A Ballad of Love and Glory(26)
She took a deep breath, looked at Cortina, and said, “I don’t need your protection. But I do want one thing from you. That you tell the Yanqui general where to find his dead men.”
His eyes were on Joaquín, not on her when he said, “I don’t know where he left Lieutenant Porter, but I do know where Falcón left Colonel Cross.”
“I don’t want them left to putrefy in the chaparral, Cheno,” she said. “If their souls are left to wander, so might Joaquín’s. Will you promise, then?”
“Sí. Te lo prometo.”
* * *
At daybreak the next morning, they rode out from the rancho in silence. Cortina and his men up front, Ramiro and the few remaining ranch hands in the rear behind their families riding in the wagons. Ximena was seated on the extra horse Cheno had brought and did not speak to any of them. They respected her need for silence, even Nana Hortencia, who secluded herself in the carriage with the house servants, leaving Ximena to her thoughts. She kept her eyes looking ahead and did not turn back to see the smoke and ruin behind her.
The route to Matamoros was a well-traveled and hard-packed dirt road. As they traversed the open plains, the road was wide and the sights were beautiful—the prairie alive with the swaying of luxuriant grasses as the wind whispered through the blue-green blades, salvias and lupine, golden Zizia, Herbertia, and globe mallow pulsing in a wave of colors under the sun, the air radiant with butterflies. In other times, Ximena would have wanted to stop and immerse herself in the beauty around her, to say a prayer of gratitude to the earth for its blessed gifts, but now, neither the wildflowers, nor the singing of the green jays from the thicket of blooming huisaches, nor the clamorous calls of the whooping cranes wading in the water holes could lift her spirits. A small herd of wild mustangs roamed in the distance, and she thought of Joaquín, of how if he’d been here, he would have given them chase. But now he was gone. As was their house. What would become of her and her grandmother?
As they neared the river, the chaparral began to take over the prairie, becoming thicker and thicker as they continued on the road. A family of javelinas wallowed in a shallow resaca, grunting in contentment. Ximena could hear the chip-chip-chip of the quail feasting on the red berries of a desertthorn. The ground cuckoos nesting within the thick spiny shrubs greeted them cheerfully with their cuc-cuc-cuc. How could these birds find any joy living among thorns? But then she latched on to another sound. A solitary Inca dove perched on a drooping paloverde branch called to her, its melancholy coos echoing the mourning of her soul. No hope, no hope, no hope.
They came upon General Antonio Canales and his guerrilleros, who were also on their way to the ferry crossing. “We heard what happened to Joaquín Trevi?o,” Canales said to Cheno after the men greeted each other. He turned to Ximena and said, “Lo siento, se?ora.”
She nodded but didn’t feel like conversing with the guerrilleros Joaquín had become involved with. A few years earlier, Canales had persuaded more than five hundred rancheros to join him in rebelling against the Mexican government to establish the Republic of the Río Grande, carved out of the states of Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas. But unlike the Texas Rebellion, his insurrection had been squashed by the Mexican forces, and now here he was, serving as a spy for the Mexican general. Ximena had even heard rumors that while Taylor was camped in Corpus Christi, Canales offered his services to him in exchange for help in making his dream of the Republic of the Río Grande into reality. Taylor had refused his offer, or at least that was what the rumors said.
She glanced at Canales and wondered if he was double-crossing the Mexicans. If so, he was in for a big surprise. The Yanquis cared only about their own dream. In helping the enemy win the war, Canales would only ensure his own displacement. The same had happened to her father. Just like Juan Seguín and other Tejanos, he’d made friends with some of the norteamericanos who’d settled in Texas. He’d admired their industry and advanced machinery, and with awe had watched as San Felipe de Austin and other Anglo settlements flourished while San Antonio stagnated. As young as Ximena was at the time, she had understood something her father had not—that the economic success of the white villages was thanks to enslaved labor. She, unlike her father, had no admiration for the Anglo colonists. But her father had even hired a tutor to teach his children and him English, though Ximena turned out to be the best pupil. In the end, her father’s admiration and friendliness to the norteamericanos would prove his undoing.
They traversed the dense chaparral in silence, squeezing through the narrow, winding passage in single file until it eventually widened as they neared the Paso Real crossing, where the ferry would take them to Matamoros. They could see the perimeter of the Yanqui encampment at a bend on the northern shore, and the cannons pointed directly at Matamoros. But even more menacing than the cannons was the flag of stars and stripes rising over the newly built fort, a blatant proclamation of possession and ownership of a land that was not theirs to claim.
Cheno pulled up alongside Ximena to observe the enemy’s flag. “They’re here to provoke a war,” he said. “And if it’s a war they want, then it’s war they’ll get.”
“Didn’t we learn anything from Texas?” she said, incensed. “Mexico lost Texas long before its rebellion, from the time our government first allowed them to immigrate to the region. And now here we are again, conceding another Yanqui invasion.”