El Paso: A Novel (61 page)

Following the fiesta, Villa had sent a party of troops to boot out El Padrino’s remaining family from their hacienda, which he then took over for his headquarters. For the rescue, it was a setback but not a catastrophe, as Bob explained after scouting the hacienda. Even though much of his original plan would have to be scrapped, the way the hacienda was situated might work to their advantage. There were more and better escape routes for after Villa’s captives were rescued. If his previous experience was an indicator, Bob figured Villa would most likely open up the hacienda’s wine cellar to the soldiers, who would waste no time becoming even drunker than they’d already gotten during the fiesta, if such a thing was possible. All in all, Bob didn’t think the new circumstances were going to be any more difficult than the original plan to grab the kids from the soldiers’ camp in town, which was to say that he would have been surprised if any of them escaped with their lives. As he rode into town, he’d observed the horrid spectacle of El Padrino’s waxen body hanging upside down above the grease pot. At almost the same moment he decided not to mention it when he got back to the group. Everybody was jumpy enough as it was.

The way Arthur had worked things out, while the rescue party went about their mission the others, including his father and Johnny Ollas, would head east toward the railroad and then on to El Paso. Johnny was now conscious enough from his amputation to give them some useful information, including the fact that the kids and Donita were being kept by Tom Mix and usually remained close by Villa’s headquarters.

Arthur had to tell Johnny there was no room in the plane for Donita, and though Johnny was naturally disappointed, he understood. The Colonel promised that after the children were safe he would see what he could do to negotiate a ransom for her. He swore to Johnny she’d be rescued. Johnny took the Colonel by the hand and gripped it tightly, his eyes glistening. “Please,” he said. “Okay?”

“I promise you, son, it will all come out right,” said Colonel Shaughnessy.

THE SUN WAS GOING DOWN
and was casting long shadows across the lettuce field when Arthur’s men first heard the thin drone of an airplane. Earlier they had sneaked out and pulled up six rows of lettuce to make a smoother landing strip for Crosswinds Charlie. The plane came over the field from behind them so low and sudden that they were all startled; then it swooped upward in a sharp turn, banking east, and disappeared behind some trees. When they saw it again, the plane was leveling in from the south, headed right for the landing area they had cleared. Within half a minute it was on the ground, and in a few more moments was turned around and pointing back down the cleared strip for a takeoff.

Charlie cut the throttle immediately and a hard silence fell back over the farmlands, broken occasionally by the distant lowing of a cow. Everybody was surprised to see a second passenger in Charlie’s plane.

When Arthur recognized the passenger as Mick Martin, he felt the hair on his neck stand up and his body solidified into a wooden block that would not turn. He could only glare as Mick Martin and Charlie walked toward him across the lettuce field. Cowboy Bob had risen out of the ditch and was waving his hat to motion them over, but he needn’t have bothered, since Charlie had already seen them from the air.

Arthur was standing at the rim of the ditch when Mick and Charlie came walking up. Mick stuck out his hand. Arthur hit him hard as he could in the mouth, knocking him to the ground. Mick tasted blood on his lip and reflexively reached up to wipe it off, when Arthur kicked him in the side of the head and Mick slid down into the ditch. The others were startled and frozen by this behavior. Mick pushed himself to his feet but Arthur jumped down into the ditch in front of him and hit him again, this time in the nose, but he didn’t go down. Neither did he try to fight back, but instead stood with his arms by his sides, waiting for the next blow. Arthur realized what Mick was doing and didn’t hit him anymore. He would have shot him, but the noise might have attracted unwanted attention.

Arthur scrambled out of the ditch and said to the perplexed Crosswinds Charlie, “There’s been a little change in plans but your job’s the same. It’s going to be later than I hoped when we get back here after we rescue the children and I don’t know what the visibility’s going to be like after it gets dark. If there isn’t enough for you to see, you better post torches along the strip; that ought to get you into the air.”

Bob, Slim, and the others were frowning down at Mick, who was still standing in the ditch. Whatever he’d done to provoke Arthur’s wrath must have been serious, because they all liked Arthur and knew he was an even-tempered fellow. Bomba was more mystified than anyone, since he’d known Mick as Arthur’s friend since the Christmas Day he’d brought him to the Shaughnessy home from the orphanage.

Charlie finally spoke: “It was your wife that told me to bring him along, Arthur. I didn’t know y’all wasn’t friends.”

“Arthur, I need to talk to you,” Mick said, climbing out of the ditch and dusting himself off.

“No, you don’t. I don’t have time for you now. Best thing you can do is start walking east and away from here.”

“I know what you’re trying to do,” Mick said. “I came to try to talk you out of it. Let me try something. This is my specialty.” Arthur gave him a steely glare. The silence between them was vast and stony. Then Arthur spoke:

“You’re not talking anyone out of anything,” he said furiously. “We have a plan and we’re going to stick to it, so shut up and get going. There’s a railroad about twenty or thirty miles east from here.”

“Look, I don’t know what Xenia has told you. But it wasn’t what you think . . .” Mick took out the letter Xenia had given him and tried to hand it to Arthur.

Arthur hit him again.

AT THE HACIENDA OF EL PADRINO,
a celebration was in progress. Villa had opened the wine cellar to his soldiers and they were sprawled all over the ground or reeling among one another with wine bottles in their hands. Inside the main house, Villa had ordered a great feast to be prepared: roasted chickens and ducks with tomatoes, peppers, and cheese; lamb chops and mint jelly; broiled calves’ liver with rice and fresh spinach; baked ham with cabbage and sautéed onions; and, of course, fine wines. This nearly cleaned out the pantries and larders of the hacienda, but Villa wasn’t concerned because he had plans for the house, too. Having ordered all this, Villa retired with the headache that had nagged him since the incident at the fiesta that morning. Finally he got his lemonade.

The meal was served bacchanal-style over the course of many hours. In the dining room, Bierce, Reed, Fierro, Strucker, and a host of others, including Donita Ollas and the children, sat at an enormous table made from ponderosa pine. The food was a delicious change from the beans and beef of the trail. Pluto, the Mexican hairless, sat under the table gobbling chunks of meat that Timmy fed him. In a corner, the mariachi band from the fiesta played gay tunes, including, at Fierro’s insistence, “La Cucaracha,” and there was noisy singing amid a blue pall of cigar smoke from El Padrino’s private stock.

During a break in the courses, Katherine excused herself and walked outside for some air. Tom Mix saw her and motioned for her to come with him onto a secluded lawn away from the drunken soldiers.

“Those men have been out in the wild for a long time,” he told her, “and when they get a bellyful of drinking, sometimes unpleasant things can happen.”

“Do you know what day this is?” Katherine asked him. They sat down on a stone bench in a corner of the lawn that was framed with flowering bushes.

Mix was somewhat baffled. In fact he didn’t know what day it was, though for some reason he thought it might be Tuesday. But out here, Tuesdays were pretty much the same as Mondays, or Wednesdays or Thursdays, or even Sundays, for that matter.

“Tuesday?” he offered.

“No, silly, not what day of the week. But what day,” she said.

Earlier Katherine had luxuriated in her first real bath since her capture. Upstairs in the hacienda was a huge commode room with mosaic tiled floors and a white marble tub; the servants had been told to bring buckets of hot water. She scrubbed herself with perfumed soaps and washed her hair for nearly half an hour. It had actually become matted in places. Since Mix told them to take or use anything they wished at the hacienda, Katherine managed to find a nice lace dress in somebody’s room. It had been a grown-up’s room, and she was a little surprised when the dress actually fit her. When she looked in the mirror, she sensed that she had grown, not just taller, but in other places, too. Katherine looked at herself for a long time and was pleased she was still pretty.

“Well, they were having a fiesta,” Mix said. “Are you asking if it is some saint’s day?”

“No, not that,” she said coyly.

“What, then? I don’t know,” Mix replied.

“It’s my birthday,” she told him.

“Is it really?” Mix said, genuinely surprised.

“I’m thirteen.”

“That’s nice and grown-up,” he said. “I remember the day when I was thirteen.”

“What did you do?”

“I went down to the river with some friends and we caught crawfish, and my ma boiled them up for us with corn and potatoes. It’s still my favorite dish to eat.”

“Did you know I’m teaching General Villa to read?” she asked.

“I wasn’t sure what you two were up to, but I kind of expected it might be something like that.”

“He’s my first student, and a good one, too.”

“The general’s a smart man,” Mix said.

“Are you always going to stay with him?” Katherine asked.

Mix looked at her. She seemed somehow changed, and not just because of the dress she was wearing. It ran across his mind that she was going to be quite a beautiful woman. But suddenly she didn’t seem to be so much a child anymore, either; there was a difference in her attitude that made him a little uneasy, the way he usually got when he was in the presence of beautiful women.

“Truth is, I ain’t sure what I’m going to do,” Mix said. “This war can’t last forever—although it’s got a pretty good start on it.”

“So then what?” The bright sunlight made her blue eyes sparkle, and it caused Mix to feel protective of her.

“Who knows? Sometimes I think about going out to California.”

“Whatever for?” Katherine asked. Mix sensed disappointment in her voice.

“To be in the movies, maybe.”

“The movies! Really? Do you think you can?”

“I don’t know why not,” he said. “I reckon I’m just as good a cowboy as the next feller. And I hope I’m not any worse-lookin’, either.”

“Worse-looking! Why, you’re the most handsome man I’ve ever met.” She’d blurted it out before thinking and caught her breath when she realized what she’d just said.

“Why, that’s . . . mighty nice of you to tell me that,” Mix replied uncomfortably.

Katherine felt herself beginning to flush, and she gulped. She hadn’t intended to say anything to Mix that was so forward, but now that she had, she decided to go on.

“Maybe my grandfather can help you,” Katherine told him, “to get in the movies.”

“How’s that?”

“Well, he knows
everybody
, you know. I mean, he can just call up the president of the United States whenever he wants to.”

“Anybody can do that,” Mix replied.

“They can’t, either.”

“Sure they can. But it don’t mean he’ll answer the phone, though.”

“Well, he talks to Grandpapa.”

“I appreciate it, young lady,” Mix told her. He was beginning to feel fidgety with the conversation. Here he was, charged with holding these people hostage, and now one of them, a child, was offering him help to get into show business.

“Can you read?” Katherine asked.

“Sure I can read. Read all the time.”

“I’ve never seen you.”

“That’s because I don’t have anything to read. There ain’t exactly any libraries out here.”

“I’ll teach you, too, if you can’t,” she said.

“Well, I can. But thanks for the offer anyway.”

“Can you dance?” Katherine asked.

“Me, dance? Sure.”

“What kind of dance?”