"Well," I said, "Mexico is Mexico. When everything is arranged you can be sure that something else is going to happen."

Two thirds of this was said in jest, the old man putting me down, I am sure, as a thoroughly stupid woman. But what I said came true. When Obregon decided to run as a candidate for the presidency he went to the Minister of War and announced himself as such. Carranza opposed this so strongly as to force Obregon into a revolution. Obregon and Calles -two men similar only in that both were sincere patriots-started the revolution in Sonora.

I hadn't been back in town four days when Obregon sent Pablo Gonzalez into the city, waiting outside himself with the army behind him. Carranza was given a certain number of days to resign and leave Mexico. The excitement was tremendous. Always a coward, Carranza took the warning, and again was off to Vera Cruz.

His days of grace he employed in headlong robbery. You could not go two blocks without seeing a line of automobiles and carriages in front of some house, and into these cars were being loaded everything from old oak wardrobes to kitchen stoves. The whole city seemed to be moving. Carranza's satellites had as many mistresses as he had; so you can imagine what a lot of packing there was to be done.

Carranza might have escaped with his life if he hadn't been so greedy. His train stood waiting with steam up for two or three days, but there were always a few more things to be taken away. He even took the cartones--cardboard currency--which looked more like street-car tickets than anything else. He took the funds from the treasury and even the light fixtures from the palace. For days we saw these great government wagons moving through the streets, bursting with everything that could be crammed into them.

On the thrifty Carranza's last day in Mexico City, one of our friends lost his Packard. The car was in the largest garage in town. Early that morning some of the departing Carranzistas broke in, killed the nightwatchman, and took all the cars nearest the door. Our friend was not wealthy enough to furnish any Carranzistas with Packards without feeling it; all that day he rushed around looking for his car.

Everything was going out through either the San Lazaro or Buena Vista stations; so he sent one of his employees to watch San Lazaro while he kept his eye on Buena Vista. The last train from the station pulled out at four o'clock in the afternoon with everything on it from girls to grindstones, but no car. Never was seen such luggage-nearly one whole train crammed with nothing but chattering, painted females, the Carranzista harem, with their bird-cages, parrots, and stacks of luggage from trunks to bandboxes. The patio of the station was full of typewriters, chairs, oak wardrobes, and half of all this they were compelled to leave behind for lack of space on the trains.

In great distress, our friend went to the Cafe Colon and ordered a tall drink of straight Scotch. This made him feel so much better that he decided to have another, and that second tall one saved his car for him. As he came out onto the sidewalk, there limping down the Paseo de la Reforma, came his Packard, stacked high with luggage. The car had two flat tires and was moving slowly.

Our friend jumped on the running board and told the driver to turn the car over to him or be shot. The bluff worked. He made the soldier drive the car to the garage and there, for safety against further theft, dismantle it. The success of this recapture was further remarkable in that the American was unarmed, except for those two big shots of whisky, whereas the soldier had guns hung all over him.

The last time I ever saw Senor Carranza was on the Paseo de la Reforma. He was going hell-bent for nowhere, the driver using a police or ambulance whistle to open traffic. The car was a beautiful Packard cabriolet. I think this is about the last time anybody saw Mr. Wilson's favorite Constitutionalist in Mexico City. Five minutes later, he, all his followers, thirty or forty women, and sixty millions in gold and silver pesos, were gone.

An Englishman who was on that last train, trying to get a paper signed by Carranza-not realizing that he was really being chased from the country-relates how the train had hardly got out of the station before the ladies of the retinue were in their chemises, running their hands through the gold, opening bottles of champagne, and how a perfect orgy went on during the entire night. Other detachments left town by way of Guadlupe and San Juan Teotihuacan, and tore up the track behind them. They made no provision for water and oil. Gonzalez's men would tear up the track in front, and then run ahead a few miles and tear up some more. They kept this up until the Carranzistas were exhausted.

The Carranzistas decided to leave the train at Aljibes. Besides the Englishman there was a negro named Ellis on the train who had been working on a free port concession and so also was there to get Carranza's signature. Ellis woke up, looked out of the window and saw the First Chief, Luis Cabrera, Carranza's Minister of Finance, and a lot of others getting into automobiles. Everything was quiet in the car. Ellis dressed, went out of the train, and secured the signatures he required.

The Carranzistas were leaving in their automobiles for Nautla, where Carranza was to take ship to Cuba. It was said afterwards that he was trying to get through the mountains to Coahuila. The cars were loaded with boxes of money, and the soldiers were throwing away their ammunition and filling their pockets with gold. They had loaded all they could into the automobiles. Ellis and the others decided that it would be better for them also to leave in a motor, so they took an automobile down from a flat car and finally found enough gasoline in other cars to start this one. Ellis put a lot of gold in the gas tank and into his pockets.

The Carranzistas started off first in automobiles with the horses following., but soon abandoned the cars and took to the hills on horseback. After a day or two there were only about thirty or forty of them left. In the end they had to throw the gold away, for weariness. For months afterwards the Indians' chief sport around there was picking up gold.

Snipers pecked at the fugitives from ambush all along the way. Ellis had taken a sheet from the Pullman car. As they drove along the road he would hold the sheet high up as a flag of truce. He was among the few who still held on to his car. The original party was now widely separated.

Finally Ellis's party ran on to General Trevino, who stopped them and took all the gold he could find. This done, he allowed them to go on into Puebla, but only on condition that they turn the car over to the military authorities. This they did. Ellis had hidden several thousand pesos oro nacional which Trevino hadn't located. He came out of the rout with a nice profit, not to mention a petition properly signed.

OBREGON came into the city two nights later. Wallace and I were driving that same day past the Iron Horse, when we heard an extra being called. Carranza had been killed, the paper reported. "I can't believe," I said, "that Obregon would fail to profit by General Huerta's mistake. I hoped he'd have sense enough, when he killed, not to advertise the fact." Wallace agreed; and said he was perfectly sure that these extras had been issued without Obregon's knowledge. This must have been true, for it wasn't two hours before another extra was on the street contradicting the first, with a great story about how the Carranzistas were overpowering the Obregonistas and that Obregon stood a very good chance of being beaten. That reassured us. Obregon, plainly, was not going to offend, as did Huerta, the moral sensibilities of the United States. Washington having recognized Carranza, might well have taken the same attitude toward Obregon; and no American in Mexico wanted further confusion. We were further comforted by a strong feeling that Carranza was dead, which he was.

The full facts came out later. Carranza kept going up into the hills until finally he was way up in the mountains. Here he was met on the road by a general whom Carranza did not distinctly remember, but who now professed great loyalty and offered comfort, saying,, "This is my country. No one shall harm you. I, myself, will guide you through to the coast."

The general's family lived in the Zacaltepec country. There had been a feud between his family and the Cabreras. When Luis Cabrera was governor of Puebla he had arrested this general's father; and to all pleas for clemency Carranza had turned, as usual, a deaf ear. The general's father was shot.

And now Obregon and Pablo Gonzalez had sent word to this son of the family to head Carranza off, and hold him captive. They didn't want Carranza to go to Cuba, and didn't want him killed--at least not yet. Obediently, for the moment, the mountain general led Carranza and his party to a site carefully picked-a narrow piece of land sticking out over a barranca; you could jump down but you couldn't jump back again.

On this site was a little village. A but had already been picked out for Carranza and cleaned and made ready for him. Bonillas and a certain general and some other officers were given huts on the other side of the village. The Indians very courteously got supper for all of them. About nine or ten o'clock that night, when everything was quiet, the general got up and went to Carranza's hut, striking a match as he came to the doorway. He had placed Carranza's cot on the opposite side of the room, and wished to know if Carranza had changed his bed around. Carranza woke up, startled "What is wanted?" he cried. "I only wished," his host answered, "to see that you had everything you ought to have." At that he started pouring bullets in Carranza's direction, and did not stop until his guest was a heavily-weighted corpse.

Bonillas in his excitement tried to climb down the barranca, and nearly broke his neck. Cabrera also climbed down, and was lucky enough to get away. The other officers were brought back with Carranza's body to Mexico City. Carranza's heart was sent to his daughter for burial; the body was too decomposed for shipment. The general was tried and acquitted. He is now a brigadier-general stationed at an important outpost.

I believe that Obregon was perfectly sincere in his expressed wish that Carranza should not be killed. He gave the true story of Carranza's death to our State Department. Whether Wilson was too busy with peace conferences, or whether Carranza, as the current saying went, had been taken from the sala--drawing-room-of Mr. Wilson's affections and thrown into the cellar, none of us will ever know. But we do know that he shed no tears over the death of this one-time favorite, and what in 1914 had been an act of violence against nations and humanity, was in 1920 taken quite as a matter of course.

Obregon had lost an arm in the hard fighting of those intervening years of chaos. At his inaugural he raised not his good remaining arm but the battle stump, and swore to preserve in peace, as in war, his country.