American Dreams (51 page)

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In the spring of 1913, Paul and Sammy Silverstone stepped off a steamer at Galveston. They transferred to the Gulf & Colorado for the long, bumpy ride to El Paso, sometime capital-in-exile of the Mexican revolutionists campaigning to bring down the central government.

Sammy complained that he couldn't understand who was who in the struggle, let alone pronounce the names. Paul said that no matter how complicated or confusing it was, what concerned the two of them was one basic truth. 'There's bloody fighting going on, and bloody fighting is a staple of our trade.'

Three months before, General Victoriano Huerta had overthrown the regime of Madero, the 'apostle of democracy,' placed him in custody, and soon sent him to a government prison for 'personal protection.' In Mexico City's midnight streets, assassins ambushed the caravan of heavily guarded autos. In a hail of bullets Madero was removed as a possible threat to the new leader, who promised the usual 'thorough investigation.'

America's newly inaugurated president, Woodrow Wilson, deplored Viva Villa!

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the killing and strengthened the U.S. military presence on the border.

Under the leadership of the First Chief of the Constitutionalists, Venustiano Carranza, two guerilla field generals had emerged to press the revolution, Emiliano Zapata in the south and, closer to Texas, Pancho Villa, El Tigre delNorte.

Rebel generals and bureaucrats had been back and forth across the Rio Grande many times, holding court, hunting funds, and buying weapons at El Paso's Sheldon Hotel, where Paul and Sammy took rooms. El Paso was a noisy, crowded warren of gamblers, whores, cattle rustlers, land speculators, cowhands, Indians, U.S. doughboys, journalists -- a bubbling stew heated by war and seasoned with a sprinkling of arms merchants and aviators selling their goods or services to any buyer with cash.

Southwest of town, near a stinking copper smelter, they crossed the Rio Grande on a swaying footbridge of rope and boards. Camera and film cases were hidden under filthy blankets in their creaky mule cart. They carried tins of jerky and hardtack and three canteens, two with water, one filled with whiskey. Serapes and straw hats, old pants and rope sandals helped deflect questions. Paul had folded his passport and hidden it, along with a letter of credit from his employer, in a cloth pouch tied around his neck with a thong. He knew a good deal of Spanish, and the Federal soldiers on the Mexican side waved them on immediately.

Below Juarez lay an arid region of sand hills studded with manzanita
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trees blooming pink and white, greasewood, prickly pear and yucca, spiny ocotillo with vivid red flowers at the end of each branch. On their right hand, curving around to form a barrier in the south, the Sierra Madres presented themselves as hazy blue ramparts of rock with vegetation on the lower slopes. General Villa, an idol of the poor, had brought the wai* to this northern state, overrunning the great ranchos, looting the haciendas, inyesting towns and villages to drive out Federalistas. He then recruited men for his Division of the North, promising a triumphant march on the capital, where Huerta and his followers clung to their power and privilege and, not incidentally, the goodwill of American oil and mining interests that helped fund their side of the war.

The chaparral gave way to raw and brutal desert. The mountains seemed to recede continually ahead of them. Thirst and heat and sand fleas tortured them waking or sleeping. Twice they saw black smoke columns on the horizon from burning ranchos. At nightfall on the fourth day, they came within sight of a town a few miles west of the National Railroad line connecting Juarez with Torreon in the state of Durango, two 320

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hundred fifty miles south. Through field glasses Paul saw Federal flags flying above the town.

He and Sammy bedded down in the open, in the lee of their cart. In the distance a wild animal howled. Paul felt lost in the vast moonlit landscape.

From his gear he took a small hinged case, opened it, tilted it to catch the brilliant light from above.

The left side of the case held a photograph of his four children, taken at New Year's in an hour-long ordeal of squirming and fussing. Seven-year old Betsy, pretty in her pinafore, sat on an ottoman with two-year-old Lottie beside her. Betsy held the baby, Theodore Roosevelt Crown, eight months, like the man for whom he was named, Teddy was a sickly child.

Little could be seen of him in his infant's dress, just a pudgy, round face with shoe-button eyes. Shad, twelve now and visibly miserable in a stiff collar, stood behind the three, one hand on Betsy's shoulder, one stuck into his coat Napoleon fashion.

The other oval held a portrait of his beloved Julie. The keepsake was no substitute for home, but a few moments spent with the sepia images relieved his loneliness. He settled down to sleep.

Twelve hours later, Villa's Constitutionalist army of horsemen, infantry, and female camp followers swept out of the desert and attacked.

A dozen horsemen stormed out of a cloud of tan dust. Orange fire streaked from Mauser rifles. A Catling gun belonging to the Federals chattered in
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reply. The Gatling's revolving barrels projected from the doorway of a church at the head of the street where Paul and Sammy crouched; the gun carriage was hidden in the vestibule. The senior officer commanding the gun had stepped out a while ago during a lull, sweeping the square and surrounding roofs with field glasses. His uniform reminded Paul of those worn by Prussian officers. His helmet was the familiar Pickelhaube, polished metal with an upright spike. There was a strong German presence in Mexico.

The rebel horsemen charged along the street toward the gun emplacement.

The horses kicked dust into Paul's eyes as he and Sammy flattened against a yellow wall, beneath a bullet-torn slogan painted on it. vwa villa!

viva revolucion! The rebels were advancing block by block, square by square; those at the rear were already celebrating the victory of the people by robbing and raping their fellow Mexicans.

Paul jammed the tripod into the dirt and started cranking, to catch the Viva Villa!

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horsemen silhouetted against the sunlit square. The Gatling returned fire, slugs tearing a long trench in the yellow wall. Sammy put his arms over his head. 'Gawd, I hope the old lady didn't miss the last payment on the insurance.'

'I'm going forward. You stay back, out of the line of fire.'

'Not bloody likely,' Sammy growled. He was a loyal helper, brave and resourceful, one reason Paul had grown attached to him.

They crept forward. In the square raked by the Gatling, the rebels reined their horses and fired into the church. Paul tilted the tripod over his shoulder and ran through the dusky street to the glaring sunlight. At the edge of the square he passed a gut-shot rebel sitting against the wall with a bewildered look on his face and intestines peeping between his fingers.

The Gatling stuttered, mowing down one of the horses. Spewing blackish blood, the horse collapsed under its rider. The Gatling killed the rider as he went down. His riddled corpse flopped against the dead animal.

Horses neighed and reared as the Gatling kept up its rat-tat. Paul darted beneath the awning of a cantina. He flung a table out of his way, saw that he still had one hundred seventy feet on the meter. Again he began to crank.

A rebel soldier on a frightened horse crashed into the poles supporting the awning. As the canvas came down and the horse bellowed, the soldier jumped off. Gatling rounds chopped into his face, blowing out an eye, ripping his cheek, blasting teeth from his jaw. Blood splashed on Paul's hair, in his eyes, on his serape, his hands, and the camera. In spite of it he kept
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cranking.

A portly soldier dismounted and led three other men in a rush up the steps of the church.. One of the men carried a bayonet as a sword. The rebels charged both sides of the gun, vanishing in the vestibule. Paul heard a scream, then gunfire. A moment later the senior officer was hurled out the door, the bayonet jutting from his belly. He tumbled to the foot of the steps. His pickelhaube clattered on the stones. His hair was blond.

More pistol fire in the church signaled the end of the Gatling detachment.

Two bodies were thrown out the door; then the smoking gun was carefully rolled into the sunlight and maneuvered down the steps. As the four yelled and celebrated, Paul's footage meter ran down to zero.

The soldiers reclaimed their horses and galloped off, leaving the Gatling gun to be claimed later. Paul surveyed the empty square, left his camera, 322

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and ran to the dead officer, who was beginning to smell. Holding his breath, he searched the officer's blouse for identification, found none. He did discover a small book in German.

Just then three armed men in sandals and ragged clothes, laden with bandoliers, came from the street he'd quitted earlier. In Spanish the leader shouted, 'Here's the other gringo.' A fourth man dragged Sammy from the dark street at gunpoint.

Paul started to reach for the holstered revolver hidden under his serape, but he checked himself when the three guerillas leveled their rifles. They walked toward him with eyes fixed on him over the rifle sights.

'Under arrest,' said the man in front.

Paul slowly raised his hands.

Dirty, bloody, and tired, Paul felt a numb sense of failure. The soldiers searched him, stripped off his gun belt and holster but returned the little book after a quick examination. Paul shoved it in his pocket and fell in beside Sammy. One of the soldiers picked up the camera and laid the tripod over his shoulder. Paul wanted to tell him not to handle the camera roughly, but that would show that he spoke Spanish; he'd hold that card facedown for a while. The soldier was careful with the camera, which surprised Paul -- and puzzled him a little.

Over the roofs of the adobe buildings, columns of smoke stained the sky.

Gunfire banged in other streets, but less steadily than before. The procession
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left the square, ascended a sloping street, reached another square, and crossed to an undamaged cantina occupied by a dozen soldiers made cheerful by the capture of the town. Or maybe they were cheerful all the time; Paul remembered that Villa's men were volunteers, in the fight because they believed in his program of land reform and education. The Federalistas who fought and died in the front lines were mostly conscripts.

Well

away from the men, a voluptuous soldadera sat with a Winchester across her knees. Though she was grimy, she was also attractive in a rough way. Nipples big as cherries stood out black in her blouse. Using a rag, she slowly removed specks from the metal. In her eyes Paul saw the passion that gave Villa his strength and his advantage.

The general was centrally seated on a stool with a respectful space around him. He was a stocky man, in his mid-thirties perhaps. His dark, flat face suggested Indian ancestry. His full mustache resembled a black Viva Villa!

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shaving brush. On the shaded table beside him rested a bottle of clear liquid. Paul saw the worm in the tequila.

Unlike his foot soldiers, the general wore a plain khaki uniform, dusty boots, military cap. His eyes, so dark brown they looked black, never seemed to blink.

'Speak Spanish, my friend?' he asked Paul in that language.

Paul replied in English, i don't understand.'

The general snapped his fingers. A wizened fellow with crooked teeth jumped forward. Spanish again: 'Julio will translate. Do you know who I am, Yankee?'

'Know who he is - el comandanteV said Julio in barely understandable English.

'General Villa. I have seen his pictures.'

When Julio translated, Villa beamed. 'Bring a stool for the gentleman.'

Sammy was shoved to a nearby table, the muzzle of a Mauser near his ear. Villa ticked his stubby brown fingers against the bottle. 'Tequila?'

'Tell the general no, thank you, but could I have a cigar?' He patted his serape, stiff with drying blood.

A jabber of Spanish, then the translation: 'The general says don't reach for your gun.'

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'I don't have a gun, you took it. I said I want a smoke.' He pantomimed puffing. 'Cigar'

'Ah. Cigarro. Puro.' Julio conveyed this, listened to the reply. 'The general says, okay, smoke, but if you try anything we show you the adobe wall.' Paul had heard the expression before; it meant the firing squad.

'Another time,' he muttered, pulling out a cigar. The backs of his hands were colored by a wash of blood. He could feel it caked in his hair arid eyebrows.

He patted hjs pants for his matchbox, but somehow he'd lost it.

Villa tossed him a sulfer match which Paul struck on the table. The general fired a question which Julio translated.

'He wishes to know who you are.'

'My name is Paul Crown. I'm an American. I make news pictures for theaters.'

Julio squinted, momentarily thrown. 'I think he said he wears a crown, General. Also he paints pictures.' Good God, the man didn't understand English at all. This could be disaster. Paul clamped the cigar in his teeth, found the soldier with the camera, pointed, then pantomimed cranking and said in Spanish, LCines noticias? News pictures. Villa rocked back on his stool, laughed.

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Nightmare

'Well, well. There are two of us playing tricks. I speak the language of you Yankees. I have been in the United States many times.' He waved a hand. 'Julio, sit down, you're an idiot.'

Shamed, the ratty man disappeared in the cantina. Villa swigged from the bottle and continued, 'I do a lot of good business in Texas and New Mexico. For instance, I take the cattle of the whoresons who rob the people of their land and birthright. My boys run the herds up to Columbus, New Mexico, by night. An accommodating merchant sells them, thereby sanctifying them in God's eyes before they go to the slaughter pen. You will understand that I can't reveal the name of the gentleman who helps me fatten the revolutionary treasure, since you and I are not well acquainted. You look trustworthy, but that can be said of many a spy.'