TOM MIX AND PANCHO VILLA: A Novel of Mexico and the Texas border (31 page)

“Aieee … mi capitán!”

We made love then, and after some rolls and coffee in the restaurant, Candelario and I went back to the laundry room and began counting again.

Around noon someone rattled the padlock outside, and we both drew our pistols.

“It’s only me,” said Pancho Villa, chuckling through the thick door. “Don’t shoot.”

Candelario let him in, and he sat down on a sack of gold, wriggling around until the hard edges no longer disturbed his ass.

“We have only two sacks left, chief.” I wiped the sweat from my forehead with my sleeve. The windowless laundry room was even hotter than the Banco Minero.

“How much is it so far?” Villa asked.

I studied my pieces of paper and added the last figures to the total. The pencil was pretty well chewed.

“There are four hundred fifteen thousand six hundred and sixty pesos. We’ve counted eighty-one thousand two hundred and twenty-five Spanish pesetas, which is about one hundred sixty thousand pesos at the bank exchange rate in El Paso. In dollars, so far, eighty-eight thousand six hundred and thirty dollars. At two pesos to the buck that’s—well, it makes a grand total of about seven hundred fifty thousand pesos.”

“These fucking Spaniards bled Mexico dry, didn’t they?”

“And then there’s the last two sacks. They’re full of double eagles.”

“Keep them,” Villa said carelessly. He nodded at Candelario. “You take one.” And then, to me, he said, “The other’s yours.”

“What did you say?”

“I said keep them. Are you deaf?”

I didn’t know how to reply. Candelario’s face held the blank expression of the desert at noon.

“Don’t you want it?” Villa asked me.

“I don’t know, chief. No … no, I really don’t want it.”

“You’re crazy, as Hipólito always says. You could have stolen anything you wanted, but you didn’t. Take it. You both worked hard.” He wagged a finger at me. “If you intend to marry Sommerfeld’s dughter, which my brother tells me is sure to happen, you’ll have to show her father something more than your nice teeth and your good posture. Just don’t tell any of the others.” He addressed Candelario then. “Do you accept this gift as well?”

“Why not? It’s the same as stray cattle. It’s bad luck to say no to good luck.”

Candelario was undoubtedly thinking of getting fat in his restaurant and his sons becoming lawyers.

“Tonight you can both come here,” Villa said. “Wrap the two sacks in sheets and take them away. One of you keep the spare key. I might lose mine under someone’s pillow and forget whose.”

He grinned, showing his red teeth.

He had said it was settled, and so it was. I hadn’t counted the last two sacks, but I knew there had to be at least $15,000 in each one, for both were filled with American twenty-dollar pieces.

I was rich. There was a time in my life, not so long ago, when I thought that all I wanted was true love, high adventure and fortune. True love had come my way in the person of Hannah Sommerfeld. I suppose that the life I had been living as a Mexican revolutionist had its share of adventure—although high or low, I didn’t care to say. And now I had a fortune in a flour sack. I had all a man could want.

I wondered why it didn’t make me feel any better. It might have been the shadow ofTorreón that took the warmth out of other things, but I suspect it was a realization —the years have only clarified it—that you’re not a different man even if your bank account swells. The glow of gold merely illuminates your other worries. Sometimes I think that Mammon might have sworn an oath that nobody who didn’t love money should ever have it.

That gold became a problem quicker than a man can get grassed on a mustang. Furtive as thieves, Candelario and I each carted our sacks out of the laundry room just after midnight chimed on the cathedral tower. By the time I got it up to my room in the Fermont my heart was dancing a polka and sweat dripped down my cheeks.

What do you do with a sack of gold double eagles? I couldn’t very well walk into the Banco Minero when the sun rose and deposit it, and it wouldn’t fit under the bed.

I left it sitting in the clothes closet, gave Rosa my pistol and told her to guard that closet with her life. I ran out into the hotel corridor to find Candelario, who was staying up on the fourth floor. We nearly collided with each other on the staircase, he running down and I running up.

“Jesus, Tomás! Where did you hide it?”

“That’s just what I was coming to ask you.”

“But this is a weighty question. I left Yvette and Marie-Thérése with my pistol to guard it. Let’s sit down and think.”

He had a full bottle of tequila with him, so we drank while we thought and came up with some pretty wild ideas, but none of them made much sense, even to a pair of drunken men on a dark hotel staircase in the short shank of the night. We thought of burying it outside of Chihuahua City, but I vetoed that with the glum idea that the tide of war might change and we would never see this part of Mexico again; we discussed carrying it south with us in our saddlebags when the army finally moved, but Candelario pointed out that if a bullet ever struck one of the saddlebags the whole battle would grind to a halt while the soldiers threw down their rifles and scrambled for the gold that would pour out like a waterfall.

“Then where, Tomás? I can’t think straight.”

“The gold is a curse. I read a story once in Aesop—”

“Please don’t tell me stories,” Candelario said. “Tell me where to keep the gold. The curse is one that I can live with.”

“Listen. I’ve got it. I know what
I’ll
do. Rosa can ride like a man. It’s only a hundred miles west to Tomochic, and her family’s there. No one goes to Tomochic—it’s up in the high sierra. She can bury my sack there.”

Candelario’s good eye narrowed. “You trust Rosa that much? Are you crazy?”

After just a brief hesitation, I said, “Yes.”

“Which question are you answering?”

“Was there more than one?” I asked.

“You’ll have to tell her what it is. You can’t say it’s rocks.”

“I’ll tell her it belongs to the Division’s treasury. So if it goes bad between us, she won’t do anything foolish. She’ll think Villa will know about it.”

“That’s not such a bad idea,” Candelario said. “You’ll have to send a couple of soldiers with her to protect her.”

“But then they’ll know.”

“We’ll have them shot afterwards.”

“You see what gold does to a man? If you want to kill our own soldiers, why don’t you desert and fight for Huerta?”

“You really think she can make it to Tomochic on her own, Tomás?”

“That’s Tarahumara country all the way.”

Candelario studied the empty tequila bottle with great solemnity. “Why not? We’ll give it to her.”

“We?”

“If it’s good enough for you, it’s good enough for me. When can she go?”

“Tomorrow night. Bring your sack to my room.”

“This is madness,” he muttered. “If I wasn’t drunk, I’d never agree to it.”

But in the morning, sober, we agreed that it was the best solution to the problem. Candelario went out to requisition a pack mule for the gold, while I explained it all to Rosa.

“Can you do it?”

“Yes,
mi capitán,”
she said proudly. “I know a back trail through the mountain from here to Anáhuac, and from there I will cross the sierra by way of Baquiachic. I will bury the gold behind our corral and tell you exactly where.”

That evening we rode with her to the outskirts of the city. We watched until her skewbald mare and the laden mule had vanished in the gathering chill of dusk, through the pass of San Martin that led to the desert.

Candelario groaned. “There goes our gold. She’ll ride all the way to Guaymas and open a whorehouse. No disrespect intended, Tomás. It’s just that it’s not easy being rich.”

“If she goes to Guaymas,” I pointed out, “we’ll be poor again. We’ll have no worries. So we can’t lose.”

Five days passed, and I did little but think of Rosa.

It had been a mistake to send her alone into the mountains. Anything could happen. She was only a child—fifteen years old now—but I found that hard to bear in mind because she usually acted toward me as a grown woman acts toward a grown man.

It was a fretful but interesting time, those five days, and I began to see that the simplicity with which I had ordered my life wasn’t so simple after all. There was Hannah in El Paso; there was Rosa in Mexico. There was I, shuttling back and forth without conscience or fear of consequences. It couldn’t last, and one day I would have to leave.

Rosa knew that—I never lied. But that vision of my easy honesty gave me no comfort. When the time came, it would give less to Rosa. The fairest thing, I thought, would be to tell her now, to send her back to Tomochic.

But I don’t want her to go. I want …

I don’t want …

One day, I prayed, I’ll be old and calm and wise and not want
anything,
and that will mean freedom, and I’ll never be able to hurt a human being again.

In a week we would attack Torreón, which we had been forced to abandon in order to concentrate all our forces on the border. To keep those forces busy, Villa ordered his Dorados to drill as he had seen the American cavalry do it on the parade ground at Fort Bliss.

He sent for me. “I’m going to Juárez,” he said. “We need more supplies, and I’ve got to make sure Luz is happy in El Paso. Julio’s coming, and Rodolfo and Dozal, and you’ll come too. You’ll have a chance to say goodbye to your Jewish sweetheart.”

“Give me another day, chief,” I said nervously. Rosa was still not back from Tomochic.

“Why?”

“Just one more day. I have things to do.”

“You can meet me there,” he said, a little annoyed.

That evening there was a knock on my door, and when I opened it, Rosa darted in, covered with dust and looking weary but pleased with herself. I hugged her for a full minute before I let her speak. I wanted her to know that she was more important to me than gold.

“The trip was nothing,” she said, which wasn’t true, because she’d had to cross in the darkness through the sierra at more than ten thousand feet. “It was pleasant to see my mother and sisters. The first night I went out, when all slept, and buried the two sacks behind the corral.”

She described the location of the adobe hut and the exact hiding place. “I worked many hours to bury it,
mi capitán. “

“Good girl. In case you forgot, I’m a major now.”

“May I not still call you
mi capitán?”

I loved her then and knew it beyond doubt.

“And every tale

condemns me for a villain.”

When I reached Juárez, Villa’s caboose was parked as usual in the railroad yards. I found him at Hipólito’s house, and we went together to see Sam Ravel in order to discuss the movement of supplies. Felix Sommerfeld was away in Columbus.

“That doesn’t matter,” Villa said afterwards. “When one Jew agrees to something, you can count on the other as well. They’re brothers,” he added instructively. “If not by blood, then by wallet.”

The following day, after Villa had been to see Luz Corral in her new house on North Oregon Street, Juan Dozal appeared at the railway caboose, bringing word from an Englishman named William Benton who wanted the favor of an audience. “It has something to do with his land,” Dozal explained. “He found me in a whorehouse last night, so naturally we couldn’t discuss it at length. He wants to come this evening.”

Villa scratched his jaw thoughtfully. “I know of this Englishman. He owns a ranch south of Juárez. He always had the protection of Luis Terrazas, but now he’s out of luck. He has a bad temper, and he’s a stubborn man. Why should I meet with him? Nothing good can come of it.”

“He was very pleasant in the whorehouse.”

“Most men are, Juanito.”

Villa frowned and started to shake his head. At that point he was one breath away from saying no. That would have been the right decision. But how was he to know it? How were any of us to counsel him? He should never have come to Juárez in the first place; but who can know the future?

It seemed to be of minor significance, whether or not he granted an audience to an aggrieved English landowner in Chihuahua. History often turns on such casual shakes or nods of the head, and I’ve sometimes thought that the earth may only be what it is because of a series of unconnected and casual nods. But perhaps that’s not so, perhaps our natures are condemned to find a way of expressing themselves … and if we say no to our fate on Monday, we’ll find ourselves saying yes on Tuesday.

“All right,” Villa said, sighing, as though surrendering to something. “Tell him he can come. But he’ll have to leave his pistol at home.”

In the late evening Juana Torres broiled tenderloin steaks in the kitchen of the caboose. Villa picked a few bits of well-done meat off every man’s platter and made that his dinner. At eleven o’clock Dozal arrived with the man he had described as an Englishman—Mr. William Benton.

Benton was about fifty-five, a wizened, sunburned man with small snapping eyes. The first thing I noticed was that, contrary to Villa s request, he wore a gun belt and pistol. He, too, was in the grip of his nature—and his doom. But Villa said nothing about it, so I relaxed.

Benton spoke perfect Spanish, though with an odd accent. He had lived in Chihuahua for thirty years, he told us, and he had paid hard cash to Don Luis Terrazas for his ranch and some tin mines. He had built the place up from nothing until it was worth twenty times what he’d paid for it.

“I know your ranch,” Villa said impatiently. “Hacienda de Santa Gertrudis.”

“No, no. Ye dinna know it. It’s called Los Remedios, near Santa Ysabel.”

“What’s the difference? One ranch is just like another if it’s owned by an Englishman.”

“In the first place,” Benton bridled, “my ranch is nae like any other. And in the second place, damn it, I’m a Scotsman. From Aberdeen.”

Villa laughed harshly. “All Englishmen drink whiskey until they’re red in the face. All Englishmen in Mexico look down their long noses and live off Mexican oil.”

Benton had a short pug nose. His dark eyes seemed to grow almost black.