Just for fun I asked a trooper with a photo button of Madero pinned to his coat who that was.
"Pues, quien sabe, señor?" he replied. "My captain told me he was a great saint. I fight because it is not so hard as to work."
"How often are you fellows paid?"
"We were paid three pesos just nine months ago tonight," said the schoolmaster, and they all nodded. "We are the real volunteers. The gente of Villa are professionals."
Then Luis Martinez got a guitar and sang a beautiful little love song, which he said a prostitute had made up one night in a bordel.
The last thing I remember of that memorable night was 'Gino Güereca lying near me in the dark, talking.
"To-morrow," he said, "I shall take you to the lost gold-mines of the Spaniards. They are hidden in a cañon in the Western mountains. Only the Indians know of them—and I. The Indians go there sometimes with knives and dig the raw gold out of the ground. We'll be rich...."
CHAPTER X
THE COMING OF THE COLORADOS
Before sunrise next morning, Fernando Silveyra, fully dressed, came into the room and said calmly to get up, that the colorados were coming. Juan Vallejo laughed: "How many, Fernando?"