III
So while the guitars were tinkling and the rest of the people were still singing and dancing and having the merriest kind of a merry Christmas, Pancho and his family said good-night politely to Señor Fernandez and his wife and slipped quietly away to the little adobe hut under the fig tree.
When they were inside their little home once more, Doña Teresa made a fire in the [p 181] brasero and heated some of the turkey for Pancho, and while he ate, Tonio and Tita stood on each side of their one chair, in which he sat, and listened with their eyes and mouths both while their father told about his adventures as a Soldier of the Revolution. And then they told him all about the night they were lost, and the secret meeting, and he was so astonished that he could hardly believe they had not dreamed it until Tita told him just what the Tall Man had said, and what Pedro had said, and about the pebble that rolled down.
Then he said, “Have you told any one about this?”
And Doña Teresa answered proudly, “Not a soul. Not even the priest.”
“You’ve done well, then,” Pancho said. “The Tall Man punishes those who spoil his plans by talking of them. He has raised an army of two thousand men in such ways. We enlisted for only four months, and in that time we turned the region to the south of us altogether into the hands of the [p 182] Revolutionists. I intended to return home at the end of the four months, but finally stayed a month more to finish the campaign.”
“I knew you would come some time, my angel,” cried Doña Teresa. “I have prayed every day before the Virgin for your safe return.”
“As God wills it,” Pancho answered soberly. “I meant at any rate to strike my blow for freedom, and to try to make things better for us all.”
“Well, have you?” asked Doña Teresa.
Pancho scratched his head with the old puzzled expression on his face. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “Things are not right as they are,—I know that,—and they never will be right if no one ever complains or protests or makes any fuss about it. And I know, too, that these uprisings never will stop until Mexico is better governed, and poor people have the chance they long for and do not know how to get for themselves. It is something just to keep things stirred up. Perhaps some time Tonio here can [p 183] think out what ought to be done. He may even be a great general some day.”
“Heaven forbid!” cried Doña Teresa. She almost upset Pancho’s dish, she was so emphatic. “There has been enough of going to war in this family!”
“Well,” said Pancho, “war isn’t very pleasant. I’ve seen enough of it to know that: but peace isn’t very pleasant either, when your life is without hope and you must live like the animals—if you live at all.”
“Now that I have you at home again, I, for one, am quite content,” said Doña Teresa; and then she went to unroll the mats and put the children to bed.
They were so tired that they went to sleep in their corner in no time at all, and when she had snuffed the candles before the Virgin, Doña Teresa came back to Pancho and sat with him beside the embers still glowing in the brasero.
She told him everything that had happened on the hacienda while he was away, [p 184] and Pancho told her all the strange sights he had seen, and the new things he had learned, and at last he said:—
“Anyway, I’ve made up my mind that Tonio shall have more learning than he can get on this hacienda, though I don’t know yet how it can be brought about. Somehow children must know more than their parents if things are ever to be better for the poor people of Mexico.”
And Doña Teresa answered, “Well, anyway, we have each other and the Twins, so let’s take comfort in that, right now, even if there are many things in the world that can’t be set right yet awhile.”
Just then the first streak of dawn showed red over the eastern hills. Out in the fig tree the red rooster shook himself and crowed, and to Pancho, as he stretched himself on his own hard bed in his own poor little home once more, it sounded exactly as if he said,
“Cock-a-doodle-do-oo.
We’re glad to see you-oo-oo.”
[25] Pah-sah´dah.
[26] Pin-yah´tah.
