Mexico -- History -- Revolution, 1910-1920 -- Fiction
Raul and Manuel trotted down a long hill and began to climb. Suddenly,
Chico drew close to Manuel's mare. He reared, throwing himself on his
hind legs and hurled Raul to the road. The blow knocked the wind out
of him and pain wired his shoulder to the ground. He thought of his
bullet wound. For a few seconds he lay motionless but by the time
Manuel reached his side, he was able to stagger to his feet. Chico was
standing calmly under a tree.
"Are you hurt?" asked Manuel.
"No ... just stunned."
"That damn' Chico! You cabrón!" Manuel cried, rushing angrily toward
the horse, whip in hand. "God damn you!"
"Leave him alone," commanded Raul. "You can't teach him by beating
him. He's too old to change. No, Manuel!"
Manuel, helping Raul mount, thought of the Petacan beatings, the men,
even boys ... now all that had been stopped by Raul. Teach a horse.
Maybe not one as old as Chico. Teach people, maybe so! But it was too
late to change the haciendas. The butterfly was over Petaca.
16
A bullet crashed through a front window, as Angelina wrote a letter to
Estelle. She had been having trouble with her pen point and was
picking at it with her fingernail. At the thud of lead and crackle of
glass, she dropped her pen and stared about her as if she had never
seen the room before. A second bullet smashed another pane and
embedded itself in a wall. Snatching her brass desk bell, she clanged
it frantically. Her letter fluttered to the floor. Another bullet
shattered glass. Sliding from her chair she began to crawl toward the
wall where there were no windows. Servants screamed in the patio.
Single shots became a volley, then silence.
She remembered childhood stories of bandits, sordid crimes; all kinds
of fears crosshatched her brain; she hunched herself forward on hands
and knees, certain she was going mad. When she reached the wall she
stood, then sank, crumpled, doll-like, her legs of no use. She reached
for the cross on her gold neck chain, but found she had forgotten it.
Closing her eyes, she prayed.
A shot spanged prisms off the chandelier, and pieces of glass thumped
the wall near her. Opening her eyes, she picked up a fragment of glass
with shaky fingers; as she stared at it she saw Raul.
"Raul!" she screamed.
"Stay on the floor!" he shouted.
"Raul ... what's happening?"
Raul and Manuel paused a second in the patio doorway. Raul held his
Mauser. Manuel had a carbine. With a rush, bending low, Raul made for
the front windows, telling Manuel to get close to the door so he would
be protected by the wall. Raul fired out the broken window, then
squatted to reload. Manuel aimed and fired; he was slower, steadier,
searching for someone on top of the wall. Smoke choked the room.
"What's wrong?" Angelina cried. "Who is it?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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