El Paso: A Novel (7 page)

That he could command the attendance of such a stellar audience was a source of continuous conceit for the Colonel, because only one generation earlier his father, Shamus McGill O’Shaughnessy, had stepped off a cheap boat fleeing the Irish potato famine with a handful of royal crowns in his pocket. The timing was perfect—smack at the beginning of the American Civil War. After exchanging his coinage for what amounted to fifty dollars, the Colonel’s father used most of his American money to purchase things he believed U.S. troops might want in the field.

Before long he established himself as one of the most prominent sutlers with the Union Army. Afterward, with wads of greenbacks in his back pocket and after dropping the
O
from O’Shaughnessy, he became a lawyer, then a United States senator, and the owner of a vast codfish fleet. “Only in America,” the Colonel was fond of saying of his father, old Shamus McGill. And to hell with the so-called Boston aristocrats!

In 1898 that same son of old Shamus, the son who was standing now on the deck of the
Ajax
, raised a squadron of Massachusetts cavalry and led them hell-for-leather afoot up San Juan Hill with Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders in the Spanish-American War. And follow Shaughnessy they did, struggling up as Spanish lead came raining down. Teddy Roosevelt may have ridden a horse, but the rest slogged up the hard way.

That was how he came to be called the “Colonel”—even though Shaughnessy was never officially ranked higher than captain. Nowadays, like all other upstanding industrialists, the Colonel detested Theodore Roosevelt and his Bull Moosers for their suicidal trustbusting and other inconveniences. His former friend and comrade-in-arms Roosevelt was definitely not one of the guests on the
Ajax
this evening, or any other evening, for that matter.

But the Colonel was still a Rough Rider and always would be. In his younger days he played polo but now contented himself with riding the Myopia Hunt. A crack shot, he went on African safaris for lion, rhinoceros, elephant, and practically every other type of game, large or small—from gnu to eland to dik-diks—and the stuffed heads of all these adorned the remarkable room in his Back Bay home. The Colonel believed in fair play, hard work, bravery, and practical jokes.

Once, from Zambia, he had shipped a friend a pair of live twelve-foot-long crocodiles, with instructions for an accomplice at home to have them placed in the friend’s swimming pool in Newport. When it was discovered that the pool had been drained for repairs, the crocodiles had to be stored in their crates in the basement of the Colonel’s club in Boston. There the stewards washed them down daily with pails of water and fed them raw meat until the pool was finally filled and the joke played out.

And so as this marvelous assemblage of American capitalism marched up the gangplank and onto the decks of the
Ajax
the Colonel’s breast swelled with pride and authority. If a bomb were to blow them all up right now, he thought—not inconceivable, since there was a lot of bombing going on just then—half the wealth of the United States would sink to the bottom of Newport Harbor. In any case, Colonel Shaughnessy was looking forward with the greatest delight to the joke he intended to play upon the gods of industry and society that evening. If his scheme went as planned they’d be writing about it till Christmas.

SIX

I
n Chihuahua the cattle rustlers were already driving their booty back toward the rolling hills where Pancho Villa and his detachment sat watching them. The band of horsemen from the hacienda were closing in fast, but the rustlers seemed unperturbed and continued driving the cows at a leisurely pace.

“Please send for Señor Mix,” Villa said. Fierro barked an order, and presently a tall, lean, good-looking young man with slicked-black hair and dark flashing eyes rode up on a palomino and saluted Villa. Six months earlier Tom Mix had been just another bored cowhand back in Arizona. In his idle moments, Mix harbored visions of someday becoming a movie-star cowboy but, along with a handful of other American soldiers of fortune, he’d thrown in with Villa’s army hoping to come away with enough cash to get his start in Hollywood.

“Take two machine gun squads and cut off those vaqueros,” Villa instructed. Mix saluted and wheeled back down the far side of the hill, where about four hundred of his Villistas were resting, grazing their animals, lying on the ground, drinking mescal, smoking, joking, and engaging in other leisurely pursuits. Mix spoke to them in a combination of pidgin Spanish and sign language and the men began to rise and collect their weapons.

It made Mix feel important that he could command obedience from this mob. He’d joined Villa with little more than a secondhand revolver, a dented Winchester .30-caliber rifle, and a trick horse, but in a short time his industriousness, bravery, and pleasant manners got him promoted as a key aide to the general.

Villa called him “my gringo fireman.”

The little band of hacendados riding from the ranch was now about halfway between the cattle rustlers and their path back to Villa’s position, but the distance to them was closing fast. Then off to his right Villa saw Tom Mix’s detachment of machine gunners with an escort of a dozen riflemen tear out from the swale, the horsemen leading four big mules that carried the German Schloss machine guns and ammunition in their packs, so that now there were three groups of horsemen, seemingly converging on one another.

Although the hacendados were farthest away, they were much faster than the rustlers and the machine gunners with the pack mules in tow, but the little situation below was developing just as Villa expected. The hacendados must have by now seen the new detachment but they did not slow down. The sun had sunk low on the horizon and reflected off a bank of big gray clouds to cast an infernal glow over the entire landscape.

“They better hurry,” Fierro said, but it was unclear whether he referred to the rustlers or the machine gunners. Suddenly the cloud of dust behind the hacendados quickly enveloped them as they drew to a halt. Nothing stirred in the air, not even the faintest breeze. The machine gunners continued and the rustlers were shouting, waving, and trying to get the cattle to move faster. Then, quite suddenly, the hacendados got on the move again, split into two groups; one rode directly for the rustlers, the other arced toward the machine gunners, the two groups acting as a sort of pincers.

Now a new figure arrived at Villa’s side. General Vargo Santo—“the Saint,” as he was known in the army. Santo was one of Villa’s principal military advisors, having grown up in France and been educated at Saint-Cyr, the French version of West Point.

Vargo Santo had been faithful to Pancho Villa and the revolution since the beginning, all through the fabulous victories of the early years and even now through the recent defeats, and, as a military scientist, had taken a keen interest in the tactical developments in the great war in Europe, particularly in the use of defenses such as trenches and barbed wire and the machine gun.

“Well, General, a nice little show coming along down there,” Santo commented. An unremarkable-looking man with a graying mustache and light green eyes that betrayed him as a mixed-Creole and probably of the aristocratic classes, both of which Villa despised. But Villa was not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, and when Santos resigned from the Federal Army and offered his services to the revolution, he was glad to have him.

“We haven’t had a fight in more than a month,” Villa replied, “Not even a bloody fuss like this. I’m looking forward to it.”

Santo nodded. Villa had many pithy mottoes, which Santo had endured over the years, and one of them was: “Try to eat a little shit every day, just so you don’t lose the taste for it.”

The first group of hacendados now closed quickly on the flank of the rustlers.

Mix had evidently seen the hacendados split up and shifted his course to get between them and the cattle herd. Now the cowboy slowed and began to unload his mules, the machine gunners rushing to unlimber their guns. The riflemen, most of them still on their horses, began pointing their weapons toward the approaching hacendados, and soon little puffs of white smoke could be seen, followed by the faint echoes of gunfire.

“Now we teach these vaqueros something,” Fierro said with relish, as if he wished to the highest heavens he were down in the fray. Whatever else had created Rudolfo Fierro, war and killing enhanced and refined it until it was commonly said he could kill a man with no more qualm than swatting an insect. Once, in the early years, he shot one of his own soldiers through the eye while sitting in a street café at Chihuahua City. He had done this on a bet from someone that he could not hit a man in the eye with a single shot from a pistol at the distance of across the street. Fierro generously donated the proceeds of the bet to the victim’s widow.

Suddenly it was apparent to Villa and the other two generals that Mix had gone wrong.

The American cowboy had set up to block the pincers movement of the hacendados but failed to defend his rear. Surely he must have seen the split-up; obviously the first prong of hacendados would reach the rustlers and their catch momentarily, which was just what happened.

While Mix’s men frantically toiled to assemble and operate the machine guns, the hacendados pitched into the band of rustlers and, outnumbering them three to two, began a small battle. Unable to both fight and control the herd, the rustlers tried to assemble themselves into something like a fighting unit, but by now it was too late. The hacendados were upon them.

“Shit,” Villa spat. Four or five of his men either dropped from their horses or the horses toppled over.

Meanwhile, the pincer prong of the hacendados came within firing range of Mix’s machine guns, which opened up on them with devastating effect. The gunners were aiming low so as to cut down the horses, and after a few brief bursts only three or four hacendados remained in their saddles. Finally realizing the firepower they faced, they beat a hasty retreat. Mix had forestalled defeat in five seconds and five hundred rounds.

“Must’ve thought they were dealing with a bunch of scruffy bandits,” Villa remarked with an air of relief, turning his attention back to the herd and the fight going on there. Fierro wheeled his horse and was waving and shouting something to the main band below, but Villa interceded.

“Too late,” he said. “Don’t worry about it. We can take all this gringo’s cattle whenever we want. Don’t waste the time.”

By now the hacendados had driven the rustlers back toward the hill in a sort of running battle and, perceiving their job as finished, they broke off and began trotting back toward the ranch. The herd, panicked by the gunfire, was stampeding, twisting and turning like a swarm of bees. Mix and his men were watching the action but were too far away to be of help.

“Your Señor Mix don’t seem to appreciate an envelopment tactic,” Fierro commented disgustedly.

“No,” Villa replied, “he’s young. He’s got a lot to learn.”

“We can teach him,” Santo offered.

“We can,” Villa sneered. “But first I’m gonna teach those gringo hacendados something they won’t forget for a while. And I guarantee you, we will not be eating beans tonight.”

SEVEN

H
uge generators hummed and electric lights shone brightly aboard A
jax
as the festivities got under way. A hundred or more business potentates in their dinner jackets drank from crystal glasses of rye, scotch, champagne, and the finest wines of France. Stewards dressed in the distinctive salmon-and-gray uniforms the Colonel had tailor-made for his yacht served Russian caviar and smoked fish and duck pâté on silver trays.

The Colonel stationed himself on the promenade deck leading to the grand salon, profusely greeting and mingling with the host of Harrimans, Goulds, Rockefellers, Fords, Guggenheims, Vanderbilts, Mellons, Whitneys, Hearsts, Dodges, Lehmanns, and other luminaries, who, in their turn, complimented the Colonel on his fine ship and splendid hospitality. His guests also knew that his favorite baseball team, the Boston Red Sox, had just won the World Series, and since the Colonel had always made such a big thing of it, they congratulated him on that, too.

One of those on board was a man named Claus Strucker. Tall, immaculately dressed in a dark spruce-colored velvet dinner jacket, charming, and with a platinum-rimmed monocle fixed in his left eye, Strucker was a wealthy German industrialist and member of the New York Yacht Club, which was where the Colonel had encountered him some years before. He was also a commissioned captain in the German Naval Intelligence Service Reserve, and was on his own mission that was closely held business between him and his country.

Of course, the Colonel knew nothing of this; he and Claus Strucker had a long history of association ever since Strucker turned up at the Yacht Club in a handsome, varnished thirty-two-meter sloop—suave, debonair, and impressive with the “ladies.” In those days the Colonel was sometimes—perhaps more than sometimes—apt to be seen in private—and sometimes in public—with a woman not his wife. Strucker often not only enabled these trysts by making introductions, but also served as a “beard” in case word should somehow get back to Beatie.

It was not an entirely foolproof ruse, however, and caused a terrible row in the Colonel’s family eleven years earlier when he was caught conducting an affair with an actress. Beatie stopped sleeping with him then and joined the temperance movement, and now she occupied a place in his life not unlike the
Ajax
. All that notwithstanding, the Colonel had maintained his acquaintance with Strucker because he usually found the German quite entertaining in an obsequious kind of way, and they would often reminisce in private over their former exploits.

For his part, Strucker had ulterior motives in joining the affair that evening, to which he had in fact invited himself. His country was at war in Europe—all over the world, in fact—and Strucker’s interest in Colonel John Shaughnessy had more to do with his big spread down in Mexico than any damn yachting party. Truth was, a Junker like Strucker could make trouble even while he was just sitting there.