But the worst thing about this business, for me, wasn’t the gold; it was that Urbina had failed to show up at León. He had been too busy hunting for stray women and collecting the last taxes in Chihuahua City.
Fierro hammered away. “Four men were killed defending the gold for him. And yet Urbina lives.”
“If he doesn’t fight for us,” Villa muttered, changing course as he felt the weight of Fierro’s argument, “he’ll wind up fighting for Carranza, like the others. I can smell it.”
Urbina heard none of this. He sprawled on the sacks of gold, one arm clasping his wounded shoulder. He looked as if he were falling asleep, despite the jolting of the wagon on the trail. The sun had vanished and the sky was soggy with impending rain.
A little desperate, Villa turned in his saddle toward me.
“What do you think, Tomás?”
He knew that if any man would counsel mercy, it should be me. But he was wrong. And yet something stopped me from pronouncing the sentence. If I were to do that for a false reason, it would be a trickery I couldn’t live with. If Urbina were to die, it had to be for treason.
“Don’t make me condemn him to death,” I said. “That’s your job.”
Villa nodded glumly. “All right. He’s a traitor. Traitors die.” He drew his pistol.
He raised it in the direction of Urbina, who had begun to snore in the wagon. The middle finger curled reluctantly around the trigger. He was going to shoot him in his sleep; he didn’t want to see his eyes. But after a moment, his finger quivered, then slowly uncurled, like a worm from a hook.
He let the pistol drop, shoving it back into his holster. “I can’t do it,” he murmured. “I must have a sentimental streak somewhere. Rodolfo,. use the rope.”
The rope stretched slack about fifteen feet from the horn of Fierro’s saddle to Urbina’s neck in the spring wagon. Fierro checked his stirrups, patted his sorrel’s neck, then dug his right knee hard into the flank.
The sorrel wheeled, almost knocking me askew in the saddle, and then Fierro spurred him round the other side of the wagon. It was cleverly done … he must already have been thinking about it before he received the order. If he had just galloped back along the trail he would have dragged Urbina after him, tearing him to pieces on the stones.
But Fierro had his code. Despite what he had done to Benton, he believed in a quick death.
As I stared, Urbina’s body flung itself across the sacks of gold, slamming hard into the planks of the rattling wagon. His hands flew to his neck to get rid of the rope, and he snatched the hangman’s knot just as it began to bury itself deeper in his throat. The team of horses pulling the wagon trotted gently along, the driver half asleep on the box.
Fierro spurred as far as he could until the rope was taut and Urbina, eyes popping, was wedged in a ball against the wooden slats. Then he slowed the sorrel and hung there, trotting in pace with the team.
Dancing a strangulation jig, Urbina kicked his legs fiercely, fighting for life. The wound in his shoulder flowed red with fresh blood. His tongue bulged. He wasn’t able to speak, to remind Villa how they had fled from the rurales or worked together in the Del Verde mine. But his grip on the knot was too powerful; he was refusing to die. The sorrel strained against the rope, mud spurting up from his hoofs.
Urbina kicked and jumped, and his pop eyes glared with fury.
“Stop!” Villa cried to Rodolfo. “You’ve bungled it, you fool!”
The rope began to relax. I kicked my horse and bolted forward, drawing my pistol. The purple tongue had already begun to edge back between the slitted lips; the limbs gave a last kick of relief, and Urbina’s onyx eyes blazed in demonic triumph. He thought now he would live.
“No, you bastard,” I whispered, and thrust the barrel of the pistol between his eyes. I pulled the trigger—the pistol roared, smoke curling. Urbina slumped suddenly, tiredly, with what seemed a third black eye above his nose and his bloody brains spewing out against the boards of the wagon.
Warm sweat rolled down my face. I turned to Pancho Villa. A vein in the center of his forehead stood out like a piece of thick blue twine.
“It’s done,” I said.
With one sleeve Villa wiped his eyes, then shoved his horse forward to the main body of men. Fierro trotted back to the wagon.
He untied his rope from Urbina’s mangled neck and dumped the body in the road for the buzzards.
A traitor had been shot. Rosa was avenged. But when we reached Torreón in the fog the next morning, I forgot about that.
While we were gone, hunting gold and Urbina, Monterrey and Nuevo Laredo had fallen to the Carranzistas under González. Our new commander in Chihuahua City, Calixto Contreras, sent word that Treviño had begun to bombard him, and he doubted that his single brigade could hold out. Five hundred more of our soldiers had deserted from Torreón. Our scouts reported that Obregón was pushing north with thirty thousand men and was only fifty miles away.
Villa sank down on the pink silk cushions of the settee in the Hotel Salvador, head in his hands. God no longer smiled on him.
“Everything’s falling apart, Tomás. Since that damned convention, nothing’s gone right for us. I’m starting to think that Obregón may be smarter than I am.”
I knew how it pained him to say that, but now I believed it too. I felt a sense of waste more powerful than any I had ever known. The banners of the revolution were in rags. We had less than seven thousand men left. Torreón was our stronghold, but with Obregón fast approaching, it wouldn’t be for long.
“If I defend the city and we lose it,” Villa said, “that will be the end of the Division. The end of hope for the people. Obregón will turn this country into a charnel house.”
For three days he brooded alone, seeing no hope. I wondered if he would give up. This was a test of his resources and the scope of his mind. Finally he called me and Candelario and three of his generals to his room. When we entered, I saw the change. He hadn’t bathed and during those three days he must have sweated constantly in the summer heat, because he stank. But his eyes gleamed with a resolve that I hadn’t seen since we had been in Ascensión and he planned the campaign to take Chihuahua.
“We’ll stay here a little longer,” Villa told us, “because I don’t like to move an army in the rains. And perhaps Contreras can hold out in Chihuahua City, which may change things. But if not—here’s what we’re going to do.”
Obregón, he explained, had always considered the northwestern state of Sonora as his fiefdom, but now Obregón was far afield. Sonora was almost unguarded. The main Carranzista garrison there was in the desert town of Agua Prieta, across the border from Arizona, and it was commanded by General Chao, the man with the ivory-handled pistol, as well as a certain Colonel Calles.
“So we’ll go to Sonora,” Villa announced, grinning. “On the way we’ll raise the Yaqui nation. They hate Carranza. First we’ll cross the high sierras … then all we have to do is lick that bucktoothed geography teacher at Agua Prieta. That won’t be hard—for a change we won’t be outnumbered. With the American border at our backs, Obregón will have to come at us head-on, if he dares. He can’t surround us, as he could do here, and we can fight forever. We’ll destroy him. I’m going to fight a diplomatic war too—any day now, Felipe Angeles arrives in Washington. I’ve written to General Scott at the War Department, asking him to arrange for Felipe to see President Wilson. The gringos will help us, I feel it in my bones. As soon as we have enough men and arms, we’ll strike east into Chihuahua. We know how to fight there, and we still hold Juárez. It will be hard to do it all over again, but we can. And what can be done, will be done! That I swear to you. The people of the north will support us. We won’t count anymore on this idiot Zapata. This will be a new beginning of the struggle. The real revolution will triumph.”
His energy swept us all before him, and late into the night we planned the campaign and the equipment we would need. Villa looked as if he hadn’t slept, but he was tireless and
thorough.
I was elated. God had to smile on such a man.
He waited as long as possible, hoping that Contreras could hold out against Treviño. But Chihuahua City fell. Then in September we heard Obregón’s cannon.
On the floor of his suite, Villa spread out the tattered maps with their faint smell of mildew. “Here,” he said, eagerly scratching a broken fingernail in the upper left-hand corner, not far from Texas, on that dotted line separating the states of Chihuahua and Sonora.
“We’ll cross the sierra here, from Casas Grandes, into Sonora. The pass is called the Cañón del Pulpito. It’s twelve thousand feet high, and no army is supposed to be able to get through it. So it will be unguarded. If we time it right, the rains will be over and the bad cold weather won’t have begun. God willing, we’ll get through. That’s the first step to victory.”
I looked over his shoulder at the maps. As his fingers traced our path northwest from Torréon through the desert, and then across the forbidding mountains to Sonora, my heart beat more quickly in my breast. Our route would pass through Parral.
Chapter 27
“So shines a good deed
in a naughty world.”
October rain beat on the tiled roof, and a chill north wind rattled the windowpanes. Lying in the big four-poster bed with Elisa Griensen curled in my arms, I had no thought of wind or weather.
The seven-thousand-man army had been camped outside of Parral for the past two days, resting and provisioning itself for the crossing of the high western sierra. Rosa was in the camp. She had traveled at my side for nearly two weeks over mountain trails that we had taken to avoid any Carranzista garrisons. Parral was still in our hands, and the remnants of Contreras’ brigade had joined us there. But we couldn’t stay long if we wanted to outrace the winter weather.
Shamelessly I left Rosa in the camp, telling her I had to do business in town for the chief and I would come back just before we marched north. On the long trek from Torreón I had convinced myself that I needed Maximilian … a good horse might get me safely through the Cañón del Pulpito. By the time we reached Parral I knew there was a deeper, simpler reason. I wanted to see Elisa.
I wasn’t proud of myself. I was the same faithless man I had always been, but I had to do it. Life was short.
I tugged at the cowbell in front of the Hacienda de Los Flores at dawn, just as I had done seven months ago with Candelario. Once again Patricio opened the wooden slat and peered out with his hooded Yaqui eyes.
Two minutes later, in the library, Elisa was in my arms, and we were kissing and murmuring each other’s names as if they were the most precious words in the world. She unpinned her yellow hair, letting it tumble below her shoulders. It was longer than I remembered it. She knew how I loved the way she did that—that wanton shower, as if all barriers tumbled at the same time.
“So you came back for your horse,” she murmured.
“Yes, for Maximilian. I told you he was too good a horse not to ride again.”
“Oh, Tom. You’re bad. Do you know that?”
“Why? I’m doing what pleases me.”
“You learn too quickly. That frightens me. Do you want to go upstairs?”
“To ride my horse?” I said wickedly.
“Bad.” Her green eyes sparkled, the little crow’s-feet around them crinkling into a fan. “But I love you for it.”
For two days and two nights I buried myself in the magic of her body and heard her song. But she was wrong; I didn’t learn quickly, I only acted impetuously. And there was no consistency to my deceit. I told her about Rosa’s return to Torreón and that we were together again. Before, with Hannah playing the role in my life that Rosa now occupied, I had been honest with Rosa. Now that I had committed myself to Rosa in almost the same way I had once done to Hannah, I chose to lay my soul bare to Elisa. It eased my conscience considerably that I could admit the truth to one of the two women in my life. Perhaps that’s why, through the centuries, mistresses had been held in such high esteem.
“Will Rosa go with you to Sonora?” Elisa asked.
That had been troubling me ever since we left Torreón. There would be some women on the trek, but crossing the sierra was perilous. And on the other side, in Sonora, the land was so barren that Villa already worried about feeding his army.
“I know the Pulpito,” Elisa said. “I rode up there years ago with Zambrano. The crossing is awful, and if it snows you won’t get through.”
“But it’s only October.”
“Last year, in November, a party of Mormons was trapped. They froze to death.”
“I should send her back to Tomochic,” I said, sighing. “She won’t like it. Neither will I.”
Elisa leaned back in bed, propped up on the scented pillows. Her belly was flat and brown—she liked to tan herself on the balcony in the late afternoon and sometimes take her siesta in the sun. She said she woke up feeling drunk, as if the gods had violated her while she slept. I watched the muscles of her breasts stretch, the nipples going a little flatter. We had made love already, and now we were both ready to sleep. The Division was leaving next evening at sundown. She ran a finger lightly across my lips. But I could see she was thinking of something else, and I raised my eyebrows.
“Rosa could stay here,” Elisa said.
“In Parral?”
“At Los Flores.”
“With you?” I laughed nervously. “Elisa, I couldn’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because, first of all, I’d be using you.”
But that wasn’t the reason for my reluctance. The real reason was a gut fear at the thought of the two women in my life coming together, meeting, living under the same roof. And yet when I thought of sending Rosa to Tomochic, I knew that would be cruel. At Los Flores she would be both comfortable and safe. For Rosa’s sake I wanted it, but still I hesitated.
“I wouldn’t have offered,” Elisa said, “if I didn’t mean it. It’s a big house. There’s plenty of work to do.”
“I know it will be good for her,” I explained. “For you, I don’t know. But it will surely complicate my life.”
“It needn’t. And don’t worry about me—I could use some company. It’s for you, my sweet. I’m taking the risk. So should you.”
Then it was hard to refuse. I was at the point of asking her, if Rosa stayed, whether she would be willing to pick up where I had left off and help with her reading and writing. But she was already offering a favor beyond value, and I couldn’t in conscience ask for more.
“I don’t want her to die in Sonora,” I said, thinking aloud.
“Then bring her here tomorrow.”
Later I had second thoughts and a gallery of fears. I would miss Rosa; the separation had no time limit. I would have to talk her into it. I remembered her crossing the mountains to Tomochic with our gold—she had no sense of personal danger. But she would probably be frightened of Elisa—that elegance, a strange house, a woman strong enough to live on her own in Mexico with no man in sight. And then, what if she discovered the truth? Elisa would never tell her, but women had a sense of smell that went beyond male understanding. The only man I knew who had it was Pancho Villa.
If Rosa found out why Elisa was keeping her, she might pack her saddlebags and head into Sonora on her own. Remembering what had happened the last time she had gone hunting for me, I didn’t want her to do that.
I rode back to camp early the next morning. Our men were sprawled the length of a fertile valley in a place called Cuevecillas de Abajo, surrounded by low mountains filled with caves. The rains had turned everything green, and the remuda grazed well. By our campfire Julio sat cross-legged in front of his silver saddle, plaiting a horsehair rope. Candelario was still at the hacienda with Francisca. A sour downturn of the lips made Julio’s face look more than ever like a pitted tomahawk.
“What’s happened?” I asked. “It can’t be good.”
“The chief got a message. Our garrison in Juárez went ov
er to Carranza.”
“Damn!” That was our only port of entry to the United States—it had been vital to keep it. “Are we still going to Sonora?”
“Hombre, there’s more reason than ever. Agua Prieta’s just over the border from Arizona. We’ve got to buy bullets and shells.”
“How is the chief taking it?”
“Not well, Tomás. Keep clear of him today.”
I found Rosa by a little stream that ran past a yellow cornfield, beating on our laundry with a mesquite branch. Her back was bent like a thousand Indian women I had seen from Ascensión to Xochimilco. A few more years of that and she would never be able to straighten it. If I had any doubts, that sight erased them. A thin sun forced itself through j the haze. She looked up at me, sweat beading her lip, smiling from her clear brown eyes.
She listened carefully while I explained what I had in mind, and she said what I thought she would say.
“I am not afraid of the pass, mi capitán. “
“Rosa, do it for my sake. I’m worried.”
“You have a feeling?”
“A feeling? You mean a premonition?”
“Yes.”
I nodded. It wasn’t really true, but it would do as a reason.
“I believe in those,” she said.
“Then stay. This woman is a good woman. She’s an old friend of mine.”
“You’re sure it’s not something else, Tomás?”
“Like what?” I asked, guardedly.
“Do you want me to go back to Tomochic?”
I laughed. “No. I want you to stay here and wait for me. After we’ve taken Agua Prieta, if I’m still alive, I’ll come back for you.”
Swiftly she made the sign against the evil eye, but then she nodded.
That afternoon I took her to the Hacienda de Los Flores. She mounted a cinnamon-colored bay that we had picked up in Torreón, and when we had ridden through the gate Elisa was there to greet us, standing by some azalea bushes that were inflamed a shocking red-pink by the hazed sun. She wore her leather Spanish riding clothes, and I saw her eyes rake Rosa up and down, taking in all that lushness and youth. Rosa dismounted gracefully. She had grown a couple of inches since I’d known her—she was seventeen now—and her body had become more slender and womanly, her face more serene. The image I carried of her mother intruded for a moment, then mercifully vanished. Rosa couldn’t properly be called beautiful, but she carried herself as if she were. Life was never easy, but she valued it.
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