TOM MIX AND PANCHO VILLA: A Novel of Mexico and the Texas border (53 page)

Our line facing Celaya spread across the plain of the Bajio for four miles, a mass of men and horses with an occasional drooping Mexican flag, the infantry in the center and the cavalry holding the flanks. I remember that date well—April 6, 1915. Not a blade of grass stirred, and the sun beat down with a terrible fury. This was the brutally hot time of the year on the central plateau. The horses were listless, the men on edge. The women were in Irapuato, thirty miles away; this time they would not be allowed near the battlefield.

It had been a long time since I had been in battle; not since Zacatecas. But I felt no fear. I never had, at least not since Fierro had ordered Juan Dozal to shoot me if I failed to load his pistols.

Then the vanguard of Obregón’s cavalry came into view through the haze. A tin bugle brayed. Julio shouted, “Come on, boys! Plenty of the bastards for all of us!”

I pulled my hat to a fighting angle and drove that bay pounding across the plain, firing my rifle at the blurred shapes in front of us. A golden cloud of dust soared skyward. Bullets flew around my head, but it wasn’t those bullets I worried about: it was the one that couldn’t find a way around me.

Obregón’s cavalry broke at the first charge. Blood boiling, yelling like Comanches, we rode over their fallen men and ground them into the earth like lumps of dung. Men in battle are no longer sane: what seems proper at another time has no purchase when the bullets fly.

“Look at the bastards run! Don’t let them get away!”

The cavalry rolled forward through the smoke, rifles yapping, the earth seeming to tremble under the drumbeat of hoofs. We must have crossed five miles of crushed wheat and barren plain. The horses were staggering, wildeyed from the bite of gunsmoke. Obregón sent out column after column—each time we charged at a gallop—each time they broke before our assault.

A mule-drawn wagon rumbled through the dust to where Candelario had halted our advance. With Rodolfo Fierro shouting orders, four grinning men leaped down, spilling cartridges from wooden boxes. We crowded round, stuffing our saddlebags. The men from the wagon rolled out two barrels of water and split the staves with an axe. Men drank greedily, and it felt as if fresh blood flowed through my body.

Thin smoke floated through the breathless air of five o’clock—the worst hour of the day.

Candelario shouted an order to mount. The plain squirmed with men and horses as the Dorados again climbed into their saddles, clicked cartridges into the chambers of rifles, sheathed sabers, soothed their horses. Pancho Villa came riding up at a trot, face hideously stained with dust and sweat. Like a general in a painting, sword in hand, he broke forward to the head of the troop. The Dorados thundered after him.

A hot gust of wind struck me in the face as we spurred up the first ridge. And then the world seemed to burst apart.

My horse was hit, sliding down to his knees in a puddle of his own blood and squirting piss. Vaulting clear, I smacked into the dirt behind him.

The air swarmed with bullets, and there was a steady rattling sound as of sewing machines run amok. Beyond the ridge lay an irrigation ditch. That was where they were, bedded down neatly in the trench, the slim black barrels of the machine guns nesting among piles of sandbags. The plain in front of the ditch was covered with rolls of coiled barbed wire that ran in either direction for a mile. This was how they were fighting in Europe. I had seen pictures in the newspapers. So had Obregón.

To have had my horse shot from under me was a blessing I only understood a minute later. The rest of the Dorados hit the barbed wire at a gallop, horses bawling with terror as the barbs ripped into their guts. Men were falling from saddles like wormy apples in a high wind. The machine guns chattered angrily, and I felt the bay’s dead body quiver at the impact of fresh bullets.

I hunched down, hardly daring to peer up for fear that my head would be torn from my neck. A man crawled by me, arm shredded from elbow to wrist, eyes glassy with pain. Another man stood up, shook his fist furiously, then toppled like an axed tree.

I heard Pancho Villa’s shout from afar. “Come on, boys! Form up! For the love of God, keep going or they’ll kill us all!”

I threw myself over the bloodsoaked flank of my horse and fired into the smoke. Villa’s voice, raging and swearing, rang out above the gunfire.

A troop of Dorados burst through the haze to fling themselves at the barbed wire. Quick as hell would scorch a feather, the saddles began to empty. The machine guns stabbed from side to side. Like steel rain, the bullets cut through the troop. I could see a few horsemen stagger to the edge of the trench. Then Obregón’s troops rose up to greet them with bayonets. Tumbling men were blown down by rifle fire at less than ten yards. Dying horses pawed the dust. Great tears rolled from stricken eyes down long brown faces, gasping the last terrible breaths of life. I fell prone in the dirt, reloaded and began to fire.

The barrel of my rifle rested on an outflung forearm, burning a purple welt that the dead man would never feel.

“Go back!”
a voice cried. And then another nearby moaned in fury, “My nose! Where’s my nose?
Oh, Maria!
… the bastards shot off my nose!”

I became aware that fewer men were in front of me. More shambled back. One fell nearby, his back torn open by bullets. In a minute or two the flies had settled on his tongue. I fired steadily at whatever showed itself beyond the barbed wire. I would have stayed there, on that shredded patch of earth, until one of the little puffs that sent the dust flying finally reached me to put an end to my madness.

But a horse’s hoofs drummed close by, and I looked up to see the hot eyes of a man staring down. His face was blackened by powder. He still clutched his sword, the blade red with blood from tip to guard. It was Pancho Villa. He had been to the trench and back, and he was unharmed.

“Tomás! Jesus Christ!
Here
…”

A powerful arm gripped me by the shoulder, hauled me up behind his saddle. I clutched at his chest, felt the pounding of his heart. The horse lurched toward the rear. Crying like an angry child, I leveled my rifle behind me and fired one last shot into the dust.

They shelled us until it grew dark. Our own cannon boomed in reply, but the spotters reported that our fire was falling short of the city and the enemy guns.

“Not the guns!” Villa screamed at the man who had brought the report. “Not the city!
Destroy the barbed wire!
Oh, Felipe,” he groaned. “Why aren’t you here?”

The sky became blue velvet, the sun a brilliant, obscene orange. The wounded straggled by, bound in bloody rags, dragging their rifles. Some tried to grin and make jokes; some hummed love songs. A few wandered aimlessly and had to be set back on the path. The sun sagged, grew fat and red, then vanished gloriously. The day snuffed out like a match, leaving only gray wisps of smoke. From a little ridge behind an alamo tree I could see the flare of the enemy guns, like dancing cigarette tips. Dim forms loomed in the shadows, whispering.

“It was hard … a death trap! I’m not ashamed to tell you I threw away my rifle. But now I regret it, because tomorrow…”

Men sucked water from their canteens and built little corncob fires, crouching round them on their haunches. I stumbled past and a soldier hailed me. “Hey,
compañero!
Are you hungry? Have some tacos. They’re cold, but it’s better than eating smoke, eh?”

The men bivouacked round the fire gave me a part of their food. The tortillas were like cardboard. I ate them quickly and muttered my thanks. In battle and after, men take strength and find courage from the presence of others.

I began wandering.

“Have you seen Colonel Cervantes? … Do you know Julio Cárdenas? I’m looking for them…”

I found Candelario in the shelter of an alamo tree, rubbing axle grease on the gashed flanks of his horse. His uniform was mottled with dried brown blood, but his luck had held.

“I’m glad to see you, Tomás. It was better in Parral, wasn’t it?”

He told me that Julio had been wounded in the leg, but not badly. He had been sent back to the hospital train in Irapuato. I limped off a few steps and curled in a lump by a fire where a few men were softly singing. I fell instantly asleep and dreamed of Elisa Griensen.

I woke only when the sun popped brightly over the plain leading to Celaya. Men lit little fires, putting up coffee. Others tossed under their serapes, muttering in protest. A sweating officer galloped among them.

“Get up, boys! Sons of whores! Come on, my little ones! Come on, my lambs.…”

The troop began sifting toward the horses. A few Indian women slid out of the brush with black water jars on their heads. Their aprons were full of fresh tortillas. Candelario silently offered me a tin mug of hot coffee.

I said hoarsely, “What’s happening? What are we going to do?”

He looked at me with mild astonishment. “We’re going to attack. What else?”

I limped round the plain until I found a trooper standing by a remuda of cut-up horses with tick-infested bellies. The man’s head was swathed in bloody bandages that were black with flies. He had an idiotic look on his face.

“
Compañero,
whose horses are these?”

He looked at me blankly, and I had to repeat the question.

“Ah,” he answered, “they are the horses of men who didn’t come back. Very fine horses, señor—the horses of the Dorados. I would give you one, but they are being saved for officers.” His voice grew martial. “Don’t try to take one from me. I would have to shoot you.” He had no gun.

“I’m a colonel. I’ll take that black.”

“My colonel …” the man sobbed. “My head hurts. I don’t think I can fight anymore.”

“You don’t have to fight. Go back to Irapuato. But first, give me that black horse.”

The man began to sob as I took the reins of the black and led him away. A sword had been looped with a piece of red velvet across the saddle horn. Gouts of dried blood hung from the horse’s nostrils; with my bandanna and a bit of water from my canteen, I wiped them away.

A wagon jolted back through the wheat field for a fresh load of wounded, and I directed them toward the man who clutched the reins of the remuda.

Pancho Villa appeared on a gray stallion, weaving a path through the campfires. “The infantry can’t advance,” he told me quietly when he had dismounted. “I can’t send men out to be killed before they can fire a shot. Tell the officers that the cavalry is to carry them—one man behind each rider. We’ll take them as far as the barbed wire. Then they’ll dismount and get through it. The cavalry will follow. Tell them Celaya will fall today.” He shook his fist at the sky. “Tell them Francisco Villa swears it! If not on the first assault, then the second. But it will fall!”

Villa mounted and spurred away. The ground boiled with a scramble of men and horses. Mules were lashed insanely as they tugged at lumbering caissons. The gunners tore away the canvas. Officers ran to and fro, yelling for shells, checking fuses.

Villa came pounding back, eyes streaming tears from the smoke.

“Closer!
Not here, for Christ’s sake! Get down on the plain! Follow me!” He slammed spurs into his horse, while the soldiers once more hitched the guns to the reeling mules.

The sky had become a faultless blue vault. Birds sang sweetly in the bushes. Our cannon began to pound at the trenches. At nine o’clock the cavalry surged forward, each rider bearing an infantryman who carried sticks of dynamite. The plain was covered with bodies already starting to swell and bubble. The man mounted behind me spotted a black earthenware jug under a maguey plant. He begged me to turn my horse a few steps to pick it up. Candelario rode only a few yards to my right, with another soldier in the saddle behind him. We moved toward the earthenware jug at the same time, and then Candelario pulled out his pistol and fired, shattering the jug into a dozen pieces. It had been full of milk, which the yellow earth soaked up instantly.

“Poisoned!” Candelario yelled. “They’ve left them all over the plain for us. Arsenic!”

Rifle fire rattled—a bugle blared. Brutal and blinding, the sun beat down. The infantry rushed forward, swallowed by the smoke, appeared again as dim shapes, then vanished behind gentle curves of land. Cannon whomped gutturally, and we heard once more the tapping of machine guns, like a flock of angry woodpeckers in a forest of oaks.

The wounded stumbled back, and when they were past us Candelario gave the order to charge. A throng of men plunged forward, spurs ringing, flags flying in the breeze. Bending low, pistol in one hand, saber and reins in the other, I put steel into the black’s side. The horse trumpeted with fear, but I had him in a gait he couldn’t break, knees pinned so hard into his heaving flanks that I could feel the knock of his heart against my thigh. And we broke suddenly through the acrid smoke that hid the trenches.

Our cannon had blasted the rolls of barbed wire into a crazy tangle, but the shell craters had made it easier for the infantry to crawl forward, toss their bombs, then dart forward again to the next crater. Bleeding from the wire, they vaulted over the lip of the first trench to fall upon the defenders.

I couldn’t stop my horse in time. He tried to clear the trench in one leap, but his forelegs struck the far dirt wall, and amid the roar of guns I heard the bones snap. He bawled with the pain. I was pitched clear.

The heat of the guns and the stench of scorched flesh had turned the trench into a cauldron. I jumped to my feet and thrust the point of my sword into an Obregonista soldier who was trying to crawl from under an overturned machine gun. These were the bastards who had been killing us, who had left arsenic for us to drink.

I spitted him through the neck, and blood spurted as from a broken pipe. Pulling the sword free, I slashed with the wet blade at another man who was firing his pistol toward the barbed wire.

Candelario, from on high, standing in his stirrups, screamed at me. I turned, and a gun exploded in my face. My hat whipped off my head … an enemy officer towered over me, face striped with blood, the steel of his bayonet flashing. My pistol clicked empty. I had no room to swing my sword. I jumped aside; the bayonet slid by my neck, so close that the coldness of its steel burned like a hot iron. Butting and flailing, shouting curses, I clutched at the man’s legs and twisted him to the earth.