"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 pa.s.ses 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 b.a.s.t.a.r.d!"
"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.
"G.o.d! 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 b.i.t.c.h, 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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.
"G.o.dd.a.m.n 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 ident.i.ty; 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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s....
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 pa.s.ses.
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 G.o.d, 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:
"G.o.d"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 d.a.m.ned 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 gla.s.s 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.