The Little Tigress: Tales Out of the Dust of Old Mexico

MEXICO

THE LITTLE TIGRESS

In one of the most beautiful cities in Mexico, with a name that traces to the Moors, lives a young woman with eyes dark and empty as a deep, dry well. Long ago—three years is a long time in rebel history—they brought her to the beautiful city. Its name means water running over stones and it has that sound. She sits all day behind the slender bars of her window. Sometimes she asks if the rebels are near. Those about her say not yet, but that they are closing in on the city. When they leave the room they shake their heads. Pobrecita! Poor little one! At night they hear her voice, sad as the dumb despair of her eyes, singing little songs in the dark——

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Long ago Don Pancho’s rebels rode into another city. Their victorious chief, before they rode in to take possession, told them to ride like soldiers. They were to show the world that they were not desert ruffians, moved by smouldering lusts, but honest patriots striking a blow for liberty.

They obeyed. The color of the desert could never be wiped off them. But their equipment was cleaned. The metal on their saddles glittered. They rode four abreast as studiously as if such formation was part of their regulations. The straining of saddle leathers, the clatter of carbines, the methodical disorder of horses’ hoofs—these made a telling masculine obbligato for the shrill cries of officers.

Very military. But black eyes strayed under wide sombreros. They glanced in eager appraisal over the city that was in their hands after the fierce campaign. Loot! They had waited a long time. Why take a city just for the sake of taking it? Don Pancho chose to be eccentric. Maybe later he would relent. There was loot in the eager, black eyes.

Don Pancho rode ahead under a white, straight-brimmed sombrero. He wore a new military uniform, fashioned after the smart ones worn by European army officers. It chafed his throat and bulged clumsily over the pair of revolvers at his waist. But it was military. Don Pancho exulted. He was about to stage a little scene at the Café Maxim. He had waited a long time. It would be an historical gesture.

At his side rode Capitan Santiago, tried warrior. Capitan Santiago’s inexplicable blue eyes were scanning windows and doorways, alert for a surprise. Once a man had attempted to explain the mystery of the blue eyes set in a brown face. He had departed this life with the jest uncompleted on his lips. The eyes of Capitan Santiago’s temper were black.

Soldadera on the March

His blue eyes searched a suspicious passage between two houses. They slipped between the long bars of narrow windows. They tested the weight of barred doors.

A massive wooden gate halted them. Its weather-washed exterior, white with the scrubbing of tropic rains and sand, was a challenge. There was aloof defiance in its metal bars and the bronze nails that studded its deep-grained face. Santiago smiled confidently and his eyes darted to the balcony over the gateway.

They surprised a slim face close to the bars of the balcony window. Slender fingers pressed at the gentle curve of a breast. Santiago sensed reaching for his heart the chaste sensuality of holy vessels, the liquid fire of jewels, the slumbering gleam of precious metals.

He swept his sombrero from his head as he rode.

Capitan Santiago was not with the gay, wild crowd at the Gato Negro when night came. Alone he went to answer the challenge of the weather-whitened door. An aged and stooping mozo came to answer his knocking. He was amused at the trembling of the servant. And at the fearful way in which he recited the rehearsed and expected lines.

No one was within the house, mi coronel. The master was deplorably ill, general valiente, and could not do himself the honor of receiving his illustrious visitor. Santiago smiled. He asked courteously that his profound respects be carried to the master and his whole family. He would return on a more fortunate day.

As he walked proudly away he was sure that a slim face watched from the balcony window.

Back at his quarters he talked long with Pedro Gonzalez, most trusted of his tenientes. Thereafter Teniente Pedro and two men guarded the house with the big gate. They followed their orders carefully. Silent, invisible, relentless watchers. And they brought information——

It was the home of the great Don Carlos Gutierrez, owner of rich lands in the Santa Maria valley. With his family he had waited too long to take flight. They were trapped when Don Pancho dynamited the railroad and closed in from the north and west.

And the daughter? asked Santiago.

"Ai—the daughter! Teniente Pedro rolled his eyes and drew a breath that surrendered the vain effort of description. She is Maria de la Luz, mi capitan. The family calls her Lucita. A superb, disdainful aristocrat. Her proud blood is in every gesture. Sangre de Cristo, what a woman !

"Just a few months ago she returned from a school for the daughters of rich and fashionable families in the Estados Unidos. She is twenty years old. A patrician to the tips of her fingers. And, ai, mi capitan—such beauty——"

Go back with your men and guard the house well, ordered Capitan Santiago.

Each night Capitan Santiago strolled past the house of Don Carlos Gutierrez. He carefully refrained from looking up at the balcony window, over the big, white gate.

Don Pancho grew restless. He planned new campaigns. The time for taking the field again was near when Pedro Gonzalez went to Santiago with news.

"At dawn tomorrow they take the señorita away, he said, in some excitement. There is a closed carriage and six vaqueros to guard it with rifles. The brother, Don Gaspar, rides at their head."

All of the night had not been erased from the sky when Capitan Santiago, Teniente Pedro, and six rebel riders lined their horses across the trail. The closed carriage jerked to a stop as the driver dragged its horses back until they reared.

Shoot them down! cried the young man who rode at the head of the vaqueros. They looked into the ready weapons of the rebels and shrugged their shoulders.

Don Gaspar fumed and tugged at his revolver. Santiago slashed his quirt across the young man’s wrist. A crimson stripe oozed where the tongue of the quirt had licked.

To live, you must be more quick, smiled the capitan. It is best to shoot and threaten afterwards, Don Gaspar. It is the order of my valiant general that civilians be unarmed. Therefore, though it desolates me, I am forced to place this party under arrest.

Teniente Pedro took Gaspar’s gun. The vaqueros were willing enough to drop their rifles into the dust. One of Santiago’s men took the seat of the carriage driver.

From the carriage stepped the proud figure of the young woman whom Teniente Pedro could not describe. Better artists than Pedro might well abandon the task. Santiago felt again the chaste sensuality of holy vessels, the fire of jewels, the gleam of precious metal. His sombrero was off as she faced him. The meeting of black eyes and blue.

Foul swine! exclaimed Señorita Maria de la Luz. Coward! You dare not arrest me. I am not armed. Does one arm one’s self against the screaming of poltroon coyotes? And you dare strike my brother!

Capitan Santiago’s face was as red as the welt on Gaspar’s wrist. But his blue eyes smiled as he dismounted and stood near her.

Because he is your brother—he still lives, replied Santiago. "Please be so kind as to step back into the carriage, señorita."

But you dare not arrest me!

That is true, Señorita Maria de la Luz, Santiago bowed. Rather abandon the duty of the soldier than for one smallest moment inconvenience such a gracious lady. But might Capitan Santiago beg humbly to be her guard in a drive back to the city?

It would be better to meet death, she replied.

"The señorita speaks of death as one who has never faced it," said Santiago.

I will not trade words with a bandit and a robber, she cried.

It is a poor exchange, alas, replied Santiago. "There will be not even my miserable words if the señorita will be so kind as to re-enter the carriage."

Her look of contempt had acid in it. And it burned deep in back of Santiago’s smile as she stepped into the carriage again.

Capitan Santiago mounted. His men nodded and grinned as he reviewed them with a glance.

Drive! he ordered the man in the driver’s seat.

The carriage wheeled and started back to the city. Galloping at one side was Capitan Santiago. On the other was the trusted Pedro.

The five rebels left behind halted the vaqueros as they were about to follow. The brother suddenly seemed to realize that his sister was being carried off. He ignored the rifles of the guard. He spurred his horse past them. One of the rebels smiled. Capitan Santiago had ordered no shooting.

He whipped his lariat from the saddle. Its coils straightened and struck. The inspiring figure of the avenging brother was swept from the saddle. And brought to earth in a clownish, clumsy fall.

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Don Gaspar rubbed the stiff welt on his right wrist as he talked. It was in the house of the forbidding gate.

It has been a full week; I can wait no longer, my father, he said. My sister, our Lucita, is dead. My heart tells me that. And I go to kill the man who took her to her death.

At the window where Capitan Santiago first had seen the slim face of Señorita Maria de la Luz sat her father. His eyes were forlorn miseries. His thin hands trembled on the arms of the high-backed, Spanish chair. His white hair was a startling contrast against the red, leather cushion of the chair.

I will hold you no longer, son of my heart, his voice shook. "If I were not so old his life would be ripped from his infamous body by these hands. Go with God, son that I love.

"It is hopeless to cling to our prayers. My father’s soul knows that our sainted Lucita is dead. It is better that way—better than she should live in the bloody hands of these wolves.

"These rebels are vermin. They profess to be shocked and offer to help. But it only amuses them. They could find this Santiago readily enough if they wished. Ai, that the name of Gutierrez should be a jest on the foul lips of these bandits. These are patriots. The buen Dios save Mexico from such patriots. Despoilers of virtue ! Murderers of women.

Son of mine, go with God. I wait for the day of your return. Come when you have killed him.

He rose feebly and embraced his son.

Don Gaspar’s quest of revenge was a tenacious melodrama. He joined the army of Don Pancho that he might better reach the man he swore to kill. Don Pancho was recruiting and in the mob none knew him as the son of proud Don Carlos Gutierrez.

With the rebels he was carried into the long campaign. It was not easy for the young aristocrat, living the life of those he had always known as slaves and servants. Days of desert marching. Fierce fighting.

Through it all the flame of his hate never thinned. At Tierra Blanca he was wounded. There came into his heart a sudden fear that he might die before he had killed Santiago. And then that Santiago might be killed before his bullets tore into the bandit captain’s body. When the dysentery amœba began eating his intestines he prayed through fevered, sleepless nights that he might live until he had wiped out the shame of his sister’s death.

In the half-delirium that came, he planned the details of the day he would kill Santiago. Unknown he would stand before the bandit. The blue eyes would wonder. As a capitan, Santiago would demand by what right he confronted him thus.

Gaspar would speak. And as he spoke his name and the name of his beloved sister he would shoot. He would be quick enough this time. And he would spit into the face of the swine as he rolled in death agony at his feet.

It was not long before he had news of Capitan Santiago. In fact, it would have been difficult to avoid the name. Many verses of camp songs celebrated the capitan’s new exploits. And they celebrated a new soldadera who followed him into battle.

The hot rage in the heart of Gaspar distilled a new drop of poisonous hate when he heard of the woman who took the field with Santiago. To him, it showed the rearing brute that was in the man. The animal must have his woman with him even in the time of fighting—some poor