he walked out on a 2-inch by 12-inch plank that was laid out to the first bent. A 2-inch plank over a 15-foot span bends considerably under a man. However, he got out all right on the bent, and, after looking at the placing of some sheave wheels, he started back. He had already begun to get giddy, and, when he stepped on the plank and it bent, he lost his nerve so much that in spite of my laughing at him he crawled in on his hands and knees. After the incline was completed, we put up a 4-inch by 12-inch plank “run-way” the whole length between the tracks for the men to go up and oil the sheaves. Working on heights is all a matter of practice, and few men can do it the first time, though of course there are exceptions. Once when shingling a very steep roof I worked the first two days sitting in a sling and expecting every few minutes to fall off; but after a while, with three or four pair of heavy woollen socks to keep me from slipping, I was running all over the same roof and never thought of falling. I have won many bets from cow-punchers who came to the mine that they could not run up the 900-foot incline in two minutes. They would start away at racing gait, then, as the incline left the ground, they would slow down to a walk, and finally they could be seen carefully placing one foot in front of the other, till generally they gave up and came back. As one fellow said, “Down here that plank is wide enough for me to ride my horse on, but up there it is like walking a tight-rope.”

After some time in the extractor house I was given charge of the stills, where the naphtha was driven off, cooled, and returned to its tank, and the pure bitumen left, which was run into barrels. A short while after I got this move, a firm in New York contracted to take our entire output to make into paint and varnish. They were looking for a local agent, and I got the position. I had to see that all the output was up to a certain grade, and when stored in the warehouse or shipped I gave receipts for it on which the company got their money. One day when I was at work a man came out to the warehouse, got into conversation, and after a while offered me a cigar. I told him I could not smoke there, but he insisted on my taking it anyway and smoking it later. He and I had quite a chat, and after a long while he finally drew a card out of his pocket and asked for my vote, as he was running for some county office. The look of disgust that spread over his face when I informed him that I was a British subject and had no vote was truly ludicrous, as he thought of his wasted time and cigar. On railway journeys sometimes this canvassing is a nuisance; moreover, the excuse that you are a Britisher is not always cordially accepted. I said in an early part of these reminiscences that I had been roasted by Americans for many years, and now had a chance when they could not reply to me of getting back a little. But it is a fact that among a certain class of people in the States that the instant they find you are English they immediately drop all other topics of conversation to refer to the time “we licked you badly,” or to discuss the degeneracy of the House of Lords, or some other topic which they think will be of interest to you. At first I used to get very angry and try to argue with them, but later I gave this up, and found the only position to take was one of superiority, and say in so many words, “How can people be so ignorant of facts, so dense as to talk such utter rot? Yet they look intelligent.”