The Hummingbird's Daughter (19 page)

They rolled cigarettes and smoked. When they were finished, Lauro spoke.

“What of these Yaquis? You almost had me convinced when you joked that they were Catholics.”

“I wasn’t joking.” Tomás put his hand on his old friend’s shoulder, and he told him a story as they walked.

When the Spaniards were finished with the Aztecs, they came, as you well know, north. They wanted to spread the Holy Faith, but they really wanted gold. And they were happy in Sinaloa, make no mistake. If not gold, then silver. They found oceans of silver down around Rosario and Escuinapa. But of course, they wanted to discover the Seven Cities of Gold they’d been looking for from the Andes all the way north. Cíbola.

Tomás moved a stone onto one of the graves with the toe of his boot. It was a gentle, absentminded gesture. Aguirre watched his friend with great tenderness.

Sooner or later, they would come this way. It was inevitable. It took them three hundred years to learn there were no cities of gold. But these Indians were sly. So the Guasaves, sad and poor to the south, told the Spaniards, “Oh yes! Great temples of gold! To the north! In the land of the Mayos!”

And of course
Mayo
sounded like
Maya,
so the Spaniards set out at a trot, imagining pyramids and sculptures. That’s when they found the Mayos. When the Spaniards came, seven hundred of them, in armor, heavily armed, and wafting their stench after not bathing for a year, or two, or three, the Mayos were appalled. So they did the only reasonable thing—they lied the way the Guasaves lied. They pointed north, said, “Oh yes—great temples of gold! But these can only be found in the Yaqui lands. Go to the Yaquis, our brothers, farther up these valleys, along the Río Yaqui, and they will share their gold with you! Tell them we sent you!”

And the Spaniards went.

The Yaquis were, of course, cousins to the Mayos. They spoke a variant of the same language. But these two tribes were like black ants and red ants. The black ants are peaceful and hardworking. The red ants are also hardworking, but if you should stand on their anthill, they will swarm out and do their best to kill you. So the Spaniards marched on to the Río Yaqui. They walked right up the valley, where the Yaquis were waiting. And the Spaniard leader said something along the time-honored lines of “In the name of the king of Spain, and the power of God Almighty, we have come to bring you the gospel of Jesus Christ our Lord. Oh, and where’s the gold?” And the Yaquis ran out like red ants and killed all of them.

Tomás laughed.

Aguirre said, “This is not funny.”

“It is if you’re a Yaqui.”

The sun was setting fast.

Aguirre looked around him. He held a cross in his left hand, and he laid his right hand on the butt of the gun he’d jammed in his belt. The crags and hills around them were, in his mind, alive with Yaquis. Comanches. The frightening Sioux might even be out there. He suddenly imagined a massive pan-Indian war party sweeping the continent, their cleansing of the land about to start with him.

“You like these people,” he said.

“They’re a great people.”

“But they’re killers.”

“We’re killers.”

“But —”

“Nobody deadlier than a missionary, eh Aguirre?” He slapped his friend on the back. “Nothing more dangerous than the Church.”

“You said they were Catholics,” Aguirre muttered.

“Oh, they are. You see, for some reason, the Yaquis allowed some Jesuits to come into these regions. There were eight Yaqui centers, towns that the Jesuits made into missions. And—perhaps God, that old trickster, was really at work after all—the Jesuits allowed the tribe to exercise its own rituals along with the new Roman high jinks. Imagine, Lauro—deer dancers in the Mass. A native Easter!”

“Some might see that as heresy. Sin.”

“Sin! Shit.” Tomás walked quickly—Aguirre had to hurry to catch up. “Why was it not a sin to impose Roman rituals on a Hebrew religion? If there is a God, do you really believe he speaks Latin? No seas tonto. It was the genius of the Jesuits to handle these people in such a fashion. And when the Jesuits were expelled from Mexico, they left behind their religion. Now they’re back.”

They walked into the crowd of cowboys, bumping into the redolent horses as they shifted in the uneasy dark. The scent of gun oil hung between the flanks of the animals, and the sharp scent of leather, and the many kinds of sweat and fear came off the men like cigarette smoke. “Boss,” the men said, some of them startled, as Tomás slipped past them. “Boys,” he said, patting them on the leg, the knee, as they sat their horses. And when he’d made his way into the middle of the men, he stopped. They all stopped. They waited.

It was Segundo who finally spoke.

“So,” he said, “what are we going to do?”

“I, for one,” the patrón said, “am going to sleep.”

Nineteen

THE FOLLOWING MORNING, as Don Tomás prepared to deliver his orders to them all, Teresita walked from camp to camp, watching the People ready their breakfasts. Huila had sent clay bowls full of beans and nopal cactus fried in eggs to the men at the ruined ranch house. Some of the locals had provided weird huge flour tortillas, and the men at the main-house ruins suspiciously wrapped their beans in these wads of what seemed to them to be wet laundry. Segundo found the tortillas de harina squishy and deeply improper, though by his third bean and cactus burrito, he started to enjoy them. Their rich taint of lard felt good and greasy in his mouth.

Tomás chose to remain loyal to his little corn tortillas. There was only so much he was willing to concede to el norte.

Most people ate beans. Fried beans or boiled with a gristly wad of fatback. Some ate bolillos that they dipped in their coffee. The two workers from Rosario’s silver mines—Guerrero and Millán—fried the last of their little green bananas. Millán dangled one before his button fly and invited passersby to bite it. And eggs, hitting melted lard, spread their hiss through the wagons like water spilling over stones. The world smelled like food, and Teresita closed her eyes and went from delicious cloud to delicious cloud, her stomach singing and burbling, her jaws tingling with hunger.

At Huila’s fire circle, she squatted down in the dirt with a tin plate balanced on her knees, and she scooped up slimy cactus and eggs with chunks of tortilla. The folded triangle of tortilla in her right hand served as a spoon, and the rough triangle in her left served as a scoop that moved choice bits around her plate. She had used spoons and forks before, but not often.

Huila set a mug of coffee before Teresita—the skin of boiled milk humped in the middle, raised by steam. Teresita lifted the cup with two hands and sipped. The old woman had already stirred in her traditional five spoonfuls of sugar. Teresita raked in the milk skin with her teeth and chewed it. After breakfast, she helped wash dishes. Then she set about beating blankets and shaking out dresses. She kept busy until lunchtime, but before she could examine the frying pans to see what they’d eat, riders approached.

Here came Segundo again, and with him, Don Tomás. The Engineer wore a checkered suit and his silliest top hat. Two vaqueros brought up the rear.

Tomás carried an empty bowl, balanced on the pommel of his saddle.

Huila stood.

“Buenos días,” she said. “Did you like your breakfast?”

Tomás tossed his bowl to one of the workers beside her.

“Good,” he said. “Gracias.”

She tipped her head at him.

“What have you decided?” Huila asked.

Tomás combed his whiskers with his fingers.

“We stay,” he said. “We rebuild.”

There arose a murmur, though no one could tell if it was dread or assent.

“Some of us don’t want to remain here. It is haunted,” Huila said.

“Ay, María Sonora,” Tomás sighed. “Don’t you think all Sonora is haunted? Have we not seen strange things all the way from Sinaloa? Haunted!” He barked out a laugh. His riders also laughed; the People did not. “I have several ranches. Some of you may go work at Aquihuiquichi, and at Santa María. All right?”

Huila nodded.

More murmuring.

“And you will be rebuilding Cabora,” Huila offered.

“Soon,” he replied. “Soon. But Engineer Aguirre will be in charge of the ranch in my absence. He has my full authority—you will follow his orders without question, as if I myself had spoken.”

“And you?” Huila called. “Where will you be?”

“I?” said Tomás. “I am going to go talk to the Yaquis.”

Now, as Tomás rode alone into the hills, he remembered their cries of fear, their arguments and shouts. Huila argued with him, and the People begged him not to go. But he had already battled Aguirre and Segundo all night. He had overcome the will of his vaqueros and their endless rounds of debate that had ruined his sleep.

“For God’s sake, you idiot—take armed riders with you!” Aguirre had cried.

“No.”

“It’s suicide, boss,” Segundo argued. “Don’t go alone. Let me ride with you, at least.”

“No.”

“They’ll kill you,” Aguirre shouted.

“I don’t think so.”

Tomás had a sense that the Yaquis would respect his boldness if he rode into their midst with no hired guns around him. And if they weren’t impressed, he didn’t want to see more of his men killed. Besides, Yaquis weren’t horsemen like Apaches or Comanches—he knew he could outride any warrior that might come after him, and he wore two revolvers and carried a shotgun and a Winchester in scabbards on either side of his saddle. He’d shoot his way out if he had to. Or he’d go down shooting.

“I am a good Catholic,” he joked. “They will join me in a rosary.”

His leaving had been nearly silent. Tomás took his firearms and a huge fighting knife on the back of his belt. He wore his silver concha black pants, a pair of rawhide chaps, and a big sombrero. In his saddlebags were two sacks of gold pesos to pay ransom for the stolen women. He had ridden out of the camp on the far edge of the red sunrise.

When he got to Alamos that afternoon, he was delighted to see cantinas and restaurants and trees. He fed a few peanuts to a great white parrot in a hibiscus tree. He ate chorizo and eggs, calabaza and papaya, a bowl of arroz cooked in tomato sauce with red onions sprinkled over it, coffee and boiled milk, and three sweet rolls. He went to the botica and bought some stomach powders in case the chorizo loosened his bowels, and he bought seven cigars and a tin of tobacco—he had read that Indian caciques liked tobacco. He turned his horse over to a stable and went to the hotel off the plazuela. There, he took a room and paid for a bath. He soaked himself in the steaming water, scrubbed the smell of cows off his body. The water, when he rose, looked like bean soup in a mug.

“I am a pig,” he noted.

Pulling on clean trousers and a white shirt from his mochila, he looked in the mirror and slicked back his hair. Downstairs, he enjoyed a shot of tequila and a lime, then sat down to a game of poker. He paid the chanteuse for three songs. Then he made his way to his cousins’ houses and sipped tea and dandled children. At midnight he rose to his room and fell in the feather bed and slept like a weary angel. At dawn, he dressed and sat down to a breakfast of fruit and bolillo rolls and ham steaks with green chiles and four eggs. He bought stout boots, had a haircut, and waited for the telegraph office to open. He sent Don Miguel a quick note: “Cabora burned! Rebuilding. I negotiate with renegades. Aguirre and Segundo in charge of rancho.”

As he rode out of town, he stopped at La Capilla, the Urrea great house, and peeked inside at its finery. The maids were flustered. He winked at a cute little teenager from Nogales and said, “I will definitely be seeing you again! What is your name?”

“Yoloxochitl,” she replied.

He found this marvelous, and he sprang into the saddle and trotted into the wasteland.

The workers at Cabora had told him the warriors’ village was ten miles away, but he realized he had failed to ask in which direction. His options formed an arc of almost seventy miles. He rode toward Bayoreca, the small mining town that was the only center of civilization outside Alamos. It would be a start, at least. He asked Indian-looking walkers on the roads. No one knew which band of Yaquis had attacked, nor what the name of their small pueblo might be. In Bayoreca, they told him, he might find informants. He might even find some of the raiders, for Yaquis often worked the mines, using their immense physical strength to pull ore carts up the shafts.

It was a day’s ride away, and Tomás had his bedroll tied on behind him. His provisions were jerky steeped in chile peppers, a cork-plugged jug of beans, bolillos, a leather pouch full of boiled rice, a wax-papered slab of bacon, a few bottles of beer. He carried a burlap sack of crushed and burned coffee beans. Three canteens were slung over his pommel. Pans and plates and a coffeepot rattled behind him. Enough bullets. His beloved jujubes.

The world was silent around him. Silent and vast. Without the pulling weight of the cattle and the ranch workers behind him, he felt cut loose, light in the air as thistledown. He might fly, if the wind hit him right. He had never thought of how large the land was. The sky was even bigger. For all its hugeness, the earth was like the thin layer of caramel on a flan, and the sky rose in a rich dome high above, spreading forever.

Ravens were as small in the distance as the ashes scattering from his cigarettes. He could barely hear their squawks. Their voices hid behind the hiss of the wind, sounded as if they had been folded and tucked under the corner of the sky.

Then up: the dirt road climbed the foothills. Agave, ocotillo, creosote, mesquite. He saw tawdry huts leaning as if blown by stiff winds. Naked children with white bottoms covered in alkaline dust. Three graves beside the road; white crosses with no words upon them and stones also painted white, as if it had snowed in the heat. Flies worried his eyes, his nose. He pulled his bandana over his face, and the scrabbling poor men who saw him pass ducked in fear, certain this tall bandit had found them out in their sins and their indiscretions, the mala hora come at last, and they hunched their shoulders and awaited his bullets. But he was gone on his newest black stallion, El Cucuy, only the echoing clonk of its hooves marking his passing: no shooting, not a word.

Mountain schooners came down the road—lines of burros overloaded with machinery and tools, bundled loads under canvas. Driven by bored little men with sticks, men with no teeth, blackened skins, splayed bare feet that looked like fried leather, yellow and cracked in the dirt. They nodded to Tomás as they passed, glancing furtively at his weapons, turning their eyes away quickly.

“Is it far?” he asked.

“Not far,” one answered.

He crested the ridge and beheld the jumbled tumbledown pueblo of Bayoreca. Town of smoke and powder. Mine tailings, drunken sots scattered like ripped clothes in the alleys, dead dogs, laundry. It was filthy. He could smell the place two miles down the road.