When the Owl Cries

by Paul Alexander Bartlett

  16

  A bullet crashed through a front window, as Angelina wrote a letter toEstelle. She had been having trouble with her pen point and waspicking at it with her fingernail. At the thud of lead and crackle ofglass, she dropped her pen and stared about her as if she had neverseen the room before. A second bullet smashed another pane andembedded itself in a wall. Snatching her brass desk bell, she clangedit frantically. Her letter fluttered to the floor. Another bulletshattered glass. Sliding from her chair she began to crawl toward thewall where there were no windows. Servants screamed in the patio.Single shots became a volley, then silence.

  She remembered childhood stories of bandits, sordid crimes; all kindsof fears crosshatched her brain; she hunched herself forward on handsand knees, certain she was going mad. When she reached the wall shestood, then sank, crumpled, doll-like, her legs of no use. She reachedfor the cross on her gold neck chain, but found she had forgotten it.Closing her eyes, she prayed.

  A shot spanged prisms off the chandelier, and pieces of glass thumpedthe wall near her. Opening her eyes, she picked up a fragment of glasswith shaky fingers; as she stared at it she saw Raul.

  "Raul!" she screamed.

  "Stay on the floor!" he shouted.

  "Raul ... what's happening?"

  Raul and Manuel paused a second in the patio doorway. Raul held hisMauser. Manuel had a carbine. With a rush, bending low, Raul made forthe front windows, telling Manuel to get close to the door so he wouldbe protected by the wall. Raul fired out the broken window, thensquatted to reload. Manuel aimed and fired; he was slower, steadier,searching for someone on top of the wall. Smoke choked the room.

  "What's wrong?" Angelina cried. "Who is it?"

  "We don't know who it is," Raul yelled. He crossed the room and kneltbeside his wife. "Stay here by the wall. I have men all around thehouse. Somebody got on our wall and fired down on us, maybe severalmen. We'll drive them off. Listen ... the shooting has stopped."

  "There goes somebody--along the wall," Manuel shouted, and firedthrough window glass, fragments flying about him.

  Like a wraith, Fernando pushed through the patio entrance in his wheelchair, shoving with one hand, groaning. Manuel saw him in the directline of fire from the wall and scuttled toward the chair, grabbed itand rolled it near Angelina and Raul.

  "Father!" said Raul. "You shouldn't be here."

  "You want them to come in my room and kill me. Who is it? What is allthis? I, you ... why...." His white face and eyeglassless eyesshocked Angelina and she knelt beside him. "You should have stayed inyour room," she said. "Who helped you?"

  "Who's out there?" Fernando asked. "What's happening?"

  "There are a lot of men. Pedro ... many men ... I don't know just whothey are."

  "So Pedro has turned against me, the god-damn' bastard. I--"

  A volley of shots tore into the house, and Raul and Manuel returned thefire. Rifle bullets cracked above, sounding steadily.

  "Our men are shooting from the roof," Raul said to Manuel.

  The old man coughed and tried to see; he blinked and tugged at hischair.

  Raul, tormented by the firing, his father's presence, the destruction,fired recklessly.

  "Take it slow, Raul," Manuel said. "First thing you know, you'll betaking chances."

  Raul nodded.

  Crawling to the far end of the room, he opened a French door and aimedcarefully at a man on the wall; as he shot, he noticed one of Petaca'sguards firing from the corner turret.

  "Some of our men are in the turrets," he said.

  Esteban soon appeared in the patio door.

  "We're driving them away!" he shouted. "Our men are on the roof.They're leaving Petaca ... we've got them on the run!" He pointed hispistol at the walls.

  "Good--we've got them on the run," said Raul to Manuel,

  "Kill them!" cried Fernando.

  "You must be quiet, ssh," said Angelina, shoving his chair nearer tothe wall and sitting beside it.

  Other Petaca men took over the outside wall, firing. Raul, at one endof the room and Manuel, at the other, watched and waited. The quietwas strange. Holding on to the wheel chair, Angelina began to cry.Raul, flattened against the wall, stared at her, hating her lack ofcourage and control. Why wasn't she in Guadalajara?

  Raul checked his supply of bullets and then wheeled his father to hisbedroom and with the help of Angelina and Chavela, got him into bed.Fernando was silent, very weak.

  Mounting the defense wall, Raul learned that twenty-five or thirty menhad attacked the hacienda; the appearance of some rurales--a handful ofthem--had discouraged the attack. But Raul could not be sure thereport about the rurales was more than a rumor. Esteban insisted thatthe firing from the roof had driven off the attackers. Two men hadbeen killed and Raul ordered them buried ... two men in white, oneyoung, one middle-aged. Several of Raul's people had been wounded andVelasco dressed their wounds in the small patio.

  Gabriel rode in later and seemed less astounded at the attack thananyone. Limping about the patio, helping the wounded, he said Pedrohad not led this attack.

  "What if he was with the men who attacked us! He didn't supply thoseguns, we know that. Raul took his guns. The hacienda of Primavera hasbeen burned. I saw it in the Ciudad Guzman newspaper. Did Pedro dothat, too? He can't be everywhere."

  "I saw him here," said Raul.

  "It's a good thing you had guards posted," said Velasco.

  "We'd have lost the place without them," said Raul, rolling a bandage."I'll have to hand out more guns. There are still some in the gameroom."

  "Keep men on the walls and in the turrets," said Gabriel.

  Dr. Velasco's goatee quivered over a wounded youngster. "Can't youhold still? Damn you!" he grumbled.

  Instrument in hand, the thin wrist swiveling, he probed for a fragment.

  "I feel it," he said.

  The youngster moaned.

  "Shut up," Velasco said, on edge. "Somebody light me a cigarette."

  Back of all this mess, Raul saw his father. Full of bitterness, hewalked to the living room and examined the smashed windows, the pockedwalls, the damaged chandelier. He asked a scared maid to sweep up thesmashed glass. Together they knocked out damaged panes. That jobdone, he sat down, but he had scarcely caught his breath when Gabrielcame in, looking beaten.

  "Let's both have a brandy," said Raul. "I was thinking..."

  "No, not now. I..."

  "What is it?"

  "Two of our people were shot, a few minutes ago."

  "I heard no shooting. Where?"

  "Behind the corral."

  "Who got shot?"

  "Teresa and Maria Eugenia. They're dead."

  "Two women--the scum ... to shoot women!" Raul exclaimed. The lasttime he had seen Maria and Teresa they had been preparing food in thekitchen.

  "So somebody shot them," Raul said, barely opening his lips.

  "It was no accident," said Gabriel.

  "Deliberate."

  "Yes."

  "My Petaca is taking a beating."

  Gabriel turned to go.

  "What can I do?" asked Raul.

  "Nothing now. I want to see their families. Perhaps..." But he didnot bother to finish; instead he read Raul's face, the pain, thestruggle for hope.

  Shortly after Gabriel had gone, Salvador tramped in, boots clacking. Aricochet bullet had hit him in the head and he had a bloody rag aroundhis skull. A bandolier x'd his chest; he carried a Winchester; histrousers, ripped on the side, sagged over his stomach.

  "I have two men at each turret now," he said. "They all have extrabullets. We're ready." He grinned, obviously enjoying himself.

  "That should be all right," said Raul. "I wish we could spare a fewmen and go after Pedro."

  "Where would we find him?"

  "A couple of men might turn up information."

  "Spies?"

  "Why not? Let's also find out where the attackers went.
We've lots offriends; let's use them. We can't wait for the rurales."

  "I'd like to get Pedro, you know that," said Salvador.

  "See what you can learn. This may be revolution. We've got to knowhow things stand." He smelled Salvador's sweat and liked it.

  "I'll see what I can find out," said Salvador.

  "If you can, contact the rurales; get some of them here."

  "Hell, they ran off," he scoffed. Settling his belt over his shoulder,he stalked away. His hat, dangling from a cord around his neck, bangedthe doorframe as he went out.

  When Raul went upstairs he found Angelina in bed, a tray of untouchedfood on the side table; two maids were with her; one of them wasoffering her a cup of tea.

  "How's everything?" she asked quietly.

  "We have men in the turrets and there are men at the gate," he said,making an effort to be calm.

  "Will they come back?"

  "It's not at all likely."

  "Tomorrow anything can happen," she murmured, refusing the tea. "I'mworried about Vicente. What's happening in Colima?" Her nervousnessincreased the huskiness of her voice. "All this mob, all thesekillings."

  "Vicente's probably all right. The revolutionists won't harm Colima."

  "Then what? Is it truly revolution, Raul?"

  He sat by the window, bent forward, trying to puzzle it out. He didnot answer her because he did not know the answer.

  The servants left the room.

  "Just as soon as I can, I'll go with you to Guadalajara, just as soonas the railroad operates again. They'll be running cars soon. You'llbe all right there, with Maria. You mustn't stay here." He rememberedthe newspaper account of street fighting, and asked himself where sheshould go to be safe.

  "Can I take Vicente with me?"

  He wanted to encourage her as much as possible. "If you want to, takehim," he said.

  "Surely the troubled times won't last long," she said, hoping.

  She wanted to sob into her pillows: she peered at shadows created bythe evening lamp, curious forms on the ceiling: she separated theforms: evil faces, women's faces, Estelle laughing at her, everyoneridiculing her for being so weak. She buried herself in her pillows.

  "Raul, Raul," she whispered. "Chavela told me what took place atRefugio.... Take me away."