“Surely!” replied Doña Rita. “Yes, my life, I am coming”—to Rosario. “Yes, Chata, could I have found you to-day, you would have known all. Ask him what you like—it will please him. Oh, he is most considerate. Did he not show that by taking me into his confidence? Yes, yes, you are right; insist upon knowing all from him, and you shall tell me: who could understand, or sympathize so well? But as you love me and value the safety of Rafael, not a word to him or Doña Feliz.—Rosario! what an impatient one! What is there to see? If there is commotion in the street, keep back from the windows. Ay, who would have thought the troops would pass this way? God save us, we shall be killed! the whole town will be destroyed! The street is alive with soldiers. Bar the doors! close the shutters! Oh, what horror! Is it Comonfort returned? Is it a pronunciamiento? What new alarm is this?” Ejaculating these last sentences Doña Rita hurried downstairs and rushed from room to room, directing the bewildered servants and chiding Rosario, who, attracted by the sound of music and the trampling of men and horses, strove to peep through a crack in the shutters.
Chata, standing where she had been left at the head of the stairs, heard it all as though in a dream. She said over and over to herself, “It is the General I will ask. Yes, yes, I will have the courage! No word of mine shall bring danger on my father. Oh, why do I say ‘my father’? Yes, I will say so; he is mine until he turns me away! Oh, what shall I do? Oh, Sanctissima Maria, help thy child! May I not say to Don Rafael, ‘Here is thy poor little child; she will be the daughter of no other’? Oh, I know he would cling to me, fight for me; but that Doña Rita says would be ruin! Ah, I know the soldier is cruel and false, even if he is my father; he has been so to me—” She stopped suddenly, as though blasphemy had escaped her. Though she would not believe in her heart the testimony which her reason could not disallow, she was struck dumb by the mere possibility of filial disrespect and with the actual abhorrence which she felt in her bosom toward the man whom she instinctively feared.
As if to flee from her thoughts, she rushed into a room that faced upon the street, and with an impulse such as leads the desperate man to throw himself into a vortex of seething water, or into the thickest of battle, as her ear caught the sounds of commotion, she threw open the shutters and stepped out upon the balcony.
A scene of confusion met her eye, in which men on horseback and on foot seemed mingled indiscriminately, each individual struggling in an attempt to secure a personal advantage. Ranks were broken and scattered. Men and officers alike were for the most part un-uniformed, and to the uninitiated it was impossible to distinguish the adherents of one party from those of another, save by the wild cries of “Religion y Fueros! Long live Liberty! Long live Juarez!”
The name of Juarez had begun to be a familiar one in all ears; and even though it possessed not the magic of later years, the voices that uttered it thrilled with an intensity of purpose which seemed to infuse the word with life,—to make it a watchword for great and noble aspirations and deeds, not the mere echo of a name, a party cry to be shouted with frenzy to-day and execrated to-morrow.
It was impossible to tell what chance had forced the combatants upon that straggling highway. The struggle had begun at the barracks, when a party of horse had surprised the garrison, pouncing upon it from the hills like hawks upon their prey, and by the sheer force of surprise, rather than any superiority of numbers or courage, throwing it into a confusion which in spite of the efforts of the young officers speedily resulted in a panic. The soldiers who had been drilling before the town prison,—which had done duty as a fort,—after a feeble and confused attempt to defend its doors, had been driven into the plaza; and when Ramirez reached this, it was to find his own guns turned upon him. His servant had been leading his charger up and down the street, awaiting him; and catching a glimpse of his master as he hurried past an alley in which the groom had taken refuge, he called in mingled devotion and affright,—
“For God’s sake, Señor! here is the black. Mount him for your life! another moment and we should have been discovered! Everybody knows Choolooke, and my life would not have been worth a cent had they caught sight of him. My faith, I like not these surprises! This way, Señor! Around by the church there is an alley unguarded. They are fighting like ten thousand devils in the plaza. It is madness to go there!”
Ramirez sprang into the saddle with a laugh, though his lips were white and his eyes blazing with rage. It was a new experience to him to be thus caught napping,—his scouts must have played him false. His horse snorted and bounded under him. In another moment he was in the midst of the mêlée, and an electric shock seemed to pass through friends and foes alike. There were wild shrieks at sight of him. The exultant invaders echoed with some dismay the name of Ramirez, the battle-cry with which his followers made an attempt to rally, seizing arms from the hands of their opponents, or using the pistols which had remained forgotten in their belts.
For a few moments the plaza appeared to be a veritable battle-ground, though there was far more noise and confusion than actual fighting done. Ramirez knew with infinite rage and shame that he would probably be forced to yield the town, rather by strategy than superior numbers. It would have been an actual pleasure to him at the moment to have seen his followers falling in their blood, rather than flying disarmed,—even though they should rally later and take a terrible revenge upon the enemy. For an instant his presence stemmed the current of retreat, but for an instant only. There had been a secret dissatisfaction in his ranks, which the sight of the well-known face of a popular leader, together with panic, rapidly fermented into a pronunciamiento; and even as Ramirez, waving his sword above his head, entered the street of the Orchards, he was saluted with the shout, “Down with Ramirez! Down with the Clergy! Long live Juarez! Long live Gonzales!” and through the dust and smoke he caught sight of Vicente Gonzales, almost unrecognizable under the grime of the hurried march and the heat of excitement and success.
The two were so close together they could have touched each other. One of those hand-to-hand encounters which the history of Mexico proves were not infrequent even at that date seemed inevitable, as they turned toward each other with the fury of personal hatred added to partisan animosity.