Shelby looked around and we saw no one approaching nor anyone fleeing.
“That old boy look familiar to you?” he asked, spitting into the blood which had pooled just below the man’s feet.
“Looks different without his uniform,” I said.
“Wonder where the rest of ’em are at.”
The answer came to us slowly, one rope at a time. The Sonoran Desert was not conducive to hanging trees, but the men who’d killed the soldiers made do. Each tree we passed held a new body and each body held a sign.
“Lord have mercy, son, these boys mean business,” Shelby said as we rode past the seventh tree. The man swung and the branch bent and creaked and then snapped and came crashing down alongside the body.
“You gonna bury all these fellas, too?” he asked.
I didn’t answer.
“Something’s going on. And whatever it is, it ain’t good.”
Later in the day we came perpendicular to a road running north and south and upon it a caravan of cart mules and women and children. Pots and pans were nailed to the wooden carts or slung over the mules on long ropes and they rattled and clanged against one another like some distorted wind chime.
There were a few men with the group and one of them rode toward us and unleashed a string of Spanish we couldn’t follow. When we didn’t answer he scowled at us and pointed south and started yelling.
“We’re American,” Shelby said, loud and slow. “Ah-mare-ih-cun.”
A second man rode up and spoke to the first and the first man threw up his hands and rode away.
“Apologies, my friends,” the second man said. “Rodrigo is, uh . . . angry. His brother is killed on yesterday. He is very angry.”
“Well, shit, I’d be angry, too,” Shelby said.
“What’s goin’ on here?” I asked. “Where’s everybody going?”
The man turned to look at the people passing by as if he hadn’t noticed them, or perhaps to confirm they were still there.
“It’s very, uh, danger. Dangerous. These people have family who fight for Madero.”
“What’s the Madero?” Shelby asked.
The man seemed to think about this. He turned again and looked back at his people.
“Madero,” he said finally. “He is the leader of the, eh, revolución.”
“Revolution?”
“Sí. Yes.”
“Well, hell.”
“We take these people to Estados Unidos. They are safe there. Díaz, the government, cannot reach them.”
“We done rode into a goddamn war, son,” Shelby said, ignoring the man.
“Is it a war?” I asked the man. “Are they fighting everywhere?”
The man shrugged and then nodded his head uncertain.
“What about Chihuahua?” Shelby said.
“Sí,” the man said. “Eh, Chihuahua is, uh, more bad than here. Worse.”
“Well,” Shelby said again. “Hell.”
“What do you want to do?” I asked him.
He spit.
“I’ll tell you this much. I’d sure rather die in America than down here in this shithole,” he said. “No offense, there, compadre.”
* * *
We decided to cross back into our own country but agreed it wise to not venture too far from the border until we made it to Texas. We’d always heard a man could get lost in Texas and we aimed to do just that. New names, new lives, Shelby told me. I did my best to believe him.
We rode alongside the caravan for a while. The sun faded over the Sonoran plains and with its setting the world was cast in colors magnificent: blood orange in the west and all manner of purple and pink projected over the hills in the fading east.
The children chased one another with sticks and the dogs ran with them, not knowing the game but happy to be playing. The older girls watched the two gringos, Shelby flashing them a crooked grin. There were campfires aplenty once the night was irrefutable, and the makeshift village gave me a strange solace. We were all running from something, and there was a certain comfort in that.
An old man sat near us, and three old women and the man who spoke broken English. When the children had quieted and the stars were high overhead, the old man began to speak. No one had inquired but no one interrupted and, as he spoke, the flames seemed to rise in front of us.
Shelby and I were quiet, but the English-speaking man, perhaps not wanting to be rude or perhaps taking upon himself the responsibility to impart an elder wisdom, began to give a somber translation of the old man’s words.
“He says this war will be a good and a bad thing for his people,” the man relayed. “He says many people will die, but perhaps it is for a greater purpose, eh, reasoning.”
“The rebels,” I asked, “are they some sort of freedom fighters?”
The translator paused, thought, then expressed my question. The old man shook his head and threw his hand to the side as if to dismiss my comment. He spoke at length.
“He says all men are free. He says since the great American war, there are no slaves, only free men. Free men, he says, are more dangerous because they are more, eh, fuerte, es, uh, strong.”
“So what then? Why the fighting?” I asked.
The old man heard my question relayed to him and he looked at me and nodded and held both hands to the sky and then to his chest as he spoke.
“He says only free men choose violence because only free men have a choice.”
“No comprende. I don’t understand.”
“Mexican gibberish,” Shelby said. “You ain’t ’sposed to understand.”
The translator smiled, “Is no gibberish. Is meaning, a country cannot exist without its people. The land, sí, yes, the land is only land. The people, they are who makes the country.”
“And Madero is for the people?” I asked.
“Sí. Madero is maybe for the people.”
“Maybe?”
“Madero is picked by the people, but Díaz is not give up his power. Madero is maybe for the people, but that is no matter. The matter is the people choose Madero, yes? The people, maybe they are right or maybe no, but they must be heard.”
“I understand.”
“Sí?”
“Yes.”
4
The hound, its lineage tracked to some of the finest-bred litters in Great Britain, was on its right side, so fat its left feet did not touch the floor. There was a fire in the stove, though the nights had not yet turned cold and bitter, and Randall liked the way it made the house smell. He sat in the great room and looked at the piano and squeezed his hand so hard against his glass of brandy he thought surely it would shatter.