The Underdogs (10 page)

“And what if the old man who gave us that information yesterday was lying? What if they turn out to have fifty men instead of twenty? What if that old man was a spy put out there by the Federales?”

“This
curro
here is startin' to get all scared already!” Anastasio Montañés said.

“Yes, handling a rifle is not like boilin' water and puttin' on bandages and givin' enemas, is it now,
curro
?” Pancracio asked.

“H'm, come on!” the Indian said. “Too much talk already. All this over a dozen scared rats!”

“Soon enough we'll find out whether our mothers gave birth to real men or what,” Lard added.

When they reached the edge of the small town, Venancio went on ahead and knocked on the door of the first small house he found.

“Where's the barracks?” he demanded of the man who stepped outside, barefoot, wearing a torn poncho around his otherwise bare chest.

“The barracks is just down there by the plaza, sir,” he answered.

But as none of them knew where “down there by the plaza” was, Venancio forced the man to walk out in front of their column and show them the way.

Trembling with fear, the unfortunate wretch exclaimed that what they were making him do was outrageous.

“I'm just a poor peasant, señor. I have a wife and small children.”

“And what are mine, dogs?” Demetrio replied.

Then he ordered:

“Very quiet now, on the ground, single file, down the middle of the street.”

The broad quadrangular church dome rose up above the other houses of the town.

“See there, señores? The plaza is in front of the church. Ya just walk a little farther down from there and ya'll run straight into the barracks.”

The man then knelt down and begged them to let him go back home. But without answering, Pancracio struck the man in the chest with the butt of his rifle and made him continue.

“How many soldiers are stationed here?” Luis Cervantes asked the man.

“Sir, I don't wanna lie to ya, your grace. But truth is, truth is there's a whole lot of 'em there.”

Luis Cervantes looked at Demetrio, but Macías pretended not to have heard anything.

They soon reached a small plaza, where they were met by a deafening discharge of rifles. Startled, Demetrio's chestnut-colored horse reared, staggered on its hind legs, folded its forelegs, and fell down kicking. Owl let out a shrill cry and rolled off his horse, which bolted madly toward the middle of the plaza.

A new round of rifle shots was fired toward them, and the man who had guided them spread his arms out and fell backward without exhaling a sound.

Anastasio Montañés quickly lifted Demetrio up and carried him over his shoulder. The others had already retreated and were hiding behind the walls of the surrounding houses.

“Señores, señores,” a common townsman said, sticking his head out from a large doorway. “You should circle 'round and get 'em from behind the chapel. They're all in there. Go back down this same street, turn left at the first corner, then ya'll reach a small alley, and then ya'll go through that till ya reach the back of the chapel.”

At that point an incessant round of pistol fire began raining down on them. It came from the nearby terraces.

“Oh,” the man said, “those aren't bitin' spiders fallin' down on us. That's the
curros
. Come inside here till they leave. They'll run away soon, those
curros,
they're afraid of their own shadows.”

“How many conservative mongrels are in town?” Demetrio asked.

“There were no more than a dozen or so here before. But last night they were real afraid of somethin' and they used the telegraph to call for reinforcements. So who knows how many are in town now! But it doesn't matter if there's a lot of 'em. Most of 'em were enlisted by the draft, and it doesn't take much of nothin' for 'em to turn and run and leave their leaders behind. My brother was caught by the damned draft and they have 'im in there with 'em. I'll go with ya, I'll give ya a sign, and ya'll see how all the men that was drafted come over to this side as soon as ya attack. And then we can get rid of the officers once and for all. If ya could just give me some kind of weapon, señor, I'd join ya at once.”

“We don't have no rifles left, brother. But this oughtta be good for somethin',” Anastasio Montañés said, handing the man a couple of hand grenades.

The leader of the Federales was a very presumptuous young blond man with waxed mustaches. At first, when he did not know the exact number of men who had assaulted them, he had remained extremely quiet and cautious. But now that the enemy had been so successfully turned back, and they had not even given them a chance to fire a single shot, he started making unwise shows of courage and taking extraordinary risks. While all the other soldiers barely dared to stick their heads out from behind the stone pillars to look toward the enemy, the leader of the Federales went out in the bright early morning and exhibited his elegant, slender figure, his long cape occasionally waving behind him in the breeze.

“Ah, this reminds me of our glorious military uprising!”

Since his military career was limited to just one adventure— the time he had participated as a cadet at the School of Officers when the revolt against President Madero had broken out—every time the slightest reason arose, he would invariably recall the deeds at the Ciudadela.
¹

“Lieutenant Campos,” he ordered emphatically. “Take ten men and finish off those bandits hiding down there. Go and get those dirty, rotten dogs down below! They only act brave when it comes time to shooting cows and stealing chickens!”

A peasant appeared under the arch of a small door. He came with the news that the assailants had retreated to a corral, where it would be very easy to seize all of them at once.

This message came from the distinguished citizens of the town, who had taken their stations on their own terraces, determined not to let the enemy escape.

“I myself will go finish them off,” the officer said vehemently. But almost immediately he changed his mind. Backing away from the door, he said:

“They may be expecting reinforcements, and it would be imprudent for me to abandon my post. Lieutenant Campos, you go and bring them back to me alive, so we can have them shot by firing squad later this very day at noon, when everyone in town is coming out of high mass. I shall make fine examples of these bandits! But if you cannot capture them alive, Lieutenant Campos, then finish them all off. No one is to get out of this town alive. Understood?”

And being well satisfied with himself, he began to pace back and forth and to think about the official dispatch he would write in his rendering of the events. “To His Honor the Minister of War, Most Esteemed General Don Aureliano Blanquet.
²
Mexico City. It is my pleasure, General, to bring to Your Excellency's attention that at sunrise on the . . . day of this month, a party of five hundred men under the leadership of H . . . sought to attack this plaza. With the force necessitated by the occasion, I gathered our troops at the elevated areas of the town. The attack commenced at dawn and lasted for a duration of more than two hours of sustained gunfire. Despite the enemy's numerical superiority, under my leadership, we managed to punish them severely and defeat them unequivocally. Their dead numbered at twenty, and even more were injured, judging by the trail of blood they left behind in their precipitous retreat. Among our ranks we had the good fortune of not being hit by a single bullet. It is my pleasure to congratulate you, esteemed Minister, for this triumph on behalf of the troops of the Republic. Long live His Honor General Don Victoriano Huerta!
³
Long live Mexico!

“After which,” he went on in his mind, “my promotion to major will be assured.” And he clenched his fists with joy just as a report of gunfire went off, leaving his ears ringing.

XVII

“So ya're sayin' that if we can get through this corral we'd come straight out into the alley?” Demetrio asked.

“Yes. Except that after the corral there's a house, then another corral, and then a store after that,” the townsman replied.

Demetrio scratched his head thoughtfully. But his decision came at once.

“Can ya get a pick, or a pickax, or somethin' like that, to break a hole through that wall there?”

“Yes, they have all of that here. But—”

“But what? Where do they keep everythin'?”

“Sure the equipment's all here, I tell ya. But all these houses here belong to the owner, my boss . . .”

Without listening any further, Demetrio walked to the room indicated as the place where the tools were kept.

From there, the entire operation took but a few minutes.

Once they were out in the alleyway, they ran in single file, staying close to the walls for cover, until they reached the area behind the church.

They had to jump over a short adobe fence before they could scale the rear wall of the chapel.

“Heaven help us,” Demetrio thought. He was the first to climb over.

The others followed at once, climbing like monkeys until they reached the top, their hands streaked with dirt and blood. After that it was much easier: deep, worn steps along the stonework allowed them to quickly mount the chapel wall, and then the church vault itself hid them from the soldiers below.

“Hold on there for a minute,” the townsman said. “Let me go and see about my brother. I'll give ya a sign, and then . . . ya'all pounce on the officers. Okay?”

But by then no one was paying any more attention to him.

For a moment Demetrio looked at his men crowded in the church tower around him, behind the iron rail. Then he contemplated the black wavering of the soldiers' dark coats below.

Smiling and satisfied, he exclaimed to his men:

“Now!”

Twenty grenades exploded simultaneously in the middle of the Federales. Overcome with fear, they jumped to attention, their eyes wide open. But before they had a chance to recover from their surprise, another twenty grenades exploded, creating a tremendous clamor, leaving dead and wounded men scattered about.

“No, not yet! Not yet! I can't see my brother yet . . .” the townsman pleaded in anguish.

An old sergeant scolds and insults the soldiers, hoping to reorganize the troop and save the day, but in vain. The scene is that of rats running about in a trap. Some try to storm the base of the stairs and there they fall, gunned down by Demetrio and his men. Others throw themselves at the feet of the twenty-some-odd specters—their heads and chests dark as iron, their legs clad in torn long white trousers— above them but are riddled with bullets down to their sandals. While still others, in the bell tower, struggle to get out from under the dead who have fallen upon them.

“Dear leader!” Luis Cervantes exclaims, extremely alarmed. “We are out of grenades and the rifles are down in the corral! We are doomed!”

Demetrio smiles and unsheathes a knife with a long, shiny blade. Instantly steel gleams in the hands of his twenty soldiers, some blades long and tapering to a sharp point, others wide as the palm of a hand, many heavy as machetes.

“The spy!” Luis Cervantes cries out, triumphantly. “I told you so!”

“Don't kill me, Papi!” the old sergeant implores at Demetrio's feet, just as Macías raises his blade in the air.

The old man turns his wrinkled indigenous face toward Macías. Demetrio recognizes the man who betrayed them from the night before.

Luis Cervantes quickly averts his gaze, horrified. The steel blade hits ribs that go
crack, crack,
and the old man falls back, his arms spread wide open, his eyes full of terror.

“No, not my brother! Not him, don't kill 'im, he's my brother!” the townsman shouts, mad with fear as he sees Pancracio jump on a Federale.

It is too late. In one fell swoop Pancracio has slit the man's throat, and now two scarlet streams gush out as if from a fountain.

“Kill the soldiers! Kill the conservative mongrels!”

Pancracio and Lard distinguish themselves in the butchery, finishing off the wounded. Montañés drops his hands, completely exhausted. His face still has that sweet look in his eyes, glowing with the ingenuousness of a child and the amorality of a jackal.

“I gotta live one here,” Quail shouts out.

Pancracio runs toward him. It is the short blond captain— now pale as wax—with the Frenchified mustaches. Cowering in a corner at the top of the spiral staircase, he has stopped moving, too weak to climb down or to try anything else.

Pancracio shoves him out to the edge of the platform. A blow with his knee to the captain's hips, and something like a sack of stones falls twenty meters to the atrium of the church.

“You're such an animal!” Quail exclaims. “Ya don't even know what ya just ruined. That was a fine pair of shoes I was gonna get for myself!”

The men, now bent over the dead soldiers, are taking the best clothes they can find. Then they dress themselves with the spoils, joking and laughing, thoroughly enjoying themselves.

Demetrio pushes aside the long, sweat-soaked strands of hair sticking to his forehead down to his eyes, and says:

“Now, let's go get the
curros
in town, muchachos!”

XVIII

Demetrio arrived in Fresnillo with a hundred men the same day that Pánfilo Natera was commencing his advance on the plaza of Zacatecas with his forces.
¹