by John Benteen
He grinned. La Capitana Angelita Helguero, twenty-eight years old, six feet tall, all fighter and soldier—and all woman.
Soldaditas, women soldiers, were no novelty in the army of Villa; women followed their men to battle and sometimes fought alongside them. But Angelita was no camp-follower and never had been one, not since the day five years before when she’d ridden into Villa’s camp, dressed like a Charro, carrying a pistol and a knife. Though her beauty was that of a woman, her height and strength and ferocity were those of a man, and her courage that of a devil. She was the offspring of a Spanish don and a Yaqui woman, and in her sixteenth year she and her novio, to whom she was engaged, had been wandering on a riverbank and looking at the moon and planning their future when they had been surrounded by a troop of Diaz’s Rurales looking for some sport. She would never speak of what happened there that night; but afterwards, methodically, she had taught herself to ride and shoot and use a knife, and she had only one obsession: revenge against the system. Riding with Villa, she could get it, and she had become one of his Dorados, risen to the rank of captain, and no Villista who valued his cojones dared look down upon her because of her sex or hesitate to obey a lawful order from her.
“Neal,” she asked softly. “How do you feel?”
“Like I’ve been ridden hard and put up wet. You found the guns?”
“Si. They are on their way to Pancho now. A thousand thanks. Not only for our guns, but for saving our bacon when those bastards ambushed us. We were betrayed, and I think I know by whom. But that can wait. Now you need attention by our medico. Rose, come here.”
Another figure emerged from the darkness. “Fargo is awake. Please examine him.”
“Yes.” It was a woman’s voice, speaking English. She knelt by Fargo and a small, soft hand touched his forehead and his cheeks.
“No fever. That’s good. How do you feel?”
Fargo turned his head. “I’m all right,” he said. Moonlight fell on blonde hair cut off short, blue eyes, a snub nose, full red mouth. The girl could not be over twenty, if that much, and she was a looker. And, despite her straw sombrero, khaki shirt and leather skirt, she was as American as he. Expertly, her fingers probed the bandages.
He flinched. “What’s the damage?”
“Broken clavicle—that’s your collarbone. Two cracked ribs, a dislocated arm which we’ve put back in joint. You were lucky you didn’t break your back or smash your pelvis—you’d have been finished. But you should be all right in a few weeks. Of course, you’re covered with bruises. You’ll be sore for a long time.”
“So finally, Neal,” Angelita said, “you get a rest. We’ll take you to Chihuahua City with us, to the hospital.”
“Hell, I don’t need any hospital—”
“You will if one of those ribs breaks loose because you ran around too soon,” the girl put in. “You want a punctured lung? Now, you lie back.”
“All right,” he grunted. “But who’re you? What’s an American kid like you doing running around with Villa’s men?”
“We’ll discuss that later when you’re stronger. Now, you sleep. Here’s some painkiller.” And she held the bottle of tequila to his lips once again, hand gently supporting his head.
Fargo drank deeply. “You’re a damned good doctor,” he whispered. “You carry the right medicine.” Then he closed his eyes and slept.
~*~
When morning came and he awakened, he found that they were camped in a sort of bowl that was well guarded and splendidly defensible, rimmed around with broken country. Men were getting breakfast, rounding up stock, and there was all the activity of a military outfit on the move. Then the girl crossed Fargo’s line of vision and for the first time he saw her plain, in daylight.
A bandolier full of ammunition was slung across one shoulder, a bag holding medical supplies, he supposed, on the other. That harness crossed in the middle of her chest, accentuating breasts which were small and pointed, but, he thought, not underdeveloped by a long shot. Her face was angular, but when she smiled, her lips were soft and red and her teeth very white. Yes, a looker, Fargo thought again, even if she was not the kind of full-figured female that usually caught his fancy.
Aware of his eyes, she turned, smiled, came over to him. “Feeling better?”
“Fine. Could use some coffee and some chow.”
“Coming up.” She called to a man at the fire, then knelt beside him, touching his face again. He looked up into eyes as blue as the Coahuila sky above.
“Fargo,” she said. “Angelita’s told me all about you.”
He grinned wolfishly. “Angelita doesn’t know all about me.”
Her face creased with an answering smile. “She says you have known each other for years and that you’ve been lovers and that ... she knows all she needs to know. She says it takes a lot of man to handle her. And that’s why she likes you. Because you’re strong enough so that with you she can feel like a woman.”
“Angelita talks a lot,” Fargo said.
“Only to me. We’re two women together out here.”
“And what the hell are you doing here? Who are you, anyhow?”
Suddenly her face shadowed. “My name’s Rose Pemberton. The rest of it’s not something I want to talk about. Now. Here’s some coffee and tortillas. Be quiet while I feed you.”
Fargo greedily drank coffee, ate the tortillas, and felt some measure of strength returning. But his body ached as if he’d been run over by a herd of Herefords. He would, he thought, be out of action for a while. Then, as Rose took the cup away, he heard Angelita call: “Bring them over here by the fire!” And that was not the voice of a woman; it was the voice of an officer in full authority.
Gingerly, with Rose’s help, Fargo changed position. Angelita stood there by the campfire, big hat tilted back, quirt swinging from her wrist, brown paper cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth. Her black eyes were hard as onyx, her face, with a big straight nose, high cheekbones, firm chin, was set and grim. He would not, Fargo thought, want to be one of those two men a guard detail was shoving toward the fire.
Fargo’s shaggy brows went up when he recognized one of them, dressed in the uniform of a Federal officer. He would never forget that face, even though it had been contorted with killing rage when he’d last seen it, and then his glimpse had lasted only a second. This was the lieutenant who’d tried to skewer him with the saber before he’d thrown himself off the rock.
The young man stood there, shoulders straight, eyes level, unafraid even though his hands were tied behind his back and he knew his doom. Villa’s cavalry took no prisoners; it had to move too far, too fast, and always on short rations.
Angelita stared at him a moment. Then her gaze shifted to the other young man beside him, and Fargo grunted. Though one wore the Federal uniform and the other was undoubtedly a Villista, the resemblance between them was striking; there could be no doubt that they were brothers.
Angelita’s voice was toneless. “So, Juan San Martin. And now, what have you to say for yourself? You betrayed us, and yesterday your betrayal cost the lives of three of your comrades and—” She slapped the quirt against her boot. “And why? Why, you young fool, why?” Her voice rose, trembled slightly, and she broke off before it displayed emotion. When she went on, it was once more low and even. “So he is your brother. And on the other side. But your real brothers were the men who rode with you, Villa’s men. And you believed in our cause and I have seen you fight like a lion for it, and ... and we have fought side by side and we have drunk together and ... you have shared my bed. And yet you betrayed me. Why?”
Juan San Martin displayed no fear. Like his brother, the lieutenant, he had a certain elegance and cavalier quality that distinguished him from the peon and Indian bearing of the rest of the company; both men were obviously descendants of the Spanish conquerors of Mexico.
San Martin sucked in a breath that made his chest swell. “Because,” he said, “I want to end the fighting.”
> “End the fighting? It will end when Villa—”
“Villa will do nothing,” San Martin said. “Except lose, make peace or die. We are finished, Angelita—you, I, Villa, all of us. I knew that when the Americanos made Carranza president—not our president, but theirs. Now he has the support of the United States and do you think that with such power Carranza and Obregon will let Villa survive?” He drew in another breath. “All those good men—those comrades that I loved as much as you did—have died for nothing. For nearly six years Mexico has been torn apart and ravished, millions dead. We were all fools to think we could change anything. Carranza, Obregon—even Villa; they are new masters. We threw out the old ones so that we could serve new ones who are no different.”
“That’s not true!” Angelita flared. “We have fought, and because we fought, things have changed and will change—”
San Martin shook his head. “I wish I could believe that. But I am tired of seeing the fighting and the killing. It is time it ended and, with my brother’s help, I tried to speed the finish.”
Angelita said, almost wearily, “And now you know what will happen to you.”
“Si. It doesn’t matter. I have seen too much, done too much, killed too many—I no longer believe. In anything.”
Angelita stared at him a moment. Then her face softened slightly. “Adios, Caballero,” she said after a moment. One big, long-fingered hand made a graceful gesture. Guards wrestled the two men to their knees beside the fire.
Now the campsite was very quiet, save for the stamping of the horses.
“No,” Rose Pemberton said thickly. “I don’t want to look.”
The two brothers bowed their heads. Angelita walked behind them. She drew an ivory-handled Colt from a holster on her right hip. Then, from a distance of five feet, she shot each man in the back of the head. As San Martin fell forward, she turned, face working. “All right!” she roared. “Get this outfit on the march, my bravos! So always with traitors and our enemies!” And she stalked off into the distance, standing there tall, lonely and erect, for minutes, looking out at something only she could see.
~*~
In Tres Barrancas, a sprawl of adobe jacales around a dusty plaza, there were a couple of high-wheeled Mexican carts. Angelita had one covered with a tarp for shade, a bed made in it, and it served as ambulance for Fargo, the only wounded man of the outfit who could not sit a saddle. Riding, Rose warned, might break loose a shattered rib, rip his lung, and he would bleed to death internally. The other cart was loaded with the loot taken from the slaughtered Federales: weapons, boots, canteens, uniforms, anything that might be useful in an army cut off from normal avenues of supply. The guns Fargo had delivered had long since been sent on ahead to Villa’s command post in Chihuahua.
The wooden hubs of the crude carts squealed and screamed continually, like panthers in agony, as mules pulled the vehicles across the desert. The next three days turned into a blur for Fargo, as, seeming to hit every rock in northern Mexico, the cart lurched and jolted toward Chihuahua City. The heat was furnace-like, and dust settled on everything and everyone in layers; the nights were chill and fires were skimpy. Fargo was in constant agony—but this was all part of soldiering, and not only in the Villa army. He bore it without complaint, beyond the few automatic curses and grumbles expected of any soldier. A good part of the time he slept, in accordance with the old soldier’s dictum that, when you weren’t fighting, drinking, eating or screwing, sleep was the noblest activity of mankind. Rose often rode with him in the wagon, but there was virtually no conversation between them, and she remained a mystery to him. For the time being, he hurt too much to bother to ponder it.
On the third afternoon, Angelita pulled up behind the cart on her big sorrel. “I relieve you,” she told Rose. “You ride a while. I will see to Fargo.”
Rose mounted and the big woman settled down beside Fargo in the high-sided cart. From her shirt, she took a bottle of tequila, pulled its cork with her teeth, passed it to Fargo. He drank, grinned, passed it back.
For a while, they sat in silence, drinking. Fargo was remembering the last time he’d seen Angelita, in a little town south of Presidio. Remembered the jacal, the hut, she had taken as her own, her command post, and the two of them in there in the heat of the long afternoon, each working on his own bottle. Remembered how she had looked naked, tall, slender-hipped, long-legged, but with full, rich breasts that left no doubt of her sex, and remembered, too, the savage strength of her thighs around him and the strong grip of her hands, and the way she had almost fought him, even while they made love, until finally, with superior strength, he had wrestled her down ... And how, after that, she had been soft, yielding, compliant ... all woman.
Angelita offered Fargo the last drink. When he had drained the bottle, she chucked it out, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Then she broke the silence.
“Neal, when you are well enough to ride, I want a favor from you.”
“What?” Fargo never bet in the blind, even with someone like Angelita. Especially with someone like Angelita.
“I want you to take Rose home to Texas. Mexico is no place for her.”
Fargo frowned. “Home to Texas? From Chihuahua? That’s a tall order. When I leave Chihuahua, I’ll have a hell of a lot of silver to keep an eye on—and get across the border. I don’t need a gringa to slow me down.”
“She perhaps saved your life.”
“Perhaps,” Fargo said. “All right, tell me more about her. She doesn’t talk about herself. Then I’ll decide.”
Angelita nodded. “She came down here with a young Americano two years ago. He was an idealist from the East, fired up with the desire to do what he could to make our people free. A good boy, and a brave soldier for Villa. She fell in love with him, married him, came with him. We were glad to have her, too. Her father was a doctor and had trained her as his nurse. Anyhow, everywhere her husband went, she went, too.”
She fished in Fargo’s pocket, found a couple of thin black cigars, bit off the ends, lit both of them, planted one between his teeth, drew deeply at the other. “A couple of months ago, Ricardo—that was his name, Richard—was escorting a load of silver from the Sierra Madre to Chihuahua City. The country was supposed to be secure, but somehow Federales infiltrated and took the pack train by surprise. Come to think about it, San Martin was along that time. Anyhow, they overwhelmed our forces and kilted Rose’s husband. And then, of course, they had their pleasure with the American girl—twenty, thirty, of them: who knows how many?”
She blew twin plumes of smoke. “We—I—went after them, and we ran them down and killed them all. Fortunately, we saved Rose; she was not injured in the battle. But she was injured otherwise—you know what I mean? As you have seen, she does not talk much. And—”
She paused. “This is a hard war, Fargo. I have seen a gentle people turn into savages. Who would believe that we—on both sides—could be so cruel to our fellow countrymen? But with her husband gone, it is no longer Rose’s war. My little Rosita—she has suffered enough. And she will not fight for vengeance. You know, vengeance sometimes gives one a reason to live when he has no other wish to see another dawn. But she does not want vengeance and she has seen enough fighting, and this is not her country, and it is time for her to go home. I ... She has become like a little sister to me. I have already lost sisters in this war and others precious to me. I will not lose her, too. So ... you must take her home.”
Fargo said, “We’ll see.”
They reached Chihuahua about nine that night. It was a large city in a bowl in the mountains, the commercial and financial center of mining enterprises once controlled by foreigners, now taken over by Villa in the name of the Mexican people. Around it had sprung up the ramshackle camps and billets of Villa’s army. The cart delivered Fargo to the hospital, a long, low stuccoed building with crosses soaring from its roof at either end. Once it had been administered by the Church; but the revolution was also against the Church and the doct
ors and nurses had fled. Now its staff was mostly foreigners, a few Americans and some Europeans, serving both the city and Villa’s army.
Here Fargo was bathed, rebandaged, put to bed. The long ward he was in was full of wounded, and it reeked of blood and pus and gangrene and all the other aftermath smells of battle, and after one good night’s sleep in a bed, he arose the next morning and demanded his clothes. A German nun tried to quiet him, but he would not be quieted. “Damn it, I want my clothes and guns. I didn’t come in here to die—and this is a place for people that are dying!”
“But, sir—” she began in broken English.
Fargo pushed her aside, summoned a Mexican ward boy in his native language. “I want my guns and gear, you understand? Bring ’em and you’ll get twenty pesos!”
“Si, Coronel!” the ward boy said, brightening, and he loped off.
A German doctor and the nurse and a Japanese nurse tried to get Fargo back into bed, but he shoved them all away with his good arm. He knew to stay here in this ward would be to weaken and die. Bad air, bad care, bad food, no whiskey—He would not stand for it. Something in his battered face, his hard gray eyes, made them back away. They all went looking for his clothes and gear: but before they were brought, Angelita came.
“Fargo,” she said. “They sent word, you were making trouble.”
“I’m not making trouble, I just want out of this slaughterhouse!”
“But it is a hospital.”
“It’s a goddam death trap. I remember when Villa took this place! Fierro, his second in command, went through here and personally shot every Federal soldier in his bed. Well, it’s not much better now!” He winced, sucked in breath as he felt a stab of pain from the broken ribs. “I want out.”
Angelita stared at him a moment, then nodded. “All right. You shall come with me to my house on the outskirts.” She turned, snapped orders. Within minutes, Fargo’s clothes appeared. “Your guns, amigo,” Angelita said, “I have taken you into my own custody. Come.”
Arm still in sling, torso tightly bandaged, Fargo followed her outside to a Ford touring car. It rattled through the narrow streets of town until it reached the suburbs. There it pulled up before a small villa that must once have belonged to some Hidalgo. Fargo entered it with Angelita.