The Vanquished (5 page)

“He's the leader,” Woods said. “He'll be the top man of us—in Mexico he'll be able to speak for all of us. Some men need that kind of power. Besides, his wife's an Ainsa.”

“What of it?”

“You know the Ainsa family?”

“Rich crowd up in San Francisco, aren't they?”

“They are now,” Woods said. “They used to be a lot richer, when they was in Sonora.”

“What happened?”

“Politics,” Woods said. He had a time-weathered face and a way of chewing periodically on an imaginary cud. “When the new bunch grabbed the governorship down there, and the revolution ended, the Ainsa family got kicked out of Mexico. The government confiscated all their property. Crabb's made a deal with Pesquiera to get all that stuff back for his wife's family. Happens Pesquiera's related to them.”

“How'd you find this out?”

Woods shrugged. “I don't expect it's any big secret. Besides, when you run a saloon as long as I have, you develop a pretty good ear for news.”

Charley looked across the room at Douglas. Woods said, “Want a beer?”

“No.” Tobacco smoke was strong in his nostrils. “One thing rubs me. What if Pesquiera doesn't win? What if Gandara keeps control?”

“That's a fact,” Woods murmured. “Think about this, too. What if Pesquiera wins the fight and then, decides he don't need us any more?”

“Sure enough,” Charley murmured. He looked at the diminishing line of men enlisting at Norval Douglas's table. Douglas's eyes came up idly and met Charley's, as if by accident; Douglas's eyebrows lifted questioningly, but Charley made no response of any kind. He turned and walked thoughtfully out the door and up the street. A long-slanting beam of sunlight cut through the western clouds to splash a faint redness on the town; in the quickening dusk, Charley looked up into an indigo sky and filled his chest with air.

CHAPTER 4

Coronel Señor
Don José Maria Giron was troubled. He did not have the heart of a true
revolucionario
. He was a soldier, not a dealer in intrigues. And what troubled him even more was that today he and his detachment must guard from the enemy the person of Ignacio Pesquiera himself. The whole of the matter played on Giron's nerves.

Pesquiera was not very old, but his long beard already had a stringy and gray look to it. It was his fierce eyes that held you, that made you know that he was a man born to lead. Today he sat upon a round-smooth rock, his legs drawn up and long arms wrapped around his knees, and looked down through the trees at the wooded course of the river, the Rio de la Concepcion. The way he held his head and the way his eyes flashed indicated to Giron that the man might as well have been sitting upon the throne in the Governor's Palace at Ures. Pesquiera would be there soon, too. Nothing was able to stop him. Giron watched him and felt an immense respect for Pesquiera's leadership, for his strength and courage, for his wisdom. To Giron, a simple soldier, the man was great.

Scattered around through the trees, alert and armed, were the men of Giron's detachment, ready to lay down their lives to protect the person of Pesquiera from any sneak attack by the Yaquis or the
federalistas
or Gandara's private guard, or whoever was in the field under Gandara's orders. There were so many enemies it was hard to keep them straight—Governor Gandara had a fiendish skill when it came to welding together outlandish alliances. It was Giron's business today to protect Pesquiera against any or all of them.

He got up restlessly to pace the sloping forest floor. Below, in patches through the timber, he could see the river flash. The hot January sun beat down on all of Mexico, and particularly on Colonel Giron, who was a heavy man very much prone to sweat. His eyes were high and narrow, his cheeks round and his jowls soft and his mustache thick with a soldierly droop. His belly hung comfortably over the wide leather belt, and the skin of his face was very smooth and very brown. His fingers were stubby and thick, and played with the caplock of his rifle. Back in the woods squatted the patient
Indios
, the breechclouted savages whose job it would be to load the coming cargo of rifles and ammunition onto the pack animals and take care of those animals. The Indians were loyal to Pesquiera because they were paid to be loyal. It made Giron shiver even under the warmth of the sun; every loyalty was so tenuous. He had never been able to develop the calm attitude toward revolutions that his countrymen adopted. Abrupt and frequent shifts of loyalty were not easy for Colonel Giron. He believed today in the republic, as he had always believed; for that reason he fought with Pesquiera against Gandara, only because Gandara had made of himself a dictator, and Pesquiera was a wise man who promised freedom to the people of Sonora. Giron stopped in a clear spot of sunlight and felt sweat drip from his armpits, staining the brown shirt he wore. Crossed bandoliers of ammunition weighted his heavy shoulders; the rifle was sticky where his sweaty hand held it.

“Gabilondo is late,” Pesquiera said in liquid Spanish, and Giron saw the mark of impatience in the way Pesquiera's lips were pressed together. “We cannot wait forever in this place,” Pesquiera went on. “It is too exposed. Gabilondo is an arrogant fool—does he believe he is free to keep me waiting all week?”

“I am sure he is making all haste,
mi general
,” Giron assured him.

“Bah. I have never yet known him to make haste when his path had to take him through villages where there were women and
tequila. Mujeres y tequila
—except for these things, Gabilondo is a good soldier. But sometimes I could strangle him.”

Giron said nothing; he only put his troubled glance once more down the slope toward the trail that wound along the riverbank. The trees rustled gently in the wind.

Giron removed his big sombrero and wiped sweat from his face with his hand. Soon again it beaded on his lip and gathered in his eyebrows; there was no preventing the sweat. He cursed mildly and tilted his rifle muzzle-up against the trunk of a tree and hooked his thumbs in his belt. His belly hung over like a loose sack of meal. I
am heavy
, he thought.
Too much cerveza—but the beer is so good and a man has little enough pleasure
. Back in the woods the Indians shifted around—they were playing some kind of a game, throwing knives at tree trunks. They laughed and Giron swung—“
Sargento
. Keep the fools quiet. Do they want to bring Gandara's whole army down upon us?”

“
Sí coronet
.” The sergeant gathered his legs under him and went yawning through the trees toward the group of Indians.

In the following silence a faint distant sound came to Giron's ears—the creak and sway of wagons. His head tipped up and he saw Pesquiera rising, standing on the rock bareheaded and gray, a tall man of Mexico. “It is about time,” Pesquiera said testily, and came down off the throne of rock. “Come—we will go down to meet them.”

“With care,
mi general
,” Giron warned. By the time he had picked up his rifle and slung his sombrero across the back of his thick shoulders upon its throat string, Pesquiera was already going down the hill. Giron had to trot to keep up. He felt the loose fat of his belly bouncing. “General, suppose it is not Gabilondo? Suppose it is the
federalistas?
One should be careful.”

“One does not win revolutions by hiding among the trees in fright,” Pesquiera said contemptuously. Giron lifted his arm in a busy signal to his men, and felt somewhat reassured when he saw their white-clothed shapes flitting among the trees, coming down on either side with their weapons ready. He found himself puffing when they reached the bottom of the slope. Pesquiera stopped so abruptly that Giron almost ran into his high, broad back. “We will wait here,” Pesquiera said, and put his shoulder against a tree and his hand on the butt of his revolver. Giron's worried glance traveled from the trail westward to Pesquiera's indomitable face and back again.

The noise of rumbling wooden wheels grew louder and presently the first of the pitching wagons appeared below, coming up the river. With considerable relief Giron recognized the stocky dark shape of Hilario Gabilondo astride the first horse. Pesquiera stepped out into the trail and held up his hand, and when Gabilondo rode up Pesquiera made one dry remark: “I see that you broke both legs getting here, my friend,” and Gabilondo's only answer was a lazy grin and a wave of his arm toward the wagons that followed him. “The guns are here, Don Ignacio.”

“Very well,” Pesquiera grunted. “Have them unloaded and packed onto the animals. We will travel through the hills henceforth—Gandara's guerrillas still guard the main roads.”

Gabilondo issued quick commands to his wagoners and stepped down from the saddle. He came forward leading his horse by the reins, and said with his stiff and precise voice, “The agreement was accepted by Señor Crabb.” Giron noted a certain contempt in his tones. “He will come down with about one hundred followers, to pick sites and prepare accommodations for his colonists.”

“Very well,” Pesquiera said again. He turned into the shelter of the trees and stopped in the shadows, turning to look at Gabilondo. “What did you think of this man Crabb?”

“I do not like him—I do not trust him.”

Pesquiera nodded. “He will be dealt with when the time comes. In the meantime, we must hurry these weapons to my men. With the aid of this new material, we should have the guerrillas driven far back in the Sierra Madre by the week's end.”

“So soon?” Gabilondo said. “You have made rapid progress, then.”

“We have.” Pesquiera turned about and went up the hill.

Gabilondo came up, leading his horse, and put his distinctly unfriendly glance against Giron. “And how goes it with you,
coronel?
”

“Very well, thank you,” Giron said stiffly. Gabilondo always drew him up and made him go taut in the belly. “Very well indeed, general.” And he too put his back to Gabilondo and began laboriously to climb the hill.

William Walker had tried to colonize Mexico with a filibustering army; he had failed. De Boulbon too had tried in Sonora, and de Boulbon had died for it. Charley knew all this, and it did not help make his plans any more clear. After supper he encountered Norval Douglas on the street, and Douglas after fixing him with a cool yellow stare said, “How are you, Charley?”

“Tell me something. Why are you so anxious to get me to join up?”

“Not anxious,” Douglas said. “Just interested. You're a good fellow, Charley. You stand on your own feet and you cast a shadow. If you want to know the truth, I see a lot of myself in you, when I was your age. I'd like to see you face up to something where you get a chance to find out about yourself. How about it?”

“I'm thinking on it,” Charley told him, and went on. The smooth, pale surface of the street had a silver sheen in the moonlight. A dark, crowded bunch of saddle ponies waited riderless and slot-eyed patient along the rims of the street. A
vaquero
, mounted on a tall dark horse, left the stable and rode his animal into the street, his high-peaked hat silhouetted; the
vaquero
let go a long shout, wheeled his horse and galloped away drumming up the street. Standing in a window's pale beam, Charley looked back at the face of Jim Woods's saloon. He wished he had a way of knowing what to do. In the gloom of the saloon's shadow he saw a shape standing lean and vigilant: Norval Douglas.

At that moment Gail came along the street. She stopped by Charley and saw him looking at Douglas, and said, “Hello, Charley. Who's that?”

“Friend of mine,” he said abstractedly. Down the street, Douglas pushed away from the wall and went into the saloon.

“Is that one of Crabb's men?”

“What?” He turned about. “Oh,” he said, “yeah, he is.”

“Don't do it, Charley. They're a bunch of toughs.”

“Are they?”

“Do you have to ask me?”

“All right,” he said. “What if they are?”

The fragrance of her hair reached his nostrils. He couldn't make out the meaning of her expression. She said, “You're better than that, Charley.”

He uttered a crisp short laugh. “Sure,” he said, “sure I am, I've got fifty cents in my pocket.”

“Do you want money? I'll give you money, Charley.”

He started, and for the first time put his whole attention on her. Her face was a sweet, solemn mask, willful and grave. He said, “What the hell for?”

She seemed remotely disappointed by his answer; she used both palms to smooth her long hair back. Her lips were set in a gentle way and the soft lamplight falling on her face made her flesh seem pale and smooth. She was not pretty; yet she had an arresting set of features. Her mouth was long, her nose uptilted, her cheeks a little hollow. But her eyes made her face appealing. Long, level eyes that glimmered. She was supple and round and she excited him, but out of a habit long ingrown he maintained his bleak old-eyed expression and merely said again, “What for? I'm just a shaver, remember? Wet and green.”