El Paso: A Novel (35 page)

THE NEXT DAY, VILLA SELECTED A VANGUARD FOR HIS PARTY
, and a wagon train was formed for the trip to the Sierra Madre. Villa himself and a dozen bodyguards were at the head of the column. Fierro and some of the other high-ranking officers were behind. Next was a column of fifty men riding side by side, and following that were the commissary and cooking wagons. Behind them was a medical wagon with a doctor; then came Mix, ambling along on his horse beside a wagon containing the children and Señora Ollas, driven by a bored-looking peon. Following that were the ammunition wagons and a few pieces of light artillery, and bringing up the rear were the cattle.

After nightfall, at the tail end of the caravan, Johnny Ollas, with his cuadrilla and Gourd Woman, had just finished a supper of beans and cow’s liver. After they were enlisted, they had been given army rifles and ammunition, and taken to Villa’s adjutant, who, when he learned they had punched cattle, assigned them to the remainder of the herd of cattle Fierro had rustled from Valle del Sol.

“You’re not gonna believe this,” Julio said to Johnny. “Look there in the middle of the herd.” Johnny’s brother Julio was a picador in the cuadrilla.

They were standing on the side of a low hill next to a draw where the cattle could be hemmed in. Johnny gazed out over the herd and actually did a double-take. There, amid the steers, he saw a pair of big horns and a huge hump on a reddish-colored fighting bull.

“It’s Casa Grande,” Johnny replied.

It was unmistakable. Casa Grande was a grandson of the late Toro Malo, just this year turned fighting age, and further recognizable by the flash of white on his throat.

“Then they must have stolen this herd from Valle del Sol,” Johnny said. “From—”

“Yeah, from the bull pasture, too,” Julio finished the statement for him.

Johnny shrugged. “But why go into the bull pasture for cattle?” he asked, “Jesucristo, there’s cattle all over the place out there.”

“I don’t know,” Julio said, “but unless Casa Grande just got loose somehow, that’s what they did. It’s a lucky thing, too, because they must’ve taken some of our herding steers along. Lucky they’re staying with him, too.”

Julio was right about the steers. Steers kept the bulls manageable because the bull’s herding instinct takes over. But the moment it was left alone, the bull would become a killing machine, charging and goring man, horse, wagons, cars—anything that moved and some that didn’t, such as trees and houses.

“You think they don’t know he’s in there?” Johnny inquired.

“These people are weird,” Julio responded. “They do weird things.”

BOMBA HAD MANAGED TO STAY ON THE HORSE,
and even learned how to control him somewhat. He didn’t know the way to Chihuahua City, but the cattle Fierro had rustled left such a distinctive trail that Bomba had no trouble following it. After a while, however, Bomba realized there were too many tracks for them to be from the same cattle that Fierro’s band had stolen. He doubled back until he found what appeared to be fresher hoofprints and followed their trail.

He rode all morning with the single-minded purpose of bringing back the children but without the faintest notion of how to accomplish it. One thing he knew was that, dressed as he was, in jodhpurs, jacket, and English riding boots, he stood out like a sore thumb. So when he reached the banks of a stream and the horse bent down to water, Bomba dismounted and removed his shirt and jacket. Then he got down in the mud and rolled around. When it dried, he was in effect camouflaged. He kept his khaki shirt—now slung around the saddle horn—to carry his collection of throwing knives.

As late afternoon approached, Bomba noticed that at a fork in the road some cow tracks veered off east, and on a hunch he followed this trail. During the course of the morning he’d discovered his horse’s various gaits, which he compared to the gears on an automobile. He concluded that a canter was the best speed to run the horse with some hope of catching up and yet not wear the animal out. The animal also needed rest and a place to graze for food.

At last the road topped a rise and Bomba saw the stolen cattle, herded only by a handful of men. Villa’s drovers were moving slowly across a little valley marked by stands of small trees and scrub and knee-high grass. The brush stands would provide Bomba with a cover but he’d have to swing wide through woods to keep from being spotted in the open. He turned the horse and headed quickly for the trees, whose branches slapped him in the head.

When he emerged, he was abreast of the herd and screened by stands of brush. He could see the drovers plainly, especially the one riding drag, atop a horse with the fancy silver and turquoise saddle that had belonged to Señor Gonzales.

Bomba saw no signs of the children. For a while he shadowed the herders, ducking behind brush until he came up just on the other side of some blackjack pines not a stone’s throw from the rider with the horse and silver saddle he’d seen Katherine get on two days earlier.

He dismounted and tied the reins around a small pine, took three knives with him. They were as flat and balanced as the one he’d originally brought with him from Samoa. A year later, as a Christmas present, the Colonel took him to a cutlery manufacturer and, using his Samoan knife as the basis, Bomba began to design throwing knives, each for a different purpose. He wished he had them all now, but would have to make do with what he’d brought.

Bomba crept to within a few yards of the rider. He flung one of the knives, a short thick one, in a way that the hilt, not the blade, struck the rider in the back of the neck.

The man lurched forward and slumped in the fancy saddle, his fingers twitching reflexively. Bomba rushed out and pulled him to the ground. He grabbed the horse’s reins and led the animal into the brush, dragging the rider behind him by the collar of his shirt. In the quiet of the little grove, Bomba knelt over the man and pinched his cheeks to bring him around. When the man opened his eyes, Bomba put on his fiercest expression and held a blade to the soldier’s throat so it barely pierced the skin.

“Where?” he said.

“Huh? Who?”

“Children.”

Bomba struggled to make himself understood.

“Huh?”

“Where?”

Bomba pressed the knife in harder, pushing the man’s neck skin so far back it not only cut him more but was strangling him.

“Where?”

The soldier gurgled, and Bomba relieved the pressure a little so he could talk.

“They all gone ahead,” the rider said. “With the general. They just told us to bring along these beefs.”

Bomba looked into the man’s eyes. They were terrified, wild, and with good reason. He put a huge hand over the man’s mouth and plunged the knife all the way through his neck till it not only went through his Adam’s apple but ruptured the spinal cord in back. The man’s hands twitched violently before falling still.

Bomba stuck the knife into the dirt to clean it, then went to the horse stolen from Señor Gonzales and got aboard the fancy silver saddle. Even Bomba could tell this was a much better animal than the one he’d been riding. Without so much as a glance at the dead man, he continued shadowing the drovers, leaving the bay horse standing among the blackjack pines.

He began to experience a new kind exhilaration. He felt invisible, like a stick insect, among the trees and rocks and men.

THIRTY-SIX

C
olonel Shaughnessy was in high spirits. He’d driven the priceless herd nearly two hundred miles in just over three weeks, surely a record of some kind.

Along with a dozen drovers, the Colonel, Arthur, Cowboy Bob, and Ah Dong in the chuckwagon were riding out ahead of the drive when some of the horses began acting up, tossing their heads and straining at the bits. The horses, it turned out, had smelled something.

To everyone’s surprise, they soon came upon a strange desert oasis, a long rift in the parched and scrubby soil filled with azure-colored water. No trees grew here, but the flora around the lake grew luxuriously. There were ferns, and creeping vines festooned the surrounding rocks with yellow and purple flowers. The Colonel and his party led the horses down to drink. The lake was shallow and crystal-clear but there didn’t seem to be any wildlife of any sort around, except for insects on the flowers.

“I used to hear about a place like this,” said Cowboy Bob. “I mean, some big lake right out in the middle of the desert. I always thought it was just a old wives’ tale.”

“It’s limestone,” Arthur said, studying the rock. “Must be a spring or artesian well somewhere.” He got off his horse and went to the water’s edge and scooped up a handful.

“Gosh, it’s cold. It’s like ice,” Arthur continued. He started to take a swallow, then flung the water on the ground. “It’s not sulfurous, but it but it tastes sort of like dishwater.”

“Glad you took it on yourself to check that out,” Cowboy Bob said. “Rumor was this here water is deadly poison.”

“What!” Arthur exclaimed.

“Just kidding,” Bob said. “Matter of fact, I think I might just jump in and wash some a this desert off me before they get the herd turned this way and foul the water all up. This’ll likely be the last water them cows drink before we get to El Paso.” He got down and began stripping his clothes off. A number of riders joined him.

“Ah Dong,” said the Colonel, “this place looks like a good spot to have lunch, huh?”

The cook nodded, and with his mess boys began unloading gear. Arthur went walking along the lake, hunting for butterflies in the flowers. He didn’t have a net but saw some interesting-looking specimens, in fact some he’d never even read about before. It took his mind off the pressing problems. Here was an opportunity, Arthur hoped—maybe he’d even find an entirely new type of species.

Arthur was a hundred or so yards away from the Colonel’s party, and frustrated because he couldn’t catch any of the butterflies without a net. They would let him come right up and then flit away. After a while he gave up and began walking back, when he came across what seemed to be an old rusting piece of metal, half buried in the sand.

He nudged it with his foot, then bent over and worked it loose. The metal was queerly shaped and some of it rusted away entirely. Then he saw what seemed to be a helmet lying in the same hole he’d made when he worked the first piece loose. He picked it up and examined what certainly looked, for all its wear and tear, like one of those old armored helmets the conquistadores wore. Quickly he went back to the other object. Now he saw that it looked something like a breastplate—at least half a breastplate. He was stunned. A party of the conquistadores must have come this way, found this lake . . . three, four hundred years ago—and here in his hands was historical evidence. He took the relic back and threw it in Ah Dong’s chuckwagon, thinking when it got shined up it would look good on his office wall.

THE COLONEL WAS WELL PLEASED
with the progress of the drive. They had not lost many of the herd and he felt confident that not only would the railroad be running by the time they crossed the border, but Pancho Villa and his band would be long gone from Chihuahua City and the environs of Valle del Sol.

It was a fine compliment to the drovers that they kept the drive headed north toward El Paso. Though the herd was still two days out, the residents of the city were astonished to see the gigantic cloud of dust it raised, coming toward them, and mistook it for a great desert sandstorm.

THIRTY-SEVEN

T
he news of Villa’s defeat at the Battle of Chihuahua City had been on everyone’s tongue when the Colonel and his party arrived in El Paso. It began as a good day. The herd, in spite of setbacks from the hail and lightning storm and attrition from thirst and weakness, survived mostly intact, though a good bit lighter in weight. Problem was, what to do with them. There were now ten times as many cattle in El Paso as there were citizens. The Colonel had spent the day handling the enormous logistics of arranging for the cows to be put on railcars bound for the Chicago slaughterhouses.

Meanwhile, time and again Cowboy Bob had proved a godsend. He spent his time arranging for places to keep the cattle while they awaited final disposition, which was no small task, since nobody around El Paso kept enough fodder for a herd like this and the largest single source of water available to them was the Rio Grande—which residents swam in, washed in, and drank from as it flowed through town. But Bob knew cattle and he knew El Paso, so he parceled out the herd by sections, spreading the Colonel’s money around the countryside leasing land, and in the process making himself a very popular fellow.