The other mestizo is searched quickly. He has little money loose in his pocket, but he has a diamond ring and two pearl earrings tucked away in the watch-pocket of his pants.
“Where are your horses?”
“In the corral back of the jacal,” the mestizo answers.
The captain sends one of his men to examine the hoofs. The man returns. “The hoofs fit all right, my captain.”
The horses are poor beasts. The saddles are old, worn-out, and ragged.
“Where are the rifles and the guns?”
One of the mestizos answers: “In the corral where the horses were.”
The captain goes to the corral. He scratches the ground with his feet and picks up a rusty revolver, an old-fashioned pistol, and a battered shotgun.
He returns to the mestizos, who are fully surrounded by the soldiers. Seeing the guns brought by two soldiers, they shrug their shoulders and smile. They know that they are lost. But what does it matter? San Antonio, their patron in heaven, did not want to protect them, so what is the use battling against destiny?
“No more guns?”
“No, jefe.” Unconcerned about their fate, they smoke their cigarettes and watch the preparations of the soldiers as if they were looking at a show.
Only a dozen villagers have assembled around the soldiers. And of course quite a number of boys. A few of them are helping the soldiers to guard their horses. The great majority of the villagers remain in their huts. From there they watch everything that goes on outside. They know by long tradition that it is not wise to be seen when soldiers or mounted police are around. None has an absolutely clear conscience, or at least none feels that he has. There are hundreds of orders given by the government or by other authorities of which they may have broken many without knowing it, so it is best not to be seen by soldiers. Once seen, one might easily be accused of something, whatever it may be.
“What are your names?” the captain asks the mestizos.
They give their names, or what they think are their names.
The captain writes the names down in his notebook.
“Where is the cemetery?” he then asks a village boy standing by.
The soldiers march the two captured men off to the cemetery, guided by the boy and followed by about twenty grown-up people and almost all the boys of the little community. While marching, the captain orders a couple of boys to get two shovels from the man who usually digs the graves.
Having arrived at the cemetery, the two prisoners are handed the shovels and led to a site where there are no other graves. They need no further orders. Leisurely they begin to dig, and both, after digging deep, lie down in the graves to see if they would rest comfortably for the next hundred years. They try them three or four times until they are satisfied and then drop their shovels, indicating that they have finished.
Then there is an intermission. The two men must have a rest after so much digging under the blazing sun. They squat and start once more to roll their cigarettes. The captain, seeing this, takes out his own cigarettes and offers the prisoners the package. They look at the package and say: “Thanks, coronel, but we are no sissy smokers, we’d better smoke our own brand.”
“As you wish,” says the captain, and lights a cigarette for himself.
The prisoners begin to talk with a few of the soldiers and find that they have acquaintances in common, or that they know the villages where some of the soldiers were born.
Having smoked three cigarettes, the prisoners look at the captain, who responds by asking: “Listo, muchachos? Ready, boys, for the trip?”
Both answer with smiling lips: “Si, coronel, yes, we are ready.”
Without being ordered, they stand up in front of the holes, each taking good care that he is in front of the hole he has dug and tried out.
The sergeant names the two squads and has them marched up before the prisoners. The prisoners, seeing everything ready, murmur a dozen words to their saints or to the Virgin, cross themselves several times, and look at the captain.
“Listo, mi coronel, ready,” they say.
Thirty seconds later they are already covered with the earth which they dug out a quarter of an hour before.
The captain and the soldiers cross themselves, salute, cross themselves once more, and then leave the cemetery, mount their horses, and march off to look for other bandits.
This murder trial, including the execution, costs the people who pay taxes three pesos and fifty centavos, the cost for cartridges. The final results are more effective than in countries where an average murder trial will cost around two hundred thousand dollars.
7
The apprehension of the bandits is not always so easy.
