The Vanquished (30 page)

Authors: Brian Garfield

BOOK: The Vanquished

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“Not when they executed them.”

“Oh,” Sus said.

“I was there afterward,” Charley said, finding himself unable to put tone into his voice. “It was the third day after the execution, I think. They took me backâthey said they wanted me to have a good look.”

“Who took you?”

“Gabilondo.”

Sus looked searchingly at him, as if he wanted Charley to go on, or rather, as if he didn't truly want him to go on but had to know, and so Charley said, “The Mexicans hadn't buried anybody. I guess maybe they were too busy celebrating the victory. The smell was pretty bad and we couldn't get too close. It looked like the bodies had been chewed by animals, and I guess the pigs got at them. I saw a finger on the ground, I suppose they cut it off for a ring. I recognized McCoun and a few of the others. The people in town were wearing our people's clothes. They had General Crabb's head in a jar of vinegar, you knowâa Mexican showed it to me. They made me wear a red jacket and dance around in the square.”

Sus said nothing. After a stretch of dark silence he said tentatively, “I got word that they wiped out McKinney and his sixteen men. I guess they made a complete job of it. Eighty-odd men, and two of us left alive, Charley.” Sus looked as if he wanted to continue, but Charley gave him no encouragement. Sus said only, “They let me write a letter to my sister but I couldn't think of what to tell her.”

Neither of them spoke again. Outside, through the window Charley could see the heavy dark hang of thick clouds. At sundown a guard brought supper for them; Charley ate because it gave him something to do. Then he lay back and watched the small square patch of sky darken. There was a brief hole in the clouds through which stars winked like distant lamplit windows across the desert, brightening one by one until the overcast swept by and obliterated them.

Every once in a while, at times like this one, he would think back on the night before the execution and remember young Chapin, pale and bent over his racking cough. Chapin had given Charley life by sacrificing his own: Why? Charley wondered if it meant there was something he should do with his gift of life. But none of them were there to answer him; only Sus was there, and Sus had not known the final truth of that night of surrender. Sus had been spared, probably because he was Mexican himself and had friends among the men of power. Sus had not been given the choice: it was Crabb who had chosen one way, Douglas and McDowell who had chosen the other. Each had chosen freely and the same fate had come to all of them.

Sus' voice cut across his thoughts: “Evans?”

“What?”

“I guess this all sits pretty hard with you.”

“And?”

“Don't make up your mind too fast,” Sus said to him.

“About what?”

“You've got plenty of time,” Sus said. “Don't let what you've seen turn you into a rock. The only thing you have is the future. The past is dead for all of us. It was something like this that made Norval Douglas what he wasâbut it didn't do him any good to lose his faith.”

Faith in what?
was the answer that hung on Charley's tongue, but he did not voice it. Sus' talk droned on, insistent:

“Loneliness is the worst thing of all.”

Like ghosts they made visions before Charley: Edmonson, Chapin, Bill Randolph, Parker, Woods, Crabb, McKinney, McCoun, Holliday, McDowell, Douglas. Which was important: That each of them had lived, or that they had died? Who was at fault, Crabb for trusting too much, or Douglas and McDowell for refusing to give up? And why was Charley alive tonight? There ought to be a reason for it, beyond the random fact that he had been the youngest. Perhaps when he was released he might go and have a look for that reason. He doubted he would ever find it, but it would be as good a way to pass the time as any.

Across the cell, Sus spoke: “You awake?”

Charley almost answered, but he could think of nothing to say to Sus. He turned his face toward the black wall. It was beginning to rain.

EPILOGUE

After his release from Mexico in September 1857, six months after the execution at Caborca, Charley Evans disappeared into the Southwestern desert. No one is recorded to have seen him for forty years. During that interval a Civil War was fought; the Indian tribes were subdued; railroads and telegraph threaded all quarters of the West; the day of the cattleman came, thrived briefly, and went, superseded by the day of the homestead farmer; the legendary plainsmen and gunfighters lived and died, leaving their myths; automobiles and telephones appeared. In 1897, weathered and gray, Charley Evans walked into Yuma leading a burro. He had been prospecting, but what he had been searching for in the desert for forty years was not clear, and he did not choose to reveal it. When he left Yuma to walk back into the desert it was almost the turn of the century. He was never seen again. The world had forgotten the executions at Caborca.

After Charley left Mexico, Sus Ainsa was brought before a Mexican tribunal in a long, involved mockery of a trial, and was finally released in the absence of a verdict. He spent years trying to clear his name, and subsequently joined his brother, Augustin, in developing a prosperous coal business in Sonora. During those decades Ignacio Pesquiera, although widely disliked, continued to rule the state of Sonora. There was no particular difference between his brand of despotism and Gandara's.

After Crabb's death, according to one source, letters from William Walker were found among his papers, proving that the two filibuster chiefs had entertained the idea of conquering the whole of Mexico: Crabb to work south from the Arizona border, Walker to work north from Central America. On May 1, 1857, or only about three weeks after the Crabb expedition met disaster, William Walker, the last surviving filibuster, surrendered to U. S. Navy Commander Charles H. Davis, in order to avoid death at the hands of Nicaraguans and Costa Ricans who had risen against Walker's piratical regime. Thus ended Walker's scheme, but not his covetousness: again in i860 he invaded Honduras with a filibuster force, but was captured and executed on September 12 of that year.

Immediately following the execution of the Crabb expedition, General Gabilondo sent Lieutenant Corella north from Caborca with three hundred troops to engage the party of twenty-six gringos who were coming down from Tucson to reinforce Crabb. This relief column included in its roster some respected Indian fighters and even Granville H. Oury, who was to become a powerful figure in Southwestern politics. Despite its fighting ability, however, the column was outnumbered twelve to one. Corella attacked, and the column was driven back, across the border in confusion and hardship. It was a grim retreat; two or three men died.

Crabb's was the last armed filibustering expedition to attempt the conquest of Mexico. In the absence of evidence that might have proved that there had been agreements between Pesquiera and Crabb, the United States government had no recourse but to let the issue drop after formally protesting the incident. (In fact copies of the agreement documents existed, but were only discovered much later.) John Forsyth, the American Envoy and Minister Plenipotentiary to Mexico, lodged a strong protest of the execution with Pesquiera and with the government at Mexico City. In Washington, on February 12, 1858, President James Buchanan transmitted to the House of Representatives the Secretary of State's report on the Crabb expedition: Executive Document 64, 35th Congress, 1st Session.

The issue was dropped; the incident soon became one of the minor, forgotten wars of our history. Today there remain the tall palms of Caborca, a few yellowed documents, and the dusty bronze plaque on the face of the battle-scarred church.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa

This edition published in 2011 by
MysteriousPress.com
/Open Road Integrated Media

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New York, NY 10014

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