The Hummingbird's Daughter_ A Novel - Luis Alberto Urrea [169]
“I sent her a letter,” Cruz said. “She knows our troubles.”
The men made assenting sounds, grunts, clicks of their mouths.
“We will stop the cavalry before it can do harm to her or to our village,” he said. “Then we will go to her, and she will bless us. She will get our paintings back. She will give us our blessing back, you’ll see. And we will carry her back to Tomóchic! No one would dare enter our valley then!”
“Viva Teresa,” they murmured. “Bless us, Teresita.”
When Cruz rose, they would all rise with him, and they would be shooting.
They had been told the cavalry was coming. Riders had sped to Cabora and warned Tomás. He rushed to Teresita’s chapel and took her by the arms and hurried her upstairs to her old room in the tower. It smelled like Segundo now.
“They’re coming,” he said. “It has begun.”
“What do I do?” she asked.
“Stay in your room. Promise me,” he said. “Do not come out of your room until I come for you.”
He looked out through her shutters.
“I don’t know what the army wants. If they come to take you away, your fanatics . . .” He looked at her and shrugged. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Your followers might revolt. You can imagine the bloodbath . . .”
He looked back outside.
“I don’t want anyone hurt,” she said.
“I know.”
“Not even the army.”
“I know.”
He slammed the shutters closed, latched them.
The twenty-eight Tigers lay in the landscape for many hours. They whispered prayers of thanksgiving. They whispered Christmas hymns, and they dreamed of roast goose, ham, fresh soup, dried corn. They dreamed of their wives. They dreamed of the toys they would carve for their children, looked ahead to the Day of the Three Kings, when all children received gifts along with Jesus himself, back behind them so far in time. They promised themselves to kill quickly, cleanly, so they could return to their homes, their beds, their families, their church.
Buenaventura appeared on the porch. He had his old .44 pistola in his belt. A new repeater rifle.
“You!” said Tomás.
“Me.”
“Where have you been?”
“Around.”
“Thank you for coming.”
“They won’t be taking my ranch away from me!” Buenaventura boasted. His father cocked an eyebrow.
Tomás’s security force was complete. Ancient Don Teófano wore a scowl and held his shotgun across his knees on a bench on Teresita’s new house’s porch. His niece sat on the step with a machete, a pistol, and a hunting rifle. Her husband manned the guard hut in the corner. Two vaqueros lay on the roof with rifles. Juan Francisco was behind a wagon parked to the east of the main gate of the big house. Segundo hid behind the wall on the west side. Shooters crouched on the main house’s roof. Tomás stood on the porch, and Buenaventura stood beneath him. He looked for plums on the little tree, but couldn’t find any. Inside, Gaby and the maids and cooks all had revolvers. They passed them among themselves, trying to figure out how to use them.
Tomás looked at his pocket watch.
“Wait for it,” he called.
They didn’t wait long at all.
The cavalry appeared in the shimmering distance—a double column of horses, standards flying above in a ripple of violent color. They appeared and faded inside their own cloud of yellow dust, like ghosts riding out of fire. Their trumpets warbled across the llano, steely insectile sounds, piercing and drifting away with the relentless hot wind. As the column neared, the ground began to reverberate with their coming, the four hundred hooves of the big steeds shaking the pebbles, feeling like a heartbeat through the feet of the People.
Rurales galloped out to join their comrades. Pilgrims slunk away from the house. Hundreds of them dropped into the arroyo and crouched in fear. Many more simply moved outside the fences and took up a position of curiosity, looking innocent