The Vanquished (27 page)

Got money for the trip?

I'll work my passage
.

That's a hard row
.…
Good luck to you, then, Charley
.

Well, then, he thought, why hadn't he gone back East? What had changed him? Was the future so unimportant that he had just let himself drift into this little unknown war?

Norval Douglas was at his shoulder. Douglas moved without sound, so that he had a way of startling Charley with his sudden appearances. Douglas said quietly, “Trying to get it figured out, kid?”

“Maybe so.”

“Maybe you won't, right away. A lot of things don't make sense. It's Jim Woods and Bill, isn't it?”

“How'd you know?”

“It's easy enough to see when a man's thinking. You can learn a lesson from those two.”

“What lesson?” Charley asked.

“Bill was a failure. Jim wasn't; he made something out of his life before he died. But he slowed down. The taste went out of life for him. That's why he gave up his business and came along with us. Even if he hadn't been killed, he wouldn't have found anything here that he couldn't have had at home.”

“Then what's the point of it?”

“It doesn't make much difference, does it? He had to die somewhere.”

Brief anger stirred Charley's lips. “That's all it ever amounts to, isn't it?”

“You don't matter after you're dead,” Douglas said. “After you die it's not up to you any more. That's why you've got to make sure you get things done beforehand.”

“Aagh,” Charley said in disgust. “What if I die tonight?”

“You won't,” Douglas told him. “You haven't made your mark yet.”

“You've got a lot of faith,” Charley said, surprised.

“Well, maybe I do. Faith in myself, faith in you a little.”

“And faith that a bullet won't cut me down in the next minute or two.”

“There's been enough killing for one day,” Douglas said. “Get some rest. I'll watch here for you.”

Charley was tired enough not to protest. He went back through the house, past the rooms where the wounded men were abed, and felt his way to a vacant spot on the corridor floor. He lay down with his rifle and canteen at hand. A small flame sputtered nearby and he saw the youth, Carl Chapin, putting a light on the tip of a brown-paper cigarette. Chapin's eyes reflected the little flame frostily. His expression was unfathomable. Charley remembered seeing him at one of the windows during the convent fight, firing savagely at the Mexicans, his lips drawn back in a strange, distorted smile. It made Charley recall the fact that Chapin had once refused to shoot at a jack-rabbit.

The red button of the cigarette tip alternately glowed and dimmed in the corridor. Presently it went out in a crush of sparks. Charley put his head back. The floor was hard, he thought; he came awake and it was daylight.

The entire day passed with little more than a peevish exchange of shots. When Charley took his turn at a front window, Crabb and some of the others were in conference; they seemed to have been there all day. McDowell's arm was bandaged from wrist to shoulder, but he was on his feet. Crabb had his own right arm in a sling. Guards were posted at close intervals all the way around the house. Dr. Oxley puttered around the wounded men. Charley spent part of the afternoon dozing in the courtyard, which struck him as an incongruous dark garden; a group of men played cards in the shade of a tree.

During the night a small party slipped out past the corrals to get water from the well. There was a volley of shots, but the men returned with water buckets full, unharmed. A man named Seaton was killed by a random gunshot from the church. Charley stood guard in the early morning hours. His thoughts kept drifting and for an hour he fought out with himself whether he should have volunteered to join the attack on the convent. Nothing made sense.

On the third day a small detachment of Mexican regulars rode in from the south, bringing two small cannon which they set up behind the church. The cannon were not powerful; the general effect of them was noise and a few dents in the front of the house. One ball came through a window, spent, and rolled across the floor; Captain McDowell picked it up in his good hand and tossed it to Norval Douglas. “Feel how hot the damned thing is.”

There seemed to be no place closer to the house where the Mexicans were willing to set up their artillery; they probably could not have done so without exposing the cannoneers to American rifle fire. At any rate the cannon stayed where they were and after a short while the Mexicans stopped using up ammunition in them. Nonetheless the rumor trickled around, reaching Charley in midafternoon, that Crabb was worried by the arrival of the regulars, because he had hoped they would lift the siege under Pesquiera's order. Charley learned that evening that some of the officers—Johns and McCoun in particular—wanted to retreat to the border. Crabb, McDowell, Oxley, and a few others were fighting this idea. Charley formed no opinion of his own; he stayed largely by himself.

By the end of the fourth day, the fourth of April, tempers were plainly raw. The men were hungry and word circulated that some of them were willing to overthrow Crabb and let McDowell take over the company and lead a massed attack on the church. To forestall that kind of hasty action, Crabb promised a decision by the following morning. That evening a man called John George was picked off by a Mexican rifleman who had climbed to the roof of a building down the square. George died within a half hour; a small party under Norval Douglas drove the sniper back. After supper the news reached Charley that Lieutenant Will Allen had died in bed of wounds suffered at the battle in the convent. Later on at night, helping to dig graves in the courtyard, he wondered at his own indifference to the deaths around him.

On the morning of April 5, a man whose name Charley did not know deserted. Charley spotted him crawling out between the corral bars with a white piece of cloth affixed to a stick. The man walked nervously across to the church, looking behind him at every few steps. “The son of a bitch,” someone said. The deserter was taken into the church. Ten minutes later a single shot boomed within that structure.

Crabb's promised decision was a thick measure of suspense hanging in the air when at nine o'clock a large body of horsemen entered town from the southwest. A large cry went up among the Mexicans and beyond the church, two blocks down a street, a crowd of women boiled out of shelter to welcome the newcomers. Charley heard the shouts: “
Viva México! Viva Gabi-londo!
” The soldiers dismounted and several men ran from the back of the church through the alleys of town to meet the arrivals. Crabb's face had turned worried, then showed a visble relief. Charley kept his post. Men around him were talking excitedly; the prospect of rescue was in the air; but nothing seemed to happen until, almost at noon, a ragged volley of shots issued from the church. At the time, Charley was watching the discussion among the officers, and on the heels of the shots he saw Crabb's face fall. A man in the belfry of the church was hoisting a Mexican flag, and someone shot him down. A stillness settled over the house and Crabb's voice, quiet and calm, was distinctly audible: “I'm afraid that's it.”

Every time he rode horseback, Giron was reminded by the loose bouncing of his paunch of the many bottles of beer he had consumed; a thing which he regretted but did not resolve to change. He stood on the porch of the house they had commandeered, rubbing his hand against his belly, and thought,
Lorenzo Rodriguez is dead. Well, he was not a very good soldier
.

A young lieutenant came quartering across the street and saluted him, reporting: “We have the Americans surrounded, sir.”

“Excellent,” Giron murmured. “Hold your positions, Lieutenant.” He returned the man's salute and went into the house.

Gabilondo had Corella on the carpet. Corella was the stocky ex-miner who had been Lorenzo Rodriguez' lieutenant. He and Gabilondo were of a build and of a size; but Corella's chin was round, not square, and his eyes did not have the flash or intolerance of Gabilondo's.

Gabilondo sat hip-cocked on the edge of a handsomely carved dining table, softly pounding a silver candlestick into his open palm. Lieutenant Corella stood before him at a stiff position of attention; though he was motionless, he seemed to be cringing. Gabilondo was talking, his voice a rasp, when Giron came in.

“Lieutenant, I regard you as a fool and a coward. For five days you have maintained contact with the gringos. You have had them outnumbered by a margin of seven or eight to one. You have had the advantage of two light cannon and superior firepower and manpower, and superior mobility. And yet what have you done? Nothing. You have retreated into the comforting shelter of the mission-church and plinked occasionally at the gringos. Lieutenant, listen to me!”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did you ever once mount an attack against the gringos?”

“No, sir.”

“Why not?”

“I had no orders, General.”

“In the name of God! Does everything have to be spelled out? Did they not invade our country, shoot down your commanding officer in cold blood, and kill a score of your troops?”

“They did.”

“Then why did you not fight back, Lieutenant?”

Corella's chin trembled. “The men—”

“Yes? Yes? Go on, Lieutenant. The men.”

“The men were afraid, General.”

“Of what? Of a little crowd of gringos whom they outnumbered vastly?”

“Of the Americano rifles. They are much more accurate than our muskets. And the riflemen are expert, General. We have lost half a dozen men to their sniping. The men fear their marksmanship.”

“Fool!” Gabilondo shouted. “Coward! You shall pay for this, all of you. I promise it. Now get out of here—out of my sight.”

Corella saluted and went. Gabilondo cursed and slammed the silver candlestick into his hand. “Old women,” he said. “It is all the fault of Lorenzo Rodriguez. If he had trained his men properly in the first place it might have stiffened their backbones a little. God, I'm sick of cowards and weary of fools. Giron, we must put an end to this matter of the filibusters.”

“
Sí
,” said Giron. “I had it in mind that we might offer surrender terms to them.”

The candlestick paused in mid-strike and Gabilondo's eyes lifted. He said, after a moment or two, “Just what terms did you have in mind to offer, José?”

“That is not up to me,” Giron said immediately.

“There will be no terms,” Gabilondo said flatly. “We will attack the house, burn it down, and kill them. That is all. No terms.”

“What?” Giron said, taken aback.

Gabilondo showed a thin smile. “My friend José, you are an excellent soldier. I feel we are most fortunate to have you in our army. But in matters of statesmanship you are abysmally ignorant, amigo.”

“What does that have to do with it? It is only common humanity to offer them the chance to surrender. It is the only honorable thing—”

“Honor is secondary,” Gabilondo interrupted. “We must think first of our country.”

“What about our country?”

Gabilondo set the candlestick down. In its place he took out his pistol and began to slap it against his palm. “Whatever the present circumstances may be, we owe our first loyalty to Mexico. Is that not right?”

“Of course. But—”

“Loyalty to Mexico,” Gabilondo went on, “is roughly the same as loyalty to our governor, is it not? If we do not honor our leader, we open the door once again to chaos, to revolution, to war and death. You agree?”

“I suppose so. But what has this to do with—”

“José”

“
Sí?
”

“You will have the kindness to let me finish.”

“
Sí
.”

“Let me present to you a picture of what will happen if we allow the filibusters to surrender. First, they will submit to arrest. Second, we will imprison them. Third, they will be brought to trial and prosecuted as enemies of the state, as invaders. True?”

“I suppose so. What's wrong with that?”

“Do you know what will happen if these men are permitted to stand in open court?”

“They will attempt to defend themselves,” Giron said. “Unsuccessfully, of course. Then they will be jailed or executed as filibusters. But at least they will have been given a trial. What will we look like if we do not give them that opportunity?”

“Perhaps we will not look good. But I put this to you, José: what will we look like if we do bring them to trial?”

“Honorable men,” Giron answered.

“No. For I will tell you what will happen. Brought into court, Señor Crabb will immediately produce the documents which seal his agreements with Pesquiera. The world will then see that Pesquiera has failed to live up to his bargain, has turned against his friends who aided him during his revolution, has shown himself to be an ingrate and a traitor who betrays his allies, and has unlawfully arrested and killed a number of citizens of a foreign power. After that it will not be long before the United States will protest, or perhaps even send troops. The people of Sonora will lose confidence in Pesquiera. They will turn against him. Pesquiera and you and I and all the others will be turned out and spat upon.”