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Pleasures, only to find it abandoned in the dusty heat of midday. With nothing else to do, they headed for the town’s only watering hole. There must have been twenty of them, all with sombreros, bandoliers, and moustaches as bushy as fox tails. Their Levi’s were dirtied with road dust and their fingernails were stained with the oil that sweated from the grips of their pistols. They sat, and started banging their fists against the tabletops.
    The cantina owner raced to serve them cervezas and tequila and mescal and even the pulque he normally gave only to the poor ejido dwellers. As the revolutionaries got drunker and drunker they got uglier and uglier, their stubbled faces growing flushed and goblin-like. As the cantina owner worked behind the bar, cleaning glasses and pretending hewas deaf, he listened to them badmouth the town and its people. And then one of the rebels loudly surmised that the fairer sex had been rounded up and carted off into the desert and so there were no women under the age of sixty to keep them company, and that this surely indicated that this place, this Corazón de Whatever, was a town that supported the federales. Why else, he opined, would they be so hostile to the army of the north, which was only fighting for their liberation? Why else, he snarled, would they be so niggardly with their damn women? Enraged, the Villistas all started yelling and howling and firing their pistols into the cantina’s ceiling beams. Sensing their mood, the cantina owner retreated to the room behind the saloon, emerging only to serve them.
    In short order the rebels had drunk the cantina owner dry, save for a case of special añejo tequila that he kept in his basement. When the soldiers next started clamouring for drinks, the cantina owner waved his arms in the air and said
We’re finished, we’re done, no hay más.
At first the revolutionaries thought he was joking. They all laughed, and more than one of them slurred a variation of
Come on, hombrecito, don’t be like that.
The cantina owner repeated his lie —
Compadres, what can I do about it?
— until they finally realized he was serious. They quieted, and reflexively looked to a guy sitting in the corner, a homely and dirt-streaked hijo de puta whom they all called the capitano. He just sat there, the back of his chair leaning against the cool adobe wall, considering the news with a foul, consternated expression. He rose slowly, all eyes watching. When he reached the cantina owner, he pulled out a pistol the size of a baby’s arm and he pressed it against the cantina owner’s sweat-drenched temple. From that close,Carlos could see that the man’s right eye was made of glass, and that it had become scratched and cloudy with wear. The capitano grinned, his teeth a smear of tartar and the stringy remains of something he’d eaten.
    â€” So, the rebel growled. — You are sure you have run out? Maybe you have forgotten a bottle or two of tequila, tucked away for special guests?
    â€” No, said the cantina owner. — There’s nothing.
    The capitano cocked the enormous trigger, the resulting noise screaming in the cantina owner’s ears. — Are you
sure
, cabrón?
    The cantina owner swallowed. — Sorry, he gulped. — I made a mistake. There may be some in the basement. — Qué bueno! exclaimed the officer as he re-holstered his weapon. — This mujer says there’s more in the basement.
    And then they were in his root cellar, overturning baskets of potatoes and beets and cabbage, and he knew when they’d found the tequila for a cheer went up and pistol fire aerated the floorboards. The visitors resumed drinking. The red-faced cantina owner, watching from the corner, felt himself shrink, his body becoming that of a child frightened by the coming of night. One of the revolutionaries, a greasy mongrel with missing fingers, was about to open the very last bottle with his teeth