Buck’s widow, Rosalita, accompanied them. A blue-gray thunderstorm was gathering down the valley and lightning flashed against the looming Sierra Madre foothills. Johnny’s four younger brothers stood on one side of the grave with their sombreros in their hands as the storm spread over the foothills. Little gusts of wind spun dust devils over the fresh mound. Even though his companions were only stepbrothers, they were Johnny’s closest family and insisted on helping in his bullfights.
Johnny stood over Buck Callahan for a long moment.
Finally he said, “I guess there’s nothing left but to go on.”
“Go on where, Johnny?” asked Rosalita Callahan.
The rumble of thunder echoed and Johnny shook his head. “Somebody’s got to go and get this finished.”
“Finished?” Rosalita said. “It is finished. Buck’s dead.”
“And Donita’s been kidnapped.” Johnny Ollas had no clear idea of what to do, but he had to do something; this he knew. It wasn’t just Donita, though that was most of it. The rest had to do with the fierce Mexican pride instilled since the time of the Aztecs; the more they were beaten down—by the humiliations of the Spanish conquest, by the rapacious Americanos, by the unrelenting hand of their own corrupt government—the prouder, the more defiant the people had become.
Johnny Ollas was no different from anyone else.
“Johnny, Pablo goes every day to the telegraph office. Colonel Shaughnessy will come as soon as he hears.”
“Well, then he hasn’t heard, has he?
“Villa’s cut the lines, they say, but they’ll be fixed,” Rosalita told him. “And we also sent a man up to Chihuahua City with a message yesterday. They’ll get it through, and even if they can’t, we sent a man with instructions to go all the way to El Paso. Why don’t you wait and see what happens?”
“No time,” Johnny said. “Villa can disappear, maybe in those mountains, and nobody can catch him. What happens to Donita then?”
The evening sun lit up his face, and he squinted beyond the wooden cross that marked the grave. Johnny was delicately built, somewhat like a lady’s wristwatch, thin and slight, yet his wrists were thick with muscle from so much practice in the bullring with the sword. A bullfighter needed strong wrists to drive the blade deep into the big hump on the bull’s neck.
Johnny’s hair was straight and black but his eyes were blue and deep-set. His nose was straight, too—not flat like an Indian’s; his chin was somewhat pointed and dainty, his lips thin, and his canine teeth large and pearly white, all of which gave him a lean, wolfish look.
“Oh, Johnny,” Rosalita said, “Buck wouldn’t have wanted you to do this. Buck was a practical man. He’d wait for the Colonel. Buck always did what the Colonel wanted.”
Johnny stared down at the mound of dirt. A few drops of rain fell.
“Look what it got him,” Johnny said.
TWELVE
The Colonel’s private train, NE&P No. 1, sat huffing on a siding in Providence, Rhode Island, under the curtain of night when Bomba drove them up beside it in a black Mormon motor coach. The headlights reflected on the glistening dark green cars and polished black engine, their sides emblazoned with the big salmon-and-gray NE&P emblem. Another automobile followed with baggage.
“Splendid, splendid!” cried the Colonel, rubbing his hands together. “Just look how she shines!”
The train was made up of the engine and five cars—collier, baggage, diner, salon, and sleeper—plus a special car Arthur had added. Bomba and two other men from the baggage auto began loading everything aboard. Through the windows of the dining car they could see white-jacketed cooks working inside in the galley and smell the fresh aromas of supper wafting out on the cool night air.
The engine’s bell clanged and every so often fantastic clouds of white steam belched onto the siding as the engineer eased off his boiler pressure. A dark-skinned porter helped Beatie and Xenia onto the salon platform, then ushered Timmy and Katherine aboard. The Colonel started to go forward to speak to the engineer when Claus Strucker turned up in a taxi. He was dressed in a black three-piece suit set off by a gold watch chain, and his hair was slicked back like a New Orleans bartender’s.
“Well, well, Colonel,” said the German, “what a fine-looking train.” He ran his fingers over the glistening side of the Colonel’s private salon car, which was named The City of Hartford. It was painted in the company’s colors: a deep lacquered gray with a salmon stripe down the length of the car.
“Good to see you, Strucker,” replied Colonel Shaughnessy. “Glad you’re coming along. I’ll have my people bring your bags.”
Three days earlier, Strucker had called the Colonel to thank him for the voyage on the Ajax. More than the others, Strucker had gotten the joke, and when he learned the Colonel was headed to Mexico, Strucker immediately asked to come along. The Colonel was glad to accommodate, grateful to have the company of someone other than women and children on the long trip. Besides, the German’s presence reminded him of some wild times of yore.
It was just the sort of break the German had been waiting for. Strucker wasn’t sure how it would play out, but going down to Mexico under cover of accompanying a man of Colonel Shaughnessy’s stature could offer endless opportunities.
Everybody in the family had met Strucker at one time or another, so there was no need to reintroduce him around. Presently they were all aboard and snug in the elegant leather-and-velvet-clad parlor car.
For his part, Strucker was secretly contemptuous of the kind of American democracy that produced such bourgeois creatures as Colonel Shaughnessy and his family. His supreme value was the Prussian hierarchy, in which one kissed ass upward and defecated downward, and even though he enjoyed the company of the Colonel, Strucker actually despised Americans in general, the same way he despised anyone in his own country who was subservient to him.
“This feels good,” Xenia remarked to Beatie, “a trip into the night to a foreign land.”
“Yes, I imagine,” she replied, “provided we don’t get tangled up in their war.” Beatie chanced a look at Strucker, who was seated at the end of the car near the bar. She didn’t like the man, mainly because in the old days he was always around when the Colonel seemed to be, well, up to something, though she couldn’t prove it. Nevertheless, he was an old friend of her husband’s, and it would do no good to protest now anyway.
Colonel Shaughnessy had overheard the exchange between Xenia and his wife and interrupted with a gravelly roar: “Now, Mother, Chihuahua’s a huge state and all the papers are saying now that Pancho Villa is all the way over in Coahuila. It would be like me saying I’m afraid of going from Boston down to New York just because somebody’s fighting a war way out in St. Louis.”
The children, Timmy and Katherine, had already opened the game locker and were setting up a Parcheesi board, while the Colonel headed back to the end of the car to speak with Strucker. Neither of the children liked the mannered Teuton, though they would be hard-pressed if asked to say why. There was something officious in his manner toward them, as if they were an impediment in his company. Katherine especially didn’t like the way he looked at her; almost, but not quite, a leer.
The Colonel told Alvin, the salon porter, to bring him a scotch and sparkling water. At this, Beatie launched into her familiar diatribe, scolding him for drinking in front of the children, and, in fact, for drinking at all. She was still at it when the servant returned with the cocktail.
“Now, now, Beatie,” the Colonel said, shaking his head and waving his hands. “We don’t want any of that on this trip. If people want to drink on this train, I don’t want them to have to go skulking around out of sight.”
“Just as you always do, I suppose,” Beatie said sourly.
“That is all too true,” replied the Colonel, “because of those carping temperance women whom you associate with.”
“And without regard to my feelings, either.”
“Well, if your feelings are hurt by seein
g a man having his drink before dinner, I imagine they will just have to stay that way,” replied the Colonel. “My word, woman, we are descended from Irish warriors!”
“You might be, but I’m not,” Beatie huffed.
She settled into the plush rear sofa of The City of Hartford while Xenia hovered over the children, who were engrossed in their game at the other end of the car. The dimmed electric lamps gave the polished-mahogany-and-velvet decor of the car a warm, friendly glow, the kind of glow the Colonel liked to get from his whiskey.
Katherine looked up from the Parcheesi board and caught Strucker watching her. He stood now by the door to the observation platform, drinking a double rye and taking in this scene. No German would ever put up with his wife bickering at him that way; in fact, no German wife would even think of such bickering. These Americans were a weak people, despite their material wealth and the vastness of their lands and resources. If Germany owned this country, it would rule the world—and might just wind up doing so anyway, depending on the outcome of the war. Katherine ran her fingers through her hair and offered a quick smile at the German, before wrinkling her nose and returning to the game, which left Strucker looking puzzled. These Americans! he thought. Even the children are weird.
“It all comes from the liquor,” Beatie continued resentfully. “From the moment you took up with that wretched woman. And, of course, it was your drinking that caused it!”
“She wasn’t wretched,” the Colonel corrected his wife, “she was perfectly nice, but you have continued to assume the worst. We were simply acquaintances.”
“Wasn’t wretched!” Beatie huffed. “Why, she ran stark-naked through the lobby of the hotel following the Belmont Stakes!”
“She was merely returning to her room,” the Colonel answered dismissively.
Strucker was appalled at being a witness to this conversation, but was not surprised by it; once, long ago, he and the Colonel had taken a pair of women on the yacht then owned by Strucker and sailed them out to Bermuda. Oh, the things that went on! In recent years, however, Strucker was left with the impression that the Colonel had reformed himself, though Strucker couldn’t see any reason why he himself should.
From somewhere up the tracks a voice cried out, “’Boarrrrrrd! ’Boarrrrrd!” and the train lurched as the air brakes unlocked. Strucker, who had also ordered a double rye, had been looking around and seemed puzzled, as the Colonel stepped out on the rear platform. “Where is your son, Arthur?” he inquired.
“In Chicago, tending to company business,” the Colonel replied sharply.
“And so he is not coming with us?” Strucker asked, surprised.
“Yes, he’s coming, but in his own way and his own time. He’s flying down,” the Colonel spat, as though he had a mouthful of ashes.
“Flying?” Strucker repeated, as though he had not understood the answer correctly.
“In that abominable flying machine you arranged for him to get.”
“The Luft-Verkehrs?” the German said, astonished.
“None other. Arthur insists that without the guns and ammunition and extra crew member it was designed for, he can take on enough fuel cans and spare parts to stay in the air eight hours at a time and—do you know what he said? He actually said he would beat me to El Paso!”
“A race, between train and plane!” Strucker could hardly contain himself.
“That’s what he said,” the Colonel sniffed. “I told him he was nuts, because my train can run twenty-four hours a day and he can only fly that thing during daylight.”
“Well, that Luft-Verkehrs does have a great range,” Strucker observed. “It can stay in the air four hours at least, with a full armored load, and who knows how long when it’s lightened.”
“Arthur says eight.” The Colonel shook his head in apparent disgust and motioned for the servant to bring him another scotch. He didn’t blame Strucker for getting Arthur the plane; as a matter of fact, he was somewhat beholden to him for doing it. When Arthur first began flying, about all that was available of American aircraft were the Curtiss Jenneys, which were unreliable, slow, and prone to crash. On the other hand, the Europeans—the British, French, and Germans—had made amazing advances in aircraft production and design, since they had actually been at war with each other.
Arthur had set his eye on a sleek little Deperdussin monoplane manufactured in France, but the French War Ministry had forbidden aircraft manufacturers from selling any of their products except to the military. He had almost bought a Blériot E.2 from an owner in Spain, but it turned out to be underpowered and in bad shape.
The subject of airplanes had come up one day the previous year when Strucker was down to Cornwall for a weekend. Sensing an opportunity to ingratiate himself with the American rail baron Shaughnessy, the sly German knew that in his position he could pull strings. Four months later Arthur went to the dock at Boston Harbor and took possession of a brand-spanking-new Luft-Verkehrs, crated up on a Swedish steamer, along with an extra engine and a variety of spare parts. The manufacturer had not put the German Iron Cross on the machine. Instead, at Strucker’s direction, he’d painted it a deep candy-apple-red.
“Arthur told me he needed to get back to the company operations headquarters in Chicago and mind the store,” the Colonel went on, “but I’ll bet it was just an excuse to do this flying stunt.”
“Well, it will certainly be interesting to see who wins,” Strucker declared. “That’s a long distance from Chicago to El Paso, isn’t it?”
“It’s fifteen hundred miles,” the Colonel replied.
The whistle blew in the chilly night air as NE&P No.1, with a plume of steam roiling back over it and vaporizing along the tracks, pulled out of the Providence rail depot and plunged into the inky darkness, toward Mexico.
“He’ll be damn lucky if he doesn’t crash the thing,” the Colonel added. Strucker found himself musing over Arthur’s flight. If he could make that distance, why couldn’t the Germans power up the Luft-Verkehrs and use them to bomb the cities of England? He’d have to get a message on this revelation through to his superior in the consulate at the first opportunity.
THIRTEEN
Johnny Ollas had been gone only a day when his troubles began in earnest. He got lost.
Mexico was not a hard country to get lost in. Aside from a few rail tracks, main roads, and towns, that part of north-central Mexico was a trackless wilderness of desert, plains, forest, and of course the sinister and seemingly impenetrable Sierra Madre. Every so often one might come across a village of Indians or the occasional adobe hut of a farmer, but mostly the country was a waste.
After leaving Valle del Sol with his four stepbrothers, Johnny tried to track Villa and his army but lost the trail even before he left the property. The fact that one had to go more than twenty-five miles just to get off the property was of little consolation, because losing track of an entire army is an embarrassment, even for amateurs. The Callahans were ranch hands and bullfighters, not plainsmen or man-hunters, and the only times Johnny had been this far away from Valle del Sol he had been on a train or in an automobile.
In any event, they were lost.
Villa’s path had been easy enough to follow at first. Not only were there the hoofprints and droppings of thousands of horses and cattle, but also the residue and droppings of five hundred men: campfires, mescal bottles, cigarette and cigar butts, wrapping papers, food tins, and other discarded things. But somewhere the Callahan brothers had gone wrong. The first and second nights, they had camped confident that they were overtaking the four-day-old tracks of the kidnappers. On the third day they arose by a creek and ate the last of Señora Pardenas’s beans and by-now-stale bread.
Two hours later, they lost the trail.
The smart way, Johnny realized now, would have been to backtrack, but the path ahead looked so likely, they went on toward the northwest, hoping to pick up the tracks again, and by late afternoon they were, basically, nowhere. In the distance they spotted a set
tlement of sorts, graying and pinkish in the last shadows of the sun. Dejected, they headed for it.
It was a small Mestizo village, a couple of dozen adobe huts, framed by tall cacti and fica trees. The dusty street that ran through the center of the village was pitted with slime-filled watery holes, and chickens, ducks, turkeys, and a pig or two wandered aimlessly in the thoroughfare. But far from being the kind of sleepy one-horse town they had envisioned, to their surprise the place seethed with activity. At first, Johnny thought some sort of fiesta was in progress.
Then they saw the woman.
She was hobbling on a cane, followed by a donkey loaded with straw brooms strapped to its back and pursued by a crowd of men, women, and children hurling insults, stones, rotten eggs, and spoiled fruit. She was barefoot and wearing a filthy rebozo, the traditional Mexican shawl, and was obviously frightened as she plodded away down the rutted street, occasionally glancing back to see what was to be heaved at her next.
“What town is this?” Johnny asked one of the mob.
The man eyed the horseback-riding strangers suspiciously and shrugged.
“The name—what is the name of this place?”
“No name,” the man said.
“What do you mean? You live here, don’t you?”
The man nodded.
“So what is the name of this town, then?”
“It hasn’t no name,” the man said. By now several other ragged-looking men and some children abandoned their persecution of the woman and had come to see the strangers. Johnny addressed another of them.
“What is the name of this town?” he demanded. “Where are we?”
“You are here,” the man said.
“I know I’m here. Where is this?”
“It’s just a place,” the man replied. “We live here.”
“I see that,” Johnny said. “You mean there’s no name for this town?”
“We’ve always lived here. There is a river over there.” He pointed off toward some trees.