TOM MIX AND PANCHO VILLA: A Novel of Mexico and the Texas border (33 page)

For a time I thought of heading east to the Brazos and starting a new life in the cattle country under another name. I didn’t do that. There was Hannah to think about, and there was Rosa back in Chihuahua City. Finally I decided it was time to talk to someone, and I chose Sam Ravel. He was a man of savvy and experience. After a decent night’s sleep I went to a barber shop, paid a nickel and soaked under a hot shower so that I looked halfway presentable, took a streetcar to Cleveland Square and walked into Sam’s office in the Toltec Building around ten o’clock in the morning. It was pleasantly furnished with some plaques and souvenirs of his days as a Texas Ranger. Some beautiful red Navajo carpets had been stitched together to form a bigger carpet.

Sam looked grim. “Where the hell have you been?”

“That’s what I came to talk about, Sam.”

“What happened with William Benton?”

“That’s a long story.”

“You’d better damn well tell it to me.” His hawk’s eyes glittered. “Benton left a note with some friends. He told them where he was going. Now it’s rumored that he was shot in Samalayuca. The American consul in Juárez wants to see Pancho Villa. The consul also happens to be Mr. Wilson’s personal representative here on the border.”

“What does the American consul have to do with it?” I asked. “Benton was a Scotsman.”

“Was?
So you
do
know!” Ravel leaned across the desk, clasping my wrist. “Listen, Tom—I’ll tell you something about the English. You can murder a man in the streets of London, and whether you’re a Mexican or a Turk, all they’ll do is hang you for it. But if you murder an Englishman abroad, they send gunboats and the Royal Marines, and they’ve been known to declare war if it suits the course of empire. Now they’ve dumped it in Mr. Wilson’s lap. He’s hopping up and down.”

I trusted Sam Ravel and had come here to tell him all that had happened. And so, finally, I did.

“Good God,” he said softly, when I had finished. “I guessed most of it, but not the part about you. No one’s spoken about you. I’ve seen Hipólito. He didn’t say a word.”

“Maybe he didn’t know.”

“Tell me this, Tom. In the caboose, with Villa, was Benton going to pull the pistol?”

“I didn’t think so. But Villa did.”

Just then Ravel’s office boy came in with the afternoon paper, the
Herald.
It had black banner headlines that read: PANCHO VILLA REPORTED TO HAVE MURDERED LOCAL ENGLISHMAN. It also said that Mr. Marion Letcher, President Wilson’s man on the border, had been ordered to investigate the incident. The story quoted from the French and British newspapers in Paris and London, whose editorials were screaming for Pancho Villa’s head on a plate.

“This does it,” Ravel said, slamming the paper down on his desk. “If he denies it and they catch him out, he’s finished. But if he does confess, he’d better have a damned good story. And witnesses.” He looked at me keenly. “What are you going to do?”

I hadn’t known until then. But now it seemed fairly clear.

“I’m going back to see Villa.”

Ravel’s look became even more searching. “Tom, you can’t do that. He’ll kill you. He said he would, and now you’ve shot one of his officers to boot.”

“I think he’ll have cooled down about that by now. I think he’ll need me.”

“You’re insane.”

“It’s the only thing I can do. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

“Not to me, my boy.”

“I know him better than you, Sam.”

Did I? I would soon find out. Maybe I
was
insane. I was certainly betting my life on it.

“One favor, Sam. Don’t tell Hannah what happened—to me. I don’t think she’d understand.”

“Do you?’’

A few soldiers stood guard about the red caboose in the Juárez railway yards. The last time I’d been here, I remembered, I had thought my life was at an end. Whatever happened now, I had picked up a few days of existence that I wasn’t supposed to have. Maybe my luck would hold.

Still, after crossing the International Bridge, even though it was a cool day, I began to sweat.

The soldiers knew me and didn’t know I was supposed to be dead or on the run. They saluted sloppily and I returned it, mounted the two iron steps and opened the door.

The first person I saw was a man who I guessed to be Mr. Marion Letcher, the President’s representative. He was ruddy-faced, plump and short, wore a gray business suit and apparently had brought Pancho Villa a telegram that had come directly from Secretary of State Bryan in Washington.

When I came in, Villa had just finished telling his side of the story. He wore his butterscotch-colored jacket, and the pith helmet sat on his little desk—probably to invoke the image of Teddy Roosevelt. His stubby brown hands were tented calmly in front of him. He looked up at me.

At first he blinked a few times. His face colored a little, and he smiled sheepishly.

“Hello, chief,” I said.

He cleared his throat, and then he frowned. Perhaps it had occurred to him that I might be here as a witness for the opposition. He couldn’t be sure. But what he couldn’t do was shoot me to insure my silence—not in front of Letcher, who had turned to me, raising a ginger-colored eyebrow. The only other one of our officers in the caboose was Julio. He was grinning at me wildly.

“This is Major Mix,” Villa announced, taking the gamble. “He was here that night. He’ll swear to the truth of everything I’ve told you.”

Letcher nodded, obviously unconvinced. “Who pronounced the sentence, General Villa?”

“I did, on behalf of the Northern Division of the Constitutionalist Army.”

“And where is the body?”

“It is buried, señor.”

“Can the grave be located?”

“All my graves can be located, señor.”

That didn’t go over too well, and Letcher frowned. He then repeated what Ravel had said, that if you killed a British citizen abroad, for whatever reason, the entire population of England, Scotland and Wales rose up in arms. “Some members of Parliament have called for the British Navy to sail,” he said stiffly.

Villa chuckled. “Señor, if a British battleship sails through the desert to Chihuahua, I’ll surrender immediately.”

Letcher responded to this wit with a demand to see the formal order of execution.

“I’ve already told you what happened,” Villa said. “Why do you need papers?”

“President Wilson is confident the order was in writing and in correct form.”

“I want to make your President happy,” Villa said enthusiastically, picking up what he thought was a broad hint. “I’ll have them for you this evening. Major Mix will deliver them.”

Letcher, somewhat confused, finally left.

Villa turned to me. “Tomás, write up some good papers that I can sign. Make them very legal, with ‘aforesaids’ and ‘therefores.’ Lots of seals. Use the typewriter.” Then he stopped, got to his feet, waddled swiftly round the desk and threw his arms around me. “Jesus Christ, I’m glad to see you. You’re like Lazarus! I can’t tell you how glad I am!” When he stepped back, I saw his eyes were dewy with tears.

“It’s all right, chief,” I said.

“You forgive me?” he said hoarsely.

“I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t forgiven you. But it wasn’t easy. If the moon hadn’t gone behind a cloud, and if Dozal hadn’t been so stupid, and if Rodolfo had decided to do the job himself…”

“I know, I know. You were right,” he groaned. “I would have hated myself for the rest of my life. I knew it an hour after you had left, when I came back to my senses. But it was too late then. I sent Julio to the yards to stop them. You had gone. Tell him that it’s so, Julio.”

“He sent me,” Julio confirmed. “I wanted to ride after you, but I knew I couldn’t catch the train.”

“I’m sorry about Dozal,” I said. “I wouldn’t have killed him if it wasn’t necessary. And if the sonofabitch hadn’t been so glad to get the job.”

“Fuck Dozal,” the chief said. “The only one who cares about him is Rodolfo.”

As if on cue, Rodolfo Fierro stepped through the door, ducking his head so that his Stetson wouldn’t scrape the door frame. When he looked up and saw me, he stiffened.

“Tomás is back,” Villa said flatly. “And I rescind my order to kill him. Do you hear me?”

Fierro said nothing. He stared at me with apparent calm, but I knew what emotions he must have been fighting to control.

“If you shoot him,” Villa added, shoving a finger in his chest—”and I mean for any reason whatever, including things that may or may not have happened in the past—I’ll hang you by your
cojones
from the tallest tree in Mexico. I’ll hang you until your tongue turns black and you beg for a quick death. And then I’ll have you shot through the balls. Do you understand?”

Fierro still said nothing.

“Do you understand?” Villa shouted.

“Yes, chief,” Fierro whispered.

So I had been reprieved, not just from the death that had been ordained three nights ago in the caboose, but from the death that had been sworn in Ascensión. Life was certainly full of twists and odd turns. I had been saved from two deaths, and I had my honor intact. I was almost ready to cry from gladness.

Villa winked at me and then turned back to Fierro. He had remembered why we were there. He still had to resolve the problem of William Benton.

“Listen, Rodolfo, and pay attention. I’ve made some promises to this American consul, or whoever he is. Can you find the Englishman’s body? Because if you can’t, you can start digging a hole for yourself.”

Fierro, for the first time that I had ever noticed, looked shamefaced. He actually blushed. He took off his Stetson again and smoothed his black hair. He shuffled his feet.

“Oh, Jesus.” Villa grew pale. “What is it?”

“Chief, I can find the grave. That’s no problem,” Fierro said. “But I didn’t shoot the man. I remembered your saying that he wasn’t worth a bullet. So after the soldiers dug the grave deeper, as the old
ingles
requested, and after the unfortunate death of Juanito, I picked up a shovel and hit Señor Benton over the head.” He cleared his throat uncomfortably. “And, obligingly, he fell into the grave.”

Villa gasped, digging his nails into the wood of the table.
“Alive?”

“I doubt it,” Fierro said cautiously. “I hit him hard.”

“You doubt it? You didn’t look?”

“It was very dark, my general.”

Villa’s big curly head sank like a rock into his hands, so that he was staring into blackness. He was making one of his rare efforts to control himself, and if it had been any man but Rodolfo Fierro, I think he would have shot him immediately for such craziness.

Finally he looked up. His fury had ebbed, but he spoke coldly.

“Go to Samalayuca—tonight. Dig up the body. Pray to God, in whom I doubt you believe, that you didn’t bury him alive. But either way, alive or dead, shoot him with a rifle through the heart. Shoot him three or four times, from about ten paces. Then take the body down to Chihuahua City.”

He turned to me.

“Tomás, get started on the papers. Say that there was a trial with four staff officers present. Say that one of them was appointed to defend the accused man. Say anything you please … but for the love of God, make it sound good! Then add an account of the execution, which took place in Chihuahua City, and say that after he was shot he was given a blow on the head—an act of mercy—in case the poor man was still by chance alive. God in heaven! Do it now, Tomás, please. And you, Rodolfo — get out of my sight, and for Christ’s sake do exactly as I told you. Don’t use your famous initiative.”

Fierro, almost trembling, left the caboose.

The chief tried to smile at me, to make light of it, but his smile slowly drained away.

Julio came over and squeezed my shoulder. “You’re back from the dead, Tomás.”

“Let’s get drunk tonight,” I said, “and celebrate my revival.”

I worked most of the afternoon on the papers, drafting them by hand and then typing them slowly on Villa’s banged-up portable Remington. He signed them, and so did the rest of the Division’s staff officers there in Juárez, excepting Fierro, who was away on his ghoulish mission. Then I delivered the papers to Mr. Letcher.

I was still troubled by a reason just a hairbreadth away from my grasp, and I decided to talk to Sam Ravel about it. His sympathies for Pancho Villa weren’t going to be dampened by a single murder—they would only fade if the murder were discovered in all its gruesome detail. I went round to his house on Fort Boulevard and caught him just as he was about to go to bed.

“You’re alive,” he said.

“Seems that way.”

“You’re awfully lucky, Tom.”

“So far,” I said. “You never know what’s round the bend.”

He sat with me on the porch, wearing his striped flannel pajamas and a silk bathrobe, while we drank a brandy in the cool night air and I told him the rest of the story. As I got near the end, he gasped. He jumped to his feet.

“Oh, my God! Do you know what will happen when that body’s delivered here?”

“That’s what I came to ask you, Sam.”

“They’ll have an autopsy! They’ll see that the bullet wounds didn’t bleed. And if Benton suffocated in that grave, they’ll learn that too! Tom, go back right now. Do anything that’s necessary … but stop Villa before it’s too late.”

I found the chief in the caboose, munching on a chocolate bar. When I told him what I had done, he groaned.

“You were right. I shouldn’t have had him shot in the first place. And you were right to talk to Ravel. But now …” His swollen hands fluttered in the air, the fingers stained with chocolate. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Can’t you find a Mexican law that says, after proper burial, it’s not permitted to disturb the dead?”

“There must be such a law somewhere.”

“And then get some doctor in Chihuahua to say he performed an autopsy
before
the burial. With the correct results.”

“I’ll get four doctors. That’s good, Tomás.”

“And something else. The English recognize the Huerta government, don’t they?”

“Yes. The bastards.”

“If they don’t recognize your authority, what right do they have to meddle in your affairs? Deal only with the Americans. They’ll make plenty of fuss, but it’ll die down after a while. At least we’ll hope so.”