THE INSURGENCE of CHAN SANTA CRUZ

CHAPTER TEN

There was another encampment in the heart of the monte, but this was served by no road save a trail no wider than an animal path, and no hospital nor store had it; no band, no artillery, not even a cenote. It was a refuge of the sublevados, and to it came two men, bearing a third in a hammock. This indian had insisted upon walking from danger but, in the end, acceded to the wishes of his companions to be carried, so long as his rifle would be carried in the hammock too. It was a fine gun, and the Cruzob was more concerned for its safety than about the Mexican bullet in his leg.

This fighter was the fugitive who in the space of one year had advanced from waiter in the house of don Antonio Macias to feared guerrilla; the status of Silvestro Kaak being a direct result of the greed of don Antonio's majordomo. Silvestro respected the Mauser far too much to carve marks in it as some of the Mexicans did but, in the place where such notches would have been carved for the soldiers whom the gun had taken, there would have been more than a dozen.

Much blood he had lost in the return and this brought worried visions, like fever, that clouded his brain, intruding upon the peaceful presence of Ah Cimil, the Mayan don del Muerte, whose behavior as he faced the wounded Mexican still troubled him, for don del Muerte had always stood beside Silvestro, pointing out those Mexican soldiers whom he wished and, with his Belgian rifle, Silvestro had quickly and expertly dispatched them to the dzulob hell.

It was this failure to take life, and not the act of taking it, which so perplexed him. After all, the soldiers whom Ah Cimil chose resembled enemies out of his past, he saw the ghosts of the vengeful mayordomo with his whip in those he slew, or else the sweaty Turkish cook or, sometimes, a sergeant of the Rurales, now retired, who boasted of killing so many indians during the Caste War. Once he had even discerned and brought down a Conquistador in shining breastplate and plumed helmet, like the men pointed out to him by the Mexican schoolteachers as heroes who fought the English centuries ago. It was not that these old enemies were actually those the Mauser claimed, but when Ah Cimil pointed out the man who was to die, the features of the soldiers softened and assumed one of the faces of these ancient enemies. Then Silvestro killed, and he was satisfied.

But in the recent fray the don of Death had left his side. While the rifles of his companions clamored for their victims, Silvestro had roamed the monte, searching for the one granted to him. Then the dzulob officer appeared. Silvestro had waited for a sign from Ah Cimil, but there was no change upon the soldier's features, only a faint resemblance to someone the guerrilla might have known; a face from the past, out of a crowd, someone, perhaps, passed on the street and for such reasons known but to the gods, remembered. Then this Mexican saw him and his confusion and had struck so quickly Silvestro had fired without don del Muerte's sign and a cloud had come over him; now the face of the wounded soldier blurred but the apparition trying to break through, Silvestro realized, was a monster, a thing of inhuman shape and boundless wrath. And for the first time in his life he had turned, running as fast as his wound would permit, and if he had been even a slightly lesser man he would have hurled his rifle into the monte as he escaped.

But he had not, and none of his comrades suspected his failure for these thoughts he had kept to himself. The hammock bearers know only that he was a brave, if unfortunate man, one who had faced the enemy and received his wound unafraid, and that he would survive if returned to the village of Neneth, the village of Miguel Chankik, the nahual or Uay in the Maya tongue, doctor to flesh and spirit of the Cruzob.

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