The animal, in all likelihood annoyed by the man’s proximity, began to grunt.

All of Luis Cervantes’s efforts to sleep after that were in vain. Not because of the pain in his wounded limb, nor that which he felt all over his battered and bruised body, but because of the vivid and clear failure he sensed within himself.

Yes. He had not realized early enough how great the distance would be between handling a verbal scalpel—between hurling factious bolts from the columns of a provincial newspaper—and coming out with a rifle in hand to hunt out the bandits in their own den. He was already beginning to suspect his mistake when he was discharged as a cavalry second lieutenant, at the end of the first day. It had been a brutal day in which they had covered fourteen leagues, leaving his hips and knees stiff as a board, as if all his bones had fused into one. He finally understood it eight days later, at the first encounter with the rebels. He could swear upon the Holy Bible itself that when the soldiers had brought their Mausers up to take aim, someone behind him had said in an extremely loud voice: “Every man for himself!” This was so clearly so that his own spirited, noble steed, which was otherwise accustomed to combat, had turned on its hind legs and galloped away, without stopping until they were at a very safe distance from where the firing of the rifles could be heard. By then the sun was already setting, the mountains filling with vague, unsettling shadows, and the darkness was quickly rising from the bottom of the ravines. Was there anything more logical for him to do, then, than to search for shelter among the boulders, and to rest his weary bones and spirit and try to sleep? But a soldier’s logic is the logic of the absurd. For the following morning his colonel kicks him awake and drags him out of his hiding place, and proceeds to bash his face in. And there is more yet: the officers find this so deeply hilarious, they are so beside themselves with laughter, that all of them beg that the fugitive be pardoned. So the colonel, instead of sentencing him to be shot by firing squad, gives him a hearty kick on his behind and sends him to take care of the pots and pans as a helper in the kitchen.

This gravest of affronts was to yield its venomous fruits. From then on Luis Cervantes would change uniform, although only in mente for the time being. The suffering and the misery of the dispossessed would eventually move him; he is to see their cause as the sublime cause of an oppressed people demanding justice, pure justice. He becomes friends with the humblest of the common soldiers, and one day even comes to shed tears of compassion for a mule that dies at the end of an arduous journey.

Luis Cervantes thus made himself deserving of the goodwill of the troop. Some soldiers even dared to confide in him. One, a very serious soldier known for his calm, his moderation, and his reserve, told him: “I’m a carpenter. I had my mother, a little ol’ lady who hadn’t been able to get up from her chair for the last ten years because of her rheumatism. At midnight three soldiers grabbed me from my house. By the time I woke up, I myself was a soldier in the barracks. Then, by the time I went to sleep that night, I was already twelve leagues away from my hometown. A month ago we go by there with the troop again, and my mother’s already six feet under! There was nothin’ in this life to console her no more. Now no one needs me. But with God above in the heavens as my witness, I swear that these cartridges that I’m carryin’ right here are not gonna be used for the enemies. And if the miracle of miracles is granted to me, if the Most Holy Mother of Guadalupe1grants me the miracle, and I am allowed to join Villa,2then I swear on my mother’s blessed soul that I’ll make these Federales pay for it.”

Another, a young soldier—very intelligent but a real blabbermouth who was an alcoholic and a marijuana smoker— called him apart, looked straight at him with his hazy, glassy eyes, and whispered into his ear: “Compadre, those men . . . Do you understand what I’m trying to tell you? Those men on the other side . . .