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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Underdogs, by Mariano Azuela
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Underdogs
+
+Author: Mariano Azuela
+
+Posting Date: August 30, 2008 [EBook #549]
+Release Date: June, 1996
+[Last updated: May 25, 2011]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE UNDERDOGS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Judith Boss.  HTML version by Al Haines.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+The Underdogs
+
+
+by
+
+Mariano Azuela
+
+
+
+
+Mariano Azuela, the first of the "novelists of the Revolution," was
+born in Lagos de Moreno, Jalisco, Mexico, in 1873. He studied medicine
+in Guadalajara and returned to Lagos in 1909, where he began the
+practice of his profession. He began his writing career early; in 1896
+he published Impressions of a Student in a weekly of Mexico City. This
+was followed by numerous sketches and short stories, and in 1911 by his
+first novel, Andres Perez, maderista.
+
+Like most of the young Liberals, he supported Francisco I. Madero's
+uprising, which overthrew the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz, and in
+1911 was made Director of Education of the State of Jalisco. After
+Madero's assassination, he joined the army of Pancho Villa as doctor,
+and his knowledge of the Revolution was acquired at firsthand. When the
+counterrevolutionary forces of Victoriano Huerta were temporarily
+triumphant, he emigrated to El Paso, Texas, where in 1915 he wrote The
+Underdogs (Los de abajo), which did not receive general recognition
+until 1924, when it was hailed as the novel of the Revolution.
+
+But Azuela was fundamentally a moralist, and his disappointment with
+the Revolution soon began to manifest itself. He had fought for a
+better Mexico; but he saw that while the Revolution had corrected
+certain injustices, it had given rise to others equally deplorable.
+When he saw the self-servers and the unprincipled turning his hopes for
+the redemption of the under-privileged of his country into a ladder to
+serve their own ends, his disillusionment was deep and often bitter.
+His later novels are marred at times by a savage sarcasm.
+
+During his later years, and until his death in 1952, he lived in Mexico
+City writing and practicing his profession among the poor.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+The Underdogs
+
+
+by
+
+Mariano Azuela
+
+
+A Novel of the Mexican Revolution
+
+
+Translated by E. Munguia, Jr.
+
+Original Title: LOS DE ABAJO
+
+
+
+
+PART ONE
+
+
+  "How beautiful the revolution!
+  Even in its most barbarous aspect it is beautiful,"
+  Solis said with deep feeling.
+
+
+
+I
+
+"That's no animal, I tell you! Listen to the dog barking! It must be a
+human being."
+
+The woman stared into the darkness of the sierra.
+
+"What if they're soldiers?" said a man, who sat Indian-fashion, eating,
+a coarse earthenware plate in his right hand, three folded tortillas in
+the other.
+
+The woman made no answer, all her senses directed outside the hut. The
+beat of horses' hoofs rang in the quarry nearby. The dog barked again,
+louder and more angrily.
+
+"Well, Demetrio, I think you had better hide, all the same."
+
+Stolidly, the man finished eating; next he reached for a cantaro and
+gulped down the water in it; then he stood up.
+
+"Your rifle is under the mat," she whispered.
+
+A tallow candle illumined the small room. In one corner stood a plow, a
+yoke, a goad, and other agricultural implements. Ropes hung from the
+roof, securing an old adobe mold, used as a bed; on it a child slept,
+covered with gray rags.
+
+Demetrio buckled his cartridge belt about his waist and picked up his
+rifle. He was tall and well built, with a sanguine face and beardless
+chin; he wore shirt and trousers of white cloth, a broad Mexican hat
+and leather sandals.
+
+With slow, measured step, he left the room, vanishing into the
+impenetrable darkness of the night.
+
+The dog, excited to the point of madness, had jumped over the corral
+fence.
+
+Suddenly a shot rang out. The dog moaned, then barked no more. Some men
+on horseback rode up, shouting and sweating; two of them dismounted,
+while the other hung back to watch the horses.
+
+"Hey, there, woman: we want food! Give us eggs, milk, beans, anything
+you've got! We're starving!"
+
+"Curse the sierra! It would take the Devil himself not to lose his way!"
+
+"Guess again, Sergeant! Even the Devil would go astray if he were as
+drunk as you are."
+
+The first speaker wore chevrons on his arm, the other red stripes on
+his shoulders.
+
+"Whose place is this, old woman? Or is it an empty house? God's truth,
+which is it?"
+
+"Of course it's not empty. How about the light and that child there?
+Look here, confound it, we want to eat, and damn quick tool Are you
+coming out or are we going to make you?"
+
+"You swine! Both of you! You've gone and killed my dog, that's what
+you've done! What harm did he ever do you? What did you have against
+him?"
+
+The woman reentered the house, dragging the dog behind her, very white
+and fat, with lifeless eyes and flabby body.
+
+"Look at those cheeks, Sergeant! Don't get riled, light of my life: I
+swear I'll turn your home into a dovecot, see?"
+
+"By God!" he said, breaking off into song:
+
+  "Don't look so haughty, dear,
+  Banish all fears,
+  Kiss me and melt to me,
+  I'll drink up your tears!"
+
+
+His alcoholic tenor trailed off into the night.
+
+"Tell me what they call this ranch, woman?" the sergeant asked.
+
+"Limon," the woman replied curtly, carrying wood to the fire and
+fanning the coals.
+
+"So we're in Limon, eh, the famous Demetrio Macias' country, eh? Do you
+hear that, Lieutenant? We're in Limon."
+
+"Limon? What the hell do I care? If I'm bound for hell, Sergeant, I
+might as well go there now. I don't mind, now that I've found as good a
+remount as this! Look at the cheeks on the darling, look at them!
+There's a pair of ripe red apples for a fellow to bite into!"
+
+"I'll wager you know Macias the bandit, lady? I was in the pen with him
+at Escobedo, once."
+
+"Bring me a bottle of tequila, Sergeant: I've decided to spend the
+night with this charming lady.... What's that? The colonel? ... Why in
+God's name talk about the colonel now? He can go straight to hell, for
+all I care. And if he doesn't like it, it's all right with me. Come on,
+Sergeant, tell the corporal outside to unsaddle the horses and feed
+them. I'll stay here all night. Here, my girl, you let the sergeant fry
+the eggs and warm up the tortillas; you come here to me. See this
+wallet full of nice new bills? They're all for you, darling. Sure, I
+want you to have them. Figure it out for yourself. I'm drunk, see: I've
+a bit of a load on and that's why I'm kind of hoarse, you might call
+it. I left half my gullet down Guadalajara way, and I've been spitting
+the other half out all the way up here. Oh well, who cares? But I want
+you to have that money, see, dearie? Hey, Sergeant, where's my bottle?
+Now, little girl, come here and pour yourself a drink. You won't, eh?
+Aw, come on! Afraid of your--er--husband ... or whatever he is, huh?
+Well, if he's skulking in some hole, you tell him to come out. What the
+hell do I care? I'm not scared of rats, see!" Suddenly a white shadow
+loomed on the threshold.
+
+"Demetrio Macias!" the sergeant cried as he stepped back in terror.
+
+The lieutenant stood up, silent, cold and motionless as a statue.
+
+"Shoot them!" the woman croaked.
+
+"Oh, come, you'll surely spare us! I didn't know you were there. I'll
+always stand up for a brave man."
+
+Demetrio stood his ground, looking them up and down, an insolent and
+disdainful smile wrinkling his face.
+
+"Yes, I not only respect brave men, but I like them. I'm proud and
+happy to call them friends. Here's my hand on it: friend to friend."
+Then, after a pause: "All right, Demetrio Macias, if you don't want to
+shake hands, all right! But it's because you don't know me, that's why,
+just because the first time you saw me I was doing this dog's job. But
+look here, I ask you, what in God's name can a man do when he's poor
+and has a wife to support and kids? ... Right you are, Sergeant, let's
+go: I've nothing but respect for the home of what I call a brave man, a
+real, honest, genuine man!"
+
+When they had gone, the woman drew close to Demetrio.
+
+"Holy Virgin, what agony! I suffered as though it was you they'd shot."
+
+"You go to father's house, quick!" Demetrio ordered. She wanted to hold
+him in her arms; she entreated, she wept. But he pushed away from her
+gently and, in a sullen voice, said, "I've an idea the whole lot of
+them are coming."
+
+"Why didn't you kill 'em?"
+
+"Their hour hasn't struck yet."
+
+They went out together; she bore the child in her arms. At the door,
+they separated, moving off in different directions.
+
+The moon peopled the mountain with vague shadows. As he advanced at
+every turn of his way Demetrio could see the poignant, sharp silhouette
+of a woman pushing forward painfully, bearing a child in her arms.
+
+When, after many hours of climbing, he gazed back, huge flames shot up
+from the depths of the canyon by the river. It was his house,
+blazing....
+
+
+
+II
+
+Everything was still swathed in shadows as Demetrio Macias began his
+descent to the bottom of the ravine. Between rocks striped with huge
+eroded cracks, and a squarely cut wall, with the river flowing below, a
+narrow ledge along the steep incline served as a mountain trail.
+
+"They'll surely find me now and track us down like dogs," he mused.
+"It's a good thing they know nothing about the trails and paths up
+here.... But if they got someone from Moyahua to guide them ..." He
+left the sinister thought unfinished. "All the men from Limon or Santa
+Rosa or the other nearby ranches are on our side: they wouldn't try to
+trail us. That cacique who's chased and run me ragged over these hills,
+is at Mohayua now; he'd give his eyeteeth to see me dangling from a
+telegraph pole with my tongue hanging out of my mouth, purple and
+swollen...."
+
+At dawn, he approached the pit of the canyon. Here, he lay on the rocks
+and fell asleep.
+
+The river crept along, murmuring as the waters rose and fell in small
+cascades. Birds sang lyrically from their hiding among the pitaya
+trees. The monotonous, eternal drone of insects filled the rocky
+solitude with mystery.
+
+Demetrio awoke with a start. He waded the river, following its course
+which ran counter to the canyon; he climbed the crags laboriously as an
+ant, gripping root and rock with his hands, clutching every stone in
+the trail with his bare feet.
+
+When he reached the summit, he glanced down to see the sun steeping the
+valley in a lake of gold. Near the canyon, enormous rocks loomed
+protrudent, like fantastic Negro skulls. The pitaya trees rose tenuous,
+tall, like the tapering, gnarled fingers of a giant; other trees of all
+sorts bowed their crests toward the pit of the abyss. Amid the stark
+rocks and dry branches, roses bloomed like a white offering to the sun
+as smoothly, suavely, it unraveled its golden threads, one by one, from
+rock to rock.
+
+Demetrio stopped at the summit. Reaching backward, with his right arm
+he drew his horn which hung at his back, held it up to his thick lips,
+and, swelling his cheeks out, blew three loud blasts. From across the
+hill close by, three sharp whistles answered his signal.
+
+In the distance, from a conical heap of reeds and dry straws, man after
+man emerged, one after the other, their legs and chests naked, lambent
+and dark as old bronze. They rushed forward to greet Demetrio, and
+stopped before him, askance.
+
+"They've burnt my house," he said.
+
+A murmur of oaths, imprecations, and threats rose among them.
+
+Demetrio let their anger run its course. Then he drew a bottle from
+under his shirt and took a deep swig; then he wiped the neck of the
+bottle with the back of his hand and passed it around. It passed from
+mouth to mouth; not a drop was left. The men passed their tongues
+greedily over their lips to recapture the tang of the liquor.
+
+"Glory be to God and by His Will," said Demetrio, "tonight or tomorrow
+at the latest we'll meet the Federals. What do you say, boys, shall we
+let them find their way about these trails?"
+
+The ragged crew jumped to their feet, uttering shrill cries of joy;
+then their jubilation turned sinister and they gave vent to threats,
+oaths and imprecations.
+
+"Of course, we can't tell how strong they are," said Demetrio as his
+glance traveled over their faces in scrutiny.
+
+"Do you remember Medina? Out there at Hostotipaquillo, he only had a
+half a dozen men with knives that they sharpened on a grindstone. Well,
+he held back the soldiers and the police, didn't he? And he beat them,
+too."
+
+"We're every bit as good as Medina's crowd!" said a tall,
+broad-shouldered man with a black beard and bushy eyebrows.
+
+"By God, if I don't own a Mauser and a lot of cartridges, if I can't
+get a pair of trousers and shoes, then my name's not Anastasio
+Montanez! Look here, Quail, you don't believe it, do you? You ask my
+partner Demetrio if I haven't half a dozen bullets in me already.
+Christ! Bullets are marbles to me! And I dare you to contradict me!"
+
+"Viva Anastasio Montanez," shouted Manteca.
+
+"All right, all right!" said Montanez. "Viva Demetrio Macias, our
+chief, and long life to God in His heaven and to the Virgin Mary."
+
+"Viva Demetrio Macias," they all shouted.
+
+They gathered dry brush and wood, built a fire and placed chunks of
+fresh meat upon the burning coals. As the blaze rose, they collected
+about the fire, sat down Indian-fashion and inhaled the odor of the
+meat as it twisted on the crackling fire. The rays of the sun, falling
+about them, cast a golden radiance over the bloody hide of a calf,
+lying on the ground nearby. The meat dangled from a rope fastened to a
+huizache tree, to dry in the sun and wind.
+
+"Well, men," Demetrio said, "you know we've only twenty rifles, besides
+my thirty-thirty. If there are just a few of them, we'll shoot until
+there's not a live man left. If there's a lot of 'em, we can give 'em a
+good scare, anyhow."
+
+He undid a rag belt about his waist, loosened a knot in it and offered
+the contents to his companions. Salt. A murmur of approbation rose
+among them as each took a few grains between the tips of his fingers.
+
+They ate voraciously; then, glutted, lay down on the ground, facing the
+sky. They sang monotonous, sad songs, uttering a strident shout after
+each stanza.
+
+
+
+III
+
+In the brush and foliage of the sierra, Demetrio Macias and his
+threescore men slept until the halloo of the horn, blown by Pancracio
+from the crest of a peak, awakened them.
+
+"Time, boys! Look around and see what's what!" Anastasio Montanez said,
+examining his rifle springs. Yet he was previous; an hour or more
+elapsed with no sound or stir save the song of the locust in the brush
+or the frog stirring in his mudhole. At last, when the ultimate faint
+rays of the moon were spent in the rosy dimness of the dawn, the
+silhouette of a soldier loomed at the end of the trail. As they
+strained their eyes, they could distinguish others behind him, ten,
+twenty, a hundred. ... Then, suddenly, darkness swallowed them up. Only
+when the sun rose, Demetrio's band realized that the canyon was alive
+with men, midgets seated on miniature horses.
+
+"Look at 'em, will you?" said Pancracio. "Pretty, ain't they? Come on,
+boys, let's go and roll marbles with 'em."
+
+Now the moving dwarf figures were lost in the dense chaparral, now they
+reappeared, stark and black against the ocher. The voices of officers,
+as they gave orders, and soldiers, marching at ease, were clearly
+audible. Demetrio raised his hand; the locks of rifles clicked. "Fire!"
+he cried tensely.
+
+Twenty-one men shot as one; twenty-one soldiers fell off their horses.
+Caught by surprise, the column halted, etched like bas-reliefs in stone
+against the rocks.
+
+Another volley and a score of soldiers hurtled down from rock to rock.
+
+"Come out, bandits. Come out, you starved dogs!"
+
+"To hell with you, you corn rustlers!"
+
+"Kill the cattle thieves! Kill 'em!"
+
+
+The soldiers shouted defiance to their enemies; the latter, giving
+proof of a marksmanship which had already made them famous, were
+content to keep under cover, quiet, mute.
+
+"Look, Pancracio," said Meco, completely black save for his eyes and
+teeth. "This is for that man who passes that tree. I'll get the son of
+a ..."
+
+"Take that! Right in the head. You saw it, didn't you, mate? Now, this
+is for the fellow on the roan horse. Down you come, you shave-headed
+bastard!"
+
+"I'll give that lad on the trail's edge a shower of lead. If you don't
+hit the river, I'm a liar! Now: look at him!"
+
+"Oh, come on, Anastasio don't be cruel; lend me your rifle. Come along,
+one shot, just one!"
+
+Manteca and Quail, unarmed, begged for a gun as a boon, imploring
+permission to fire at least a shot apiece. "Come out of your holes if
+you've got any guts!"
+
+"Show your faces, you lousy cowards!"
+
+From peak to peak, the shouts rang as distinctly as though uttered
+across a street. Suddenly, Quail stood up, naked, holding his trousers
+to windward as though he were a bullfighter flaunting a red cape, and
+the soldiers below the bull. A shower of shots peppered upon Demetrio's
+men.
+
+"God! That was like a hornet's nest buzzing overhead," said Anastasio
+Montanez, lying flat on the ground without daring to wink an eye.
+
+"Here, Quail, you son of a bitch, you stay where I told you," roared
+Demetrio.
+
+They crawled to take new positions. The soldiers, congratulating
+themselves on their successes, ceased firing when another volley roused
+them.
+
+"More coming!" they shouted.
+
+Some, panic-stricken, turned their horses back; others, abandoning
+their mounts, began to climb up the mountain and seek shelter behind
+the rocks. The officers had to shoot at them to enforce discipline.
+
+"Down there, down there!" said Demetrio as he leveled his rifle at the
+translucent thread of the river.
+
+A soldier fell into the water; at each shot, invariably a soldier bit
+the dust. Only Demetrio was shooting in that direction; for every
+soldier killed, ten or twenty of them, intact, climbed afresh on the
+other side.
+
+"Get those coming up from under! Los de Abajo! Get the underdogs!" he
+screamed.
+
+Now his fellows were exchanging rifles, laughing and making wagers on
+their marksmanship.
+
+"My leather belt if I miss that head there, on the black horse!"
+
+"Lend me your rifle, Meco."
+
+"Twenty Mauser cartridges and a half yard of sausage if you let me
+spill that lad riding the bay mare. All right! Watch me.... There! See
+him jump! Like a bloody deer."
+
+"Don't run, you half-breeds. Come along with you! Come and meet Father
+Demetrio!"
+
+Now it was Demetrio's men who screamed insults. Manteca, his smooth
+face swollen in exertion, yelled his lungs out. Pancracio roared, the
+veins and muscles in his neck dilated, his murderous eyes narrowed to
+two evil slits.
+
+Demetrio fired shot after shot, constantly warning his men of impending
+danger, but they took no heed until they felt the bullets spattering
+them from one side.
+
+"Goddamn their souls, they've branded me!" Demetrio cried, his teeth
+flashing.
+
+Then, very swiftly, he slid down a gully and was lost....
+
+
+
+IV
+
+Two men were missing, Serapio the candymaker, and Antonio, who
+played the cymbals in the Juchipila band. "Maybe they'll join us
+further on," said Demetrio.
+
+The return journey proved moody. Anastasio Montanez alone preserved his
+equanimity, a kindly expression playing in his sleepy eyes and on his
+bearded face. Pancracio's harsh, gorillalike profile retained its
+repulsive immutability.
+
+The soldiers had retreated; Demetrio began the search for the soldiers'
+horses which had been hidden in the sierra.
+
+Suddenly Quail, who had been walking ahead, shrieked. He had caught
+sight of his companions swinging from the branches of a mesquite. There
+could be no doubt of their identity; Serapio and Antonio they certainly
+were. Anastasio Montanez prayed brokenly.
+
+"Our Father Who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom
+come..."
+
+"Amen," his men answered in low tones, their heads bowed, their hats
+upon their breasts....
+
+Then, hurriedly, they took the Juchipila canyon northward, without
+halting to rest until nightfall.
+
+Quail kept walking close to Anastasio unable to banish from his mind
+the two who were hanged, their dislocated limp necks, their dangling
+legs, their arms pendulous, and their bodies moving slowly in the wind.
+
+On the morrow, Demetrio complained bitterly of his wound; he could no
+longer ride on horseback. They were forced to carry him the rest of the
+way on a makeshift stretcher of leaves and branches.
+
+"He's bleeding frightfully," said Anastasio Montanez, tearing off one
+of his shirt-sleeves and tying it tightly about Demetrio's thigh, a
+little above the wound.
+
+"That's good," said Venancio. "It'll keep him from bleeding and stop
+the pain."
+
+Venancio was a barber. In his native town, he pulled teeth and
+fulfilled the office of medicine man. He was accorded an unimpeachable
+authority because he had read The Wandering Jew and one or two other
+books. They called him "Doctor"; and since he was conceited about his
+knowledge, he employed very few words.
+
+They took turns, carrying the stretcher in relays of four over the bare
+stony mesa and up the steep passes.
+
+At high noon, when the reflection of the sun on the calcareous soil
+burned their shoulders and made the landscape dimly waver before their
+eyes, the monotonous, rhythmical moan of the wounded rose in unison
+with the ceaseless cry of the locusts. They stopped to rest at every
+small hut they found hidden between the steep, jagged rocks.
+
+"Thank God, a kind soul and tortillas full of beans and chili are never
+lacking," Anastasio Montanez said with a triumphant belch.
+
+The mountaineers would shake calloused hands with the travelers, saying:
+
+"God's blessing on you! He will find a way to help you all, never fear.
+We're going ourselves, starting tomorrow morning. We're dodging the
+draft, with those damned Government people who've declared war to the
+death on us, on all the poor. They come and steal our pigs, our
+chickens and corn, they burn our homes and carry our women off, and if
+they ever get hold of us they'll kill us like mad dogs, and we die
+right there on the spot and that's the end of the story!"
+
+At sunset, amid the flames dyeing the sky with vivid, variegated
+colors, they descried a group of houses up in the heart of the blue
+mountains. Demetrio ordered them to carry him there.
+
+These proved to be a few wretched straw huts, dispersed all over the
+river slopes, between rows of young sprouting corn and beans. They
+lowered the stretcher and Demetrio, in a weak voice, asked for a glass
+of water.
+
+Groups of squalid Indians sat in the dark pits of the huts, men with
+bony chests, disheveled, matted hair, and ruddy cheeks; behind them,
+eyes shone up from floors of fresh reeds.
+
+A child with a large belly and glossy dark skin came close to the
+stretcher to inspect the wounded man. An old woman followed, and soon
+all of them drew about Demetrio in a circle.
+
+A girl sympathizing with him in his plight brought a jicara of bluish
+water. With hands shaking, Demetrio took it up and drank greedily.
+
+"Will you have some more?"
+
+He raised his eyes and glanced at the girl, whose features were common
+but whose voice had a note of kindness in it. Wiping his sweating brow
+with the back of his palm and turning on one side, he gasped: "May God
+reward you."
+
+Then his whole body shook, making the leaves of the stretcher rustle.
+Fever possessed him; he fainted.
+
+"It's a damp night and that's terrible for the fever," said Remigia, an
+old wrinkled barefooted woman, wearing a cloth rag for a blouse.
+
+She invited them to move Demetrio into her hut.
+
+Pancracio, Anastasio Montanez, and Quail lay down beside the stretcher
+like faithful dogs, watchful of their master's wishes. The rest
+scattered about in search of food.
+
+Remigia offered them all she had, chili and tortillas.
+
+"Imagine! I had eggs, chickens, even a goat and her kid, but those damn
+soldiers wiped me out clean."
+
+Then, making a trumpet of her hands, she drew near Anastasio and
+murmured in his ear:
+
+"Imagine, they even carried away Senora Nieves' little girl!"
+
+
+
+V
+
+Suddenly awakening, Quail opened his eyes and stood up.
+
+"Montanez, did you hear? A shot, Montanez! Hey, Montanez, get up!"
+
+He shook him vigorously until Montanez ceased snoring and in turn woke
+up.
+
+"What in the name of ... Now you're at it again, damn it. I tell you
+there aren't ghosts any more," Anastasio muttered out of a half-sleep.
+
+"I heard a shot, Montanez!"
+
+"Go back to sleep, Quail, or I'll bust your nose."
+
+"Hell, Anastasio I tell you it's no nightmare. I've forgotten those
+fellows they hung, honest. It's a shot, I tell you. I heard it all
+right."
+
+"A shot, you say? All right, then, hand me my gun."
+
+Anastasio Montanez rubbed his eyes, stretched out his arms and legs,
+and stood up lazily.
+
+They left the hut. The sky was solid with stars; the moon rose like a
+sharp scythe. The confused rumor of women crying in fright resounded
+from the various huts; the men who had been sleeping in the open, also
+woke up and the rattle of arms echoed over the mountain.
+
+"You cursed fool, you've maimed me for life."
+
+A voice rang clearly through the darkness.
+
+"Who goes there?"
+
+The shout echoed from rock to rock, through mound and over hollow,
+until it spent itself at the far, silent reaches of the night.
+
+"Who goes there?" Anastasio repeated his challenge louder, pulling back
+the lock of his Mauser.
+
+"One of Demetrio's men," came the answer.
+
+"It's Pancracio," Quail cried joyfully. Relieved, he rested the butt of
+his rifle on the ground.
+
+Pancracio appeared, holding a young man by the arms; the newcomer was
+covered with dust from his felt hat to his coarse shoes. A fresh
+bloodstain lay on his trousers close to the heel.
+
+"Who's this tenderfoot?" Anastasio demanded.
+
+"You know I'm on guard around here. Well, I hears a noise in the brush,
+see, and I shouts, 'Who goes there?' and then this lad answers,
+'Carranza! Carranza!' I don't know anyone by that name, and so I says,
+'Carranza, hell!' and I just pumps a bit of lead into his hoof."
+
+Smiling, Pancracio turned his beardless head around as if soliciting
+applause.
+
+Then the stranger spoke:
+
+"Who's your commander?"
+
+Proudly, Anastasio raised his head, went up to him and looked him in
+the face. The stranger lowered his tone considerably.
+
+"Well, I'm a revolutionist, too, you know. The Government drafted me
+and I served as a private, but I managed to desert during the battle
+the day before yesterday, and I've been walking about in search of you
+all."
+
+"So he's a Government soldier, eh?" A murmur of incredulity rose from
+the men, interrupting the stranger.
+
+"So that's what you are, eh? One of those damn half-breeds," said
+Anastasio Montanez. "Why the hell didn't you pump your lead in his
+brain, Pancracio?"
+
+"What's he talking about, anyhow? I can't make head nor tail of it. He
+says he wants to see Demetrio and that he's got plenty to say to him.
+But that's all right: we've got plenty of time to do anything we damn
+well please so long as you're in no hurry, that's all," said Pancracio,
+loading his gun.
+
+"What kind of beasts are you?" the prisoner cried. He could say no
+more: Anastasio's fist, crashing down upon his face, sent his head
+turning on his neck, covered with blood.
+
+"Shoot the half-breed!"
+
+"Hang him!"
+
+"Burn him alive; he's a lousy Federal."
+
+In great excitement, they yelled and shrieked and were about to fire at
+the prisoner.
+
+"Sssh! Shut up! I think Demetrio's talking now," Anastasio said,
+striving to quiet them. Indeed, Demetrio, having ascertained the cause
+of the turmoil, ordered them to bring the prisoner before him.
+
+"It's positively infamous, senor; look," Luis Cervantes said, pointing
+to the bloodstains on his trousers and to his bleeding face.
+
+"All right, all right. But who in hell are you? That's what I want to
+know," Demetrio said.
+
+"My name is Luis Cervantes, sir. I'm a medical student and a
+journalist. I wrote a piece in favor of the revolution, you see; as a
+result, they persecuted me, caught me, and finally landed me in the
+barracks."
+
+His ensuing narrative was couched in terms of such detail and expressed
+in terms so melodramatic that it drew guffaws of mirth from Pancracio
+and Manteca.
+
+"All I've tried to do is to make myself clear on this point. I want you
+to be convinced that I am truly one of your coreligionists...."
+
+"What's that? What did you say? Car ... what?" Demetrio asked, bringing
+his ear close to Cervantes.
+
+"Coreligionist, sir, that is to say, a person who possesses the same
+religion, who is inspired by the same ideals, who defends and fights
+for the same cause you are now fighting for."
+
+Demetrio smiled:
+
+"What are we fighting for? That's what I'd like to know."
+
+In his disconcertment, Luis Cervantes could find no reply.
+
+"Look at that mug, look at 'im! Why waste any time, Demetrio? Let's
+shoot him," Pancracio urged impatiently.
+
+Demetrio laid a hand on his hair which covered his ears, and stretching
+himself out for a long time, seemed to be lost in thought. Having found
+no solution, he said:
+
+"Get out, all of you; it's aching again. Anastasio put out the candle.
+Lock him up in the corral and let Pancracio and Manteca watch him.
+Tomorrow, we'll see."
+
+
+
+VI
+
+Through the shadows of the starry night, Luis Cervantes had not yet
+managed to detect the exact shape of the objects about him. Seeking the
+most suitable resting-place, he laid his weary bones down on a fresh
+pile of manure under the blurred mass of a huizache tree. He lay down,
+more exhausted than resigned, and closed his eyes, resolutely
+determined to sleep until his fierce keepers or the morning sun,
+burning his ears, awakened him. Something vaguely like warmth at his
+side, then a tired hoarse breath, made him shudder. He opened his eyes
+and feeling about him with his hands, he sensed the coarse hairs of a
+large pig which, resenting the presence of a neighbor, began to grunt.
+
+All Luis' efforts to sleep proved quite useless, not only because the
+pain of his wound or the bruises on his flesh smarted, but because he
+suddenly realized the exact nature of his failure.
+
+Yes, failure! For he had never learned to appreciate exactly the
+difference between fulminating sentences of death upon bandits in the
+columns of a small country newspaper and actually setting out in search
+of them, and tracking them to their lairs, gun in hand. During his
+first day's march as volunteer lieutenant, he had begun to suspect the
+error of his ways--a brutal sixty miles' journey it was, that left his
+hips and legs one mass of raw soreness and soldered all his bones
+together. A week later, after his first skirmish against the rebels, he
+understood every rule of the game. Luis Cervantes would have taken up a
+crucifix and solemnly sworn that as soon as the soldiers, gun in hand,
+stood ready to shoot, some profoundly eloquent voice had spoken behind
+them, saying, "Run for your lives." It was all crystal clear. Even his
+noble-spirited horse, accustomed to battle, sought to sweep back on its
+hind legs and gallop furiously away, to stop only at a safe distance
+from the sound of firing. The sun was setting, the mountain became
+peopled with vague and restless shadows, darkness scaled the ramparts
+of the mountain hastily. What could be more logical then, than to seek
+refuge behind the rocks and attempt to sleep, granting mind and body a
+sorely needed rest?
+
+But the soldier's logic is the logic of absurdity. On the morrow, for
+example, his colonel awakened him rudely out of his sleep, cuffing and
+belaboring him unmercifully, and, after having bashed in his face,
+deprived him of his place of vantage. The rest of the officers,
+moreover, burst into hilarious mirth and holding their sides with
+laughter begged the colonel to pardon the deserter. The colonel,
+therefore, instead of sentencing him to be shot, kicked his buttocks
+roundly for him and assigned him to kitchen police.
+
+This signal insult was destined to bear poisonous fruit. Luis Cervantes
+determined to play turncoat; indeed, mentally, he had already changed
+sides. Did not the sufferings of the underdogs, of the disinherited
+masses, move him to the core? Henceforth he espoused the cause of
+Demos, of the subjugated, the beaten and baffled, who implore justice,
+and justice alone. He became intimate with the humblest private. More,
+even, he shed tears of compassion over a dead mule which fell, load and
+all, after a terribly long journey.
+
+From then on, Luis Cervantes' prestige with the soldiers increased.
+Some actually dared to make confessions. One among them, conspicuous
+for his sobriety and silence, told him: "I'm a carpenter by trade, you
+know. I had a mother, an old woman nailed to her chair for ten years by
+rheumatism. In the middle of the night, they pulled me out of my house;
+three damn policemen; I woke up a soldier twenty-five miles away from
+my hometown. A month ago our company passed by there again. My mother
+was already under the sod! ... So there's nothing left for me in this
+wide world; no one misses me now, you see. But, by God, I'm damned if
+I'll use these cartridges they make us carry, against the enemy. If a
+miracle happens (I pray for it every night, you know, and I guess our
+Lady of Guadalupe can do it all right), then I'll join Villa's men; and
+I swear by the holy soul of my old mother, that I'll make every one of
+these Government people pay, by God I will."
+
+Another soldier, a bright young fellow, but a charlatan, at heart, who
+drank habitually and smoked the narcotic marihuana weed, eyeing him
+with vague, glassy stare, whispered in his ear, "You know, partner ...
+the men on the other side ... you know, the other side ... you
+understand ... they ride the best horses up north there, and all over,
+see? And they harness their mounts with pure hammered silver. But us?
+Oh hell, we've got to ride plugs, that's all, and not one of them good
+enough to stagger round a water well. You see, don't you, partner? You
+see what I mean? You know, the men on the other side-they get shiny new
+silver coins while we get only lousy paper money printed in that
+murderer's factory, that's what we get, yes, that's ours, I tell you!"
+
+The majority of the soldiers spoke in much the same tenor. Even a top
+sergeant candidly confessed, "Yes, I enlisted all right. I wanted to.
+But, by God, I missed the right side by a long shot. What you can't
+make in a lifetime, sweating like a mule and breaking your back in
+peacetime, damn it all, you can make in a few months just running
+around the sierra with a gun on your back, but not with this crowd,
+dearie, not with this lousy outfit ...."
+
+Luis Cervantes, who already shared this hidden, implacably mortal
+hatred of the upper classes, of his officers, and of his superiors,
+felt that a veil had been removed from his eyes; clearly, now, he saw
+the final outcome of the struggle. And yet what had happened? The first
+moment he was able to join his coreligionists, instead of welcoming him
+with open arms, they threw him into a pigsty with swine for company.
+
+Day broke. The roosters crowed in the huts. The chickens perched in the
+huizache began to stretch their wings, shake their feathers, and fly
+down to the ground.
+
+Luis Cervantes saw his guards lying on top of a dung heap, snoring. In
+his imagination, he reviewed the features of last night's men. One,
+Pancracio, was pockmarked, blotchy, unshaven; his chin protruded, his
+forehead receded obliquely; his ears formed one solid piece with head
+and neck--a horrible man. The other, Manteca, was so much human refuse;
+his eyes were almost hidden, his look sullen; his wiry straight hair
+fen over his ears, forehead and neck; his scrofulous lips hung
+eternally agape. Once more, Luis Cervantes felt his flesh quiver.
+
+
+
+VII
+
+Still drowsy, Demetrio ran his hand through his ruffled hair, which
+hung over his moist forehead, pushed it back over his ears, and opened
+his eyes.
+
+Distinctly he heard the woman's melodious voice which he had already
+sensed in his dream. He walked toward the door.
+
+It was broad daylight; the rays of sunlight filtered through the thatch
+of the hut.
+
+The girl who had offered him water the day before, the girl of whom he
+had dreamed all night long, now came forward, kindly and eager as ever.
+This time she carried a pitcher of milk brimming over with foam.
+
+"It's goat's milk, but fine just the same. Come on now: taste it."
+
+Demetrio smiled gratefully, straightened up, grasped the clay pitcher,
+and proceeded to drink the milk in little gulps, without removing his
+eyes from the girl. She grew self-conscious, lowered her eyes.
+
+"What's your name?" he asked.
+
+"Camilla."
+
+"Ah, there's a lovely name! And the girl that bears it, lovelier still!"
+
+Camilla blushed. As he sought to seize her wrist, she grew frightened,
+and Picking up the empty pitcher, flew out the door.
+
+"No, Demetrio,"  Anastasio  Montanez  commented gravely, "you've got to
+break them in first. Hmm! It's a hell of a lot of scars the women have
+left on my body. Yes, my friend, I've a heap of experience along that
+line."
+
+"I feel all right now, Compadre." Demetrio pretended he had not heard
+him. "I had fever, and I sweated like a horse all night, but I feel
+quite fresh today. The thing that's irking me hellishly is that Goddamn
+wound. Can Venancio to look after me."
+
+"What are we going to do with the tenderfoot we caught last night?"
+Pancracio asked.
+
+"That's right: I was forgetting all about him."
+
+As usual, Demetrio hesitated a while before he reached a decision.
+
+"Here, Quail, come here. Listen: you go and find out where's the
+nearest church around here. I know there's one about six miles away. Go
+and steal a priest's robe and bring it back."
+
+"What's the idea?" asked Pancracio in surprise.
+
+"Well, I'll soon find out if this tenderfoot came here to murder me.
+I'll tell him he's to be shot, see, and Quail will put on the priest's
+robes, say that he's a priest and hear his confession. If he's got
+anything up his sleeve, he'll come out with it, and then I'll shoot
+him. Otherwise I'll let him go."
+
+"God, there's a roundabout way to tackle the question. If I were you,
+I'd just shoot him and let it go at that," said Pancracio
+contemptuously.
+
+That night Quail returned with the priest's robes; Demetrio ordered the
+prisoner to be led in. Luis Cervantes had not eaten or slept for two
+days, there were deep black circles under his eyes; his face was
+deathly pale, his lips dry and colorless. He spoke awkwardly, slowly:
+"You can do as you please with me.... I am convinced I was wrong to
+come looking for you."
+
+There was a prolonged silence. Then:
+
+"I thought that you would welcome a man who comes to offer his help,
+with open arms, even though his help was quite worthless. After all,
+you might perhaps have found some use for it. What, in heaven's name,
+do I stand to gain, whether the revolution wins or loses?"
+
+Little by little he grew more animated; at times the languor in his
+eyes disappeared.
+
+"The revolution benefits the poor, the ignorant, all those who have
+been slaves all their lives, all the unhappy people who do not even
+suspect they are poor because the rich who stand above them, the rich
+who rule them, change their sweat and blood and tears into gold..."
+
+"Well, what the hell is the gist of all this palaver? I'll be damned if
+I can stomach a sermon," Pancracio broke in.
+
+"I wanted to fight for the sacred cause of the oppressed, but you don't
+understand ... you cast me aside.... Very well, then, you can do as you
+please with me!"
+
+"All I'm going to do now is to put this rope around your neck. Look
+what a pretty white neck you've got."
+
+"Yes, I know what brought you here," Demetrio interrupted dryly,
+scratching his head. "I'm going to have you shot!"
+
+Then, looking at Anastasio he said:
+
+"Take him away. And ... if he wants to confess, bring the priest to
+him."
+
+Impassive as ever, Anastasio took the prisoner gently by the arm.
+
+"Come along this way, Tenderfoot."
+
+They all laughed uproariously, when a few minutes later, Quail appeared
+in priestly robes.
+
+"By God, this tenderfoot certainly talks his head off," Quail said.
+"You know, I've a notion he was having a bit of a laugh on me when I
+started asking him questions."
+
+"But didn't he have anything to say?"
+
+"Nothing, save what he said last night."
+
+"I've a hunch he didn't come here to shoot you at all, Compadre," said
+Anastasio.
+
+"Give him something to eat and guard him."
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+On the morrow, Luis Cervantes was barely able to get up. His injured
+leg trailing behind him, he shuffled from hut to hut in search of a
+little alcohol, a kettle of boiled water and some rags. With unfailing
+kindness, Camilla provided him with all that he wanted.
+
+As he began washing his foot, she sat beside him, and, with typical
+mountaineer's curiosity, inquired:
+
+"Tell me, who learned you how to cure people?  Why did you boil that
+water? Why did you boil the rags? Look, look, how careful you are about
+everything! And what did you put on your hands? Really.... And why did
+you pour on alcohol? I just knew alcohol was good to rub on when you
+had a bellyache, but ... Oh, I see! So you was going to be a doctor,
+huh? Ha, ha, that's a good one! Why don't you mix it with cold water?
+Well, there's a funny sort of a trick. Oh, stop fooling me ... the
+idea: little animals alive in the water unless you boil it! Ugh! Well,
+I can't see nothing in it myself."
+
+Camilla continued to cross-question him with such familiarity that she
+suddenly found herself addressing him intimately, in the singular tu.
+Absorbed in his own thoughts, Luis Cervantes had ceased listening to
+her. He thought:
+
+Where are those men on Pancho Villa's payroll, so admirably equipped
+and mounted, who only get paid in those pure silver pieces Villa coins
+at the Chihuahua mint? Bah! Barely two dozen half-naked mangy men, some
+of them riding decrepit mares with the coat nibbled off from neck to
+withers. Can the accounts given by the Government newspapers and by
+myself be really true and are these so-called revolutionists simply
+bandits grouped together, using the revolution as a wonderful pretext
+to glut their thirst for gold and blood? Is it all a lie, then? Were
+their sympathizers talking a lot of exalted nonsense?
+
+If on one hand the Government newspapers vied with each other in noisy
+proclamation of Federal victory after victory, why then had a paymaster
+on his way from Guadalajara started the rumor that President Huerta's
+friends and relatives were abandoning the capital and scuttling away to
+the nearest port? Was Huerta's, "I shall have peace, at no matter what
+cost," a meaningless growl? Well, it looked as though the
+revolutionists or bandits, call them what you will, were going to
+depose the Government. Tomorrow would therefore belong wholly to them.
+A man must consequently be on their side, only on their side.
+
+"No," he said to himself almost aloud, "I don't think I've made a
+mistake this time."
+
+"What did you say?" Camilla asked. "I thought you'd lost your
+tongue.... I thought the mice had eaten it up!"
+
+Luis Cervantes frowned and cast a hostile glance at this little plump
+monkey with her bronzed complexion, her ivory teeth, and her thick
+square toes.
+
+"Look here, Tenderfoot, you know how to tell fairy stories, don't you?"
+
+For all answer, Luis made an impatient gesture and moved off, the
+girl's ecstatic glance following his retreating figure until it was
+lost on the river path. So profound was her absorption that she
+shuddered in nervous surprise as she heard the voice of her neighbor,
+one-eyed Maria Antonia, who had been spying from her hut, shouting:
+
+"Hey, you there: give him some love powder. Then he might fall for you."
+
+"That's what you'd do, all right!"
+
+"Oh, you think so, do you? Well, you're quite wrong! Faugh! I despise a
+tenderfoot, and don't forget it!
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+Ho there, Remigia, lend me some eggs, will you? My chicken has been
+hatching since morning. There's some gentlemen here, come to eat."
+
+Her neighbor's eyes blinked as the bright sunlight poured into the
+shadowy hut, darker than usual, even, as dense clouds of smoke rose
+from the stove. After a few minutes, she began to make out the contour
+of the various objects inside, and recognized the wounded man's
+stretcher, which lay in one corner, close to the ashy-gray galvanized
+iron roof.
+
+She sat down beside Remigia Indian-fashion, and, glancing furtively
+toward where Demetrio rested, asked in a low voice:
+
+"How's the patient, better? That's fine. Oh, how young he is! But he's
+still pale, don't you think? So the wound's not closed up yet. Well,
+Remigia, don't you think we'd better try and do something about it?"
+
+Remigia, naked from the waist up, stretched her thin muscular arms over
+the corn grinder, pounding the corn with a stone bar she held in her
+hands.
+
+"Oh, I don't know; they might not like it," she answered, breathing
+heavily as she continued her rude task. "They've got their own doctor,
+you know, so--"
+
+"Hallo, there, Remigia," another neighbor said as she came in, bowing
+her bony back to pass through the opening, "haven't you any laurel
+leaves? We want to make a potion for Maria Antonia who's not so well
+today, what with her bellyache."
+
+In reality, her errand was but a pretext for  asking questions and
+passing the time of day in gossip,  so she turned her eyes to the
+corner where the patient lay and, winking, sought information as to his
+health.
+
+Remigia lowered her eyes to indicate that Demetrio was sleeping.
+
+"Oh, I didn't see you when I came in. And you're here too, Panchita?
+Well, how are you?"
+
+"Good morning to you, Fortunata. How are you?"
+
+"All right. But Maria Antonia's got the curse today and her belly's
+aching something fierce."
+
+She sat Indian-fashion, with bent knees, huddling hip to hip against
+Panchita.
+
+"I've got no laurel leaves, honey," Remigia answered, pausing a moment
+in her work to push a mop of hair back from over her sweaty forehead.
+Then, plunging her two hands into a mass of corn, she removed a handful
+of it dripping with muddy yellowish water. "I've none at all; you'd
+better go to Dolores, she's always got herbs, you know."
+
+"But Dolores went to Cofradia last night. I don't know, but they say
+they came to fetch her to help Uncle Matias' girl who's big with child."
+
+"You don't say, Panchita?"
+
+The three old women came together forming an animated group, and
+speaking in low tones, began to gossip with great gusto.
+
+"Certainly, I swear it, by God up there in heaven."
+
+"Well, well, I was the first one to say that Marcelina was big with
+child, wasn't I? But of course no one would believe me."
+
+"Poor girl. It's going to be terrible if the kid is her uncle's, you
+know!"
+
+"God forbid!"
+
+"Of course it's not her uncle: Nazario had nothing to do with it, I
+know. It was them damned soldiers, that's who done it."
+
+"God, what a bloody mess! Another unhappy woman!"
+
+The cackle of the old hens finally awakened Demetrio. They kept silent
+for a moment; then Panchita, taking out of the bosom of her blouse a
+young pigeon which opened its beak in suffocation, said:
+
+"To tell you the truth, I brought this medicine for the gentleman here,
+but they say he's got a doctor, so I suppose--"
+
+"That makes no difference, Panchita, that's no medicine anyhow, it's
+simply something to rub on his body."
+
+"Forgive this poor gift from a poor woman, senor," said the wrinkled
+old woman, drawing close to Demetrio, "but there's nothing like it in
+the world for hemorrhages and suchlike."
+
+Demetrio nodded hasty approval. They had already placed a loaf of bread
+soaked in alcohol on his stomach; although when this was removed he
+began to be cooler, he felt that he was still feverish inside.
+
+"Come on, Remigia, you do it, you certainly know how," the women said.
+
+Out of a reed sheath, Remigia pulled a long and curved knife which
+served to cut cactus fruit. She took the pigeon in one hand, turned it
+over, its breast upward, and with the skill of a surgeon, ripped it in
+two with a single thrust.
+
+"In the name of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph," Remigia said, blessing the
+room and making the sign of the cross; next, with infinite dexterity,
+she placed the warm bleeding portions of the pigeon upon Demetrio's
+abdomen.
+
+"You'll see: you'll feel much better now."
+
+Obeying Remigia's instructions, Demetrio lay motionless, crumpled up on
+one side.
+
+Then Fortunata gave vent to her sorrows. She liked these gentlemen of
+the revolution, all right, that she did--for, three months ago, you
+know, the Government soldiers had run away with her only daughter. This
+had broken her heart, Yes, and driven her all but crazy.
+
+As she began, Anastasio Montanez and Quail lay on the floor near the
+stretcher, their mouths gaping, all ears to the story. But Fortunata's
+wealth of detail by the time she had told half of it bored Quail and he
+left the hut to scratch himself out in the sun. By the time Fortunata
+had at last concluded with a solemn "I pray God and the Blessed Virgin
+Mary that you are not sparing the life of a single one of those
+Federals from hell," Demetrio, face to wall, felt greatly relieved by
+the stomach cure, and was busy thinking of the best route by which to
+proceed to Durango. Anastasio Montanez was snoring like a trombone.
+
+
+
+X
+
+"Why don't you call in the tenderfoot to treat you, Compadre Demetrio,"
+Anastasio Montanez asked his chief, who had been complaining daily of
+chills and fever. "You ought to see him; no one has laid a hand to him
+but himself, and now he's so fit that he doesn't limp a step."
+
+But Venancio, standing by with his tins of lard and his dirty string
+rags ready, protested:
+
+"All right, if anybody lays a hand on Demetrio, I won't be responsible."
+
+"Nonsense! Rot! What kind of doctor do you think you are? You're no
+doctor at all. I'll wager you've already forgotten why you ever joined
+us," said Quail.
+
+"Well, I remember why you joined us, Quail," Venancio replied angrily.
+"Perhaps you'll deny it was because you had stolen a watch and some
+diamond rings."
+
+"Ha, ha, ha! That's rich! But you're worse, my lad; you ran away from
+your hometown because you poisoned your sweetheart."
+
+"You're a Goddamned liar!"
+
+"Yes you did! And don't try and deny it! You fed her Spanish fly and..."
+
+Venancio's shout of protest was drowned out in the loud laughter of the
+others. Demetrio, looking pale and sallow, motioned for silence. Then,
+plaintively:
+
+"That'll do. Bring in the student."
+
+Luis Cervantes entered. He uncovered Demetrio's wound, examined it
+carefully, and shook his head. The ligaments had made a furrow in the
+skin. The leg, badly swollen, seemed about to burst. At every move he
+made, Demetrio stifled a moan. Luis Cervantes cut the ligaments, soaked
+the wound in water, covered the leg with large clean rags and bound it
+up. Demetrio was able to sleep all afternoon and all night. On the
+morrow he woke up happy.
+
+"That tenderfoot has the softest hand in the world!" he said.
+
+Quickly Venancio cut in:
+
+"All right; just as you say. But don't forget that tenderfoots are like
+moisture, they seep in everywhere. It's the tenderfoots who stopped us
+reaping the harvest of the revolution."
+
+Since Demetrio believed in the barber's knowledge implicitly, when Luis
+Cervantes came to treat him on the next day he said:
+
+"Look here, do your best, see. I want to recover soon and then you can
+go home or anywhere else you damn well please."
+
+Discreetly, Luis Cervantes made no reply.
+
+A week, ten days, a fortnight elapsed. The Federal troops seemed to
+have vanished. There was an abundance of corn and beans, too, in the
+neighboring ranches. The people hated the Government so bitterly that
+they were overjoyed to furnish assistance to the rebels. Demetrio's
+men, therefore, were peacefully waiting for the complete recovery of
+their chief.
+
+Day after day, Luis Cervantes remained humble and silent.
+
+"By God, I actually believe you're in love," Demetrio said jokingly one
+morning after the daily treatment. He had begun to like this
+tenderfoot. From then on, Demetrio began gradually to show an
+increasing interest in Cervantes' comfort. One day he asked him if the
+soldiers gave him his daily ration of meat and milk; Luis Cervantes was
+forced to answer that his sole nourishment was whatever the old ranch
+women happened to give him and that everyone still considered him an
+intruder.
+
+"Look here, Tenderfoot, they're all good boys, really," Demetrio
+answered. "You've got to know how to handle them, that's all. You mark
+my words; from tomorrow on, there won't be a thing you'll lack."
+
+In effect, things began to change that very afternoon. Some of
+Demetrio's men lay in the quarry, glancing at the sunset that turned
+the clouds into huge clots of congealed blood and listening to
+Venancio's amusing stories culled from The Wandering Jew. Some of them,
+lulled by the narrator's mellifluous voice, began to snore. But Luis
+Cervantes listened avidly and as soon as Venancio topped off his talk
+with a storm of anticlerical denunciations he said emphatically:
+"Wonderful, wonderful! What intelligence! You're a most gifted man!"
+
+"Well, I reckon it's not so bad," Venancio answered, warming to the
+flattery, "but my parents died and I didn't have a chance to study for
+a profession."
+
+"That's easy to remedy, I'm sure. Once our cause is victorious, you can
+easily get a degree. A matter of two or three weeks' assistant's work
+at some hospital and a letter of recommendation from our chief and
+you'll be a full-fledged doctor, all right. The thing is child's play."
+
+From that night onward Venancio, unlike the others, ceased calling him
+Tenderfoot. He addressed him as Louie.
+
+It was Louie, this, and Louie, that, right and left, all the time.
+
+
+
+XI
+
+"Look here, Tenderfoot, I want to tell you something," Camilla called
+to Luis Cervantes, as he made his way to the hut to fetch some boiling
+water for his foot.
+
+For days the girl had been restless. Her coy ways and her reticence had
+finally annoyed the man; stopping suddenly, he stood up and eyeing her
+squarely:
+
+"All right. What do you want to tell me?"
+
+Camilla's tongue clove to her mouth, heavy and damp as a rag; she could
+not utter a word. A blush suffused her cheeks, turning them red as
+apples; she shrugged her shoulders and bowed her head, pressing her
+chin against her naked breast. Then without moving, with the fixity of
+an idiot, she glanced at the wound, and said in a whisper:
+
+"Look, how nicely it's healing now: it's like a red Castille rose."
+
+Luis Cervantes frowned and with obvious disgust continued to care for
+his foot, completely ignoring her as he worked. When he had finished,
+Camilla had vanished.
+
+For three days she was nowhere to be found. It was always her mother,
+Agapita, who answered Cervantes' call, and boiled the water for him and
+gave him rags. He was careful to avoid questioning her. Three days
+later, Camilla reappeared, more coy and eager than ever.
+
+The more distrait and indifferent Luis Cervantes grew, the bolder
+Camilla. At last, she said: "Listen to me, you nice young fellow, I
+want to tell you something pleasant. Please go over the words of the
+revolutionary song 'Adelita' with me, will you? You can guess why, eh?
+I want to sing it and sing it, over again often and often, see? Then
+when you're off and away and when you've forgotten all about Camilla,
+it'll remind me of you."
+
+To Luis Cervantes her words were like the noise of a sharp steel knife
+drawn over the side of a glass bottle. Blissfully unaware of the effect
+they had produced, she proceeded, candid as ever:
+
+"Well, I want to tell you something. You don't know that your chief is
+a wicked man, do you? Shall I tell you what he did to me? You know
+Demetrio won't let a soul but Mamma cook for him and me take him his
+food. Well, the other day I take some food over to him and what do you
+think he did to me, the old fool. He grabs hold of my wrist and he
+presses it tight, tight as can be, and then he starts pinching my legs.
+
+"'Come on, let me go,' I said. 'Keep still, lay off, you shameless
+creature. You've got no manners, that's the trouble with you.' So I
+wrestled with him, and shook myself free, like this, and ran off as
+fast as I could. What do you think of that?"
+
+Camilla had never seen Luis Cervantes laugh so heartily.
+
+"But it is really true, all this you've told me?"
+
+Utterly at a loss, Camilla could not answer. Then he burst into
+laughter again and repeated the question. A sense of confusion came
+upon her. Disturbed, troubled, she said brokenly:
+
+"Yes, it's the truth. And I wanted to tell you about it. But you don't
+seem to feel at all angry."
+
+Once more Camilla glanced adoringly at Luis Cervantes' radiant, clean
+face; at his glaucous, soft eyes, his cheeks pink and polished as a
+porcelain doll's; at his tender white skin that showed below the line
+of his collar and on his shoulders, protruding from under a rough
+woolen poncho; at his hair, ever so slightly curled.
+
+"What the devil are you waiting for, fool? If the chief likes you, what
+more do you want?"
+
+Camilla felt something rise within her breast, an empty ache that
+became a knot when it reached her throat; she closed her eyes fast to
+hold back the tears that welled up in them. Then, with the back of her
+hand, she wiped her wet cheeks, and just as she had done three days
+ago, fled with all the swiftness of a young deer.
+
+
+
+XII
+
+Demetrio's wound had already healed. They began to discuss various
+projects to go northward where, according to rumor, the rebels had
+beaten the Federal troops all along the line.
+
+A certain incident came to precipitate their action. Seated on a crag
+of the sierra in the cool of the afternoon breeze, Luis Cervantes gazed
+away in the distance, dreaming and killing time. Below the narrow rock
+Pancracio and Manteca, lying like lizards between the jarales along one
+of the river margins, were playing cards. Anastasio Montanez, looking
+on indifferently, turned his black hairy face toward Luis Cervantes
+and, leveling his kindly gaze upon him, asked:
+
+"Why so sad, you from the city? What are you daydreaming about? Come on
+over here and let's have a chat!"
+
+Luis Cervantes did not move; Anastasio went over to him and sat down
+beside him like a friend.
+
+"What you need is the excitement of the city. I wager you shine your
+shoes every day and wear a necktie. Now, I may look dirty and my
+clothes may be torn to shreds, but I'm not really what I seem to be.
+I'm not here because I've got to be and don't you think so. Why, I own
+twenty oxen. Certainly I do; ask my friend Demetrio. I cleared ten
+bushels last harvest time. You see, if there's one thing I love, that's
+riling these Government fellows and making them furious. The last
+scrape I had--it'll be eight months gone now, ever since I've joined
+these men--I stuck my knife into some captain. He was just a nobody, a
+little Government squirt. I pinked him here, see, right under the
+navel. And that's why I'm here: that and because I wanted to give my
+mate Demetrio a hand." "Christ! The bloody little darling of my life!"
+Manteca shouted, waxing enthusiastic over a winning hand. He placed a
+twenty-cent silver coin on the jack of spades.
+
+"If you want my opinion, I'm not much on gambling. Do you want to bet?
+Well, come on then, I'm game. How do you like the sound of this leather
+snake jingling, eh?"
+
+Anastasio shook his belt; the silver coins rang as he shook them
+together.
+
+Meanwhile, Pancracio dealt the cards, the jack of spades turned up out
+of the deck and a quarrel ensued. Altercation, noise, then shouts, and,
+at last, insults. Pancracio brought his stony face close to Manteca,
+who looked at him with snake's eyes, convulsive, foaming at the mouth.
+Another moment and they would have been exchanging blows. Having
+completely exhausted their stock of direct insults, they now resorted
+to the most flowery and ornate insulting of each other's ancestors,
+male and female, paternal or maternal. Yet nothing untoward occurred.
+
+After their supply of words was exhausted, they gave over gambling and,
+their arms about each other's shoulders, marched off in search of a
+drink of alcohol.
+
+"I don't like to fight with my tongue either, it's not decent. I'm
+right, too, eh? I tell you no man living has ever breathed a word to me
+against my mother. I want to be respected, see? That's why you've never
+seen me fooling with anyone." There was a pause. Then, suddenly, "Look
+there, Tenderfoot," Anastasio said, changing his tone and standing up
+with one hand spread over his eyes. "What's that dust over there behind
+the hillock. By God, what if it's those damned Federals and we sitting
+here doing nothing. Come on, let's go and warn the rest of the boys."
+
+The news met with cries of joy.
+
+"Ah, we're going to meet them!" cried Pancracio jubilantly, first among
+them to rejoice.
+
+"Of course, we're going to meet them! We'll strip them clean of
+everything they brought with them."
+
+A few moments later, amid cries of joy and a bustle of arms, they began
+saddling their horses. But the enemy turned out to be a few burros and
+two Indians, driving them forward.
+
+"Stop them, anyhow. They must have come from somewhere and they've
+probably news for us," Demetrio said.
+
+Indeed, their news proved sensational. The Federal troops had fortified
+the hills in Zacatecas; this was said to be Huerta's last stronghold,
+but everybody predicted the fall of the city. Many families had hastily
+fled southward. Trains were overloaded with people; there was a
+scarcity of trucks and coaches; hundreds of people, panic-stricken,
+walked along the highroad with their belongings in a pack slung over
+their shoulders. General Panfilo Natera was assembling his men at
+Fresnillo; the Federals already felt it was all up with them.
+
+"The fall of Zacatecas will be Huerta's requiescat in pace," Luis
+Cervantes cried with unusual excitement. "We've got to be there before
+the fight starts so that we can join Natera's army."
+
+Then, suddenly, he noted the surprise with which Demetrio and his men
+greeted his suggestion. Crestfallen, he realized they still considered
+him of no account.
+
+On the morrow, as the men set off in search of good mounts before
+taking to the road again, Demetrio called Luis Cervantes:
+
+"Do you really want to come with us? Of course you're cut from another
+timber, we all know that; God knows why you should like this sort of
+life. Do you imagine we're in this game because we like it? Now, I like
+the excitement all right, but that's not all. Sit down here; that's
+right. Do you want to know why I'm a rebel? Well, I'll tell you.
+
+"Before the revolution, I had my land all plowed, see, and just right
+for sowing and if it hadn't been for a little quarrel with Don Monico,
+the boss of my town, Moyahua, I'd be there in a jiffy getting the oxen
+ready for the sowing, see?
+
+"Here, there, Pancracio, pull down two bottles of beer for me and this
+tenderfoot.... By the Holy Cross ... drinking won't hurt me, now, will
+it?"
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+I was born in Limon, close by Moyahua, right in the heart of the
+Juchipila canyon. I had my house and my cows and a patch of land, see:
+I had everything I wanted. Well, I suppose you know how we farmers make
+a habit of going over to town every week to hear Mass and the sermon
+and then to market to buy our onions and tomatoes and in general
+everything they want us to buy at the ranch. Then you pick up some
+friends and go to Primitivo Lopez' saloon for a bit of a drink before
+dinner; well, you sit there drinking and you've got to be sociable, so
+you drink more than you should and the liquor goes to your head and you
+laugh and you're damned happy and if you feel like it, you sing and
+shout and kick up a bit of a row. That's quite all right, anyhow, for
+we're not doing anyone any harm. But soon they start bothering you and
+the policeman walks up and down and stops occasionally, with his ear to
+the door. To put it in a nutshell, the chief of police and his gang are
+a lot of joykillers who decide they want to put a stop to your fun,
+see? But by God! You've got guts, you've got red blood in your veins
+and you've got a soul, too, see? So you lose your temper, you stand up
+to them and tell them to go to the Devil.
+
+"Now if they understand you, everything's all right; they leave you
+alone and that's all there is to it; but sometimes they try to talk you
+down and hit you and--well, you know how it is, a fellow's
+quick-tempered and he'll be damned if he'll stand for someone ordering
+him around and telling him what's what. So before you know it, you've
+got your knife out or your gun leveled, and then off you go for a wild
+run in the sierra, until they've forgotten the corpse, see?
+
+"All right: that's just about what happened to Monico. The fellow was a
+greater bluffer than the rest. He couldn't tell a rooster from a hen,
+not he. Well, I spit on his beard because he wouldn't mind his own
+business. That's all, there's nothing else to tell.
+
+"Then, just because I did that, he had the whole God-damned Federal
+Government against me. You must have heard something about that story
+in Mexico City--about the killing of Madero and some other fellow,
+Felix or Felipe Diaz, or something--I don't know. Well, this man Monico
+goes in person to Zacatecas to get an army to capture me. They said
+that I was a Maderista and that I was going to rebel. But a man like me
+always has friends. Somebody came and warned me of what was coming to
+me, so when the soldiers reached Limon I was miles and miles away.
+Trust me! Then my compadre Anastasio who killed somebody came and
+joined me, and Pancracio and Quail and a lot of friends and
+acquaintances came after him. Since then we've been sort of collecting,
+see? You know for yourself, we get along as best we can...."
+
+For a while, both men sat meditating in silence. Then:
+
+"Look here, Chief," said Luis Cervantes. "You know that some of
+Natera's men are at Juchipila, quite near here. I think we should join
+them before they capture Zacatecas. All we need do is speak to the
+General."
+
+"I'm no good at that sort of thing. And I don't like the idea of
+accepting orders from anybody very much."
+
+"But you've only a handful of men down here; you'll only be an
+unimportant chieftain. There's no argument about it, the revolution is
+bound to win. After it's all over they'll talk to you just as Madero
+talked to all those who had helped him: 'Thank you very much, my
+friends, you can go home now....'"
+
+"Well that's all I want, to be let alone so I can go home."
+
+"Wait a moment, I haven't finished. Madero said: 'You men have made me
+President of the Republic. You have run the risk of losing your lives
+and leaving your wives and children destitute; now I have what I
+wanted, you can go back to your picks and shovels, you can resume your
+hand-to-mouth existence, you can go half-naked and hungry just as you
+did before, while we, your superiors, will go about trying to pile up a
+few million pesos....'"
+
+Demetrio nodded and, smiling, scratched his head.
+
+"You said a mouthful, Louie," Venancio the barber put in
+enthusiastically. "A mouthful as big as a church!"
+
+"As I was saying," Luis Cervantes resumed, "when the revolution is
+over, everything is over. Too bad that so many men have been killed,
+too bad there are so many widows and orphans, too bad there was so much
+bloodshed.
+
+"Of course, you are not selfish; you say to yourself: 'All I want to do
+is go back home.' But I ask you, is it fair to deprive your wife and
+kids of a fortune which God himself places within reach of your hand?
+Is it fair to abandon your motherland in this solemn moment when she
+most needs the self-sacrifice of her sons, when she most needs her
+humble sons to save her from falling again in the clutches of her
+eternal oppressors, executioners, and caciques? You must not forget
+that the thing a man holds most sacred on earth is his motherland."
+
+Macias smiled, his eyes shining.
+
+"Will it be all right if we go with Natera?"
+
+"Not only all right," Venancio said insinuatingly, "but I think it
+absolutely necessary."
+
+"Now Chief," Cervantes pursued, "I took a fancy to you the first time I
+laid eyes on you and I like you more and more every day because I
+realize what you are worth. Please let me be utterly frank. You do not
+yet realize your lofty noble function. You are a modest man without
+ambitions, you do not wish to realize the exceedingly important role
+you are destined to play in the revolution. It is not true that you
+took up arms simply because of Senor Monico. You are under arms to
+protest against the evils of all the caciques who are overrunning the
+whole nation. We are the elements of a social movement which will not
+rest until it has enlarged the destinies of our motherland. We are the
+tools Destiny makes use of to reclaim the sacred rights of the people.
+We are not fighting to dethrone a miserable murderer, we are fighting
+against tyranny itself. What moves us is what men call ideals; our
+action is what men call fighting for a principle. A principle! That's
+why Villa and Natera and Carranza are fighting; that's why we, every
+man of us, are fighting."
+
+"Yes ... yes ... exactly what I've been thinking myself," said Venancio
+in a climax of enthusiasm.
+
+"Hey, there, Pancracio," Macias called, "pull down two more beers."
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+"You ought to see how clear that fellow can make things, Compadre,"
+Demetrio said. All morning long he had been pondering as much of Luis
+Cervantes' speech as he had understood.
+
+"I heard him too," Anastasio answered. "People who can read and write
+get things clear, all right; nothing was ever truer. But what I can't
+make out is how you're going to go and meet Natera with as few men as
+we have."
+
+"That's nothing. We're going to do things different now. They tell me
+that as soon as Crispin Robles enters a town he gets hold of all the
+horses and guns in the place; then he goes to the jail and lets all the
+jailbirds out, and, before you know it, he's got plenty of men, all
+right. You'll see. You know I'm beginning to feel that we haven't done
+things right so far. It don't seem right somehow that this city guy
+should be able to tell us what to do."
+
+"Ain't it wonderful to be able to read and write!"
+
+They both sighed, sadly. Luis Cervantes came in with several others to
+find out the day of their departure.
+
+"We're leaving no later than tomorrow," said Demetrio without
+hesitation.
+
+Quail suggested that musicians be summoned from the neighboring hamlet
+and that a farewell dance be given. His idea met with enthusiasm on all
+sides.
+
+"We'll go, then," Pancracio shouted, "but I'm certainly going in good
+company this time. My sweetheart's coming along with me!"
+
+Demetrio replied that he too would willingly take along a girl he had
+set his eye on, but that he hoped none of his men would leave bitter
+memories behind them as the Federals did.
+
+"You won't have long to wait.  Everything will be arranged when you
+return," Luis Cervantes whispered to him.
+
+"What do you mean?" Demetrio asked.  "I thought that you and Camilla..."
+
+"There's not a word of truth in it, Chief.  She likes you but she's
+afraid of you, that's all."
+
+"Really?  Is that really true?"
+
+"Yes.  But I think you're quite right in not wanting to leave any
+bitter feelings behind you as you go.  When you come back as a
+conqueror, everything will be different.  They'll all thank you for it
+even."
+
+"By God, you're certainly a shrewd one," Demetrio replied, patting him
+on the back.
+
+At sundown, Camilla went to the river to fetch water as usual.  Luis
+Cervantes, walking down the same trail, met her.  Camilla felt her
+heart leap to her mouth.  But, without taking the slightest notice of
+her, Luis Cervantes hastily took one of the turns and disappeared among
+the rocks.
+
+At this hour, as usual, the calcinated rocks, the sun-burnt branches,
+and the dry weeds faded into the semi-obscurity of the shadows.  The
+wind blew softly, the green lances of the young corn leaves rustling in
+the twilight. Nothing was changed; all nature was as she had found it
+before, evening upon evening; but in the stones and the dry weeds, amid
+the fragrance of the air and the light whir of falling leaves, Camilla
+sensed a new strangeness, a vast desolation in everything about her.
+
+Rounding a huge eroded rock, suddenly Camilla found herself face to
+face with Luis, who was seated on a stone, hatless, his legs dangling.
+
+"Listen, you might come down here to say good-bye."
+
+Luis Cervantes was obliging enough; he jumped down and joined her.
+
+"You're proud, ain't you?  Have I been so mean that you don't even want
+to talk to me?"
+
+"Why do you say that, Camilla?  You've been extremely kind to me; why,
+you've been more than a friend, you've taken care of me as if you were
+my sister.  Now I'm about to leave, I'm very grateful to you; I'll
+always remember you."
+
+"Liar!" Camilla said, her face transfigured with joy. "Suppose I hadn't
+come after you?"
+
+"I intended to say good-bye to you at the dance this evening."
+
+"What dance? If there's a dance, I'll not go to it."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because I can't stand that horrible man ... Demetrio!"
+
+"Don't be silly, child," said Luis. "He's really very fond of you.
+Don't go and throw away this opportunity. You'll never have one like it
+again in your life. Don't you know that Demetrio is on the point of
+becoming a general, you silly girl? He'll be a very wealthy man, with
+horses galore; and you'll have jewels and clothes and a fine house and
+a lot of money to spend. Just imagine what a life you would lead with
+him!"
+
+Camilla stared up at the blue sky so he should not read the expression
+in her eyes. A dead leaf shook slowly loose from the crest of a tree
+swinging slowly on the wind, fell like a small dead butterfly at her
+feet. She bent down and took it in her fingers. Then, without looking
+at him, she murmured:
+
+"It's horrible to hear you talk like that.... I like you ... no one
+else.... Ah, well, go then, go: I feel ashamed now. Please leave me!"
+
+She threw away the leaf she had crumpled in her hand and covered her
+face with a corner of her apron. When she opened her eyes, Luis
+Cervantes had disappeared.
+
+She followed the river trail. The river seemed to have been sprinkled
+with a fine red dust. On its surface drifted now a sky of variegated
+colors, now the dark crags, half light, half shadow. Myriads of
+luminous insects twinkled in a hollow. Camilla, standing on the beach
+of washed, round stones, caught a reflection of herself in the waters;
+she saw herself in her yellow blouse with the green ribbons, her white
+skirt, her carefully combed hair, her wide eyebrows and broad forehead,
+exactly as she had dressed to please Luis. She burst into tears.
+
+Among the reeds, the frogs chanted the implacable melancholy of the
+hour. Perched on a dry root, a dove wept also.
+
+
+
+XV
+
+That evening, there was much merrymaking at the dance, and a great
+quantity of mezcal was drunk. "I miss Camilla," said Demetrio in a loud
+voice. Everybody looked about for Camilla.
+
+"She's sick, she's got a headache," said Agapita harshly, uneasy as she
+caught sight of the malicious glances leveled at her.
+
+When the dance was over, Demetrio, somewhat unsteady on his feet,
+thanked all the kind neighbors who had welcomed them and promised that
+when the revolution had triumphed he would remember them one and all,
+because "hospital or jail is a true test of friendship."
+
+"May God's hand lead you all," said an old woman.
+
+"God bless you all and keep you well," others added.
+
+Utterly drunk, Maria Antonia said: "Come back soon, damn soon!"
+
+On the morrow, Maria Antonia, who, though she was pockmarked and
+walleyed, nevertheless enjoyed a notorious reputation--indeed it was
+confidently proclaimed that no man had failed to go with her behind the
+river weeds at some time or other--shouted to Camilla:
+
+"Hey there, you! What's the matter? What are you doing there skulking
+in the corner with a shawl tied round your head! You're crying, I
+wager. Look at her eyes; they look like a witch's. There's no sorrow
+lasts more than three days!"
+
+Agapita knitted her eyebrows and muttered indistinctly to herself.
+
+The old crones felt uneasy and lonesome since Demetrio's men had left.
+The men, too, in spite of their gossip and insults, lamented their
+departure since now they would have no one to bring them fresh meat
+every day. It is pleasant indeed to spend your time eating and
+drinking, and sleeping all day long in the cool shade of the rocks,
+while clouds ravel and unravel their fleecy threads on the blue shuttle
+of the sky.
+
+"Look at them again. There they go!" Maria Antonia yelled. "Why, they
+look like toys."
+
+Demetrio's men, riding their thin nags, could still be descried in the
+distance against the sapphire translucence of the sky, where the broken
+rocks and the chaparral melted into a single bluish smooth surface.
+Across the air a gust of hot wind bore the broken, faltering strains of
+"La Adelita," the revolutionary song, to the settlement. Camilla, who
+had come out when Maria Antonia shouted, could no longer control
+herself; she dived back into her hut, unable to restrain her tears and
+moaning. Maria Antonia burst into laughter and moved off.
+
+"They've cast the evil eye on my daughter," Agapita said in perplexity.
+She pondered a while, then duly reached a decision. From a pole in the
+hut she took down a piece of strong leather which her husband used to
+hitch up the yoke. This pole stood between a picture of Christ and one
+of the Virgin. Agapita promptly twisted the leather and proceeded to
+administer a sound thrashing to Camilla in order to dispel the evil
+spirits.
+
+
+Riding proudly on his horse, Demetrio felt like a new man. His eyes
+recovered their peculiar metallic brilliance, and the blood flowed, red
+and warm, through his coppery, pure-blooded Aztec cheeks.
+
+The men threw out their chests as if to breathe the widening horizon,
+the immensity of the sky, the blue from the mountains and the fresh
+air, redolent with the various odors of the sierra. They spurred their
+horses to a gallop as if in that mad race they laid claims of
+possession to the earth. What man among them now remembered the stern
+chief of police, the growling policeman, or the conceited cacique? What
+man remembered his pitiful hut where he slaved away, always under the
+eyes of the owner or the ruthless and sullen foreman, always forced to
+rise before dawn, and to take up his shovel, basket, or goad, wearing
+himself out to earn a mere pitcher of atole and a handful of beans?
+
+They laughed, they sang, they whistled, drunk with the sunlight, the
+air of the open spaces, the wine of life.
+
+Meco, prancing forward on his horse, bared his white glistening teeth,
+joking and kicking up like a clown.
+
+"Hey, Pancracio," he asked with utmost seriousness, "my wife writes me
+I've got another kid. How in hell is that? I ain't seen her since
+Madero was President."
+
+"That's nothing," the other replied. "You just left her a lot of eggs
+to hatch for you!"
+
+They all laughed uproariously. Only Meco, grave and aloof, sang in a
+voice horribly shrill:
+
+  "I gave her a penny
+  That wasn't enough.
+  I gave her a nickel
+  The wench wanted more.
+  We bargained. I asked
+  If a dime was enough
+  But she wanted a quarter.
+  By God! That was tough!
+  All wenches are fickle
+  And trumpery stuff!"
+
+
+The sun, beating down upon them, dulled their minds and bodies and
+presently they were silent. All day long they rode through the canyon,
+up and down the steep, round hills, dirty and bald as a man's head,
+hill after hill in endless succession. At last, late in the afternoon,
+they descried several stone church towers in the heart of a bluish
+ridge, and, beyond, the white road with its curling spirals of dust and
+its gray telegraph poles.
+
+They advanced toward the main road; in the distance they spied a figure
+of an Indian sitting on the embankment. They drew up to him. He proved
+to be an unfriendly looking old man, clad in rags; he was laboriously
+attempting to mend his leather sandals with the help of a dull knife. A
+burro loaded with fresh green grass stood by. Demetrio accosted him.
+
+"What are you doing, Grandpa?"
+
+"Gathering alfalfa for my cow."
+
+"How many Federals are there around here?"
+
+"Just a few: not more than a dozen, I reckon."
+
+The old man grew communicative. He told them of many important rumors:
+Obregon was besieging Guadalajara, Torres was in complete control of
+the Potosi region, Natera ruled over Fresnillo.
+
+"All right," said Demetrio, "you can go where you're headed for, see,
+but you be damn careful not to tell anyone you saw us, because if you
+do, I'll pump you full of lead. And I could track you down, even if you
+tried to hide in the pit of hell, see?"
+
+"What do you say, boys?" Demetrio asked them as soon as the old man had
+disappeared.
+
+"To hell with the mochos! We'll kill every blasted one of them!" they
+cried in unison.
+
+Then they set to counting their cartridges and the hand grenades the
+Owl had made out of fragments of iron tubing and metal bed handles.
+
+"Not much to brag about, but we'll soon trade them for rifles,"
+Anastasio observed.
+
+Anxiously they pressed forward, spurring the thin flanks of their nags
+to a gallop. Demetrio's brisk, imperious tones of order brought them
+abruptly to a halt.
+
+They dismounted by the side of a hill, protected by thick huizache
+trees. Without unsaddling their horses, each began to search for stones
+to serve as pillows.
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+At midnight Demetrio Macias ordered the march to be resumed. The town
+was five or six miles away; the best plan was to take the soldiers by
+surprise, before reveille.
+
+The sky was cloudy, with here and there a star shining. From time to
+time a flash of lightning crossed the sky with a red dart, illumining
+the far horizon.
+
+Luis Cervantes asked Demetrio whether the success of the attack might
+not be better served by procuring a guide or leastways by ascertaining
+the topographic conditions of the town and the precise location of the
+soldiers' quarters.
+
+"No," Demetrio answered, accompanying his smile with a disdainful
+gesture, "we'll simply fall on them when they least expect it; that's
+all there is to it, see? We've done it before all right, lots of times!
+Haven't you ever seen the squirrels stick their heads out of their
+holes when you poured in water? Well, that's how these lousy soldiers
+are going to feel. Do you see? They'll be frightened out of their wits
+the moment they hear our first shot. Then they'll slink out and stand
+as targets for us."
+
+"Suppose the old man we met yesterday lied to us. Suppose there are
+fifty soldiers instead of twenty. Who knows but he's a spy sent out by
+the Federals!"
+
+"Ha, Tenderfoot, frightened already, eh?" Anastasio Montanez mocked.
+
+"Sure! Handling a rifle and messing about with bandages are two
+different things," Pancracio observed.
+
+"Well, that's enough talk, I guess," said Meco. "All we have to do is
+fight a dozen frightened rats."
+
+"This fight won't convince our mothers that they gave birth to men or
+whatever the hell you like...." Manteca added.
+
+When they reached the outskirts of the town, Venancio walked ahead and
+knocked at the door of a hut.
+
+"Where's the soldiers' barracks?" he inquired of a man who came out
+barefoot, a ragged serape covering his body.
+
+"Right there, just beyond the Plaza," he answered.
+
+Since nobody knew where the city square was, Venancio made him walk
+ahead to show the way. Trembling with fear, the poor devil told them
+they were doing him a terrible wrong.
+
+"I'm just a poor day laborer, sir; I've got a wife and a lot of kids."
+
+"What the hell do you think I have, dogs?" Demetrio scowled. "I've got
+kids too, see?"
+
+Then he commanded:
+
+"You men keep quiet. Not a sound out of you! And walk down the middle
+of the street, single file."
+
+The rectangular church cupola rose above the small houses.
+
+"Here, gentlemen; there's the Plaza beyond the church. Just walk a bit
+further and there's the barracks."
+
+He knelt down, then, imploring them to let him go, but Pancracio,
+without pausing to reply, struck him across the chest with his rifle
+and ordered him to proceed.
+
+"How many soldiers are there?" Luis Cervantes asked.
+
+"I don't want to lie to you, boss, but to tell you the truth, yes, sir,
+to tell you God's truth, there's a lot of them, a whole lot of 'em."
+
+Luis Cervantes turned around to stare at Demetrio, who feigned
+momentary deafness.
+
+They were soon in the city square.
+
+A loud volley of rifle shots rang out, deafening them. Demetrio's horse
+reared, staggered on its hind legs, bent its forelegs, and fell to the
+ground, kicking. The Owl uttered a piercing cry and fell from his horse
+which rushed madly to the center of the square.
+
+Another volley: the guide threw up his arms and fell on his back
+without a sound.
+
+With all haste, Anastasio Montanez helped Demetrio up behind him on his
+horse; the others retreated, seeking shelter along the walls of the
+houses.
+
+"Hey, men," said a workman sticking his head out of a large door, "go
+for 'em through the back of the chapel. They're all in there. Cut back
+through this street, then turn to the left; you'll reach an alley. Keep
+on going ahead until you hit the chapel."
+
+As he spoke a fresh volley of pistol shots, directed from the
+neighboring roofs, fell like a rain about them.
+
+"By God," the man said, "those ain't poisonous spiders; they're only
+townsmen scared of their own shadow. Come in here until they stop."
+
+"How many of them are there?" asked Demetrio.
+
+"There were only twelve of them. But last night they were scared out of
+their wits so they wired to the town beyond for help. I don't know how
+many of them there are now. Even if there are a hell of a lot of them,
+it doesn't cut any ice! Most of them aren't soldiers, you know, but
+drafted men; if just one of them starts mutinying, the rest will follow
+like sheep. My brother was drafted; they've got him there. I'll go
+along with you and signal to him; all of them will desert and follow
+you. Then we'll only have the officers to deal with! If you want to
+give me a gun or something...."
+
+"No more rifles left, brother. But I guess you can put these to some
+use," Anastasio Montanez said, passing him two hand grenades.
+
+The officer in command of the Federals was a young coxcomb of a captain
+with a waxed mustache and blond hair. As long as he felt uncertain
+about the strength of the assailants, he had remained extremely quiet
+and prudent; but now that they had driven the rebels back without
+allowing them a chance to fire a single shot, he waxed bold and brave.
+While the soldiers did not dare put out their heads beyond the pillars
+of the building, his own shadow stood against the pale clear dawn,
+exhibiting his well-built slender body and his officer's cape bellying
+in the breeze.
+
+"Ha, I remember our coup d'etat!"
+
+His military career had consisted of the single adventure when,
+together with other students of the Officers' School, he was involved
+in the treacherous revolt of Feliz Diaz and Huerta against President
+Madero. Whenever the slightest insubordination arose, he invariably
+recalled his feat at the Ciudadela.
+
+"Lieutenant Campos," he ordered emphatically, "take a dozen men and
+wipe out the bandits hiding there! The curs! They're only brave when it
+comes to guzzling meat and robbing a hencoop!"
+
+A workingman appeared at the small door of the spiral staircase,
+announcing that the assailants were hidden in a corral where they might
+easily be captured. This message came from the citizens keeping watch
+on housetops.
+
+"I'll go myself and get it over with!" the officer declared impetuously.
+
+But he soon changed his mind. Before he had reached the door, he
+retraced his steps.
+
+"Very likely they are waiting for more men and, of course, it would be
+wrong for me to abandon my post. Lieutenant Campos, go there yourself
+and capture them dead or alive. We'll shoot them at noon when
+everybody's coming out of church. Those bandits will see the example
+I'll set around here. But if you can't capture them, Lieutenant, kill
+them all. Don't leave a man of them alive, do you understand?"
+
+In high good humor, he began pacing up and down the room, formulating
+the official despatch he would send off no later than today.
+
+
+To His Honor the Minister for War,
+  General A. Blanquet,
+  Mexico City.
+
+Sir:
+
+I have the honor to inform your Excellency that on the morning of ... a
+rebel army, five hundred strong, commanded by ...  attacked this town,
+which I am charged to defend. With such speed as the gravity of the
+situation called for, I fortified my post in the town. The battle
+lasted two hours. Despite the superiority of the enemy in men and
+equipment, I was able to defeat and rout them. Their casualties were
+twenty killed and a far greater number of wounded, judging from the
+trails of blood they left behind them as they retreated. I am pleased
+to state there was no casualty on our side. I have the honor to
+congratulate Your Excellency upon this new triumph for the Federal
+arms. Viva Presidente Huerta! Viva Mexico!
+
+
+"Well," the young captain mused, "I'll be promoted to major." He
+clasped his hands together, jubilant. At this precise moment, a
+detonation rang out. His ears buzzed, he--
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+"If we get through the corral, we can make the alley, eh?" Demetrio
+asked.
+
+"That's right," the workman answered. "Beyond the corral there's a
+house, then another corral, then there's a store."
+
+Demetrio scratched his head, thoughtfully. This time his decision was
+immediate.
+
+"Can you get hold of a crowbar or something like that to make a hole
+through the wall?"
+
+"Yes, we'll get anything you want, but ..."
+
+"But what? Where can we get a crowbar?"
+
+"Everything is right there. But it all belongs to the boss."
+
+Without further ado, Demetrio strode into the shed which had been
+pointed out as the toolhouse.
+
+It was all a matter of a few minutes. Once in the alley, hugging to the
+walls, they marched forward in single file until they reached the rear
+of the church. Now they had but a single fence and the rear wall of the
+chapel to scale.
+
+"God's will be done!" Demetrio said to himself. He was the first to
+clamber over.
+
+Like monkeys the others followed him, reaching the other side with
+bleeding, grimy hands. The rest was easy. The deep worn steps along the
+stonework made their ascent of the chapel wall swifter. The church
+vault hid them from the soldiers.
+
+"Wait a moment, will you?" said the workman. "I'll go and see where my
+brother is; I'll let you know and then you'll get at the officers."
+
+But no one paid the slightest attention to him.
+
+For a second, Demetrio glanced at the soldiers' black coats hanging on
+the wall, then at his own men, thick on the church tower behind the
+iron rail. He smiled with satisfaction and turning to his men said:
+
+"Come on, now, boys!"
+
+Twenty bombs exploded simultaneously in the midst of the soldiers who,
+awaking terrified out of their sleep, started up, their eyes wide open.
+But before they had realized their plight, twenty more bombs burst like
+thunder upon them leaving a scattering of men killed or maimed.
+
+"Don't do that yet, for God's sake! Don't do it till I find my
+brother," the workman implored in anguish.
+
+In vain an old sergeant harangued the soldiers, insulting them in the
+hope of rallying them. For they were rats, caught in a trap, no more,
+no less. Some of the soldiers, attempting to reach the small door by
+the staircase, fell to the ground pierced by Demetrio's shots. Others
+fell at the feet of these twenty-odd specters, with faces and breasts
+dark as iron, clad in long torn trousers of white cloth which fell to
+their leather sandals, scattering death and destruction below them. In
+the belfry, a few men struggled to emerge from the pile of dead who had
+fallen upon them.
+
+"It's awful, Chief!" Luis Cervantes cried in alarm. "We've no more
+bombs left and we left our guns in the corral."
+
+Smiling, Demetrio drew out a large shining knife. In the twinkling of
+an eye, steel flashed in every hand. Some knives were large and
+pointed, others wide as the palm of a hand, others heavy as bayonets.
+
+"The spy!" Luis Cervantes cried triumphantly. "Didn't I tell you?"
+
+"Don't kill me, Chief, please don't kill me," the old sergeant implored
+squirming at the feet of Demetrio, who stood over him, knife in hand.
+The victim raised his wrinkled Indian face; there was not a single gray
+hair in his head today. Demetrio recognized the spy who had lied to him
+the day before. Terrified, Luis Cervantes quickly averted his face. The
+steel blade went crack, crack, on the old man's ribs. He toppled
+backward, his arms spread, his eyes ghastly.
+
+"Don't kill my brother, don't kill him, he's my brother!" the workman
+shouted in terror to Pancracio who was pursuing a soldier. But it was
+too late. With one thrust, Pancracio had cut his neck in half, and two
+streams of scarlet spurted from the wound.
+
+"Kill the soldiers, kill them all!"
+
+Pancracio and Manteca surpassed the others in the savagery of their
+slaughter, and finished up with the wounded. Montanez, exhausted, let
+his arm fall; it hung limp to his side. A gentle expression still
+filled his glance; his eyes shone; he was naive as a child, unmoral as
+a hyena.
+
+"Here's one who's not dead yet," Quail shouted.
+
+Pancracio ran up. The little blond captain with curled mustache turned
+pale as wax. He stood against the door to the staircase unable to
+muster enough strength to take another step.
+
+Pancracio pushed him brutally to the edge of the corridor. A jab with
+his knee against the captain's thigh--then a sound not unlike a bag of
+stones falling from the top of the steeple on the porch of the church.
+
+"My God, you've got no brains!" said Quail. "If I'd known what you were
+doing, I'd have kept him for myself. That was a fine pair of shoes you
+lost!"
+
+Bending over them, the rebels stripped those among the soldiers who
+were best clad, laughing and joking as they despoiled them. Brushing
+back his long hair, that had fallen over his sweating forehead and
+covered his eyes, Demetrio said:
+
+"Now let's get those city fellows!"
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+On the day General Natera began his advance against the town of
+Zacatecas, Demetrio with a hundred men went to meet him at Fresnillo.
+
+The leader received him cordially.
+
+"I know who you are and the sort of men you bring. I heard about the
+beatings you gave the Federals from Tepic to Durango."
+
+Natera shook hands with Demetrio effusively while Luis Cervantes said:
+
+"With men like General Natera and Colonel Demetrio Macias, we'll cover
+our country with glory."
+
+Demetrio understood the purpose of those words, after Natera had
+repeatedly addressed him as "Colonel."
+
+Wine and beer were served; Demetrio and Natera drank many a toast.
+Luis Cervantes proposed: "The triumph of our cause, which is the
+sublime triumph of Justice, because our ideal--to free the noble,
+long-suffering people of Mexico--is about to be realized and because
+those men who have watered the earth with their blood and tears will
+reap the harvest which is rightfully theirs."
+
+Natera fixed his cruel gaze on the orator, then turned his back on him
+to talk to Demetrio.  Presently, one of Natera's officers, a young man
+with a frank open face, drew up to the table and stared insistently at
+Cervantes.
+
+"Are you Luis Cervantes?"
+
+"Yes.  You're Solis, eh?"
+
+"The moment you entered I thought I recognized you. Well, well, even
+now I can hardly believe my eyes!"
+
+"It's true enough!"
+
+"Well, but ... look here, let's have a drink, come along." Then:
+
+"Hm," Solis went on, offering Cervantes a chair, "since when have you
+turned rebel?"
+
+"I've been a rebel the last two months!"
+
+"Oh, I see!  That's why you speak with such faith and enthusiasm about
+things we all felt when we joined the revolution."
+
+"Have you lost your faith or enthusiasm?"
+
+"Look here, man, don't be surprised if I confide in you right off. I am
+so anxious to find someone intelligent among this crowd, that as soon
+as I get hold of a man like you I clutch at him as eagerly as I would
+at a glass of water, after walking mile after mile through a parched
+desert.  But frankly, I think you should do the explaining first.  I
+can't understand how a man who was correspondent of a Government
+newspaper during the Madero regime, and later editorial writer on a
+Conservative journal, who denounced us as bandits in the most fiery
+articles, is now fighting on our side."
+
+"I tell you honestly: I have been converted," Cervantes answered.
+
+"Are you absolutely convinced?"
+
+Solis sighed, filled the glasses; they drank.
+
+"What about you?  Are you tired of the revolution?" asked Cervantes
+sharply.
+
+"Tired?  My dear fellow, I'm twenty-five years old and I'm fit as a
+fiddle!  But am I disappointed? Perhaps!"
+
+"You must have sound reasons for feeling that way."
+
+"I hoped to find a meadow at the end of the road. I found a swamp.
+Facts are bitter; so are men. That bitterness eats your heart out; it
+is poison, dry rot. Enthusiasm, hope, ideals, happiness-vain dreams,
+vain dreams.... When that's over, you have a choice. Either you turn
+bandit, like the rest, or the timeservers will swamp you...."
+
+Cervantes writhed at his friend's words; his argument was quite out of
+place ... painful.... To avoid being forced to take issue, he invited
+Solis to cite the circumstances that had destroyed his illusions.
+
+"Circumstances? No--it's far less important than that. It's a host of
+silly, insignificant things that no one notices except yourself ... a
+change of expression, eyes shining-lips curled in a sneer-the deep
+import of a phrase that is lost! Yet take these things together and
+they compose the mask of our race ... terrible ... grotesque ... a race
+that awaits redemption!"
+
+He drained another glass. After a long pause, he continued:
+
+"You ask me why I am still a rebel? Well, the revolution is like a
+hurricane: if you're in it, you're not a man ... you're a leaf, a dead
+leaf, blown by the wind."
+
+Demetrio reappeared. Seeing him, Solis relapsed into silence.
+
+"Come along," Demetrio said to Cervantes. "Come with me."
+
+Unctuously, Solis congratulated Demetrio on the feats that had won him
+fame and the notice of Pancho Villa's northern division.
+
+Demetrio warmed to his praise. Gratefully, he heard his prowess
+vaunted, though at times he found it difficult to believe he was the
+hero of the exploits the other narrated. But Solis' story proved so
+charming, so convincing, that before long he found himself repeating it
+as gospel truth.
+
+"Natera is a genius!" Luis Cervantes said when they had returned to the
+hotel. "But Captain Solis is a nobody ... a timeserver."
+
+Demetrio Macias was too elated to listen to him. "I'm a colonel, my
+lad! And you're my secretary!"
+
+Demetrio's men made many acquaintances that evening; much liquor flowed
+to celebrate new friendships. Of course men are not necessarily even
+tempered, nor is alcohol a good counselor; quarrels naturally ensued.
+Yet many differences that occurred were smoothed out in a friendly
+spirit, outside the saloons, restaurants, or brothels.
+
+On the morrow, casualties were reported. Always a few dead. An old
+prostitute was found with a bullet through her stomach; two of Colonel
+Macias' new men lay in the gutter, slit from ear to ear.
+
+Anastasio Montanez carried an account of the events to his chief.
+Demetrio shrugged his shoulders. "Bury them!" he said.
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+"They're coming back!"
+
+It was with amazement that the inhabitants of Fresnillo learned that
+the rebel attack on Zacatecas had failed completely.
+
+"They're coming back!"
+
+The rebels were a maddened mob, sunburnt, filthy, naked. Their high
+wide-brimmed straw hats hid their faces. The "high hats" came back as
+happily as they had marched forth a few days before, pillaging every
+hamlet along the road, every ranch, even the poorest hut.
+
+"Who'll buy this thing?" one of them asked. He had carried his spoils
+long: he was tired. The sheen of the nickel on the typewriter, a new
+machine, attracted every glance. Five times that morning the Oliver had
+changed hands. The first sale netted the owner ten pesos; presently it
+had sold for eight; each time it changed hands, it was two pesos
+cheaper. To be sure, it was a heavy burden; nobody could carry it for
+more than a half-hour.
+
+"I'll give you a quarter for it!" Quail said.
+
+"Yours!" cried the owner, handing it over quickly, as though he feared
+Quail might change his mind. Thus for the sum of twenty-five cents,
+Quail was afforded the pleasure of taking it in his hands and throwing
+it with all his might against the wall.
+
+It struck with a crash. This gave the signal to all who carried any
+cumbersome objects to get rid of them by smashing them against the
+rocks. Objects of all sorts, crystal, china, faience, porcelain, flew
+through the air. Heavy, plated mirrors, brass candlesticks, fragile,
+delicate statues, Chinese vases, any object not readily convertible
+into cash fell by the wayside in fragments.
+
+Demetrio did not share the untoward exaltation. After all, they were
+retreating defeated. He called Montanez and Pancracio aside and said:
+
+"These fellows have no guts. It's not so hard to take a town. It's like
+this. First, you open up, this way...." He sketched a vast gesture,
+spreading his powerful arms. "Then you get close to them, like
+this...." He brought his arms together, slowly. "Then slam! Bang!
+Whack! Crash!" He beat his hands against his chest.
+
+Anastasio and Pancracio, convinced by this simple, lucid explanation
+answered:
+
+"That's God's truth! They've no guts! That's the trouble with them!"
+
+Demetrio's men camped in a corral.
+
+"Do you remember Camilla?" Demetrio asked with a sigh as he settled on
+his back on the manure pile where the rest were already stretched out.
+
+"Camilla? What girl do you mean, Demetrio?"
+
+"The girl that used to feed me up there at the ranch!"
+
+Anastasio made a gesture implying: "I don't care a damn about the women
+... Camilla or anyone else...."
+
+"I've not forgotten," Demetrio went on, drawing on his cigarette. "Yes,
+I was feeling like hell! I'd just finished drinking a glass of water.
+God, but it was cool.... 'Don't you want any more?' she asked me. I was
+half dead with fever ... and all the time I saw that glass of water,
+blue ... so blue ... and I heard her little voice, 'Don't you want any
+more?' That voice tinkled in my ears like a silver hurdy-gurdy! Well,
+Pancracio, what about it? Shall we go back to the ranch?"
+
+"Demetrio, we're friends, aren't we? Well then, listen. You may not
+believe it, but I've had a lot of experience with women. Women! Christ,
+they're all right for a while, granted! Though even that's going pretty
+far. Demetrio, you should see the scars they've given me ... all over
+my body, not to speak of my soul! To hell with women. They're the
+devil, that's what they are! You may have noticed I steer clear of
+them. You know why. And don't think I don't know what I'm talking
+about. I've had a hell of a lot of experience and that's no lie!"
+
+"What do you say, Pancracio? When are we going back to the ranch?"
+Demetrio insisted, blowing gray clouds of tobacco smoke into the air.
+
+"Say the day, I'm game. You know I left my woman there too!"
+
+"Your woman, hell!" Quail said, disgruntled and sleepy.
+
+"All right, then, our woman! It's a good thing you're kindhearted so we
+all can enjoy her when you bring her over," Manteca murmured.
+
+"That's right, Pancracio, bring one-eyed Maria Antonia. We're all
+getting pretty cold around here," Meco shouted from a distance.
+
+The crowd broke into peals of laughter. Pancracio and Manteca vied with
+each other in calling forth oaths and obscenity.
+
+
+
+XX
+
+"Villa is coming!"
+
+The news spread like lightning. Villa--the magic word! The Great Man,
+the salient profile, the unconquerable warrior who, even at a distance,
+exerts the fascination of a reptile, a boa constrictor.
+
+"Our Mexican Napoleon!" exclaimed Luis Cervantes.
+
+"Yes! The Aztec Eagle! He buried his beak of steel in the head of
+Huerta the serpent!" Solis, Natera's chief of staff, remarked somewhat
+ironically, adding: "At least, that's how I expressed it in a speech I
+made at Ciudad Juarez!"
+
+The two sat at the bar of the saloon, drinking beer. The "high hats,"
+wearing mufflers around their necks and thick rough leather shoes on
+their feet, ate and drank endlessly. Their gnarled hands loomed across
+table, across bar. All their talk was of Villa and his men. The tales
+Natera's followers related won gasps of astonishment from Demetrio's
+men. Villa! Villa's battles! Ciudad Juarez ... Tierra Blanca ...
+Chihuahua ... Torreon....
+
+The bare facts, the mere citing of observation and experience meant
+nothing. But the real story, with its extraordinary contrasts of high
+exploits and abysmal cruelties was quite different. Villa, indomitable
+lord of the sierra, the eternal victim of all governments ... Villa
+tracked, hunted down like a wild beast ... Villa the reincarnation of
+the old legend; Villa as Providence, the bandit, that passes through
+the world armed with the blazing torch of an ideal: to rob the rich and
+give to the poor. It was the poor who built up and imposed a legend
+about him which Time itself was to increase and embellish as a shining
+example from generation to generation.
+
+"Look here, friend," one of Natera's men told Anastasio, "if General
+Villa takes a fancy to you, he'll give you a ranch on the spot. But if
+he doesn't, he'll shoot you down like a dog! God! You ought to see
+Villa's troops! They're all northerners and dressed like lords! You
+ought to see their wide-brimmed Texas hats and their brand-new outfits
+and their four-dollar shoes, imported from the U. S. A."
+
+As they retailed the wonders of Villa and his men, Natera's men gazed
+at one another ruefully, aware that their own hats were rotten from
+sunlight and moisture, that their own shirts and trousers were tattered
+and barely fit to cover their grimy, lousy bodies.
+
+"There's no such a thing as hunger up there. They carry boxcars full of
+oxen, sheep, cows! They've got cars full of clothing, trains full of
+guns, ammunition, food enough to make a man burst!"
+
+Then they spoke of Villa's airplanes.
+
+"Christ, those planes! You know when they're close to you, be damned if
+you know what the hell they are! They look like small boats, you know,
+or tiny rafts ... and then pretty soon they begin to rise, making a
+hell of a row. Something like an automobile going sixty miles an hour.
+Then they're like great big birds that don't even seem to move
+sometimes. But there's a joker! The God-damn things have got some
+American fellow inside with hand grenades by the thousand. Now you try
+and figure what that means! The fight is on, see? You know how a farmer
+feeds corn to his chickens, huh? Well, the American throws his lead
+bombs at the enemy just like that. Pretty soon the whole damn field is
+nothing but a graveyard ... dead men all over the dump ... dead men
+here ... dead men there ... dead men everywhere!"
+
+Anastasio Montanez questioned the speaker more particularly. It was not
+long before he realized that all this high praise was hearsay and that
+not a single man in Natera's army had ever laid eyes on Villa.
+
+"Well, when you get down to it, I guess it doesn't mean so much! No
+man's got much more guts than any other man, if you ask me. All you
+need to be a good fighter is pride, that's all. I'm not a professional
+soldier even though I'm dressed like hell, but let me tell you. I'm not
+forced to do this kind of bloody job, because I own ..."
+
+"Because I own over twenty oxen, whether you believe it or not!" Quail
+said, mocking Anastasio.
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+The firing lessened, then slowly died out. Luis Cervantes, who had been
+hiding amid a heap of ruins at the fortification on the crest of the
+hill, made bold to show his face. How he had managed to hang on, he did
+not know. Nor did he know when Demetrio and his men had disappeared.
+Suddenly he had found himself alone; then, hurled back by an avalanche
+of infantry, he fell from his saddle; a host of men trampled over him
+until he rose from the ground and a man on horseback hoisted him up
+behind him. After a few moments, horse and riders fell. Left without
+rifle, revolver, or arms of any kind, Cervantes found himself lost in
+the midst of white smoke and whistling bullets. A hole amid a debris of
+crumbling stone offered a refuge of safety.
+
+"Hello, partner!"
+
+"Luis, how are you!"
+
+"The horse threw me. They fell upon me. Then they took my gun away. You
+see, they thought I was dead. There was nothing I could do!" Luis
+Cervantes explained apologetically. Then:
+
+"Nobody threw me down," Solis said. "I'm here because I like to play
+safe."
+
+The irony in Solis' voice brought a blush to Cervantes' cheek.
+
+"By God, that chief of yours is a man!" Solis said. "What daring, what
+assurance! He left me gasping--and a hell of a lot of other men with
+more experience than me, too!"
+
+Luis Cervantes vouchsafed no answer.
+
+"What! Weren't you there? Oh, I see! You found a nice place for
+yourself at the right time. Come here, Luis, I'll explain; let's go
+behind that rock. From this meadow to the foot of the hill, there's no
+road save this path below. To the right, the incline is too sharp; you
+can't do anything there. And it's worse to the left; the ascent is so
+dangerous that a second's hesitation means a fall down those rocks and
+a broken neck at the end of it. All right! A number of men from Moya's
+brigade who went down to the meadow decided to attack the enemy's
+trenches the first chance they got. The bullets whizzed about us, the
+battle raged on all sides. For a time they stopped firing, so we
+thought they were being attacked from behind. We stormed their
+trenches--look, partner, look at that meadow! It's thick with corpses!
+Their machine guns did that for us. They mowed us down like wheat; only
+a handful escaped. Those Goddamned officers went white as a sheet; even
+though we had reinforcements they were afraid to order a new charge.
+That was when Demetrio Macias plunged in. Did he wait for orders? Not
+he! He just shouted:
+
+"'Come on, boys! Let's go for them!'
+
+"'Damn fool!' I thought. 'What the hell does he think he's doing!'
+
+"The officers, surprised, said nothing. Demetrio's horse seemed to wear
+eagle's claws instead of hoofs, it soared so swiftly over the rocks.
+'Come on! Come on!' his men shouted, following him like wild deer,
+horses and men welded into a mad stampede. Only one young fellow
+stepped wild and fell headlong into the pit. In a few seconds the
+others appeared at the top of the hill, storming the trenches and
+killing the Federals by the thousand. With his rope, Demetrio lassoed
+the machine guns and carried them off, like a bull herd throwing a
+steer. Yet his success could not last much longer, for the Federals
+were far stronger in numbers and could easily have destroyed Demetrio
+and his men. But we took advantage of their confusion, we rushed upon
+them and they soon cleared out of their position. That chief of yours
+is a wonderful soldier!"
+
+Standing on the crest of the hill, they could easily sight one side of
+the Bufa peak. Its highest crag spread out like the feathered head of a
+proud Aztec king. The three-hundred-foot slope was literally covered
+with dead, their hair matted, their clothes clotted with grime and
+blood. A host of ragged women, vultures of prey, ranged over the tepid
+bodies of the dead, stripping one man bare, despoiling another, robbing
+from a third his dearest possessions.
+
+Amid clouds of white rifle smoke and the dense black vapors of flaming
+buildings, houses with wide doors and windows bolted shone in the
+sunlight. The streets seemed to be piled upon one another, or wound
+picturesquely about fantastic corners, or set to scale the hills
+nearby. Above the graceful cluster of houses, rose the lithe columns of
+a warehouse and the towers and cupola of the church.
+
+"How beautiful the revolution! Even in its most barbarous aspect it is
+beautiful," Solis said with deep feeling. Then a vague melancholy
+seized him, and speaking low:
+
+"A pity what remains to do won't be as beautiful! We must wait a while,
+until there are no men left to fight on either side, until no sound of
+shot rings through the air save from the mob as carrion-like it falls
+upon the booty; we must wait until the psychology of our race,
+condensed into two words, shines clear and luminous as a drop of water:
+Robbery! Murder! What a colossal failure we would make of it, friend,
+if we, who offer our enthusiasm and lives to crush a wretched tyrant,
+became the builders of a monstrous edifice holding one hundred or two
+hundred thousand monsters of exactly the same sort. People without
+ideals! A tyrant folk! Vain bloodshed!"
+
+Large groups of Federals pushed up the hill, fleeing from the "high
+hats." A bullet whistled past them, singing as it sped. After his
+speech, Alberto Solis stood lost in thought, his arms crossed.
+Suddenly, he took fright.
+
+"I'll be damned if I like these plaguey mosquitoes!" he said. "Let's
+get away from here!"
+
+So scornfully Luis Cervantes smiled that Solis sat down on a rock quite
+calm, bewildered. He smiled. His gaze roved as he watched the spirals
+of smoke from the rifles, the dust of roofs crumbling from houses as
+they fell before the artillery. He believed he discerned the symbol of
+the revolution in these clouds of dust and smoke that climbed upward
+together, met at the crest of the hill and, a moment after, were
+lost....
+
+"By heaven, now I see what it all means!"
+
+He sketched a vast gesture, pointing to the station. Locomotives
+belched huge clouds of black dense smoke rising in columns; the trains
+were overloaded with fugitives who had barely managed to escape from
+the captured town.
+
+Suddenly he felt a sharp blow in the stomach. As though his legs were
+putty, he rolled off the rock. His ears buzzed... Then darkness ...
+silence ... eternity....
+
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+
+
+I
+
+Demetrio,  nonplussed, scratched his head: "Look here, don't ask me any
+more questions.... You gave me the eagle I wear on my hat, didn't you?
+All right then; you just tell me: 'Demetrio, do this or do that,' and
+that's all there is to it."
+
+
+To champagne, that sparkles and foams as the beaded bubbles burst at
+the brim of the glass, Demetrio preferred the native tequila, limpid
+and fiery.
+
+The soldiers sat in groups about the tables in the restaurant, ragged
+men, filthy with sweat, dirt and smoke, their hair matted, wild,
+disheveled.
+
+"I killed two colonels," one man clamored in a guttural harsh voice. He
+was a small fat fellow, with embroidered hat and chamois coat, wearing
+a light purple handkerchief about his neck.
+
+"They were so Goddamned fat they couldn't even run. By God, I wish you
+could have seen them, tripping and stumbling at every step they took,
+climbing up the hill, red as tomatoes, their tongues hanging out like
+hounds. 'Don't run so fast, you lousy beggars!' I called after them.
+'I'm not so fond of frightened geese--stop, You bald-headed bastards: I
+won't harm you! You needn't worry!' By God, they certainly fell for it.
+Pop, pop! One shot for each of them, and a well-earned rest for a pair
+of poor sinners, be damned to them!"
+
+"I couldn't get a single one of their generals!" said a swarthy man who
+sat in one corner between the wall and the bar, holding his rifle
+between his outstretched legs. "I sighted one: a fellow with a hell of
+a lot of gold plastered all over him. His gold chevrons shone like a
+Goddamned sunset. And I let him go by, fool that I was. He took off his
+handkerchief and waved it. I stood there with my mouth wide open like a
+fool! Then I ducked and he started shooting, bullet after bullet. I let
+him kill a poor cargador. Then I said: 'My turn, now! Holy Virgin,
+Mother of God! Don't let me miss this son of a bitch.' But, by Christ,
+he disappeared. He was riding a hell of a fine nag; he went by me like
+lightning! There was another poor fool coming up the road. He got it
+and turned the prettiest somersault you ever saw!"
+
+Talk flew from lip to lip, each soldier vying with his fellow,
+snatching the words from the other's mouth. As they declaimed
+passionately, women with olive, swarthy skins, bright eyes, and teeth
+of ivory, with revolvers at their waists, cartridge-belts across their
+breasts, and broad Mexican hats on their heads, wove their way like
+stray street curs in and out among groups. A vulgar wench, with rouged
+cheeks and dark brown arms and neck, gave a great leap and landed on
+the bar near Demetrio's table.
+
+He turned his head toward her and literally collided with a pair of
+lubric eyes under a narrow forehead and thick, straight hair, parted in
+the middle.
+
+The door opened wide. Anastasio, Pancracio, Quail, and Meco filed in,
+dazed.
+
+Anastasio uttered a cry of surprise and stepped forward to shake hands
+with the little fat man wearing a charro suit and a lavender bandanna.
+A pair of old friends, met again. So warm was their embrace, so tightly
+they clutched each other that the blood rushed to their heads, they
+turned purple.
+
+"Look here, Demetrio, I want the honor of introducing you to Blondie.
+He's a real friend, you know. I love him like a brother. You must get
+to know him, Chief, he's a man! Do you remember that damn jail at
+Escobedo, where we stayed together for over a year?"
+
+Without removing his cigar from his lips, Demetrio, buried in a sullen
+silence amid the bustle and uproar, offered his hand and said:
+
+"I'm delighted to meet you!"
+
+"So your name is Demetrio Macias?" the girl asked suddenly. Seated on
+the bar, she swung her legs; at every swing, the toes of her shoes
+touched Demetrio's back.
+
+"Yes: I'm Demetrio Macias!" he said, scarcely turning toward her.
+
+Indifferently, she continued to swing her legs, displaying her blue
+stockings with ostentation.
+
+"Hey, War Paint, what are you doing here? Step down and have a drink!"
+said the man called Blondie.
+
+The girl accepted readily and boldly thrust her way through the crowd
+to a chair facing Demetrio.
+
+"So you're the famous Demetrio Macias, the hero of Zacatecas?" the girl
+asked.
+
+Demetrio bowed assent, while Blondie, laughing, said:
+
+"You're a wise one, War Paint. You want to sport a general!"
+
+Without understanding Blondie's words, Demetrio raised his eyes to
+hers; they gazed at each other like two dogs sniffing one another with
+distrust. Demetrio could not resist her furiously provocative glances;
+he was forced to lower his eyes.
+
+From their seats, some of Natera's officers began to hurl obscenities
+at War Paint. Without paying the slightest attention, she said:
+
+"General Natera is going to hand you out a little general's eagle. Put
+it here and shake on it, boy!"
+
+She stuck out her hand at Demetrio and shook it with the strength of a
+man. Demetrio, melting to the congratulations raining down upon him,
+ordered champagne.
+
+"I don't want no more to drink," Blondie said to the waiter, "I'm
+feeling sick. Just bring me some ice water."
+
+"I want something to eat," said Pancracio. "Bring me anything you've
+got but don't make it chili or beans!"
+
+Officers kept coming in; presently the restaurant was crowded. Small
+stars, bars, eagles and insignia of every sort or description dotted
+their hats. They wore wide silk bandannas around their necks, large
+diamond rings on their fingers, large heavy gold watch chains across
+their breasts.
+
+"Here, waiter," Blondie cried, "I ordered ice water. And I'm not
+begging for it either, see? Look at this bunch of bills. I'll buy you,
+your wife, and all you possess, see? Don't tell me there's none left--I
+don't care a damn about that! It's up to you to find some way to get it
+and Goddamned quick, too. I don't like to play about; I get mad when
+I'm crossed.... By God, didn't I tell you I wouldn't stand for any
+backchat? You won't bring it to me, eh? Well, take this...."
+
+A heavy blow sent the waiter reeling to the floor.
+
+"That's the sort of man I am, General Macias! I'm clean-shaven, eh? Not
+a hair on my chin? Do you know why? Well, I'll tell you! You see I get
+mad easy as hell; and when there's nobody to pick on, I pull my hair
+until my temper passes. If I hadn't pulled my beard hair by hair, I'd
+have died a long time ago from sheer anger!"
+
+"It does you no good to go to pieces when you're angry," a man affirmed
+earnestly from below a hat that covered his head as a roof does a
+house. "When I was up at Torreon I killed an old lady who refused to
+sell me some enchiladas. She was angry, I can tell you; I got no
+enchiladas but I felt satisfied anyhow!"
+
+"I killed a storekeeper at Parral because he gave me some change and
+there were two Huerta bills in it," said a man with a star on his hat
+and precious stones on his black, calloused hands.
+
+"Down in Chihuahua I killed a man because I always saw him sitting at
+the table whenever I went to eat. I hated the looks of him so I just
+killed him! What the hell could I do!"
+
+"Hmm! I killed...."
+
+The theme is inexhaustible.
+
+By dawn, when the restaurant was wild with joy and the floor dotted
+with spittle, young painted girls from the suburbs had mingled freely
+among the dark northern women. Demetrio pulled out his jeweled gold
+watch, asking Anastasio Montanez to tell him the time.
+
+Anastasio glanced at the watch, then, poking his head out of a small
+window, gazed at the starry sky.
+
+"The Pleiades are pretty low in the west. I guess it won't be long now
+before daybreak...."
+
+Outside the restaurant, the shouts, laughter and song of the drunkards
+rang through the air. Men galloped wildly down the streets, the hoofs
+of their horses hammering on the sidewalks. From every quarter of the
+town pistols spoke, guns belched. Demetrio and the girl called War
+Paint staggered tipsily hand in hand down the center of the street,
+bound for the hotel.
+
+
+
+II
+
+"What damned fools," said War Paint convulsed with laughter! "Where the
+hell do you come from?.....  Soldiers don't sleep in hotels and inns
+any more.......  Where do you come from? You just go anywhere you like
+and pick a house that pleases you, see. When you go there, make
+yourself at home and don't ask anyone for anything. What the hell is
+the use of the revolution? Who's it for? For the folks who live in
+towns? We're the city folk now, see? Come on, Pancracio, hand me your
+bayonet. Damn these rich people, they lock up everything they've got!"
+
+She dug the steel point through the crack of a drawer and, pressing on
+the hilt, broke the lock, opened the splinted cover of a writing desk.
+Anastasio, Pancracio and War Paint plunged their hands into a mass of
+post cards, photographs, pictures and papers, scattering them all over
+the rug. Finding nothing he wanted, Pancracio gave vent to his anger by
+kicking a framed photograph into the air with the toe of his shoe. It
+smashed on the candelabra in the center of the room.
+
+They pulled their empty hands out of the heap of paper, cursing. But
+War Paint was of sterner stuff; tirelessly she continued to unlock
+drawer after drawer without failing to investigate a single spot. In
+their absorption, they did not notice a small gray velvet-covered box
+which rolled silently across the floor, coming to a stop at Luis
+Cervantes' feet.
+
+Demetrio, lying on the rug, seemed to be asleep; Cervantes, who had
+watched everything with profound indifference, pulled the box closer to
+him with his foot, and stooping to scratch his ankle, swiftly picked it
+up. Something gleamed up at him, dazzling. It was two pure-water
+diamonds mounted in filigreed platinum. Hastily he thrust them inside
+his coat pocket.
+
+When Demetrio awoke, Cervantes said:
+
+"General, look at the mess these boys have made here. Don't you think
+it would be advisable to forbid this sort of thing?"
+
+"No. It's about their only pleasure after putting their bellies up as
+targets for the enemy's bullets."
+
+"Yes, of course, General, but they could do it somewhere else. You see,
+this sort of thing hurts our prestige, and worse, our cause!"
+
+Demetrio leveled his eagle eyes at Cervantes. He drummed with his
+fingernails against his teeth, absent-mindedly. Then:
+
+"Come along, now, don't blush," he said. "You can talk like that to
+someone else. We know what's mine is mine, what's yours is yours. You
+picked the box, all right; I picked my gold watch; all right too!"
+
+His words dispelled any pretense. Both of them, in perfect harmony,
+displayed their booty.
+
+War Paint and her companions were ransacking the rest of the house.
+Quail entered the room with a twelve-year-old girl upon whose forehead
+and arms were already marked copper-colored spots. They stopped short,
+speechless with surprise as they saw the books lying in piles on the
+floor, chairs and tables, the large mirrors thrown to the ground,
+smashed, the huge albums and the photographs torn into shreds, the
+furniture, objets d'art and bric-a-brac broken. Quail held his breath,
+his avid eyes scouring the room for booty.
+
+Outside, in one corner of the patio, lost in dense clouds of
+suffocating smoke, Manteca was boiling corn on the cob, feeding his
+fire with books and paper that made the flames leap wildly through the
+air.
+
+"Hey!" Quail shouted. "Look what I found. A fine sweat-cover for my
+mare."
+
+With a swift pull he wrenched down a hanging, which fell over a
+handsomely carved upright chair.
+
+"Look, look at all these naked women!" Quail's little companion cried,
+enchanted at a de luxe edition of Dante's Divine Comedy. "I like this;
+I think I'll take it along."
+
+She began to tear out the illustrations which pleased her most.
+
+Demetrio crossed the room and sat down beside Luis Cervantes. He
+ordered some beer, handed one bottle up to his secretary, downed his
+own bottle at one gulp. Then, drowsily, he half closed his eyes, and
+soon fell sound asleep.
+
+"Hey!" a man called to Pancracio from the threshold. "When can I see
+your general?"
+
+"You can't see him. He's got a hangover this morning. What the hell do
+you want?"
+
+"I want to buy some of those books you're burning."
+
+"I'll sell them to you myself."
+
+"How much do you want for them?"
+
+Pancracio frowned in bewilderment.
+
+"Give me a nickel for those with pictures, see. I'll give you the rest
+for nothing if you buy all those with pictures."
+
+The man returned with a large basket to carry away the books....
+
+"Come on, Demetrio, come on, you pig, get up! Look who's here! It's
+Blondie. You don't know what a fine man he is!"
+
+"I like you very much, General Macias, and I like the way you do
+things. So if it's all right, I'd like very much to serve under you!"
+
+"What's your rank?" Demetrio asked him.
+
+"I'm a captain, General."
+
+"All right, you can serve with me now. I'll make you major. How's that?"
+
+Blondie was a round little fellow, with waxed mustache. When he
+laughed, his blue eyes disappeared mischievously between his forehead
+and his fat cheeks. He had been a waiter at "El Monico," in Chihuahua;
+now he proudly wore three small brass bars, the insignia of his rank in
+the Northern Division.
+
+Blondie showered eulogy after eulogy on Demetrio and his men; this
+proved sufficient reason for bringing out a fresh case of beer, which
+was finished in short order.
+
+Suddenly War Paint reappeared in the middle of the room, wearing a
+beautiful silk dress covered with exquisite lace.
+
+"You forgot the stockings," Blondie shouted, shaking with laughter.
+Quail's girl also burst out laughing. But War Paint did not care. She
+shrugged her shoulders indifferently, sat down on the floor, kicked off
+her white satin slippers, and wiggled her toes happily, giving their
+muscles a freedom welcome after their tight confinement in the
+slippers. She said:
+
+"Hey, you, Pancracio, go and get me my blue stockings ... they're with
+the rest of my plunder."
+
+Soldiers and their friends, companions and veterans of other campaigns,
+began to enter in groups of twos and threes. Demetrio, growing excited,
+began to narrate in detail his most notable feats of arms.
+
+"What the hell is that noise?" he asked in surprise as he heard string
+and brass instruments tuning up in the patio.
+
+"General Demetrio Macias," Luis Cervantes said solemnly, "it's a
+banquet all of your old friends and followers are giving in your honor
+to celebrate your victory at Zacatecas and your well-merited promotion
+to the rank of general!"
+
+
+
+III
+
+"General Macias, I want you to meet my future wife," Luis Cervantes
+said with great emphasis as he led a beautiful girl into the dining
+room.
+
+They all turned to look at her. Her large blue eyes grew wide in
+wonder. She was barely fourteen. Her skin was like a rose, soft, pink,
+fresh; her hair was very fair; the expression in her eyes was partly
+impish curiosity, partly a vague childish fear. Perceiving that
+Demetrio eyed her like a beast of prey, Luis Cervantes congratulated
+himself.
+
+They made room for her between Luis Cervantes and Blondie, opposite
+Demetrio.
+
+Bottles of tequila, dishes of cut glass, bowls, porcelains and vases
+lay scattered over the table indiscriminately. Meco, carrying a box of
+beer upon his shoulders, came in cursing and sweating.
+
+"You don't know this fellow Blondie yet," said War Paint, noticing the
+persistent glances he was casting at Luis Cervantes' bride. "He's a
+smart fellow, I can tell you, and he never misses a trick." She gazed
+at him lecherously, adding:
+
+"That's why I don't like to see him close, even on a photograph!"
+
+The orchestra struck up a raucous march as though they were playing at
+a bullfight. The soldiers roared with joy.
+
+"What fine tripe, General; I swear I haven't tasted the like of it in
+all my life," Blondie said, as he began to reminisce about "El Monico"
+at Chihuahua.
+
+"You really like it, Blondie?" responded Demetrio. "Go ahead, call for
+more, eat your bellyful."
+
+"It's just the way I like it," Anastasio chimed in. "Yes, I like good
+food! But nothing really tastes good to you unless you belch!"
+
+The noise of mouths being filled, of ravenous feeding followed. All
+drank copiously. At the end of the dinner, Luis Cervantes rose, holding
+a champagne glass in one hand, and said:
+
+"General..."
+
+"Ho!" War Paint interrupted. "This speech-making business isn't for me;
+I'm all against it. I'll go out to the corral since there's no more
+eating here."
+
+Presenting Demetrio with a black velvet-covered box containing a small
+brass eagle, Luis Cervantes made a toast which no one understood but
+everyone applauded enthusiastically. Demetrio took the insignia in his
+hands; and with flushed face, and eyes shining, declared with great
+candor:
+
+"What in hell am I going to do with this buzzard!"
+
+"Compadre," Anastasio Montanez said in a tremulous voice. "I ain't got
+much to tell you...."
+
+Whole minutes elapsed between his words; the cursed words would not
+come to Anastasio. His face, coated with filth, unwashed for days,
+turned crimson, shining with perspiration. Finally he decided to finish
+his toast at all costs. "Well, I ain't got much to tell you, except
+that we are pals...."
+
+Then, since everyone had applauded at the end of Luis Cervantes'
+speech, Anastasio having finished, made a sign, and the company clapped
+their hands in great gravity.
+
+But everything turned out for the best, since his awkwardness inspired
+others. Manteca and Quail stood up and made their toasts, too. When
+Meco's turn came, War Paint rushed in shouting jubilantly, attempting
+to drag a splendid black horse into the dining room.
+
+"My booty! My booty!" she cried, patting the superb animal on the neck.
+It resisted every effort she made until a strong jerk of the rope and a
+sudden lash brought it in prancing smartly. The soldiers, half drunk,
+stared at the beast with ill-disguised envy.
+
+"I don't know what the hell this she-devil's got, but she always beats
+everybody to it," cried Blondie. "She's been the same ever since she
+joined us at Tierra Blanca!"
+
+"Hey, Pancracio, bring me some alfalfa for my horse," War Paint
+commanded crisply, throwing the horse's rope to one of the soldiers.
+
+Once more they filled their glasses. Many a head hung low with fatigue
+or drunkenness. Most of the company, however, shouted with glee,
+including Luis Cervantes' girl. She had spilled all her wine on a
+handkerchief and looked all about her with blue wondering eyes.
+
+"Boys," Blondie suddenly screamed, his shrill, guttural voice
+dominating the mall, "I'm tired of living; I feel like killing myself
+right now. I'm sick and tired of War Paint and this other little angel
+from heaven won't even look at me!"
+
+Luis Cervantes saw that the last remark was addressed to his bride;
+with great surprise he realized that it was not Demetrio's foot he had
+noticed close to the girl's, but Blondie's. He was boiling with
+indignation.
+
+"Keep your eye on me, boys," Blondie went on, gun in hand. "I'm going
+to shoot myself right in the forehead!"
+
+He aimed at the large mirror on the opposite wall which gave back his
+whole body in reflection. He took careful aim....
+
+"Don't move, War Paint."
+
+The bullet whizzed by, grazing War Paint's hair. The mirror broke into
+large jagged fragments. She did not even so much as blink.
+
+
+
+IV
+
+Late in the afternoon Luis Cervantes rubbed his eyes and sat up. He had
+been sleeping on the hard pavement, close to the trunk of a fruit tree.
+Anastasio, Pancracio and Quail slept nearby, breathing heavily.
+
+His lips were swollen, his nose dry and cold. There were bloodstains on
+his hands and shirt. At once he recalled what had taken place. Soon he
+rose to his feet and made for one of the bedrooms. He pushed at the
+door several times without being able to force it open. For a few
+minutes he stood there, hesitating.
+
+No--he had not dreamed it. Everything had really occurred just as he
+recalled it. He had left the table with his bride and taken her to the
+bedroom, but just as he was closing the door, Demetrio staggered after
+them and made one leap toward them. Then War Paint dashed in after
+Demetrio and began to struggle with him. Demetrio, his eyes white-hot,
+his lips covered with long blond hairs, looked for the bride, in
+despair. But War Paint pushed him back vigorously.
+
+"What the hell is the matter with you? What the hell are you trying to
+do?" he demanded, furious.
+
+War Paint put her leg between his, twisted it suddenly, and Demetrio
+fell to the ground outside of the bedroom. He rose, raging.
+
+"Help! Help! He's going to kill me!" she cried, seizing Demetrio's
+wrist and turning the gun aside. The bullet hit the floor. War Paint
+continued to shriek. Anastasio disarmed Demetrio from behind.
+
+Demetrio, standing like a furious bull in the middle of the arena, cast
+fierce glances at all the bystanders, Luis Cervantes, Anastasio,
+Manteca, and the others.
+
+"Goddamn you! You've taken my gun away! Christ! As if I needed any gun
+to beat the hell out of you."
+
+Flinging out his arms, beating and pummeling, he felled everyone within
+reach. Down they rolled like tenpins. Then, after that, Luis Cervantes
+could remember nothing more. Perhaps his bride, terrified by all these
+brutes, had wisely vanished and hidden herself.
+
+"Perhaps this bedroom communicates with the living room and I can go in
+through there," he thought, standing at the threshold. At the sound of
+his footsteps, War Paint woke up. She lay on the rug close to Demetrio
+at the foot of a couch filled with alfalfa and corn where the black
+horse had fed.
+
+"What are you looking for? Oh, hell, I know what you want! Shame on
+you! Why, I had to lock up your sweetheart because I couldn't struggle
+any more against this damned Demetrio. Take the key, it's lying on that
+table, there!"
+
+Luis Cervantes searched in vain all over the house.
+
+"Come on, tell me all about your girl."
+
+Nervously, Luis Cervantes continued to look for the key.
+
+"Come on, don't be in such a hurry, I'll give it to you. Come along,
+tell me; I like to hear about these things, you know. That girl is your
+kind, she's not a country person like us."
+
+"I've nothing to say. She's my girl and we're going to get married,
+that's all."
+
+"Ho! Ho! Ho! You're going to marry her, eh? Trying to teach your
+grandmother to suck eggs, eh? Why, you fool, any place you just manage
+to get to for the first time in your life, I've left a hundred miles
+behind me, see. I've cut my wisdom teeth. It was Meco and Manteca who
+took the girl from her home: I knew that all the time. You just gave
+them something so as to have her yourself, gave them a pair of cuff
+links ... or a miraculous picture of some Virgin.... Am I right? Sure,
+I am! There aren't so many people in the world who know what's what,
+but I reckon you'll meet up with a few before you die!"
+
+War Paint got up to give him the key but she could not find it either.
+She was much surprised. Quickly, she ran to the bedroom door and peered
+through the keyhole, standing motionless until her eye grew accustomed
+to the darkness within. Without drawing away, she said: "You damned
+Blondie. Son of a bitch! Come here a minute, look!"
+
+She went away laughing.
+
+"Didn't I tell them all I'd never seen a smarter fellow in all my life!"
+
+The following morning, War Paint watched for the moment when Blondie
+left the bedroom to feed his horses....
+
+"Come on, Angel Face. Run home quick!"
+
+The blue-eyed girl, with a face like a Madonna, stood naked save for
+her chemise and stockings. War Paint covered her with Manteca's lousy
+blanket, took her by the hand and led her to the street.
+
+"God, I'm happy," War Paint cried. "I'm crazy ... about Blondie ...
+now."
+
+
+
+V
+
+Like neighing colts, playful when the rainy season begins, Demetrio's
+men galloped through the sierra.
+
+"To Moyahua, boys. Let's go to Demetrio Macias' country!"
+
+"To the country of Monico the cacique!"
+
+The landscape grew clearer; the sun margined the diaphanous sky with a
+fringe of crimson. Like the bony shoulders of immense sleeping
+monsters, the chains of mountains rose in the distance. Crags there
+were like heads of colossal native idols; others like giants' faces,
+their grimaces awe-inspiring or grotesque, calling forth a smile or a
+shudder at a presentment of mystery.
+
+Demetrio Macias rode at the head of his men; behind him the members of
+his staff: Colonel Anastasio Montanez, Lieutenant-Colonel Pancracio,
+Majors Luis Cervantes and Blondie. Still further behind came War Paint
+with Venancio, who paid her many compliments and recited the despairing
+verses of Antonio Plaza. As the sun's rays began to slip from the
+housetops, they made their entrance into Moyahua, four abreast, to the
+sound of the bugle. The roosters' chorus was deafening, dogs barked
+their alarm, but not a living soul stirred on the streets.
+
+War Paint spurred her black horse and with one jump was abreast with
+Demetrio. They rode forward, elbow to elbow. She wore a silk dress and
+heavy gold earrings. Proudly her pale blue gown deepened her olive skin
+and the coppery spots on her face and arms. Riding astride, she had
+pulled her skirts up to her knees; her stockings showed, filthy and
+full of runs. She wore a gun at her side, a cartridge belt hung over
+the pommel of her saddle.
+
+Demetrio was also dressed in his best clothes. His broad-brimmed hat
+was richly embroidered; his leather trousers were tight-fitting and
+adorned with silver buttons; his coat was embroidered with gold thread.
+
+There was a sound of doors being beaten down and forced open. The
+soldiers had already scattered through the town, to gather together
+ammunition and saddles from everywhere.
+
+"We're going to bid Monico good morning," Demetrio said gravely,
+dismounting and tossing his bridle to one of his men. "We're going to
+have breakfast with Don Monico, who's a particular friend of mine ...."
+
+The general's staff smiled ... a sinister, malign smile....
+
+Making their spurs ring against the pavement, they walked toward a
+large pretentious house, obviously that of a cacique.
+
+"It's closed airtight," Anastasio Montanez said, pushing the door with
+all his might.
+
+"That's all right. I'll open it," Pancracio answered, lowering his
+rifle and pointing it at the lock.
+
+"No, no," Demetrio said, "knock first."
+
+
+Three blows with the butt of the rifle. Three more. No answer.
+Pancracio disobeys orders. He fires, smashing the lock. The door opens.
+Behind, a confusion of skirts and children's bare legs rushing to and
+fro, pell-mell.
+
+"I want wine. Hey, there: wine!" Demetrio cries in an imperious voice,
+pounding heavily on a table.
+
+"Sit down, boys."
+
+A lady peeps out, another, a third; from among black skirts, the heads
+of frightened children. One of the women, trembling, walks toward a
+cupboard and, taking out some glasses and a bottle, serves wine.
+
+"What arms have you?" Demetrio demands harshly.
+
+"Arms, arms...?" the lady answers, a taste of ashes on her tongue.
+"What arms do you expect us to have! We are respectable, lonely old
+ladies!"
+
+"Lonely, eh! Where's Senor Monico?"
+
+"Oh, he's not here, gentlemen, I assure you! We merely rent the house
+from him, you see. We only know him by name!"
+
+Demetrio orders his men to search the house.
+
+"No, please don't. We'll bring you whatever we have ourselves, but
+please for God's sake, don't do anything cruel. We're spinsters, lone
+women ... perfectly respectable...."
+
+"Spinsters, hell! What about these kids here?" Pancracio interrupts
+brutally. "Did they spring from the earth?"
+
+The women disappear hurriedly, to return with an old shotgun, covered
+with dust and cobwebs, and a pistol with rusty broken springs.
+
+Demetrio smiles.
+
+"All right, then, let's see the money."
+
+"Money? Money? But what money do you think a couple of spinsters have?
+Spinsters alone in the world....?"
+
+They glance up in supplication at the nearest soldier; but they are
+seized with horror. For they have just seen the Roman soldier who
+crucified Our Lord in the Via Crucis of the parish! They have seen
+Pancracio!
+
+Demetrio repeats his order to search.
+
+Once again the women disappear to return this time with a moth-eaten
+wallet containing a few Huerta bills.
+
+Demetrio smiles and without further delay calls to his men to come in.
+Like hungry dogs who have sniffed their meat, the mob bursts in,
+trampling down the women who sought to bar the entrance with their
+bodies. Several faint, fall to the ground; others flee in panic. The
+children scream.
+
+Pancracio is about to break the lock of a huge wardrobe when suddenly
+the doors open and out comes a man with a rifle in his hands.
+
+"Senor Don Monico!" they all exclaim in surprise.
+
+"Demetrio, please, don't harm me! Please don't harm me! Please don't
+hurt me! You know, Senor Don Demetrio, I'm your friend!"
+
+Demetrio Macias smiles slyly. "Are friends," he asked, "usually
+welcomed gun in hand?"
+
+Don Monico, in consternation, throws himself at Demetrio's feet, clasps
+his knees, kisses his shoes: "My wife! ... My children! ... Please,
+Senor Don Demetrio, my friend!"
+
+Demetrio with taut hand puts his gun back in the holster.
+
+A painful silhouette crosses his mind. He sees a woman with a child in
+her arms walking over the rocks of the sierra in the moonlight. A house
+in flames....
+
+"Clear out. Everybody outside!" he orders darkly.
+
+His staff obeys. Monico and the ladies kiss his hands, weeping with
+gratitude. The mob in the street, talking and laughing, stands waiting
+for the general's permission to ransack the cacique's house.
+
+"I know where they've buried their money but I won't tell," says a
+youngster with a basket in his hands.
+
+"Hm! I know the right place, mind you," says an old woman carrying a
+burlap sack to hold whatever the good Lord will provide. "It's on top
+of something ... there's a lot of trinkets nearby and then there's a
+small bag with mother-of-pearl around it. That's the thing to look for!"
+
+"You ain't talking sense, woman," puts in a man. "They ain't such fools
+as to leave silver lying loose like that. I'm thinking they've got it
+buried in the well, in a leather bag."
+
+The mob moves slowly; some carry ropes to tie about their bundles,
+others wooden trays. The women open out their aprons or shawls
+calculating their capacity. All give thanks to Divine Providence as
+they wait for their share of the booty.
+
+When Demetrio announces that he will not allow looting and orders them
+to disband, the mob, disconsolate, obeys him, and soon scatters; but
+there is a dull rumor among the soldiers and no one moves from his
+place.
+
+Annoyed, Demetrio repeats this order.
+
+A young man, a recent recruit, his head turned by drink, laughs and
+walks boldly toward the door. But before he has reached the threshold,
+a shot lays him low. He falls like a bull pierced in the neck by the
+matador's sword. Motionless, his smoking gun in his hand, Demetrio
+waits for the soldiers to withdraw.
+
+"Set fire to the house!" he orders Luis Cervantes when they reach their
+quarters.
+
+With a curious eagerness Luis Cervantes does not transmit the order but
+undertakes the task in person.
+
+Two hours later when the city square was black with smoke and enormous
+tongues of fire rose from Monico's house, no one could account for the
+strange behavior of the general.
+
+
+
+VI
+
+They established themselves in a large gloomy house, which likewise
+belonged to the cacique of Moyahua. The previous occupants had already
+left strong evidences in the patio, which had been converted into a
+manure pile. The walls, once whitewashed, were now faded and cracked,
+revealing the bare unbaked adobe; the floor had been torn up by the
+hoofs of animals; the orchard was littered with rotted branches and
+dead leaves. From the entrance one stumbled over broken bits of chairs
+and other furniture covered with dirt.
+
+By ten o'clock, Luis Cervantes yawned with boredom, said good night to
+Blondie and War Paint, who were downing endless drinks on a bench in
+the square, and made for the barracks. The drawing room was alone
+furnished. As he entered, Demetrio, lying on the floor with his eyes
+wide open, trying to count the beams, gazed at him.
+
+"It's you, eh? What's new? Come on, sit down."
+
+Luis Cervantes first went over to trim the candle, then drew up a chair
+without a back, a coarse rag doing the duty of a wicker bottom. The
+legs of the chair squeaked. War Paint's black horse snorted and whirled
+its crupper in wide circles. Luis Cervantes sank into his seat.
+
+"General, I wish to make my report. Here you have ..."
+
+"Look here, man, I didn't really want this done, you know. Moyahua is
+almost like my native town. They'll say this is why we've been
+fighting!" Demetrio said, looking at the bulging sack of silver
+Cervantes was passing to him. Cervantes left his seat to squat down by
+Demetrio's side.
+
+He stretched a blanket over the floor and into it poured the ten-peso
+pieces, shining, burning gold.
+
+"First of all, General, only you and I know about this.... Secondly,
+you know well enough that if the sun shines, you should open the
+window. It's shining in our faces now but what about tomorrow? You
+should always look ahead. A bullet, a bolting horse, even a wretched
+cold in the head, and then there are a widow and orphans left in
+absolute want! ... The Government? Ha! Ha! ... Just go see Carranza or
+Villa or any of the big chiefs and try and tell them about your
+family.... If they answer with a kick you know where, they'll say
+they're giving you a handful of jewels. And they're right; we did not
+rise up in arms to make some Carranza or Villa President of our
+Republic. No--we fought to defend the sacred rights of the people
+against the tyranny of some vile cacique. And so, just as Villa or
+Carranza aren't going to ask our consent to the payment they're getting
+for the services they're rendering the country, we for our part don't
+have to ask anybody's permission about anything either."
+
+Demetrio half stood up, grasped a bottle that stood nearby, drained it,
+then spat out the liquor, swelling out his cheeks.
+
+"By God, my boy, you've certainly got the gift of gab!"
+
+Luis felt dizzy, faint. The spattered beer seemed to intensify the
+stench of the refuse on which they sat; a carpet of orange and banana
+peels, fleshlike slices of watermelon, moldy masses of mangoes and
+sugarcane, all mixed up with cornhusks from tamales and human offal.
+
+Demetrio's calloused hands shuffled through the brilliant coins,
+counting and counting. Recovering from his nausea, Luis Cervantes
+pulled out a small box of Fallieres phosphate and poured forth rings,
+brooches, pendants, and countless valuable jewels.
+
+"Look here, General, if this mess doesn't blow over (and it doesn't
+look as though it would), if the revolution keeps on, there's enough
+here already for us to live on abroad quite comfortably."
+
+Demetrio shook his bead.
+
+"You wouldn't do that!"
+
+"Why not? What are we staying on for? ... What cause are we defending
+now?"
+
+"That's something I can't explain, Tenderfoot. But I'm thinking it
+wouldn't show much guts."
+
+"Take your choice, General," said Luis Cervantes, pointing to the
+jewels which he had set in a row.
+
+"Oh, you keep it all.... Certainly! ... You know, I don't really care
+for money at all. I'll tell you the truth! I'm the happiest man in the
+world, so long as there's always something to drink and a nice little
+wench that catches my eye...."
+
+"Ha! Ha! You make the funniest jokes, General. Why do you stand for
+that snake of a War Paint, then?"
+
+"I'll tell you, Tenderfoot, I'm fed up with her. But I'm like that: I
+just can't tell her so. I'm not brave enough to tell her to go plumb to
+hell. That's the way I am, see? When I like a woman, I get plain silly;
+and if she doesn't start something, I've not got the courage to do
+anything myself." He sighed. "There's Camilla at the ranch for
+instance.... Now, she's not much on looks, I know, but there's a woman
+I'd like to have......."
+
+"Well, General, we'll go and get her any day you like."
+
+Demetrio winked maliciously.
+
+"I promise you I'll do it."
+
+"Are you sure? Do you really mean it? Look here, if you pull that off
+for me, I'll give you the watch and chain you're hankering after."
+
+Luis Cervantes' eyes shone. He took the phosphate box, heavy with its
+contents, and stood up smiling.
+
+"I'll see you tomorrow," he said. "Good night, General! Sleep well."
+
+
+
+VII
+
+"I don't know any more about it than you do. The General told me,
+'Quail, saddle your horse and my black mare and follow Cervantes; he's
+going on an errand for me.' Well, that's what happened. We left here at
+noon, and reached the ranch early that evening. One-eyed Maria Antonia
+took us in.... She asked after you, Pancracio. Next morning Luis
+Cervantes wakes me up. 'Quail, Quail, saddle the horses. Leave me mine
+but take the General's mare back to Moyahua. I'll catch up after a
+bit.' The sun was high when he arrived with Camilla. She got off and we
+stuck her on the General's mare."
+
+"Well, and her? What sort of a face did she make coming back?" one of
+the men inquired.
+
+"Hum! She was so damned happy she was gabbing all the way."
+
+"And the tenderfoot?"
+
+"Just as quiet as he always is, you know him."
+
+"I think," Venancio expressed his opinion with great seriousness, "that
+if Camilla woke up in the General's bed, it was just a mistake. We
+drank a lot, remember! That alcohol went to our heads; we must have
+lost our senses."
+
+"What the hell do you mean: alcohol! It was all cooked up between
+Cervantes and the General."
+
+"Certainly! That city dude's nothing but a ..."
+
+"I don't like to talk about friends behind their backs," said Blondie,
+"but I can tell you this: one of the two sweethearts he had, one was
+mine, and the other was for the General."
+
+They burst into guffaws of laughter.
+
+When War Paint realized what had happened, she sought out Camilla and
+spoke with great affection:
+
+"Poor little child! Tell me how all this happened."
+
+Camilla's eyes were red from weeping.
+
+"He lied to me! He lied! He came to the ranch and he told me, 'Camilla,
+I came just to get you. Do you want to go away with me?' You can be
+sure I wanted to go with him; when it comes to loving, I adore him.
+Yes, I adore him. Look how thin I've grown just pining away for him.
+Mornings I used to loathe to grind corn, Mamma would call me to eat,
+and anything I put in my mouth had no taste at all."
+
+Once more she burst into tears, stuffing the corner of her apron into
+her mouth to drown her sobs.
+
+"Look here, I'll help you out of this mess. Don't be silly, child,
+don't cry. Don't think about the dude any more! Honest to God, he's not
+worth it. You surely know his game, dear? ... That's the only reason
+why the General stands for him. What a goose! ... All right, you want
+to go back home?"
+
+"The Holy Virgin protect me. My mother would beat me to death!"
+
+"She'll do nothing of the sort. You and I can fix things. Listen! The
+soldiers are leaving any moment now. When Demetrio tells you to get
+ready, you tell him you feel pains all over your body as though someone
+had hit you; then you lie down and start yawning and shivering. Then
+put your hand on your forehead and say, 'I'm burning up with fever.'
+I'll tell Demetrio to leave us both here, that I'll stay to take care
+of you, that as soon as you're feeling all right again, we'll catch up
+with them. But instead of that, I'll see that you get home safe and
+sound."
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+The sun had set, the town was lost in the drab melancholy of its
+ancient streets amid the frightened silence of its inhabitants, who had
+retired very early, when Luis Cervantes reached Primitivo's general
+store, his arrival interrupting a party that promised great doings.
+
+Demetrio was engaged in getting drunk with his old comrades. The entire
+space before the bar was occupied. War Paint and Blondie had tied up
+their horses outside; but the other officers had stormed in brutally,
+horses and all. Embroidered hats with enormous and concave brims bobbed
+up and down everywhere. The horses wheeled about, prancing; tossing
+their restive heads; their fine breed showing in their black eyes,
+their small ears and dilating nostrils. Over the infernal din of the
+drunkards, the heavy breathing of the horses, the stamp of their hoofs
+on the tiled floor, and occasionally a quick, nervous whinny rang out.
+
+A trivial episode was being commented upon when Luis Cervantes came in.
+A man, dressed in civilian clothes, with a round, black, bloody hole in
+his forehead, lay stretched out in the middle of the street, his mouth
+gaping. Opinion was at first divided but finally all concurred with
+Blondie's sound reasoning. The poor dead devil lying out there was the
+church sexton.... But what an idiot! His own fault, of course! Who in
+the name of hell could be so foolish as to dress like a city dude, with
+trousers, coat, cap, and all? Pancracio simply could not bear the sight
+of a city man in front of him! And that was that!
+
+Eight musicians, playing wind instruments, interrupted their labors at
+Cervantes' command. Their faces were round and red as suns, their eyes
+popping, for they had been blowing on their brass instruments since
+dawn.
+
+"General," Luis said pushing his way through the men on horseback, "a
+messenger has arrived with orders to proceed immediately to the pursuit
+and capture of Orozco and his men."
+
+Faces that had been dark and gloomy were now illumined with joy.
+
+"To Jalisco, boys!" cried Blondie, pounding on the counter.
+
+"Make ready, all you darling Jalisco girls of my heart, for I'm coming
+along too!" Quail shouted, twisting back the brim of his hat.
+
+The enthusiasm and rejoicing were general. Demetrio's friends, in the
+excitement of drunkenness, offered their services. Demetrio was so
+happy that he could scarcely speak. They were going to fight Orozco and
+his men! At last, they would pit themselves against real men! At last
+they would stop shooting down the Federals like so many rabbits or wild
+turkeys.
+
+"If I could get hold of Orozco alive," Blondie said, "I'd rip off the
+soles of his feet and make him walk twenty-four hours over the sierra!"
+
+"Was that the guy who killed Madero?" asked Meco.
+
+"No," Blondie replied solemnly, "but once when I was a waiter at 'El
+Monico,' up in Chihuahua, he hit me in the face!"
+
+"Give Camilla the roan mare," Demetrio ordered Pancracio, who was
+already saddling the horses.
+
+"Camilla can't go!" said War Paint promptly.
+
+"Who in hell asked for your opinion?" Demetrio retorted angrily.
+
+"It's true, isn't it, Camilla? You were sore all over, weren't you? And
+you've got a fever right now?"
+
+"Well--anything Demetrio says."
+
+"Don't be a fool! say 'No,' come on, say 'No,"' War Paint whispered
+nervously into Camilla's ear.
+
+"I'll tell you, War Paint.... It's funny, but I'm beginning to fall for
+him....  Would you believe it!" Camilla whispered back.
+
+War Paint turned purple, her cheeks swelled. Without a word she went
+out to get her horse that Blondie was saddling.
+
+
+
+IX
+
+A whirlwind of dust, scorching down the road, suddenly broke into
+violent diffuse masses; and Demetrio's army emerged, a chaos of horses,
+broad chests, tangled manes, dilated nostrils, oval, wide eyes, hoofs
+flying in the air, legs stiffened from endless galloping; and of men
+with bronze faces, ivory teeth, and flashing eyes, their rifles in
+their hands or slung across the saddles.
+
+Demetrio and Camilla brought up the rear. She was still nervous,
+white-lipped and parched; he was angry at their futile maneuver. For
+there had been battles, no followers of Orozco's to be seen. A handful
+of Federals, routed. A poor devil of a priest left dangling from a
+mesquite; a few dead, scattered over the field, who had once been
+united under the archaic slogan, RIGHTS AND RELIGION, with, on their
+breasts, the red cloth insignia: Halt! The Sacred Heart of Jesus is
+with me!
+
+"One good thing about it is that I've collected all my back pay," Quail
+said, exhibiting some gold watches and rings stolen from the priest's
+house.
+
+"It's fun fighting this way," Manteca cried, spicing every other word
+with an oath. "You know why the hell you're risking your hide."
+
+In the same hand with which he held the reins, he clutched a shining
+ornament that he had torn from one of the holy statues.
+
+After Quail, an expert in such matters, had examined Manteca's treasure
+covetously, he uttered a solemn guffaw.
+
+"Hell, Your ornament is nothing but tin!"
+
+"Why in hell are you hanging on to that poison?" Pancracio asked
+Blondie who appeared dragging a prisoner.
+
+"Do you want to know why? Because it's a long time since I've had a
+good look at a man's face when a rope tightens around his neck!"
+
+The fat prisoner breathed with difficulty as he followed Blondie on
+foot; his face was sunburnt, his eyes red; his forehead beaded with
+sweat, his wrists tightly bound together.
+
+"Here, Anastasio, lend me your lasso. Mine's not strong enough; this
+bird will bust it. No, by God, I've changed my mind, friend Federal:
+think I'll kill you on the spot, because you are pulling too hard.
+Look, all the mesquites are still a long way off and there are no
+telegraph poles to hang you to!"
+
+Blondie pulled his gun out, pressed the muzzle against the prisoner's
+chest and brought his finger against the trigger slowly ... slowly....
+The prisoner turned pale as a corpse; his face lengthened; his eyelids
+were fixed in a glassy stare. He breathed in agony, his whole body
+shook as with ague. Blondie kept his gun in the same position for a
+moment long as all eternity. His eyes shone queerly. An expression of
+supreme pleasure lit up his fat puffy face.
+
+"No, friend Federal," he drawled, putting back his gun into the
+holster; "I'm not going to kill you just yet.... I'll make you my
+orderly. You'll see that I'm not so hardhearted!"
+
+Slyly he winked at his companions. The prisoner had turned into an
+animal; he gulped, panting, dry-mouthed. Camilla, who had witnessed the
+scene, spurred her horse and caught up with Demetrio.
+
+"What a brute that Blondie is: you ought to see what he did to a
+wretched prisoner," she said. Then she told Demetrio what had occurred.
+The latter wrinkled his brow but made no answer.
+
+War Paint called Camilla aside.
+
+"Hey you ... what are you gobbling about? Blondie's my man, understand?
+From now on, you know how things are: whatever you've got against him
+you've got against me too! I'm warning you."
+
+Camilla, frightened, hurried back to Demetrio's side.
+
+
+
+X
+
+The men camped in a meadow, near three small lone houses standing in a
+row, their white walls cutting the purple fringe of the horizon.
+Demetrio and Camilla rode toward them. Inside the corral a man, clad in
+shirt and trousers of cheap white cloth, sat greedily puffing at a
+cornhusk cigarette. Another man sitting beside him on a flat cut stone
+was shelling corn. Kicking the air with one dry, withered leg, the
+extremity of which was like a goat's hoof, he frightened the chickens
+away.
+
+"Hurry up, 'Pifanio," said the man who was smoking, "the sun has gone
+down already and you haven't taken the animals to water."
+
+
+A horse neighed outside the corral; both men glanced up in amazement.
+Demetrio and Camilla were looking over the corral wall at them.
+
+"I just want a place to sleep for my woman and me," Demetrio said
+reassuringly.
+
+As he explained that he was the chief of a small army which was to camp
+nearby that night, the man smoking, who owned the place, bid them enter
+with great deference. He ran to fetch a broom and a pail of water to
+dust and wash the best corner of the hut as decent lodging for his
+distinguished guests.
+
+"Here, 'Pifanio, go out there and unsaddle the horses."
+
+The man who was shelling corn stood up with an effort. He was clad in a
+tattered shirt and vest. His torn trousers, split at the seam, looked
+like the wings of a cold, stricken bird; two strings of cloth dangled
+from his waist. As he walked, he described grotesque circles.
+
+"Surely you're not fit to do any work!" Demetrio said, refusing to
+allow him to touch the saddles.
+
+"Poor man," the owner cried from within the hut, "he's lost all his
+strength.... But he surely works for his pay.... He starts working the
+minute God Almighty himself gets up, and it's after sundown now but
+he's working still!"
+
+Demetrio went out with Camilla for a stroll about the encampment. The
+meadow, golden, furrowed, stripped even of the smallest bushes,
+extended limitless in its immense desolation. The three tall ash trees
+which stood in front of the small house, with dark green crests, round
+and waving, with rich foliage and branches drooping to the very ground,
+seemed a veritable miracle.
+
+"I don't know why but I feel there's a lot of sadness around here,"
+said Demetrio.
+
+"Yes," Camilla answered, "I feel that way too."
+
+On the bank of a small stream, 'Pifanio was strenuously tugging at a
+rope with a large can tied to the end of it. He poured a stream of
+water over a heap of fresh, cool grass; in the twilight, the water
+glimmered like crystal. A thin cow, a scrawny nag, and a burro drank
+noisily together.
+
+Demetrio recognized the limping servant and asked him: "How much do you
+get a day?"
+
+"Eight cents a day, boss."
+
+He was an insignificant, scrofulous wraith of a man with green eyes and
+straight, fair hair. He whined complaint of his boss, the ranch, his
+bad luck, his dog's life.
+
+"You certainly earn your pay all right, my lad," Demetrio interrupted
+kindly. "You complain and complain, but you aren't no loafer, you work
+and work." Then, aside to Camilla: "There's always more damned fools in
+the valley than among us folk in the sierra, don't you think?"
+
+"Of course!" she replied.
+
+They went on. The valley was lost in darkness; stars came out. Demetrio
+put his arm around Camilla's waist amorously and whispered in her ear.
+
+"Yes," she answered in a faint voice.
+
+She was indeed beginning to "fall for him" as she had expressed it.
+
+Demetrio slept badly. He flung out of the house very early.
+
+"Something is going to happen to me," he thought.
+
+It was a silent dawn, with faint murmurs of joy. A thrush sang timidly
+in one of the ash trees. The animals in the corral trampled on the
+refuse. The pig grunted its somnolence. The orange tints of the sun
+streaked the sky; the last star flickered out.
+
+Demetrio walked slowly to the encampment.
+
+He was thinking of his plow, his two black oxen--young beasts they
+were, who had worked in the fields only two years--of his two acres of
+well-fertilized corn. The face of his young wife came to his mind,
+clear and true as life: he saw her strong, soft features, so gracious
+when she smiled on her husband, so proudly fierce toward strangers. But
+when he tried to conjure up the image of his son, his efforts were
+vain; he had forgotten....
+
+He reached the camp. Lying among the farrows, the soldiers slept with
+the horses, heads bowed, eyes closed.
+
+"Our horses are pretty tired, Anastasio. I think we ought to stay here
+at least another day."
+
+"Well, Compadre Demetrio, I'm hankering for the sierra.... If you only
+knew.... You may not believe me but nothing strikes me right here. I
+don't know what I miss but I know I miss something. I feel sad ...
+lost...."
+
+"How many hours' ride from here to Limon?"
+
+"It's no matter of hours; it's three days' hard riding, Demetrio."
+
+"You know," Demetrio said softly, "I feel as though I'd like to see my
+wife again!"
+
+Shortly after, War Paint sought out Camilla.
+
+"That's one on you, my dear.... Demetrio's going to leave you flat! He
+told me so himself; 'I'm going to get my real woman,' he says, and he
+says, 'Her skin is white and tender ... and her rosy cheeks.... How
+beautiful she is!' But you don't have to leave him, you know; if you're
+set on staying, well--they've got a child, you know, and I suppose you
+could drag it around...."
+
+When Demetrio returned, Camilla, weeping, told him everything.
+
+"Don't pay no attention to that crazy baggage. It's all lies, lies!"
+
+Since Demetrio did not go to Limon or remember his wife again, Camilla
+grew very happy. War Paint had merely stung herself, like a scorpion.
+
+
+
+XI
+
+Before dawn, they left for Tepatitlan. Their silhouettes wavered
+indistinctly over the road and the fields that bordered it, rising and
+falling with the monotonous, rhythmical gait of their horses, then
+faded away in the nacreous light of the swooning moon that bathed the
+valley. Dogs barked in the distance.
+
+"By noon we'll reach Tepatitlan, Cuquio tomorrow, and then ... on to
+the sierra!" Demetrio said.
+
+"Don't you think it advisable to go to Aguascalientes first, General?"
+Luis Cervantes asked.
+
+"What for?"
+
+"Our funds are melting slowly."
+
+"Nonsense ... forty thousand pesos in eight days!"
+
+"Well, you see, just this week we recruited over five hundred new men;
+all the money's gone in advance loans and gratuities," Luis Cervantes
+answered in a low voice.
+
+"No! We'll go straight to the sierra. We'll see later on."
+
+"Yes, to the sierra!" many of the men shouted.
+
+"To the sierra! To the sierra! Hurrah for the mountains!"
+
+The plains seemed to torture them; they spoke with enthusiasm, almost
+with delirium, of the sierra. They thought of the mountains as of a
+most desirable mistress long since unvisited.
+
+Dawn broke behind a cloud of fine reddish dust; the sun rose an immense
+curtain of fiery purple. Luis Cervantes pulled his reins and waited for
+Quail. "What's the last word on our deal, Quail?"
+
+"I told you, Tenderfoot: two hundred for the watch alone."
+
+"No! I'll buy the lot: watches, rings, everything else. How much?"
+
+Quail hesitated, turned slightly pale; then he cried spiritedly:
+
+"Two thousand in bills, for the whole business!"
+
+Luis Cervantes gave himself away. His eyes shone with such an obvious
+greed that Quail recanted and said:
+
+"Oh, I was just fooling you. I won't sell nothing! Just the watch, see?
+And that's only because I owe Pancracio two hundred. He beat me at
+cards last night!"
+
+Luis Cervantes pulled out four crisp "double-face" bills of Villa's
+issue and placed them in Quail's hands.
+
+"I'd like to buy the lot.... Besides, nobody will offer you more than
+that!"
+
+
+As the sun began to beat down upon them, Manteca suddenly shouted:
+
+"Ho, Blondie, your orderly says he doesn't care to go on living. He
+says he's too damned tired to walk."
+
+The prisoner had fallen in the middle of the road, utterly exhausted.
+
+"Well, well!" Blondie shouted, retracing his steps. "So little mama's
+boy is tired, eh? Poor little fellow. I'll buy a glass case and keep
+you in a corner of my house just as if you were the Virgin Mary's own
+little son. You've got to reach home first, see? So I'll help you a
+little, sonny!"
+
+He drew his sword out and struck the prisoner several times.
+
+"Let's have a look at your rope, Pancracio," he said. There was a
+strange gleam in his eyes. Quail observed that the prisoner no longer
+moved arm or leg. Blondie burst into a loud guffaw: "The Goddamned
+fool. Just as I was learning him to do without food, too!"
+
+"Well, mate, we're almost to Guadalajara," Venancio said, glancing over
+the smiling row of houses in Tepatitlan nestling against the hillside.
+
+They entered joyously. From every window rosy cheeks, dark luminous
+eyes observed them. The schools were quickly converted into barracks;
+Demetrio found lodging in the chapel of an abandoned church.
+
+The soldiers scattered about as usual pretending to seek arms and
+horses, but in reality for the sole purpose of looting.
+
+In the afternoon some of Demetrio's men lay stretched out on the church
+steps, scratching their bellies. Venancio, his chest and shoulders
+bare, was gravely occupied in killing the fleas in his shirt. A man
+drew near the wall and sought permission to speak to the commander. The
+soldiers raised their heads; but no one answered.
+
+"I'm a widower, gentlemen. I've got nine children and I barely make a
+living with the sweat of my brow. Don't be hard on a poor widower!"
+
+"Don't you worry about women, Uncle," said Meco, who was rubbing his
+feet with tallow, "we've got War Paint here with us; you can have her
+for nothing."
+
+The man smiled bitterly.
+
+"She's only got one fault," Pancracio observed, stretched out on the
+ground, staring at the blue sky, "she goes mad over any man she sees."
+
+They laughed loudly; but Venancio with utmost gravity pointed to the
+chapel door. The stranger entered timidly and confided his troubles to
+Demetrio. The soldiers had cleaned him out; they had not left a single
+grain of corn.
+
+"Why did you let them?" Demetrio asked indolently.
+
+The man persisted, lamenting and weeping. Luis Cervantes was about to
+throw him out with an insult. But Camilla intervened.
+
+"Come on, Demetrio, don't be harsh, give him an order to get his corn
+back."
+
+Luis Cervantes was obliged to obey; he scrawled a few lines to which
+Demetrio appended an illegible scratch.
+
+"May God repay you, my child! God will lead you to heaven that you may
+enjoy his glory. Ten bushels of corn are barely enough for this year's
+food!" the man cried, weeping for gratitude. Then he took the paper,
+kissed everybody's hand, and withdrew.
+
+
+
+XII
+
+They had almost reached Cuquio, when Anastasio Montanez rode up to
+Demetrio: "Listen, Compadre, I almost forgot to tell you.... You ought
+to have seen the wonderful joke that man Blondie played. You know what
+he did with the old man who came to complain about the corn we'd taken
+away for horses? Well, the old man took the paper and went to the
+barracks. 'Right you are, brother, come in,' said Blondie, 'come in,
+come in here; to give you back what's yours is only the right thing to
+do. How many bushels did we steal? Ten? Sure it wasn't more than ten?
+... That's right, about fifteen, eh? Or was it twenty, perhaps? ... Try
+and remember, friend.... Of course you're a poor man, aren't you, and
+you've a lot of kids to raise.... Yes, twenty it was. All right, now!
+It's not ten or fifteen or twenty I'm going to give you. You're going
+to count for yourself.... One, two, three ... and when you've had
+enough you just tell me and I'll stop.' And Blondie pulled out his
+sword and beat him till he cried for mercy."
+
+War Paint rocked in her saddle, convulsed with mirth. Camilla, unable
+to control herself, blurted out:
+
+"The beast! His heart's rotten to the core! No wonder I loathe him!"
+
+At once War Paint's expression changed.
+
+"What the hell is it to you!" she scowled. Camilla, frightened, spurred
+her horse forward. War Paint did likewise and, as she trotted past
+Camilla, suddenly she reached out, seized the other's hair and pulled
+with all her might. Camilla's horse shied; Camilla, trying to brush her
+hair back from over her eyes, abandoned the reins. She hesitated, lost
+her balance and fell in the road, striking her forehead against the
+stones.
+
+War Paint, weeping with laughter, pressed on with utmost skill and
+caught Camilla's horse.
+
+"Come on, Tenderfoot; here's a job for you," Pancracio said as he saw
+Camilla on Demetrio's saddle, her face covered with blood.
+
+Luis Cervantes hurried toward her with some cotton; but Camilla,
+choking down her sobs and wiping her eyes, said hoarsely:
+
+"Not from you! If I was dying, I wouldn't accept anything from you ...
+not even water."
+
+In Cuquio Demetrio received a message.
+
+"We've got to go back to Tepatitlan, General," said Luis Cervantes,
+scanning the dispatch rapidly. "You've got to leave the men there while
+you go to Lagos and take the train over to Aguascalientes."
+
+There was much heated protest, the men muttering to themselves or even
+groaning out loud. Some of them, mountaineers, swore that they would
+not continue with the troop.
+
+Camilla wept all night. On the morrow at dawn, she begged Demetrio to
+let her return home.
+
+"If you don't like me, all right," he answered sullenly.
+
+"That's not the reason. I care for you a lot, really. But you know how
+it is. That woman ..."
+
+"Never mind about her. It's all right! I'll send her off to hell today.
+I had already decided that."
+
+Camilla dried her tears....
+
+Every horse was saddled; the men were waiting only for orders from the
+Chief. Demetrio went up to War Paint and said under his breath:
+
+"You're not coming with us."
+
+"What!" she gasped.
+
+"You're going to stay here or go wherever you damn well please, but
+you're not coming along with us."
+
+"What? What's that you're saying?" Still she could not catch Demetrio's
+meaning. Then the truth dawned upon her. "You want to send me away? By
+God, I suppose you believe all the filth that bitch..."
+
+And War Paint proceeded to insult Camilla, Luis Cervantes, Demetrio,
+and anyone she happened to remember at the moment, with such power and
+originality that the soldiers listened in wonder to vituperation that
+transcended their wildest dream of profanity and filth. Demetrio waited
+a long time patiently. Then, as she showed no sign of stopping, he said
+to a soldier quite calmly:
+
+"Throw this drunken woman out."
+
+"Blondie, Blondie, love of my life! Help! Come and show them you're a
+real man! Show them they're nothing but sons of bitches! ..."
+
+She gesticulated, kicked, and shouted.
+
+Blondie appeared; he had just got up. His blue eyes blinked under heavy
+lids; his voice rang hoarse. He asked what had occurred; someone
+explained. Then he went up to War Paint, and with great seriousness,
+said:
+
+"Yes? Really? Well, if you want my opinion, I think this is just what
+ought to happen. So far as I'm concerned, you can go straight to hell.
+We're all fed up with you, see?"
+
+War Paint's face turned to granite; she tried to speak but her muscles
+were rigid.
+
+The soldiers laughed. Camilla, terrified, held her breath.
+
+War Paint stared slowly at everyone about her. It all took no more than
+a few seconds. In a trice she bent down, drew a sharp, gleaming dagger
+from her stocking and leapt at Camilla.
+
+A shrill cry. A body fell, the blood spurting from it.
+
+"Kill her, Goddamn it," cried Demetrio, beyond himself. "Kill her!"
+
+Two soldiers fell upon War Paint, but she brandished her dagger,
+defying them to touch her:
+
+"Not the likes of you, Goddamn you! Kill me yourself, Demetrio!"
+
+War Paint stepped forward, surrendered her dagger and, thrusting her
+breast forward, let her arms fall to her side.
+
+Demetrio picked up the dagger, red with blood, but his eyes clouded; he
+hesitated, took a step backward. Then, with a heavy hoarse voice he
+growled, enraged:
+
+"Get out of here! Quick!"
+
+No one dared stop her. She moved off slowly, mute, somber.
+
+Blondie's shrill, guttural voice broke the silent stupor:
+
+"Thank God! At last I'm rid of that damned louse!"
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+  Someone plunged a knife
+  Deep in my side.
+  Did he know why?
+  I don't know why.
+  Maybe he knew,
+  I never knew.
+  The blood flowed out
+  Of that mortal wound.
+  Did he know why?
+  I don't know why.
+  Maybe he knew,
+  I never knew.
+
+
+His head lowered, his hands crossed over the pommel of his saddle,
+Demetrio in melancholy accents sang the strains of the intriguing song.
+Then he fell silent; for quite a while he continued to feel oppressed
+and sad.
+
+"You'll see, as soon as we reach Lagos you'll come out of it, General.
+There's plenty of pretty girls to give us a good time," Blondie said.
+
+"Right now I feel like getting damn drunk," Demetrio answered, spurring
+his horse forward and leaving them as if he wished to abandon himself
+entirely to his sadness.
+
+After many hours of riding he called Cervantes.
+
+"Listen, Tenderfoot, why in hell do we have to go to Aguascalientes?"
+
+"You have to vote for the Provisional President of the Republic,
+General!"
+
+"President, what? Who in the devil, then, is this man Carranza? I'll be
+damned if I know what it's all about."
+
+At last they reached Lagos. Blondie bet that he would make Demetrio
+laugh that evening.
+
+Trailing his spurs noisily over the pavement, Demetrio entered "El
+Cosmopolita" with Luis Cervantes, Blondie, and his assistants.
+
+The civilians, surprised in their attempt to escape, remained where
+they were. Some feigned to return to their tables to continue drinking
+and talking; others hesitantly stepped up to present their respects to
+the commander.
+
+"General, so pleased! ... Major! Delighted to meet you!"
+
+"That's right! I love refined and educated friends," Blondie said.
+"Come on, boys," he added, jovially drawing his gun, "I'm going to play
+a tune that'll make you all dance."
+
+A bullet ricocheted on the cement floor passing between the legs of the
+tables, and the smartly dressed young men-about-town began to jump much
+as a woman jumps when frightened by a mouse under her skirt. Pale as
+ghosts, they conjured up wan smiles of obsequious approval. Demetrio
+barely parted his lips, but his followers doubled over with laughter.
+
+"Look, Blondie," Quail shouted, "look at that man going out there.
+Look, he's limping."
+
+"I guess the bee stung him all right."
+
+Blondie, without turning to look at the wounded man, announced with
+enthusiasm that he could shoot off the top of a tequila bottle at
+thirty paces without aiming.
+
+"Come on, friend, stand up," he said to the waiter. He dragged him out
+by the hand to the patio of the hotel and set a tequila bottle on his
+head. The poor devil refused. Insane with fright, he sought to escape,
+but Blondie pulled his gun and took aim.
+
+"Come on, you son of a sea cook! If you keep on I'll give you a nice
+warm one!"
+
+Blondie went to the opposite wall, raised his gun and fired. The bottle
+broke into bits, the alcohol poured over the lad's ghastly face.
+
+"Now it's a go," cried Blondie, running to the bar to get another
+bottle, which he placed on the lad's head.
+
+He returned to his former position, he whirled about, and shot without
+aiming. But he hit the waiter's ear instead of the bottle. Holding his
+sides with laughter, he said to the young waiter:
+
+"Here, kid, take these bills. It ain't much. But you'll be all right
+with some alcohol and arnica."
+
+After drinking a great deal of alcohol and beer, Demetrio spoke:
+
+"Pay the bill, Blondie, I'm going to leave you."
+
+"I ain't got a penny, General, but that's all right. I'll fix it. How
+much do we owe you, friend?"
+
+"One hundred and eighty pesos, Chief," the bartender answered amiably.
+
+Quickly, Blondie jumped behind the bar and with a sweep of both arms,
+knocked down all the glasses and bottles.
+
+"Send the bill to General Villa, understand?"
+
+He left, laughing loudly at his prank.
+
+"Say there, you, where do the girls hang out?" Blondie asked, reeling
+up drunkenly toward a small well-dressed man, standing at the door of a
+tailor shop.
+
+The man stepped down to the sidewalk politely to let Blondie pass.
+
+Blondie stopped and looked at him curiously, impertinently.
+
+"Little boy, you're very small and dainty, ain't you? ... No? ... Then
+I'm a liar! ... That's right! ... You know the puppet dance.... You
+don't? The hell you don't! ... I met you in a circus! I know you can
+even dance on a tightrope! ... You watch!"
+
+Blondie drew his gun out and began to shoot, aiming at the tailor's
+feet; the tailor gave a little jump at every pull of the trigger.
+
+"See! You do know how to dance on the tightrope, don't you?"
+
+Taking his friends by the arm, he ordered them to lead him to the
+red-light district, punctuating every step by a shot which smashed a
+street light, or struck some wall, a door, or a distant house.
+
+Demetrio left him and returned to the hotel, singing to himself:
+
+  "Someone plunged a knife
+  Deep in my side.
+  Did he know why?
+  I don't know why.
+  Maybe he knew,
+  I never knew."
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+Stale cigarette smoke, the acrid odors of sweaty clothing, the vapors
+of alcohol, the breathing of a crowded multitude, worse by far than a
+trainful of pigs.
+
+Texas hats, adorned with gold braid, and khaki predominate. "Gentlemen,
+a well-dressed man stole my suitcase in the station. My life's savings!
+I haven't enough to feed my little boy now!"
+
+The shrill voice, rising to a shriek or trailing off into a sob, is
+drowned out by the tumult within the train.
+
+"What the hell is the old woman talking about?" Blondie asks, entering
+in search of a seat.
+
+"Something about a suitcase ... and a well-dressed man," Pancracio
+replies. He has already the laps of two civilians to sit on.
+
+Demetrio and the others elbow their way in. Since those on whom
+Pancracio had sat preferred to stand up, Demetrio and Luis Cervantes
+quickly seize the vacant seats.
+
+Suddenly a woman who has stood up holding a child all the way from
+Irapuato, faints. A civilian takes the child in his arms. The others
+pretend to have seen nothing. Some women, traveling with the soldiers,
+occupy two or three seats with baggage, dogs, cats, parrots. Some of
+the men wearing Texan hats laugh at the plump arms and pendulous
+breasts of the woman who fainted.
+
+"Gentlemen, a well-dressed man stole my suitcase at the station in
+Silao! All my life's savings ... I haven't got enough to feed my little
+boy now! ..."
+
+The old woman speaks rapidly, parrotlike, sighing and sobbing. Her
+sharp eyes peer about on all sides. Here she gets a bill, and further
+on, another. They shower money upon her. She finishes the collection,
+and goes a few seats ahead.
+
+"Gentlemen, a well-dressed man stole my suitcase in the station at
+Silao." Her words produce an immediate and certain effect.
+
+A well-dressed man, a dude, a tenderfoot, stealing a suitcase! Amazing,
+phenomenal! It awakens a feeling of universal indignation. It's a pity:
+if this well-dressed man were here every one of the generals would
+shoot him one after the other!
+
+"There's nothing as vile as a city dude who steals!" a man says,
+exploding with indignation.
+
+"To rob a poor old lady!"
+
+"To steal from a poor defenseless woman!"
+
+They prove their compassion by word and deed: a harsh verdict against
+the culprit; a five-peso bill for the victim.
+
+"And I'm telling you the truth," Blondie declares. "Don't think it's
+wrong to kill, because when you kill, it's always out of anger. But
+stealing--Bah!"
+
+This profound piece of reasoning meets with unanimous assent. After a
+short silence while he meditates, a colonel ventures his opinion:
+
+"Everything is all right according to something, see? That is,
+everything has its circumstances, see? God's own truth is this: I have
+stolen, and if I say that everyone here has done the trick, I'm not
+telling a lie, I reckon!"
+
+"Hell, I stole a lot of them sewing machines in Mexico," exclaims a
+major. "I made more'n five hundred pesos even though I sold them at
+fifty cents apiece!"
+
+A toothless captain, with hair prematurely white, announces:
+
+"I stole some horses in Zacatecas, all damn fine horses they was, and
+then I says to myself, 'This is your own little lottery, Pascual Mata,'
+I says. 'You won't have a worry in all your life after this.' And the
+damned thing about it was that General Limon took a fancy to the horses
+too, and he stole them from me!"
+
+"Of course--there's no use denying it, I've stolen too," Blondie
+confesses. "But ask any one of my partners how much profit I've got.
+I'm a big spender and my Purse is my friends' to have a good time on! I
+have a better time if I drink myself senseless than I would have
+sending money back home to the old woman!"
+
+The subject of "I stole," though apparently inexhaustible, ceases to
+hold the men's attention. Decks of cards gradually appear on the seats,
+drawing generals and officers as the light draws mosquitoes.
+
+The excitement of gambling soon absorbs every interest, the heat grows
+more and more intense. To breathe is to inhale the air of barracks,
+prison, brothel, and pigsty all in one.
+
+And rising above the babble, from the car ahead ever the shrill voice,
+"Gentlemen, a well-dressed young man stole ..."
+
+
+The streets in Aguascalientes were so many refuse piles. Men in khaki
+moved to and fro like bees before their hive, overrunning the
+restaurants, the crapulous lunch houses, the parlous hotels, and the
+stands of the street vendors on which rotten pork lay alongside grimy
+cheese.
+
+The smell of these viands whetted the appetites of Demetrio and his
+men. They forced their way into a small inn, where a disheveled old hag
+served, on earthenware plates, some pork with bones swimming in a clear
+chili stew and three tough burnt tortillas. They paid two pesos apiece;
+as they left Pancracio assured his comrades he was hungrier than when
+he entered.
+
+"Now," said Demetrio, "we'll go and consult with General Natera!"
+
+They made for the northern leader's billet.
+
+A noisy, excited crowd stopped them at a street crossing. A man, lost
+in the multitude, was mouthing words in the monotonous, unctuous tones
+of a prayer. They came up close enough to see him distinctly; he wore a
+shirt and trousers of cheap white cloth and was repeating:
+
+"All good Catholics should read this prayer to Christ Our Lord upon the
+Cross with due devotion. Thus they will be immune from storms and
+pestilence, famine, and war."
+
+"This man's no fool," said Demetrio smiling.
+
+The man waved a sheaf of printed handbills in his hand and cried:
+
+"A quarter of a peso is all you have to pay for this prayer to Christ
+Our Lord upon the Cross. A quarter ..."
+
+Then he would duck for a moment, to reappear with a snake's tooth, a
+sea star, or the skeleton of a fish. In the same predicant tone, he
+lauded the medical virtues and the mystical powers of every article he
+sold.
+
+Quail, who had no faith in Venancio, requested the man to pull a tooth
+out. Blondie purchased a black seed from a certain fruit which
+protected the possessor from lightning or any other catastrophe.
+Anastasio Montanez purchased a prayer to Christ Our Lord upon the
+Cross, and, folding it carefully, stuck it into his shirt with a pious
+gesture.
+
+"As sure as there's a God in heaven," Natera said, "this mess hasn't
+blown over yet. Now it's Villa fighting Carranza."
+
+Without answering him, his eyes fixed in a stare, Demetrio demanded a
+further explanation.
+
+"It means," Natera said, "that the Convention won't recognize Carranza
+as First Chief of the Constitutionalist Army. It's going to elect a
+Provisional President of the Republic. Do you understand me, General?"
+
+Demetrio nodded assent.
+
+"What's your opinion, General?" asked Natera.
+
+Demetrio shrugged his shoulders:
+
+"It seems to me that the meat of the matter is that we've got to go on
+fighting, eh? All right! Let's go to it! I'm game to the end, you know."
+
+"Good, but on what side?"
+
+Demetrio, nonplussed, scratched his head:
+
+"Look here, don't ask me any more questions. I never went to school,
+you know.... You gave me the eagle I wear on my hat, didn't you? All
+right then; you just tell me: 'Demetrio, do this or do that,' and
+that's all there's to it!"
+
+
+
+
+PART THREE
+
+"Villa? Obregon? Carranza? What's the difference? I love the revolution
+like a volcano in eruption; I love the volcano, because it's a volcano,
+the revolution, because it's the revolution!"
+
+
+
+I
+
+El Paso, Texas, May 16, 1915
+
+My Dear Venancio:
+
+Due to the pressure of professional duties I have been unable to answer
+your letter of January 4 before now. As you already know, I was
+graduated last December. I was sorry to hear of Pancracio's and
+Manteca's fate, though I am not surprised that they stabbed each other
+over the gambling table. It is a pity; they were both brave men. I am
+deeply grieved not to be able to tell Blondie how sincerely and
+heartily I congratulate him for the only noble and beautiful thing he
+ever did in his whole life: to have shot himself!
+
+Dear Venancio, although you may have enough money to purchase a degree,
+I am afraid you won't find it very easy to become a doctor in this
+country. You know I like you very much, Venancio; and I think you
+deserve a better fate. But I have an idea which may prove profitable to
+both of us and which may improve your social position, as you desire.
+We could do a fine business here if we were to go in as partners and
+set up a typical Mexican restaurant in this town. I have no reserve
+funds at the moment since I've spent all I had in getting my college
+degree, but I have something much more valuable than money; my perfect
+knowledge of this town and its needs. You can appear as the owner; we
+will make a monthly division of profits. Besides, concerning a question
+that interests us both very much, namely, your social improvement, it
+occurs to me that you play the guitar quite well. In view of the
+recommendations I could give you and in view of your training as well,
+you might easily be admitted as a member of some fraternal order; there
+are several here which would bring you no inconsiderable social
+prestige.
+
+Don't hesitate, Venancio, come at once and bring your funds. I promise
+you we'll get rich in no time. My best wishes to the General, to
+Anastasio, and the rest of the boys.
+
+Your affectionate friend,
+  Luis Cervantes
+
+
+Venancio finished reading the letter for the hundredth time and,
+sighing, repeated:
+
+"Tenderfoot certainly knows how to pull the strings all right!"
+
+"What I can't get into my head," observed Anastasio Montanez, "is why
+we keep on fighting. Didn't we finish off this man Huerta and his
+Federation?"
+
+Neither the General nor Venancio answered; but the same thought kept
+beating down on their dull brains like a hammer on an anvil.
+
+They ascended the steep hill, their heads bowed, pensive, their horses
+walking at a slow gait. Stubbornly restless, Anastasio made the same
+observation to other groups; the soldiers laughed at his candor. If a
+man has a rifle in his hands and a beltful of cartridges, surely he
+should use them. That means fighting. Against whom? For whom? That is
+scarcely a matter of importance.
+
+The endless wavering column of dust moved up the trail, a swirling ant
+heap of broad straw sombreros, dirty khaki, faded blankets, and black
+horses....
+
+Not a man but was dying of thirst; no pool or stream or well anywhere
+along the road. A wave of dust rose from the white, wild sides of a
+small canyon, swayed mistily on the hoary crest of huizache trees and
+the greenish stumps of cactus. Like a jest, the flowers in the cactus
+opened out, fresh, solid, aflame, some thorny, others diaphanous.
+
+At noon they reached a hut, clinging to the precipitous sierra, then
+three more huts strewn over the margin of a river of burnt sand.
+Everything was silent, desolate. As soon as they saw men on horseback,
+the people in the huts scurried into the hills to hide. Demetrio grew
+indignant.
+
+"Bring me anyone you find hiding or running away," he commanded in a
+loud voice.
+
+"What? What did you say?" Valderrama cried in surprise. "The men of the
+sierra? Those brave men who've not yet done what those chickens down in
+Aguascalientes and Zacatecas have done all the time? Our own brothers,
+who weather storms, who cling to the rocks like moss itself? I protest,
+sir; I protest!"
+
+He spurred his miserable horse forward and caught up with the General.
+
+"The mountaineers," he said solemnly and emphatically, "are flesh of
+our flesh, bone of our bone. Os ex osibus meis et caro de carne mea.
+Mountaineers are made from the same timber we're made of! Of the same
+sound timber from which heroes ..."
+
+With a confidence as sudden as it was courageous, he hit the General
+across the chest. The General smiled benevolently.
+
+Valderrama, the tramp, the crazy maker of verses, did he ever know what
+he said?
+
+When the soldiers reached a small ranch, despairingly, they searched
+the empty huts and small houses without finding a single stale
+tortilla, a solitary rotten pepper, or one pinch of salt with which to
+flavor the horrible taste of dry meat. The owners of the huts, their
+peaceful brethren, were impassive with the stonelike impassivity of
+Aztec idols; others, more human, with a slow smile on their colorless
+lips and beardless faces, watched these fierce men who less than a
+month ago had made the miserable huts of others tremble with fear, now
+in their turn fleeing their own huts where the ovens were cold and the
+water tanks dry, fleeing with their tails between their legs, cringing,
+like curs kicked out of their own houses.
+
+But the General did not countermand his order. Some soldiers brought
+back four fugitives, captive and bound.
+
+
+
+II
+
+"WHY do you hide?" Demetrio asked the prisoners.
+
+"We're not hiding, Chief, we're hitting the trail."
+
+"Where to?"
+
+"To our own homes, in God's name, to Durango."
+
+"Is this the road to Durango?"
+
+"Peaceful people can't travel over the main road nowadays, you know
+that, Chief."
+
+"You're not peaceful people, you're deserters. Where do you come from?"
+Demetrio said, eyeing them with keen scrutiny.
+
+The prisoners grew confused; they looked at each other hesitatingly,
+unable to give a prompt answer.
+
+"They're Carranzistas," one of the soldiers said.
+
+"Carranzistas hell!" one of them said proudly. "I'd rather be a pig."
+
+"The truth is we're deserters," another said. "After the defeat we
+deserted from General Villa's troops this side of Celaya."
+
+"General Villa defeated? Ha! Ha! That's a good joke."
+
+The soldiers laughed. But Demetrio's brow was wrinkled as though a
+black shadow had passed over his eyes.
+
+"There ain't a son of a bitch on earth who can beat General Villa!"
+said a bronzed veteran with a scar clear across the face.
+
+Without a change of expression, one of the deserters stared
+persistently at him and said:
+
+"I know who you are. When we took Torreon you were with General Urbina.
+In Zacatecas you were with General Natera and then you shifted to the
+Jalisco troops. Am I lying?"
+
+These words met with a sudden and definite effect. The prisoners gave a
+detailed account of the tremendous defeat of Villa at Celaya.
+Demetrio's men listened in silence, stupefied.
+
+Before resuming their march, they built a fire on which to roast some
+bull meat. Anastasio Montanez, searching for food among the huizache
+trees, descried the close-cropped neck of Valderrama's horse in the
+distance among the rocks.
+
+"Hey! Come here, you fool, after all there ain't been no gravy!" he
+shouted.
+
+Whenever anything was said about shooting someone, Valderrama, the
+romantic poet, would disappear for a whole day.
+
+Hearing Anastasio's voice, Valderrama was convinced that the prisoners
+had been set at liberty. A few moments later, he was joined by Venancio
+and Demetrio.
+
+"Heard the news?" Venancio asked gravely.
+
+"No."
+
+"It's very serious. A terrible mess! Villa was beaten at Celaya by
+Obregon and Carranza is winning all along the line! We're done for!"
+
+Valderrama's gesture was disdainful and solemn as an emperor's. "Villa?
+Obregon? Carranza? What's the difference? I love the revolution like a
+volcano in eruption; I love the volcano because it's a volcano, the
+revolution because it's the revolution! What do I care about the stones
+left above or below after the cataclysm? What are they to me?"
+
+In the glare of the midday sun the reflection of a white tequila bottle
+glittered on his forehead; and, jubilant, he ran toward the bearer of
+such a marvelous gift.
+
+"I like this crazy fool," Demetrio said with a smile. "He says things
+sometimes that make you think."
+
+They resumed their march; their uncertainty translated into a
+lugubrious silence. Slowly, inevitably, the catastrophe must come; it
+was even now being realized. Villa defeated was a fallen god; when gods
+cease to be omnipotent, they are nothing.
+
+Quail spoke. His words faithfully interpreted the general opinion:
+
+"What the hell, boys! Every spider's got to spin his own web now!"
+
+
+
+III
+
+In Zacatecas and Aguascalientes, in the little country towns and the
+neighboring communities, haciendas and ranches were deserted. When one
+of the officers found a barrel of tequila, the event assumed miraculous
+proportions. Everything was conducted with secrecy and care; deep
+mystery was preserved to oblige the soldiers to leave on the morrow
+before sunrise under Anastasio and Venancio.
+
+When Demetrio awoke to the strains of music, his general staff, now
+composed chiefly of young ex-government officers, told him of the
+discovery, and Quail, interpreting the thoughts of his colleagues, said
+sententiously:
+
+"These are bad times and you've got to take advantage of everythin'. If
+there are some days when a duck can swim, there's others when he can't
+take a drink."
+
+The string musicians played all day; the most solemn honors were paid
+to the barrel: but Demetrio was very sad.
+
+  "Did he know why?
+  I don't know why."
+
+
+He kept repeating the same refrain.
+
+In the afternoon there were cockfights. Demetrio sat down with the
+chief officers under the roof of the municipal portals in front of a
+city square covered with weeds, a tumbled kiosk, and some abandoned
+adobe houses.
+
+"Valderrama," Demetrio called, looking away from the ring with tired
+eyes, "come and sing me a song--sing 'The Undertaker.'"
+
+But Valderrama did not hear him; he had no eyes for the fight; he was
+reciting an impassioned soliloquy as he watched the sunset over the
+hills.
+
+With solemn gestures and emphatic tones, he said:
+
+"O Lord, Lord, pleasurable it is this thy land! I shall build me three
+tents: one for Thee, one for Moses, one for Elijah!"
+
+"Valderrama," Demetrio shouted again. "Come and sing 'The Undertaker'
+song for me."
+
+"Hey, crazy, the General is calling you," an officer shouted.
+
+Valderrama with his eternally complacent smile went over to Demetrio's
+seat and asked the musicians for a guitar.
+
+"Silence," the gamesters cried. Valderrama finished tuning his
+instrument.
+
+Quail and Meco let loose on the sand a pair of cocks armed with long
+sharp blades attached to their legs. One was light red; his feathers
+shone with beautiful obsidian glints. The other was sand-colored with
+feathers like scales burned slowly to a fiery copper color.
+
+The fight was swift and fierce as a duel between men. As though moved
+by springs, the roosters flew at each other. Their feathers stood up on
+their arched necks; their combs were erect, their legs taut. For an
+instant they swung in the air without even touching the ground, their
+feathers, beaks, and claws lost in a dizzy whirlwind. The red rooster
+suddenly broke, tossed with his legs to heaven outside the chalk lines.
+His vermilion eyes closed slowly, revealing eyelids of pink coral; his
+tangled feathers quivered and shook convulsively amid a pool of blood.
+
+Valderrama, who could not repress a gesture of violent indignation,
+began to play. With the first melancholy strains of the tune, his anger
+disappeared. His eyes gleamed with the light of madness. His glance
+strayed over the square, the tumbled kiosk, the old adobe houses, over
+the mountains in the background, and over the sky, burning like a roof
+afire. He began to sing. He put such feeling into his voice and such
+expression into the strings that, as he finished, Demetrio turned his
+head aside to hide his tears.
+
+But Valderrama fell upon him, embraced him warmly, and with a
+familiarity he showed everyone at the appropriate moment, he whispered:
+
+"Drink them! ... Those are beautiful tears."
+
+Demetrio asked for the bottle, passed it to Valderrama. Greedily the
+poet drank half its contents in one gulp; then, showing only the whites
+of his eyes, he faced the spectators dramatically and, in a highly
+theatrical voice, cried:
+
+"Here you may witness the blessings of the revolution caught in a
+single tear."
+
+Then he continued to talk like a madman, but like a madman whose vast
+prophetic madness encompassed all about him, the dusty weeds, the
+tumbled kiosk, the gray houses, the lovely hills, and the immeasurable
+sky.
+
+
+
+IV
+
+Juchipila rose in the distance, white, bathed in sunlight, shining in
+the midst of a thick forest at the foot of a proud, lofty mountain,
+pleated like a turban.
+
+Some of the soldiers, gazing at the spire of the church, sighed sadly.
+They marched forward through the canyon, uncertain, unsteady, as blind
+men walking without a hand to guide them. The bitterness of the exodus
+pervaded them.
+
+"Is that town Juchipila?" Valderrama asked.
+
+In the first stage of his drunkenness, Valderrama had been counting the
+crosses scattered along the road, along the trails, in the hollows near
+the rocks, in the tortuous paths, and along the riverbanks. Crosses of
+black timber newly varnished, makeshift crosses built out of two logs,
+crosses of stones piled up and plastered together, crosses whitewashed
+on crumbling walls, humble crosses drawn with charcoal on the surface
+of whitish rocks. The traces of the first blood shed by the
+revolutionists of 1910, murdered by the Government.
+
+Before Juchipila was lost from sight, Valderrama got off his horse,
+bent down, kneeled, and gravely kissed the ground.
+
+The soldiers passed by without stopping. Some laughed at the crazy man,
+others jested. Valderrama, deaf to all about him, breathed his unctuous
+prayer:
+
+"O Juchipila, cradle of the Revolution of 1910, O blessed land, land
+steeped in the blood of martyrs, blood of dreamers, the only true men..."
+
+"Because they had no time to be bad!" an ex-Federal officer interjected
+as he rode.
+
+Interrupting his prayer, Valderrama frowned, burst into stentorian
+laughter, reechoed by the rocks, and ran toward the officer begging for
+a swallow of tequila.
+
+Soldiers minus an arm or leg, cripples, rheumatics, and consumptives
+spoke bitterly of Demetrio. Young whippersnappers were given officers'
+commissions and wore stripes on their hats without a day's service,
+even before they knew how to handle a rifle, while the veterans,
+exhausted in a hundred battles, now incapacitated for work, the
+veterans who had set out as simple privates, were still simple
+privates. The few remaining officers among Demetrio's friends also
+grumbled, because his staff was made up of wealthy, dapper young men
+who oiled their hair and used perfume.
+
+"The worst part of it," Venancio said, "is that we're gettin'
+overcrowded with Federals!"
+
+Anastasio himself, who invariably found only praise for Demetrio's
+conduct, now seemed to share the general discontent.
+
+"See here, brothers," he said, "I spits out the truth when I sees
+something. I always tell the boss that if these people stick to us very
+long we'll be in a hell of a fix. Certainly! How can anyone think
+otherwise? I've no hair on my tongue; and by the mother that bore me,
+I'm going to tell Demetrio so myself."
+
+Demetrio listened benevolently, and, when Anastasio had finished, he
+replied:
+
+"You're right, there's no gettin' around it, we're in a bad way. The
+soldiers grumble about the officers, the officers grumble about us,
+see? And we're damn well ready now to send both Villa and Carranza to
+hell to have a good time all by themselves.... I guess we're in the
+same fix as that peon from Tepatitlan who complained about his boss all
+day long but worked on just the same. That's us. We kick and kick, but
+we keep on killing and killing. But there's no use in saying anything
+to them!"
+
+"Why, Demetrio?"
+
+"Hm, I don't know.... Because ... because ... do you see? ... What
+we've got to do is to make the men toe the mark. I've got orders to
+stop a band of men coming through Cuquio, see? In a few days we'll have
+to fight the Carranzistas. It will be great to beat the hell out of
+them."
+
+Valderrama, the tramp, who had enlisted in Demetrio's army one day
+without anyone remembering the time or the place, overheard some of
+Demetrio's words. Fools do not eat fire. That very day Valderrama
+disappeared mysteriously as he had come.
+
+
+
+V
+
+They entered the streets of Juchipila as the church bells rang, loud
+and joyfully, with that peculiar tone that thrills every mountaineer.
+
+"It makes me think we are back in the days when the revolution was just
+beginning, when the bells rang like mad in every town we entered and
+everybody came out with music, flags, cheers, and fireworks to welcome
+us," said Anastasio Montanez.
+
+"They don't like us no more," Demetrio returned.
+
+"Of course. We're crawling back like a dog with its tail between its
+legs," Quail remarked.
+
+"It ain't that, I guess. They don't give a whoop for the other side
+either."
+
+"But why should they like us?"
+
+They spoke no more.
+
+Presently they reached the city square and stopped in front of an
+octagonal, rough, massive church, reminiscent of the colonial period.
+At one time the square must have been a garden, judging from the bare
+stunted orange trees planted between iron and wooden benches. The
+sonorous, joyful bells rang again. From within the church, the honeyed
+voices of a female chorus rose melancholy and grave. To the strains of
+a guitar, the young girls of the town sang the "Mysteries."
+
+"What's the fiesta, lady?" Venancio asked of an old woman who was
+running toward the church.
+
+"The Sacred Heart of Jesus!" answered the pious woman, panting.
+
+They remembered that one year ago they had captured Zacatecas. They
+grew sadder still.
+
+Juchipila, like the other towns they had passed through on their way
+from Tepic, by way of Jalisco, Aguascalientes and Zacatecas, was in
+ruins. The black trail of the incendiaries showed in the roofless
+houses, in the burnt arcades. Almost all the houses were closed, yet,
+here and there, those still open offered, in ironic contrast, portals
+gaunt and bare as the white skeletons of horses scattered over the
+roads. The terrible pangs of hunger seemed to speak from every face;
+hunger on every dusty cheek, in their dusty countenances; in the hectic
+flame of their eyes, which, when they met a soldier, blazed with
+hatred. In vain the soldiers scoured the streets in search of food,
+biting their lips in anger. A single lunchroom was open; at once they
+filled it. No beans, no tortillas, only chili and tomato sauce. In vain
+the officers showed their pocketbooks stuffed with bills or used
+threats:
+
+"Yea, you've got papers all right! That's all you've brought! Try and
+eat them, will you?" said the owner, an insolent old shrew with an
+enormous scar on her cheek, who told them she had already lain with a
+dead man, "to cure her from ever feeling frightened again."
+
+Despite the melancholy and desolation of the town, while the women sang
+in the church, birds sang in the foliage, and the thrushes piped their
+lyrical strain on the withered branches of the orange trees.
+
+
+
+VI
+
+Demetrio Macias' wife, mad with joy, rushed along the trail to meet
+him, leading a child by the hand. An absence of almost two years!
+
+They embraced each other and stood speechless. She wept, sobbed.
+Demetrio stared in astonishment at his wife who seemed to have aged ten
+or twenty years. Then he looked at the child who gazed up at him in
+surprise. His heart leaped to his mouth as he saw in the child's
+features his own steel features and fiery eyes exactly reproduced. He
+wanted to hold him in his arms, but the frightened child took refuge in
+his mother's skirts.
+
+"It's your own father, baby! It's your daddy!"
+
+The child hid his face within the folds of his mother's skirt, still
+hostile.
+
+Demetrio handed the reins of his horse to his orderly and walked slowly
+along the steep trail with his wife and son.
+
+"Blessed be the Virgin Mary, Praise be to God! Now you'll never leave
+us any more, will you? Never ... never.... You'll stay with us always?"
+
+Demetrio's face grew dark. Both remained silent, lost in anguish.
+Demetrio suppressed a sigh. Memories crowded and buzzed through his
+brain like bees about a hive.
+
+A black cloud rose behind the sierra and a deafening roar of thunder
+resounded. The rain began to fall in heavy drops; they sought refuge in
+a rocky hut.
+
+The rain came pelting down, shattering the white Saint John roses
+clustered like sheaves of stars clinging to tree, rock, bush, and
+pitaya over the entire mountainside.
+
+Below in the depths of the canyon, through the gauze of the rain they
+could see the tall, sheer palms shaking in the wind, opening out like
+fans before the tempest. Everywhere mountains, heaving hills, and
+beyond more hills, locked amid mountains, more mountains encircled in
+the wall of the sierra whose loftiest peaks vanished in the sapphire of
+the sky.
+
+"Demetrio, please. For God's sake, don't go away! My heart tells me
+something will happen to you this time."
+
+Again she was wracked with sobs. The child, frightened, cried and
+screamed. To calm him, she controlled her own great grief.
+
+Gradually the rain stopped, a swallow, with silver breast and wings
+describing luminous charming curves, fluttered obliquely across the
+silver threads of the rain, gleaming suddenly in the afternoon sunshine.
+
+"Why do you keep on fighting, Demetrio?"
+
+Demetrio frowned deeply. Picking up a stone absent-mindedly, he threw
+it to the bottom of the canyon. Then he stared pensively into the
+abyss, watching the arch of its flight.
+
+"Look at that stone; how it keeps on going...."
+
+
+
+VII
+
+It was a heavenly morning. It had rained all night, the sky awakened
+covered with white clouds. Young wild colts trotted on the summit of
+the sierra, with tense manes and waving hair, proud as the peaks
+lifting their heads to the clouds.
+
+The soldiers stepped among the huge rocks, buoyed up by the happiness
+of the morning. None for a moment dreamed of the treacherous bullet
+that might be awaiting him ahead; the unforeseen provides man with his
+greatest joy. The soldiers sang, laughed, and chattered away. The
+spirit of nomadic tribes stirred their souls. What matters it whether
+you go and whence you come? All that matters is to walk, to walk
+endlessly, without ever stopping; to possess the valley, the heights of
+the sierra, far as the eye can read.
+
+Trees, brush, and cactus shone fresh after rain. Heavy drops of limpid
+water fell from rocks, ocher in hue as rusty armor.
+
+Demetrio Macias' men grew silent for a moment. They believed they heard
+the familiar rumor of firing in the distance. A few minutes elapsed but
+the sound was not repeated.
+
+"In this same sierra," Demetrio said, "with but twenty men I killed
+five hundred Federals. Remember, Anastasio?"
+
+As Demetrio began to tell that famous exploit, the men realized the
+danger they were facing. What if the enemy, instead of being two days
+away, was hiding somewhere among the underbrush on the terrible hill
+through whose gorge they now advanced? None dared show the slightest
+fear. Not one of Demetrio Macias' men dared say, "I shall not move
+another inch!"
+
+So, when firing began in the distance where the vanguard was marching,
+no one felt surprised. The recruits turned back hurriedly, retreating
+in shameful flight, searching for a way out of the canyon.
+
+A curse broke from Demetrio's parched lips.
+
+"Fire at 'em. Shoot any man who runs away!"
+
+"Storm the hill!" he thundered like a wild beast.
+
+But the enemy, lying in ambush by the thousand, opened up its
+machine-gun fire. Demetrio's men fell like wheat under the sickle.
+
+
+Tears of rage and pain rise to Demetrio's eyes as Anastasio slowly
+slides from his horse without a sound, and lies outstretched,
+motionless. Venancio falls close beside him, his chest riddled with
+bullets. Meco hurtles over the precipice, bounding from rock to rock.
+
+Suddenly, Demetrio finds himself alone. Bullets whiz past his ears like
+hail. He dismounts and crawls over the rocks, until he finds a parapet:
+he lays down a stone to protect his head and, lying flat on the ground,
+begins to shoot.
+
+The enemy scatter in all directions, pursuing the few fugitives hiding
+in the brush. Demetrio aims; he does not waste a single shot.
+
+His famous marksmanship fills him with joy. Where he settles his
+glance, he settles a bullet. He loads his gun once more ... takes
+aim....
+
+The smoke of the guns hangs thick in the air. Locusts chant their
+mysterious, imperturbable song. Doves coo lyrically in the crannies of
+the rocks. The cows graze placidly.
+
+The sierra is clad in gala colors. Over its inaccessible peaks the
+opalescent fog settles like a snowy veil on the forehead of a bride.
+
+At the foot of a hollow, sumptuous and huge as the portico of an old
+cathedral, Demetrio Macias, his eyes leveled in an eternal glance,
+continues to point the barrel of his gun.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Underdogs, by Mariano Azuela
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