by Lou Cameron
Stringer shrugged and said, “Nobody who hires a gun expects to get caught, if his gun’s any good. But before we accuse Bennet of even aiming custard pies this way, we’d best be certain he’s the only gent with pies to throw. If he heard about the battle and you heard about the battle, who’s to say how many others in the same business heard about it? We didn’t know Matt Bennet was on the scene until just now. I’d best scout about some more before bedtime.”
“Mais, Stuart,” Claudette protested, “I thought it was about that time.”
“It’s barely midnight,” Stringer insisted, “and at the rate things are going, everyone may wind up sleeping late. Anyone serious about taking motion pictures ought to be parked somewhere in these same yards. It’ll only take me a few minutes to find out who else is here.”
Then he helped himself to some wine and ducked back outside. He didn’t roll another smoke as he moved out to the service road to see if he could make out the layout of the yards better in the dim light. Dim light was no place to light a smoke when you had to study on who else might be poking about in the same. He felt halfway sure the one hired gun he’d taken out had been working alone. Nobody as easy to take out as Jones should have been working alone unless he had to. But it was better to be safe than sorry and so, until he had some notion as to what in thunder this was all about, he meant to act as if he was up against the whole Wild Bunch again.
From the service road, he just couldn’t tell how many cars in all were parked along that double-siding, let alone how many might be just box cars or private cars with their lights out. He was fixing to move in for a car by car tally when the Mexicans in the noisy Maxwell putted across the tracks and swung his way. He knew he stood exposed to their headlamps as the beams swept over him. So he just stayed put and kept his gun hand polite as he waited for them to pass on by.
They didn’t. The big Maxwell slammed on its brakes and slid to a dusty stop between Stringer and the yards, which were the only cover. As Stringer braced himself for a midnight game of “Tu Madre” with a bunch of drunks, the side door flew open and one said, “Get in, Stringer. We have been searching all over town for you. Is it not fortunate we caught up with you at last?”
Having no other choice, Stringer got in, as he numbly wondered just how fortunate this was going to be for him.
But they didn’t even take his gun. So he figured his boots were at least as safe for now, as they made room for him in the rear seat, or tried to. It was hard for three full-grown men to sit side by side when at least two of them wore several cartridge belts, carried Winchesters, and two or more six-guns, each. Stringer casually hitched his own .38 to ride his right thigh and left his hand on the grips just as casually, as he politely asked where they might all be headed. The one who’d ordered him to get in jovially replied, “We have to cross the border well to the west. They got gringo soldados patrolling up and down the line, both ways, pero not too far.”
“We’re on our way to Mexico?” Stringer asked in English. While his Spanish was probably as good as their own, there were times when it was smart to play dumb.
The burly bandito in command replied in Spanish, “Where else, and for why are you playing gringo games with us? Have you forgotten me since last we met south of the border, my rurale-shooting scribe?”
Stringer peered closer. Then he tried, “You were serving as Villa’s lieutenant that time?”
The burly Mex laughed boyishly and replied, “I am a colonel, now. Pancho, he has promoted himself to the rank of General. So I spit on lieutenants. You can call me Hernan, though. We fight for democracia, and I was never stuck up to begin with.”
Stringer replied that he’d heard their cause was just and tried to keep track of where they were as the Maxwell bounded off across the rolling desert, not bothering to go around the clumps of prickly pear cactus it encountered in the darkness. He started to ask Hernan how they’d come by this modern means of transportation, and decided not to. It was tough to talk and bounce so high at the same time, and he really didn’t want to know who they’d stolen the motor car from. He knew they frowned on being described as bandits and he owed it to his paper to report the truth, short of getting himself killed.
When they finally dipped down into a wash and the engine died trying to haul them up the far slope, Stringer suggested, “You might be using too much choke, muchachos.”
Hernan growled, “Choke? Choke? Hey, Pablo, have you been choking somebody?”
To which the man at the wheel could only reply in a fatalistic tone, “Of course not. I have been having enough of a time just driving this estupido machine. How do you choke one? It sounds like a good way to make it behave, no?”
Stringer explained. He wasn’t too surprised to learn they’d been driving in low gear with full choke all this time. Hernan told him to get behind the wheel if he knew so much, so Stringer did. Pablo got out to crank. That much he knew about lost, strayed, or stolen motor cars. All four of them seemed delighted and surprised that Stringer, once he had everyone aboard, was able to back up, rev the engine to full power, and take the far bank easily before he threw the transmission into second gear. When he asked which way to steer, Hernan chuckled, told him just to keep going, and added, “You must have done something to this thing. It’s making a lot less noise, even though it’s moving faster than before.”
Stringer said it was just a knack. He was too polite to say it was a wonder they’d been moving at all, since they hadn’t opened the choke or shifted gears since they’d found it parked that way. He knew they’d likely stolen it in New Mexico. The country to the south was even less civilized, and Maxwells were a rarity anywhere this far from any good-sized town.
When they came to another wash and Hernan said to just follow it south across the imaginary line that constituted the border, Stringer stopped, but left the engine running as he got out to trim the oil-fired head lamps.
When Hernan asked why, as he climbed back in, Stringer explained, “I just hate to get machinegunned. Some pretty good army units are watching for either side to invade Los Estados Unidos. I can see the white sand ahead without head lamps. So let’s make them guess where we are. Twin headlamps can’t be mistaken for anything else on or near the border. How did you muchachos drive this rig up here to begin with?”
Hernan shrugged and said, “Was daylight. You sure are smart for a gringo, Stringer. How many times have you jumped the border before this, eh?”
Stringer chuckled and replied, “As seldom as I can help it. That time we met over near the big bend was an accident. I was helping friends hunt stolen cows. We weren’t paying all that much attention until those rurales jumped us to ask if we had entry visas, or pocket money.”
Hernan sighed and said, “Si, was a grand running gunfight you were enjoying when you rode into us and we got all the pocket money in the end.” He turned to his comrades to tell them, “This one knows how to deal with Los Rurales. He can nail them shooting backwards at full gallop, better than most pistoleros pick off bottles on a fence.”
Thinking back to the last time they’d met inspired Stringer to ask, “Speaking of rurales, Hernan, how come there don’t seem to be any around here right now? The U.S. Cav knows about your battle with Terrazas. They’re even setting up moving picture-cameras to film the fun and games. So doesn’t Mexico have lawmen any more?”
“Private fight,” Hernan said flatly, “Terrazas hates Pancho’s guts. Pancho would piss on the grave of Terrazas’ father, if anyone knew who that bastard’s father was. Los Rurales know both sides would turn on them if they interfered in an affair of honor. Is all set up. Pancho will explain his battle plans to you. He said he wants you riding at his side because you write nice things about him. He gets very angry when gringo reporters call him a bandit. In that story you wrote about us, you said that we were only giving the government its just desserts. What are just desserts?”
“I wrote it only stood to reason that when a government abused its people beyond endura
nce they had the right and, indeed, the duty to fight back. My people tried to tell that to an English king one time. He didn’t listen, either.”
Hernan brightened and said, “I see. You say our Pancho is like your own George Washington, eh?”
“Well, within reason,” Stringer muttered.
An hour later, they rolled into Pancho Villa’s camp set in the foothills of the dry Hatchet Range that brooded above the Chihuahua wastelands to the east.
The George Washington or Puma of Northern Mexico, depending on whom one asked, was making no great secret of his whereabouts, judging from all the night fires and guitar music. At Hernan’s direction, Stringer stopped in front of a tent George Washington would have been proud of. As they all piled out, Pancho Villa nee Doroteo Arango, came out of his headquarters tent to greet them, wearing a broad smile and an adelita, or camp follower, on one arm. Villa was a husky gent in his late twenties or early thirties with pleasant peasant features and a trusting smile belied by Indian eyes that didn’t seem to miss much. He told the girl clinging to him to go find a friend in case his Amigo from El Norte wanted to get married. Then, as she flounced off, Villa took Stringer by the hand to lead him inside, saying, “I am glad you will be riding with me, mañana. Some are sure to say I double-crossed a double-crosser. I want you there for to write everything down right.”
Villa sat Stringer at a map table, and moved to the far side of the tent to pour two tumblers of tequila before sitting himself down. Stringer picked up his drink as he glanced down at the map. It was a U.S. Survey chart of the area around Columbus. He didn’t ask how the guerrilla chief had gotten his own copy. Villa obviously knew how to read maps, judging from the lines he’d been penciling on it in red and blue. The blue positions were clearly his. Enemy positions were drawn in red by most military leaders. Terrazas would have his own maps colored the opposite way, if he was planning as hard as Villa.
The young Mex leader raised his own tumbler to mutter, “Drink up. That bullshit with the lemon and salt is for tourists. We got lots to talk about and maybe you shouldn’t get married tonight, with the day we face at dawn. That cabrone, Terrazas, has outdone himself this time as a shit-eating liar of lies. But I have my own spies out, and so mañana we shall see who is shitting whom, eh?”
Stringer took a sip of liquid fire. He couldn’t have swallowed more than a sip at a time without letting his feeling show, and put the tumbler aside to get out his notebook as he said, “I think we’d better begin at the beginning, ah, General.”
“To you I am always Pancho,” Villa said, “I was born in the Year Of Our Lord, 1877, as private property. Don Arturo Lopez y Negrete owned the clothes on our backs as well as the land we had to work for him. Is not true that I was born in the Rio Grande as some have written. Don Arturo called his big hacienda Rios Grandes. I do not know why. Was all dry and my mother had to pay for our water. You know how the peonage system works, no?”
Stringer hadn’t meant for him to start that far back, but he nodded and said, “Sure. We call it sharecropping in parts of my country. Landlord loans his tenants land and provisions to make a crop, only, from year to year, they never make enough to pay off what they owe him, so…”
“Was not working por nada, like my father and his fathers before him, that made me kill.” Villa cut in, continuing, “Was the other bad things grandees think they can do to their peones as well. I had a sister. I do not wish to tell you her name, now that it has been dishonored. I was in prison when it happened. I had been flogged and locked up for trying to find work on another hacienda. While my sister was unprotected, she was raped by the son of Don Arturo. His name was Leonardo. I have to laugh at this when I think of how bravely he faced me when I demanded satisfaction. He refused to fight me mano a mano. He said hombres of his class did not stoop to dueling with peones. He was not too proud to stick his blue-blooded prick in a woman of the people, so I stuck my knife in him to spill his blue blood and, of course, they called that murder.” Villa swallowed a slug of tequila, then continued, “I ran off to the hills. A mounted rurale caught me. After that I had my own horse, guns, and a nice big rurale sombrero. I thought about seeking work as an honest charro. But every place I went, I saw posters screaming for my blood. My poor red Indio blood was now worth more to the grandees than before, eh? I thought, shit, if they get so excited over an hombre killing a rapist, I may as well give them something to be excited about, so I joined the band of Ignacio Parra. Was a good man, but you can put down that he was a bandit, like they say, if you like. Parra had even more Indio blood than me and was not as interested in justice. Back in the nineties, we just robbed everybody. About `95, we jumped a payroll coach. Was more heavily guarded than usual. Parra got shot. I got away. So now I was in command, and it was my idea for to give presents to the poor people as we rode. They had nothing to steal and once word got around that we were nicer than Los Rurales, it made it most difficult for Los Rurales to trail us. Since then, other muchachos mistreated by the grandees have rushed for to join us. I turn away more recruits than I have arms for. The army you see outside is good. Even our adelitas are more tough than the hired guns of Terrazas. He knows this. That is why he means for to double-cross us when we meet him for to put on the battle.”
Stringer cocked a curious eyebrow and said, “Hold on, I got both ears open but I’m missing something, Pancho. You’d best tell me more about that battle you’re fixing to have. No offense, but it sounds sort of dumb to me. I’m no military genius, but it seems suicidal on the part of both sides. All the battles I’ve ever read about involved such considerations as surprise, positions of advantage and such.”
Villa snorted and said, “Carramba, I know that. So does that coward, Terrazas, even though he has not had half my experience as a hero. We were, how you say, fighting by the book until this Americano fight promoter, Pickins, approached us with his offer. Both sides could use the money and, in truth, the breathing spell. So we made a truce, just long enough for to stage the battle, only now…”
“I get it.” Stringer cut in with an incredulous grin. “It’s to be a fixed fight, just for tourist consumption, with a lot of noise and nobody really getting hurt amid the clouds of gunsmoke, right?”
Villa nodded morosely and replied, “We even got the blanks and smoke bombs from the promoters. Pickens said was all right for both sides to carry off their wounded as long as some of us fell down. The gringo showmen said to make it look good because some moving picture cameras would be there, and….”
“That’s it!” Stringer cut in. Actually to himself. He saw Villa was confused and quickly explained, “Someone’s been trying to prevent Pathe News from recording the event. They’re good. The camera does not lie and some dead soldado breathing while he’s supposed to be lying dead would be a matter of record, long after he died for real. Tex Pickins has been accused of staging less dramatic bouts. He can’t afford to have his face exposed, so…”
“Is not a farce no more.” Villa cut in, explaining, “I told you I got ears in Terrazas’ camp. What good are adelitas if they do not really love you, eh? Nobody has to worry about soldados just playing dead, mañana. Terrazas plans to open up on us with live ammunition as we charge with blanks. Only guess what’s really going to happen.”
Stringer grimaced and said, “Ouch! But won’t both sides take one hell of a heap of casualties, shooting it out face to face for real?”
“Sure,” Villa replied.
Then he half rose to place a brown and surprisingly delicate finger on the map between them as he went on, “Here is that circus grandstand built for to watch the amusing brown monkeys perform. A mile of concertina wire has been strung along the border to keep us in our place. East and west of the stands, Tio Sam will have posted plenty of his own troopers and a couple of batteries of machineguns. So neither side has to worry much about that flank.”
Villa slashed a north-south line to the east of the scrawl he’d used to indicate the barbed wire along the border as he cont
inued, ‘Terrazas’ private army will no doubt line up about here. They are all vaqueros with a sense of adventure or a love of money. I mean to show them war for fun and profit. They will all be mounted, expecting us to be firing blanks and lobbing smoke grenades as they charge grandly past the viewing stands intending to slaughter us. Most of my pobrecitos still have to fight on foot. Is hard to keep horses in desert country, even when you can steal enough for everybody.
I’ll position the riders I have to the south, on our right flank. Your gringo troops will have the kindness to guard my left flank as I advance my infantry in a skirmish line. As the enemy rides down on them, they will hit the dirt and take careful aim from prone positions. The vaqueros they will be spilling are not real soldados. They will break as they discover there is more to War than wine, women and parades. As they reel back, my own massed cavalry will take them on their south flank to drive them north against the tangled barbed wire Tio Sam was good enough to provide me. Your people seated in the stands should see all the blood and slaughter they paid to see, up close, eh?”
Stringer whistled and replied, “More than they bargained for if they don’t duck! Those U.S. Army troops are certain to open up on all concerned when they see two Mexican armies headed right at ‘em. We’re talking about Krag rifles along with machinegun fire, Pancho!”