EVEN IN DEATH, LOYALTY OF DOGS IN BATTLE OF TOMOCHIC

(Ed.'s Note: We've all read of the faithful dog who continued going to the train station to see if his master returned until it died waiting for him when he never did. 

And when Ulysses returned to Ithaca after his Odyssey, he found his faithful dog Argus - too weak to stand anymore - and it wagged his tail and flattened his ears at the sound of his master's voice before he died and Ulysses turned away and wiped a tear. 

In the selection below, journalist/writer Heriberto Frias describes a battle scene at Tomóchic, Chihuahua, in 1892 when Mexican Army troops sent by dictator Porfirio Diaz massacred the gallant Yaqui insurgents who protested the taking of their lands to be given to American investors. He was a lieutenant in Diaz's army and witnessed the massacre. The story written by Frias four months after the battle focuses on the loyalty of the Indians' dogs, even in death. Writing about the massacre cost him his position in the army and he took up writing. This article appeared in a publication called Mexico en Cien Reportajes covering the period from 1890  to 1990.)

By Heriberto Frias
Journalist

...Meanwhile, below, as the sea of shadows was still extending its islands of luminous blood  and chorus of laments surged from the beasts in the valley that howled desperately, he sat about to tell him the episodes of the day because he was in on the detail incinerating the cadavers, the victims of the last combats.

He had already touched upon, as he could, poor devil, more than one moving or epic scene, when he suddenly jumped up and exclaimed with a feeling that (I) would never forget.

"Oh, sir!.."And the dogs...! The dogs of Tomóchic...! How great....What beautiful dogs ...! I've never seen anything like it ...! What horror...! How courageous...! How good... yes ... How beautiful! I confess to you, I cried ...

"Right now they bark ... Can't you hear them ...? They bark, but with pain, it's because they're crying close to their dead masters ... They cry, taking care of the bodies, without separating from them for anything...! These dogs are better than us Christians...They watch over those they loved..!My second lieutenant, sir, do you hear? The are not barking in  in anger...Listen well, they're crying!

"Well... yes... I was saying, sir, that they caught my attention, because when I was going to pile up the dead, the little animals threw themselves at us, growling and showing us our teeth and fangs...We had to kill many of them, hitting them with the butts of the rifles... and some of the bigger ones, we had to bayonet them, sometimes more than once...

"And you wouldn't believe that when they were still alive, Bless me Holy Virgin!, once again they would lie down again near the deceased master or following him to the pile where we had to burn them...Out of sheer thirst they licked with their dry tongues the blood of their beloved dead ... Oh, poor little animals!

"You see, sir, we all love dogs... The troops "la juanada" are not comfortable without their little animals. But we had to kill them because they were hindering and biting us! We killed them and threw them in the pile, scrambled with those of Tomóchic and with ours all together, adding a large amount of firewood and corn stubble to make them burn better...!

"Other dogs ran barking sadly across the plain, complaining with very long screams that made my hair stand like someone who is very cold, and my stomach hurt... Poor little dogs...! It was because they were looking for their masters...

"They ran up the hills, they came down, returned to the river, threw themselves into the water, then emerged shaking themselves dry, and take up running again, to run through the jacales and the stubble and the rubble, jumping the corpses of ours or those of Tomóchic, without paying attention, running and running, barking and barking, because they couldn't find their own... And so they kept going crazy, going round and round...

"And do you know what other things there were over there, by the little houses by the river...? Can you see where that red smoke is, where those grain bins are burning, or god knows what?  Well, I was over there on the same detail clearing my section... Huuy! That's where the hogs had escaped...but what hogs! It was a pleasure to see such hogs... They were that fat... but they were hungry ... and the  Indians' hogs wanted to eat to the dead men...the dead of Tomóchic...! I think, I think they smelled the blood and with that, they would lounge like wild beasts over the muddy corpses...and then I saw the fight...!

The sergeant was silent for a moment, stunned, no doubt, by the dreadful memory. Then he continued:

"—When the dogs saw the pigs coming, they fell on them ... and that was a battle over the very dead themselves; the pigs growled with hunger, the dogs barked furiously, always faithful...! And all of them, pigs and dogs, were bunched up, between frightful grunts and the screeches of the dogs, half starved, watching and still defending their masters! That made my hair stand on end again and gave me a chill, and I even wanted to cry... Poor things...! Hear them, hear them, my second lieutenant...! Right now the pigs who want to eat the dead and and the dogs who watch over their masters, defending them must be fighting, and the dogs who watch over their masters, defending them ... Do you hear?"

The rough voice of the sergeant fell, faltering in a sob of pity and fright....(He) shook, and inclining to hear toward the dark depths of the valley, he heard...

From the darkness, heart-rendering howls, forlorn echoes that bounced, slow and fading, through the mountain peaks and valleys of the sierra.

And sometimes the northeast wind would revive  the tragic rumors of that beastly combat...A dispute over a human cadaver, between dogs and hogs, there in the sinister darkness and solitude of Tomóchic.