El Paso

by Winston Groom

  Shaughnessy led the way to a smaller parlor in which a fireplace had been lit, and more brandy was poured. The Colonel had the select group seated when, just before the doors closed, Strucker appeared in the companionway and lurched in without asking if he could join them. “I am always interested in Mexico,” the German said, “and perhaps I can be enlightened by your information. I have thought of buying a house there somewhere, perhaps on the Pacific Coast.” This seemed harmless enough, and Colonel Shaughnessy showed him to a seat, into which he plopped unceremoniously. Then he noticed on a small bar several bottles of whiskey and liquor. He began to rise toward them but his arms failed him and he sank back resignedly into the deep leather chair.

  “Something is happening down in the state of Chihuahua,” the Colonel told them in slow, measured words. “My reports are not precisely clear, but I have a man—a nameless man, mind you—who has access to the office of Mr. Bryan,” the Colonel said, referring to the U.S. Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan. “And he tells me there is going to be a shift in our Mexico policy.

  “As you know,” the Colonel continued, “we have all tried to get along with this fellow Pancho Villa. We have arranged for shipments to be made to him for his military operations. We have repaired his railroad trains in our yards at a discount and with credit. We have freighted him millions of tons of coal for his engines. We have loaned him money for medical supplies. We have paid taxes and duties to him—bribed him, if you will—for the oil and minerals and timber and cattle we raise down there . . . and we all know that in exchange for this, he and his men have left our interests in Mexico alone. So far . . .”

  The Colonel looked at a scrap of paper in his hands and cleared his voice. “Now, however, because some military reverses have befallen General Villa, it seems as if President Wilson—our schoolteacher in the White House—may have decided to recognize General Carranza as the legitimate president of Mexico. What will happen now?” the Colonel asked. A grumbling of disbelief filled the room as this news sank in.

  The Colonel answered his own question. “I fear,” he said, “that Villa may no longer be willing to respect our position vis-à-vis our property. We all know he is a bandit at heart, even though the press portrays him as a great revolutionary savior, or some such nonsense. Now, I have met Mr. Villa personally on several occasions and our discourse was always pleasant and conciliatory. And yet I ask myself, what is to stop him from looting our interests? He still commands an army of some sort. I tell you, gentlemen, I own nearly one million acres of ranchland down there, upon which there are some hundred thousands head of cattle, and I shudder—shudder—at the idea that Pancho Villa and his people have had their eyes on them for quite a while now. My word, gentlemen, this calls for action.”

  In other, less auspicious gatherings, this news might have provoked a panic of sorts, but these were cool men. The captains—no, admirals—of industry in the greatest industrial nation on earth, and they did the only sensible thing that might have been expected of them. To a man, they got up and ran to the bar for another drink.

  Herr Strucker was astonished by their reaction, these so-called American tycoons who went for whiskey at the first sign of trouble. Strucker had known some of these men socially, but this was his first inside glance at how they behaved when the chips were down. What, he thought, would they do when the helm was hard down and water coming in over the lee rail—scramble down to the cabin like scaredy-cats and take a drink? He knew what his own countrymen would do in similar circumstances. They would immediately demand war! And have this Mexican’s head on a pike at the end of a week.

  When some attitude of calm had been restored, the Colonel continued his address.

  “I think we all understand what the destiny of Northern Mexico finally must be,” he told them. “We must bring it into American hands. Why, my word, we own most of it by deed already, but we’re constantly frustrated and even threatened by some tinhorn dictator-of-the-moment down in Mexico City. This is no way to run a business enterprise, is it?

  “Naturally,” Colonel Shaughnessy continued, “the left-wing press will scream that we’re just a bunch of jingoistic imperialists. Well, let them—they’re right! We proved that when the great Texas patriot Sam Houston kicked the bloodthirsty dictator Santa Anna back to where he came from, and again seventeen years later when we had to send our army to capture Mexico City. What would be the fate of Texas now, or for that matter Arizona, New Mexico, and California, if the Mexicans were still in charge of it? Same as the fate of the rest of Mexico, which is a state of eternal war! We must stand together in this, no matter what it takes, no matter what the sacrifice, personal or financial. What is at stake here, gentlemen, is nation-building!” the Colonel thundered. “And nation-building is what America is about!”

  These remarks by Colonel Shaughnessy were much more to Strucker’s liking, though he noticed that most of the others did not applaud, and some seemed to look dismayed, but even through the haze of smoke and gin at least he thought he’d found in the Colonel a man of action, a man who might be useful—to the German cause.

  IN THE EARLY MORNING HOURS, after everyone else had gone to bed, the Colonel poured himself a nightcap in a very private little anteroom off his private suite on the ship. Only two or three of the Ajax crew even knew the room existed, and no one was let in without permission. The room was quite small, with but a single port. On the walls hung personal mementos from the Colonel’s life and career: military photos from the Rough Rider days, college baseball and football pictures, scenes from a safari, and a shot of the Colonel on his favorite horse. The only furniture in the room was an overstuffed black leather chair, a side table, and a lamp.

  He sat in the chair sipping his drink and wondering what Arthur’s reaction had been to his telegram: SEE IF YOU CAN HANDLE IT.

  He knew their situation was critical, but neither, to the Colonel’s way of thinking, was it grave. He was being squeezed, both professionally with the NE&P and personally. He had been extravagant lately and his personal finances were quite thin right now. But there were many ways out—the most immediate and obvious of which was to postpone the note due to National Bank of Boston. But be damned if he’d go over there, hat in hand, and reveal his predicament to those pompous bastards.

  It would be all over town. Of course, it would get all over town, too, when Arthur went there—as the Colonel knew he must—but Arthur had a way of explaining things that the Colonel did not enjoy. Say what you would, the boy could handle it.

  When the Colonel went in for a loan, he simply marched up to the president of the bank and said, “Phillip, I want you to put a million in the NE&P account tomorrow,” and it would be done, and later the legal papers would follow. The Colonel greatly delighted in this kind of power and pull. Now it would have to be explained why NE&P needed an extension on such a loan, and that would be sticky business. Questions would be asked that could lead someplace he did not wish them to lead. Arthur was far better at explaining such things, while he himself would probably just harrumph around and maybe even get belligerent and cause a row.

  As far as the long-term went, Shaughnessy was confident things would work themselves out. They always had. Building the railroad up he’d experienced many reverses, yet when things seemed darkest, something always intervened to pull them through. What it would be this time, he did not know—the munitions contracts, perhaps; another wave of immigrants to whom he could resell the notion of western homesteading, just as he had to the others. Or perhaps something else he hadn’t even considered. The Colonel had always been lucky in his life.

  After all, didn’t he win the railroad in a dice game in the first place?

  In the center of the room was a polished walnut stand upon which sat a complicated mechanical device housed in a large glass dome; it was silent now but by ten a.m. would begin spouting out ticker tape with quotations from the New York Stock Exchange. The Colonel sat in his chair and stared at the ticker tape machine and
sipped his final brandy of the night. By the time the machine began clattering out its first morning messages, the dinner guests would be shaking off their hangovers to the realization that they had become the latest victims of the Colonel’s most elaborate practical joke to date. They would have arisen expecting to look out their portholes to see Boston Harbor or at least the sight of land. But all that would greet them would be the ocean swells of the North Atlantic.

  He was relishing this prospect when there came a hesitant tapping at his door. He got up and unlocked it to find the captain of Ajax standing there, hat in one hand and a piece of message paper in another.

  “Sorry to disturb you, sir,” the captain said, “we just received this. You told me you insist on hearing controversial news immediately.”

  Colonel Shaughnessy took the piece of paper and shut the door, leaving the captain outside. He read it in disbelief, face turning beet-red, feeling first a wave of panic, then anger surge over him. He slammed his fist against the bulkhead wall and crumpled the paper in his hand.

  “Goddamn it!” he spat, throwing the wadded-up message paper on the floor. He paced around for a few moments, once looking out of the lone porthole, where all he could see was empty ocean. He flung open the door to find the captain was still standing there, hat still in his hand.

  “All right, damn it!” he muttered. “Turn us around. Take us to Boston. And say nothing to anyone about this!”

  EIGHT

  Johnny Ollas had spent the afternoon skinning a cow at the Hacienda Valle del Sol, Colonel Shaughnessy’s preposterous ranch in a remote part of the Mexican state of Chihuahua nearly two hundred miles from the American border at El Paso, Texas.

  Johnny Ollas did not often occupy himself in cow-skinning, but he needed a new set of chaps and this was the most convenient way to get them. Around Valle del Sol, Johnny Ollas was something of a gran hombre. In addition to being a cowhand, he aspired to be a great matador. A decade ago, the Colonel had decided to enter the bullfighting business by acquiring one of the premier stud fighting bulls in all Mexico; Toro Malo was his name.

  Toro Malo weighed nearly sixteen hundred pounds, large for a fighting bull, and had so far sired four hundred ninety-eight progeny, the sale of which had earned the Colonel nearly three hundred thousand dollars. Toro Malo now occupied a pasture to himself and was in the sole charge of Johnny Ollas, who loved the old animal like a pet.

  Johnny Ollas was also the personal ward of the Colonel himself. Three years after Shaughnessy purchased the ranch from the Mexican government—at the going rate in American money of fifteen cents an acre—the manager had found a naked day-old baby boy lying in a drainage ditch, surrounded by dogs.

  Word was that the mother had fled to Texas in disgrace after having the illegitimate child. The manager brought the baby to Valle del Sol, and during one of the Colonel’s visits there he took compassion on the infant and instructed the manager, an Oklahoman named Callahan, to see to it he was reared and schooled in a proper fashion.

  Manager Callahan took this task upon himself and he and his wife raised Johnny Ollas along with the rest of their brood—even named him after Colonel John Shaughnessy, his patron. From then on, the Colonel always took an interest in Johnny’s development, and on his annual visits to Valle del Sol he spent time with the boy and over the years grew quite fond of him.

  Several years earlier, Johnny had taken a wife, Donatella, whom everyone called Donita. She was a true beauty whom Johnny had met in San Miguel de Allende, where he had gone to buy saddles. She was a Creole of Spanish descent, of a social class well above an orphaned Mexican ranch hand, but, despite her parents’ objections, Donita became taken by Johnny’s handsomeness and charm and the rumor that he would one day become a great matador.

  But it had not all worked out the way she wished. First, she discovered that being a bullfighter meant being away most of the time, and often Johnny did not take her with him. In a way, this was a relief, because she found herself increasingly fearful when she watched him in the ring. But neither did she like being left alone for such long periods. She felt it would be better if he stayed on at the ranch and she was certain that if he did, one day the Colonel would make him ranch manager. That was a good, solid job. Being outspoken, Donita and Johnny could be heard arguing on many occasions, and it was generally agreed around the hacienda that she usually had the better of it.

  That morning, lying in bed, he had wanted to make love, but, still angry over one of their arguments the night before, Donita had pushed him away. In any case, Johnny had gone to skin his cow in the courtyard of Valle del Sol when the warning sounded that rustlers were on the premises.

  Johnny Ollas the matador was no pistolero and so did not respond to Callahan’s call for arms to rout the cattle thieves. Nobody, especially not Callahan, thought less of him for this. Matadors, even aspiring ones, were considered to be above rough gunplay.

  When Callahan’s party saddled up and rode out to drive off the rustlers, they had no notion of encountering anything but ordinary bandits. Even while the revolution raged up and down Chihuahua, there were always some outlaws who conducted depredations in either Villa’s name or one of his generals’, but nobody much believed them because Villa was a certified hero to much of the population.

  From time to time Callahan had to ride out against cattle thieves and his policy was to go in force and with unmistakable determination. Usually, when they saw Callahan’s men coming straight at them, the thieves ran off. But this time, when Callahan saw the second party of men—Mix’s—emerge from the fold of ground, he became wary, which was why he split up his posse. He had not, of course, counted on the machine guns.

  By the time Callahan got everybody back to the ranch it was nearly sundown. The machine gunners had hit seven horses and three men. The horses had to be destroyed; the men were injured but not badly. Women were tending the men’s wounds and the conversation was heated in the plaza of Valle del Sol when word came that more trouble was on the way.

  Callahan climbed to the bell tower and his heart began to pound. Spread out across the plains, coming toward him, were hundreds of horsemen, in large formations, carrying flags and banners. He knew the hacienda was about to be paid a visit by some part of Pancho Villa’s army, a very sobering thought, and it made him wish he’d stayed in Oklahoma.

  Callahan’s apprehension was well founded. Johnny Ollas was among those standing in the courtyard when Villa’s vanguard rode in through the walled gate. Fierro rode in first, just behind two guidons with red and white serpent flags on lances. Next came Pancho Villa himself with half a dozen bodyguards and staff, their horse’s hooves clattering on the brick pavings. The women of the hacienda gathered nervously on the balconies and beneath the columned porticos that surrounded the courtyard. Among them was Johnny’s wife, Donita.

  No one was quite sure what to do with the arrival of the famous Pancho Villa.

  Callahan, the manager, stood in the courtyard with the rest, waiting for somebody else to make the first move. The Villistas’ horses clopped around on the paving stones while the general surveyed the hacendados for a leader. Finally Señora Parnadas stepped forward, twisting a handkerchief in her fingers. She was the house manager of Valle del Sol, a sort of mother figure to everyone, who arranged the meals and housekeeping duties, and she had been there longer than anyone could remember.

  “May I get you something, General?” Señora Parnadas asked.

  “Do you have any lemonade?” Villa answered.

  “I can make some,” she said, turning with instruction to one of the women to start squeezing lemons.

  “So who was it led those cabrones against my men?” Villa said loudly.

  Everyone knew. No one wanted to say. No one dared meet Villa’s gaze. At last Callahan reluctantly stepped up. “General,” he said, “I ordered my people to go after cattle rustlers.”

  “And who are you?”

  “The ranch manager for Mr. Shaughnessy,” Callahan replie
d, figuring that his minutes on earth might be fast ticking away.

  “Well, we are not cattle rustlers,” Villa informed him. “We were requisitioning beef for my army. I am governor of Chihuahua and I can requisition beef when I need it for the revolution.”

  “We didn’t know it was you,” Callahan said. He knew it sounded feeble, but it was true.

  “You should have asked.”

  Since he hadn’t been shot by now, he figured he could be a little bolder, but was careful not to sound argumentative. A maid brought a large glass of lemonade to Señora Parnadas, who handed it to Villa.

  “Gracias,” responded the general, taking a large swig, then returning his attentions to the man before him.

  “My men haven’t had any fresh beef in a while,” Villa said. “It is not good for an army to be underfed.”

  Callahan had the feeling the general might be toying with him, but, emboldened merely by being alive, he plunged ahead.

  “General,” he said, “all these years you’ve left us alone. All us Americans down here, we wish you the best. We don’t want to get in your way. If you want some cows, we can let you have them.”

  Villa had a way of twisting his mouth to the side so you couldn’t tell if it was a grin or a grimace. Callahan thought it was a grimace.

  “You want me to send my boys to cut out some of the herd for you?” Callahan offered.

  “I didn’t know your hospitality would be so generous,” Villa said. “We were all looking forward to having a big beef supper tonight. Just a little while ago I promised this to General Fierro myself.”

  “Well, then,” Callahan said hopefully, “let me get my people working.”

  “I don’t think that’s necessary,” Fierro interrupted. He had been glaring at Callahan all during the conversation. “You see, on the way here we picked out a very fine beef for our dinner. He’s old and tough, like us. We’re not used to your good grain-fed cows. We been fighting and on the march too long.”