The time of the crisis approached. Whether or not the Revolution would
be depended upon the Junta, and the Junta was hard-pressed. The need
for money was greater than ever before, while money was harder to get.
Patriots had given their last cent and now could give no more. Section
gang laborers-fugitive peons from Mexico--were contributing half
their scanty wages. But more than that was needed. The heart-breaking,
conspiring, undermining toil of years approached fruition. The time
was ripe. The Revolution hung on the balance. One shove more, one last
heroic effort, and it would tremble across the scales to victory. They
knew their Mexico. Once started, the Revolution would take care of
itself. The whole Diaz machine would go down like a house of cards. The
border was ready to rise. One Yankee, with a hundred I.W.W. men, waited
the word to cross over the border and begin the conquest of Lower
California. But he needed guns. And clear across to the Atlantic,
the Junta in touch with them all and all of them needing guns, mere
adventurers, soldiers of fortune, bandits, disgruntled American union
men, socialists, anarchists, rough-necks, Mexican exiles, peons escaped
from bondage, whipped miners from the bull-pens of Coeur d'Alene and
Colorado who desired only the more vindictively to fight--all the
flotsam and jetsam of wild spirits from the madly complicated modern
world. And it was guns and ammunition, ammunition and guns--the
unceasing and eternal cry.
Fling this heterogeneous, bankrupt, vindictive mass across the border,
and the Revolution was on. The custom house, the northern ports of
entry, would be captured. Diaz could not resist. He dared not throw
the weight of his armies against them, for he must hold the south. And
through the south the flame would spread despite. The people would rise.
The defenses of city after city would crumple up. State after state
would totter down. And at last, from every side, the victorious armies
of the Revolution would close in on the City of Mexico itself, Diaz's
last stronghold.
But the money. They had the men, impatient and urgent, who would use the
guns. They knew the traders who would sell and deliver the guns. But to
culture the Revolution thus far had exhausted the Junta. The last dollar
had been spent, the last resource and the last starving patriot milked
dry, and the great adventure still trembled on the scales. Guns and
ammunition! The ragged battalions must be armed. But how? Ramos lamented
his confiscated estates. Arrellano wailed the spendthriftness of his
youth. May Sethby wondered if it would have been different had they of
the Junta been more economical in the past.
“To think that the freedom of Mexico should stand or fall on a few
paltry thousands of dollars,” said Paulino Vera.
Despair was in all their faces. Jose Amarillo, their last hope, a recent
convert, who had promised money, had been apprehended at his hacienda in
Chihuahua and shot against his own stable wall. The news had just come
through.
Rivera, on his knees, scrubbing, looked up, with suspended brush, his
bare arms flecked with soapy, dirty water.
“Will five thousand do it?” he asked.
They looked their amazement. Vera nodded and swallowed. He could not
speak, but he was on the instant invested with a vast faith.
“Order the guns,” Rivera said, and thereupon was guilty of the longest
flow of words they had ever heard him utter. “The time is short. In
three weeks I shall bring you the five thousand. It is well. The weather
will be warmer for those who fight. Also, it is the best I can do.”
Vera fought his faith. It was incredible. Too many fond hopes had been
shattered since he had begun to play the revolution game. He believed
this threadbare scrubber of the Revolution, and yet he dared not
believe.
“You are crazy,” he said.
“In three weeks,” said Rivera. “Order the guns.”
He got up, rolled down his sleeves, and put on his coat.
“Order the guns,” he said.
“I am going now.”