And she quickly crumbled up the leaf in her trembling hand and tossed it away, and then covered her face with her apron.
When she looked up again, Luis Cervantes was nowhere to be seen.
Camila got up and started walking down the path toward the creek again. Now it looked as if the water was sprinkled with fine particles of carmine, as if a sky of colors and sharp peaks of light and valleys of shadows stirred about in its waters. Myriads of luminous insects blinked above a pool near the water’s edge. And at the bottom, the reflection just above the smooth, round pebbles reproduced Camila’s yellow blouse with its green ribbons, her white skirt, her clean and finely combed hair, and her smooth eyebrows and forehead—exactly as she had prepared herself to please Luis Cervantes.
And she burst into tears again.
In the thicket of rockroses the frogs sang the implacable melancholy of the hour.
Swaying back and forth on a dry branch, a dove cried as well.
XV
There was much merrymaking and a lot of very good mezcal1at the dance.
“I wish Camila was here,” Demetrio said loudly.
Everyone looked around for Camila.
“She’s sick, she has a real bad headache,” Señora Agapita said in a harsh voice, irritated by the mean looks she was getting from everyone.
Later, as the fandango was coming to an end, Demetrio, swaying a bit as he spoke, thanked the good neighbors who had given them such generous shelter, and promised that he would keep them all in mind once the revolution triumphed. He concluded with: “Bed and prison, that’s where ya always know who your real friends are.”
“May God hold you in his blessed hand,” an old woman said.
“May God bless you and lead you down the righteous path,” a few others said.
And a very drunk María Antonia added:
“May ya come back soon. But real, real soon now!”
The next day, María Antonia who, despite being pock-marked and having a lazy eye, had a very bad reputation— so bad that everyone said there was no man who had not taken a turn with her behind the thicket of rockroses by the riverbanks—yelled at Camila:
“Hey, you! What’s this cryin’ all about? What’re ya doin’ in the corner with that shawl wrapped ’round your head? Hey? Don’t tell me that ya’re cryin’ now? Look at your eyes, girl. Ya look like a witch already. Go on. There’s nothin’ to get all upset about. Ya know there’s no pain that ever lasts no more than three days.”
Señora Agapita knit her brows and mumbled something incomprehensible under her breath.
The women were actually quite upset by the departure of Demetrio and his men. Even the men, despite the insults they muttered between their teeth, lamented that they would no longer be eating lamb and sheep for dinner. That had been the life indeed: eating and drinking to their hearts’ delight, and sleeping long siestas in the shade of the large boulders with their legs stretched out while the clouds drifted slowly across the sky overhead.
“Look at ’em again. There they go,” María Antonia shouted. “They look like toy soldiers arranged on a cupboard. ”
In the distance, Macías’s men could be seen atop the edge of a summit—out where the rugged ground and the chaparral began to merge into a bluish, velvety horizon—cut out against the sky’s sapphire radiance. A warm breeze carried the faint, intermittent melody of “La Adelita” back to the huts.
Camila had come out when she had heard María Antonia’s voice. Seeing them one last time, she was unable to control herself, and once again broke out in sobs.
María Antonia laughed loudly and walked away.
“Someone has cast the evil eye on my daughter,” murmured Señora Agapita, perplexed.
She thought quietly for a while. Then, after going over it carefully in her mind, she made a decision. She reached up to a spike nailed into a post in her hut, between the image of Christ and one of the Virgin of Jalpa, and grabbed the raw leather strap that her husband used to yoke the oxen. And folding the long strap in half, she gave Camila a thorough thrashing to drive away the evil spirits.
As he rode on his chestnut horse, Demetrio felt rejuvenated. His eyes had recovered their peculiar metallic sparkle, and the red, hot blood was flowing again through his coppery, pure-race indigenous cheeks.
The men all filled their lungs deeply, as if they were trying to breathe in the vast horizon, the immensity of the sky, the blueness of the mountains, and the fresh air infused with the sweet fragrances of the Sierra. They galloped on their horses as if they could thus take possession of all the land with their unrestrained running. Who among them thought then of the severe chief of police, of the grumbling gendarme, or of the pompous cacique? Who then thought any more of their wretched shack of a house, where one lives like a slave, always under the watch of the owner or of the surly, cruel majordomo? Who among them thought at that point of always having to be up before sunrise, with shovel and basket in hand, or lugging plow and goad, ready to go out and earn one’s daily serving of atole and frijoles?
They sang, they laughed, and they hooted, drunk with the sun, the air, and life itself.
The Indian pranced forward on his horse; flashing his white teeth, he told jokes and acted like a clown.
“Listen, Pancracio,” he asked very seriously. “In a letter I got here my wife has notified me that we have another child now. How can that be? I haven’t seen her since the days of Señor Madero!”
“Nah, tha’s nothin’. When ya left ’er the bun was already in the oven!”
Everyone bursts out in loud laughter. Everyone except the Indian, who starts singing in a falsetto voice, grave and aloof and horribly off-key:
I gave her a penny
but she said no, no, no . . .
I gave her a nickel
but she wanted more.
She begged and she begged
until I gave her a dime.
Oh, ungrateful women
showin’ no consideration at all!
The clamoring finally ceased when the sun began to beat down on them.
All day long they rode along the canyon. All day long they climbed up and down sloping hills, dirty, cropped hills like scabbed heads, hills always endlessly followed by more hills.
In the late afternoon, they made out the vague outline of several tall church towers against the blue-ridged mountains in the distance, and beyond this, a road with swirling white dust and gray telegraph poles.
They headed toward the main road, where they saw the shape of a man sitting on his haunches off to one side. They approached him. He was a ragged, ugly-looking old man working hard as he tried to repair a leather sandal with a dull knife. Near him grazed a donkey loaded with a bale of hay.
Demetrio asked: “What’re ya doin’ here, gramps?”
“I’m headin’ to town, bringin’ alfalfa for my cow.”
“How many Federales in town?”
“Yup . . . there’s a few, I think no more than a dozen.”
The old man started talking. He spoke of very grave rumors. That Obregón was already laying siege to Guadalajara; that Carrera Torres had taken San Luis Potosí; and that Pánfilo Natera was in Fresnillo.2
“Well then,” Demetrio said. “You can go on ’head and head back into town. But ya better be careful and not tell no one who ya just saw out here, ’cause if ya do I’ll blow your brains out myself. I’ll find you even if ya go and hide in the center of the earth.”
“What d’ya say, muchachos?” Demetrio inquired after the old man had left.
“Let’s go get ’em! Let’s go kill every single one of those conservative mongrels!” Demetrio’s men exclaimed.
They counted the cartridges and the hand grenades that Owl3had built with fragments of iron pipes and brass knobs.
“It’s not much,” Anastasio observed. “But we’ll trade ’em in for real rifles soon ’nough.”
They pressed forward anxiously, spurring the thin flanks of their fatigued nags.
But Demetrio’s imperious voice stopped them. Following their leader’s orders, they made camp at the foothill of a rise, protected by a thick growth of huisache trees. Without unsaddling their horses, every man sought a rock to lay his head.
XVI
Demetrio Macías gave the marching orders at midnight.
The town was one or two leagues away. They were going to strike the Federales at dawn. The sky was clouded over and only a handful of stars shone above, but occasionally there was a reddish flash of lightning that lit up the entire night.
Luis Cervantes asked Demetrio if it might not behoove them—so as to be even more successful in their attack—to find a guide, or at the very least to gather the town’s topographic details and the precise situation of the barracks of the Federales.
“No, curro,” Demetrio replied, smiling with a disdainful expression. “We hit ’em when they least expect it, and tha’s that. Tha’s how we’ve always done it, many times before, and it’s how we’ll always do it. Ever seen how squirrels stick their heads outta their holes if ya fill ’em up with water? Well, these damned little conservative mongrels will come out just as stunned when they hear the first shots. They’ll come out, and we’ll be there ready to use their heads as target practice.”
“And what if the old man who gave us that information yesterday was lying? What if they turn out to have fifty men instead of twenty? What if that old man was a spy put out there by the Federales?”
“This curro here is startin’ to get all scared already!” Anastasio Montañés said.
“Yes, handling a rifle is not like boilin’ water and puttin’ on bandages and givin’ enemas, is it now, curro?” Pancracio asked.
“H’m, come on!” the Indian said. “Too much talk already. All this over a dozen scared rats!”
“Soon enough we’ll find out whether our mothers gave birth to real men or what,” Lard added.
When they reached the edge of the small town, Venancio went on ahead and knocked on the door of the first small house he found.
“Where’s the barracks?” he demanded of the man who stepped outside, barefoot, wearing a torn poncho around his otherwise bare chest.
“The barracks is just down there by the plaza, sir,” he answered.
But as none of them knew where “down there by the plaza” was, Venancio forced the man to walk out in front of their column and show them the way.
Trembling with fear, the unfortunate wretch exclaimed that what they were making him do was outrageous.
“I’m just a poor peasant, señor. I have a wife and small children.”
“And what are mine, dogs?” Demetrio replied.
Then he ordered:
“Very quiet now, on the ground, single file, down the middle of the street.”
The broad quadrangular church dome rose up above the other houses of the town.
“See there, señores? The plaza is in front of the church. Ya just walk a little farther down from there and ya’ll run straight into the barracks.”
The man then knelt down and begged them to let him go back home. But without answering, Pancracio struck the man in the chest with the butt of his rifle and made him continue.
“How many soldiers are stationed here?” Luis Cervantes asked the man.
“Sir, I don’t wanna lie to ya, your grace. But truth is, truth is there’s a whole lot of ’em there.”
Luis Cervantes looked at Demetrio, but Macías pretended not to have heard anything.
They soon reached a small plaza, where they were met by a deafening discharge of rifles. Startled, Demetrio’s chestnut-colored horse reared, staggered on its hind legs, folded its forelegs, and fell down kicking. Owl let out a shrill cry and rolled off his horse, which bolted madly toward the middle of the plaza.
A new round of rifle shots was fired toward them, and the man who had guided them spread his arms out and fell backward without exhaling a sound.
Anastasio Montañés quickly lifted Demetrio up and carried him over his shoulder. The others had already retreated and were hiding behind the walls of the surrounding houses.
“Señores, señores,” a common townsman said, sticking his head out from a large doorway. “You should circle ’round and get ’em from behind the chapel. They’re all in there. Go back down this same street, turn left at the first corner, then ya’ll reach a small alley, and then ya’ll go through that till ya reach the back of the chapel.”
At that point an incessant round of pistol fire began raining down on them. It came from the nearby terraces.
“Oh,” the man said, “those aren’t bitin’ spiders fallin’ down on us. That’s the curros. Come inside here till they leave. They’ll run away soon, those curros, they’re afraid of their own shadows.”
“How many conservative mongrels are in town?” Demetrio asked.
“There were no more than a dozen or so here before. But last night they were real afraid of somethin’ and they used the telegraph to call for reinforcements. So who knows how many are in town now! But it doesn’t matter if there’s a lot of ’em. Most of ’em were enlisted by the draft, and it doesn’t take much of nothin’ for ’em to turn and run and leave their leaders behind. My brother was caught by the damned draft and they have ’im in there with ’em. I’ll go with ya, I’ll give ya a sign, and ya’ll see how all the men that was drafted come over to this side as soon as ya attack. And then we can get rid of the officers once and for all. If ya could just give me some kind of weapon, señor, I’d join ya at once.”
“We don’t have no rifles left, brother. But this oughtta be good for somethin’,” Anastasio Montañés said, handing the man a couple of hand grenades.
The leader of the Federales was a very presumptuous young blond man with waxed mustaches. At first, when he did not know the exact number of men who had assaulted them, he had remained extremely quiet and cautious. But now that the enemy had been so successfully turned back, and they had not even given them a chance to fire a single shot, he started making unwise shows of courage and taking extraordinary risks. While all the other soldiers barely dared to stick their heads out from behind the stone pillars to look toward the enemy, the leader of the Federales went out in the bright early morning and exhibited his elegant, slender figure, his long cape occasionally waving behind him in the breeze.
“Ah, this reminds me of our glorious military uprising!”
Since his military career was limited to just one adventure— the time he had participated as a cadet at the School of Officers when the revolt against President Madero had broken out—every time the slightest reason arose, he would invariably recall the deeds at the Ciudadela.1
“Lieutenant Campos,” he ordered emphatically. “Take ten men and finish off those bandits hiding down there. Go and get those dirty, rotten dogs down below! They only act brave when it comes time to shooting cows and stealing chickens!”
A peasant appeared under the arch of a small door. He came with the news that the assailants had retreated to a corral, where it would be very easy to seize all of them at once.
This message came from the distinguished citizens of the town, who had taken their stations on their own terraces, determined not to let the enemy escape.
“I myself will go finish them off,” the officer said vehemently. But almost immediately he changed his mind. Backing away from the door, he said:
“They may be expecting reinforcements, and it would be imprudent for me to abandon my post. Lieutenant Campos, you go and bring them back to me alive, so we can have them shot by firing squad later this very day at noon, when everyone in town is coming out of high mass. I shall make fine examples of these bandits! But if you cannot capture them alive, Lieutenant Campos, then finish them all off. No one is to get out of this town alive. Understood?”
And being well satisfied with himself, he began to pace back and forth and to think about the official dispatch he would write in his rendering of the events. “To His Honor the Minister of War, Most Esteemed Gener
al Don Aureliano Blanquet.2Mexico City. It is my pleasure, General, to bring to Your Excellency’s attention that at sunrise on the . . . day of this month, a party of five hundred men under the leadership of H . . . sought to attack this plaza. With the force necessitated by the occasion, I gathered our troops at the elevated areas of the town. The attack commenced at dawn and lasted for a duration of more than two hours of sustained gunfire. Despite the enemy’s numerical superiority, under my leadership, we managed to punish them severely and defeat them unequivocally. Their dead numbered at twenty, and even more were injured, judging by the trail of blood they left behind in their precipitous retreat. Among our ranks we had the good fortune of not being hit by a single bullet. It is my pleasure to congratulate you, esteemed Minister, for this triumph on behalf of the troops of the Republic. Long live His Honor General Don Victoriano Huerta!3Long live Mexico!
“After which,” he went on in his mind, “my promotion to major will be assured.” And he clenched his fists with joy just as a report of gunfire went off, leaving his ears ringing.
XVII
“So ya’re sayin’ that if we can get through this corral we’d come straight out into the alley?” Demetrio asked.
“Yes. Except that after the corral there’s a house, then another corral, and then a store after that,” the townsman replied.
Demetrio scratched his head thoughtfully. But his decision came at once.
“Can ya get a pick, or a pickax, or somethin’ like that, to break a hole through that wall there?”
“Yes, they have all of that here. But—”
“But what? Where do they keep everythin’?”
“Sure the equipment’s all here, I tell ya. But all these houses here belong to the owner, my boss . . .”
Without listening any further, Demetrio walked to the room indicated as the place where the tools were kept.
From there, the entire operation took but a few minutes.
Once they were out in the alleyway, they ran in single file, staying close to the walls for cover, until they reached the area behind the church.
The Underdogs Page 7
