DC03 - Though Mountains Fall (4 page)

A
fter breakfast on Monday morning Caleb hitched a horse to the buggy and took Domingo with him to Hacienda El Prado. The village at the feet of the hacienda was buzzing with activity, as usual whenever the
haciendado
was present on his estate. Don Hidalgo only visited El Prado for a few weeks at planting time and harvest, dividing the rest of his year between New York and Paris, so the peons and merchants who lived at his beck and call kept themselves very busy whenever he was in attendance. Caleb drove through the village, past the beautiful stone church with its oak trees and graveyard, right up to the ivy-swathed gates of the hacienda itself. Two armed guards met him there and, after relieving Domingo of his gun belt, waved them through.

The main house sat on a hill well back from the gates, shadowed in the rear by a sprawling flower garden dotted with shade trees, marble benches, and shallow ponds where exotic fish meandered in the shade of weeping willows and arched-stone footbridges. Caleb left his buggy with a stableboy while he and Domingo went on up to the back entrance of the main
house. Yet another armed guard frisked them before leading them through a maze of hallways to a waiting room crowded with a dozen barefoot Mexican peasants.

They didn’t wait long. When Hidalgo’s minion came out and saw an American face he ushered Caleb into Hidalgo’s grand library ahead of everyone else, explaining that Caleb was, after all, a landowner. But when Domingo got up to come with him, the butler’s eyebrows went up.

“Your peon can wait here,” he said.

It took Caleb a second to get his meaning, but then he hung back, his eyes narrowing.

“Domingo Zapara is no peon,” he said. “He is my
friend
, and he goes where I go.”

Despite the fact that Domingo was a head taller the butler still managed to look down his nose at him for a second, then sniffed and said in a distinctly condescending tone, “
Muy bien
. Follow me.”

Hidalgo’s cavernous library, with its high frescoed ceiling, exquisitely crafted mahogany woodwork, and Persian carpets was without a doubt the most opulent room Caleb had ever seen, and it was only one small part of a house large enough to contain twenty such rooms.

“Señor Bender!” Hidalgo rose from behind a massive, ornately carved desk, greeted Caleb with a warm handshake, and ushered him to a leather chair in front of his desk. He ignored Domingo, who remained standing quietly behind Caleb, hat in hand.

Hidalgo seated himself behind the desk and folded his hands on the blotter. His hands were soft, the nails neatly manicured. Ten years younger than Caleb, the haciendado carried himself like royalty and he was dressed like a politician. His smile faded as he spoke.

“Fuentes wrote to me about the bandit attack last summer, Señor Bender. We were all deeply saddened to hear of the loss of your son. A terrible tragedy. It must have been a very difficult time for your family.”

Caleb nodded gravely. “Sí, we miss him badly, especially now, with spring planting to do. He was a good son, and an able worker.”

“I was also informed that one of your daughters was taken, but she was later restored to you. Is this true?”

“Sí. Rachel was kidnapped, but this young man”—Caleb glanced over his shoulder at Domingo—“and another were able to rescue her.”

“Sí, that is the story I heard. You are lucky, Señor Bender. This El Pantera is a very bad man.”

Caleb nodded. Pictures of his son’s last moments flashed across his mind’s eye. A bad man indeed.

“This is what I came to talk to you about, Don Hidalgo. El Pantera. Even now he makes plans to attack us. They say he is full of rage and he seeks revenge.”

Hidalgo’s head turned, just a notch, so that the stare he fastened on Caleb seemed slightly wary. “And what will you do?”

Caleb looked down at the hat in his lap, already sensing resistance in the haciendado’s language.
What will
you
do?

“We were hoping you might help us.”

Hidalgo nodded. “Sí, I will be happy to help. I have told you before, Señor Bender, you and your people are welcome behind the walls of the hacienda when bandits attack. You will be safe here.”

Caleb sighed. “Gracias, Don Hidalgo. We are grateful for your protection, but you must understand that we are farmers. Even if we run to the hacienda, our livestock will be slaughtered, our houses and barns burned. We would lose everything.”

Hidalgo squinted at him, puzzled. “Then perhaps you should band together and defend your farms from these men. There are ten families in your valley now, are there not?”

“Sí, but we cannot fight. It is against the laws of our Gott to take up arms against our fellow man.”

“Bandits—vermin, rabid dogs,” Hidalgo said with a shrug.

“Men, still,” Caleb answered evenly. “Made by the hand of Gott. I talked it over with the others, and it seems to all of us that the only solution to our problems is to bring
federales
to the valley. If there are troops here, the bandits will stay away. But Señor Montoya—the official in Monterrey you recommended to us—he wanted money. Señor Hidalgo, we have given you nearly all the money we have to buy the land.”

Hidalgo leaned back in his chair and a leery smile came into his eyes. He nodded slowly. “I see. You have come to ask me to pay Señor Montoya’s bribe so he will send troops here to protect you.”

Caleb nodded thinly. “Sí, though I still don’t understand why a bribe must be paid at all. Montoya is a government official. Don’t they pay him a salary?”

Hidalgo chuckled. “This is Mexico, Señor Bender. Montoya’s salary as a civil servant is a token. Anyway, why would any man aspire to such an office if there were no way to profit from it?”

Caleb’s hopes were fading. The tone of Hidalgo’s voice had already told him what his answer would be.

Hidalgo leaned forward, once again clasping his hands on his desk.

“Señor Bender, I have the deepest respect for you and your people. You have worked very hard to build a homestead here in our mountains, and you have gained the trust of all those around you. But if you will not defend your own farms how can you expect someone else to defend them for you?”

“In America there were policemen to protect the innocent.”

Hidalgo’s eyes narrowed. He took a deep breath and exhaled through his nose like a little hiss of steam. “America is a
rich
country with plenty of policemen to go around. But Mexico is a poor country, and we have just been through a bitter revolution. In Mexico these days there is never enough of
anything
to go around.”

As he was speaking a paneled door opened behind him and a woman in the full regalia of a Mexican baroness glided silently into the room. Her face, her bearing, matched a regal portrait in a gilded frame hanging on the wall directly behind Hidalgo’s desk. His wife. Caleb glanced up at her, and Hidalgo, following his glance, turned and saw her. He held up a finger and said, “I will be with you in a moment,
mi amor
.”

She nodded, and remained.

Hidalgo stared at Caleb a minute longer as if waiting for a rebuttal, but Caleb could think of nothing more to say.

“My offer stands,” Hidalgo said, and there was an air of finality in his tone, like the banging of a gavel. “You may bring your people here, behind the walls of the hacienda, and I will guarantee their safety. But with all due respect, Señor Bender, it makes no sense for me to pay a king’s ransom for troops when I have no need of them myself.”

Caleb nodded, his jaw working, his eyes downcast. The irony of Hidalgo’s words seemed lost on Hidalgo himself. But Caleb, with a farmer’s common sense, saw quite clearly the hypocrisy of an aristocrat, sitting in the grand library of his palatial estate with his fine clothes and manicured nails, complaining that there was not enough to go around. Caleb braced his palms on the arms of the chair to rise, but Domingo’s hand pressed firmly on his shoulder. Domingo came around him then and leaned his fists on the edge of Hidalgo’s desk, glaring at the haciendado.

Hidalgo bristled, staring up at him. There was only indignation in his eyes. The man was too powerful to fear any peasant.

“Don Hidalgo,” Domingo said softly, with a little bow of the head to show at least the pretense of respect, “I think in his haste my American
amigo
has failed to mention one or two things that may interest you. First, everyone knows Hacienda El Prado enjoyed the favor of Pancho Villa, and while he lived none of his men would dare lift a hand against you. But Pancho Villa is dead.” Again, Caleb noticed Domingo making the sign of the cross on his chest as he said this. “You no longer have him to protect you, my haciendado, and if El Pantera comes all this way with a hundred armed men, do you really think he will be satisfied with the spoils of a few poor
gringo
campesinos
?”

Caleb glanced up at Hidalgo’s wife. Her eyes widened perceptibly.

Domingo leaned a little closer to Hidalgo and said very calmly, “El Pantera will never stop with the outlying farms, Don Hidalgo, and you know it. His men are fierce and well-trained. They learned how to storm a hacienda during the Revolution. You and your family can sail away to Europe if you wish, but when you return your fancy furniture and your beautiful paintings will be gone, and your grand hacienda will be a smoking pile of rubble.”

Caleb caught a glimpse of outright fear in Hidalgo’s wife’s face, and the involuntary opening of her mouth before she raised a black-lace fan to hide it.

There was fire in Hidalgo’s eyes, and his chair slid back roughly as he rose to his full height, jerking stiffly at the hem of his tunic.

“Your audience is at an end, Señor Bender. I will not be intimidated in my own house. My servant will show you out.”
With a hard glare at Domingo he added, “And take your insolent peon with you!”

———

Driving back home, neither of them said anything until they were clear of the hacienda village and Caleb quietly asked, “What do you think he will do?”

Domingo laughed out loud. “Did you see the look on his wife’s face when she heard what would happen to her lovely hacienda? You are a married man, Señor Bender—you tell
me
what he will do.”

Caleb couldn’t suppress a grin, though the ethics of it bothered him a little. “It was wrong to lie to him, Domingo. El Pantera doesn’t have a hundred men.”

Domingo met this with a shrug. “It was not exactly a lie. I only asked what he will do
if
El Pantera comes with a hundred men. I did not say he would.”

In the evening, just before sundown when the Benders were gathered at the supper table, Caleb heard hoofbeats rounding the house and went to the back door to see who it was.

Diego Fuentes, Hidalgo’s right-hand man and overseer of his estate, cantered up to the corral on his big black Friesian. As he climbed down from his silver-studded saddle Caleb strolled out to see what he wanted.

“I have something for you,” Fuentes said, handing him an envelope bearing only the name Montoya on the front. “I am told it contains a letter and a
cheque
. Don Hidalgo instructed me to give it to you, and that you would know what to do with it. He said he would have attended to the matter himself but he is far too busy with the affairs of his estate just now.”

Caleb smiled, running a rough thumb over the fancy wax
seal. “The haciendado is a proud man. Tell Don Hidalgo it will be done, and tell him
muchas
gracias.”

Caleb hitched the surrey and left two hours before daylight the next morning, picking up Domingo in San Rafael and making it to Arteaga in time to catch the afternoon train to Monterrey. They arrived in the bureaucrat’s office bright and early the next morning. Once Caleb presented Hidalgo’s cheque he found Montoya much more amenable than he had been on Caleb’s last visit. There were no federales available at the moment, Montoya said, but he promised an entire company within a fortnight.

“I only hope they will not come too late,” Caleb said.

They caught the train back to Arteaga before nightfall, shaving a whole day off the trip—a good thing, since there was planting to be done. Camping by a little stream outside Arteaga for the night, Domingo seemed preoccupied. The young native had never been talkative, but for the last two days he’d said virtually nothing. Sitting across the campfire from him that evening, Caleb found out why.