by Lyle Brandt
At thirty feet he stopped and asked, “Which one of you intends to kill me, then? Or will you share that honor equally?”
“Honor?” the gringo answered back. “You must think highly of yourself.”
“The sin of pride,” said Villa. “I confess it is among my various transgressions.”
“I believe it’s him,” one of the sisters said, sounding surprised.
“Him, who?” the gringo asked.
“I recognize him from his photographs,” the other twin replied. “I think so, anyway.”
Their seeming leader frowned. Said, “Someone want to clue me in?”
The first woman who’d spoken said, “He looks like Pancho Villa.”
For the first time since his stallion had collapsed beneath him, Villa thought survival might turn out to be an option after all. The stark alternative, if one or all of those confronting him harbored some private grudge or simply knew about the bounty that Porfirio Díaz had placed on Villa’s head, they might as easily cut loose and riddle him with bullets where he stood.
With nothing left to lose, Villa broadened his smile, bowed slightly from the waist, and told the killers ranged before him, “In the flesh. You have me at a disadvantage now. May I be privileged to know your names and why you’ve massacred my men?”
* * *
* * *
Five minutes later, Clint Parnell sat facing Pancho from across the campfire that Kuruk had managed to rekindle, once the bodies strewn about it were removed. On either side of Clint sat Sonya and Dolores, rifles close at hand. The other members of their posse moved among the restless horses still confined to the box canyon, trying to relax them with soft words and gentle touches.
“Why we’re here is simple,” Clint advised their prisoner. “You stole these horses in a raid on the Aguirre ranch. We’ve come to take them back.”
“The nine of you came all this way?” Villa’s surprise was evident.
“We lost a few between times,” Clint replied. “All friends of ours.”
Sonya chimed in at that, her voice bitter. “You also killed our brother and more friends the night you struck our hacienda. Someone from your gang of rats wounded our father at the same time.”
“Ah, then this is personal for you,” Villa replied.
“A blood debt that we must repay,” Dolores said.
Villa nodded his understanding. “I could easily apologize,” he said. “But having been in your position many times myself, I know that it would fall upon deaf ears. You are obliged to kill me and you may as well get on with it.”
Clint saw the bandit’s answer take the sisters by surprise. They glanced at one another, hesitating, while hands tightened on their rifles. Finally, Dolores asked Villa, “You wish to die?”
“¡Por supuesto no!” said Villa, laughing as he spoke, the sound shocking all of them. “Of course not! Only old men who have nothing left to live for wish to die, and half of them are lying even as they say it. But I understand the debt you owe your padre and hermano. While I did not injure either of them personally, it is clearly my responsibility. Do what you must.”
Clint half expected one twin or the other, maybe both, to fire on Villa then, at point-blank range, but neither did. Instead, both looked to Clint as if he had the answer to a riddle that confounded them. Feeling their eyes upon him, waiting, he replied to their unspoken question, saying, “I suppose it’s up to you-all.”
As he finished speaking, Sonya raised her Springfield, aiming it at Villa’s face across the fire, then hesitated with her finger on the rifle’s trigger, frozen there. After a long moment she shook her head, lowered the weapon. Said, “I cannot do it in cold blood.”
“Nor I,” Dolores said. “But if he lives and goes unpunished . . .”
Villa saw an opening. He said, “If I may say, perhaps you might consider that the man or men who shot your relatives and friends have already been punished.” With one hand, he waved in the direction of his scattered dead. “I led the raid, it’s true, but always hope that no one may be slain unnecessarily. Responsibility is mine, of course. As for the triggermen, you have already dealt with them. Whatever waits for them beyond death’s door, they have discovered it.”
“How would you pay your debt in that case?” Sonya asked their prisoner.
Villa considered that. “For one thing, I am willing to accompany you and assist in returning your fine horses to New Mexico.”
“One extra hand won’t make much difference,” Clint said.
“You’re right, of course,” Villa confirmed. “And I am not the best vaquero, what you in el norte call a wrangler, ¿sí?”
“In that case,” Parnell said, “you might want to explain yourself.”
“If I ride with you, it would be as Pancho Villa.” The bandido emphasized his statement with a fist thump to his chest. “I can persuade my people to assist you when we near their villages and warn them against speaking to the federales, eh?”
“Without your gang behind you?” Parnell challenged him.
“They will not know the difference,” Villa replied. “Whoever rides with me becomes mi pandilla—my gang, if you prefer that term.”
“And if we make it to the border?” Clint inquired.
Villa responded with a shrug. “Then you may kill me if the need compels you, or we may part company and never meet again.”
“About that,” said Dolores. “How can we believe that you will never cross the Rio Grande to trouble us again?”
“You have my solemn word,” Villa replied.
Sonya snorted at that. “Your word?”
“It’s all I have to offer, señorita. As you know, I am an outlaw, thief, and murderer. That said, I only lie when there is profit to be made from it.”
“In this case,” Sonya answered, “that would be your miserable life.”
“From which you may feel free to liberate me if and when we reach the Rio Grande,” Villa replied.
“Step off and let us have a minute to discuss this,” Clint advised. Villa immediately nodded, rose, and moved away to find a saddled horse, escorted by Kuruk and his two Mescalero tribesmen.
When they were alone, Clint told the twins, “I know why you’re dead set against it, and I don’t trust Villa anywhere outside of pistol range, but there’s a chance that he could help us get your horses back across the border.”
“And what then?” Sonya demanded.
“Then, I leave it up to you,” he said. “You want to spare him, I’m okay with that. Decide to put him down regardless, and I’ll help you dig a hole, or you can leave him for the buzzards.”
The sisters huddled for another thirty seconds, then agreed with obvious reluctance to accept the bandit leader’s aid. Clint whistled Villa back, surrounded by the Mescaleros, leading a roan mare with bloodstains on its saddle from its last, late rider.
“All right,” Clint told Villa. “We accept your offer with the understanding that the first time you step out of line, you’re dead.”
“Por supuesto,” Villa said at once. “Of course.”
Clint fudged some on the other part of it, omitting that he’d left the twins to settle Villa’s fate between themselves once they had reached the Rio Grande. Instead, he told the outlaw, “If you show up on Aguirre land again, you’re done. Make no mistake about it. Anyone who spots you, by yourself or with another gang, has leave to shoot you down on sight.”
“De acuerdo, mis amigos,” Villa answered. “I agree.”
“Just so we’re crystal clear,” Clint said.
“And now,” Villa replied, “may I suggest that we make haste and leave this place behind?”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The Rio Grande
Despite a brooding sense of apprehension, aggravated by two nights when no one in the rescue party slept, they reached the border without any majo
r incidents at sundown of the third day since they had retrieved Don Alejandro’s herd. Of fourteen hundred eighty-seven horses, nine had suffered fatal wounds during the canyon fight and two more died during the final trek toward home—one from a rattler’s bite, the other seemingly from sheer exhaustion.
All things considered, Clint Parnell supposed they had been spared a major tragedy.
The occupants of one small village, Rocas Rojas—christened for the red cliff in whose shadow it existed—had turned out in force, all forty-two of them, to watch the herd pass by. Clint saw a couple of them packing ancient rifles, worried that they might cause trouble, but they’d backed off after Pancho Villa rode among them, warning them against unworthy thoughts of theft or scheming to alert the federales. Joaquín Cantú listened in, reporting back to Clint once Villa spoke his piece, and three old women acting on the village headman’s orders brought them food to carry with them on the trail.
Now, as they overlooked the Rio Grande, facing toward New Mexico, Clint thought about the problems that they might find waiting for them on the other side. There was a fifty-fifty chance, he realized, that someone, somewhere, had reported their incursion into Mexico. By this time, soldiers from Fort Whipple might be on the lookout for them, but he saw no bluecoats on the north side of the river, and the desert flatlands there offered no handy hiding place.
Another possibility: if troops had been dispatched, they might be bivouacked close to Don Alejandro’s spread, waiting to see if anyone returned alive from their illicit foray to Chihuahua. There was no way of resolving that until they’d crossed the Rio Grande, passing back from Mexico to the United States. The nine survivors of their quest would simply have to wait and see what happened next.
And now, before they made that crossing, Pancho Villa’s fate remained to be decided by Dolores and her twin.
Clint had not raised that subject with the sisters while they traveled north, giving them time to think about it through long days and nights. Whatever they decided, Parnell meant to keep his word. If it were death for Villa, neither he nor any of his men would intervene. The Mescaleros clearly did not care and would be happy to dispatch the bandit leader on their own, taking his scalp back to their village as a trophy of their hunt.
Settled astride his dapple gray, flanked by the sisters, Pancho Villa facing them aboard his weary roan, Clint waited for the verdict to be handed down. When Sonya spoke at last, he realized the twins had made their choice somewhere along the homeward trail without consulting him.
“You’ve kept your word so far,” she said. “For that, we grant you mercy undeserved. But if your thoughts turn toward our hacienda in the future, rest assured that day will be your last.”
“Muchas gracias, señoritas,” Villa said. “You may believe me when I say I wish our paths had never crossed.”
“Then let them never cross again,” Dolores warned. “For there is no more mercy in our hearts.”
“Eso es justo,” Villa answered. “That is fair. Vaya con Dios.”
Even with their good-byes said, it took another hour and a quarter for the herd to cross the sluggish river and emerge on the far side. When all of them had safely crossed, Clint paused and looked back toward Old Mexico, where Pancho Villa still sat watching them. In parting, the bandido flourished his sombrero overhead, then turned away and spurred his roan mare southward, trailing dust.
“I’m having second thoughts now,” Sonya said.
“Never mind, hermana,” said Dolores. “He is nothing to us now.”
* * *
* * *
Rancho Aguirre, Doña Ana County, New Mexico Territory
Seated in a rocker on his front porch, sipping coffee flavored with a dash of rum, Don Alejandro watched another sunset creep across his land, trailing familiar purple shadows as it passed. He had grown tired of counting days since his twin daughters and the rest rode off to find his stolen herd. With each sunrise and nightfall, marking wasted time, his shoulders slumped a little more. The hair around his temples turned a lighter shade of gray, and there were new lines on his face.
Hope fluttered weakly, like a dying sparrow, in the void around his heart.
Each day at noon he visited Eduardo’s grave and knelt to pray, feeling that no one heard him or that God, perhaps, had simply ceased to care. Each night he lay awake for hours, until pure fatigue drew him into a nightmare realm where bullets ripped into his son and left him dying in convulsions on the blood-drenched ground. Each dawn found Alejandro more exhausted, craving rest that lay beyond his grasp.
With a sigh, Aguirre drained his coffee mug and felt the rum burning its course down his esophagus to settle in his stomach. While he knew he might regret that later, he decided that another hefty tot of rum might be in order, this time without coffee to dilute its impact.
Maybe he would sleep better tonight if he put a few more away.
Unlikely, but it could not hurt to try—that is, until another daybreak woke him to the bleak discomforts of a headache and a sour stomach.
Then again, what did he have to lose?
He rose, turned from the vista of his property where caballeros made a show of busywork, preoccupied with petty tasks since Pancho Villa’s raid had stripped them of their livelihood, as well as murdering some of their friends.
Aguirre cleared the porch, was moving through his parlor toward the lounge where he maintained a stock of liquor, when his houseman, Manuelito Obregón, barged in behind him, saying, “¡Jefe, ven y mira!”
Alejandro turned to face his eldest servant. “Come and see what, Manuelito?”
“You would not believe me, señor. You must see it for yourself.”
Aguirre swallowed back a curse. Said, “Bien entonces. All right, then. Show me.”
The houseman, jumpy and excited as a child at Christmas, led his master back onto the broad front porch and pointed to the southwest, where a dust cloud was approaching slowly. Scowling now, Aguirre said, “A dust storm? Do we treat that as a marvel now? What’s next? A passing cloud?”
“Look closer, jefe,” Manuelito urged him. “That is not una tormenta de arena. It is the dust from many horses heading this way.”
Alejandro did curse then. His first thought was a band of U.S. Cavalry approaching, likely to chastise him for allowing his employees and his own offspring to violate the sanctity of Mexico. Well, he would simply lie to them—deny that he knew anything about it, and could not have stopped them had he known, a single man and wounded as he was. If God saw fit to punish him for that in time, so be it.
What more did Aguirre have to lose except the battered remnant of his soul?
“Rally the men,” he ordered Obregón. “The army would not help us when we needed them. If they wish to attack us now, they have a lesson coming in the rights of private property.”
“¿El ejército, jefe?” Obregon first looked bewildered, then a smile broke out across his face. “That is not the army. It’s a dream come true!”
“¡No tiene sentido!” Alejandro snapped. “That makes no sense, you old—”
Aguirre’s voice caught in his throat then. One hand raised to shade his eyes, he squinted at the riders he could not see in the distance, trailing dust behind them. Reconsidering, he saw that most of the horses in the long advancing column bore no saddles and no riders. Scattered caballeros drove them forward, gaining speed now that the hacienda was within their line of sight.
Making for home.
Relief washed over Alejandro, weakening his knees. He gripped the rocker for support and searched the riders for beloved faces he might recognize.
There! He saw Sonya, then Dolores riding close behind her twin sister. And off some fifty feet away from them, he spotted Clint Parnell. The rest came into focus as they neared Aguirre’s casa grande. He saw Joaquín Cantú, with Ignacio Fuentes and Arturo Lagüera. Riding farther back, he recognized the Mescalero
s Bear, Great Hawk, and Gray Wolf.
Nine riders, of the dozen who had set out for Chihuahua to retrieve Aguirre’s stolen herd. That meant three lost somewhere along their trek, and cause for further mourning still ahead.
Descending his porch steps, Aguirre almost lost his footing, might have fallen if his houseman had not caught one arm and offered him support. Don Alejandro moved to greet the drovers and their herd—his herd, shared with Eduardo’s spirit and the daughters who had saved their livelihood from ruin.
Sonya and Dolores vaulted from their mounts as one and ran to meet their father, throwing arms around him, one to either side. Aguirre’s foreman rode on past them, tipped his hat, and left them to their private moment of reunion while he shouted orders to the mixed force of vaqueros and Apache braves.
For the first time since the raid upon his hacienda, Alejandro felt he had a reason to survive. And the next time he went to visit his beloved wife and son in their respective graves, he would enthrall them with an epic tale of family and sacrifice.
EPILOGUE
Pancho Villa kept his word to the Aguirre family, ensuring that guerrillas never ventured onto their estancia again. That, however, did not end his story nor abate the interest of the Aguirre sisters in the man who’d nearly bankrupted their clan. In fact, they closely followed Villa’s subsequent career through newspaper reports, by word of mouth, and later on the motion picture screen.
The revolution Villa had anticipated finally erupted five days prior to Thanksgiving 1910, continuing for nine years, six months, and one day. Villa was thirty-two years old when it began, and since much of the fighting raged through northern Mexico, daily reports of action from the battle front were inescapable in the American Southwest, with worried eyes searching for trouble on the Rio Grande.
The civil war began when Francisco Madero challenged incumbent president Porfirio Díaz in November 1910. Díaz had Madero arrested while his troops stuffed ballot boxes, but Madero’s broad-based opposition responded with the Plan of San Luis Potosí on November 20, calling for revolt against Díaz and declaring Madero Mexico’s provisional president. In Chihuahua, Madero ally Abraham González invited Villa to join the uprising, whereupon they captured a large hacienda, a train of Federal Army soldiers, and the town of San Andrés. He rolled on from there to defeat Díaz’s federales at Naica, Camargo, and Pilar de Conchos before suffering his first defeat at Tecolote. He personally met with Madero in March, while revolutionary forces gathered to besiege Ciudad Juárez, across the Tex-Mex border from El Paso.
