47

Circling the Wagons

Grace worried too much about José to sleep much. She heard the bell on the front door jangle just after dawn. Whoever wanted in was insistent.

Tradesmen went to the back door and the hour was too early for train arrivals. Grace herself wouldn’t leave for the station for two hours to go to Mexico City to see President Huerta. She dressed quickly and hurried downstairs.

Leobardo looked worried. “They say they are policemen and they have a warrant to search for contraband.”

He stood aside so Grace could peer through the barred window in the door. The five men standing outside did have on the blue jackets and khaki trousers of Cuernavaca’s police force, but something about them looked amiss. The city’s policemen took great pride in their appearance. Their uniforms were always starched, pressed, and tailored. Their white gloves were pristine.

These men’s trousers had horizontal creases above the knees where they had hung drying over a line. The men’s smiles fit them as badly as the jackets. Grace suspected they had snagged the clothes from a laundress. The police didn’t hang their service pistols out to dry, which made them less accessible. These men were trying to hide their machetes behind their backs.

One of them held up a smudged paper with a red wax seal in the lower left-hand corner.

“¿Qué pasa?” Socrates joined Grace and Leobardo.

“They say they have an order to search the Colonial.”

“Banditos.” Socrates sized them up with a glance. “Asesinos. Sinvergüenzas. Assassins. Shameless ones.”

What irked Grace most was that the thieves thought her stupid enough to fall for their ruse.

When the doors didn’t swing open, the leader of the gang shouted threats. Grace knew a woman’s voice would carry little authority for the likes of them. She turned to ask Socrates to tell them to go away, but he had disappeared. Muttering a few expletives of her own, she started off to look for him. Halfway across the courtyard she saw him trotting toward her with her shotgun in his hand.

“You can’t shoot them.” Grace did not want corpses piled up at the door and a mob of real policemen clogging the lobby. She imagined reams of official forms to fill out. “You might hit an innocent passerby.”

“Don’t worry, Mamacita.”

When the men heard Socrates pump the shotgun they started backing away. He poked the muzzle between the window’s bars, aimed slightly over their heads, and fired. The blast would have riffled their hair if it hadn’t been plastered down with handfuls of grease. They skulked off shouting promises to return with the army.

“I doubt that,” Grace muttered. What was left of the federal army in Cuernavaca rarely left their barracks.

“Shall I open the doors, Mamacita?” Leobardo put a hand on the rope that lifted the big beam from across the massive gates.

Leobardo’s first official act each morning was to open the doors wide. Masses of crimson bougainvillea framed the doorway and the splashing fountain and luxuriant greenery in the cool courtyard beyond the entryway. The open doors were more than a ploy to lure in travelers. Grace considered them her contribution to the beauty of Cuernavaca.

She had a subtler reason for wanting them open. She never lost hope that Rico would find his way back to her, in spite of all Rubio’s threats. She feared if he did return and found the doors closed, he would assume she had left the city, and would turn away.

Grace looked through the barred window. The area was clear except for the men sweeping the plaza with their big push brooms. She nodded to Leobardo to raise the beam and open the doors. Lyda, Annie, and Jake McGuire were the first to walk through them.

Annie’s eyes were still red from crying over José. Lyda looked ashen. Grace wondered what news could possibly be worse than Rico threatened with execution and José sent into exile.

“What’s happened?”

Jake took off his Stetson, ran his long, knobby fingers through his hair. “Zapata’s rabble has blown up the troop train.”

“Was anyone hurt?” asked Grace.

“I don’t know. The lines are all down. I just heard it from someone who rode down from Tres Marías last night.”

“They’ve killed Socorro’s papi and the other poor prisoners,” sobbed Annie. “They’ve blown them up.”

Lyda tried to reassure her. “We don’t know that.”

“The rebels have damaged the tracks before,” said Grace.

“Not like this. I hear the main trestle’s destroyed. I’m putting together a convoy to take the company’s executives and their families to Em Cee. We have horses, mules, a truck, and a Gatling gun. You and Lyda and the young ’un can come with us.”

“I thank you for the offer, Mr. McGuire, but I cannot leave the Colonial.”

“Miss Grace, I’m all for loyalty and commerce. But the time has come to pack your possibles, kick out the cook fire, and decamp.”

“I won’t leave my staff.”

“Hell, they’ll be the ones sacking the place as soon as your heels clear the lintel.”

“They will not!”

Jake was a good fellow at heart and a droll one, but he had that pernicious American sense of superiority over Mexicans, and everyone else for that matter.

Grace had to admit that she didn’t have complete confidence in the people of her adopted country either. She assumed that if she abandoned the Colonial, the local folk would swarm in. They would smash what they could not steal and set fire to the rest. The fact that her staff believed the same thing didn’t make her feel any less hypocritical.

Grace didn’t expect Jake to understand her reluctance to leave. He was a wildcatter for the oil company. He moved from place to place and felt beholden to nowhere. His job was to destroy the landscape, and he did it with matter-of-fact efficiency. But Grace tried to explain herself anyway.

“We have guests staying here,” she said. “And army officers.”

“If the guests are smart they’ll come with us. The soldiers can fend for themselves.”

“My mind is made up, Mr. McGuire. Thank you all the same.”

“Well then, Lyda May, pack your things and Annie’s. I’ll meet you at the house in an hour. You two can ride Duke.”

Annie crossed her arms and planted her feet. “I won’t leave without Aunt Grace.”

Lyda tucked her wild blond hair behind her ears, stood behind her daughter, and put her arms around her. “We’ll stay here a while longer.”

Jake blew out his breath in exasperation. “I have to get those starched collars to Em Cee. As soon as they’re safely stowed, I’ll come back and help you circle the wagons and hold off the hostiles.”

Grace smiled at him. He was gallant in his own thorny, Texas way.

“What do you ladies have in the way of firepower?” he asked.

Grace retrieved the Winchester Ninety-Seven pump shotgun and boxes of ammunition. She had had the gunsmith cut the barrel down to her specifications. Antonio Perez had told her that if she didn’t mind ruining the plaster on the wall, this was the best weapon to keep under the bed. “Just point it in the general direction and squeeze the trigger.”

Jake hefted it, inspected it, then nodded and gave it back. “Will you use this should the occasion arise, Mrs. Knight?”

“I will.”

Jake gave Lyda a quick kiss on the forehead and patted Annie on the head.

His bashfulness about kissing in public amused Grace. For all his bravado, she suspected Jake McGuire had a streak of shyness where women were concerned. Lyda agreed. She once had observed to Grace that cowboys only feared two things: being set afoot, and a good woman.

Jake put three fingertips to the brim of his Stetson and gave them a flick that was part salute, part wave. He swiveled on the tall heels of his cowboy boots and left. Grace and Lyda stood in the doorway and watched him walk across the zócalo. They both liked to watch long, lanky Jake walk. Annie said he looked like he had a pair of stilts in the legs of his dungarees.

Annie headed for the kitchen to see what María had prepared for breakfast.

When she was out of hearing, Grace said, “You and Annie should go with him, Lyda.”

“The Colonial weathered the 1910 uprising. We can wait this one out.”

“This is different.”

“What do you mean?”

“Zapata has vowed to keep on fighting, no matter what.”

“Maybe Zapata could be president.”

Grace shook her head. “Too many men with ambition and no conscience are arrayed against him. He will always be an ignorant indio to those in power.”

Annie returned peeling a banana and Grace changed the subject.

“Jake does have a point,” Grace said. “Maybe the time has come to circle the wagons, as they say in the moving pictures. You and Annie should stay here. Goodness knows, we have room.”

“What about Duke?”

“Bring your horse, too. He can keep the hotel mule company.”

Annie and Lyda exchanged looks.

“He’ll be safe,” said Grace. “Socrates sleeps in the stable.”

“Duke won’t come down,” said Annie.

“Down from where?”

“My bedroom.” Annie rushed to assure Grace that they hadn’t put Duke in solitary confinement. “The landlady loaned us her goat to keep him company.”

“We think they’re in love,” said Lyda.

“Annie, your bedroom is on the second floor. What’s he doing up there?”

“We didn’t want anyone to eat him. We don’t want anyone to eat the goat either.”