l tears."

Demetrio asked for the bottle, passed it to Valderrama. Greedily the
poet drank half its contents in one gulp; then, showing only the whites
of his eyes, he faced the spectators dramatically and, in a highly
theatrical voice, cried:

"Here you may witness the blessings of the revolution caught in a
single tear."

Then he continued to talk like a madman, but like a madman whose vast
prophetic madness encompassed all about him, the dusty weeds, the
tumbled kiosk, the gray houses, the lovely hills, and the immeasurable
sky.

IV

Juchipila rose in the distance, white, bathed in sunlight, shining in
the midst of a thick forest at the foot of a proud, lofty mountain,
pleated like a turban.

Some of the soldiers, gazing at the spire of the church, sighed sadly.
They marched forward through the canyon, uncertain, unsteady, as blind
men walking without a hand to guide them. The bitterness of the exodus
pervaded them.

"Is that town Juchipila?" Valderrama asked.

In the first stage of his drunkenness, Valderrama had been counting the
crosses scattered along the road, along the trails, in the hollows near
the rocks, in the tortuous paths, and along the riverbanks. Crosses of
black timber newly varnished, makeshift crosses built out of two logs,
crosses of stones piled up and plastered together, crosses whitewashed
on crumbling walls, humble crosses drawn with charcoal on the surface
of whitish rocks. The traces of the first blood shed by the
revolutionists of 1910, murdered by the Government.

Before Juchipila was lost from sight, Valderrama got off his horse,
bent down, kneeled, and gravely kissed the ground.

The soldiers passed by without stopping. Some laughed at the crazy man,
others jested. Valderrama, deaf to all about him, breathed his unctuous
prayer:

"O Juchipila, cradle of the Revolution of 1910, O blessed land, land
steeped in the blood of martyrs, blood of dreamers, the only true men..."

"Because they had no time to be bad!" an ex-Federal officer interjected
as he rode.

Interrupting his prayer, Valderrama frowned, burst into stentorian
laughter, reechoed by the rocks, and ran toward the officer begging for
a swallow of tequila.

Soldiers minus an arm or leg, cripples, rheumatics, and consumptives
spoke bitterly of Demetrio. Young whippersnappers were given officers'
commissions and wore stripes on their hats without a day's service,
even before they knew how to handle a rifle, whi