Mexico: A Novel Part 31

Our family plantation, Newfields, lay at the extreme northeastern edge of the Wilderness where in the late seventeenth century trees could be felled from relatively flat land, broad fields constructed and cotton grown. To the east lay the rivers that flowed into the Chesapeake and then into the Atlantic, and to the west, through the Wilderness, ran the road that took us to Richmond.

On a spring day in 1823 Joshua Clay ran from his plantation home, leaped on his horse and spurred it down our tree-lined lane, out onto the public road, into the Wilderness and on to Richmond. He galloped through the streets till he came to his club, where he told his fellow members: "It's a boy! I'm registering him for entry into the Virginia Third!" Some of the witnesses had welcomed Joshua himself into the famed regiment forty years before.

As far back as the people of Richmond could remember, the Clays of Newfields Plantation had been known for their ability to handle their land, all two thousand acres of it. They were knowledgeable not only about agriculture and the growing of cotton but also about horseshoeing, carpentry, irrigation and the management of Negro slaves. Joshua Clay had some two hundred slaves, whom he treated decently and from whose labor he built a modest family fortune.

The family's patriotism spoke for itself: Clays had served with Colonel George Was.h.i.+ngton in his frontier fight against the Indians, with General Was.h.i.+ngton at Valley Forge, and with Andrew Jackson at New Orleans after the English burned our capital during the War of 1812. Clays had also served in the Virginia government, and one branch of our family had led a settlement party to tame the frontier in Kentucky and had stayed on to help build that state.

In 1823, when my grandfather was born, there was no war in progress in which the Clays could take part. They spent the peaceful years improving their plantation, removing the tall trees that encroached upon their cotton fields, and building strong business relations.h.i.+ps with cotton traders in Liverpool. They also did a considerable business with the trees they cut down in the area they called the Wilderness by converting the wood into lumber, which they sold to carpenters in cities like nearby Richmond and Was.h.i.+ngton. Since the family holdings were only some dozen miles from Richmond, the Clays were often in that lively city. As soon as their newborn son was about two weeks old and able to travel, the family drove him to Richmond to visit with the relatives who preferred city living, and it was there that Uncle Clay, who served as clergyman in the Episcopal Church, baptized the child as Jubal Clay.

The first name had occasioned debate in the family, for the boy's father preferred a more military name like Gideon, whom the Lord had specifically called a mighty warrior; the mother, who was a delicate young woman who loved books and painting and music, begged her husband to allow her to name the boy Jubal, of whom the Bible said: "He was the father of all who play the harp and flute." But when the father looked in Genesis to find that citation he read: "Zillah also had a son, Tubal-Cain, who forged all kinds of tools out of bronze and iron," and so he made a pact with his wife: "You can call him Jubal if you wish, and I'll call him Tubal," and that is how the boy grew up. He could play the musical instruments his mother provided, but he could also work in the smithy to help his father shoe horses and forge the tools a plantation required.

In time the mother's name prevailed, in part because she bore a second son whom her husband was allowed to name Gideon, after the warrior who slew the Midianites. But the christening had little effect because Gideon became a banker.

In 1846, when Jubal was a married man of twenty-three with a son of his own, he was growing dissatisfied with his life helping direct the plantation. With his father's guidance he had made himself into a skilled toolmaker, an inventive engineer and a shrewd manager of slaves, selling off the unproductive workers to unsuspecting neighbors and buying black men and women in their late teens who could bear children while doing fruitful work in the fields. In the evenings he enjoyed playing music with his mother and his wife, the two women playing together on the piano, he on a clarinet imported from Germany. He also enjoyed going to Richmond to discuss affairs with businessmen there, to visit with his brother in the bank, or to attend the various plays and musical entertainments the city provided.

Such pleasant diversions did not, however, make him neglect his*work at the plantation, where his wife, Zephania, was proving as capable as he in managing the female slaves; she taught them sewing, mending, weaving and cooking, so that the Clays lived well, dressed well and dined well. This satisfactory state of affairs might have continued indefinitely had not Jubal, on one of his visits to Richmond, dined with a group of military men who spoke with some heat about events that threatened the recently admitted state of Texas and indeed the entire nation.

"It's intolerable!" a major was saying. "When I was a member of the army's inspecting party, trying to decide how many forts and where we should place our new lands, I heard nothing but complaints about the continual threats Mexico was making against our borders."

"Didn't the Texans thrash the Mexicans pretty badly?" a naval officer asked, and the army man explained: "That fellow named Santa Anna, a brazen sort, who's president of Mexico and their leading general, too, won four or five stupendous victories against the Texans. But under Sam Houston, that fellow in our Senate now, the Texans finally rallied and beat him. Won their independence, too."

"And became a free nation."

"For a while," the army man said. "But don't make a big thing of it. In the decisive battle less than a thousand men on each side took part. A skirmish, really, but it did the trick. And I must give the Texans credit. They won that battle while losing only six men."

Clay could not believe such figures: "Did you say six?" and the army man said: "I told you it was a skirmish."

Clay persisted: "But you say it's the same Santa Anna who's causing trouble now?"

"When he got back home he refused to acknowledge that Mexico lost the battle, and the war, and Texas. He has hopes of winning it all back from us."

"Any chance?" several of the men asked, and the reply was unequivocal: "He's a d.a.m.ned good military man. If we allow him to get a running start, he could create havoc along our southern border."

"What should we do?"

"I'm told President Polk is just waiting for Santa Anna to move back into Texas. It's American territory now, and"-he banged his right fist into his left palm-"it's war. We move south in overwhelming force and crush that would-be Napoleon." His listeners nodded their approval.

In the discussion that followed, a businessman who collected cotton from many plantations and s.h.i.+pped it to England said quietly: "It behooves everyone in this room to consider the opportunities meticulously. In your mind's eye, draw a picture of our southern border. Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana don't touch Mexico, but everything west of there does. I believe it's land that can grow cotton, and the part that Mexico holds is the richest of all. Believe me, gentlemen, if we could take this Mexican head-on, whip him properly and force him to accept our terms in the peace treaty, we could take his land and win undreamed-of riches."

When the silence of his listeners indicated that they did not share his vision, he a.s.sumed that it must be because he had not spoken clearly, so he elucidated further: "The land we take from Mexico could grow cotton, gentlemen, and where cotton grows you must have slaves, and where will they come from? You can't get them from Africa anymore, or Cuba either. Our laws and British s.h.i.+ps prevent that. So where must the new landowners look for their slaves? Not Georgia or the Carolinas. They need every slave they have. Alabama and Mississippi don't have ten extra slaves between them. Where the new owners will have to come is Virginia. We're phasing out of cotton. Every one of you men has slaves to spare. Imagine the prices you'll get if new cotton land opens up!"

Although Jubal Clay was a prudent businessman who could comprehend the financial advantages a war with Mexico might yield, he was, like his ancestors, primarily a military man, and now he asked: "How do you see the situation developing?" and the army man said: "Talk is that President Polk will call for volunteers, army and navy, to go down there and teach those Mexicans a lesson."

"Where do I go to volunteer?" Clay asked and the man said: "The public call hasn't gone out yet, but I can a.s.sure you that our Virginia Third has a few interesting openings, captain or better if you've had military training."

"Does militia duty count?"

"It sure does. How old are you, Clay?"

"Twenty-three."

"I could sign you up tomorrow, but at your age you'd have to be a lieutenant."

"My family for generations have been fighting captains. I couldn't settle for less."

The army man leaned back, studied Clay, lowered his head to stare at the table, then said: "Well, now. I'd sure like to see our complement filled out, but a captain? At age twenty-three?"

To the man's surprise, Clay broke into a big grin. "If you look in your records, you'll see I've been a member of your regiment since 1823."

"You one of those?"

"Yep." And the recruiter said: "If you mean it, by this time tomorrow I'll have you a captain in the Virginia Third," and Clay saluted, saying: "Like my father and his father before him."

But as the new captain left the table the businessman who acted as a wholesaler in cotton took Jubal aside and said: "Captain Clay, before you depart for Texas, you should give careful thought about this strategy of selling your slaves to whatever new territory we gather after a victorious war with Mexico. Do the proper thing in the next few years, and you can reap profits for decades."

Had Clay accepted his commission in the Virginia regiment one week earlier he would have seen service where he expected, along the Texan-Mexican border under the command of General Zachary Taylor, who was about to lead the invasion south into the heartland of Mexico. But he missed that a.s.signment in which he would have served with many young men like himself who were destined for glory in the 1860s-- Ulysses S. Grant and William Sherman fighting for the North, Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee serving the South.

His delay placed him not on a train heading for Texas but on a troops.h.i.+p leaving the navy yard at New Orleans for a speedy trip to Veracruz, where the Americans would fight their way ash.o.r.e and then march up through jungle roads to Mexico City. When that capital was occupied, the war would be over. Soldiers in the expeditionary force believed they could defeat the Mexicans in about a month and were eager to get the job finished.

Sailing with them would be General Winfield Scott, commander in chief of all American forces in Mexico, sixty years old, white-haired, big in all dimensions and possessed of a furious temper and the conviction that everyone in the government at Was.h.i.+ngton and the army officers on their way to Mexico were plotting against him. But his military credentials were impeccable: fighting in Canada, heroism in the War of 1812, service against the Indians, and holder of every important position in the peacetime army. He was unquestionably the premier military man in the nation, and he intended his conquest of Mexico to be the glorious capstone to his fighting career and possibly a stepping-stone to the presidency.

Well before the voyage began on the little s.h.i.+p that would take him to his meeting with destiny, Scott started a.s.sembling a team he could depend on. Aware that he would require some trustworthy aide to copy the confidential doc.u.ments with which he would bombard his civilian superiors in Was.h.i.+ngton, he was on the lookout for such a man. One morning he spotted Jubal Clay exercising on deck-a fine-looking young fellow, clean-cut, well groomed and most likely with a good education. As Clay ran past Scott growled: "You, young man! Have you a steady hand?" Clay stopped and, turning back, saw the general. "I've shot all my life, sir."

Scott bellowed: "I mean can you write a page that can be read," and Clay said humbly: "Yes."

As Clay worked in the general's crowded quarters he required only a few days to discover that Winfield Scott, secure in the nation's top military job, was pitifully insecure in all personal relations but at the same time ridiculously arrogant. He was, Jubal concluded after a week's work, an impossible fellow, but also a man born to command. He said to himself, It's going to be a stormy war.

He soon learned that Scott hated everyone in a position of power. As a staunch conservative Whig he especially loathed President Polk, a liberal Democrat, but he also despised General Zachary Taylor, another Democrat who acted as if he too hoped to be the next president. His ultimate scorn, however, was reserved for Gideon J. Pillow, a pettifogging lawyer from a small town in Tennessee, who was so ineffectual that Clay could not understand why Scott even bothered with him.

"I'll tell you why," Scott thundered. "Because he was Polk's law partner, and the president a.s.signed him to my staff to spy on me." After Scott had identified three or four, other spies among his generals, Clay asked: "If they're all against you, why did the army put you in command?" and Scott roared: "I'll tell you why. Because they knew I was the best man for the job, the only one who could force Santa Anna to surrender, and that I will do."

Clay, suffering daily proof of Scott's incredible vanity and his determination to fight every official to protect what he deemed his rights, wondered how such a man could lead troops effectively, but when in March 1847 the various American wars.h.i.+ps congregated in the roads of the heavily fortified harbor of Veracruz, Clay saw what a genius Scott was. "To a.s.sault that port with its fortifications," a junior officer said, "would mean enormous losses on our side. 1 do not want such a battle to start."

Nor did Scott, so with a masterly blockade to keep any Mexican supply s.h.i.+p from sneaking into the wharves, and calling upon all the firepower of his s.h.i.+ps, he laid down such a furious bombardment that after a few days the Americans marched ash.o.r.e, virtually unopposed. It was now a free run up to the altiplano where Mexico City awaited the a.s.sault. Clay supposed the march might take two or three weeks, the siege another three weeks, and the surrender sometime in mid-May at the latest.

What a surprise my grandfather had! March went by, then April, May and June, and General Scott was still working his way gingerly through the Mexican jungle, up steep paths, past well-defended forts and formidable cities like Puebla. When the subordinate generals urged more speed, Scott growled: "When I reach the capital I want the battle to be already won. Every advantage should be ours. I want a quick, decisive skirmish."

Clay made good use of this dilatory approach, and in a way he could not have planned. A Mexican scout who had volunteered to lead Scott inland in hopes of gaining American citizens.h.i.+p later, one Pablo Mugica, found that he too had time on his hands, so he offered to teach Clay Spanish, for a fee, and as June eased into July and August neared, Jubal gained a low-level mastery of Spanish that surprised him, and he became valuable in interrogating prisoners.

It was on this long, tedious uphill climb that my grandfather became familiar with Mexico's constant revelation of wonders: the great volcanoes piercing the sky, the matted jungle, the handsome little villages each with its whitewashed walls, the silent valleys, the churches hundreds of years old, and everywhere the Peons in their skimpy white clothes and their donkeys.

The more he saw of Mexico, the more he liked it, and while he never thought of living in such a culturally r.e.t.a.r.ded place, the beauty of the land and the essential charm of the inhabitants' Catholic way of life did attract him, so that when other Americans, sweating up the hills, complained or denigrated the country as a h.e.l.lhole, he was far from agreeing with them. He was not impressed with the military genius of its leaders, for with their enormous numerical superiority he knew that they should have been able to sweep Scott back into the Atlantic, but the people he met on his marches he liked.

His experiences with Scott as he toiled in the general's headquarters handling paper details were constantly surprising, for Scott seethed with hatred of Polk, Pillow and Zach Taylor as he encountered difficulties. His suspicion that spies lurked within his own staff increased, and for good reason, because he really was surrounded by men, usually political appointees, who hoped that he would fail and sometimes took active steps to try to ensure that he did. But he was also accompanied by trusted regular army generals who were as determined as he to achieve a victory. Always outnumbered and opposed by first-cla.s.s artillery under the command of Mexican army officers trained in Europe, Scott's subordinates acted resolutely and responsibly, even though their commander in chief seemed to enjoy abusing them and defaming them in his written reports. Whenever Clay read Scott's latest diatribe against his generals he wondered how they could obey his orders.

But Clay also saw the manner in which Scott sought diligently to identify which of his junior officers showed promise as potential generals, and these he praised extravagantly, giving them choice a.s.signments and then reporting on their successes to Was.h.i.+ngton. Years later when Clay was trying to reach a mature a.s.sessment of Scott as a military man, he wrote: "Reading his reports on his juniors penned in 1847, it would seem that he was eager to pinpoint those young men who would prove the greatest Civil War generals fifteen years later in 1862. He was proud of having P. G. T. Beauregard on his staff, quickly spotted George C. McClellan as promising, and mentioned enthusiastically six or seven other young men who would become important generals."

But Scott's shrewdest evaluation concerned a young engineer named Captain Robert E. Lee. In the dispatches Clay had to copy he read repeatedly of Scott's high regard for this young Virginian: "Greatly distinguished himself at the siege of Veracruz ... indefatigable ... bravery under heavy fire ... an officer of great promise." But the dispatch Jubal remembered longest and quoted to his family most often came at the end of a message in which he commended both George McClellan and P. G. T. Beauregard: "Captain Lee, Engineer, also bore important orders from me until he fainted from a wound and the loss of two nights' sleep at the batteries."

Scott required a substantial amount of time to get from Veracruz to the capital, 27 March to 14 September, but once there he achieved a series of stupendous victories, and Jubal saw what a splendid general he was. Nothing gave Jubal more satisfaction than the report he helped draft for headquarters in Was.h.i.+ngton, for it depicted not only a good general but a great man: Since our final victory carried us right to the gates of the Mexican capital, which was poorly defended, we expected General Scott to give us the order: "Rush in, overwhelm the guards and celebrate a well-earned victory." But to our amazement he halted us, conferred with his generals and said in my hearing: "We shall stop here two days to allow the stricken Mexican government time to stabilize, to get their breath and recover their courage. I order this for two reasons: in the days to come we shall have to consult with these men to work out a sensible peace, and they will behave more sensibly if they have retained their sense of honor. And I have learned from history that when a conquering army bursts into a city after a protracted siege, terrible things are likely to happen. Arson, plunder, murder, rape. These are things that do not happen under my command. We will wait till tempers cool, theirs and ours."

Two days later, as planned, a small contingent of our troops a.s.saulted a minor gate defended by a token force of Mexicans. After a brief skirmish our troops broke through. The Mexicans felt that they had defended the city with honor, and when we marched in to take possession, our troops in order, our flags flying, there was no burning, plunder or rape.

Jubal had one other observation on the Mexican War: At the final batde of Chapultepec late in the siege, an incident occurred that has always perplexed me. It was a confused affair, which consumed several hours, for the Mexicans had the advantage in numbers and position, but in the end we prevailed. Later we learned that during the battle a group of very young cadets from a military college located on the hill refused to abandon their advantageous site even though their instructors and the older cadets had fled. With extraordinary heroism these lads temporarily repulsed the American attacks but eventually they were engulfed by our numbers and six died. When word of their patriotism spread through Mexico, they became enshrined in legend as Los Ninos Heroes. Years later, when I had become a Mexican, people would ask me: "If you were at Chapultepec during the battle, what did you think of Los Ninos Heroes?" and at first I used to say: "We were never aware of them," because it was top painful to consider. But this caused such baleful looks that later I said: "If you'd had one brigade more of those children we'd never have won," and my listeners were gratified by this response.

The reason I emphasize my grandfather's role in the Mexican War and his relations.h.i.+p with General Scott is that this friends.h.i.+p produced an incident which would determine the latter half of his life. Shortly after the end of the hostilities, Scott summoned Jubal and said: "Major Clay, no man on my staff has behaved more admirably than you. You have my complete trust. I'm placing you in command of a dozen cavalrymen and their sergeant for an unusual a.s.signment. I've asked General Santa Anna to issue you a safe conduct to ride northwest of here to Toledo, a mining town with the same name as the town in Spain. I want to know what kind of mines it has, especially whether it's iron or coal. It looks to be about a hundred and eighty miles away. Take money, take food, take ammunition, take your eyes and ears, and G.o.dspeed."

So toward the end of September 1847 my grandfather's party of fourteen rode out from Mexico City toward Toledo, which was almost as far west of the capital as Veracruz had been east, and it had taken them half a year to traverse that distance, but now the fighting was ended and they rode at their pleasure, always attentive to repel snipers or bandits who might try to a.s.sault them. It was, as Grandfather loved to tell my father in later years, a trip marked by grand vistas of the volcanoes behind them and the glorious panoramas ahead. They pa.s.sed historic settlements like Queraaro, saw now and then a small pyramid or other relics of past occupation, and in time they reached the more barren ground covered with cactus, a plant with which the Virginians in the party were not familiar.

In time, when the cooler breezes of November made the weather comfortable, they reached a crest from which they looked ahead to their target, the famous mining city of Toledo, with a large pyramid to the right, a handsome aqueduct running from it into the city limits, inside which stood a central plaza bordered by colonial buildings including a cathedral, and off to one side an imitation of a Roman coliseum built of red boards. When Grandfather , tried his Spanish on a man with a mule he said: 'That's where they run with the bulls," and when Jubal asked: "And where are the mines?" the man said proudly: "Beyond the city, to the north," and all my grandfather could see was a vague ma.s.s of shacks.

"Donde esta la carcel?" Jubal asked a man at the edge of the city, and the man surveyed the troop and asked: "Quien es el prisionero?" for Jubal had confused the word carcel, jail, with cuartel, military headquarters or barracks. When the mistake was explained, both sides began to laugh, and the Mexican called over some friends to explain that the American soldiers wanted to go to jail. Thus my grandfather entered the colonial city of Toledo accompanied by robust laughter.

The commanding officer of the city's guard detachment recommended that the Americans stay at a hostelry that occupied a building famous in the region, the House of Tile, a handsome building facing a fine park to the south and a spectacular sight on the north, the huge pyramid of Toledo, so that during Jubal's three-week stay in the city he gazed alternately at the square, which was only three hundred years old, or the brooding pyramid, thirteen hundred years old. Both gave him constant delight.

He had explained to the Mexicans that he had come to visit their famous mines, and they corrected him: "Only one, senor, but it is big enough," and when they formed a mounted caravan they took him some seven miles to the north along a wide but winding road to a nondescript site on a hillside consisting of a group of low adobe buildings, their roofs made of vines intertwined with tree branches and plastered with mud. There was no impressive building that could have been a.s.sociated with a major mine, but there was a large circular area across which narrow paths ran, and Clay saw that they led to a vast, dark hole. This was the famed Mineral de Toledo, as highly regarded in Spain as in Mexico. In Spanish the name was certainly in the plural for the reason that no one could believe that the silver that poured out of Toledo could have come from one mine only.

"Only silver?" Clay asked and the men nodded. "No iron?" and they shook their heads. "Any iron in the hills beyond?" and again they disappointed him. With that quick solution to the problem he had been sent to investigate, he could have marched back to the capital, but instead he made a fortunate decision: "I'd like to see what quality of mine they have," and he tarried in Toledo, finding the citizens willing to help, for they were justly proud of their treasure. They took him to a Spanish engineer from the home country, a wiry, sandy-haired man not over five feet three, who seemed actually delighted to entertain a knowledgeable visitor: "Mine? Engineer?" When Clay said "Abogado," the Spaniard said something that indicated that he liked lawyers, and Clay struck his own forehead: "AlG.o.don," which meant that he raised cotton, and again there was laughter.

The distance from the shack, in which he met the head of the mine, to the open shaft was only some fifteen yards, but the gravity with which the miner led the way and the care he exercised when approaching the open hole made Clay cautious as he moved forward. At this point eight small Indian women came up out of the mine, each with a basket on her head containing what Clay supposed to be some dark ore containing silver.

When the women had pa.s.sed, their bare feet making no sound, their solemn faces showing no animation, Clay and the engineer moved to the spot from which they had climbed out of the pit, and there the Spaniard indicated a stout board platform where Clay could lie down in a p.r.o.ne position and look down into the Mineral de Toledo. It was an awesome experience: He could see the dark wall of the pit but not the remote bottom where Indian workmen were digging out the ore that their women carried to the top. There was only darkness, a kind of glimpse into h.e.l.l, for up the shaft from time to time came wisps of gray smoke; someone was burning something far, far down in the bowels of the earth.

Then, slowly emerging from the smoke, perhaps two hundred feet down, came eight more Indian women with baskets on their heads, and as he stared at the weaving pattern their movement created he had the impression that they were walking on air, for he could see no stairway. But when he looked more closely as they climbed higher, he saw what had escaped him before: into the sides of the pit, winding down in an endless spiral so as to achieve a gradual rate of ascent, ran a series of narrow stone steps, which had been cut centuries ago for use by the thousands of Indian men and women who had toiled here.

As Jubal stared at the steps he was appalled to see what a small area they provided for the climbing feet-about eighteen inches square-and how, through the centuries the stone wall of the pit had been worn smooth by the pressure of a million hands as the workers had steadied themselves in their perilous climb. He thought: It must be even more dangerous climbing back down, for then the whole weight of the body pulls you forward and a false step ... He could imagine himself plunging headlong down that abyss. While he was contemplating the horror of such a death the women climbing the stairs reached the top of the shaft, blinking as sunlight struck them. Stepping out of the pit, they moved along the path to deliver their ore to the smelter without a single pause in their movements, so that Clay judged them to be machines, dependable, manageable and cheap. They reminded him of his Negro slaves chopping cotton, except that the slaves worked in daylight.

By the time the engineer was ready to lead Clay down the shaft and into the mine, my grandfather had prepared himself emotionally to see some great thing, and he was not disappointed, for in later years he often told his family, whether in Virginia or Mexico: "It was one of the most thrilling days of my life, and I seldom use that word."

The mine that year was nearly thirteen hundred feet deep straight down, and the descent was, as he had antic.i.p.ated, perilous, but the Spaniard showed him how, if he kept his right shoulder pressed against the wall, he could negotiate it with relative ease and safety. But the descent seemed endless, a slow drop into h.e.l.l; however, when they approached the six-hundred-foot mark, the shaft opened out into a s.p.a.cious cavern of some magnitude. Indeed a small farm could have been installed here with the rocky roof high enough to permit reasonably tall barns.

"You found a thick lode here?" Clay asked, and when the engineer nodded, Clay said: "But down there it narrows again?"

"Disappears."

Clay halted at the edge of the shaft as it continued downward, as narrow as before, and the magnitude of the decision made at this point more than a century ago stunned him: "You mean, that as the lode began to run out, someone had the courage to argue: 'Down below there must be the other part,' and on that blind hope they dug through solid rock even deeper?"

"The decision wasn't difficult. In Spain the king received a report every month on the progress of the Toledo Mineral. He relied on our silver, and when he saw it running out he gave an order: 'Dig deeper,' and the Indians dug."

When Clay asked: "How much deeper?" the engineer said: "You'll see," and down they went on the same narrow steps, leaning to the right as before to keep their balance. After perhaps a hundred feet of black rock they came to the second cavern, nearly seven hundred feet down, not quite as s.p.a.cious as before, but still more than a ballroom in size.

"They dug here for years," the engineer said as they descended to the thirteen-hundred-foot level. "This is where they began to come upon the real treasure of Toledo."

As Jubal's eyes became accustomed to the dim light thrown by smoky flares, he saw that he had descended not to a miners' cave but to an underground village placed in a circle well over five hundred yards in diameter. Here some three dozen Indians and their Mexican overseers toiled as if they were on an open field in sunlight. There was a smithy to sharpen the tools that cut away the rock to find the ore; there were vats of water, a flat area that resembled a restaurant with tables; lost in distant shadows were storehouses. But what astounded Clay the most was the donkeys bringing large chunks of ore from the cutting face to the area where it would be broken into smaller segments for transportation above.

"How do you get the donkeys in and out? They can't walk down the steps, can they?"

'They don't go out."

"Never?"

"Their bodies are hauled out when they die." And as Clay stared at the donkeys, plodding along in near darkness, his eyes wandered from them to the Indians and he asked: "The Indians? Do they too stay down here perpetually?" and the Spaniard said: "Not by force. They're allowed up if they wish, but that climb is fearful, as you'll see, so some prefer to stay down. Of course, when they grow too old to work, we encourage them to leave, but some prefer to stay and work at little jobs here and there. Some grow fond of their donkeys and stay with them."

"But how do they get the donkeys down here?" Clay asked. The Spaniard asked the workmen if any were due to come down that day and they nodded. After more than two hours during which Clay inspected the cavern, finding one amazing aspect after another, the foreman blew a whistle, whereupon an Indian worker began beating a drum and women stopped their steep climb with their baskets. When activity in the shaft had ceased for about twenty minutes, Clay heard a b.u.mping and a sc.r.a.ping, punctuated by the sound of braying, and in time he saw, in a rope sling that slowly descended, the kicking legs of a protesting donkey. When released, the animal ran about, exploring this rocky pasture on which he would spend the rest of his life. With the ropes thus freed, the miners formed a kind of basket into which were tossed different items no longer required below, and after proper signals were sent by tugging on the rope, the drumbeating began and the huge bundle rose, b.u.mping the narrow walls as it went.

When the women resumed their climb, Clay asked: "Do some of them live down, here too?" and the engineer said: "If they've been up and down several times, with loads, they're free to sleep down here. Of course, they go above to have their babies, but even so, a few stubborn ones stay down."

"Do pregnant women climb those steps, with baskets of ore?"

"We watch carefully. When she's in the seventh or eighth month we give her easier tasks aboveground. Like feeding ore into the furnace."

"How long have those steps been there?" Clay asked, and the engineer said: "They tell me the Indians discovered silver here in 1548, so the first steps must have been cut three hundred years ago next year."

"And if one of the women, or the men, slips on a step... ?"

The Spaniard shrugged and raised his hands upward in a gesture of supreme dismissal, but then he did add: "We've always watched the steps closely, and if wc find one where people have fallen from time to time, we bring the stonemasons down and we redo that step, though it takes time and it's costly. Of course, we preach caution going and coming." He explained that more Indians died coming down empty-handed than when climbing up with a load of ore: "They get careless, and they hurry."

"Where do you find the Indians to do this work?" and the engineer said: "Criminals used to be sent here, in the early centuries, but we found they weren't reliable-they were apt to do dreadful things. So the engineers stopped that, too dangerous."

'Then what?"

"Our missionaries persuaded some of their converts to work so they could be near a church, and when we didn't get enough-this was in my time-the soldiers would bring in whole tribes. If you could speak to each of the workers down here, you'd find a dozen different languages."

"Do those brought in by the soldiers ever protest? I mean, in America sometimes our slaves start a rebellion."

"The same here. This mine has seen some incidents, very ugly ones. The entire white staff belowground wiped out, or Indians from one tribe eliminating another tribe. And we have to be watchful. Sometimes a man who's become . . ." He knocked on his head to indicate insanity. "He might lurk in one of the empty caverns we saw coming down, and when he spots a manager he doesn't like or one of the Indians we promoted to a job he wanted, he waits till the man has taken the first step on the stairs, then out he leaps, grabs the man and together they plunge to the bottom."

"Has that happened in your time?"

"Last month. We have to be constantiy alert."

What Clay was seeing, especially the delivery of the donkey, made him think: If you can bring the donkey down by those ropes, why don't you haul the ore out the same way? and the Spaniard explained: "Ropes cost money. Use them too often, they fray and break. Besides, it's a long way down here from up there. The women are much cheaper."

When the time came to start the long climb out, Clay was tormented by many visions: some insane Indian grabbing him for the terrible plunge; the donkey that had been sentenced that day to a perpetual service underground; and, most lurid of all, the scene of an entire community living and working and having children deep in the bowels of the earth. As he tried to calculate how many Indians had perished in the Mineral de Toledo, he was suddenly struck by the parallel fate of his slaves at Newfields Plantation. But he was able to salve his conscience: "After all, G.o.d has ordained that inferior races must work for the superior. Anyway, the Indians probably have it a lot better here than they did in the mountains." But when he reached the top and climbed out into the sunlight, he felt the cruel pain in his legs, and he thought: How do those little women do it? When he saw the next line of eight crossing the flat ground to the smelter he muttered softly: "You're stronger than I could ever be."

He told his fellow engineer as they parted: "I'll be wanting to see a lot more of your operation. It looks to be in great shape." When he returned to his quarters in the House of Tile a surprise awaited him that would make his expedition a worthy and memorable adventure, for Don Alipio Palafox of the notable Spanish family who had played a major role in converting an ancient Altomec city into a modern Christian one was waiting to welcome him to Toledo, which the Spaniard considered a Palafox fiefdom. A gracious, vigorous man in his late thirties with a head of black hair, a smile of white teeth and skin markedly darker than that of the average homeland-born Spaniard, he greeted Jubal as if eager to pay his respects to the conquering hero: "With that a.s.s Santa Anna leading our troops, you couldn't escape winning. Did you ever see a general make more mistakes? Sending his army here and there when he should have stayed home defending his capital?"

"We were lucky to win," Clay said modestly. "And it was d.a.m.ned difficult, because your men fought valiantly."

"Where did you learn to speak such excellent Spanish?"

"Don Alipio, you've been a diplomat to some foreign capital. I learned a few words, a few useful phrases on the march up from Veracruz."

"In that short a time? You must be a genius with words."

"Don Alipio, how long do you think it took us to make that march?"

"I have no idea. Out here we didn't follow the progress of the war. Santa Anna's always in one or another. How long?"