The Vanquished (25 page)

“What?”

“Are you hurt?”

“I don't think so.” Edmonson checked himself over. Then he shook his head. His face had a numb, dull look. “No,” he said. “I'm all right.”

“Come on, then.” Charley took his arm and helped him get up. Edmonson shook his head as if to clear it. Charley said, “Pick up your rifle.”

“My rifle.” Edmonson stood dumbly. Charley reached down and gathered up the gun and handed it to Edmonson, who looked at it. Presently he slung it over his shoulder and presented a shaking smile. “Come on,” Charley said, and led him forward.

Men stood around in tight ranks, all of them listening to Crabb. “They attacked us without warning,” Crabb was saying. “We have the right to carry the fight to them, and by God we will. I intend to take this town. Does anyone object?”

Very possibly, Charley thought, it was Crabb's shortest speech. He put down the impulse to giggle. A muttering roar like something from an animal's throat grew in the crowd. Charley felt weak in the ankles. They began to move forward, spreading out along the sides of the road. McDowell and Holliday came back giving orders to the horse-holders. McDowell looked like a Biblical prophet; the long jaw of his red beard moved energetically when he talked. He said, “Keep to cover and watch for snipers,” and, “Keep those horses in the rear.” Holliday was drawling in a more relaxed way: “Keep your Goddamn guns loaded.” Keep this and keep that—Charley moved in a daze of confusion. Up the road beyond the wheat fields he could see the walls of small farm plots that bordered the road. Men seemed to be dodging around behind those walls. All the officers' horses went to the rear and men moved forward on the edges of the road until a sporadic musketry began from the adobe walls and the officers got down on one knee to return the fire. Charley had a clear picture of Norval Douglas calmly firing his revolver at slow intervals toward the walls that closed down on the road ahead. It was all very impersonal; targets were seldom visible and did not seem to relate to humanity. Shadow-figures, seen only briefly, fell back from the walls and he saw Crabb marching briskly forward down the road, followed by the officers. The column picked up speed and Charley found himself walking at a good pace, as if they were out alone in the desert marching toward a water hole.

The column halted between the adobe walls. Several men vaulted over them and there were a few gunshots. Then the officers came down the line singling out men. McDowell stopped in front of Charley and said, “You handled that gun well back there, Evans,” and Charley wondered when the captain had got time to notice. McDowell said, “You'll go with me around to the left. We'll cut through town around from the east side and meet the others on the square. You too, Randolph.”

After that, in company with half a dozen others, Charley followed the red-bearded captain past the end of the adobe wall and, cautiously, around a building corner. They skirted the edge of town, making a quarter-circle around it, and met no resistance, though Charley kept his rifle cocked and jumped several times when he saw what appeared to be movements in the shadows. They passed slot-windowed adobes one by one; each time McDowell would kick the door open and lunge inside, and each time the building would prove to be empty. McDowell said, “They were ready for us. They're all probably forted up in the middle of town.”

Charley swept the rooftops and inspected shadows until his eyes began to ache. A slight tremor had invaded his hands and he was afraid that even if he did shoot at something, he would probably miss. He kept having the vision of the crowd of Mexicans coming down the road to avenge their gunshot leader—a mass of bodies and eyes, arms and legs into which he had poured his ammunition. He did not know whether he had hit anyone, but had the feeling he must have. It was strange, he thought, that he felt no particular reaction—unless he were to count the trembling.

“Look out, now,” McDowell said. They were slipping along the side wall of a 'dobe. McDowell flattened himself against the end of the wall and poked his head around for a look down the street. Then he gestured with his free hand and went around out of sight.

Bill Randolph followed him; Charley was right behind Bill. The three of them stopped at the head of the street. From here they could see part of the plaza, two blocks distant. The twin domes of the church lifted above the rooftops of squat yellow-gray buildings. Bill's tongue came out and moistened his lips. His head was defiantly set back on his thick Prussian neck. The three other men came around the corner and stood with them. The street appeared deserted—dry, sunlit, dusty. Quite crisp and loud was the sound of Bill's rifle-hammer drawing back to full cock. There was sweat on Charley's palms and he rubbed them, one at a time, against the coarse grain of his trousers. His hat felt tight and he pushed it back an inch. From some other part of town came the rapid chatter of gunfire. It lasted only a short while. “Come on,” McDowell said. “Stay close to the buildings.”

Bill Randolph and two of the others trotted across the head of the street and started down the opposite side. Charley got up on the sidewalk behind McDowell. They walked forward putting one boot in front of the other. Once Charley thought he saw a man's hatbrim outlined above a roof across the street, but when he turned it was gone. A few more shots went off in another part of town. He wondered where everyone had gone. Had they deserted the town in the face of the gringo riflemen? It didn't seem likely.

A Mexican in a wide sombrero with crossed belts running from shoulder to waist came in a rush from a doorway a block down the street, shouting in Spanish. He had a musket and he lifted it. Charley thought it was aimed right at him. He tried to bring his gun around, but it swung with ponderous slowness. A single shot crashed against his ears and the Mexican spun half-around, dropped his gun, and wheeled back into the doorway from which he had come. McDowell stopped to reload his rifle. “We'll have to go in after that one,” he said. “He'll probably have a knife.”

But then the Mexican leaped out of the doorway again. Somewhere he had armed himself with a huge flintlock horse pistol, over which he leaned. It was a strange sight—the man standing in the middle of the street bent over a pistol, trying to get it cocked. Charley heard a roar of laughter and saw Bill Randolph take a casual aim and shoot. The Mexican's feet slipped out from under him and he fell in an ungainly sprawl. The pistol flipped away from him. He raised his head and stared at it. Standing where he was, Bill Randolph calmly reloaded and took aim again, but then the Mexican's face turned and dropped into the dirt, and Bill did not fire. “Jesus Christ,” Charley heard McDowell mutter. “What a Goddamn mess.” They went foot by foot downstreet toward the edge of the plaza. At every window they stopped to reconnoiter; at every door they stopped and pushed inside, guns ready. Every place seemed deserted. Furniture stood empty. In a window across the street, behind Bill and his men, a Mexican appeared with a shotgun. Charley's breath hung up in his chest. The shotgun muzzle lifted and Charley turned his gun on that man and fired. He had not aimed his shot; he had only pointed and pulled the trigger. But the Mexican sagged across the sill and dropped his shotgun. Charley swallowed. The Mexican did not move at all. Still, he was far enough away to remain an impersonal target. Charley had yet to see death close up.

“Reload,” McDowell told him, and went on down the street.

CHAPTER 20

“God damn it,” said Jim Woods, “I knew there was something crazy. It's April Fool's Day!”

A rattle of laughter went around the big room. Crabb's voice cut across it sharply: “Watch your posts.”

Men crouched with their rifles laid across windowsills. The massive front door was barred with a heavy timber. In a back bedroom two wounded men lay on luxurious beds. Furniture had been pushed aside in the big parlor; supplies were stacked in the center of the room. Periodically a shot came from the church across the square where the Mexican troops had fortified themselves. In the front windows, Bill Randolph and Norval Douglas and five other men answered the fire. The smell and taste of powdersmoke was powerful and bitter. Charley sat in a front corner pressing the bandage that covered a bullet-burn on his left arm. Around him men cursed and fretted. He felt detached and cool and slightly lightheaded. The events of the last hour were a blur in his mind—battling armies surging back and forth across the square; a line of men driving the Mexicans into the walls of the church while behind them another line of men feverishly unloaded the pack animals and rushed the supplies into this thick-walled mansion opposite the church. He had only a vague idea of what had happened; he did not understand how they had achieved the sanctuary of this fortress-like house and in the doing of it only suffered two minor casualties and a few bullet scratches like his own. Across the room a small group of men was laughing and spraying obscenities, talking contemptuously of Mexican marksmanship. The Mexicans had been scared; but Charley did not laugh at them. He knew how they felt. He remembered the women, the children, the old men spilling back from invaded homes, driven back from all sides and trapped in the open plaza, fired at from the streets and falling back into the convent beside the old church. Horses rearing and screaming. Men cutting the packsaddle cinches and dragging the loaded saddles back into the big house. A line of men crouched down and squinting across their sights. The Mexican troops, confused and leaderless, backing into the church. A stocky Mexican officer who looked more like a miner than a soldier, finally taking charge and laying siege to the Americans who had gathered in this great sprawling house which must have belonged to the wealthiest citizen of Caborca.

Old John Edmonson came over and stooped over him, looming in the strange shadows. “Do you want a drink?”

“Yes.”

Edmonson went away and presently returned with a canteen. Charley swallowed the tepid water. “What's going on?” he said.

“The Mexicans have moved back in the church. Some of them are up in the towers shooting at us. A few of them tried to run for the next buildings.”

Tried. Charley looked at the blank casual expression on the old man's face. What had the last hour done to him? Edmon-son carried his revolver in his fist. Charley got up and handed the canteen back and went to the window nearest him. Norval Douglas looked up and said mildly, “Keep your head back, Charley.”

“If I do that I can't see anything.”

“What do you want to see? A bullet?”

“All right.” He turned back to his corner. Across the room Crabb was in conference with his officers. They seemed to be arguing. A bullet poked a small hole in the back wall; it must have come through one of the windows. Edmonson sat down beside him; his look had turned sour. He said, “How old are you, Charley? Fifteen? Sixteen? You don't belong here.”

“Nobody belongs here.”

“I suppose not.” Douglas fired and the shot was deafening. Edmonson said, “This is ridiculous. We're not savages.”

“Aren't we?”

“I hope to God we're not. What's the point of all this? Charley, what in God's name are we doing here?”

His voice had risen. Men were looking at him. Edmonson trailed off and turned his face into the shadows. His plea rang in Charley's ears. Charley felt very calm next to him. He put his hand on the old man's arm. Edmonson looked up, perhaps with gratitude, and got up stiffly to leave. He was muttering when he walked away.

The man at the second window cried out and rolled back from his post. A bullet had seared the top of his shoulder. Charley crawled forward and took that man's place; the injured man went back with two others attending him.

Through the window Charley could see the front of the church. It was a tall two-domed structure. He dragged his rifle up and laid it across the sill, and sat looking out the corner of the opening. He laid his ammunition out beside him on the floor. A bird flew across the square and some fool shot at it, missing it, and McDowell's voice bawled, “Cut that out!” Charley couldn't see anyone inside the dark windows of the church, but a shot plunked into the wall of the house and he saw a drift of muzzle smoke. Two others fired on it before he cocked his rifle.

“Charley.”

It was Bill Randolph, beside him at the next window. Charley said, “What?”

“Nothing,” Bill said. When his gun went off it startled Charley. Bill pulled the gun in and began to pour powder down the barrel. He said, “On April eighteenth of 'Forty-seven, I fought under Lieutenant Tom Sweeny at the battle of Cerro Gordo. This ain't the first time I've shot at Mexicans, by God. In August that year I was at Churubusco.” Bill carried his battle flags with pride. “I accounted for sixteen greasers at Cerro Gordo,” he said. “I didn't count at Churubusco. Ain't none of them can fight worth a damn. I think we ought to bust out of here and pull that Goddamn church down around their ears. Don't know what we're waiting for.”

Charley did not know either. Across the room Crabb and the officers were still arguing. The Mexicans fired four or five shots from the church. Charley shot back and reloaded and shot again.