the _ocatilla_; one morning the pale vordes, which had been bare and
shiny green, appeared to have burst into full bloom, a yellow flowering
that absorbed the sunlight; cacti opened great buds of magenta; from
the canyon walls, on inaccessible ledges, hung the exquisite and rare
desert flowers, _lluvia d’oro_, shower of gold; and many beautiful
flowers lifted their faces out of the tall grasses. This magic of
spring did not last long. The flowers faded, died, and blew away on
the dry wind; the tall grasses slowly yellowed and bleached. Summer
came. The glaring sun blazed over the eastern ramparts, burned white
down over the still solemn valley, and sank like a huge ball of fire
into the distant hazy sea. With the torrid heat of desert Sonora came
a sense of absolute security to the chief Yaqui. His new home was
locked in the furnace of the sun-blasted waste land. The clear spring
of mountain water sank lower and lower, yet it did not fail. The birds
and beasts that visited the valley attested to the nature of the
surrounding country. So the time came when Yaqui forgot the strange
feeling of distant steps upon his trail.
When autumn came all the valley was dry and gray and withered, except
the green line along the stream and the perennial freshness of the
cactus plants and the everlasting green of the paloverdes. With the
winter season came the rains, and a wave of ever-brightening green
flushed the vast valley from its eastern height of slope to the far
distant mouth, where it opened into the barren breaks of the desert.
Manifestly the god of the Yaquis had not forgotten them. As the months
passed child after child was born to the women of the tribe. Yaqui’s
dusky-eyed wife bore him a healthy girl baby. As the chief balanced
the tiny brown form in his great hand he remembered speech of his
own father’s: “Son, let the Yaquis go back to the mountains of the
setting sun--to a land free from white men and gold and fire water, to
the desert valley where deer graze with horses. There let the Yaquis
multiply into a great people or perish from the earth.”
Yaqui watched his girl baby with a gleam of troubled hope lighting
in his face. His father had spoken prophecy. There waved the green
grass of the broad valley, dotted with wild horses, antelope, and deer
grazing among his stock. Here in his hand lay another child--a woman
child--and he had believed his son to be the last of his race. It was
not too late. The god of the Indian was good. His branch of the Yaquis
would mother and father a great people. But even as he fondled his babe
the toe of his moccasin stirred grains of gold in the sand.
Love of life lulled Yaqui back into his dreams. To live, to have his
people round him, to see his dusky-eyed wife at her work, to watch
the little naked children playing in the grass, to look out over that
rolling, endless green valley, so wild, so lonely, so fertile--such a
proof of god in the desert--to feel the hot sun and the sweet wind and
the cool night, to linger on the heights watching, listening, feeling,
to stalk the keen-eyed mountain sheep, to eat fresh meat and drink pure
water, to rest through the solemn still noons and sleep away the silent
melancholy nights, to enjoy the games of his forefathers--wild games
of riding and running--to steal off alone into the desert and endure
heat, thirst, cold, dust, starvation while he sought the Indian gods
hidden in the rocks, to be free of the white man whom he recognized as
a superior and a baser being--to live like the eagles--to live--Yaqui
asked no more.
Yaqui laid the baby back in the cradle of its mother’s breast and
stalked out as a chief to inspire his people.
In that high altitude the morning air was cold, exhilarating, sweet to
breathe and wonderful to send the blood racing. Some winter mornings
there was just a touch of frost on the leaves. The sunshine was
welcome, the day was short, the night was long. Yaqui’s people reverted
to their old order of happy primitive life before the white man had
come with greed for gold and lust to kill.
The day dawned in which Yaqui took his son out and put him upon a
horse. As horsemen the Yaquis excelled all other Indian tribes of the
Southwest. Boys were given lessons at an early age and taught to ride
bareback. Thus as youths they developed exceeding skill and strength.
Some of the braves had rounded up a band of wild horses and had driven
them into a rough rock-walled triangle, a natural trap, the opening of
which they had closed with a rude fence. On this morning the Yaquis all
assembled to see the wild horses broken. Yaqui, as an inspiration to
his little son and to the other boys of the tribe, chose the vicious
leader of the band as the horse he would first ride and break. High
on the rocky wall perched the black-eyed boys, eager and restless,
excited and wondering, some of them naked and all of them stretching
out tousled black heads with shining ragged hair flying in the wind.
The women and girls of the tribe occupied another position along the
outcropping of gray wall, their colorful garments lending contrast to
the scene.
The inclosure was wide and long, containing both level and uneven
ground, some of which was grass and some sand and rock. A few ironwood
trees and one huge paloverde, under which Indians were lolling,
afforded shade. At the edge of the highest slope began a line of pine
trees that reached up to the bare gray heights.
Yaqui had his braves drive the vicious leader of the wild horses out
into the open. It was a stallion, of ungainly shape and rusty color, no
longer young. With ugly head high, nostrils distended, mouth open and
ears up, showing the white of vicious, fiery eyes, it pranced in the
middle of the circle drawn by its captors.
Yaqui advanced with his long leather _riata_, and, once clear of the
ring of horsemen inclosing the stallion, he waved them back. Then as
the wild steed plunged to and fro, seeking for an opening in that
circle, Yaqui swung the long noose. He missed twice. The third cast
caught its mark, the snarling nose of this savage horse. Yaqui hauled
the lasso taut. Then with snort of fright the stallion lunged and
reared, pawing the air. Yaqui, hauling hand over hand, pulled him down
and approached him at the same time. Shuddering all over, breathing
with hard snorts, the stallion faced his captor one moment, as if ready
to fight. But fear predominated. He leaped away. At the end of that
leap, so powerful was the strain on him, he went down in the sand. Up
he sprang, wilder than ever, and dashed forward, dragging the Indian,
gaining yards of the lasso. But the mounted Yaquis blocked his passage;
he had to swerve; and as he ran desperately in a circle once more the
giant chief hauled hand over hand on the rope. Suddenly Yaqui bounded
in and with a tremendous leap, like the leap of a huge panther, he
gained the back of the stallion and seemed to become fixed there. He
dropped the lasso, and with the first startled jump of the stallion the
noose loosened and slipped off. Except for Yaqui’s great, long brown
legs, with their strung bands of muscle set like steel, the stallion
was free.
The stallion bolted for the open. Only the rock wall checked his
headlong flight. Then he wheeled and ran along the wall, bounding over
rocks and ditches, stretching out until, with magnificent stride, he
was running at his topmost speed. Along one wall and then the other he
dashed, round and round and across, until the moment came when panic
succeeded to fury, and then his tremendous energies were directed to
the displacement of his rider. Wildly he pitched. With head down, legs
stiff, feet together, he plunged over the sand, plowing up the dust,
and bounding straight up. But he could not unseat his inexorable rider.
Yaqui’s legs banded his belly and were as steel. Then the stallion, now
lashed into white lather of sweat and froth, lunged high to paw the air
and scream and plunge down to pitch again. His motions soon lost their
energy, though not their fury. Then he reached back with eyes of fire
and open mouth to bite. Yaqui’s huge fist met him, first on the right,
then, as he turned, on the left. Last he plunged to his knees and with
rumbling heave of anger he fell on his side, meaning to roll over his
rider. But the Yaqui’s leg on that side flashed high while his hands
twisted hard in the long mane. When the foiled horse rose again Yaqui
rose with him, again fixed tight on his back. Another dash and burst of
running, wild and blind this time and plainly losing speed, showed the
weakening of the stallion. And the time arrived when, spent and beaten,
he fell in the sand.
“Let Yaqui’s son learn to ride like his father,” said the chief to his
gleeful, worshiping son.
Then the chief again stalked forth, drawn irresistibly by something in
the hour.
“Let Yaqui’s son watch and remember to tell his son’s son,” he said.
He scattered his riders to block the few passages out of the valley and
he ordered his son and all the women of the tribe and their children
again to climb high on the rocks, there to watch. The Indian gods said
this day marked the rejuvenation of their tribe. Let his son, who would
be chief some day, and his people, see the great runner of the Yaquis.
Naked except for his moccasins, the giant chief broke into a slow trot
that was habitual with him when alone on a trail; and he crossed the
stream and the plots of sand, and headed out into the grassy valley
where deer grazed with the horses. Yaqui selected the one that appeared
largest and strongest of the herd and to it he called in a loud voice,
meant as well for the spirit of his forefathers and for his gods,
watching and listening from the heights: “Yaqui runs to kill!”
The sleek gray deer left off their grazing and stood at gaze, with
long ears erect. Then they bounded off. Yaqui broke from his trot
into a long, swinging lope and the length of his stride was such that
he seemed to fly over the ground. Up the valley the deer scattered
and Yaqui ran in the trail of the one to which he had called. Half
a mile off it halted to look back. Then it grazed a little, but
soon lifted its head to look again. Yaqui ran on at the same easy,
distance-devouring stride. Presently the deer dashed away and kept on
until it was a mere speck in Yaqui’s eyes. It climbed a deer trail that
led over the heights, to be turned back there by one of Yaqui’s braves.
Then it crossed the wide valley to be turned back by insurmountable
cliffs. Yaqui kept it in sight and watched it trot and stop, run and
walk and stop again, all the way up the long grassy slope toward the
head of the valley.
Here among rocks and trees Yaqui lost sight of his quarry, but he
trailed it with scarcely a slackening of his pace. At length, coming
out upon a level open bench, he saw the deer he had chosen to run to
death. It was looking back.
Down the grassy middle of the vast valley, clear to the mouth where
the stream tumbled off into space, across the wide level from slope to
slope, back under the beetling heights, Yaqui pursued the doomed deer.
Leagues and leagues of fleet running had availed the deer nothing. It
could not shake off the man. More and more the distance between them
lessened. Terror now added to the gradual exhaustion of the four-footed
creature, designed by Nature to escape its foes. Yaqui, perfect in all
the primal attributes of man, was its superior. The race was not to the
swift but to the enduring.
Within sight of his people and his little son Yaqui overtook the
staggering deer and broke its neck with his naked hands. Then for an
instant he stood erect over his fallen quarry, a tall and gaunt giant,
bathed in the weird after-glow of sunset; and he lifted a long arm to
the heights, as if calling upon his spirits there to gaze down upon the
victory of the red man.
II
It was toward evening of another day, all the hours of which had
haunted Yaqui with a nameless oppression. Like a deer that scented a
faint strange taint on the pure air Yaqui pointed his sensitive nose
toward the east, whence came the soft wind.
Suddenly his strong vision quivered to the movement of distant objects
on the southern slope. Halting, he fixed his gaze. Long line of moving
dots! Neither deer nor sheep nor antelope traveled in that formation.
The objects were men. Yaqui’s magnified sight caught the glint of
sunset red on shining guns. Mexican soldiers! That nameless haunting
fear of the south, long lulled, now had its fulfillment.
Yaqui leaped with gigantic bounds down the slope. Like an antelope he
sprang over rocks and dips, and once on the grassy downs he ran the
swiftest race of his life. His piercing yells warned his people in time
to save them from being surprised by the soldiers. The first shots of
combat were fired as he hurdled the several courses of the stream.
Yaqui saw the running and crawling forms of men in dusty blue--saw
them aim short carbines--saw spurts of flame and puffs of smoke.
Yaqui’s last few bounds carried him into the stone-walled encampment,
and the whistling bullets that missed him told how the line of soldiers
was spreading to surround the place. Yaqui flung himself behind the
wall and crawled to where his braves knelt with guns and bows ready.
Some of them were shooting. The women and children were huddled
somewhere out of sight. Steel-jacketed bullets cracked on the rocks and
whined away. Yaqui knew how poor was the marksmanship of the Mexicans;
nevertheless it seemed to him they were shooting high. The position of
the Indians was open to fire from several angles.
During a lull in the firing a hoarse yell pealed out. Yaqui knew
Spanish. “Surrender, Yaquis!” was the command. The Yaquis answered by
well-aimed bullets that brought sharp cries from the soldiers. Soon
the encampment appeared entirely surrounded. Reports came from all
sides and bullets whistled high, spatting into the trees. Then occurred
another lull in the firing. Again a voice pealed out: “Surrender,
Yaquis, save your lives!”
The Indians recognized their doom. Each man had only a few shells for
his gun. Many had only bows and arrows. They would be shot like wolves
in a trap. But no Yaqui spoke a word.
Nevertheless, when darkness put an end to their shooting there were
only a few who had a shell left. The Mexicans grasped the situation and
grew bold. They built fires off under the trees. They crept down to
the walls and threw stones into the encampment and yelled derisively:
“Yaqui dogs!” They kept up a desultory shooting from all sides as if
to make known to the Indians that they were surrounded and vigilantly
watched.
At dawn the Mexicans began another heavy volleying, firing into
the encampment without aim but with deadly intent. Then, yelling
their racial hatred of the Yaquis, they charged the camp. It was
an unequal battle. Outnumbered and without ammunition the Yaquis
fought a desperate but losing fight. One by one they were set upon by
several, sometimes by half a dozen, Mexicans and killed or beaten into
insensibility.
Yaqui formed the center of several storms of conflict. With clubbed
rifle he was like a giant fighting down a horde of little men.
“Kill the big devil!” cried a soldier.
From the thick of that mêlée sounded Spanish curses and maledictions
and dull thuds and groans as well. The Yaqui was a match for all that
could surround him. A Mexican fired a pistol. Then the officer came
running to knock aside the weapon. He shouted to his men to capture
the Yaqui chief. The Mexicans pressed closer, dodging the sweeping
rifle, and one of them plunged at the heels of the Indian. Another did
likewise and they tripped up the giant, who was then piled upon by a
number of cursing soldiers. Like a mad bull Yaqui heaved and tossed,
but to no avail. He was overpowered and bound with a lasso, and tied
upright to the paloverde under which he had so often rested.
His capture ended the battle. And the Mexicans began to run about,
searching. Daylight had come. From under a ledge of rock the Indian
women and children were driven. One lithe, quick boy eluded the
soldiers. He slipped out of their hands and ran. As he looked back over
his shoulder his dark face shone wildly. It was Yaqui’s son. Like a
deer he ran, not heeding the stern calls to halt. “Shoot!” ordered the
officer. Then the soldiers leveled rifles and began to fire. Puffs of
dust struck up behind, beside and beyond that flying form. But none hit
him. They shot at him until he appeared to be out of range. And all
eyes watched him flee. Then a last bullet struck its flying mark. The
watchers heard a shrill cry of agony and saw the lad fall.
All the Indians were tied hand and foot and herded into a small space
and guarded as if they had been wild cattle.
After several hours of resting and feasting and celebrating what
manifestly was regarded as a great victory, the officer ordered the
capture of horses and the burning of effects not transportable. Soon
the beautiful encampment of the Yaquis was a scene of blackened and
smoking ruin. Then, driving the Yaquis in a herd before them, the
Mexicans, most of them now mounted on Indian horses, faced the ascent
of the slope by which they had entered the valley.
Far down that ragged mountain slope the Mexicans halted at the camp
they had left when they made their attack on the Yaquis. Mules and
burros, packsaddles and camp duffel occupied a dusty bench upon which
there grew a scant vegetation. All round were black slopes of ragged
lava and patches of glistening white cholla.
The Yaquis received but little water and food, no blankets to sleep on,
no rest from tight bonds, no bandaging of their fly-tormented wounds.
But they bore their ills as if they had none.
Yaqui sat with his back to a stone and when unobserved by the guards he
would whisper to those of his people nearest to him. Impassively but
with intent faces they listened. His words had some strange, powerful,
sustaining effect. And all the time his inscrutable gaze swept down off
the lava heights to the hazy blue gulf of the sea.
Dawn disclosed the fact that two of the Yaquis were badly wounded and
could not be driven to make a start. Perhaps they meant to force the
death that awaited them farther down the trail; perhaps they were
absorbed in the morbid gloom of pain and departing strength. At last
the officer, weary of his subordinate’s failure to stir these men,
dragged at them himself, kicked and beat them, cursing the while.
“Yaqui dogs! You go to the henequen fields!”
The older of these wounded Indians, a man of lofty stature and mien,
suddenly arose. Swiftly his brown arm flashed. He grasped a billet
of wood from a packsaddle and struck the officer down. The blow
lacked force. It was evident that the Yaqui, for all his magnificent
spirit, could scarcely stand. Excitedly the soldiers yelled, and some
brandished weapons. The officer staggered to his feet, livid and
furious, snarling like a dog, and ordering his men to hold back, he
drew a pistol to kill the Yaqui. The scorn, the contempt, the serenity
of the Indian, instead of rousing his respect, incurred a fury which
demanded more than death.
“You shall walk the cholla torture!” he shrieked, waving his pistol in
the air.
In northwest Mexico, for longer than the oldest inhabitant could
remember, there had been a notorious rumor of the cholla torture that
the Yaquis meted out to their Mexican captives. This cholla torture
consisted of ripping the skin off the soles of Mexicans’ feet and
driving them to walk upon the cactus beds until they died.
The two wounded Indians, with bleeding raw feet, were dragged to the
cholla torture. They walked the white, glistening, needle-spiked
beds of cholla blind to the cruel jeers and mute wonderment and vile
maledictions of their hereditary foes. The giant Yaqui who had struck
down the officer stalked unaided across the beds of dry cholla. The
cones cracked like live bits of steel. They collected on the Yaqui’s
feet until he was lifting pads of cactus. He walked erect, with a
quivering of all the muscles of his naked bronze body, and his dark
face was set in a terrible hardness of scorn for his murderers.
Then when the mass of cactus cones adhering to the Yaqui’s feet grew so
heavy that he became anchored in his tracks the Mexican officer, with a
fury that was not all hate, ordered his soldiers to dispatch these two
Indians, who were beyond the reach of a torture hideous and appalling
to all Mexicans. Yaqui, the chief, looked on inscrutably, towering
above the bowed heads of his women.
This execution sobered the soldiers. Not only extermination did they
mean to mete out to the Yaqui, but an extermination of horrible toil,
by which the Mexicans were to profit.
Montes, a Brazilian, lolled in the shady spot on the dock. The hot sun
of Yucatan was more than enough for him. The still air reeked with a
hot pungent odor of henequen. Montes had learned to hate the smell. He
was in Yucatan on a mission for the Brazilian government and also as an
agent to study the sisal product--an advantageous business for him, to
which he had devoted himself with enthusiasm and energy.
But two unforeseen circumstances had disturbed him of late and rendered
less happy his devotion to his tasks. His vanity had been piqued, his
pride had been hurt, his heart had been stormed by one of Mérida’s
coquettish beauties. And the plight of the poor Yaqui Indians, slaves
in the henequen fields, had so roused his compassion that he had
neglected his work.
So, as Montes idled there in the shade, with his legs dangling over
the dock, a time came in his reflection when he was confronted with a
choice between the longing to go home and a strange desire to stay. He
gazed out into the gulf. The gunboat _Esperanza_ had come to anchor in
the roads off Progreso. She had a cargo of human freight--Yaqui Indian
prisoners from the wild plateaus of Northern Sonora--more slaves to
be broken in the terrible henequen fields. At that moment of Montes’s
indecision he espied Lieutenant Perez coming down the dock at the head
of a file of _rurales_.
Gazing at Perez intently, the Brazilian experienced a slight cold shock
of decision. He would prolong his stay in Yucatan. Strange was the
nameless something that haunted him. Jealous curiosity, he called it,
bitterly. Perez had the favor of the proud mother of Señorita Dolores
Mendoza, the coquettish beauty who had smiled upon Montes. She cared
no more for Perez than she cared for him or any of the young bloods of
Merida. But she would marry Perez.
Montes rose and stepped out of the shade. His commission in Yucatan put
him on common ground with Perez, but he had always felt looked down
upon by this little Yucatecan.
“Buenos dias, señor,” replied Perez to his greeting. “More Yaquis.”
A barge was made fast to the end of the dock and the Yaquis driven off
and held there in a closely guarded group.
The time came when Perez halted the loading of henequen long enough to
allow the prisoners to march up the dock between files of _rurales_.
They passed under the shadows of the huge warehouses, out into a
glaring square where the bare sand radiated veils of heat.
At an order from Perez, soldiers began separating the Yaqui women and
children from the men. They were formed in two lines. Then Perez went
among them, pointing out one, then another.
Montes suddenly grasped the significance of this scene and it had
strange effect upon him. Yaqui father and son--husband and wife--mother
and child did not yet realize that here they were to be parted--that
this separation was forever. Then one young woman, tall, with
striking dark face, beautiful with the grace of some wild creature,
instinctively divined the truth and she cried out hoarsely. The
silence, the stoicism of these Indians seemed broken. This woman had a
baby in her arms. Running across the aisle of sand, she faced a huge
Yaqui and cried aloud in poignant broken speech. This giant was her
husband and the father of that dusky-eyed baby. He spoke, laid a hand
on her and stepped out. Perez, who had been at the other end of the
aisle, saw the movement and strode toward them.
“Back, Yaqui dogs!” he yelled stridently, and he flashed his bright
sword.
With tremendous stride the Yaqui reached Perez and towered over him.
“_Capitan_, let my wife and child go where Yaqui goes,” demanded the
Indian in deep voice of sonorous dignity. His Spanish was well spoken.
His bearing was that of a chief. He asked what seemed his right, even
of a ruthless enemy.
But Perez saw nothing but affront to his authority. At his order the
_rurales_ clubbed Yaqui back into his squad. They would have done
the same for the stricken wife, had she not backed away from their
threatening advances. She had time for a long agonized look into the
terrible face of her husband. Then she was driven away in one squad and
he was left in the other.
* * * * *