A Ballad of Love and Glory(2)
“Joaquín!” Ximena cried out, pushing past the crowd, her heart flailing like a seagull trapped in netting. Seeing her husband run out of the building, she rushed to join him.
“Vámonos,” he said, taking her hand.
The air reeked of smoke. Ximena could hear the crackling of the burning timber and thatch as the villagers’ huts burned. Flames licked the rafters in the plaza church even as the bells continued to toll. People ran out of their homes with whatever they could carry. A fortunate few loaded their wagons and carts and fled. The rest followed behind on foot in a frantic pace, seeking shelter in the prairie beyond.
The Yanqui cavalry suddenly burst through the smoke, led by a peculiar old man dressed like a farmer and wearing a straw hat. They shot their pistols into the air, and in the shocked silence that followed, the man in the straw hat pulled his horse to a halt and held up one hand.
“My name is General Zachary Taylor, commander-in-chief of the Army of Occupation of the United States of America,” he declared. “Do not be afraid.”
No one waited to hear the Yanqui general say more. Joaquín handed Ximena her horse’s reins, and as soon as Nana Hortencia sat safely on one of the canvas-topped wagons and the ranch hands took the reins, they rode out of the village, eluding the general and his mounted troops along with the Rangers.
They made their way across the broad plains, but encumbered by wagons and carts loaded with sacks of rice, wheat flour, coffee and cacao, crates of piloncillo and dried fish, and other provisions they had picked up at the port, they couldn’t get away fast enough. As the gathering dusk gave over to the fireflies twinkling over the prairie, Ximena, struggling to see in the deepening twilight, wondered how long it would take to cover the remaining nine kilometers to the rancho.
She glanced back at the village in the distance and saw it was covered in an orange haze.
“War is coming,” she said.
“No, mi amor,” Joaquín said. “They will negotiate. I’m sure it won’t come to war.”
He was only trying to ease her worries. But it was futile to try to shield her from what she had witnessed that day. What else could this be, if not an act of war?
She remembered that ten years before, when Texas rebelled against Mexico and declared itself an independent republic, it proclaimed that its boundary would then extend two hundred and fifty kilometers south to the Río Bravo, even though the Río Nueces had been the established border even before Mexico had achieved its independence from Spain. Mexico had never recognized Texas’s independence or its claim to the Río Bravo and the region between the two rivers, and it had warned the United States to keep its hands off its lands.
Looking to the sky, Ximena thought of the single star on the flag of the Republic of Texas, realizing that it was now part of the American constellation. If the United States was now ready to destroy everything in its wake, what would become of her and her family?
2
March 1846
Rancho Los Meste?os, Río Bravo
The next day, Ximena sat on her horse facing northeast, looking beyond the prairie teeming with wildflowers at the wisps of smoke rising over the remnants of El Frontón de Santa Isabel. They had arrived at the rancho before sunup, and though she was tired, she had been unable to sleep. So she’d gotten dressed to ride out to the prairie and offer up a prayer for the villagers. If the Yanquis weren’t stopped, would El Frontón de Santa Isabel be the first of many Mexican villages to be burned to the ground?
The wind rippled through the zacahuistle grass. Specks of the windblown ash settled on her opened hand, and she licked them off her palm, tasting the bitter sorrow of innocent families displaced from their homes. What would happen to them now? Those who’d fled were most likely scattered about the bare prairie, unsheltered and exposing themselves to further dangers. But where could they go? Those who hadn’t been able to flee were surely now at the mercy of their enemies, facing an equally uncertain fate.
As she turned her horse, Cenizo, to return to the house, she spotted another cloud rising in the west. This one was not from a fire. Mounted riders were kicking up dust as they sped toward the rancho, and that kind of haste meant trouble. Ximena galloped back to the stables, calling for the foreman’s sons to fetch her husband and the wranglers who’d taken the horses out to pasture. The teenage boys dropped their pitchforks and hurried off, but the horsemen reached the main house before Joaquín. The barking dogs brought out Nana Hortencia and the three house servants, who waited fearfully under the ramada.
Hiding her escopeta between the folds of her skirt, her finger on the trigger and ready to shoot if she had to, Ximena stood by the front door of her house and waited, her heart pounding to the beat of the horses’ hooves. It wasn’t the dreaded Texas Rangers or the marauding Comanches, and yet she felt little relief once she identified the leader of the twelve riders. It was Joaquín’s childhood friend Cheno, or more officially, Corporal Juan Nepomuceno Cortina of the Mexican militia, Los Defensores de la Patria.
“Cheno, what a surprise,” she said, loosening her tight grip on her musket, though the worry in the pit of her stomach intensified. What was the militia doing here?
Cortina pulled up to the house and dismounted quickly. “Ximena. Sorry to show up like this, but I need your help.” He looked toward Nana Hortencia, who stood behind Ximena, and said, “Por favor. He doesn’t have much time.”