El Paso: A Novel (39 page)

IN CAMP AND AROUND THE FIRE,
Rigaz’s death lay heavily upon them, and they ate their supper without relish. Johnny said, “Listen. I want you to know that from now on I release you from any pledge to go along with this. You want to leave, go home—do it. I understand. I’ll tell the sergeant you just went away.”

“No,” Julio said. “We’re here. We’re staying.” The other two nodded.

“Well, I appreciate it,” Johnny said.

“Something evil is out there,” Gourd Woman said. She had been sitting in the shadows, throwing her bones in the dirt.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Johnny said.

“Something is out there. It will return. Bones tell me.”

“Bullshit,” said Johnny. “Those same bones told you Pancho Villa was in Creel, too—didn’t they?”

“Like I said, maybe I didn’t throw them right that time.”

“So what makes you think you’re throwing them right now?”

“I don’t know; I got a bad feeling.”

WHEN VILLA GOT BACK TO HIS HEADQUARTERS,
he found more turmoil. At the river crossing, Donita had taken Katherine and Timmy down to the banks. Mix and a couple of his men followed. It was a clear refreshing stream that began in the mountains and was about a hundred yards wide and shallow, with the water gurgling around big rocks. On the sandy banks, they knelt to scoop up handfuls of water to drink, and it was sweet, tasting a little of autumn leaves. Donita and Katherine ached to wade in and scrub themselves clean of trail grime—but how to do it with these people here—or must they bathe in their clothing?

“Okay,” said Mix. “We’ll ride over behind that little knob there. But remember, you run off now, we’re gonna catch you, and there won’t be any more bathing or anything. General Villa, he might put all of you in a cage.”

Donita and Katherine removed most of their clothes and waded into the stream. Even though there was a chill in the air and the water was icy, it felt wonderful. They passed a bar of soap between them and luxuriated in the bath. Timmy had walked away upstream so as to have his privacy, too, and he sat down in the river and washed himself, then toweled off with his shirt. He sat on the bank for a while, watching the water and wondering what would become of them. He was frightened for his mother and his grandmother; last time he had seen them, they had looked so bad, but Mix continued to reassure him. He wondered about Bomba, too—was he dead? Mix didn’t actually know anything about that. And he wondered about Grandpapa and his father and what they were doing to save them. He knew they would do something. They wouldn’t just leave them here; in fact, Timmy would not have been surprised to see his father and the Colonel riding up right now to take them home.

Enveloped in these thoughts, Timmy got up and began walking along the riverbank, when he noticed a hole about a foot wide in the dirt. For an instant, when he peered into it, he saw something glimmer in the darkness of the hole, like a jewel. He reached inside to pick it up.

Katherine and Donita finally came out of the water. They would have stayed in longer if it hadn’t been so chilly. They dried themselves off with their clothes, dressed, and walked up the bank to sit down when an unearthly shriek split the air.

Mix and his people heard it, too, and came galloping over the rise. Timmy was out of sight and around a bend, but he was screaming so loudly it echoed down the river and across the nearby meadow. Donita and Katherine scrambled up and rushed toward the commotion. Mix had arrived before them and leaped off his horse to grab Timmy, who had been seized on the wrist by a gila monster that had been looking out at him from inside its lair. The gleaming eye had, for an instant, looked like a jewel. Timmy flailed his arm wildly, but the thick coral-and-black-tinted reptile wouldn’t let go. Mix grabbed Timmy by the shoulders and dragged him into the water, pressing the arm down so the gila monster would go under. It still wouldn’t turn loose.

“Get me a stick!” Mix hollered. Other members of the party had rushed to the riverbank. Someone produced a stick. Mix jerked Timmy’s arm out of the water and began beating the creature. It still would not let go. He pried at the gila monster’s mouth. Timmy was still screaming awfully, and his eyes were wide with fright and horror. Mix continued to pry. When Donita and Katherine ran up and saw what had happened, Donita put her hands to her mouth and Katherine rushed into the water to help.

Finally Mix managed to get the stick between Timmy’s wrist and the jaws of the thing, and when it moved its mouth momentarily to improve its grip he jerked Timmy’s wrist from the creature’s grasp. The gila monster plopped into the water and drifted away downstream. Several of the men fired at it but missed. Mix carried Timmy to shore; his arm was a bloody mess from the sharp teeth and claws of the monster.

“We’ve got to get him back to the doctor, now,” Mix said. He slung Timmy on his horse and took off at a gallop. Katherine wanted to go, but others restrained her.

“What, what was that?” she cried.

“Gila monster, missy,” one of the men said, “least that’s what they call ’em over in Sonora. I seen one before.”

“He’s badly hurt?” Katherine said.

“Yes, miss. That thing’s got poison. But Doc’ll take care of it, I guess.”

“See what you’ve done?” Katherine growled, losing control. “My little brother might die!” She wasn’t just scared, she was furious. They didn’t belong here, and it was outlandish, kidnapping people and putting them in situations they didn’t know how to cope with. They should be home and going to school and dances . . .

“Doc takes care of a lot of snakebites and such, miss,” said the man, “but he’s gonna be one sick little boy.”

Tears of frustration came to her eyes. Katherine began to sob and turned away.

BOMBA HAD NOT INTENDED TO KILL THE MAN
from Villa’s cattle party, but in his intensity to learn information he’d gone too far. He had shadowed the herd ever since intercepting the soldier who’d been riding Señor Gonzales’s horse. Several times he’d tried to catch one of the drovers riding drag off guard, but something always seemed to work against him. For one thing, they had entered the
lomas
, the plains, and he’d had to conceal himself far away behind swales in the landscape or lag far behind, catching up when night fell.

At one point near a stream he saw a canebrake and cut off a long hollow cane stem, which he whittled into a blowgun. Bomba had noticed a few poison frogs along the way, and next time he came upon one, he caught it in a big leaf and scraped off a little of the skin from its back, which was deadly toxic in anything other than tiny doses. As Bomba hung back and shadowed Villa’s band, he whittled darts from branches of a hickory tree and later made a paste of water, clay, and a little of the poison, which he put on the tip of the darts. It would be cleaner and quieter than trying to knock somebody off a horse with a knife.

One afternoon another chance presented itself. A man from the cattle party, at the back of the herd, had gotten off his horse to urinate. He seemed to be alone, and Bomba moved stealthily on foot and from about fifty feet, with the man’s back to him, put the blowgun to his lips and blew out a dart, which hit the man in the shoulder. The man swatted at the sting, probably thinking it was a bee or wasp.

When he went down face-first in the grass, Bomba dragged him back into the woods. He shook the man and pinched his cheeks to bring him to, and when the man’s eyes opened he bent close to him.

“Where the children?” Bomba demanded.

The man blinked. “Huh?”

“Where? Kids?” Bomba said.

Suddenly the man began to struggle and yell. Bomba clapped a hand over his mouth and held him down.

“Where?” he repeated. When he continued to struggle, Bomba lifted him off the ground and wedged him into the fork of a tree. He stood in front of him and demanded again, “Where children?”

When the man still fought back, Bomba grabbed him by the head and jerked it back. It was meant only to make him answer, but to his surprise Bomba heard a loud crack as a vertebra snapped and the man went limp. Bomba lifted the head and stared into his lifeless eyes. The man took a few more breaths, then stopped breathing. Bomba stepped back, angry at himself. He might have learned something from this man. The cattle herd had moved on, so just the two of them were in the quiet of the woods. No birds sang, no breeze blew. He walked around the tree where the man’s body was wedged. Then he lifted up the man’s uniform shirt. The skin was beginning to pale and turn gray.

Bomba took out his knife and made a quick incision in the side. He peeled back the skin and continued to cut until he saw the liver. It had been the custom of his people that eating the liver of your enemy made you invincible. Bomba had been living in civilization now for twenty-five years, and he knew better, but these were desperate times that called for desperate measures. He looked at the liver and was within an inch of cutting it out, but something stopped him. Here he was, a grown man, actually thinking about eating the liver of a man he’d just killed. He was suddenly horrified, and backed away from the dead body. He could never look the Colonel in the eye again, or Mrs. Shaughnessy, or Arthur or Xenia, or any of them, including the children, if he had done that. He felt ashamed. Meanwhile, the wound in his shoulder continued to fester.

FORTY

T
he train in which the Colonel and his party rode south was halfway to Chihuahua City when they encountered a dreadful spectacle. Rounding a curve, they could see ahead of them a black spot far down the tracks that slowly turned into the scorched hulks of a locomotive and many railcars lying in a ditch. As they got nearer, they saw objects dangling from the telegraph poles beside the tracks.

These turned out to be the bodies of soldiers, hanged, wearing the plain white peasant uniforms of Villa’s army, three or four bodies to a pole. The train slowed while everybody looked out the windows in revulsion. The bodies were perfectly mummified in the rarefied air of the desert plateau. Vultures flapped up as the train rolled by and resettled after it passed. There were bodies as far as the eye could see.

“Good God,” croaked the Colonel; his stomach turned. Never, even in war, had the Colonel encountered such a sight. Many in the train drew away from the windows and sat in silence. Finally, Cowboy Bob said, “Well, the Federales don’t give no quarter, Colonel. I expect them people was prisoners taken at the battle, or maybe the Federales captured their train.”

“Sheer barbarism,” Shaughnessy muttered.

“They all do it,” said Death Valley Slim. “Don’t think no more about it than squashing a cockroach.”

Strucker for once seemed subdued, and chewed on the nail of his thumb. He was dressed in a riding jacket and highly polished black boots. Before he left El Paso he’d spied a blooming camellia bush outside the Toltec, and had plucked a lush red blossom for his boutonniere.

“You still want to do business with these people?” Arthur asked. They were seated next to each other on the train, an arrangement that had not made Arthur particularly happy; he’d wanted to be alone, with so many things on his mind.