The thieves did not wait for the next sentence. With one jump they broke through the circle formed by the villagers and escaped down the main street of the village.
The alcalde gave a signal and in half a minute a group of villagers were after them, not even waiting to saddle their horses. The thieves did not get far. Their pursuers caught them before they passed the last huts and marched them back to the plaza in front of the house of the mayor. Here they were allowed to squat under the trees, lashed together and guarded by five Indians sitting close, with their machetes on their laps.
The alcalde came out, leading his horse, which had been saddled in the meanwhile. Before mounting he spoke to the thieves. “We shall go now and look for the American and ask him at what price he sold you the burros, and why he stripped himself to give you his boots and his pants. We shall bring with us his shirt and find out why none of you wanted that. Make yourselves comfortable here; we won’t be gone long. We won’t have to go to Durango.”
The men who were to form the posse had gone for their horses. They put some tortillas and cooked beans wrapped in corn leaves in their little bags, made of bast, hung the bags on their saddles, mounted, and went on their way.
3
The posse did not follow the trail by which the thieves had come. They looked for the one Dobbs had used when he had passed by this village at a distance. Soon the posse found the trail of the American. The tracks left by the hoofs of the burros could still be seen, as there had been no rain.
Since the men were riding animals used to these hard trails, they soon reached the place where Dobbs had rested under the trees. Here they noted that not all the burros had strayed down the road to town. It was plain that the burros had been led back to the trees and from there had returned to the mountains.
The Indians realized that at this place something must have happened to prevent Dobbs from keeping his burros together. The tracks left by Dobbs’s boots going from the trees half a mile toward town were found to be different from those on the road coming from the mountains and ending near the trees. The boots could not well leave the same imprint as before, because the feet inside them were shorter.
The alcalde decided that the boots had been changed near the trees. He sent a man to look for footprints on the road to town— Dobbs’s footprints. They would be of naked feet, for he no longer had his boots. There were no such prints.
“Then the body must be near here somewhere,” the alcalde said.
“They may have taken the body along and hidden it in the woods at the base of the mountains.”
“I don’t think, don Chuncho, that they would have dared do that. Many people travel over this road, small merchants and peasants going to market or coming from there. It would be dangerous to carry the body on this road. Let’s look around here. It must be here. If not, we may still follow the whole trail of these thieves. Somewhere along this trail we’ll have to look again for the body. Anyway, let’s try here first, since we are here. I am positive we’ll find him here.”
So the men went searching about the place.
No sign of any digging was found under the trees or near them. The men circled the place, going farther and farther. There was a cornfield near by, where the ground was soft. They had looked about this field hardly fifteen minutes when one of the men shouted: “I’ve got it, don Joaquin. Here he is.”
The body was taken out. It was still fresh and the features could easily be recognized.
“It’s the Americano all right,” the alcalde said. “He was the stockiest of the three, the fair-haired one. Get his shirt off. We’ll take it along for evidence.”
The body was carried back near the trees. The alcalde ordered his men to dig a grave for the dead man some twenty feet away from the trees, yet not in the field. With their machetes the men dug a deep hole and lowered the body into it. All the men took off their huge hats and knelt at the open grave. The mayor said a dozen Ave Marias for the soul of the slain. Then he cut off a twig and made a little cross held together by a few threads, kissed it and blessed it, and laid it on the naked body. Thereupon the grave was covered and the ground leveled, so that the place should not reveal a grave. But the mayor made now another cross slightly bigger than the first one, blessed it and kissed it, put it into the ground where the head lay, knelt down again, prayed, made the sign of the cross over the grave and three times over his own face and heart, and said: “Let’s go now. The Holy Virgin in heaven will protect him and bless his eternal soul!”
4
The men returned to their village early next morning.
They went right to the thieves. The alcalde showed them the shirt and said: “We found it.”
“So I see,” Miguel answered. He shrugged his shoulders lazily and rolled himself another cigarette. His two partners grinned. Miguel chuckled as if all this were a joke on him and he meant to take it without offense. He had known long before that one can do nothing against his fate; one can’t even marry the right girl, or get rich, or make a fair living by decent work, if fate does not decree it. Why worry?
The alcalde had already sent word the day before to the nearest military post, and during the forenoon twelve federal soldiers led by a captain came to take charge of the prisoners.
The captain on seeing Miguel said: “We know him. We’ve been looking for him and his two amigos. Last week on a lonely ranch he killed a farmer and his wife. All he could get was about seven pesos, because there was no more in the house. These two birds were with him.”
The captain gave orders to his sergeant. Then he turned again to the mayor: “What are you going to do with the burros and the packs, senor alcalde?”
“I know the rightful owners of these donkeys and of the packs they carry,” the mayor replied. “One of those Americans is a great doctor, just now on the other slope of the mountains staying with my brother-in-law, that is my hermano politico, whose son he has awakened from the dead. They don’t want to let him go yet because he can perform miracles of all sorts. I’ll take the burros and the packs over to him, for I’ve wanted, anyhow, for a long time, to pay a visit to my sister, who has her Santo next week.”
“Right,” said the captain. “Then I have nothing to do with the goods. We’ll shuffle off now. I want to be back at the post by midnight. My woman is always a bit scared if I stay away too long.”
The soldiers took their prisoners without binding them and marched them off.
5
The trail the soldiers followed was hard, and they cursed having to guard the prisoners as if they were virgins.
Night fell while the little troop was still five miles from the post.
“Let’s rest here,” commanded the captain. “We need a good deep breath after these goddamned steep trails.”
The soldiers settled down and had a smoke.
“Sergeant De La Barra!” the captain called.
“A sus ordenes, mi capitan!” The sergeant stood before his captain waiting for orders.
“Take three men and get the prisoners over to those bushes for a few minutes. But I warn you, sergeant, don’t let them escape. I make you responsible. If they escape, I shall have you put into the guardhouse for three months, on tortillas and water. If they try to make their get-away, shoot to kill and don’t come back telling me that you missed. You have your orders. Repeat them, sergeant!”
The sergeant repeated the order and then selected his men.
The captain lighted a cigarette and called a private who carried a guitarro to sing him the “Adelita.”
The sergeant ordered the prisoners up: “Get your bowels emptied, you rascals. No, not here; over there in those bushes. We don’t want to have that stink around here among decent soldiers. March off!”
The prisoners could hardly have reached the bush when half a dozen shots were heard.
The captain took his cigarette out of his mouth and said: “Now, what the hell can this be? I hope the prisoners didn’t try to escape. That would be too bad.”
