Chapter VII An Outpost of the Revolution
There were a hundred and fifty of us stationed at La Cadena, the advance guard of all the Maderista army to the West. Our business was to guard a pass, the Puerta de la Cadena; but the troops were quartered at the hacienda, ten miles away. It stood upon a little plateau, a deep arroyo on one side, at the bottom of which a sunken river came to the surface for perhaps a hundred yards, and vanished again. As far as the eye could reach up and down the broad valley was the fiercest kind of desert,—dried creek-beds, and a thicket of chaparral, cactus and sword plant.
Directly east lay the Puerta, breaking the tremendous mountain range that blotted out half the sky and extended north and south beyond vision, wrinkled like a giant’s bed-clothes. The desert tilted up to meet the gap, and beyond was nothing but the fierce blue of stainless Mexican sky. From the Puerta you could see fifty miles across the vast arid plain that the Spaniards named Llano de los Gigantes, where the little mountains lie tumbled about; and four leagues away the low gray houses of Mapimi. There lay the enemy; twelve hundred colorados, or Federal irregulars, under the infamous Colonel Argumendo. The colorados are the bandits that made Orozco’s revolution. They were so called because their flag was red, and because their hands were red with slaughter, too. They swept through Northern Mexico, burning, pillaging and robbing the poor. In Chihuahua, they cut the soles from the feet of one poor devil, and drove him a mile across the desert before he died. And I have seen a city of four thousand souls reduced to five after a visit by the colorados. When Villa took Torreon, there was no mercy for the colorados; they are always shot.
The first day we reached La Cadena, twelve of them rode up to reconnoiter. Twenty-five of the Tropa were on guard at the Fuerta. They captured one colorado. They made him get off his horse, and took away his rifle, clothes and shoes. THen they made him run naked through a hundred yards of chaparral and cactus, shooting at him. Juan Sanchez finally dropped him, screaming, and thereby won the rifle, which he brought back as a present to me. The colorado they left to the great Mexican buzzards, which flap lazily above the desert all day long.
When all this happened, my compadre, Captain Longinos Güereca, and Trooper Juan Vallejo, and I, had borrowed the Colonel’s coach for a trip to the dusty little rancho of Bruquilla,—Longinos’ home. It lay four desert leagues to the north, where a spring burst miraculously out of a little white hill. Old Güereca was a white-haired peon in sandals. He had been born a slave on one of the great haciendas; but years of toil, too appalling to realize, had made him that rare being in Mexico, the independent owner of a small property. He had ten children,—soft, dark-skinned girls, and sons that looked like New England farmhands,—and a daughter in the grave.
The Güerecas were proud, ambitious, warm-hearted folk. Longinos said: “This is my dearly loved friend, Juan Reed, and my brother.” And the old man and his wife put both their arms around me and patted me on the back, in the affectionate way Mexicans embrace.
“My family owes nothing to the Revolucion,” said ‘Gino, proudly. “Others have taken money and horses and wagons. The jefes of the army have become rich from the property of the great haciendas. The Güerecas have given all to the Maderistas, and have taken nothing but my rank....”
The old man, however, was a little bitter. Holding up a horsehair rope, he said: “Three years ago I had four riatas like this. Now I have only one. One the colorados took, and the other Urbina’s people took, and the last one José Bravo.... What difference does it make which side robs you?” But he didn’t mean it all. He was immensely proud of his youngest son, the bravest officer in all the army.
We sat in the long adobe room, eating the most exquisite cheese, and tortillas with fresh goat-butter,—the deaf old mother apologizing in a loud voice for the poverty of the food, and her warlike son reciting his personal Iliad of the nine-days’ fight around Torreon.
“We got so close,” he was saying, “that the hot air and burning powder stung us in the face. We got too close to shoot, so we clubbed our rifles——” Just then all the dogs began to bark at once. We leaped from our seats. One didn’t know what to expect in the Cadena those days. It was a small boy on horseback, shouting that the colorados were entering the Puerta—and off he galloped.
Longinos roared to put the mules in the coach. The entire family fell to work with a fury, and in five minutes Longinos dropped on one knee and kissed his father’s hand, and we were tearing down the road. “Don’t be killed! Don’t be killed! Don’t be killed!” we could hear the Señora wailing.
We passed a wagon loaded with corn-stalks, with a whole family of women and children, two tin trunks, and an iron bed, perched on top. The man of the family rode a burro. Yes, the colorados were coming—thousands of them pouring through the Puerta. The last time the colorados had come they had killed his daughter. For three years there had been war in this valley, and he had not complained. Because it was for the Patria. Now they would go to the United States where—— But Juan lashed the mules cruelly, and we heard no more. Farther along was an old man without shoes, placidly driving some goats. Had he heard about the colorados? Well, there had been some gossip about colorados. Were they coming through the Puerta, and how many?
“Pues, quien sabe, señor!”
At last, yelling at the staggering mules, we came into camp just in time to see the victorious Tropa straggle in across the desert, firing off many more rounds of ammunition than they had used in the fight. They moved low along the ground, scarcely higher on their broncos than the drab mesquite through which they flashed, all big sombreros and flapping gay serapes, the last sunshine on their lifted rifles.
That very night came a courier from General Urbina, saying that he was ill and wanted Pablo Seañes to come back. So off went the great coach, and Pablo’s mistress, and Raphaelito, the hunchback, and Fidencio, and Patricio. Pablo said to me: “Juanito, if you want to come back with us, you shall sit beside me in the coach.” Patricio and Raphaelito begged me to come. But I had got so far to the front now that I didn’t want to turn back. Then the next day my friends and compañeros of the Tropa, whom I had learned to know so well in our march across the desert, received orders to move to Jarralitos. Only Juan Vallejo and Longinos Güereca stayed behind.
The Cadena’s new garrison were a different kind of men. God knows where they came from, but it was a place where the troopers had literally starved. They were the most wretchedly poor peons that I have ever seen—about half of them didn’t have serapes. Some fifty were known to be nuevos who had never smelt powder, about the same number were under a dreadfully incompetent old party named Major Salazar, and the remaining fifty were equipped with old carbines and ten rounds of ammunition apiece. Our commanding officer was Lieutenant-Colonel Petronilo Hernandez, who had been six years a Major in the Federal army until the murder of Madero drove him to the other side. He was a brave, good-hearted little man, with twisted shoulders, but years of official army red tape had unfitted him to handle troops like these. Every morning he issued an Order of the Day, distributing guards, posting sentinels, and naming the officer on duty. Nobody ever read it. Officers in that army have nothing to do with the disciplining or ordering of soldiers, They are officers because they have been brave, and their job is to fight at the head of their troop—that’s all. The soldiers all look up to some one General, under whom they are recruited, as to their feudal lord. They call themselves his gente—his people; and an officer of anybody else’s gente hasn’t much authority over them. Petronilo was of Urbina’s gente; but two-thirds of the Cadena garrison belonged to Arrieta’s division. That’s why there were no sentinels to the west and north. Lieutenant-Colonel Alberto Redondo guarded another pass four leagues to the south, so we thought we were safe in that direction. True, twenty-five men did outpost duty at the Fuerta, and the Puerta was strong....