"No."
"I thought you'd fallen asleep."
"I wish I could."
"I've had a quarrel with Estelle."
"You shouldn't have brought her here."
"I didn't bring her."
"Women without men are no good," he said.
Back in bed, she fell into a troubled sleep until peacocks and roosters
woke her. She dressed and the shrill pot-rack, pot-rack of the guinea
hen annoyed her; it seemed to her the most hideous of hacienda noises.
Raul got up and dressed rapidly and as he dressed he told her that he
and his men must drive three hundred head of cattle to Colima. At
breakfast, he still could not tell her about Refugio.
She toyed with her dish of fruit, thinking of Estelle, remembering
Guadalajara people.
Such a sad face, he thought.
"Couldn't you and Gabriel do something with some of the children?" he
suggested.
"Perhaps we could. I ... I'll talk to Gabriel."
He gulped his food: eggs and bread.
"Bring my coffee," he said to Chavela.
His chewing annoyed her and she wanted to leave the table.
"Why do we change so?" she asked.
"Many things are changing," he said, not following her.
"I don't mean that." She poured herself water.
He got up and drank his coffee standing. "Have to go," he mumbled. "I
hear the cattle in the court. Goodbye."
Raul overtook the cattle outside the hacienda gate: Esteban had the
group in front, Manuel worked the rear, and other cowboys covered the
sides, to pick up strays and keep them moving.
Raul and Manuel rode side by side a while.
"Have we got them all?"
"So far, so good. A fine bunch," said Manuel. "Are we sure of
railroad cars?"
"General Matanzas promised cars. He gets a cut."
"Engines too?" joked Manuel.
"Well, they're going through to Guadalajara."
The cattle followed a narrow road through palmera, fronds roofing the
trail, dumping dust and dirt on the riders. The hoofs drummed a hollow
insistence, hollower in rocky places, where boulders towered. Between
houselike rocks lay the ruins of a temple, ancient limestone walls in
stubble, weeds and bushes, a circular platform partially terraced.
Years ago, Raul had planned to dig there. What for? he asked himself
as he rode by. Bones, old pots, an idol? Let the temple keep its
secrets.... A young doe, crouched among stones, eyes shifting, ears
up. Raul liked this route to Colima, seldom used because it was too
rough for carriages and wagons.
In Colima, the promised cars lay on a siding and, after checking the
cattle into the loading pen, Raul and Manuel rode to the Hotel Ruiz, a
shabby white stucco building overlooking the plaza. The town heat was
oppressive, and when Raul had eaten in the flyspecked dining room,
where not a breath stirred, he sought the square. There, the iron
swans spewed water through misshapen beaks into a mossy fountain; dried
bougainvillaea flowers blew about from little piles left by the
gardener. The clock--pasted in the Presidencia wall--bonged the hour.
On a bench, Raul smoked and listened to Colimans argue: a bearded
fellow was peeved over domino rules. He clacked a domino up and down
at his rustic playing table under a laurel tree. His fat partner
scowled and talked back. Across the plaza, in the house of Doña
Camila, somebody struggled with a guitar.
Colima--he had been here so many times!
Colima--narrow streets, simple one- and two-story homes, red-tiled
roofs, whitewashed fronts, patios with banana, breadfruit, coco palms,
bamboo and mango. A little town that fought earthquakes and
hurricanes, a sugar-cane town with a few coffee plantations nearby.
He smoked and listened to the badly strummed guitar (the domino players
had gone); he thought of Angelina.... Kindness, could that help?
He loved Lucienne for her auburn beauty, her even temper, her grace,
her humor.
He strolled down a shady street and circled back to the plaza and
noticed a band of armed men alongside the church, sitting on the curb,
leaning against the wall; most of them had carbines. At first he
disregarded them, and then felt concerned.
In the hotel, he mentioned the band of men to Manuel and Esteban, and
the three talked it over with the manager. He was a huge, high-strung
Spaniard, sallow, fish-eyed, egg-chinned; he said that the hoodlums
ought to be strung up and that if they entered the hotel he'd shoot
them "one by one." Manuel winked at Raul.
During the night Raul heard rifle shots but in the morning no one had
any information. "Drunkards," the manager conjectured.
Raul paid a call on Federicka. In her shady bamboo-slatted living
room, he read a letter Lucienne had written him, telling him why she
had gone hastily to Guanajuato, her handwriting more of a gardener's
scribble: "They say the trains will start running regularly in 1912....
I think I had better find a lead mine, for bullets...." Her humor was
there, even in her concern.
"What a foolish thing, to go to Guanajuato at this time," he said.
"I begged her not to go," Federicka said.
She gave him a venison lunch and then they went to see Vicente, at his
school, where the sisters and students were blissfully unaware of
Mexico's impending disaster. Federicka, too, shrugged a provincial
shrug.
Raul, alone for a moment with Vicente, thought: My God, the boy
resembles Angelina, face, body, her posture even! Putting a rough arm
about him, he hugged him close.
Late in the afternoon, the postmaster showed Raul a newspaper from
Guadalajara, brought in by a horseman. It reported street fighting.
Raul found many Colima friends who were sorely distressed, who
predicted tragedy, who blamed foreign governments and the _hacendados_.
Raul described a cartoon, in the Guadalajara newspaper, to Manuel, as
they rode out of Colima, for Petaca.
"It showed a butterfly of death hovering above an hacienda," said Raul.
"How does the song go about the butterfly of death?" asked Manuel,
hitching his gun belt, kicking his horse with his spurs.
"I don't remember," said Raul.
"I should remember," Manuel laughed. "I used to sing it to you."