CHAPTER NINETEEN

HOLMAN SOMMERS TURNS PROPHET

Holman Sommers, clad outwardly in old wool trousers of a dingy gray, a faded brown smoking jacket that had shrunk in many washings until it was three inches too short in the sleeves, and old brown slippers, sat tilted back in a kitchen chair against the wall of his house and smoked a beautifully colored meerschaum with solid gold bands and a fine amber mouthpiece, while he conferred comfortably with one Elfigo Apodaca.

There was no quizzical twinkle in the eyes of Holman Sommers, vividly alive though they were always.  With his low slipper heels hooked over the rung of his chair and his right hand nursing the bowl of his pipe and his black hair rumpled in the wind, he was staring at the granite ridge somberly.

“I am indeed sorry to hear that Estan Medina was shot,” he said after a pause.  “Even in the interests of the Cause it was absolutely unjustifiable.  The man could do no harm; indeed, he served to divert suspicion from others.  Only crass stupidity would resort to brute violence in the effort to further propaganda.  Laying aside the human—­”

“Of course,” Elfigo interrupted sarcastically, “there’s nothing violent in a revolution!  Where do you get your argument for gentleness, Holly?  That’s what bothers me.  You can stir up a bunch of Mexicans quicker than a barrel of mezcal with your revolution talks.”

“Ah, but you do not take into account the great, fundamental truth that cooperative effort, on the part of the proletariat, is wholly justifiable, in that it furthers the good of all humanity.  Whereas violence on the part of the individual merely retards the final result for which we are striving.  The murder of Estan Medina, for instance, may be the one display of individual violence which will nullify all our efforts toward a common good.

“For myself, I am bending every energy toward the formation of a cooperative colony which will demonstrate the feasibility of a cooperative form of government for the whole nation—­the whole world, in fact.  Your Junta has pledged itself to the assistance of this colony, the incalculable benefits of which will, I verily believe, be the very salvation of Mexico as a nation.  Mexico, now in the throes of national parturition, is logically the pioneer in the true socialistic form of government.  From Mexico the seed will be carried overseas to drop upon soil made fertile by the bones of those sacrificed to the blood-lust of the war mad lords of Europe.

“Here, in this little corner of the world, is where the first tiny plant must be grown.  Can you not grasp, then, the tremendous significance of what, on the face of it, is the pitifully small attempt of a pitifully weak people to strike a feeble blow for the freedom of labor?  To frustrate that feeble blow now, by the irresponsible, lawless murder of a good citizen, merely because he failed at first to grasp the meaning of the lesson placed before him to learn, is, to my way of thinking, not only unjustifiable but damnably weak and reprehensible.”