The General and the Jaguar (19 page)

Villa and his men had fallen back a thousand yards west of the knoll. Their identities were difficult to make out in the dawn
light and Colonel Slocum ordered his men to momentarily hold their fire, thinking the soldiers might actually be their own
cavalry troops coming from Gibson’s Line Ranch. Said Stringfellow, “Not having field glasses I had to take a chance, opened
fire and then stopped to listen to the bullets. The Villistas went into action beautifully, dismounted as one and their return
fire clipped the top of the hill but there was no ‘crack’ of the Springfields. These were Mexicans.”

M
AUD
W
RIGHT
was one of the first to realize that the battle was turning against the Mexican troops. A bullet struck the ground in front
of her horse, another grazed its mane. “They began to bring the wounded back to the horseholders. They were placed on their
blankets side by side where they lay groaning and crying. Many of them died right there,” she remembered.

Villa, she continued, “had been in the thick of the fight, for many times I heard his stallion squeal from some particularly
noisy section of town.” At some point, she said, the stallion was shot out from under him and one of his soldiers dashed back
and got a replacement horse. Before retreating, Villa galloped up and down among the disorganized and frightened soldiers,
slashing from right to left with his sword, trying to make them stand and fight. A few did kneel and fire their rifles at
the Americans, then began a fairly orderly retreat toward the border. Maud and her horse were swept up with them. Bunk Spencer,
the other hostage, made his escape by lying flat on the ground, somehow managing to avoid being trampled.

One of the retreating Mexicans stumbled into Lieutenant William McCain’s party, which included his wife and young daughter.
McCain raised his shotgun and fired. The Mexican fell to the ground, moaning, but still very much alive. McCain suddenly remembered
that the gun was filled only with bird shot. He and Captain George Williams did not want to fire the gun again for fear of
alerting other Mexicans so McCain tried to choke him, but the wounded man fought back ferociously and the little girl began
to cry. Mrs. McCain tried to hush her and then handed her husband a pocketknife. “Slit his throat,” she whispered. McCain
took the knife and hacked at the man’s throat but the blade was too dull. Finally, he tossed the knife away, and with his
family looking on he picked up the shotgun and bludgeoned the Mexican to death.

Pablo López, who had directed the Santa Isabel train massacre, had been severely wounded near the Columbus train depot. A
bullet had struck him in the middle of the chest, at the exact point where his bandoliers crisscrossed his body. The heavy
leather straps kept the bullet from penetrating his chest but the impact knocked him from his horse: “As I was sitting on
the ground, another came and went clean through both of my legs, from left to right, while still another broke the loading
lever of my rifle. I thought it was time to go. A stray horse, also wounded, was standing by, and I crawled to it and dragged
myself on it. Having lots of clips for my automatic, I kept emptying my pistol to protect my retreat. My comrades were riding
southward, too.”

As the Mexicans withdrew, they continued to hear gunfire.
“Por buen rato pelearon americanos contra americanos”
—“For a time Americans were fighting Americans,” remembered Juan Muñoz. “They didn’t realize that we were retiring and they
followed with thick fire; but not against us, it was against the people of the village, the ones who were already organized
and had begun to fight.”

The Villistas galloped toward the border, passing Mooreview, where John and Susan Moore lived. “We rode past the ranch and
I once again saw Villa,” recalled Maud. “He threw away an empty cartridge belt and pulled out his revolver and emptied it
in the general direction of the soldiers. When those shots were gone he took off his hat and waved it defiantly at all of
them. I sincerely believe he was unafraid and almost willing to fight the whole U.S. Army by himself.”

Once they crossed the international line, Villa rode back to Maud. Sweat streamed down his horse’s flanks and the animal’s
dark eyes rolled, the whites grown wide with fear. He held his reins lightly while the horse plunged up and down.

Quieres regresar a los Estados Unidos?

Sí, por favor.

Bueno. Puedes irse. Te quedas con el caballo y la silla.

Maud did not argue. She took her horse and saddle and turned back toward Columbus. Her horse had been badly spooked by the
gunfire and the smell of blood and kept trying to rejoin the horses that were fleeing in the opposite direction. Finally she
dismounted and began leading the mare through the brush. “When I would pass Villistas, many of them would tell me good-bye
and shake my hand, saying they were sorry that they had treated me badly. They actually acted as though I was their best friend.”

She had not gone far when she heard a voice begging in Spanish for water. It was Castillo, one of her guards, who had taunted
her on the long northward march by telling her she probably would not be alive the next day. He had been badly wounded and
her first impulse was to kill him. Instead, she took his saddle, which was much better than hers, and put it on top of her
own. “I was sorely tempted to impale him on a sword, but instead asked him what he thought of the American soldiers now. He
turned his head and I walked away, leaving him to die.”

She reached a small compound and went into the corral, watered her horse and drank deeply herself, and then walked toward
the house. John Moore was lying dead in a pool of blood at the edge of the porch. She heard a faint noise and followed the
sound out behind the house, where she came upon Susan Moore.

J
OHN AND
S
USAN
M
OORE
had been sound asleep on their porch, buried under their heavy auto robe, when the attack began. Susan, the first to hear
the gunfire, was so afraid for a moment that she couldn’t speak.

“Wake up. Look. Villa has come and is burning the town,” she finally whispered.

John Moore raised himself up on his elbows. Although they were several miles away, the orange flames were plainly visible
against the black horizon. “You are right. We had better get dressed.”

Susan was already slipping on her clothes, grateful that she had taken the time to arrange them so carefully the night before.
They tiptoed around the house and drew down the shades. Her husband returned to a pantry window, which faced the town. Susan
stood next to him. Quietly, John said, “If I were in your place, I would not stand there. Someone might see you or you might
be hit by a bullet.”

Susan moved back into the shadows and began walking from room to room, her eyes lighting upon the small beautiful things that
she had brought with her to Columbus—the hand-painted vase, her linen table runner, the fancy bedroom clock that she had bought
at Macy’s.

Imperceptibly, the sky lightened and the dirt road alongside their house began to grow visible. A dark shape clattered by.
A few moments later, another passed.

She looked at her husband. “Maybe we had better go to the mesquite bushes and hide.”

He shook his head, telling her they had nothing to fear, that they had always treated their Mexican customers fairly.

Soon the road was filled with retreating Villistas. One group turned into the Moore’s yard and watered their horses at the
tub of drip water. “Again I looked towards town and saw the road and open space covered with stumbling, wounded, dirty, ragged
men. Some of these men were afoot, some on horseback, clinging desperately to the necks of their horses.”

An officer wearing a cape coat and sitting astride a white horse ordered several of his men to check out a neighbor’s home
to the north of them. It was Candelario Cervantes and
los namiquipenses
—the men from Namiquipa. He nodded toward the Moore home. The soldiers climbed up onto their front porch. One used the butt
of his rifle to break the glass on a bedroom window. Mr. Moore told his wife to go into the dining room. Then he went to the
front door and opened it.

“Sabe usted dónde se puede haber escondido Ravel?”
—“Do you know where Ravel is hiding?” Cervantes asked.

“No soy el guardián de Ravel,”
John responded.

“Muy bien,”
said Cervantes.

Then his soldiers fell upon John.

“They raised their hands and struck him. They raised their sabers and knives and stabbed and slashed him. They raised their
guns and shot him,” said Susan.

The assailants crouched over John’s lifeless body, removed his ring and his watch, and went through his pockets. Suddenly
they remembered Susan and started toward her.

“Pan? Oro?”
—“Bread? Gold?” asked a soldier. She looked at him closely and realized he was none other than the man who had been in her
store the previous day to buy the
pantalones.
The Mexicans grabbed her by either arm and gestured at her rings—a plain gold wedding band, a diamond solitaire engagement
ring, and a monogram ring set with diamonds.

As she struggled to remove the jewelry, her thoughts were racing. She was certain that she would be killed just like her husband.
“Then the thought came to me that I might surprise or outwit them. The next thought that came to me was to scream. I screamed
twice, at the same time I looked towards Mr. Moore and the front of the house, to attract their attention away from me, and
to give the impression that someone had come.” Her captors loosened their grip as they turned to see what she was looking
at. Susan jerked free, picked up her skirts, and fled out the back door. Several soldiers were in the garage trying to start
the Ford.

“Mira, mira, señora!”

They fired at her. She felt a stinging sensation in her right leg and knew that she had been shot, but kept running. A second
bullet slammed into her right hip. She fell, but got up and continued. Running and falling, she eventually reached the barbed-wire
fence that enclosed their immediate property. Somehow she managed to heave herself over the fence and she crawled toward a
clump of mesquite.

As the gunfire grew intermittent and then stopped altogether, the sweet sound of morning rushed in. Susan Moore lost consciousness.
When she awoke, she realized that she was bleeding profusely and tore a ruffle from her petticoat to bind her wounds. Then
she passed out again. When she came to, she heard the sound of horsemen and realized it was the American soldiers. She hung
her handkerchief on a bush and called out weakly to them.

Captain Smyser and two privates found her. “Why, it is a woman. My God, it is Mrs. Moore!” he shouted. “Are you hurt?”

In a calm voice, she responded, “Yes, Captain, I am shot, but I can wait, if you will go to the house and take Mr. Moore in.
They have killed him and you will find him on the front step.”

Soon other soldiers arrived. They pulled off their coats and made a bed for her. Someone gave her brandy. Another brought
her water in a milk pan. A third shielded her face from the sun. As they were tending her, she noticed a dirty young American
woman standing nearby. It was Maud Wright.

“She was dressed in a coarse linen dress with a little Dutch bonnet and was very, very dirty. However, I was glad to see a
woman, especially an American, and she came up to me and said she had been a prisoner of Villa for nine days. I looked at
her, she looked like she was hungry to me, I asked her if she had had any breakfast, she said no, I told her when we got to
town to go to any of these restaurants and get whatever she wanted and have it charged to me, and I asked her to stay with
me, and go to town with me in the ambulance, which she did.”

Together, Susan Moore and Maud Wright rode into Columbus. By then it was about ten o’clock in the morning. The sky was hard
as enamel and the morning sun felt like shards of glass in their eyes. Susan lifted herself up and saw the smoldering remains
of the hotel, the half-burned automobile that belonged to Charles DeWitt Miller, the bodies of horses and soldiers. She lay
back down and closed her eyes.

There were other survivors. Milton James’s stepsister, Myrtle Wright Lassiter, lay unconscious near the Hoover Hotel with
a head injury and bullet wounds in her thigh and right hip. She was picked up later that morning and taken back to Milton’s
house, where she would eventually regain consciousness. Milton himself had managed to crawl to the east side of the hotel,
where a man named Gardner picked him up and carried him down to the railroad tracks. Gently he laid Milton down on the embankment
and then continued on his way. Later that morning, the train conductor, John Lundy, spotted Milton as the train began inching
its way into Columbus. He was delirious and begging for water. Lundy lifted Milton onto the train and transported him to the
army hospital. One of the bullets had passed through his penis and scrotum and into his right leg. A second bullet had slammed
into his left leg, carrying with it bits of his clothing that were driven deep into the wound. But he would live.

As the sounds of the battle receded, the people of Columbus crept from their hiding places. The children ran ahead, excitedly
fingering bullet holes in the thick adobe walls and grabbing up swords and guns. The Hoover Hotel served as a temporary hospital,
the bank as a temporary morgue. In all, eighteen U.S. civilians and soldiers had been killed and ten others wounded.

F
ROM THE KNOLL
south of the railroad tracks, Colonel Slocum and the other officers of the Thirteenth Cavalry had watched the dissolving
shapes of the horsemen. Behind them Columbus still burned. Major Frank Tompkins had asked for permission to chase the attackers.
Slocum had nodded, and in a few minutes thirty-two men were mounted and moving.

As Tompkins and his men galloped south, they could see the fleeing Villistas off to their right. They tried to catch up to
them but their progress was greatly hampered by barbed-wire fences. As the Villistas retreated through a twenty-foot gap in
the boundary fence, Lieutenant Clarence Benson and his men, who had been sent out the night before to patrol the border, killed
eighteen fleeing Mexicans. Also killed at this point was Harry Wiswell, a thirty-eight-year-old corporal from Long Island,
who just two weeks earlier had remarked upon the hostile attitudes of the Mexicans in a letter to his mother.