El Paso: A Novel (72 page)

“Well, all that’s behind you now. You’ve made something of yourself. You’ve got a reputation all over this part of the world.”

Flipper didn’t know whether to thank him or not. It didn’t sound like much of a compliment, even if Patton had meant it as one.

“You know this country pretty well, don’t you?” Patton asked.

“Yes,” Flipper said.

“Well, I believe I’m authorized to hire you in the name of the United States Army as a scout. We need to find Villa.”

Flipper looked at him numbly. “No, thank you,” he said.

“No?”

“That’s what I said.”

SEVENTY-ONE

P
atton was thoughtful enough to lend one of the army automobiles to carry Bob’s remains back to El Paso, where they went to the best funeral home in town. Since Bob wasn’t known to any of the few churches in the area, Arthur arranged a meeting with a young Episcopal priest and described to him what he knew of Bob’s life.

The first night, when they got back to the Toltec Hotel, Arthur had gone down to the bar to get a bottle of rye to take back to his room. He hadn’t had a proper drink in quite a while, and was startled to find the grimy old prospector they had met in the sierras standing at the counter, drinking tequila.

“Did you ever find what you were after?” the man asked him.

“Yes,” Arthur said, “we did.”

“You found Pancho Villa?”

“And more,” Arthur told him.

“I’d say you were lucky to escape out of Mexico,” said the prospector. “These are perilous times over there.”

“What are you doing on Wednesday?” Arthur asked. The man seemed nonplussed.

“Because I want you to come to a funeral,” Arthur told him.

THE FUNERAL SERVICE WAS IN A FINE SMALL CHAPEL
not far from the hotel. An organist was playing the old Episcopal hymn “The Prayer of Thanksgiving.” Arthur had been worried there wouldn’t be many people there, but a lot more showed up than expected; in fact, he needn’t have invited the prospector at all. It seemed Bob had made a lot of friends among the stockyard and saloon crowd in El Paso, who had found out what had happened from the newspapers. The priest went through the traditional funeral service. Then he said:

“I did not know Bob Braswell personally but I am told he led an exemplary life. He was orphaned at the age of nine and forced to work his way through the world. He survived the Indian wars, miscarriages of justice, and the rough life of a plainsman, only to perish at the cruel hands of a killer while helping rescue children from harm. Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for a friend.” The organist concluded the service by playing the old gospel hymn “Going Home” as pallbearers from Bob’s old haunts in the saloons and stockyards slowly moved Bob’s casket out the door and on to the local boot hill.

It was an emotional moment and Arthur felt a tear coming, which he brushed away. It was a much nicer service than he’d expected. He, Xenia, Katherine and Timmy, Beatie, Slim, Henry Flipper, Ah Dong, Bomba, Johnny and Donita Ollas, Gourd Woman, and Crosswinds Charlie sat in the front pews like family—after what they’d all been through, they all
were
family in a way. Even the old prospector turned up and had seated himself in the back of the church. Afterward, as they were walking down the steps of the church, a man approached Arthur.

“Mr. Shaughnessy,” he said, “my name is John Reed, and I’ve heard of your ordeal. You might remember that I helped you back before all this, to get you gasoline for your plane in the desert. I want you to know that I was with Pancho Villa while he held your children captive.”

“Why?” Arthur asked him.

“Well, like I told you then, I’m reporting on the revolution for the
New York World
.”

“Revolution?” Arthur repeated the word slowly, deliberately, so that it came out in four distinct syllables. “Is that what you call a revolution?”

“The process takes many forms,” Reed responded, but felt a little uncomfortable saying it. “I lost a friend there myself,” he added.

Arthur said nothing, but there was something icy in his gaze that almost frightened Reed.

“I’d like to interview you for a story,” Reed said.

“No, thank you,” Arthur told him.

“No?”

“I’m tired right now,” Arthur said.

“But you rescued your children from Pancho Villa,” Reed said incredulously. “That’s a story the whole world will want to hear. It’s front-page stuff.”

“Who cares?” Arthur replied. “I’m not in the newspaper business.”

After they left the cemetery, Arthur was leading his party back to the hotel for a farewell luncheon. For most of them, he figured, it would probably be the last time they saw each other. Just then, the train out of Mexico was arriving. Its bell was clanging and steam was hissing as it pulled into the station, blocking their way. Arthur began to lead them around it when from out of the coal tender behind the engine a disheveled figure emerged, hobbling on a crutch. He was black with coal dust from head to toe, hair wild and eyes wide, and for all the world looked like a man in the circus who’d just been shot out of a cannon. For a moment Arthur didn’t recognized him.

It was the Colonel.

“Papa!” Arthur shouted, and rushed to him. The Old Man was grinning from ear to ear and gave Arthur a hug. Ah Dong, Bomba, Flipper—with Gourd Woman and Johnny Ollas hobbling after—had followed Arthur and were dancing around the Colonel; there was so much excitement that it took a while to get the story out.

“I swapped myself for
The City of Hartford
!” the Colonel howled.

“Your train car?” Arthur cried.

“I hope you all don’t mind riding back to Boston in the coaches,” the Colonel said, chortling.

“But how did you do it?” Arthur asked.

The Colonel rubbed his hands merrily as he told them. “Old Villa wanted to know if I had my own car, and so I described it to him. When he learned it was right here in El Paso, we worked out a deal. He took me to a telegraph and I ordered the thing sent down toward Chihuahua. Villa says he’s gonna retire and move it onto a ranch and live in it! After a couple of days he began saying I was more of a pain to him than the children, that I was disagreeable and talked too much. He turned me loose near the railroad tracks, but since I didn’t have any money for a ticket, they let me ride in the coal car.”

“I’ll be a son-of-a-bitch!” Arthur cried gleefully.

“No, you won’t, and never will,” the Colonel told him soberly. “And don’t ever say that again.”

Beatie, Xenia, and the children had also seen the creature emerge from the coal car but, like Arthur, didn’t recognize him immediately. When they realized who it was, they, too, rushed down the train platform, including Slim and Crosswinds Charlie. Everybody was talking and chattering and hugging and kissing the Colonel or clapping him on the back and pumping his hand. Arthur felt so glad that everybody was happy and together again. Between that and the hissing and clanging of the steam engine, the noise became a din, as if he’d stepped out into the rail yard in Chicago, or put his ear to a seashell. He tried to tell his father about Bob but the racket was too loud. He finally gave up. That could be later. For now, family, to him, was all that mattered.

“Mexico,” the Colonel cried. “The hell with it.”

“It ain’t that bad for some people,” said Death Valley Slim, “once you get used to it.”

EPILOGUE

T
he doctors pronounced that the mending of both the Colonel and Johnny Ollas was going as well as could be expected, considering the circumstances. In fact, one doctor said he’d never seen a severed limb sewn up so nicely as the job Ah Dong had done on Johnny. As for the Colonel, the doctor was astonished that his leg had been set almost perfectly by Cowboy Bob and he probably wouldn’t even have a limp.

They remained in El Paso for a few days more, which didn’t seem to bother anyone; the reunion was bracing in itself. Arthur had to get the
Grendel
biplane taken apart again and put into a boxcar for shipment home.

The morning they were to leave, Colonel Shaughnessy had a private meeting with Gourd Woman in his rooms at the Toltec. She’d asked to see him, and he suspected he knew why.

“I suppose this is about Johnny,” the Colonel said.

“No, it’s about you,” she told him.

“Me, Lurie? What about me?”

“I know you’ve been struggling with it,” she said.

“With what?”

“To tell him or not.”

“You’re right, I have. It’s difficult. Why don’t you do it?”

“He should hear it from you.”

“Well, I don’t know why. You’re his mother, aren’t you? I’d take it as a kindness.”

“Yes, but it would mean more to him if it was from you. After all, what could I give him? I barely make a living selling brooms.”

Colonel Shaughnessy reflected on that for a long moment, then said:

“You’re right again, Lurie. I was planning to bring him back to Boston with me anyway, him and his wife. Mexico’s no place for Johnny with all these lunatics on the loose, and he can’t fight bulls anymore, that’s for sure.”

“But were you going to tell him?” she asked.

“I hadn’t made up my mind. After all, if I do, I’ll have to tell my wife, too.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want him to have to live a lie. If he knows, after all this time, and then has to hide it as a secret, it wouldn’t be right.”

“That will cause you trouble, won’t it?”

“Of course, but I still like to think I’m an honorable man, even if I’ve done some things that everyone else, including my wife, might think weren’t right.”

“You are honorable, John Shaughnessy. You’re one of the most honorable men I know.”

“Say,” he said, “why don’t you come along, too? Mexico’s no good for you anymore, either.”

“And do what?”’

“Something better than selling brooms, I imagine.”

THE FOLLOWING YEAR,
when America entered the European war, the New England & Pacific Railroad at last got the profitable war contracts the Colonel had sought after, and Arthur finally convinced him that the only way to save the company in the long run was to take it public. When they did, the Old Man’s greatest fears were realized.

First the new board of directors ordered him to sell
Ajax
, on grounds it was an extravagance, although they did let him order another private railcar, which he named
The City of El Paso
, even though his trains didn’t run within a thousand miles of there. Then they began reorganizing the company. Soon, speculating robber barons began moving in on the enterprise, driving up stock, trying to take it over. In the end they succeeded, and just as the Colonel had predicted, they tossed him and Arthur out on their ears—though fortunately with enough money to keep them comfortable for the rest of their lives. The Colonel wasn’t really bitter about it. “I’d have done the same thing myself, if I’d been in their shoes,” he said.

Johnny Ollas and Donita stayed around Boston long enough for him to get fitted with a cork leg. When he could dance as well as he used to bullfight, the Colonel gave him a job at the railroad, but he wasn’t really suited to it, and the weather didn’t much agree with the leg. Then, out of the blue, Donita wrote to Tom Mix out in Hollywood and he sent them an invitation to come out and visit. When they arrived, Mix set them up running a Mexican restaurant, one of the first fancy ones in Southern California, and it soon became the talk of the town.

Crosswinds Charlie also became a success story—one for the books. After America got into the world war, he joined up with the U.S. Army Flying Corps. He went to France and became an ace pilot, with rows of medals on his chest after shooting down fourteen German planes. He became a colonel and was on the short list for general, but got out of the service to become the president of a large airline company.

As for Slim, the Colonel gave him enough money to start his own musical band: Death Valley Slim and the Ghost Riders. They got a big record hit out on the radio in the 1920s—a pretty waltz called “I Love You More Than Yesterday,” in which Slim got to show off his Irish tenor and false-soprano yodel. Beatie invited him to play at one of the dances at Cornwall that she’d designed as a western theme party, complete with hay bales, western two-step dancing, and a few horses snorting around outside.