Don Anselmo kneeled on the river bank, soaked to the skin, bathing and cooling the open wound in his face. He was dead tired and had no will left to offer any resistance. Had any of the men beaten him with a heavy wet rag he would have keeled over like a rotten tree.
All around him, on both banks and on several cups in the river, the victors squatted. Some, not knowing what else to do, again prepared their pozol. Others busied themselves with their packs. And still others picked sand fleas from their toes or searched their legs, arms and naked torsos for those infinitely small prickles that rubbed off in the jungle from certain plants, so small that one can hardly see them, but nevertheless very painful and uncomfortable. Nobody bothered about the two men who had attacked Don Anselmo and who were now nursing themselves, one his kneecap and the other his groin.
There the Indians squatted, indecision in their every gesture, indecision in their low conversation as though they were afraid of waking somebody. And there was indecision even in their sideway glances toward Don Anselmo. They were the victors all right, but they did not know what to do with their victory. They could go back to their villages. Nobody would prevent them from doing so. If at this moment they gave Don Anselmo the final blow and buried him, not even the police would be after them for breach of contract, because there would be no plaintiff to press the case. And if they wanted to, after burying Don Anselmo, they could all march to the montería as volunteers. Since there would no longer be an agent to demand from the montería administration the advances given them, they would receive their full pay and, after two years, would return home with a handsome sum of money.
None of them were obligated to know what had happened to Don Anselmo. They were not his bodyguard. The boy who traveled along with the troop as Don Anselmo’s personal servant had seen nothing, because he was riding a long way ahead. The muchachos would make up a tale about Don Anselmo having seen a herd of jabalíes which he had followed to shoot one or two for fresh meat. The men had waited on the trail for an entire day and night, but he never came back. “Probably,” they could say, “the wild pigs knocked him down and then ate him while he was still half alive.” Or he might have fallen prey to a cougar, crouching on a tree under which Don Anselmo happened to pass. He also could have been bitten by a snake and perished in the depths of the jungle. Any of the hundreds of causes which may mean death for a human being in the jungle might have occurred. All they had to do was to agree on the same story. Instead they sat on their hams, waiting to see what would happen next.
Three of the men who had stopped on the same river bank where Don Anselmo knelt began a low-voiced discussion. Then they went to fetch green leaves from certain plants which they selected very carefully. Finally they approached Don Anselmo.
When he saw them come straight toward him, he reached for the gun lying by his side. Quite naturally he thought the three were coming to finish him off. If he had to die he, as a true Mexican, was not the kind to take it lying down like a sick dog. He was resolved to take at least as many with him to hell as he could get in his last moment.
Aim carefully he could not because his hand was trembling owing to his great weakness. But he still managed to train his gun fairly well on the men.
He pulled the trigger. But the gun only went “pfish.” He pulled the trigger a second time and now the gun went “pfut.”
Don Anselmo let go with the most awful blasphemies against all the saints, appealed to the devil and to all the damnations he had ever heard of and, in the same breath, asked the saints and the Virgin to strike all ammunition makers on earth with smallpox, syphilis and cancer because they made such lousy stuff that an honest Mexican couldn’t even fall into a river without finding himself defenseless in front of his enemies.
The men watching him had noticed that on two successive occasions the gun failed to go off. Thus they realized once more that he was completely in their hands. They didn’t even need a club to liberate him from all his pains and further worries. A hard kick with a foot against his head would have sufficed to roll him into the river where he would drown.
But the men did nothing. They just squatted and looked with interest at the whole scene like people watching a show.
Without betraying by the slightest gesture that there was anything wrong with his gun, Don Anselmo opened the drum in a very businesslike manner, expelled the cartridges, threw them into the river shrieking: “Que chin—a sus madres y abuelas!” at the ammunition makers, extracted new cartridges from his belt and pushed them into the drum. He snapped the drum back into place, threw the gun up into the air so that it made two somersaults, deftly caught it again by the grip and pushed it back into the holster with an energetic gesture. He knew perfectly well that this reloading of the gun did not arm him again because the cartridges in the belt were just as soaked as those in the drum, if not more, because those inside the drum had, at least in part, been protected. But the showy manipulation was smart. He knew the men used only old muzzle-loaders for hunting and would, therefore, not know that the cartridges taken from the belt were not a whit more effective than those Don Anselmo had thrown into the river. It was nothing but a very hoary strategem, not unlike a hundred similar ones by which wars have been won and more rebellions lost than historians have recorded.
The men who had been approaching Don Anselmo with branches and leaves in their hands had stopped in their tracks when Don Anselmo pulled the gun—whether out of courage or out of indifference would be hard to say, because they knew that running away is not much good against flying revolver bullets.
That the gun failed to go off did not impress them. At least they showed no surprise. They let Don Anselmo reload, watching him from where they had stopped when he aimed his gun at them.
Once he had pushed his gun back into the holster, one of them said in a loud voice: “Patroncito, we only want to bring you hierbas buenas, some healing leaves, to cure your wound and stanch the blood. Understand, you may bleed to death right here, patroncito.”
“Bueno, bueno, muchachos,” said Don Anselmo, while wringing out his bandanna in the water, “come on, bring the curitas and let’s see if they are any good.”
The muchachos came close, picked up stones, dipped them into the water to wash off the earth and then ground and stamped the leaves and thin twigs into a sort of pulp. They helped Don Anselmo to put the mush on his wound and to tie it up firmly with his bright-colored bandanna. Once bandaged, he turned first left and then right and said: “Goddamn it, where is that maldito cabrón, that horse of mine?”
“El caballito está detrás de las otras bestias ya bien adelante en el camino,” said one of the muchachos.
“Well, if it is ahead already I suppose I have to make it on foot to the next paraje,” said Don Anselmo, clumsily trying to get up.
As soon as he stood on his feet he wavered, but he got hold of himself, stumbled with two long, dragging strides toward a tree and leaned against it. He shook himself like a wet dog. Then he let off steam, swearing in the most blasphemous way, berating the saints, the federal government and that of the state, and in particular the poor condition of business which forced him to take up such a godforsaken profession, that of giving work and bread to miserable Indians, whom he, out of sheer generosity, freed of their debts and bondage. Then he shouted: “Hey, you whoring bastards, cabrones y ladrones malditos, has none of you a drop of goddamn stinking aguardiente or comiteco? Whatever it is, hand it over!”
One of the men still squatitng on one of the cups replied: “Tenga, patroncito. I’ve got a bottle.”
“Of course, I knew it, puercos, marranos del diablo, I knew that some of you goddamned swine would drag a bottle along. That the Santísima Madre del Dios Poderoso slay you and rot your filthy bones. I knew there was booze in the outfit. Hand over the stuff.”
The man pulled a bottle out of his pack, jumped from cup to cup across the river and offered the fifth, more than half full, to Don Anselmo.
Don Anselmo screwed out the corncob which served as a cork, smelled the contents, sniffed noisily, smelled again, sniffed more noisily than before and yelled at the top of his voice: “I should’ve known it. It’s Doña Emilia’s piss. That old goddamn hag isn’t satisfied with keeping a whore house with half a dozen bitches, every one of them ten times a grandmother and fatter than a prize sow. No, she has to brew booze on top of it. Only God Almighty knows what that lewd slattern has spit and pissed into her bottles this time.”
He lifted up the bottle, stared at it, made a gesture as if overcome by nausea and took a huge gulp. He shook himself with all his might, belched terribly and spat out the stuff that still lingered in his mouth in a wide curve against the bushes lining the river bank. He yelled: “That I, an honest and faithful Catholic, should have to drink such goddamned whore’s piss when I can hardly stand on my feet no one would believe. That damned old whoring bitch should be hanged for brewing this stinking stuff, and she even has the nerve to call it ‘comiteco añejo.’ No wonder that with such rotgut in their belly the boys go crazy and think of murder. I would do the same.” Shaking himself wildly he took still another swallow out of the bottle. Then, the bottle swinging in his hand, he broke out in another stream of oaths.
However, he did not do this just to entertain the boys, who by now only stared at him in deep silence. They did not even mumble among themselves. They only watched him to see what he might do. But his swearing only proved that he was slowly becoming himself again. He had to get his mind clear and off the fact that only a few minutes before he had been as near to death as any human being can come. Besides, he had to dull the terrific pain which now, since the shock was over, increased so much that he thought he could not bear it any more without going insane. A severely wounded, dying soldier who in his agony swears the blue out of the skies and the saints out of Heaven feels in his heart that he is more assured of the understanding of Nature’s God than the mollycoddle who whines for a soul-saver’s babblings, which to the dying soldier are utterly meaningless. If you have to go to hell, do it with dignity like a man and don’t bother about trifles which won’t change the outcome anyway.
With a horrified grimace on his face Don Anselmo looked critically at the bottle in his hand, and when he noticed that less than one-third of its contents was left he gave it back to its owner and said: “Gracias. But let me tell you, son, if you don’t want to die poisoned but return to your mother someday instead, don’t take another drop of this stuff.”
At this the boy grasped the bottle, went to his pack and stored it very carefully away between a pair of pants and his woolen blanket.
“Hey you, come here,” Don Anselmo called the boy back. Taking him aside so that the other boys should not overhear their conversation, he reached into his pocket, produced a small leather purse, fumbled in it for a coin and said: “There, take this tostón for the aguardiente I drank out of your bottle, for which sin only God Almighty in person can forgive me.”
He searched his shirt pocket for cigarettes. He pulled out a package which was nothing but a brown mealy paste in soaked and dissolving paper.
“I’ve got cigarettes, patroncito,” said one of the men, getting up from the ground and coming near. He only had the type which is very good uncured tobacco wrapped in ordinary packing paper. This coarse paper does not exactly contribute to the pleasure of smoking. “But then what can you do if you haven’t got something better,” thought Don Anselmo to himself.
He took the cigarettes offered him. “Tonight, at the paraje where we camp, I’ll give you a whole new package. Good ones. I’ve got plenty in my packs.”
“Gracias, jefecito,” said the man. “Shall I look for the caballito and bring it back, patroncito?”
“No, let it go. The horse is along with the other animals by now and too far ahead. Before you’re back, night will have fallen. I’ll march on foot like all of you. Good for my health.” And so saying he lit a cigarette, took a few puffs, then he shouted: “Oigan, muchachos, let’s be on our way. Get up. Come on, damn it all, we got to make the next paraje or sleep on the road like pigs. Abran las piernas. Get going.”
Without waiting to see whether all the men would really follow, he pulled up his pants, tightened his belt and as, owing to his bandage, he couldn’t put his hat on straight, he slapped it on sideways and started on his way.