The Last Conquistador: A tale of El Murceilago

The border towns between Mexico and the United States are odd little places, often ruled by two mayors, or a mayor and an Alcalde or by a council composed of American and Mexican Citizens. 

Usually the United States and the Mexican governments are quite content to leave these border towns to their own devices. 

While for the most part the citizens of these border towns appreciate the lack of government interference in their lives at times they also miss the government amenities, such as aid from the government for situations beyond their control. 

One such incidence of this was when the Last Conquistador went on his war of reconquista,

The town of Palo Fierro was the first to fall under this man's campaign. The town found itself invaded by fifty men, wearing the gear and uniforms of the Spanish Conquistador. Two portable cannon pulled by a team of horses also accompanied the soldados.

A man wearing a golden cuirass, morion and greaves walked into to the town plaza and spoke in a flawless Castillian. The citizens of Palo Fierro were now subjects of his imperial Majesty Charles V of Spain and this township was part of New Spain as ruled by Generalissimo Cortez Pizarro.

Generalissimo Cortez quickly laid down strict rules of governance, all pure born Caucasian families would be the aristocracy of New Spain, the mestizos those of Spanish and Indio heritage would be free laborers, the rest, the Indios, the Negroes and the Orientals would be chained as slaves.

The insurrection which followed was put down quickly and brutally, the surviving male insurrectos were drawn and quartered. The female insurrectos were given to the troops to be used as the ungrateful putas that they were.

After the rebellion was put down, Generalissimo Cortez gave to the blanco population, the waters of the Fountain of Youth which he claimed his soldiers had drank before being buried alive and sleeping for hundreds of years. To make the Fountain of Youth he dropped a glowing stone into a vat of ordinary water. After a few hours the waters bubbled with tiny bubbles and took on an odd mauve coloration.

The Waters of Youth tasted bitter but they filled the drinkers with a vitality, cured most diseases and healed injuries swiftly. The Blancos quickly rallied around to Generalissimo Cortez's banner of conquest.

Over the course of the next six months, three more towns were added to Generalissimo's Cortez's New Spain. Many of his Blanco recruits wondered why he did not head south and reconquer all of Mexico or North to reconquer the regions of New Spain stolen by the United States. Generalissimo Cortez would always reply that to try this in this day and age would be like the Aztecs sailing to Spain and trying to conquer it. The technology of the day would quickly overwhelm his small forces.

His plan was to build enough support on the border, starting along Texas, and moving west to New Mexico and Arizona to California influencing Texas and the other Southern states now chafing under the yoke of the Yankee to rise again and join forces with New Spain so that the Confederacy and the New Spain would rise together as permanent allies. With Texan and Confederate backing, the Conquistadors could turn on Mexico and destroy the cursed republican Jurists.

Generalissimo Cortez's regime was brutal on Negroes and Indians, even more brutal than the previous Conquistadors had been to their slaves. When even some of his Blanco supporters protested the working of slaves to death, Generalissimo Cortez responded with the following comment, "To secure true progress we must unfetter Genius and chain down mediocrity. Liberty for the Few, slavery in every form for the masses."

When a few of the Blanco aristocrats persisted in protesting his policies he demonstrated that a white skin was not an invincible shield against slavery, the protesters were chained and worked to death as if they were colored.

As word of Generalissimo's little empire filtered through the border region and various towns reacted in differing ways. A few of the towns broke out in civil war as the Bancos attempted to enslave the colored citizenry prior to the Generalissimo's arrival. The citizenry of some other towns banded together to resist his forces. The survivors of these towns that resisted were beaten and enslaved, blanco and colored alike.

Disaffected Texans and ex-Confederate soldiers traveled to Generalissimo Cortez's New Spain, wanting to join the ranks of his new slavocracy but he denied them this. He told them to travel back to their own nations and put their own houses in order.

As with all slave states, insurrections and escapes were a frequent worry, so Generalissimo instituted border patrols and also strict curfews which even the Blancos had to obey. Those slaves violating curfew were hung in public, the Blancos were merely flogged.

There was a town named Malmozo whose Blanco rulers decided while they liked the social structure Generalissimo Cortez had imposed on them they did not especially like Generalissimo Cortez and refused to pay his tribute. They made plans for this overthrow.

Generalissimo responded by stopping their shipments of Fountain Water. The Blancos lost all their vitality quickly and shriveled up into ancient, withered creatures. Their slaves rebelled and easily slaughtered them. Generalissimo Cortez's Nueva Conquistores captured and slew the rebel slaves to the last man, woman and child. Or so they thought.

One girl, sorely beaten and sorely used by the Nueva Conquistadors, survived being buried alive in trench with a the other victims from Malmozo. Avoiding patrols she escaped from New Spain, making her way into the state of Texas. When she related her tale of a Conquistador, Fountain of Youth and re-institution of slavery she was thought maddened by her injuries. After her physical injuries had been healed Elena Gutierrez Salmonica was sent to work for Don Marco Deloso, a nueva rico Patron well known for taking in wayward girls and boys.

Don Marco Deloso had a hacienda outside of El Paso.

Elena discovered that the patron was rarely at his hacienda, he traveled about the country on business. He left the running of the hacienda to Senor Penique de Valor, his segundo.

In her initial meeting with Senor Perique de Valor, Elena recounted her tale of the Last Conquistador. Senor Perique de Valor was polite enough to tell her he would pass this information onto the patron.

She was given a small gauchely, a small house, and a job working in the cotton fields of the hacienda. The work was hard but the other workers were friendly and supportive people.

Two weeks after she arrived, Elena was requested to come to the Patron's casa. After eating a solitary meal of meat and vegetables, wine and sweet, soft bread at a large linen covered table, Senor Perique de Valor lead her into a small enclosed patio. The room was dark except for the moonlight and the glow put out by a single candle. The candle sat in an ornate silver candlestick, sitting on one of the stone benches in the patio. A small fish pond burbled in the center of the patio, across the pond was another bench upon which sat a large, stocky figure.

Elena could barely see him in the dim light but she saw that he was heavily bearded and wore dark glasses, his clothing was so dark as to be indistinct.

"Good evening, Senorita, I am Marco Deloso"

His voice was soft and somewhat piercing. After asking about her health and how she enjoyed her life at the hacienda, he asked many questions about Generalissimo Cortez' New Spain.
After Elena had answered all his questions, Don Marco Deloso thanked her for her time. He blew cut the candle and the room was engulfed in darkness. She felt a wind blow past her. Elena started when a light flared into being. Senor Perique de Valor had relit the candle.

Don Marco Deloso was nowhere to be seen. As Senor Perique de Valor lead her to the door she crossed herself.

The next day she described her meeting with Don Marco and one of the other workers exclaimed" Ai de mi, El Murcielago rides again!"

Elena asked what he meant but an older woman said that the man was a tonto, a fool, who believed that their Patron was a creature of myth, a dark avenger of wrongs.

Elena half hoped that it were true.

Shortly after Elena had told her story to her Patron, the Kingdom of New Spain soon realized that something was amiss.

Curfew patrols in several of the towns were disrupted by strange screeching noises and rocks clanging off their morions and cuirasses.

Strange posters appeared in the town plazas. They were white with a strange symbol printed upon them. The symbol consisted of a gothic L on the top, the lower section of the L making the right side of the symbol, another gothic L was on the bottom, its lower section making a left side. Inside the box made by the two Ls was a gothic M.

The Blancos were mystified by the symbol but the Mestizos and Indians knew what it meant.

The phrase, "El Murcielago," was bandied about.

El Murcielago was a figure or legend, a dark hooded rider wearing dark clothing with a sweeping black cape. He was an expert shot, a superb swordsman, an expert in the use of the reata, whip and bob. He was an righter of wrongs, an avenger of injustice and a enemy to evil. He rode on a gray horse with a roan chest, named Petirrojo.

A few days after the posters appeared, curfew patrols began disappearing. Usually they were found a day or so later, sitting naked on the steps outside of the Alcalde's house. The soldiers had broken legs and the symbol of El Murcielago had been branded upon their foreheads.

Patrols were doubled and still the men disappeared to be beaten and branded. All claimed to have been attacked swiftly by a hairy flying beast, a creature who had come out of the darkness like a demon. Most had been captured by bob but those who had matched swords with him had found that he outclassed most men.

Tired of the nuisance, Generalissimo Cortez called a halt to his campaign of conquest to hunt down and destroy El Murcielago.

As the canyons, rivers, deserts and plantations were scoured by large companies of conquistadores looking for El Murcielago, he made mischief elsewhere. Tribute shipments were stolen from warehouses before they could be shipped the Generalissimo's Cortez, shipments of the needed Youth Water were hijacked in broad daylight and destroyed, Blanco aristocrats were harassed and branded in their homes.

El Murcielago sent messages to Generalissimo Cortez telling him to abdicate his rule and to turn himself into the American authorities.

Generalissimo Cortez sneered at these threats until his house was branded one night by the mark of El Murcielago.

Generalissimo Cortez tripled his personal guard, keeping his fifty or so true conquistadores with him at all times.

Generalissimo Cortez received notes stating that El Murcielago could kill him at any time.

The company of Nueva conquistadores were instructed to torture slaves for information about El Murcielago, they had to be aiding the man.

In response to this Jose Almerida Guzman, one of Generalissimo's conquistadores was captured. Generalissimo Cortez laughed when he heard this for his Conquistadores were virtually immortal, not only had they lived for nearly four hundred years but they healed from just about any wound.

A month passed and a pile of bones and ancient, rust pitted armor was discovered outside of the Generalissimo's house.

The skeleton wore the Almerida signet ring. Generalissimo Cortez quickly announced that it was a hoax, but the other Conquistadores insisted that it was not.

Generalissimo Cortez sent a message to El Murcielago, stating that unless El Murcielago left New Spain and desisted from bothering the Generalissimo, the slaves would be decimated. Every tenth slave would be slaughtered like a cattle.

El Murcielago sent back a counter proposal, that he and the Generalissimo meet in personal combat to decide their differences. If the Generalissimo was a man who lived by the code of the caballero, as the Conquistadores had, then he must respond to the code duello.

Generalissimo Cortez at first balked at the challenge but when his true Conquistadores saw his reluctance, he feared a rebellion from them.

The Generalissimo agreed to duel with El Murcielago with sword in El Pelado Real at dawn three days hence.

The masked vigilante El Murcielago strode into the plaza of El Pelado Real at dawn only to be surrounded by forty-nine men dressed in authentic Conquistador costumes.

They rushed him and El Murcielago fought them off with bolo and pistol, whip and sword, sorely wounded many before he was overcome by sheer numbers. Those he had wounded soon were whole and hale. After El Murcielago had been chained to a stake in the center of the plaza the man known as the Last Conquistador, walked into the plaza.

Generalissimo Cortez wore a golden morion, cuirass and greaves. Underneath the armor he wore white pantaloons and a white tunic. The Last Conquistador was pale skinned, blue eyed and had long hair and a full beard of the snowiest white, yet his face was unlined and seemed quite young.
 
"I really did not believe that it would work, but I guess you believed I was as stupid as you evidently are."

"I had hoped you were a man of honor."

Generalissimo Cortez laughed heartily at that, his mirth sprayed saliva in a mist.

"Honor, will not win battles or a war. I learned that lesson at Appomattox. General Lee was a great man of honor, yet he lost the war to the damn yankees and they imposed their dictatorship upon the South."

As Generalissimo Cortez spoke a distinct Texan accent became more distinct.

"As you will have deduced, I am not Mexican or even Spanish, although I studied about all the great Conquistadores when I was a boy growing up in Texas. I joined up with the Texas volunteers and fought against the cursed Union.

After the South was destroyed by the North, I and a bunch of my expatriate soldiers went down to Ole Mex to fight for Maximilian. When the Yankee sponsored republicans under that damned Juarez overthrew Emperor Maximilian I and my friends took to the hills, carrying on a guerrilla war until the damned Federales started hunting us down.

As I was running from a Federales patrol, I hid out in the Mountains and stumbled across an old Aztec temple site, part of it had been buried in a cave in. Figuring that there might be some undiscovered treasure in it, I dug my way into the temple.

I found a treasure alright but not in gold. Laying in scattered humps were corpses in Conquistador armor. A fortune in artifacts, I thought as I bent to strip the bodies.

To my amazement and, I admit, horror. I found that all the corpses were breathing, slowly shallowly as if asleep. As air filled the chamber they slowly came to consciousness.

As I waited for them to revive and tell ne their tale, I explored the chamber. I found a small altar, wet with glistening human blood, next to the altar was a pool of bubbling, fizzing water with a glowing stone resting on its bottom. I tested the water with my fingertips, a few droplets placed on my tongue filled my mouth with a bitter warmth. Taking all of these incidents into account, the still viable blood, the living conquistadores I realized what this stone was. It was the fable Philosopher's Stone, which could transmute lead into gold and give its possessor eternal life.

Knowing that I had to have possession of the stone before the conquistadores awoke, I grabbed it. Living flames covering me, burning away my old self and creating an immortal man with purpose.

The conquistadores disbelieved me when I told them that they had slept for three hundred or so years. They had found this secret part of the temple after slaying the priests. A cave in had buried them alive in the chamber and they had passed out from lack of air, preserved by the Stone for ages.

Because I had the Stone, they were forced to obey me. Originally there were fifty six of the men but five refused to follow me and struck out on their own. They rapidly aged to their natural age and crumbled to dust.

In proximity to me or the Stone, they were un-aging immortals.

When I touched the Stone, I realized that Providence had guided me here, I would use this group to form an empire which would inspire Texas and the South to rise again and use the principles of the great philosopher George Fitzhugh, that slavery is not only a good but necessary for human progress.

As to why I chose the persona of the Last Conquistador, I gather you can guess, it would have been quite difficult to disguise these gentlemen as Southern Cavaliers and the concept of the Conquistador would not go over real well in the South.

You merely delayed my dreams but could not stop them. Now you will die. A painful lingering death, I think."

Generalissimo Cortez walked over the the chained El Murcielago and ripped off his mask, exposing his face.

El Murcielago glared at him, beady cobalt blue eyes filled with hate. Generalissimo Cortez flinched from the sight of a man whose face and head were covered were with black bristle fur, whose eyes were those of a rodent and nose was pink and flat with wide nostrils much like a bat's. Behind thin lips, sharp little fangs filled El Murcielago's mouth.

"Jesus, you're an ugly one! What the hell happened to you?"

"I was digging for gold in a valley filled with the glow that comes from your Stone. I got news for you, that ain't no philosopher's stone, it's a meteorite and its glow is dangerous. I suspect, that it changed you and these gentlemen as well but you have harnessed the power in it enough to deceive lots of people, yourself too, I reckon.

"Liar! You are the deceiver, telling the slaves that they deserve freedom. You are a Yankee demon!" Generalissimo Cortez screamed, spraying El Murcielago with his spittle.

"And you, are a lunatic," whispered El Murcielago.

"Think what you want, you will be dead soon anyway. I discovered that the unshielded emanations of the Stone, will cause a lingering, painful death. It must be kept submerged in water or else you must have drunk of its Youth Waters, even then prolonged exposure is fatal. Great running sores sprout on your body, great burns that peel off layers of skin, your teeth and hair fall out and your organs liquify and blood runs from every orifice."

Generalissimo took the Stone out of a small tin filled with water and placed it next to El Murcielago's feet. As the water on the Stone evaporated, the stone glowed with a white hot intensity bathing the plaza in a blinding white light.

El Murcielago convulsed, white froth rose from his mouth and dribbled down his chin. Smiling, Generalissimo Cortez covered his eyes and had the plaza cleared until night fall. By then, El Murcielago would be nothing more than a withered husk.
 
From a window, Generalissimo Cortez watched El Murcielago writhe and shrink, pulling against his chains. He watched until the blinding light in the plaza became too much for his eyes and white spots filled his vision even through dark glasses.

When he returned in an hour, the glow had vanished. Rushing into the plaza, Generalissimo Cortez screamed when he saw the empty wooden stake with empty chains dangling from it.

The Stone was gone and where it had rested on the plaza's adobe floor lay the brand of El Murcielago.

Suddenly weak and weary, Generalissimo Cortez sat next to the plaza fountain. When he caught his reflection in the water's surface, he shrieked.

He was a hairless, skinny old man covered with boils and running sores. His skin hung off of him in bloody patches. El Murcielago had known the truth, the illusion he had generated with stone was gone. All those Blancos who had drunk his Youth water would soon succumb to the sickness when their supply of the Water was depleted.

Stumbling back into his stronghold, he found his Conquistadores a bunch of dying old men, covering with rusted and decaying armor. A few of them grabbed their swords and came after him. He shot them down and fled into the street, calling for his Blanco supporters to spread the word to kill all slaves immediately, only their blood would stop the sickness.

In response to this he heard a high, squeaking laugh.

Turning Generalissimo saw El Murcielago standing at the head of a group of slaves carrying pitchforks, sticks and sickles.

"Where's the Stone!" cried Generalissimo Cortez.

El Murcielago laughed again. "You'll never know".

A sharp whistling filled the air, followed by a crack and a choking pain about Generalissimo Cortez' neck. El Murcielago yanked on the whip bringing Cortez to his knees. As Cortez knelt before El Murcielago, he saw a bright glow in the vigilante's hairy hand. For a brief second hope surged in the Generalissimo's heart, thinking it was the Stone. Alas, it was not. The red hot brand of El Murcielago melted through the Generalissimo's soft flesh and burned a brand onto the very bone of his skull, right over his eyes.

New Spain had risen over the space of five years and fell in the space of a few hours.

As Generalissimo Cortez perished from the sickness of the Stone, he heard his empire falling apart as the emancipated slaves took their revenge. Maybe he should have stayed in the South after all, at least there they hadn't drawn and quartered their former masters.