And yet, while these revolutions still were being fought, an army of gringos crossed the border. The headquarters of its general was at Colonia Dublan.
At Colonia Dublan there was built on the open, glaring desert a stockade of raw pine. Two sentries with rifles paced the oblong enclosure. At the entrance gate, like the entrance to an amusement park concession, stood a sergeant wearing side-arms. To pass this guard required the possession of an army identification disc—and two dollars.
Inside the stockade was a long row of shacks, built with their sides touching. In the West such buildings are called “cribs.” Their tiny windows have shades which are drawn up or down as a signal. Along the front of these shacks was a walk, with a rail at its outer edge.
In each shack was a bed, a chair, a woman and a wash basin. At the far end from the entrance gate was the exit. There was a shack there. It flew the red cross.
In the night the soft, desert shadows cloaked the figures of those who walked until they reached a shack with the window shade drawn up. And their errand was masked in the dark.
But not in the light of the sun——
There was a gringo infantry outpost further south. To this a hag drove with two girls in a covered wagon. After colors the men of that camp stood in two long lines, kept in order by sergeants, and disappeared two and two into the covered wagon——
The soldadera in Mexican armies, with few exceptions, is the wife, married or not, of the man at whose side she sleeps. She is his housekeeper as far as camp conditions permit. She cooks for him. And at times she takes up arms with him.
Such was the Little Tigress, Santiago’s woman. She slept in the blankets of the capitan. Two bodies make delicious warmth in blankets, despite the cold wind from the hills. And always she was by his side, a princess of soldaderas and a fitting mate for the laughing, blue-eyed capitan. The songs celebrated her bravery; her jealous devotion; the fierce nature that gave her the name.
Already she was a tradition. In all the camps there were tales of how she dressed her boyish, slim figure in men’s clothes. Only to please Santiago would she put on women’s fineries. Looted, likely as not, in some captured town. He admired especially a black gown that he called a “lady’s dress.” Always his eyes turned to hers that mirrored his moods.
She made merry over the duties of the field housewife. She patted tortillas into shape and minded the pot of frijoles and chili. She laughed and would not let him help her even by so little as bringing a jar of water. It was not the manly thing to do, she protested. She would not have him lose caste.
The Little Tigress rode at Santiago’s side into the attack on Jimenez. As they galloped together, their knees touching, he reached from his saddle to touch her hair. Together they shouted the battle-cry and led in the rout of the federalistas.
In a skirmish on the Durango line he was hurt. The Little Tigress was not seen in that fighting. They found her at his side, soothing him with little words. She snarled like a jealous dog when they came up with aid.
Once he was absent a whole day on a special mission for his chief. The Little Tigress sulked. Another soldadera made a jest about the absence of Santiago. She said it was another woman who had called Santiago away—and flavored the jest with the spice of the camp.
Those in the camp expected the Little Tigress’ knife to fly from the sash at her slender waist. Soldaderas duel to the death over their men.
Instead, the Little Tigress straightened her boy body proudly. Her scornful eyes measured the woman. And then she spoke—such words as never were heard in a camp. Whipping, biting words that cut like the metal-braided lash of a quirt; that raked sensibilities raw as the tied rowel of a spur rakes hide and flesh. Not the epithets of the soldier nor yet the worse epithets of the soldadera. Women are worse that way. But the Little Tigress did not use a foul word.
She used words as a cruel prince might order his torturers to lay the scourge on offending, worthless backs. And it was as effective. The other soldadera, who had started to reach for the hair of the Little Tigress, was glad of the chance to creep away.
The Little Tigress and Santiago moved side by side in the stubborn fighting around Parral. Fresh stories of their adventures together flew to other camps.
It was then that Gaspar, half-dead with the gnawing of amoeba at his vitals, with suffering etched deep on his fleshless face, found his chance. And his long melodrama moved to its feverishly rehearsed fourth act. His regiment was ordered into the Parral campaign.
Parral was taken the day Gaspar’s regiment reached the battle ground. Already the victorious troops were making ready for the customary fiesta. The rebel band was making gay music. Near it a crowd of soldiers cheered the dancing of a soldadera in a red and green striped skirt. Another group listened to a camp minstrel, composing songs of the last day of fighting.
None was too interested, though, not to note the passing of Capitan Santiago and the Little Tigress. Whenever they passed they left a wake of smiles. Arm in arm, they strode to a little, cool-green, adobe house they had chosen for their quarters in the conquered city.
She wore her field clothes and her boy figure swung along bravely. He was looking down at her, smiling at her words. At the doorway of the green house they stood a moment. They always were loath to part. She laughed and darted into the house. She was going to change into the black “lady’s dress” for the fiesta.
Capitan Santiago had some trifling soldier duty to perform. He called to her again and her laugh responded.
Santiago turned to face a reeling, hollow-eyed scarecrow. He was a capitan and this man was drunk. But it was a fiesta, after all. He could afford the smile that was his instinct. He tried to ignore the man.
Gaspar, burning with fever and the nightmare of his hate, drew himself up in front of the capitan.
“You can no longer escape me!” he cried. “You pay for your black crime—your life for the life of my sister. I am Don Gaspar Gutierrez ! My sainted sister, Maria de la Luz——!”
“Her brother !” Santiago exclaimed, softly. He spoke the words in a welcome. His arms went out as if to embrace Gaspar.
Gaspar was quick enough this time. As the bullet struck, there was a puzzled look in Santiago’s blue eyes. His hand went very slowly to the butt of his revolver. It was there when he melted to the ground.
Through the doorway of the green house leaped the Little Tigress. Her hair was in disorder. For a moment she stood still. A living figure turned into marble by the touch of horror. Sudden death is not always convincing. One instant a living, pleasant form. The next a sprawling shape in a clown’s contortion in the dust.
The Little Tigress dropped to the side of Santiago.
“Alma de mi corazon—soul of my heart!” she called to him. “Speak to me—it is your Little Tigress——”
And there were other little words that they knew together.
The soldiers had seized Gaspar like the closing of hawk’s claws. He was collapsing after his big scene. Now and then there came a sob of exhaustion. It was his prayer of gratitude that his revenge was won. The soldiers held him and watched the grief of the Little Tigress. They sensed what was coming before she arose.
There was no sorrow in her eyes as she stood up. Only a flaming desire for the life of the one who had slain her man. Very gently she patted Santiago’s hand and lifted it from the revolver butt. She took the gun from its holster and kissed it.
“Where is the murderer?” she asked, calmly.
Her answer was the huddled figure they held swaying on its feet. His head sagged. His body hung limp. For all the world like a drunken scarecrow.
She went directly to the group. She raised Santiago’s revolver and fired. The body was so weary and spent that there was no recoil from this fresh outrage. The soldiers dropped Gaspar to the ground. She bent over to fire again.
Gaspar’s eyes fluttered open. His mouth gaped foolishly.
“Maria de la Luz—Lucita!” he cried. “My sister—the Little Tigre
ss!”
. . . . . . .
In one of the most beautiful cities in Mexico lives a young woman with eyes dark and empty as a deep, dry well. Sometimes she asks if the rebels are near. Pobrecita! Poor little one! At night her sad voice sings little songs in the dark.
TRADITION AND A DIRTY JOKE
Fierro the Butcher tried too earnestly to live up to his own tradition. Wherefore, Fierro the Butcher died. And small doubt a chorus of fierce welcome sounded in the regions to which Fierro was almost unanimously consigned.
In the bandit days of which these songs are sung it was not surprising to meet a man who was a whispered tradition and who still jingled musical spurs on the flagging of the Plaza de Toros. Overnight a man might do deeds that would make him the hero of minstrel verses. There are still minstrels in Mexico. In one quick raid he might win a colorful page in a history written in vivid colors.
Fame had come so to Fierro the Butcher. Yet it required no small genius to earn that nom de guerre in a land known for casual cruelties that a child could scarcely invent.
Fierro was the great rebel leader’s chief executioner. In Mexico they remembered most that, borrowing the revolvers of other officers, Fierro had shot down with his own hand forty-two prisoners. He had the sense of drama to spare three for the firing squad. He complained that his trigger finger had grown tired.
On the Durango Line
In the courts of international diplomacy he was remembered for the efficient slaying of a British subject who, a bit the worse for liquor, made a threatening move in the direction of Fierro’s chief.
There were other deeds. The strangling of Ernesto Gutierrez. The dancing girl at the Gato Negro——
Fierro the Butcher went high in the regard of his chief. He was a man whose hasty temper could be depended upon when the man who lost his temper first might save his life. He became leader of the chief’s pet terrors, the dorados—the golden ones. As their capitan he enjoyed the first choice of loot. No small perquisite in the days when Mexico was a bandits’ land of plenty.
There were diamonds set in the hubs of Fierro’s spurs. Three rings were on one hand and four on the other. Another big stone glinted in the knot of his black silk neckerchief.
He wore a purple sombrero, traced with silver. Silver embroidery gleamed on his clothes of fawn-colored leather. Under a striped silk shirt Fierro carried always—this was tradition—the bulk of his loot in gold coins in a heavy belt. It was an uncomfortable price to pay for the miser satisfaction. But Fierro had small faith in paper money. He had helped print bushels of it.
There were two heavy revolvers always slung at his waist. They were tradition, too. The pommel of the Mexican saddle is about the shape and size of a fair-sized half grapefruit. In the silver-trimmed pommel of Fierro’s saddle a mirror was set. In this the fabled executioner could view himself and twist his fierce mustachios with satisfaction when he rode by a group of girls.
Yes, Fierro was a tradition. And because he was a living tradition—and Fierro—he received more respect than is sometimes accorded traditions decently apparitional.
And, jealously maintaining the tradition of himself, Fierro rode to his death.
The final episode began with a bit of a joke made by Fierro in his most rollicking and gracious manner. The joke had to do with the word, “goat,” which has a double meaning colloquially. Not only does it mean the animal named but a human animal of even lower rating. It cannot be adequately translated. And would not be printable if it could. The Mexican joke, like Mexican food, is highly spiced. And never so peppered as when it plays with the relations of men and women.
Fierro, awakening from a long siesta, heard shooting. It came from just outside the town where his victorious chief had made his headquarters. It was not the excited, spasmodic sound of an outpost exchange. Nor did it have the business-like syncopation of troops engaged in a body. It was more as if a pair of weary, rival snipers were attempting perfunctorily to slay each other.
“They are the foreigners, my capitan,” responded the sentry at the cuartel militar. “They are shooting at targets. It is at their country club.”
Fierro was in a rare jovial mood. Usually he wore a professional frown that made him look like a sullen, sulky boy. Now he smiled. It was the smile of a threatening Airedale. The ragged line of his black mustachios was etched against his teeth.
The foreigners were shooting, were they? A lot they knew about shooting. Fierro would show them marksmanship that would make their hair stand up. Fierro would show them, in brief, how Fierro himself shot. He would be generous. His chief had mentioned a kindly attitude to the foreigners who remained in the captured city.
Fate sent a worm-eaten victoria, drawn by a ratty horse, past the entrance to the cuartel militar. Fierro called to the cochero. The cochero recognized his fare and his eyes rolled in mute protest to the guardian saint of aged cocheros. He realized sadly that there would be no fee. Also that the buen San Pedro might be startled during that afternoon by the abrupt appearance at the heavenly gates of a reluctant cochero.
Fierro swaggered to the victoria. Its dry axles squealed as if hurt as he dropped into the flimsy, scuffed leather seat. He called for a rifle. The sentry gave him the one that he carried. And his bandolier of cartridges.
“Drive on, scarecrow of a cochero,” cried Fierro, in great good nature. “Beat that vulture’s food into a gallop. To the country club of these foreigners. Adalante!”
Disaster galloped through the streets of Chihuahua on screeching axles. As the victoria turned into the hill road leading to the country club the reports of shots still sounded. They stopped as there rose over the road the dust stirred by the victoria and the horse that galloped like a rheumatic caricature.
On the hillside, facing the clubhouse verandah, was the target range. There half a dozen goats had been freshly tethered. They stood on a green stretch where the hide of the hill had not been eaten off by the sun and the drought. They were bleating, pitiful targets for amateur guns. The foreigners, men and women, habitually contemptuous of Mexico’s graceful customs, had chosen to absorb this pastime.
The targets didn’t bleat much when Fierro began shooting, still at a gallop. He chuckled as he fired. This the cochero said afterwards in adding to Fierro tradition. Perhaps even then Fierro had thought of his delightful bon mot having to do with goats and a pun.
The astounded group of men and women on the verandah of the little country club saw the dust and heard the rifle cracking. At first there was an hysterical move of defense. Then some one noticed that a goat was down. At the same moment another went stiffly over. Then another. As the last goat dropped, the watchers, even in their panic, realized that they were observing a miracle of marksmanship.
Fierro called again to the cochero. This time most politely. Fierro was assuming a gentle air. The surprised cochero swung the victoria in a circle that almost upset the gasping horse and drew up at the clubhouse verandah.
Fierro the Butcher would make a delicate little social gesture. He would show that the soldier and the patriot may have his gentler moments. They would be surprised at the exquisite manner of the famous Fierro. They would wonder where he had acquired such a polish. The velvet glove on the hand of steel. The golden heart under the rough exterior. That sort of thing.
A cavalier obeisance to the ladies. A bit of a joke. Then, through the laughter that greeted it, the expression of a hope that he had not harassed the party with his rifle pleasantry—that the dear ladies had not been alarmed.
A good-natured greeting from the men. A flutter of feminine finery about him. The soft stirring of dainty garments. The scent of seducing perfumes——
Fierro’s nostrils narrowed. His tongue licked over his upper lip. White dresses made a mysterious welcome. Other women had been
Fierro wore his blandest social smile when he stepped from the decrepit victoria. He strode with a vibrant ring of his spurs to the nervous group on the verandah. There were faces white as the tr
opical dresses. An Englishman sputtered indignantly. The eyes of the English consul stopped him with their reminder.
Fierro removed his purple sombrero in the grand manner. The slow fling of his arm swung his body into a courtier’s bow. His slitted eyes reached for a pair of silken ankles. The sombrero, at the end of the swing, fluffed up a puff of white dust from the ground.
Then, with a sly twinkle in his black eyes, Fierro sprang the little joke that was to gloss over the shooting—the little, unspeakable joke about the goat.
It was quite a sensation. But not as Fierro had planned. There was no healthy roar of male laughter, with the delicious overtone of amused women’s voices. The Englishman started to sputter again. There came a stunning silence. It was as if one of the men in white had uttered before the womenfolk one of those brief and meaning Anglo-Saxon words. One of those words that are considered so jolly between the red covers of Rabelais——
The laugh was delayed. And when it came it had the limping, stiff-jointed sound of forced merriment. It was decidedly good policy to humor such a quick-tempered and excellent marksman. It was undoubted diplomacy to smile at the fancy of the rebel chief’s great executioner.
Fierro was enraged. He, Fierro the Butcher, had been snubbed. He had come as a charming gentleman and he had been received as if he were an uncouth bandit. Fierro’s snobbish soul spoke. For all his tradition, he had been but a poor peasant before his bandit days. He felt that was the reason for the cool reception.
The scowl of the sullen, bad boy was on his face when he started for the victoria. The horse, its head drooping on the wilted stalk of its neck, cringed and stumbled standing still. Another drive like that——
Fierro turned. His bow legs stamped to the stable of the club. His spurs had the sound of a furious rattler. Saddle that horse! What was that? Another man’s horse? Fierro’s glittering fingers curled on the butt of his right hand revolver. The horse was saddled.
The Little Tigress: Tales out of the Dust of Old Mexico Page 2