El Paso: A Novel (24 page)

BY MIDAFTERNOON NEXT DAY
, the Colonel’s party reached Valle Del Sol.

“My word,” the Colonel exuberated as they topped a rise, “it’s as magnificent as ever!” Under a cloudless cobalt sky, the valley was ringed by low mountains and foothills covered with dense green pines, while the vast snow-capped Sierra Madre rose imposingly in the faraway distance. Tall green grasses waved in the breeze, and the plains and hillsides were dotted with tens of thousands of cattle. Occasionally, men on horseback would be seen riding among them. At the head of the valley was the ranch, its reddish adobe buildings set amid a copse of trees. An enormous pear orchard lined both sides of the road, and as the Colonel’s motorcade wound its way toward the hacienda a red-tailed hawk soared, looking for prey.

TWENTY-FOUR

A
mbrose Bierce had been with Pancho Villa’s army for a week when John Reed arrived.

Just as Cowboy Bob predicted, the train tracks were repaired to Chihuahua City after a few days and, after crossing the river and loading their horses on boxcars, the party proceeded in that direction by rail. Bob contacted an old Mexican who he knew had been close to Villa in the past, and was given instructions on how to reach the general’s encampment in a maze of foothills about thirty miles from the city.

And, again just as Bob predicted, Bierce’s gift of the lovely little derringer broke whatever ice there might have been.

To everyone’s relief, Villa was a delightful host to “Señor Jack Robinson,” who billed himself as a former military officer in the American Civil War, saying he had merely come to observe the fighting.

Bierce expressed surprise that the ambushers had not also closed off the line of retreat for the Federales, thus catching them not only in a crossfire, but bottling them up front and rear as well. This observation impressed Villa to the extent that he sent a messenger down to order the thing done, and when the Federal horsemen eventually arrived they were cut down almost to a man. It was the first fighting Ambrose Bierce had seen in fifty years but the old rush of excitement welled up in him immediately, just as it had on the battlefields of Chickamauga and Shiloh.

“That was as near-perfect a butchery as I have ever witnessed,” Bierce commented as Villa’s infantrymen began working their way through the fallen Federales, going through their pockets and dispatching any still living with a bullet to the head.

“Thanks in many ways to you,” Villa told him. “I’m gonna haul up that young lieutenant down there just as soon as he comes back and let him have it,” he said with a laugh. “Imagine, having to be instructed in the setting of an ambush by a man who hasn’t seen a battle in half a century!”

“It comes back to you,” Bierce replied. “Of course, those machine guns of yours made all the difference.”

“They’re something,” said the general.

“In my day it would have taken a regiment to put out that rate of fire,” the old man said.

“It’s made killing a lot easier, but we need more of them. They are always breaking down and it’s hard to find spare parts.”

“Must be harder since my country closed down the border,” Bierce said tentatively.

“That’s damn true, Señor Robinson,” said the general, “but we got other ways. That war they’re fighting over in Europe, they got more machine guns than they know what to do with.”

“Who from? The English, the French?”

“No, the Germans,” Villa said. “English and French wouldn’t sell us a cupful of warm spit. But the Germans are trying to be friendly. We’ll see.”

A few days later, Bierce, Villa, and half a dozen of the general’s staff including Santo—“the Saint”—and Fierro—the butcher—were sitting around a campfire on some empty ammunition crates when John Reed arrived. They were watching Tom Mix do some fancy pistol-twirling he had taught himself out of boredom on the range back in Arizona.

“Chief,” said the young officer escorting Reed, “this guy says he wants to see you. He’s a gringo newspaperman from New York, he says. All the credentials he’s got come from this note he carries. It’s from that stinking Federale Orozco.” The officer extended to Villa a wadded piece of telegraph paper, but Villa waved him off.

“No, no—what does it say? You read it.” Reading, even in Spanish, was not one of Villa’s strong points.

“Yes, General,” the officer began. “It says: ‘Dear Esteemed and Honored Señor Reed. If you set foot inside of Chihuahua, I will stand you sideways against a wall, and with my own hand take great pleasure in shooting furrows in your back.’”

Villa looked puzzled for a moment, then burst out in laughter. “If you are Señor Reed, I’d say you must’ve done something to make General Orozco very unhappy.”

“All I did, sir,” Reed replied, “was to politely ask his permission to enter Mexico to see you.”

“That would have been enough,” Villa responded, “but it’s not his permission to give, anyway. It’s mine. So why are you here and not against the wall?”

“Well,” Reed answered, “I’m not sure about that, either, except that I went ahead and waded across the river and I saw General Mercado, who apparently hates General Orozco, and he told me if I minded my business it was all right to stay in Juárez.”

“General Orozco is now in Juárez?” Villa inquired. “Commanding the Federales?”

“He was when I was there.”

“With his army?”

“As far as I know. He had arrived recently.”

Villa pondered this information for a few moments, stroking his chin. “Then tell me, Señor Reed,” he said finally, “what brought you here?”

“Well, sir, for a few days I stayed in Juárez, until they repaired the rail tracks, and then I took the train to Chihuahua and somebody told me in a sort of general way of your whereabouts, and I started out, and when I got to the beginning of the mountains these gentlemen accosted me.”

“And you are not harmed?”

“No, sir, your people were very proper. Except that they took all my money and my press credentials.”

Villa scowled at this revelation. “You give him those back,” the general told the young officer.

“We were only holding it for him, Chief, in safekeeping,” the escort said sheepishly.

“It will be a lot safer with him than with you,” the general replied. The man did as he was told.

“And what newspaper are you with?” Villa asked Reed.

“Sir, the
New York World
. I am sent to write about the war.”

“And whose side is the
New York World
on?”

“Nobody’s,” said Reed. “The
New York World
reports the news as it is.”

“Well, Señor Reed,” Villa said, “we will see. So what exactly do you want?”

“To write stories,” Reed replied, “about you, and your revolution.”

TWENTY-FIVE

R
osalita Callahan rushed into the courtyard at Valle del Sol the instant she saw Colonel Shaughnessy step out of the car, bursting into tears as she fell into his arms. She poured out the news of her husband’s murder and the pillaging. Shocked by the revelations, the Colonel felt compelled to make a speech and held his arms up for silence. The ranch workers gathered around with anxious eyes. Most of them had seen the terrible scene that Pancho Villa had caused. They had always felt safe with the Americans at Valle del Sol, because neither side in the war wanted to disturb the Americans—until Pancho Villa broke the rule.

“I know there has been evil done and many of you might remain worried,” the Colonel declared. “Fear no more. I am here.” As this was being translated to those who understood no English, the Colonel continued. “Now, I am terribly saddened by the death of Buck Callahan. He was my friend. And also about the injuries to some of the rest of you. I understand there’s been a kidnapping as well. All I can say is, give me some time to get settled and I promise you we will sort things out.”

At this there was a chorus of approving voices and nods, and the Shaughnessy family was escorted to their quarters. Bomba supervised the unloading of the baggage with his uncanny way of communicating with people whose tongue he did not speak—a firm series of grunts and gestures that seemed to constitute an international language all its own.

WITH THE COLONEL’S APPEARANCE,
normality seemed to return to Valle del Sol. That evening they dined on fresh calf’s liver smothered with peppers, tomatoes and onions, salsaed corn and rice, and a rich wine from the small vineyard on the ranch. In the hours before darkness Timmy and Katherine had been given a guided tour on buckboard around the hacienda, where they visited the horse-breeding pastures, fighting-bull pens, vegetable fields, orchards, stables, barns, streams, and glades. This was conducted by Rodriguez, Buck Callahan’s former assistant foreman, now promoted to Callahan’s old position, who entertained the children with lavish stories of life at the ranch.

Next morning, the Colonel began assessing the damage. More than five hundred head of cattle had been driven off by Villa’s men in the raid. What was more, Villa had left behind a party who continued to rustle the ranch daily—or rather, nightly—and because of the size of the property there was little anyone could do about it.

“I won’t put up with it!” declared Colonel Shaughnessy. “At this rate they’ll bankrupt us. We’re American citizens and deserve protection. If the Mexican government won’t do it, the United States government should.”

With this pronouncement ringing in the air, he sat down at a desk and began scribbling out telegrams to President Wilson, Secretary of State Bryan, the secretary of the army, and the American ambassador to Mexico, with copies to the other big American landholders in Mexico. Next he rang the telephone operator and told her to place a call to the White House in Washington and ring him back when she got them. When he finished, the Colonel called for a rider to take the telegrams to the wire office in Torreón and rose from his chair.

“C’mon, Arthur,” he said, “let’s have a look around.”

The two of them rode alone in the cooling evening along the roads beside the fields of cattle and produce.

“That young Johnny Ollas is a fool,” said the Colonel. “Can you imagine somebody going after a man like Villa with four men? I only hope he escapes with his life. He’s a good boy—would have made a good matador, too, maybe.”

“Well, he might come out all right.”

“I don’t know,” the Colonel replied. “He’s hotheaded like all these Mexicans.”

They topped the rise of a hill and spread out before them was a sight that almost took Arthur’s breath away. Across the horizon stretched thousands upon thousands of cattle, silhouetted against a blood-red setting sun. There was very little movement among them; it was almost as if he were looking at a cyclorama. They reined in their horses to take in the view.

“Poor ol’ Buck Callahan,” the Colonel said finally. “He didn’t deserve what happened to him.”

“Senseless,” Arthur said. “A damned depraved act.”

“One time,” the Colonel went on, “Old Man Swift telegraphed Buck Callahan from Chicago saying that his company needed to buy forty-five thousand head of cattle and could we supply them. Know what Buck did?”

“Umm,” Arthur said, shaking his head.

“Wired him back: ‘
We can supply. What color do you want?’
” The Colonel chuckled, then burst out laughing. “What color . . . !”

Arthur had to laugh, too. That was the exactly the kind of story the Colonel loved; the power, the sheer arrogance of it.

TWENTY-SIX

W
ith the long-distance telephone lines temporarily repaired, at three in the afternoon the Valle del Sol telephone rang for the first time in nearly a month. It was answered by Señora Pardenas, who had been dusting paintings in the hallway and who let it ring nearly ten times, hoping that somebody else might pick it up.

“
Bueno?
” the señora said softly into the receiver.

“This is the White House calling,” said the voice at the other end. “We are trying to reach Colonel Shaughnessy.”

“The Colonel, he taking his siesta,” Señora Pardenas replied.