TOM MIX AND PANCHO VILLA: A Novel of Mexico and the Texas border (64 page)

It hardly seemed joyous news that nearly a score of people had been shot dead, but of course I understand Lieutenant Patton’s jubilation. It heralded combat, and combat was his dream. Pipe in hand, pacing the office, he told me what he knew.

At four o’clock in the morning, after knifing the sentries on the border, Villa bad struck at Columbus. The cavalry’s rifles were under lock and key, the officer with the key nowhere to be found, so the men had to smash open the weapons locker with axes. One soldier in the stables killed a raider with a baseball bat, and the kitchen cooks defended themselves with pots of boiling water and cleavers. A dozen Mexicans were burned alive when the Commercial Hotel caught fire. The telephone operator in the Hoover Hotel, although her baby was clasped to her breast and she was struck in the face by flying glass, got through to Deming and summoned aid.

The cavalry rallied and struck back. At dawn the Villistas fled, leaving a gutted town. Pablo Lopez and his brother, who had massacred the train at Santa Ysabel, had been recognized among them. Why had they done it? On Villa’s part it seemed madness.

Major Tompkins, with a troop of horses, set out in pursuit and penetrated fifteen miles into Mexico before he ran out of bullets.

“Tompkins claimed they killed a hundred of them. Probably exaggerating. But, do you realize—this is war! The big question is, will the Eighth Cav go?” Patton grew a shade paler.

The rumor is that the army will send a force consisting of nine cavalry regiments, infantry, trucks, one regiment of mounted artillery and a troop of Apache scouts, and the First Aero Squadron. But some units will have to stay behind to guard the border.

If that is the fate of his own Eighth Cavalry, Lieutenant Patton says he will resign his commission and raise polo ponies in Pasadena.

The following day he was Officer of the Day. He was smoking his pipe on the porch of the headquarters building after lunch when he learned that the Eighth Cavalry would definitely
not
go to Mexico.

Despite the midday heat he rushed immediately to the regimental adjutant and asked to be recommended to General Pershing as an aide. Then, in a sweat, he flew across the compound to the major who has been appointed adjutant general of the expedition and repeated his request. Finally he buttonholed Lieutenant Shallenberger, his friend and one of Pershing’s two regular aides-de-camp, begging him to put in a good word.

In the late afternoon, while he sat around sneezing and biting his nails, he was summoned to the general’s office. Pershing was busy dealing with logistics and newspaper releases. He had no time for pleasantries.

“What’s all this about, Lieutenant? I’m being hit from all sides about you.”

“I want to go to Mexico, sir.”

“So does every officer worth his salt.” Pershing’s bony face revealed no sympathy. He was a Missourian, and you had to show him. He was one of three officers in the history of the U. S. Army who had been promoted directly from captain to brigadier general—in his case by President Roosevelt. It wasn’t favoritism; it was merit.

“What exactly is so special about you,” he asked Patton, “that you should receive consideration?”

“What’s special,” Patton blurted, “is that I want to go more than anyone else. Beyond that, sir, I’m a Distinguished Marksman, Master of the Sword in the whole army, and I know more about cavalry tactics than … well, I know a lot. I’ve learned some Spanish too—I mean more than just
buenas días.
And … and …”

Here Patton saw that the general was unmoved by his plea and was about to dismiss him and return to his paperwork and the ringing telephones; and here, in a fit of desperation, Patton’s fateful idea came to him.

“There’s something else, sir. Something special. I won’t bore you now with the details, but I happen to be personally acquainted with a colonel on Villa’s staff. He’s an American, a renegade. Soldier-of-fortune type. A cold-blooded killer to boot. He was one of the Villistas who blew up the railroad last October. If I can make contact with this man—and I’ve got an idea how to do that—he could be of extraordinary use to us. He has no more morals than a rat, but I might be able to persuade him not to fight against his own kind.”

Pershing grunted, shuffled the papers on his desk to one side and tented his thin, liver-spotted hands. “What’s the man’s name?”

“Mix. Colonel Mix. He’s much too young to be colonel. He probably curried favor.”

“Suffering catfish/’ Pershing said. “I know this fellow.”

“You do?” Patton’s mouth hung open.

“I met him here at the post, at General Scott’s house. Villa was there too. just after they took Juárez in 1913.”

Patton remembered then that Mix had told him he had once had tea with the general. But he had not believed him.

“Well, how do you judge the man, sir?”

“Probably more competent than most. Idealistic. A bit simple-minded. Very close to Villa. Why do you say he’s a cold-blooded killer?”

Patton quickly related the story of the massacre in the stockyards of Torreón.

“Good God …” Pershing shook his head sadly. The subject of wanton death was more than distasteful to him. Six months ago his wife and three daughters had been burned to death when their home in San Francisco caught fire. Only his small son survived. It had made the general melancholy and turned his already gray hair a yellowish white, but it was not a subject he would discuss.

“Do we want such a man working for us?” he asked Patton.

“Sir, it’s war. We’re going to be in a hostile country. No roads, poor maps, hardly any water for the first hundred miles. We’ll lick them, but we’ve got to have good Intelligence. Well, you know that—you campaigned down there against Geronimo. I’ve studied that campaign carefully. I’ve also heard a tale that the Germans may be backing Villa, that they may have helped him organize this raid—start a diversionary second front that will keep us out of France. Now, I think—”

“That will do, Patton. I’ll let you know.”

The lieutenant hurried back to the stables and brought me with him to his office. He began to sneeze ferociously. Whenever he was nervous, not only did his voice rise but his hay fever attacked him. While he brewed tea he told me the story of his proposition to Pershing.

“What do you think, Miguel? Will you help me?”

“How can I do that?”

“If—lousy, rotten if!—if Pershing takes me along—and by God, he’s got to!— I’ll have to make good on this thing about Mix. The idea just came to me, bang-o, like that, but it’s a first-rate one. Don’t you understand? Even though the man’s a swine, there’s got to be a spark of patriotism in him. And if there’s not, I’ll pay him—out of my own money. What the hell else is it good for? That should do the trick, and he can give us the sort of information that might be worth millions. The problem is … I’ve got to reach him.”

The lieutenant looked at me eagerly with his watery blue eyes. After another sneezing fit, he poured the tea into two white mugs and handed one to me.

“Here. It’s Darjeeling. The best.”

I stared at him. “You know that this man killed my brother. And two hundred other innocent men.”

“Yes, I know that. War is hell, Sherman said. And it makes strange bedfellows.”

I took a shaky breath. “If I ever found him, Lieutenant, I would kill him.”

Patton disregarded me. “If Pershing makes me his aide,” he said, “I’ll need a striker. To take care of my horses and uniforms. Brew tea. Keep the tent neat. So you’d be part of the expedition. I can’t reach Mix, but you can. And then you can bring him to me.”

“Lieutenant, I can’t do that.”

“Look here, Miguel. I’ve got to say something straight—man to man. You owe me quite a lot, and you owe even more to the U. S. Army. We pulled you out of the desert, gave you a decent life, fixed up your arm. That was from the goodness of our hearts, because that’s the American way, and you don’t owe a goddam nickel to me or the army. But if you have a chance to pay that debt with service, you should damn well make an effort.”

Face flushed, he waited for my answer. There was certainly reason in what he said, but he asked too much. For two years I had nurtured the thought of revenge in a way that the lieutenant, brought up to be a soldier and a good American, could not understand.

“I’m grateful to you,” I said. “And to the army. I might have the best of intentions, but if I came face to face with Major Mix, or the other one, Colonel Fierro, I don’t think I could act reasonably.”

“You’re a grown man, Miguel!”

“I’ve made a vow to God, on the sacred memory of my brothers. I can’t break it. If you feel I’m ungrateful and you dismiss me from my position, I’ll understand.”

Lieutenant Patton clenched his fists, not in anger but in frustration. He turned his back, paced the length of the office, glanced up at his medals and diplomas, then swung back to me.

“Would money change your mind?”

“I didn’t hear you say that.”

His cheeks flushed even more, and he came up to where I sat on the other side of his desk, my tea growing cold in the mug. He tried to lower his voice so that it didn’t squeal as much as it had been doing.

“I have only one more way to ask you. That’s to beg. And I’m doing it. My career’s at stake. More than my career—my whole life. This is my last chance in the army.”

I knew how hard it was for him to say that, and I was moved.

“Let me think about it, Lieutenant. You don’t have to beg.”

He threw the dice once more. This time he rolled a high number. “When it’s over,” he said, “I mean if we get through to the man and he does what I ask him to do—after that, you can do with him as you please. I won’t interfere again, as I did on Stanton Street. You have my word as an officer.”

At five o’clock the next morning the telephone rang in Lieutenant Patton’s house up on Military Heights. General Pershing came directly on the line.

“Patton, how long will it take you to get ready?”

“Five minutes, sir. I packed last night.” ‘

“I’ll tell you a brief tale,” Pershing drawled. “In ‘98 I was an instructor at the Point—a lieutenant. Policy had it that no instructors were to go to war. I applied through channels for an exception and was turned down flat. So I went AWOL to Washington, knocked on the door of the Secretary of War, who was a friend of my father-in-law, and got myself sent to Cuba. If you repeat that, I’ll call you a liar. You’ll be my aide-de-camp with Shallenberger. Be down here by seven o’clock.”

That morning, Punitive Expedition Headquarters issued Special Orders Number Two, relieving Lieutenant Patton from duty with the Eighth Cavalry. Once again he rushed to the stables to find me.

“Will you come? I’ve got authority for a striker and two extra horses.”

“If you put it that way, yes. You know I want to go.”

“Then it’s settled. That’s dandy! That’s really fine!”

He said nothing more about his plan to find Pancho Villa through Mix, and neither did I. Perhaps, I thought, he had given up the idea. It was certainly farfetched, and the more I considered it the more I realized that if ever I tried to ferret out the man in the wilds of Chihuahua, my own life would be at forfeit. Mix understood my intentions—if he were given the opportunity, he would kill me.

But in the ende I would accompany the expedition because I wanted to be with the lieutenant. I felt linked to him now in a way that was difficult to fathom. It was almost as if we shared a destiny, and I didn’t want to be left behind while he sought it. He was a man of great talent and enormous ambition. I confess, for all his singlemindedness, he fascinated me. He may have been a Johnny-One-Note, but so was I.

That morning he met with the general’s other aides to divide their tasks. He loaded all the staff horses on the train that would take them to Columbus, and in the afternoon he coded telegrams with a major from the Intelligence unit. At dusk we all piled into several staff cars and drove to the railroad station. I had never been that close to General Pershing before. He paid no attention to me. I was the lowest of the low, an officer’s servant.

By then we knew a great deal more about the raid on unsuspecting Columbus. Although he had denied it, it was assumed that Villa was wreaking vengeance on the United States for having recognized the Carranza government and helping to defeat him at Agua Prieta. In addition, he had probably hoped to steal rifles and ammunition at Camp Furlong. Colonel Slocum now claimed that Villa had led the raid himself; the bandit general’s burly form was easily recognizable. The rumors of German involvement continued; the names of a Colonel Kloss and a Captain von Papen were most often mentioned, but there was no hard evidence.

In the fighting one hundred sixty-seven of Villa’s soldiers were killed by the Americans’ accurate fire. Most of the bodies were soaked in gasoline outside the town, then burned to char. Colonel Slocum was in some disfavor because he had disregarded a warning from some Mexican vaqueros that Villistas were camped only a few miles from the border. Major Tompkins, on the other hand, had already been recommended for the Medal of Honor for pursuing Villa into Chihuahua and receiving, in his words, “a slight wound in the knee, and a bullet through the rim of my hat.” He described the accuracy of the Mexican gunfire as “remarkably atrocious.”

The American people cried out for vengeance. The State Department, on orders from President Wilson, authorized the punitive expedition immediately—”with the sole object of capturing Villa and preventing further raids by his band, and with scrupulous regard to the sovereignty of Mexico.”

Carranza telegraphed to Washington that he was in complete accord “if the raid effected at Columbus in New Mexico should unfortunately be repeated.” In the heat of preparation, no one paid much attention to that careful wording.

We were going to fight! Nothing else mattered.

Our train reached Columbus late at night. The town still smoldered, and the stench of burned flesh struck my nostrils. I had no desire to see the piles of dead; in Torreón I had seen enough for a lifetime.

Lieutenant Patton, however, made an inspection by lamplight before he unloaded the general’s baggage from the train. He then had to wait until five o’clock in the morning to get the horses off—Caterpillar tractors were being unloaded first, for grading the dirt roads of Chihuahua. Then he collapsed for an hour in the barracks, where I had slept fitfully among a gaggle of snorers. I was not the only civilian. The army was so short of transport that it had advertised all over Texas and New Mexico for trucks, and in most cases hired their drivers and mechanics with them.