Crossers by Philip Caputo Page A

that.
I reckon the Yaquis killed a good half dozen, and I was sickened by it and told Ynez, Goddammit, this ain’t war, this here is cold-blooded murder. She said that I was now in my own country and was free to ride away if I was so bothered by it. Well, you know what? I could not leave her side, and another thing—I wasn’t entirely sure that that rattle snake of a Mexican witch-woman would not have shot me in the back for a deserter.
I hadn’t seen the worst. We caught up with two soldiers still ahorseback. The Yaquis ran after them, shooting their arrows on the run, and managed to stick the horses, and you know, being a cowhand, that bothered me more than seeing men shot the same way. The Indians was fixing to shoot the two soldiers, but Ynez stopped them. We rode them down and surrounded them, and Ynez told a couple of our men to tie them up. One was an officer, a lieutenant I think, and the other one was a sergeant. I figured that my telling Ynez that it was all coldblooded murder had got to her conscience, if she had one, and she was gone to take them prisoner and at least give them a fair trial before shooting them. The both of them were right surprised and confused to hear a gal giving the orders. The lieutenant, a young fella, looked like he had mostly Spanish blood—he had light hair and blue eyes and fair skin. And he was scared to about dirtying his britches when Ynez looked down at him and the sergeant and said, “You bastards murdered my husband.” Of course she meant that bastards like them had done the murdering. Anyway, that was her idea of a fair trial.
Next thing, a couple of our men knocked them cold with rifle butts. Then the Yaquis piled dry bear grass on top of them and dead branches on top of the grass and lit a fire. That woke them up, and they started to screaming—I still have bad dreams about that, me, looking eighty in the eye, and I can still hear those screams in my sleep sometimes. They rolled out from under the brush piles, both on fire, and the smell—well, I will spare you that. In a second there was no screams, just the black bodies twitching funnylike. Oh, my Lord, the little-shots of Mexico had been treated like dogs, and now they were biting back, and then some. “Basta,” said Ynez, and turned her horse, and with the smoke rising up behind us, we rode on back into Old Mexico.
By the time we got back to Santa Cruz, we were just about asleep in our saddles. Colonel Bracamonte had rousted the scared townspeople out of their houses and told them they was now liberated, and then put them to work to burying the dead, which I reckon did not make them feel all that liberated. Ynez gave him a full report of our doings, and he was happy to beat the band about capturing the machine gun. He come walking over to where Ben and me and Francisco were flopped down in the plaza and promoted the three of us on the spot. He made Ben a lieutenant and said he was second in command of the company, and he made sergeants out of me and Francisco. So there we were, Teniente Erskine and Sargento Babcock, but if Bracamonte had made me a full-blown general, I could not have cared less—all I wanted was something to eat and a good ten hours’ sleep.
We rode with the Red Sash Battalion for another three months I think it was, anyhow until the Revolution was over. I ought to say, till we thought it was over. There was fighting and trouble in Mexico for another twenty years before things got settled down. My memory is not as good about those three months like it is about those first three days—everything is kind of jumbled up—but I know we was plumb wore out from riding and fighting and killing. We took railway junctions and garrisons and towns all through Sonora. We liberated a few more haciendas from the hacendados, and after each fight we got bigger than we was before, what with federal troops deserting and joining up. We didn’t have to worry about what generals call supply lines because we’d