There was nothing I could do except tell Tiptoe in Poré, "Keep silent!" then raise a comradely hand to the lead soldier—who was groping for the arcabuz slung across his saddle horn—and greet him cordially, as if he and we were accustomed to meeting thus every day, "Buenas tardes, amigo. ¿Qué tal?"
He stammered, "B-buenas tardes," and, with the hand that had been reaching for the weapon, returned my salute. He said nothing more, but deferred to two other riders—men in officers' uniform—who shouldered their horses up beside him.
One of them growled a vile blasphemy, "¡Me cago en la puta Virgen!"then, eyeing my partial uniform and the army brands on our horses, demanded impolitely, "¿Quién eres, Don Mierda?"
Disquieted though I was, I had wit enough to tell him the same thing I had told Padre Vasco, that I was Juan Británico, interpreter and assistant to the notarius who served the Bishop of Mexíco.
The officer sneered and exclaimed, "¡Y un cojón!"a vulgar expression of disbelief. "An indio on horseback? That is a thing forbidden!"
I was glad that our far-more-strictly-forbidden arcabuces were out of his sight, and said humbly, "You are riding in the direction of the City of Mexíco, Señor Capitán. If you like, I will accompany you thither, where Bishop Zumárraga and Notarius de Molina will assuredly vouch for me. It was they who provided these horses for this journey of mine."
I do not know if the officer had ever heard those two names before, but my speaking them seemed to mitigate his disbelief slightly. He was less gruff when he demanded, "And who is the other man?"
"My slave and attendant," I lied, grateful now for her having chosen to pose as a man, and gave her name in Spanish, "Se llama de Puntas."
The other officer laughed. "A mannamed Tiptoe!How stupid these indios!"
The first one laughed, too, then, derisively misspeaking my name, said, "And you,Don Zonzón, what are you doing here?"
More composed by now, I was able to say glibly, "A special mission, Señor Capitán. The bishop wishes to ascertain the temper of the savages here in the Tierra de Guerra. I was sent because I am of their race, and speak several of their languages, but also am manifestly vested with Spanish and Christian authority."
"¡Joder!"he rasped. "Everyone already knows the temper of these savages. Their temper is ugly. Murderous. Bloodthirsty. Why do you think wetravel only in unassailable numbers?"
"Just so," I said blandly. "I intend to report to the bishop that he might palliate the savages' temper by sending Christian missionaries to do humanitarian works among them, in the manner of Padre Vasco de Quiroga."
Again, I do not know if the officer had ever heard of that priest, but my apparent familiarity with so many churchmen seemed finally to dispel his suspicions.
He said, "We too are on a humanitarian mission. Our Governor of New Galicia, Nuño de Guzmán, assembled this numerous company to escort four men to the City of Mexíco. They are three brave Christian Spaniards and a loyal Moro slave, long believed lost in the far-off colony called Florida. But, most miraculously, they fought their way hither—this close to civilization. Now they wish to tell the story of their wanderings to the Marqués Cortés himself."
"And I am sure you will safely deliver them, Señor Capitán," I said. "But this day latens. My own slave and I had intended to proceed farther, but we passed a good water hole not a league back, sufficient for your whole troop's camping. If you will allow, we will return there to lead you and, by your leave, camp there with you."
"By all means, Don Juan Británico," he said, companionably now. "Lead on."
Tiptoe and I turned our horses about, and as the company came clanking and shuffling and clattering behind us, I translated to her what had passed between me and the officer. She asked, her voice again trembly because she was speaking of white men:
"Why in the name of the war god Curicáuri do you wish to spend the night with them?"
"Because the officer mentioned that butcher Guzmán," I said. "The man who laid waste your land of Michihuácan and claimed it for his own. I had believed there were no Spaniards in these northern parts. I want to find out what Guzmán is doing, so distant from his New Galicia."
"If you must," she said resignedly.
"And you, Tiptoe, please just remain inconspicuous. Let the white men hunt their own game for their night's meal. Pleasedo not take out a thunder-stick to show them your mastery of it."
The officer—his name was Tallabuena, and his rank was only teniente,but I kept on ingratiatingly addressing him as Capitán—sat beside me at the campfire. While the two of us gnawed on juicy roast deer meat, he confided quite freely what I wished to know about that Governor Guzmán:
"No, no, he has not come this far north. He is still safely resident in New Galicia. The canny Guzmán knows better than to risk his fat culónup here in the Tierra de Guerra. But he has established his capital right onthe northern border of New Galicia, and hopes to make a fair city of it."
"Why?" I asked. "The old capital of Michihuácan was on the shore of the Lake of Rushes, far to the south."
"Guzmán is no fisherman. His home province of Galicia back in Old Spain is silver-mining country. It follows that he expects to make his fortune here from silver. So he founded his capital in a region near the coast, where his prospectors have discovered rich veins of that and other ores. He has named it Compostela. So far, it consists just of himself and his favorite fawning compinchesand his cadre of troops, but he will be rounding up native slaves to toil underground to mine the silver for him. I pity those poor wretches."
"So do I," I murmured, while deciding that Tiptoe and I would set our direction more north of west when we moved on, not to stumble into that Compostela. Still, it troubled me that the butcher Guzmán had set his new city so close to my native Aztlan—no more than a hundred one-long-runs distant, as best I could estimate.
"But come, Don Juan," Tallabuena said now. "Come and meet the heroes of the hour."
He led me to where the three heroes sat eating. They were being devotedly attended by a number of lesser-ranking soldiers, who plied them with the choicest portions of deer meat and poured for them wine from leather bags and jumped to fulfill their every least request. Also in attendance on them was a man in the traveling dress of a friar, who seemed even more servilely to seek their favor. The heroes, I could see, had originally been white-skinned, but they were now so sunburned that their complexion was darker than my own. The fourth man, who would also have been accounted a hero, I suppose, if he had been white, sat eating alone and apart and unattended. He was black and could not have been burned any blacker.
I would never see these several Spaniards again after this one night. But though I could not have known it then, the tonáli of every one of them was so linked with mine that our separate future lives—and numberless other lives, and even the destinies of nations—would inextricably be intertwined. So I will tell here of what I learned about them, and how I befriended one of them, in the brief time before we parted.
XVI