THE INSURGENCE of CHAN SANTA CRUZ

CHAPTER FORTY TWO

Two days later, Ignacio Bravo entered Akbal alone on horseback, encountering a somewhat surprised but worried Major Macias who, since the destruction of the telegraph at Santa Cruz, earlier in the week, had fretted over the future of Quintana Roo. He knew of Rivera's coming and of Bravo's intent to oppose this General, but it was Boleaga who had been given the instructions he was to pass on to José to arrange for one of the smugglers of the Captain's acquaintance to have Bravo, Boleaga, El Chacol and the money carried over the sea to a safe Caribbean port, where they could wait out the rest of the Madero presidency... which certainly would be as short a thing as was the man himself.

"Truly no sign of my Corporal?" Bravo asked for what seemed the twentieth time in the space of two hours since his arrival and not a week since Manuel Rivera's entry into Santa Cruz.

José shook his head. "So," Bravo said, "I am not only a General without a command, I am a pauper, too, until I find the Jackal in Veracruz. He has certificates which can be redeemed for millions of pesos in the German, American and British banks, which I will deliver to Felix Diaz. With these funds, we'll have Mexico City at our feet by Christmas. If he is successful," the General added, warily... "I would have no cause for alarm were his uncle involved, but I do not think that don Porfirio will ever return. So if we fail, I die a pauper."

"It's happened to the best of us," José replied. "All over Mexico, proud men have had their lands confiscated or sold to the foreign banks in anticipation of their loss. Nothing has come of this revolution, except that some who were rich are poor, now, and others of the rich are richer still. Under Diaz we had peace... thirty four years of it."

"Yes and, in Santa Cruz, twelve years. Peace which will not long endure for Rivera's a fool, a fool with good intentions... which is that most dangerous of men. He will have the indians believe they can be rich, too, and their leaders shall not be able to prevent them from turning upon Mexico and upon each other. Finally the army, too, will turn upon itself. God may have cause to fault this arrangement I made but no Mexican, whether white, ladino nor indian, may do the same unless he is prepared to better it. Some other may do this, but it will not be Manuel Rivera, nor Madero, nor is it likely one I shall survive to see."

"Nonsense. You will return to the capital a hero. Madero would not dare charge the hero of Quintana Roo on the word of Manuel Rivera. Besides, he is not long for this world, nor for his office. Don't you sense it, too? There's an Englishman with a boat who's been hanging around Vigia Chico, he'll take us to Jamaica. From there, it will be only a matter of weeks before Felix Diaz begins his revolt. Huerta won't fire on him and Madero has no other Generals... only his clerks in uniform, like Beltran, Garibaldi, men like that. We'll enter Mexico City behind don Felix."

"I suppose. Who else would have us... Villa? Zapata?"

"Villa's with Huerta now, though I hear that it isn't working out well between them. Zapata... at least he's a man."

"So you think that you still might become a revolutionary, eh?" Bravo asked with a smile.

The Major shrugged. "If it were to aid the cause of Yucatan's independence, why not? All that I know is that I must follow the trail of steel and blood... the smell of gunpowder and horse, even this abominable coffee. Do you remember there was an old man, I've forgotten his name, who boiled coffee in his hat?"

"Why yes," Bravo remembered, "and also his beans and fish, anything he could catch."

"In a free, independent Yucatan, miserable bankers would think twice about calling in those notes they hold on my father's estanción. I'm no farmer but, at Idznacab, I could raise children of my own." If he noticed Bravo's starting at the mention of children, he did not show it. "Well, we had better be going."

For perhaps the last time, Major Macias and General Bravo rode to the southeast, picking up the railroad tracks and following them to Vigia Chico. They entered the port by night and José swiftly determined that Rivera's Captain had already arrived, and had given orders to seize Bravo should he show his face.

"Orders!" Bravo wondered. "If he had put a price on my head, I could be in some trouble here. Which way is it to your Englishman with his boat?"

The sloop had been tied up in a cove near the north mouth of the bay. It was still an hour from dawn when the officers reached it, accompanied by a creature of La Siria who would bring their horses back to Vigia Chico. "Where was this featherhead of a Rivera kept all these years?" the man still wondered. "His Captain has ordered the taverns be closed and girls all sent back to Progreso. This Rivera plans to start a temperance society and open a library for the sailors. A library! Are all of Madero's people this way."

So impoverished by the failure of Boleaga to appear was General Bravo that it was José who paid for their passage. "Gentlemen," the skipper said, "it serves us well to leave at once for, if we're out at sea by sunrise, there isn't much that your other General can do."

"No, then," Bravo said, "let's go. Be my eyes, Major, for I wish to take my last look at this territory here, not from a boat, for water is not land and I shall never see this land again. Rivera will make a ruin of it, he'll make it another part of Mexico with all of the intrigues and carelessness and pettiness which we mistake for progress. If nothing else, it shall remain unspoiled in my memories and, when I have gone, what it could have become shall disappear with me, and what is left behind shall enter into the mundanity - a thing of little importance. I am as it is, we understand this, the Cruzob and I, even if the government of Mexico doesn't. Even if all Madero's spirits... with their mineral water blood, and their accountants' souls... do not. Ignacio Bravo may not long survive, but Santa Cruz del Bravo shall vanish with him when I reach the end of this ramp.

"I am looking at this town, the sands, the endlessness of the monte beyond," Bravo continued, walking backwards in erratic vagabondage. "Were I to look ahead, what would my eyes perceive?"

"Phosphorous," replied José, "Ascension Bay is almost white tonight, white as sand, as stone..."

"As death!" the old General laughed, "for I have heard this phosphorescence is no more than the light of don del Muerte's feet as he walks on the sea, as Jesucristo did, touching both the creatures above and those below. Now we are here," he added as the skipper guided him into the boat, "and I shall look no more, may the gods of this sky and Juan de la Cruz hear my plea and my curses and may they be added to the burden of the territory." He would say no more, nor look up... but José Macias, who had left nothing of Quintana Roo that he had not afterwards pulled down, could look back without remorse, and did so as the anchor was hauled up and the moon gently pulled the little sloop away upon its mat of tides.

RETURN to HOMEPAGE – “THE INSURGENCE of CHAN SANTA CRUZ”

RETURN to GENERISIS HOMEPAGE