El Paso

by Winston Groom

  Half a dozen armed men rushed up to Mix, who was about to squeeze off another round into the thing to make sure it was dead. He’d killed men before, but this . . .

  “Jesús, Capitán!” one man exclaimed. “You killed a tigre?”

  “If he’s dead,” Mix replied. He took a few steps to pick up the glowing log and tentatively approached the creature with it. The others followed with cocked guns.

  “Sí, he is dead, Capitán,” one man observed.

  “That’s a big one,” another remarked. “I never seen a tigre that big!”

  “You ought to get the cooks to skin him for you,” somebody said. “Make a good blanket—or a rug.”

  “Not a bad idea,” Mix said. He turned and walked back toward the camp. He realized his feet were cut and scuffed up from running across the rocky ground barefoot. Katherine was waiting for him by the fire with a blanket around her shoulders.

  “What was it?” she asked, still trembling, “a mountain lion?”

  “A jaguar,” he said, “worse than a mountain lion. The Mexican’s call ’em tigres. Only thing bigger or meaner than a jaguar is an African lion or a tiger from India.” Mix sat down and looked at his feet. They were bleeding and he reached for his shirt to wipe them off, but Katherine said, “No, wait—I have some clean cloths in my bag.” She dipped a cloth in a pot of water they’d boiled earlier for coffee and gently began wiping off Mix’s feet.

  “There’s some salve in my kit,” he told her. Katherine got it and applied this, too.

  “Did you . . . kill it?” she asked.

  “I did,” Mix told her. “Otherwise, you’d likely be cat food by now.”

  Her mother had always admonished her, “Darling, before you do anything, always ask yourself first, where is this leading me?” She’d remembered that starkly on the day she’d been captured; and had ground it into her mind ever since. But that night, against her better judgment, Katherine began to have very changed feelings about Tom Mix.

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  Two days later, Villa’s troops were out of the canyons and entered a terrain of grassy valleys and rolling hills surrounded by lilac-hued mountains that could have been the subject of a Chinese watercolor. At last there were signs of civilization: wagon tracks, pepper trees, fruit groves, sheep and goats. Hungry for sheep meat, the soldiers stole and slaughtered a dozen of these.

  They traveled most of the day beside a clear rocky stream until at dusk they came to the outskirts of a village. Along a dusty road they passed miserable hovels and filthy, naked children playing in the dirt among chickens or the occasional pig. Here the stream ran a murky yellowish brown and stank of sewage and the children’s eyes were hollow, filled only with hunger and sadness. When Villa’s riders approached, some of the women gathered their children inside and closed their doors. A sinister atmosphere reeked over everything.

  Such as it was, the town consisted of half a dozen low adobe buildings and a morose two-story frame structure that was both the cantina and the whorehouse. There they stopped and tethered their horses. Despite the breathtaking poverty, preparations for a fiesta were in progress. Bright banners had been strung along the street and a small grandstand had been erected. Inside the cantina a handful of peons were drinking pulque served by a scrawny saloon-keep who had one of the most unattractive faces you could find outside of an ape house. In the corner a drunk Mexican was trying to negotiate a tune out of a piano as Villa led the way in, followed by his officers and entourage.

  “What is this place?” Villa asked of the saloon-keep.

  “Reyes,” replied the man.

  “Never heard of it,” the general said.

  When the man did not respond, Villa sat down and requested a lemonade.

  “No tengo,” the man told him.

  “What?” Villa said. “You got no lemons?”

  “No.”

  “Oranges?” Villa said. “I’ll take an orangeade.”

  “No tengo.”

  “Do you know who I am?” he asked.

  “No, señor.”

  “I am General Villa.”

  “Sí.”

  “Now do you know who I am?”

  “Sí, you are General Villa,” the man said stupidly.

  “Well, if you know what’s good for you, you’ll find me some lemons and make a lemonade.”

  “Peaches,” the man said. “That’s all I got.”

  “Hell with it, then,” Villa grumbled. “All right, squeeze me some peaches and I’ll have a peachade—with plenty of sugar.” What Villa really craved was ice cream, but he realized that was out of the question.

  The man nodded and disappeared into a back room. The drunk at the piano had gotten a load of Villa’s conversation with the saloon-keep and wisely slunk out of the room.

  Bierce, Reed, and Strucker had sat down with Villa. After Villa got his peachade, Reed and Bierce ordered themselves beer, while Strucker uncharacteristically asked for water because his stomach was cramped with indigestion.

  “What a wretched place,” Reed remarked. “The people almost seem like prisoners.” Reed had foolishly hoped that when they finally got out of the canyons they would come upon a quaint, lovely town where he could get a hot bath and soft bed. Instead he got a repulsive shithole.

  “They probably are,” Villa said. “Somewhere around here there’s going to be a big fancy hacienda, and all these poor bastards work on it. They get paid a few centavos a day and if they get caught so much as taking home one ear of the corn they picked, they’ll get horsewhipped. That’s their only future, and their children’s future, too. I lived in a place like this myself once.”

  Suddenly the silhouette of a large man appeared in the doorway. Villa had seated himself to face the door and squinted at the stranger, who said:

  “Well, what a surprise to find you here, General.”

  It was Cowboy Bob. It took Villa a moment to recognize him, then he broke out in a grin.

  “As I live and breathe!” Villa exuded. “What in hell are you doing here?”

  Cowboy Bob had left Arthur’s party the day before and picked his way all night past Villa’s troop, swinging wide so that he entered the village from the north end.

  “Passin’ through,” Bob replied. “I just needed a place to stay for the night. Say! Ain’t that Mr. Jack Robinson there?”

  “It is,” Bierce said. “Fancy seeing you here, Bob.”

  Bob said, “I thought you would’ve got your taste of this country and gone on home by now.”

  “Maybe I should have,” Bierce told him, “but I’m gonna stick around a little while longer. General Villa needs my advice.”

  “All of Mexico needs Señor Robinson’s advice,” Villa said sarcastically, motioning for Cowboy Bob to take a seat. “He’ll take his last breath for Mexico.”

  Bierce took a swallow of his beer. “That’s not so. If I owned Mexico and hell both, I’d rent out Mexico and live in hell,” he said, borrowing a line from William T. Sherman.

  “You’re very witty today,” Villa told him.

  “No, I’m not,” Bierce said calmly. “It only sounds that way.”

  Strucker had not yet been served his water and became impatient. “What do I have to do to get some water in this dump?” he demanded.

  “Why don’t you try setting yourself on fire?” Bierce suggested.

  Strucker was not amused and began banging on the table to attract attention. He was in a predicament he’d never counted on: Villa was not an honorable man in any sense, contrary to what he’d been told. The Mexican apparently had no intention of attacking the United States, yet now insisted on the ten million marks anyway as a condition of Strucker’s survival. It would be difficult for Strucker to explain to his superiors back in Berlin, but if the money did not arrive, no explanations or anything else would be forthcoming from Strucker anyway.

  Bob had ridden past the big Mission-style hacienda that Villa had alluded to earlier and been impressed. He even saw a motorcar in the
courtyard. Therefore, Bob was unpleasantly surprised when he encountered the squalor of the village. Like Reed, he’d hoped for amenities.

  “So, General, where you headed?” Bob asked, suddenly deciding to tackle the question straightforward.

  “What’s it to you?” Villa answered.

  “Just trying to make a conversation.” Bob smiled, trying not to seem nervous.

  “And you,” Villa said. “Where are you coming from?”

  “El Paso,” Bob lied.

  “And where are you going?”

  “West,” Bob said. “I’m thinking about going to California to get in the movies.”

  “Aren’t you a little old for that?” Villa said, more as a statement than a question.

  “Maybe, but I’d like to give it a try before I cash in.”

  “Why didn’t you just take the train?” Villa asked suspiciously. “Sort of out of your way, isn’t it? Being this far south?”

  “Not a’tall,” Bob said. “I figured I’d come down here first to get some work. Maybe punch some cows or even get a job as a foreman. You can’t go to Hollywood without any money. I don’t even have train fare.”

  “Any luck?”

  “Not yet, but there’s a big hacienda up across them hills there. I thought I’d ask around in the morning.”

  Villa seemed satisfied with that explanation. His troopers had now filled the saloon and were marching single-file up the stairs to the whores like a line of termites climbing a dead limb. Bob decided he’d played the only card he could in asking about Villa’s plans. If the man wasn’t going to tell him, Bob figured it wasn’t worth persisting and getting shot or hung. Nevertheless, he decided to try one more gambit.

  “So how long you gonna hang around here?” he asked pleasantly.

  “Not long,” Villa told him. “We got things to do. But there’s some kind of fiesta tomorrow and the men need a little relaxation. I expect we’ll stay here a couple of days—maybe more. The men’ll need to sober up after the fiesta and get their strength back after the whores.”

  FIFTY-NINE

  It wasn’t much, but at least it was a chance, provided Bob could get word back to Arthur in time. He said his good nights, telling Villa that he’d best get some sleep before job-hunting next day. Then he went outside, desperate to get a line on the whereabouts of the children. Just being in Villa’s company gave him the heebie-jeebies. As luck would have it, he spotted Tom Mix herding Katherine, Timmy, and Donita Ollas into a little encampment at the far end of town. Bob dismounted and hung around for a while to study the setup, carefully avoiding Mix’s attention. There seemed to be four or five men assisting Mix, and they had all set up under a big oak away from the stench of the hovels. Bob calculated the approaches. There were other encampments, but he saw a possible avenue if Arthur and his people could swing in on the north side of town like he had earlier, then go west to a pecan grove where they could hide their horses. A drainage ditch would provide cover. To make sure he had it exactly right, Bob sketched the site on a pad, then mounted his horse and rode away into the night.

  He wheeled wide around the town through a lettuce field, until he came upon the same road Villa had ridden in on. It would be a lot shorter going back that way than the circuitous overland route he’d had to take the night before. There wasn’t much, but by starlight he was able to scout out some spots where a plane might land, as well as the possible escape paths for Arthur’s raiders. When Bob finally ran into Arthur’s party on the road after sunup, he’d had no sleep in twenty-four hours.

  “You’re about half a day away,” he told him. “The good thing is that they’ll be a lot of drunks from the fiesta and the town itself provides pretty good cover. There’s a lot of coming and going. You might just pull it off.”

  Arthur took a deep breath and nodded. “If we’re going to do it, looks like now’s the time,” he said. Arthur summoned Crosswinds Charlie and Bob briefed him on his reconnaissance.

  “There’s a spot I rode through in a lettuce patch,” Bob said. “It’s dry, at least, and level, and it’s behind a big knoll. I think you can land the plane there. They’ll probably hear your motor, but I doubt they’ll see you. Even if they do, maybe they’ll just think it’s something to do with the fiesta.”

  “A lettuce patch?” Charlie asked. “Are there lettuces growing on it?”

  “Yep,” Bob said.” Big ones, too. But they’re in rows; maybe you can put your wheels in between ’em.”

  Charlie turned to Arthur. “I ain’t never landed in a lettuce field before,” he said.

  “Well, do you think you can?” Arthur asked.

  “I landed in a tree once,” Charlie told him. “I can try.”

  “All right, that’s it, then,” Arthur said. “We won’t make our move till you’re on the ground and we’re sure you can take off again.” Crosswinds Charlie already had a letter Arthur had written to the rail authorities giving permission for him to put together the Luft-Verkehrs, and also his handwritten letter of credit to provide Charlie any funds he needed. He crossed his fingers that there’d be enough in the NE&P coffers to cover it. According to Cowboy Bob the train Charlie had to catch to El Paso was thirty miles away, and Arthur put an arm around his shoulder.

  “This is going to be a tight-run business,” Arthur told him, “so you’d best ride like the wind.”

  “Suppose I can’t find nobody to help me get the thing assembled?” Charlie asked.

  “You will,” Arthur said confidently, echoing his father. “They can do anything in El Paso.”

  SIXTY

  The fiesta in Reyes began the next day with a three-person mariachi band playing a gay tune leading a procession of bedraggled men naked from the waist up with big crucifix crosses strapped to their backs. Next came some Mexican cowboys, charros, on horseback with fancy silver-and-turquoise saddles. When the fancy charros rode past the crowd, all the men spectators took off their sombreros and the women lowered their eyes and bowed. There were a couple of dancing acts with women twirling in full colored skirts, and then the children of the village appeared in one large and unseemly mob. The children were partly naked and just as filthy as when Villa’s people had ridden into town the day before.

  The grandstand was filled with about a dozen well-dressed men, women, and children, and all the paraders paid them some kind of deference as they passed. The men carrying the crucifixes bowed and scraped, the charros on horseback waved and reared their horses. When the village children came to the grandstand, they got on the ground and groveled while a short fat man in a sequined suit threw coins at them.

  Villa and his staff were watching from the boardwalk in front of the cantina. They had bought some tortillas from a woman who was frying them in a huge iron cauldron of boiling grease. The cantina saloon-keep was standing in his doorway when Villa addressed him.

  “Who are those people in the seats there?” he asked, indicating the grandstand.

  “El Padrino and his family,” replied the man.

  “The Godfather, huh?” Villa spat. “And I bet he’s the one with the big hacienda around here, too?”

  “That is right,” the man said. “If it was not for El Padrino, everyone would starve.”

  “Looks to me like you’re starving anyway!” Villa told him. “Can’t you see that? Look at those children!”

  “El Padrino is good to us, Señor General,” the barkeep said. “All this land belongs to him. He lets us live on it and work for him. What would we do otherwise?”

  “That fat cabrón is wringing the lifeblood from you, and you kiss his ass,” Villa snorted. The saloon-keep said nothing.

  They stood in the street with their backs to El Padrino and his entourage, while a tall gaunt man wearing polished boots and a black outfit strode down the street toward them. He had a red bandanna tied around his head and was carrying a bullwhip. A priest who had been sitting in the stands got down and began administering the Communion sacraments to the crucifix men.

  W
hen he had finished, the man with the bullwhip began his work. He lashed out at the naked backs of the men, tearing flesh with an awful cracking sound. The crosses the men were carrying provided some protection but not enough. Somehow the whipper managed to get to the skin anyway. The whipped men stood ramrod-stiff and did not cry out. Soon all the crucifix men’s backs and shoulders were bloody.

  This was enough for Villa. He pulled out his pistol and fired it into the air, penetrating the crowd with great strides until he got in front of the grandstand. Tom Mix herded the children and Donita Ollas back to their camp.

  “Arrest him!” Villa cried, pointing to the flogger. Half a dozen soldiers surrounded the man, relieving him of his whip. Then Villa turned to the startled occupants in the grandstand.

  “So you’re supposed to be El Padrino, huh?” he said to the fat man in the sequined suit. “Well, I say you’re an asshole.”

  “I am Señor Reyes, but they call me El Padrino,” the man said, standing. His face was ashen and the muscles of his jaw seemed to click. “And who, please, are you?”

  “Pancho Villa.”

  “I have heard of you, señor. What is it you want? We’re having a fiesta.”

  “It’s not like any fiesta I’ve ever seen,” Villa replied. “You don’t whip men and have little children grovel in the dirt at fiestas.”

  “It has been this way here since before I was born. My father and my grandfather, and his—”

  “Shut up you stinking gachupín!” Villa flared up again. “You and your thieving ancestors made slaves of these people and this is only your way of keeping them in line. Why were you whipping those men? Did they do something wrong?”

  “It is not me, it’s the Church,” El Padrino replied. “They are doing penitence.”

  Villa asked the priest, “Is that so, Padre?” He was an old man with a red face blotched with spiderwebs of veins from drinking too much wine.