TOM MIX AND PANCHO VILLA: A Novel of Mexico and the Texas border (74 page)

“And why are you here, Major?” Lozano asked.

“At the invitation of your Captain Mesa, señor. And to provision ourselves—for which, naturally, we’ll pay you. In Mexican silver.”

Lozano shot a dirty look at Mesa. “Accompany me to my office, if you please. Major. This will have to be discussed.”

Tompkins tugged me by the arm. “Come along, Mix. If he rattles too fast, I’ll need your help.”

We climbed some rickety stairs to the general’s office, which had big French windows opening onto a balcony overlooking the plaza. No sooner did I poke my head out the window to get a view and a whiff of breeze than a mule hitched to a heavy cart came bolting down the street toward the cavalry—some citizen’s form of protest and a way of starting mayhem. A yell rose from the crowd, but a big Yank from Troop K lumbered quickly into the path of the cart, grabbed the mule by the bit and brought it to a halt.

“Whoa there, Carmencita!”

The cavalry, dismounted by now, started to laugh. The crowd looked disappointed, but that simmered them down.

Lozano and Tompkins had seen that too, over my shoulder. The major slipped his holster more forward on his belt.

“This is the problem,” the general said. “The people of Parral are unhappy that your soldiers are here in Mexico. For that matter, so am I. Intervention by the armed forces of one state into another is against international law. I must stress this so that you fully comprehend. You are not welcome here.”

“Translate that for me, son, while I think of what to say.”

I did, and then Tompkins nodded.

“Okay, General. I appreciate your opinion. As soon as my men have provisioned themselves—I have a list right here—we’ll be on our way. That is, after we take a look around for Pancho Villa. We had a report that he was here a while ago. He may have left some men behind.”

Lozano’s eyes gleamed with interest. Unlike Mesa, he didn’t think that Villa’s presence was impossible. He studied Tompkins’ list.

“You should not have come here, Major. But I wish to avoid an incident. If you will be good enough to camp outside of the city by the railroad station, the supplies will be delivered to you. And then we shall conduct the search for this bandit together. Under my command, if you please.”

My heart sank—I had hoped Lozano was going to insult him and kick us out. Nothing was going right for me today.

“Good enough,” Tompkins said. He saluted, and for the first time the fat general smiled.

“Viva Villa! Viva Mexico!”

The shout came from the street through the open French windows—at first one or two voices, then a swelling chorus.

Lozano said, “I suggest we go right now.”

“I take your meaning, General.”

We thumped down the stairs double-time. As soon as we reached the street I understood what was happening. Troop K, at an order from Sergeant Richley, had mounted their horses; the crowd had bunched up and were shaking their fists. Most of the blue-clad Carranzista soldiers had retreated to the little raised bandstand in the center of the park. But a group of white-shirted citizens had come marching up from a side street, and they were the ones making the trouble.

They were led by a tall, green-eyed woman in a black sombrero, denim shirt, black pants and riding boots. She carried a Mauser hip-high. That was the way I had first seen her at the front door of the hacienda, so I knew how the soldiers felt. She didn’t give the impression that she was one of the weaker sex fooling around at grown men’s games. She urged the townspeople toward the uneasy troopers.

“Are you men or goats? Are you citizens of Parral? Then tell these gringo bastards to go home!”

Tompkins’ lingo was good enough to understand most of it. He spoke out of the corner of his mouth to me. “Who’s she?”

“A tough lady. German, used to be married to a Villista. I think it’s time to leave town.”

“Richley! Get those men out!”

Just at that moment Elisa raised her rifle and squeezed off a shot, well above Troop K’s heads. I looked hard at the people surging around her, but she had had enough sense not to let Candelario or Hipólito come along. The bullet banged off the copper sign above the bank.

Rushing up with a horse, Captain Mesa helped to hoist his general into the saddle.

“I will lead your men to safety,” Lozano wheezed to us.

Elisa was still turning the air blue with curses. I hoped Tompkins couldn’t understand the shades of meaning, although Lozano certainly did, and for all his pompousness he was even grinning a little. The troopers kept quiet and held their fire; there was no way they would shoot at a wildeyed beautiful blond woman, even if she was telling them they were sons of whores, goats and one-balled faggots.

The trouble came from the most unexpected quarter: the Carranzista soldiers.

Troop K had begun to retreat, with Tompkins, Richley, the pack mules and me bringing up the rear. Captain Mesa and a troop of his blue-uniformed men stayed behind with us. The sun beat down, and the swallows in the plaza chirped like a troop of disturbed monkeys. Lozano was at the head of the column, winding up a steep cobbled street. I lost sight of Elisa.

The citizens and the Carranzista soldiers, who had moved out of the park and into the street to control the crowd, jostled and shoved each other. The outnumbered soldiers gave way grudgingly—they were not overly fond of the people of Parral, who had made no secret of their loyalty to Pancho Villa. Machetes flashed, striking sharply against the steel of bayonets.

Then Captain Mesa, tired of being pushed around and perhaps beginning to fear for the safety of his soldiers, shouted an order. Carranzista rifles cracked. Women screamed. I saw a white shirt blossom with blood.

Tompkins yelled ahead at his men to hold their fire, to retreat to the railroad station and join Troop M. Lozano, hearing the shots, came galloping back, brandishing his sword.

But it had got beyond the control of any one man.

Now a few citizens of the town had pulled pistols and were firing back at the Carranzista soldiers. Bullets whistled in every direction, some of them chipping stone off the walls above our heads. It was hard to tell whether they were aimed at us and who was doing the firing.

Tompkins and I reached the crest of the hill, above the railroad embankment. The horses’ hoofs rang out on the cobbles.

A messenger came galloping up from Lozano. “Señor Major, the general requests that you withdraw!”

“What the hell does he think we’re doing?” Tompkins snapped. “Look here—your soldiers are shooting at
us!”

When we got down to the embankment we turned, and now the Carranzista troop under Mesa was running down the street toward us, whooping and hollering. They must have decided, in the end, that the real enemy had whiter faces than theirs.

Tompkins, purple in the face rather than white, turned to Sergeant Richley. “Sergeant, give me your rifle!.” He stood up and yelled at the charging soldiers, “Damn it, you people! Get back!”

The answer was a wild volley of shots that slammed into the embankment … all but one bullet, and that one gored Richley in the eye and flowered out the back of his head. He had been lying on his stomach, with only his head exposed to see over the rails. He made no sound; he just slumped over.

I didn’t think of it then, but he was the first American soldier of the Punitive Expedition to be killed in Mexico. It happened no more than five feet away from me. Tompkins turned to hand him back his rifle, saw the puddle of blood and knew immediately that he was dead.

“Troop M, fire at will! Troop K, withdraw!”

The battle lasted about an hour, while the Yanks steadily withdrew along the trail to Santa Cruz. The troopers had one more man killed and six wounded. About twenty Carranzista soldiers were killed, and later I found out that in the melee on the plaza they had shot four citizens of Parral. With all that smoke and confusion and dust I became separated from Tompkins, and of course I never fired my rifle. Elisa was out of her mind, I decided. And for all I knew then, she might have been shot by one of Mesa’s men. After we passed the railroad station I veered off behind a water tank and then, when the firing slackened, ducked my head and whipped Maximilian across the tracks and down a smelly back alley that led to Calle Chorro. I wanted no more to do with the cavalry.

I threw the reins to Patricio and ran across the gravel into the house. The coolness was a balm. I heard voices in the library. Elisa sat on an ottoman, the rifle across her lap, her face dappled with sweat. Villa sprawled in a red-leather easy chair, drinking a mug of steaming coffee. Elisa looked up at me quickly.

“It worked, Tom!”

“Worked?”

“The cavalry’s gone. They won’t come back. Your chief is safe. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

Well, I suppose she was right, and she had a right to be proud and think of herself as a hero. Where I had failed, she had succeeded. That may have irked me a trifle, but what dismayed me considerably was the realization that two Yank troopers and some fairly innocent citizens of Parral had been killed in order to achieve our purpose. The soldiers, who had only fired after they had been fired upon, were as undeserving of death as the citizens. Elisa didn’t seem to understand that, or didn’t seem to care. I was sure it had never occurred to Pancho Villa.

I let Elisa know what was on my mind. She flushed a little, but then she said, “Tom, it had to be. We just couldn’t foresee it.”

“You thought Tompkins would leave peaceably?”

“He tried, didn’t he? How could anyone know the Carranzistas would shoot at the crowd?”

Villa asked, “Where are the gringos now?”

“Heading north,” I said. “They’ve had enough of Parral. They don’t want to kill Carranzistas or Mexican citizens, chief. They only want to kill you. They won’t be back.”

He turned to Elisa, smiling. “You saved my life, señora. If I had medals to give. I’d give you the biggest one, made of pure gold. For the moment you have only my thanks. And my loyalty unto the grave.”

I grunted and stomped out of the house to the stables, where I smoked a cigarette, cleaned up Maximilian and muttered to myself for the better part of an hour. It wasn’t for this that I had left Texas and come back down to Chihuahua, and it certainly wasn’t why I had agreed to stay on with Pancho Villa and play at being a spy. Maybe the reason I hadn’t wanted to fight at Guerrero had been more than just my worry about Rosa and Elisa. What sense did it make? We’d kill some of them, they’d kill some of us. In between, a few cavalrymen would die too. What had started as a battle for land and liberty had become little more than a bloody game. It could go on forever, and the chief would keep believing that when he blew that one bugle call, a hundred thousand would rise. It wouldn’t happen. I wondered if there were that many whole men left in the country to fight.

I was sick of killing, sick of being shot at, sick of running. I had come back from my mountain lair at Pahuirachic to find a different destiny. It was here, I was sure of that. I was tapped out, fed up. A stove-up cowboy—too tired to fight, but not too dumb to quit.

That night I was roaming the garden, still muttering and trying to make peace with myself, when Rosa came out of the house to find me. I hadn’t seen Elisa all evening; she had stayed out of my way, and I took my meal in the kitchen alone. I didn’t have much appetite, but I managed to guzzle almost a full bottle of wine, and then I had a brandy to wash it down.

Rosa, without a word, pressed her body against mine so that I inhaled the perfume of her hair. Villa was back with Hipólito in his room behind the stables. Candelario would surely sleep with Francisca. I took Rosa with me to my room, bolted the door, and we undressed. I made love to her, not with much joy, but it was better than I thought it would be. It was a way to kill the voices in my mind. It had been a long time, but neither of us had forgotten how to please the other.

Afterwards, she sighed. “Don’t be sad, Tomás.”

“I can’t help how I feel.”

“In war, men die. It’s to be expected.”

“Not this time. It didn’t have to happen.” I stubbed out my cigarette.

“They would have found your chief. That’s all Elisa was thinking about. You would have done the same.”

I might have … that was true. I had gone over this a dozen times already in my head and muttered versions of it to Maximilian. But nothing helped.

“I’m not angry at
her,
damn it. I’m just upset because two Americans died. And didn’t have to. They didn’t even want to shoot. They held their fire until one of them got killed.”

“In battles,
mi capitán,
many have died. My husband. Thousands more.”

“I guess I’m just tired of it all, Rosa. I wish I could go home.”

“You can.”

“No, I can’t.”

Rosa was silent for a while, stroking my bare back, careful to avoid the strip of peeled hide that had scabbed and begun to heal. When I thought of all the times I had been skinned and shot and nearly blown up—at Torreón, Celaya, León, Pahuirachic—I was lucky to be whole.

Then Rosa spoke, even more gently than before. “There is one thing, Tomás. Elisa doesn’t say it, but I do. If you get angry, which I hope you don’t, I ask your pardon. If you hadn’t come here first, and then if your chief hadn’t followed, this would never have happened. If he had not chosen this house—which he did because of you—the señora would not have had to do what she did. The two gringo soldiers would not have died. The fault lies with you and General Villa.”

I put a hand to her lips. Of course, she was right: Elisa had just been an instrument of our purpose. She had been brave … braver than I would have been. She had faced a troop of the U. S. Cavalry, with no way of knowing that Lozano wouldn’t order her shot.

I had to make it up to her, but somehow this didn’t seem quite the right way to go about it, with Rosa curled next to me in the darkness.

The next day, at first light, Elisa rode south into Durango with Patricio. A while ago she had made an appointment to buy an Appaloosa stallion, and she didn’t return until evening.

In the late morning Villa strolled out to the stables and saddled his albino mare, then rode around the corral for half an hour. His leg hurt, he said, but he could bear it, and riding a horse would help to cure him. Back in his room he unwrapped the bandage and showed me the wound. It was pink around the edges and starting to scab.