The Hummingbird's Daughter_ A Novel - Luis Alberto Urrea [63]
“Kill the women and children,” Tomás heard one vaquero proclaim.
Aguirre joined him on the steps.
“Que en paz descansen,” he said. May they rest in peace. It was a standard blessing.
Tomás nodded.
“A dark day, amigo,” Aguirre said.
Tomás extended his hand before him.
“Four graves,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Four.”
“Yes, four.”
“Why not ten, Lauro? Why not a hundred?”
“I —” Aguirre started to say, then fell silent. “I don’t know.”
“This was a Yaqui war party,” Tomás said. “They could have wiped out the whole llano, I’m certain.”
“I couldn’t say. You are the expert in this matter. Yaquis?” He shrugged. “Well.”
They rolled cigarettes and smoked. When they were finished, Lauro spoke.
“What of these Yaquis? You almost had me convinced when you joked that they were Catholics.”
“I wasn’t joking.” Tomás put his hand on his old friend’s shoulder, and he told him a story as they walked.
When the Spaniards were finished with the Aztecs, they came, as you well know, north. They wanted to spread the Holy Faith, but they really wanted gold. And they were happy in Sinaloa, make no mistake. If not gold, then silver. They found oceans of silver down around Rosario and Escuinapa. But of course, they wanted to discover the Seven Cities of Gold they’d been looking for from the Andes all the way north. Cíbola.
Tomás moved a stone onto one of the graves with the toe of his boot. It was a gentle, absentminded gesture. Aguirre watched his friend with great tenderness.
Sooner or later, they would come this way. It was inevitable. It took them three hundred years to learn there were no cities of gold. But these Indians were sly. So the Guasaves, sad and poor to the south, told the Spaniards, “Oh yes! Great temples of gold! To the north! In the land of the Mayos!”
And of course Mayo sounded like Maya, so the Spaniards set out at a trot, imagining pyramids and sculptures. That’s when they found the Mayos. When the Spaniards came, seven hundred of them, in armor, heavily armed, and wafting their stench after not bathing for a year, or two, or three, the Mayos were appalled. So they did the only reasonable thing—they lied the way the Guasaves lied. They pointed north, said, “Oh yes—great temples of gold! But these can only be found in the Yaqui lands. Go to the Yaquis, our brothers, farther up these valleys, along the Río Yaqui, and they will share their gold with you! Tell them we sent you!”
And the Spaniards went.
The Yaquis were, of course, cousins to the Mayos. They spoke a variant of the same language. But these two tribes were like black ants and red ants. The black ants are peaceful and hardworking. The red ants are also hardworking, but if you should stand on their anthill, they will swarm out and do their best to kill you. So the Spaniards marched on to the Río Yaqui. They walked right up the valley, where the Yaquis were waiting. And the Spaniard leader said something along the time-honored lines of “In the name of the king of Spain, and the power of God Almighty, we have come to bring you the gospel of Jesus Christ our Lord. Oh, and where’s the gold?” And the Yaquis ran out like red ants and killed all of them.
Tomás laughed.
Aguirre said, “This is not funny.”
“It is if you’re a Yaqui.”
The sun was setting fast.
Aguirre looked around him. He held a cross in his left hand, and he laid his right hand on the butt of the gun he’d jammed in his belt. The crags and hills around them were, in his mind, alive with Yaquis. Comanches. The frightening Sioux might even be out there. He suddenly imagined a massive pan-Indian war party sweeping the continent, their cleansing of the land about to start with him.
“You like these people,” he said.
“They’re a great people.”
“But they’re killers.”
“We’re killers.”
“But —”
“Nobody deadlier than a missionary, eh Aguirre?” He slapped his friend on the back. “Nothing more dangerous than the Church.”
“You said they were Catholics,