XIII
At the baths – Merchants – Trophies of war – The banquet – Trias – The ball – North – Coyame – The border – The Hueco tanks – Massacre of the Tiguas – Carrizal – A desert spring – The Medanos – An inquest concerning teeth – Nacori – The cantina – A desperate encounter – Into the mountains – A village decimated – Mounted lancers – A skirmish – Pursuing the survivors – The plains of Chihuahua – Slaughter of the soldiers – A burial – Chihuahua – Westward.
Their progress was swelled by new riders, by boys on muleback and old men in plaited hats and a deputation that took charge of the captured horses and mules and hazed them on through the narrow streets toward the bullring where they could be kept. The tattered campaigners surged on, some now holding aloft cups that had been pressed upon them, waving to the ladies clustered on the balconies their putrescent hats and elevating the bobbing heads with those strange halflidded looks of ennui into which the features had dried, all so hemmed about now by the citizenry that they seemed the vanguard of some ragged uprising and heralded before by a pair of drummers one witless and both barefoot and by a trumpeter who marched with one arm raised above his head in a martial gesture and playing the while. In this manner they passed through the standing portals of the governor’s palace, over the worn stone sills and into the courtyard where the broomed hooves of the mercenaries’ shoeless horses subsided upon the cobbles with a curious turtlelike clatter.
Hundreds of onlookers pressed about as the dried scalps were counted out upon the stones. Soldiers with muskets kept back the crowds and young girls watched the Americans with huge black eyes and boys crept forth to touch the grisly trophies. There were one hundred and twenty-eight scalps and eight heads and the governor’s lieutenant and his retinue came down into the courtyard to welcome them and admire their work. They were promised full payment in gold at the dinner to be held in their honor that evening at the Riddle and Stephens Hotel and with this the Americans sent up a cheer and mounted their horses again. Old women in black rebozos ran forth to kiss the hems of their reeking shirts and hold up their dark little hands in blessing and the riders wheeled their gaunted mounts and pushed through the clamoring multitude and into the street.
They moved on to the public baths where they descended one by one into the waters, each more pale than the one before and all tattooed, branded, sutured, the great puckered scars inaugurated God knows where by what barbarous surgeons across chests and abdomens like the tracks of gigantic millipedes, some deformed, fingers missing, eyes, their foreheads and arms stamped with letters and numbers as if they were articles requiring inventory. Citizens of both sexes withdrew along the walls and watched the water turn into a thin gruel of blood and filth and none could take their eyes from the judge who had disrobed last of all and now walked the perimeter of the baths with a cigar in his mouth and a regal air, testing the waters with one toe, surprisingly petite. He shone like the moon so pale he was and not a hair to be seen anywhere upon that vast corpus, not in any crevice nor in the great bores of his nose and not upon his chest nor in his ears nor any tuft at all above his eyes nor to the lids thereof. The immense and gleaming dome of his naked skull looked like a cap for bathing pulled down to the otherwise darkened skin of his face and neck. As that great bulk lowered itself into the bath the waters rose perceptibly and when he had submerged himself to the eyes he looked about with considerable pleasure, the eyes slightly crinkled, as if he were smiling under the water like some pale and bloated manatee surfaced in a bog while behind his small and close-set ear the wedged cigar smoked gently just above the waterline.
By now merchants had spread their wares all along the clay tiles behind them, suits of European cloth and cut and shirts of colored silks and closenapped beaver hats and fine Spanish leather boots, silverheaded canes and riding crops and silvermounted saddles and carven pipes and hideout guns and a group of Toledo swords with ivory hilts and nicely chased blades and barbers were setting up chairs to receive them, crying out the names of celebrated patrons upon whom they had attended, and all of these entrepreneurs assuring the company of credit on the most generous terms.
When they crossed the square attired in their new haberdashery, some with coatsleeves barely past their elbows, the scalps were being strung about the iron fretwork of the gazebo like decorations for some barbaric celebration. The severed heads had been raised on poles above the lampstandards where they now contemplated with their caved and pagan eyes the dry hides of their kinsmen and forebears strung across the stone facade of the cathedral and clacking lightly in the wind. Later when the lamps were lit the heads in the soft glare of the uplight assumed the look of tragic masks and within a few days they would become mottled white and altogether leprous with the droppings of the birds that roosted upon them.
This Angel Trias who was governor had been sent abroad as a young man for his education and was widely read in the classics and was a student of languages. He was also a man among men and the rough warriors he’d hired for the protection of the state seemed to warm something in him. When the lieutenant invited Glanton and his officers to dine Glanton replied that he and his men did not keep separate mess. The lieutenant yielded the point with a smile and Trias had done the same. They arrived in good order, shaved and shorn and turned out in their new boots and finery, the Delawares strangely austere and menacing in their morningcoats, all to gather about the table set for them. Cigars were presented and glasses of sherry poured and the governor standing at the head of the table made them welcome and issued orders to his chamberlain that every need be seen to. Soldiers attended them, fetching extra glasses, pouring the wine, lighting cigars from a wick in a silver holder designed for just that purpose. The judge arrived last of all, dressed in a well-cut suit of unbleached linen that had been made for him that very afternoon. Whole bolts of cloth exhausted and squads of tailors as well in that fabrication. His feet were encased in nicely polished gray kid boots and in his hand he held a panama hat that had been spliced together from two such lesser hats by such painstaking work that the joinery did scarcely show at all.
Trias had already taken his seat when the judge made his appearance but no sooner had the governor seen him than he rose again and they shook hands cordially and the governor had him seated at his right and they at once fell into conversation in a tongue none other in that room spoke at all saving for random vile epithets drifted down from the north. The expriest was sat opposite the kid and he raised his brows and motioned toward the head of the table with a swing of his eyes. The kid, in the first starched collar he’d ever owned and the first cravat, sat mute as a tailor’s dummy at that board.
By now the table was fully commenced and there was a tandem run of dishes, fish and fowl and beef and wild meats of the countryside and a roast shoat on a platter and casseroles of savories and trifles and glaces and bottles of wine and brandy from the vineyards at El Paso. Patriotic toasts were drunk, the governor’s aides raising their glasses to Washington and Franklin and the Americans responding with yet more of their own country’s heroes, ignorant alike of diplomacy and any name at all from the pantheon of their sister republic. They fell to and they continued to eat until they had exhausted first the banquet and then the larder of the hotel altogether. Couriers were sent abroad through the city to fetch more only to have this also vanish and more sent for until Riddle’s cook barricaded the door with his body and the soldiers in attendance took to simply dumping great trays of pastries, fried meatskins, rounds of cheese—whatever they could find—out upon the table.