Carlos Fuentes - The Death of Artemio Cruz

arm to hang on to your belt. The pain will put you to sleep. Your arm and leg will dangle inert, and the Yaqui still be hanging on to your waist, moaning, his face flushed. Then you will come upon the tombstone-shaped crags and you will march along protected by the shadows, in the mountain canyon, reconnoitering hidden rock valleys, deep gorges above abandoned irrigation ditches, roads of thorns and scrub. Who will remember with you? Lorenzo without you on that mountain? Gonzalo with you in this prison?

He wrapped himself in the blue serape because the freezing night wind hissed-as if someone were shaking a sheaf of straw-and negated the vertical heat of the day. They'd spent the night out in the open with no food. Just over a mile from them, the basalt crowns of the mountains shot up, their roots buried in the hard desert. For three days now, the scouting party had been on patrol, never asking where they were going, in which direction, guided only by the captain's instincts. He thought he knew all the tricks and all the routes left to Francisco Villa's tattered retreating columns. Thirty-six miles behind them stood the main body of their troops, only waiting for a galloping messenger from this detachment so they could throw themselves on the remnants of Villa's forces and keep them from joining the fresh troops in Chihuahua. But where were those remnants? The captain thought he knew: in some mountain pass, following the worst road. On the fourth day-today-the detachment was to have plunged into the sierra while the bulk of Carranza's forces would advance toward this place, which he and his men would leave at dawn. Yesterday they ran out of cornmeal. And the sergeant who rode out with the canteens last night, to find the stream coursing through the rocks, which disappeared as soon as it reached the desert, had not found it. Yes, he could see its bed of reddish-veined stone, clean and wrinkled, but it was dry. Two years before, they'd passed through this same place during the rainy season, and now, at dawn, only one round start twinkled over the soldier's burning heads. They'd made camp without starting any fires; an enemy scout might see them from the mountain. In any case, it was unnecessary. There was no food to cook, and in the immensity of the desert plains an isolated fire couldn't keep anyone warm. Wrapped in the serape, he ran his hand over his thin face, over the wiry beard that had started to cover his chin. Dust encrusted the corners of his lips, his eyebrows, and the bridge of his nose. There were eighteen men in the detachment, only a few yards from the captain. Whether he sleeps or keeps watch, he is always alone, always separated from his men by a few yards of bare ground. Nearby, the horses shook their manes in the wind, their black silhouettes standing out against the yellow skin of the desert. He wanted to go up into the mountains: the spring that gave rise to the brief, solitary flow of the cool creek was up there. His body felt tense. Hunger and thirst sank his eyes and opened them wider, green eyes with a cold, even stare.

The mask of his face, stained with dust, remained fixed and awake. He was waiting for the first line of dawn to show itself: the fourth day, according to orders. Almost no one slept, they were watching him from a distance as he sat with his knees tucked up, wrapped in the serape, unmoving. Those who tried to close their eyes had to fight their thirst, hunger, and fatigue. Those who weren't looking at the captain looked toward the line of horses, all with their forelocks parted. Their bridles were tied to the thick mesquite protruding out of the earth like a lost finger. The tired horses stared at the ground. The sun should be appearing from behind the mountain about now. It was time.

They were all waiting for the moment when the captain stood up, tossed aside the blue serape, and revealed himself: his chest covered with cartridge belts, the shining buckle on his officer's tunic, his pigskin puttees. Without a word, the detachment got to its feet and went over to the horses. The captain was right: a fan-shaped glow flared up from behind the lowest peaks, casting an arch of light to which unseen birds added a chorus. They kept their distance but they were the real owners of the vast silence of this abandoned land. He signaled to the Yaqui Indian Tobias and said to him, in his own language, "You stay to the back. As soon as we catch sight of the enemy, race back to headquarters."

The Yaqui nodded, putting on his narrow-brimmed hat, which had a round crown and a single red feather stuck in the band. The captain leaped onto his horse, and the line of men began a light trot toward the entrance to the sierra: a canyon with ocher-faced defiles.

There were three bluffs overhanging three passes through the mountain. The detachment headed for the second, the narrowest, along which the horses would have to pass in single file, with the steep cliff wall on one side and the ravine on the other. The path led to the spring; the canteens broadcast their emptiness as they bounced off the men's hips. The clatter of the rocks glancing off the horses' shoes repeated a deep, empty sound which, like the single dry beat of a drum, vanished without an echo down the canyon. Seen from above, the short column of horsemen seemed to be groping its way forward. Only he kept his eyes on the top of the canyon wall, squinting against the sun, letting his horse find the path. At the head of the detachment, he felt neither fear nor pride. He'd left his fear behind, not in his first battles, but in the long series of skirmishes which had made danger normal for him and turned safety into something disturbing. The absolute silence of the canyon secretly alarmed him, and he tightened the reins and flexed the muscles of his right arm and hand so he could swiftly pull out his pistol. He thought he was devoid of arrogance-earlier, because of his fear, and now out of habit. He had no sense of pride when the first bullets whistled past his ear and life like a miracle went on each time another shot missed its mark. He felt only astonishment at the blind wisdom of his body as it avoided danger by standing or crouching, his face hidden behind a tree trunk-astonishment and scorn, when he thought about the tenacity with which his body, faster even than his will, safeguarded itself. He felt no pride when, later, he didn't even hear that pertinacious, all-too-familiar whistle. He lived a dry but controlled dread in those minutes when unforeseen tranquillity surrounded him. He jutted out his jaw in a gesture of doubt.

A soldier's insistent whistle behind him confirmed the danger

of this march through the canyon. The whistle was broken by a sudden volley of small-arms fire and a howl he knew only too well: Villa's cavalry was charging down the almost vertical face of the canyon in a suicide attack, while the riflemen dug in on the third bluff fired at his men, whose bleeding horses, enveloped in a din of dust, reared and plunged into the pit of sharp rocks. He was the only one able to look back to see Tobias imitate Villa's men by galloping down the steep slope in a vain attempt to carry out his orders. The Yaqui's horse lost its footing and for an instant flew through the air, until it crashed at the foot of the canyon wall, crushing its rider under it. The howl grew, accompanied by heavy firing; he slipped off the left side of his horse and rolled down the ravine, controlling his fall to the bottom with somersaults and occasional handholds. In his fractured vision, the bellies of the rearing horses pulsated above him, accompanied by the useless shots of the men who'd been surprised on that narrow ledge, where there was no chance to take cover or maneuver the horses. As he fell, clawing at the steep slope, Villa's cavalrymen attacked from the second peak and the hand-to-hand fighting began. Up above, the savage whirlwind of tangled men and crazed horses continued, while down below he was touching the dark floor of the canyon with his bloody hands. He took out his pistol. Only a renewed silence awaited him. His strength was completely drained. He dragged himself forward, his arm and leg in agony, toward a gigantic rock.