Excerpt
“What, hombre, what?”
“You’ll see I was right,” he said. One of the men climbed the same
tree, bringing him his harquebus. Diego de Henares aimed and
fired. “Yes! I knew it!” he exclaimed, shrouded in a cloud of powder.
“What happened, Henares?” demanded Losada.
“Did you hit him?” asked Infante.
Henares lowered his gun and asked for a primed one. He sent off
his second shot with triumphant laughter. “Can you see them
running?” asked Henares, pleased with himself.
“Yes! There they go!”
“We could never have spotted them from down below. The
bastards are disguised as bushes! Not that stupid, after all,” said
Henares.
Losada was very pleased. “Friar Salvador,” he called. “Come here.”
Of course I obeyed.
“Tomorrow is the feast of the Annunciation, is it not?”
“Yes,” I answered. “March twenty-fifth. Holy Monday as well.”
“Excellent. It’s a pity we won’t be able to celebrate mass, but on
the other hand, we couldn’t ask for a better day to penetrate
Guacaipuro’s territory.”
It was not the first time I had heard that name. I knew Guacaipuro
was the cacique of the Teques’ Indians and chief cacique of all the
rest. It was Guacaipuro we had come to defeat. But I knew little
about him as a man.
“So pray, Father,” said Losada. “Pray that we may celebrate the
Holy Week in the valley of San Francisco.”
It dawned on me then that our battles were merely skirmishes.
The worst was yet to come.
The night was cold. I dozed off several times, waking suddenly,
sometimes from a dream in which I felt I was falling, sometimes
from the buzzing of a mosquito flying about my ear or the tickling of
an insect crawling over me. It was like a guild of nocturnal demons
attacking us on every front.
The last time I woke, I found a pair of big brown eyes alarmingly
close to my face, observing me ruefully.
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