THE MEXICAN
NOBODY knew his history-- they of the Junta least of all. He
was their "little mystery," their "big patriot," and in his way
he worked as hard for the coming Mexican Revolution as did
they. They were tardy in recognizing this, for not one of the
Junta liked him. The day he first drifted into their crowded,
busy rooms, they all suspected him of being a spy--one of the
bought tools of the Diaz secret service. Too many of the
comrades were in civil an military prisons scattered over the
United States, and others of them, in irons, were even then
being taken across the border to be lined up against adobe
walls and shot.
At the first sight the boy did not impress them favorably. Boy
he was, not more than eighteen and not over large for his
years. He announced that he was Felipe Rivera, and that it was
his wish to work for the Revolution. That was all--not a wasted
word, no further explanation. He stood waiting. There was no
smile on his lips, no geniality in his eyes. Big dashing
Paulino Vera felt an inward shudder. Here was something
forbidding, terrible, inscrutable. There was something venomous
and snakelike in the boy's black eyes. They burned like cold
fire, as with a vast, concentrated bitterness. He flashed them
from the faces of the conspirators to the typewriter which
little Mrs. Sethby was industriously operating. His eyes rested
on hers but an instant--she had chanced to look up--and she,
too, sensed the nameless something that made her pause. She was
compelled to read back in order to regain the swing of the
letter she was writing.
Paulino Vera looked questioningly at Arrellano and Ramos, and
questioningly they looked back and to each other. The
indecision of doubt brooded in their eyes. This slender boy was
the Unknown, vested with all the menace of the Unknown. He was
unrecognizable, something quite beyond the ken of honest,
ordinary revolutionists whose fiercest hatred for Diaz and his
tyranny after all was only that of honest and ordinary
patriots. Here was something else, they knew not what. But
Vera, always the most impulsive, the quickest to act, stepped
into the breach.
"Very well," he said coldly. "You say you want to work for the
Revolution. Take off your coat. Hang it over there. I will show
you, come--where are the buckets and cloths. The floor is
dirty. You will begin by scrubbing it, and by scrubbing the
floors of the other rooms. The spittoons need to be cleaned.
Then there are the windows."
"Is it for the Revolution?" the boy asked.
"It is for the Revolution," Vera answered.
Rivera looked cold suspicion at all of them, then proceeded to
take off his coat.
"It is well," he said.
And nothing more. Day after day he came to his work--sweeping,
scrubbing, cleaning. He emptied the ashes from the stoves,
brought up the coal and kindling, and lighted the fires before
the most energetic one of them was at his desk.
"Can I sleep here?" he asked once.
Ah, ha! So that was it--the hand of Diaz showing through! To
sleep in the rooms of the Junta meant access to their secrets,
to the lists of names, to the addresses of comrades down on
Mexican soil. The request was denied, and Rivera never spoke of
it again. He slept they knew not where, and ate they knew not
where nor how. Once, Arrellano offered him a couple of dollars.
Rivera declined the money with a shake of the head. When Vera
joined in and tried to press it upon him, he said:
"I am working for the Revolution."
It takes money to raise a modern revolution. and always the
Junta was pressed. The members starved and toiled, and the
longest day was none too long, and yet there were times when it
appeared as if the Revolution stood or fell on no more than the
matter of a few dollars. Once, the first time, when the rent of
the house was two months behind and the landlord was
threatening dispossession, it was Felipe Rivera, the scrub-boy
in the poor, cheap clothes, worn and threadbare, who laid sixty
dollars in gold on May Sethby's desk. There were other times.
Three hundred letters, clicked out on the busy typewriters
(appeals for assistance, for sanctions from the organized labor
groups, requests for square news deals to the editors of
newspapers, protests against the high-handed treatment of
revolutionists by the United States courts), lay unmailed,
awaiting postage. Vera's watch had disappeared--the
old-fashioned gold repeater that had been his father's.
Likewise had gone the plain gold band from May Setbby's third
finger. Things were desperate. Ramos and Arrellano pulled their
long mustaches in despair. The letters must go off, and the
Post Office allowed no credit to purchasers of stamps. Then it
was that Rivera put on his hat and went out. When he came back
he laid a thousand two-cent stamps on May Sethby's desk.
"I wonder if it is the cursed gold of Diaz?" said Vera to the
comrades.
They elevated their brows and could not decide. And Felipe
Rivera, the scrubber for the Revolution, continued, as occasion
arose, to lay down gold and silver for the Junta's use.
And still they could not bring themselves to like him. They did
not know him. His ways were not theirs. He gave no confidences.
He repelled all probing. Youth that he was, they could never
nerve themselves to dare to question him.
"A great and lonely spirit, perhaps, I do not know, I do not
know," Arrellano said helplessly.
"He is not human," said Ramos.
"His soul has been seared," said May Sethby. "Light and
laughter have been burned out of him. He is like one dead, and
yet he is fearfully alive."
"He has been through hell," said Vera. "No man could look like
that who has not been through hell--and he is only a boy."
Yet they could not like him. He never talked, never inquired,
never suggested. He would stand listening, expressionless, a
thing dead, save for his eyes, coldly burning, while their talk
of the Revolution ran high and warm. From face to face and
speaker to speaker his eyes would turn, boring like gimlets of
incandescent ice, disconcerting and perturbing.
"He is no spy," Vera confided to May Sethby. "He is a
patriot--mark me, the greatest patriot of us all. I know it, I
feel it, here in my heart and head I feel it. But him I know
not at all."
"He has a bad temper," said May Sethby.
"I know," said Vera, with a shudder. "He has looked at me with
those eyes of his. They do not love; they threaten; they are
savage as a wild tiger's. I know, if I should prove unfaithful
to the Cause, that he would kill me. He has no heart. He is
pitiless as steel, keen and cold as frost. He is like moonshine
in a winter night when a man freezes to death on some lonely
mountain top. I am not afraid of Diaz and all his killers; but
this boy, of him am I afraid. I tell you true. I am afraid. He
is the breath of death."
Yet Vera it was who persuaded the others to give the first
trust to Rivera. The line of communication between Los Angeles
and Lower California had broken down. Three of the comrades had
dug their own graves and been shot into them. Two more were
United States prisoners in Los Angeles. Juan Alvarado, the
Federal commander, was a monster. All their plans did he
checkmate. They could no longer gain access to the active
revolutionists, and the incipient ones, in Lower California.
Young Rivera was given his instructions and dispatched south.
When he returned, the line of communication was reestablished,
and Juan Alvarado was dead. He had been found in bed, a knife
hilt-deep in his breast. This had exceeded Rivera's
instructions, but they of the Junta knew the times of his
movements. They did not ask him. He said nothing. But they
looked at one another and conjectured.
"I have told you," said Vera. "Diaz has more to fear from this
youth than from any man. He is implacable. He is the hand of
God."
The bad temper, mentioned by May Sethby, and sensed by them
all, was evidenced by physical proofs. Now he appeared with a
cut lip, a blackened cheek, or a swollen ear. It was patent
that he brawled, somewhere in that outside world where he ate
and slept, gained money, and moved in ways unknown to them. As
the time passed, he had come to set type for the little
revolutionary sheet they published weekly. There were occasions
when he was unable to set type, when his knuckles were bruised
and battered, when his thumbs were injured and helpless, when
one arm or the other hung wearily at his side while his face
was drawn with unspoken pain.
"A wastrel," said Arrellano.
"A frequenter of low places," said Ramos.
"But where does he get the money?" Vera demanded. "Only to-day,
just now, have I learned that he paid the bill for white
paper--one hundred and forty dollars."
"There are his absences," said May Sethby. "He never explains
them."
"We should set a spy upon him," Ramos propounded.
"I should not care to be that spy," said Vera. "I fear you
would never see me again, save to bury me. He has a terrible
passion. Not even God would he permit to stand between him and
the way of his passion."
"I feel like a child before him," Ramos confessed.
"To me he is power--he is the primitive, the wild wolf, the
striking rattlesnake, the stinging centipede," said Arrellano.
"He is the Revolution incarnate," said Vera. "He is the flame
and the spirit of it, the insatiable cry for vengeance that
makes no cry but that slays noiselessly. He is a destroying
angel in moving through the still watches of the night."
"I could weep over him," said May Sethby. "He knows nobody. He
hates all people. Us he tolerates, for we are the way of his
desire. He is alone. . . . lonely." Her voice broke in a half
sob and there was dimness in her eyes.
Rivera's ways and times were truly mysterious. There were
periods when they did not see him for a week at a time. Once,
he was away a month. These occasions were always capped by his
return, when, without advertisement or speech, he laid gold
coins on May Sethby's desk. Again, for days and weeks, he spent
all his time with the Junta. And yet again, for irregular
periods, he would disappear through the heart of each day, from
early morning until late afternoon. At such times he came early
and remained late. Arrellano had found him at midnight, setting
type with fresh swollen knuckles, or mayhap it was his lip,
new-split, that still bled.
