The Diezmo by Rick Bass (top fiction books of all time TXT) 📗

and had even been hinting at suicide, he said, for “release from this painful thralldom.”

The first day out of Monterrey, en route to the next village, Saltillo, Cameron approached us one by one and told us to be ready. We languished for weeks in Saltillo, however, without an opportunity—and growing weaker—and then were marched farther south, to Hacienda del Salado, where Cameron told us that this time we had to escape, or die, and that we would make our attempt the next morning.

Only Charles Reese was solidly against the escape plan. He pointed out that we were now more than three hundred miles from home, an observation that infuriated Cameron. Reese shook his head and argued further. “Even if you man age to escape into the countryside, the local militias will cut you down.”

It was his use of the word you rather than us that made me think afterward that he was the one who tipped off the officer directly in charge of guarding us—Colonel Barragan. The next morning, with all of us waiting anxiously for some sign from Cameron, we were surprised to see that Barragan checked in on us an hour earlier than usual. He seemed extraordinarily suspicious, and some accused Reese outright of having alerted him. The more charitable among us—of whom I was not one—believed that Reese had escape plans of his own and was concerned that our attempt might jeopardize them.

Regardless, the plan was foiled that day, and later that night Cameron urged Reese once more to change his mind, warning him that the break would need to be made very soon, maybe even the next day, and even if he had to make it “all alone and single-handed.”

Reese remained unconvinced. “You have sinned away your days of grace,” he told us that night, staring into the fire and speaking calmly. “What was courage and wisdom on one side of the border would be madness and weakness on this side. There is only this one earthly life,” Reese said. “Regardless of your beliefs in a hereafter, or a merciful God, we are flesh but once, and our choices must be made wisely.”

Bigfoot Wallace was listening, pensive for once, but Cameron cursed and rose from the fire and stalked away.

Our sleep was fitful, and my fishing acquaintances and I visited late into the night, speaking not so much of war or freedom but about the homes we had left behind.

Jimmy Pinn spoke of the berry cobbler that his mother made each Sunday in the spring, and Curtis Haieber told of going turkey hunting with his father.

“I even miss the work,” I told them, “digging stumps, hauling stones out of the field, plowing, cutting stovewood. It wasn’t any more tiring than this, and you felt better at the end of the day.”

In that younger life, there had been a security, even sanctity, in the regular cycles and rhythms, even if harsh. And were not these things—bygone, now—every bit as much the essence of freedom as our current campaign for contested, distant territories?

We were still just children. We talked into the night about all the things that were most precious to us, and, I think, without ever speaking directly about it, we formed the necessary courage that would be required in the morning—to take on our armed captors barehanded, and to be prepared to fight, again, to the death.

Since Monterrey we had been receiving rice for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, which was a wonderful improvement over beans. I still carried a dusty fistful of dried beans in my coat pocket as an emergency ration, but now that we had new stores of rice, our spirits were better, and we were no longer beset by the diarrhea that had begun to plague us. Occasionally, as they had with the beans, our captors threw in a few scraps of meat: hoofs, gristle, ears, tongues, internal organs. Any offal they did not want was ours. A dead snake encountered in the middle of the trail. The shell of an armadillo. A vulture that one of their marksmen shot from the sky, the great black bird plummeting from such a height that it exploded upon impact, leaving only a smeared mess, and feathers.

That next morning, Colonel Barragan checked in on us early again before heading into the hills for his morning ride with Green, Fisher, Canales, and Ampudia, as well as Shepherd, who continued to ride with Ampudia. We kept spooning rice from our gourds, watching the officers’ cavalry grow more distant, and when they were tiny specks, Ewen Cameron tossed his hat high into the air where all could see it, and with a wild whoop he charged the two guards at the gate, knocking them both to the ground, and with our own wild roars the storm of us poured through the gate and fell upon our startled captors as they were still eating their own breakfast.

One irregular, John Robson, had made a weapon by wrapping a stone in his coat and swinging it around and around, leveling any soldier who came near him. He spun through the Mexicans like a tornado, with others trailing in his wake, and we were able to get to the cache of rifles just steps ahead of the soldiers.

On the trail, they might have been our benefactors at times, and even, occasionally, our commiserates, but now we fell upon them and mowed them down—swinging stone-coats, firing rifles, and even turning their own cannon upon them. Bigfoot Wallace had seized a bayonet and was fighting hand to hand. There was pain in our captors’ faces, but what I remember more were the expressions of surprise and sorrow.

A soldier and a Texan wrestled for a musket, and the musket discharged at such close range that the powder burns ignited the Texan’s ragged coat. He ran howling among us and leapt into one of the horses’ watering troughs.

More a way station for supplies and a crude military fortress than a true village, Hacienda del Salado