IV
The man who had gone for the wood now spoke. He took up one of the rifles. “See!” he said, “we have guns enough [p 148] for you, and you have horses. It is time to start. The morning will soon be here.”
The men rose slowly from their places around the fire. Tonio saw some of them glance fearfully around at the great Pyramid of the Moon in which they were hidden and furtively cross themselves. Then he heard his father’s voice. It was the first time Pancho had spoken.
“I will go with you,” said Pancho. “I am no sheep. I, too, have suffered many things. My wife is a strong woman. She will look after the children while I am gone. I have no fear for them.”
When Tita heard her father say these dreadful words she almost screamed, but now Tonio clapped his hand over her mouth.
“Keep still,” he whispered in her ear. “Those other men might kill us if they knew we were here and had heard everything.”
Tita hid her face on her arms, and her whole body shook with sobs, but she did [p 149] not make a sound—not even when she saw Pancho and Pedro ride away with the two men whom they had first seen by the fire.
Four of the other men went with them too. The ones who had made the sign of the cross did not go.
The children could catch only a few words of what they said when Pancho and Pedro and the others rode away, but it sounded like this: “—Our wives—our children—we shall not forget—by and by—perhaps in the spring—” And then they heard the voice of the Tall Man speaking very sharply.
“If you will not go with us, see that you keep silence,” he said. “If any news of this gets about in this region we shall know whom to blame and to punish! We shall come back and we shall know,” and then “Á dios[23]—á dios—á dios—” and the hoof-beats of horses as they rode away, then silence again, and the moon sailing away toward the west, with only the glow [p 150] of the dying coals to show that any one had been there at all.
When they were gone, the children wept together as if their hearts would break, but soon the birds began to sing, and the sky grew brighter and brighter in the east, and the coming of the sunshine comforted them.
[p 151]
When it was quite light they let themselves down out of their nest and warmed themselves over the coals. They had nothing to eat, of course, and they did not know which way to go. But Tonio had an idea.
“Father and Pedro came from this direction,” he said, pointing toward the south, “and so the hacienda must be somewhere over that way.”