[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.He reined in the horse where it stamped and skittered and reached and untied the rope from the saddlehorn.The wolf had run off down the mountain and wrapped herself around a tree and he rode down to get her.By the time he came back dragging her behind him stifflegged and half crazed the trail was deserted save for an old woman and a young girl who sat in the grass by the trailside passing tobacco and cut cornhusks between them and rolling cigarettes.The girl was a year or two younger than he was and she lit her cigarette with an esclarajo and passed it to the old woman and blew smoke and tossed her head and stared at him boldly.He coiled the rope and dismounted and dropped the reins and hung the coiled rope over the saddlehorn and touched the brim of his hat with two fingers.Buenos días, he said.They nodded, the older woman spoke his greeting back.The girl watched him.He walked the wolf down along the rope to where it crouched in the weeds and knelt and talked to it and led it by the collar back out into the trail.Es Americano, the woman said.Sí.She sucked fiercely on the cigarette and squinted at him through the smoke.Es feroz la perm, no?Bastante.They wore homemade dresses and huaraches cobbled up out of leather scraps and rawhide.The woman had on a black shawl or rebozo about her shoulders but the girl was all but naked in the thin cotton dress.Their skin was dark like an Indian’s and their eyes coal black and they smoked the way poor people eat which is a form of prayer.Es una loba, he said.Cómo? said the woman.Es una loba.The woman looked at the wolf.The girl looked at the wolf and at the woman.De veras? said the woman.Sí.The girl looked as if she might be about to rise and back away but the woman laughed at her and told her that the caballero was only having a joke with them.She put the cigarette in the corner of her mouth and called to the wolf.She patted the ground for it to come.Qué pasó con la pata? she said.He shrugged.He said that she had caught it in a trap.Far below them on the side of the mountain they could hear the cries of the arrieros.She offered their tobacco but the boy thanked her no.She shrugged.He said that he was sorry about the burros but the old woman said that the arrieros were inexperienced and had little control over their animals anyway.She said that the revolution had killed off all the real men in the country and left only the tontos.She said moreover that fools beget their own kind and here was the proof of it and that as only foolish women would have aught to do with them their progeny were twice doomed.She sucked again on the cigarette which was now little more than ash and let it fall to the ground and squinted at him.Me entiende? she said.Sí, claro.She studied the wolf.She looked at him again.The eve half closed was probably from some injury but it lent her the air of one demanding candor.Va a parir, she said.Sí.Como la jovencita.He looked at the girl.She didnt look pregnant.She had turned her back on them and sat smoking and looking out over the country where there was nothing to be seen although a few faint cries still drifted up the slope.Es su hija? he said.She shook her head.She said that the girl was the wife of her son.She said that they were married but that they had no money to pay the priest so they were not married by the priest.Los sacerdotes son ladrónes, the girl said.It was the first she had spoken.The woman nodded her head at the girl and rolled her eyes.Una revolucionaria, she said.Soldadera.Los que no pueden recordar la sangre de la guerra son siempre los más ardientes para la lucha.He said that he had to go.She paid no mind.She said that when she was a child she’d seen a priest shot in the village of Ascención.They’d stood him against the wall of his own church and shot him with rifles and gone away.When they were gone the women of the village came forward and knelt and lifted up the priest but the priest was dead or dying and some of the women dipped their handkerchiefs in the blood of the priest and blessed themselves with the blood as if it were the blood of Christ.She said that when young people see priests shot in the streets it changes their view of religion.She said that the young nowadays cared nothing for religion or priest or family or country or God.She said that she thought the land was under a curse and asked him for his opinion but he said he knew little of the country.Una maldición, she said.Es cierto.All sound of the arrieros had died away on the slopes below them.Only the wind blew.The girl finished her cigarette and rose and dropped it in the trail and stomped on it with her huarache and twisted it into the dirt as if it contained some malevolent life.The wind blew her hair and it blew her thin dress against her.She looked at the boy.She said the old woman was always talking about curses and dead priests and that she was half crazy and to pay her no mind.Sabemos to que sabemos, the old woman said.Sí, said the girl.Lo que es nada.The old woman held out one hand palm up in the direction of the girl.As if to offer her in evidence of all that she claimed.She invited him to observe the one who knew.The girl tossed her head
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]