Crossers by Philip Caputo

and he thought for a spell and said that these Messican revolutionaries—I never could get him to say “Mexican” the right way—appeared to be folks long on justice and short on mercy, and that we had best keep that in mind. I told him that Ynez had killed Doña Álvarez out of mercy so she could be in heaven with her boys and her husband.
Ben thought that was the most damn fool thing he’d ever heard, and finally I got it off my chest, that I was in love with Ynez. Now that , said Ben, was even more of a damn fool thing. Ben was funny when it come to women. One time when we was in Mexico on a cattle-buying trip, I’d drug him over to a cantina in Nogales where we could line us up a couple of señoritas, and he wanted nothing to do with the ladies of the night, nor the day neither. Said he wasn’t gone to do that with no gal till he was married. I argued with him that a wife would expect her husband to know what the hell he was doing and how could he if he hadn’t some practice. And he said he’d learned to walk without practice. I reminded him that he’d crawled first, but he didn’t see my logic. Anyway, he snubbed out his cigarette and told me to stop thinking with what was between my legs and to get some sleep. We were a-going into battle inside of twenty-four hours, and if I didn’t have a clear head I might get myself killed.
I damn near did.
We got rousted out at dawn. First order of business was looting the hacienda’s storerooms for flour and beans and coffee and whatever else might come in handy. While all that was going on, a crowd of peons come marching down the ranch road and gathered outside the walls and asked to see the jefe. These peons raised corn and alfalfa and other crops on the Santa Barbara, and they wanted to know what was to become of them now that the rancho was under new ownership.
Colonel Bracamonte stood up on a box and told them that the rancho sure enough did have new owners and they were it. Bracamonte threw them a big white grin under that big black mustache, but them peons just stared at him without a word. It took him a while to get the idea across, but finally some of them got it, so when Bracamonte called out Viva la revolución, they shouted it back at him.
The battalion left for Santa Cruz middle of the afternoon. The plan was to make a night attack on the federal garrison. That country down there didn’t look no different than in Arizona, grasslands and arroyos and mesquite and prickly pear and so damn many rocks you thought that God didn’t rest on the seventh day but made rocks and dumped ’em all right there. We rode cross-country, to make sure nobody could alert Díaz’s troops that we were a-coming. Our company was in the lead, with the colonel and his aides leading us and the Yaquis maybe half a mile ahead as scouts. Sometimes, coming over a rise, we could see them, loping along on foot with their bows and arrows, them Indians could have kept up that pace all day and had enough left over to have them a dance at night. Behind us was the donkey carts and burros, and the camp follower gals walking alongside. I calculate that altogether there was about a hundred fifty, sixty of us. Ben and me were in high spirits, this was what we’d joined up for, not to watch executions. And Ben was tickled pink because he’d found some ammunition at the hacienda for that fancy Luger.
The next part of my story is hard to tell, but I will tell it.
When we came to the Santa Cruz River, Colonel Bracamonte called a halt to rest his soldiers and water the horses. We were gone to wait there till sundown and make the rest of the march under cover of darkness. Me and Ben rolled us some smokes and were taking it easy. I remember looking downriver and seeing the Colonel huddled with Ynez and his other officers and some Yaqui scouts.
Then Ynez come up and said the colonel wanted to see us. That ain’t exactly right. She was looking at Ben when she said it, but Ben being my compadre, I