House of the Rising Sun: A Novel by James Lee Burke

horse heaving under him, he heard someone shout “ ¡Fuego! ” and saw five Mexican soldiers fire their rifles chest-high into three prisoners who were standing blindfolded against the wall. Their faces seemed to shudder in the smoke, then they went straight down, like puppets whose strings had been cut.
    T HE VILLAGERS WERE bunched across the street from the adobe wall, afraid to look at the dead and afraid to look away from the soldier conducting the executions. The men held their hats in their hands; the women had covered their heads with shawls, as though they were attending Mass. The villagers’ craggy, work-seamed faces resembled teakwood carvings. The soldier in charge was explaining to them why the executions were taking place and why the villagers must remember the event they were witnessing during the three-day Festival of the Dead.
    The soldier assured them the prisoners were not loyal and good campesinos , as were the villagers; the prisoners were traitors and deserters and marijuanistas and informers and tools of the Americans. Had the villagers not heard of the gringo called Patton, the American officer who tied bodies on the fenders of his motorcar? The gringo about to die, Huachinango, was not a harmless drunk but a spy who spat on the cross and gave up the names of patriots to American killers. Today should be one of joy, not mourning, he said. Today these enemies of the Mexican people would be covered over in the anonymous graves they had earned.
    Hackberry held his rifle aloft with one hand as he got down from the saddle. “I’m here on a peaceful mission. I have no quarrel with you,” he said. “The one you call Huachinango lives in the desert because he’s deranged. He’s a poor man, like the campesinos . The last thing this fellow wants to do is hurt anybody.” He repeated his statement in Spanish.
    “You are a very troublesome man,” the soldier said. “Would you introduce yourself? I didn’t catch your name earlier.”
    “I didn’t give it. Actually, I’m down here prospecting talent for William Cody’s Wild West show and would like to interview you and others about that possibility.”
    “Then you are famous? A man of the people?”
    “That’s why Mr. Bill gave me this job,” Hackberry said. “How about it, amigo? Cut this fellow loose, and you and me can talk business.”
    “Let me see your rifle once more.”
    “Yes, sir, just don’t snap the firing pin on an empty chamber, if you don’t mind. It tends to mess up the spring.”
    “I will take care not to harm your rifle, even though I suspect it was taken off a Mexican soldier. You don’t have a pistol?”
    “Not on me.”
    “Why did you tell me you were a friend of General Huerta? Why did you tell me such a ridiculous lie?”
    “I wouldn’t exactly call it a lie. I met the man. I met Emiliano Zapata, too. You can ask him.”
    “You tell your lies to us because you think we’re stupid. You fuck our women, you buy our leaders, you take our minerals, you lay waste to our villages. You do all these things because Pancho Villa killed a handful of worthless people in New Mexico. I feel very much like killing you, gringo.”
    While the soldier spoke, he held Hackberry’s rifle in one hand and gestured in the air with the other, his back to his men, clearly knowing they awaited his command. Hackberry watched them lead the remaining two prisoners to the wall. The American refused the blindfold.
    “Don’t do this,” Hackberry said.
    “What will you do for me if I stop it?”
    “I’m at your orders, señor .”
    “Then get down on your knees.”
    “Sir, we shouldn’t be discussing activities of a maricón nature here.”
    “Kneel down, gringo. You need to learn what it is like to be a Mexican in your country.”
    “I run off at the mouth sometimes. I promise Mr. Glick won’t be no more trouble.”
    “You can do it, hombre ,” the soldier said. He shifted his stance and inserted his thumb inside his belt buckle