El Paso: A Novel (32 page)

There were only a dozen in Fierro’s party, about the same number as the ranch hands—at least that was in their favor. As the soldiers neared the house, Señor Gonzales walked out to meet them. He was visibly trembling, but tried to keep a smile on his face. Keen in his recollection was what he had heard that Villa had done to ranch manager Callahan.

“You people expecting thieves?” Fierro said to Gonzales, as he drew up in front of the man. He nodded toward the armed ranch hands ensconced behind hay bales and barn doors.

“No, señor,” said Gonzales. “Well . . . yes, maybe.” He took off his hat and held it in front of him. “We had some rustlers around lately. Can’t be careful enough, you know?”

“You missing a girl off this place?” Fierro said. His teeth shone brightly behind his drooping mustache. Fierro had a way of squinting the eye with the drooping lid so that the other seemed huge and fierce.

“A girl?” Gonzales stammered.

“You see, we found a girl riding alone by the river. Does she belong here?”

“Why, yes, señor, she was out riding with some of my men. You say you found her?”

“Something like that,” said Fierro. “But she says she’s in the family of the big gringo that owns this
rancho
. She’s pretty far from home, eh?”

“Well,” Gonzales stumbled, “maybe so . . . I guess, you see, she came out for a little ride. I let her use my saddle . . .”

“Yes, we found your saddle. It’s a nice one. A real beauty.”

“And she, well, she was with my men.”

“We have found your men also,” Fierro said, openly delighted to watch Gonzales squirm. “Two of your men objected to seeing us, however, and had to be punished. The other two are in our hands for safekeeping.”

Bomba was peering out from the side of the barn but was too far away to tell what was going on. He considered getting the family out of the car and hustling them into the woods, but then they’d be afoot and helpless.

“You say you got the girl?” said Gonzales. “Did you bring her back to us? We were worried . . .”

“Yes, we got her,” Fierro said. “She is perfectly safe. Say, my men tell me somebody’s here with a fancy car. Who is that?”

“A car?” Gonzales choked. “What kind of car?”

“You own a car, señor?”

“No, señor.”

“‘General,’” Fierro said.

“Yes, sure . . . General. No, I don’t own a car.”

“Then where is it—and whose is it?”

“It . . . belongs to the estancia,” Gonzales said.

“So where is the car?”

“It’s—I been in the house. Maybe they left.”

“Who left?”

“Who?”

Fierro was bored now by toying with Gonzales. “Look, you dumb
cabrón
, I got no time for this. Tell those men of yours to put down their weapons and come out here.”

“Put down . . . ?” Gonzales said. “They—they’re really not my men . . . they belong to the estancia, too.”

“So what are they doing here?” Fierro said with renewed interest.

“They brought out the girl. For horseback riding.”

“Well, you go back and tell them to put down their guns and come out, okay?”

“I don’t know if they listen to me, señor . . . ah, General . . . They are estancia men.”

Fierro was through playing. He nodded, then waved an arm in the air, motioning. “Look there,” he said, pointing to the low hills that formed the valley. Mix’s soldiers slowly began to emerge from the trees and into the open so as to converge on the hacienda. Gonzales’s heart sank. They were surrounded. The ranch hands saw this, too, and so did Bomba.

“Now,” Fierro said, “you go back and tell them what I told you to.”

“Yes, General,” said Gonzales. He plodded back toward the house, hat still in hand.

Bomba felt panicky. He hoped Katherine would not return just now, and that she was safe out there across the hills. He also understood that there was no hiding in the woods anymore, and that the only options were either to wait for whatever was about to happen or to make a break for it. If he could get the car past the bunch blocking the road they’d never catch them. But what if they opened fire? He didn’t know what had gone on between the soldiers and Gonzales, but it was a dangerous situation. Bomba made his decision. He raced to the car and motioned everybody to get down low in back.

“What’s happening?” Beatie cried.

“Bomba . . .” Timmy said.

“No!” Xenia exclaimed. “Katherine! Where’s Katherine?”

Bomba put the car in forward gear and gunned the engine; the big Packard shot out from the barn in a spray of dirt, scattering chickens, dogs, pigs, and ranch hands in every direction. Bomba roared through the gate, pedal to the floor and the Packard’s horns blaring, heading straight for the startled Mexicans on their horses. He was only twenty or so yards distant and they scarcely had time to get out of the way. Their horses began to rear and plunge. Fierro and the Mexicans bolted off the road in a hail of profanity as Bomba and his precious cargo roared past them, the car swerving in the dirt from overgearing and acceleration.

Bomba didn’t look back. As he sped past blurred fence posts he looked ahead and saw only the open plain and safety. That was when the rifle shot hit him. It tore through his right shoulder and violently wrenched his right arm. The automobile lurched out of control. He slammed on brakes but they were going too fast, spun sideways, and crashed into a ditch. Bomba’s head struck the steering wheel and he blacked out from the impact.

When he regained his senses he heard shouts and horses’ hooves rushing toward them. He tried to reach for the big pistol strapped around his waist, but the arm lay helplessly limp, like a broken wing on a bird; the bullet hadn’t hit a bone—he knew that—but had paralyzed a muscle that probably saved his life. Bomba turned to the backseat and saw a pile of bodies with blood everywhere. The pursuing party had arrived, and one of them reached down from his horse, opened the car door, and jerked Bomba out by the collar. He fell on the ground. Fierro rode up and looked into the automobile.

“Seems like these here are not so good,” Fierro said. Then he looked at Bomba, lying dazed in the dirt.

“Who is this big Negro? He sure don’t belong around here.”

By now others in his party had opened the rear doors and dragged Beatie and Xenia out onto some grass by the side of the road. Both were unconscious and bleeding profusely from their scalps. They had been smashed against the folding walnut dining trays built into the Packard’s seat backs. Down on the floor, Timmy was still conscious but in shock. When someone hauled him out by the scruff of the neck he saw his mother and grandmother and began to scream. One soldier dismounted and dragged him away from the scene. Just then Mix rode up. He’d watched the whole thing while leading his company down the hill and was appalled by the sight of the women lying on the ground.

“They dead?” he asked unsteadily.

“Don’t look to be,” Fierro said. “I think they’re just bunged up.”

“The boy,” Mix said. “One of them’s his mother and the other’s his grandmother—she’s the wife of the owner of this spread. At least I think that’s who they are.”

“How do you know that?”

“The girl told us. I got to talking to her while we were waiting. Says her grandfather’ll pay you a lot to leave them alone.”

“Yeah,” Fierro said, “I bet he will, and we’re gonna find that out soon enough. Get some people to take these women back to the hacienda, and then put the boy on somebody’s horse. He’s coming with us, too.”

“Is he hurt?” Mix asked.

“Nah, just scared. I’d take these women, too, but they’re hurt and they’ll slow us down. I figure if we got the two kids there’s gonna be a nice payday down the road. These stinking gringos have more money than the priests—then they come down here and buy up everything and turn our people into paupers. Well, it’s time they pay up.”

“Well . . . children, General . . .” Mix said. “I don’t know . . .”

“It ain’t for you to know, Capitán Mix. It’s for you to do what General Villa wants. And for that matter, me, too,” Butcher Fierro informed him.

“What about this one here?” said a soldier, indicating Bomba, who was now sitting up, holding his shoulder to stem the flow of blood running down his sleeve out onto the dirt road. The voice belonged to Lieutenant Crucia—in fact, Crucia seemed to be peering intently at Bomba’s prominent flat nose. “You want us to put him out of his misery?”

“Nah,” said the general. “He’s just some dumb gringo’s nigger. He’s shot bad. He won’t do us any harm.”

PART THREE

THE SIERRAS

THIRTY-THREE

F
ierro’s scouting parties returned with the annoying information that there were few cattle left on Valle del Sol. This vexed the general but he decided to round up what strays and castoffs he could lay hands on and return as quickly as possible to Villa at Chihuahua City. The most direct route would carry them past Colonel Shaughnessy’s big hacienda—which Fierro decided would be easy pickings, since he now understood that most of the ranch hands were away on the cattle drive.

Tom Mix had swung the sobbing Timmy up on his own horse and tried to comfort him a little.

“They aren’t dead, your mommy and grandma,” Mix told the boy. “They probably aren’t even hurt bad. You’ll see. They’ll be fine.”

“Where are we going?” Timmy croaked.

“We’re taking you to a safer place,” Mix lied. “Where your sister is.”

“Where is she? She went riding.”

“I know,” said Mix. “We’re all going to meet a very great general of the Mexican army. His name is Pancho Villa. I’m sure you’ve heard of him.”

“Grandpapa says he’s a bandit and a murderer.”

“No,” Mix corrected him, “General Villa is a great man.” But Tom Mix was beginning to wonder about this, too. He did not like kidnapping children. And he had seen brutality that disgusted him. In Mix’s view, cowboys were supposed to be good fellows. But a Mexican army wasn’t for good fellows, it was more for heartless brutes. He felt a pang when he thought of these two children. Mix could remember when he had been Timmy’s age and had wandered into the far end of town where a bunch of bully-boys held sway. He could imagine how frightened and alone Timmy must feel.

“He killed Mr. Callahan, who was going to show me how to carve things.”

“Who?” Mix asked.

“Mr. Callahan ran Grandpapa’s ranch at Valle del Sol.”

“Oh,” said Mix. “Yeah, I heard about that. I don’t think General Villa killed him, though. I think it was a mistake, maybe.”

He was a little annoyed at himself. He didn’t like lying to children any more than kidnapping them. Mix decided to keep Timmy back in the line of march, for the time being away from Katherine, who had been sent ahead with one of her captors. He figured if the kids got together right now it might cause difficulty—especially when she found out what had happened to her mother and grandmother. From what he’d seen of the girl, she had spark, and she was already plenty unhappy with her circumstances. It must be bad enough for a boy to be captured by all these rough grown men, let alone a girl.

They came up over a big rolling hill and the full beauty of Valle del Sol spread out before them—huge fenced pastures, orchards, and vegetable fields, the vast hacienda itself. All that was missing were the cattle.

Fierro rode far ahead. After leaving a couple of men to watch over Katherine, he and most of his band entered the hacienda proper, startling and terrorizing the few workers who remained there. Fierro was both surprised and delighted to find a nice herd of cows in a large fenced pasture. With these and the strays his men had managed to collect, he might not disappoint the chief after all. He told Lieutenant Crucia to round them up.

“What are you doing?” asked the new ranch manager, Rod Rodriguez, as Fierro’s men began opening the gate to the big pasture.

“Taking these beefs,” said Crucia.

“Beefs!” cried Rodriguez disgustedly. “Those aren’t beefs in there, those are fighting bulls. This is the fighting bull pasture.” He moved in front of the gate.

“Hell you say,” replied the lieutenant. “I know a beef from a bull. Get out of the way.”

“What you’re seeing there is steers,” said Rodriguez. “They control the bulls. The bulls are docile around the steers. But you get close to one of those bulls, and soon enough you’ll find out something you don’t want to know.” He stalked off and climbed up on the fence a little distance away. He’d gotten a whiff of Crucia’s nose necklace. He’d seen such things before and didn’t want anything to do with this creature.

Crucia hesitated for a moment, peering out at the mass of animals. Indeed, he could then see some of them had the large humps and long horns of fighting bulls.

Just then Fierro rode up.

“What are you waiting for?” Fierro said. “Go get those beefs.”

“There’s fighting bulls out there, General,” said Lieutenant Crucia.

“Where?”

“There, see them?”

Fierro stared out at the cattle. The man was right; Fierro, too, saw a few big humps and horns.

“Well, there’s a lot of steers out there, too. Mostly steers, far as I can see. Go and get them.”

“What about the bulls?” Crucia asked nervously.

“Well, you’re a cavalryman,” the general snapped. “You can ride, can’t you? Take your chances.” He wheeled and trotted away toward the main house.

Crucia nervously leaned down and unlatched the gate. He rode through it, followed tentatively by a dozen or so of his men. “You better get your rifles ready,” he said, “in case some of those bulls get the idea you are matadors.” The men began unlimbering their weapons.

“Please,” pleaded Rodriguez, “don’t shoot the bulls. Those bulls are the best in Chihuahua.”

“I don’t give a rat’s ass if they’re the best in the world,” replied the lieutenant. “I got my orders, and I’m not going to get killed by some stinking bull.”