TOM MIX AND PANCHO VILLA: A Novel of Mexico and the Texas border (18 page)

“Tomás, in Juárez I made you a promise. I didn’t forget. You’re a captain, attached to my personal staff.”

I thanked him. I felt thrilled.

“I know that you told your woman that you were already a captain. That was impetuous of you. But I forgive you because you’re young. And loyal, too. Now you can go to her and not feel like such a damned fool.”

That man knew everything.

At dawn the outlying Federal cannon began to bombard us on the banks of the Nazas. The earth shook and gouts of smoke swirled among the cottonwood trees. I mounted my horse and whipped him along a burro path toward the hacienda. All around me boots dragged jangling spurs, cavalrymen checked reins and stirrups, hoofs pounded. A pillar of brown dust, like smoke from a burning city, rose into the air. Mist packed under the trees, rolling across green fields, and a weak orange sun peeked above the mountains. The birds, who didn’t know that a great battle was about to take place, began to sing.

Villa had already assembled most of his staff. “Let’s not waste time,” he said sternly, “or we’ll be food for the buzzards.”

He would take one brigade and advance down the right bank of the Nazas, with Calixto Contreras attacking on the left bank toward Gómez Palacio, Torreón’s twin city. The population of the two cities numbered almost three hundred thousand. This was no knitting bee, for the Federal general, Murguia, commanded a full division with a regiment of artillery.

Villa turned to me and said, “Tomás, do you want to fight?”

A little surprised, I replied, “That’s why I’m here, chief.”

“My staff officers don’t sit around at the rear with binoculars. The others know that. I wasn’t sure you did. Go with Candelario’s battalion,” he ordered. “And remember, with your pistol you don’t aim. But with your rifle, line up the sights low and dead center.” He slapped the cotton shirt that covered his belly, crisscrossed with full cartridge belts.

A shell splashed in the river, and my stomach heaved. I’d never been in a battle before and I had no training as a soldier, not that many of our troops were much better off. I didn’t want to die, and even more I feared being gutshot or having a chunk of shrapnel tear my balls apart. Checking reins and stirrups, thinking about all the awful things that could happen to a man’s body, I mounted my horse and almost slipped right out of the saddle when he wrinkled his spine to get the kinks out. Mule-drawn caissons and gun carriages rumbled past us. The gunners unlimbered, and Medina ran round screwing on the sights and cranking the levers. Far to the east we could see the smokestacks of factories and the stony peak of La Pila guarding the city from the north. Whips cracked. The mules strained forward and troops of horse kicked mighty clouds of dust in our faces.

Like any sensible cowhand I wore a big blue bandanna round my throat. Now I raised it up over my nose— Jesse James in Old Mexico—and started to sweat.

We moved slowly toward Torreón, through a narrow valley flanked by low hills. We were bunched together in a mass, thousands of horsemen with wagons following. I was glad we weren’t fighting Apaches or the advance would have been suicidal, but the Federal Army fought by the book and waited for us. Our horses trampled the burnt yellow corn into rubble. I heard the crackling rip of rifle fire ahead, and then a shell burst with a dull
bar-ooom
in front of Villa, who rode ahead of the troops.

“Deploy! … spread out!”

The brigade fanned out as the valley widened. It was a warm, muggy morning with elephant-gray clouds clustered on the horizon, threatening rain. I spotted some adobe houses and then an automobile wrecking yard in our path. In the distance the buildings of the city formed themselves vaguely out of the haze. Suddenly I realized Torreón wasn’t just a word, an image—it was a
place.
We rode at a choppy trot, which made it difficult to fire, while pods of cotton floated by like snow. A few bullets whistling by made a tired sound.

I pulled my rifle from its scabbard and took a snug check on the rein. Off to my left then, a horse was hit. Braying like a donkey, it spilled its rider into a prickly-pear cactus. He jumped up from the dust, cursing and pulling thorns out of his arm.

“Don’t kill them all, boys! Wait for me!”

Julio yelled at us. “There are Federals in the wrecking yard!”

Behind some rusting automobiles I saw white shapes with peaked caps. The muzzles of their rifles puffed with smoke. We were about three hundred yards away, easy range for a sharpshooter, but they were snapping off their shots too quickly and too high to do any damage. Julio gave the order to fire. At least fifty of us cut loose at once, and even at that distance I could hear the spang and whine of bullets hitting metal, so that if you were sheltered behind the wrecks it must have been a terrifying clamor. The white shapes disappeared. There was no more return fire.

This is easy, I thought. This suits me fine. If this is war, then I’d a damn sight rather take part in it than face Rodolfo Fierro’s pistol. A shell exploded off to our right, but it wasn’t aimed at me.

I slammed the bolt, aimed, fired and heard the shattering of glass—a car window. Then from far away Candelario shouted an order to gallop. I put my knees into the big chestnut. Off he went like a quarter horse, hind legs churning, supple in the withers and lightning between my legs, Hipólito at my side on his roan. We must have been two hundred men in that charge, and suddenly the wrecking yard was in front of us and I could make out twisted license plates, crumpled fenders, and a big jack lying in front of a rusted Stutz-Bearcat whose insides had been stripped down to the chassis.

We were almost at the yard when the Federals popped up like ghosts from behind stacks of black tires and let off a volley at us. None of us was hit. The Federals turned and ran toward the adobe houses across the dirt road. Almost immediately they began to fall—Candelario and another troop of cavalry had outflanked them.

Remembering La Perla, I fired until my rifle was empty, not having any idea whether or not I hit anyone. The dust billowed up like a yellow fountain.

I reined up in the wrecking yard behind the shelter of a clapboard shack, dug a fresh box of five rounds from my cartridge belt and rammed it home into the Mauser. My breath came in shallow gulps. The chestnut nickered—he wanted to keep moving. A score of Villistas, including Julio and Hipólito, had stopped to reload, and I grinned foolishly at them through the smoke. A man next to me stared at the mess of his bloody hand. A few red-soaked, white-uniformed bodies lay on the ground, either dead or twitching. I had seen corpses laid out neatly in my father’s undertaking parlor, but here they flung themselves about in the most awkward way possible, legs twisted and necks bent back at ridiculous angles.

I was trying to figure out what useful thing I could do next, when a nearby man, busily trying to adjust a loose cinch, jumped suddenly off his horse and lay down full length in the dirt, making a pillow of his hands. What in hell, I wondered, is
he
up to? This was no time to take a siesta. Then I saw bright red blood flowing from his neck. The man was dead.

I said aloud, “Oh, lord!”

Rifles began cracking murderously at close range.

I yanked at the rein and my horse spun, crawfishing, as the Mauser flew out of my hand and bounced with a clang against the hood of a car. There were Federals hidden in the wrecking-yard office not twenty yards away, firing at us as fast as they could.

Men tumbled from their saddles. Blood jetting from its throat, Julio’s horse slid out from under him. He jumped down, crouched behind the flailing body, laid his rifle across the withers and began to pump bullets through the windows of the clapboard shack. The other men scattered through the dust like boys playing hide-and-go-seek. I pulled my pistol, spurred between a battered black hearse and a Winton touring car, and almost trampled Hipólito, on his knees behind a fender of the hearse.

He yelled up at me, “Idiot! Get down! Shelter yourself!”

I vaulted from the saddle and hit the dirt with a shock that nearly drove my spine through my neck. For a minute bells rang; the world turned fuzzy. Working the bandanna loose from my face, I smelled grease and the dizzying odor of spilled gasoline. I was safe behind the hearse. The firing slacked off, the smoke swirling downwind. In a battle the enemy always had to reload—there was always plenty of time to think and worry. I gulped some hot air into my lungs and wiped the sweat from my eyes. The sweat rolled down my forehead as if someone had dumped a pail of warm oil over me. Why had I ever looked forward to this?

I peered round the fender. A bullet spanged off metal … now they
were
shooting at me. But that quick glance told me that the Federals in the office were surrounded—they had no chance, unless we just lay back and traded shots with them all day until we got tired of it and went away. Not a bad idea, I thought, when suddenly there was a deafening explosion—and the tire in front of me whooshed out its air, flattening before my eyes.

“What was that?” I yelled.

At my elbow, as if we were at a tea party, Hipólito said, “Don’t shout. I can hear you quite well. It was a grenade.”

“A grenade?”
I felt my bowels loosen. No, it wasn’t a tea party. Despite the birds chirping and the sun shining, this was a battle, in a war. Grenades could kill or blow your balls to shreds. I didn’t want to die, or be maimed, not now, not ever. Somehow I could deal with bullets, but not with grenades.

I muttered to myself for a few seconds, then leaped to my feet, enraged. “Come on!” I shouted. “We have to rush these sons of bitches!”

Maybe I had read it in a magazine somewhere: some tale of Teddy’s Rough Riders at San Juan Hill. I yelled,
“Adelante!
Forward!” and sprinted toward the shack, blood pumping in my ears, tugging at the trigger of my pistol. Fifty men followed me, weapons rattling like a chorus of hammers on iron buckets.

The shack splintered apart. Federals began tumbling out the door. They fell on their knees, shrieking to surrender. My pistol was empty before I reached the wall of the shack.

I slid to the ground there to reload. By the time I had finished, scorching my fingers on the barrel, the gunfire had stopped. A gang of our men had broken into the shack and were herding the rest of the enemy out at rifle point.

Julio trotted up to me, thin face streaked with blood. A bullet had taken away part of an earlobe. His eyes looked like targets, huge white circles centered with black bulls. He bent to my side.

“Where are you hit, Tomás?”

“I’m not hit. I’m fine.”

“But,
hombre,
you’re bleeding.”

I glanced down. There was blood in the dirt where I sat. It was soaking redly through the Levi’s on my left thigh, staining them a rich grapelike purple that glistened in the sunlight. I could see the rip clearly. I hadn’t felt a thing. Scrambling to my feet, I still didn’t feel anything.

“Take off your pants, Tomás.”

“What? Here?”

“Are you shy?”

I pulled down my Levi’s, and a knife of pain flew from leg to brain and back to my leg again. Just below my underpants, damp with sweat from crotch to crack, was an ugly dark red gash and a sliver of thin black metal about an inch long sticking out of my thigh.

I stared, then babbled, “Well, look at that … just look at that. How about that? I’ll be a cross-eyed baboon if I know where
that
came from.”

“It’s a grenade fragment.”

“Is that what it is?”

“You’d better go back, Tomás.”

“You don’t look so hot yourself with that red ear. Are you going back? If you go, I’ll go.”

Julio grinned like a coyote out of his bloody poxed face. Without warning, he threw his arms around me, giving me a hug that nearly cracked a rib.

“Tomás! My friend! You were brave! You were like a lion!
You led the charge!”

I grinned foolishly, a little embarrassed. Then suddenly I felt dizzy, and stumbled, and sat down in the dirt. The world grew fuzzy and gray. Hands lifted and carried me. I shut my eyes.

When I woke, most of the fighting for Torreón was over. Machine guns putt-putt-putted nastily from far away, and the sun baked down through the sultry late-afternoon air. My wound was being dressed in a makeshift aid station outside the city, swabbed with iodine and bandaged by an old crone who was certainly no nurse.

“Aieee,
poor little one,” she crooned. “You’re lucky to be alive!”

“I think so too, señora,” I said.

“I have a son your age. No, wait, that one’s dead. But it’s all right, I have five more. Two with the Federals and two with your General Villa! One is a Redflagger … he’s the naughty one. Do you have a cigarette? Give me a cigarette for good luck …

Wreaths of black smoke spiraled up from Torreón. As dusk settled I sipped a bottle of warm beer and watched the men limping back along the road. I recognized an unshaven filthy soldier from our battalion. His name was Ignacio Garcia. He had been shot in the shoulder, and his arm was in a sling ripped from some Federal’s shirt. I waved him over and said, “How did it go, Ignacio?”

“Wonderful, my captain. I was brave as a bull. I killed many bad men.” He told me that the battalion had penetrated deep into the city, and Villa had ordered them to rest while he brought up his reserves. Only a few had been killed.

“What about Colonel Cervantes?” I asked.

“A one-eyed man can ride through hell and come out carrying sunflowers. But I haven’t seen him, that’s true.”

Nor had he seen Hipólito or Julio.

Despite the pain in my leg, I saddled my horse and set out in the direction of the city. Dark groups of shawl-wrapped figures sat by the roadside, women and half-naked children who had huddled in the ditches during the day. A river of wounded men flowed by, and a baby wailed from the darkness. The dead had been cleared from the road, but horses lay with stiff legs splayed in the air.

The battalion had established itself in the ruins of a brick school house. I found Candelario, Hipólito and Julio in one of the classrooms, each sitting behind a small wooden desk. Heads pillowed on the wood, they snored in unison as if the music teacher were waving her baton. When I clumped in with my boots on the concrete floor, Candelario opened one malevolent eye, looked me up and down, then groaned. “Mother of God, it’s come back from the dead.”