THE INSURGENCE of CHAN SANTA CRUZ

BOOK NINE: BOOK of the JAGUAR PRIEST

CHAPTER FORTY SIX

"It never becomes easy," Silvestro replied and the Colonel nodded, for he recognized his joviality as false and the lie was wearing as thin as paper. "But if you would have the truth, what I am feeling is not the terror of battle, as we both have known it, but something beyond... something ancient, omnipotent, a loathsome thing. There is some wicked aspect to this day... I sense a conjugation of evil stars, of hurricane, of plague and intrigue!" The General's head dropped as he observed the hand of his watch count off another minute. "And it is waiting for us there," he pointed out to the southeast, towards Santa Cruz.

"Perhaps I fear Pedro Yoac's assassins for the reason that I welcome them... for the reason that, if I were to die here, I would go with my soul intact to Gloria. I would be carried, in the arms of Juan de la Cruz, to that place of the faithful and the Christian people. But would Juan de la Cruz not know of my intent, even if its objective were to be shortened by assassins?" He shook his head and, reaching into his overcoat, removed a bottle, unscrewed its cap and swallowed a draught without offering any to Solis.

"See," Maria prodded the Colonel, "he's been drinking English rum all the way from Merida." And Solis nodded, for this explanation satisfied him, and absolved him of the need to ponder those things which the Tatoob had said.

Instead, he seized upon the rainmaking device, that which had been the object of his ridicule. "Well, whatever evil waits there in the Territory," he said, "and I can think of few things worse than drought and heat such as we have already suffered, it is your duty to confront it. Was it an accident that you were sent to Mexico to be named Governor... or that the inventor chose you, out of all of the people in Merida as being in need of this device? Hold up your head," he admonished, "think of your statue. No memorials dedicated to those who do not meet their responsibilities, however don del Muerte may appear to them."

The General slumped against his wall. "You're right," he said, "I am Halach Uinic, I have my obligation to the mazehualob. Promise me only this, that if I do not survive the journey you will conduct the scientific ceremony." And he opened Frank Miller's box and showed the Colonel how to operate the rainmaker.

"It will be done," Solis promised, hoping dearly that he would not have to be seen as the foolish custodian of such obviously fraudulent and, thus, perhaps dangerous device. Silvestro pushed off from the wall and gave the order for their things to be taken to the Decauville; the Colonel grasped his pistol.

"If there are assassins, they shall pay for their deeds," Solis assured the Tatoob.

There were no assassins, for only the laborers under the direction of the Ingenario could be seen, besides which were the pigs and the skinny dogs of Peto who followed the Decauville, keeping up a chorus of howls and grunts, presumably directed at the boxed Pablito.

They were loaded within the hour and crossed over the border into the territory as dawn lightened the sky, if not those forebodings that Silvestro felt as the little train hurtled like a tinny, hand-cast bullet rattling towards the heart of the underworld... for the spirits of the dead twisted in violet and crimson shadows, their stretched, tormented faces screaming outrage without words at the Tatoob. Although the tracks had been lain and pulled apart several time, the train still followed the route Ignacio Bravo had hacked through the monte, and the sleepy villages they passed were those in which the fiercest battles of the mat of the century had been fought and, at each station… a line of ghostly spectators watched the passage of the train. The wind was brisk, taking some of the edge off of the morning's heat, and allowing Maria and the Colonel to doze, but Silvestro remained erect, upright as the figurehead of a pirate's corsair... as if his stare, alone, could burn away whatever evil gathered in Santa Cruz del Bravo.

"I have been untruthful," he said sorrowfully, during one of those instances when his companions stirred. "By all rights I should have sent word that I had taken a second wife, but I acted as a child, surprising other children by showing a toy to them solely for the purpose of inciting their envy. I have slighted my wife and children, who have done nothing deserving of such treatment." Of his second crime, known only by the documents preserving the name of the Mexican conqueror, he could not speak even to himself.

"This is what must be done," he said when Maria opened her eyes, blinking under the fierceness of Lord Kin. "You will be given a house near my own," he promised her, "and I shall visit you upon the days that are appropriate. Tonight, however, I go to my first wife to lay with her as a husband must do, and I shall hold my children."

"But you told me that we would live together, as the Arabs do, I hear," Maria protested. "I will do nothing to offend your wife... we'll even share these clothes," she offered. "And I've always loved children..."

"The matter is decided," the Tatoob declared and, though another hour passed in argument, he would not reply to the pleadings of his second bride. When Maria finally retired under the shade of an umbrella, he continued watching the monte, although his apprehensions of assassination grew slighter the nearer they approached the capital. "What I fear," he said to himself, rapping his fingers against the rainmaker, "is that, if the drought is a composition of our sins, than it may not be lifted by an impure jefe. If I take measures to correct my faults, it may be that the things which gather against the mazehualob shall also disperse." And, as the shame of what he had done in order to secure his half of the revenues from the Jackal, he turned his eyes forward... as though, by scrutiny alone, he could discern and then dissolve these evils.

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