El Paso: A Novel (55 page)

“Might be,” Flipper said. “But I’m going to take my time before I go down there.”

FIFTY-FOUR

A
rthur, Cowboy Bob, and Slim were riding in the shallow streambed of the canyon. Arthur was feeling strangely in control since he’d taken over the expedition, and actually, as wretched as the experience had been, had felt supremely confident ever since killing the grizzly, back on the mountain. His hands were now tough and callused, his face tanned, and the fare along the trail had left him without an ounce of fat. As he rode along, he practiced snapping at rocks and sticks with his bullwhip, and tried out his fast draw, too—but of course didn’t fire, since they were getting closer to Villa.

Colonel Shaughnessy was strapped down in a two-wheeled, burro-drawn wagon that previously had contained sacks of beans and was led by one of Ah Dong’s helpers. He was in pain but held his silence. For a day and a half the laudanum kept him in and out of consciousness and he looked pale and old and his teeth were often bared in a grimace. At least this morning he’d been able to get down a little breakfast, and Ah Dong was trying to wean him off the sedative.

“I’m working on a plan,” Arthur announced, “but first I need to know where Villa’s going.”

“If we had some ham, we could have some ham and eggs,” Bob observed. “If we had some eggs.”

Arthur ignored that and went on. “There’s nothing we can do while he’s still here in these canyons. We know that. But we’ll be out of them in a day or so, right?”

“I think so,” Slim said. “Seems as if we’ve been going as much east as north.”

“And assuming we’re able to slip in at some point and take the children, what would happen?”

“Villa’s people would most likely ride us down and murder us all,” said Bob.

“Precisely,” replied Arthur. “But what if there was an aeroplane waiting for the children nearby? If we could get them to it, they’re free, and we can all sort of scatter.”

“An aeroplane?” Bob exclaimed. “Where in hell would we find an aeroplane?”

“I have one,” Arthur answered. “It’s back in El Paso in a boxcar on the train.”

“A lot of good that does us,” Bob said.

“An aeroplane riding the train—if that don’t beat all,” remarked Slim.

“Seriously,” Arthur told them. “Look, Crosswinds Charlie knows how to fly a plane. If I can get him back to El Paso, he can assemble it and get it ready and we can arrange some sort of rendezvous. He could land somewhere just about dusk, while they’re bedding down. I doubt anybody would notice it. He could land behind trees or something.”

“Trees—there might not be no trees to speak of once we’re out of here,” Slim said.

“Well, a ridge, then, or some piece of terrain where they can’t see him.”

“And what about Villa?” Bob asked. “You think he’s just gonna stand there with his thing in his hand and watch us do it?”

“No,” Arthur continued. “But he won’t be expecting it, either. We’ll have the element of surprise.”

“What’s Crosswinds Charlie have to say about all this?” Bob asked. “Is he ready to get himself shot full of holes?” To Bob it seemed like a harebrained scheme.

“I haven’t mentioned it to him yet,” said Arthur. “But he’s a seat-of-the-pants aviator. He’d trade a brick of gold just to get into the air.”

“But how could anybody flying an aeroplane ever find Villa—or us, for that matter?” Slim asked.

“That’s the problem I was talking about,” said Arthur. “When we get out of these canyons there’ll be some sort of civilization, won’t there?”

“Yup,” said Slim. “There’s a few villages don’t amount to much, but we oughta start runnin’ into them.”

“Well, if we knew where Villa was headed, then I could send Crosswinds over to the nearest railroad and on to El Paso.”

“If we had some bread, we could make us a sow’s-ear sandwich, if we had some sow’s ears,” Bob remarked.

Arthur let this pass, too; he didn’t want to get bogged down in useless conversation. “Once Crosswinds got there, it wouldn’t take a day to get the plane ready. He could be back in this area that same afternoon if he took some extra gas with him. Once we’re in the open and if the weather holds, it shouldn’t be much trouble finding us from the air—or Villa, either, for that matter.”

“Yeah, but who knows where Villa’s headed?” asked Bob. “He could do anything. He might decide to stop and hole up before we run out of canyons. He might keep on goin’ north or he might turn east or west. He might even double back and run straight into us. There’s no tellin’.”

“Somebody might be able to intersect him,” Arthur said. “What if somebody he’s on friendly terms with just happens to wander into his camp? I was hoping Strucker might get some word back to us, but then the Indians quit, so now that’s out. But if somebody Villa knows joins up with him, they might be able to find out something.”

“Who?” Bob asked. Arthur looked at him, and the truth suddenly dawned.

“Aw, hell, Arthur,” Bob replied, “that man’s dangerous. I feel lucky to come away in one piece every time I get near him.”

“Well, it was just a thought,” Arthur said with a hint of scorn.

They let the conversation drop as Slim began whistling a tune that set the birds in the trees to singing. Arthur noticed half a dozen butterflies floating around a bush with yellow flowers. He identified them as Frickstone’s white skippers, a rare type, but forced himself to quit thinking of butterflies as he rode past them.

After a while Bob said, “I imagine he’ll be stopping in one of them villages. His men’ll want to get drunk and get up with whores; they been out here a long time.”

Arthur said nothing. This was the man who had taught him everything along the trail; good old brave Bob. Could Arthur blame him for wanting nothing to do with being near Villa? Bob knew as well as anyone how dangerous Villa could be; he had seen it back in the village near the tin mines. Still, Arthur had hoped Bob would rise to the occasion anyway. But he couldn’t blame him if he didn’t.

“I reckon I might arrange to be there ahead of them, maybe. But how in hell I’m gonna find out what Villa’s plans are is somethin’ else. I ain’t exactly a confidant of his, you know.”

“We’ve got to make a move sooner or later,” Arthur said. “Otherwise we might as well just go on home.”

FIFTY-FIVE

I
t was midmorning by the time Bomba and Henry Flipper made their way down to where the bullfight had taken place. They had waited on the bluff until Villa’s soldiers disappeared behind a bend, and then some. They climbed the rock pile at the entrance to the little box canyon and beheld the grim theater. The bodies of Luis, Rafael, and Casa Grande lay where they were killed, drying and shriveling in the sun like dead fish. Gourd Woman had propped Johnny’s head up on a rock and was kneeling over him, trying to give him some shade. She noticed them when they began climbing over the
barrera
of logs.

“Is he still with us, sister?” Flipper asked when they were within talking distance.

“No thanks to you,” she said, stroking Johnny’s face.

“What happened? Did the bull get him?” He was just trying to open a conversation.

“As if you didn’t know,” she replied. Nearby her was a box with some sort of food—beans, peppers, flour, dried corn. “They send you back to finish the job?”

“We ain’t with them,” said Flipper. “We just watched this bullfight thing from up there.” He indicated the top of the canyon.

“Then what are you doing here?” she asked, examining them closely for the first time. “Are you lost?”

“Looking for children,” Bomba told her.

“Well, everybody’s looking for somebody, I guess—he was looking for his wife,” she said, nodding at Johnny, who appeared to be asleep, but his chest rose and fell in labored breathing.

“We saw the bullfight,” Flipper said again. “What was that all about?”

“A way of killing somebody without having to waste bullets,” she answered. “Big man, this Pancho Villa—said Johnny was lucky to be alive, and that was that.”

Flipper bent over and peered at the bandaged leg. “Cut through the blood vessel?” he asked.

Gourd Woman nodded. “They had the doctor look at it. He did what he could but it wasn’t much. Said if he moved him it would most likely kill him. Villa said they couldn’t wait around, so he gave us a little food and left us here to die.”

“It still bleeding?” asked Flipper.

“No, The doctor tied it off. Said he’ll lose the leg anyway but Villa didn’t give him time to saw it off. So I guess we just wait here until it rots,” she said angrily.

“Harsh treatment,” Flipper remarked, noting that the lower leg had already turned a bloated ghastly purple. He knew something about gangrene; they’d had a brief training course on wounds when he was at West Point. “Why was he bullfighting?” he asked.

Gourd Woman explained what had happened. “These two are his brothers,” she said, “and another one is back there a little ways. All dead. Actually they’re not his real brothers. He was an orphan. He was born in a ditch.”

“Well, he fought a pretty good fight, far as I could tell from up there,” Flipper said.

“I wouldn’t know,” Gourd Woman said. “I’ve never seen one till now. It looked pretty disgusting to me.”

“At least it seems they could have taken off that leg. It might’ve given him a fighting chance.”

“They’re fiends,” she told him. “I don’t care what they say about giving back property to the people. What’s the use if the people are all dead anyway?”

“I’m sorry there’s nothing we can do,” Flipper told her.

“If you’ve got a shovel you might could dig him a grave. This ground’s pretty hard to dig with your hands.”

“How come they left you here with him? You his kin or something?”

“No,” she said. “I sell brooms.”

Flipper felt a sudden admiration for this Johnny Ollas; he had indeed fought a good fight, an honorable fight, and now he was going to die for it, way out here in the desolation.

FIFTY-SIX

D
eath Valley Slim, who’d been scouting ahead, came riding back to Arthur’s party to say he’d discovered the corpse of one of Villa’s soldiers lying on a sand spit not far down the canyon.

“From the look of him, it was an execution,” Slim said.

“Let’s hope he keeps it up,” said Arthur. “Maybe he’ll whittle himself down to our size.”

Soon they came on the sandbar and Julio’s body. Several buzzards were picking over the flesh. They flapped their big wings and flew away, leaving the canyon in a ghoulish quiet; the only sound was of flies buzzing on Julio’s blood. From the holes Arthur and the others could see in the skin, it looked to be an execution for sure. Arthur nudged his horse and moved on, leading his party away. Then Bob, forward again, held up his hand to halt and be quiet. He rode back to Arthur and Slim quietly as possible.

“There’s still people here,” he said. “Couple of pack donkeys up ahead.” Just then they all saw a man emerge from behind a pile of rocks that sealed up a little box canyon.

“Hey!” the man hollered, waving.

“Who the hell is that?” Arthur said.

“Beats me,” Bob replied. “He ain’t dressed like one of Villa’s men, though.”

“It could be a trap,” said Slim.

“If they knew we was here, we’d already been trapped,” Bob said. The man continued to wave and holler.

“You two stay here,” Bob told them. “I’ll go see what this is about.” He rode cautiously toward the man, scanning the canyon from floor to rim for signs of others. He was amazed, as he got closer, to see that it was a black man hailing them. The man began to climb down off the rocks and come toward him.

“Who are you?” Bob said when he got nearer. “Prospecting?” He had noted Flipper’s khaki clothing, which a lot of miners and engineers wore.

“Hell, no,” Flipper said. “We been . . .” He stopped. He couldn’t think how to explain it.

“I CAN’T BELIEVE THIS
—we’re all out in this godforsaken place for the same reason?” Bob exclaimed. Arthur, Slim, and some of the others had come up to the rock pile, and Flipper had been trying to tell them what he was doing, and about Bomba and the children. Bob almost felt like laughing—it sounded crazy. Suddenly there was a cry from atop the rock pile and Bomba appeared, huge and backlit by the fading sun, a spade in his hand. He’d recognized Arthur and scrambled down toward him.

Arthur could hardly believe his eyes. He leaped off the horse and ran toward Bomba, and they embraced, close to tears. Bob, Slim, and Flipper gaped in astonishment. It took a little while to get the whole story unraveled. By that time Colonel Shaughnessy’s wagon had arrived and another reunion was in order. Bomba looked as if he were going to weep at the sight of the Old Man, not just because of his condition, but because he was so glad to see him. Instead, he tried to explain about the children.

“I understand,” said the Colonel, “don’t worry about that. It wasn’t your fault.”

“They shot me,” Bomba said. “Took a while to get well.”

“I know,” Shaughnessy replied. “You did everything you could.”

“He’s a tough sombitch,” Flipper chimed in. “When he got to me he was half naked, near froze, and had pneumonia.”