El Paso

  SIX

  In Chihuahua the cattle rustlers were already driving their booty back toward the rolling hills where Pancho Villa and his detachment sat watching them. The band of horsemen from the hacienda were closing in fast, but the rustlers seemed unperturbed and continued driving the cows at a leisurely pace.

  “Please send for Señor Mix,” Villa said. Fierro barked an order, and presently a tall, lean, good-looking young man with slicked-black hair and dark flashing eyes rode up on a palomino and saluted Villa. Six months earlier Tom Mix had been just another bored cowhand back in Arizona. In his idle moments, Mix harbored visions of someday becoming a movie-star cowboy but, along with a handful of other American soldiers of fortune, he’d thrown in with Villa’s army hoping to come away with enough cash to get his start in Hollywood.

  “Take two machine gun squads and cut off those vaqueros,” Villa instructed. Mix saluted and wheeled back down the far side of the hill, where about four hundred of his Villistas were resting, grazing their animals, lying on the ground, drinking mescal, smoking, joking, and engaging in other leisurely pursuits. Mix spoke to them in a combination of pidgin Spanish and sign language and the men began to rise and collect their weapons.

  It made Mix feel important that he could command obedience from this mob. He’d joined Villa with little more than a secondhand revolver, a dented Winchester .30-caliber rifle, and a trick horse, but in a short time his industriousness, bravery, and pleasant manners got him promoted as a key aide to the general.

  Villa called him “my gringo fireman.”

  The little band of hacendados riding from the ranch was now about halfway between the cattle rustlers and their path back to Villa’s position, but the distance to them was closing fast. Then off to his right Villa saw Tom Mix’s detachment of machine gunners with an escort of a dozen riflemen tear out from the swale, the horsemen leading four big mules that carried the German Schloss machine guns and ammunition in their packs, so that now there were three groups of horsemen, seemingly converging on one another.

  Although the hacendados were farthest away, they were much faster than the rustlers and the machine gunners with the pack mules in tow, but the little situation below was developing just as Villa expected. The hacendados must have by now seen the new detachment but they did not slow down. The sun had sunk low on the horizon and reflected off a bank of big gray clouds to cast an infernal glow over the entire landscape.

  “They better hurry,” Fierro said, but it was unclear whether he referred to the rustlers or the machine gunners. Suddenly the cloud of dust behind the hacendados quickly enveloped them as they drew to a halt. Nothing stirred in the air, not even the faintest breeze. The machine gunners continued and the rustlers were shouting, waving, and trying to get the cattle to move faster. Then, quite suddenly, the hacendados got on the move again, split into two groups; one rode directly for the rustlers, the other arced toward the machine gunners, the two groups acting as a sort of pincers.

  Now a new figure arrived at Villa’s side. General Vargo Santo—“the Saint,” as he was known in the army. Santo was one of Villa’s principal military advisors, having grown up in France and been educated at Saint-Cyr, the French version of West Point.

  Vargo Santo had been faithful to Pancho Villa and the revolution since the beginning, all through the fabulous victories of the early years and even now through the recent defeats, and, as a military scientist, had taken a keen interest in the tactical developments in the great war in Europe, particularly in the use of defenses such as trenches and barbed wire and the machine gun.

  “Well, General, a nice little show coming along down there,” Santo commented. An unremarkable-looking man with a graying mustache and light green eyes that betrayed him as a mixed-Creole and probably of the aristocratic classes, both of which Villa despised. But Villa was not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, and when Santos resigned from the Federal Army and offered his services to the revolution, he was glad to have him.

  “We haven’t had a fight in more than a month,” Villa replied, “Not even a bloody fuss like this. I’m looking forward to it.”

  Santo nodded. Villa had many pithy mottoes, which Santo had endured over the years, and one of them was: “Try to eat a little shit every day, just so you don’t lose the taste for it.”

  The first group of hacendados now closed quickly on the flank of the rustlers.

  Mix had evidently seen the hacendados split up and shifted his course to get between them and the cattle herd. Now the cowboy slowed and began to unload his mules, the machine gunners rushing to unlimber their guns. The riflemen, most of them still on their horses, began pointing their weapons toward the approaching hacendados, and soon little puffs of white smoke could be seen, followed by the faint echoes of gunfire.

  “Now we teach these vaqueros something,” Fierro said with relish, as if he wished to the highest heavens he were down in the fray. Whatever else had created Rudolfo Fierro, war and killing enhanced and refined it until it was commonly said he could kill a man with no more qualm than swatting an insect. Once, in the early years, he shot one of his own soldiers through the eye while sitting in a street café at Chihuahua City. He had done this on a bet from someone that he could not hit a man in the eye with a single shot from a pistol at the distance of across the street. Fierro generously donated the proceeds of the bet to the victim’s widow.

  Suddenly it was apparent to Villa and the other two generals that Mix had gone wrong.

  The American cowboy had set up to block the pincers movement of the hacendados but failed to defend his rear. Surely he must have seen the split-up; obviously the first prong of hacendados would reach the rustlers and their catch momentarily, which was just what happened.

  While Mix’s men frantically toiled to assemble and operate the machine guns, the hacendados pitched into the band of rustlers and, outnumbering them three to two, began a small battle. Unable to both fight and control the herd, the rustlers tried to assemble themselves into something like a fighting unit, but by now it was too late. The hacendados were upon them.

  “Shit,” Villa spat. Four or five of his men either dropped from their horses or the horses toppled over.

  Meanwhile, the pincer prong of the hacendados came within firing range of Mix’s machine guns, which opened up on them with devastating effect. The gunners were aiming low so as to cut down the horses, and after a few brief bursts only three or four hacendados remained in their saddles. Finally realizing the firepower they faced, they beat a hasty retreat. Mix had forestalled defeat in five seconds and five hundred rounds.

  “Must’ve thought they were dealing with a bunch of scruffy bandits,” Villa remarked with an air of relief, turning his attention back to the herd and the fight going on there. Fierro wheeled his horse and was waving and shouting something to the main band below, but Villa interceded.

  “Too late,” he said. “Don’t worry about it. We can take all this gringo’s cattle whenever we want. Don’t waste the time.”

  By now the hacendados had driven the rustlers back toward the hill in a sort of running battle and, perceiving their job as finished, they broke off and began trotting back toward the ranch. The herd, panicked by the gunfire, was stampeding, twisting and turning like a swarm of bees. Mix and his men were watching the action but were too far away to be of help.

  “Your Señor Mix don’t seem to appreciate an envelopment tactic,” Fierro commented disgustedly.

  “No,” Villa replied, “he’s young. He’s got a lot to learn.”

  “We can teach him,” Santo offered.

  “We can,” Villa sneered. “But first I’m gonna teach those gringo hacendados something they won’t forget for a while. And I guarantee you, we will not be eating beans tonight.”

  SEVEN

  Huge generators hummed and electric lights shone brightly aboard Ajax as the festivities got under way. A hundred or more business potentates in their dinner jackets drank from crystal glasses of rye, sco
tch, champagne, and the finest wines of France. Stewards dressed in the distinctive salmon-and-gray uniforms the Colonel had tailor-made for his yacht served Russian caviar and smoked fish and duck pâté on silver trays.

  The Colonel stationed himself on the promenade deck leading to the grand salon, profusely greeting and mingling with the host of Harrimans, Goulds, Rockefellers, Fords, Guggenheims, Vanderbilts, Mellons, Whitneys, Hearsts, Dodges, Lehmanns, and other luminaries, who, in their turn, complimented the Colonel on his fine ship and splendid hospitality. His guests also knew that his favorite baseball team, the Boston Red Sox, had just won the World Series, and since the Colonel had always made such a big thing of it, they congratulated him on that, too.

  One of those on board was a man named Claus Strucker. Tall, immaculately dressed in a dark spruce-colored velvet dinner jacket, charming, and with a platinum-rimmed monocle fixed in his left eye, Strucker was a wealthy German industrialist and member of the New York Yacht Club, which was where the Colonel had encountered him some years before. He was also a commissioned captain in the German Naval Intelligence Service Reserve, and was on his own mission that was closely held business between him and his country.

  Of course, the Colonel knew nothing of this; he and Claus Strucker had a long history of association ever since Strucker turned up at the Yacht Club in a handsome, varnished thirty-two-meter sloop—suave, debonair, and impressive with the “ladies.” In those days the Colonel was sometimes—perhaps more than sometimes—apt to be seen in private—and sometimes in public—with a woman not his wife. Strucker often not only enabled these trysts by making introductions, but also served as a “beard” in case word should somehow get back to Beatie.

  It was not an entirely foolproof ruse, however, and caused a terrible row in the Colonel’s family eleven years earlier when he was caught conducting an affair with an actress. Beatie stopped sleeping with him then and joined the temperance movement, and now she occupied a place in his life not unlike the Ajax. All that notwithstanding, the Colonel had maintained his acquaintance with Strucker because he usually found the German quite entertaining in an obsequious kind of way, and they would often reminisce in private over their former exploits.

  For his part, Strucker had ulterior motives in joining the affair that evening, to which he had in fact invited himself. His country was at war in Europe—all over the world, in fact—and Strucker’s interest in Colonel John Shaughnessy had more to do with his big spread down in Mexico than any damn yachting party. Truth was, a Junker like Strucker could make trouble even while he was just sitting there.

  Seeing Strucker board the Ajax brought much of the past back to the Colonel and, as all the guests were aboard, he went up to the ship’s bridge with a cigar and glass of scotch to watch the casting-off operations. The scotch went down smoothly and warm and, for some reason, on the dim outskirts of the conversational buzz below, he began to consider his life and times.

  Never mind the chilled relations between them now, Mrs. Shaughnessy had provided the Colonel with two children, the first of whom, Alexa, turned out a disappointment. Now thirty-four, she had never married and led a dissolute life in New York City. The adopted one, Arthur, who had come to them at age nine and was now thirty-two, had married and sired him two grandchildren, which made the Colonel exceedingly pleased.

  But Arthur was in many respects all the things the Colonel was not, and it often pained him. What he had hoped for in Arthur was a mirror of himself, but he might have known it wouldn’t happen, since the boy wasn’t his own flesh and blood.

  Those things the Colonel enjoyed, Arthur did not, and either buried himself in his collections of stamps, coins, and, yes, butterflies, or, more recently, devoted himself to tinkering with the Grendel, that infernal flying machine of his. Once, when Arthur was no more than eleven and had lived with the Shaughnessys for two years, the Colonel had tired of his excuses for not wanting to ride or box or shoot or play rough sports and determined to get to the root causes.

  Shaughnessy had demanded of the orphanage that they turn over the names of Arthur’s true parents so that he could investigate them himself. The orphanage refused, even in the face of veiled threats to cut off his generous donations, but in the end Shaughnessy was somewhat relieved.

  What if he had discovered Arthur was the child of a thief or prostitute or spies or worse?

  No, he would work with what he had, and work Arthur he did, trying without success to remold him in his own image. The boy was maddening sometimes; he tried hard to please, yet let you know his heart wasn’t really in it.

  It became apparent that Arthur had developed his own personality while in the orphanage and changing it would be difficult, if not impossible. Still, the Colonel had to pay a kind of grudging respect to his adoptive son. Even though he quit Groton, which, for all intents, removed him from consideration for Harvard, he’d worked hard at Boston College (though Beatie went into conniptions because it was a Jesuit school) and slaved at the railroad business until the Colonel began to depend on him for sound decisions and advice. Yet he remained disappointed that Arthur had not turned out to be the companion he needed in his later life, someone to ride and hunt and fish with, someone who shared his views, political, economic, and social.

  The mirror, a perfect mirror, of himself.

  PRESENTLY, DINNER WAS SERVED. The well-oiled guests, including Claus Strucker, who had consumed half a dozen glasses of schnapps, trooped into the ship’s dining hall, where a huge feast had been prepared. Strucker took note that the tables were set in the finest Irish linen and the mahogany chairs were covered in salmon and gray velvet with a big A for Ajax embroidered on the backs. The columns were strung with fresh green smilax and bright drooping ferns.

  Following the elegant soups, salads, oysters, scallops, and crab meat, enormous trays of roast venison, partridge, pheasant, duck, hams, Atlantic salmon, mountain trout, halibut, swordfish, and lobster were offered. The wine flowed freely, as usual. At last, when coffee and desserts were being delivered, the Colonel took to a podium and over a newfangled broadcast system opened a speech.

  “Gentlemen, we are gathered here this evening for a bit of relaxation,” he began, then hesitated. “While our ladies are at home, devising ways to spend our hard-earned dollars.”

  There was much applause and the Colonel continued. “However, we must never forget that the price of liberty to conduct our affairs in such a way to make this great nation prosper is . . . eternal vigilance!”

  Strucker, sitting twelve guests away, put down his dessert fork and made a mental note of this remark.

  More applause, as the Colonel warmed to his subject. He inveighed against the current horrors that were on everyone’s lips: the infernal federal income tax, Mexico, socialism, unionism, anarchism, trustbustingism, notions of alcohol prohibition and women’s suffrage—but nothing, Strucker observed, about the war in Europe. The speech had gone on for half an hour when the Ajax began a low vibration and a deep shudder emanated from far belowdecks. At this, many of the dinner guests seemed alarmed and looked at one another. Signaling a crew officer, the Colonel leaned off the podium for a moment, then addressed his audience.

  “Gentlemen,” he said reassuringly, “there is no problem to concern yourselves with. I have just been informed that a severe storm is reported off Nantucket Island, headed this way. I have been advised by the harbormaster to weigh anchor and remove Ajax to the open seas so as not to run the danger of grounding. We will put in safely at Boston Harbor first thing in the morning.”

  Immediately there began a low mumbling from the guest tables, since many of these men had important duties to attend to at their offices—duties that involved millions of dollars, contracts, mergers, businesses to run. But the Colonel, smiling, waved them silent.

  “There are comfortable cabins aboard for all of you, and when we arrive at Boston one of my trains will be on hand to carry you back to Newport, New York, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia—wherever you wish to go. T
he harbormaster has already notified your drivers ashore of the situation, and any of you wishing to send telegraph messages may use the wireless station on the bridge deck. So please, let us finish with the evening’s program. Have another drink and enjoy a comfortable night on the high seas, courtesy of the New England & Pacific Railroad Company!”

  This information seemed to calm the guests as the Ajax steamed past the rock-perched beacons guarding Newport Harbor and out toward the dark Atlantic Ocean. The guests relit their cigars, drained their brandy glasses, called for more, and settled back for the remainder of the voyage and the Colonel’s address. A little past midnight Shaughnessy finally wound up to thundering applause from the dining room coterie, which to a man agreed with everything he said—even the German spy Strucker, who, in his drunkenness, had dropped his monocle into a dish of custard.

  Before the Colonel closed the ceremonies he asked that certain members of the guest party remain behind. He ticked off their names: Whitney, Hearst, Harriman, Guggenheim, Buckley, and others. They were singled out for this distinction because, like the Colonel, they had a vested interest—a very large vested interest—in the present goings-on in Mexico.

  These families and a few more owned practically the entire northern part of that country that adjoined the United States—millions and millions of acres that, for a quarter century and more, they exploited for ranching, farming, mining, railroads, and the like. Now the Colonel had some news he wished to give them.