The yellow film was in the narrow eyes as Orñelas’ knees sagged, as a fighter’s knees sag when he is hurt. The punishment went on mercilessly.
“You in Mexico Ciudad, living like a king. Don Pancho hiding in the cañon waiting to strike another blow for the freedom of Mexico.”
The passengers whispered to each other their sympathy for the patriot who suffered to strike another blow for freedom.
Orñelas lifted trembling brown hands in supplication. His face twisted like a child about to cry.
“My general, I made a mistake,” his voice faltered “Give me another chance. I will serve you with my life——”
He sank to his knees. Don Pancho shook his head sadly. But there was triumph in the little eyes.
“This is the worst blow of all,” he said. “That Orñelas, the man Don Pancho trusted, should be less than a man. That he should turn coward and beg for his life——”
“I beg only to serve you,” protested Orñelas.
“Does a man give a snake a second chance to strike?” Don Pancho sighed. “I grieve that in the end you are not a man. I could forgive that I trusted you and that you betrayed me. I could forget that you slunk away like a coyote when Don Pancho needed all his strength.
“But this I cannot forgive——”
He made a gesture to the two who guarded Orñelas. They lifted him to his feet. They walked him to where, under two thirsty cotton-woods, six of Don Pancho’s men were bending over the rifles and clicking bolts.
Don Pancho’s wrinkled eyes swept the line of protruding heads. They sighted the train fruit vendor.
“I will take an apple, please,” he said gently.
The fruit vendor frantically tried to force the whole unwieldly basket through the narrow window.
“Take it all, my general,” he cried. “It is yours.”
“Only an apple, thank you,” said Don Pancho. He pulled a dusty, faded roll of bills from his pocket.
“No money, my general,” cried the vendor. “Pray take the apple as an unworthy gift.”
“Don Pancho pays for everything he gets,” declared the rebel chief. Each of these passengers was a potential propagandist. He flung a bill at the vendor. The bill was of Don Pancho’s printing. At the time, they were worth less than the federalista money, which was rated at something under two cents on the dollar.
Don Pancho rubbed the apple on his sleeve. He bit it.
“It is an excellent apple, amigo,” he said.
As he spoke the rifles crashed under the two thirsty cottonwoods. Orñelas paying for his white and gold sombrero. Don Pancho bit again into the apple and turned thoughtfully to his horse.
FIERRO IS SENTIMENTAL
Fierro the Butcher wiped his thick fingers fastidiously on the table cloth. Gustily he sucked the last flavor of food from his lips.
It had been an excellent meal. The waiter was as apprehensively pleased as was Fierro. Fierro had been a shade too thoughtful during the meal. And Fierro could think of such violent, fatal things.
Don Roberto felt the mood. He cursed the fancy of the rebel chief’s executioner that had fastened on him as a dining companion. Fierro was as cumbersome and as treacherous a companion as a trained bear.
“The trouble with me, amigo,” said Fierro, “is that I am too sentimental. Fierro is too easy a target for the glance of soft eyes. This is not good for a man, especially a soldier. When a man stands alone he is a man. He strives that he may hold the regard of other men. Thus he does his best.
“When he is sentimental about a woman he is less than a man. Sangre de Cristo, he is less than a woman! What would become of the world if men gave their lives just to please a woman?”
Don Roberto had an answer for this. But he shrugged his shoulders to humor Fierro. And sought some excuse to leave the presence of Don Pancho’s trigger finger.
He knew now where the heavy-footed musing of Fierro had its origin. The dancing girl at the Gato Negro. The one they called the Yellow Star.
The whole town gossiped about it. It was a ripe topic. Not only because the fiery Fierro had become an obvious, ogling suitor. But the dancer wore in her yellow hair, which made a wicked little “V” drawn back from her white forehead, a comb in which was set one of Fierro’s diamonds. That Fierro had parted with one of his jewels——
Ai, these fair-haired women! What they do to the emotions of the swarthy ones——
Fierro had sat for hours in the Gato Negro. At first, when he spoke to her, she laughed in the face of the terrible one. The Gato Negro gasped. And sighed its relief when Fierro only smiled.
He went again to the Gato Negro. His tongue licked his upper lip as he watched the Yellow Star dance. His eyes were half shut in a calculating dream. The tawny skin of her arms and breast wove pulsing seductions. Her legs were tall and slender vases. Their muscles were the delicate carving of a Chinese worker in ivory.
The scarlet precision of her smile had no favorite. Their symbol of desire spoke to every one alike. And to no one. Her lithe body, moving among the tables, was the shadow of a dream eluding the memory.
The young rebel officers who were the patrons of the Gato Negro wooed her. In the splendid, unashamed way of animals that was the way of these wild tribesmen of Don Pancho. She laughed at them.
Fierro watched. The young panther would be an animal to tame. They warned the Yellow Star. Don Pancho’s men had their own way of making love. The man who called himself liberator was a stern despot. And his princelings were uncurbed. They were not all fables to frighten naughty girls—these tales of young women carried away by force.
The Yellow Star laughed.
One night she sat at his table. After all, Fierro was a celebrity. He did not make the mistake of trying to touch her. None heard their words. The next night the Yellow Star wore in her piled-up hair the diamond-set comb that Fierro gave her. An exquisite, high, Spanish comb.
“It is not good for a man to be sentimental,” Fierro said to Don Roberto in the restaurant. “What good is it that Fierro is a powerful man in the government of Don Pancho if his power is slave to a woman’s lightest fancy?”
He grunted an appreciation of his own greatness when the restaurant keeper did not present a check to be paid. He and the restaurant keeper had discussed this before. Don Pancho had ordered his men to pay for such things. In his simplicity, Fierro saw small use in being a successful patriot if he had to pay his way like an ordinary person.
There was no moon. The restless city brooded in the dark. The narrow streets took on heavier shadows at rare points where there were nervous, moody lamps. Fierro flung his arm around Don Roberto’s shoulders.
“We will go to the cinema,” he decided. “Perhaps there is a good picture there. It is well for a man to have simple diversion.”
Reluctantly, Don Roberto followed his distinguished host. Outside were violent posters. A woman being dragged by the hair. Strangling hands at a man’s throat. An assassin with a dripping, scarlet stiletto—the cinema dared attempt to keep pace with life in the disordered city.
Inside the theater were evil smells. Fierro grew restless. No one could see him in the theater. No one recognized Fierro the Butcher. The audience was interested in crying out warnings to the hero of the film and in shouting epithets at the sneering villain.
Vaguely Don Roberto saw the plot unreeled. A heartless woman and an unhappy lover. A slick heavy. In the end a reconciliation. Tears of repentance and a happy fadeout in the forgiving lover’s arms.
“This theater stinks!” growled Fierro. “And the picture stinks worse.”
He dragged Don Roberto into the brooding gloom of the street.
“That picture shows you sentiment again,” said Fierro. “Imagine how low a man must be to let a woman do such things to him. Is Fierro such a fool? Fierro’s failing is being too sentimental.”
They reached the Plaza. The evening concert was on. The band played “La Seduccion.” Young men and young women strolled in opposite, touching
circles. Their eyes sought each other and said little, embarrassed words. They wished for sad love that would be in tune to the poignant heartache of the music. The scent of jasmina came from the alameda, where the smells of different flowers rise like soft walls in the dark. Wavelets of emotion washed the banks of the Plaza.
“More sentiment!” exclaimed Fierro. “It is everywhere. Men and women walking around and around like milling cattle. And shamelessly telling the world what they want. A woman of the streets is less frank.”
Don Roberto realized that Fierro was heading for the Gato Negro. Fierro would not listen to his excuses. Fierro was talking altogether too much for a man of few words.
The Gato Negro was close with the reek of people and black tobacco and drinks. Smoke clung in blue and gray layers through the room. It hovered over the dancing space in rank festooning. There were noisy voices and loud laughs.
There were respectfully cordial calls to Fierro. The proprietor hastily shooed a patron away from the table that Fierro had made his. It was at the edge of the dancing space. Don Roberto’s glance was almost as swift as Fierro’s in finding the Yellow Star.
The Yellow Star was seated at a table just across the dancing floor with Jesus Lastro. Lastro of all men! If there was one man Fierro despised above other men it was Jesus Lastro. Men whispered in the rebel ranks that Lastro was Fierro’s greatest rival for the favor of Don Pancho.
Don Roberto saw El Humoristo at the same table. El Humoristo and the Yellow Star were laughing heartily. Don Roberto caught El Humoristo’s eye. He made gestures of warning to be conveyed to the Yellow Star. El Humoristo whispered to the dancer. She laughed again.
Fierro ordered a bottle of aguardiente. It came in a heavy stone flask. There were dainty liqueur glasses.
The Gato Negro was keyed to a high pitch. That night new tropas had ridden in from the desert. Their campaign had been hard. At their throats and through their bodies was the thirst and the hunger that come in the desert. The desert dust still clung to their clothes. About them still was the smell of the camp.
The laughs of these newcomers were the loudest. So were their shouts for drinks. And there was a single earnestness about their way of looking at the women who danced at the Gato Negro.
There would be trouble later. Some of them were drinking tequila. It is a saying that tequila makes a man ten feet tall and eight feet wide. This is approximately true. The saying is not definite enough about the delusions of grandeur it brings. And the unfailing inspiration to homicide.
The slow, sharp flutter of castanets. A vibrant, appealing sob from the guitar. Cries for the Yellow Star. She arose from Jesus Lastro’s table. The scarlet precision of her lips smiled seduction at the shouting crowd. The smile was for each of them and for none of them.
El Humoristo loosened the tangled fringe of her mantilla, where it had caught on his chair. It was colored like a tropical bird with yellow and vermillion and green. The black of her dress fell away from her breast and arms. And clung to her slim hips and thighs. Yellow silk glazed the slender vases of her legs.
High in her yellow hair, drawn back to form the wicked little “V” on her white forehead, she wore the exquisite Spanish comb set with Fierro’s diamond.
El Humoristo whispered to her. A last interpretation of Don Roberto’s signalled warning, no doubt. She tapped her castanets on his head. Her hand brushed familiarly on Jesus Lastro’s shoulder. The hand of a strange rebel reached out. She spat at it and smiled again as the men about her laughed.
The Yellow Star glided to the dancing space. The guitar throbbed with a fresh desire. She lifted her tawny arms and her castanets sounded. She was a vision that comes in the delirium of fever. Her body was a single rhythm. The undulation of her flesh was a torment of invitation. There was a challenge in her flashing legs, in the secrets of her arms and in the promise of her breasts. Her black dress did not conceal the melting lines that the hand of the Chinese ivory carver had made.
The men from the desert howled.
Fierro’s tongue licked his upper lip as if it was scorched by fever. His eyes were almost shut with the intensity of watching. The sound of the castanets and the guitar was the pulsing that awakens a man from deep dreams.
Fierro’s eyes were on the Yellow Star when her dance ended. The smile that she gave the whole turbulent room she gave him, too. But no other smile.
He watched her as she moved, an elusive vision, back to the table where El Humoristo sat with Jesus Lastro. She stood there, smiling down at Lastro. Lastro put the edge of her mantilla to his lips.
“You see the ways of women, amigo,” said Fierro to Don Roberto. Don Roberto’s eyes sought to warn the Yellow Star. “Fierro is too sentimental. Look, amigo, the woman wears in her beautiful hair the comb that Fierro gave her. It is set with a diamond worth many pesos gold. That is how sentimental the great Fierro has become.
“And when he comes into the Gato Negro to do her honor, is she gracious? No, she is like all other women. She has made a prisoner. She is no longer interested. She seeks another victim.
“And who does this one seek? That get of a mangy steer out of a diseased cow—that miserable upstart, Jesus Lastro. One day I shall take his heart out of his living body, as the Aztec priests did at the sacrifice. But this is not his fault. He is just another fool.
“It is my fault. I am too sentimental. But she should be taught a lesson. Is it not so? Fierro will teach her this lesson.
“He will shoot that diamond comb out of her hair. She would remember that, maybe.”
Don Roberto, frantically gesturing to El Humoristo, did not see Fierro’s revolver rise over the edge of the table. Like a snake with a single eye. Fierro steadied the gun on the table. And pulled the trigger.
The Yellow Star was standing, smiling at Lastro. The bullet struck her in the forehead, right at the point of the wicked little “V.” Her white forehead puckered into a puzzled frown. The scarlet precision of her smile curled into a clown’s simper.
Slowly her body slipped forward across the table. Her tawny arms bent back in helpless awkwardness. The yellow, slender vases of her legs hung foolishly, like the legs of a drunken man. The mantilla of yellow and vermillion and green was as lifeless as the Yellow Star.
Fierro turned to Don Roberto.
“Too much sentiment has made me nervous,” he smiled apologetically. “That comb was an easy shot—and Fierro, the great marksman, missed. There will be talk about this. It is too sad. Maybe a drink will steady my nerves. If I can pour one.”
Fierro picked up the stone flask of aguardiente. Under his brows, he made sure of the fearful audience around him.
Then he lifted the flask high and with steady hands he poured a thin thread of liquor into the dainty little glass.
That, no doubt, is where the story should end. Just because other things happened that night may be no reason for dragging them in here. This may not be the place to tell how Don Roberto, sick at heart—and at stomach, too—found himself walking back to the cuartel militar with Fierro. But it happened so.
At the iron gate of the cuartel, Don Roberto begged to be excused. The closeness of the dance hall, he said, had given him a headache——
“I have just the thing for that,” laughed Fierro. “Come with me, Don Roberto. Today my men found a cask of rare wine under the monastery.”
He pushed Don Roberto ahead of him. In the hallway, on a couch, slept a young capitan. Fierro stopped and shook his head.
“I grow sentimental again,” he said. “When I see this weary patriot. Thus the men of Don Pancho serve him. They wear themselves out until they can no longer stay awake.
“Look at this poor fellow. If there is one man in the city who should be awake tonight it is this one. He is the capitan of the guard. But he has fallen exhausted. Pobrecito! Poor little one. He needs a long rest. Fierro will see that he gets it.”
He stepped to the side of the sleeping youth. His revolver sent a “mercy shot” crashing into the temple
. The boy on the couch stirred as if in an uneasy dream. His right leg, which had been drawn up, slowly stretched itself out.
“Come, Don Roberto, into the next room!” cried Fierro with the air of a jovial host. “It is a most excellent wine. Imagine those sly priests—hidden under the monastery——”
DUST OF MEXICO
Once the dust of Mexico has settled on your heart there can be no rest for you in any other land. That is a saying in Mexico. It is spoken proudly and sometimes hopelessly. The truth of it is in the empty, seeking eyes of exiles in other countries—in places far away from the land of golden lights and purple shadows.
The proof of it was in the little band of exiles that crossed the Rio Grande border a morning in Juarez. It was the morning that the first train in two weeks was to attempt a dash to Ciudad Chihuahua. It was an official boast of control over a district rather successfully disputed by the rebels.
Ciudad Chihuahua is about 225 miles from the border. “About” is written because definite information of such facts is difficult to get in Mexico. The run along the narrow, rusty, single-track road was through the heart of the bandit country. Trains had been wrecked. Passengers had been slaughtered. The train two weeks before had been stopped and Orñelas taken off and executed by the chief he betrayed.
Market Place, “Dulces y Tortillas”
That tale of renegade justice was fresh in the minds of the exiles as they huddled through the early morning chill to the ragged Juarez railroad station. They discussed it with a morbid interest for details. But there was no sign of unquiet in their hearts. They showed the optimism that is the gift of the true fatalist, who is the Mexican.
And they, on whose hearts the dust of Mexico had settled, were going back to their beloved Chihuahua——
The Little Tigress: Tales out of the Dust of Old Mexico Page 4