TOM MIX AND PANCHO VILLA: A Novel of Mexico and the Texas border (80 page)

“I can’t see,” he whispered.

The bullet had struck up through his cheek, destroying his good eye. He was blind, and he was dying. He would never grow fat, never own his restaurant, never see his sons become lawyers.

The rain pelted down. “You’ll be all right,” I said. Oh God!

I clenched my fists and took deep shuddering breaths.

I hadn’t seen Julio die, and so it was unreal to me. But Candelario made up for that. I didn’t care anymore that death came to us all. Those were words. He had been my brother. We had counted gold, been shot at in the Morelos Theater, blown up the railroad, found both our names inscribed in Parral. Images spun through my mind. The trenches of Celaya, where he had saved my life, a lobby in the Station Hotel. I cared that the best were gone, the worst survived.

“Hombre,” he
whispered. “Go. Leave me in peace.”

I thought I would have to shoot him the way I would shoot a crippled horse. But he was considerate, even at the end. A little rattle came from his throat. Through the blood I couldn’t see his eyes glaze, but I felt him stiffen, then go slack. I was gripping his shoulders in the rain when he died.

Fierro’s calm voice seemed to come from a distance. “They’re not far behind,” he said. “Leave him now.”

The rain eased. Hard gashes of sunlight swooped down to stain the desert, so that the shadows of the horses flowed like a moving stream. Sunset bled over the land, turning the desert crimson. Then the wound closed, and night fell like death.

“Still ride in triumph

over all mischance.”

from THE SCHOOLTEACHER’S JOURNAL

Chihuahua

June 17, 1916

The lieutenant positioned us perfectly and made only one mistake: he let me keep my rifle. It was sheer good luck that the Villistas had ridden into the foothills, but they must have had a destination south of Casas Grandes and this was their only route.

They came in single file, silently, three riders ahead and the rest bunched behind, faces in black shadow under their sombreros. When they were less than a half-mile distant, Patton, squeezed down between two boulders, worked goggles over his nose and reached for his field glasses. The desert light was so strong that the horses seemed to swim legless on a rippling sea of white water.

“I can see Mix,” he murmured, “but where’s Villa?
Damn!
The man out in front looks like Cervantes. How are your eyes, Miguel?”

His were watering and red-lidded from losing a night’s sleep. I took the glasses from him and adjusted the focus. I watched the dark faces drawing closer, lacking expressions, mouths clamped tight under their mustaches against the dust. He was right: I didn’t see Pancho Villa. But I knew the man behind Mix. That smooth face and those almond eyes had haunted my dreams.

“Third in the column, Lieutenant, is Colonel Fierro. The one who shot the prisoners in Torreón.”

He grunted impatiently. “Yes, but do you see Villa?”

“He’s not with them. He would lead.”

“Hold your fire,” Patton called calmly to his men. “Let them pass. Be silent.”

Our horses were tethered behind the cliff. Hardly a breeze blew. The riders were a hundred yards away now. The shuffle of hoofs in the dust reached our ears … the creak of saddle leather, the click of iron on loose shale. Somewhere a rock fell, dislodged by a trooper seeking better cover. Mix yelled, then spurred his horse.

Patton would have let them go. He wanted them to lead him to Pancho Villa. But that meant nothing to me. Whatever promises I had made about Mix, I had made none about Rodolfo Fierro. Mix had only been his instrument, I knew that now, but for Fierro I felt an engulfing hatred. To have him in the sights of my rifle and to let him go would have mocked my vows, my brother’s memory, the deepest purpose of my life. A red haze rose before me. I pulled the trigger of my rifle.

“Damn you, Bosques!” Patton cried.

Alive, unharmed, for my shot had missed him, Fierro spurred his horse quickly after Mix, over the rocky scarp toward the desert.

The troopers took my shot as a signal; they began firing. Cervantes swung his rifle toward us. The rest of the Villistas tried to turn their horses, to bolt back down the trail. A trooper to my left, clutching a bloody chest, dropped his Springfield …

When it was over, Lieutenant Patton climbed to the escarpment, peering through his field glasses.

If you do anything foolish, I don’t want to know about it. But if you can find Villa . .
.

Perhaps Pershing’s words came back to him then. Perhaps he remembered his Confederate grandfather, who had hesitated at the gates of Washington, D.C.
He didn’t have the military mind in its highest form of development, because he was swayed by ideas of right and wrong..

His face warped with anger. He lowered the glasses, clenching his fist so tightly that the knuckles showed white. Then he plunged down the cliff, sliding on shale, shouting orders to his sergeant. He was to lash the three bodies on pack mules and take the prisoners to Casas Grandes.

“Go back to General Pershing,” Patton said. “Tell him I may find Villa. Tell him I’ve taken only my striker.”

The lieutenant and I mounted our horses and galloped over the escarpment. With the field glasses we could see faint puffs of dust far to the south on the desert. After a while it began to rain.

“But, since I am a dog,

beware my fangs.”

The second day out from Ascensión, when we mounted into the sierra, I hung over the lip of rock for a long, thoughtful look at the two men who had followed us across the desert. Patton was easy to recognize. After half a minute I knew that the other fellow had to be Miguel Bosques.

The earth was wet from the rains, and we couldn’t hide our tracks. That afternoon, north of Bachinava, it rained again—a gully washer with rolling clouds, ropes of white lightning, gusting wind and earsplitting thunderclaps. To add to my troubles, the thunder spooked Maximilian. He shied off the trail and threw a shoe against an outcrop of rock; it was from a hind hoof, and in the high country he couldn’t do without it. I had a spare pair, but I didn’t carry any anvil and bellows and I had to plate him cold right there on the mountain trail.

I had begun to sort some things out in my mind, and when I stopped work for a minute I turned to Rodolfo, who sat cross-legged in the mud, massaging his bad ankle.

“We’ll split up now,” I said. “I’m going south. You can pick any direction you like, but you can’t go to San Juan Bautista.”

He hadn’t known my plans. He hadn’t been at Los Flores. “Where are you going?” he asked, surprised.

“Parral.”

“Francisco Villa is at San Juan Bautista.”

“I know where he is. And if you go there, you’ll lead this damned lieutenant right to him. That’s why he’s following us.”

“I won’t lead him anywhere that I don’t want to,” Fierro said. “Tomorrow, or when it pleases me. I’ll kill him.”

I should have known. He would pick the time and place, just as he had once said he would do it with me.

“Listen, Rodolfo. Clear the potatoes out of your ears and hear me well. This Lieutenant Patton may want me dead, but I don’t mean to return the favor. I want to lose him, not kill him.”

That wasn’t easy to say, but that was the only way I could live. No more killing, I had decided. Patton had killed Julio and Candelario, two men I loved, but he was a soldier and for him they had been the enemy. I might hate him for it, but I didn’t lust for revenge like Bosques. I needed to get off the wheel.

I shoved Maximilian against a boulder and leaned on him hard, so that his weight shifted. Lifting the hind leg, I ran a hand down to the hock, then jammed it between my teeth and hammered the shoe home. Maximilian snorted. The hoof was tender.

Fierro considered for a while. Then he spoke in a maddeningly gentle way. I would rather he had snapped or spat, but then he wouldn’t have been Rodolfo Fierro.

“Tomás,” he said, “I’ve known you a long time now. Once I threatened to kill you, and I would have done so if the chief had not stopped me. But you threw your rope to me at Ascensión. The others would have let me die, but not you. I confess that puzzled me for a while. Finally I accepted it, and understood. I consider you my friend.”

His friend?
Maybe the only one he had, other than Pancho Villa. But he was wrong, terribly wrong. I would rather have been friends with a scorpion.

“No,” I said quietly. “I despise you.”

“Why?” he asked, genuinely puzzled. “You’ve killed unarmed men. You’re not squeamish anymore. You shot Dozal, then Urbina. And others. You never even knew their names.”

With the claw of the hammer I twisted off the point behind the shoe and then hammered the nails into the crease. I lowered Maximilian’s leg. Testing the hoof in the mud, he nickered agreeably. There had been no devilment.

“I had reason,” I told Fierro. “And I never enjoyed it, like you.”

“But it has to be done. These men following us are our enemies—even more so than Urbina. And they want to kill you, as much as Dozal did. I understand your feelings—one of them is a gringo. So I’ll do it. I’ve already chosen the place. It’s the same as in Torreón. You don’t even have to load my pistols. You have only to not interfere.”

He clambered awkwardly to his feet and limped toward his horse. “No, whatever you do,” he said, over his shoulder, “don’t interfere. That would be a mistake.”

I went about my business of stowing the rasp and clinching hammer in my saddlebags. I knew how dedicated he was to the short life and the quick death, and he wouldn’t change his mind. No more killing, I had said. But I had forgotten about Rodolfo Fierro.

We rode higher into the mountains, making camp at dark. We couldn’t build a fire, but the night wasn’t cold and I was comfortable under my blanket. Fierro stood guard for a few hours while I slept, and then he woke me. I squatted a few yards away with my back against a juniper tree. When he finally began to snore, I stood and peered down at him. A few raindrops from the leaves fell on my neck. I slid my Colt softly out of its holster.

Candelario and Julio were dead. Why should Fierro live?

The best were gone, the worst survived.

He was on his back, hands on top of his saddle blanket. I leveled the gun and held it pointed at the middle of his chest. A rising moon offered enough light. His death would have passed from my mind like the shadow of a buzzard flitting across the sand. No one would mourn him. Patton and Bosques would live. I would have paid one debt that I had owed ever since Torreón.

I holstered the pistol and walked among the juniper trees, listening to the soughing of the night wind and the patter of drops. The shapes of Maximilian and the buckskin, side by side, bulked from between the trees. There was no one near.

I hadn’t been able to do it in the dark, while he slept. Candelario had been right the first time, in that Juárez cantina. I was a
pendejo.

I stayed with Fierro. If I had left him alone there would have been nothing to stop him from bushwhacking Patton and Bosques anywhere he chose. Why did I care? I suppose, despite everything that Patton had done, I respected him. He lived and fought like a soldier. I could damn his soul to hell a hundred times, but I could never blame him for lining up the sights of his rifle on the men who had been my best friends. To him they were enemies; he couldn’t help that.

As for Bosques, he was a man for whom I felt more than a measure of responsibility. I hadn’t been able to save his life at Torreón, and I had come to regret it. Perhaps I could make up for that now.

But even beyond that, I couldn’t let go, the way a man who’s played in a big poker game until nearly the end can’t get up and leave just as the stakes are raised to life and death and the cards come flicking across the table. I couldn’t turn my back. I wanted to play the final hand.

They found us north of San Juan Bautista in the ghost town of Las Palomas. In the sunny afternoon as we trotted into that eerie landscape of ruined buildings and abandoned mine shafts, Fierro reined up and swung lightly off his horse.

The region was one of rolling hills with scrub that had started to green in the summer rains. It was one of the few places where the old Spaniards hadn’t bled the land dry. Thirty years ago Las Palomas had been a thriving city of twenty thousand souls. The gold and silver mines tapped out first, then the cobalt and zinc. The soil was too dusty to grow anything except dwarf maize, so the people went too. It was as if the bones of a city had been scoured clean by buzzards and coyotes, or been bombarded for a month by a thousand cannon. There were cobbled streets, dusty roads, an abandoned plaza and the walls of fine stone houses, dazzling white in the sun—but no one lived there except the lizards. Windows, like blinded eyes, gaped on all sides of roofless ruins with jagged walls. The walls were held together by creepers that had grown from the dust to support the stones. The mountain wind sighed among piles of rock.

“I know this place,” Fierro said. “Pancho and I hid here ten years ago with Urbina. The mine shafts go into the hills, not straight down, as you would think, but level. They wind back for a mile. When you turn a corner, it’s pitch-dark. Black as you’ve never known black to be. Come along, Tomás. I’ll show you something.”

He seemed to have no worry that Patton and Bosques would arrive before he was ready.

“See? It looks like a castle. It belonged to Luis Terrazas.”

We were on a dirt road at the outskirts of the town, where the wrecks of houses were larger and more scattered. He was pointing at a brown turret a hundred yards away, with a battlemented walkway. To our right was the great hole of a mine shaft, an oval black patch against an alkaline hill, leading back to an inky darkness.

Fierro dismounted, looping the buckskin’s reins around the branch of a mesquite tree in front of the mine shaft. The horses had grazed during the night, in the sierra. I swung off Maximilian and tied him to the other side of the mesquite, unbuckled the cinch, hauled the saddle off his back and laid it on the ground. I didn’t believe that we would have to hightail it out of here. We would either go at leisure, or not at all. Following Fierro, I jumped down into the sloping cut shaded by the castle. Across the road stood a single two-story house with four windows on each side. Blue sky shone through every window. A ruined stone staircase led up from the earth, then ended in space—a bizarre comment on human effort.