The General and the Jaguar (27 page)

Many of the horses taken into Mexico were debilitated from the trauma of being boxed up and transported in railroad cars and
they suffered from shipping fever and lice. During the campaign, they developed constipation, diarrhea, and life-threatening
colic. Some fell to their deaths when they lost their footing on the mountain trails, or were dragged off a cliff by the wagon
they were pulling. Many more were killed in the running gunfights, for they were always the largest targets on the battlefield.
The majority, though, died of exhaustion and hunger. Quickly, like the little Villista ponies, they gave up their lives. A
few were let go on the trail, to fend for themselves, but most were put out of their misery by a merciful bullet to the head.
The soldiers grieved their deaths. Poor beasts, they muttered as they passed the huge, ungainly forms, bloated and barrel
shaped, a blasphemy of the graceful creatures that they had been in life. With each one lost, Pershing’s challenge became
greater. And the fighting had not yet begun.

O
N
M
ARCH 21,
Colonel George Dodd, a cigar-chomping West Pointer and classmate of Colonel Slocum, took charge of the Seventh Regiment south
of Galeana, one of the string of towns that Villa had passed through on his flight south. Dodd was sixty-three years old and
yearned for one more good fight before he reached the army’s mandatory retirement age of sixty-four. He had been twice cited
for gallant conduct under enemy fire and was a veteran of San Juan Hill and the Philippines, where he had participated in
twelve pitched battles. He was an experienced soldier, physically fit with a craggy handsomeness, and every bit as driven
as Pershing himself.

Dodd’s orders were to move directly south and then veer west toward San Miguel de Babícora and connect with the other columns.
On March 23, he passed the town of El Valle, a picturesque community of adobe homes and flower gardens. Colonel Jorge Salas,
a Carrancista commander, rode out and demanded to know by whose authority the U.S. troops were in Mexico. Dodd showed him
a proclamation from General Obregón himself, which stated in part that the Mexican government had “entered into an agreement
with the government of the United States, so that their respective troops may cross the International boundary in pursuit
of bandits who are committing depredations along the frontier.”

Seemingly satisfied, Salas confided that Villa was reportedly holed up in Namiquipa, the little town that was home to Candelario
Cervantes and many of the raiders who had attacked Columbus. Buoyed by the news, Dodd raced on. As the column neared Cruces,
an ardent Villista community fifteen miles north of Namiquipa, he struck off the dirt road and followed an arroyo to avoid
detection.

Dodd planned to surround Namiquipa the following morning, March 24, and take Villa by surprise. While bivouacked, he learned
that Villa had already fled. “I was in doubt, which of the many divergent rumors to follow, at this juncture, and will admit
being perplexed,” he later wrote. Dodd decided to stick to Pershing’s plan and proceeded to march west across the mountains
toward the Hearst properties. A late winter storm suddenly swept down from the Sierra Madre, bringing sleet, high winds, and
bone-chilling cold. Sand mixed with snow and ice was driven into the tender, sunburned faces of the horse soldiers. “It cuts
like a knife, filling the eyes and hair and mouth, filtering through the clothing and into boots and shoes,” wrote correspondent
Frank Elser. “Even the horses are suffering. They have turned their backs to the wind, and with heads down, like cattle drifting
before a blizzard, they stand dejected at the picket lines.”

The Seventh Cavalry soldiered on, following a steep rocky trail up and over the Continental Divide. The elevation was between
ten and eleven thousand feet and icicles grew from the mouths of both soldiers and horses. Despite the intense cold, the troopers
could not help noticing their beautiful surroundings.

The hills and valleys were filled with virgin forests teeming with deer, bear, wolves, and wild turkeys. It was as if they
were looking back in time at an untouched piece of the American West. Upon reaching one of the Hearst estates, Dodd learned
Villa had not been seen anywhere near the place for months. Wearily, the Seventh went into camp and continued on the following
day. “It was bitter cold in the morning when the march began,” the regiment’s narrative reads, “some cases of frost-bitten
fingers being reported. The regiment walked several miles to keep warm. Later in the day and afternoon coming down into the
valley east of the mountains the weather was very hot.”

The Seventh crisscrossed mountains, canyons, and wind-scoured plains, hoping to pick up Villa’s trail. Messengers from other
columns periodically caught up with them, sharing their latest information regarding Villa’s whereabouts. Dodd also sent his
Spanish-speaking guides into the towns to query the residents and the Carrancista commanders about Villa’s location. The reports
were maddeningly vague and often unreliable. Dodd finally stopped listening to the reports and went by instinct, confident
they were still on the right trail when they passed fresh graves, the worn-out carcasses of dead ponies, or cattle from which
a few cuts of meat had been taken, the rest left for the coyotes.

W
HILE
D
ODD’S TROOPERS
floundered through the mountains, wearing out their mounts and expending valuable energy, Villa’s men were recuperating in
the small town of Rubio, almost three hundred miles south of Columbus. “The abundant supplies found here cheered us considerably,”
recalled one raider. Villa knew from his spies that the gringos were already on his trail, but what he didn’t know was how
fast they were moving and how close they actually were to catching him.

Since the skirmish with Carranza’s troops at Namiquipa on March 19, his band had continued south, but they were traveling
east of the region that the Americans were searching. On the evening of March 24, Villa and his men changed direction, swinging
to the southwest toward the town of Guerrero, a Carrancista stronghold in a fertile valley located in the Sierra Madre.

At 3:00 a.m. on March 27, Villa gathered his troops together to inform them of his daring plan: they were to attack Guerrero
and the neighboring settlements of San Ysidro and Miñaca simultaneously. His loyal officers nodded and the main body separated
and rode through the darkness. At Miñaca, Francisco Beltrán and Martín López caught 80 sleeping Carrancistas, who surrendered
without firing a shot. But Nicolás Fernández’s detachment encountered 250 Carrancista soldiers under the command of General
José Cavazos at the pueblo of San Ysidro. Surprised and badly outnumbered, they fell back toward Guerrero, where Candelario
Cervantes and Pancho Villa and their troops were engaged in a furious firefight. At about six o’clock in the morning, on a
sweeping mesa, Villa jumped out of an arroyo, and ran on foot toward the opposing line. As he did so, one of the conscripts
taken in El Valle raised his rifle and shot him from behind. “It was our intention to kill him and go over to the Carrancistas,”
recalled Modesto Nevárez. “But just at the time when he was shot, the Carrancistas gave way and ran, leaving us with no possible
way to escape, so we again assumed the pretense of loyalty and declared that if he had been shot by any of us it was purely
accidental.”

Villa had been shot with an old-fashioned Remington rifle, which uses a very large lead bullet. His right leg had been in
a forward position as he ran, and the bullet entered from behind, opposite the knee joint, and ricocheted down, coming out
through the shinbone directly in front and about four inches below the knee. The bullet had made a big hole where it went
in and a much larger hole where it exited. “The shin bone was badly shattered and I afterward saw them pick out small pieces
of bone from the hole in the front,” Modesto recalled.

Villa instructed his officers to tell the rank and file that he had been thrown from his horse. Then several of his most trusted
Dorados hurried to the home of a doctor, where they were given cotton bandages and a coarse-grained drug, which was dark blue
in color and turned red when dropped into water. Villa’s pant leg was cut back nearly to the hip, the wound was washed, and
the leg bound with splints and bandages.

Villa spent the night on the outskirts of Guerrero in the home of a trusted sympathizer. Although he believed that Dodd’s
men were in El Valle, some 150 to 200 miles to the north, he was still anxious to get away. The following evening, March 28,
Villa slipped out of town with a small group of trusted soldiers. Since he could no longer mount a horse, he rode in a carriage
with fifty of his Dorados riding in a tight cluster around him. Three other wagons carrying wounded officers, including Juan
Pedrosa, who had been shot in the foot, rattled along behind him. Nicolás Fernández and his detachment rode alongside the
wagons, watching for potential ambushes. Occasionally, members of the advance guard would stop to remove large stones from
the road so Villa’s ride would be less jarring.

On the same day that Villa’s entourage left Guerrero, Dodd’s men captured a native who said that Villa had been badly wounded
in a battle there. Dodd considered the information reliable and decided to head for the town at once. Lieutenant Herbert A.
Dargue, flying one of the still-operational Jennies, arrived in camp with a message from Pershing. The general advised Dodd
that he was sending fresh troopers to pick up the chase and instructed him to turn over his pack animals and recuperate for
a few days. But Dodd wrote back that he would break off the chase after Guerrero. Before taking off with the message, Lieutenant
Dargue passed out candy and tobacco and gave his shoes to one of the soldiers.

Dodd decided to make a forced night march of thirty-six miles through the mountains in order to attack the town at dawn. It
was a daring and almost reckless thing to do, given the condition of the soldiers and horses. By then, the regiment had been
on the march for fourteen straight days, covering nearly four hundred miles and subsisting on corn, beans, fresh beef, and
whatever else they could find. Their guide hadn’t been to Guerrero in years and no reliable native guides could be enticed
to join the column. Despite the single-digit temperatures and their inadequate knowledge of the terrain, Dodd nevertheless
set off on the march shortly before midnight. The column was forced to make frequent stops in order to figure out which way
to go. During the halts, the troopers sank to the ground, reins in hand, and slept. “Words cannot describe the tedious effort
demanded of the tired trooper when he is forced to dismount and lead his weary horse over a difficult trail on a dark night,
making effort to keep in touch with the horse in front, for to lose contact in the dark means going astray, causing long delays
in reassembling the column,” Major Tompkins later wrote.

He must carry his rifle in one hand and lead the horse with the other. Many times the horses are so played out that they hang
back and make the troopers pull them along. The soldier is animated by the prospect of meeting the enemy but the poor horse
has nothing to stimulate him to abnormal effort except the instinct of service which is born in him. It is too dark to see
the trail, so horses and men go stumbling along, drunk with sleep and fatigue, with the horse sometimes on top of the man.
No wonder it is a common saying “he swears like a trooper.” The trooper learns to swear when leading his mount in a long column,
on a night march, over a rough trail.

At dawn on the morning of March 29, Dodd and his men finally spied the rosy domes of Guerrero’s two whitewashed churches.
The Americans, as it turned out, had taken an unnecessarily long route to Guerrero and had emerged from the trail south of
the little settlement. On their right was a grassy plain with the faint outlines of fence posts, indicating barbed wire. To
their left was a cliff that dropped down one hundred to two hundred feet to a river. The town itself was strung out on both
sides of the river about half a mile north of where the troopers were standing. The bluff that led down to the river was cut
by deep arroyos. More bluffs rose to the west of the town and blended into the mountains. These, too, were cut by deep arroyos.
Dodd realized immediately that the terrain would make a surprise attack difficult, if not impossible. Everywhere, it seemed,
were obstacles.

In Guerrero, several residents spotted the “strange mounted force approaching” and rushed to the cuartel to warn the remaining
Villistas. Although Villa had instructed his troops to leave for the state of Durango immediately, Candelario Cervantes and
Martín López and a combined force of two hundred men had dallied. Cervantes ordered his men to retreat, designating a town
in the mountains to the west where they would rendezvous. López slipped out of Guerrero and galloped to San Ysidro to warn
Francisco Beltrán and his 120 soldiers. Beltrán’s detachment quickly saddled up and headed south.

Dodd ordered his squadrons to circle the town, with instructions to cut off all escape routes. As his troopers were working
their way down the bluff, they saw a large body of soldiers moving out of town at a leisurely pace and carrying the Mexican
flag. The U.S. soldiers suspected that they were Villa’s men masquerading as members of the Carrancista army but didn’t dare
fire upon them until they were absolutely sure. When the American troops drew closer, however, the Mexicans broke and ran,
confirming they were indeed Villistas.

Dodd ordered the men to attack. He no doubt envisioned a glorious pistol charge, but the horses were incapable of moving faster
than a “slow walk.” Two collapsed beneath their riders as they were being urged forward. The troopers dismounted and inflicted
what damage they could from a distance, using their Springfield rifles and machine guns. By the time the engagement was over,
Dodd estimated that thirty of the enemy had been killed and an even larger number wounded. By contrast, only five cavalrymen
had sustained injuries and they were so superficial that the men were soon returned to action. The Seventh also captured forty-four
rifles, two machine guns, and thirteen horses. Two of the horses were confirmed as having been stolen in the Columbus raid
and were in such terrible shape that they had to be shot. The Americans also captured twenty-three mules, including one that
the troopers jokingly referred to as “Villa’s drug store.” The animal was carrying quinine capsules, antiseptics, bandages,
and coffee—which both sides considered almost as important as medicine in conducting a military campaign.