Being taken under the wing of Don Andres benefitted me in many ways.  When the Indians from the hills all around could see my white tent close by his little home, they understood that I could not be so bad, or else the good Don Andres would not have anything to do with me.

The Indians in the vicinity had recently gone through the sensation of fighting with four real robbers, who had several times succeeded in plundering store-houses while the owners were off at some feast.  At last the Indians had caught them.  The thieves travelled on foot, but had a pack-horse which carried all the blankets and handkerchiefs stolen, the total value of which ran up to $112.  Sixty-five Tarahumares had banded together in the course of four or five hours, and obliged the robbers to take refuge in a cave, from which they defended themselves with rifles for several hours.  The Tarahumares first threw stones at them, as they did not want to waste their arrows.  Finally Don Andres, who had been sent for, arrived at the place, and induced the robbers to surrender; but only with difficulty could he prevent the Tarahumares from attacking them.  “What does it matter,” they said, “if one or two of us are killed?” Cowards as the Tarahumares are when few in number, they do not know fear when many of them are together.  They are harmless when not interfered with, but neither forget nor forgive an injury.  On several occasions they have killed white men who abused their hospitality, and they even threatened once, when exasperated by abuses, to exterminate all the whites in some sections of their domain.

The robbers were taken by an escort of Indians to the little town of Carichic, and from there sent to Cusihuiriachic ("where upright pole is”) to be tried.  This place is about a hundred miles from Nararachic, and as the Indians during the next weeks were called to be present at the trial as witnesses, it annoyed them not a little.  They were sorry they had not killed the evil-doers; and it would even have been better, they said, to have let them go on stealing.

In the fight the gobernador had got a bullet through his lung.  I saw him a fortnight afterward, smoking a cigarette and on the way to recovery, and after some days he, too, walked to Cusihuiriachic.  A few months later the robbers managed to dig themselves out of the prison.

On an excursion of about ten miles through the picturesque Arroyo de las Iglesias, I passed seventeen caves, of which only one was at present inhabited.  All of them, however, had been utilised as dwellings before the construction of the road to Batopilas had driven the Indians off.