TOM MIX AND PANCHO VILLA: A Novel of Mexico and the Texas border (32 page)

He raised his voice. “General Villa, pay attention to me. I don’t live off bloody oil! I made that blasted desert bloom like the Scottish highlands. And then this so-called general of yours, this Urbina, came around last week and told me he was taking over. And he’d do me a bloody great favor and let me manage the place!”

Villa asked, “Did he offer you a price for your land, as he was ordered to do?”

“You think I want any of this two-faces junk you people hand out? What am I supposed to do if you bloody well lose your damned revolution? It won’t even be good for toilet paper, man.”

Villa’s eyes sparked. “You Englishmen don’t—”

“I’m a Scotsman!” Benton cried. “Are ye deef?”

“What are your political sympathies, señor?”

“If you win,” the Scotsman growled, “that’s fine with me. If Huerta wins, I can live with that too. I speak my mind, and I’m afraid of no one. I sell my cattle to the highest bidder. No man alive can ever say I cheated him.”

“Be assured I won’t say it, either, señor. I’m going to pay you a fair price for your ranch and your cattle,” Villa said, “and whatever the hell else you’ve got lying around in Santa Gertrudis. Then you can go home to London and get drunk in your club like the rest of them. And weren’t you told by Juanito to leave your pistol behind tonight?”

“You re a bandit and a fool!” Benton jumped to his feet, flushed. “And I was a bigger fool to come here! Do you think you can rob a Scotsman and get away with it, Pancho bloody Villa?”

I don t think he meant to pull out his pistol. But in his rage his hand dropped to the butt. He gripped it tightly, probably more to control his itch than anything else.

Villa thought otherwise. The gun belt around his own thick waist was stuffed with gleaming steel cartridges that looked like miniature torpedos. The handle of his pistol protruding from the scuffed holster gleamed with the polish of use, as if the warmth of his palm had given it a permanent sheen of sweat.

In one swift motion he laid the long blue-black barrel on the table, pointed at Benton’s stomach. His eyes were narrowed, and when I saw the green light in them I knew he was out of control.

“Disarm this man,” he said coldly to Julio.

Benton’s eyes flickered and blazed. But he was no killer. He let Julio pry his fingers from the handle and take the pistol.

“You Englishmen!” It was Villa’s turn to rave. “You think you can do what you please in Mexico! You count Luis Terrazas as your benefactor—that Spanish pig! I’m sure you never cheated
him,
but I’d like to hear the tales told by your
campesinos.
You came here to threaten me! No, señor! You can’t do that. The man is not born who can do that to Francisco Villa.” He wheeled on Julio and Fierro. “I won’t waste a good bullet. Take him out and execute him.”

Benton cried, “You wouldn’t dare!”

I thought it time to get my two cents in. “Chief, he wasn’t going to shoot,” I said sharply. “And his friends will know he came here.”

Julio agreed with me. His long face twitched. He said, “It’s a bad thing, chief.”

Fierro and Dozal said nothing. Villa kept his angry gaze fastened on Benton, who returned it in kind—but he spoke to me and Julio. “You don’t understand these things, either of you. The harm is done. Do you think I can let a man live to boast that he called me a fool and then drew his pistol, and I did nothing?”

He spun around on Fierro. “You heard me! Take him out of my sight! Execute him.”

“Here in Juárez, my general?” Fierro asked carefully.

“Handcuff him,” Villa said. “Go down to Samalayuca. Julio, take some soldiers to dig a grave. Tomás is right. We don’t need an uproar.”

“Wait, chief.” I broke in again. “You can’t do this.”

He glared at me. “What do you mean?
What
can’t I do?”

“You can’t shoot this man in cold blood. He’s not an enemy. He’s not a prisoner. He didn’t try to cheat you the way Wentworth did. He hasn’t fought against us. You just can’t do it.”

The glare turned Villa’s face the color of cream. I had learned that when a man’s face turns red with rage, there’s usually little danger of his taking violent action. But when his face turns pale, he is out of control. And this wasn’t any man—this was Pancho Villa.

“You go too far, Tomás,” he said.

I hated this. I hated my fear, but I hated even more what Villa had declared he would do.

“I can’t let you kill him,” I said.

Villa smirked, but not a drop of color flowed back into his cheeks. “Because he’s an Englishman, Tomás? Because he’s white like you?” His cold voice cut like the blade of a knife. “Is that it? You don’t mind killing Mexicans, even unarmed Mexicans, but you object to killing one of your own kind. Is that what you tell me?”

Perhaps it was partly true. But only partly.

“The man is innocent,” I said. “I won’t let you do it.”

“You’re a fool. That means,” Villa said, “that you’ll have to die with him.”

“You’d regret that, chief. I’ll regret it even more, but afterwards you’ll know you were wrong. You’ll know I was right, and you’ll hate yourself for the rest of your life.”

That speech took all the courage I had. I didn’t think there was anything more I could say after that.

I caught Julio’s eye. He was staring at me in undisguised horror. He believed I was already a dead man.

Behind him, in the shadows of the hissing lamplight, Fierro regarded me with cool, impersonal eyes, but there was a flicker of anticipation in their depths. I suppose he thought he would receive the assignment, and nothing would please him more. He would keep his vow and the love of his master at one stroke. At his side, Juan Dozal looked at me scornfully.

“Give me your pistol, Tomás.” Villa had still spoken coldly, with just a touch of regret. “Carefully.”

I took a deep breath. “What about Benton, chief?”

“I’ve given my orders about Benton. I can’t change them.”

“Then I can’t give you my pistol.”

I thought he would shoot me then. I had driven him too far, and for a moment he no longer knew who I was, no longer knew I was a man who had fought at his side at Torreón and Chihuahua, a man to whom he had entrusted the Division’s gold and had called his illegitimate son and promoted to major in front of General Pershing. He would remember eventually, but then it would be too late.

“Disarm him too,” he said, giving the order to Dozal. Now his voice quivered too. “Take him with you to Samalayuca. Get rid of him. Julio, stay with me.”

Dozal moved swiftly. I was in too much of a daze to resist. And resistance would have been impossible. I hadn’t known what I would do, but I knew what I couldn’t do, and that was shoot Pancho Villa.

I had been bluffing, and the bluff” had failed—I had asked to die, and my wish was about to be granted. Dozal slipped the pistol from my holster as easily as a child is robbed of a toy.

The world seemed to grow darker. I moved in a trance, out the door of the caboose, with Dozal, Fierro and Benton following me. A few strangled sounds came from Julio’s throat, but he knew that if he objected he would become a victim of Villa’s wrath as well. There were no goodbyes. Benton never said a word. He was a braver man than I. He had accepted his fate. It was crazy—all of it was crazy.

But it was happening.

Still in that trance, I let myself be led to the other end of the railroad yard. In the darkness Fierro talked to some men, and five minutes later Benton and I were shoved into another caboose attached to an engine.

The door slammed shut and was locked from the outside. The pitch-black caboose stank of rotting meat and old piss. I sank down in some damp straw, and almost immediately the engine shivered into life and began hauling us out of the Juárez yards, south toward Samalayuca.

I couldn’t see Benton’s face. He was crouched only a few feet away from me, but he might as well have been on the other side of a wall.

“Be brave, laddie,” he said. “Ye did the right thing. Ye have to die now, but so do we all. Yer bloody general will pay.”

I stared into the inky darkness. I felt neither courage nor fear, and I experienced no sense of satisfaction. I felt only a drowsy sadness, as if I were dead already. I didn’t want to talk to Benton. He meant nothing to me, I realized. I had thrown away my life in the cause of conscience; I had failed the simple commandment of survival. Was that the right thing? I began to wonder. But it was too late.

An hour later we reached Samalayuca. The caboose jerked to a halt … the engine sputtered and then shuddered to silence. A bolt rasped from outside, and the door of the caboose slid open. A moon gave a bit of light now, and the charcoal gray outline of a sombrero and a man’s head appeared at the door.

Dozal’s voice said cheerfully, “Get out, señores.”

Standing by the track, I realized that we were not in the railroad yards, but at a lonely part of the desert near the sleeping town. Stars blinked down. The stars were beautiful. I would never see them again.

Fierro and half a dozen soldiers stood to one side, while Dozal shepherded us at pistol point to the shelter of some tall saguaro cactus. The cactus was a lovely, ghostly silvery green in the moonlight.

Goodbye, Hannah.

Fierro handed some shovels to the soldiers and ordered them to dig. In the dark, some twenty yards away from the cactus, the soldiers began to dig a crude trench that would serve as a grave.

Benton, totally calm, peered down and said to Fierro, “Listen, amigo, make a deeper hole. The coyotes will drag me out of that one.”

Perhaps he believed that his bravery would be impressive enough to save his life. If so, he didn’t know Rodolfo Fierro. For Rodolfo it was just another job of work. He nodded; the soldiers dug deeper.

“This one is mine,” Dozal said happily to Fierro, digging his elbow into my ribs and waving his pistol in the moonlight. A cigarette hung from his lips, glowing cherry-red and dropping sparks. “That’s what the chief ordered.”

Fierro considered a minute. He had heard Villa’s words too. It made no difference which one of them pulled the trigger and dispatched the bullet that would end my short life. Fierro had his reason for desiring the chore, but he must have decided that an order was an order. He always listened carefully to what the chief said.

“All right,” Fierro said, walking off into the darkness toward the open grave where the soldiers and William Benton waited.

The darkness seemed to absorb him. The moon had edged behind a lone cloud.

“Can I smoke a cigarette?” I asked Dozal. I didn’t have much of an urge for one, but it seemed a proper thing to say, and it would prolong my existence for just that extra few sweet minutes.

“Well…”

“It’s not much to ask,” I said, my mind racing. Perhaps every man’s mind races when he’s about to die.

“All right.”

“I don’t have one.”

“Jesus. Here. Be quick.”

Dozal was a stupid man. I was a desperate one. I hadn’t fully realized the extent of my desperation, or my will to live, until he gave me the opportunity. He was more than stupid. He was willing and eager to kill me; he had reminded Fierro that it was his privilege. I bore that in mind.

He reached into his pocket for a crumpled pack of cigarettes, shook one halfway loose and let me take it.

“Give me a light, Juanito.”

But he wasn’t stupid enough. He had no matches, and in order to give me a light he would have to shove the pack into his pocket and then puff at his own weed before handing it to me. He must have realized that his hands would be occupied, and if I were rash enough to try any tricks, that would be the time for me to do it. His pistol came up level with my stomach, and with the other hand he flipped the cigarette at my feet. Even in that eerie darkness, I could see him grinning.

“Take it,” he said. “Smoke fast.”

My heartbeat grew violent. Oh God, I thought, I’m going to die. He’ll probably shoot me when I bend down.

The bones of my knees cracked and my fingers shook as I scrabbled in the dust for the end of the cigarette that wouldn’t burn my fingers. I almost laughed aloud. What did it matter if they got burned? That would be the last pain I would feel before the big one.

As I bent, something slipped from my shirt and dangled on the ground, glittering slightly in the faint starlight. It was the spare key that Villa had given me for safekeeping, tied round my neck by a piece of pigging string. The moon darted out for a moment, then was swallowed by its cloud.

“What’s that?” Dozal asked, when he saw the glitter.

“The key to the laundry-room padlock,” I said. “Where the gold is. You better take it before blood gets all over it. Blood makes keys rust.”

The thought of the gold must have excited him, maybe deranged him. He lowered the pistol, stepped forward and made a grab. Maybe he thought I was going to throw the key away in a fit of spite. He had nothing to fear from me—Fierro and the others were twenty yards away.

But if he couldn’t see them in the suddenly moonless night, I realized, they probably couldn’t see us either.

With both hands, as he clutched at the key, I seized his right wrist, the one with the pistol. He grunted with surprise and annoyance. I twisted the gun into his neck and then squeezed his hand as hard as I could.

The shot shattered the darkness. The bullet nearly tore his head off.

Over by the grave, the soldiers threw down their shovels with a dull ringing thud. Fierro called calmly from a black distance: “Good, Juanito. Bring the body over here.”

“In a minute,” I called back, pitching my voice higher—not difficult, under the circumstances.

I let Dozal slide to the ground, wiped my bloody hands on his shirt, then turned and bolted across the desert.

Alive! It seemed a miracle.

I didn’t stop until I had covered half a mile. But I heard no pursuit. I didn’t even hear the shot that was meant to kill William Benton. That puzzled me, until I found out later there was no shot.

I spent the next day in a small fleabag of a hotel in the area called “Little Chihuahua,” on the El Paso side of the border. I didn’t know what to do. I was glad to be alive, but it seemed that I had no reasonable life worth living. I contacted no one I knew, not even Hannah or my family. I didn’t dare go back to Hipólito’s house—his loyalties might have been divided if he knew what had happened, but not divided evenly.