El Paso

by Winston Groom

  Bomba didn’t look back. As he sped past blurred fence posts he looked ahead and saw only the open plain and safety. That was when the rifle shot hit him. It tore through his right shoulder and violently wrenched his right arm. The automobile lurched out of control. He slammed on brakes but they were going too fast, spun sideways, and crashed into a ditch. Bomba’s head struck the steering wheel and he blacked out from the impact.

  When he regained his senses he heard shouts and horses’ hooves rushing toward them. He tried to reach for the big pistol strapped around his waist, but the arm lay helplessly limp, like a broken wing on a bird; the bullet hadn’t hit a bone—he knew that—but had paralyzed a muscle that probably saved his life. Bomba turned to the backseat and saw a pile of bodies with blood everywhere. The pursuing party had arrived, and one of them reached down from his horse, opened the car door, and jerked Bomba out by the collar. He fell on the ground. Fierro rode up and looked into the automobile.

  “Seems like these here are not so good,” Fierro said. Then he looked at Bomba, lying dazed in the dirt.

  “Who is this big Negro? He sure don’t belong around here.”

  By now others in his party had opened the rear doors and dragged Beatie and Xenia out onto some grass by the side of the road. Both were unconscious and bleeding profusely from their scalps. They had been smashed against the folding walnut dining trays built into the Packard’s seat backs. Down on the floor, Timmy was still conscious but in shock. When someone hauled him out by the scruff of the neck he saw his mother and grandmother and began to scream. One soldier dismounted and dragged him away from the scene. Just then Mix rode up. He’d watched the whole thing while leading his company down the hill and was appalled by the sight of the women lying on the ground.

  “They dead?” he asked unsteadily.

  “Don’t look to be,” Fierro said. “I think they’re just bunged up.”

  “The boy,” Mix said. “One of them’s his mother and the other’s his grandmother—she’s the wife of the owner of this spread. At least I think that’s who they are.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “The girl told us. I got to talking to her while we were waiting. Says her grandfather’ll pay you a lot to leave them alone.”

  “Yeah,” Fierro said, “I bet he will, and we’re gonna find that out soon enough. Get some people to take these women back to the hacienda, and then put the boy on somebody’s horse. He’s coming with us, too.”

  “Is he hurt?” Mix asked.

  “Nah, just scared. I’d take these women, too, but they’re hurt and they’ll slow us down. I figure if we got the two kids there’s gonna be a nice payday down the road. These stinking gringos have more money than the priests—then they come down here and buy up everything and turn our people into paupers. Well, it’s time they pay up.”

  “Well . . . children, General . . .” Mix said. “I don’t know . . .”

  “It ain’t for you to know, Capitán Mix. It’s for you to do what General Villa wants. And for that matter, me, too,” Butcher Fierro informed him.

  “What about this one here?” said a soldier, indicating Bomba, who was now sitting up, holding his shoulder to stem the flow of blood running down his sleeve out onto the dirt road. The voice belonged to Lieutenant Crucia—in fact, Crucia seemed to be peering intently at Bomba’s prominent flat nose. “You want us to put him out of his misery?”

  “Nah,” said the general. “He’s just some dumb gringo’s nigger. He’s shot bad. He won’t do us any harm.”

  PART THREE

  THE SIERRAS

  THIRTY-THREE

  Fierro’s scouting parties returned with the annoying information that there were few cattle left on Valle del Sol. This vexed the general but he decided to round up what strays and castoffs he could lay hands on and return as quickly as possible to Villa at Chihuahua City. The most direct route would carry them past Colonel Shaughnessy’s big hacienda—which Fierro decided would be easy pickings, since he now understood that most of the ranch hands were away on the cattle drive.

  Tom Mix had swung the sobbing Timmy up on his own horse and tried to comfort him a little.

  “They aren’t dead, your mommy and grandma,” Mix told the boy. “They probably aren’t even hurt bad. You’ll see. They’ll be fine.”

  “Where are we going?” Timmy croaked.

  “We’re taking you to a safer place,” Mix lied. “Where your sister is.”

  “Where is she? She went riding.”

  “I know,” said Mix. “We’re all going to meet a very great general of the Mexican army. His name is Pancho Villa. I’m sure you’ve heard of him.”

  “Grandpapa says he’s a bandit and a murderer.”

  “No,” Mix corrected him, “General Villa is a great man.” But Tom Mix was beginning to wonder about this, too. He did not like kidnapping children. And he had seen brutality that disgusted him. In Mix’s view, cowboys were supposed to be good fellows. But a Mexican army wasn’t for good fellows, it was more for heartless brutes. He felt a pang when he thought of these two children. Mix could remember when he had been Timmy’s age and had wandered into the far end of town where a bunch of bully-boys held sway. He could imagine how frightened and alone Timmy must feel.

  “He killed Mr. Callahan, who was going to show me how to carve things.”

  “Who?” Mix asked.

  “Mr. Callahan ran Grandpapa’s ranch at Valle del Sol.”

  “Oh,” said Mix. “Yeah, I heard about that. I don’t think General Villa killed him, though. I think it was a mistake, maybe.”

  He was a little annoyed at himself. He didn’t like lying to children any more than kidnapping them. Mix decided to keep Timmy back in the line of march, for the time being away from Katherine, who had been sent ahead with one of her captors. He figured if the kids got together right now it might cause difficulty—especially when she found out what had happened to her mother and grandmother. From what he’d seen of the girl, she had spark, and she was already plenty unhappy with her circumstances. It must be bad enough for a boy to be captured by all these rough grown men, let alone a girl.

  They came up over a big rolling hill and the full beauty of Valle del Sol spread out before them—huge fenced pastures, orchards, and vegetable fields, the vast hacienda itself. All that was missing were the cattle.

  Fierro rode far ahead. After leaving a couple of men to watch over Katherine, he and most of his band entered the hacienda proper, startling and terrorizing the few workers who remained there. Fierro was both surprised and delighted to find a nice herd of cows in a large fenced pasture. With these and the strays his men had managed to collect, he might not disappoint the chief after all. He told Lieutenant Crucia to round them up.

  “What are you doing?” asked the new ranch manager, Rod Rodriguez, as Fierro’s men began opening the gate to the big pasture.

  “Taking these beefs,” said Crucia.

  “Beefs!” cried Rodriguez disgustedly. “Those aren’t beefs in there, those are fighting bulls. This is the fighting bull pasture.” He moved in front of the gate.

  “Hell you say,” replied the lieutenant. “I know a beef from a bull. Get out of the way.”

  “What you’re seeing there is steers,” said Rodriguez. “They control the bulls. The bulls are docile around the steers. But you get close to one of those bulls, and soon enough you’ll find out something you don’t want to know.” He stalked off and climbed up on the fence a little distance away. He’d gotten a whiff of Crucia’s nose necklace. He’d seen such things before and didn’t want anything to do with this creature.

  Crucia hesitated for a moment, peering out at the mass of animals. Indeed, he could then see some of them had the large humps and long horns of fighting bulls.

  Just then Fierro rode up.

  “What are you waiting for?” Fierro said. “Go get those beefs.”

  “There’s fighting bulls out there, General,” said Lieutenant Crucia.

 
“Where?”

  “There, see them?”

  Fierro stared out at the cattle. The man was right; Fierro, too, saw a few big humps and horns.

  “Well, there’s a lot of steers out there, too. Mostly steers, far as I can see. Go and get them.”

  “What about the bulls?” Crucia asked nervously.

  “Well, you’re a cavalryman,” the general snapped. “You can ride, can’t you? Take your chances.” He wheeled and trotted away toward the main house.

  Crucia nervously leaned down and unlatched the gate. He rode through it, followed tentatively by a dozen or so of his men. “You better get your rifles ready,” he said, “in case some of those bulls get the idea you are matadors.” The men began unlimbering their weapons.

  “Please,” pleaded Rodriguez, “don’t shoot the bulls. Those bulls are the best in Chihuahua.”

  “I don’t give a rat’s ass if they’re the best in the world,” replied the lieutenant. “I got my orders, and I’m not going to get killed by some stinking bull.”

  MEANTIME, FIERRO HAD ARRIVED AT THE MAIN HOUSE with more of his men. The first person he saw who looked halfway official was Señora Pardenas.

  “Where do they keep the money?” Fierro asked.

  “Who am I to know?” she replied.

  “If you value your life, you’ll take me to somebody who does,” Fierro stated. He was in no mood for word-fencing.

  “They all gone away,” said the señora.

  Just then Rodriguez turned up with unfortunate timing. He’d come to see if the phone was working. Rodriguez figured since the Colonel had been driving the herd around the clock for two days, he’d probably be about sixty or seventy miles north by now. He was wondering if he ought not send somebody to the telegraph station at Parral, which might get a message through to the Colonel that Villa’s men had returned to Valle del Sol. After all, a herd that size wasn’t hard to spot. In any case, it was worth a try, or so Rodrigez thought, until he stumbled upon the scene between Fierro and Señora Pardenas.

  “What’s your authority around here?” Fierro demanded.

  With the fate of his predecessor freshly in mind, Rodriguez responded, “I just work here.”

  But Fierro had already noticed the notebooks sticking out of Rodriguez’s shirt pockets and he observed that he was of Spanish, not Indian, descent, and didn’t look or dress like an ordinary ranch hand.

  “Where do they keep the money?” Fierro said coldly.

  “How would I know that?” Rodrigez told him. It was an ill-starred reply, after Señora Pardenas’s earlier demurral.

  Without so much as a wince, Butcher Fierro drew his pistol and shot Rodriguez between the eyes. The bullet sent him sprawling in a grisly, bloody heap.

  The general then got down from his horse and, brushing the horrified Señora Pardenas aside, strode into the great hall, where so many dances had been held. His men followed, fanning out into adjacent rooms. It wasn’t long before one of the soldiers reappeared before Fierro with a pleased expression.

  “General,” he declared, “I think we found it.” He led Fierro through a parlor into some kind of office, where along a wall was a huge safe adorned with elaborate engravings and gold leaf. It certainly looked important. The general tried the handle but of course the thing was locked, causing him to conclude that valuables must be inside.

  “Bring me Chavez,” Fierro barked. Chavez was one of the general’s bootlickers who had made an abbreviated career of bank robbery before joining the revolution—abbreviated because on his second outing he was caught and thrown in jail, where he languished until Pancho Villa’s troops liberated the prison and made soldiers out of the inmates.

  “Somebody got any dynamite?” Chavez asked after examining the safe.

  “I’m sure some of Mix’s people got some,” replied Fierro. He sent a man to find out. They used a lot of dynamite to blow up bridges and trestles, and many people in Mix’s command had come from the mines, where the use of explosives was common. Shortly the man returned with a canvas sack containing the dynamite. Fierro gave it to Chavez, who peered into the sack.

  “Well?” the general said impatiently.

  “I only used this once,” Chavez said reluctantly. “Actually, the other guy was the one who used it. I just watched.”

  “Then you better have a good memory,” Fierro told him, “because I’m going outside, and when I come back, I want to know what’s in this safe. He strode out of the room. Chavez shrugged and began fiddling with the dynamite.

  After a while Chavez appeared in the main doorway of Valle del Sol. “General,” he said, “I have lit the fuse. It will be only a—”

  Suddenly there was a gigantic, earthshaking explosion belching fire and smoke, followed by a rain of plaster, glass, and wood. A heavy wooden door landed in a fountain in the courtyard.

  Chavez was shot through the air and landed facedown in a rose garden. General Fierro was knocked flat along with half a dozen of his men. Everybody’s horses ran off. All the windows in the hacienda were shattered and the whole front part of the building seemed to sag.

  “Are you crazy?” Fierro shouted at Chavez. “I didn’t tell you to blow the house up!”

  “I guess maybe I used more than necessary,” replied Chavez, who had turned over and was sitting upright in the rose garden. “I figured you were in a hurry.”

  “Well,” Fierro said, “let’s go find out what happened.” He stuck his head inside the house, which was still belching acrid gray smoke. They plowed their way through wrecked furniture and cracked beams and broken plaster until they got to the office, a scene of amazing devastation. Burned papers were strewn everywhere. A huge hole was blown in the rug and down through the floor. Draperies were on fire and the side of the building where the window had been was torn away. Desks and chairs were smashed and smoldering. Everything was ruined but the safe, which stood almost untouched. Fierro inspected it, then turned savagely on Chavez, who was cringing in a corner.

  “You stinking imbecile!” he hissed. “Where did you place the dynamite?”

  “On the floor, by the safe,” Chavez told him.

  “Floor!” the general shouted. “Why?”

  “It’s where the guy that was robbing the bank with me put it,” Chavez replied.

  “So how come it didn’t it work?” Fierro demanded.

  “It didn’t work then, either,” Chavez informed him. “That was when we got arrested.”

  Fierro lunged as if to strike Chavez, when Mix suddenly stuck his head through the door.

  “Everything okay, General?” Mix asked. After hearing the explosion, he’d left Timmy with some of his men to investigate.

  “Hell, no!” replied Fierro. “This idiot calls himself a bank robber and can’t even blow a safe.”

  Mix looked at the safe, then went over and inspected it closely. “Well, if you want, I could give it a try,” he said.

  “You? You are a safecracker, too, I suppose?”

  “Long time ago, when I was just a kid. Guy said he was called Black Bart come through town, said for a dollar he’d teach anybody who wanted to know how to pick a lock or open a safe. Couple of us boys scraped up some money and went to his exhibition. I used to do it as a stunt in Wild West shows—getting out of handcuffs and stuff, like that guy Houdini’s doing now.”

  “Well, go ahead, then,” Fierro told him. Mix bent down and put his ear to the safe right above the lock. It was still hot from the explosion. He turned the knob this way and that half a dozen times.

  “I need a lot of quiet,” Mix said. “See, when I turn this dial, at some spot in the rotation it’s going to pass one of the tumblers and make a tiny little noise. That’s part of the combination. It’s a process of elimination and it takes a while. I might be able to get it open.”

  “Well, we’ll leave you alone, then,” Fierro said, scowling at Chavez, who was still hovering in his corner. “C’mon, you moron,” the general said. “Let’s leave this man to his work.”r />
  Meanwhile, Lieutenant Crucia’s steer roundup was in progress, though not without difficulty. For one thing, the fighting bulls had killed several of the soldiers’ horses, and in one case tossed a rider half a dozen feet into the air, then gored him to death on the ground. But finally the men either shot or separated most of the bulls from the steers and were herding the steers out the pasture gate. There was still at least one bull left among them, but no one could get at him or even shoot him without killing steers. He seemed tame enough for the moment, among the steers, and it was decided to move the herd with the fighting bull as part of it.

  “General, I have opened your safe,” Mix proudly announced from the hacienda doorway. They all marched inside and Fierro began rooting through the contents. Something in the very bottom caught his eye. In a bin were eight or ten oilcloth sacks. He picked one up and became excited. Its very weight told him something. The bag was tied with a leather string and Fierro opened it and looked inside.

  “Eiyeeeee, caramba!” he cried. Each sack contained bars of solid gold stamped with the emblem of the mint in Mexico City. “There must be—who can tell? Three, four hundred pounds, maybe more!” Fierro ordered several men to remove the bags and he personally supervised loading it onto their horses. He also emptied into his own saddlebags several dozen of the gold bars. Certainly enough to keep a man wealthy for a while. He wondered why Villa hadn’t thought to pillage the place on their last visit, but in any case he, Fierro, had done a thorough job of it this time, bringing to the army not only the beefs and two valuable hostages, but a hoard of solid gold. So far as the general was concerned, it had become a very good day.