“No, no, not directly. His take-over is somewhat in the future. But Rosas must go.”
“Ah yes, man, but easy and orderly. We'll see about his going.”
Rosas still seemed strong, for all that he had the revolutionaries of a dozen countries gathered hysterical against him. He still had the strong friendship of his fellow governors, of Urquiza the governor of Entre Ríos in particular. It was hard to see how the man could be brought down when all his fellow governors still stood with him. But the opposition rose and rose and rose, and the forces gathered. England and France sent forces, official and unofficial, against Rosas. Pedro II the Emperor of Brazil sent forces, as did Carlos Antonio Lopez who was dictator of Paraguay. The Colorados of Uruguay gathered in their total numbers, and the Unitarios of all the United Provinces, of Argentina. Argentina was prosperous, for one thing, and the other lands weren't; there was jealousy. Rosas had been in office for too long; there is always jealousy in this. And there were the wreckers from all over the world, and they love to wreck. Besides this, Rosas was a very crude man and the time was past for men of his sort.
“This opposition will not cease,” the Italian man said. “It will build up till it reaches the very sky. It will break the sky. I myself would like to see Rosas go, but not to be succeeded by them.”
“I will see what I myself can do,” Dana told him.
Dana Coscuin, with such crewmen as he had left, and with three new crewmen, three quite bright new crewmen, slipped out of anchorage one night and took the Catherine Dembinska up river.
Two evenings later, they docked at Buenos Aires, upstream and on the west bank of the Plata estuary, a distance of not more than a hundred and thirty miles. The Catherine had wished to go without engine, to play and tack with the wind, to go against the waters and with the back-waters. Buenos Aires was a larger town than Montevideo by half, and a much less nervous town. The people and officials of Buenos Aires cared not at all who docked at their docks, friend or enemy, in war or in peace.
There were better accommodations to be found than in Montevideo, but there wasn't the high society nor the foreign flavor. There weren't any flies. There were booted men of the city, there were booted men of the pampas the Gauchos, those South American cowboys. There were grain-men and boat-men and wool-weavers.
But Dana was known there. He was now such a personage as would be recognized even in a strange city. But he had a bad name now to go with his bright appearance.
“Judas in the green shirt,” the people called to him. “You'll not find one man in all the province who'll betray our leader. Ask where you will; you'll not be able to subvert even one. You've come in vain.” They laughed at Dana. They let him alone. They were serene in themselves and their leader.
Almost all serene. But one knowledgeable man did come to Dana in his hotel that evening and talked to him.
“I agree that Rosas will have to go, Irishman,” this knowledgeable man said. “Rosas himself has been saying that Rosas will have to go, and been saying it for years. He has always been ready to step down. He's been sincere in that. He hasn't wanted the position.
“Here is the situation. Rosas has offered to call an election. His enemies announce that they will boycott any election. Rosas would convene the junta and ask that it name a governor, either temporary or for full-term. The enemies, the unitarios, say that they will not recognize the junta, that they will not take their own seats in the junta, that they will not recognize any governor, either temporary or full-term, who is named by the junta. We ask them ‘Who do you want for governor of the province then?’ ‘Chaos,’ they answer, ‘We want Chaos for governor.’ The fact is that they want to do away with the province and with all the provinces. They want to make another kind of world here. This is the whole matter of the dispute. The men from the foreign countries say that the men of the United Provinces are wild horses who will have to be broken and ridden. What business is it of theirs if we are wild horses who don't want to be ridden? We have our loose freedom and we like it. We prosper in it.”
“But the man Rosas is very cruel, is he not?” Dana asked.
“Yes he is. I don't like that in him. I'm told that he doesn't at all like it in himself. I am told, and it's truth what I'm told, that Rosas goes out at night in the wild country and crashes through thorn bushes naked to try to allay his cruelty and lust. He has Encarnación the Scarlet Woman for wife, and still he has other and stranger lusts. And he does have the cruelty. He'll kill a man in a passion; and he'll then near kill himself in flinging himself about in remorse. He's come almost to doubt his own present sanity, and many of us do doubt it.
“At one time we needed a strong violent man such as he was to preserve our weak and free system. Only strong people with a strong leader can afford the luxury of a weak government. What we need now is a strong un-violent man to do it, one of whose present sanity there is no doubt. Do you know of such a man?”
“I do. That is what I intend to arrange.”
“Rosas would have been gone fifteen years ago if they didn't demand that he go. And he'll be gone immediately when they quiet their clamor for him to be gone. But we'll not give up our ways. The Extranjeros have already enslaved the East Bank province. They'll not enslave the others. What man do you believe you can turn against Rosas, Irishman, the instigator?”
“Oh, I'll try the biggest one first,” Dana said frankly. “It will be the second man of all the United Provinces, Urquiza.”
The man laughed at Dana like a pampas stallion laughing.
“Urquiza? The best friend of Rosas? The governor of Entre Rios? He'd never turn against Rosas, whatever differences of views they have.”
The man horse-laughed Dana again and left him there.
The next morning Dana took the Catherine Dembinska on up the channel. Soon they were at the head of the Persian Gulf, as it were, at the head of the great Plata estuary that is grander than the gulf; and to the mouths of the two rivers of Mesopotamia, the Tigris (which is here named the Uruguay River) and the Euphrates (which is here named the Parana). But Babylon (which was Montevideo) was behind them and not located in the between-the-rivers region at all. Never mind, analogies will break down, and perhaps the sea had encroached on the rivers since ancient times. The mud banks here were at least as ancient as those of its Asian reflection, the rivers greater, and the land greener.
The Uruguay River came down wide and single; but the Parana (the greater of the two rivers) was broken and scattered; it debouched through a dozen mouths. Dana went north up the broad single Uruguay River, with the eastern Uruguay Province on the right hand and the Entre Ríos Province on the left.
Somewhere along that west bank the Governor Urquiza would be waiting with a good nucleus of men which he could in a short time call up into an army. He would defend his province there from the Uruguayan and foreign hysteria, and he would defend his friend Rosas in Buenos Aires Province, if indeed that man needed any defending.
Well, if Urquiza was any tactician at all he would have posted himself at the lowest point on the Uruguay River where large groups of men could cross without elaborate boatage. And he was there, a little above the Entre Ríos town of Concepción del Uruguay, a little below the Uruguayan town named Paysandu.
Dana shored the Catherine on the west bank and went boldly and alone to find the Governor Urquiza.
Dana's ill fame had been here before him. He would not be well received by the governor, but he would be received. And he was received in a ranch-house of the region.
“What have you to say to me, Irish meddler?” Urquiza asked him shortly. “Your mouth has been heard on both sides of the estuary and up the river. What do you want?”
“I want to bring an end to these hostilities that have been sputtering for ten years,” Dana stated, “and to bring them to a reasonable and right end. I want to prevent their ending in a horribly wrong way, as they easily could. The thing builds up high as the sky, one man told me, and it could break the very sky here.�
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“So far I agree,” the Governor Urquiza said as he measured this stranger with his gaze. “I'm also attempting to prevent that horribly wrong ending of it all. How to do it, Irish man?”
“Declare against Rosas immediately, and announce that you are marching against him. That will give confidence to the other forces who have him so greatly outnumbered and are still afraid of him. You declare against him and move against him; then all will move against him. And he will be felled.”
“Rosas is my best friend and fellow governor in the United Provinces. To declare against him would be betrayal.”
“Certainly it would be betrayal. It is declaring against one's worst enemy that has a gentler name. But you must do this thing, whatever you call it.”
“Why, insane man, why?” Should I be traitor, to Rosas as Lopez of Santa Fe was traitor to him in years past? Not only am I not a traitor, but I am a wise enough man to learn by example. Do you know what happened to Lopez of Santa Fe?”
(That had been in 1838. The French had been trying to topple Rosas then, and it was to the French that caudillo Lopez had attempted to betray Rosas.)
“Oh, he failed in it, I'm told, and Rosas had him killed,” Dana said. “But that may not happen to you. You're a more capable man than was Lopez.”
“Yes, I am. And I'm a more honest man also. What do you expect to gain from this, Irishman? What will you do? Where will you go from here, if I do let you go?”
“I'll go straight to Rosas and tell him that he's been betrayed, that he had better make an end to his affairs in his own land, that he should get the best terms possible from his opponents. If you, and he, handle it right, he might get to safe exile somewhere out of the provinces, or out of the continent.”
“And if I refuse to betray him, as I do refuse, what will you do?”
“I'll still go to Rosas. I'll tell him that I solicited your betrayal and that you refused it.”
“This passes all understanding. Why did the Lord of the Flies select a fool for this?”
“His sort always selects fools for errands, Governor. But in me he selected a different sort of fool than he supposed.”
“I let you go freely, fool. Go to Rosas. He'll do to you what I am tempted to do, but he has the greater flair for such things. Get out of here now! At once!”
“No, I will not. I have further things to say to your ears,” Dana stated stubbornly.
“No. You will leave at once. At once!”
“Oh, then I'll cut off your ears and take them with me, Governor. I stated that I had more things to say to your ears and I'll say them to them, here, or on my way.”
Governor Urquiza rose to his feet and looked at Dana in astonishment.
“That was spoken almost like a Gaucho, Irishman,” he said. “All right, everybody leave the room for a moment. I will hear in private what this madman has to say to me.”
All the attendants left. Dana Coscuin talked to the Governor Urquiza for half an hour. Then he left, went down to the shore where the Catherine was shored, and pulled her out into the river.
Governor Urquiza called horse-couriers and sent out the announcement that he was declaring against Governor Rosas of Buenos Aires, that he was activating army and marching against this Rosas, and that all forces of the Four Countries and all their foreign friends should also march against Rosas to fell him.
No, it was not hoax or trap or other device. Urquiza made true decision to move against his friend Rosas and bring him down, and he would bring him down.
And Dana Coscuin started to go to Rosas, as he had said that he would. He did not, however, go in the direction in which he knew Rosas to be; he went in the opposite direction. Dana knew that Rosas had not been in power so long without himself being a competent tactician. A competent tactician will not allow himself to be trapped in a box if he hears news of an alliance against himself. If he is really competent, he will learn of the news fast, and he will be out of the box fast.
No real hurry for Dana, though. Rosas could move rapidly on land, but the news had to come to him first, and Rosas would have to assemble his men (however swiftly he did that) and move a much greater distance by land than Dana would move by water.
Dana piloted the Catherine Dembinska lazily up the Uruguay River to the Rosas meeting. The Catherine was cranky. She was an ocean ship and disliked the narrowness of the river field and the invariance of the currents. She'd not have hurried if they'd been in a hurry. And they weren't. They shored often. It was January, high summer. The shore world was one of Ombu trees and cactus, but also good grass, and bad thistles which merged into worse thorns. Among the inhabitants of that Entre Ríos district was the biscacha which is something like a rabbit and something like a pack-rat and which has only three toes behind. It is good eating, but the locals who have so much beef do not bother with this small meat. And the little owl, the Athene cunicularia, was there. This bird was friend of the biscacha and they shared the same holes. They insured always that there would be a hooting night of it.
Dana missed the companionship of Damisa and of Serafino and Carolina. He had for friend only the Englishman Osborne and those who remained of the old crewmen. The three new crewmen were somehow more than crewmen and somehow less. They didn't know much about ships and boats, but they did know about agreements and documents and manifestos. They were interesting in their own ways, but they weren't true voyaging companions. They were really advocates, lawyers, men of affairs, diplomats of a sort, arrangers.
Some days had gone by. One day a rifle shot sang very close to Dana's head. He knew the voice of that rifle but he didn't believe it. And the next day another shot from that same rifle sang even closer to Dana's head. He believed it now.
“Old friend, we'll meet very soon,” Dana said. “You'd not come so close and miss twice if you meant to hit. It is but your way of saying hello to me, but there's a surly note to it.”
Finally Dana shored the Catherine under brush-wood on the west bank of the Uruguay River in the neighborhood of Monte Caceros. This was at the three-nation junction of Uruguay and Brazil and Argentina (or at the four-nation junction, from another viewpoint; some Paraguayans claimed that Paraguay extended to this point). Dana stayed there and waited for appearance and actions.
Meanwhile, Rosas, deep within his own province of Buenos Aires, heard the news of the betrayal. He was puzzled by it, but he acted quickly. He hadn't a large army, he never had, he'd never needed one; he had an intrepid and expert army for the country of the United Provinces. He had it in motion within hours. He came out of the box. He'd not be caught between any diverse forces until he wanted to go between them and split them. He went behind Urquiza, south and west of him. He trespassed on the Province of Sante Fe, but none would contradict his way there; perhaps they remembered Lopez of Sante Fe.
It was a scattered scrim of men on horseback, and a file of bullock carts. Each cart was pulled by six bullocks. They were very long carts, but two-wheeled; the wheels, however, were as much as eight or ten feet in diameter. These baggage carts would traverse mud, very deep mud as was sometimes found in the Provinces, and bullocks with their spreading hooves can go through mud where even horses cannot.
The Rosas party crossed the Parana River a little above the city of Sante Fe on the west bank and the town of Sante Fe Bajada (now named Parana) on the east bank. Then it was clear across the Entre Ríos province to Monte Caseros in that queer corner of the province where all the nations come together.
Dana heard a new hooting of owls in the night, and a chatter of the biscacha, and he knew that something was moving. He heard the squeaking of the wheels of bullock carts, and the muffle of horses’ hoofs. Rosas’ scouts were out, and they were good. Just at dawn, one came to the river bank where the Catherine was shored under brushwood. The scout-rider leaped his horse solidly onto the Catherine's deck, spun him around, waved hand (in mutual respect) at Dana who sat on that little three-legged stool on deck, and leaped his horse off the deck and onto the
brushwood shore again.
“That is a good scout,” Dana said. “It's a good man he serves. Ah, but he'd been tipped off by another good man, a man who traveled with me once.”
Dana went onto shore, to find Rosas in the now-forming camp. But he heard a voice of such complex tones that there was no getting to the bottom of it.
“Ah, it is my eldest son,” the voice said. “It is my eldest son the traitor.”
It was the Lady Valiente, the mother of Serafino. There also was Otis Ranker the United States man with whom Dana had once traveled. Otis had crossed the continent on foot to find a man he might serve. He'd found him now, just when that man had run to the end of his line. Serafino and Carolina were there. And Damisa the Leopard. All the old company, all in the camp of Rosas whom Dana had betrayed.
And Rosas was there. “I could pass for a younger Rosas even easier than I passed for a younger O'Higgins,” Dana said to himself. Animal blue eyes locked with those others of animal-blue. The older and the younger man looked much alike, straw haired and strong.
“You are the rotted-soul Irishman who talked Urquiza into betraying me?” Rosas asked with casual harshness.
“I'm that,” Dana said.
“How'd you do it?” Rosas inquired with apparent interest.
“I'm quite a talker,” Dana said.
“Manolo!” Rosas ordered. A large, lithe Indian man came from off-haunch of Rosas. He struck Dana Coscuin a terrific blow in the face. “Fastest man a-hand I ever saw,” Dana mused in shallow consciousness as he lay in the stomped thistles. The Indian Manolo bound Dana's hands behind his back. He bound him of foot. He ran a strong line to his foot binding, and ran the long line to the saddle-horn of his horse. He mounted horse, he lunged, and the horse lunged, and Dana was being dragged.
“Ah, my eldest son the traitor, he will be dragged to his death behind a horse,” the Lady Valiente wailed in her complex voice, very complex voice. But why did she wink so solemnly and puzzlingly at Dana when he caught her eye as he rolled in the jerking drag? The Lady Valiente had confidence in this her eldest son the traitor.
Half a Sky: The Coscuin Chronicles Book 2 Page 23
