by B. TRAVEN
“Our chief’s not here at the moment, muchachos,” answered Professor in a casual voice. “He’s training the men out on the plain where you heard those shots. We’ve got machine guns, too.”
The spokesman of the visiting peons made an astonished face. But when he grew conscious of the fact that Professor was observing him closely, his expression immediately resolved itself into one of simplicity, submissiveness, and humility. This change in expression confirmed Professor in his opinion that all was not aboveboard with these visitors. Nevertheless, he could not imagine what the men wanted.
Now Colonel approached, having just finished his training session and wishing to collect a new squad. He looked at the four men, rolled a cigarette, but said nothing.
“What finca do you come from?” asked Professor.
“Las Margaritas.”
“Who is your master?”
“Our master?”
“Yes, your master.”
“Well, our master, yes, our master is Don Fernando, he’s our master.”
“What’s his surname?”
“Sosa. Don Fernando Sosa.”
“Then you’ve come here to guide us to your finca so that we can divide up the estate among you peons?”
“That’s it, jefecito. That’s why we’ve come here. And that’s what we wanted to talk to your chief about.”
“Well, just sit down by the fire,” said Professor, with a grin now, which half-resembled that of the housewife who, faced with an unexpected visitor plainly intending to stay to supper, knows that, it being washday, she has only a leftover meal in the house, and half-reminded one of Satan’s grin when he stands at the door as the latest convoy arrives and sees among them half-a-dozen Methodist preachers and a dozen desiccated nuns. “Yes, just sit down here by the fire. Of course, you’re hungry after that long journey. The muchachos will give you some frijoles, tortillas, and coffee. As good—and as bad—as we make ’em.”
Professor wandered over to a group of fellows whom Andreu was teaching to read and write. “Andrucho,” he said quietly, “just come over to the staff fire. I think we’ve got chinches, bugs, in the camp.”
“What do you mean, chinches, Professor?”
“Do you know where the finca Las Margaritas is?”
“Roughly. When I was still working with the carretas we had many loads for Don Susano at Las Margaritas.”
“I see. Don Susano is the finquero of Las Margaritas? I thought he was called Don Fernando Sosa.”
“Why should he be called Don Fernando when his name is Don Susano?”
“That’s what I wondered. Do you know the Las Margaritas finca?”
“I’ve never been there. We took the loads for Las Margaritas only as far as Balun Canan, because the way to Las Margaritas is so narrow and bad that no carretas can drive along it. The finca sent their men to Balun Canan to fetch the stuff from there on muleback. It’s probably six or eight leagues distant from Balun Canan.”
“What language do the peons speak at Las Margaritas?”
“They speak Tojolabal and Spanish. Of course, among themselves and in their homes they speak only Tojolabal.”
“You’re sure that all the peons living on Las Margaritas, even if they speak and understand Spanish, understand Tojolabal as well?”
“All without exception. Even Don Susano knows a good bit of Tojolabal, and the major-domo and the capataces speak it as well as the peons. They’re all from the district, born and brought up there. The major-domo is a natural son of Don Susano whom he had by a Tojolabal girl. She’s had other children by him—by Don Susano, I mean. And although he’s been married to Doña Paulina from Balun Canan for more than twenty years and has had nine or ten children by her, he spends the afternoon of every other day with his old flame. He built her a lovely little house and gave her some land and she has two dozen piglets every Christmas as a present. But he never gives her money.”
“All right. I don’t want to know all that.”
“And you understand there’s not a soul in Las Margaritas who doesn’t understand Tojolabal.”
“That’s what I wanted to know. Four strange birds have arrived here. I’m not quite sure who sent them, whether it was the governor or the finqueros or the Rurales or the Federals. Come along with me and have a look at them and talk to them in Tojolabal.”
“I don’t know much Tojolabal. I’m a Tseltal. But I can manage enough to find out whether they’re peons from Las Margaritas.”
Professor and Andreu strolled casually over to the fire where the four men sat busily eating, while a dozen muchachos squatted around, some chatting with them, some smoking and talking among themselves.
In the army there were more than thirty or forty Tojolabal Indians, some of them possibly even muchachos who had been sold into the monterías by the owner of Las Margaritas or who had fled from that finca. But there would have been difficulties in searching them out, and in all likelihood they would not have easily understood what Professor wanted of them. In any case, Andreu was the best person to examine the four visitors.
Andreu walked casually up to the fire and rolled himself a cigar. Then he bent down to the embers and drew forth a glowing stick. Without looking at the four men, he said loudly in Tojolabal, “You’ve run away from your finca, haven’t you?”
The four men calmly continued eating and threw a casual word here and there to the muchachos who were talking Spanish with them.
Now Andreu, straightening up and taking a draw at his cigar, turned and directly addressed the one of the four who was nearest to him. Again he spoke in Tojolabal, “Have you still that old muleteer who always got drunk in Balun Canan whenever he was fetching his loads?”
The man now realized that he was being addressed and had to answer. He became embarrassed and scowled as if he were considering. Then he squinted shyly up to see if Professor was listening. Professor was standing apart and talking to a muchacho, but lost not a word or gesture of the speaker.
At last the spokesman of the four visitors replied. He said, with a crooked laugh, “We’ve come a very long way, amigos, that’s true.” He said this in Spanish and attempted to sound the vowels deep in his throat, as Indians generally do in their own language.
“Yes. I believe that,” said Andreu in reply, this time in good Spanish. “I can very well believe that. That’s why I asked. It must have been a very long way.”
Andreu bent down again and once more lit his cigar. It was burning perfectly well, but he wanted to look more closely at something that he had already noticed in this man. He drew fiercely at his cigar and then walked leisurely over to Professor.
“Do they speak Tojolabal?” asked Professor.
“Tell me something. Have you ever seen a poor peon who’s had his teeth filled with gold?”
“Had his teeth filled with gold? Never.”
“But I have. And apart from that, they don’t understand a word of Tojolabal.”
Professor detailed three muchachos to watch the four visitors, but to watch them in such a way that they shouldn’t notice it; and if they were to get up, they should be allowed to do so, but the watchers must on no account let them out of their sight and at all cost must stop them from leaving the camp.
Now it was dark. All the fires in the camp were glowing.
General came up to the staff fire, slowly and wearily. All day long, supported by Colonel, Matias, Celso, Fidel, and other knowledgeable officers, he had been training the muchachos in maneuvering and shooting, running about with them like a raw recruit himself—down-up, down-up, he had practiced with them until he could scarcely get up himself. Then he had taught them how to advance in open formation, how best to take cover in lying down; taught them to avoid getting sand in the barrels or chambers of their rifles when on the ground or crouching; taught them to shoot from a squatting or prone position, and shown them how to scrape hollows quickly in soft ground where they could lie and offer less of a target. Everything that he could remember, that he
had ever learned and taught as a sergeant, he now taught the muchachos. The material that he had at his disposal was twenty times inferior to what he had had to deal with when his battalion took in new recruits. If the muchachos had not shown good will and an overwhelming enthusiasm for the next battle, he might well have despaired at the meager results his training produced.
So it was not to be wondered at that he now came up to the fire like a washed-out rag.
“And so that’s their chief, their general,” said one of the four visitors softly to his neighbor when they gathered from the greetings and inquiries of the muchachos that this weary, sagging, stumbling, dirty, unkempt fellow who approached was the leader of the rebellion.
“Give him a slap in the face and he’d fall flat in the mud,” whispered the one sitting next to him. “We could drive off this lousy, dirty pack with a few cudgels. Don’t know why the old man makes such a fuss, wanting to send out three battalions. I’d thrash them with one company, the swine.”
“Curse you,” said the other softly, scarcely opening his lips and forcing the words through his teeth. “Why don’t you shut your bloody trap? See how that fellow’s already looking over here and watching us.” It was Professor, who kept glancing at the four, wondering who they might be and what purpose they had in coming.
Then Colonel said, turning to the muchachos who belonged to the staff, “Let’s go over to the fire where Celso’s muchacha is cooking. They’ve got a pig there. The food looks pretty meager here.”
“Where did the pig come from?” Professor asked Celso, who was walking beside him.
“It’s not a pig. It’s an antelope. I was in the bush with Modesta and let her blaze off ten rounds with the machine gun so she could learn to aim. And then the antelope came running across our path and Modesta fired and at the second shot it fell. Both shots hit the mark.”
“Then I’ll promote her to corporal tomorrow,” said General, with a tired laugh in his voice. “And you, Colonel, can learn something from the muchacha. You let off twenty rounds at a tree, as I saw myself this afternoon, and just one bullet hit its fat trunk.”
“You must take the distance into consideration,” replied Colonel. “The antelope was so near you could have caught it by the tail with one hand.”
“That’s what you think, Colonel.” Celso laughed. “Catch it with your hand? I’d like to see you do that. Catch it with your hand! It was at least two hundred paces away.”
“Did you measure off the two hundred paces?” asked Colonel.
“I didn’t need to. I ought to know what two hundred paces are.”
While they squatted by Modesta’s fire and ate roasted antelope with a tortilla and fresh green leaves plucked at the edge of the bush, Professor said, “We could have eaten at our fire, too. But then we’d have had to send away those four men because we wanted to talk. I preferred to leave them sitting there, so that they shouldn’t realize that we know what sort of peons they are.”
General made no answer to this. But as he ate and made desperate efforts not to fall asleep, numerous muchachos came up to him and whispered reports quietly into his ear and received orders from him, equally quietly whispered.
His officers paid no attention to what he was arranging and how he was preparing his plans. Now and again he asked something of Colonel or Professor or Andreu or Matias, and the answers he received he seemed to incorporate into the orders with which he dispatched the muchachos.
Then he got Matias to roll him a cigar, and lit it. After he had drawn at it a few times without speaking, his weariness seemed to abate. He gave the impression of having half-slept and rested and restored himself as he ate. He, like most of his advisers around the fire, was not squatting on the ground as was usually the case; instead, they were sitting on sawed-off treetrunks that lay around and were later destined for bigger fires, which should give the camp a cozier and jollier appearance and keep all the muchachos happy.
On the staff fire there now blazed up a mighty stack of wood that was the signal for lighting all the other great fires and for ending the day with singing, music, dancing, and general festivity.
Once more another muchacho approached and brought him a whispered report. General stood up and beckoned to all the others to follow him.
They went over to the staff fire, where they also sat down on treetrunks.
“So you four worms are still here,” he said to the visitors, who seemed to be enjoying themselves at the huge fire, or at least to be trying to give such an impression.
“Yes, jefecito, we’re still here,” answered the man with the gold-filled teeth. “But with your permission, we’d like to be on our way now. We’ve a long journey to go.”
“What were you paid for the journey, hombres?” asked General dryly.
At this all four paled slightly. However, the speaker quickly collected himself and said, “No one paid us, jefecito. We’re poor peons and only want to know when you’re coming to our finca to deliver us from slavery and servitude.”
As the phrase “deliver us from slavery” was uttered, Professor grinned and looked at General’s face to see how he would take this expression.
“You’re poor peons from Las Margaritas, are you?” asked General, perhaps a shade more dryly than before.
“Yes, jefecito, a sus muy amables órdenes!”
“You,” said General, his voice completely altering and all tiredness disappearing from his face, “you are First Lieutenant Ruben Bailleres, third company, sixty-seventh battalion, Yalanchen garrison. Who your three friends are I don’t yet know, but I shall by tomorrow evening.”
The four men tried to moisten their lips, without apparent success, for though they worked their jaws, their saliva seemed to have dried up.
Professor’s eyes goggled, and he stared at General helplessly. The other muchachos were no less taken aback than the four visitors.
Three or four minutes passed before the lieutenant spoke. “It’s all a mistake, jefecito. We’re poor peons from Las Margaritas, and that’s really, absolutely true.”
“Do you swear by the Sacred Virgin?”
“Yes, jefecito, por la Madre Santísima.”
“You weren’t invited here.”
“I know, but we wanted to learn the truth.”
“What truth?”
“That you’re going to give us, the peons, land and liberty.”
“The peons, yes. But to the officers of the Federals and Rurales and all other uniformed skunks and crawlers we’re going to give something else. Perhaps you’d now like to see our armories as well?”
“No, jefecito. We’d like to go home now, to our families.”
“All of us, all we muchachos, have for years been wanting to return to our huts and to our families, and we haven’t been able to. So you, too, will have to wait an hour.”
General beckoned five muchachos to him and spoke softly to them. The men squatting by the fire caught only the last sentence which he shouted after the muchachos, “Find a strong sack and then come back here.”
The four visitors stood up and made as if to leave.
At this moment, however, the muchachos came running back, waving an empty sack.
“Follow the muchachos and have a look at our armory first before you go home again to Las Margaritas,” said General to the four. He stressed Las Margaritas with an ironical smile.
When the four visitors had gone about ten steps and were beginning to vanish in the darkness, General called out, “No. You, Lieutenant, stay here a moment longer. Your three companions will find more than enough to see.”
After this neither he nor the other men about the fire paid any further attention to the lieutenant, who with convulsive, jerking gestures stared out into the night in the direction where the muchachos had gone with his three companions. There was a great fire in that direction, but he nevertheless seemed not to see whatever he wanted to see.
No more than ten minutes had passed before the muchachos returned without the th
ree visitors. They threw a sack onto the ground in front of them. The sack was tied at the mouth with strips of bast. It was wet and covered with filth, as if it had been dragged through slimy mud.
General gave two muchachos a sign. In one jump they were on the lieutenant. And when they leaped away from him again, blood ran over his face and down the sides of his head. He had uttered not a sound, attempting only to defend himself. His nose had been sliced off down to the bone and both ears cut in half along their length.
“The muchachos should have slit your lips, too, for your infamous lies when you called upon the Holy Virgin to help you in lying. But I need your lips, Lieutenant Ruben Bailleres. You have a message to carry from me to your commanding officer, Don Petronio Bringas. And in order that I shall know you when I meet you again and ask you whether you have reported to your general everything I shall tell you, I had to have your nose cut short. In the future they will now call you Chato. A very nice name, too. And why not?”
The lieutenant said nothing. With his sleeve he wiped off the blood that ran into his mouth and down his neck. He uttered not a sound of pain. But General knew, or could well imagine, that the lieutenant at this moment was oblivious to all pain and thinking only of the hour when he would have General as a prisoner, squatting opposite him just as he was now. Even if it was doubtful that he would ever capture General, the thought of it nevertheless did him an uncommon amount of good.
“I could, of course, have you hanged, Lieutenant,” continued General, “but I have important messages to send to Don Petronio. And you are the best messenger that I can send. Your horses are at the ranchito La Primavera. You can be back with your battalion by eight or nine o’clock tomorrow morning. That’s why I’m giving you this sack here. In the sack is the breakfast I am sending to your chief, in gratitude for his having thought of me in sending three officers and a sergeant here to inquire after my well-being. Or was the fourth one of you a lieutenant as well? But then the other three wouldn’t have had a groom.”
