Carlos Fuentes - The Death of Artemio Cruz

"It's time to give up. Come on out of there, Captain Cruz."

His throat dry, he answered, "Why? So you can shoot me? I think I'll stay right here."

But his right hand, numb with pain, could barely hold the pistol. As he raised his arm, he felt a sharp pain in his stomach. He fired with his head down because the pain would not let him lift it. He kept on firing until the trigger only repeated its metallic clicking. He threw the pistol over the rock, and the voice from above shouted again: "Come out with your hands on the back of your neck."

On the other side of the boulder, more than thirty horses were scattered, dead or dying. Some were trying to lift their heads; others leaned on a bent leg; most had red bullet holes in their foreheads, their necks, or their stomachs. Sometimes on top, sometimes beneath the animals, the men on both sides had assumed distracted positions: face up, as if they were trying to drink the thin stream of the dry creek; face down, hugging the rocks. All dead, except this man who was groaning, trapped under the weight of a bay mare.

"Let me bring this man out," he shouted to the group up above. "He might be one of yours."

How would he do it? With what arms? With what strength? He had barely bent over to put his hands under the shoulders of Tobias's trapped body when a bullet whistled past, hitting the boulder. He raised his eyes. The leader of the winning side-his white officer's hat visible in the bluff's shadow-halted the firing with a wave of his hand. Caked sweat, thick with dust, covered his wrists, and even though one arm could barely move, the other managed to drag Tobias's body with a concentrated will.

Behind him he could hear the swift hooves of Villa's cavalry as they detached themselves from the column to take him. They were almost on him when the Yaqui's broken legs emerged from beneath the animal's body. Villa's men tore the cartridge belts from his chest.

It was seven o'clock in the morning.

By four in the afternoon, when they entered the Perales prison, he wouldn't have any memory of the forced march that Colonel Zagal imposed on his men and the two prisoners to negotiate, in nine hours, the difficult mountain passes and descend into the Chihuahua village. His head was so riddled with pain that he could barely follow the route they took. Seemingly, the harshest. The simplest for someone like Zagal, who had accompanied Pancho Villa on his first raids and had spent twenty years traveling these mountains, memorizing hiding places, passes, canyons, and shortcuts. The mushroom shape of Zagal's hat hid half his face, but his long, clenched teeth were always visible in a smile, framed by a black beard and mustache. Zagal smiled when Cruz was mounted, with great effort, on a horse, and the Yaqui's broken body, face down, was tied on the croup of the animal. He smiled when Tobias stretched out an arm to hold on to the captain's belt. He smiled when the column moved forward, entering a dark mouth, a natural tunnel, which he and the rest of Carranza's men hadn't know about, a shortcut that reduced to an hour what would have been a four-hour gallop on the open road. But he was only half aware of all this. He knew that both sides shot captured officers on the spot, so he wondered why Colonel Zagal was leading him to an unknown destiny.

The pain made him sleep. His arm and leg, badly bruised by the fall, hung inert; the Yaqui still held on to him, moaning, his face flushed. The rock tumulus passed by, one by one, and the men continued on, protected by the shadows at the base of the mountains, entering interior valleys of stone, deep ravines that ended in dry riverbeds, paths camouflaged by thickets and bushes so the column could cross undetected. Perhaps only Pancho Villa's men have really traveled this land, he thought, which was why, before, they had been able to win the string of guerrilla victories that had broken the back of the dictatorship. Masters of surprise, of encirclement, of rapid withdrawal after attack. Exactly the opposite of the tactics taught in military school, the tactics of General Alvaro Obregón, who believed in formal battles on the open plain with precise maneuvers on well-reconnoitered terrain.

"All together and in order. Don't straggle on me," shouted Colonel Zagal, detaching himself from the head of the column and galloping back, swallowing dust and clenching his teeth. "Now that we're out of the mountains, who knows what we'll run into. Everybody on guard; heads down, eyes open for dust clouds; together we see better than I would by myself…"

The masses of rock opened wider. The column was on a flat bluff, and the rolling Chihuahua desert, spotted with mesquite, spread out at their feet. The sun was cut by gusts of high wind: a layer of coolness that never touched the burning edges of the desert.

"Let's go by way of the mine so we get down faster," shouted Zagal. "Hold on tight to your pal, Cruz. It's a steep path."

The Yaqui's hand squeezed Artemio's belt. There was more in that pressure than a desire not to fall: an intent to communicate. Artemio lowered his head, patted his horse's neck, and turned toward Tobias's flushed face.

Speaking in his own language, the Indian whispered: "We're going to pass by a mine that was abandoned a long time ago. When we get close to one of the entrances, turn the horse and head him inside. The passages branch off so many times they'll never find you…"

He went on patting the horse's neck. Then he raised his head and tried to make out path they'd down to the desert and the mine entrance Tobias was talking about.

The Yaqui whispered again: "Forget about me. My legs are broken."

Was it noon? Was it one o'clock? The sun grew heavier and heavier.

A flock of goats appeared on a ridge, and some soldiers fired at them. One goat escaped; another fell off his pedestal and was picked up by a soldier who dismounted, picked up the carcass, and loaded it on his shoulders.

"Hunting season is officially over!" Zagal declared in his hoarse, smiling voice. "You're going to miss those bullets someday, Corporal Payán."

Then, standing up in his stirrups, he spoke to the entire column: "Get one thing through your thick skulls, you bastards: Carranza's troops are right on our ass. Don't anyone waste a single shot. What do you think, that we're on our way south, winning all the way, like before? Well, we aren't. We lost and we're heading north, back where we came from."

"But, sir," whined the corporal in a low voice, "at least now we've got a little something to eat."

"Yeah, and if we don't get out of here, we'll turn into a little something to shit."

The column laughed, and Corporal Payán tied the dead goat behind his saddle.

"No one eats or drinks anything until we get down there," ordered Zagal.

He had his mind fixed on the narrow trails that led down. There, just around the next turn, the open mouth of the mine.

The hooves of Zagal's horse clattered on the narrow-gauge rails protruding a foot or two outside the entrance. It was then that Cruz threw himself off his horse, tumbling down the slope before the surprised rifles could be raised. He fell on his knees in the darkness: the first shots rang out, and Zagal's men began shouting at each other. The sudden cold cleared his head, but the darkness dizzied him. Keep going: his legs ran, forgetting the pain, until he smashed into a boulder. He spread his arms toward two shafts running in different directions. Through one, a strong wind was blowing; out of the other came a shut-in-heat. With his arms outstretched, he could feel the different temperatures on the tips of his fingers. He started running again, toward the closed shaft, because it had to be deeper. Behind him, accompanied by the music of jangling spurs, came Villa's men. A match cast an orange glow, and he lost his footing and fell down a vertical shaft, until he felt the dry thud of his body on some rotten beams. Above, the noise of spurs was incessant, and a murmur of voices bounced off the walls of the mine. The man being chased got to his feet painfully; he tried to calculate the dimensions of the place into which he'd fallen and locate the shaft he should follow to get away.