The Underdogs — Part 3, chapters 4-7

IV

Juchipila rose in the distance, white, bathed in sunlight, shining in the midst of a thick forest at the foot of a proud, lofty mountain, pleated like a turban.

Some of the soldiers, gazing at the spire of the church, sighed sadly.

They marched forward through the canyon, uncertain, unsteady, as blind men walking without a hand to guide them.

The bitterness of the exodus pervaded them.

"Is that town Juchipila?"

Valderrama asked.

In the first stage of his drunkenness, Valderrama had been counting the crosses scattered along the road, along the trails, in the hollows near the rocks, in the tortuous paths, and along the riverbanks.

Crosses of black timber newly varnished, makeshift crosses built out of two logs, crosses of stones piled up and plastered together, crosses whitewashed on crumbling walls, humble crosses drawn with charcoal on the surface of whitish rocks.

The traces of the first blood shed by the revolutionists of 1910, murdered by the Government.

Before Juchipila was lost from sight, Valderrama got off his horse, bent down, kneeled, and gravely kissed the ground.

The soldiers passed by without stopping.

Some laughed at the crazy man, others jested.

Valderrama, deaf to all about him, breathed his unctuous prayer: "O Juchipila, cradle of the Revolution of 1910, O blessed land, land steeped in the blood of martyrs, blood of dreamers, the only true men..."

"Because they had no time to be bad!"

an ex-Federal officer interjected as he rode.

Interrupting his prayer, Valderrama frowned, burst into stentorian laughter, reechoed by the rocks, and ran toward the officer begging for a swallow of tequila.

Soldiers minus an arm or leg, cripples, rheumatics, and consumptives spoke bitterly of Demetrio.

Young whippersnappers were given officers' commissions and wore stripes on their hats without a day's service, even before they knew how to handle a rifle, while the veterans, exhausted in a hundred battles, now incapacitated for work, the veterans who had set out as simple privates, were still simple privates.

The few remaining officers among Demetrio's friends also grumbled, because his staff was made up of wealthy, dapper young men who oiled their hair and used perfume.

"The worst part of it," Venancio said, "is that we're gettin' overcrowded with Federals!"

Anastasio himself, who invariably found only praise for Demetrio's conduct, now seemed to share the general discontent.

"See here, brothers," he said, "I spits out the truth when I sees something.

I always tell the boss that if these people stick to us very long we'll be in a hell of a fix.

Certainly!

How can anyone think otherwise?

I've no hair on my tongue; and by the mother that bore me, I'm going to tell Demetrio so myself."

Demetrio listened benevolently, and, when Anastasio had finished, he replied: "You're right, there's no gettin' around it, we're in a bad way.

The soldiers grumble about the officers, the officers grumble about us, see?

And we're damn well ready now to send both Villa and Carranza to hell to have a good time all by themselves....

I guess we're in the same fix as that peon from Tepatitlan who complained about his boss all day long but worked on just the same.

That's us.

We kick and kick, but we keep on killing and killing.

But there's no use in saying anything to them!"

"Why, Demetrio?"

"Hm, I don't know....

Because ...

because ...

do you see?

...

What we've got to do is to make the men toe the mark.

I've got orders to stop a band of men coming through Cuquio, see?

In a few days we'll have to fight the Carranzistas.

It will be great to beat the hell out of them."

Valderrama, the tramp, who had enlisted in Demetrio's army one day without anyone remembering the time or the place, overheard some of Demetrio's words.

Fools do not eat fire.

That very day Valderrama disappeared mysteriously as he had come.

V

They entered the streets of Juchipila as the church bells rang, loud and joyfully, with that peculiar tone that thrills every mountaineer.

"It makes me think we are back in the days when the revolution was just beginning, when the bells rang like mad in every town we entered and everybody came out with music, flags, cheers, and fireworks to welcome us," said Anastasio Montanez.

"They don't like us no more," Demetrio returned.

"Of course.

We're crawling back like a dog with its tail between its legs," Quail remarked.

"It ain't that, I guess.

They don't give a whoop for the other side either."

"But why should they like us?"

They spoke no more.

Presently they reached the city square and stopped in front of an octagonal, rough, massive church, reminiscent of the colonial period.

At one time the square must have been a garden, judging from the bare stunted orange trees planted between iron and wooden benches.

The sonorous, joyful bells rang again.

From within the church, the honeyed voices of a female chorus rose melancholy and grave.

To the strains of a guitar, the young girls of the town sang the "Mysteries."

"What's the fiesta, lady?"

Venancio asked of an old woman who was running toward the church.

"The Sacred Heart of Jesus!"

answered the pious woman, panting.

They remembered that one year ago they had captured Zacatecas.

They grew sadder still.

Juchipila, like the other towns they had passed through on their way from Tepic, by way of Jalisco, Aguascalientes and Zacatecas, was in ruins.

The black trail of the incendiaries showed in the roofless houses, in the burnt arcades.

Almost all the houses were closed, yet, here and there, those still open offered, in ironic contrast, portals gaunt and bare as the white skeletons of horses scattered over the roads.

The terrible pangs of hunger seemed to speak from every face;

hunger on every dusty cheek, in their dusty countenances; in the hectic flame of their eyes, which, when they met a soldier, blazed with hatred.

In vain the soldiers scoured the streets in search of food, biting their lips in anger.

A single lunchroom was open; at once they filled it.

No beans, no tortillas, only chili and tomato sauce.

In vain the officers showed their pocketbooks stuffed with bills or used threats: "Yea, you've got papers all right!

That's all you've brought!

Try and eat them, will you?"

said the owner, an insolent old shrew with an enormous scar on her cheek, who told them she had already lain with a dead man, "to cure her from ever feeling frightened again."

Despite the melancholy and desolation of the town, while the women sang in the church, birds sang in the foliage, and the thrushes piped their lyrical strain on the withered branches of the orange trees.

VI

Demetrio Macias' wife, mad with joy, rushed along the trail to meet him, leading a child by the hand.

An absence of almost two years!

They embraced each other and stood speechless.

She wept, sobbed.

Demetrio stared in astonishment at his wife who seemed to have aged ten or twenty years.

Then he looked at the child who gazed up at him in surprise.

His heart leaped to his mouth as he saw in the child's features his own steel features and fiery eyes exactly reproduced.

He wanted to hold him in his arms, but the frightened child took refuge in his mother's skirts.

"It's your own father, baby!

It's your daddy!"

The child hid his face within the folds of his mother's skirt, still hostile.

Demetrio handed the reins of his horse to his orderly and walked slowly along the steep trail with his wife and son.

"Blessed be the Virgin Mary, Praise be to God!

Now you'll never leave us any more, will you?

Never ...

never....

You'll stay with us always?"

Demetrio's face grew dark.

Both remained silent, lost in anguish.

Demetrio suppressed a sigh.

Memories crowded and buzzed through his brain like bees about a hive.

A black cloud rose behind the sierra and a deafening roar of thunder resounded.

The rain began to fall in heavy drops; they sought refuge in a rocky hut.

The rain came pelting down, shattering the white Saint John roses clustered like sheaves of stars clinging to tree, rock, bush, and pitaya over the entire mountainside.

Below in the depths of the canyon, through the gauze of the rain they could see the tall, sheer palms shaking in the wind, opening out like fans before the tempest.

Everywhere mountains, heaving hills, and beyond more hills, locked amid mountains, more mountains encircled in the wall of the sierra whose loftiest peaks vanished in the sapphire of the sky.

"Demetrio, please.

For God's sake, don't go away!

My heart tells me something will happen to you this time."

Again she was wracked with sobs.

The child, frightened, cried and screamed.

To calm him, she controlled her own great grief.

Gradually the rain stopped, a swallow, with silver breast and wings describing luminous charming curves, fluttered obliquely across the silver threads of the rain, gleaming suddenly in the afternoon sunshine.

"Why do you keep on fighting, Demetrio?"

Demetrio frowned deeply.

Picking up a stone absent-mindedly, he threw it to the bottom of the canyon.

Then he stared pensively into the abyss, watching the arch of its flight.

"Look at that stone; how it keeps on going...."

VII

It was a heavenly morning.

It had rained all night, the sky awakened covered with white clouds.

Young wild colts trotted on the summit of the sierra, with tense manes and waving hair, proud as the peaks lifting their heads to the clouds.

The soldiers stepped among the huge rocks, buoyed up by the happiness of the morning.

None for a moment dreamed of the treacherous bullet that might be awaiting him ahead; the unforeseen provides man with his greatest joy.

The soldiers sang, laughed, and chattered away.

The spirit of nomadic tribes stirred their souls.

What matters it whether you go and whence you come?

All that matters is to walk, to walk endlessly, without ever stopping; to possess the valley, the heights of the sierra, far as the eye can read.

Trees, brush, and cactus shone fresh after rain.

Heavy drops of limpid water fell from rocks, ocher in hue as rusty armor.

Demetrio Macias' men grew silent for a moment.

They believed they heard the familiar rumor of firing in the distance.

A few minutes elapsed but the sound was not repeated.

"In this same sierra," Demetrio said, "with but twenty men I killed five hundred Federals.

Remember, Anastasio?"

As Demetrio began to tell that famous exploit, the men realized the danger they were facing.

What if the enemy, instead of being two days away, was hiding somewhere among the underbrush on the terrible hill through whose gorge they now advanced?

None dared show the slightest fear.

Not one of Demetrio Macias' men dared say, "I shall not move another inch!"

So, when firing began in the distance where the vanguard was marching, no one felt surprised.

The recruits turned back hurriedly, retreating in shameful flight, searching for a way out of the canyon.

A curse broke from Demetrio's parched lips.

"Fire at 'em.

Shoot any man who runs away!"

"Storm the hill!"

he thundered like a wild beast.

But the enemy, lying in ambush by the thousand, opened up its machine-gun fire.

Demetrio's men fell like wheat under the sickle.

Tears of rage and pain rise to Demetrio's eyes as Anastasio slowly slides from his horse without a sound, and lies outstretched, motionless.

Venancio falls close beside him, his chest riddled with bullets.

Meco hurtles over the precipice, bounding from rock to rock.

Suddenly, Demetrio finds himself alone.

Bullets whiz past his ears like hail.

He dismounts and crawls over the rocks, until he finds a parapet: he lays down a stone to protect his head and, lying flat on the ground, begins to shoot.

The enemy scatter in all directions, pursuing the few fugitives hiding in the brush.

Demetrio aims; he does not waste a single shot.

His famous marksmanship fills him with joy.

Where he settles his glance, he settles a bullet.

He loads his gun once more ...

takes aim....

The smoke of the guns hangs thick in the air.

Locusts chant their mysterious, imperturbable song.

Doves coo lyrically in the crannies of the rocks.

The cows graze placidly.

The sierra is clad in gala colors.

Over its inaccessible peaks the opalescent fog settles like a snowy veil on the forehead of a bride.

At the foot of a hollow, sumptuous and huge as the portico of an old cathedral, Demetrio Macias, his eyes leveled in an eternal glance, continues to point the barrel of his gun.

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