El Paso: A Novel (48 page)

THAT NIGHT THEY CAMPED NEAR THE RIM OF A CANYON
where they’d come onto a stream of fresh water cascading over the edge. The Rarámuri Indians had returned with news and a strange cargo.

The news was that Villa had indeed descended into the canyons and was about two days away, moving north. The strange cargo was the treasure seekers. The Colonel wanted to know from the Indians if there was some way to get ahead of Villa and come down on his flank or front, but since communication was limited, the best Slim could get out of them was that they didn’t think so. The gold seekers were affable enough, and repeated their story about the lost mine of El Dorado.

“Yeah, I know about that,” Slim said. “I looked for it myself for years. I think it’s an old wives’ tale. Somehow them things get started . . .”

“We saw a lot of the country, anyway,” said the leader dejectedly.

The main thing everybody wanted to know, of course, was whether they had seen Villa and what about the children, but the leader claimed he hadn’t seen Villa and nothing would shake him from his story. Arthur, for one, did not believe him. There was something in the offhand way he said it that made Arthur think he was lying. He tried playing on the man’s humanity, telling him how frightened he was for the children’s lives; that they only wanted to reach Villa to pay him ransom. But the adventurer stuck to his story.

However, that night after dinner one of the others, a man named Moss, took Arthur aside.

“Look,” he said, “we seen Villa, all right, but we didn’t see no kids. He told us there’d be serious consequences if we told anybody we’d seen him. You could tell the man meant business and we just want to get out of here alive.”

Arthur was appreciative and believed Moss when he said he hadn’t seen the kids. After all, these people had only been there one night, and Villa had a big caravan. Nevertheless, he walked with Moss into a copse of trees and pumped him for information: How many men did Villa have with him? What kind of armaments? Machine guns? Cannon? Food supplies? Any hint of his intentions?

Moss did not have the answers to most of the questions. Near as he could recall, Villa had maybe fifty to a hundred men and a couple of small cannons. He hadn’t seen any big artillery pieces, but there had been a wagon they passed by next morning that looked like it contained machine guns. He had plenty of food, too—a small herd of cattle brought up the rear—and spirits seemed high.

Arthur thanked Moss and went back to camp, where he called his father aside and gave him the information. This was useful stuff, good or bad, and the Colonel absorbed it and told Arthur to get some rest. They were striking out early the next day, and the Colonel himself was preparing to bed down when Strucker approached him.

“Do you remember when we talked about me going to Villa,” Strucker began, “back as we were entering the mountains . . . ?”

“Yes, when that damn storm hit us,” the Colonel said.

“Correct,” replied the German. “And I said to you that if I could somehow get to Villa, he might accept me as a disinterested party. After all, I’m German and, frankly, we’ve been trying to establish good relations with the Mexicans.”

“Are you on some kind of diplomatic mission?’ Shaughnessy asked.

“
Gott
, no!” Strucker said. “It’s just that I think I might be useful. You might find it difficult to subdue a military organization of Villa’s strength, and my thought was that perhaps I could negotiate with him over the ransom, if that was what you had in mind.”

“I did not have that in mind,” Shaughnessy replied flatly, not wishing to go into the matter.

“Then in that case,” the German said, “the plan I mentioned to you earlier might be useful—to persuade Villa to attack the United States and—”

“Wait a minute,” Shaughnessy interrupted. “Are you suggesting that I get the Mexicans to start a war with my country?” The more he’d thought about it afterward, the more Strucker’s notion seemed preposterous.

“No—not exactly—and yes, in a manner of speaking. As I told you, my notion was to convince Villa that if he attacked the United States somewhere along the border, your government would be compelled to send troops into Mexico, would they not?”

“Yes, I imagine so,” Shaughnessy said.

“And then Carranza and Villa’s enemies in Mexico City would be forced to fight the United States to protect their border, right?”

“I imagine that, too.”

“So what I want to persuade Villa is that this would be in his best interests, because while Carranza’s people are fighting the Americans, Villa would have a chance to reinforce himself—especially since he could recruit from men who found an American invasion distasteful. At least that is what I want him to believe.”

“But how would that help me?” the Colonel asked.

“Once Villa attacks, we get word to the Americans where he is. He will no doubt have retreated to hide, but you are right here on his trail. And then suddenly he is confronted by a large force from your own army—one of the finest armies in the world. If you want an overwhelming force against him,” Strucker said, “what could be better than that?”

“Then you
are
talking about starting a war—that’s powerful stuff,” Shaughnessy said.

“Well, you told me you tried to yourself when you attempted to persuade your President Wilson to send troops down, but he refused you.”

“That’s true,” the Colonel conceded, “but that was strictly an American affair—Americans protecting American property and citizens. Not something the Germans were mixed up in.”

“I was merely offering my help. I have no national interests in any of this,” Strucker reminded him.

“I am sorry if I implied that, Strucker,” Shaughnessy said. He didn’t quite believe the German, but he would certainly have liked the American army to find a reason to come down into Mexico.

“If you wish,” said the German, “I will say no more about it.”

“No, no,” replied the Colonel, “that isn’t it. Perhaps you
can
be of help in some way like that. And it would certainly be useful to have a friend in Villa’s camp, though I expect you know great dangers are involved.”

“I’m aware of it,” Strucker said. “But I think when he hears my story he’ll accept me as a friend. After all, he’s supposed to have a somewhat international contingent riding with him now, does he not?”

“So I’ve heard,” said the Colonel.

“Shall I go, then?”

“Well, the Indians are back here in camp now. I imagine at least one of them could take you close enough.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Yes, they start out at daylight.”

“Then, my friend, it’s settled?”

“But how will you explain how you located him? It’s going to look suspicious for you to just show up from out of nowhere, isn’t it?”

“I don’t think so. I’ll say I went to Chihuahua City to look for him, but the battle had ended and he had already left, so I hired guides until I reached the canyons. I think that might actually impress him, that I, a lone man, would be so tenacious.”

“And how will you get out?” Shaughnessy asked.

“I’ve considered that, too,” Strucker said. “When I have done all I can, I’ll take my leave, assuming he permits me, and hope to return to you and report everything I can. If I can figure out a way, I might even get the Indians to carry messages to you. We shall see. Naturally, my utmost dream would be to return with your grandchildren, but that might be to ask the impossible.”

Colonel John Shaughnessy nodded and took Strucker’s outstretched hand. Then the German took his leave to get himself ready. Shaughnessy sat down on a log and held his head in his hands. His head was throbbing and his back hurt. It had been a dangerous day, one that had almost cost Arthur his life. Back at San Juan Hill the Colonel had had men dying all around him, but he’d been younger then, and young men don’t look at death quite like old ones do.

PART FIVE

THE
LOMAS

FORTY-FIVE

T
he snowstorm that caught Villa’s party at the top of the mountains had also caught Bomba
in extremis
. His decision to abandon most of his clothes during the chase across the warm plains left him in bad straits when he reached the high altitudes. All this time he’d been shadowing Villa, trying to get close enough at least to glimpse the children, but so far the terrain hadn’t allowed it and he took to hanging back two or three hours and hoping for a break.

First he caught a cold. He had managed to feed himself by taking squirrels and even once a deer, but he was weakened by the day, then by the hour. Worse, the wounds he’d suffered in the first encounter with Villa’s men hadn’t healed properly and were still oozing pus and blood. Gradually Bomba fell farther behind Villa’s party and in a feverish haze simply let his horse wander on its own in the maze of highlands, canyons, and plateaus. He lost track of time and distance; when the snow began to fall he thought he was freezing to death.

The horse had stumbled into a ravine and was plodding along a narrow stream when, faint and semi-delirious, Bomba smelled smoke. He only got a whiff of it, but the notion of fire and warmth was enough to revive him a little. He looked in all directions for the source of the smoke but saw nothing but the steep rocky walls of the ravine upon which dark shadows of night were approaching. Then as he glanced up toward the rim he finally saw a wisp of smoke. It was coming from a cavelike structure cut into the side of the cliff.

At first he couldn’t tell how anyone could get up the side of the cliff but then he saw a narrow set of steps carved into the stone. A pair of burros grazed in shrubs as he dismounted and began climbing. The steps went one way, then the next, traversing the side of the cliff hundreds of feet skyward and it was painful and seemed to take forever.

Several times he reeled dizzily and rested, until he finally reached a ledge covered with a big rock overhang; beneath it was a man hovering over a flickering fire. Bomba made a sound that was no more than a grunt and the man looked up. Even in his fever-ravished stupor, Bomba was astonished to see the face of another black man like himself. He took several steps toward the man, who seemed even more startled than he, then collapsed to his knees. The man gaped at him for a few moments and then Bomba felt himself being lifted and dragged toward the warmth of the fire.

FORTY-SIX

P
ancho Villa at last had reached the deep canyon bottoms and was slowly making his way north, confident he and his party were secure and undetected in the gigantic labyrinth spreading hundreds of miles though the mountain chain. Donita and the Americans—Katherine, Timmy, Mix, Reed, and even Bierce—were astonished that in contrast to the bleak and rugged cold at tops, the floors of the canyons were a semitropical paradise with shallow clear streams meandering down the centers.

Parrotlike birds and other bright avians squawked in bamboo breaks and there were wild bananas, lemons, oranges, mangoes, and figs for the picking. Wild orchids and a plant that might have been liana festooned tall hardwood trees, while up in the branches were hundreds of parakeets, doves, and occasionally a big yellow-beaked macaw-looking bird with brilliant red, green, and blue plumage.

They saw deer and rabbits, too, and at night there was a festive twinkling of fireflies. They also saw what looked like boa constrictors sunning themselves by the water’s edge, and once just before dusk caught a glimpse of a full-grown jaguar, its yellow eyes gleaming in the faded light.

Katherine continued her evening chess matches with Pancho Villa, and sometimes during daytime breaks the general played checkers with Timmy, even letting him win on occasion. At each of these events, Katherine noticed Tom Mix hovering in the shadows. He always seemed to be doing something—leading his horse, looking for firewood—that brought him within sight whenever Villa was with Katherine.

Once, after Katherine had given Villa a particularly instructive lesson in chess, he had managed to take her castle and was moving toward her queen when she stopped him.

“Suppose you take my queen,” she said, “and then I’m in check, right?”

“Yes, señorita,” replied Villa. “And I will have you and the game.”

“But not if I take your bishop here, because I have the next move; then
you
go into check, with no place to hide because you’re in a box, and so I win the game.”

Villa reflected on this for a long time, slowly tracing with his finger the moves she’d described.

“You are right, little señorita,” Villa said finally. “You know, this chess,” he went on, “is not unlike running an army. It’s always the one thing you don’t think of that does you in.”

Katherine looked at him and smiled. She didn’t know armies, but she did know chess, and Villa had been good to his word about keeping them in the clothes they needed.

“It’s just a game,” she said.

“So is everything else, little señorita. But sometime the stakes get higher.”