The Hummingbird's Daughter (52 page)

Fifty-seven

THE SHADOW OF THE MESQUITE that extended onto the road a few feet beyond the shadow tucked between the three boulders spoke:

“Do you remember the crippled girl at Cabora?”

The shadow between the boulders raised its head.

“Rubén,” Cruz said. “You know better than to talk.”

“I was just thinking.”

Cruz lay back down.

His twenty-eight gunmen remained invisible. He could have spotted many of them from the road. But even knowing where to look, he could not have seen them all.

“So?” said Rubén. “Do you remember her?”

“I remember.”

“We never saw her again.”

“Yes.”

“Do you think Teresita healed her?”

“Of course.” After a while: “I know it by faith. She healed José, didn’t she?”

“That old goat.”

They chuckled.

“She will bless us. We must do this out of loyalty to her. She will care for us, but we must protect her the way we would protect our own wives.”

“Amen!”

“Now be quiet,” Cruz said.

“I was just thinking,” Rubén repeated. “Just thinking about that girl at Cabora.”

“Think about soldiers,” Cruz said. “Think about soldiers arresting Teresita. Think about soldiers entering our church, taking down our saints.”

“I am.”

“Think about soldiers in Tomóchic.”

“I am.”

“Think about them shooting Teresa. Shooting your mother. Your wife. They will do it if we allow them the chance. That girl in Cabora? Think of your daughter instead!”

“I’m thinking about Indios in the trees, Cruz.”

“Yes.”

“We have all seen Indios hanging.”

“Yes.”

“Bastards.”

“Yes.”

Cruz heard the cold sound of Rubén’s hammer being pulled back.

From far above, where the buzzards and the turkey vultures now gathered, turning slow circles, the entire landscape seemed alive with movement. The tides of pilgrims aimlessly wandered around Cabora, around and around. Waves of brown bodies broke away this way and that—trailing toward Alamos, toward Hermosillo, toward the sierras, toward the far American border, down the arroyo and the Río Yaqui toward Guaymas and the sea. The cavalrymen and the Rurales cut through this human flood, surrounding the main house and dismounting. And a column of horsemen set out at a fast trot on their way to the mountain road, planning to climb into the sierra and police the insurgents at Tomóchic. Dust like smoke and smoke like clouds of dust carried in all directions with the whipping wind. Yaqui warriors flitted through the dry hills, attracted by the doings at Cabora, ready to fight the cavalry, and the thieves along the roads made ready to attack the fleeing pilgrims. The empty land was full: wagon trains, herds, neighboring ranches alive with cattle, the mining mule trains, American outlaws raiding a string of horses, vaqueros. And two small figures racing between foothills, small and lonely on the vast land—and behind them, coming from the bosques beyond Cabora, a wedge of horses, fast riders bent low over their necks, tattered standards snapping behind them, the quickest attack squad of the cavalry—racers and killers—cutting the trail of the fugitives, reading the signs as they sped, not yet in sight of Teresita or her father, but running full out, gaining, gaining.

The cavalry moved smartly up the foothills road. The riders maintained order, riding in two tight columns, their bright metalwork flaring in the sun, their uniforms clean and their hats shining. Their saddles, rifles, saddlebags, swords, lances, flagpoles, spurs, reins, bits, trumpets, iron horseshoes all rattled and clanged, raised a musical jangle that could be heard for a half mile. The soldiers’ brass buttons were nearly blinding, throwing sparks.

Ahead, a group of old women appeared. The women seemed to rise from the soil itself, materializing, the way Indians always seemed to, out of nowhere. They were dressed in black—long dresses, and shawls over their heads.

The lieutenant riding at the head of the column had been put there by Major Enríquez personally. He saw the old ladies and said, “Are they going to Mass?” to his assistant. He was laughing. His hands had just risen off his pommel, palms out, fingers splayed and down, in a gesture any Mexican—even the Tigers—would recognize as a sign of bafflement, surrender to some greater mystery. His shoulders rose in the exaggerated shrug that completed the gesture. The corners of his lips bent down sharply.

He turned back to the hags and shouted his challenge: “Viva quién?”

Rebels would shout
Viva Tomóchic!
Or
Viva la Santa de Cabora!
A wise traveler would simply cry
Viva Porfirio Díaz!
and live. But the old women said nothing.

“Viva quién!” the lieutenant repeated.

The women stood, mute.

“I said, Long live who!”

And a male voice shouted: “Long live Holy Mary, Saint Joseph, and the Saint of Cabora!” The old women whipped back their skirts. And in an instant it became clear they were not women at all. Cruz Chávez, at the center, pulled his rifle out from his petticoats and fired.

The lieutenant was still shrugging when his heart exploded. A four-foot geyser of blood, bits of heart and bone sprayed the faces of the riders behind him. Then the other Tigers opened fire. Three riders had fallen by the time the cavalrymen drew their rifles and shot back. The valley filled with smoke and clouds of dust kicked up by the horses. One of the army’s volleys went through the upper left chest of José Chávez, Cruz Chávez’s elder brother.

The Tigers ran as fast as they could while holding José between them. He cried and gurgled. Blood made his shirt greasy and cold as it gushed from his chest. When they were sure the army could not see them, Cruz himself clamped his hand over José’s mouth to still his yells of pain. They tore their shirts, made wadding that they packed into the gaping holes in José’s back and chest. They used the women’s dresses in which they had hidden for black bandages.

Cruz laid hands on his brother’s head. He prayed over him. The men wept to hear José’s ghastly cries. He was insane with pain and blood loss.

“What do we do? What do we do?” they asked Cruz.

They had never seen him afraid, but this was his big brother. His hands shook as he held José to his breast. His own shirt became sticky with blood.

“Cabora,” he gasped. “We must carry him to Cabora, my brothers! Teresita can save him!”

“Amen!”

“Viva la Santa!”

They took his right arm and his two legs and they held him between them. They made a sling of the remaining skirts of the old women and used them to hold up José’s sagging midsection. And they ran.

Fifty-eight

BY THE TIME Tomás and Teresita got to Aquihuiquichi, they were too tired to do much more than sit. They had ridden like creatures fleeing a fire. They leapt fences and logs, leapt over creeks, scattered cattle and deer in panics, drove crows and coveys of quail into the sky in explosive terror.

The horses were stumbling by the time they reached the smaller ranch. Teresita’s legs shook, and she retched when she dropped from the horse. Tomás fetched her a cup of water and held her as she shook.

“Rest,” he said. “Rest an hour.”

“Just a few minutes,” she said, but once inside, she fell into a bed. By the time he had secured the door and come back to check on her, she was asleep.

Still, the cavalry came. And by the time they entered Aquihuiquichi, scattered riders from the ambuscade had joined them, inflaming them with stories of the rocks coming alive, of Indians dressed as women stepping out of tree trunks and murdering their comrades. They rode on the house firing their weapons in the air, yelling curses, coming in a chaos of noise and murder.

“Teresa Urrea!” they shouted.

Tomás stepped out the door, waving off his few cowboys, who were outgunned by the soldiers.

“Bring her out!” the officer in charge shouted.

“I will not.”

“She will die in the house, then,” the cavalryman responded. He signaled and a rider came forth with a tree branch wrapped in torn cloth. “Light it.”

The rider struck a match and lit the torch.

“She burns,” the officer said. “To kill the lice, burn the bed.”

“For the love of God, man!” Tomás shouted.

“God? We don’t worry about God here!”

“In the name of all that is holy!”

“I am all that is holy,” the officer said. “I am your religion now.”

Tomás held up his hands, as if he could stop the horses by himself.

“She dies here,” the rider said, “or she dies in prison.”

The door behind Tomás opened. He smelled her before she stepped out.

“Teresita, no,” he hissed.

“Do not burn this house,” she said.

“Teresa Urrea?” said the rider.

“Sí.”

“The one they call the Saint of Cabora?”

“It is I.”

The cavalryman looked at her. He sneered, shook his head.

“You? You’re nothing!”

He laughed. His men laughed.

“She’s not even pretty,” a rider shouted.

“Age?” the officer demanded.

“Nineteen.”

“All this trouble, and you are a stinking
little girl?
” He was disgusted with this whole thing—with Indians and fanatics, with messiahs and criminals, with this niña and her hysterical father. “Shoot her,” ordered the officer.

Rifles rose.

“No!” Tomás shouted.

He stepped in front of her and opened his arms even wider.

“No!”

“Move aside.”

“Shoot me first.”

“I’m telling you to move aside, señor.”

“If you shoot my daughter, let the bullets pass through me first.”

“You have no charges against you.”

“Kill me first.”

“Sir.”

“Kill me.”

“Chingado!”

They moved in, began kicking him, trying to break Tomás away from Teresita. But he gritted his teeth and took their boots to his ribs and his head.

“Suéltala, pendejo!”

“Vas a ver, buey!”

They rained curses down on father and daughter.

“Te vamos a dar una madriza, cabrón!”

“Mátenlos a patadas!” they started to yell. They wanted to see the two of them kicked to death. But one of the riders came to his senses and said to the officer, “He’s a friend of Major Enríquez.”

“Eh?”

“The major has slept in his house,” the rider warned.

“Shit!”

The officer called off his men, using his reins to flog the nearest soldier’s back.

Tomás had a line of blood running down his lip. He and Teresita were breathing like winded animals. And still he did not let go of her.

“You will not step aside?” the officer asked.

“Never.”

“Damn you.”

Tomás took handfuls of Teresita’s clothes in a tight grasp and pulled her against his back.

The cavalrymen looked at each other. They shrugged. Tomás heard one say, “Let’s kill him and the bitch and go home.”

The horses moved together. The riders conferred. “She’s just a witch. Kill her.” The officer shook his head, muttered.

He turned his horse back to Tomás.

“You are making my life difficult,” he said. “To take your daughter to prison, we’d have to ride to Guaymas. Look how tired we are. And she’ll only die on the gallows there. Or she’ll die on the road. You would save us all a lot of trouble.”

Tomás stood his ground.

“I will accompany her to prison!” he announced.

“For what reason?”

“I am directly impeding the doing of your duties. Am I not? Do you think I’m an idiot? Do you think I’ll let you take my daughter off alone?”

The cavalryman sighed. “A bullet would be kinder than the rope,” he said. “And I will have to requisition a wagon for her. And another for you! Come now!”

“We will go to the prison,” Tomás said. “And if they hang her, I will dangle on the rope beside her.”

The officer shook his head, laughed.

“Have it your way,” he said. “But if I get bored with you on the ride to Guaymas . . .” He held up his finger, aimed at them, and made a pistol-shot noise with his lips.

They waited out the night inside the ranch house. Tomás berated himself. He should have ridden on. He should have vanished in the hills. He thought he could preserve something of his life, something of Cabora. Teresita shushed him. But he was beyond consolation.

By midmorning, two crude wooden wagons had appeared. They looked like lion cages from some abandoned desert zoo. Tomás was thrown roughly into his. Teresita was lifted by two soldiers. She briefly thought of making herself too heavy to lift, but did not, for fear that they would harm her father.

Next came the days on the open roads. Hands tied. Kicked and cursed at, sunburned, infernally thirsty. When she went to relieve herself, the soldiers followed her and laughed at her, shouted obscenities. Once, Tomás tried to defend her, and they clubbed him over the head with a rifle butt.

“Kill them,” he whispered to her through the bars of his cage. “You can do it.”

“Father, please.”

“Remember what you did to Buenaventura! Do it again.”

“I must not.”

“All right. Don’t kill them. Just . . . just paralyze the bastards. Do it! Blind them!”

She turned from him.

“If you love me, you will kill these pigs. Kill them.”

“No,” she cried. “No, no, no!”

“Shut up,” her guard snapped, kicking her cage.

The soldiers parked Teresita’s wagon near a small stand of trees. They rolled Tomás down the road. “Teresa!” he called. “Teresa!” He called to her until he was out of sight.

She heard a faint trumpet bleat.

“Here he comes,” said her guard.

“Who?” she asked. She was on her knees in the cage, turning to keep her eyes on him as he circled. He pulled his horse back.

“The general,” he said. “General Bandála.”

They all laughed.

“He will want a look at you,” the rider said.

“That’s not all he’ll want,” called another.

They laughed again, and she watched them slap each other on the back and the arm.

For the second time, Cabora had been destroyed. Passion had torn apart the fences, had trampled all the crops. The gardens were moldering dung heaps. Windows on Segundo’s house were broken by angry youths fleeing the cavalry. Dead dogs lay in the distance, dead burros. A lame bull limped near the tumbled beehives, a bullet hole visible in his haunch. The People, those of them left, hurried to El Potrero and hid in their shacks. The vaqueros stood around, seemingly stunned by blows to the head. It was a dead place of inaction. Even the few chicks that walked across the Alamos road seemed dirty, covered in dust. The gates to the main-house courtyard were open. One of them was pulled off its hinges and hung at an angle.

The men from Tomóchic put José down outside the gates. The little plum tree had been uprooted. As Cruz stepped up to the door, a young girl hurried out, carrying a silver platter. She saw Cruz and gasped and dropped her tray and ran back in the house.

Segundo came out. He put his pistol in Cruz’s face. He said: “You.”

“What has happened here?” asked Cruz.

Segundo pulled back the hammer. Cruz watched the cylinder rotate.

“The end of the world,” Segundo said.

Cruz stared at the pistol.

“Do not think,” Segundo continued, “that you can come here to take anything.”

“Take?” said Cruz.

Juan Francisco came out behind Segundo.

“Who is this?” he said. Then, seeing the silver platter, he said, “What is this?”

“I am Cruz Chávez,” Cruz announced. “I am a friend of Teresita.”

Juan Francisco shook his head.

“Spare us any more friends,” he said.

He stepped out, picked up the platter, and walked back inside.

Cruz sat on the step and put his head in his hands. Segundo saw he had dried blood on his shoulders and down his back.

“Are you shot?” he asked.

Cruz shook his head.

“My brother.”

Segundo heard the groaning coming from beyond the wall.

He lowered his pistol.

He went to the wall and peeked over.

“That cabrón is in a grave state,” he said.

“Sí. Mi hermano está grave.”

Segundo holstered his pistol.

“It is all ruined,” Cruz was saying. “All ruined.”

Segundo put his hands in his pockets.

“Those damned pilgrims,” he said. “They destroyed everything.”

“And Teresa?” asked Cruz.

Segundo shook his head.

“Gone.”

Cruz put his head down.

“All ruined. All ruined.”

After a few moments, he rose. He went out the gate. Segundo watched him. He stood in the road and faced his men. “Teresita,” he told them, “has left. Things here,” he gestured with his left hand, “have ended.”

Segundo was amazed to see the men fall to their knees and weep like children. They rested until dusk, then they trotted away. Cruz, as ever in the lead, cried all the way into the mountains. José, left behind, moaned as Segundo had him put on the porch.

General Bandála came forward in the midst of a troop of heavily armed men. He rode directly to Teresita’s cage and peered in at her.

“So this is the great saint,” he said.

He drank from a canteen, offered it to Teresa through the bars of her cage. She turned her face from it. He corked the canteen and hung it on his pommel.

“That’s all right, that’s all right,” he said. “You will be thirsty soon enough. You will ask for water, and we will see if I feel like giving it to you.”

His men laughed.

He dismounted.

Teresita saw that as soon as he was off his horse, he looked like a toad. His legs were bandy from spending his life in the saddle. His torso was short, and he was tubby and neckless. Rubber lips.

“Ride on,” he ordered.

The men saluted and galloped away.