THIRTY-FOUR
Señora Gonzales and her cooks tended to Xenia and Beatie. Both had nasty cuts and contusions on their heads.
Bomba appeared worse off. It took four of Gonzales’s men to carry him into the house, where Gonzales put him on a bed and gave him a bottle of tequila, which Bomba declined. Then Gonzales inexpertly probed for the bullet in Bomba’s shoulder. After a while he gave up. He walked out to the Packard and examined the dashboard, in which he found a big hole through the speedometer. It occurred to him that he could have spared Bomba a lot of torment if he had realized from the start that since there were holes in both the front and back of the shoulder, the bullet had obviously exited.
He returned to the house and examined Bomba again. The huge man’s eyes were impassive; Gonzales couldn’t understand why he didn’t cry out. There wasn’t too much bleeding, he noted, so at least an artery hadn’t been cut. And when he moved the shoulder he couldn’t feel any evidence of broken bone, either. Maybe it was a clean through-and-through. In any case, Gonzales swabbed the flesh with iodine and dressed it with bandages and gauze.
Xenia was beside herself when she was told about the children; a horror beyond nightmares. She tried to sort it out rationally but her mind raced so fast she couldn’t think.
How had they let it happen?
She began to blame Arthur and the Colonel, but quickly decided that blame was just a way of avoiding the question of how to get the kids back. She suddenly wanted her father. He might be a dumb Pittsburgh Polack, but for the first time in her marriage—including the terrible business with Mick—Xenia felt completely alone and isolated.
Beatie was plenty distressed herself and could do little to comfort her. Nobody knew what to do. Here they were, in the middle of nowhere, and a bloodthirsty bandit had kidnapped her grandchildren while her husband and son were off on an insane cattle drive somewhere in the wilds of Mexico. What sleep either woman got that night was restive.
Only Bomba had a plan, such as it was.
The ranch hands determined that Fierro’s bunch had headed east toward Valle del Sol, probably for the big hacienda, but didn’t see any sense in giving chase, since they were outnumbered ten-to-one. Bomba had stayed up much of the night, and as the shock of the wound wore off he decided to get in the Packard and head for Valle del Sol himself. He could make a lot better time than men on horseback. Once he got there, he didn’t have a plan at all, but hoped one would evolve. He felt feverish, but was able to move his arm a little.
At daybreak, Bomba put on a pair of jodhpurs and a khaki sweater and set out for Valle del Sol, where he arrived an hour or so later. The household staff greeted him with tears and hand-wringing, all of them vying to tell him what had happened. He couldn’t understand much, but could see some of it for himself: part of the house was destroyed and still smoldering. Rodrigez’s corpse was laid out on a table on the veranda, a bullet through his head. From what Bomba apprehended, the soldiers had taken off less than eight hours earlier, headed toward Chihuahua City, driving steers before them. The tracks led across fields toward a distant woods. The Packard would be of no use to him now.
He went to the barn and indicated to a cowhand he wanted a horse. The cowhand saddled up a big bay. Bomba stepped up to the animal to mount it but the horse tossed its head and sidestepped away.
“No, no,” shouted the cowboy. “You’re on the wrong side. You got to get up on his left side.”
Bomba looked at the man, puzzled. He’d never ridden a horse, but figured there couldn’t be that much to it. The cowhand took the horse by the reins and indicated for Bomba to board on the horse’s left. Bomba tried again but this time put the wrong foot in the stirrup, a mistake he quickly realized even before he hoisted himself off the ground.
“Look here,” said the cowhand. The reins in his left hand, he put his left foot in the stirrup and mounted the horse. Then he got down and handed the reins to Bomba, who nodded back in recognition. This time he got it right. He shook the reins and the horse walked slowly out of the barn and into the road. Bomba’s injured right arm hung limply by his side but he was able to guide the horse with his left. Everything he had become was now lost: his charges, the children, gone away with murderers. All these years he’d been immensely proud that no harm had come to anyone in the Shaughnessy family. But now Bomba felt deeply ashamed and personally humiliated. He looked north, where he could see the tracks of many cattle. Then, as he’d watched the Colonel do many times, he kicked his horse in its flanks. The animal, straining under Bomba’s enormous bulk, reared slightly, then flew into a wild gallop in the direction of Chihuahua City, with Bomba hanging on for whatever he was worth.
THIRTY-FIVE
That same day, Johnny Ollas’s party had seen dust from several miles away, which they mistook for Villa’s army. Johnny sent Julio to investigate but he returned to report it was just somebody moving a lot of cows. Julio hadn’t gotten a look at the whole herd; he’d just topped a ridge when he saw part of the drove in the distance. In any case, Johnny kept on the route to Chihuahua City. By early afternoon they were still about twenty miles away, when they encountered the first of Villa’s retreating troops.
Villa had ordered the withdrawal early that morning when the stubborn Federales refused to budge from Chihuahua City. Indeed, the expedition was a disaster; he’d lost more than half of his remaining army killed, wounded, and captured, and the rest were exhausted and demoralized.
Villa had little to be cheerful about, with the exception of Fierro’s triumphant return to his camp. The gold the Butcher had brought back could be turned into American dollars for soldiers’ pay and supplies.
Villa sent away most of the cattle Fierro had stolen from Valle del Sol with the main body of troops headed for the state of Coahuila, retaining only a small herd for himself. He was going to the mountains for safety with his headquarters staff and several companies of cavalry until his next plan of action became clear. He was also pleased with the arrival of the Shaughnessy children. Compared with them, the ransom value of Señora Donatella Ollas paled. Villa placed the children in the custody of Tom Mix. As soon as he got a chance, he would compose another note to that stinking old gringo.
At the head of the caravan of Villa’s army rode a young lieutenant, who was the first to encounter Johnny Ollas’s strange party.
“Is this the army of General Villa?” Johnny asked.
“What’s left of it,” replied the lieutenant. Johnny noticed that he was wearing a peculiar necklace. He could not make out what exactly it was made of, but he thought he detected a faint reek in the air.
“Well, we came to join up.”
“You picked a fine time,” said the officer. “What are your skills?”
“We ride. I guess we can shoot, too.”
“Why do you want to join us now?”
“For the glorious revolution,” Johnny Ollas answered. He felt like holding his nose. Johnny was operating on gut instinct now. Joining this army might well be his death warrant, and his brothers’ also. But he couldn’t think of any better way to get close to Donita. Certainly he ran the risk of being recognized, but chances had to be taken. He knew that from the bullring.
“All right,” the lieutenant said. He turned to a sergeant beside him. “See that they are properly enlisted and equipped. Then take them to General Santo’s adjutant. He’ll have to figure out what to do with them.”
The sergeant motioned for Johnny and the others to go with him toward the rear of the column. Gourd Woman hobbled along behind.
“What’s with her?” the sergeant asked.
“We ran into her a few weeks ago out on the llanos,” Johnny told him. “People were saying she’s a witch, but she’s okay. She just makes brooms and peddles them for a living.”
“Why is she following us?” asked the sergeant.
“I don’t know. Why don’t you ask her?”
“Hey,” the soldier said, “where do you think you’re going?”
“Well, there’s no law against it,” the sergeant said. “We got some women in this army—but you’re limping. What’s wrong with you?”
“My foot hurts, but I can get around. I came with these men probably two hundred miles, didn’t I?”
“That’s right,” Johnny said. “She did.”
“What are your skills?” the sergeant asked.
“I make brooms and I can cook.”
“Cook?” the soldier said. “Well, maybe you can make yourself useful. This army needs all the men it can get right now.”
JOHN REED WAS FURIOUS. He had been down among the fighting for two days and felt a tinge of neurasthenia. He was covered with the stains of battle: dirt, sweat, grime. He’d gone in with the troops who’d attacked the day before, and watched as Villa’s men fell back against the resistance of the Federales, who fought house-to-house from windows, corners of houses, rooftops, and doorways, often tossing sticks of dynamite at the revolutionaries, who’d had nothing of the sort to reply with.
“They fought magnificently,” Reed told Bierce, “but were overcome with unfair tactics.”
“Unfair?” Bierce said to him from his perch, in the twilight, atop an empty keg of gunpowder. They were sitting around the campfire of Villa’s headquarters, where they’d yet again finished a dinner of unsatisfying beans and rice. “What kind of tactic was that?”
Reed described the dynamite. “They exploded innocent people’s homes.”
“Well, welcome to war, young man,” Bierce told him. His mind raced back through the years, to the desperate slaughter at Shiloh and Chickamauga, where men ran bayonets through other men’s hearts and heads and thought little or nothing of it. To the ravine full of dead from his own regiment at Shiloh, later eaten by feral pigs, so that their corpses were unrecognizable; and to the body-strewn landscape at Franklin, piled waist-high with the dead, and . . . .
“Yes, well, you tell that to the people who are homeless and starving tonight, Mr. Robinson, that are dead,” Reed countered. “I tell you, it was brutal.”
“But don’t you think if General Villa’s troops had dynamite sticks themselves,” Bierce said, “they would have done the same thing?”
“No, in fact I don’t. These men are fighting for the people, not to destroy their homes and families. There were also women and children inside those houses. Some came running out set on fire. It was sheer cruelty.”
“Ask the people of the American South what General Sherman told them,” Bierce answered.
“Sherman didn’t dynamite them out of their residences.”
“No, we merely set fire to their residences,” the old man said serenely. “Believe it or not, they came out all by themselves.”
“At least they were given the chance to escape. These people were burned and exploded alive, I tell you, those were humans, ablaze!”
“It’s a new century,” Bierce answered, “and a new kind of war.”
“If that’s so,” said Reed, “God help us all.” He paused and looked at Bierce with a cold eye. “And God help you for thinking such a thing.”
Bierce disliked this naive young reporter, John Reed—too full of himself and his school-bought notions. Bierce was a pragmatist of the first order. He did not believe in God or people. And he did not believe in fate. So there wasn’t much left, except for himself, and even that was a facade.
For Reed’s part, he didn’t exactly know what to make of this fellow Jack Robinson, except for a vague feeling that he had seen the old coot before. That old men like him couldn’t or wouldn’t understand the notion of civil revolution was a source of constant astonishment and irritation to John Reed, but possibly an object of conversation—maybe even a chance for converting the old man to Marxism.
Just then Villa, Santos, Fierro, and others emerged from the commander’s tent, where they had been conferring. They were all smoking cigars and joined Reed and Bierce around the campfire. The late afternoon sky had turned a sickly yellow gray that faintly stank of gun smoke.
“You fellows get enough to eat?” Villa asked. “I’m sorry we didn’t have time to butcher one of those beefs. But tomorrow we ought to be far enough away from here to have a little rest, huh?”
“Your soldiers fought gallantly,” Reed told the general. “I was there. The brutality of your enemy is appalling.”
“Yes, I know,” replied the general. “I just wish I had thought to supply our people with a lot of dynamite sticks.” He sounded remarkably nonchalant about losing the battle.
Reed looked startled. Okay, so what if Villa would have used the dynamite, too? Reed reasoned. It was used against him, wasn’t it? Revolution was revolution, and once you were into it, no cost came too high, he rationalized, since the revolutionaries, if defeated and caught, would be put to death.
“So, General,” Reed asked, “where do you fight again?”
“We’ve just been talking about that,” Villa said. “But I’m afraid if I tell you my plans, I’ll have to keep you here with me for a while.”
“That’s okay with me,” Reed said. “I’d rather file a good story late than file something that doesn’t say anything.”
“And you, Señor Robinson?” Villa said. “You told me you had been a writer, too, at some point.”
“I’m just writing letters to a friend, and so far I ain’t even found anyplace to post them.” This was about true, too. Bierce had quit writing professionally several years before, following the horrendous reception of his Collected Works. The critics, waiting with their shovels, had buried him, as he had buried them and ten score of other writers. They had actually made a carnival of it, a unanimous humiliation, prompting Bierce to say to one of his few friends who was still alive and still speaking to him, “My work is finished, and so am I.”
“I’m not filing any stories,” Bierce told Villa.
“Good,” the general said. “Let’s keep it that way. I wouldn’t want to feel I got spies in my camp.”
“So, where from here?” Reed asked, his voice bright and eager.
“The mountains,” Villa replied. “We all need a little rest. Ain’t nobody going to follow us into there—not where I go. Then I’m going to make up a plan to get at one of the Federales’ positions I think I can lick. There are several garrisons up by the border. I’m not going to fight any more big battles unless I have the strength to win them. But I can sure pester a lot of outposts and keep those traitors down in Mexico City guessing where I’m gonna turn up next. I’ll be like a ghost.”
“Yes, that’s it!” Reed said. “I can see that clearly: ‘The Ghost Revolution.’ It’s a wonderful headline.”
“Just make sure nobody sees it before I tell you,” Villa said. “Besides,” he added, “I think I may be more like a horsefly than a ghost—a pesky horsefly that never leaves you alone.”
Bierce sat staring into the low campfire, contemplating Villa’s new strategy and watching the sparks waft up into the yellow-gray sky. He felt his seventy years but took pains not to show it, even though he’d come to Mexico not expecting to return. His two sons were gone, one a suicide, the other from pneumonia, and his wife as well. He’d lost so many friends between death and arguments that he’d thrown his address book away years ago. He sent everything to Miss Christiansen and had her forward letters if necessary.
Bierce, at length, had decided there wasn’t a place for him in America anymore, and ever since the war he’d been living on borrowed time. In his Devil’s Dictionary, under the letter S, Bierce had offered a definition of suicide: “An excellent solution, too seldom used,” he’d written—and then, years later, his son had broken his heart by killing himself. In any case Bierce himself wasn’t ready to die quite yet; there was interesting stuff happening and he wanted to stay around awhile and see how things turned out.
TOM M
IX WAS AT A SEPARATE CAMPFIRE half a mile away with the hostages. At first he’d been worried about bringing them together lest they conspire to escape, but when he weighed this against the difficulties of trying to keep them apart, he changed his mind. Besides, the children would need a woman of some sort to look after them, and that would give Señora Ollas something to do.
Katherine was shocked and frightened when Timmy told her about their mother and Beatie, but Mix assured her they were all right.
“How do you know?” Katherine demanded.
“I saw them,” Mix said. “They were hurt a little in the car wreck, but they’re fine now.”
“What about Bomba?” Katherine asked.
“That big darkie? The driver? Just winged. He’s all right, too, I guess. But he tried to run down General Fierro and his men with a car.”
Actually, Mix wasn’t sure of anything he was telling them, but justified it on the grounds it was better to keep them happy.
“Why can’t we go home?” Timmy asked.
“Because first General Villa is going to communicate with your grandfather. Shouldn’t take long.”
“It means we’re kidnapped,” Katherine said with raw hostility.
“Kidnapped, yes! That’s exactly what it means,” Donita interjected. “These people are sadists and murderers and kidnappers.” For some reason she felt she could get away with saying such things in the presence of Mix.
“Have we treated you badly?” Mix said.
“No, but it doesn’t mean you won’t. What kind of people kidnap women and children?” Donita demanded.
“Actually, it ain’t my preference,” Mix said uncomfortably, “But right now I just do what I’m told.”
THE NEXT DAY, VILLA SELECTED A VANGUARD FOR HIS PARTY, and a wagon train was formed for the trip to the Sierra Madre. Villa himself and a dozen bodyguards were at the head of the column. Fierro and some of the other high-ranking officers were behind. Next was a column of fifty men riding side by side, and following that were the commissary and cooking wagons. Behind them was a medical wagon with a doctor; then came Mix, ambling along on his horse beside a wagon containing the children and Señora Ollas, driven by a bored-looking peon. Following that were the ammunition wagons and a few pieces of light artillery, and bringing up the rear were the cattle.
El Paso Page 24