The Vanquished

by Brian Garfield

  CHAPTER 4

  Coronel Señor Don José Maria Giron was troubled. He did not have the heart of a true revolucionario. He was a soldier, not a dealer in intrigues. And what troubled him even more was that today he and his detachment must guard from the enemy the person of Ignacio Pesquiera himself. The whole of the matter played on Giron’s nerves.

  Pesquiera was not very old, but his long beard already had a stringy and gray look to it. It was his fierce eyes that held you, that made you know that he was a man born to lead. Today he sat upon a round-smooth rock, his legs drawn up and long arms wrapped around his knees, and looked down through the trees at the wooded course of the river, the Rio de la Concepcion. The way he held his head and the way his eyes flashed indicated to Giron that the man might as well have been sitting upon the throne in the Governor’s Palace at Ures. Pesquiera would be there soon, too. Nothing was able to stop him. Giron watched him and felt an immense respect for Pesquiera’s leadership, for his strength and courage, for his wisdom. To Giron, a simple soldier, the man was great.

  Scattered around through the trees, alert and armed, were the men of Giron’s detachment, ready to lay down their lives to protect the person of Pesquiera from any sneak attack by the Yaquis or the federalistas or Gandara’s private guard, or whoever was in the field under Gandara’s orders. There were so many enemies it was hard to keep them straight—Governor Gandara had a fiendish skill when it came to welding together outlandish alliances. It was Giron’s business today to protect Pesquiera against any or all of them.

  He got up restlessly to pace the sloping forest floor. Below, in patches through the timber, he could see the river flash. The hot January sun beat down on all of Mexico, and particularly on Colonel Giron, who was a heavy man very much prone to sweat. His eyes were high and narrow, his cheeks round and his jowls soft and his mustache thick with a soldierly droop. His belly hung comfortably over the wide leather belt, and the skin of his face was very smooth and very brown. His fingers were stubby and thick, and played with the caplock of his rifle. Back in the woods squatted the patient Indios, the breechclouted savages whose job it would be to load the coming cargo of rifles and ammunition onto the pack animals and take care of those animals. The Indians were loyal to Pesquiera because they were paid to be loyal. It made Giron shiver even under the warmth of the sun; every loyalty was so tenuous. He had never been able to develop the calm attitude toward revolutions that his countrymen adopted. Abrupt and frequent shifts of loyalty were not easy for Colonel Giron. He believed today in the republic, as he had always believed; for that reason he fought with Pesquiera against Gandara, only because Gandara had made of himself a dictator, and Pesquiera was a wise man who promised freedom to the people of Sonora. Giron stopped in a clear spot of sunlight and felt sweat drip from his armpits, staining the brown shirt he wore. Crossed bandoliers of ammunition weighted his heavy shoulders; the rifle was sticky where his sweaty hand held it.

  “Gabilondo is late,” Pesquiera said in liquid Spanish, and Giron saw the mark of impatience in the way Pesquiera’s lips were pressed together. “We cannot wait forever in this place,” Pesquiera went on. “It is too exposed. Gabilondo is an arrogant fool—does he believe he is free to keep me waiting all week?”

  “I am sure he is making all haste, mi general,” Giron assured him.

  “Bah. I have never yet known him to make haste when his path had to take him through villages where there were women and tequila. Mujeres y tequila—except for these things, Gabilondo is a good soldier. But sometimes I could strangle him.”

  Giron said nothing; he only put his troubled glance once more down the slope toward the trail that wound along the riverbank. The trees rustled gently in the wind.

  Giron removed his big sombrero and wiped sweat from his face with his hand. Soon again it beaded on his lip and gathered in his eyebrows; there was no preventing the sweat. He cursed mildly and tilted his rifle muzzle-up against the trunk of a tree and hooked his thumbs in his belt. His belly hung over like a loose sack of meal. I am heavy, he thought. Too much cerveza—but the beer is so good and a man has little enough pleasure. Back in the woods the Indians shifted around—they were playing some kind of a game, throwing knives at tree trunks. They laughed and Giron swung—“Sargento. Keep the fools quiet. Do they want to bring Gandara’s whole army down upon us?”

  “Sí coronet.” The sergeant gathered his legs under him and went yawning through the trees toward the group of Indians.

  In the following silence a faint distant sound came to Giron’s ears—the creak and sway of wagons. His head tipped up and he saw Pesquiera rising, standing on the rock bareheaded and gray, a tall man of Mexico. “It is about time,” Pesquiera said testily, and came down off the throne of rock. “Come—we will go down to meet them.”

  “With care, mi general,” Giron warned. By the time he had picked up his rifle and slung his sombrero across the back of his thick shoulders upon its throat string, Pesquiera was already going down the hill. Giron had to trot to keep up. He felt the loose fat of his belly bouncing. “General, suppose it is not Gabilondo? Suppose it is the federalistas? One should be careful.”

  “One does not win revolutions by hiding among the trees in fright,” Pesquiera said contemptuously. Giron lifted his arm in a busy signal to his men, and felt somewhat reassured when he saw their white-clothed shapes flitting among the trees, coming down on either side with their weapons ready. He found himself puffing when they reached the bottom of the slope. Pesquiera stopped so abruptly that Giron almost ran into his high, broad back. “We will wait here,” Pesquiera said, and put his shoulder against a tree and his hand on the butt of his revolver. Giron’s worried glance traveled from the trail westward to Pesquiera’s indomitable face and back again.

  The noise of rumbling wooden wheels grew louder and presently the first of the pitching wagons appeared below, coming up the river. With considerable relief Giron recognized the stocky dark shape of Hilario Gabilondo astride the first horse. Pesquiera stepped out into the trail and held up his hand, and when Gabilondo rode up Pesquiera made one dry remark: “I see that you broke both legs getting here, my friend,” and Gabilondo’s only answer was a lazy grin and a wave of his arm toward the wagons that followed him. “The guns are here, Don Ignacio.”

  “Very well,” Pesquiera grunted. “Have them unloaded and packed onto the animals. We will travel through the hills henceforth—Gandara’s guerrillas still guard the main roads.”

  Gabilondo issued quick commands to his wagoners and stepped down from the saddle. He came forward leading his horse by the reins, and said with his stiff and precise voice, “The agreement was accepted by Señor Crabb.” Giron noted a certain contempt in his tones. “He will come down with about one hundred followers, to pick sites and prepare accommodations for his colonists.”

  “Very well,” Pesquiera said again. He turned into the shelter of the trees and stopped in the shadows, turning to look at Gabilondo. “What did you think of this man Crabb?”

  “I do not like him—I do not trust him.”

  Pesquiera nodded. “He will be dealt with when the time comes. In the meantime, we must hurry these weapons to my men. With the aid of this new material, we should have the guerrillas driven far back in the Sierra Madre by the week’s end.”

  “So soon?” Gabilondo said. “You have made rapid progress, then.”

  “We have.” Pesquiera turned about and went up the hill.

  Gabilondo came up, leading his horse, and put his distinctly unfriendly glance against Giron. “And how goes it with you, coronel?”

  “Very well, thank you,” Giron said stiffly. Gabilondo always drew him up and made him go taut in the belly. “Very well indeed, general.” And he too put his back to Gabilondo and began laboriously to climb the hill.

  William Walker had tried to colonize Mexico with a filibustering army; he had failed. De Boulbon too had tried in Sonora, and de Boulbon had died for it. Charley knew all this, and it did not help m
ake his plans any more clear. After supper he encountered Norval Douglas on the street, and Douglas after fixing him with a cool yellow stare said, “How are you, Charley?”

  “Tell me something. Why are you so anxious to get me to join up?”

  “Not anxious,” Douglas said. “Just interested. You’re a good fellow, Charley. You stand on your own feet and you cast a shadow. If you want to know the truth, I see a lot of myself in you, when I was your age. I’d like to see you face up to something where you get a chance to find out about yourself. How about it?”

  “I’m thinking on it,” Charley told him, and went on. The smooth, pale surface of the street had a silver sheen in the moonlight. A dark, crowded bunch of saddle ponies waited riderless and slot-eyed patient along the rims of the street. A vaquero, mounted on a tall dark horse, left the stable and rode his animal into the street, his high-peaked hat silhouetted; the vaquero let go a long shout, wheeled his horse and galloped away drumming up the street. Standing in a window’s pale beam, Charley looked back at the face of Jim Woods’s saloon. He wished he had a way of knowing what to do. In the gloom of the saloon’s shadow he saw a shape standing lean and vigilant: Norval Douglas.

  At that moment Gail came along the street. She stopped by Charley and saw him looking at Douglas, and said, “Hello, Charley. Who’s that?”

  “Friend of mine,” he said abstractedly. Down the street, Douglas pushed away from the wall and went into the saloon.

  “Is that one of Crabb’s men?”

  “What?” He turned about. “Oh,” he said, “yeah, he is.”

  “Don’t do it, Charley. They’re a bunch of toughs.”

  “Are they?”

  “Do you have to ask me?”

  “All right,” he said. “What if they are?”

  The fragrance of her hair reached his nostrils. He couldn’t make out the meaning of her expression. She said, “You’re better than that, Charley.”

  He uttered a crisp short laugh. “Sure,” he said, “sure I am, I’ve got fifty cents in my pocket.”

  “Do you want money? I’ll give you money, Charley.”

  He started, and for the first time put his whole attention on her. Her face was a sweet, solemn mask, willful and grave. He said, “What the hell for?”

  She seemed remotely disappointed by his answer; she used both palms to smooth her long hair back. Her lips were set in a gentle way and the soft lamplight falling on her face made her flesh seem pale and smooth. She was not pretty; yet she had an arresting set of features. Her mouth was long, her nose uptilted, her cheeks a little hollow. But her eyes made her face appealing. Long, level eyes that glimmered. She was supple and round and she excited him, but out of a habit long ingrown he maintained his bleak old-eyed expression and merely said again, “What for? I’m just a shaver, remember? Wet and green.”

  “You look big enough to me.”

  “Sure,” he said, and frowned when he looked away. He was not a stranger. He remembered the brown flesh of Maria, the contempt in her look. He had been down the trail and seen the cribs of Stockton and Sacramento. The body of a woman was a wonder and a mystery but not unfamiliar to him. He had only half a dollar in his pocket, and he knew Gail knew it. That was what puzzled him about the misty near-smile in her eyes, brightening the interest already there. “I ain’t that big,” he said, and saw her shake her head. The whores had laughed at him sometimes; they had seldom shown him any smile other than a calculated upturning at the lip corners and a brittle, weary look. Maria, he thought, and cursed inwardly. “What for?”

  Whatever the answer was, it was only in her eyes, and he did not recognize it. He shook himself. “Aren’t you supposed to be tending bar?”

  “I let one of the dealers take over. I wanted some air.”

  “You’ve got it,” he said.

  Her laughter was soft and throaty. “Don’t fool, Charley.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Don’t pretend to be so hard. You’re not that way.”

  “No?”

  She laughed again. “No,” she said, in mocking echo of him. She directed one long-lashed look at him and said, “Where will you sleep tonight?”

  “I don’t know. I sold my shack two days ago. Maybe in the stable loft.”

  “That’s cold at night,” she said. “Use my house. Here’s the key.”

  The iron key dropped into his palm. When he looked up she was going away, back up the walk to the Triple Ace.

  Lights sparkled out of windows. A small bunch of men came up the street, laughing and talking with hearty familiarity. They went past and left in their wake the residue of their laughter, soft and insolent and sour like a taste on his tongue. He stood alone in the shadows and beyond the roof of a low, flat building across the street he could see the branches of a tall tree swaying in the wind. The cool air bit through his clothing. It was a lonely hour. He puzzled, frowning, and presently settled his flat-slab shoulders, turning along the street. When he passed the stable’s big open doorway, an earthy scent, damp and dark, issued from it. He tarried there. A dark tomcat shot out of the adjacent corral and spurted across the street. Wind made a thin hollow sound along the street; he was a solitary warmth in the night until a lantern came bobbing forward through the stable and the Negro hostler stood holding it shoulder-high. Its wavering flare glistened off the dark surface of his skin and eyes; his teeth flashed. “Howdy, Charley.”

  “Howdy.”

  “Fixin’ to spend the night up here? I don’t mind.”

  “I guess not,” Charley said. “Obliged anyway.” He went away, with the upraised lantern casting his shadow before him so that he trampled it into the dust when he walked. He turned into the narrow alley and walked slowly through it to Gail’s little white house, and went in, using the key she had given him. Inside, he lighted a lamp and set it on the central table and turned its wick down low, and settled on a stuffed chair, from which he regarded the motionless, closed door through half-lidded eyes. Uncertainties troubled him, and too restless to lie still, he went to the door and flung it open and stood with the night wind brushing his cheeks. The image of a face wavered before him, temples shot with gray—the hard-eyed face of Norval Douglas. He thought of Douglas and thought of the man’s toughness and self-assurance, and wondered whether he should follow Douglas. Cool air freshened his skin and now he thought back to his brother Ed, and the thinking was not new. Ed was in his grave now, but that was of no matter. Charley remembered in detail the day Ed had left home. Ed had come out of the barn with the horse he had bought from Pizner’s neighboring farm, and Charley had come out of the house in time to see Ed’s belongings loaded on the saddle and Ed leading the horse up to the shack, a tall youth with long ash-colored hair like Charley’s own; Ed had called out to the house, and then Charley’s father had come out, his Creole stepfather, and behind him Charley’s mother had appeared timidly in the doorway, saying nothing, only putting her bleak hollow eyes like dead eyes on Ed and holding Charley’s shoulders with her veined knobby-fingered hands. Charley had smelled the odor of whisky strong on his stepfather and he had listened wincingly to his stepfather’s tyrannical voice, strange and always unfamiliar with its French-Indian accents: “Put up that horse and unpack those things. There is much work to be done and the Lord did not make you to idle away time adventuring.”

  Ed’s answer had been gentle but firm. “I’m leaving, old man.”

  “The Lord will punish your soul. Have you a soul, Edwin? No matter—you’ll be punished.” His stepfather had drawn up his thin shoulders and laid his glance like a whip with flat righteousness on Ed. “Unsaddle that horse now, boy!”

  “No, old man.”

  His stepfather had clamped his jaws then and wheeled inside; and only then had his mother moved, lifting her hands reluctantly from Charley’s shoulders and going down to stand beside Ed, touching his arm hesitantly and saying, “Go quickly—he’s gone after the switch.”

  “Let him.” There ha
d been a grimness in Ed’s eyes and Charley had stood back against the wall beside the door, watching with mute amazement. His mother had stepped away from Ed with fear on her face, and his stepfather had come out with the birchrod. Charley knew the sting of it. Now his stepfather had come down with the switch and Ed had stood his ground. His stepfather’s demeanor was that of a man half raging and half drunk and when he had lifted the rod, Ed had jumped forward and pinned his arm, and Ed, with his face pressed close to his stepfather’s, had spoken hissing: “You listen to me, old man. I’ve seen your pious preaching and your drunk crying and the way you like to push us all. I’ve seen it and taken it. I’m moving on—I don’t expect you’ll ever see me again, only if I ever hear you’ve hurt Ma or Charley, then I’ll be back and I’ll bust a hoe over your whisky-logged head. Now drop that Goddamned rod and step away from me, you old bastard.”

  It was the only time Charley had ever seen fear in the old man’s eyes. The hand had opened, dropping the birchrod, and Ed had pushed the old man back, coming forward then and kneeling by Charley. He had put his hands on Charley’s shoulders and said, “One day you’ll be big enough to do the same thing, kid. I’ll see you somewhere, when that time comes. But meantime you watch out for Ma and be a good kid, eh?” Ed had solemnly shaken his hand and wheeled abruptly to his horse, brushing the old man with his shoulder, and gathered the reins in quick synchronization with his rise to the saddle. The horse had turned and Ed had ridden away, followed by Charley’s wistful eyes and his mother’s rising tears and his stepfather’s hoarse recriminations: “The Lord will avenge me! Let no man’s son turn against the father—damnation upon the son—you shall lie in Hell!” And the old man’s accent had made Charley want to laugh and want to hit him, to smash that red-lined face and crush it soft. The old man’s arms had ridden up and down in exasperation and rage.