El Paso: A Novel (67 page)

They asked about everybody and Mick told them what he knew.

“Your grandfather broke his leg, but he’s going to be all right. And Bomba was fine, too, last time I saw him.”

“Are they back at El Paso?” Katherine wondered.

“I don’t know, but I’m sure they will be shortly. Now I want to know about you. Have they treated you well?”

They told Mick about Timmy’s gila monster bite and about the jaguar, about going through the mountains and canyons, and Katherine described how she was teaching Villa to read and she also talked a little about Tom Mix.

“He’s really quite nice,” she said, “although I think he’s made a big mistake. He’s not like these people at all.”

“I’m sure,” Mick said. From what he’d seen of Mix so far, he was just another adventuring fool looking to earn a reputation for himself.

“Well, I don’t want you to worry anymore,” he told them. “Uncle Mick’s here now and we’ll all be going home.” Nervous and worried as he was, Mick felt better trying to reassure the children—as though in some small way he could make it right, no matter what might happen.

They traveled for nearly a week across the prairies, or llanos, to Mick’s growing concern about their ultimate fate. Mick was shocked that Villa seemed to have no interest whatever in negotiating anything. It was unlike any of his previous experience, and thus he began to look for some other way out. He noticed that in the late evening a small black Ford truck appeared toward the end of the caravan and off-loaded what probably was food to the commissary wagon; the driver then spent the night and left again in the late morning, after breakfast. By his own estimate, Mick figured they could not be more than twenty or thirty miles from the U.S. border. If he could somehow get hold of that truck by surprise, and put the kids in it, he ought to be able to outrun men on horseback. It was chancy, but being among these killers all day was chancier, Mick decided.

Working in his favor was the fact that the cowboy Tom Mix who had been taking care of the children and the Mexican woman Donita had been sent ahead for a day or so to scout. Someone had put Lieutenant Crucia in charge of the hostages. Mix had been nearly constantly with them, seeing to their food and other needs; but Crucia’s directive had simply been to guard the prisoners, and when he quickly realized there was no place for them to go, he ceased being a presence in the entourage except in the morning and evening, when he stopped by to count noses, so to speak.

Mick sprang the plan on his fellow captives the following evening. Next morning, Mick said, after Crucia’s routine visit, he would drift back toward the commissary wagon and hijack the truck. The only rub would be whether or not the key would be left in the truck; the plan would be ruined if it wasn’t, but Mick figured there’d be no reason for the driver to remove it. After all, who would steal a truck out here? He was familiar with this particular vehicle; Ford had made them by the tens of thousands. Luckily, a year or two earlier Ford had replaced the awkward—and attention-calling—hand crank with an ignition starter button on the floor next to the clutch pedal. Provided the ignition caught quickly, Mick figured he could wheel the truck along the column of men at maximum speed, slam on brakes to gather up Timmy, Katherine, Donita Ollas, and the dog, and speed north across the open prairie toward the U.S. border, outdistancing any pursuers on horseback.

Shortly after sunup, Lieutenant Crucia arrived for roll call, and then rode off to some other occupation. After positioning the kids and Donita near a small shrub, Mick sneaked down the column with his hat pulled low. The truck was parked casually about ten yards from the commissary wagon, near the reata where the horses were tethered. That would provide good cover. He could see the soldiers and others at their breakfasts.

From behind one of the chuckwagons, Mick strided into the open and quickly put himself between the reata and the truck. From there the coast was clear and he loped across to the vehicle and ducked into the cab. Immediately he saw the key was in place—as he’d guessed, the driver hadn’t bothered to lock the steering column. Mick put the gear in neutral, took a deep breath, and hit the starter button. The engine groaned and turned over but failed to catch. He exhaled, waited a moment, and tried again. Same result. Another deep breath. The starter whined and strained, as if the battery might be low. He held it down for what seemed an eternity, when suddenly the motor caught, sputtered, caught and sputtered again, and then caught for good. Mick was in the process of putting the vehicle in first gear when he felt the cold steel of a pistol barrel hard behind his left ear. He froze in midmotion, then let off the clutch and slowly raised his hands. The pistol barrel was removed and Mick slowly—slowly—turned his head to meet the grimly smirking face of Lieutenant Crucia, standing in front of the driver of the truck, who had heard his engine being started.

“You were planning a drive in the country, señor?” Crucia said nicely.

“It was on my mind,” said Mick.

CLAUS STRUCKER HAD HELPED REED BURY BIERCE
following the execution.

“I enjoyed knowing Mr. Robinson,” the German told Reed. “He was a cultivated man and deserved better than this.”

They had found a coffin in Los Palomas that was waiting for an old woman to die and persuaded the family to accept ten dollars for it. Reed and Strucker took turns shoveling out a grave in a little desert plot of ground that was covered with pretty orange flowers the shape of violets, as well as some spiny cactus plants.

“He was a fool, too,” Reed said bitterly. “He might have saved himself.”

Reed wasn’t as angry or disgusted with Bierce as it sounded. He was feeling a heavy weight in his chest from the death. The two of them had come through a lot together and Reed had grown fonder than he’d realized of the old man, even though he disagreed with practically everything he said. In a way they were perfect companions: opposites attracting each other, each with a keen, witty mind and the capacity to argue without fighting.

“Well, he died a brave man,” Strucker replied. “I think facing a firing squad must take more courage than any other way of going.”

“He committed suicide, you know,” Reed told him.

“They said he died defiantly. Did you hear what he did?”

“Yes,” Reed said. “Now I wish I’d been there. To at least have been a friendly face he could recognize at the end.”

“Are you going on this raid tonight?” Strucker asked.

“No, I couldn’t do that,” Reed replied, “and Robinson was right, of course. This is a stupid plan and Villa will regret it.” He stopped digging and leaned on his shovel.

“I am going,” Strucker told him. “It’s a command performance.”

“Well, it was your idea in the first place, wasn’t it?”

“Listen, my country is fighting for its life and yours is aiding our enemies. It isn’t that I have anything against Americans.”

“Your nation will reap the whirlwind,” Reed informed him, “and so will England and France and everybody else mixed up in that thing, including the USA, if it goes in. And it serves them right. The only thing that’ll be left when it’s over is a brotherhood of man which will demand an end to war and injustice. This time, they’ll get it.”

“You might be right, Mr. Reed,” Strucker said. “I just hope there are enough of us left who’ve put our money in safe places so we can live our lives out in respectability.”

Reed nodded and resumed his shoveling. He might as well have been addressing one of the cacti.

STRUCKER HAD BEEN ISSUED A RIFLE AND A PISTOL
to take along on the raid. He felt uncomfortable about that, but took them anyway. He’d seen firsthand what happened to people who didn’t do what they were told. Villa’s raiding party got into Columbus without a hitch. First, half the troops attacked the American garrison, shooting it up so that in the dark it sounded like a display of fireworks was being set off. Strucker’s group rode into the town proper and things quickly turned into confusion. Since the town wasn’t lighted, the riders had trouble finding the stores and banks they were looking for. One of the soldiers got the bright idea to set fire to some buildings so they could see what they were doing.

At about the same time, some of the American machine guns began to open up and there was pandemonium in the streets. People rushed from houses that had been set fire, some shooting, some just running, women in nightclothes, barefoot men in long johns, children. In the center of the main street, standing alone in his nightclothes and crying, was a little boy. He couldn’t have been more than two or three years old, and Strucker was sure he’d be shot or run down by the galloping horses if he remained there. In an unusual moment of compassion, Strucker rode out to pick the little boy up, but as he did he felt machine gun bullets slap into his horse, which collapsed on its side. Strucker managed to scramble out from under the horse and was in the process of grabbing the child when bullets struck him in the chest. He had only a few moments to consider what life had been like. Curiously, his starring role at age nine in his gymnasium class tableau was the last thing Strucker would ever remember on this earth. He’d played Tristan.

THE ATTACK ON COLUMBUS PRODUCED
the precise outcome that Strucker had intended, at least at first. Newspapers all over the United States began screaming for an invasion of Mexico and at once President Wilson ordered General Pershing to form a military expedition to find and punish Pancho Villa. But first the diplomats went to work and the consequences of that were the opposite of the German’s hopes. The Americans went to the Carranza government and actually got permission to invade Mexico. The agreed-on rules were that the Americans were not allowed to use the Mexican railroads for resupply, nor enter any city, and they were confined to roads that led only north and south. The war Strucker hoped would ensue had not developed and never would.

Pershing was confused by the orders he received from President Wilson and phoned him to say so.

“Mr. President, are you telling me you want the United States to make war on one man?”

“He’s the one causing the trouble, isn’t he?” Wilson replied testily.

“Well, suppose he should get into a train and go to Guatemala; are you prepared for me to go after him?” Pershing inquired.

“Well, no, I am not.”

“So what you really want is to have his band captured or destroyed,” Pershing suggested.

“Yes, that is what I really want,” Wilson replied.

At least it clarified things for Pershing and satisfied him yet again that civilians such as Wilson had no business telling the military what to do.

The story of Villa’s attack was big news all over the country, and nowhere was it bigger than in El Paso, where four thousand American troops were preparing for the hunt. Xenia immediately went to Patton.

“I would like to come with you,” she said.

“Oh, madam, that’s hardly possible,” Patton replied. “We are going after a vicious desperado.”

“I have already crossed the state of Chihuahua without a military escort,” she said. “I expect I can do it again.”

“Alone?” Patton asked.

“No, that is why I want to come along with you. Don’t you consider yourselves safe?”