University of Virginia Library

5. CHAPTER FIVE

DURING the night the expectant populace had taken
possession of all the belfries in the town in order to welcome
Pedrito Montero, who was making his entry after
having slept the night in Rincon. And first came straggling
in through the land gate the armed mob of all
colours, complexions, types, and states of raggedness,
calling themselves the Sulaco National Guard, and
commanded by Señor Gamacho. Through the middle
of the street streamed, like a torrent of rubbish, a mass
of straw hats, ponchos, gun-barrels, with an enormous
green and yellow flag flapping in their midst, in a
cloud of dust, to the furious beating of drums. The
spectators recoiled against the walls of the houses
shouting their Vivas! Behind the rabble could be seen
the lances of the cavalry, the "army" of Pedro Montero.
He advanced between Señores Fuentes and Gamacho
at the head of his llaneros, who had accomplished the
feat of crossing the Paramos of the Higuerota in a
snow-storm. They rode four abreast, mounted on
confiscated Campo horses, clad in the heterogeneous
stock of roadside stores they had looted hurriedly in
their rapid ride through the northern part of the province;
for Pedro Montero had been in a great hurry
to occupy Sulaco. The handkerchiefs knotted loosely
around their bare throats were glaringly new, and all
the right sleeves of their cotton shirts had been cut
off close to the shoulder for greater freedom in throwing
the lazo. Emaciated greybeards rode by the side of
lean dark youths, marked by all the hardships of campaigning,

with strips of raw beef twined round the
crowns of their hats, and huge iron spurs fastened to
their naked heels. Those that in the passes of the
mountain had lost their lances had provided themselves
with the goads used by the Campo cattlemen: slender
shafts of palm fully ten feet long, with a lot of loose rings
jingling under the ironshod point. They were armed
with knives and revolvers. A haggard fearlessness characterized
the expression of all these sun-blacked countenances;
they glared down haughtily with their
scorched eyes at the crowd, or, blinking upwards insolently,
pointed out to each other some particular
head amongst the women at the windows. When they
had ridden into the Plaza and caught sight of the equestrian
statue of the King dazzlingly white in the sunshine,
towering enormous and motionless above the
surges of the crowd, with its eternal gesture of saluting,
a murmur of surprise ran through their ranks. "What
is that saint in the big hat?" they asked each other.

They were a good sample of the cavalry of the plains
with which Pedro Montero had helped so much the victorious
career of his brother the general. The influence
which that man, brought up in coast towns, acquired in
a short time over the plainsmen of the Republic can be
ascribed only to a genius for treachery of so effective
a kind that it must have appeared to those violent men
but little removed from a state of utter savagery, as the
perfection of sagacity and virtue. The popular lore
of all nations testifies that duplicity and cunning, together
with bodily strength, were looked upon, even
more than courage, as heroic virtues by primitive mankind.
To overcome your adversary was the great
affair of life. Courage was taken for granted. But
the use of intelligence awakened wonder and respect.
Stratagems, providing they did not fail, were honourable;

the easy massacre of an unsuspecting enemy evoked
no feelings but those of gladness, pride, and admiration.
Not perhaps that primitive men were more faithless
than their descendants of to-day, but that they went
straighter to their aim, and were more artless in their
recognition of success as the only standard of morality.

We have changed since. The use of intelligence
awakens little wonder and less respect. But the ignorant
and barbarous plainsmen engaging in civil strife followed
willingly a leader who often managed to deliver their
enemies bound, as it were, into their hands. Pedro Montero
had a talent for lulling his adversaries into a sense
of security. And as men learn wisdom with extreme
slowness, and are always ready to believe promises that
flatter their secret hopes, Pedro Montero was successful
time after time. Whether only a servant or some inferior
official in the Costaguana Legation in Paris, he had
rushed back to his country directly he heard that his
brother had emerged from the obscurity of his frontier
commandancia. He had managed to deceive by his
gift of plausibility the chiefs of the Ribierist movement
in the capital, and even the acute agent of the San
Tomé mine had failed to understand him thoroughly.
At once he had obtained an enormous influence over
his brother. They were very much alike in appearance,
both bald, with bunches of crisp hair above their ears,
arguing the presence of some negro blood. Only Pedro
was smaller than the general, more delicate altogether,
with an ape-like faculty for imitating all the outward
signs of refinement and distinction, and with a parrot-
like talent for languages. Both brothers had received
some elementary instruction by the munificence of a
great European traveller, to whom their father had been
a body-servant during his journeys in the interior of
the country. In General Montero's case it enabled

him to rise from the ranks. Pedrito, the younger, incorrigibly
lazy and slovenly, had drifted aimlessly from
one coast town to another, hanging about counting-
houses, attaching himself to strangers as a sort of valet-
de-place, picking up an easy and disreputable living.
His ability to read did nothing for him but fill his head
with absurd visions. His actions were usually determined
by motives so improbable in themselves as to
escape the penetration of a rational person.

Thus at first sight the agent of the Gould Concession
in Sta. Marta had credited him with the possession of
sane views, and even with a restraining power over the
general's everlastingly discontented vanity. It could
never have entered his head that Pedrito Montero,
lackey or inferior scribe, lodged in the garrets of the
various Parisian hotels where the Costaguana Legation
used to shelter its diplomatic dignity, had been devouring
the lighter sort of historical works in the French
language, such, for instance as the books of Imbert
de Saint Amand upon the Second Empire. But Pedrito
had been struck by the splendour of a brilliant court,
and had conceived the idea of an existence for himself
where, like the Duc de Morny, he would associate the
command of every pleasure with the conduct of political
affairs and enjoy power supremely in every way. Nobody
could have guessed that. And yet this was one
of the immediate causes of the Monterist Revolution.
This will appear less incredible by the reflection that
the fundamental causes were the same as ever, rooted
in the political immaturity of the people, in the indolence
of the upper classes and the mental darkness of
the lower.

Pedrito Montero saw in the elevation of his brother
the road wide open to his wildest imaginings. This was
what made the Monterist pronunciamiento so unpreventable.

The general himself probably could have been
bought off, pacified with flatteries, despatched on a
diplomatic mission to Europe. It was his brother who
had egged him on from first to last. He wanted to become
the most brilliant statesman of South America.
He did not desire supreme power. He would have been
afraid of its labour and risk, in fact. Before all, Pedrito
Montero, taught by his European experience, meant
to acquire a serious fortune for himself. With this
object in view he obtained from his brother, on the
very morrow of the successful battle, the permission
to push on over the mountains and take possession
of Sulaco. Sulaco was the land of future prosperity,
the chosen land of material progress, the only province
in the Republic of interest to European capitalists.
Pedrito Montero, following the example of the Duc de
Morny, meant to have his share of this prosperity.
This is what he meant literally. Now his brother was
master of the country, whether as President, Dictator,
or even as Emperor — why not as an Emperor? — he
meant to demand a share in every enterprise — in railways,
in mines, in sugar estates, in cotton mills, in land
companies, in each and every undertaking — as the price
of his protection. The desire to be on the spot early
was the real cause of the celebrated ride over the mountains
with some two hundred llaneros, an enterprise of
which the dangers had not appeared at first clearly to
his impatience. Coming from a series of victories, it
seemed to him that a Montero had only to appear
to be master of the situation. This illusion had betrayed
him into a rashness of which he was becoming
aware. As he rode at the head of his llaneros he regretted
that there were so few of them. The enthusiasm
of the populace reassured him. They yelled "Viva
Montero! Viva Pedrito!" In order to make them still
more enthusiastic, and from the natural pleasure he had
in dissembling, he dropped the reins on his horse's neck,
and with a tremendous effect of familiarity and confidence
slipped his hands under the arms of Señores
Fuentes and Gamacho. In that posture, with a ragged
town mozo holding his horse by the bridle, he rode
triumphantly across the Plaza to the door of the Intendencia.
Its old gloomy walls seemed to shake in
the acclamations that rent the air and covered the
crashing peals of the cathedral bells.

Pedro Montero, the brother of the general, dismounted
into a shouting and perspiring throng of enthusiasts
whom the ragged Nationals were pushing
back fiercely. Ascending a few steps he surveyed the
large crowd gaping at him. and the bullet-speckled
walls of the houses opposite lightly veiled by a sunny
haze of dust. The word "PORVENIR" in immense
black capitals, alternating with broken windows, stared
at him across the vast space; and he thought with delight
of the hour of vengeance, because he was very sure
of laying his hands upon Decoud. On his left hand,
Gamacho, big and hot, wiping his hairy wet face,
uncovered a set of yellow fangs in a grin of stupid hilarity.
On his right, Señor Fuentes, small and lean,
looked on with compressed lips. The crowd stared
literally open-mouthed, lost in eager stillness, as
though they had expected the great guerrillero, the
famous Pedrito, to begin scattering at once some sort
of visible largesse. What he began was a speech. He
began it with the shouted word "Citizens!" which
reached even those in the middle of the Plaza. Afterwards
the greater part of the citizens remained fascinated
by the orator's action alone, his tip-toeing, the
arms flung above his head with the fists clenched, a
hand laid flat upon the heart, the silver gleam of rolling

eyes, the sweeping, pointing, embracing gestures, a
hand laid familiarly on Gamacho's shoulder; a hand
waved formally towards the little black-coated person
of Señor Fuentes, advocate and politician and a true
friend of the people. The vivas of those nearest to the
orator bursting out suddenly propagated themselves irregularly
to the confines of the crowd, like flames running
over dry grass, and expired in the opening of the
streets. In the intervals, over the swarming Plaza
brooded a heavy silence, in which the mouth of the
orator went on opening and shutting, and detached
phrases — "The happiness of the people," "Sons of
the country," "The entire world, el mundo entiero" —
reached even the packed steps of the cathedral with
a feeble clear ring, thin as the buzzing of a mosquito.
But the orator struck his breast; he seemed to prance
between his two supporters. It was the supreme effort
of his peroration. Then the two smaller figures disappeared
from the public gaze and the enormous Gamacho,
left alone, advanced, raising his hat high above
his head. Then he covered himself proudly and yelled
out, "Ciudadanos!" A dull roar greeted Señor Gamacho,
ex-pedlar of the Campo, Commandante of the
National Guards.

Upstairs Pedrito Montero walked about rapidly from
one wrecked room of the Intendencia to another, snarling
incessantly —

"What stupidity! What destruction!"

Señor Fuentes, following, would relax his taciturn
disposition to murmur —

"It is all the work of Gamacho and his Nationals;"
and then, inclining his head on his left shoulder,
would press together his lips so firmly that a little
hollow would appear at each corner. He had his
nomination for Political Chief of the town in his

pocket, and was all impatience to enter upon his
functions.

In the long audience room, with its tall mirrors all
starred by stones, the hangings torn down and the
canopy over the platform at the upper end pulled to
pieces, the vast, deep muttering of the crowd and the
howling voice of Gamacho speaking just below reached
them through the shutters as they stood idly in dimness
and desolation.

"The brute!" observed his Excellency Don Pedro
Montero through clenched teeth. "We must contrive
as quickly as possible to send him and his Nationals out
there to fight Hernandez."

The new Géfé Político only jerked his head sideways,
and took a puff at his cigarette in sign of his agreement
with this method for ridding the town of Gamacho and
his inconvenient rabble.

Pedrito Montero looked with disgust at the absolutely
bare floor, and at the belt of heavy gilt picture-frames
running round the room, out of which the remnants of
torn and slashed canvases fluttered like dingy rags.

"We are not barbarians," he said.

This was what said his Excellency, the popular
Pedrito, the guerrillero skilled in the art of laying ambushes,
charged by his brother at his own demand
with the organization of Sulaco on democratic principles.
The night before, during the consultation
with his partisans, who had come out to meet him in
Rincon, he had opened his intentions to Señor Fuentes —

"We shall organize a popular vote, by yes or no, confiding
the destinies of our beloved country to the wisdom
and valiance of my heroic brother, the invincible general.
A plebiscite. Do you understand?"

And Señor Fuentes, puffing out his leathery cheeks,
had inclined his head slightly to the left, letting a thin,

bluish jet of smoke escape through his pursed lips. He
had understood.

His Excellency was exasperated at the devastation.
Not a single chair, table, sofa, étagère or console had
been left in the state rooms of the Intendencia. His
Excellency, though twitching all over with rage, was
restrained from bursting into violence by a sense of his
remoteness and isolation. His heroic brother was very
far away. Meantime, how was he going to take his
siesta? He had expected to find comfort and luxury
in the Intendencia after a year of hard camp life, ending
with the hardships and privations of the daring dash
upon Sulaco — upon the province which was worth
more in wealth and influence than all the rest of the
Republic's territory. He would get even with Gamacho
by-and-by. And Señor Gamacho's oration, delectable
to popular ears, went on in the heat and glare
of the Plaza like the uncouth howlings of an inferior
sort of devil cast into a white-hot furnace. Every
moment he had to wipe his streaming face with his bare
fore-arm; he had flung off his coat, and had turned up
the sleeves of his shirt high above the elbows; but he
kept on his head the large cocked hat with white plumes.
His ingenuousness cherished this sign of his rank as
Commandante of the National Guards. Approving and
grave murmurs greeted his periods. His opinion was
that war should be declared at once against France,
England, Germany, and the United States, who, by
introducing railways, mining enterprises, colonization,
and under such other shallow pretences, aimed at robbing
poor people of their lands, and with the help of
these Goths and paralytics, the aristocrats would convert
them into toiling and miserable slaves. And
the leperos, flinging about the corners of their dirty
white mantas, yelled their approbation. General

Montero, Gamacho howled with conviction, was the
only man equal to the patriotic task. They assented
to that, too.

The morning was wearing on; there were already signs
of disruption, currents and eddies in the crowd. Some
were seeking the shade of the walls and under the trees
of the Alameda. Horsemen spurred through, shouting;
groups of sombreros set level on heads against the vertical
sun were drifting away into the streets, where the
open doors of pulperias revealed an enticing gloom resounding
with the gentle tinkling of guitars. The National
Guards were thinking of siesta, and the eloquence
of Gamacho, their chief, was exhausted. Later on,
when, in the cooler hours of the afternoon, they tried
to assemble again for further consideration of public
affairs, detachments of Montero's cavalry camped on
the Alameda charged them without parley, at speed,
with long lances levelled at their flying backs as far as
the ends of the streets. The National Guards of
Sulaco were surprised by this proceeding. But they
were not indignant. No Costaguanero had ever
learned to question the eccentricities of a military force.
They were part of the natural order of things. This must
be, they concluded, some kind of administrative measure,
no doubt. But the motive of it escaped their
unaided intelligence, and their chief and orator, Gamacho,
Commandante of the National Guard, was lying
drunk and asleep in the bosom of his family. His bare
feet were upturned in the shadows repulsively, in the
manner of a corpse. His eloquent mouth had dropped
open. His youngest daughter, scratching her head with
one hand, with the other waved a green bough over his
scorched and peeling face.