Chapter IV: Part VI: Mexican Nights (2)

Just about then somebody saw a coyote sneaking through the brush, and the entire Tropa gave chase with a whoop. They scattered rollicking over the desert, the late sun flashing from cartridge-belts and spurs, the ends of their bright serapes flying out behind. Beyond them, the scorched world sloped gently up, and a range of far lilac mountains jumped in the heat waves like a bucking horse. By here, if tradition is right, passed the steel-armored Spaniards in their search for gold, a blaze of crimson and silver that has left the desert cold and dull ever since. And, topping a rise, we came upon the first sight of the Hacienda of La Mimbrera, a walled enclosure of houses strong enough to stand a siege, stretching steeply down a hill, with the magnificent Casa Grande at the top.

In front of this house, which had been sacked and burned by Orozco's General, Che Che Campa, two years before, the coach was drawn up. A huge fire had been kindled, and ten _companeros_ were slaughtering sheep. Into the red glare of the firelight they staggered, with the struggling, squealing sheep in their arms, its blood fountaining upon the ground, shining in the fierce light like something phosphorescent.

The officers and I dined in the house of the _administrador_ Don Jesus, the most beautiful specimen of manhood I have ever seen. He was much over six feet tall, slender, white-skinned--a pure Spanish type of the highest breed. At one end of his dining-room, I remember, hung a placard embroidered in red, white and green: "Viva Mexico!" and at the other, a second, which read: "Viva Jesus!"

It was after dinner, as I stood at the fire, wondering where I was to sleep, that Captain Fernando touched me on the arm.

"Will you sleep with the _companeros_?"

We walked across the great open square, in the furious light of the desert stars, to a stone store-house set apart. Inside, a few candles stuck against the wall illumined the rifles stacked in the corners, the saddles on the floor, and the blanket-rolled _companeros_ with their heads on them. One or two were awake, talking and smoking. In a corner, three sat muffled in their serapes, playing cards. Five or six had voices and a guitar. They were singing "Pascual Orozco," beginning:

_"They say that Pascual Orozco has turned his coat_
_Because Don Terrazzas seduced him;_
_They gave him many millions and they bought him_
_And sent him to overthrow the government._

_"Orozco believed it_
_And to the war he went;_
_But the Maderista cannon_
_Was his calamity._

_"If to thy window shall come Porfirio Diaz,_
_Give him for charity some cold tortillas;_
_If to thy window shall come General Huerta,_
_Spit in his face and slam the door._

_"If to thy window shall come Inez Salazar,_
_Lock your trunk so that he can't steal;_
_If to thy window shall come Maclovio Herrera,_
_Give him dinner and put the cloth on the table."_

They didn't distinguish me at first, but soon one of the card-players said: "Here comes Meester!" At that the others roused, and woke the rest. "That's right--it's good to sleep with the _hombres_--take this place, amigo--here's my saddle--here there is no crookedness--here a man goes straight...."

"May you pass a happy night, _companero_," they said. "Till morning, then."

Pretty soon somebody shut the door. The room became full of smoke and fetid with human breath. What little silence was left from the chorus of snoring was entirely obliterated by the singing, which kept up, I guess, until dawn. The _companeros_ had fleas....

But I rolled up in my blankets and lay down upon the concrete floor very happily. And I slept better than I had before in Mexico.

At dawn we were in the saddle, larking up a steep roll of barren desert to get warm. It was bitter cold. The Tropa were wrapped in serapes up to their eyes, so that they looked like colored toadstools under their great sombreros. The level rays of the sun, burning as they fell upon my face, caught them unaware, glorifying the serapes to more brilliant colors than they possessed. Isidro Amayo's was of deep blue and yellow spirals; Juan Sanchez had one brick red, Captain Fernando's was green and cerise; against them flashed a purple and black zigzag pattern....

We looked back to see the coach pulled to a stop, and Patricio waving to us. Two of the mules had given out, raw from the traces, and tottering with the fatigue of the last two days. The Tropa scattered to look for mules. Soon they came back, driving two great beautiful animals that had never seen harness. No sooner had they smelled the coach than they made a desperate break for freedom. And now the Tropa instantly went back to their native profession--they became _vaqueros_. It was a pretty sight, the rope-coils swinging in the air, the sudden snake-like shoot of the loops, the little horses bracing themselves against the shock of the running mule. Those mules were demons. Time after time they broke the _riatas_; twice they overturned horse and rider. Pablo came to the rescue. He got on Sabas's horse, drove in the spurs, and went after one mule. In three minutes he had roped him by the leg, thrown him, and tied him. Then he took the second with equal dispatch. It was not for nothing that Pablo was Lieutenant-Colonel at twenty-six. Not only could he fight better than his men, but he could ride better, rope better, shoot better, chop wood better, and dance better.

The mules' legs were tied, and they were dragged with ropes to the coach, where the harness was slipped on them in spite of their frantic struggles. When all was ready, Patricio got on the box, seized the whip, and told us to cut away. The wild animals scrambled to their feet, bucking and squealing. Above the uproar came the crack of the heavy whip, and Patricio's bellow: "_Andale! Ujos de la Gran' Ch----!_" and they jerked forward, running, the big coach taking the arroyos like an express train. Soon it vanished behind its own pall of dust, and appeared hours afterward, crawling up the side of a great hill, miles away....

Panchito was eleven years old, already a trooper with a rifle too heavy for him, and a horse that they had to lift him on. His _compadre_ was Victoriano, a veteran of fourteen. Seven others of the Tropa were under seventeen. And there was a sullen, Indian-faced woman, riding side-saddle, who wore two cartridge-belts. She rode with the _hombres_--slept with them in the cuartels.

"Why are you fighting?" I asked her.

She jerked her head toward the fierce figure of Julian Reyes.

"Because he is," she answered. "He who stands under a good tree is sheltered by a good shade."

"A good rooster will crow in any chicken-coop," capped Isidro.

"A parrot is green all over," chimed in someone else.

"Faces we see, but hearts we do not comprehend," said Jose, sentimentally.

At noon we roped a steer, and cut his throat. And because there was no time to build a fire, we ripped the meat from the carcase and ate it raw.

"_Oiga_, meester," shouted Jose. "Do the United States soldiers eat raw meat?"

I said I didn't think they did.

"It is good for the _hombres_. In the campaign we have no time for anything but _carne crudo_. It makes us brave."

By late afternoon we had caught up with the coach, and galloped with it down through the dry arroyo and up through the other side, past the great _ribota_ court that flanks the Hacienda of La Zarca. Unlike La Mimbrera, the Casa Grande here stands on a level place, with the peons' houses in long rows at its flanks, and a flat desert barren of chaparral for twenty miles in front. Che Che Campa also paid a visit to La Zarca. The big house is a black and gaping ruin.

*CHAPTER V*

*WHITE NIGHTS AT ZARCA*

Of course, I took up quarters at the cuartel. And right here I want to mention one fact. Americans had insisted that the Mexican was fundamentally dishonest--that I might expect to have my outfit stolen the first day out. Now for two weeks I lived with as rough a band of ex-outlaws as there was in the army. They were without discipline and without education. They were, many of them, Gringo-haters. They had not been paid a cent for six weeks, and some were so desperately poor that they couldn't boast sandals or serapes. I was a stranger with a good outfit, unarmed. I had a hundred and fifty pesos, which I put conspicuously at the head of my bed when I slept. And I never lost a thing. But more than that, I was not permitted to pay for my food; and in a company where money was scarce and tobacco almost unknown, I was kept supplied with all I could smoke by the _companeros_. Every suggestion from me that I should pay for it was an insult.

The only thing possible was to hire music for a _baile_. Long after Juan Sanchez and I rolled up in our blankets that night, we could hear the rhythm of the music, and the shouts of the dancers. It must have been midnight when somebody threw open the door and yelled: "Meester! _Oiga_, meester! Are you asleep? Come to the _baile_! _Arriba_! _Andale_!"

"Too sleepy!" I said. After some further argument the messenger departed, but in ten minutes back he came. "El Capitan Fernando orders you to come at once! _Vamonos_!" Now the others woke up. "Come to the _baile_, meester!" they shouted. Juan Sanchez sat up and began pulling on his shoes. "Now we're off!" said he. "The meester is going to dance! Captain's orders! Come on, meester!"

"I'll go if all the Tropa does," I said. They raised a yell at that, and the night was full of chuckling men pulling on their clothes.

Twenty of us reached the house in a body. The mob of peons blocking door and window opened to let us pass. "The meester!" they cried. "The meester's going to dance!"

Capitan Fernando threw his arms about me, roaring: "Here he comes, the _companero_! Dance now! Go to it! They're going to dance the _jota_!"

"But I don't know how to dance the _jota_!"

Patricio, flushed and panting, seized me by the arm. "Come on, it's easy! I'll introduce you to the best girl in the Zarca!"

There was nothing to do. The window was jammed with faces, and a hundred tried to crowd in at the door. It was an ordinary room in a peon's house, whitewashed, with a humpy dirt floor. In the light of two candles sat the musicians. The music struck up "_Puentes a Chihuahua_." A grinning silence fell. I gathered the young lady under my arm, and started the preliminary march around the room customary before the dance begins. We waltzed painfully for a moment or two, and suddenly they all began to yell: "_Ora_! _Ora_! _Now_!"

"What do you do now?"

"_Vuelta_! _Vuelta_! Loose her!" a perfect yell.

"But I don't know how!"

"The fool doesn't know how to dance," cried one.

Another began the mocking song:

_"The Gringos all are fools,_
_They've never been in Sonora,_
_And when they want to say: 'Diez Reales,'_
_They call it 'Dollar an' a quarta' ...."_

But Patricio bounded into the middle of the floor, and Sabas after him; each seized a _muchacha_ from the line of women sitting along one end of the room. And as I led my partner back to her seat, they "_vuelta'd_." First a few waltz steps,--then the man whirled away from the girl, snapping his fingers, throwing one arm up to cover his face, while the girl put one hand on her hip and danced after him. They approached each other, receded, danced around each other. The girls were dumpy and dull, Indian-faced and awkward, bowed at the shoulder from much grinding of corn and washing of clothes. Some of the men had on heavy boots, some none; many wore pistols and cartridge-belts, and a few carried rifles slung from their shoulders.

The dance was always preceded by a grand march-around; then, after the couple had danced twice the circuit of the room, they walked again. There were two-steps, waltz and mazurka beside the _jota_. Each girl kept her eyes on the ground, never spoke, and stumbled heavily after you. Add to this a dirt floor full of arroyos, and you have a form of torture unequaled anywhere in the world. It seemed to me I danced for hours, spurred on by the chorus: "Dance, meester! _No floje_! Keep it up! Don't quit!"

Later there was another jota, and here's where I almost got into trouble. I danced this one successfully--with another girl. And, afterward, when I asked my original partner to two-step, she was furiously angry.

"You shamed me before them all," said she. "_You_--you said you didn't know how to dance the _jota_!" As we marched around the room, she appealed to her friends: "Domingo! Juan! Come out and take me away from this Gringo! He won't dare to do anything!"

Half a dozen of them started onto the floor, and the rest looked on. It was a ticklish moment. But all at once the good Fernando glided in front, a revolver in his hand.

"The Americano is my friend!" said he. "Get back there and mind your business!..."

The horses were tired, so we rested a day in La Zarca. Behind the Casa Grande lay a ruined garden, full of gray alamo trees, figs, vines, and great barrel-cactuses. It was walled around by high adobe walls on three sides, over one of which the ancient white tower of the church floated in the blue sky. The fourth side opened upon a reservoir of yellow water, and beyond it stretched the western desert, miles upon miles of tawny desolation. Trooper Marin and I lay under a fig tree, watching the vultures sail over us on quiet wing. Suddenly the silence was broken by loud, swift music.

Pablo had found a pianola in the church, where it had escaped Che Che Campa's notice the previous year; with it was one roll, the "Merry Widow Waltz." Nothing would do but that we carry the instrument out into the ruined patio. We took turns playing the thing all day long; Rafaelito volunteering the information that the "Merry Widow" was Mexico's most popular piece. A Mexican, he said, had composed it.

The finding of the pianola suggested that we give another _baile_ that night, in the portico of the Casa Grande itself. Candles were stuck upon the pillars, the faint light flickering upon broken walls, burned and blackened doorways, the riot of wild vines that had twisted unchecked around the roof-beams. The entire patio was crowded with blanketed men, making holiday, even yet a little uncomfortable in the great house which they had never been allowed to enter. As soon as the orchestra had finished a dance, the pianola immediately took up the task. Dance followed dance, without any rest. A barrel of _sotol_ further complicated things. As the evening wore on the assembly got more and more exhilarated. Sabas, who was Pablo's orderly, led off with Pablo's mistress. I followed. Immediately afterward Pablo hit her on the head with the butt end of his revolver, and said he'd shoot her if she danced with anyone else, and her partner too. After sitting some moments meditating, Sabas rose, pulled his revolver, and informed the harpist that he had played a wrong note. Then he shot at him. Other _companeros_ disarmed Sabas, who immediately went to sleep in the middle of the dance-floor.

The interest in Meester's dancing soon shifted to other phenomena. I sat down beside Julian Reyes, he with the Christ and Virgin on the front of his sombrero. He was far gone in _sotol_--his eyes burned like a fanatic's.

He turned on me suddenly:

"Are you going to fight with us?"

"No," I said. "I am a correspondent. I am forbidden to fight."

"It is a lie," he cried. "You don't fight because you are afraid to fight. In the face of God, our Cause is Just."

"Yes, I know that. But my orders are not to fight."

"What do I care for orders?" he shrieked. "We want no correspondents. We want no words printed in a book. We want rifles and killing, and if we die we shall be caught up among the saints! Coward! Huertista!..."

"That's enough!" cried someone, and I looked up to see Longinos Gueereca standing over me. "Julian Reyes, you know nothing. This _companero_ comes thousands of miles by the sea and the land to tell his countrymen the truth of the fight for Liberty. He goes into battle without arms, he's braver than you are, because you have a rifle. Get out now, and don't bother him any more!"

He sat down where Julian had been, smiled his homely, gentle smile, and took both my hands in his.

"We shall be _compadres_, eh?" said Longinos Gueereca. "We shall sleep in the same blankets, and always be together. And when we get to the Cadena I shall take you to my home, and my father shall make you my brother.... I will show you the lost gold-mines of the Spaniards, the richest mines in the world.... We'll work them together, eh? ... We'll be rich, eh?..."

And from that time on until the end, Longinos Gueereca and I were always together.

But the _baile_ grew wilder and wilder. Orchestra and pianola alternated without a break. Everybody was drunk now. Pablo was boasting horribly of killing defenseless prisoners. Occasionally, some insult would be passed, and there would be a snapping of rifle levers all over the place. Then perhaps the poor exhausted women would begin to go home; and what an ominous shout would go up: "_No vaya_! Don't go! Stop! Come back here and dance! Come back here!" And the dejected procession would halt and straggle back. At four o'clock, when somebody started the report that a Gringo Huertista spy was among us, I decided to go to bed. But the _baile_ kept up until seven....

*CHAPTER VI*

*"QUIEN VIVE?"*

At dawn I woke to the sound of shooting, and a cracked bugle blowing wildly. Juan Sanchez stood in front of the cuartel, sounding Reveille; he didn't know which call Reveille was, so he played them all.

Patricio had roped a steer for breakfast. The animal started on a plunging, bellowing run for the desert, Patricio's horse galloping alongside. The rest of the Tropa, only their eyes showing over their serapes, kneeled with their rifles to their shoulders. Crash! In that still air, the enormous sound of guns labored heavily up. The running steer jerked sideways,--his screaming reached us faintly. Crash! He fell headlong. His feet kicked in the air. Patricio's pony jerked roughly up, and his serape flapped like a banner. Just then the enormous sun rose bodily out of the east, pouring clear light over the barren plain like a sea....

Pablo emerged from the Casa Grande, leaning on his wife's shoulder.

"I am going to be very ill," he groaned, suiting the action to the word. "Juan Reed will ride my horse."

He got into the coach, weakly took the guitar, and sang:

_"I remained at the foot of a green maguey_
_My ungrateful love went away with another._
_I awoke to the song of the lark:_
_Oh, what a hangover I have, and the barkeeps won't trust me!_

_"O God, take away this sickness,_
_I feel as if I were surely going to die--_
_The Virgin of pulque and whisky must save me:_
_O what a hangover, and nothing to drink!..."_

It is some sixty-five miles from La Zarca to the Hacienda of La Cadena, where the Tropa was to be stationed. We rode it in one day, without water and without food. The coach soon left us far behind. Pretty soon, the barrenness of the land gave way to spiny, hostile vegetation,--the cactus and the mesquite. We strung out along a deep rut between the gigantic chaparral, choked with the mighty cloud of alkali dust, scratched and torn by the thorny brush. Sometimes emerging in an open space, we could see the straight road climbing the summits of the rolling desert, until the eye couldn't follow it; but we knew it must be there, still farther and farther again. Not a breath of wind stirred. The vertical sun beat down with a fury that made one reel. And most of the troop, who had been drunk the night before, began to suffer terribly. Their lips glazed, cracked, turned dark blue. I didn't hear a single word of complaint; but there was nothing of the lighthearted joking and rollicking of other days. Jose Valiente taught me how to chew mesquite twigs, but that didn't help much.

When we had been riding for hours, Fidencio pointed ahead, saying huskily: "Here comes a _christiano_!" When you realize that word _christiano_, which now means simply Man, is descended among the Indians from immeasurable antiquity,--and when the man that says it looks exactly as Guatemozin might have looked, it gives you curious sensations. The _christiano_ in question was a very aged Indian driving a burro. No, he said, he didn't carry any water. But Sabas leaped from his horse and tumbled the old man's pack on the ground.

"Ah!" he cried; "fine! _Tres piedras_!" and held up a root of the _sotol_ plant, which looks like a varnished century-plant, and oozes with intoxicating juices. We divided it as you divide an artichoke. Pretty soon everybody felt better....

It was at the end of the afternoon that we rounded a shoulder of the desert and saw ahead the gigantic ashen alamo trees that surrounded the spring of the Hacienda of Santo Domingo. A pillar of brown dust, like the smoke of a burning city, rose from the corral, where _vaqueros_ were roping horses. Desolate and alone stood the Casa Grande, burned by Che Che Campa a year ago. And by the spring, at the foot of the alamo trees, a dozen wandering peddlers squatted around their fire, their burros munching corn. From the fountain to the adobe houses and back moved an endless chain of women water-carriers,--the symbol of northern Mexico.

"Water!" we shouted, joyously, galloping down the hill. The coach-horses were already at the spring with Patricio. Leaping from their saddles, the Tropa threw themselves on their bellies. Men and horses indiscriminately thrust in their heads, and drank and drank.... It was the most glorious sensation I have ever felt.

"Who has a cigarro?" cried somebody. For a few blessed minutes we lay on our backs smoking. The sound of music--gay music--made me sit up. And there, across my vision, moved the strangest procession in the world. First came a ragged peon carrying the flowering branch of some tree. Behind him, another bore upon his head a little box that looked like a coffin, painted in broad strips of blue, pink and silver. There followed four men, carrying a sort of canopy made of gay-colored bunting. A woman walked beneath it, though the canopy hid her down to the waist; but on top lay the body of a little girl, with bare feet and little brown hands crossed on her breast. There was a wreath of paper flowers in her hair, and her whole body was heaped with them. A harpist brought up the rear, playing a popular waltz called "_Recuerdos de Durango_." The funeral procession moved slowly and gaily along, passing the _ribota_ court, where the players never ceased their handball game, to the little Campo Santo. "Bah!" spat Julian Reyes furiously. "That is a blasphemy to the dead!"

In the late sunshine the desert was a glowing thing. We rode in a silent, enchanted land, that seemed some kingdom under the sea. All around were great cactuses colored red, blue, purple, yellow, as coral is on the ocean bed. Behind us, to the west, the coach rolled along in a glory of dust like Elijah's chariot.... Eastward, under a sky already darkening to stars, were the rumpled mountains behind which lay La Cadena, the advance post of the Maderista army. It was a land to love--this Mexico--a land to fight for. The ballad-singers suddenly began the interminable song of "The Bull-Fight," in which the Federal chiefs are the bulls, and the Maderista generals the _torreros_; and as I looked at the gay, lovable, humble _hombres_ who had given so much of their lives and of their comfort to the brave fight, I couldn't help but think of the little speech Villa made to the foreigners who left Chihuahua in the first refugee train:

"This is the latest news for you to take to your people. There shall be no more palaces in Mexico. The _tortillas_ of the poor are better than the bread of the rich. Come!..."

It was late night--past eleven--when the coach broke down on a stretch of rocky road between high mountains. I stopped to get my blankets; and when I started on again, the _companeros_ had long vanished down the winding road. Somewhere near, I knew, was La Cadena. At any minute now a sentinel might start up out of the chaparral. For about a mile I descended a steep road that was often the dried bed of a river, winding down between high mountains. It was a black night, without stars, and bitter cold. Finally, the mountains opened into a vast plain, and across that I could faintly see the tremendous range of the Cadena, and the pass that the Tropa was to guard. Barely three leagues beyond that pass lay Mapimi, held by twelve hundred Federals. But the hacienda was still hidden by a roll of the desert.

I was quite upon it, without being challenged, before I saw it, an indistinct white square of buildings on the other side of a deep arroyo. And still no sentinel. "That's funny," I said to myself. "They don't keep very good watch here." I plunged down into the arroyo, and climbed up the other side. In one of the great rooms of the Casa Grande were lights and music. Peering through, I saw the indefatigable Sabas whirling in the mazes of the _jota_, and Isidro Amayo, and Jose Valiente. A _baile_! Just then a man with a gun lounged out of the lighted doorway.

"Quien vive?" he shouted, lazily.

"Madero!" I shouted.

"May he live!" returned the sentinel, and went back to the _baile_....

*CHAPTER VII*

*AN OUTPOST OF THE REVOLUTION*

There were a hundred and fifty of us stationed at La Cadena, the advance guard of all the Maderista army to the West. Our business was to guard a pass, the Puerta de la Cadena; but the troops were quartered at the hacienda, ten miles away. It stood upon a little plateau, a deep arroyo on one side, at the bottom of which a sunken river came to the surface for perhaps a hundred yards, and vanished again. As far as the eye could reach up and down the broad valley was the fiercest kind of desert,--dried creek-beds, and a thicket of chaparral, cactus and sword plant.

Directly east lay the Puerta, breaking the tremendous mountain range that blotted out half the sky and extended north and south beyond vision, wrinkled like a giant's bed-clothes. The desert tilted up to meet the gap, and beyond was nothing but the fierce blue of stainless Mexican sky. From the Puerta you could see fifty miles across the vast arid plain that the Spaniards named _Llano de los Gigantes_, where the little mountains lie tumbled about; and four leagues away the low gray houses of Mapimi. There lay the enemy; twelve hundred _colorados_, or Federal irregulars, under the infamous Colonel Argumendo. The _colorados_ are the bandits that made Orozco's revolution. They were so called because their flag was red, and because their hands were red with slaughter, too. They swept through Northern Mexico, burning, pillaging and robbing the poor. In Chihuahua, they cut the soles from the feet of one poor devil, and drove him a mile across the desert before he died. And I have seen a city of four thousand souls reduced to _five_ after a visit by the _colorados_. When Villa took Torreon, there was no mercy for the _colorados_; they are always shot.

The first day we reached La Cadena, twelve of them rode up to reconnoiter. Twenty-five of the Tropa were on guard at the Fuerta. They captured one _colorado_. They made him get off his horse, and took away his rifle, clothes and shoes. THen they made him run naked through a hundred yards of chaparral and cactus, shooting at him. Juan Sanchez finally dropped him, screaming, and thereby won the rifle, which he brought back as a present to me. The _colorado_ they left to the great Mexican buzzards, which flap lazily above the desert all day long.

When all this happened, my _compadre_, Captain Longinos Gueereca, and Trooper Juan Vallejo, and I, had borrowed the Colonel's coach for a trip to the dusty little rancho of Bruquilla,--Longinos' home. It lay four desert leagues to the north, where a spring burst miraculously out of a little white hill. Old Gueereca was a white-haired peon in sandals. He had been born a slave on one of the great haciendas; but years of toil, too appalling to realize, had made him that rare being in Mexico, the independent owner of a small property. He had ten children,--soft, dark-skinned girls, and sons that looked like New England farmhands,--and a daughter in the grave.

The Gueerecas were proud, ambitious, warm-hearted folk. Longinos said: "This is my dearly loved friend, Juan Reed, and my brother." And the old man and his wife put both their arms around me and patted me on the back, in the affectionate way Mexicans embrace.

"My family owes nothing to the Revolucion," said 'Gino, proudly. "Others have taken money and horses and wagons. The _jefes_ of the army have become rich from the property of the great haciendas. The Gueerecas have given all to the Maderistas, and have taken nothing but my rank...."

The old man, however, was a little bitter. Holding up a horsehair rope, he said: "Three years ago I had four _riatas_ like this. Now I have only one. One the _colorados_ took, and the other Urbina's people took, and the last one Jose Bravo.... What difference does it make which side robs you?" But he didn't mean it all. He was immensely proud of his youngest son, the bravest officer in all the army.

We sat in the long adobe room, eating the most exquisite cheese, and _tortillas_ with fresh goat-butter,--the deaf old mother apologizing in a loud voice for the poverty of the food, and her warlike son reciting his personal Iliad of the nine-days' fight around Torreon.

"We got so close," he was saying, "that the hot air and burning powder stung us in the face. We got too close to shoot, so we clubbed our rifles----" Just then all the dogs began to bark at once. We leaped from our seats. One didn't know what to expect in the Cadena those days. It was a small boy on horseback, shouting that the _colorados_ were entering the Puerta--and off he galloped.

Longinos roared to put the mules in the coach. The entire family fell to work with a fury, and in five minutes Longinos dropped on one knee and kissed his father's hand, and we were tearing down the road. "Don't be killed! Don't be killed! Don't be killed!" we could hear the Senora wailing.

We passed a wagon loaded with corn-stalks, with a whole family of women and children, two tin trunks, and an iron bed, perched on top. The man of the family rode a burro. Yes, the _colorados_ were coming--thousands of them pouring through the Puerta. The last time the _colorados_ had come they had killed his daughter. For three years there had been war in this valley, and he had not complained. Because it was for the Patria. Now they would go to the United States where---- But Juan lashed the mules cruelly, and we heard no more. Farther along was an old man without shoes, placidly driving some goats. Had he heard about the _colorados_? Well, there had been some gossip about _colorados_. Were they coming through the Puerta, and how many?

"_Pues, quien sabe, senor!_"

At last, yelling at the staggering mules, we came into camp just in time to see the victorious Tropa straggle in across the desert, firing off many more rounds of ammunition than they had used in the fight. They moved low along the ground, scarcely higher on their broncos than the drab mesquite through which they flashed, all big sombreros and flapping gay serapes, the last sunshine on their lifted rifles.

That very night came a courier from General Urbina, saying that he was ill and wanted Pablo Seanes to come back. So off went the great coach, and Pablo's mistress, and Raphaelito, the hunchback, and Fidencio, and Patricio. Pablo said to me: "Juanito, if you want to come back with us, you shall sit beside me in the coach." Patricio and Raphaelito begged me to come. But I had got so far to the front now that I didn't want to turn back. Then the next day my friends and _companeros_ of the Tropa, whom I had learned to know so well in our march across the desert, received orders to move to Jarralitos. Only Juan Vallejo and Longinos Gueereca stayed behind.

The Cadena's new garrison were a different kind of men. God knows where they came from, but it was a place where the troopers had literally starved. They were the most wretchedly poor peons that I have ever seen--about half of them didn't have serapes. Some fifty were known to be _nuevos_ who had never smelt powder, about the same number were under a dreadfully incompetent old party named Major Salazar, and the remaining fifty were equipped with old carbines and ten rounds of ammunition apiece. Our commanding officer was Lieutenant-Colonel Petronilo Hernandez, who had been six years a Major in the Federal army until the murder of Madero drove him to the other side. He was a brave, good-hearted little man, with twisted shoulders, but years of official army red tape had unfitted him to handle troops like these. Every morning he issued an Order of the Day, distributing guards, posting sentinels, and naming the officer on duty. Nobody ever read it. Officers in that army have nothing to do with the disciplining or ordering of soldiers, They are officers because they have been brave, and their job is to fight at the head of their troop--that's all. The soldiers all look up to some one General, under whom they are recruited, as to their feudal lord. They call themselves his _gente_--his people; and an officer of anybody else's _gente_ hasn't much authority over them. Petronilo was of Urbina's _gente_; but two-thirds of the Cadena garrison belonged to Arrieta's division. That's why there were no sentinels to the west and north. Lieutenant-Colonel Alberto Redondo guarded another pass four leagues to the south, so we thought we were safe in that direction. True, twenty-five men did outpost duty at the Fuerta, and the Puerta was strong....

*CHAPTER VIII*

*THE FIVE MUSKETEERS*

The Casa Grande of La Cadena had been sacked, of course, by Che Che Campa the year before. In the patio were corraled the officers' horses. We slept on the tiled floors of the rooms surrounding it. In the _sala_ of the owner, once barbarically decorated, pegs were driven into the walls to hang saddles and bridles on, rifles and sabers were stacked against the wall, and dirty blanket-rolls lay flung into the corner. At night a fire of corn-cobs was built in the middle of the floor, and we squatted around it, while Apolinario and fourteen-year-old Gil Tomas, who was once a _colorado_, told stories of the Bloody Three Years.

"At the taking of Durango," said Apolinario, "I was of the _gente_ of Captain Borunda; he that they call the _Matador_, because he always shoots his prisoners. But when Urbina took Durango there weren't many prisoners. So Borunda, thirsty for blood, made the rounds of all the saloons. And in every one he would pick out some unarmed man and ask him if he were a Federal. 'No, senor,' the man would say. 'You deserve death because you have not told the truth!' yelled Borunda, pulling his gun. Bang!"

We all laughed heartily at this.

"That reminds me," broke in Gil, "of the time I fought with Rojas in Orozco's--(cursed be his mother!)--Revolucion. An old Porfirista officer deserted to our side, and Orozco sent him out to teach the _colorados_ (animals!) how to drill. There was one droll fellow in our company. Oh! he had a fine sense of humor. He pretended he was too stupid to learn the manual of arms. So this cursed old Huertista--(may he fry in hell!)--made him drill alone.

"'Shoulder arms!' The _companero_ did it all right.

"'Present arms!' Perfectly.

"'Port arms!' He acted like he didn't know how, so the old fool went around and took hold of the rifle.

"'This way!' says he, pulling on it.

"'Oh!' says the fellow, '_that_ way!' And he let him have the bayonet right in the chest...."

After that Fernando Silveyra, the paymaster, recounted a few anecdotes of the _curas_, or priests, that sounded exactly like Touraine in the thirteenth century, or the feudal rights of landlords over their women tenants before the French Revolution. Fernando ought to have known, too, for he was brought up for the Church. There must have been about twenty of us sitting around that fire, all the way from the most miserably poor peon in the Tropa up to First Captain Longinos Gueereca. There wasn't one of these men who had any religion at all, although once they had all been strict Catholics. But three years of war have taught the Mexican people many things. There will never be another Porfirio Diaz; there will never be another Orozco Revolution; and the Catholic Church in Mexico will never again be the voice of God.

Then Juan Santillanes, a twenty-two-year-old _subteniente_, who seriously informed me that he was descended from the great Spanish hero, Gil Blas, piped up the ancient disreputable ditty, which begins:

_"I am Count Oliveros_
_Of the Spanish artillery...."_

Juan proudly displayed four bullet wounds. He had killed a few defenseless prisoners with his own gun, he said; giving promise of growing up to be _muy matador_ (a great killer) some day. He boasted of being the strongest and bravest man in the army. His idea of humor seemed to be breaking eggs into the pocket of my coat. Juan was very young for his years, but very likable.

But the best friend I had beside 'Gino Gueereca was Subteniente Luis Martinez. They called him "_Gachupine_"--the contemptuous name for Spaniards--because he might have stepped out of a portrait of some noble Spanish youth by Greco. Luis was pure race--sensitive, gay and high-spirited. He was only twenty, and had never been in battle. Around the contour of his face was a faint black beard.

He fingered it, grinning. "Nicanor and I made a bet that we wouldn't shave until we took Torreon...."

Luis and I slept in different rooms. But at night, when the fire had gone out and the rest of the fellows were snoring, we sat at each other's blankets--one night in his cuartel, the one next to mine--talking about the world, our girls, and what we were going to be and to do when we really got at it. When the war was over, Luis was coming to the United States to visit me; and then we were both coming back to Durango City to visit the Martinez family. He showed me the photograph of a little baby, proudly boasting that he was an uncle already. "What will you do when the bullets begin to fly?" I asked him.

"_Quien sabe?_" he laughed. "I guess I'll run!"

It was late. The sentinel at the door had long since gone to sleep. "Don't go," said Luis, grabbing my coat. "Let's gossip a little longer...."

'Gino, Juan Santillanes, Silveyra, Luis, Juan Vallejo and I rode up the arroyo to bathe in a pool that was rumored to be there. It was a scorched river bed filled with white-hot sand, rimmed with dense mesquite and cactus. Every kilometer the hidden river showed itself for a little space, only to disappear at a crackling white rim of alkali. First came the horse pool, the troopers and their wretched ponies gathered around it; one or two squatting on the rim, scooping water up against the animals' sides with calabashes.... Above them kneeled the women at their eternal laundry on the stones. Beyond that the ancient path from the hacienda cut across, where the never-ending line of black-shawled women moved with water-jars on their heads. Still farther up were women bathers, wrapped round and round with yards of pale blue or white cotton, and naked brown babies splashing in the shallows. And, last of all, naked brown men, with sombreros on and bright-colored serapes draped over their shoulders, smoked their _hojas_, squatting on the rocks. We flushed a coyote up there, and scrambled steeply up to the desert, pulling at our revolvers. There he went! We spurred into the chaparral on the dead run, shooting and yelling. But of course he got away. And later, much later, we found the mythical pool--a cool, deep basin worn in the solid rock, with green weeds growing on the bottom.

When we got back, 'Gino Gueereca became greatly excited, because his new _tordillo_ horse had come from Bruquilla--a four-year-old stallion that his father had raised for him to ride at the head of his company.

"If he is dangerous," announced Juan Santillanes, as we hurried out, "I want to ride him first. I love to subdue dangerous horses!"

A mighty cloud of yellow dust filled all the corral, rising high into the still air. Through it appeared the dim chaotic shapes of many running horses. Their hoofs made dull thunder. Men were vaguely visible, all braced legs and swinging arms, handkerchiefs bound over their faces; wide-spreading rope coils lifted, circling. The big gray felt the loop tighten on his neck. He trumpeted and plunged; the _vaquero_ twisted the rope around his hip, lying back almost to the ground, feet plowing the dirt. Another noose gripped the horse's hind legs--and he was down. They put a saddle on him and a rope halter.

"Want to ride him, Juanito?" grinned 'Gino.

"After you," answered Juan with dignity. "He's your horse...."

But Juan Vallejo already was astride, shouting to them to loose the ropes. With a sort of squealing roar, the _tordillo_ struggled up, and the earth trembled to his furious fight.

We dined in the ancient kitchen of the hacienda, sitting on stools around a packing box. The ceiling was a rich, greasy brown, from the smoke of generations of meals. One entire end of the room was taken up by immense adobe stoves, ovens, and fireplaces, with four or five ancient crones bending over them, stirring pots and turning _tortillas_. The fire was our only light, flickering strangely over the old women; lighting up the black wall, up which the smoke fled, to wreathe around the ceiling and finally pour from the window. There were Colonel Petronilo, his mistress, a strangely beautiful peasant woman with a pock-marked face, who always seemed to be laughing to herself about something; Don Tomas, Luis Martinez, Colonel Redondo, Major Salazar, Nicanor, and I. The Colonel's mistress seemed uncomfortable at the table; for a Mexican peasant woman is a servant in her house. But Don Petronilo always treated her as if she were a great lady.

Redondo had just been telling me about the girl he was going to marry. He showed me her picture. She was even then on her way to Chihuahua to get her wedding dress. "As soon as we take Torreon," he said.

"_Oiga, senor_!" Salazar touched me on the arm. "I have found out who you are. You are an agent of American business men who have vast interests in Mexico. I know all about American business. You are an agent of the trusts. You come down here to spy upon the movement of our troops, and then you will secretly send them word. Is it not true?"

"How could I secretly send anybody any word from here?" I asked. "We're four days' hard ride from a telegraph line."

"Ah, _I_ know," he grinned cunningly, wabbling a finger at me. "I know many things; I have much in the head." He was standing up now. The Major suffered badly from gout; his legs were wrapped in yards and yards of woolen bandages, which made them look like _tamales_. "I know _all_ about business. I have studied much in my youth. These American trusts are invading Mexico to rob the Mexican people----"

"You're mistaken, Major," interrupted Don Petronilo sharply. "This senor is my friend and my guest."

"Listen, _mi Coronel_," Salazar burst out with unexpected violence. "This senor is a spy. All Americans are Porfiristas and Huertistas. Take this warning before it is too late. I have much in the head. I am a very smart man. Take this Gringo out and shoot him--at once. Or you will regret it."

A clamor of voices burst out all together from the others, but it was interrupted by another sound--a shot, and then another, and men shouting.

Came a trooper running. "Mutiny in the ranks!" he cried. "They won't obey orders!"

"Who won't?" snapped Don Petronilo.

"The _gente_ of Salazar!"

"Bad people!" exclaimed Nicanor as we ran. "They were _colorados_ captured when we took Torreon. Joined us so we wouldn't kill 'em. Ordered out tonight to guard the Puerta!"

"Till to-morrow," said Salazar at this point, "I'm going to bed!"

The peons' houses at La Cadena, where the troops were quartered, enclosed a great square, like a walled town. There were two gates. At one we forced our way through a mob of women and peons fighting to get out. Inside, there were dim lights from doorways, and three or four little fires in the open air. A bunch of frightened horses crowded one another in a corner. Men ran wildly in and out of their cuartels, with rifles in their hands. In the center of the open space stood a group of about fifty men, mostly armed, as if to repel an attack.

"Guard those gates!" cried the Colonel. "Don't let anybody out without an order from me!" The running troops began to mass at the gates. Don Petronilo walked out alone into the middle of the square.

"What's the trouble, _companeros_?" he asked quietly.

"They were going to kill us all!" yelled somebody from the darkness. "They wanted to escape! They were going to betray us to the _colorados_!"

"It's a lie!" cried those in the center. "We are not Don Petronilo's _gente_! Our _jefe_ is Manuel Arrieta!"

Suddenly Longinos Gueereca, unarmed, flashed by us and fell upon them furiously, wrenching away their rifles and throwing them far behind. For a moment it looked as if the rebels would turn on him, but they did not resist.

"Disarm them!" ordered Don Petronilo. "And lock them up!"

They herded the prisoners into one large room, with an armed guard at the door. And long after midnight I could hear them hilariously singing.

That left Don Petronilo with a hundred effectives, some extra horses with running sores on their backs, and two thousand rounds of ammunition, more or less. Salazar took himself off in the morning, after recommending that all his _gente_ be shot; he was evidently greatly relieved to be rid of them. Juan Santillanes was in favor of execution, too. But Don Petronilo decided to send them to General Urbina for trial.

*CHAPTER IX*

*THE LAST NIGHT*

The days at La Cadena were full of color. In the cold dawn, when the river pools were filmed with ice, a trooper would gallop into the great square with a plunging steer at the end of his rope. Fifty or sixty ragged soldiers, only their eyes showing between serapes and big sombreros, would begin an amateur bull-fight, to the roaring delight of the rest of the _companeros_. They waved their blankets, shouting the correct bull-fight cries. One would twist the infuriated animal's tail. Another, more impatient, beat him with the flat of a sword. Instead of banderillas, they stuck daggers into his shoulder--his hot blood spattering them as he charged. And when at last he was down and the merciful knife in his brain, a mob fell upon the carcase, cutting and ripping, and bearing off chunks of raw meat to their cuartels. Then the white, burning sun would rise suddenly behind the Puerta, stinging your hands and face. And the pools of blood, the faded patterns of the serapes, the far reaches of umber desert glowed and became vivid....

Don Petronilo had confiscated several coaches in the campaign. We borrowed them for many an excursion--the five of us. Once it was a trip to San Pedro del Gallo to see a cock-fight, appropriately enough. Another time 'Gino Gueereca and I went to see the fabulously rich lost mines of the Spaniards, which he knew. But we never got past Bruquilla--just lounged in the shade of the trees and ate cheese all day.

Late in the afternoon the Puerta guard trotted out to their post, the late sun soft on their rifles and cartridge-belts; and long after dark the detachment relieved came jingling in out of the mysterious dark.

The four peddlers whom I had seen in Santo Domingo arrived that night. They had four burro loads of _macuche_ to sell the soldiers.

"It's meester!" they cried, when I came down to their little fire. "_Que tal_, meester? How goes it? Aren't you afraid of the _colorados_?"

"How is business?" I asked, accepting the heaped-up handful of _macuche_ they gave me.

They laughed uproariously at this.

"Business! Far better for us if we had stayed in Santo Domingo! _This_ Tropa couldn't buy one cigarro if they clubbed their money!..."

One of them began to sing that extraordinary ballad, "The Morning Song to Francisco Villa." He sang one verse, and then the next man sang a verse, and so on around, each man composing a dramatic account of the deeds of the Great Captain. For half an hour I lay there, watching them, as they squatted between their knees, serapes draped loosely from their shoulders, the firelight red on their simple, dark faces. While one man sang the others stared upon the ground, wrapt in composition.

_"Here is Francisco Villa_
_With his chiefs and his officers,_
_Who come to saddle the short-horns_
_Of the Federal Army._

_"Get ready now, colorados,_
_Who have been talking so loud,_
_For Villa and his soldiers_
_Will soon take off your hides!_

_"To-day has come your tamer,_
_The Father of Rooster Tamers,_
_To run you out of Torreon--_
_To the devil with your skins!_

_"The rich with all their money_
_Have already got their lashing,_
_As the soldiers of Urbina_
_Can tell, and those of Maclovio Herrera._

_"Fly, fly away, little dove,_
_Fly over all the prairies,_
_And say that Villa has come_
_To drive them all out forever._

_"Ambition will ruin itself,_
_And justice will be the winner,_
_For Villa has reached Torreon_
_To punish the avaricious."_

_"Fly away, Royal Eagle,_
_These laurels carry to Villa,_
_For he has come to conquer_
_Bravo and all his colonels._

_"Now you sons of the Mosquito,_
_Your pride will come to an end._
_If Villa has come to Torreon,_
_It is because he could do it!_

_"Viva Villa and his soldiers!_
_Viva Herrera and his gente!_
_You have seen, wicked people,_
_What a brave man can do._

_"With this now I say good-bye;_
_By the Rose of Castile,_
_Here is the end of my rhyme_
_To the great General Villa!"_

After a while I slipped away, and I doubt if they even saw me go. They sang around their fire for more than three hours.

But in our cuartel there was other entertainment. The room was full of smoke from the fire on the floor. Through it I dimly made out some thirty or forty troopers squatting or sprawled at full length--perfectly silent as Silveyra read aloud a proclamation from the Governor of Durango forever condemning the lands of the great haciendas to be divided among the poor.

He read:

"Considering: that the principal cause of discontent among the people in our State, which forced them to spring to arms in the year 1910, was the absolute lack of individual property; and that the rural classes have no means of subsistence in the present, nor any hope for the future, except to serve as peons on the haciendas of the great land owners, who have monopolized the soil of the State;

"Considering: that the principal branch of our national riches is agriculture, and that there can be no true progress in agriculture without that the majority of farmers have a personal interest in making the earth produce....