“Si debbe ai colpi della sua fortuna
Voltar il viso di lagrime asciutto.”
–Machiavelli.
The mountain villages were arming. Bronzed men, savagely joyful, poured from under roofs of thatch, strapping on great black lead-weighted belts. In the corrals others lassoed horses. It looked like a sudden changing from peaceful highland domesticity, as the clans of Scotland or the cantons of Helvetia might gather. But these men were not rising to defend their homes. The hamlets clustered among the crags were their barracks, nothing more. The wildest cañons of the Sierra Madre del Sur, far away in the rocky southwestern corner of the continent, were only their camping grounds, their refuge. To be armed was their natural state. They were fighters by occupation. They were an army. Unceasing hardship and constant peril had seasoned them, and their discipline was perfect, unconscious, because it came from the herding instinct of wolves. During years they had waged war against a ruthless foe, and they, too, were relentless. The penalty of defeat was massacre.
The foe of this army was a greater army, and between the two it was a duel of chieftains, of General Régules in the Sierra, of General Mendez on the plain. Deadlier antagonists might not be imagined. Mendez, he who had shot two Republican generals under the Black Decree, was above all men the likeliest to hold stubborn Michoacan for the Empire. But even he failed, because the man against him was not less a man than 360he, because also the spark of resistance to sceptre and crosier never dies out in Michoacan.
The man as good as he was Régules. A Spaniard, Régules had fought with the Catholic Don Carlos. And now, he was suffering for Mexican Liberals the most that any general can suffer, defeat after defeat, and sometimes annihilation. But he was a Marion, a Fabius. He knew the mountain recesses as no one else, even better than Mendez, who was born among them, and here he would gather fugitives, draft every straggler, until in time he sallied forth again to badger his arch enemy. He hoped only to exist till that day when the French should leave Empire and Republic face to face, on equal terms. It had taken tenacious faith and gloomy years, but the day came at last. The news sifted through defile and gorge. The invader had embarked for Toulon. Nearer at hand Mendez had evacuated Morelia, and was marching to Querétero. And at Querétero was Miramon, driven there from the north by Escobedo. At Querétero was the Emperor–was the Empire, desperate, ferocious, an animal at bay. Out boldly upon the plain, then! But no longer as a slinking guerrilla horde! As an army rather, with thrilling bugles and the Mexican eagle aloft, and regiment numbers in gold on pennons of brightest red! For the Empire was the hunted mad-dog now, and the dignified host was the Republic. The barracks of the Sierra were arming.
In one of the corrals an officer of cavalry was quelling insubordination with soft words. But the mutineers, not knowing their man, did not fathom the dangerous sweetness of his tone. They were deserters from Mendez, come that morning, and as they had horses, were foisted on the officer’s splendid troop. But like the native infantry, they insisted that their women, the soldaderas, should go with them on what was to be a swift march to Querétero. Having brought useful information concerning Mendez, they were insolent in their demands.
361“Now, muchachos,” said the officer of cavalry, “you see how absurd it is, so quiet down. The women can follow later.”
“A Gringo to dictate to us, bless me the saints! Us, free Mexicans, and Republicans!” And the ringleader drew his machete and rushed on the officer.
The Gringo smiled, in a way that a man rarely smiles. His eyes opened in mild surprise, and as the mutineers looked to see his head roll from his shoulders, he was still smiling in that poisonously sweet way. Perhaps there passed across his face just the shadow of pity or of revulsion, but none might say for certain, because of a pistol’s flash that came so quickly after. With the report the assailant plunged headlong, and on the ground seemed to shrivel in his rags. Behind the smoke the officer was carelessly holding a large black revolver, no higher than his hip.
“Because,” he added, “it’s not a woman’s game.”