The General and the Jaguar (34 page)

REVENGE AND REVIVAL

M
ORNING SUNLIGHT POURED THROUGH
the window of the hospital ward, falling on the chamber pots and sour sheets and faces of
the sleepers. Slowly the patients awakened from their drugged dreams. Jesús Paez, his black hair still smelling faintly of
kerosene and his skin raw from disinfectants, heard the birds outside the window, and for a moment his heart soared with a
twelve-year-old’s exuberance. Then the terrible knowledge that nagged at him even in his deepest sleep rushed in: his left
leg had been amputated, foot, ankle, calf, knee, and most of his thigh lopped off by a surgeon’s saw while he lay etherized
on the operating table.

For nearly a week after the Columbus raid, Jesús had languished in the hospital tent with the other wounded Villistas. Two
men taken on the battlefield had already died of their wounds. On the fifteenth and sixteenth of March, Jesús and four others
were transported to the jail in the basement of the Deming courthouse. Jesús’s femur had been fractured by the impact of the
bullet and his wound had become badly infected. He was taken to Ladies Hospital, where the leg was amputated. For days, before
and after the operation, he had lingered in a feverish state of near death, but he was young and strong and the danger eventually
passed. When word of his miraculous recovery got out, newspaper correspondents came to interview him. He propped himself up
in bed and his obsidian eyes filled with tears as he talked about his father, Emilio. During the raid, Jesús said, he had
remained with the rear guard, holding his father’s horse. When his father did not return with the others, Jesús had gone to
look for him. A bullet struck him in the left thigh, shattering the bone, and he fell to the ground in excruciating pain.
“Yo soy un buen muchacho”
—“I am a good boy,” he screamed as a cavalryman approached him.

The correspondents soon dubbed Jesús the
“buen muchacho”
and the “baby bandit” and the people of Deming brought him crayons and notepads and coins, which went into a small piggy
bank next to his bed. But Jesús, it seemed, was not the docile creature that the newspapers made him out to be. When his guests
departed, he hounded Mrs. Emma Duff, the hospital matron. Wrote a Deming resident:

The Mexican boy who belongs to the bandits and who was taken prisoner and brought here to the hospital severely wounded, is
proving a terror for poor Mrs. Duff to manage. The foolish people here insisted upon making a young hero of him and rushed
to see him in perfect squads, carrying all sorts of delicacies to him and other gifts. He is only 12 years old, or so they
say, but is a hardened young tough and has become dreadfully spoiled. He has been treated with the care and kindness of a
valuable young prince and he has not the gratitude of a buzzard. Mrs. Duff says he would shoot her in the back if he only
had the chance. In addition, a Mexican priest, who made his appearance here only after the raid, visits him seven or eight
times a day and the boy has become more and more unmanageable under this man’s ministrations, who talks to him in Spanish.
Mrs. Duff is convinced he is no priest but a spy, and thinks the authorities ought to take some steps about it, but it seems
no one feels authorized to do anything. The boy calls constantly for cigarettes and a stiff drink of whiskey and Mrs. D. at
any hour in the night must get up and answer his bell, give him the cigarette and then stay until he finishes it lest he burn
something with it. If she refuses him, he raises a yell that lifts the roof and alarms every patient in the hospital. His
leg had to be amputated at the hip and I suppose that and his apparent youth make people pity him. Poor Mrs. D. is almost
crazy with the trouble of him.

Jesús’s story was filled with inconsistencies. In one interview, he said his father had been forced to join the column. In
another, he boasted that his father was a Dorado and paymaster in Villa’s army. Yet Villa would hardly have made a forced
conscript a member of his Dorados much less entrusted him with money for his troops. Years later, one of the Villistas who
participated in the attack said Jesús was not a member of their band at all but lived on the east side of Columbus with other
poor Mexican families and was accidentally shot by the Americans as he fled from his house.
“De una de esas casas salió corriendo y gritando que no tiraran, un paisano y, luego, un chamaco lo siguió.”
—“From one of these houses, a peasant and later, a kid, came running and screaming not to shoot.”

Civil authorities in Deming had been eager to try someone for the atrocities committed in Columbus, but by March 23, three
more raiders had died, leaving only Jesús and Juan Sánchez, sixteen, still alive. Since they were mere boys, it would be difficult
to hold them solely responsible for the brutal murders. Still, the desire for vengeance was strong and someone should have
to pay. But who?

The answer came on April 11, when a second group of wounded Villistas was brought up from El Valle to Columbus. No formal
extradition process was followed, nor was the de facto government consulted before the men were removed from Mexico. An army
document simply states that six men were being transferred on orders of the chief of staff of the Punitive Expedition. All
of them had been left behind as Villa retreated south and were suffering from badly infected gunshot wounds. The most severely
injured were José Rangel, who had bullet wounds in both legs and couldn’t walk, and Francisco Álvarez, whose handsome features
had been ruined by a bullet that had penetrated his cheek and mouth. They were dressed in filthy rags and a medical officer
with the expedition had difficulty getting them to take the gasoline baths that were supposed to rid them of vermin. “The
Mexicans knew enough of gasoline to fear it, and after the Columbus raid some bodies of Mexicans were burned in the vicinity.
They wailed and begged and dragged back from the gasoline, in scarcely intelligible Spanish, imploring the army men not to
burn them alive,” a correspondent wrote.

Upon arriving in Columbus, the six men were taken to a hospital tent where an army nurse named Lurid Fillmore watched over
them. While they lay on their army cots, a parade of citizens and law-enforcement officials trooped in to question them. The
prisoners answered the questions freely without having the benefit of an attorney or anyone else to represent them. A few
days later, those same officials were called as witnesses before a Luna County grand jury. The men related what they had learned
from the prisoners in the hospital tent and the information was sufficient for the grand jury to hand up a raft of criminal
indictments. All six Mexicans were indicted on two counts of first-degree murder each in the deaths of James Dean, John Moore,
Charles DeWitt Miller, and Corporal Paul Simon, the soldier who played clarinet in the band.

In a separate group of indictments, Juan Sánchez, Jesús Paez, and Pablo Sánchez, the man who was arrested on suspicion of
being a spy, were charged with the same murders. Although the evidence was flimsy, Pablo Sánchez was also charged with being
an accessory before the fact in the murder of Charles DeWitt Miller. Finally, the grand jury indicted Pancho Villa himself
for the murders of James Dean, John Moore, and Charles DeWitt Miller. (He was not indicted for the murder of the soldier,
possibly in an effort to avoid military complications.)

As soon as the indictments were handed up, arrest warrants were issued and the six wounded prisoners were taken into custody
by the sheriff of Luna County and transported to jail. The trial was set to start four days later, on April 19, before Judge
Edward Medler, a no-nonsense judge from Lincoln County who had been reassigned to the district court in Luna County that spring
by the state supreme court.

The day before the trial, Medler got a call in his hotel room from the Luna County district attorney advising him that E.
B. Stone of the Bureau of Investigation wanted to confer with him about the case. Stone was the federal agent who interviewed
many of the prisoners and the two hostages, Maud Wright and Edwin Spencer, immediately after the raid. Medler seemed irritated
by the request and two years later, in a letter to Senator Fall, he noted with some satisfaction that Stone was serving time
in Leavenworth for soliciting a bribe from Leona Grace, a “boss madam” in El Paso. At the time, however, Stone was still a
reputable agent and Medler agreed to hear what he had to say at eight o’clock that evening in the courtroom.

At the appointed time, Stone made his appearance and said he had a statement to make from the United States attorney general,
Thomas Gregory. Stone produced three telegrams: one from Gregory, a second from General Funston, and a third from Newton Baker.
“The substance of the telegrams,” recalled Medler, “was that these various departments protested against the trial of the
Villa raiders, or the Columbus raiders, as we called them, on the ground that it would involve the United States in international
complications with Mexico.”

Medler viewed Stone’s remarks as a reflection on his court and responded testily that the Mexican prisoners had been indicted
by a properly impaneled grand jury and were in the legal custody of the sheriff of Luna County. He also explained that the
county was not in a position to cope with a postponement because a previous grand jury had found that the Luna County jail
“was unsanitary and not a proper place to confine prisoners.” Furthermore, he added, “I saw no reason why the court could
not proceed to try this case on the following morning; that General Pershing was in Mexico with his expedition trying to arrest
Francisco Villa, a co-defendant named in this indictment; and that if the trial of these raiders would involve the United
States in international complications, to my mind it would seem that the United States was already involved. In other words,
I practically told him there would be no ‘watchful waiting’ around my court.”

When Medler had finished, agent Stone asked the judge if he would be willing to talk with Summers Burkhart, the U.S. attorney
in Albuquerque. The judge agreed and they reached him by telephone. “I had known Mr. Burkhart for quite a number of years
and easily recognized his voice. Mr. Burkhart, when he found I was on the telephone, advised me he had received instructions
from the Attorney General to go to Deming and protest against the trial of these Villistas.”

“Upon what grounds?” barked Medler.

“Upon the ground that you will not give them a fair trial.”

Medler considered the remark to be in contempt of court and informed Burkhart he had until ten o’clock the following morning
to repeat his statement in open court. “He [Burkhart] then apologized, stating he did not intend to make any reflections upon
the court, but stated that the public feeling was such that he did not feel the defendants would get a fair trial. I assured
him that as far as I had anything to do with it as judge of the court that they would have a fair trial.”

The following morning, April 19, the six Villistas filed into a courtroom on the second floor of the Luna County courthouse.
The room was large and spacious, with an embossed-tin ceiling and tall arching windows. The judge sat behind a wooden bench,
which still had the old territorial seal of New Mexico carved upon it. To the left of him were the jury box and witness stand,
made from the same wood. The Villistas were clad in jeans and blue shirts that were buttoned up to their necks. Their heads
had been shaved, making them appear very young. The county physician reported to Medler that the six men could handle the
rigors of a trial, but in fact, only two of the raiders could stand when the indictments were read aloud.

E. B. Stone took a seat in the audience, which was crowded with female spectators. J. S. Vaught, the assistant district attorney
for Luna County, was the lead prosecutor. Buel Wood, an attorney from Carrizozo, New Mexico, represented the Villistas. He
would have had a hard time mounting a vigorous defense; he had been appointed to the case only the day before the trial began.

Twelve potential jurors, all men with Anglo-sounding names, filed into the jury box. Prosecutor Vaught asked them a brief
series of questions about their ages and occupations, where they lived, how much they knew about the case, and their feelings
toward the death penalty. One was excused when he said he would not sentence anyone to death.

Defense attorney Wood asked the group collectively to withdraw from the case if they had any prejudices. “Now, if any of you
gentlemen bear any malice against the Mexican race or if any of you gentlemen suffered in a property sense or had any of your
relatives or close friends hurt, wounded, or killed at Columbus during the raid, or if you know of any other fact connected
with the raid on Columbus that would naturally create in your mind an impression . . . I will ask you gentlemen as a matter
of your own personal conscience that you will voluntarily withdraw from the jury box when your name is called as juror.” None
of the men volunteered.

Eventually twelve jurors were seated. The panel reflected small-town America at the beginning of the twentieth century and
included a cigar dealer, a stock handler, seven farmers, a livery-stable operator, a machinist, and a man who operated an
“automobile livery” business.

J. S. Vaught delivered his opening statement, which lasted perhaps thirty seconds. The state, he told the jurors, decided
to try all six defendants for the murder of Charles De Witt Miller. Each indictment contained two counts: the first charged
that one or all of the defendants had actually fired the weapon that killed Mr. Miller, and the second alleged only that the
defendants had “aided and abetted” in the killing. Conviction on either count carried the death penalty and it was clear from
his statement that he intended to prove only the second count.

“Call your first witness,” snapped Medler.