Oroville Union High School - Nugget Yearbook (Oroville, CA)

Page 21 text:

I V I A THREE CORPSES It was in the back room of a saloon in the American town of Piedras Blancas, six miles back from the Mexican border in the sage brush of New Mexico, that the following scene was enacted a scarce three months ago. Picture in the foreground several chairs with raw-hide bottoms pushed back from a rough table; in the left hand far corner a tall upright stove: on the rough board floor around the latter, innumerable cigarette stubs; and hung on the right wall a large calendar from an El Paso brewery, and the setting is complete. Seated on the opposite side of the table was a large, swarthy man with black hair and a slightly grayish moustache with a fierce downward curve, a bandana around his neck, and his lower extremities clothed in leather chaps. Plainly his attire bespoke him a vacquero. or as his kind is better known, a cowboy. On his either hand sat iwo similarly attired. Before them each sat a small glass whim but a moment before had contained some of America's national drink. “Well. Dick, said the man on the right of the first de-scribed, what's been happening to you these five months, that you’ve been below the line?” Why, I was down at Arroyo la Cruz in Dawsons silver mine. You know his men there, all Mexicans, were most of them shot by Villa when Dawson abandoned his properties two years ago. But you all know Dawson—he isn’t afraid of a whole corral-full of Villas, so when things commenced to look brighter about half a year back he bought a light auto truck and he went into there again, equipped to open things up and, as a valuable part of his equipment, he took me with him. “We made the one hundred and three miles from El Paso down in great shape, but you should have seen the shape we found things in at the camp. Those --------- Villis- tas had torn the whole thing upside-down. They blew the mill up, dynamited a lot of timbering In the tunnel and stole the copper amalgam plates. But that was all in the run of things—Charley Dawson wasn’t the sort to quit. What he did was to hire a big greaser that was still there and he set him and me to excavating and retimbering the tunnel and then he hiked off to the railroad at Ysleta and ordered some new machinery. Well, we three worked away at that tunnel and got the whole thing cleared up in good shape, not mentioning the new apparatus we installed, and Charley was about ready to get a gang of men to start the thing off. when what should 17

Page 20 text:

I ▼ I 4 in white moonlight. Tall. slim, shining, silvery trees encircle the meadow. A lone figure in filmy white draper.es, stands with arms upstretched toward a silvery poplar tree. Tla Bot, gazing thoughtfully out over the dreaming meadow, hoping and watching for the Light. A mysterious music floats in the air. tantalizing her, for she can only hear, now and then, a straiiv—always there is a m ssing note in the wondrous music. Her wandering gaze falls on the moon. A dark spot is on it—It grows—half the moon is hidden. With wistful eyes she watches it grow. The shadow is about to conceal the last ray of light. Did the last tiny fragment of light break from the moon? What is that thin piece of light fluttering to earth from the heavens? Nearer and nearer it dances. Boc’s eyes seem glued to it. A quick thought crosses her mind—the Light! With a cry of joy she lifts her arm toward it. But Boc. in her ecstasy, does not notice that the Llgnt is no longer coming nearer. It is swiftly flying upward. It has again united with the moon, which has freed itself from the black shroud. With a sob. Boc limply falls to the ground, burying her pale face n the dewv moss. IV. Doc. almost discouraged. is again searching for the Light. Is it possible that she must go through life ever longing for Inspiration and never finding it? This time her wandering leads her to a lake, calm and serene. Vainly the moon is trying to escape a mass of black clouds. Boc raises her eyes to the moor., knowing that it will not b long before it will break from obscurity and give its light to the world. Is there not such a chance for her? That Inex-plicible yearning is always upon her, never is she w ithout it. Alw’ays strong upon her is that sense of drifting toward certain doom. The Light! Was it ever so bright? She would have it this time. Going to the brink of the lake she unhesitatingly put one white foot, then the other, into the water. To Boc, it was not cold. What did she care? She was going to have the Light. Its luminous brightness on the w’ater promised nothing dismal beyond. Further and further she walked into the lake. Nearer and nearer she came to the Light. Her hand touched it! Walking forward she clutched it to her breast, never to part from it again. The music of the water lapping gently over her head grew sweeter with every note. ALICE CLEMO, '16. 16

Page 22 text:

happen but that Villa greaser started up our way. The news drifted into the camp one afternoon that he and a gang of marauders were thirty miles south of us. “Now we were up in the hills and. to get out. we had to go south down to the plains and then circle back around the hills to get to the states. The night wf got this news Dawson came to me, and he sure did look sickly, and he says, ‘Dick, we’ll have to get out of here tonight. That Villa is too----------close for com- fort, and if we don’t get by him before dawn, we won’t be able to save any of our stuff.’ (He meant the truck and some valuable testing apparatus). You see, he wanted to save some of his layout and since I wasn’t the kind to choose the safe way of backing away from Villa on horseback If I could save some money for Charley by braving a little danger. I agreed with him. “We waited till about eleven that night and then jumped into the machine and started down the canyon. Just as we were going Charley laid a big steel plate from the mill, together with a bunch of rope, in the back. I didn't quite see what he wanted that for, but I knew that it was for some purpose, so I didn't have anything to say. “It’s about twenty miles down the canyon to the plains from Arroyo la Cruz, and we passed out of it about 2 a. m. Well, we could see Villa's camp fires a few miles ahead and when we turned and started away from him we felt more comfortable. 18 But everything didn’t go smooth—Villa had more than likely heard of Dawson’s truck, so about half an hour after we got out of the hills we heard some popping behind us. We had been running with dimmed lights and pretty slow over those roads, but when we heard that firing we started to speed up. The truck bounced all over the road at twenty-five miles an hour, but we couldn’t afford to go any slower. Pretty soon the popping stopped and we thought we were out of danger. Mile after mile we went on through the night. A little while after dawn a sound like a whole battle turned loose behind us and Charley looked around. You should have seen his face pale. That man looked like a ghost. About two miles behind us was an automobile coming like hell and on it was one of those machine guns making a noise like a riveting machine. A little ways farther on we stopped behind some mes-quite brush and roped that steel plate in back of the seat. Of course the popping ceased when we were hidden from the greasers’ view and perhaps they were kind of wonderin’ what kind of a dodge we would pull anyhow. But they kept coming Just the same and I should Judge that when we started off they weren’t much more’n three-quarters of a mile away. When we hit the trail again one of those Mexicanos took a squint at us through his glasses and then he waved