Crossers (8 page)

Around sundown the revolucionarios had them a big fiesta. They started in to playing these revolutionary songs, corridos de la revolución. “La Adelita” is the one I remember best—it was about a woman a soldier falls in love with.

I wasn’t in much of a fiesta mood, owing to what I’d seen that day, but when I heard the second verse, I got all achy inside. Si Adelita quisiera ser mi esposa. That’s what I wanted—to make Ynez my wife and dress her in satin. I’d watched her kill a woman in cold blood, and I was still in love with her. I couldn’t make no sense of it.

Well, I had plenty of rivals for her affections. I’d say half the battalion was looking at her all moon-eyed while they sang that song. She was their Adelita. I asked her to dance, and she said yes, but she wouldn’t let me hold her close. I asked her how come she shot Doña Álvarez. She looked up at me with that mournful face and said it was because she felt sorry for her, that she wanted to spare her the pain of living out her life with the memory of her sons and her husband. The priest had forgiven the boys their sins, so they was in heaven now, and Doña Álvarez was with them. You know, if I hadn’t been raised up in Mexico, I would have thought that a right strange reason to kill somebody.

Some fella tried to cut in on me, and I told him más tarde, muchacho. I had something to say to Ynez and I said it. I was in love with her. She laughed. I think that was the only time I ever saw her laugh. I’ve got to ask you to pardon my language again. Ynez had a foul mouth and said that I wasn’t in love with her, that all I wanted was, you know,
chingar
, fuck, because that was all gringos wanted from Mexican women. She let go of me and walked off, but damn if I didn’t see just a little bit of interest in them black eyes of hers.

The fiesta went on till Bracamonte ordered everyone to hit the hay. Me and Ben got our bedrolls and stretched out next to our horses. He laid his head on his saddle and was snoring inside of thirty seconds, but I had too many mixed-up thoughts buzzing through my head. I poked him in the ribs and told him I couldn’t get no shut-eye. He cussed me and said that I might have the decency to let him get some. I said that the executions didn’t seem right somehow. Ben reckoned they wasn’t, but this here was a war. He was a hard man, Ben was, harder than me, he’d got himself accustomed to bloodshed somehow. Then he sat up and got out his makings and rolled one for himself and one for me and we smoked and he thought for a spell and said that these Messican revolutionaries—I never could get him to say “Mexican” the right way—appeared to be folks long on justice and short on mercy, and that we had best keep that in mind. I told him that Ynez had killed Doña Álvarez out of mercy so she could be in heaven with her boys and her husband.

Ben thought that was the most damn fool thing he’d ever heard, and finally I got it off my chest, that I was in love with Ynez. Now
that
, said Ben, was even more of a damn fool thing. Ben was funny when it come to women. One time when we was in Mexico on a cattle-buying trip, I’d drug him over to a cantina in Nogales where we could line us up a couple of señoritas, and he wanted nothing to do with the ladies of the night, nor the day neither. Said he wasn’t gone to do that with no gal till he was married. I argued with him that a wife would expect her husband to know what the hell he was doing and how could he if he hadn’t some practice. And he said he’d learned to walk without practice. I reminded him that he’d crawled first, but he didn’t see my logic. Anyway, he snubbed out his cigarette and told me to stop thinking with what was between my legs and to get some sleep. We were a-going into battle inside of twenty-four hours, and if I didn’t have a clear head I might get myself killed.

I damn near did.

We got rousted out at dawn. First order of business was looting the hacienda’s storerooms for flour and beans and coffee and whatever else might come in handy. While all that was going on, a crowd of peons come marching down the ranch road and gathered outside the walls and asked to see the jefe. These peons raised corn and alfalfa and other crops on the Santa Barbara, and they wanted to know what was to become of them now that the rancho was under new ownership.

Colonel Bracamonte stood up on a box and told them that the rancho sure enough did have new owners and they were it. Bracamonte threw them a big white grin under that big black mustache, but them peons just stared at him without a word. It took him a while to get the idea across, but finally some of them got it, so when Bracamonte called out Viva la revolución, they shouted it back at him.

The battalion left for Santa Cruz middle of the afternoon. The plan was to make a night attack on the federal garrison. That country down there didn’t look no different than in Arizona, grasslands and arroyos and mesquite and prickly pear and so damn many rocks you thought that God didn’t rest on the seventh day but made rocks and dumped ’em all right there. We rode cross-country, to make sure nobody could alert Díaz’s troops that we were a-coming. Our company was in the lead, with the colonel and his aides leading us and the Yaquis maybe half a mile ahead as scouts. Sometimes, coming over a rise, we could see them, loping along on foot with their bows and arrows, them Indians could have kept up that pace all day and had enough left over to have them a dance at night. Behind us was the donkey carts and burros, and the camp follower gals walking alongside. I calculate that altogether there was about a hundred fifty, sixty of us. Ben and me were in high spirits, this was what we’d joined up for, not to watch executions. And Ben was tickled pink because he’d found some ammunition at the hacienda for that fancy Luger.

The next part of my story is hard to tell, but I will tell it.

When we came to the Santa Cruz River, Colonel Bracamonte called a halt to rest his soldiers and water the horses. We were gone to wait there till sundown and make the rest of the march under cover of darkness. Me and Ben rolled us some smokes and were taking it easy. I remember looking downriver and seeing the Colonel huddled with Ynez and his other officers and some Yaqui scouts.

Then Ynez come up and said the colonel wanted to see us. That ain’t exactly right. She was looking at Ben when she said it, but Ben being my compadre, I decided I should go along too. When we got there, we saw a rough kind of map of Santa Cruz drawed in the dirt, and the colonel said to Ben that he’d heard from Ynez that Ben knew the town and asked if it was accurate. Ben told him it wasn’t and drawed a correct map. The colonel looked at it and then he switched from Spanish to English. “I order you to shoot that man” was what he said, and made a kind of movement with his head at a scout the name of Apache Juan. Ben and me looked at him like we hadn’t heard right, so he repeated his order, and Ben said, “What the hell for?”

Bracamonte’s face turned to stone. “Because I have ordered you to.”

Ben said that he wouldn’t shoot nobody without a good reason, and being told to do it, colonel or no colonel, wasn’t a good reason, it was no reason at all.

I could tell no one had ever talked to Bracamonte like that, but he held his temper and told Ben something like that he’d been suspicious of Apache Juan from the minute he’d joined up and now his suspicions were confirmed because he’d asked Apache Juan a lot of questions and wasn’t satisfied with his answers.

I have got to hand it to Ben. It was plain to him and me that we was being put to the test, that if he didn’t do as ordered, it was gone to go hard for both of us. But Ben said he still hadn’t heard a good reason—if the colonel didn’t like the answers that fella gave, then he should shoot him himself.

Bracamonte stared at him for what felt like an hour, and Ben stared right back, one hard man to another. For a second there I thought the colonel was gone to do what Ben said, then turn his pistol on us. But he grinned cold like and more or less said that us gringos were a pain in the ass and … Well, I can’t remember his exact words, but they went something like this: “I have determined that this man is a traitor and a spy. He gave us wrong information about the town. He is going to desert us tonight and warn the federals of our approach. You have your reason, señor, now follow my orders.”

Ben hesitated just the littlest bit—it was right unusual for him to hesitate—and looked over at Apache Juan like he was trying to judge for his own self if the fella was a spy and a traitor. I shot first. I was pretty handy with a pistol, but I’d never shot a man in my life, and my hand was shaking so bad when I drew my Colt that it threw my aim off. I winged him in the leg. He spun around and grabbed his leg, and right then Pow! Ben fired the Luger, and Apache Juan dropped like a bale from a hayloft. He was still twitching when some other soldiers took his boots.

So now Ben and me was executioners, too. We’d come for gold and glory and so far hadn’t seen none of either. The past fifty-some years, I have asked myself a hundred times over, Why did you shoot that man? And near as I can figure, it was because I knew Apache Juan was a doomed man no matter what and I just wanted to get it over with. And Ben? He never did say what was a-going on in his mind, and I never asked. He wasn’t one to explain himself anyway. Once he done a thing, it was done, and there was no looking back.

Bracamonte said “Bueno,” that was all, but you could tell his opinion of us, and Ynez’s too, had changed. They trusted us now. Helluva way to earn their trust. So the sun went down, and we left Apache Juan for the coyotes and the buzzards.

The battalion rode out single file through the cottonwoods alongside the river. There wasn’t a moon, and riding under those big trees was like riding through a tunnel with a blindfold on. Must have been close to midnight when the word come back in whispers to dismount. A few men were left behind to picket and guard the horses. The rest of us moved out afoot. The river made a bend between us and Santa Cruz, and we waded across it. Coming out from under the cottonwoods was like going from night to day, on account of our eyes had got so used to the pitch black. The town was dark, not a light burning anywhere, but we could make out some houses and the bell towers of the church. The colonel with El Agave’s company split off to circle around to the west side of the town. They were supposed to take the federal troops’ barracks. With Ben as a guide, Ynez led our company up the main street toward the plaza. Truth to tell, I thought I was gone to wet my pants from being scared and keyed up at the same time.

Somebody a couple of streets over, where the first company was, shouted. Couldn’t hear what exactly, but we heard the gunshot clear enough. Found out later it was a federal sentry who’d spotted El Agave’s men. They shot back, then there was more yelling, then more shooting, a whole lot of it, and stray rounds cracked over our heads like little whips. Ynez yelled, “Line of skirmishers, left!” Being ignorant of soldiering, Ben and me didn’t know what the hell that meant, but we saw our company shaking itself out from single file into a firing line, so we got the idea. What folks these days would call on-the-job training. “¡Adelante!” Ynez ordered, and we started to advance on the plaza. The church was off to our left, a courthouse directly across, and a bandstand in the middle. All of a sudden I heard a noise the likes of which I’d never heard before. The federals had them a machine gun on the bandstand! Would have wiped us out if it hadn’t been for two things—the gunners couldn’t see us too clear, and they was seven, eight feet off the ground on the bandstand, so the rounds flew high. Some of our boys shot back. A few of them, like Francisco, could handle a gun, but most, even though Ynez said she wouldn’t have no man who didn’t shoot like her, could not have hit a fat bull’s ass with a canoe paddle. They seemed to be shooting every which way but straight up in the air. Ben yelled to them to aim at the muzzle flashes of the machine gun. The machine gunners got the same idea and shot at our muzzle flashes. A couple of men got hit. Then I saw Ynez go down, flat on her face, under a tree at the edge of the plaza. Without thinking, I ran over to her to carry her out of the line of fire. The machine gunners must have seen me. Anyway, they fired in my direction and chopped chunks out of the tree trunk maybe a foot over my head. Told you I’d damn near got myself killed on account of that woman. She screamed at me, “Get down, you fool!” She hadn’t been shot! That sure was one time I didn’t mind getting called a fool, and I flung myself down right next to her.

The machine gun stopped firing for a few seconds, I reckon it had jammed, and Ben called out for me, so I ran over to him. He said, “Come with us!” Then him and Francisco and a few of Francisco’s compadres made a dash for the church, and I followed. Ben and Francisco sure did know that town like the backs of their hands. They led us—there wasn’t but six of us all told—down a little street back of the church, then turned up another street, then another one, and the next thing I knew, we were jammed up tight against the wall of the courthouse, facing the back of the bandstand. Meantime that infernal gun had got to firing again, and there was so much shooting over to the federal barracks, I thought the bullets was gone to knock the building down. Ben told us to open up on the bandstand with everything we had, and we did. We couldn’t see nothing but the outline of it, but you would have thought we’d hit them gunners just by accident. We didn’t, and they turned their gun around and let loose at us, which is just what Ben had in mind. He wanted them to think the whole outfit had circled around to their rear. Ynez figured out what was going on, and as soon as that gun had been swung around, we could hear that high voice of hers crying out, “¡Adelante compañeros!” And the men with her stormed the bandstand and killed the gunners point-blank and captured the machine gun.