El Paso: A Novel (36 page)

What exactly had become of Villa and his army was not fully understood in El Paso. Press reports were conflicting. Some said Villa was marching on Juárez City just across the river. This rumor may have had to do with the great dust cloud stirred up by the Colonel’s cattle as they neared the Texas border. Others said Villa was headed for the Sierra Madre, but yet other stories asserted he retired to Coahuila and from there was preparing to launch an attack against the oil facilities over on the Gulf of Mexico near Veracruz. One thing for sure was that the citizens of El Paso were in the dark about Villa’s whereabouts; another was that for the time being they were up to their asses in cows.

THE FIRST THING ARTHUR DID
when they reached town was go to the telegraph depot and wire his office about the affairs of the NE&P. An hour later he received a long communication from one of the vice presidents overseeing freight and payroll that everything was running smoothly based on the infusion of money from the loan Arthur had secured on the
Ajax
. Paid miles were up slightly and there was even encouraging news about the possibility of one of the lucrative government munitions contracts. On the other hand, the railroad was hanging on by a fingernail, the official hinted, which would have to be dealt with when Arthur returned. But for now, with the sale of the cattle, Arthur hoped he could get the company out of the clutches of its creditors. All in all, things seemed to be looking positive.

After nearly a month on the trail, Colonel Shaughnessy and his top hands were having their first drink of whiskey at the polished mahogany bar of the Toltec Hotel, when a motorcyclist from the telegraph depot found him and handed him a personal message from the home office. It rendered the Colonel momentarily speechless; he flipped the paper to Arthur, then downed his drink in a single gulp.

Arthur felt his face flush as he read the message again.

“What is it?” Cowboy Bob asked.

“They have kidnapped my children,” Arthur said in blank disbelief.

“Who?” said Bob.

“Villa.” He handed him the telegram.

Cowboy Bob examined the document. “Well, I heard he’s taken people hostage before, but it was never kids.”

Señor Gonzales had sent the message from the telegraph office at Parral. It told of Fierro’s arrival, the capture of Katherine, Bomba’s attempted escape, the injuries to Beatie and Xenia, and, finally, the kidnapping of Timmy.

YOUR WIFE AND DAUGHTER IN LAW WELL NOW REMAIN WITH ME STOP UNDERSTAND YOUR NEGRO SERVANT GONE AFTER VILLA’S ARMY STOP TELEPHONE STILL DOWN STOP ALL QUIET HERE FOR NOW STOP VILLA’S SOLDIERS RAIDED VALLE DEL SOL BLEW UP HOUSE KILLED RODRIGUEZ AND FIGHTING BULLS STOP SAFE IN YOUR OFFICE BROKEN INTO AND LOOTED STOP WHAT DO I DO NEXT STOP REGRET EVERYTHING GONZALES.

Arthur pushed his drink away. A shaft of pain exploded from his stomach upward, and at the same time a paralyzing weakness caused his legs and arms to tremble. This sort of thing was unheard-of in Boston or Chicago. For a moment, speech would not come to his lips. His mind seemed frozen in time. Then he managed to say, “My God.” That was all, for the moment.

Arthur, Bob, and the Colonel stood at the Toltec bar gaping at each other in disbelief.

Arthur began to shake off the numbness, and his first thought was that they must raise ransom money for Villa as soon as he demanded it. His second was, where on earth would they get it?

The Colonel felt the rebuke in Arthur’s face and for a moment tried to rationalize the situation. Suppose he’d taken all the family on the cattle drive and been attacked by Villa’s people? Same thing or worse may have happened. Suppose he hadn’t had a cattle drive in the first place and they’d all stayed at Valle del Sol? Wouldn’t the same thing have happened there, too? He never got around to asking himself what if he hadn’t brought the family down into Mexico at all, because he already knew the answer to that. Instead, trying to deflect attention from himself, he said, mostly for Cowboy Bob’s benefit, “I don’t give a damn about the house and the bulls, but Rodrigez was a fine manager. Cheerful man, good stock, like Callahan before him. It’s been a bad year for ranch managers.”

For the first time in his life, Arthur read fear and confusion in the Old Man’s eyes. The Colonel knew that if the safe in his office had been looted, then his last readily available cash had vanished. There had been upward of $200,000 worth of gold bars in that safe—money he’d counted on to keep Valle del Sol running and also as a stash that he might draw on if he really needed it. No need to tell anyone, especially Arthur; no need to add misery to poverty.

“The only good thing is that Villa’s been defeated,” the Colonel finally responded, “which probably means the trains will be running again. We need the women on American soil as quickly as possible. In the morning we’ll go to the telegraph office and the rail depot and find out what we can. Villa wouldn’t dare hurt them.” The Colonel put an arm on Arthur’s shoulder. “We’ll just have to figure something out, son. Believe me, we will.”

John Shaughnessy got a further shock first thing next morning when a second messenger from Western Union showed up at his hotel room door. The telegraph from Villa demanding ransom money for the children had finally caught up with him. The Colonel burst into Arthur’s adjoining room and thrust the offensive paper at him.

“A million dollars! I don’t
have
a million dollars!” the Colonel said, shaking his head. “I may have a million dollars’ worth of
things
here and there, but it wouldn’t do us any good. Why must I deal with this monstrous heathen?”

“Maybe he’ll negotiate,” Arthur said, without really believing it.

“Negotiate with a bloodthirsty greaser?”

“I have some money of my own. These are my children. I think by selling my securities and taking a note on my property I could come up with fifty, maybe a hundred thousand.”

“Yes, and how long do you think that would take? Besides, what guarantees do you have? Deliver such money to a madman and simply hope and pray the children are returned? Villa will laugh at fifty thousand dollars. He has overestimated me. He expects real money.”

“So what in hell can we do?” Arthur said.

“First, we need to get Beatie and Xenia out of there before something like this happens to them,” said the Colonel. “Trains ought to be running the next day or so, and if we find out it’s safe for them to return, that’s the first order of business. Then, what we need most is intelligence. Right now we don’t even know where to locate the son of a bitch to give him any ransom even if we had it.”

“We need information,” Arthur said starkly. “We will find it right here,” he said. “Here in El Paso. You can find out anything in El Paso, isn’t that what you said, Father?”

In that, Arthur was correct, but the problem was how to identify phony information from the real thing. He turned to Cowboy Bob.

Bob had an old compadre called Death Valley Slim, who’d been a cavalryman and later a mineral prospector down in Chihuahua, and who was not only familiar with Villa himself but also with his elaborate network of spies hanging around El Paso picking up information and intelligence. When Cowboy Bob explained the situation to him, Slim said he’d return in an hour with solid news.

Meantime, Colonel Shaughnessy got on the phone and rang up the White House again. President Woodrow Wilson was having his breakfast when he took the Colonel’s call.

“I believe I explained the situation to you before,” the president said after listening to the Colonel’s tale. “I am very sorry about your family, Shaughnessy, but we can’t just go changing American foreign policy and possibly start a war over a man like Pancho Villa.”

The Colonel fumed. “Roosevelt did it! Remember: ‘Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead!’” he said, referring to an incident in Morocco some years earlier when a Berber bandit named Raisuli kidnapped and held for ransom an American named Perdicaris. Roosevelt had sent in the Marines.

“Well, that was President Roosevelt’s way of dealing with things,” Wilson said regally.

“Yes, and he said something else, too: ‘Speak softly and carry a big stick,’” the Colonel reminded him.

“It wasn’t Roosevelt said that,” Wilson corrected him. “It was his secretary of state John Hay.”

“Whatever,” snapped Colonel Shaughnessy. “How about you, Mr. President? Where is your ‘big stick’?”

“I have one, Colonel Shaughnessy, but must use it wisely,” the president said. “However,” he concluded in the barest whisper, “I do believe I speak softly.”

Furious, the Colonel hung up. “That man is an ass,” he said to himself, wishing, despite everything, that he’d supported Roosevelt.

By midmorning, Death Valley Slim found Arthur and the Colonel standing in the lobby of the Toltec.

“What’s left of his army’s back over in Coahuila lickin’ their wounds,” Slim said, “but ol’ Pancho, he’s took to the hills.”

“What hills?” Arthur asked. He moved them all to a table.

“Well, they’re not hills, exactly,” said Slim. “He’s gone to hide out in the Sierra Madre. That’s where he usually goes when he needs some time to regroup.”

“How many men does he have with him?” demanded the Colonel.

“Regiment—maybe less,” Slim answered. “It’s tough travelin’ in them mountains with anything more’n that. Tough enough travelin’ in there anyway,” he added.

“A regiment,” said the Colonel. “Well, now, that’s all he’s got?”

“All he took,” Slim said.

“Why, hell, I can raise a regiment!” the Colonel declared.

“What are you talking about?” said Arthur.

“Look, if Villa’s separated himself from most of his army, then why don’t we just raise us an army here in El Paso and go after him, before he pulls himself together and reunites himself with his band?”

“How are you going to raise an army?” Arthur said, trying to hide his astonishment at such a crackpot notion.

“Son, in case you forgot, I raised one right there in Boston back in ’98 and took it up San Juan Hill with T.R. I’m not exactly unaccustomed to fighting these beaners.”

“Yes, but—look, we need to be realistic here. For Katherine and Timmy.”

The Colonel rose up from the table and motioned for Arthur to come with him. They went to a quiet spot in a corner of the lobby.

“Listen, Arthur, you asked me yesterday what I suggested we do. First, Wilson isn’t going to do anything, so any help from our government is out. He offered to have our ambassador in Mexico City contact the Carranza government, but what in hell good would that do? Carranza can’t even find Villa himself.”

Arthur listened.

“Second, we don’t have the money to pay the ransom, and every minute we wait, Villa’s going to be harder to catch up with, and every minute the children remain in danger. So the choice is either to sit on our hands here in El Paso and hope something happens or take action.”

“Action . . . ?”

“Yes, action! At the best, we might have a chance to sneak in and bring the kids out, because I imagine that’s the last thing he’ll be expecting. The other possibility is that if we do catch up with him and a rescue isn’t possible, at least we might be able to negotiate, like you say.”

Arthur closed his eyes and shook his head and ran his fingers through his hair.

“Suppose we try to rescue them and fail?” The bright faces of Katherine and Timmy kept flashing in Arthur’s mind.

“You know Villa pretty well,” Arthur said to Death Valley Slim after he and his father rejoined the group. “Do you think he’ll harm those children?”

“Let me put it this way: I wouldn’t put nothin’ past him.”

“I say since we know where he is we ought to at least give it a try,” Colonel Shaughnessy said. “I’m not an unreasonable man. I think once we smoke him out, I’ll just let him know it’s not him we’re after, but those children, and if he releases them, he’ll not be molested any further by me.”

“Father, that’s . . .” Arthur’s voice trailed off. He could not remember a time in his life when he felt real fear, real panic, at least not for any length of time. But now he felt frightened in himself, unsure of whatever decision he made, yet he knew he would ultimately have to be the one to decide.

“Excuse me, Colonel,” Death Valley Slim put in, “you said ‘since we know where he is.’ Now, that’s not exactly what I said. I said he’s gone to the mountains. That ain’t like saying he’s down the street at Mr. Foote’s Saloon. Do you understand how large them mountains are? I mean, just in area, if you could scoop ’em all up together they’d prob’ly fill up the entire state of Texas—and Texas is big enough being flat. You got to appreciate what kind of mountains these is, Colonel,” Slim continued. “You know the Rockies, and the Sierras up in California . . . well, these ain’t like them. Those got civilization—roads, towns. These mountains here ain’t got nothing like that. All that lives up there is a handful of Indians that came down from the Toltecs. Everything else is, well, just wild. There ain’t even maps for most of it.”

“So how does Villa get around there?” the Colonel asked, now annoyed.

“He knows the place,” Slim said. “He’s been in there a lot—ever since he was just a kid—and he’s also got a few of those Indians—they call themselves Rarámuris—anyhow, they go with him. They know their way around.”