The Underdogs — Part 1, chapters 17-19
XVII
"If we get through the corral, we can make the alley, eh?"
Demetrio asked.
"That's right," the workman answered.
"Beyond the corral there's a house, then another corral, then there's a store."
Demetrio scratched his head, thoughtfully.
This time his decision was immediate.
"Can you get hold of a crowbar or something like that to make a hole through the wall?"
"Yes, we'll get anything you want, but ..."
"But what?
Where can we get a crowbar?"
"Everything is right there.
But it all belongs to the boss."
Without further ado, Demetrio strode into the shed which had been pointed out as the toolhouse.
It was all a matter of a few minutes.
Once in the alley, hugging to the walls, they marched forward in single file until they reached the rear of the church.
Now they had but a single fence and the rear wall of the chapel to scale.
"God's will be done!"
Demetrio said to himself.
He was the first to clamber over.
Like monkeys the others followed him, reaching the other side with bleeding, grimy hands.
The rest was easy.
The deep worn steps along the stonework made their ascent of the chapel wall swifter.
The church vault hid them from the soldiers.
"Wait a moment, will you?"
said the workman.
"I'll go and see where my brother is; I'll let you know and then you'll get at the officers."
But no one paid the slightest attention to him.
For a second, Demetrio glanced at the soldiers' black coats hanging on the wall, then at his own men, thick on the church tower behind the iron rail.
He smiled with satisfaction and turning to his men said: "Come on, now, boys!"
Twenty bombs exploded simultaneously in the midst of the soldiers who, awaking terrified out of their sleep, started up, their eyes wide open.
But before they had realized their plight, twenty more bombs burst like thunder upon them leaving a scattering of men killed or maimed.
"Don't do that yet, for God's sake!
Don't do it till I find my brother," the workman implored in anguish.
In vain an old sergeant harangued the soldiers, insulting them in the hope of rallying them.
For they were rats, caught in a trap, no more, no less.
Some of the soldiers, attempting to reach the small door by the staircase, fell to the ground pierced by Demetrio's shots.
Others fell at the feet of these twenty-odd specters, with faces and breasts dark as iron, clad in long torn trousers of white cloth which fell to their leather sandals, scattering death and destruction below them.
In the belfry, a few men struggled to emerge from the pile of dead who had fallen upon them.
"It's awful, Chief!"
Luis Cervantes cried in alarm.
"We've no more bombs left and we left our guns in the corral."
Smiling, Demetrio drew out a large shining knife.
In the twinkling of an eye, steel flashed in every hand.
Some knives were large and pointed, others wide as the palm of a hand, others heavy as bayonets.
"The spy!"
Luis Cervantes cried triumphantly.
"Didn't I tell you?"
"Don't kill me, Chief, please don't kill me," the old sergeant implored squirming at the feet of Demetrio, who stood over him, knife in hand.
The victim raised his wrinkled Indian face; there was not a single gray hair in his head today.
Demetrio recognized the spy who had lied to him the day before.
Terrified, Luis Cervantes quickly averted his face.
The steel blade went crack, crack, on the old man's ribs.
He toppled backward, his arms spread, his eyes ghastly.
"Don't kill my brother, don't kill him, he's my brother!"
the workman shouted in terror to Pancracio who was pursuing a soldier.
But it was too late.
With one thrust, Pancracio had cut his neck in half, and two streams of scarlet spurted from the wound.
"Kill the soldiers, kill them all!"
Pancracio and Manteca surpassed the others in the savagery of their slaughter, and finished up with the wounded.
Montanez, exhausted, let his arm fall; it hung limp to his side.
A gentle expression still filled his glance; his eyes shone; he was naive as a child, unmoral as a hyena.
"Here's one who's not dead yet," Quail shouted.
Pancracio ran up.
The little blond captain with curled mustache turned pale as wax.
He stood against the door to the staircase unable to muster enough strength to take another step.
Pancracio pushed him brutally to the edge of the corridor.
A jab with his knee against the captain's thigh--then a sound not unlike a bag of stones falling from the top of the steeple on the porch of the church.
"My God, you've got no brains!"
said Quail.
"If I'd known what you were doing, I'd have kept him for myself.
That was a fine pair of shoes you lost!"
Bending over them, the rebels stripped those among the soldiers who were best clad, laughing and joking as they despoiled them.
Brushing back his long hair, that had fallen over his sweating forehead and covered his eyes, Demetrio said: "Now let's get those city fellows!"
XVIII
On the day General Natera began his advance against the town of Zacatecas, Demetrio with a hundred men went to meet him at Fresnillo.
The leader received him cordially.
"I know who you are and the sort of men you bring.
I heard about the beatings you gave the Federals from Tepic to Durango."
Natera shook hands with Demetrio effusively while Luis Cervantes said: "With men like General Natera and Colonel Demetrio Macias, we'll cover our country with glory."
Demetrio understood the purpose of those words, after Natera had repeatedly addressed him as "Colonel."
Wine and beer were served; Demetrio and Natera drank many a toast.
Luis Cervantes proposed: "The triumph of our cause, which is the sublime triumph of Justice, because our ideal--to free the noble, long-suffering people of Mexico--is about to be realized and because those men who have watered the earth with their blood and tears will reap the harvest which is rightfully theirs."
Natera fixed his cruel gaze on the orator, then turned his back on him to talk to Demetrio.
Presently, one of Natera's officers, a young man with a frank open face, drew up to the table and stared insistently at Cervantes.
"Are you Luis Cervantes?"
"Yes.
You're Solis, eh?"
"The moment you entered I thought I recognized you.
Well, well, even now I can hardly believe my eyes!"
"It's true enough!"
"Well, but ...
look here, let's have a drink, come along."
Then: "Hm," Solis went on, offering Cervantes a chair, "since when have you turned rebel?"
"I've been a rebel the last two months!"
"Oh, I see!
That's why you speak with such faith and enthusiasm about things we all felt when we joined the revolution."
"Have you lost your faith or enthusiasm?"
"Look here, man, don't be surprised if I confide in you right off.
I am so anxious to find someone intelligent among this crowd, that as soon as I get hold of a man like you I clutch at him as eagerly as I would at a glass of water, after walking mile after mile through a parched desert.
But frankly, I think you should do the explaining first.
I
can't understand how a man who was correspondent of a Government newspaper during the Madero regime, and later editorial writer on a Conservative journal, who denounced us as bandits in the most fiery articles, is now fighting on our side."
"I tell you honestly: I have been converted," Cervantes answered.
"Are you absolutely convinced?"
Solis sighed, filled the glasses; they drank.
"What about you?
Are you tired of the revolution?"
asked Cervantes sharply.
"Tired?
My dear fellow, I'm twenty-five years old and I'm fit as a fiddle!
But am I disappointed?
Perhaps!"
"You must have sound reasons for feeling that way."
"I hoped to find a meadow at the end of the road.
I found a swamp.
Facts are bitter; so are men.
That bitterness eats your heart out; it is poison, dry rot.
Enthusiasm, hope, ideals, happiness-vain dreams, vain dreams....
When that's over, you have a choice.
Either you turn bandit, like the rest, or the timeservers will swamp you...."
Cervantes writhed at his friend's words; his argument was quite out of place ...
painful....
To avoid being forced to take issue, he invited Solis to cite the circumstances that had destroyed his illusions.
"Circumstances?
No--it's far less important than that.
It's a host of silly, insignificant things that no one notices except yourself ...
a change of expression, eyes shining-lips curled in a sneer-the deep import of a phrase that is lost!
Yet take these things together and they compose the mask of our race ...
terrible ...
grotesque ...
a race that awaits redemption!"
He drained another glass.
After a long pause, he continued: "You ask me why I am still a rebel?
Well, the revolution is like a hurricane: if you're in it, you're not a man ...
you're a leaf, a dead leaf, blown by the wind."
Demetrio reappeared.
Seeing him, Solis relapsed into silence.
"Come along," Demetrio said to Cervantes.
"Come with me."
Unctuously, Solis congratulated Demetrio on the feats that had won him fame and the notice of Pancho Villa's northern division.
Demetrio warmed to his praise.
Gratefully, he heard his prowess vaunted, though at times he found it difficult to believe he was the hero of the exploits the other narrated.
But Solis' story proved so charming, so convincing, that before long he found himself repeating it as gospel truth.
"Natera is a genius!"
Luis Cervantes said when they had returned to the hotel.
"But Captain Solis is a nobody ...
a timeserver."
Demetrio Macias was too elated to listen to him.
"I'm a colonel, my lad!
And you're my secretary!"
Demetrio's men made many acquaintances that evening; much liquor flowed to celebrate new friendships.
Of course men are not necessarily even tempered, nor is alcohol a good counselor; quarrels naturally ensued.
Yet many differences that occurred were smoothed out in a friendly spirit, outside the saloons, restaurants, or brothels.
On the morrow, casualties were reported.
Always a few dead.
An old prostitute was found with a bullet through her stomach; two of Colonel Macias' new men lay in the gutter, slit from ear to ear.
Anastasio Montanez carried an account of the events to his chief.
Demetrio shrugged his shoulders.
"Bury them!"
he said.
XIX
"They're coming back!"
It was with amazement that the inhabitants of Fresnillo learned that the rebel attack on Zacatecas had failed completely.
"They're coming back!"
The rebels were a maddened mob, sunburnt, filthy, naked.
Their high wide-brimmed straw hats hid their faces.
The "high hats" came back as happily as they had marched forth a few days before, pillaging every hamlet along the road, every ranch, even the poorest hut.
"Who'll buy this thing?"
one of them asked.
He had carried his spoils long: he was tired.
The sheen of the nickel on the typewriter, a new machine, attracted every glance.
Five times that morning the Oliver had changed hands.
The first sale netted the owner ten pesos; presently it had sold for eight; each time it changed hands, it was two pesos cheaper.
To be sure, it was a heavy burden; nobody could carry it for more than a half-hour.
"I'll give you a quarter for it!"
Quail said.
"Yours!"
cried the owner, handing it over quickly, as though he feared Quail might change his mind.
Thus for the sum of twenty-five cents, Quail was afforded the pleasure of taking it in his hands and throwing it with all his might against the wall.
It struck with a crash.
This gave the signal to all who carried any cumbersome objects to get rid of them by smashing them against the rocks.
Objects of all sorts, crystal, china, faience, porcelain, flew through the air.
Heavy, plated mirrors, brass candlesticks, fragile, delicate statues, Chinese vases, any object not readily convertible into cash fell by the wayside in fragments.
Demetrio did not share the untoward exaltation.
After all, they were retreating defeated.
He called Montanez and Pancracio aside and said: "These fellows have no guts.
It's not so hard to take a town.
It's like this.
First, you open up, this way...."
He sketched a vast gesture, spreading his powerful arms.
"Then you get close to them, like this...."
He brought his arms together, slowly.
"Then slam!
Bang!
Whack!
Crash!"
He beat his hands against his chest.
Anastasio and Pancracio, convinced by this simple, lucid explanation answered: "That's God's truth!
They've no guts!
That's the trouble with them!"
Demetrio's men camped in a corral.
"Do you remember Camilla?"
Demetrio asked with a sigh as he settled on his back on the manure pile where the rest were already stretched out.
"Camilla?
What girl do you mean, Demetrio?"
"The girl that used to feed me up there at the ranch!"
Anastasio made a gesture implying: "I don't care a damn about the women Camilla or anyone else...."
"I've not forgotten," Demetrio went on, drawing on his cigarette.
"Yes, I was feeling like hell!
I'd just finished drinking a glass of water.
God, but it was cool....
'Don't you want any more?'
she asked me.
I was half dead with fever ...
and all the time I saw that glass of water, blue ...
so blue ...
and I heard her little voice, 'Don't you want any more?'
That voice tinkled in my ears like a silver hurdy-gurdy!
Well, Pancracio, what about it?
Shall we go back to the ranch?"
"Demetrio, we're friends, aren't we?
Well then, listen.
You may not believe it, but I've had a lot of experience with women.
Women!
Christ, they're all right for a while, granted!
Though even that's going pretty far.
Demetrio, you should see the scars they've given me ...
all over my body, not to speak of my soul!
To hell with women.
They're the devil, that's what they are!
You may have noticed I steer clear of them.
You know why.
And don't think I don't know what I'm talking about.
I've had a hell of a lot of experience and that's no lie!"
"What do you say, Pancracio?
When are we going back to the ranch?"
Demetrio insisted, blowing gray clouds of tobacco smoke into the air.
"Say the day, I'm game.
You know I left my woman there too!"
"Your woman, hell!"
Quail said, disgruntled and sleepy.
"All right, then, our woman!
It's a good thing you're kindhearted so we all can enjoy her when you bring her over," Manteca murmured.
"That's right, Pancracio, bring one-eyed Maria Antonia.
We're all getting pretty cold around here," Meco shouted from a distance.
The crowd broke into peals of laughter.
Pancracio and Manteca vied with each other in calling forth oaths and obscenity.
XX
