El Paso

  He includes in his caravan two young children, boy and girl, and a Mexican woman insisting they’ve been kidnapped. Villa claims he is only escorting them to safety, but I have my doubts. He’s a ruthless man and kidnapping is not beneath him. He is furious at the administration in Washington for recognizing his enemy Carranza as leader of Mexico, to his exclusion, and for closing the border to shipments of arms and supplies for his army.

  The man Reed whom I mentioned in my last letter has revealed himself to me as a socialist. He’s decent enough but his philosophy isn’t right. It isn’t even wrong. That’s what’s scary about it.

  The weather agrees with me and even though the travel is rough and hard I feel hale for a man my age. Our diet is mainly beef and beans and onions and biscuits but I yearn for those good chicken dinners or a shad roe breakfast at the Willard.

  Yours truly, A.B.

  Bierce tore the paper from the tablet, sealed it in an envelope, and slipped it in his vest pocket next to the other unmailed letters he’d written to his secretary. He’d no sooner arrived back at the campfire than a gunshot rang out, zinging though the branches above and creating a little shower of leaves and twigs that floated down. Immediately there was the sound of machine guns and rifle fire ahead, where the sound of the shot had originated. In the camp there was shouting and confusion.

  Villa himself had just returned from his conversation with Katherine and was standing over a kettle dishing up a plate of beans when the shot was fired. He fell flat to the ground and rolled toward the cover of a tree, cursing in Spanish.

  From the canyon ahead, the shouting grew louder, and presently a group of horsemen appeared in the dim light, the lead rider dragging something behind him on a rope. It was the body of a man dressed in the white peasant uniform of one of Villa’s soldiers. The rider dragged the body through the shallow stream and deposited it on a little spit of sand next to Villa’s encampment.

  “We got him sure, General,” the rider cried excitedly. “He was right where you thought he’d be—up on that canyon rim there.”

  “Who is it?” Villa asked. Two men roughly turned the corpse over, but its face had been shot away by machine gun fire. There must have been a dozen holes in the blood-soaked clothing.

  “Does anybody know this man?” Villa demanded. His lips were curled back in a snarl.

  People shook their heads.

  “Go through his pockets,” Fierro ordered.

  Another rider came up waving a rifle with a telescope sight. Fierro grabbed it.

  “This is one of ours,” he spat. He turned to one of his aides. “Go to the armory wagon and find out if one of our rifles is missing and how this happened.”

  “There is nothing in his clothing but a few pesos,” said one of the men examining the body. He held out several coins in his hand.

  “All right,” Villa told Fierro, “I want to scour this camp. Find out who’s missing. Tell all the section leaders to assemble here in half an hour.”

  Fierro nodded and started to walk away; then, as an afterthought, he spun around and snatched the coins from the man who was still holding them out. Giving the man the once-over, Fierro spat, “Vamoose,” and shoved the coins in his pocket as he stomped away.

  JOHNNY OLLAS AND RAFAEL WERE WAITING NERVOUSLY with the cattle herd when Luis ran up breathless and white with shock.

  “I think they killed Julio.” He shuddered.

  Johnny’s breath caught in his throat. He’d heard the shot and then the machine gun fire and sensed it boded ill, coming so quickly after the shot. Still, he’d hoped for the best.

  “I blinked the flashlight near Villa’s camp,” Luis said, “and when the shot was fired, I started coming back here. But then when I heard the other shots, I returned. They were dragging somebody behind a horse. From what I could tell, he was dead.”

  “Julio?” An animal wail came out of Johnny’s throat. Julio, the youngest, whom he’d taught how to ride and rope.

  “I think so,” said Luis. “I couldn’t get too close.”

  Just then Gourd Woman appeared out of the gloom.

  “He was shot,” she said.

  “I think we’d better get out of here,” said Johnny. He felt his voice crack.

  Johnny’s heart was beating so fast he thought it might jump outside his chest. There was nothing left to do but run. The plan might have worked. The ambush shots had gotten Villa edgy and he’d be looking for trouble ahead. Ahead and not behind, where Johnny had planned to come from next time, driving the herd straight through the camp, scattering people and confusing them, and then he would grab Donita in the uproar and they would disappear back down the canyons before anyone could figure out what had happened. But Villa had outsmarted him, laying a trap for his trap, and Julio was dead.

  Johnny, Luis, and Rafael had just saddled their horses when Fierro and a party of a dozen soldiers burst into the clearing where the cattle were. The soldiers’ rifles were drawn.

  “Is one of your men missing?” Fierro demanded.

  “I don’t know,” Johnny mumbled. “It’s dark.”

  “How many do you have here with this herd?”

  “Well, me and Luis and Rafael—and the woman.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Yes,” Johnny fumbled.

  “Say, amigo, why are your horses saddled?” Fierro asked suddenly. “You going someplace?”

  “No . . . we’ve been out checking the beefs,” said Johnny.

  One of the soldiers was a sergeant who had a cigarette in his mouth. He puffed out a big cloud of smoke and said to Fierro, “General, I think there was five of them here. I used to come back with the orders for the beefs to be brought up. There was six when they came, including the woman. Then one of their guys was killed back before we got to the mountains. They cut his guts out, remember? That still left five.”

  “So how many are you?” Fierro said slowly, his suspicions aroused.

  “Well, there is four of us. We had another guy, but I haven’t seen him for a day or so.”

  “We can look at the roster and tell how many you are supposed to be,” Fierro said, “but I think you all better come back with me and talk to the chief. He’ll be interested in your story.”

  FORTY-NINE

  Bomba and Henry Flipper learned at the Rarámuri Indian village that Villa had taken to the canyons. They also learned there was another party, too, following after them, but didn’t know what to make of that. But after working the area for twenty-five years, Flipper was pretty sure where Villa would have gotten to by now, and he knew a shortcut.

  Flipper cursed himself, and not always silently, for getting mixed up in a crazy thing such as this. He should have stayed put in the cave of the mummies. This was against every judgment he’d ever made, good or bad. But he also knew there was no way Bomba could possibly find Villa by himself and that he’d likely die out there alone. So he agreed to try to locate Villa. After that, Flipper would wash his hands of it and hightail it for the border, and Bomba would be on his own.

  When he learned he’d been correct, and that the Indians had seen a young boy with Villa’s troop, Flipper led Bomba and himself back down the way they had come and headed north on a course he calculated would parallel Villa’s on the other side of the mountains. They’d make better time that way, and maybe make up for the time that was lost. Eventually they came to a mountain pass Flipper believed would intersect Villa’s path through the canyons. They arrived just before dark in time to hear shots fired, and in the morning found themselves looking directly down into Villa’s encampment. They were hidden on an outcropping that reached out over the canyon like a sharp tooth snagging the air. They could make out people, animals, and wagons.

  “You see any children?” Flipper asked.

  “Can’t see that far,” Bomba told him. They were behind low shrubbery, lying flat on their stomachs. The morning sun had risen behind, them but not high enough to shine down onto the canyon floor.

  Flipper
went back to one of the donkeys he’d tethered to a tree and returned with a spyglass. Bomba scanned the glass slowly across his field of vision. Something strange was going on. He saw no children, but there was an affair in one of the offshoot gullies, a little box canyon, that seemed a hive of activity. Bomba concentrated the spyglass on it. Dozens of men were gathered at one end of the gully, which was blocked off from the main canyon by a rockslide. Within the gully he could see a few men in motion, and they seemed to be moving around a bull.

  “What is it?” Flipper asked.

  Bomba handed him the glass. They could both make out a faint hum of human shouting that drummed up out of the canyon. Flipper studied the scene for a few moments, then put the spyglass down.

  “What the hell is this?” he whispered. “That looks like . . . a bullfight going on down there!”

  FIFTY

  When they took Johnny Ollas to Pancho Villa, Johnny assumed his goose was cooked. The only slight chance was to convince Villa that Julio had somehow harbored a personal grudge against Villa and the decision to ambush was Julio’s alone. It might have worked, until Donita saw Johnny being led into Villa’s camp and rushed to him.

  “Wait a minute!” Fierro said. “Say, this is that vaquero from back at that big ranch where we killed the fighting bull, isn’t it? And this woman was his wife, right?”

  Fierro was smirking at him sourly, as if he’d just eaten a pickle.

  “So, Private Ollas,” said Villa, “this is why you have come to join my army—to kill me, eh?” Dozens of people had gathered, including Bierce and Reed. Mix hurried Donita and the children away because he was pretty sure what was going to happen next.

  “No,” Johnny said, “to bring home my wife.” He guessed it wouldn’t do any good to lie now. They pretty much had him red-handed.

  “Well, you tried to, didn’t you?” Villa snapped. “Your man there was taking shots at me, wasn’t he?” Villa motioned toward Julio’s body, which still lay on the spit of sand. “Or were you with him, too?”

  “No,” Johnny said. “I . . . Julio was not trying to kill you, General.”

  “I suppose you wouldn’t be the first man to lie,” Villa informed him.

  “No, General. We were merely trying to distract you.”

  “To what purpose?”

  “I’m not a killer,” Johnny said. “I am a bullfighter. The only way I knew how to fight you was like I fight the bulls. I tried to draw you out, see which way you hooked, correct it, if possible, and then make my move.”

  “Which was?”

  “To run the herd through your camp and in the confusion rescue Donita. I just wanted to bring her home safely.”

  “Bullfighter, eh? You are a matador?”

  “I am.”

  “And you had shots fired at me and were going to endanger my army by running a herd of stinking beefs through it!”

  Johnny could see Villa was becoming worked up. It gave him a queasy feeling in his bowels. “Julio was not trying to hit you with the rifle,” Johnny told him. “He could have, though, with the telescope sight. He was only trying to throw you off your guard.”

  “Off my guard!” Villa roared. “Are you stupid? Being shot at only put me on my guard! And look where it got your man there.” He gestured again toward Julio’s still form, the shirt and pants soaked in blood.

  “He was my brother and my picador,” Johnny said.

  “Bullfighter!” Villa spat. “You’re a fool, too.”

  “I know it,” said Johnny, “but what was I supposed to do? You took my wife.”

  Villa considered this for a few moments. The silence was familiar to anyone who had known him long. The next words Villa uttered would seal Johnny’s fate, of that much they were sure.

  “And these people with you,” Villa said, nodding to Rafael, Luis, and Gourd Woman. “What are their roles?”

  “They are my cuadrilla,” Johnny said. He started to say they were his brothers, too, but thought better of it. Guilt by relation might be even worse than guilt by association.

  “The woman, too?” Villa seemed taken aback.

  “No. She’s just a peddler. She’s not involved.”

  “Well, all right, Señor Matador,” Villa said. “I’ll tell you what. I’m going to give you a fighting chance, which is more than most men would receive who are assassins. So you fight the bull, huh? Well, I saw a big fighting bull back there with the herd. Is he still there?”

  “He is,” said Johnny hesitantly. “His name is Casa Grande and he’s the grandson of the bull you killed at Señor Shaughnessy’s ranch.”

  “And you, Señor Ollas, are going to fight him,” Villa snorted, with the satisfaction of a man who had just divined a solution to a sticky problem.

  “Fight him?” Johnny said.

  “Yes—you claim to be a matador, right?”

  “I am, but—”

  “No ‘buts.’ I could have you shot right now, or in the morning you will fight this bull. Take your pick.”

  “But that’s . . . I don’t have my cuadrilla—there’s just Rafael and Luis. And I don’t have anything—no muleto, no estoque, no—”

  “Oh, that is not for you to worry about.” Villa rubbed his hands together warmly. “For a muleto, I think you can use the shirt of your companion there—your brother, you say.” He pointed to Julio’s body. “It will make a good cape—blood-red, eh?” And for an estoque, well you can use one of our cavalry sabers. I’ll have it especially sharpened up for you.”

  “But that’s crazy,” Johnny said nervously. “A saber is curved. It’s not an estoque. There’s no way to place it properly—it won’t go in.”

  “Ah, but it is all we have, matador. Maybe you will plow new ground for bullfighting here—perhaps you can use the saber to cut off the bull’s head.”

  “Or stick it up his ass,” Fierro remarked.

  “What do you think, General?” Villa asked Fierro. “We will have a bullfight, no?”

  “It’s murder—the animal will kill him,” Fierro noted casually. “Still, our men have been without entertainment for some time.”

  “Good,” Villa said. “The bullfight will begin when there’s enough light to watch it.”

  “Would you mind,” Johnny asked, “if I was with my wife tonight?”

  “I don’t see why not, señor. But you must also get some sleep. Tomorrow will be a big day for you,” Villa replied.

  At dawn next morning a remarkable apparition came riding into Villa’s camp. He was tall and ramrod-stiff, with high polished riding boots and wearing a monocle. He guided his horse almost casually down the streambed that meandered through the canyon until he found someone to take him to Pancho Villa.

  “Good morning, Herr General,” Strucker said. Villa did not offer his hand. He had just returned from a clump of bushes behind which he’d performed his morning routine and was unhappy because his stomach was sour.

  “Who the devil are you?” Villa asked, puzzled.

  The German introduced himself and for once told the truth.

  “I am representing His Imperial Majesty, the kaiser of the German Empire.”

  “Is that so?” Villa said. “Well, what do you want here?”

  “I’ve been trying to find you since Chihuahua City,” said Strucker. “It was an unfortunate reverse for you, I’m sure.”

  “We gave as good as we got,” Villa told him curtly. “It didn’t seem smart to hang around.”

  “No doubt,” Strucker said. “I wonder if there is somewhere we can go and talk. I have come on official business.”

  “Are you hungry?” Villa said.

  “Yes, I am,” replied Strucker.

  “Well, there’s food on the fire. Someone will get you a plate. By the way, how in hell did you find me?”

  “I have followed your trail from Chihuahua City,” said the German.

  “Are you a tracker?”

  “No. I had guides to the Indian village you visited in the mountains. From there the Indian
s helped me. I’m sure I’d be wandering around out here for years without them.”

  “That’s most likely true,” Villa observed. “I should have killed those Indians before I left.

  “Anyway,” he continued, “there is a piece of entertainment this morning. There is going to be a bullfight. After that, you can state your business.”

  “A bullfight,” Strucker remarked. “What an odd place to hold one.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Do you do it often?”

  “No,” Villa replied. “It’s a special occasion.”

  FIFTY-ONE

  The Rarámuri guides told Colonel Shaughnessy they were just a day behind Villa’s party and might overtake him at any time. The Indians also informed him they were going home now. They had reached the limits of their range, they said, and the extent of their knowledge of the canyons. The Colonel didn’t like this, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. He was stewing over this late in the afternoon when catastrophe struck. The Colonel had been riding across a stream when his horse stumbled on a submerged log. The animal pitched forward, throwing the Colonel, and then, in a flailing scramble to get up, it kicked him in the leg.

  Arthur and Slim witnessed the whole thing and were close enough to hear the crack when the leg broke, as if somebody had snapped a large stick in two. They got the Colonel out of the water and carried him to the sandy bank. Slim cut off the Colonel’s trousers leg and was alarmed by what he saw. The leg above the boot was already beginning to swell and had turned an ugly bright red.

  “It’s broke for sure,” Slim said. “We need for somebody to go find Bob. He knows about these things.” Bob was somewhere up ahead scouting. Arthur stayed with his father, who was in fierce pain.

  “Tell Ah Dong to come up here,” Arthur shouted. He knew the Chinaman had sedatives and other painkillers in the chuckwagon. By the time Ah Dong arrived, the Colonel was white-faced, grimacing. Taking only a quick look, the cook rushed back to his wagon.