When Fat Cat and the older Santiago were finished, they nodded with satisfaction at the gun. Fat Cat plumped himself down behind it and squinted along the sights with approval.
Manuelo gestured to the younger Santiago. “Up into the trees. Cover us with your rifle if there is trouble.”
Santiago was settled among the branches almost before the order was completed. The leaves quivered for a moment as he disappeared from sight.
Manuelo looked at us two boys. “You, back into the cave.”
Before we could protest Fat Cat held up his hand. We stood very still, listening. The heavy drum of hoofbeats was clear now. “There are more than twenty,” he said, his hand gesturing for us to lie down.
Manuelo went to his hands and knees and crept out toward the road. At the edge of the clump of trees I could see the back of his head as he raised himself to peer down. I tried to look past him to the road but it was hidden by the dipping curve of the mountainside.
The hoofbeats grew louder and Manuelo’s head disappeared. The sound rose from the road directly in front of us, then it passed and began to grow fainter.
Manuelo came running back. “Cavalry,” he said. “A whole troop! I counted thirty-four.”
Fat Cat’s lips pursed. “What are they doing here? El militar was not reported in Bandaya.”
Manuelo shrugged. “They are here.”
There was the distant sound of a bugle, then silence. Manuelo listened for a moment more, then sat down behind the machine gun and lit a cigarrillo. His eyes were thoughtful.
“Hola, Younger!” he called in a low penetrating voice. “What do you see?”
The voice came back muffled by the leaves. “Nothing. The road is clear.”
“Not the road, you fool! The valley.”
There was a silence, then the voice came again. “There is smoke riding into the air but it is too far to tell what is burning.”
“Can you see anything else?”
“No. Shall I come down now?”
“Stay there!”
“My cojones are sore from straddling this branch.”
Fat Cat laughed. “It isn’t the branch that your cojones are sore from.” He turned to Manuelo. “What do you think?”
“I don’t know,” Manuelo answered thoughtfully. “It could have been a raiding party passing through the valley.”
“What now?” Fat Cat asked. “Do we go home?”
“Guns are a poor substitute for meat.”
“But if there are soldiers in the valley—”
Manuelo interrupted. “We do not know that there are. The only ones we saw were riding away.”
Fat Cat was silent. Santiago the Older came over and sat down opposite him. They sat there silently staring at one another.
I felt a pressure in my kidneys. “I have to pee.” I went over to a tree to relieve myself. A moment later Roberto joined me. We stood there side by side, the two yellow streams arcing golden in the sunlight. I looked at his with satisfaction. Maybe he was older but I could pee farther. He didn’t seem to notice. I was just about to call his attention to it when the stream trickled off. I buttoned my fly and returned to the mouth of the cave.
The three men were still sitting silently around the machine gun. Manuelo pinched out his cigarrillo and carefully stored the butt in his pocket. “There is only one way to find out. One of us must go down into the valley.”
“If there are more militares it will be dangerous.”
“It will be more dangerous if we return home without meat, or without making sure we could obtain none,” Manuelo replied.
“True.” Fat Cat nodded. “They would not like that.”
“Not at all,” Santiago the Older added. “They will be hungry.”
Both men stared at him in surprise. It was rare for the Indian to speak.
Manuelo turned back to Fat Cat. “You will go.”
“Me?” Fat Cat exclaimed. “Why me?”
“You have been in this valley before. None of the rest of us has. So it is logical that you should go.”
“But I was there only one day,” Fat Cat protested. He gestured toward me. “Then the general sent me back with him.”
Manuelo looked at me. “Do you remember the valley?”
“Sí.”
“How far is it from here to your hacienda?”
“One and a half hours by horse.”
“On foot?” he asked. “A horse would attract too much attention.”
“Three, maybe four hours.”
Manuelo made up his mind. “You will take the boy with you. He can serve as your guide.”
Fat Cat grumbled. “At least we should take the horses. You know how difficult it is for me to walk. Besides, I have a feeling it is too dangerous. We shall be killed.”
Manuelo got to his feet. “In that case you will not need the horses,” he said with finality. “Vaya!”
Fat Cat got to his feet and reached for his rifle.
“Leave it!” Manuelo said sharply. “And hide your pistol under your shirt. Then if you pass anyone on the road you are nothing but a poor campesino and his son on your way to Bandaya. If they see you with a rifle they will shoot first and ask questions afterward.”
Fat Cat didn’t look happy. “How long will you wait for us?”
Manuelo looked at him. I watched him calculating. He glanced up at the sun, then back at Fat Cat. “It is now roughly eight o’clock. If the boy is right you should reach the hacienda by noon. We will wait until nightfall. If you are not back by then, we start for home.”
Fat Cat stared at him without complaint. Each knew what the other was thinking. Had the situation been reversed Manuelo would have reacted the same way. It was one of the conditions of life.
Fat Cat turned to me. “Come on, boy. Apparently it has also become my duty to return you home.”
“My cojones are killing me!” The younger Santiago’s voice was almost a wail from the tree.
Fat Cat looked up, smiling wickedly. “Too bad,” he called.
“Perhaps you would like it better if you could join us for this little walk?”
***
The sun stood almost at the center of the heavens as we hid in the cane field and stared across the road. The barn and the kitchen had been burned to the ground. I could feel the heat from the charred timbers against my face. There was a sickness clutching in my stomach.
I got to my feet. Fat Cat’s hand pulled me down. “Be still! There still may be some of them around!”
I stared at him as if he were someone I had never seen before. “They tried to burn my house.”
He didn’t answer. His eyes squinted up and down the deserted road. Then he looked at me. “That’s why your father sent you to the mountains,” he said gruffly.
“If he knew, he should have let me stay,” I cried. “I wouldn’t have let them burn the hacienda!”
“They would have burned it and you too,” Fat Cat said matter-of-factly. He got to his feet. “Come. Maybe we learn something.”
I followed him across the road. Halfway between the road and the house we came upon a body. It was lying face down in the dirt. Fat Cat turned it over. He looked down and spat. “Campesino!” he said contemptuously.
I recognized him. It was old man Sordes, who did the gardening and tended the flowers around the house. I told Fat Cat.
He spat again. “Just as well,” he said noncommittally. “He would have been out of a job anyway.”
We walked on toward the house. The galería was gone too. It seemed to have collapsed into the cellar. I could feel the heat more intensely now.
Fat Cat reached out with his foot and kicked a timber. It fell away from the frame and down into the cellar. Almost instantly a sheet of flame licked up from below.
We walked around the house toward the back.
“Maybe someone is still down in the cellar,” I said to Fat Cat.
“If they are, they’re well cooked.”
It wasn’t until we came
to the clump of trees that stood between the house and the barn that we saw the two women. They had been lashed to a tree trunk, back to back, and they stared back at us with sightless eyes. One of them I recognized. It was Sarah, the cook. The other I had never seen before.
They had been stripped naked and their bodies were covered with countless tiny cuts in which the blood had dried and caked. Already the ants had climbed up.
“This one is Sarah,” I said, “the one who packed my bag.”
Fat Cat stared at her. “La India?”
I nodded. I closed my eyes and remembered how she had given me breakfast that last morning at home. I opened my eyes. “Why didn’t they just rape her and then kill her?” I asked. “Why did they have to torture her?”
“Soldados!” Fat Cat spat again. “They are worse than we.”
“Why?” I repeated.
“They thought she had something to tell them.” He began to walk back toward the cane field. “Come, there is nothing here. We might as well start back.”
We were almost at the road when he suddenly stopped me with his hand. “Your name is Juan,” he whispered fiercely. “Do not speak! Let me do the talking!”
I didn’t know what he was talking about until the six soldiers suddenly appeared in their red and blue uniforms, their guns pointing at us.
10
Fat Cat took his hat off, a fawning smile on his face. “We are nothing but poor campesinos come to Bandaya in search of work, excelencia. My son and I.”
The young lieutenant stared at him. “What are you doing in this particular place?”
“We saw the smoke,” Fat Cat said. “We thought—”
The lieutenant interrupted. “You thought you could steal something.”
“No, excelencia,” Fat Cat protested in a hurt voice. “We thought we could be of help. We did not realize it was a military matter.”
The lieutenant looked down at me. “How old is the boy?”
“My son Juan is almost twelve, excelencia.”
“We are looking for an eight-year-old boy,” the lieutenant said. “The son of the bandolero Xenos.”
“We do not know him,” Fat Cat said quickly.
The lieutenant looked at me again. He hesitated. “He is supposed to be dark like your son.”
“Stand straight, Juan!” Fat Cat turned to the soldier again. “See how tall my Juan is? What eight-year-old has his size?”
The lieutenant was still studying me. “How old are you, boy?” he suddenly asked.
“Tengo once años, señor.”
“Why is your skin so dark?”
I looked at Fat Cat. I didn’t know what he meant.
“His mother is—”
The lieutenant cut off Fat Cat. “I asked the boy!”
I took a breath. “Mi mamá es negrita.”
I heard Fat Cat’s almost silent sigh of relief. The soldier threw another question at me. “Dónde vives?”
I gestured toward the mountains. “Up there, señor.”
“The boy speaks well for a campesino,” the lieutenant said to Fat Cat.
“It is the church, excelencia,” Fat Cat said quickly. “His mother is a great one for the church. He has gone to the school of the Fathers in the mountains.”
The lieutenant stared at him for a moment. “Come along.”
“Why, excelencia?” Fat Cat protested. “Surely there is nothing more you want of us. We wish to return home.”
“You can return home later,” the lieutenant said. “El coronel wishes to interrogate every suspicious person. March!”
The soldiers formed around us quickly. “Where are you taking us?” Fat Cat asked.
The lieutenant spoke briefly. “A la hacienda de Don Rafael Campos. Move!”
He started down the road. We followed him. The soldiers followed us. I felt Fat Cat’s hand on my shoulder. He whispered. “You will not recognize your grandfather!”
“But what if he recognizes me?” I whispered back.
“We will worry about that when it happens. It has been several years, and you have grown much. It is possible that he may not.”
“What are you two whispering about?” the lieutenant asked.
“Nothing, excelencia,” Fat Cat answered quickly. “Just that we are tired and hungry.”
A troop of cavalry came sweeping down the road, and we moved aside to let them pass. The lieutenant called out to one of their officers. “What did you find?”
The cavalryman shook his head. “Nothing.” The lieutenant watched as he turned his horse away and galloped down the road to the encampment.
There were men, women, and children standing around the hacienda of my grandfather. They looked at us without curiosity, preoccupied with a private misery of their own. Fat Cat drew me to one side. “Do you know any of these people?”
I shook my head. “No one is familiar.”
“Bueno.” He looked around. “I could use something to eat. My stomach is growling.”
The sun was hot, and I was tired and thirsty. “There is a well behind the house.”
“Forget it,” Fat Cat said quickly. “All they would have to see is that you know where the well is. Then our goose would be cooked.” He noticed the expression on my face, and his voice softened. He put out his hand and drew me toward him. “Come, niño, we will try to find a place in the shade to lie down and rest.”
We found a spot near a wagon in the front yard. Fat Cat slumped down, resting his back against one of the broad-spoked wheels. I stretched out underneath, and in a few moments I was asleep.
I don’t know how long I had been sleeping when Fat Cat shook me awake. “Open your eyes, niño.”
I sat up, rubbing my eyes. The sun was still high in the heavens. I could not have slept for more than half an hour.
The soldiers were pushing everybody toward the galería of the house. We got to our feet and moved forward with the others.
A soldier climbed up on the steps and faced us. “Line up by twos.”
I looked around. There were perhaps fifty of us in the yard. There were a few boys about my age but mostly they were adults. I started toward the front of the line but Fat Cat pulled me back behind a fat woman in the center of the crowd.
The front door opened and two soldiers came out of la casa. Between them they supported an old man. I sucked in my breath and started forward, but Fat Cat had a grip of steel on my arm.
It was Papá Grande but not the Papá Grande I remembered. His once immaculate white shirt and suit were wrinkled and crumpled, and there were traces of blood at the corner of his mouth and down across his beard and on the collar of his shirt. His eyes were almost blank with pain and his chin trembled as he strove to hold himself erect.
They came to a halt at the railing of the galería as an officer came out of the doorway behind them. He wore the epaulets of a colonel. He looked at us, then at Papá Grande. He had a dark pencil-line mustache, and there was a sneer on his face.
His voice was a thin reedy rasp. “Don Rafael, these people claim to be campesinos of this valley. They say you know them and will vouch for them. We want you to look at each and if there is one you do not recognize you will tell us. Comprende?”
Papá Grande nodded. “I understand,” he said with difficulty. “I have already told you all I know.”
The coronel’s voice was impatient. “We shall see.” He motioned to the soldier on the steps. “Have them file past slowly.”
The double line began to shuffle by the galería as Papá Grande looked down at us, unseeing. Fat Cat and I were almost directly below when the coronel spoke. “You, boy! Stand in the front where we can see you.”
It was a moment before I realized whom he meant. I stopped, hesitating, then I felt something cold in my back as Fat Cat pushed me into the front line. I stood there looking up at the galería, still feeling that cold pressure in the middle of my spine. I wondered what it was.
I looked straight into Papá Grande’s eyes. A sudden flicker o
f recognition burned briefly, then the lids came down over his eyes slowly. When they reopened the eyes contained the same black look as before.
The coronel had been watching us closely. “All right,” he said, after a moment, “move on.”
The line began to shuffle forward. I felt the release of the cold pressure against my spine as Fat Cat moved away. Then I noticed the lieutenant who had captured us whisper in the coronel’s ear.
The coronel nodded. “Halt!” he called out.
The line stopped.
“You!” He pointed at me. “Fall out!”
I looked at Fat Cat. His face was blank and impassive, only his eyes glittered. He took my arm as we stepped forward. He bowed obsequiously. “Sí, excelencia.”
The coronel had already turned to my grandfather. “My lieutenant tells me he caught these two near your son-in-law’s hacienda. They say they are campesinos from the hills seeking work. Do you know them?”
Papá Grande looked down at us. There was a curiously distant look in his eyes. “I have seen them before,” he replied tonelessly.
Fat Cat moved closer behind me. Once more I felt the coldness against my spine. I started to turn but his free hand kept me facing forward.
“Who are they?” the coronel asked.
My grandfather seemed to take a long time in answering. At last he licked his lips and spoke. “I am an old man,” he said in a quavering voice. “I do not remember names, but I have seen them often in the valley seeking work.”
The coronel turned and studied me. “The boy is dark. Your son-in-law is also dark.”
“There are many of us with Negro blood,” the old man replied quietly. “It has not yet been declared a crime.”
Again the coronel was silent. He looked thoughtfully at the old man, then drew his pistol and pointed it at me. “Then it does not matter to you whether this one lives or dies?”
There was a sadness in my grandfather’s eyes but it was gone when he turned back to the coronel. “It does not matter.”
Slowly the coronel cocked the pistol. Papá Grande turned away. The coronel didn’t look at me; he kept watching my grandfather.
The Adventurers Page 7