When the Owl Cries Part 45

"You want them to come in my room and kill me. Who is it? What is all this? I, you ... why...." His white face and eyegla.s.sless eyes shocked Angelina and she knelt beside him. "You should have stayed in your room," she said. "Who helped you?"

"Who's out there?" Fernando asked. "What's happening?"

"There are a lot of men. Pedro ... many men ... I don't know just who they are."

"So Pedro has turned against me, the G.o.d-d.a.m.n' b.a.s.t.a.r.d. I--"

A volley of shots tore into the house, and Raul and Manuel returned the fire. Rifle bullets cracked above, sounding steadily.

"Our men are shooting from the roof," Raul said to Manuel.

The old man coughed and tried to see; he blinked and tugged at his chair.

Raul, tormented by the firing, his father's presence, the destruction, fired recklessly.

"Take it slow, Raul," Manuel said. "First thing you know, you'll be taking chances."

Raul nodded.

Crawling to the far end of the room, he opened a French door and aimed carefully at a man on the wall; as he shot, he noticed one of Petaca's guards firing from the corner turret.

"Some of our men are in the turrets," he said.

Esteban soon appeared in the patio door.

"We're driving them away!" he shouted. "Our men are on the roof.

They're leaving Petaca ... we've got them on the run!" He pointed his pistol at the walls.

"Good--we've got them on the run," said Raul to Manuel,

"Kill them!" cried Fernando.

"You must be quiet, ssh," said Angelina, shoving his chair nearer to the wall and sitting beside it.

Other Petaca men took over the outside wall, firing. Raul, at one end of the room and Manuel, at the other, watched and waited. The quiet was strange. Holding on to the wheel chair, Angelina began to cry.

Raul, flattened against the wall, stared at her, hating her lack of courage and control. Why wasn't she in Guadalajara?

Raul checked his supply of bullets and then wheeled his father to his bedroom and with the help of Angelina and Chavela, got him into bed.

Fernando was silent, very weak.

Mounting the defense wall, Raul learned that twenty-five or thirty men had attacked the hacienda; the appearance of some rurales--a handful of them--had discouraged the attack. But Raul could not be sure the report about the rurales was more than a rumor. Esteban insisted that the firing from the roof had driven off the attackers. Two men had been killed and Raul ordered them buried ... two men in white, one young, one middle-aged. Several of Raul's people had been wounded and Velasco dressed their wounds in the small patio.

Gabriel rode in later and seemed less astounded at the attack than anyone. Limping about the patio, helping the wounded, he said Pedro had not led this attack.

"What if he was with the men who attacked us! He didn't supply those guns, we know that. Raul took his guns. The hacienda of Primavera has been burned. I saw it in the Ciudad Guzman newspaper. Did Pedro do that, too? He can't be everywhere."

"I saw him here," said Raul.

"It's a good thing you had guards posted," said Velasco.

"We'd have lost the place without them," said Raul, rolling a bandage.

"I'll have to hand out more guns. There are still some in the game room."

"Keep men on the walls and in the turrets," said Gabriel.

Dr. Velasco's goatee quivered over a wounded youngster. "Can't you hold still? d.a.m.n you!" he grumbled.

Instrument in hand, the thin wrist swiveling, he probed for a fragment.

"I feel it," he said.

The youngster moaned.

"Shut up," Velasco said, on edge. "Somebody light me a cigarette."

Back of all this mess, Raul saw his father. Full of bitterness, he walked to the living room and examined the smashed windows, the pocked walls, the damaged chandelier. He asked a scared maid to sweep up the smashed gla.s.s. Together they knocked out damaged panes. That job done, he sat down, but he had scarcely caught his breath when Gabriel came in, looking beaten.

"Let's both have a brandy," said Raul. "I was thinking..."

"No, not now. I..."

"What is it?"

"Two of our people were shot, a few minutes ago."

"I heard no shooting. Where?"

"Behind the corral."

"Who got shot?"

"Teresa and Maria Eugenia. They're dead."

"Two women--the sc.u.m ... to shoot women!" Raul exclaimed. The last time he had seen Maria and Teresa they had been preparing food in the kitchen.

"So somebody shot them," Raul said, barely opening his lips.

"It was no accident," said Gabriel.

"Deliberate."

"Yes."

"My Petaca is taking a beating."

Gabriel turned to go.

"What can I do?" asked Raul.