When the paymaster had painfully waded through all the provisions that followed, telling how the land was to be applied for, etc., there was a silence.
"That," said Martinez, "is the Mexican Revolucion."
"It's just what Villa's doing in Chihuahua," I said. "It's great. All you fellows can have a farm now."
An amused chuckle ran around the circle. Then a little, bald-headed man, with yellow, stained whiskers, sat up and spoke.
"Not us," he said, "not the soldiers. After a Revolucion is done it wants no more soldiers. It is the pacificos who will get the land—those who did not fight. And the next generation...." He paused and spread his torn sleeves to the fire. "I was a school teacher," he explained, "so I know that Revolucions, like Republics, are ungrateful. I have fought three years. At the end of the first Revolucion that great man, Father Madero, invited his soldiers to the Capital. He gave us clothes, and food, and bull-fights. We returned to our homes and found the greedy again in power."
"I ended the war with forty-five pesos," said a man.
"You were lucky," continued the schoolmaster. "No, it is not the troopers, the starved, unfed, common soldiers who profit by the Revolucion. Officers, yes—some—for they get fat on the blood of the Patria. But we—no."
"What on earth are you fighting for?" I cried.
"I have two little sons," he answered. "And they will get their land. And they will have other little sons. They, too, will never want for food...." The little man grinned. "We have a proverb in Guadalajara: 'Do not wear a shirt of eleven yards, for he who wants to be a Redeemer will be crucified.'"
"I've got no little son," said fourteen-year-old Gil Tomas, amid shouts of laughter. "I'm fighting so I can get a thirty-thirty rifle from some dead Federal, and a good horse that belonged to a millionaire."