Chapter XII Elizabetta
So, against a crimson sky, the beaten, exhausted soldiers came down the hill. Some rode, their horses hanging weary heads—occasionally two on a horse. Others walked, with bloody bandages around their foreheads and arms. Cartridge-belts were empty, rifles gone. Their hands and faces were foul with sweaty dirt and stained still with powder. Beyond the hill, across the twenty-mile arid waste that lay between us and La Cadena, they straggled. There were not more than fifty left, including the women—the rest had dispersed in the barren mountains and the folds of the desert—but they stretched out for miles; it took hours for them to arrive.
Don Petronilo came in front, with lowered face and folded arms, the reins hanging loose upon the neck of his swaying, stumbling horse. Right behind him came Juan Santillanes, gaunt and white, his face years older. Fernando Silveyra, all rags, dragged along at his saddle. As they waded the shallow stream they looked up and saw me. Don Petronilo weakly waved his hand; Fernando shouted, “Why, there’s meester! How did you escape? We thought sure they had shot you.”
“I ran a race with the goats,” I answered. Juan gave a laugh. “Scared to death, eh?”
The horses thrust eager muzzles into the stream, sucking fiercely. Juan cruelly spurred across, and we fell into each other’s arms. But Don Petronilo dismounted in the water, dully, as if in a dream, and, wading up to the tops of his boots, came to where I was.
He was weeping. His expression didn’t change, but slow, big tears fell silently down his cheeks.
“The colorados captured his wife!” murmured Juan in my ear.
I was filled with pity for the man.
“It is a terrible thing, mi Coronel,” I said gently, “to feel the responsibility for all these brave fellows who died. But it was not your fault.”
“It is not that,” he replied slowly, staring through tears at the pitiful company crawling down from the desert.
“I, too, had many friends who died in the battle,” I went on. “But they died gloriously, fighting for their country.”
“I do not weep for them,” he said, twisting his hands together. “This day I have lost all that is dear to me. They took my woman who was mine, and my commission and all my papers, and all my money. But I am wrenched with grief when I think of my silver spurs inlaid with gold, which I bought only last year in Mapimi!” He turned away, overcome.
And now the peons began to come down from their houses, with pitying cries and loving offers. They threw their arms around the soldiers’ necks, assisting the wounded, patting them shyly on the shoulders and calling them “brave.” Desperately poor themselves, they offered food, and beds, and fodder for the horses, inviting them to stay at Santo Domingo until they should become well. I already had a place to sleep. Don Pedro, the chief goatherd, had given me his room and his bed in a gush of warm-hearted generosity, and had removed himself and his family to the kitchen. He did so without hope of recompense, for he thought I had no money. And now everywhere men, women and children left their houses to make way for the defeated and weary troops.
Fernando, Juan and I went over and begged some tobacco from the four peddlers camped under the trees beside the spring. They had made no sales for a week, and were almost starving, but they loaded us lavishly with macuche. We talked of the battle, lying there on our elbows watching the shattered remnants of the garrison top the hill.
“You have heard that ‘Gino Güereca fell,” said Fernando. “Well, I saw him. His big gray horse that he rode for the first time was terrified by the bridle and saddle. But once he came where the bullets were flying and the guns roaring, he steadied at once. Pure race, that horse.... His fathers must have been all warriors. Around ‘Gino were four or five more heroes, with almost all their cartridges gone. They fought until on the front and on both sides double galloping lines of colorados closed in. ‘Gino was standing beside his horse—suddenly a score of shots hit the animal all at once, and he sighed and fell over. The rest ceased firing in a sort of panic. ‘We’re lost!’ they cried. ‘Run while there is yet a chance!’ ‘Gino shook his smoking rifle at them. ‘No,’ he shouted. ‘Give the compañeros time to get away!’ Shortly after that they closed around him, and I never saw him until we buried his body this morning.... It was the devil’s hell out there. The rifles were so hot you couldn’t touch the barrels, and the whirling haze that belched out when they shot twisted everything like a mirage....”
Juan broke in. “We rode straight out toward the Puerta when the retreat began, but almost immediately we saw it was no use. The colorados broke over our little handfuls of men like waves of the sea. Martinez was just ahead. He never had a chance even to fire his gun—and this was his first battle, too. They hit him as he rode.... I thought how you and Martinez loved each other. You used to talk together at night so warmly, and never wished to leave each other to sleep....”
Now the tall, naked tops of the trees had dulled with the passing of the light, and seemed to stand still the swarming stars in the deep dome overhead. The peddlers had kindled their tiny fire; the low, contented murmur of their gossip floated to us. Open doors of the peons’ huts shed wavering candlelight. Up from the river wound a silent line of black-robed girls with water-jars on their heads. Women ground their corn-meal with a monotonous stony scraping. Dogs barked. Drumming hoofs marked the passing of the caballada to the river. Along the ledge in front of Don Pedro’s house the warriors smoked and fought the battle over again, stamping around and shouting descriptive matter. “I took my rifle by the barrel and smashed in his grinning face, just as——” some one was narrating, with gestures. The peons squatted around, breathlessly listening.... And still the ghastly procession of the defeated straggled down the road and across the river.
It was not yet quite dark. I wandered down to the bank to watch them, in the vague hope of finding some of my compadres who were still reported missing. And it was there that I first saw Elizabetta.
There was nothing remarkable about her. I think I noticed her chiefly because she was one of the few women in that wretched company. She was a very dark-skinned Indian girl, about twenty-five years old, with the squat figure of her drudging race, pleasant features, hair hanging forward over her shoulders in two long plaits, and big, shining teeth when she smiled. I never did find out whether she had been just a peon woman working around La Cadena when the attack had come, or whether she was a vieja—a camp follower of the army.
Now she was trudging stolidly along in the dust behind Captain Felix Romero’s horse—and had trudged so for thirty miles. He never spoke to her, never looked back, but rode on unconcernedly. Sometimes he would get tired of carrying his rifle and hand it back to her to carry, with a careless “Here! Take this!” I found out later that when they returned to La Cadena after the battle to bury the dead he had found her wandering aimlessly in the hacienda, apparently out of her mind; and that, needing a woman, he had ordered her to follow him. Which she did, unquestioningly, after the custom of her sex and country.
Captain Felix let his horse drink. Elizabetta halted, too, knelt and plunged her face into the water.
“Come on,” ordered the Captain. “Andale!” She rose without a word and waded through the stream. In the same order they climbed the near bank, and there the Captain dismounted, held out his hand for the rifle she carried, and said, “Get me my supper!” Then he strolled away toward the houses where the rest of the soldiers sat.
Elizabetta fell upon her knees and gathered twigs for her fire. Soon there was a little pile burning. She called a small boy in the harsh, whining voice that all Mexican women have, “Aie! chamaco! Fetch me a little water and corn that I may feed my man!” And, rising upon her knees above the red glow of the flames, she shook down her long, straight black hair. She wore a sort of blouse of faded light blue rough cloth. There was dried blood on the breast of it.
“What a battle, señorita!” I said to her.
Her teeth flashed as she smiled, and yet there was a puzzling vacancy about her expression. Indians have mask-like faces. Under it I could see that she was desperately tired and even a little hysterical. But she spoke tranquilly enough.
“Perfectly,” she said. “Are you the Gringo who ran so many miles with the colorados after you shooting?” And she laughed—catching her breath in the middle of it as if it hurt.
The chamaco shambled up with an earthen jar of water and an armful of corn-ears that he tumbled at her feet. Elizabetta unwound from her shawl the heavy little stone trough that Mexican women carry, and began mechanically husking the corn into it.
“I do not remember seeing you at La Cadena,” I said. “Were you there long?”
“Too long,” she answered simply, without raising her head. And then suddenly, “Oh, but this war is no game for women!” she cried.
Don Felix loomed up out of the dark, with a cigarette in his mouth.
“My dinner,” he growled. “Is it pronto?”
“Luego, luego!” she answered. He went away again.
“Listen, señor, whoever you are!” said Elizabetta swiftly, looking up to me. “My lover was killed yesterday in the battle. This man is my man, but, by God and all the Saints, I can’t sleep with him this night. Let me stay then with you!”
There wasn’t a trace of coquetry in her voice. This blundering, childish spirit had found itself in a situation it couldn’t bear, and had chosen the instinctive way out. I doubt if she even knew herself why the thought of this new man so revolted her, with her lover scarcely cold in the ground. I was nothing to her, nor she to me. That was all that mattered.
I assented, and together we left the fire, the Captain’s neglected corn spilling from the stone trough. And then we met him a few feet into the darkness.
“My dinner!” he said impatiently. His voice changed. “Where are you going?”
“I’m going with this señor,” Elizabetta answered nervously. “I’m going to stay with him——”
“You——” began Don Felix, gulping. “You are my woman. Oiga, señor, this is my woman here!”
“Yes,” I said. “She is your woman. I have nothing to do with her. But she is very tired and not well, and I have offered her my bed for the night.”
“This is very bad, señor!” exclaimed the Captain, in a tightening voice. “You are the guest of this Tropa and the Colonel’s friend, but this is my woman and I want her——”
“Oh!” Elizabetta cried out. “Until the next time, señor!” She caught my arm and pulled me on.
We had been living in a nightmare of battle and death—all of us. I think everybody was a little dazed and excited. I know I was.
By this time the peons and soldiers had begun to gather around us, and as we went on the Captain’s voice rose as he retailed his injustice to the crowd.
“I shall appeal to the Colonel,” he was saying. “I shall tell the Colonel!” He passed us, going toward the Colonel’s cuartel, with averted, mumbling face.
“Oiga, mi Coronel!” he cried. “This Gringo has taken away my woman. It is the grossest insult!”
“Well,” returned the Colonel calmly, “if they both want to go, I guess there isn’t anything we can do about it, eh?”
The news had traveled like light. A throng of small boys followed us close behind, shouting the joyful indelicacies they shout behind rustic wedding parties. We passed the ledge where the soldiers and the wounded sat, grinning and making rough, genial remarks as at a marriage. It was not coarse or suggestive, their banter; it was frank and happy. They were honestly glad for us.
As we approached Don Pedro’s house we were aware of many candles within. He and his wife and daughter were busy with brooms, sweeping and resweeping the earthen floor, and sprinkling it with water. They had put new linen on the bed, and lit the rush candle before the table altar of the Virgin. Over the doorway hung a festoon of paper blossoms, faded relics of many a Christmas Eve celebration—for it was winter, and there were no real flowers.
Don Pedro was radiant with smiles. It made no difference who we were, or what our relation was. Here were a man and a maid, and to him it was a bridal.
“May you have a happy night,” he said softly, and closed the door. The frugal Elizabetta immediately made the rounds of the room, extinguishing all the candles but one.
And then, outside, we heard music beginning to tune up. Some one had hired the village orchestra to serenade us. Late into the night they played steadily, right outside our door. In the next house we heard them moving chairs and tables out of the way; and just before I went to sleep they began to dance there, economically combining a serenade with a baile.
Without the least embarrassment, Elizabetta lay down beside me on the bed. Her hand reached for mine. She snuggled against my body for the comforting human warmth of it, murmured, “Until morning,” and went to sleep. And calmly, sweetly, sleep came to me....
When I woke in the morning she was gone. I opened my door and looked out. Morning had come dazzlingly, all blue and gold—a heaven of flame-trimmed big white clouds and windy sky, and the desert brazen and luminous. Under the ashy bare trees the peddlers’ morning fire leaped horizontal in the wind. The black women, with wind-folded draperies, crossed the open ground to the river in single file, with red water-jars on their heads. Cocks crew, goats clamored for milking, and a hundred horses drummed up the dust as they were driven to water.
Elizabetta was squatted over a little fire near the corner of the house, patting tortillas for the Captain’s breakfast. She smiled as I came up, and politely asked me if I had slept well. She was quite contented now; you knew from the way she sang over her work.
Presently the Captain came up in a surly manner and nodded briefly to me.
“I hope it’s ready now,” he grunted, taking the tortillas she gave him. “You take a long time to cook a little breakfast. Carramba! Why is there no coffee?” He moved off, munching. “Get ready,” he flung back over his shoulder. “We go north in an hour.”
“Are you going?” I asked curiously. Elizabetta looked at me with wide-open eyes.
“Of course I am going. Seguro! Is he not my man?” She looked after him admiringly. She was no longer revolted.
“He is my man,” she said. “He is very handsome, and very brave. Why, in the battle the other day——”
Elizabetta had forgotten her lover.