Chapter 34 By midday three weeks later they rode into the state of Chihuahua. They entered filthy and drunk and angry and at no remove from their own insanity. And ruin and misery marked their ways. About the place there were females of domestic reputation dressed brightly like transvestites in a madhouse. Hartford took this opportunity to ventilate himself on the matter of destiny and its path and claims. The reeking horde passed the streets, and did hove up before the governor’s palace, and Jacobs announced himself by kicking at the oak doors with his boot. The doors were opened forthwith, and he rode in, horse and all, and the doors were closed again. Jacobs brought the Mexican scalps and dumped them before the mayor. He said: “They’re Comanche scalps every last one of em.” The mayor nodded. “Tomará un poco de tiempo,” he said. “Por favor, espere allí.” “Más rápido possible,” said Jacobs. “Como.” “Pagar me.” “Como.” “Where’s my money?” “Como.” “I want my money and I want my new pack-mules and I want a new contract and I want to know about a man named David Brown and I want to know where he is.” “Si.” “Pagar me.” *** They gang waited. While they wondered the streets a shot fired from the upper floor of a wooded structure, and a raider fell, bleeding, on to the street. The double doors opened, and a company of Mexican soldiers began to march out. Over one hundred and fifty nine shots were fired in less than the space of one minute. All of the glass fell out of the windows. All of the wood splintered apart. The civilians climbed through the broken windows past the razor shards where the wind cut through with a sharp whistle. Knives were already in use. The gunfire was uninterrupted. The desert air began to fill up with smoke. Slags of burning lead were whining through the air, and many lay dead and many lay crying out. One scalper had drawn his bowie and severed a man’s arm with it, and the man stood with black arterial blood spraying through his fingers as he tried to hold the wound shut. Sprawled about in every position were the meat piles of the wild asses shot to pieces. The gunfire continued without intermission, and they fought until the drain-tiles and the gutters and spouts from the azotes ran with blood and the rebuses of blood ran in those sands. A scalper fired his rifle, and the rifle-bullet passed with the sun on the side of the revolving core of metal, the lead wiped bright from the riffling of the bore, and it slowed from having passed through a body, but still moved faster than sound, with the suck of air like a whisper from the void and the small shockwave, and then ricocheting off the woodwork and singing away over the desert. The man ejected the spent shell and leveled in a fresh round and shot a man through the base of the skull. Both sides hacked down with their enormous knives. The sulfurous smoke hung over everything, and the riders fell from their horses in that perilous mist, like soldiers slaughtered in a dream. One soldier on the ground picked up a fallen rifle and aimed it, and a rider leaned down out of that weltering melee and cut his throat to the spine and rode on. Human bodies. In every position. Fallen dead. Shot apart with scores of lead. Many soldiers had gathered on a wooden balcony on the upper floor of a building, and they fired their rifles and when shots fired back at them the balcony had already come undone and it swung down in a parabola and the mob of soldiers were sucked down by gravity and fell onto the ground and got up and divided into two factions and shot at each other. The boy fired every last round, save his three shot precision pistol, and that he drew and fired. Jacobs had been firing with two six-guns. He shot a man squarely in the chest. The man sat down heavily and was shot again. Hartford had hid this entire time, and he was the first to ride away in retreat. Soon the gang mounted up and began to follow him. *** Some of the riders fell slain from their horses as they fled. One horse fell to the earth wounded, and the man attempted to run but was captured. They stood him in the street, and blind folded him, and had a minister read some words concerning death and the dust, dust thou art and to dust thou shall return, and then they shot the man through the head and carried out the military execution with procedure. *** Sunday, in that city, the minister had a sermon. The minister spoke in Spanish. He said: “Fearfulness and trembling are come upon me. And horror hath overwhelmed me. And I said, Oh that I had wings like a dove, then would I fly away and be at rest. Lo then would I wander far off. I would lodge in the wilderness. I would hast me to a shelter from the stormy wind and tempest.” He paused and looked up. “Destroy, O Lord, and divide their tongue: For I have seen violence and strife in the city. Day and night they go about it upon the walls thereof. Iniquity also and mischief are in the midst of it.” He paused. Then said: “For it was not an enemy that reproached me. Then I could have borne it.”
Posted on: Wed, 04 Sep 2013 13:07:00 +0000
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