THE INSURGENCE
of CHAN
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CHAPTER SIX |
Their arrival was a cause for relief,
their success for celebration. It would have been a final blow to Bravo's
reputation had an entire company failed to return after Dzonotchel
and Cumil, for the success of the others had been
scant. One had returned with two children, another had discovered a pig. The
rest had come back empty handed.
In
General Bravo's tent, Major Villanueva related the details of the struggle, how
his outnumbered company had routed at least a score of the Sublevados
at the chicle camp, driving them into the monte
dragging their wounded and dead. That the prisoner, tied to a tree and given a
mouthful of aguardiente for nourishment and for the pain in his leg, insisted
that he was not of the Cruzob, that, in fact, he
hated them as much as did the army, was of no consequence. Everybody knew that indians were famous liars. What
else could be expected than mendacity and protestations of innocence -
considering the fate that awaited captured rebels. His
lies finally so wearied his captors that they reinserted the gag and left him
to the children of the camp for whatever games that they might devise.
The
captured pig provided a handsome repast for the officers of the camp, and for
selected members of the three successful patrols. However, with the choicest
cuts reserved for Bravo and his circle, the distribution of the rest of the
meat was capricious, and so it transpired that José's share of the victory
banquet was no more than a piece of pork fat.
And the
captured children... these posed a problem of another sort. No benefit attached
to their display as captives of the war - such would not reflect on the valor
and skill of the army. Nor could there be any question of impressing them into
the company. The terms of the pacification were unyielding; children of the
rebel cross would grow to be sublevados.
As the
officers dined, a dozen men were set to work digging a shallow trench in the
thin, stony soil at the edge of the encampment with the monte
at their back. Padre Julio Pacheco, whose girth was such to make the strongest
horses shy from his approach, forced open the mouths of the children for the
reason of determining if they were seven years old, consequently gente de razon, on whom the gates
of hell would close upon the moment of their end. The girl's teeth closed upon
the priest's thumb and Padre Julio cursed the wiles of Satan. In childish trust
is the
He who
had stepped forward had no rank, even his Christian name was lost in the wastes
of the past, with its unmentionable crimes. He was a long-time associate of
General Bravo, known only as El Chacol, the jackal,
and his were the tasks that even Bravo's hatchet man, Boleaga,
would not touch.
This Jackal wrestled the children to
their knees before the pit, drawing his machete. Bravo had impressed upon his
men the virtue of frugality and the waste of ammunition on a prisoner horrified
him. El Chacol's blade fell once, twice, and Corporal
Boleaga, manifested, prodded the small corpses with
his boot, then kicked them into the trench. Motioning
the soldiers to begin shoveling the earth back into place, he and the Jackal
vanished back into the shadows from whence they'd appeared.
RETURN to HOMEPAGE
– “THE INSURGENCE of CHAN SANTA
CRUZ”
RETURN to GENERISIS HOMEPAGE