A perfect storm broke everywhere. "We are more valiente than the Americanos—The cursed Gringos would get no further south than Juarez—Let's see them try it—We'd drive them back over the Border on the run, and burn their capital the next day...!"
"No," said Fernando, "you have more money and more soldiers. But the men would protect us. We need no army. The men would be fighting for their houses and their women."
"What are you fighting for?" I asked. Juan Sanchez, the color-bearer, looked at me curiously. "Why, it is good, fighting. You don't have to work in the mines...!"
Manuel Paredes said: "We are fighting to restore Francisco I. Madero to the Presidency." This extraordinary statement is printed in the program of the Revolution. And everywhere the Constitutionalist soldiers are known as "Maderistas." "I knew him," continued Manuel, slowly. "He was always laughing, always."
"Yes," said another, "whenever there was any trouble with a man, and all the rest wanted to fight him or put him in prison, Pancho Madero said: 'Just let me talk to him a few minutes. I can bring him around.'"
"He loved bailes," an Indian said. "Many a time I've seen him dance all night, and all the next day, and the next night. He used to come to the great Haciendas and make speeches. When he began the peons hated him; when he ended they were crying...."
Here a man broke out into a droning, irregular tune, such as always accompanies the popular ballads that spring up in thousands on every occasion:
"In Nineteen hundred and ten
Madero was imprisoned
In the National Palace
The eighteenth of February
"Four days he was imprisoned
In the Hall of the Intendancy
Because he did not wish
To renounce the Presidency
"Then Blanquet and Felix Diaz
Martyred him there
They were the hangmen
Feeding on his hate.
"They crushed....
Until he fainted
With play of cruelty
To make him resign.
"Then with hot irons
They burned him without mercy
And only unconsciousness
Calmed the awful flames.
"But it was all in vain
Because his mighty courage
Preferred rather to die
His was a great heart!
"This was the end of the life
Of him who was the redeemer
Of the Indian Republic
And of all the poor.
"They took him out of the Palace
And tell us he was killed in an assault
What a cynicism!
What a shameless lie!
"O Street of Lecumberri
Your cheerfulness has ended forever
For through you passed Madero
To the Penitentiary.
"That twenty-second of February
Will always be remembered in the Indian Republic.
God has pardoned him
And the Virgin of Guadelupe.
"Good-bye Beautiful Mexico
Where our leader died
Good-bye to the palace
Whence he issued a living corpse
"Señores, there is nothing eternal
Nor anything sincere in life
See what happened to Don Francisco I. Madero!'
By the time he was half-way through, the entire Tropa was humming the tune, and when he finished there was a moment of jingling silence.
"We are fighting," said Isidro Amayo, "for Libertad."