by B. TRAVEN
Since El Zorro generally rode after the rear guard to drive on the sluggards nobody missed him.
But then a muchacho came along, breathless from running. Excitedly he approached the fire around which the agents and traders were squatting: “Patroncito, oh patroncito, half a mile back there on the road, the horse of El Zorro got caught in a tree stump, and El Zorro fell off.”
“Well, if that rascal falls off his horse I suppose he’s old enough to get on again by himself,” said Don Ramón.
Nobody took the excited boy seriously. The agents and the traders had more important matters on their mind than El Zorro.
“Whether next year we can again collect so large and good a troop as this one, Don Gabriel, not even any goddamned jefe político could guarantee us, much less el gobernador,” said Don Ramón, placing some hot beans on a piece of totopostle. “Our business goes from bad to worse and more miserable every day. And on top of it it’s a dog’s life. You’ll learn that one day, Don Gabriel. Here we sit like savages around the fire, without a roof over our heads, feeding like pigs and not like good faithful Catholics. The wife at home alone in her bed, I hope, and this time not a single whore with the whole troop. It gets worse and worse. Every kind of business. And I can tell you one thing, Don Gabriel, one of these fine days not one sapling of caoba will be left the way they cut it without ever planting one single new tree.”
Don Gabriel looked at the business far less pessimistically. Compared with his former enterprises, this seemed like a gold mine to him. During the long march, he had only one thought: how to take the business away from Don Ramón and how it possibly might happen that Don Ramón should meet with a lamentable accident of such a kind that nobody would be present who could swear that Don Ramón did not owe Don Gabriel five thousand pesos which Don Gabriel had loaned Don Ramón when they were buying up peons. In case Don Ramón should not meet with an accident of this sort Don Gabriel’s profit in the deal would not even amount to one-third of those five thousand pesos mentioned, and Don Gabriel would have to continue working very hard for several years before being able to conduct the business by himself and exclusively for his own benefit.
“Un accidente! Es horrible!” a voice shouted above the chattering conversation of the muchachos who were cooking their meals. Don Gabriel, who had been ceaselessly thinking about an accident which should befall his business partner, paled when he heard the yell: “A horrible accident!” But he saw Don Ramón squatting calmly before him, eating and talking, and so he came back to reality.
None of the other caballeros around the fire got excited. They waited for more precise news. Perhaps it was nothing but a peon fallen into a gully, or some boy kicked by a mule.
The caballeros got up slowly to see what it was all about. One of the boys was holding El Zorro’s horse by the reins. As everybody could clearly see, the reins and straps had caught several times in the brush and stumps along the trail.
“Why, that’s El Zorro,” said Don Ramón. “What has happened? Didn’t he know how to handle a horse? Damn it, he seems the worse for wear. You wouldn’t recognize him. Jesus Christ, it might as well be somebody else I never saw before. But those are his pants all right. Also his boots and his dried and shrunken leather leggings. And there’s no doubt that’s his horse.”
The horse was covered with sweat. It trembled and its eyes were wide with fright.
“How did that whoremonger manage to get under his horse like that?” asked Don Alban, one of the traders. “He spoils my appetite. Thanks to Heaven that I brought a few bottles of comiteco along, or I’d dream the whole night of this mess.”
El Zorro’s clothing was torn completely in rags, as thoroughly torn and ragged as his face. The head was a dirty pulp. There was hardly any flesh left on the skull and only a few tufts of hair. His neck was like a wash rag.
“Cut him loose from the saddle, if you can’t get him out of the stirrup,” said Don Ramón. “Put him over there, near those bushes. We’ll bury him later. Unsaddle the horse once it has cooled off and take it to the brook to drink. Pobre bestia!”
The caballeros went back to their fire. There they ate solemnly and talked about every imaginable thing, but only occasionally of accidents which they had witnessed personally or had heard about.
“Break out that comiteco, Don Alban,” said Don Gabriel. “I hope that in these circumstances you won’t let us suffer from ghosts.”
“Of course not, caballeros. Considering the way conditions have developed, the comiteco is yours as much as mine. Help yourself. And don’t be bashful. I’ve got enough with me. Besides, what we drink I won’t have to bother to sell at the montería. Salud, caballeros.”
Don Ramón called the boy who did the cooking for him and for Don Gabriel: “Ausencio, call El Camarón over here. I want to talk to him.”
“Ahorita, patroncito,” the boy replied. Then he shouted: “Camarón! Camarón! Lo llama el patrón!”
Ausencio went in search of The Shrimp and found him with the arrieros. The arrieros were of the same social stratum to which he belonged, the stratum of noncommissioned officers in the army. “Ya voy. I’m coming,” El Camarón said and followed the boy.
“El Zorro was your campañero, eh?” asked Don Ramón.
“Compañero? Well, yes, in a way, compañero,” said El Camarón. “To tell the truth, I only know him because the two of us are working together for you, patrón.”
“But at least you know where he came from?”
“How should I know, jefe?”
“Well, where did you two meet?”
“En el calabozo, en Tuxtla, jefe.”
“Fine-feathered fellows.” Don Albán laughed. “Come here, Camarón, have a drink.”
“Muchas gracias, patrón,” said El Camarón, taking a gigantic draught from the bottle offered. He did not know whether they would offer him the bottle a second time, and what’s inside your belly nobody can steal from you.
“So—in jail? In Tuxtla, eh?” Don Ramón remarked thoughtfully.
“But I was there completely innocent, jefe, believe me. I can swear it by the Holy Virgin and the Child.” While saying that, he crossed himself and kissed his thumb in confirmation of the oath.
“And why was El Zorro in jail?” Don Alban asked.
“Well, patrón—it was just one of those things. You know how they happen,” El Camarón replied with a wide grin on his mouth.
“What sort of thing?” Don Ramón wanted to know.
“Well, El Zorro had a girl, a criada, you know. He maintained that she had let herself be made by a carretero. So naturally he had a short but rather lively discussion with the muchacha. You know how it happens. And when he looked close the muchacha was no longer among the living. And there was a terrible scandal. And then he was put away in the calabozo.”
“And why didn’t they keep him there in jail?”
“Que vá, jefe! They couldn’t keep him there. You know how it is. Nobody had seen whether he had killed the girl or whether a stone from the roof had fallen off and struck her on the head. He didn’t have a centavo. So nobody was interested in his staying in jail. And after a few weeks they set him free. No evidence, you know.”
“Did they let you go at the same time?”
“No, they let me out long before that. I had done nothing. I was there all innocent. Framed, I should say. Such things happen, you know, jefe!”
“Didn’t you work for some time as mozo for Don Eliseo in Tuxtla?” Don Ramón asked.
“Right, jefe, that’s true.”
“Don Eliseo runs a farmacia in Tuxtla. He is my compadre,” Don Ramón explained to the other caballeros.
He turned again toward El Camarón. “Don Eliseo had you put in jail because you stole drugs and patent medicines when you opened the cases, and then sold them to Don Ismael, the Turk merchant who peddled them at village fairs and markets.”
“Mentiras, damned brazen lies, jefe. I never touched anything that belonged to my patrón.”
“Whether El Zorro did time in Huixtla, I couldn’t tell, jefe. By the Holy Virgin and Saint Joseph, I wouldn’t know. But I can assure you I was never in that dirty calabozo where one can’t sleep because of the millions of bedbugs.”
“No? Then how come Don Gervasio here knows you from Huixtla? Don Gervasio, isn’t this the same pimp about whom you told me that story?” asked Don Ramón.
“Precisamente, exactly,” replied Don Gervasio, the other trader. “You and El Zorro stole eight fine mules from Don Adelino’s finca Peñaflor and then you cleverly changed the brands. That done, you and your joto, El Zorro, tried to sell the mules to Don Federico, of the cafetal La Providencia. But you had bad luck. The former mayordomo of Peñaflor happened to be in Huixtla, where he owns a small ranch, and he saw to it that you two thieves were taken care of. Is it or is it not so, you goddamn son-of-a-bitch?”
“I? I change branding marks? I don’t even know how you go about it, jefe. May the poor soul of my deceased grandmother roast in el purgatorio if I ever was in Huixtla; never in my whole life have I ever been in jail in Huixtla or in Motozintla.”
“I think we’d better not go into the deeds and adventures of you and your crony, El Zorro, in Motozintla and in Niquivil, because we’d end up hanging you just for your own protection,” said Don Matildo, taking part in the conversation. Don Matildo was a small agent who had some fifteen recruited men in the troop.
“There, Camaronsote, have another drink,” said Don Albán, offering El Camarón the bottle of comiteco.
El Camarón took another deep draught.
“Gracias, caballeros,” he said, wiping his mouth with his red bandanna.
“To poke into your life and that of El Zorro would keep us busy until tomorrow night,” said Don Ramón, “and even then I doubt whether we’d reach the end. At least you might tell us where El Zorro was from, so we can notify his mother or his brothers or whatever relations he had if any of them cares at all.”
“Now that I come to think of it, he might have been from Pichucalco. He knew lots about cacao. I remember his telling me something like that. But I’m not sure about it.”
“Well, in that case,” Don Ramón announced after a while, “there’s nothing left for us to do but dig him in. How about it, caballeros?”
The gentlemen got up.
Half a dozen firebrands were brought along and an adequate site was found, some hundred paces away from the paraje.
“Disagreeable feeling,” said Don Ramón, “to bury someone so close to a camp site. Who knows how often we’ll have to camp in this paraje again and perhaps squat on the corpse if someone needs to let his pants down.”
Some of the boys dragged the body along by its legs. Others approached to watch. Others scratched a hole with their machetes in the earth. Once the hole was about two feet deep, the soil became too hard to scratch deeper. Don Ramón already had lost his patience, and said, “Throw him in there and be done with it.”
When the boys lifted the corpse, he shouted: “Un momento, just a moment. Go through all his pockets. Take off his boots and see if he carries anything inside. Leave that ring on his finger, it’s only brass with a piece of glass, anyway.”
They found eleven pesos and thirty-seven centavos in his pocket, some cigarette tobacco in a little bag and ordinary white paper which he himself had cut to size, the usual flint lighter and a good, strong pocket knife.
“Seems to me you’re the only rightful heir of that rascal, El Zorro, around here,” Don Ramón said to El Camarón, “so you can hang on to all that junk.”
“Gracias mil, jefe.” And very contentedly El Camarón pocketed the money and the few other things. “With your amiable permission, jefe, I might just as well take the ring also. He won’t need it any longer, and the ring is still good. It may perhaps be brass, but the women won’t know the difference. They want to believe it’s gold.” And without waiting for permission, he squatted down to pull off the ring. El Zorro’s hands, which had been dragged along the road just like the head, were so torn, so smashed that one look at them would have caused delicate people to vomit or to faint. Since the fingers were swollen, El Camarón could get the ring off only by using a lot of his saliva and by pulling, twisting, twirling and squeezing the dead man’s finger mercilessly. No sooner did he get the ring than he shoved it on his own finger as though afraid someone else might claim it. After cleaning it with his shirt sleeve, he let it glitter in the moving reflection of the firebrands.
“Now you can throw that stiff in,” Don Ramón told the boys. But right away he added: “Un momento, just a moment, muchachos.” And he called out loud: “Caballeros, it’s God’s eternal truth, he most certainly was a goddamned son-of-a-bitch, a filthy raper of innocent women, a scoundrel of a cattle rustler, a lousy pimp, a reptile, a venomous snake in the grass, a dirty bandit, a pitiless murderer and only God in Heaven knows what else, but after all, he was a human being and a Christian. And even if he’s bound for hell, let’s say an Ave Maria for his soul.”
The caballeros and the peons took off their hats, and all of them began to babble: “Ave Maria, Santa Purísima, Santa Madre del Dios Poderoso, sálvanos, ora pro nobis, Santa Purísima, Santa Maria de Dios, ora pro nobis. Amen.”
The prayer over, the caballeros picked up a few crumbs of earth and threw them on the body. The peons did likewise, not knowing why, but because the caballeros did it and what they did seemed the correct thing to do.
Don Albán pulled a red handkerchief from his pants pocket and spread it over the disfigured part of the skull where once El Zorro’s face had been. Then he made the sign of the cross three times over the handkerchief and said: “Ahora, muchachos, cover’m up.”
The peons pushed the earth, partly with their feet, partly with their machetes, partly with branches, until it covered the body.
Since the corpse filled the hollow completely, the earth thrown over it formed a little rise. Several of the men ran into the thicket with their firebrands, gathering stones which they spread over the rise. Then they threw branches, twigs and leaves upon the grave, and still more stones on top to prevent the branches from being blown away by the wind.
In spite of all this the corpse was in no way really protected against wild pigs or hungry tigers, which could easily pull it out into the open again.
“Make a little cross and stick it in there,” Don Ramón advised.
And Don Alban added: “You boys who brought this hombre here and buried him, come over to our fire and have a drink, or you’ll dream of it all night.”
Then he turned around to the gentlemen. “I think we had better have another bottle for ourselves, caballeros. I think we’ve earned it. Goddamn it again, by Holy Nicholas, caracoles y carambolas, I never saw anyone in my whole life so torn to rags. Hell, I’m going to take a good hefty gargle of comiteco to forget the sight. Bueno, así es la vida, such is life. Yesterday a happy whoremonger and today torn to pieces and not even safe from being eaten by wild pigs. Santísima Madre de Dios, grant me a Christian death.” He crossed himself devoutly several times and then kissed his thumb to make sure.
The gentlemen returned to their fire and prepared for a dreamless night with the aid of still another bottle of “comiteco añejo.”
28
Around the fires of the recruited men the incident formed the night’s topic, not only as the most recent event, but because it was of such a nature that none would forget it.
The muchachos who had assisted in the burial got their bottle of ordinary aguardiente from Don Albán. They felt quite satisfied with it because they were more accustomed to raw liquor than to the añejo which the caballeros drank, and which would not have burned their throats
sufficiently to be considered a well-earned compensation for the disagreeable work of this evening.
Don Albán, to whom the life and death of El Zorro was a matter of complete indifference, voluntarily took charge of the burial expenses. When it was all over, he found that El Zorro’s accident had cost him two bottles of ordinary aguardiente and four bottles of comiteco añejo. One bottle had not been sufficient for the men. He had to sacrifice a second one because, after a while, some other muchachos appeared who claimed that they also had had to handle the corpse and that during the next weeks they would be unable to eat a single bite unless they could wash down the stink with a good, deep draught.
At the fire where Celso, Andrés, Paulino and Santiago squatted cooking their evening meal, there were a few other boys who had joined the four during the march that day.
None of this group paid the slightest attention to the accident. They only got up for a moment when the horse arrived in camp. After a few cursory looks they returned to their fire.
Celso told them: “Keep out of the way. Means extra work. Don’t let yourself be seen around there. No overtime’s ever paid in these outfits. Get that straight, cuates.”
Following this clever advice none of them attended the burial.
Celso took his pots and pans down to the river to wash.
This done he rinsed his mouth and polished his teeth with his index finger.
Andrés had followed him with his pots and pans.
When both of them squatted side by side on the bank and Andrés saw that nobody was nearby, he said: “How did you know that El Zorro was going to be dragged to death by his horse?”
“Who said I knew? I didn’t know a thing,” Celso replied calmly. “I only read in the stars that he would kick off. In what way that stinking dog would end, the stars didn’t tell me. Nor did his hands. Fact is, I don’t bother about such little details. You know my story, don’t you?”
“Yes, of course I do. It was related to me when you tried to kill me without even knowing me,” Andrés said, grinning.