A whirlwind of dust, scorching down the road, suddenly broke into
violent diffuse masses; and Demetrio's army emerged, a chaos of horses,
broad chests, tangled manes, dilated nostrils, oval, wide eyes, hoofs
flying in the air, legs stiffened from endless galloping; and of men
with bronze faces, ivory teeth, and flashing eyes, their rifles in
their hands or slung across the saddles.
Demetrio and Camilla brought up the rear. She was still nervous,
white-lipped and parched; he was angry at their futile maneuver. For
there had been battles, no followers of Orozco's to be seen. A handful
of Federals, routed. A poor devil of a priest left dangling from a
mesquite; a few dead, scattered over the field, who had once been
united under the archaic slogan, RIGHTS AND RELIGION, with, on their
breasts, the red cloth insignia: Halt! The Sacred Heart of Jesus is
with me!
"One good thing about it is that I've collected all my back pay," Quail
said, exhibiting some gold watches and rings stolen from the priest's
house.
"It's fun fighting this way," Manteca cried, spicing every other word
with an oath. "You know why the hell you're risking your hide."
In the same hand with which he held the reins, he clutched a shining
ornament that he had torn from one of the holy statues.
After Quail, an expert in such matters, had examined Manteca's treasure
covetously, he uttered a solemn guffaw.
"Hell, Your ornament is nothing but tin!"
"Why in hell are you hanging on to that poison?" Pancracio asked
Blondie who appeared dragging a prisoner.
"Do you want to know why? Because it's a long time since I've had a
good look at a man's face when a rope tightens around his neck!"
The fat prisoner breathed with difficulty as he followed Blondie on
foot; his face was sunburnt, his eyes red; his forehead beaded with
sweat, his wrists tightly bound together.
"Here, Anastasio, lend me your lasso. Mine's not strong enough; this
bird will bust it. No, by God, I've changed my mind, friend Federal:
think I'll kill you on the spot, because you are pulling too hard.
Look, all the mesquites are still a long way off and there are no
telegraph poles to hang you to!"
Blondie pulled his gun out, pressed the muzzle against the prisoner's
chest and brought his finger against the trigger slowly ... slowly....
The prisoner turned pale as a corpse; his face lengthened; his eyelids
were fixed in a glassy stare. He breathed in agony, his whole body
shook as with ague. Blondie kept his gun in the same position for a
moment long as all eternity. His eyes shone queerly. An expression of
supreme pleasure lit up his fat puffy face.
"No, friend Federal," he drawled, putting back his gun into the
holster; "I'm not going to kill you just yet.... I'll make you my
orderly. You'll see that I'm not so hardhearted!"
Slyly he winked at his companions. The prisoner had turned into an
animal; he gulped, panting, dry-mouthed. Camilla, who had witnessed the
scene, spurred her horse and caught up with Demetrio.
"What a brute that Blondie is: you ought to see what he did to a
wretched prisoner," she said. Then she told Demetrio what had occurred.
The latter wrinkled his brow but made no answer.
War Paint called Camilla aside.
"Hey you ... what are you gobbling about? Blondie's my man, understand?
From now on, you know how things are: whatever you've got against him
you've got against me too! I'm warning you."
Camilla, frightened, hurried back to Demetrio's side.
X
The men camped in a meadow, near three small lone houses standing in a
row, their white walls cutting the purple fringe of the horizon.
Demetrio and Camilla rode toward them. Inside the corral a man, clad in
shirt and trousers of cheap white cloth, sat greedily puffing at a
cornhusk cigarette. Another man sitting beside him on a flat cut stone
was shelling corn. Kicking the air with one dry, withered leg, the
extremity of which was like a goat's hoof, he frightened the chickens
away.
"Hurry up, 'Pifanio," said the man who was smoking, "the sun has gone
down already and you haven't taken the animals to water."
A horse neighed outside the corral; both men glanced up in amazement.
Demetrio and Camilla were looking over the corral wall at them.
"I just want a place to sleep for my woman and me," Demetrio said
reassuringly.
As he explained that he was the chief of a small army which was to camp
nearby that night, the man smoking, who owned the place, bid them enter
with great deference. He ran to fetch a broom and a pail of water to
dust and wash the best corner of the hut as decent lodging for his
distinguished guests.
"Here, 'Pifanio, go out there and unsaddle the horses."
The man who was shelling corn stood up with an effort. He was clad in a
tattered shirt and vest. His torn trousers, split at the seam, looked
like the wings of a cold, stricken bird; two strings of cloth dangled
from his waist. As he walked, he described grotesque circles.
"Surely you're not fit to do any work!" Demetrio said, refusing to
allow him to touch the saddles.
"Poor man," the owner cried from within the hut, "he's lost all his
strength.... But he surely works for his pay.... He starts working the
minute God Almighty himself gets up, and it's after sundown now but
he's working still!"
Demetrio went out with Camilla for a stroll about the encampment. The
meadow, golden, furrowed, stripped even of the smallest bushes,
extended limitless in its immense desolation. The three tall ash trees
which stood in front of the small house, with dark green crests, round
and waving, with rich foliage and branches drooping to the very ground,
seemed a veritable miracle.
"I don't know why but I feel there's a lot of sadness around here,"
said Demetrio.
"Yes," Camilla answered, "I feel that way too."
On the bank of a small stream, 'Pifanio was strenuously tugging at a
rope with a large can tied to the end of it. He poured a stream of
water over a heap of fresh, cool grass; in the twilight, the water
glimmered like crystal. A thin cow, a scrawny nag, and a burro drank
noisily together.
Demetrio recognized the limping servant and asked him: "How much do you
get a day?"
"Eight cents a day, boss."
He was an insignificant, scrofulous wraith of a man with green eyes and
straight, fair hair. He whined complaint of his boss, the ranch, his
bad luck, his dog's life.
"You certainly earn your pay all right, my lad," Demetrio interrupted
kindly. "You complain and complain, but you aren't no loafer, you work
and work." Then, aside to Camilla: "There's always more damned fools in
the valley than among us folk in the sierra, don't you think?"
"Of course!" she replied.
They went on. The valley was lost in darkness; stars came out. Demetrio
put his arm around Camilla's waist amorously and whispered in her ear.
"Yes," she answered in a faint voice.
She was indeed beginning to "fall for him" as she had expressed it.
Demetrio slept badly. He flung out of the house very early.
"Something is going to happen to me," he thought.
It was a silent dawn, with faint murmurs of joy. A thrush sang timidly
in one of the ash trees. The animals in the corral trampled on the
refuse. The pig grunted its somnolence. The orange tints of the sun
streaked the sky; the last star flickered out.
Demetrio walked slowly to the encampment.
He was thinking of his plow, his two black oxen--young beasts they
were, who had worked in the fields only two years--of his two acres of
well-fertilized corn. The face of his young wife came to his mind,
clear and true as life: he saw her strong, soft features, so gracious
when she smiled on her husband, so proudly fierce toward strangers. But
when he tried to conjure up the image of his son, his efforts were
vain; he had forgotten....
He reached the camp. Lying among the farrows, the soldiers slept with
the horses, heads bowed, eyes closed.
"Our horses are pretty tired, Anastasio. I think we ought to stay here
at least another day."
"Well, Compadre Demetrio, I'm hankering for the sierra.... If you only
knew.... You may not believe me but nothing strikes me right here. I
don't know what I miss but I know I miss something. I feel sad ...
lost...."
"How many hours' ride from here to Limon?"
"It's no matter of hours; it's three days' hard riding, Demetrio."
"You know," Demetrio said softly, "I feel as though I'd like to see my
wife again!"
Shortly after, War Paint sought out Camilla.
"That's one on you, my dear.... Demetrio's going to leave you flat! He
told me so himself; 'I'm going to get my real woman,' he says, and he
says, 'Her skin is white and tender ... and her rosy cheeks.... How
beautiful she is!' But you don't have to leave him, you know; if you're
set on staying, well--they've got a child, you know, and I suppose you
could drag it around...."
When Demetrio returned, Camilla, weeping, told him everything.
"Don't pay no attention to that crazy baggage. It's all lies, lies!"
Since Demetrio did not go to Limon or remember his wife again, Camilla
grew very happy. War Paint had merely stung herself, like a scorpion.