They ascended the steep hill, their heads bowed, pensive, their horses walking at a slow gait. Stubbornly restless, Anastasio made the same observation to other groups; the soldiers laughed at his candor. If a man has a rifle in his hands and a beltful of cartridges, surely he should use them. That means fighting. Against whom? For whom? That is scarcely a matter of importance.

The endless wavering column of dust moved up the trail, a swirling ant heap of broad straw sombreros, dirty khaki, faded blankets, and black horses....

Not a man but was dying of thirst; no pool or stream or well anywhere along the road. A wave of dust rose from the white, wild sides of a small canyon, swayed mistily on the h.o.a.ry crest of huizache trees and the greenish stumps of cactus. Like a jest, the flowers in the cactus opened out, fresh, solid, aflame, some th.o.r.n.y, others diaphanous.

At noon they reached a hut, clinging to the precipitous sierra, then three more huts strewn over the margin of a river of burnt sand.

Everything was silent, desolate. As soon as they saw men on horseback, the people in the huts scurried into the hills to hide. Demetrio grew indignant.

"Bring me anyone you find hiding or running away," he commanded in a loud voice.

"What? What did you say?" Valderrama cried in surprise. "The men of the sierra? Those brave men who've not yet done what those chickens down in Aguascalientes and Zacatecas have done all the time? Our own brothers, who weather storms, who cling to the rocks like moss itself? I protest, sir; I protest!"

He spurred his miserable horse forward and caught up with the General.

"The mountaineers," he said solemnly and emphatically, "are flesh of our flesh, bone of our bone. Os ex osibus meis et caro de carne mea.

Mountaineers are made from the same timber we're made of! Of the same sound timber from which heroes ..."

With a confidence as sudden as it was courageous, he hit the General across the chest. The General smiled benevolently.

Valderrama, the tramp, the crazy maker of verses, did he ever know what he said?

When the soldiers reached a small ranch, despairingly, they searched the empty huts and small houses without finding a single stale tortilla, a solitary rotten pepper, or one pinch of salt with which to flavor the horrible taste of dry meat. The owners of the huts, their peaceful brethren, were impa.s.sive with the stonelike impa.s.sivity of Aztec idols; others, more human, with a slow smile on their colorless lips and beardless faces, watched these fierce men who less than a month ago had made the miserable huts of others tremble with fear, now in their turn fleeing their own huts where the ovens were cold and the water tanks dry, fleeing with their tails between their legs, cringing, like curs kicked out of their own houses.

But the General did not countermand his order. Some soldiers brought back four fugitives, captive and bound.

II

"WHY do you hide?" Demetrio asked the prisoners.

"We're not hiding, Chief, we're hitting the trail."

"Where to?"

"To our own homes, in G.o.d's name, to Durango."

"Is this the road to Durango?"

"Peaceful people can't travel over the main road nowadays, you know that, Chief."

"You're not peaceful people, you're deserters. Where do you come from?"

Demetrio said, eyeing them with keen scrutiny.

The prisoners grew confused; they looked at each other hesitatingly, unable to give a prompt answer.

"They're Carranzistas," one of the soldiers said.

"Carranzistas h.e.l.l!" one of them said proudly. "I'd rather be a pig."

"The truth is we're deserters," another said. "After the defeat we deserted from General Villa's troops this side of Celaya."

"General Villa defeated? Ha! Ha! That's a good joke."

The soldiers laughed. But Demetrio's brow was wrinkled as though a black shadow had pa.s.sed over his eyes.

"There ain't a son of a b.i.t.c.h on earth who can beat General Villa!"

said a bronzed veteran with a scar clear across the face.

Without a change of expression, one of the deserters stared persistently at him and said:

"I know who you are. When we took Torreon you were with General Urbina.

In Zacatecas you were with General Natera and then you shifted to the Jalisco troops. Am I lying?"

These words met with a sudden and definite effect. The prisoners gave a detailed account of the tremendous defeat of Villa at Celaya.

Demetrio's men listened in silence, stupefied.

Before resuming their march, they built a fire on which to roast some bull meat. Anastasio Montanez, searching for food among the huizache trees, descried the close-cropped neck of Valderrama's horse in the distance among the rocks.

"Hey! Come here, you fool, after all there ain't been no gravy!" he shouted.

Whenever anything was said about shooting someone, Valderrama, the romantic poet, would disappear for a whole day.

Hearing Anastasio's voice, Valderrama was convinced that the prisoners had been set at liberty. A few moments later, he was joined by Venancio and Demetrio.

"Heard the news?" Venancio asked gravely.

"No."

"It's very serious. A terrible mess! Villa was beaten at Celaya by Obregon and Carranza is winning all along the line! We're done for!"

Valderrama's gesture was disdainful and solemn as an emperor's. "Villa?

Obregon? Carranza? What's the difference? I love the revolution like a volcano in eruption; I love the volcano because it's a volcano, the revolution because it's the revolution! What do I care about the stones left above or below after the cataclysm? What are they to me?"

In the glare of the midday sun the reflection of a white tequila bottle glittered on his forehead; and, jubilant, he ran toward the bearer of such a marvelous gift.

"I like this crazy fool," Demetrio said with a smile. "He says things sometimes that make you think."

They resumed their march; their uncertainty translated into a lugubrious silence. Slowly, inevitably, the catastrophe must come; it was even now being realized. Villa defeated was a fallen G.o.d; when G.o.ds cease to be omnipotent, they are nothing.

Quail spoke. His words faithfully interpreted the general opinion:

"What the h.e.l.l, boys! Every spider's got to spin his own web now!"

III