The Vanquished (22 page)

She only looked at him out of wide, frank eyes, very dark and large. After a while she said absently, “I am staying in the house over there with my aunt. My aunt has gone to town.” Then she stood up with her basket and chuckled when she looked at him, and went off through the cottonwoods with a springy gait like a young colt, long-legged and supple.

When she was gone Charley climbed out of the pool and stood restlessly on the bank. The air was cool. He lay down on his belly until he was dry. The girl's intrusion had broken up the day; for a while he resented it. But then, after he put on his clothes and buckled on his gunbelt and picked up the rifle, he looked around thoughtfully and yawned and, when he left the grove, turned uphill toward the little adobe house.

CHAPTER 17

Caborca. The church, twin-domed, dominated the town square; it sat on the east end of the plaza, backing up against a dry creek-bed which, now and then, grew damp and flowed in a brown trickle; and which roared frothily during rains. Around the square stood galleried adobe structures, in part dwarfed by the tall palm trees that grew haphazardly around the town. The
padre
came out on the church steps and fingered the rope that belted his dark brown robes. A heavy woman with skin almost black, creased and cracked by weather, shuffled on her sandals, stirring up dust. The
padre
smiled and spoke a few words to her. She lifted a disreputable scarf over her head and went into the cool dimness of the church. A farmer came into the square leading his burro; on its back were packs of fresh vegetables. He led it toward the
abacería
, the grocery store. The burro was small and gray and seemed too fragile for its load; the farmer was short and bent in soiled white clothing and a wide hat. His face was out of sight in shadow. Lorenzo Rodriguez led his troops into the square at two in the afternoon, lined them up along one side of the plaza and left them standing at ease while he consulted with his officers and the leaders of the town.

It was hot. Rodriguez ran a handkerchief around his neck, under his blouse collar. He removed his hat and mopped his forehead. The two lieutenants came up and he said to the first lieutenant, “Arrange to have the men billeted in homes,” and to the second lieutenant, “Commandeer enough food for our men for the next four days. Arrange for a building to be used as a mess hall.” The two lieutenants saluted him and turned away. Rodriguez wiped his face with the handkerchief and turned to the city leaders—the
comisario
, the
alcalde
, the
padre
. He sighed and whipped his glance across their faces. The
alcalde
seemed to be a sensible old man. The
comisario
looked greedy. And as for the
padre
—he was a Franciscan; that was all. Rodriguez had never understood priests.

He stood young and tall, a dark man with a handsome, slightly evil face, very trim in his uniform. He held his hand over the hilt of his sword when he spoke to them. “I have been sent here by the office of Ignacio Pesquiera, who as you know has assumed the position of substitute governor since the abdication of Aguilar. My function is to inform you that there may be an attack made on this city by a group of gringo filibusters.”

The
alcalde
and the
comisario
looked at one another. The
comisario
said, “Filibusters?” and his face turned fearful.

“They were invited to come here by the Gandara administration,” Rodriguez said, and his voice had the sound of truth. “There will be not more than a hundred of them, I can assure you. They may heed our kind advice and turn back at Sonoyta, but that is doubtful, very doubtful. Probably they will come this way.
Por aquí
, you understand? We must be prepared for them.”

The
comisario
swallowed and said, “How long do we have?”

Rodriguez shrugged. “Perhaps two days, perhaps two weeks.”

“How shall we prepare for them?”

“I will take it upon myself to train and equip the young men of the town,” Rodriguez said. “You will have all the young men report to my sergeants for training. They will be issued muskets and ammunition. As for the rest, the women and old men and children, I suggest you organize them into groups, encourage them to stay under cover away from the center of town, and keep with them enough provisions to withstand a brief siege if it becomes necessary.”

“A siege?”

“I hope that will not occur,” Rodriguez said. “Already I have posted guards some distance up the roads. If the filibusters come, we should be given ample warning of their approach. I hope to meet them outside the town and bring an end to it. But they are better armed than we are—one has to do the best he can with what he has, you see. It may be necessary for us to draw them into the town so that we can hold them here until General Gabilondo arrives with reinforcements.”

“
Por Diós
,” the
padre
muttered. “We must pray for our people.”

“You might say a prayer or two for the filibusters too,” Rodriguez said with a small grin.

“Bah,” the
padre
said, and spat. “They are pigs. But if they walk on two legs I suppose they are entitled to God's mercy.”

“You are most charitable, good priest.”

The
padre
turned toward the church, his robes flapping. Rodriguez said to the
comisario
, “I am afraid the town stores will have to be made available to my men. We do not wish to tax the town more than necessary, but my men must eat.”

“Of course,” the
comisario
said reluctantly.

“Do not be so sad,” Rodriguez murmured drily. “I only seek to save your town,
comisario
.”

“Or perhaps use it for a battleground,” the
comisario
replied. “Which is it, Captain?”

“Do you want me to take my troops with me and leave?” Rodriguez demanded immediately. “I should like to see what might happen to this town of yours if the filibusters were given free rein to sack it.”

The glum
comisario
spread his hands. “All right,” he said. “All right. You will have our cooperation, Captain. It is just that no man wishes to see his home turned into a barracks.”

“Of course. I understand perfectly,” Rodriguez said coolly. “My tongue is dry, gentlemen. Is there a cantina where we might continue our talk?”

“This way,” the
alcalde
said.

Inside the cantina it was cool and dark. The barkeep drew three
cervezas
and set the mugs before them. Rodriguez took his beer back to a rickety hand-hewn table in a corner of the room where it seemed coolest, and sat, adjusting his sword so that it did not dig against his ribs. Not far away a girl sat listlessly over a glass of tequila, staring without interest at the face of the fat young man with her. The girl wore a low-scoop blouse and a flower in her hair. Probably the local
puta
, Rodriguez thought, but she was less ugly than most of her kind. Her eyes flicked past him, hesitated, and came back. Rodriguez dipped his head to her and the girl smiled. That would do very nicely for later, Rodriguez decided, and thought for a moment of his wife in Hermosillo. He said to the
alcalde
, “It might be a good idea if you were to call a meeting of the townspeople and let me explain to them what we are doing here.”

“Yes,” the
alcalde
said. “I had thought the same thing.”

“Perhaps,” said the
comisario
, “perhaps we should not alarm the people unduly.”

“They must be told,” Rodriguez said, disliking the man for his obtuseness. “Would you rather have them wonder what we are doing here and resent the billeting of my troops in their houses? They must be prepared, and it is best that they know what is going on as soon as possible. As it is, enough of them will run away.”

“Very well,” the
comisario
grumbled.

The
alcalde
said, “I will have someone ring the church bell,” and got up from his beer to pick a path through the tables and go out into the sun.

The
comisario
was frugal enough to finish his beer before he went. Rodriguez was happy to see him leave. Afterward he sat and smiled at the girl with the flower in her hair. He remembered when he had first met his wife. She had been a girl then, no older than this whore, but she had carried herself with a fine composure. It had been, he remembered, at a ball given by the prefect of Hermosillo. A very fine ball. Chandeliers and wine, fine ladies and music. And from that he had come away to this dusty little town on the Rio Concepcion to fight against an army of foreigners. He drank his beer down and touched the hilt of his sword. At Ures they thought him a dandy, a wealthy young man who liked to show himself off in a uniform. He would demonstrate to them that he was as good a fighting soldier as any of them. He smiled at the girl with the flower in her hair.

When Charley returned to camp in the evening it was time to eat. He spoke to no one, ate a lonely meal, and afterward cleaned his utensils with sand. The sun went down and the harmonica breathed its sorrowful way across the camp; men settled down to play cards, soap saddles, talk, sleep. There was an attitude of confidence in the faces roundabout. Charley felt adrift. He went back over the long afternoon's conversation with the girl. Flirting and small talk—arts at which he was not expert. He had spoken, though, of little things: of the cool pleasure of the shaded cottonwood pool, of the plans in his mind, hanging there vaguely, to build a little house in Mexico and work the ground for gold, of things he had seen in Stockton and Sacramento and San Francisco, of childhood recollections of New Orleans—cotton barkers hawking at an auction, the filthy old streets, darkies hauling river barges with thick ropes bent around their shoulders, dandy swells in their finery stalking the walks, his stepfather sending him to a corner saloon with a pail for beer. The girl had showed wistful interest, and in her turn had told of a dusty little horned-toad she had kept as a pet, of a time when her father the
alcalde
had whipped a youth because the youth had spoken to her, of the little things that touched her heart. Hers was a romantic soul and she spoke of such things as birdsongs and a long ago friendship with a coyote cub. It was all very strange and in a way sad, for it made him think of other places and he began to wish he had not come along on this senseless journey.

When the sky was star-peppered and campfires blossomed red and men settled in, Charley got up softly from his blankets and walked out into the desert alone. The night air carried the sharp, raw scent of the wild country. Fine short wrinkles converged around his eyes when he looked up toward the faint glitter of distant stars. Dry branches rustled before small winds.

Indecision plagued him; he wondered if he had made a mistake coming here; he was afraid. Always inclined to stuff his feelings down inside where they wouldn't show, he walked slowly and listened to the crunch of his feet and the occasional crackle of a creosote twig or cholla segment that would break underfoot in the dark, and in spite of his aloneness in the world his expression displayed none of the tugging that went on in his soul. He wished he could know, for certain, whether to quit or go on—or whether it made any real difference whatever he did. In that mood, a sudden mood, he sat down on his haunches and tossed pebbles.

He had come to know that no one ever had much warning of the conflicts brought by each moment's waking; there had to be times when, taken by surprise, he had to act and stand behind that act forever, even though he might have acted for no reason whatever. He had the feeling that most of his life had resulted not so much from will as from accident. If that were not true, there was no adequate reason for his being here.

And the end result of it was that no living person had a claim on him and he had no claim on anybody. It made him recall what Norval Douglas had said to him one day—that every man had to live by himself, for himself; that was as it should be. “When you've got no one to please but yourself,” Douglas had told him, “then you're all right. It's a mistake to begin thinking you matter to somebody.”

He didn't know. A coyote yapped across the night from some distant point. He got up and went back, slipped into camp without bothering anyone, and rolled up in his blanket, thinking of the girl with the long neck on the mossy bank of the water hole. It was some time before he got to sleep.

CHAPTER 18

Sus came up from the camp and stood before Crabb, and looked at his feet. Crabb said, “Well?”

“Well, what?”

“We're ready to leave,” Crabb said, looking forward at the men lined up, the pack animals grouped together, the officers mounted on chafing horses. Crabb stood by the head of his horse, ready to mount. “McKinney should be along any time now with the wounded. You'll give him my instructions?”

“I will,” Sus said, with a tone of stiffness.