DC03 - Though Mountains Fall Read Online Free Page B

protection, but you must understand that we are farmers. Even if we run to the hacienda, our livestock will be slaughtered, our houses and barns burned. We would lose everything.”
    Hidalgo squinted at him, puzzled. “Then perhaps you should band together and defend your farms from these men. There are ten families in your valley now, are there not?”
    “Sí, but we cannot fight. It is against the laws of our Gott to take up arms against our fellow man.”
    “Bandits—vermin, rabid dogs,” Hidalgo said with a shrug.
    “Men, still,” Caleb answered evenly. “Made by the hand of Gott. I talked it over with the others, and it seems to all of us that the only solution to our problems is to bring federales to the valley. If there are troops here, the bandits will stay away. But Señor Montoya—the official in Monterrey you recommended to us—he wanted money. Señor Hidalgo, we have given you nearly all the money we have to buy the land.”
    Hidalgo leaned back in his chair and a leery smile came into his eyes. He nodded slowly. “I see. You have come to ask me to pay Señor Montoya’s bribe so he will send troops here to protect you.”
    Caleb nodded thinly. “Sí, though I still don’t understand why a bribe must be paid at all. Montoya is a government official. Don’t they pay him a salary?”
    Hidalgo chuckled. “This is Mexico, Señor Bender. Montoya’s salary as a civil servant is a token. Anyway, why would any man aspire to such an office if there were no way to profit from it?”
    Caleb’s hopes were fading. The tone of Hidalgo’s voice had already told him what his answer would be.
    Hidalgo leaned forward, once again clasping his hands on his desk.
    “Señor Bender, I have the deepest respect for you and your people. You have worked very hard to build a homestead here in our mountains, and you have gained the trust of all those around you. But if you will not defend your own farms how can you expect someone else to defend them for you?”
    “In America there were policemen to protect the innocent.”
    Hidalgo’s eyes narrowed. He took a deep breath and exhaled through his nose like a little hiss of steam. “America is a rich country with plenty of policemen to go around. But Mexico is a poor country, and we have just been through a bitter revolution. In Mexico these days there is never enough of anything to go around.”
    As he was speaking a paneled door opened behind him and a woman in the full regalia of a Mexican baroness glided silently into the room. Her face, her bearing, matched a regal portrait in a gilded frame hanging on the wall directly behind Hidalgo’s desk. His wife. Caleb glanced up at her, and Hidalgo, following his glance, turned and saw her. He held up a finger and said, “I will be with you in a moment, mi amor .”
    She nodded, and remained.
    Hidalgo stared at Caleb a minute longer as if waiting for a rebuttal, but Caleb could think of nothing more to say.
    “My offer stands,” Hidalgo said, and there was an air of finality in his tone, like the banging of a gavel. “You may bring your people here, behind the walls of the hacienda, and I will guarantee their safety. But with all due respect, Señor Bender, it makes no sense for me to pay a king’s ransom for troops when I have no need of them myself.”
    Caleb nodded, his jaw working, his eyes downcast. The irony of Hidalgo’s words seemed lost on Hidalgo himself. But Caleb, with a farmer’s common sense, saw quite clearly the hypocrisy of an aristocrat, sitting in the grand library of his palatial estate with his fine clothes and manicured nails, complaining that there was not enough to go around. Caleb braced his palms on the arms of the chair to rise, but Domingo’s hand pressed firmly on his shoulder. Domingo came around him then and leaned his fists on the edge of Hidalgo’s desk, glaring at the haciendado.
    Hidalgo bristled, staring up at him. There was only indignation in his eyes. The man was too powerful to