knew what was coming. And it came. Half a dozen barrels opened fire on that building, the old ones with their side-mounted machine guns, the new with turret cannon and coaxial machine guns. Windows vanished. So did a couple of big stretches of brick wall between the windows as cannon shells struck home. Glass and fragments of brick flew in all directions. People on the street crawled out of the way; they knew better than to get up and expose themselves to the gunfire.
Through it all, Daniel MacArthur never moved a muscle. He had nerve and he had style. Based on what Morrell remembered from the Great War, none of that surprised him. Did MacArthur have brains? Morrell wasn't so sure there.
Only after the front of the apartment building was wrecked did the brigadier general wave the barrels forward once more. They make a desert and they call it peace, Morrell thought. But no one fired any more shots before the armored detachment reached its perimeter in the center of town.
Once they got there, MacArthur summoned reporters from the Gazette and the Statesman, the two local newspapers. He said, 'Gentlemen, here is something your readers need to know: if they interfere with the U.S. Army or disobey military authority, they will end up dead. And, having died, they will be buried in the soil of the United States, for they cannot and will not detach this state from this country. All they can do is spill their own blood to no purpose. Take that back to your plants and print it.'
They did. The same message went out over the wireless, and in the papers in El Paso and other towns in Houston. Contingents of Morrell's barrels, along with infantrymen and state police, reinforced it. The rioting eased. Morrell was as pleased as he was surprised. Maybe Brigadier General MacArthur was pretty smart after all. Or maybe someone on the other side of the border had decided the rioting should ease for the time being. Morrell wished like hell that hadn't occurred to him.
Miguel and Jorge Rodriguez stood side by side in the farmhouse kitchen. They both looked very proud. They wore identical broad-brimmed cloth hats, short-sleeved cotton shirts, sturdy denim shorts, socks, and stout shoes. They also wore identical proud smiles.
Hats, shirts, and shorts were of the light brown color the Confederate Army, for no reason Hipolito Rodriguez had ever been able to understand, called butternut. On the pocket above the left breast of each shirt was sewn a Confederate battle flag with colors reversed: the emblem of the Freedom Party.
'I will miss your work,' Rodriguez told his two older sons. 'I will miss it, but the country needs it.'
'That's right, Father,' Jorge said. 'And they'll pay us money-not a lot of money, but some-to do the work.'
'I'll help you, Father,' Pedro-the youngest son-said. He wasn't old enough to join the Freedom Youth Corps yet, and had been sick-jealous of his brothers ever since they did. Being useful on the farm wasn't much consolation, but it was what he had, and he made the most of it.
'I know you will.' Rodriguez set a hand on his shoulder. 'You're a good boy. All of you are good boys.'
'Sн,' his wife said. She probably hadn't followed the whole conversation, most of which was in English, but she got that. In Spanish, she went on, 'I'll miss you while you are gone.' The tears in her eyes spoke a universal language.
'Father was right,' Miguel said importantly. 'The country does need us, so you shouldn't cry. We'll do big things for Sonora, big things for Baroyeca. I hear'-his voice dropped to an excited whisper-'I hear we are going to put in the poles to carry the wires to bring electricity down from Buenavista. Electricity!'
Instead of being impressed, Magdalena Rodriguez, was practical: 'We already have poles to bring the telegraph. Why not use those?'
Miguel and Jorge looked at each other. Plainly, neither one of them knew the answer. Just as plainly, neither one wanted to admit it. At last, Jorge said, 'Because these poles are special, Mother.' He might not even have noticed switching back to Spanish to talk to Magdalena.
'Come on, boys,' Hipolito said. 'Let's go into town.' His sons had grumbled that they were almost grown men, that they were going off to do men's work, and that they didn't need their father escorting them to Baroyeca. He'd explained he was proud of them and wanted to show them off. He'd also explained he would wallop them if they grumbled any more. They'd stopped.
Before they left, he made sure his own Freedom Party pin was on his shirt. They trooped out of the farmhouse together. Neither the crow that fluttered up from the roof nor the two lizards that scuttled into a hole seemed much impressed. Before long, Rodriguez's sons were less delighted, too. 'My feet hurt,' Miguel complained. Jorge nodded.
'This happened to me when I went into the Army,' Rodriguez said. 'Shoes pinch. Up till then, I hadn't worn anything but sandals.' He looked down at his feet. He wore sandals now. They were more comfortable than shoes any day. But comfort wasn't always the only question. 'For some of what you do, for working in the mountains, sandals won't protect your feet. Good shoes like those will.'
'They'll give us blisters,' Jorge said. Now Miguel was the one who nodded in agreement.
'For a little while, yes,' Rodriguez answered. 'Then your feet will toughen up, and you'll be fine.' He could afford to say that. His feet weren't the ones suffering.
When they came to Baroyeca-Jorge limping a little and trying not to show it, for his shoes pinched tighter than Miguel's-Rodriguez led them to the town square between the alcalde's house and the church, as he'd been instructed to do. There he found most of the boys in the area, all standing solemnly in ranks that weren't so neat as they should have been. One of the new members of the guardнa civil, a man who'd been a sergeant during the war, was in charge of them.
'ЎLibertad, Hipolito!' he called. 'These are your boys?'
'My older ones, Felipe,' Rodriguez answered. 'ЎLibertad!'
'They'll do fine,' Felipe Rojas said. 'They won't have too much nonsense to knock out of them. Some of these little brats…' He shook his head. 'Well, you can guess which ones.'
'A lot of them will be ones whose fathers don't belong to the Party,' Rodriguez predicted. Felipe Rojas nodded. Rodriguez eyed the youths. He couldn't tell by the uniforms; those were all the same. But the stance gave away who was who a lot of the time, that and whether a boy looked eager or frightened.
The bell in the church struck nine. Rodriguez let out a sigh of relief. He'd been told to get here before the hour. He hadn't realized he'd cut it so close.
A few minutes later, another boy tried to join the ranks in the square. Rojas ran him off, shouting, 'You don't deserve to be here! You can't even obey orders about when to come. You're a disgrace to your uniform. Get out! Get out!'
'But, seсor-' protested his father, who was not a Party man.
'No!' Rojas said. 'He had his orders. He disobeyed them. You helped, no doubt. But anyone who doesn't understand from the start that the Freedom Youth Corps is about obedience and discipline doesn't deserve to be in it. Get him out of here, and you can go to the devil with him.' The boy slunk away, his face a mask of misery. His father followed, hands clenched into impotent fists. He was not the least important man in Baroyeca, but he'd been treated as if he were.
Robert Quinn came into the square, pushing a wheelbarrow full of shovels. 'Hello, boys,' he said. 'ЎLibertad!'
'ЎLibertad!' they echoed raggedly. Some of them were still looking after the youngster who'd been sent away.
'These are your spades,' Quinn said in his accented but fluent Spanish. 'You will have the privilege of using them to make Sonora a better place.' Most of them smiled at that, liking the idea.
'These are your spades,' Felipe Rojas echoed. 'You will have the privilege of taking care of them, of keeping them sharp, of keeping them shiny, of keeping their handles polished. You will take them everywhere you go in the Freedom Youth Corps. You will sleep with them, por Dios. And you will enjoy sleeping with them, more than you would with a woman. Do you hear me? Do you hear me? Answer when I talk to you!'
'Sн, seсor,' they chorused in alarm.
Now Hipolito Rodriguez smiled, and he wasn't the only man his age who did. Rojas' rant sounded much like what sergeants had said at the training camp during the war, except they'd been talking about rifles, not spades. Rojas took a shovel from the wagon and tossed it, iron blade up, to the closest youth. The boy awkwardly caught it. Another shovel flew, and another, till every boy had one.
