The Adventurers Read online

My mother was at the doorway even before we reached the galena. "Quickly. A la bodega!" she hissed. "The wine cellar."

  We pushed through the doorway. La Perla, the fat Indian cook, was standing behind my mother. She took me from my sister and began to hurry through the house to the pantry off the kitchen. Behind us I heard the click of the heavy bolt on the front door.

  "What is it, La Perla?" I asked. "Donde esta Papa?"

  She held me tighter to her heavy bosom. "Shh, nino."

  The pantry door was open and we clattered down the cellar steps. The other servants were there already, their faces dark and frightened in the shadows cast by the small candle burning on top of a wine barrel.

  La Perla set me down on a small bench. "Now sit there and be quiet!"

  I looked up at her. This was fun, I thought, more fun than playing in the yard. It was a new kind of game.

  La Perla hastened up the stairs again. I could hear her hoarse voice shouting above me. A moment later my sister came down, and there were tears running down her cheeks. She ran over to me and put her arms around my neck and pulled my head down to her chest.

  I pulled away angrily. Her chest hurt my face. It was bony. It wasn't comforting and soft and warm like La Perla's. "Leave me alone," I said.

  My mother came down the steps, her face drawn and thin. I heard the sound of the heavy cellar door being slammed and bolted, and then La Perla came too, her face red from the exertion. In her hand she held a huge cleaver, the one she used to chop off the heads of the chickens.

  Mother looked down at me. "Are you all right?" "Si, Mama," I said. "But Perro ran away. He ran into the cane field. I couldn't find him."

  But she wasn't listening. She was trying to hear any sounds from the outside. It was a waste of time. No sound could penetrate this far into the ground.

  One of the servant girls suddenly began to cry hysterically.

  "Shut up!" La Perla hissed, with a threatening gesture of the cleaver. "Do you want them to hear us? Do you want to get us all killed?"

  The girl shut up. I was glad that La Perla had made her because my sister stopped crying too. I didn't like her to cry. Her face gets all ugly and red.

  I held my breath and tried to listen. I could hear nothing. "Mama—"

  "Quiet, Dax," she whispered sternly.

  I had a question to ask. "Where's Papa?"

  At that my sister began to cry again.

  "Shut up!" my mother hissed, then turned to me. "Papa will be here in a little while. But we must be very quiet until he comes. Comprende?"

  I nodded. I turned to look at my sister. She was sobbing under her breath now. I could see that she was frightened but there was no real reason for her to cry. I reached out for her hand. "No tengas miedo," I whispered. "I am here."

  Somehow a smile pushed its way through her tears. She pulled me close. "My little hero," she whispered. "My protector."

  The thud of heavy boots came from the ceiling overhead. Suddenly they seemed to be all over the house.

  "Los bandoleros!" one of the maids screamed. "They will kill us!"

  "Shut up!" This time La Perla did more than speak. Her hand flashed in the dim light. The maid tumbled to the floor whimpering softly. The footsteps seemed to be coming toward the kitchen.

  "The candle!" my mother whispered hoarsely. The small light went out abruptly. We sat there in the blackness.

  "Mama, I can't see," I said.

  I felt a hand press across my mouth. I tried to see in the dark but all I could do was listen to the sounds of the others breathing. The footsteps were over our heads now. They seemed to be in the kitchen.

  I heard the crash of a table as it was overturned and dimly the voices of men, the sound of their laughter. There was the creak of a door, and now they were in the pantry. The cellar door rattled. I could now hear their voices more clearly.” The chickens must be hiding down there," one of them said, and there was a sound of laughter.

  "Cock a doodle doo," another crowed. "Your rooster is here."

  There was a kick at the door. "Abre la puerta!"

  I could feel the girls shrinking back against the wall. I felt my sister shiver. "They're only looking for chickens," I whispered. "Tell them they're in the coop back of the house."

  No one answered. They didn't seem to mind any more if I spoke. La Perla pushed past me in the darkness and stood at the foot of the steps waiting. A heavy blow against the door reverberated through the cellar.

  One of the maids fell to her knees and began to pray hysterically as there was another crash from above. A panel of the door gave way and then it sprang open, as a stream of light came tumbling down the steps to reveal La Perla standing there, resolute as a rock, the cleaver reflecting the light like a silvered mirror.

  Some men came down the stairs. There were three that I could see. The others were behind, so all I could see were their legs.

  The first one stopped when he saw La Perla. "An old fat hen. Not worth the bother." He knelt slightly and peered under the overhang. "But there are others. Young and juicy ones. The old hen stands guard on her flock."

  "Bastardos!" La Perla said through her teeth.

  The man straightened up almost negligently and the short-barreled musket in his hand exploded with a blinding flash.

  The acrid smell of gunpowder was strong in my nostrils and as my eyes cleared I could see La Perla stagger back against the wall opposite the steps. She seemed to hang there suspended for a moment, then began slowly to slide down the wall. The side of her face and neck was completely gone. There was nothing but a raw red mass of flesh and bone.

  "La Perla!"

  My mother screamed and ran toward her. Almost without effort the man seemed to reverse the musket in his hand and club my mother across the head as she ran past him. She collapsed suddenly, falling across La Perla's body with a curiously crumpled look on her face.

  "Mama!" I started to run toward her but my sister's fingers were like vises and I couldn't move. "Mama!" I screamed again.

  The servant girl who had been praying fainted, sprawling grotesquely out on the floor. The man came down off the last step, stepping over La Perla and my mother. He looked down for a moment at the servant, then rolled her casually out of the way with his foot. The others pushed down the steps behind him. There were eleven of them.

  He noticed the candle on the barrel. "La candela," he said, gesturing.

  One of the men struck a match. Its yellow light danced eerily in the cellar. The leader looked around at us. "Ah, four pullets and a young cock."

  My sister's voice came from behind me. It suddenly sounded older and more full bodied than I had ever heard it. "What do you want?" she asked. "Take what you will and go."

  The man stared at her for a moment. His eyes were black and they shone like coals. "This one is mine," he said casually. "You are welcome to the others."

  The girl who had fainted came to her senses just in time to hear. She screamed and scrambled to her feet. She tried to run past the others toward the stairs but one of them caught her by her long loose black hair. He jerked her back, and she stumbled backward to her knees. He turned her toward him, holding her head back until her face was almost turned completely up to him, her mouth open, gasping for air. With his free hand he ripped at the front of her dress but the coarse cotton was too strong. It wouldn't tear.

  With an angry curse he let her go, then his hand came up with a knife. It slashed quickly down the front of the dress. The coarse shift fell away like the husk from an ear of corn. A thin pencil-like streak, starting at her throat and running down between her breasts and across her brown Indian belly into the heavy matting of pubic hair, suddenly began to well crimson. She screamed and tried to get away, scrambling on her hands and knees, but he laughed aloud and pulled her back by her hair.

  She tried to get away again. Quickly he reversed the knife in his hand and hooked the butt end viciously upward between her legs, and this time she screamed in pure agony.

  She cru
mpled to the floor at his feet, writhing in pain. The sharp blade end of the knife reflected the crazy yellow lights from the candle as it stuck upright from between her legs. He put his heavily booted foot on her belly to hold her still and started to pull at the rope belt that held up his pantalones.

  By now the others were at the other servant girls. Niella, who was my mother's personal maid, was already stripped naked and bent backward across a wine barrel, held on either side by a bandolero as a third began to mount her. Sarah, the Indian girl La Perla had brought down from the hills to help in the kitchen, was sprawled on the floor on the other side of the cellar behind a row of wooden crates.

  The leader turned. His broad body blocked the rest of the room. "Get rid of the boy," he said quietly, "or I will kill him."

  My sister began to push me away.

  I turned to look up at her face. It was dull and glazed. Her eyes seemed to have no life in them. "No! No!" I screamed.

  "Go behind the boxes in the corner and do not look," she said. It wasn't her voice. It was a stranger's voice, cold and distant. One I had never heard before.

  "No!"

  The sharp sting of her slap ran down my cheek. "Vaya! Do as I say!"

  It wasn't the pain. It was the note of authority in her voice. I began to cry.

  "Go!"

  Rubbing my eyes, I turned away and huddled down behind the boxes. I was still crying. Suddenly I started to wet my pants. How quickly we learn the meaning of fear.

  CHAPTER 2

  It was my sister's penetrating scream that stopped my tears. They seemed to dry up inside me as a wave of intense blinding hate coursed through me. I sucked in my breath and held it as I raised my head and peered over the boxes.

  My sister's back was to me and her naked buttocks were twisting violently as the bandolero forced her backward toward a crate. Her nails clawed at his face, leaving a red welter of scratches, but he slapped her viciously and she fell backward across the crate.

  Her mouth was open and she was screaming but no sound was coming from her lips. Her eyes were wild as they stared up at me without seeing. Her little tetas were stretched flat across her chest bones and her belly was almost a concave hollow.

  Suddenly I knew what he was going to do. I had seen enough bulls when the cows were led to them. I looked at the bandolero as his pantalones fell about his legs. His belly was a thick matted rug of hair from which his swollen manhood rose like the white shaft of the broom that was used to sweep the galena.

  She tried to get up and away but he leaned down on one hairy elbow, resting it in the pit of her stomach, and with his open hand around her throat, he pinned her back against the crate, almost choking her. She screamed again and bucked, sliding away from him, but he cursed and increased the pressure against her throat. She bucked and writhed and angrily he swiped his hand across her face. Her head hit viciously against the side of the crate.

  For a fraction of a second he was still, half suspended in the air above her, seemingly balanced on himself. Then she screamed again and shuddered. Slowly he disappeared into her as her screams faded away to a low agonized moan.

  He moved again on her. Twice more he seemed to tear into her, and then a peculiar agony of his own seemed to overtake him as a curious shuddering animal-like cry escaped him.

  Just at that moment he looked up and I stared straight into his face. His eyes were glazed and tortured, his mouth open and gasping for air. Then my sister screamed again and I saw the blood bubbling up from her. I felt a hatred rising inside me. I began to tremble. I wanted to kill him.

  I heard something clatter to the wooden floor, and I looked down. The knife had fallen from his belt. Without thought I scrambled over the crate for it. Slowly, as if with a great effort, he turned toward me.

  "Bastardo!" I screamed, plunging it toward his throat with both hands.

  He threw up an arm and the knife flew out of my hands, falling between us. I flung myself at him, trying to hit him with my clenched fists, and almost lazily he swung his open fist at me.

  I spun back off the wall and crashed into the crates. I could no longer feel any pain. There was only hatred and a wish to kill I never before had known. I am not sure if I realized what could happen. I was only aware that nothing mattered. I had to destroy him.

  My sister had twisted her head and was staring at me. Suddenly there was clarity in her eyes. "Dax!" she screamed, grabbing at his hand, the one that now held the knife.

  Angrily he tried to wrench his arm free, half pulling her out from under him. "Dax! Run, por Dios!" she screamed again. "Run!"

  I stood there frozen. He lunged at me.

  "Run, Dax!"He started to lunge again, and suddenly she seemed to cross her legs, pulling her knees together. He screamed in pain.

  "Dax! Run to Papa!"

  This I understood. This got inside me. I whirled and began to run up the cellar steps. I heard another scream behind me.

  It stopped almost in the middle, and I heard him shouting hoarsely, "El nino!"

  I was up the steps and through the house. I burst out into the sunlight. For a moment I was blinded; I could not see. Then I began to run toward the cane fields where Perro had gone. "Papa! Papa!"

  Some men were coming up the road. I didn't know who they were but I ran toward them. I was out past the fence before the first of the bandoleros came out of the house. I streaked down the road screaming hysterically, and then I heard a shout come from up the road, my father's voice.

  "Dax! Dax! Gracias a Dios!"

  "Papa!" I screamed.

  I leaped into his arms crying, "Papa! Papa! Tengo miedo! Don't let them hurt me!" '

  My father's dark face was glistening in the midday heat. He held me closely. "Don't be afraid," he whispered. "No one will hurt you."

  "They hurt Mama," I cried hysterically, "and sister. La Perla is dead, and sister is bleeding."

  I could see my father's face turn ashen under his dark skin. "This is your army, General?" His voice was savagely sarcastic. "They make war on women and children?"

  The slim man standing next to my father stared at him, then those cold gray eyes turned to me. The mouth pressed into a thin line. "If my men have committed any wrongs they will die for them, senor."

  He started toward the house, and the bandoleros who had started after me stopped when they saw him. "El jefe!"

  They shrank back against the wall as we pushed past. The general paused in the doorway and looked back at us. "Where are they?"

  "En la bodega," I said.

  Suddenly my father broke into a run. With me still in his arms he hurtled past the general into the house, through the kitchen, and down the cellar steps.

  He stood there for a moment staring at the havoc. Then he put me down slowly. "Dios mio!" he cried softly, sinking to his knees and raising my mother's head to his lap. "Dios mio!"

  My mother's face was white and very still. Her head seemed to be hanging at a curious angle. I looked across the room for my sister. She still lay across the crate, her head dangling backward. I ran over to her. "It's all right now," I cried. "Papa is here."

  But she didn't hear me. She would never hear me again. The knife was still caught in her larynx where the bandolero had plunged it. I stared at her, disbelieving. Then I screamed.

  For the first time I realized what had happened. They were dead. They were all dead. Mama. My sister. La Perla. All dead. I screamed and screamed and screamed.

  Later, after my father had picked me up and taken me out of that place of blood up into the sunlight, we stood in the courtyard. It was late afternoon, and there were many more men than there had been earlier. There must have been more than a hundred. They were standing around watching silently. Eleven of them were separated from the others. They were tied together, each with a rope leading to the man on either side of him. They stood silently in the bright sunlight against the wall, staring back at their compatriots.

  The general was seated on a chair at the table on the galena. He l
ooked out at them and at the other bandoleros. He spoke quietly but his thin cold voice carried to the farthest among them.

  "Look. And remember. For their punishment will be yours if you, too, forget that you are liberators, not bandoleros. You fight for freedom and for your countrymen, not for your own gain or profit. You are soldiers in the service of your homeland, not looters and rapists."

  He got to his feet and turned to an aide, who placed a submachine gun in his hands. Slowly he turned to my father. He held the gun out toward him. "Senor?"

  My father stared at the gun for a moment, then at the general. He took a deep breath, and turned to look at the men standing against the wall. "No, General," he said softly. "I am a man of law, not of war. The hurt is mine but not the vengeance."

  The general nodded and walked down the steps from the galeria onto the hard, sun-baked earth of the courtyard. Holding the machine gun loosely in his hand, he strolled toward the eleven men. He stopped in front of the first in the line, the man who had raped and killed my sister.

  "You, Garcia," he said quietly, "you I made sergeant. You should have known better."

  The man didn't speak. He stared back into the general's eyes without fear. He knew there would be no mercy and he didn't expect any.

  A knife flashed in the general's hand as he walked down the line. As he stepped away we could see what he had done. The rope belt holding up each man's pantalones had been cut and they fell to the ground exposing their white lower bodies and legs. Slowly the general moved back until he was ten paces away. He started to raise the gun.

  I was staring at Garcia. The memory of him poised over my sister exploded back into my mind. I screamed and ran down from the galena. "Let me, General! Let me kill him!"

  The general turned in surprise.

  "Dax! Dax! Come back!" my father called after me.

  But I didn't hear. I ran to the general. "Let me!" I cried.

  "Dax!" my father shouted.

  The general looked back at the galena. "It is justice," he said.

  "But he's a child!" my father replied. "What could he know of justice?"