The news reporter said he didn't live near the yards, fortunately, and noticed Moon looking at his wife with an amused expression and then shaking his head; just a faint movement. The man seemed to get a kick out of her. He said, “What do you know about Chicago stockyards?” She answered him, “I visited there with my dad when I was little and have never felt the urge to go back.” Strange, having a conversation like that in front of everyone.
Moon said, “Maurice, shake hands with a veteran of the War of the Rebellion and a cavalryman twenty-four years.”
This was the young reporter's introduction to Bo Catlett, whom he had already heard about and who did not disappoint him in his appearance, with his high boots and felt campaign hat low over his eyes. Bo Catlett's expression was kindly, yet he was mean and hard-looking in that he seemed the type who would never hold his hat in his hand and stand aside or give an inch, certainly not give up his horse ranch. The other two colored men wore boots also, standing the way cavalrymen seem to pose, and appeared just as fit and ready as Bo Catlett. There were three more former members of the Tenth up with their families or tending the herds.
Red, the little Mimbre Apache, said something in Spanish to Moon and Moon said, “He thought, when you rode up and commenced making signs, you were asking him how old he was, how many moons, till you stuck your tongue in your cheek.”
The Apaches sat along the edge of the porch, Maurice Dumas noticed, while all the others stood around. (Did it mean Indians were lazy by nature?, Maurice wondered. Or smart enough to squat when they got the chance?)
The news reporter wouldn't have minded sitting down himself in one of those cane rocking chairs. But first he had to meet Armando Duro-and his young son Eladio who was about eighteen-and this introduction turned into something he never expected.
Maurice had a feeling Moon had saved Armando until last out of deference, for he seemed especially polite and careful as he addressed him in Spanish, nodding toward Maurice as Maurice caught the words Chicago Times. Was the Mexican impressed?
The young news reporter was, for he had heard the name Armando Duro before, though he had not known this fiery champion of Mexican land rights was living in these mountains.
Here he was now rattling off Spanish a mile a minute, his son and his companions nodding in agreement while Moon listened intently at first, then seemed to get tired of hanging on and shifted his weight from one foot to the other as Armando went on and on. When there was a pause Maurice said quickly, “I'd like to interview Señor Duro if I could.”
Moon said, “If you can get a word in.” Armando's eyes darted from the news reporter to Moon. “And if you-si puede hablar en Español. Can you?”
“Doesn't he speak English?”
“When he wants to,” Moon said. “It depends if he's in one of his royal pain-in-the-ass moods or not.”
If the Mexican could understand him, how come Moon was saying this in front of him? Evidently because Moon had only so much patience with the man and had run out.
Following Moon's less than kind remark, Armando turned to the young news reporter and said in English, “Will you print the truth for a change if I give it to you?”
What kind of question was that? Maurice Dumas said the Times always printed the truth.
“The twisting of truth to fit your purpose,” Armando said, “is the same as a lie.”
Maurice didn't know what the man was talking about because the paper had hardly ever printed anything about Armando Duro or Mexican land rights to begin with. It was an old issue, settled in court, dead and buried. But since the man did represent the Mexican community here, some eighty or ninety people living on scattered farms and sheep pastures, Maurice decided he'd better pay attention.
He said, “Well, I suppose you see this present situation as an opportunity to air your complaints once again, bring them into the open.” Maurice heard Moon groan and knew he had said the wrong thing.
Sure enough.
Armando started talking, taking them back to the time of Spanish land grants and plodding on through the war with Mexico and the Gadsden Purchase to explain why their acreage, their sheep graze, their golden fields of corn and bean patches belonged to them as if by divine succession and not to a mining company from a state named for a small island in the English Channel (which Maurice Dumas had not realized before this).
Bo Catlett and the colored troopers shuffled around or leaned against a wagon. Moon would continue to shift from one foot to another. His wife, what she did was shake her head and go into the house. Even Armando's son and the other Mexicans seemed ready to fall asleep. Only the Apaches, sitting along the edge of the porch, stared at Armando with rapt attention, not having any idea what he was talking about, even though Armando would lapse into fiery Spanish phrases every so often. He reminded the young news reporter of every politician he had ever heard speak, except that Armando talked in bigger circles that included God and kings.
“How am I going to write about all that?” Maurice said to Moon, after.
Moon said, “You picked your line of work, I didn't.”
Armando got a rolled-up sheet of heavy paper from his wagon and came over to the news reporter opening it as you would a proclamation, which is what it was.
“Here,” Armando said, handing it to Maurice, “show this to the mine company and print it in your newspaper so anyone who sees one of these will know it marks the boundary of our land.”
The notice said, in large black letters:
WARNING
Anyone venturing onto
this land uninvited is
TRESPASSING
on property granted by
Royal Decree and witnessed
before God. Trespassers
are not welcome and
will be fired on if they cross this boundary.
Armando Duro
and the
People of the Mountain
Later on, just before Maurice Dumas left to go back down the switchback trail, he said to Moon, “Does that man know what he's doing?”
“It's his idea of the way to do it,” Moon said.
“But that warning's not gonna do any good. You think?”
“Warning?” Moon said. “It reads more like an invitation.”
“Can't you stop him, shut him up?”
“I suppose,” Moon said, “but the sooner it starts, the sooner it's over, huh?”
6
Moon, Bo Catlett and Red, the leader of the Mimbres, packed up into the high reaches to shoot some game, drink whiskey, have a talk and get away from their women for a few days. Moon said that's all they would have, three days. On the piney shoulder of the mountain where they camped, they could hear the mine company survey crew exploding dynamite as they searched out new ore veins: like artillery off to the west, an army gradually moving closer, having already wiped out several of the Mexican homesites.
Armando Duro had drawn the line and posted his trespass notices, giving himself a printed excuse to start shooting. But how did you tell a man like Armando he was a fool? Armando was not a listener, he was a talker.
Moon, in the high camp, took out a roughsketch map he'd drawn and laid it on the pine needles for Bo Catlett and Red to look at, Moon pointing: little squares were homes and farms, though maybe he was missing some; the circles were graze. X's marked the areas where the survey crews had been working.
Here, scattered over the pastureland in the Western foothills, the Mexican homesteads. How would you defend them?