by Blake, J
The morning brought verdicts rendered by a judge they had none of them ever seen or ever would. All of them had been found guilty of “undeniable” acts of murder and robbery and rape and all of them had been sentenced to death. They were to be hanged in the municipal square at four o’clock that very afternoon. Hanged four at a time from branches of the Hanging Tree, one bunch after the other until only Dominguez was left and then he would be hanged by himself.
Ortiz delivered the news. He grinned through the bars at Dominguez and said he was now going to pay Dominguez’s wife a visit but would return in time to watch his execution. Dominguez stared at him without expression and Ortiz laughed. “Quieres que la daré un besito por ti?” he said, puckering his lips. He was laughing as he left.
29
The condemned spoke little as their final hours passed. Each man of them sat with his back to the wall and kept to his private thoughts. Edward leaned back with his eyes closed and was surprised by the rush of memories of the days in Florida. He recalled the ripe swampland smells and the feel of the long summer’s wet heat. He saw vividly the creek where he’d witnessed one of his dogs killed by an alligator, where he and his brother caught catfish and turtles and where farther upstream he’d once spotted his brother hidden in the reeds and spying on their sister as she bathed. He had himself remained hidden and watched her too. He felt himself hardening as he recalled his naked sister—and now remembered the softbrain girl who had been his first—and the girl’s momma who only minutes later had been his second. And recalled too the countless sunsets when he sat on the stump next to the stable and looked to westward and envisioned some vast territory burning red under a noonday sun fierce and pitiless as the Devil himself.
And remembered feeling absolutely certain, in a way he would never understand, that only out there did he truly belong. Only out there.
30
Two hours before they were to be hanged they could hear through the high window the sounds of the gathering crowd in the municipal plaza. A band was playing merrily. Laughter and shouts of children. Cries of vendors hawking snacks. The head jailer appeared at the barred door and called for Dominguez to come forward. Dominguez stared at him from where he sat against the wall and said if the jailer wanted to see him up close he was welcome to come in and sit beside him. The compañeros laughed maliciously.
“Ven aquí, cabrón!” the jailer commanded. “Ya te lo digo.”
“No,” Dominguez said. “Tú ven aquí, hermanito.”
Now a pair of American army officers stepped into view and peered into the cell’s noisome gloom. The compañeros turned to each other with puzzled glances and their murmur snaked through the room. The jailer motioned the Yankees back and said he would take care of this but the officers ignored him. The jailer put his hand on an officer’s arm as if he would guide him away from the door and the Yankee turned and shoved him hard against the wall and the bonk of the jailer’s head resounded loudly. Several of the inmates laughed and the jailer slank from sight.
“Captain Dominguez,” the other officer said into the dimness. “General Winfield Scott wishes to speak with you in his headquarters, sir. Right away.”
Dominguez turned to Spooner. “El General Escott quiere hablar conmigo?” Spooner arched his brows and nodded.
Dominguez looked back at the Yankees. “For why he want to talk with me?”
“I’m not at liberty to say, Captain,” the officer said. “If you’ll just come with us, sir.”
“Pues,” Dominguez said, getting to his feet. “A ver que pasa. Si me van a colgar, que me cuelgan de una vez.”
The other officer went out of view momentarily and then reappeared with the jailer’s keys. He worked the lock and swung the door open. Some of the other inmates made for the opening but the officer drew his pistol and said, “Get back, damn you,” and they did.
Dominguez stepped out and the officer relocked the door and then the three of them walked off with their bootheels clacking on the stones. The prisoners heard an outer door creak open and then slam shut and then nothing.
The compañeros exchanged looks and shrugs. “What you reckon it’s about?” Edward asked Spooner.
“Could be they aim to hang him for all them U. S. of A. trains we robbed. Only I never heard of no general wanting to talk to somebody he was about to hang, and specially not no Mexican. And specially not asking so nice as all that.” He scratched his chin thoughtfully. “General Scott, by Jesus! Old Fuss and Feathers hisself. No sir, I don’t believe they’ll hang him. I’d say the general wants somethin. And if that’s the case, then maybe, just goddamn maybe …” He left the thought unspoken.
But now Edward too was thinking, “Maybe, maybe …” as the high window above them admitted the rising clamor of the crowd so eager to see them die.
31
At ten minutes to four the gloomy cell was resounding with the carnivorous rumblings of the crowd outside when Dominguez reappeared at the jail door. Edward’s heart jumped at the sight of the chiefs wide grin. The jailer eased up next to Dominguez and turned his key in the lock and then quickly stepped back. Dominguez looked at him and laughed. He entered the cell and the compañeros gathered around him with a clamor of questions and the other inmates closed in behind them. The jailer did not reshut the door. There were fresh dark bloodstains on Dominguez’s shirtsleeves and Chucho asked him if he’d been wounded. The jefe laughed and shook his head and said for them to shut up and listen, he had some things to tell them. His high spirit was infectious. Edward felt his own blood racing.
Dominguez described Winfield Scott as having the face of a Roman emperor whose picture he had once seen in a book. His uniform was the most splendid he had ever seen on a Yankee. In addition to Scott, there had been several others at the meeting. General William Jenkins Worth was there, silverhaired and mutton-chopped and nearly as dazzingly outfitted as Scott. He had commanded the U.S. forces in Puebla for the two weeks preceding Scott’s arrival and had an air of vanity about him. Also present was Scott’s adjutant, a trim and quick-talking colonel named Ethan Allen Hitchcock. And a rugged-looking colonel named Thomas Childs, Scott’s appointee to serve as Military and Civil Governor of Puebla. And a strange man named Alphonse Wengierski, tall, lean and goateed, who served as translator in the proceedings. Wengierski said he was from Poland, and though his Spanish was excellent it was the most strangely accented Dominguez had ever heard.
Hitchcock did most of the talking, occasionally glancing at Scott to assure himself of the general’s concurrence with a point. Worth sat with his arms folded over his chest and showed little expression through most of the meeting. Childs watched everyone closely, especially Scott, who kept his eyes on Dominguez.
They gave no time to amenities. Through Wengierski’s interpretation Hitchcock told Dominguez that General Scott was in need of someone who had been raised in this part of Mexico and knew the region very well. Someone who could serve as a scout during the coming advance on Mexico City. Someone who could gather accurate intelligence information for him. Someone who knew every foot of the main highways and where guerrilla gangs might position themselves to attack military supply trains, who knew the high country and where the guerrilla camps might be. Above all, General Scott needed someone who could be depended upon to organize—and quickly—a counterguerrilla force to seek out and destroy these gangs and thereby spare the general the necessity of appointing any of his regular troops to that special duty. The general’s forces had been greatly reduced of late with the expiration of many of the volunteer units’ terms of enlistment and every soldier of the regular ranks was needed for the push toward the capital.
Hitchcock paused to give Dominguez a moment to absorb this information. Dominguez looked to Scott and the general smiled slightly. In that moment, Dominguez told his compañeros, he knew they might yet escape the noose.
Then Hitchcock said: “The question, of course, is whether such a man as we are discussing might have reservations about fighting
against his fellow countrymen.”
Dominguez affected to mull Hitchcock’s point for a moment, then said that he knew of such a man as they were discussing, a man with no reservations whatsoever about fighting against his fellow countrymen. This man had in fact been fighting his countrymen for most of his life and even now could name several fellow countrymen whose hearts he would dearly love to cut out. The real question, Dominguez said, was whether such a man as they were discussing would be relieved of any legal difficulties he might now be facing from his fellow countrymen.
Hitchcock smiled and said, “Such legal difficulties as being scheduled to meet with the hangman within the next two hours, for instance?”
Dominguez said yes, that was a perfect example of the sort of legal difficulty he had in mind.
Hitchcock assured him that all legal problems such a man might be facing from his own government would be resolved immediately. Furthermore, he said, such a man would likely be interested to know that the American army would not now or ever charge him with any U.S. military train robberies he might have committed, or with any other crimes alleged to have transpired during those robberies—notwithstanding any official reports of his own government that might name him as the culprit in any of those crimes.
Dominguez said that such a promise by the American government would certainly give comfort to such a man as they were talking about. Would such assurances, he asked, apply as well to all members of the man’s company?
Hitchcock looked to Scott and Scott nodded at Dominguez.
This man, Hitchcock told Dominguez, would be granted the rank of colonel and be paid fifty dollars a month. He would be authorized to raise a special cavalry unit to be called the Spy Company. It would consist of thirty men, including two captains and two sergeants of his own appointment. The captains would be paid forty dollars per month, the sergeants thirty. The other members of the company would each receive twenty dollars a month—more than a U.S. sergeant was paid. The entire company would be enlisted in the Army of the United States for the duration of the war and would be provided with the best of arms and horses and its own distinctive uniform bearing U.S. Army insignia. Colonel Childs and he himself, Hitchcock said, would be the intermediaries between the company and General Scott, under whose direct orders they would operate.
Dominguez said that such a man as they were discussing might find it perilous to remain among his fellow countrymen at the end of the war. Could provision be made to remove him to some safer location when the war was over—to the United States, for example?
Hitchcock looked to Scott. The general nodded. Dominguez smiled.
“Now tell us, Captain,” Hitchcock said, “who is this man you have in mind who might meet General Scott’s requirements?”
Dominguez faced General Scott, stood at attention, saluted smartly, and said, “Coronel Manuel Dominguez de la compañía de espías—a sus órdenes, mi general!”
Even General Scott had joined in the laughter.
And now, facing his grinning compañeros in the dim jail cell, Dominguez said that whosoever among his compañeros would ride with him as members of General Scott’s Spy Company should come with him now to the U.S. garrison where they would sign enlistment papers and be given temporary lodging and fitted for uniforms. Tomorrow they would draw weapons and horses and begin planning their campaign against the region’s ranchero gangs.
Every compañero rose to his feet to go with him. And from the clamoring throng of other inmates who also wanted to join, Dominguez swiftly selected the thirteen most capable to fill out his authorized roster of thirty. They filed out of the cell and into the anteroom and out the door into the municipal building courtyard where a dozen U.S. soldiers were waiting to escort them to the garrison. Fredo kept calling for the jailers but none would show himself.
They swaggered through the plaza, laughing and making obscene hand signs to the gaping and frightened crowd that had collected there to be entertained by the spectacle of their hanging. The policemen kept their distance but many of the compañeros pointed at them in passing and said they would come back to see them again. Dominguez spoke to the sergeant in charge of the escort detail and the sergeant shrugged and said, “Hell, Colonel, you’re giving the orders. We’ll go any way you say.”
Dominguez turned them off the main avenida that led directly to the garrison and took them instead down a series of back streets where people saw them coming and ran out of sight. At the corner of a narrow residential street shaded by oaks and brilliant with flowers he halted the procession. No one was on the street but for a handful of small children who stood gaping up at the huge front door of a house midway down the short block. Dominguez pointed at the house and told the compañeros it was his and that after leaving the meeting with Scott he had come directly home to get his wife and move her to another residence where she would be safe from the police and from anyone else who would do him harm by harming her. Edward now recalled Ortiz’s parting words to Dominguez in the jail and he saw that others of the company remembered as well, and they all shifted about uncomfortably and none would meet their jefe’s eyes for the shame his wife must have been made to suffer at the hands of that son of a whore.
But Dominguez was grinning wide and telling them that he had been lucky because he found Ortiz at his house and lingering over his wife when he arrived.
The compañeros exchanged looks of confusion. Dominguez laughed. “Miren!” he said, striding quickly toward the house where the children were gathered. The compañeros followed after and he pointed to the large crosstimber above the imposing front door that opened into a courtyard. “Miren!”
And there in the center of the crosstimber was the badged cap of the chief of police held fast to the wood by their jefe’s Green River knife that pinioned as well a shriveled cock and dangling bloody balls.
32
A week later they rode out of Puebla on their first mission, every man of them mounted on a fine American stallion larger than most Mexican horses and seated on a well-tooled saddle and armed with a pair of new Colt five-shooters and a Hall percussion rifle and some with a shotgun besides. A half-dozen of them carried a lance they had learned to use when they served in the Mexican army and some were armed with sabers and some with bowies as big as machetes. They wore high black boots and gray trousers and short-tailed gray coatees with red collars and cuffs and flat-crowned black felt hats banded with a blood-red scarf. The effect of the uniforms was heady. Edward felt cloaked in power.
With Hitchcock’s approval Dominguez had organized the company into two units which he named the Eagles and the Serpents, a patriotic allusion he found amusing in its irony but which outraged the local populace. Mexican newspaper editorials condemned the company as a reprehensible collection of society’s dregs, as a crew of despicable and utterly damned murderers and convicts who lacked even the single saving grace of allegiance to their native land. The more the good citizens ranted the more pleased did Dominguez seem. “This people are want to hang me,” he said to Spooner and Edward, “and now they are want me to fight the gringos for them. This people are very stupid, no?”
Edward was assigned to the Eagle squad, which was captained by Spooner and had Fredo as its sergeant. The Serpents’ captain was Pedro Arria and their sergeant a new man named Rogelio Gomez whom Dominguez had known in the old days and who had served as a sergeant in the Mexican army before deserting. As they rode out of town on their fine prancing stallions they were looked upon by the citizens on the streets as a damnable spectacle but a fearsome one even more and thus no one cursed them audibly as their horses clopped past on the cobblestones.
Two weeks later they found Padre Colombo Bermejillo’s ranchero band encamped in the hills a few miles east of the junction of the National Highway and the Orizaba Road. So confident of never being discovered by Yankee scouts had the guerrillas become that they did not even post night guards. Dominguez positioned Spooner’s men on one flank of the camp and himself with Pedro Arria’
s men on the other and they waited for first light. When it came they opened fire and killed a dozen as they slept on the ground and shot the other fifteen when they jumped to their feet and ran about in confusion. They then descended into the slaughter and killed off the wounded. Padre Bermejillo was easily identified by the priestly robes he had persisted in wearing despite his excommunication from the Church. Dominguez sent the padre’s tonsured head and the twenty-six noses of the other rancheros back to Hitchcock in a bloody sack.
The trophies appalled many of the Yankee officers in attendance in Hitchcock’s headquarters when they were delivered to him, and the next time Hitchcock and Wengierski met with Dominguez the colonel told him not to send any more such evidence of his successes. Dominguez said he simply wanted him and General Scott to know the Spy Company was doing its duty. Hitchcock said he understood, but there were some officers in their ranks who were set on making trouble for General Scott with the politicians back home and these men would not hesitate to provide American newspapers with a lot of muck about Scott’s sanctioning of “barbarities” in Mexico. General Scott believed that Dominguez and his boys should do whatever they had to do in order to achieve their missions, but Dominguez must henceforth be very careful in his reports to exclude all the unpalatable particulars. And now it was Dominguez’s turn to assure Hitchcock that he understood perfectly.
Dominguez thereafter omitted from his reports even the details of the interrogation techniques they were sometimes obliged to apply as they sought information from villagers in guerrilla territory. When a response seemed to him evasive or untruthful Dominguez would permit the Yaqui half-breed Bernado—whom they called El Verdadero because of his talent for eliciting truth—to exercise his own persuasive methods of questioning, methods he’d learned as a scout for the Mexican army in its endless war with the Apaches. No man could hold to a lie once Bernardo began to burn his feet or cut out his teeth or slap at his bare testicles with a little rawhide quirt or press the burning end of a stick to his asshole or to the head of his dick.