PART VI. MEXICAN NIGHTS

I. El Cosmopolita

II. Happy Valley

III. Los Pastores

*INSURGENT MEXICO*

*ON THE BORDER*

Mercado's Federal army, after its dramatic and terrible retreat four

hundred miles across the desert when Chihuahua was abandoned, lay three

months at Ojinaga on the Rio Grande.

At Presidio, on the American side of the river, one could climb to the

flat mud roof of the Post Office and look across the mile or so of low

scrub growing in the sand to the shallow, yellow stream; and beyond to

the low _mesa_, where the town was, sticking sharply up out of a

scorched desert, ringed round with bare, savage mountains.

One could see the square, gray adobe houses of Ojinaga, with here and

there the Oriental cupola of an old Spanish church. It was a desolate

land, without trees. You expected minarets. By day, Federal soldiers

in shabby white uniforms swarmed about the place desultorily digging

trenches, for Villa and his victorious Constitutionalists were rumored

to be on the way. You got sudden glints, where the sun flashed on field

guns; strange, thick clouds of smoke rose straight in the still air.

Toward evening, when the sun went down with the flare of a blast

furnace, patrols of cavalry rode sharply across the skyline to the night

outposts. And after dark, mysterious fires burned in the town.

There were thirty-five hundred men in Ojinaga. This was all that

remained of Mercado's army of ten thousand and the five thousand which

Pascual Orozco had marched north from Mexico City to reinforce him. Of

this thirty-five hundred, forty-five were majors, twenty-one colonels,

and eleven generals.

I wanted to interview General Mercado; but one of the newspapers had

printed something displeasing to General Salazar, and he had forbidden

the reporters the town. I sent a polite request to General Mercado.

The note was intercepted by General Orozco, who sent back the following

reply:

ESTEEMED AND HONORED SIR: If you set foot inside of Ojinaga, I will

stand you sideways against a wall, and with my own hand take great

pleasure in shooting furrows in your back.

But after all I waded the river one day and went up into the town.

Luckily, I did not meet General Orozco. No one seemed to object to my

entrance. All the sentries I saw were taking a siesta on the shady side

of adobe walls. But almost immediately I encountered a courteous

officer named Hernandez, to whom I explained that I wished to see

General Mercado.

Without inquiring as to my identity, he scowled, folded his arms, and

burst out:

"I am General Orozco's chief of staff, and I will not take you to see

General Mercado!"

I said nothing. In a few minutes he explained:

"General Orozco hates General Mercado! He does not deign to go to

General Mercado's cuartel, and General Mercado does not dare to come to

General Orozco's cuartel! He is a coward. He ran away from Tierra

Blanca, and then he ran away from Chihuahua!"

"What other Generals don't you like?" I asked.

He caught himself and slanted an angry look at me, and then grinned:

"_Quien sabe....?_"

I saw General Mercado, a fat, pathetic, worried, undecided little man,

who blubbered and blustered a long tale about how the United States army

had come across the river and helped Villa to win the battle of Tierra

Blanca.

The white, dusty streets of the town, piled high with filth and fodder,

the ancient windowless church with its three enormous Spanish bells

hanging on a rack outside and a cloud of blue incense crawling out of

the black doorway, where the women camp followers of the army prayed for

victory day and night, lay in hot, breathless sun. Five times had

Ojinaga been lost and taken. Hardly a house that had a roof, and all the

walls gaped with cannon-shot. In these bare, gutted rooms lived the

soldiers, their women, their horses, their chickens and pigs, raided

from the surrounding country. Guns were stacked in the corners, saddles

piled in the dust. The soldiers were in rags; scarcely one possessed a

complete uniform. They squatted around little fires in their doorways,

boiling corn-husks and dried meat. They were almost starving.

Along the main street passed an unbroken procession of sick, exhausted,

starving people, driven from the interior by fear of the approaching

rebels, a journey of eight days over the most terrible desert in the

world. They were stopped by a hundred soldiers along the street, and

robbed of every possession that took the Federals' fancy. Then they

passed on to the river, and on the American side they had to run the

gantlet of the United States customs and immigration officials and the

Army Border Patrol, who searched them for arms.

Hundreds of refugees poured across the river, some on horseback driving

cattle before them, some in wagons, and others on foot. The inspectors

were not very gentle.

"Come down off that wagon!" one would shout to a Mexican woman with a

bundle in her arm.

"But, senor, for what reason?..." she would begin.

"Come down there or I'll pull you down!" he would yell.

They made an unnecessarily careful and brutal search of the men and of

the women, too.

As I stood there, a woman waded across the ford, her skirts lifted

unconcernedly to her thighs. She wore a voluminous shawl, which was

humped up in front as if she were carrying something in it.

"Hi, there!" shouted a customs man. "What have you got under your

shawl?"

She slowly opened the front of her dress, and answered placidly:

"I don't know, senor. It may be a girl, or it may be a boy."

These were metropolitan days for Presidio, a straggling and

indescribably desolate village of about fifteen adobe houses, scattered

without much plan in the deep sand and cotton-wood scrub along the river

bottom. Old Kleinmann, the German store-keeper, made a fortune a day

outfitting refugees and supplying the Federal army across the river with

provisions. He had three beautiful adolescent daughters whom he kept

locked up in the attic of the store, because a flock of amorous Mexicans

and ardent cow-punchers prowled around like dogs, drawn from many miles

away by the fame of these damsels. Half the time he spent working

furiously in the store, stripped to the waist; and the remainder,

rushing around with a large gun strapped to his waist, warning off the

suitors.

At all times of the day and night, throngs of unarmed Federal soldiers

from across the river swarmed in the store and the pool hall. Among

them circulated dark, ominous persons with an important air, secret

agents of the Rebels and the Federals. Around in the brush camped

hundreds of destitute refugees, and you could not walk around a corner

at night without stumbling over a plot or a counterplot. There were

Texas rangers, and United States troopers, and agents of American

corporations trying to get secret instructions to their employees in the

interior.

One MacKenzie stamped about the Post Office in a high dudgeon. It

appeared that he had important letters for the American Smelting and

Refining Company mines in Santa Eulalia.

"Old Mercado insists on opening and reading all letters that pass

through his lines," he shouted indignantly.

"But," I said, "he will let them pass, won't he?"

"Certainly," he answered. "But do you think the American Smelting and

Refining Company will submit to having its letters opened and read by a

damned greaser? It's an outrage when an American corporation can't send

a private letter to its employees! If this don't bring Intervention,"

he finished, darkly, "I don't know what will!"

There were all sorts of drummers for arms and ammunition companies,

smugglers and _contrabandistas_; also a small, bantam man, the salesman

for a portrait company, which made crayon enlargements from photographs

at $5 apiece. He was scurrying around among the Mexicans, getting

thousands of orders for pictures which were to be paid for upon

delivery, and which; of course, could never be delivered. It was his

first experience among Mexicans, and he was highly gratified by the

hundreds of orders he had received. You see, a Mexican would just as

soon order a portrait, or a piano, or an automobile as not, so long as

he does not have to pay for it. It gives him a sense of wealth.

The little agent for crayon enlargements made one comment on the Mexican

revolution. He said that General Huerta must be a fine man, because he

understood he was distantly connected, on his mother's side, with the

distinguished Carey family of Virginia!

The American bank of the river was patroled twice a day by details of

cavalry, conscientiously paralleled on the Mexican side by companies of

horsemen. Both parties watched each other narrowly across the Border.

Every once in a while a Mexican, unable to restrain his nervousness,

took a pot-shot at the Americans, and a small battle ensued as both

parties scattered into the brush. A little way above Presidio were

stationed two troops of the Negro Ninth Cavalry. One colored trooper,

watering his horse on the bank of the river, was accosted by an

English-speaking Mexican squatting on the opposite shore:

"Hey, coon!" he shouted, derisively, "when are you damned Gringos going

to cross that line?"

"Chile!" responded the Negro. "We ain't agoin' to cross that line at

all. We're just goin' to pick up that line an' carry it right down to

the Big Ditch!"

Sometimes a rich refugee, with a good deal of gold sewed in his

saddle-blankets, would get across the river without the Federals

discovering it. There were six big, high-power automobiles in Presidio

waiting for just such a victim. They would soak him one hundred dollars

gold to make a trip to the railroad; and on the way, somewhere in the

desolate wastes south of Marfa, he was almost sure to be held up by

masked men and everything taken away from him. Upon these occasions the

High Sheriff of Presidio County would bluster into town on a small pinto

horse,--a figure true to the best tradition of "The Girl of the Golden

West." He had read all Owen Wister's novels, and knew what a Western

sheriff ought to look like: two revolvers on the hip, one slung under

his arm, a large knife in his left boot, and an enormous shotgun over

his saddle. His conversation was larded with the most fearful oaths,

and he never caught any criminal. He spent all of his time enforcing

the Presidio County law against carrying firearms and playing poker; and

at night, after the day's work was done, you could always find him

sitting in at a quiet game in the back of Kleinmann's store.

War and rumors of war kept Presidio at a fever heat. We all knew that

sooner or later the Constitutionalist army would come overland from

Chihuahua and attack Ojinaga. In fact, the major in command of the

Border Patrol had already been approached by the Federal generals in a

body to make arrangements for the retreat of the Federal army from

Ojinaga under such circumstances. They said that when the rebels

attacked they would want to resist for a respectable length of

time,--say two hours,--and that then they would like permission to come

across the river.

We knew that some twenty-five miles southward, at La Mula Pass, five

hundred rebel volunteers guarded the only road from Ojinaga through the

mountains. One day a courier sneaked through the Federal lines and

across the river with important news. He said that the military band of

the Federal army had been marching around the country practicing their

music, and had been captured by the Constitutionalists, who stood them

up in the market-place with rifles pointed at their heads, and made them

play twelve hours at a stretch. "Thus," continued the message, "the

hardships of life in the desert have been somewhat alleviated." We

could never discover just how it was that the band happened to be

practicing all alone twenty-two miles from Ojinaga in the desert.

For a month longer the Federals remained at Ojinaga, and Presidio

throve. Then Villa, at the head of his army, appeared over a rise of

the desert. The Federals resisted a respectable length of time--just

two hours, or, to be exact, until Villa himself at the head of a battery

galloped right up to the muzzles of the guns,--and then poured across

the river in wild rout, were herded in a vast corral by the American

soldiers, and afterward imprisoned in a barbed-wire stockade at Fort

Bliss, Texas.

But by that time I was already far down in Mexico, riding across the

desert with a hundred ragged Constitutionalist troopers on my way to the

front.

*PART ONE*

*DESERT WAR*

*CHAPTER I*

*URBINA'S COUNTRY*

A peddler from Parral came into town with a mule-load of _macuche_,--you

smoke _macuche_ when you can't get tobacco,--and we strolled down with

the rest of the population to get the news. This was in Magistral, a

Durango mountain village three days' ride from the railroad. Somebody

bought a little _macuche_, the rest of us borrowed from him, and we sent

a boy for some corn-shucks. Everybody lit up, squatting around the

peddler three deep; for it was weeks since the town had heard of the

Revolution. He was full of the most alarming rumors: that the Federals

had broken out of Torreon and were headed this way, burning ranches and

murdering _pacificos_; that the United States troops had crossed the Rio

Grande; that Huerta had resigned; that Huerta was coming north to take

charge of the Federal troops in person; that Pascual Orozco had been

shot at Ojinaga; that Pascual Orozco was coming south with ten thousand

_colorados_. He retailed these reports with a wealth of dramatic

gesture, stamping around until his heavy brown-and-gold sombrero wabbled

on his head, tossing his faded blue blanket over his shoulder, firing

imaginary rifles and drawing imaginary swords, while his audience

murmured: "_Ma!_" and "_Adio!_" But the most interesting rumor was that

General Urbina would leave for the front in two days.

A hostile Arab named Antonio Swayfeta happened to be driving to Parral

in a two-wheeled gig the next morning, and allowed me to go with him as

far as Las Nieves, where the General lives. By afternoon we had climbed

out of the mountains to the great upland plain of Northern Durango, and

were jogging down the mile-long waves of yellow prairie, stretching away

so far that the grazing cattle dwindled into dots and finally

disappeared at the base of the wrinkled purple mountains that seemed

close enough to hit with a thrown stone. The Arab's hostility had

thawed, and he poured out his life's story, not one word of which I

could understand. But the drift of it, I gathered, was largely

commercial. He had once been to El Paso and regarded it as the world's

most beautiful city. But business was better in Mexico. They say that

there are few Jews in Mexico because they cannot stand the competition

of the Arabs.

We passed only one human being all that day--a ragged old man astride a

burro, wrapped in a red-and-black checked serape, though without

trousers, and hugging the broken stock of a rifle. Spitting, he

volunteered that he was a soldier; that after three years of

deliberation he had finally decided to join the Revolution and fight for

Libertad. But at his first battle a cannon had been fired, the first he

had ever heard; he had immediately started for his home in El Oro, where

he intended to descend into a gold-mine and stay there until the war was

over....

We fell silent, Antonio and I. Occasionally he addressed the mule in

faultless Castilian. Once he informed me that that mule was "all heart"

(_pura corazon_). The sun hung for a moment on the crest of the red

porphyry mountains, and dropped behind them; the turquoise cup of sky

held an orange powder of clouds. Then all the rolling leagues of desert

glowed and came near in the soft light. Ahead suddenly reared the solid

fortress of a big rancho, such as one comes on once a day in that vast

land,--a mighty square of blank walls, with loop-holed towers at the

corners, and an iron-studded gate. It stood grim and forbidding upon a

little bare hill, like any castle, its adobe corrals around it; and

below, in what had been a dry arroyo all day, the sunken river came to

the surface in a pool, and disappeared again in the sand. Thin lines of

smoke from within rose straight into the high last sunshine. From the

river to the gate moved the tiny black figures of women with water-jars

on their heads: and two wild horsemen galloped some cattle toward the

corrals. Now the western mountains were blue velvet, and the pale sky a

blood-stained canopy of watered silk. But by the time we reached the

great gate of the rancho, above was only a shower of stars.

Antonio called for Don Jesus. It is always safe to call for Don Jesus

at a rancho, for that is invariably the _administrador's_ name. He

finally appeared, a magnificently tall man in tight trousers, purple

silk undershirt, and a gray sombrero heavily loaded with silver braid;

and invited us in. The inside of the wall consisted of houses, running

all the way around. Along the walls and over the doors hung festoons of

jerked meat, and strings of peppers, and drying clothes. Three young

girls crossed the square in single file, balancing _ollas_ of water on

their heads, shouting to each other in the raucous voices of Mexican

women. At one house a woman crouched, nursing her baby; next door

another kneeled to the interminable labor of grinding corn-meal in a

stone trough. The men-folk squatted before little corn-husk fires,

bundled in their faded serapes, smoking their _hojas_ as they watched

the women work. As we unharnessed they rose and gathered around, with

soft-voiced "_Bueno noches_," curious and friendly. Where did we come

from? Where going? What did we have of news? Had the Maderistas taken

Ojinaga yet? Was it true that Orozco was coming to kill the

_pacificos_? Did we know Panfilo Silveyra? He was a _sergento_, one of

Urbina's men. He came from that house, was the cousin of this man. Ah,

there was too much war!

Antonio departed to bargain for corn for the mule. "A _tanito_--just a

little corn," he whined. "Surely Don Jesus wouldn't charge him

anything.... Just so much corn as a mule could eat...!" At one of the

houses I negotiated for dinner. The woman spread out both her hands.

"We are all so poor now," she said. "A little water, some

beans--_tortillas_.... It is all we eat in this house...." Milk? No.

Eggs? No. Meat? No. Coffee? _Valgame Dios_, no! I ventured that

with this money they might be purchased at one of the other houses.

"_Quien sabe?_" replied she dreamily. At this moment arrived the

husband and upbraided her for her lack of hospitality. "My house is at

your orders," he said magnificently, and begged a cigarette. Then he

squatted down while she brought forward the two family chairs and bade

us seat ourselves. The room was of good proportions, with a dirt floor

and a ceiling of heavy beams, the adobe showing through. Walls and

ceiling were whitewashed, and, to the naked eye, spotlessly clean. In

one corner was a big iron bed, and in the other a Singer sewing machine,

as in every other house I saw in Mexico. There was also a

spindle-legged table, upon which stood a picture-postcard of Our Lady of

Guadelupe, with a candle burning before it. Above this, on the wall,

hung an indecent illustration clipped from the pages of _Le Rire_, in a

silver-gilt frame--evidently an object of the highest veneration.

Arrived now various uncles, cousins, and _compadres_, wondering casually

if we dragged any cigarros. At her husband's command, the woman brought

a live coal in her fingers. We smoked. It grew late. There developed

a lively argument as to who would go and buy provisions for our dinner.

Finally they compromised on the woman; and soon Antonio and I sat in the

kitchen, while she crouched upon the altar-like adobe platform in the

corner, cooking over the open fire. The smoke enveloped up, pouring out

the door. Occasionally a pig or a few hens would wander in from the

outside, or a sheep would make a dash for the _tortilla_ meal, until the

angry voice of the master of the house reminded the woman that she was

not doing five or six things at once. And she would rise wearily and

belabor the animal with a flaming brand.

All through our supper--jerked meat fiery with _chile_, fried eggs,

_tortillas_, _frijoles_, and bitter black coffee,--the entire male

population of the rancho bore us company, in the room and out. It

seemed that some were especially prejudiced against the Church. "Priests

without shame," cried one, "who come when we are so poor and take away a

tenth of what we have!"

"And us paying a quarter to the Government for this cursed war!" ...

"Shut your mouth!" shrilled the woman. "It is for God! God must eat,

the same as we...."

Her husband smiled a superior smile. He had once been to Jimenez and

was considered a man of the world.

"God does not eat," he remarked with finality. "The _curas_ grow fat on

us."

"Why do you give it?" I asked.

"It is the law," said several at once.

And not one would believe that that law was repealed in Mexico in the

year 1857!

I asked them about General Urbina. "A good man, all heart." And

another: "He is very brave. The bullets bound off him like rain from a

sombrero...." "He is the cousin of my woman's first husband's sister."

"He is _bueno para los negocios del campo_" (that is to say, he is a

highly successful bandit and highwayman). And finally one said proudly:

"A few years ago he was just a peon like us; and now he is a General and

a rich man."

But I shall not soon forget the hunger-pinched body and bare feet of an

old man with the face of a saint, who said slowly: "The Revolucion is

good. When it is done we shall starve never, never, never, if God is

served. But it is long, and we have no food to eat, or clothes to wear.

For the master has gone away from the hacienda, and we have no tools or

animals to do our work with, and the soldiers take all our corn and

drive away the cattle...."

"Why don't the _pacificos_ fight?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "Now they do not need us. They have no

rifles for us, or horses. They are winning. And who shall feed them if

we do not plant corn? No, senor. But if the Revolucion loses, then

there will be no more _pacificos_. Then we will rise, with our knives

and our horsewhips.... The Revolucion will not lose...."

As Antonio and I rolled up in our blankets on the floor of the granary,

they were singing. One of the young bucks had procured a guitar

somewhere, and two voices, clinging to each other in that peculiar

strident Mexican "barber-shop" harmony, were whining loudly something

about a "_trista historia d'amor_."...

The rancho was one of many belonging to the Hacienda of El Canotillo,

and all next day we drove through its wide lands, which covered more

than two million acres, I was told. The _hacendado_, a wealthy

Spaniard, had fled the country two years before.

"Who is owner now?"

"General Urbina," said Antonio. And it was so, as I soon saw. The

great haciendas of Northern Durango, an area greater than the State of

New Jersey, had been confiscated for the Constitutionalist government by

the General, who ruled them with his own agents, and, it was said,

divided fifty-fifty with the Revolution.

We drove steadily all day, only stopping long enough to eat a few

_tortillas_. And along about sundown we saw the brown mud wall that

hemmed El Canotillo round, with its city of little houses, and the

ancient pink tower of its church among the alamo trees,--miles away at

the foot of the mountains. The village of Las Nieves, a straggling

collection of adobes the exact color of the earth of which they are

built, lay before us, like some strange growth of the desert. A

flashing river, without a trace of green along its banks to contrast it

with the scorched plain, made a semi-circle around the town. And as we

splashed across the ford, between the women kneeling there at their

washing, the sun suddenly went behind the western mountains.

Immediately a deluge of yellow light, thick as water, drowned the earth,

and a golden mist rose from the ground, in which the cattle floated

legless.

I knew that the price for such a journey as Antonio had carried me was

at least ten pesos, and he was an Arab to boot. But when I offered him

money, he threw his arms around me and burst into tears.... God bless

you, excellent Arab! You are right; business is better in Mexico.

*CHAPTER II*

*THE LION OF DURANGO AT HOME*

At General Urbina's door sat an old peon with four cartridge-belts

around him, engaged in the genial occupation of filling corrugated iron

bombs with gunpowder. He jerked his thumb toward the patio. The

General's house, corrals and storerooms ran around all four sides of a

space as big as a city block, swarming with pigs, chickens and

half-naked children. Two goats and three magnificent peacocks gazed

pensively down from the roof. In and out of the sitting-room, whence

came the phonographic strains of the "Dollar Princess," stalked a train

of hens. An old woman came from the kitchen and dumped a bucket of

garbage on the ground; all the pigs made a squealing rush for it. In a

corner of the house-wall sat the General's baby daughter, chewing on a

cartridge. A group of men stood or sprawled on the ground around a well

in the center of the patio. The General himself sat in their midst, in

a broken wicker arm-chair, feeding _tortillas_ to a tame deer and a lame

black sheep. Before him kneeled a peon, pouring from a canvas sack some

hundreds of Mauser cartridges.

To my explanations the General returned no answer. He gave me a limp

hand, immediately withdrawing it, but did not rise. A broad,

medium-sized man of dark mahogany complexion, with a sparse black beard

up to his cheek-bones, that didn't hide the wide, thin, expressionless

mouth, the gaping nostrils, the shiny, small, humorous, animal eyes.

For a good five minutes he never took them from mine. I produced my

papers.

"I don't know how to read," said the General suddenly, motioning to his

secretary. "So you want to go with me to battle?" he shot at me in the

coarsest Spanish. "Many bullets!" I said nothing. "_Muy bien_! But I

don't know when I shall go. Maybe in five days. Now eat!"

"Thanks, my general, I've already eaten."

"Go and eat," he repeated calmly. "_Andale!_"

A dirty little man they all called Doctor escorted me to the

dining-room. He had once been an apothecary in Parral, but was now a

Major. We were to sleep together that night, he said. But before we

reached the dining-room there was a shout of "Doctor!" A wounded man

had arrived, a peasant with his sombrero in his hand, and a

blood-clotted handkerchief around his head. The little doctor became

all efficiency. He dispatched a boy for the family scissors, another

for a bucket of water from the well. He sharpened with his knife a

stick he picked up from the ground. Seating the man on a box, he took

off the bandage, revealing a cut about two inches long, caked with dirt

and dried blood. First he cut off the hair around the wound, jabbing

the points of the scissors carelessly into it. The man drew in his

breath sharply, but did not move. Then the doctor slowly _cut the

clotted blood away from the top_, whistling cheerfully to himself.

"Yes," he remarked, "it is an interesting life, the doctor's." He

peered closely at the vomiting blood; the peasant sat like a sick stone.

"And it is a life full of nobility," continued the doctor. "Alleviating

the sufferings of others." Here he picked up the sharpened stick,

thrust it deep in, _and slowly worked it the entire length of the cut_!

"Pah! The animal has fainted!" said the doctor. "Here, hold him up

while I wash it!" With that he lifted the bucket and poured its

contents over the head of the patient, the water and blood dribbling

down over his clothes. "These ignorant peons," said the doctor, binding

up the wound in its original bandage, "have no courage. It is the

intelligence that makes the soul, eh?" ...

When the peasant came to, I asked: "Are you a soldier?" The man smiled

a sweet, deprecating smile.

"No, senor, I am only a _pacifico_," he said. "I live in the Canotillo,

where my house is at your orders...."

Some time later--a good deal--we all sat down to supper. There was

Lieutenant-Colonel Pablo Seanes, a frank, engaging youth of twenty-six,

with five bullets in him to pay for the three years' fighting. His

conversation was sprinkled with soldierly curses, and his pronunciation

was a little indistinct, the result of a bullet on the jaw-bone and a

tongue almost cut in two by a sword. He was a demon in the field, they

said, and a killer (_muy matador_) after it. At the first taking of

Torreon, Pablo and two other officers, Major Fierro and Captain Borunda,

had executed alone eighty unarmed prisoners, each man shooting them down

with his revolver until his hand got tired pulling the trigger.

"_Oiga_!*" Pablo said. "Where is the best institute for the study of

hypnotism in the United States? ... As soon as this cursed war is over I

am going to study to become a hypnotist...." With that he turned and

began to make passes at Lieutenant Borrega, who was called derisively

"The Lion of the Sierras," because of his prodigious boasting. The

latter jerked out his revolver: "I want no business with the devil!" he

screamed, amid the uproarious laughter of the others.

Then there was Captain Fernando, a grizzled giant of a man in tight

trousers, who had fought twenty-one battles. He took the keenest

delight in my fragmentary Spanish, and every word I spoke sent him into

bellows of laughter that shook down the adobe from the ceiling. He had

never been out of Durango, and declared that there was a great sea

between the United States and Mexico, and that he believed all the rest

of the earth to be water. Next to him sat Longinos Gueereca, with a row

of decayed teeth across his round, gentle face every time he smiled, and

a record for simple bravery that was famous throughout the army. He was

twenty-one, and already First Captain. He told me that last night his

own men had tried to kill him.... Then came Patricio, the best rider of

wild horses in the State, and Fidencio next to him, a pure-blooded

Indian seven feet tall, who always fought standing up. And last Raphael

Zalarzo, a tiny hunchback that Urbina carried in his train to amuse him,

like any medieval Italian duke.

When we had burned our throats with the last enchilada, and scooped up

our last _frijole_ with a _tortilla_,--forks and spoons being

unknown,--the gentlemen each took a mouthful of water, gargled it, and

spat it on the floor. As I came out into the patio, I saw the figure of

the General emerge from his bedroom door, staggering slightly. In his

hand he carried a revolver. He stood for a moment in the light of

another door, then suddenly went in, banging it behind him.

I was already in bed when the doctor came into the room. In the other

bed reposed the Lion of the Sierras and his momentary mistress, now

loudly snoring.

"Yes," said the Doctor, "there has been some little trouble. The

General has not been able to walk for two months from rheumatism....

And sometimes he is in great pain, and comforts himself with

_aguardiente_.... To-night he tried to shoot his mother. He always

tries to shoot his mother .... because he loves her very much." The

Doctor peeped at himself in the mirror, and twisted his mustache. "This

Revolucion. Do not mistake. It is a fight of the poor against the rich.

I was very poor before the Revolucion and now I am very rich." He

pondered a moment, and then began removing his clothes. Through his

filthy undershirt the Doctor honored me with his one English sentence:

"I have mooch lices," he said, with a proud smile....

I went out at dawn and walked around Las Nieves. The town belongs to

General Urbina, people, houses, animals and immortal souls. At Las

Nieves he and he alone wields the high justice and the low. The town's

only store is in his house, and I bought some cigarettes from the Lion

of the Sierras, who was detailed store-clerk for the day. In the patio

the General was talking with his mistress, a beautiful,

aristocratic-looking woman, with a voice like a hand-saw. When he

noticed me he came up and shook hands, saying that he'd like to have me

take some pictures of him. I said that that was my purpose in life, and

asked him if he thought he would leave soon for the front. "In about

ten days, I think," he answered. I began to get uncomfortable.

"I appreciate your hospitality, my General," I told him, "but my work

demands that I be where I can see the actual advance upon Torreon. If

it is convenient, I should like to go back to Chihuahua and join General

Villa, who will soon go south." Urbina's expression didn't change, but

he shot at me: "What is it that you don't like here? You are in your

own house! Do you want cigarettes? Do you want _aguardiente_; or

_sotol_, or cognac? Do you want a woman to warm your bed at night?

Everything you want I can give you! Do you want a pistol? A horse? Do

you want money?" He jerked a handful of silver dollars from his pocket

and threw them jingling on the ground at my feet.

I said: "Nowhere in Mexico am I so happy and contented as in this

house." And I was prepared to go further.

For the next hour I took photographs of General Urbina: General Urbina

on foot, with and without sword; General Urbina on three different

horses; General Urbina with and without his family; General Urbina's

three children, on horseback and off; General Urbina's mother, and his

mistress; the entire family, armed with swords and revolvers, including

the phonograph, produced for the purpose, one of the children holding a

placard upon which was inked: "General Tomas Urbina R."

*CHAPTER III*

*THE GENERAL GOES TO WAR*

We had finished breakfast and I was resigning myself to the ten days in

Las Nieves, when the General suddenly changed his mind. He came out of

his room, roaring orders. In five minutes the house was all bustle and

confusion,--officers rushing to pack their serapes, _mozos_ and troopers

saddling horses, peons with armfuls of rifles rushing to and fro.

Patricio harnessed five mules to the great coach,--an exact copy of the

Deadwood Stage. A courier rode out on the run to summon the Tropa,

which was quartered at the Canotillo. Rafaelito loaded the General's

baggage into the coach; it consisted of a typewriter, four swords, one

of them bearing the emblem of the Knights of Pythias, three uniforms,

the General's branding-iron, and a twelve-gallon demijohn of _sotol_.

And there came the Tropa, a ragged smoke of brown dust miles along the

road. Ahead flew a little, squat, black figure, with the Mexican flag

streaming over him; he wore a floppy sombrero loaded with five pounds of

tarnished gold braid,--once probably the pride of some imperial

_hacendado_. Following him closely were Manuel Paredes, with riding

boots up to his hips, fastened with silver buckles the size of dollars,

beating his mount with the flat of a saber; Isidro Amayo, making his

horse buck by flapping a hat in his eyes; Jose Valiente, ringing his

immense silver spurs inlaid with turquoises; Jesus Mancilla, his

flashing brass chain around his neck; Julian Reyes, with colored

pictures of Christ and the Virgin fastened to the front of his sombrero;

a struggling tangle of six behind, with Antonio Guzman trying to lasso

them, the coils of his horsehair rope soaring out of the dust. They

came on the dead run, all Indian shouts and cracking revolvers, until

they were only a hundred feet away, then jerked their little cow-ponies

cruelly to a staggering halt with bleeding mouths, a whirling confusion

of men, horses and dust.

This was the Tropa when I first saw them. About a hundred, they were,

in all stages of picturesque raggedness; some wore overalls, others the

charro jackets of peons, while one or two sported tight vaquero

trousers. A few had shoes, most of them only cowhide sandals, and the

rest were barefooted. Sabas Gutierrez was garbed in an ancient

frockcoat, split up the back for riding. Rifles slung at their saddles,

four or five cartridge-belts crossed over their chests, high, flapping

sombreros, immense spurs chiming as they rode, bright-colored serapes

strapped on behind--this was their uniform.

The General was with his mother. Outside the door crouched his

mistress, weeping, her three children around her. For almost an hour we

waited, then Urbina suddenly burst out of the door. With scarcely a

look at his family, he leaped on his great, gray charger, and spurred

furiously into the street. Juan Sanchez blew a blast on his cracked

bugle, and the Tropa, with the General at its head, took the Canotillo

road.

In the meanwhile Patricio and I loaded three cases of dynamite and a

case of bombs into the boot of the coach. I got up beside Patricio, the

peons let go of the mules' heads, and the long whip curled around their

bellies. Galloping, we whirled out of the village, and took the steep

bank of the river at twenty miles an hour. Away on the other side, the

Tropa trotted along a more direct road. The Canotillo we passed without

stopping.

"_Arre mulas! Putas! Hijas de la Ho----!_" yelled Patricio, the whip

hissing. The _Camino Real_ was a mere track on uneven ground; every

time we took a little arroyo the dynamite came down with a sickening

crash. Suddenly a rope broke, and one case bounced off the coach and

fell upon rocks. It was a cool morning, however, and we strapped it on

again safely....

Almost every hundred yards along the road were little heaps of stones,

surmounted by wooden crosses,--each one the memorial of a murder. And

occasionally a tall, whitewashed cross uprose in the middle of a

side-road, to protect some little desert rancho from the visits of the

devil. Black shiny chaparral, the height of a mule's back, scraped the

side of the coach; Spanish bayonet and the great barrel-cactus watched

us like sentinels from the skyline of the desert. And always the mighty

Mexican vultures circled over us, as if they knew we were going to war.

Late in the afternoon the stone wall which bounds the million acres of

the Hacienda of Torreon de Canas swung into sight on our left, marching

across deserts and mountains like the Great Wall of China, for more than

thirty miles; and, soon afterward, the hacienda itself. The Tropa had

dismounted around the Big House. They said that General Urbina had

suddenly been taken violently sick, and would probably be unable to

leave his bed for a week.

The Casa Grande, a magnificent porticoed palace but one story high,

covered the entire top of a desert rise. From its doorway one could see

fifteen miles of yellow, rolling plain, and, beyond, the interminable

ranges of bare mountains piled upon each other. Back of it lay the

great corrals and stables, where the Tropa's evening fires already sent

up myriad columns of yellow smoke. Below, in the hollow, more than a

hundred peons' houses made a vast open square, where children and

animals romped together, and the women kneeled at their eternal grinding

of corn. Out on the desert a troop of _vaqueros_ rode slowly home; and

from the river, a mile away, the endless chain of black-shawled women

carried water on their heads.... It is impossible to imagine how close

to nature the peons live on these great haciendas. Their very houses

are built of the earth upon which they stand, baked by the sun. Their

food is the corn they grow; their drink the water from the dwindled

river, carried painfully upon their heads; the clothes they wear are

spun from the wool, and their sandals cut from the hide of a newly

slaughtered steer. The animals are their constant companions, familiars

of their houses. Light and darkness are their day and night. When a

man and a woman fall in love they fly to each other without the

formalities of a courtship,--and when they are tired of each other they

simply part. Marriage is very costly (six pesos to the priest), and is

considered a very swagger extra; but it is no more binding than the most

casual attachment. And of course jealousy is a stabbing matter.

We dined in one of the lofty, barren _salas_ of the Casa Grande; a room

with a ceiling eighteen feet high, and walls of noble proportions,

covered with cheap American wallpaper. A gigantic mahogany sideboard

occupied one side of the place, but we had no knives and forks. There

was a tiny fireplace, in which a fire was never lighted, yet the chill

of death abode there day and night. The room next door was hung with

heavy, spotted brocade, though there was no rug on the concrete floor.

No pipes and no plumbing in all the house,--you went to the well or the

river for water. And candles the only light! Of course the _dueno_ had

long fled the country; but the hacienda in its prime must have been as

splendid and as uncomfortable as a medieval castle.

The _cura_ or priest of the hacienda church presided at dinner. To him

were brought the choicest viands, which he sometimes passed to his

favorites after helping himself. We drank _sotol_ and _aguamiel_, while

the _cura_ made away with a whole bottle of looted anisette. Exhilarated

by this, His Reverence descanted upon the virtues of the confessional,

especially where young girls were concerned. He also made us understand

that he possessed certain feudal rights over new brides. "The girls,

here," he said, "are very passionate...."

I noticed that the rest didn't laugh much at this, though they were

outwardly respectful. After we were out of the room, Jose Valiente

hissed, shaking so that he could hardly speak: "I know the dirty ----!

And my sister...! The Revolucion will have something to say about these

_curas_!" Two high Constitutionalist officers afterward hinted at a

little-known program to drive the priests out of Mexico; and Villa's

hostility to the _curas_ is well known.

Patricio was harnessing the coach when I came out in the morning, and

the Tropa were saddling up. The doctor, who was remaining with the

General, strolled up to my friend, Trooper Juan Vallejo.

"That's a pretty horse you've got there," he said, "and a nice rifle.

Lend them to me."

"But I haven't any other----" began Juan.

"I am your superior officer," returned the doctor. And that was the last

we ever saw of doctor, horse and rifle.

I said farewell to the General, who was lying in torture in bed, sending

bulletins to his mother by telephone every fifteen minutes. "May you

journey happily," he said. "Write the truth. I commend you to

Pablito."

*CHAPTER IV*

*LA TROPA ON THE MARCH*

And so I got inside the coach, with Rafaelito, Pablo Seanes, and his

mistress. She was a strange creature. Young, slender, and beautiful,

she was poison and a stone to everybody but Pablo. I never saw her

smile and never heard her say a gentle word. Sometimes she treated us

with dull ferocity; sometimes with bestial indifference. But Pablo she

cradled like a baby. When he lay across the seat with his head in her

lap, she would hug it fiercely to her breast, making noises like a

tigress with her young.

Patricio handed down his guitar from the box, where he kept it, and to

Rafael's accompaniment the Lieutenant-Colonel sang love-ballads in a

cracked voice. Every Mexican knows hundreds of these. They are not

written down, but often composed extemporaneously, and handed along by

word of mouth. Some of them are very beautiful, some grotesque, and

others as satirical as any French popular song. He sang:

_"Exiled I wandered through the world--_

_Exiled by the government._

_I came back at the end of the year,_

_Drawn by the fondness of love._

_I went away with the purpose_

_Of staying away forever._

_And the love of a woman was the only thing_

_That made me come back."_

And then "_Los Hijos de la Noche_":

_"I am of the children of the night_

_Who wander aimlessly in the darkness._

_The beautiful moon with its golden rays_

_Is the companion of my sorrows._

_"I am going to lose myself from thee,_

_Exhausted with weeping;_

_I am going sailing, sailing,_

_By the shores of the sea._

_"You will see at the time of our parting_

_I will not allow you to love another._

_For if so it should be, I would ruin your face._

_And many blows we would give one another._

_"So I am going to become an American._

_Go with God, Antonia._

_Say farewell to my friends._

_O may the Americans allow me to pass_

_And open a saloon_

_On the other side of the River!"_

The Hacienda of El Centro turned out to give us lunch. And there

Fidencio offered me his horse to ride for the afternoon.

The Tropa had already ridden on ahead, and I could see them, strung out

for half a mile in the black mesquite brush, the tiny

red-white-and-green flag bobbing at their head. The mountains had

withdrawn somewhere beyond the horizon, and we rode in the midst of a

great bowl of desert, rolling up at the edges to meet the furnace-blue

of the Mexican sky. Now that I was out of the coach, a great silence,

and a peace beyond anything I ever felt, wrapped me around. It is

almost impossible to get objective about the desert; you sink into

it,--become a part of it. Galloping along, I soon caught up with the

Tropa.

"Aye, meester!" they shouted. "Here comes meester on a horse! _Que

tal_, meester? How goes it? Are you going to fight with us?"

But Captain Fernando at the head of the column turned and roared: "Come

here, meester!" The big man was grinning with delight. "You shall ride

with me," he shouted, clapping me on the back. "Drink, now," and he

produced a bottle of _sotol_ about half full. "Drink it all. Show

you're a man." "It's too much," I laughed. "Drink it," yelled the

chorus as the Tropa crowded up to see. I drank it. A howl of laughter

and applause went up. Fernando leaned over and gripped my hand. "Good

for you, _companero_!" he bellowed, rolling with mirth. The men crowded

around, amused and interested. Was I going to fight with them? Where

did I come from? What was I doing? Most of them had never heard of

reporters, and one hazarded the opinion darkly that I was a Gringo and a

Porfirista, and ought to be shot.

The rest, however, were entirely opposed to this view. No Porfirista

would possibly drink that much _sotol_ at a gulp. Isidro Amayo declared

that he had been in a brigade in the first Revolution which was

accompanied by a reporter, and that he was called _Corresponsal de

Guerra_. Did I like Mexico? I said: "I am very fond of Mexico. I like

Mexicans too. And I like _sotol_, _aguardiente_, _mescal_, _tequila_,

_pulque_, and other Mexican customs!" They shouted with laughter.

Captain Fernando leaned over and patted my arm. "Now you are with the

men (_los hombres_.) When we win the Revolucion it will be a government

by the men,--not by the rich. We are riding over the lands of the men.

They used to belong to the rich, but now they belong to me and to the

_companeros_."

"And you will be the army?" I asked.

"When the Revolucion is won," was the astonishing reply, "there will be

no more army. The men are sick of armies. It is by armies that Don

Porfirio robbed us."

"But if the United States should invade Mexico?"

A perfect storm broke everywhere. "We are more _valiente_ than the

Americanos--The cursed Gringos would get no further south than

Juarez--Let's see them try it--We'd drive them back over the Border on

the run, and burn their capital the next day...!"

"No," said Fernando, "you have more money and more soldiers. But the

men would protect us. We need no army. The men would be fighting for

their houses and their women."

"What are you fighting for?" I asked. Juan Sanchez, the color-bearer,

looked at me curiously. "Why, it is good, fighting. You don't have to

work in the mines...!"

Manuel Paredes said: "We are fighting to restore Francisco I. Madero to

the Presidency." This extraordinary statement is printed in the program

of the Revolution. And everywhere the Constitutionalist soldiers are

known as "Maderistas." "I knew him," continued Manuel, slowly. "He was

always laughing, always."

"Yes," said another, "whenever there was any trouble with a man, and all

the rest wanted to fight him or put him in prison, Pancho Madero said:

'Just let me talk to him a few minutes. I can bring him around.'"

"He loved _bailes_," an Indian said. "Many a time I've seen him dance

all night, and all the next day, and the next night. He used to come to

the great Haciendas and make speeches. When he began the peons hated

him; when he ended they were crying...."

Here a man broke out into a droning, irregular tune, such as always

accompanies the popular ballads that spring up in thousands on every

occasion:

_"In Nineteen hundred and ten_

_Madero was imprisoned_

_In the National Palace_

_The eighteenth of February_

_"Four days he was imprisoned_

_In the Hall of the Intendancy_

_Because he did not wish_

_To renounce the Presidency_

_"Then Blanquet and Felix Diaz_

_Martyred him there_

_They were the hangmen_

_Feeding on his hate._

_"They crushed...._

_Until he fainted_

_With play of cruelty_

_To make him resign._

_"Then with hot irons_

_They burned him without mercy_

_And only unconsciousness_

_Calmed the awful flames._

_"But it was all in vain_

_Because his mighty courage_

_Preferred rather to die_

_His was a great heart!_

_"This was the end of the life_

_Of him who was the redeemer_

_Of the Indian Republic_

_And of all the poor._

_"They took him out of the Palace_

_And tell us he was killed in an assault_

_What a cynicism!_

_What a shameless lie!_

_"O Street of Lecumberri_

_Your cheerfulness has ended forever_

_For through you passed Madero_

_To the Penitentiary._

_"That twenty-second of February_

_Will always be remembered in the Indian Republic._

_God has pardoned him_

_And the Virgin of Guadelupe._

_"Good-bye Beautiful Mexico_

_Where our leader died_

_Good-bye to the palace_

_Whence he issued a living corpse_

_"Senores, there is nothing eternal_

_Nor anything sincere in life_

_See what happened to Don Francisco I. Madero!'_

By the time he was half-way through, the entire Tropa was humming the

tune, and when he finished there was a moment of jingling silence.

"We are fighting," said Isidro Amayo, "for Libertad."

"What do you mean by Libertad?"

"Libertad is when I can _do what I want_!"

"But suppose it hurts somebody else?"

He shot back at me Benito Juarez' great sentence:

"Peace is the respect for the rights of others!"

I wasn't prepared for that. It startled me, this barefooted _meztizo's_

conception of Liberty. I submit that it is the only correct definition

of Liberty--_to do what I want to_! Americans quote it to me

triumphantly as an instance of Mexican irresponsibility. But I think it

is a better definition than ours--Liberty is the right to do what the

Courts want. Every Mexican schoolboy knows the definition of peace and

seems to understand pretty well what it means, too. But, they say,

Mexicans don't want peace. That is a lie, and a foolish one. Let

Americans take the trouble to go through the Maderista army, asking

whether they want peace or not! The people are sick of war.

But, just to be square, I'll have to report Juan Sanchez' remark:

"Is there war in the United States now?" he asked.

"No," I said untruthfully.

"No war at all?" He meditated for a moment. "How do you pass the time,

then...?"

Just about then somebody saw a coyote sneaking through the brush, and

the entire Tropa gave chase with a whoop. They scattered rollicking

over the desert, the late sun flashing from cartridge-belts and spurs,

the ends of their bright serapes flying out behind. Beyond them, the

scorched world sloped gently up, and a range of far lilac mountains

jumped in the heat waves like a bucking horse. By here, if tradition is

right, passed the steel-armored Spaniards in their search for gold, a

blaze of crimson and silver that has left the desert cold and dull ever

since. And, topping a rise, we came upon the first sight of the

Hacienda of La Mimbrera, a walled enclosure of houses strong enough to

stand a siege, stretching steeply down a hill, with the magnificent Casa

Grande at the top.

In front of this house, which had been sacked and burned by Orozco's

General, Che Che Campa, two years before, the coach was drawn up. A

huge fire had been kindled, and ten _companeros_ were slaughtering

sheep. Into the red glare of the firelight they staggered, with the

struggling, squealing sheep in their arms, its blood fountaining upon

the ground, shining in the fierce light like something phosphorescent.

The officers and I dined in the house of the _administrador_ Don Jesus,

the most beautiful specimen of manhood I have ever seen. He was much

over six feet tall, slender, white-skinned--a pure Spanish type of the

highest breed. At one end of his dining-room, I remember, hung a

placard embroidered in red, white and green: "Viva Mexico!" and at the

other, a second, which read: "Viva Jesus!"

It was after dinner, as I stood at the fire, wondering where I was to

sleep, that Captain Fernando touched me on the arm.

"Will you sleep with the _companeros_?"

We walked across the great open square, in the furious light of the

desert stars, to a stone store-house set apart. Inside, a few candles

stuck against the wall illumined the rifles stacked in the corners, the

saddles on the floor, and the blanket-rolled _companeros_ with their

heads on them. One or two were awake, talking and smoking. In a

corner, three sat muffled in their serapes, playing cards. Five or six

had voices and a guitar. They were singing "Pascual Orozco," beginning:

_"They say that Pascual Orozco has turned his coat_

_Because Don Terrazzas seduced him;_

_They gave him many millions and they bought him_

_And sent him to overthrow the government._

_"Orozco believed it_

_And to the war he went;_

_But the Maderista cannon_

_Was his calamity._

_"If to thy window shall come Porfirio Diaz,_

_Give him for charity some cold tortillas;_

_If to thy window shall come General Huerta,_

_Spit in his face and slam the door._

_"If to thy window shall come Inez Salazar,_

_Lock your trunk so that he can't steal;_

_If to thy window shall come Maclovio Herrera,_

_Give him dinner and put the cloth on the table."_

They didn't distinguish me at first, but soon one of the card-players

said: "Here comes Meester!" At that the others roused, and woke the

rest. "That's right--it's good to sleep with the _hombres_--take this

place, amigo--here's my saddle--here there is no crookedness--here a man

goes straight...."

"May you pass a happy night, _companero_," they said. "Till morning,

then."

Pretty soon somebody shut the door. The room became full of smoke and

fetid with human breath. What little silence was left from the chorus

of snoring was entirely obliterated by the singing, which kept up, I

guess, until dawn. The _companeros_ had fleas....

But I rolled up in my blankets and lay down upon the concrete floor very

happily. And I slept better than I had before in Mexico.

At dawn we were in the saddle, larking up a steep roll of barren desert

to get warm. It was bitter cold. The Tropa were wrapped in serapes up

to their eyes, so that they looked like colored toadstools under their

great sombreros. The level rays of the sun, burning as they fell upon

my face, caught them unaware, glorifying the serapes to more brilliant

colors than they possessed. Isidro Amayo's was of deep blue and yellow

spirals; Juan Sanchez had one brick red, Captain Fernando's was green

and cerise; against them flashed a purple and black zigzag pattern....

We looked back to see the coach pulled to a stop, and Patricio waving to

us. Two of the mules had given out, raw from the traces, and tottering

with the fatigue of the last two days. The Tropa scattered to look for

mules. Soon they came back, driving two great beautiful animals that

had never seen harness. No sooner had they smelled the coach than they

made a desperate break for freedom. And now the Tropa instantly went

back to their native profession--they became _vaqueros_. It was a

pretty sight, the rope-coils swinging in the air, the sudden snake-like

shoot of the loops, the little horses bracing themselves against the

shock of the running mule. Those mules were demons. Time after time

they broke the _riatas_; twice they overturned horse and rider. Pablo

came to the rescue. He got on Sabas's horse, drove in the spurs, and

went after one mule. In three minutes he had roped him by the leg,

thrown him, and tied him. Then he took the second with equal dispatch.

It was not for nothing that Pablo was Lieutenant-Colonel at twenty-six.

Not only could he fight better than his men, but he could ride better,

rope better, shoot better, chop wood better, and dance better.

The mules' legs were tied, and they were dragged with ropes to the

coach, where the harness was slipped on them in spite of their frantic

struggles. When all was ready, Patricio got on the box, seized the

whip, and told us to cut away. The wild animals scrambled to their

feet, bucking and squealing. Above the uproar came the crack of the

heavy whip, and Patricio's bellow: "_Andale! Ujos de la Gran' Ch----!_"

and they jerked forward, running, the big coach taking the arroyos like

an express train. Soon it vanished behind its own pall of dust, and

appeared hours afterward, crawling up the side of a great hill, miles

away....

Panchito was eleven years old, already a trooper with a rifle too heavy

for him, and a horse that they had to lift him on. His _compadre_ was

Victoriano, a veteran of fourteen. Seven others of the Tropa were under

seventeen. And there was a sullen, Indian-faced woman, riding

side-saddle, who wore two cartridge-belts. She rode with the

_hombres_--slept with them in the cuartels.

"Why are you fighting?" I asked her.

She jerked her head toward the fierce figure of Julian Reyes.

"Because he is," she answered. "He who stands under a good tree is

sheltered by a good shade."

"A good rooster will crow in any chicken-coop," capped Isidro.

"A parrot is green all over," chimed in someone else.

"Faces we see, but hearts we do not comprehend," said Jose,

sentimentally.

At noon we roped a steer, and cut his throat. And because there was no

time to build a fire, we ripped the meat from the carcase and ate it

raw.

"_Oiga_, meester," shouted Jose. "Do the United States soldiers eat raw

meat?"

I said I didn't think they did.

"It is good for the _hombres_. In the campaign we have no time for

anything but _carne crudo_. It makes us brave."

By late afternoon we had caught up with the coach, and galloped with it

down through the dry arroyo and up through the other side, past the

great _ribota_ court that flanks the Hacienda of La Zarca. Unlike La

Mimbrera, the Casa Grande here stands on a level place, with the peons'

houses in long rows at its flanks, and a flat desert barren of chaparral

for twenty miles in front. Che Che Campa also paid a visit to La Zarca.

The big house is a black and gaping ruin.

*CHAPTER V*

*WHITE NIGHTS AT ZARCA*

Of course, I took up quarters at the cuartel. And right here I want to

mention one fact. Americans had insisted that the Mexican was

fundamentally dishonest--that I might expect to have my outfit stolen

the first day out. Now for two weeks I lived with as rough a band of

ex-outlaws as there was in the army. They were without discipline and

without education. They were, many of them, Gringo-haters. They had not

been paid a cent for six weeks, and some were so desperately poor that

they couldn't boast sandals or serapes. I was a stranger with a good

outfit, unarmed. I had a hundred and fifty pesos, which I put

conspicuously at the head of my bed when I slept. And I never lost a

thing. But more than that, I was not permitted to pay for my food; and

in a company where money was scarce and tobacco almost unknown, I was

kept supplied with all I could smoke by the _companeros_. Every

suggestion from me that I should pay for it was an insult.

The only thing possible was to hire music for a _baile_. Long after Juan

Sanchez and I rolled up in our blankets that night, we could hear the

rhythm of the music, and the shouts of the dancers. It must have been

midnight when somebody threw open the door and yelled: "Meester!

_Oiga_, meester! Are you asleep? Come to the _baile_! _Arriba_!

_Andale_!"

"Too sleepy!" I said. After some further argument the messenger

departed, but in ten minutes back he came. "El Capitan Fernando orders

you to come at once! _Vamonos_!" Now the others woke up. "Come to the

_baile_, meester!" they shouted. Juan Sanchez sat up and began pulling

on his shoes. "Now we're off!" said he. "The meester is going to

dance! Captain's orders! Come on, meester!"

"I'll go if all the Tropa does," I said. They raised a yell at that,

and the night was full of chuckling men pulling on their clothes.

Twenty of us reached the house in a body. The mob of peons blocking

door and window opened to let us pass. "The meester!" they cried. "The

meester's going to dance!"

Capitan Fernando threw his arms about me, roaring: "Here he comes, the

_companero_! Dance now! Go to it! They're going to dance the _jota_!"

"But I don't know how to dance the _jota_!"

Patricio, flushed and panting, seized me by the arm. "Come on, it's

easy! I'll introduce you to the best girl in the Zarca!"

There was nothing to do. The window was jammed with faces, and a

hundred tried to crowd in at the door. It was an ordinary room in a

peon's house, whitewashed, with a humpy dirt floor. In the light of two

candles sat the musicians. The music struck up "_Puentes a Chihuahua_."

A grinning silence fell. I gathered the young lady under my arm, and

started the preliminary march around the room customary before the dance

begins. We waltzed painfully for a moment or two, and suddenly they all

began to yell: "_Ora_! _Ora_! _Now_!"

"What do you do now?"

"_Vuelta_! _Vuelta_! Loose her!" a perfect yell.

"But I don't know how!"

"The fool doesn't know how to dance," cried one.

Another began the mocking song:

_"The Gringos all are fools,_

_They've never been in Sonora,_

_And when they want to say: 'Diez Reales,'_

_They call it 'Dollar an' a quarta' ...."_

But Patricio bounded into the middle of the floor, and Sabas after him;

each seized a _muchacha_ from the line of women sitting along one end of

the room. And as I led my partner back to her seat, they "_vuelta'd_."

First a few waltz steps,--then the man whirled away from the girl,

snapping his fingers, throwing one arm up to cover his face, while the

girl put one hand on her hip and danced after him. They approached each

other, receded, danced around each other. The girls were dumpy and

dull, Indian-faced and awkward, bowed at the shoulder from much grinding

of corn and washing of clothes. Some of the men had on heavy boots,

some none; many wore pistols and cartridge-belts, and a few carried

rifles slung from their shoulders.

The dance was always preceded by a grand march-around; then, after the

couple had danced twice the circuit of the room, they walked again.

There were two-steps, waltz and mazurka beside the _jota_. Each girl

kept her eyes on the ground, never spoke, and stumbled heavily after

you. Add to this a dirt floor full of arroyos, and you have a form of

torture unequaled anywhere in the world. It seemed to me I danced for

hours, spurred on by the chorus: "Dance, meester! _No floje_! Keep it

up! Don't quit!"

Later there was another jota, and here's where I almost got into

trouble. I danced this one successfully--with another girl. And,

afterward, when I asked my original partner to two-step, she was

furiously angry.

"You shamed me before them all," said she. "_You_--you said you didn't

know how to dance the _jota_!" As we marched around the room, she

appealed to her friends: "Domingo! Juan! Come out and take me away

from this Gringo! He won't dare to do anything!"

Half a dozen of them started onto the floor, and the rest looked on. It

was a ticklish moment. But all at once the good Fernando glided in

front, a revolver in his hand.

"The Americano is my friend!" said he. "Get back there and mind your

business!..."

The horses were tired, so we rested a day in La Zarca. Behind the Casa

Grande lay a ruined garden, full of gray alamo trees, figs, vines, and

great barrel-cactuses. It was walled around by high adobe walls on

three sides, over one of which the ancient white tower of the church

floated in the blue sky. The fourth side opened upon a reservoir of

yellow water, and beyond it stretched the western desert, miles upon

miles of tawny desolation. Trooper Marin and I lay under a fig tree,

watching the vultures sail over us on quiet wing. Suddenly the silence

was broken by loud, swift music.

Pablo had found a pianola in the church, where it had escaped Che Che

Campa's notice the previous year; with it was one roll, the "Merry Widow

Waltz." Nothing would do but that we carry the instrument out into the

ruined patio. We took turns playing the thing all day long; Rafaelito

volunteering the information that the "Merry Widow" was Mexico's most

popular piece. A Mexican, he said, had composed it.

The finding of the pianola suggested that we give another _baile_ that

night, in the portico of the Casa Grande itself. Candles were stuck

upon the pillars, the faint light flickering upon broken walls, burned

and blackened doorways, the riot of wild vines that had twisted

unchecked around the roof-beams. The entire patio was crowded with

blanketed men, making holiday, even yet a little uncomfortable in the

great house which they had never been allowed to enter. As soon as the

orchestra had finished a dance, the pianola immediately took up the

task. Dance followed dance, without any rest. A barrel of _sotol_

further complicated things. As the evening wore on the assembly got

more and more exhilarated. Sabas, who was Pablo's orderly, led off with

Pablo's mistress. I followed. Immediately afterward Pablo hit her on

the head with the butt end of his revolver, and said he'd shoot her if

she danced with anyone else, and her partner too. After sitting some

moments meditating, Sabas rose, pulled his revolver, and informed the

harpist that he had played a wrong note. Then he shot at him. Other

_companeros_ disarmed Sabas, who immediately went to sleep in the middle

of the dance-floor.

The interest in Meester's dancing soon shifted to other phenomena. I

sat down beside Julian Reyes, he with the Christ and Virgin on the front

of his sombrero. He was far gone in _sotol_--his eyes burned like a

fanatic's.

He turned on me suddenly:

"Are you going to fight with us?"

"No," I said. "I am a correspondent. I am forbidden to fight."

"It is a lie," he cried. "You don't fight because you are afraid to

fight. In the face of God, our Cause is Just."

"Yes, I know that. But my orders are not to fight."

"What do I care for orders?" he shrieked. "We want no correspondents.

We want no words printed in a book. We want rifles and killing, and if

we die we shall be caught up among the saints! Coward! Huertista!..."

"That's enough!" cried someone, and I looked up to see Longinos Gueereca

standing over me. "Julian Reyes, you know nothing. This _companero_

comes thousands of miles by the sea and the land to tell his countrymen

the truth of the fight for Liberty. He goes into battle without arms,

he's braver than you are, because you have a rifle. Get out now, and

don't bother him any more!"

He sat down where Julian had been, smiled his homely, gentle smile, and

took both my hands in his.

"We shall be _compadres_, eh?" said Longinos Gueereca. "We shall sleep

in the same blankets, and always be together. And when we get to the

Cadena I shall take you to my home, and my father shall make you my

brother.... I will show you the lost gold-mines of the Spaniards, the

richest mines in the world.... We'll work them together, eh? ... We'll

be rich, eh?..."

And from that time on until the end, Longinos Gueereca and I were always

together.

But the _baile_ grew wilder and wilder. Orchestra and pianola

alternated without a break. Everybody was drunk now. Pablo was

boasting horribly of killing defenseless prisoners. Occasionally, some

insult would be passed, and there would be a snapping of rifle levers

all over the place. Then perhaps the poor exhausted women would begin

to go home; and what an ominous shout would go up: "_No vaya_! Don't

go! Stop! Come back here and dance! Come back here!" And the dejected

procession would halt and straggle back. At four o'clock, when somebody

started the report that a Gringo Huertista spy was among us, I decided

to go to bed. But the _baile_ kept up until seven....

*CHAPTER VI*

*"QUIEN VIVE?"*

At dawn I woke to the sound of shooting, and a cracked bugle blowing

wildly. Juan Sanchez stood in front of the cuartel, sounding Reveille;

he didn't know which call Reveille was, so he played them all.

Patricio had roped a steer for breakfast. The animal started on a

plunging, bellowing run for the desert, Patricio's horse galloping

alongside. The rest of the Tropa, only their eyes showing over their

serapes, kneeled with their rifles to their shoulders. Crash! In that

still air, the enormous sound of guns labored heavily up. The running

steer jerked sideways,--his screaming reached us faintly. Crash! He

fell headlong. His feet kicked in the air. Patricio's pony jerked

roughly up, and his serape flapped like a banner. Just then the

enormous sun rose bodily out of the east, pouring clear light over the

barren plain like a sea....

Pablo emerged from the Casa Grande, leaning on his wife's shoulder.

"I am going to be very ill," he groaned, suiting the action to the word.

"Juan Reed will ride my horse."

He got into the coach, weakly took the guitar, and sang:

_"I remained at the foot of a green maguey_

_My ungrateful love went away with another._

_I awoke to the song of the lark:_

_Oh, what a hangover I have, and the barkeeps won't trust me!_

_"O God, take away this sickness,_

_I feel as if I were surely going to die--_

_The Virgin of pulque and whisky must save me:_

_O what a hangover, and nothing to drink!..."_

It is some sixty-five miles from La Zarca to the Hacienda of La Cadena,

where the Tropa was to be stationed. We rode it in one day, without

water and without food. The coach soon left us far behind. Pretty soon,

the barrenness of the land gave way to spiny, hostile vegetation,--the

cactus and the mesquite. We strung out along a deep rut between the

gigantic chaparral, choked with the mighty cloud of alkali dust,

scratched and torn by the thorny brush. Sometimes emerging in an open

space, we could see the straight road climbing the summits of the

rolling desert, until the eye couldn't follow it; but we knew it must be

there, still farther and farther again. Not a breath of wind stirred.

The vertical sun beat down with a fury that made one reel. And most of

the troop, who had been drunk the night before, began to suffer

terribly. Their lips glazed, cracked, turned dark blue. I didn't hear a

single word of complaint; but there was nothing of the lighthearted

joking and rollicking of other days. Jose Valiente taught me how to

chew mesquite twigs, but that didn't help much.

When we had been riding for hours, Fidencio pointed ahead, saying

huskily: "Here comes a _christiano_!" When you realize that word

_christiano_, which now means simply Man, is descended among the Indians

from immeasurable antiquity,--and when the man that says it looks

exactly as Guatemozin might have looked, it gives you curious

sensations. The _christiano_ in question was a very aged Indian driving

a burro. No, he said, he didn't carry any water. But Sabas leaped from

his horse and tumbled the old man's pack on the ground.

"Ah!" he cried; "fine! _Tres piedras_!" and held up a root of the

_sotol_ plant, which looks like a varnished century-plant, and oozes

with intoxicating juices. We divided it as you divide an artichoke.

Pretty soon everybody felt better....

It was at the end of the afternoon that we rounded a shoulder of the

desert and saw ahead the gigantic ashen alamo trees that surrounded the

spring of the Hacienda of Santo Domingo. A pillar of brown dust, like

the smoke of a burning city, rose from the corral, where _vaqueros_ were

roping horses. Desolate and alone stood the Casa Grande, burned by Che

Che Campa a year ago. And by the spring, at the foot of the alamo

trees, a dozen wandering peddlers squatted around their fire, their

burros munching corn. From the fountain to the adobe houses and back

moved an endless chain of women water-carriers,--the symbol of northern

Mexico.

"Water!" we shouted, joyously, galloping down the hill. The

coach-horses were already at the spring with Patricio. Leaping from

their saddles, the Tropa threw themselves on their bellies. Men and

horses indiscriminately thrust in their heads, and drank and drank....

It was the most glorious sensation I have ever felt.

"Who has a cigarro?" cried somebody. For a few blessed minutes we lay

on our backs smoking. The sound of music--gay music--made me sit up.

And there, across my vision, moved the strangest procession in the

world. First came a ragged peon carrying the flowering branch of some

tree. Behind him, another bore upon his head a little box that looked

like a coffin, painted in broad strips of blue, pink and silver. There

followed four men, carrying a sort of canopy made of gay-colored

bunting. A woman walked beneath it, though the canopy hid her down to

the waist; but on top lay the body of a little girl, with bare feet and

little brown hands crossed on her breast. There was a wreath of paper

flowers in her hair, and her whole body was heaped with them. A harpist

brought up the rear, playing a popular waltz called "_Recuerdos de

Durango_." The funeral procession moved slowly and gaily along, passing

the _ribota_ court, where the players never ceased their handball game,

to the little Campo Santo. "Bah!" spat Julian Reyes furiously. "That

is a blasphemy to the dead!"

In the late sunshine the desert was a glowing thing. We rode in a

silent, enchanted land, that seemed some kingdom under the sea. All

around were great cactuses colored red, blue, purple, yellow, as coral

is on the ocean bed. Behind us, to the west, the coach rolled along in

a glory of dust like Elijah's chariot.... Eastward, under a sky already

darkening to stars, were the rumpled mountains behind which lay La

Cadena, the advance post of the Maderista army. It was a land to

love--this Mexico--a land to fight for. The ballad-singers suddenly

began the interminable song of "The Bull-Fight," in which the Federal

chiefs are the bulls, and the Maderista generals the _torreros_; and as

I looked at the gay, lovable, humble _hombres_ who had given so much of

their lives and of their comfort to the brave fight, I couldn't help but

think of the little speech Villa made to the foreigners who left

Chihuahua in the first refugee train:

"This is the latest news for you to take to your people. There shall be

no more palaces in Mexico. The _tortillas_ of the poor are better than

the bread of the rich. Come!..."

It was late night--past eleven--when the coach broke down on a stretch

of rocky road between high mountains. I stopped to get my blankets; and

when I started on again, the _companeros_ had long vanished down the

winding road. Somewhere near, I knew, was La Cadena. At any minute now

a sentinel might start up out of the chaparral. For about a mile I

descended a steep road that was often the dried bed of a river, winding

down between high mountains. It was a black night, without stars, and

bitter cold. Finally, the mountains opened into a vast plain, and

across that I could faintly see the tremendous range of the Cadena, and

the pass that the Tropa was to guard. Barely three leagues beyond that

pass lay Mapimi, held by twelve hundred Federals. But the hacienda was

still hidden by a roll of the desert.

I was quite upon it, without being challenged, before I saw it, an

indistinct white square of buildings on the other side of a deep arroyo.

And still no sentinel. "That's funny," I said to myself. "They don't

keep very good watch here." I plunged down into the arroyo, and climbed

up the other side. In one of the great rooms of the Casa Grande were

lights and music. Peering through, I saw the indefatigable Sabas

whirling in the mazes of the _jota_, and Isidro Amayo, and Jose

Valiente. A _baile_! Just then a man with a gun lounged out of the

lighted doorway.

"Quien vive?" he shouted, lazily.

"Madero!" I shouted.

"May he live!" returned the sentinel, and went back to the _baile_....

*CHAPTER VII*

*AN OUTPOST OF THE REVOLUTION*

There were a hundred and fifty of us stationed at La Cadena, the advance

guard of all the Maderista army to the West. Our business was to guard

a pass, the Puerta de la Cadena; but the troops were quartered at the

hacienda, ten miles away. It stood upon a little plateau, a deep arroyo

on one side, at the bottom of which a sunken river came to the surface

for perhaps a hundred yards, and vanished again. As far as the eye

could reach up and down the broad valley was the fiercest kind of

desert,--dried creek-beds, and a thicket of chaparral, cactus and sword

plant.

Directly east lay the Puerta, breaking the tremendous mountain range

that blotted out half the sky and extended north and south beyond

vision, wrinkled like a giant's bed-clothes. The desert tilted up to

meet the gap, and beyond was nothing but the fierce blue of stainless

Mexican sky. From the Puerta you could see fifty miles across the vast

arid plain that the Spaniards named _Llano de los Gigantes_, where the

little mountains lie tumbled about; and four leagues away the low gray

houses of Mapimi. There lay the enemy; twelve hundred _colorados_, or

Federal irregulars, under the infamous Colonel Argumendo. The

_colorados_ are the bandits that made Orozco's revolution. They were so

called because their flag was red, and because their hands were red with

slaughter, too. They swept through Northern Mexico, burning, pillaging

and robbing the poor. In Chihuahua, they cut the soles from the feet of

one poor devil, and drove him a mile across the desert before he died.

And I have seen a city of four thousand souls reduced to _five_ after a

visit by the _colorados_. When Villa took Torreon, there was no mercy

for the _colorados_; they are always shot.

The first day we reached La Cadena, twelve of them rode up to

reconnoiter. Twenty-five of the Tropa were on guard at the Fuerta.

They captured one _colorado_. They made him get off his horse, and took

away his rifle, clothes and shoes. THen they made him run naked through

a hundred yards of chaparral and cactus, shooting at him. Juan Sanchez

finally dropped him, screaming, and thereby won the rifle, which he

brought back as a present to me. The _colorado_ they left to the great

Mexican buzzards, which flap lazily above the desert all day long.

When all this happened, my _compadre_, Captain Longinos Gueereca, and

Trooper Juan Vallejo, and I, had borrowed the Colonel's coach for a trip

to the dusty little rancho of Bruquilla,--Longinos' home. It lay four

desert leagues to the north, where a spring burst miraculously out of a

little white hill. Old Gueereca was a white-haired peon in sandals. He

had been born a slave on one of the great haciendas; but years of toil,

too appalling to realize, had made him that rare being in Mexico, the

independent owner of a small property. He had ten children,--soft,

dark-skinned girls, and sons that looked like New England

farmhands,--and a daughter in the grave.

The Gueerecas were proud, ambitious, warm-hearted folk. Longinos said:

"This is my dearly loved friend, Juan Reed, and my brother." And the

old man and his wife put both their arms around me and patted me on the

back, in the affectionate way Mexicans embrace.

"My family owes nothing to the Revolucion," said 'Gino, proudly.

"Others have taken money and horses and wagons. The _jefes_ of the army

have become rich from the property of the great haciendas. The

Gueerecas have given all to the Maderistas, and have taken nothing but

my rank...."

The old man, however, was a little bitter. Holding up a horsehair rope,

he said: "Three years ago I had four _riatas_ like this. Now I have

only one. One the _colorados_ took, and the other Urbina's people took,

and the last one Jose Bravo.... What difference does it make which side

robs you?" But he didn't mean it all. He was immensely proud of his

youngest son, the bravest officer in all the army.

We sat in the long adobe room, eating the most exquisite cheese, and

_tortillas_ with fresh goat-butter,--the deaf old mother apologizing in

a loud voice for the poverty of the food, and her warlike son reciting

his personal Iliad of the nine-days' fight around Torreon.

"We got so close," he was saying, "that the hot air and burning powder

stung us in the face. We got too close to shoot, so we clubbed our

rifles----" Just then all the dogs began to bark at once. We leaped

from our seats. One didn't know what to expect in the Cadena those

days. It was a small boy on horseback, shouting that the _colorados_

were entering the Puerta--and off he galloped.

Longinos roared to put the mules in the coach. The entire family fell

to work with a fury, and in five minutes Longinos dropped on one knee

and kissed his father's hand, and we were tearing down the road. "Don't

be killed! Don't be killed! Don't be killed!" we could hear the Senora

wailing.

We passed a wagon loaded with corn-stalks, with a whole family of women

and children, two tin trunks, and an iron bed, perched on top. The man

of the family rode a burro. Yes, the _colorados_ were coming--thousands

of them pouring through the Puerta. The last time the _colorados_ had

come they had killed his daughter. For three years there had been war

in this valley, and he had not complained. Because it was for the

Patria. Now they would go to the United States where---- But Juan

lashed the mules cruelly, and we heard no more. Farther along was an

old man without shoes, placidly driving some goats. Had he heard about

the _colorados_? Well, there had been some gossip about _colorados_.

Were they coming through the Puerta, and how many?

"_Pues, quien sabe, senor!_"

At last, yelling at the staggering mules, we came into camp just in time

to see the victorious Tropa straggle in across the desert, firing off

many more rounds of ammunition than they had used in the fight. They

moved low along the ground, scarcely higher on their broncos than the

drab mesquite through which they flashed, all big sombreros and flapping

gay serapes, the last sunshine on their lifted rifles.

That very night came a courier from General Urbina, saying that he was

ill and wanted Pablo Seanes to come back. So off went the great coach,

and Pablo's mistress, and Raphaelito, the hunchback, and Fidencio, and

Patricio. Pablo said to me: "Juanito, if you want to come back with us,

you shall sit beside me in the coach." Patricio and Raphaelito begged

me to come. But I had got so far to the front now that I didn't want to

turn back. Then the next day my friends and _companeros_ of the Tropa,

whom I had learned to know so well in our march across the desert,

received orders to move to Jarralitos. Only Juan Vallejo and Longinos

Gueereca stayed behind.

The Cadena's new garrison were a different kind of men. God knows where

they came from, but it was a place where the troopers had literally

starved. They were the most wretchedly poor peons that I have ever

seen--about half of them didn't have serapes. Some fifty were known to

be _nuevos_ who had never smelt powder, about the same number were under

a dreadfully incompetent old party named Major Salazar, and the

remaining fifty were equipped with old carbines and ten rounds of

ammunition apiece. Our commanding officer was Lieutenant-Colonel

Petronilo Hernandez, who had been six years a Major in the Federal army

until the murder of Madero drove him to the other side. He was a brave,

good-hearted little man, with twisted shoulders, but years of official

army red tape had unfitted him to handle troops like these. Every

morning he issued an Order of the Day, distributing guards, posting

sentinels, and naming the officer on duty. Nobody ever read it.

Officers in that army have nothing to do with the disciplining or

ordering of soldiers, They are officers because they have been brave,

and their job is to fight at the head of their troop--that's all. The

soldiers all look up to some one General, under whom they are recruited,

as to their feudal lord. They call themselves his _gente_--his people;

and an officer of anybody else's _gente_ hasn't much authority over

them. Petronilo was of Urbina's _gente_; but two-thirds of the Cadena

garrison belonged to Arrieta's division. That's why there were no

sentinels to the west and north. Lieutenant-Colonel Alberto Redondo

guarded another pass four leagues to the south, so we thought we were

safe in that direction. True, twenty-five men did outpost duty at the

Fuerta, and the Puerta was strong....

*CHAPTER VIII*

*THE FIVE MUSKETEERS*

The Casa Grande of La Cadena had been sacked, of course, by Che Che

Campa the year before. In the patio were corraled the officers' horses.

We slept on the tiled floors of the rooms surrounding it. In the _sala_

of the owner, once barbarically decorated, pegs were driven into the

walls to hang saddles and bridles on, rifles and sabers were stacked

against the wall, and dirty blanket-rolls lay flung into the corner. At

night a fire of corn-cobs was built in the middle of the floor, and we

squatted around it, while Apolinario and fourteen-year-old Gil Tomas,

who was once a _colorado_, told stories of the Bloody Three Years.

"At the taking of Durango," said Apolinario, "I was of the _gente_ of

Captain Borunda; he that they call the _Matador_, because he always

shoots his prisoners. But when Urbina took Durango there weren't many

prisoners. So Borunda, thirsty for blood, made the rounds of all the

saloons. And in every one he would pick out some unarmed man and ask

him if he were a Federal. 'No, senor,' the man would say. 'You deserve

death because you have not told the truth!' yelled Borunda, pulling his

gun. Bang!"

We all laughed heartily at this.

"That reminds me," broke in Gil, "of the time I fought with Rojas in

Orozco's--(cursed be his mother!)--Revolucion. An old Porfirista

officer deserted to our side, and Orozco sent him out to teach the

_colorados_ (animals!) how to drill. There was one droll fellow in our

company. Oh! he had a fine sense of humor. He pretended he was too

stupid to learn the manual of arms. So this cursed old Huertista--(may

he fry in hell!)--made him drill alone.

"'Shoulder arms!' The _companero_ did it all right.

"'Present arms!' Perfectly.

"'Port arms!' He acted like he didn't know how, so the old fool went

around and took hold of the rifle.

"'This way!' says he, pulling on it.

"'Oh!' says the fellow, '_that_ way!' And he let him have the bayonet

right in the chest...."

After that Fernando Silveyra, the paymaster, recounted a few anecdotes

of the _curas_, or priests, that sounded exactly like Touraine in the

thirteenth century, or the feudal rights of landlords over their women

tenants before the French Revolution. Fernando ought to have known,

too, for he was brought up for the Church. There must have been about

twenty of us sitting around that fire, all the way from the most

miserably poor peon in the Tropa up to First Captain Longinos Gueereca.

There wasn't one of these men who had any religion at all, although once

they had all been strict Catholics. But three years of war have taught

the Mexican people many things. There will never be another Porfirio

Diaz; there will never be another Orozco Revolution; and the Catholic

Church in Mexico will never again be the voice of God.

Then Juan Santillanes, a twenty-two-year-old _subteniente_, who

seriously informed me that he was descended from the great Spanish hero,

Gil Blas, piped up the ancient disreputable ditty, which begins:

_"I am Count Oliveros_

_Of the Spanish artillery...."_

Juan proudly displayed four bullet wounds. He had killed a few

defenseless prisoners with his own gun, he said; giving promise of

growing up to be _muy matador_ (a great killer) some day. He boasted of

being the strongest and bravest man in the army. His idea of humor

seemed to be breaking eggs into the pocket of my coat. Juan was very

young for his years, but very likable.

But the best friend I had beside 'Gino Gueereca was Subteniente Luis

Martinez. They called him "_Gachupine_"--the contemptuous name for

Spaniards--because he might have stepped out of a portrait of some noble

Spanish youth by Greco. Luis was pure race--sensitive, gay and

high-spirited. He was only twenty, and had never been in battle.

Around the contour of his face was a faint black beard.

He fingered it, grinning. "Nicanor and I made a bet that we wouldn't

shave until we took Torreon...."

Luis and I slept in different rooms. But at night, when the fire had

gone out and the rest of the fellows were snoring, we sat at each

other's blankets--one night in his cuartel, the one next to

mine--talking about the world, our girls, and what we were going to be

and to do when we really got at it. When the war was over, Luis was

coming to the United States to visit me; and then we were both coming

back to Durango City to visit the Martinez family. He showed me the

photograph of a little baby, proudly boasting that he was an uncle

already. "What will you do when the bullets begin to fly?" I asked him.

"_Quien sabe?_" he laughed. "I guess I'll run!"

It was late. The sentinel at the door had long since gone to sleep.

"Don't go," said Luis, grabbing my coat. "Let's gossip a little

longer...."

'Gino, Juan Santillanes, Silveyra, Luis, Juan Vallejo and I rode up the

arroyo to bathe in a pool that was rumored to be there. It was a

scorched river bed filled with white-hot sand, rimmed with dense

mesquite and cactus. Every kilometer the hidden river showed itself for

a little space, only to disappear at a crackling white rim of alkali.

First came the horse pool, the troopers and their wretched ponies

gathered around it; one or two squatting on the rim, scooping water up

against the animals' sides with calabashes.... Above them kneeled the

women at their eternal laundry on the stones. Beyond that the ancient

path from the hacienda cut across, where the never-ending line of

black-shawled women moved with water-jars on their heads. Still farther

up were women bathers, wrapped round and round with yards of pale blue

or white cotton, and naked brown babies splashing in the shallows. And,

last of all, naked brown men, with sombreros on and bright-colored

serapes draped over their shoulders, smoked their _hojas_, squatting on

the rocks. We flushed a coyote up there, and scrambled steeply up to

the desert, pulling at our revolvers. There he went! We spurred into

the chaparral on the dead run, shooting and yelling. But of course he

got away. And later, much later, we found the mythical pool--a cool,

deep basin worn in the solid rock, with green weeds growing on the

bottom.

When we got back, 'Gino Gueereca became greatly excited, because his new

_tordillo_ horse had come from Bruquilla--a four-year-old stallion that

his father had raised for him to ride at the head of his company.

"If he is dangerous," announced Juan Santillanes, as we hurried out, "I

want to ride him first. I love to subdue dangerous horses!"

A mighty cloud of yellow dust filled all the corral, rising high into

the still air. Through it appeared the dim chaotic shapes of many

running horses. Their hoofs made dull thunder. Men were vaguely

visible, all braced legs and swinging arms, handkerchiefs bound over

their faces; wide-spreading rope coils lifted, circling. The big gray

felt the loop tighten on his neck. He trumpeted and plunged; the

_vaquero_ twisted the rope around his hip, lying back almost to the

ground, feet plowing the dirt. Another noose gripped the horse's hind

legs--and he was down. They put a saddle on him and a rope halter.

"Want to ride him, Juanito?" grinned 'Gino.

"After you," answered Juan with dignity. "He's your horse...."

But Juan Vallejo already was astride, shouting to them to loose the

ropes. With a sort of squealing roar, the _tordillo_ struggled up, and

the earth trembled to his furious fight.

We dined in the ancient kitchen of the hacienda, sitting on stools

around a packing box. The ceiling was a rich, greasy brown, from the

smoke of generations of meals. One entire end of the room was taken up

by immense adobe stoves, ovens, and fireplaces, with four or five

ancient crones bending over them, stirring pots and turning _tortillas_.

The fire was our only light, flickering strangely over the old women;

lighting up the black wall, up which the smoke fled, to wreathe around

the ceiling and finally pour from the window. There were Colonel

Petronilo, his mistress, a strangely beautiful peasant woman with a

pock-marked face, who always seemed to be laughing to herself about

something; Don Tomas, Luis Martinez, Colonel Redondo, Major Salazar,

Nicanor, and I. The Colonel's mistress seemed uncomfortable at the

table; for a Mexican peasant woman is a servant in her house. But Don

Petronilo always treated her as if she were a great lady.

Redondo had just been telling me about the girl he was going to marry.

He showed me her picture. She was even then on her way to Chihuahua to

get her wedding dress. "As soon as we take Torreon," he said.

"_Oiga, senor_!" Salazar touched me on the arm. "I have found out who

you are. You are an agent of American business men who have vast

interests in Mexico. I know all about American business. You are an

agent of the trusts. You come down here to spy upon the movement of our

troops, and then you will secretly send them word. Is it not true?"

"How could I secretly send anybody any word from here?" I asked. "We're

four days' hard ride from a telegraph line."

"Ah, _I_ know," he grinned cunningly, wabbling a finger at me. "I know

many things; I have much in the head." He was standing up now. The

Major suffered badly from gout; his legs were wrapped in yards and yards

of woolen bandages, which made them look like _tamales_. "I know _all_

about business. I have studied much in my youth. These American trusts

are invading Mexico to rob the Mexican people----"

"You're mistaken, Major," interrupted Don Petronilo sharply. "This

senor is my friend and my guest."

"Listen, _mi Coronel_," Salazar burst out with unexpected violence.

"This senor is a spy. All Americans are Porfiristas and Huertistas.

Take this warning before it is too late. I have much in the head. I am

a very smart man. Take this Gringo out and shoot him--at once. Or you

will regret it."

A clamor of voices burst out all together from the others, but it was

interrupted by another sound--a shot, and then another, and men

shouting.

Came a trooper running. "Mutiny in the ranks!" he cried. "They won't

obey orders!"

"Who won't?" snapped Don Petronilo.

"The _gente_ of Salazar!"

"Bad people!" exclaimed Nicanor as we ran. "They were _colorados_

captured when we took Torreon. Joined us so we wouldn't kill 'em.

Ordered out tonight to guard the Puerta!"

"Till to-morrow," said Salazar at this point, "I'm going to bed!"

The peons' houses at La Cadena, where the troops were quartered,

enclosed a great square, like a walled town. There were two gates. At

one we forced our way through a mob of women and peons fighting to get

out. Inside, there were dim lights from doorways, and three or four

little fires in the open air. A bunch of frightened horses crowded one

another in a corner. Men ran wildly in and out of their cuartels, with

rifles in their hands. In the center of the open space stood a group of

about fifty men, mostly armed, as if to repel an attack.

"Guard those gates!" cried the Colonel. "Don't let anybody out without

an order from me!" The running troops began to mass at the gates. Don

Petronilo walked out alone into the middle of the square.

"What's the trouble, _companeros_?" he asked quietly.

"They were going to kill us all!" yelled somebody from the darkness.

"They wanted to escape! They were going to betray us to the

_colorados_!"

"It's a lie!" cried those in the center. "We are not Don Petronilo's

_gente_! Our _jefe_ is Manuel Arrieta!"

Suddenly Longinos Gueereca, unarmed, flashed by us and fell upon them

furiously, wrenching away their rifles and throwing them far behind.

For a moment it looked as if the rebels would turn on him, but they did

not resist.

"Disarm them!" ordered Don Petronilo. "And lock them up!"

They herded the prisoners into one large room, with an armed guard at

the door. And long after midnight I could hear them hilariously

singing.

That left Don Petronilo with a hundred effectives, some extra horses

with running sores on their backs, and two thousand rounds of

ammunition, more or less. Salazar took himself off in the morning, after

recommending that all his _gente_ be shot; he was evidently greatly

relieved to be rid of them. Juan Santillanes was in favor of execution,

too. But Don Petronilo decided to send them to General Urbina for

trial.

*CHAPTER IX*

*THE LAST NIGHT*

The days at La Cadena were full of color. In the cold dawn, when the

river pools were filmed with ice, a trooper would gallop into the great

square with a plunging steer at the end of his rope. Fifty or sixty

ragged soldiers, only their eyes showing between serapes and big

sombreros, would begin an amateur bull-fight, to the roaring delight of

the rest of the _companeros_. They waved their blankets, shouting the

correct bull-fight cries. One would twist the infuriated animal's tail.

Another, more impatient, beat him with the flat of a sword. Instead of

banderillas, they stuck daggers into his shoulder--his hot blood

spattering them as he charged. And when at last he was down and the

merciful knife in his brain, a mob fell upon the carcase, cutting and

ripping, and bearing off chunks of raw meat to their cuartels. Then the

white, burning sun would rise suddenly behind the Puerta, stinging your

hands and face. And the pools of blood, the faded patterns of the

serapes, the far reaches of umber desert glowed and became vivid....

Don Petronilo had confiscated several coaches in the campaign. We

borrowed them for many an excursion--the five of us. Once it was a trip

to San Pedro del Gallo to see a cock-fight, appropriately enough.

Another time 'Gino Gueereca and I went to see the fabulously rich lost

mines of the Spaniards, which he knew. But we never got past

Bruquilla--just lounged in the shade of the trees and ate cheese all

day.

Late in the afternoon the Puerta guard trotted out to their post, the

late sun soft on their rifles and cartridge-belts; and long after dark

the detachment relieved came jingling in out of the mysterious dark.

The four peddlers whom I had seen in Santo Domingo arrived that night.

They had four burro loads of _macuche_ to sell the soldiers.

"It's meester!" they cried, when I came down to their little fire.

"_Que tal_, meester? How goes it? Aren't you afraid of the

_colorados_?"

"How is business?" I asked, accepting the heaped-up handful of _macuche_

they gave me.

They laughed uproariously at this.

"Business! Far better for us if we had stayed in Santo Domingo! _This_

Tropa couldn't buy one cigarro if they clubbed their money!..."

One of them began to sing that extraordinary ballad, "The Morning Song

to Francisco Villa." He sang one verse, and then the next man sang a

verse, and so on around, each man composing a dramatic account of the

deeds of the Great Captain. For half an hour I lay there, watching

them, as they squatted between their knees, serapes draped loosely from

their shoulders, the firelight red on their simple, dark faces. While

one man sang the others stared upon the ground, wrapt in composition.

_"Here is Francisco Villa_

_With his chiefs and his officers,_

_Who come to saddle the short-horns_

_Of the Federal Army._

_"Get ready now, colorados,_

_Who have been talking so loud,_

_For Villa and his soldiers_

_Will soon take off your hides!_

_"To-day has come your tamer,_

_The Father of Rooster Tamers,_

_To run you out of Torreon--_

_To the devil with your skins!_

_"The rich with all their money_

_Have already got their lashing,_

_As the soldiers of Urbina_

_Can tell, and those of Maclovio Herrera._

_"Fly, fly away, little dove,_

_Fly over all the prairies,_

_And say that Villa has come_

_To drive them all out forever._

_"Ambition will ruin itself,_

_And justice will be the winner,_

_For Villa has reached Torreon_

_To punish the avaricious."_

_"Fly away, Royal Eagle,_

_These laurels carry to Villa,_

_For he has come to conquer_

_Bravo and all his colonels._

_"Now you sons of the Mosquito,_

_Your pride will come to an end._

_If Villa has come to Torreon,_

_It is because he could do it!_

_"Viva Villa and his soldiers!_

_Viva Herrera and his gente!_

_You have seen, wicked people,_

_What a brave man can do._

_"With this now I say good-bye;_

_By the Rose of Castile,_

_Here is the end of my rhyme_

_To the great General Villa!"_

After a while I slipped away, and I doubt if they even saw me go. They

sang around their fire for more than three hours.

But in our cuartel there was other entertainment. The room was full of

smoke from the fire on the floor. Through it I dimly made out some

thirty or forty troopers squatting or sprawled at full length--perfectly

silent as Silveyra read aloud a proclamation from the Governor of

Durango forever condemning the lands of the great haciendas to be

divided among the poor.

He read:

"Considering: that the principal cause of discontent among the people in

our State, which forced them to spring to arms in the year 1910, was the

absolute lack of individual property; and that the rural classes have no

means of subsistence in the present, nor any hope for the future, except

to serve as peons on the haciendas of the great land owners, who have

monopolized the soil of the State;

"Considering: that the principal branch of our national riches is

agriculture, and that there can be no true progress in agriculture

without that the majority of farmers have a personal interest in making

the earth produce....

"Considering, finally: that the rural towns have been reduced to the

deepest misery, because the common lands which they once owned have gone

to augment the property of the nearest hacienda, especially under the

Dictatorship of Diaz; with which the inhabitants of the State lost their

economic, political, and social independence, then passed from the rank

of citizens to that of slaves, without the Government being able to lift

the moral level through education, because the hacienda where they lived

is private property....

"Therefore, the Government of the State of Durango declares it a public

necessity that the inhabitants of the towns and villages be the owners

of agricultural lands...."

When the paymaster had painfully waded through all the provisions that

followed, telling how the land was to be applied for, etc., there was a

silence.

"That," said Martinez, "is the Mexican Revolucion."

"It's just what Villa's doing in Chihuahua," I said. "It's great. All

you fellows can have a farm now."

An amused chuckle ran around the circle. Then a little, bald-headed

man, with yellow, stained whiskers, sat up and spoke.

"Not us," he said, "not the soldiers. After a Revolucion is done it

wants no more soldiers. It is the _pacificos_ who will get the

land--those who did not fight. And the next generation...." He paused

and spread his torn sleeves to the fire. "I was a school teacher," he

explained, "so I know that Revolucions, like Republics, are ungrateful.

I have fought three years. At the end of the first Revolucion that

great man, Father Madero, invited his soldiers to the Capital. He gave

us clothes, and food, and bull-fights. We returned to our homes and

found the greedy again in power."

"I ended the war with forty-five pesos," said a man.

"You were lucky," continued the schoolmaster. "No, it is not the

troopers, the starved, unfed, common soldiers who profit by the

Revolucion. Officers, yes--some--for they get fat on the blood of the

Patria. But we--no."

"What on earth are you fighting for?" I cried.

"I have two little sons," he answered. "And _they_ will get their land.

And they will have other little sons. They, too, will never want for

food...." The little man grinned. "We have a proverb in Guadalajara:

'Do not wear a shirt of eleven yards, for he who wants to be a Redeemer

will be crucified.'"

"I've got no little son," said fourteen-year-old Gil Tomas, amid shouts

of laughter. "I'm fighting so I can get a thirty-thirty rifle from some

dead Federal, and a good horse that belonged to a millionaire."

Just for fun I asked a trooper with a photo button of Madero pinned to

his coat who that was.

"_Pues, quien sabe, senor?_" he replied. "My captain told me he was a

great saint. I fight because it is not so hard as to work."

"How often are you fellows paid?"

"We were paid three pesos just nine months ago tonight," said the

schoolmaster, and they all nodded. "We are the real volunteers. The

_gente_ of Villa are professionals."

Then Luis Martinez got a guitar and sang a beautiful little love song,

which he said a prostitute had made up one night in a _bordel_.

The last thing I remember of that memorable night was 'Gino Gueereca

lying near me in the dark, talking.

"To-morrow," he said, "I shall take you to the lost gold-mines of the

Spaniards. They are hidden in a canon in the Western mountains. Only

the Indians know of them--and I. The Indians go there sometimes with

knives and dig the raw gold out of the ground. We'll be rich...."

*CHAPTER X*

*THE COMING OF THE COLORADOS*

Before sunrise next morning, Fernando Silveyra, fully dressed, came into

the room and said calmly to get up, that the _colorados_ were coming.

Juan Vallejo laughed: "How many, Fernando?"