Jones delivers the news to the house next door, where Nepomuceno is practically a god. “Don’t let Laura hear!” But Laura, only a few months older than Felipillo Holandés, has already heard. Angry tears begin to pour from her eyes: how could someone dare insult her hero, her savior, the man who rescued her from captivity?!
Don Marcelino, who rises at dawn every day of the week, including Sundays, to search for plant specimens for his herbarium (“that crazy old plant man,” as the old women and children call him) is returning to Matasánchez from a two week expedition when he hears the news. It’s only half-translated and the “Shut up” part’s been run together. He immediately takes a piece of paper from his shirt pocket and writes with a sharp-tipped pencil, “shorup: used to order someone to be quiet. A scornful command.” He thinks it’s a Spanish word. He collects words the same way he collects plants.
Later Don Marcelino folds the paper and puts it away next to his pencil, careful to put the tip up so it doesn’t become dulled. He goes inside his house. He removes his boots just past the front door and doesn’t give the subject another thought.
Petronila, a vaquero’s daughter—she was conceived on Rancho Petronila, hence her name—is standing on her balcony when she hears the news. She goes inside, puts on a shawl, (although it’s hot outside, that’s what decent women do, otherwise her neck would be exposed; at home she leaves her head uncovered) and goes out shouting to her friends, “The Robin brothers are coming!”
The legend of these handsome bandits has been passed from señorita to señorita. The brothers are the Devil incarnate: the most terrible threat, and the most hoped-for.
In the street, Jones sees his friend Roberto, one of the Negroes who escaped when Texan landowners fled to Louisiana before the battle of San Jacinto (they dropped everything and ran for their lives, absolutely terrified, shouting “The Mexicans are coming!” The slaves took advantage of the chaos, “Let’s scram!”, and escaped).
“Roberto, come here! I have to tell you something …”
No sooner does he hear what Shears said than poor Roberto breaks out into hives. The Mexicans had welcomed him with open arms. But now the gringos are getting bolder, perhaps they will cross the Río Bravo to capture fugitives? It had already happened once before, when the mayor locked some escaped slaves in the town jail to protect them, but now things aren’t the same because Nepomuceno and the mayor have their differences, and no one is going to come to their rescue. Ouch, his hives! His skin is covered in tiny red bumps. He begins to scratch and can’t stop.
At the arcades, while having his shoes shined, Doctor Velafuente tells the bootblack, Pepe; then he tells the tobacconist when he stops in to pay for his snuff; at the post office he announces the news loudly to Domingo, who seals the letter the Doctor sends to his sister Lolita every week; and on Hidalgo Street he repeats it to Gómez, the mayor’s assistant, whom he runs into when he’s deciding whether to follow his routine and go to the café, or go to the barber (where Goyo recently cut his hair), or even go home (but it’s too early, the news is really messing up his daily routine). All he really wants to do is get on board the White Lily (the one luxury in his life, his fishing boat), but “that would be irresponsible.”
Gómez, the mayor’s assistant, has no sooner heard Doctor Velafuente’s news than he wants to go directly to tell his boss, but first he must hurry to deliver a “personal and confidential” message for Matasánchez’s new jailkeeper.
He delivers the message and the news about Shears’ phrase as well. It’s received quite differently than it was in Bruneville’s jail. Here there’s only one prisoner, not a prize catch, like Urrutia on the other side of the river; however, in the presidio on the outskirts of Matasánchez, there are scores of prisoners, among whom there are at least a half-dozen big fish.
This solitary prisoner is from the north. He’s a Comanche called Green Horn. Captain Randolph B. Marcy (one of the good gringos) brought him in and accused him of torturing a Negro girl named Pepementia, who is no longer a slave under Mexican law.
Captain Marcy recognized Green Horn in Matasánchez one day, seized him on the spot, and took him directly to the authorities.
In his defense, Green Horn said in perfect Spanish (he speaks several languages): “We did it solely out of scientific interest. We wanted to see if they’re as black on the inside as they are on the outside; that’s why we were peeling back and scrutinizing her layers of skin and muscles.”
Gutiérrez, a lawyer known for his guile and his profitable connections in the Comanche slave trade, is defending Green Horn.
It would have been impossible for Captain Marcy to bring charges in Bruneville, or any other city in American territory, but in Mexico he knew the authorities would take it to heart.
Green Horn is being kept in the jail at the center of town because the presidio—from which it’s impossible to escape—is on the outskirts and vulnerable to Comanche raids.
When Green Horn hears the news of the Shears-Nepomuceno affair, he thinks that the gringos will ride into Matasánchez in reprisal and liberate him from “these disgusting meals and salsas, these flatulent greasers.” He has to restrain himself from breaking into song.
The jailkeeper—who doesn’t have an official title—is a friend of Carvajal, Nepomuceno’s political rival; he has many reasons to rejoice:
1 At last he has something to distract him from his boredom.
2 The position he’s been given by the mayor is humiliating—he’s no more than a security guard, a lowly post unbecoming to a man of his lineage, but he needs the money. “If I’d bought land to the north of the river when the time was right, I’d be set for life” (which, given the gringo takeover, is not true).
3 He thinks he’s finally got his shot at glory; he’s always been on the sidelines when things happen, but not this time, he’s in the jailhouse and something big’s going to happen here.
The jailkeeper caresses the pistols in his holsters.
No one remembers his name.
His duty done, Gómez, the mayor’s assistant, returns to the office. He arrives to find his boss, Don José María, whose famous family’s surname has been popularly replaced by “de la Cerva y Tana” (meaning “blow gun”, a nickname that mocks his inability to open his mouth without spitting verbal bullets at people), carrying an envelope bearing the central government’s seal. Upon hearing the news about Shears the mayor tears the letter open and tosses it onto his desk, unread, and begins to rant and rave as usual, while folding the envelope over and over again, as though it were the envelope’s fault:
He curses Gómez for bearing the news.
He curses Bruneville.
He curses Shears: “Idiot, good-for-nothing, doesn’t even know how to hammer a nail.”
He curses Lázaro Rueda for being drunk: “Booze isn’t good for him, the violin, on the other hand …”
He curses up and down, left and right.
When he’s vented this string of insults he asks loudly, “And now what are we supposed to do? There’s no doubt that Nepomuceno will retaliate, and how! Where does this leave the rest of us?”
The letter lies on his desk, still unread. It’s signed by Francisco Manuel Sánchez de Tagle. It says, in large, clear letters:
