The Underdogs — Part 1, chapters 5-6

"Montanez, did you hear?

A shot, Montanez!

Hey, Montanez, get up!"

He shook him vigorously until Montanez ceased snoring and in turn woke up.

"What in the name of ...

Now you're at it again, damn it.

I tell you there aren't ghosts any more," Anastasio muttered out of a half-sleep.

"I heard a shot, Montanez!"

"Go back to sleep, Quail, or I'll bust your nose."

"Hell, Anastasio I tell you it's no nightmare.

I've forgotten those fellows they hung, honest.

It's a shot, I tell you.

I heard it all right."

"A shot, you say?

All right, then, hand me my gun."

Anastasio Montanez rubbed his eyes, stretched out his arms and legs, and stood up lazily.

They left the hut.

The sky was solid with stars; the moon rose like a sharp scythe.

The confused rumor of women crying in fright resounded from the various huts; the men who had been sleeping in the open, also woke up and the rattle of arms echoed over the mountain.

"You cursed fool, you've maimed me for life."

A voice rang clearly through the darkness.

"Who goes there?"

The shout echoed from rock to rock, through mound and over hollow, until it spent itself at the far, silent reaches of the night.

"Who goes there?"

Anastasio repeated his challenge louder, pulling back the lock of his Mauser.

"One of Demetrio's men," came the answer.

"It's Pancracio," Quail cried joyfully.

Relieved, he rested the butt of his rifle on the ground.

Pancracio appeared, holding a young man by the arms; the newcomer was covered with dust from his felt hat to his coarse shoes.

A fresh bloodstain lay on his trousers close to the heel.

"Who's this tenderfoot?"

Anastasio demanded.

"You know I'm on guard around here.

Well, I hears a noise in the brush, see, and I shouts, 'Who goes there?'

and then this lad answers, 'Carranza!

Carranza!'

I don't know anyone by that name, and so I says, 'Carranza, hell!'

and I just pumps a bit of lead into his hoof."

Smiling, Pancracio turned his beardless head around as if soliciting applause.

Then the stranger spoke: "Who's your commander?"

Proudly, Anastasio raised his head, went up to him and looked him in the face.

The stranger lowered his tone considerably.

"Well, I'm a revolutionist, too, you know.

The Government drafted me and I served as a private, but I managed to desert during the battle the day before yesterday, and I've been walking about in search of you all."

"So he's a Government soldier, eh?"

A murmur of incredulity rose from the men, interrupting the stranger.

"So that's what you are, eh?

One of those damn half-breeds," said Anastasio Montanez.

"Why the hell didn't you pump your lead in his brain, Pancracio?"

"What's he talking about, anyhow?

I can't make head nor tail of it.

He says he wants to see Demetrio and that he's got plenty to say to him.

But that's all right: we've got plenty of time to do anything we damn well please so long as you're in no hurry, that's all," said Pancracio, loading his gun.

"What kind of beasts are you?"

the prisoner cried.

He could say no more: Anastasio's fist, crashing down upon his face, sent his head turning on his neck, covered with blood.

"Shoot the half-breed!"

"Hang him!"

"Burn him alive; he's a lousy Federal."

In great excitement, they yelled and shrieked and were about to fire at the prisoner.

"Sssh!

Shut up!

I think Demetrio's talking now," Anastasio said, striving to quiet them.

Indeed, Demetrio, having ascertained the cause of the turmoil, ordered them to bring the prisoner before him.

"It's positively infamous, senor; look," Luis Cervantes said, pointing to the bloodstains on his trousers and to his bleeding face.

"All right, all right.

But who in hell are you?

That's what I want to know," Demetrio said.

"My name is Luis Cervantes, sir.

I'm a medical student and a journalist.

I wrote a piece in favor of the revolution, you see; as a result, they persecuted me, caught me, and finally landed me in the barracks."

His ensuing narrative was couched in terms of such detail and expressed in terms so melodramatic that it drew guffaws of mirth from Pancracio and Manteca.

"All I've tried to do is to make myself clear on this point.

I want you to be convinced that I am truly one of your coreligionists...."

"What's that?

What did you say?

Car ...

what?"

Demetrio asked, bringing his ear close to Cervantes.

"Coreligionist, sir, that is to say, a person who possesses the same religion, who is inspired by the same ideals, who defends and fights for the same cause you are now fighting for."

Demetrio smiled: "What are we fighting for?

That's what I'd like to know."

In his disconcertment, Luis Cervantes could find no reply.

"Look at that mug, look at 'im!

Why waste any time, Demetrio?

Let's shoot him," Pancracio urged impatiently.

Demetrio laid a hand on his hair which covered his ears, and stretching himself out for a long time, seemed to be lost in thought.

Having found no solution, he said: "Get out, all of you; it's aching again.

Anastasio put out the candle.

Lock him up in the corral and let Pancracio and Manteca watch him.

Tomorrow, we'll see."

VI

Through the shadows of the starry night, Luis Cervantes had not yet managed to detect the exact shape of the objects about him.

Seeking the most suitable resting-place, he laid his weary bones down on a fresh pile of manure under the blurred mass of a huizache tree.

He lay down, more exhausted than resigned, and closed his eyes, resolutely determined to sleep until his fierce keepers or the morning sun, burning his ears, awakened him.

Something vaguely like warmth at his side, then a tired hoarse breath, made him shudder.

He opened his eyes and feeling about him with his hands, he sensed the coarse hairs of a large pig which, resenting the presence of a neighbor, began to grunt.

All Luis' efforts to sleep proved quite useless, not only because the pain of his wound or the bruises on his flesh smarted, but because he suddenly realized the exact nature of his failure.

Yes, failure!

For he had never learned to appreciate exactly the difference between fulminating sentences of death upon bandits in the columns of a small country newspaper and actually setting out in search of them, and tracking them to their lairs, gun in hand.

During his first day's march as volunteer lieutenant, he had begun to suspect the error of his ways--a brutal sixty miles' journey it was, that left his hips and legs one mass of raw soreness and soldered all his bones together.

A week later, after his first skirmish against the rebels, he understood every rule of the game.

Luis Cervantes would have taken up a crucifix and solemnly sworn that as soon as the soldiers, gun in hand, stood ready to shoot, some profoundly eloquent voice had spoken behind them, saying, "Run for your lives."

It was all crystal clear.

Even his noble-spirited horse, accustomed to battle, sought to sweep back on its hind legs and gallop furiously away, to stop only at a safe distance from the sound of firing.

The sun was setting, the mountain became peopled with vague and restless shadows, darkness scaled the ramparts of the mountain hastily.

What could be more logical then, than to seek refuge behind the rocks and attempt to sleep, granting mind and body a sorely needed rest?

But the soldier's logic is the logic of absurdity.

On the morrow, for example, his colonel awakened him rudely out of his sleep, cuffing and belaboring him unmercifully, and, after having bashed in his face, deprived him of his place of vantage.

The rest of the officers, moreover, burst into hilarious mirth and holding their sides with laughter begged the colonel to pardon the deserter.

The colonel, therefore, instead of sentencing him to be shot, kicked his buttocks roundly for him and assigned him to kitchen police.

This signal insult was destined to bear poisonous fruit.

Luis Cervantes determined to play turncoat; indeed, mentally, he had already changed sides.

Did not the sufferings of the underdogs, of the disinherited masses, move him to the core?

Henceforth he espoused the cause of Demos, of the subjugated, the beaten and baffled, who implore justice, and justice alone.

He became intimate with the humblest private.

More, even, he shed tears of compassion over a dead mule which fell, load and all, after a terribly long journey.

From then on, Luis Cervantes' prestige with the soldiers increased.

Some actually dared to make confessions.

One among them, conspicuous for his sobriety and silence, told him: "I'm a carpenter by trade, you know.

I had a mother, an old woman nailed to her chair for ten years by rheumatism.

In the middle of the night, they pulled me out of my house;

three damn policemen; I woke up a soldier twenty-five miles away from my hometown.

A month ago our company passed by there again.

My mother was already under the sod!

...

So there's nothing left for me in this wide world; no one misses me now, you see.

But, by God, I'm damned if I'll use these cartridges they make us carry, against the enemy.

If a miracle happens (I pray for it every night, you know, and I guess our Lady of Guadalupe can do it all right), then I'll join Villa's men; and I swear by the holy soul of my old mother, that I'll make every one of these Government people pay, by God I will."

Another soldier, a bright young fellow, but a charlatan, at heart, who drank habitually and smoked the narcotic marihuana weed, eyeing him with vague, glassy stare, whispered in his ear, "You know, partner ...

the men on the other side ...

you know, the other side ...

you understand ...

they ride the best horses up north there, and all over, see?

And they harness their mounts with pure hammered silver.

But us?

Oh hell, we've got to ride plugs, that's all, and not one of them good enough to stagger round a water well.

You see, don't you, partner?

You see what I mean?

You know, the men on the other side-they get shiny new silver coins while we get only lousy paper money printed in that murderer's factory, that's what we get, yes, that's ours, I tell you!"

The majority of the soldiers spoke in much the same tenor.

Even a top sergeant candidly confessed, "Yes, I enlisted all right.

I wanted to.

But, by God, I missed the right side by a long shot.

What you can't make in a lifetime, sweating like a mule and breaking your back in peacetime, damn it all, you can make in a few months just running around the sierra with a gun on your back, but not with this crowd, dearie, not with this lousy outfit ...."

Luis Cervantes, who already shared this hidden, implacably mortal hatred of the upper classes, of his officers, and of his superiors, felt that a veil had been removed from his eyes; clearly, now, he saw the final outcome of the struggle.

And yet what had happened?

The first moment he was able to join his coreligionists, instead of welcoming him with open arms, they threw him into a pigsty with swine for company.

Day broke.

The roosters crowed in the huts.

The chickens perched in the huizache began to stretch their wings, shake their feathers, and fly down to the ground.

Luis Cervantes saw his guards lying on top of a dung heap, snoring.

In his imagination, he reviewed the features of last night's men.

One, Pancracio, was pockmarked, blotchy, unshaven; his chin protruded, his forehead receded obliquely; his ears formed one solid piece with head and neck--a horrible man.

The other, Manteca, was so much human refuse;

his eyes were almost hidden, his look sullen; his wiry straight hair fen over his ears, forehead and neck; his scrofulous lips hung eternally agape.

Once more, Luis Cervantes felt his flesh quiver.