United States or Saint Pierre and Miquelon ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
They remembered that one year ago they had captured Zacatecas. They grew sadder still. Juchipila, like the other towns they had passed through on their way from Tepic, by way of Jalisco, Aguascalientes and Zacatecas, was in ruins. The black trail of the incendiaries showed in the roofless houses, in the burnt arcades.
Some of the soldiers, gazing at the spire of the church, sighed sadly. They marched forward through the canyon, uncertain, unsteady, as blind men walking without a hand to guide them. The bitterness of the exodus pervaded them. "Is that town Juchipila?" Valderrama asked.
Since then we've been sort of collecting, see? You know for yourself, we get along as best we can...." For a while, both men sat meditating in silence. Then: "Look here, Chief," said Luis Cervantes. "You know that some of Natera's men are at Juchipila, quite near here. I think we should join them before they capture Zacatecas. All we need do is speak to the General."
Valderrama, deaf to all about him, breathed his unctuous prayer: "O Juchipila, cradle of the Revolution of 1910, O blessed land, land steeped in the blood of martyrs, blood of dreamers, the only true men..." "Because they had no time to be bad!" an ex-Federal officer interjected as he rode.
Two men were missing, Serapio the candymaker, and Antonio, who played the cymbals in the Juchipila band. "Maybe they'll join us further on," said Demetrio. The return journey proved moody. Anastasio Montanez alone preserved his equanimity, a kindly expression playing in his sleepy eyes and on his bearded face. Pancracio's harsh, gorillalike profile retained its repulsive immutability.
"Our Father Who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come..." "Amen," his men answered in low tones, their heads bowed, their hats upon their breasts.... Then, hurriedly, they took the Juchipila canyon northward, without halting to rest until nightfall.
Then he continued to talk like a madman, but like a madman whose vast prophetic madness encompassed all about him, the dusty weeds, the tumbled kiosk, the gray houses, the lovely hills, and the immeasurable sky. Juchipila rose in the distance, white, bathed in sunlight, shining in the midst of a thick forest at the foot of a proud, lofty mountain, pleated like a turban.
Valderrama, the tramp, who had enlisted in Demetrio's army one day without anyone remembering the time or the place, overheard some of Demetrio's words. Fools do not eat fire. That very day Valderrama disappeared mysteriously as he had come. They entered the streets of Juchipila as the church bells rang, loud and joyfully, with that peculiar tone that thrills every mountaineer.
"Here, there, Pancracio, pull down two bottles of beer for me and this tenderfoot.... By the Holy Cross ... drinking won't hurt me, now, will it?" I was born in Limon, close by Moyahua, right in the heart of the Juchipila canyon. I had my house and my cows and a patch of land, see: I had everything I wanted.
Before Juchipila was lost from sight, Valderrama got off his horse, bent down, kneeled, and gravely kissed the ground. The soldiers passed by without stopping. Some laughed at the crazy man, others jested.
Word Of The Day