by B. TRAVEN
On nearing the wreck, but still more than half a mile off, the engine was fired at by bandits lying in ambush or on their way home with the loot. One fireman got a shot in his leg; the other fireman serving the engine got a scratch on his skull. But in spite of all that, the engine reached the wreck safely.
The emergency train was also under fire, but the officials and a few of the volunteers who carried guns answered the fire, which made the bandits believe that this emergency train carried soldiers. So the bandits dropped their heavily loaded bags and hurried to get away with the little they could carry without interfering with their retreat. The more important booty was on the farther side of the wreck, where the train could not go, for the wreck blocked the way.
All wounded and dead that could be found were taken into the emergency train, as well as those who were unhurt, and the baggage that was lying about, and then the train returned to the depot, where by now the whole town had gathered.
At the depot a dozen official telegrams had arrived. A hospital train would be there in the morning. The chief of the federal military force of the state and of two neighboring states had, by order of the government, mobilized cavalry troops to be sent after the bandits by special trains. The mounted police of all districts in the vicinity of the attack had been ordered to hunt down the bandits and bring them in by whatever means possible, but run them in they must.
The tragedy was not ended, for twenty-four hours later, when the hospital train with all the surviving passengers arrived at the main station of the capital, where thousands had been waiting for many hours, there were no less than twenty men and women who turned insane or committed suicide at the sight of a loved one among the dead. There were three who killed themselves in the belief that their relatives had been murdered. They were so excited that when the expected person was not among the first to leave the train, they were sure that he must be dead, and shot themselves or threw themselves before other incoming trains. For the metropolitan press, with such a piece of news at its command, had turned hysterical and had done its best to excite the whole population, so that practically no individual could be found sane enough to look objectively at this disaster. Every person able to read the papers was made to identify himself with the victims.
Man can more easily endure a train-wreck or a ship-disaster or an earthquake with a loss of many hundreds of lives than wholesale murder by criminals. Men feel sorry about a thousand lives lost by a shipwreck; they will do all in their power to help the victims and to avoid a similar catastrophe. But the same men will rage like savages for vengeance if only twenty persons have been willfully murdered by bandits for purely material reasons.
5
The government considered it its foremost duty to hunt down these murderers who in the face of the whole civilized world had besmirched the honor and the name of a civilized nation just then mistrusted and detested everywhere. Roman Catholics, ignorant or misled as to the facts, were trying to get other governments to interfere in what they thought to be suppression of religious liberty.
In certain countries whenever banditry occurs on such a large scale, it is not always possible to determine who profits by what bandits do. The bandits may get all the booty for themselves, but often they may not know for whom they are fighting. A man high up in politics, a general hot after the seat of the president, a dismissed secretary of commerce, may use these bandits, whom he calls rebels, to destroy the reputation of the government before foreign nations and before their own. Many attacks by bandits in these countries can be explained in this way, as it frequently happens that the bandits after an assault are not prosecuted in the way the public has a right to expect. In such cases only a few are caught, and the report is given out that they have been executed, but sometimes it happens that they are later found to be soldiers in the army, where they hide out. The pursuit of the bandits cannot be followed up by the public in general, for they know only what they read in the papers, and what is printed may be true or it may not. After two or three weeks no more is heard about bandits, other affairs having taken the foreground in the public mind.
The bandits in this case made it quite clear that they were fighting for their king, Jesus. Fighting on behalf of the Roman Catholic church, for religious liberty. The fact is that they had only a very vague idea as to who Cristo was. It would have been quite easy to make them believe that Bonaparte, Columbus, Cortes, and Jesus were all identical. The Roman Catholic church during its four hundred years of rule in Latin America, of which three hundred and fifty were an absolute rule, has been more interested in purely material gains for the treasuries and coffers in Rome than in educating its subjects in the true Christian spirit. Governments of modern civilized countries have quite a different opinion from the church on education, and these governments have also different opinions as to who is better suited to rule, the state or the church.
No better proof of what the Roman Catholic church in these countries has done to the people could be found than the fact that the same men who cried: “Viva nuestro rey Cristo!” killed mercilessly and robbed for their own pockets men, women, and children whom they knew were members of the same church, believing at the time that they were doing so to help their church and to please the Holy Virgin and the Pope.
Two Catholic priests had been recognized by passengers as active members of the bandit band. Later these priests were caught, and they admitted that they had been leaders, not only in this train-assault, but also in half a hundred hold-ups on highways and ranches. They considered their own actions similar to those of the Roman Catholic priests, Father Hidalgo and Father Morelos, who fought against the Spaniards for the independence of their country. They had also paid with their lives for the failure of their enterprise, because they were fighting under absolutely different conditions from Washington the Great, and these fighters for their country were condemned not only by the crown of Spain but also by the Holy Inquisition although they fought under the flag of the Holy Virgin of Guadalupe. A few years later when the Roman Catholic church became interested in separating the Latin-American countries from Spain, because Spain had started to throw off the yoke of the Roman church, the independence of the Latin-American countries was won by the help of the same church that had only ten years before helped execute patriots who did what the church now wanted done, and the beheaded bodies of these rebel priests were buried in the main cathedral.
Besides these two recognized priests, the government did not know who was leading the hordes of bandits fighting for King Cristo. To find the real boss who pulled the strings, or to show American tourists that the country was safe and that such an incident would be punished severely and swiftly, the government changed certain military chiefs in whom it had lost confidence and then went with all its might on the trail of the malef actors.
6
In pursuing bandits along the Sierra Madre it does not help you to take finger-prints from the walls of railroad cars or to file all finger-prints at headquarters. The thing is to get the bandits. When you have them, shoot them. This done, you may check up on the finger-prints. There is no other way.
In certain Latin-American countries, including Mexico, bandits, gangsters, hold-up men, highway-robbers, never see a court from the inside, never have a lawyer to speak to, never are allowed bail, never hear of a parole-board. This is the reason why there are no bandits and no gangsters who rule by their own laws. They may get away with one hold-up, perhaps with two; when very lucky, with three. Then they are no longer.
The bandits, corrupted Indians in part, mestizos mostly, are with rare exceptions small farmers, more peasants than farmers. They know every trail for miles around their homes, every mountain path, every hole in the ground where a man may hide, every crack in the rocks where a man might squeeze himself through. In such a crack a fugitive may sit for three days without food for fear of betraying his hiding-place.
Eighty out of every hundred federal soldiers are pure Indians, selected from those tribes fo
r whom war has been the main occupation since this continent rose above the oceans. Against them no hide-out is of any use. The rest of the soldiers are mestizos who know all the tricks and can make use of them more cunningly than the bandits, for they have the advantage which every hunter has against the hunted. The officers in charge of the hunt know by long experience and by special education how to make use of their men to the best advantage.
Soldiers—all cavalry men in this case, and led by a first lieutenant or a captain—about eighteen in all, ride into a village. The officer has traced the tracks of certain horses to this village or to the vicinity. For many reasons he thinks it likely that a few of the bandits may live in this village, or have relatives here or friends.
The train had been attacked by about two hundred men, only twenty or twenty-five of them doing the actual killing and robbing, all the others being stationed along the road to take part in the fight only should it happen that the train came to a stop before the convoy was subdued. Otherwise they were to carry away the booty thrown out of the train by the robbers.
The assault over, the band breaks up in little groups. Most of them return to their villages, where they own a piece of land, have their families, and live the life of peaceful farmers. Many of them do not even tell their wives or mothers where they have been and what they have done while they were away, apparently gone to market. On coming back they hide their guns, or not, since the peasants after the revolution were allowed to have guns to fight the big hacendados, the former feudal lords, who by the revolution lost the greater part of their huge domains, which were parceled out to the peasants; so the possession of fire-arms alone is no proof that their owner is a bandit.
The officer works mainly on hunches, and he uses certain tricks which he knows that these bandits, ignorant and superStitious men with little intelligence, will inevitably fall for. Their minds are not quick enough to answer questions for any length of time without being so bewildered that they confess.
Now, the soldiers are riding into Chalchilmitesa, a village far off the roads, inhabited by Indian farmers.
In the shade before a palm hut two mestizos are squatting, smoking cigarettes they have made by rolling tobacco into corn leaves. They watch the soldiers with little interest and without making any move or trying to hide.
The soldiers pass. But thirty yards beyond the hut the officer orders them to halt. One of the mestizos rises and tries to go behind the hut. His pal, however, with a gesture of his head, tells him to stay where he is. He squats down again.
A sergeant has taken notice of the behavior of the two men and says a few words to his captain, who rides to a hut opposite the one where the two mestizos are. He asks for a drink of water and dismounts. Taking the earthen vessel in which the water is offered, he drinks, and asks if they have had much rain lately.
He meditates for a while, apparently about nothing in particular, and walks across to where the two mestizos are.
“You are living in this pueblo?”
“No, patron, we are not living here.”
“Where are you from?”
“We have our house and our piece of land, our milpa, in Mezquital, mi jefe.”
“On a visit here? Visiting your compadre, I figure.”
“Yes, coronel.”
The captain calls one of his men to bring his horse. The officer tries to mount his horse. He seems tired from the long march over the hot country. The horse is dancing about, and the officer has trouble getting his foot into the stirrup. The horse is nearly kicking the mestizos, so one of them rises and comes close to help the officer get into the saddle.
The captain has somehow touched the man. He sets his foot firmly on the ground again as if waiting for the horse to get quiet.
“What have you got in your pocket?” the officer asks the man unexpectedly.
The mestizo looks down along his pants and fixes his eyes on his pocket, which seems rather bulky. He turns around as though he wants to go back to the hut. But he notes all the soldiers coming along without having received an order to do so. At least so it seems to him. He now tries to calm himself by rolling another cigarette and asks his pal if he also would like another.
The captain is still standing, seemingly absolutely uninterested in anything. Just as the mestizo lights his cigarette, the captain grasps him by the shirt-collar with his left hand and at the same time thrusts his right hand in the man’s pocket.
The other mestizo has risen. He shrugs his shoulders as if to say that he does not care about what is going on here. But when he wants to go behind the hut, he finds three soldiers standing in his way. He grins and tries no other move.
Now the captain looks at what he has taken from the pocket of the mestizo. It is a rather expensive leather purse.
The captain laughs, and both the mestizos laugh as if the whole thing were just a joke.
He empties the purse into his hand. A few gold pieces, silver, a few coins, and small change. Twenty-five pesos.
“That’s your money?” asks the captain.
“What do you think, chief, of course, claro, it’s my money.”
“So much money and such a ragged and torn shirt?”
“I was just about to go to town tomorrow, coronel, and buy me another shirt.”
“You suffer often from nose-bleeding?” the captain asks.
The man looks down at his shirt. “You said it, mi jefe, I certainly do.”
“I thought so.” The officer looks at the other things found in the purse. A railroad ticket to Torreon. First class. This mestizo never rides first class. Something more still. The ticket has the date of the day when the train was robbed.
The other mestizo is searched quickly. He has little money loose in his pocket, but he has a diamond ring and two pearl earrings tucked away in the watch-pocket of his pants.
“Where are your horses?”
“In the corral back of the jacal,” the mestizo answers.
The captain sends one of his men to examine the hoofs. The man returns. “The hoofs fit all right, my captain.”
The horses are poor beasts. The saddles are old, worn-out, and ragged.
“Where are the rifles and the guns?”
One of the mestizos answers: “In the corral where the horses were.”
The captain goes to the corral. He scratches the ground with his feet and picks up a rusty revolver, an old-fashioned pistol, and a battered shotgun.
He returns to the mestizos, who are fully surrounded by the soldiers. Seeing the guns brought by two soldiers, they shrug their shoulders and smile. They know that they are lost. But what does it matter? San Antonio, their patron in heaven, did not want to protect them, so what is the use battling against destiny?
“No more guns?”
“No, jefe.” Unconcerned about their fate, they smoke their cigarettes and watch the preparations of the soldiers as if they were looking at a show.
Only a dozen villagers have assembled around the soldiers. And of course quite a number of boys. A few of them are helping the soldiers to guard their horses. The great majority of the villagers remain in their huts. From there they watch everything that goes on outside. They know by long tradition that it is not wise to be seen when soldiers or mounted police are around. None has an absolutely clear conscience, or at least none feels that he has. There are hundreds of orders given by the government or by other authorities of which they may have broken many without knowing it, so it is best not to be seen by soldiers. Once seen, one might easily be accused of something, whatever it may be.
“What are your names?” the captain asks the mestizos.
They give their names, or what they think are their names.
The captain writes the names down in his notebook.
“Where is the cemetery?” he then asks a village boy standing by.
The soldiers march the two captured men off to the cemetery, guided by the boy and followed by about twenty grown-up people and almost all the boys of the little com
munity. While marching, the captain orders a couple of boys to get two shovels from the man who usually digs the graves.
Having arrived at the cemetery, the two prisoners are handed the shovels and led to a site where there are no other graves. They need no further orders. Leisurely they begin to dig, and both, after digging deep, lie down in the graves to see if they would rest comfortably for the next hundred years. They try them three or four times until they are satisfied and then drop their shovels, indicating that they have finished.
Then there is an intermission. The two men must have a rest after so much digging under the blazing sun. They squat and start once more to roll their cigarettes. The captain, seeing this, takes out his own cigarettes and offers the prisoners the package. They look at the package and say: “Thanks, coronel, but we are no sissy smokers, we’d better smoke our own brand.”
“As you wish,” says the captain, and lights a cigarette for himself.
The prisoners begin to talk with a few of the soldiers and find that they have acquaintances in common, or that they know the villages where some of the soldiers were born.
Having smoked three cigarettes, the prisoners look at the captain, who responds by asking: “Listo, muchachos? Ready, boys, for the trip?”
Both answer with smiling lips: “Si, coronel, yes, we are ready.”
Without being ordered, they stand up in front of the holes, each taking good care that he is in front of the hole he has dug and tried out.
The sergeant names the two squads and has them marched up before the prisoners. The prisoners, seeing everything ready, murmur a dozen words to their saints or to the Virgin, cross themselves several times, and look at the captain.
“Listo, mi coronel, ready,” they say.
Thirty seconds later they are already covered with the earth which they dug out a quarter of an hour before.
The captain and the soldiers cross themselves, salute, cross themselves once more, and then leave the cemetery, mount their horses, and march off to look for other bandits.