“But we have only five days,” a woman shouted. “What can we do?”
“You can sign the paper and be taken to the Estancia to work in the fields or you can stay and fight. The choice is yours. But we saw those men shoot Carlos to death. I don’t know of any reason to trust them. Once they have you on the Estancia, with no place to hide and no means of fighting back, will they let you live?”
There were cries of “We have to fight!” and “We have no choice!”
“There’s a third way,” said Father Gomez. “We can pack everyone up and run away to another town. We can try to hold out there for a month or two and hope the government will act by then.”
“All that will do is get two towns killed,” said Pepe. “And once we leave, they’ll take over everything, dig up the tombs, burn our houses and fields. We’ll never be able to come back.”
Within minutes, the discussion was only a series of speakers who all said the same thing — running was futile and was more dangerous than staying. Signing away the town was unthinkable, and the only way to survive was to fight. At last, Dr. Huerta said, “It’s time to hear from Sam and Remi Fargo.”
Sam and Remi had remained silent through the discussion, but now they stood. Sam said, “If you want to fight, we’ll do what we can to help. Tomorrow morning at seven, meet us in front of the church. If you have any guns and ammunition, bring them with you. We’ll begin to work out a strategy.”
At seven a.m., Sam and Remi sat on the church steps and waited. The first to arrive were a few of the hotheads who had helped capture Sam and Remi up on the plateau. Then came people who considered themselves to be part of the gentry — the business owners, independent farmers, and their wives, sons, and daughters. After them were others, people who worked for wages or helped on the farms for a share of the crops.
By seven-thirty, the street was full of more people than it had been during the mercenaries’ roundup. Sam stood up and called the group to order. “Beginning with the people on this end of the street, form a line and come talk with us. After you have, then go wait in the church.”
As people came to the steps to talk, Sam and Remi would interview them, always speaking Spanish now. “Do you have a gun? Let me look it over. Are you a hunter? What do you hunt? Are you a good shot?” When there was no gun, they would ask, “Are you healthy? Can you run a mile without stopping? Do you want to fight? If you needed a weapon to fight a jaguar, what would you reach for?”
Women seemed to prefer to talk to Remi, possibly out of local standards of propriety. Her questions varied little. “How old are you? Are you married? Do you have any children? Are you willing to fight to protect them? Are you very strong and healthy? Have you ever fired a gun?”
The older children, the teenagers, were the hardest to interview, but Sam and Remi persisted. All the armies of the past had relied on boys from fifteen to twenty to fill the ranks.
By ten, they were alone on the steps. The town’s firepower amounted to seven rifles with about one hundred rounds each, eight shotguns with about one box of twenty-five shells each, mostly bird shot. There were seven handguns, including four .38 K Frame revolvers that looked like old police sidearms, Señora Velasquez’s old .38 Colt, and two .32 caliber pistols made for concealed carry.
Sam and Remi stood, staring at the villagers, whose faces were tinged with hopelessness. “Thank you all,” said Sam. “Now we have a better idea of where to start. Your ancestors could not fight soldiers trained in modern tactics or go up against new technical weapons and neither can you. You, your wives and children would die within minutes of the first attack.”
Remi could easily see a deep sadness in the villagers’ eyes, as mothers pulled their children closer and the men looked around at their friends and neighbors in frustration.
Sam steeled himself against the impossible odds. He nodded at Dr. Huerta and Father Gomez. “Can I talk to you in the vestry?”
They entered and sat down in the hand-carved chairs around the large Spanish-style table. Father Gomez spoke directly to Sam.
“Do you have a strategy?” he asked.
Sam shook his head. “Nothing I can guarantee.”
“You have no plan, no strategy, to help save my people?” said Father Gomez coldly.
“Nothing I can talk about,” asserted Sam.
“What do you want us to do?” Dr. Huerta demanded.
“Take your people up the mountain to the fortress and tombs.”
Father Gomez glared at Sam. “I believe the villagers would just as soon die in their beds as be dragged down the hill to trucks that will carry them to the Estancia fields, where they would work themselves to death. And then there are the children. It will be like a concentration camp.”
Remi, who had been standing in the doorway unnoticed, stared at Sam with stunned incomprehension. “You don’t know what you’re saying. Sending the villagers up to the old fortress is like giving them a one-way ticket to a slow death.”
“The trucks can’t navigate the narrow trail up the mountain,” said Sam.
“But a hundred men with deadly arms can’t be stopped with a few old shotguns,” Remi argued.
Sam shrugged. “I see no other way out.”
Remi stepped over to Sam and stared with anguish into his eyes. “Who are you?” she gasped. “You’re not the man I’ve known and loved.”
He gave her a look of indifference she’d never seen before.
As Remi turned to speak, Sam had walked from the vestry without looking back at his lovely wife.
Chapter 30
The next day, the mothers, children, and the elderly were led by Remi to the ruined stronghold on the plateau. There they would gather hundreds of stones to throw down at the attackers if they tried to climb the narrow path up. Remi determined where the best locations were behind a rock-stack barrier to fire at any attacker who reached the top.
Remi kept her mind off Sam’s strange behavior and directed her squad of women and children to make effigies of townspeople, stuffing clothing with leaves and brush. “If your son is firing a rifle, you want the enemy to waste ammunition shooting at the five or six dummies you made and placed around to protect him.”
She had other people bringing empty bottles, cans of gasoline, and rags to the plateau and making Molotov cocktails. “If men are coming up the path, these will stop them for a time. And if it’s night, they’ll light them up so anyone with a gun can hit them.”
At dusk, Sam stood on the crest of the hill beside the ancient fortress, surveying the preparations the townspeople had made. He knew there were hundreds of human effigies, beginning on the trail to the ancient stronghold. There were pits from building the old rock barrier. Within the walls of the ancient fortress were enough food and water for the whole town for a couple of weeks, and there were shelters for the children. The whole perimeter had dummies at the ramparts, and the supply of rocks and Molotov cocktails was impressive.
Sam was suddenly aware that Remi was standing next to him.
“I can’t live without you,” she said softly. “Please don’t stay in the village and die there alone.”
Sam shook his head and looked down. “I’ve never asked you to blindly follow my direction. I have to ask you now. Trust me.”
She turned to him and looked for something in his eyes. “We’ve never had any secrets between us.”
“I’m sorry, Remi. But I swore an oath many years ago that I have to stand by. And now I have to see this through.”
“I know you have something up your sleeve. But will it work?”
He ran his hand through her hair. “The final throw of the dice and I can’t even tell you what I hope is going to happen.”