In the Rogue Blood (35 page)

Edward’s girl was a sexy but sullen wench who coupled like the act was an imposition. When he had done with her he did not want to linger and got dressed while she lay naked on her side, smoking a thin cigar and watching him with hooded eyes. But neither did he want the compañeros to make fun of him for having been so quick about it and so he rolled a cigarette and sat on the bed and smoked it. The room was small and lighted by a single candle and their smoke swirled blue and clung to the ceiling in webs. Neither of them spoke. When the cigarette was down to a nub he crushed it under his boot and went out and shut the door behind him. Chucho just then came out of another room down the hall and they grinned at one another and headed down the stairs and at the middle
landing found themselves staring down at more than a dozen cocked rifles pointed at them from the brightly lighted parlor floor. Some of the riflemen wore police uniforms, some did not.

“No se muevan, carajos,” said a man with a raised pistol in his hand. He was the chief of police and his authority was proclaimed by his uniform, the most elaborate in the room, topped by a stiff-crowned cap with a silver badge pinned to its front. Two of his minions came warily up the stairway and relieved Edward and Chucho of their Colts and prodded them the rest of the way downstairs. They were made to sit on the floor with their hands under them and their backs against the wall. The chief told them that if they so much as shifted their weight they would be shot for attempting to escape. He examined their Colts and smiled and handed his flintlock to an aide and cocked a revolver in each hand and turned his attention back to the stairway landing.

A few minutes later Cisco appeared on the landing and his face fell at the sight of the ready rifles. He put up his hands and was disarmed and ordered onto his hands beside Edward and Chucho. In this way were all the compañeros in La Mariposa put under arrest. All but Gustavo the seminarian who as always was the last to finish his business with the girls because after sating himself on them he always spent a while trying to persuade them to give up the whore’s life. When he finally came down to the landing and saw the riflemen and the chief said, “No te mueves, cara—” he went for his Colts and the rifles all fired at once and knocked him back against the wall amid splatters of blood and he pitched headlong down the stairs and rolled to a crumpled heap and the chief stood over him in a gunpowder haze and emptied both Colts into him as Gustavo’s blood soaked the carpet in a widening red stain. Not until both pistols were done blasting did Edward hear the high steady screaming of the women of the house.

They were eight of them manacled and taken out to the street and led off toward the jail. People had come hurrying from the plazas to see what was happening and the chief told them to keep their distance. The gawkers followed along on either side of the line of chained men in the wavering light of the street lamps, talking excitedly about these captured bandidos and heaping imprecations on them. One of the plaza brass bands joined the procession and added to the festive air with a lively tune. Now some of the boys snatched up stones and pelted the prisoners who cursed and tried to shield themselves with their arms and the police laughed at them along with everyone else.

The jail was a communal cell, a long stone room set in the rear of the main municipal building of the central plaza. It had a wide door of steel bars and the floor was covered with straw the color of mud. A single heavily barred window was set a dozen feet above the floor and rose almost to the ceiling. The compañeros were unmanacled one by one in the anteroom and shoved inside. The cell was dimly lighted by small candles set on the floor and by lamplight falling through the door from the anteroom. It stank powerfully of sweat and human waste. Slop buckets stood in the corners. Most of the two dozen inmates already there had been comrades of some the compañeros in earlier bandit gangs and there were greetings and nods of recognition and bittersweet abrazos.

Barely an hour later the eight compañeros who’d gone to Las Flores Picantes were brought in. Julio had a broken wrist and Fredo’s cheek had been fractured by a rifle butt and the half of his face was swollen grossly and purple as a plum. Spooner had lost his hat. He sat down beside Edward and sighed. “Aint we the dumb sonsabitches, lettin em slick up on us easy as that?”

“They aint got Manuel,” Edward said. “Could be he’ll get us out of here some kind a way.” He surprised himself by saying it and more so by believing it. He was recalling how Captain James Kirkson Hobbes had dealt with the arrest of one of his company.

“Don’t believe he will,” Spooner said, and spat into the straw.

“And why not?” Edward said, irritated by Spooner’s air of defeat.

“Because right there he is.”

A knot of policemen led by the chief had brought Dominguez into the anteroom. He was held by a policeman on either side of him and his hands were cuffed behind him and his mouth was bloated and bloody. His shirt was torn and he was hatless. The hair about his right ear was matted with blood. A knot of compañeros converged on the cell door and were warned back by the jailers. The police chief grabbed a fistful of Dominguez’s hair and directed the bandit chiefs attention to the men in the cell. “Ya lo vez, cabrón? Hay están tus chingados compañeros, lo mismo como te dije! En dos días los colgaremos a todos. Todos! Te lo prometo!” He rammed his knee up between Dominguez’s legs and the bandit groaned and sagged in the grip of the men who held him. Now Ortiz stepped back and said, “Tíralo adentro!” and the men holding Dominguez dragged him to the cell door and flung him inside and a jailer clanged the door shut and turned the lock.

Later that night they sat around a guttering little chunk of candle and Dominguez told Spooner and Edward how he’d been mounted on his wife and was right on the brink of coming when his head suddenly burst with stars and the next thing he knew he was on his face on the floor with his hands manacled behind him and a boot sole pressing hard on his neck. He’d always been careful in going to his house, always taken roundabout routes through side streets and back alleys and crowded marketplaces, always taken precautions against being followed. But this time he obviously hadn’t been careful enough. The police had with them a pair of Tarascan Indians who sneaked into his house and up the stairs and into the bedroom and went right up to him as he was fucking his wife and he’d never heard a thing until his head exploded.

When he regained consciousness a pair of policeman were holding him fast, one on either arm. He was surprised they hadn’t simply shot him in the back and been done with it. Then he saw that the police chief was Huberto Ortiz and he understood why they had not. Ortriz greeted him with a wide smile and a punch to the mouth that smashed his lips and loosened his front teeth.

“Ortiz, he hate me since we are little boys,” Dominguez said. “We fight and I win him. We race and I win him. We dance and make love with the señoritas and I win him. All the times I get the more pretty ones. He hate me because he never can win me. When we are hombres I make together my gente, my compañeros, but he don’t want to call me el jefe and so he make together his own gente, but they never can steal so much like my gente can steal. He never so good like me at nothing, Ortiz, from the time we are muchachos. So he hate me, you see. Is simple. Is why he want for all the peoples to see me hang. Is more shameful for me than he shoot me, and is more better for him if the peoples see me to hang. He can say to everbody, ‘You see all this bad mens? You see this bad hombre Manuel Dominguez? I am going to hang him for you and you can see him to die with your eyes.’ He will be more famous, you see.”

“And now the bastard’s the chief of police?” Spooner said. He chuckled. “Aint that always the way?”

Dominguez’s smile was twisted on his bloated lips. “The peoples, they want a policemens who can make them to feel safe, you know? Somebody strong for to protect them to the bad mens like Manuel Dominguez.” He laughed without humor. “They
want
for to see me be hang, this damn
peoples.” He looked up at the high dark window as if he might scale the wall to it and look out on all his fellow citizens who wanted him dead. He spat.

He made no account of his wife and neither Edward nor Spooner was so impolite as to ask after her. It was sufficient to know she had been naked in the bed when the police came in. It required little imagination to know what happened thereafter, and they knew that had it been otherwise Dominguez would have said so. But he had not.

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.

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.

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.

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.