Knight of the Tiger

by W. Michael Farmer

  He stopped to roll a cigarette, lighted it, and said, “Before Celaya, Obregón took time to train his men and study tactics used in the war overseas. I understand he had some German advisors who taught him how to fight from trenches, and more importantly, he studied Villa’s tactics. Obregón understands Villa’s tactics and bullheadedness and can predict with almost mathematical precision what he’ll do in a battle.”

  He took another long draw from his cigarette. “Obregón knew that Villa was an impulsive hothead. At Celaya, Obregón set his own trap and just sat back waiting, allowing Villa’s spies to find him. Obregón knew Villa couldn’t resist attacking him, if for no other reason than to show all Mexico and the world who was the clearly superior general.”

  I threw my hands out, palms up, and asked, “Why Celaya? Why did Obregón choose to fight Villa there?”

  “It doesn’t take a genius to figure that out. Big farming fields with networks of irrigation ditches surround Celaya. It’s down in a bowl; mountains surround it on three sides, but are too far away for Villa to pull cannon up their sides and shoot down on men in the trenches. Obregón saw the irrigation trenches as the perfect opportunity to use the same tactics on Villa as those being used in the war in Europe. He built machine-gun nests for covering fire up and down the trenches, laid down barbed wire in front of the trenches, and positioned his artillery for maximum slaughter when Villa made one of his famous cavalry charges.”

  I shuddered as I imagined that deadly field of fire. “How many soldiers did Obregón have?”

  Quent threw his cigarette butt down and crushed it with his heel. He said, “Maybe six thousand cavalry and five thousand infantry. Villa probably had twice that many in División del Norte. On the sixth of April, Obregón sent out an advance guard of about twelve hundred men down the train tracks out of Celaya to look for Villa. Villa’s troops caught them out in the open and began cutting them to pieces as they tried to retreat back to Celaya. Realizing his error, one of very few in the summer battles, Obregón jumped on an armored train, drove it out, and saved most of them.

  “After that first little encounter, Villa didn’t doubt he’d crush Obregón at Celaya. Angeles still tried to talk Villa out of attacking Obregón, but he wouldn’t listen. It was a matter of pride. He had to ‘whack the dandy’ to keep the recruits coming, and to hell with the cost.

  “The morning of the seventh of April, Villa had his first wave of cavalry make a line three miles long, facing Obregón’s trenches. All day long, forty times, they charged those machine guns and artillery and were slaughtered. It was suicide. They knew it was suicide, but they went anyway, over and over again.”

  Quent paused and looked into the night sky for a moment. Then he said, “Villa had his artillery pounding away at the trenches, and they were pretty accurate. The problem was his shells, made in Chihuahua, weren’t worth a damn. A lot of them didn’t explode. He might as well have been throwing big rocks for all the good his artillery did.

  “As the sun went down, Villa stopped the charges and pulled his men back to rest and recover. Obregón kept his artillery pounding them all night. The next day was even bloodier. Obregón hid Yaqui sharpshooters in dugouts all around the trenches and flooded the fields with drainage ditch water where Villa’s cavalry charged. The Yaquis picked off cavalry and infantry while the horses floundered in the mud and water. Obregón’s own cavalry charged Villa’s from both ends of their line just when it looked like they might actually break through the center of Obregón’s lines. Devastating. Villa’s right side broke, then the center, and finally the left. He rode into the middle of it with his dorados and drove Obregón’s cavalry back so his men could retreat and save their artillery pieces.”

  My mental picture of the slaughter nauseated me. “Then did he retreat and pull back from Celaya?”

  Quent shivered and said through clenched teeth, “Nope. There was a week’s standoff while Villa and Carranza waged a little propaganda war in the Mexican newspapers. Retired soldiers and new recruits for both sides started pouring in. By the thirteenth of April, Obregón had about fifteen thousand men, and Villa maybe twenty thousand. The second battle started on the morning of the thirteenth and went into the night, when there was heavy rain. This battle was a lot like the first one, except this time, on the second day, Obregón’s cavalry caught Villa’s infantry on both sides of a charge that was about to break through his lines. When Obregón’s cavalry hit Villa’s infantry, they threw down their weapons and ran, leaving artillery pieces, comrades, everything. Villa had to retreat.”

  Quent cupped his hands, blew into them to warm them, and said, “Villa had about three thousand killed and six thousand taken prisoner at Celaya, and God only knows how many wounded. In addition to the soldados, he lost about a thousand horses, five thousand rifles, and thirty-two artillery pieces. On top of that, Obregón executed a hundred and twenty of Villa’s captured officers. It was an unmitigated disaster.”

  I tried to whistle, but couldn’t pucker in the cold. “You said Angeles advised him not to attack Obregón like that. Why didn’t he listen?”

  “I don’t know, except maybe the old Bible proverb, Pride goes before a fall, has it right. Now I want to ask you a question, if it’s not too personal.”

  “What’s on your mind?”

  “Today I heard you attach yourself and Yellow Boy to a man who, because of his pride, led thousands of his men to slaughter in horse charges against trenches, barbed wire, machine guns, and artillery. I was shocked and, it seemed to me, so was Villa, to hear you say you and Yellow Boy wanted to join División del Norte. I know he doesn’t expect you to come back after you take me to Hachita. Are you and Yellow Boy going to keep riding when you reach Hachita? You surely don’t want to waste your life for a madman, do you?”

  I stared at Quent and slowly shook my head. “You don’t understand how I was raised. To answer your question, in a word, yes. I’d waste my life, and know I was wasting it, because I gave Villa my word that I’d fight for him. Maybe I’m a fool, an ignorant fool, for offering to fight with him, but when I . . . we, Yellow Boy and me, give our word, we stick by it, come the fires of hell or sinking sand.”

  CHAPTER 13

  PANCHO VILLA RETURNS TO MEXICO

  Yellow Boy emerged from the shadows and jerked his head toward the wash. Time to go. We tightened cinches, let the horses drink once more, and then rode up the wash toward the top of a low pass where we could see, maybe twenty miles away, the Hatchet Mountains wrapped in shadows, their dark outlines framed by the stars on the distant horizon.

  Down in the flats, tall grama grass and water still stood in a few pools along the major washes. Yellow Boy headed straight for Big Hatchet Peak. An easy ride, dry summer grass and a few desert bushes covered the land, flat in all directions except for an occasional dip into a brush-lined arroyo.

  A faint smudge of gray brightened the eastern sky as Yellow Boy led us toward a wash at the entrance to a canyon, in the shadows of Zeller Peak, on the northern end of the Big Hatchets. We initially stopped at a water tank made from galvanized sheets of iron and filled by a dilapidated, creaking windmill out in the flats not more than a mile away from the canyon entrance. Fresh tracks mixed in with those several days’ old showed riders used the tank often. After watering the horses and filling our canteens, we disappeared into the canyon and made a dry camp. Quent and I built a small fire, boiled coffee, and heated the pot of stew and tortillas Magritte had sent with us. I took the first watch.

  Early morning shadows were growing short when a cavalry patrol came down the trail around the mountains at a fast trot with scouts out a quarter mile on either side of the column. The lead scout reminded me of a bloodhound sniffing a trail, sauntering back and forth looking for fresh signs. He led the column to the tank where the troopers watered their animals, smoked, rested a while, and then reset their cinches before riding for the gray, hazy mountains to the southwest. I breathed a sigh of relief as the dust from their column fade
d into the bright morning air.

  The rest of the day passed with no signs of anyone else. Back on the trail at dusk, Yellow Boy led us around the northern end of the Big Hatchet Mountains. During most of the night’s ride, we stayed near a dry river where small pools of water still lingered.

  We rode up to the Hachita train station a little after the moon began its downward arc, probably an hour or so after midnight. Not a soul stirred. Quent dismounted. Stepping up on the platform, he took the chalkboard schedule hanging beside the ticket window to a bright patch of moonlight and read it before returning it to its place in the shadows. He returned to us grinning.

  “We’re lucky on our timing, boys. There’s a train due in here about 2:45. I ought to be in El Paso by six. I thank you for accompanying me this far. Rest a little while, and then take off. I’ll be fine.”

  I shook my head. “No, Quent. We promised the general we’d see you on the train, and that’s what we’ll do.”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “Okay. Suit yourselves.”

  Dismounting, we led the horses to a nearby water trough and loosened their cinches. While the animals drank, I said to Quent, “I’ll keep the roan for you and use it as a pack animal until you need it in Douglas.”

  “Thanks, Henry. That’ll save the paper a little money.”

  Yellow Boy led the horses away from the station to a mesquite thicket down the tracks from the platform and gave them some grain.

  Dangling our legs off the platform edge, Quent and I waited for the train. The story he’d told me at North Tank about the battles in Celaya generated all kinds of questions that buzzed in my mind like angry bees.

  “Quent, how did you come to know Villa?”

  Scratching his scruffy beard, he smiled. “I was covering the revolución for the Herald and briefly met him while I was with a group of reporters riding around the countryside on trains carrying his army to battles. I wanted to learn how a bandit managed to become a charismatic general who was pounding the stuffing out of a professionally trained federal army. He gave me permission to interview several of his generals, and I wrote stories describing some of their most successful battles. Several pieces were picked up and carried in the big national papers. After Díaz took off, I figured the war was over and didn’t waste any time returning to El Paso to reclaim my wife and two little boys, who I hadn’t seen in months.”

  I shook my head. “You and Villa seem a lot more friendly than just casual war acquaintances.”

  Quent grinned and crossed his arms against the cold night. “Oh, there’s a lot more to it. I guess you want it all. It’s a long story.”

  “We’ve got plenty of time.”

  He smiled and said, “It was like this. After Madero came to power, Villa settled in Chihuahua City, owning, if my memory serves me right, four or five butcher shops. Madero’s government was slow and inept, and pretty soon, the peones began local revolts against the government they’d fought to install. Madero asked Villa to help his government’s commanding general, Huerta, put down the revolts. Villa recalled his troops and put himself and men under Huerta’s command. Problem was, Huerta was contemptuous of Villa as a general, and Villa claimed Huerta was just a little drunkard.

  “One morning Villa was having one of his bouts of raging fever—I believe he has malaria—when a messenger showed up and said he was needed at Huerta’s headquarters. He got off his sick bed and went. When he showed up, he was arrested, accused of stealing a horse, and marched out to be shot. Men in the firing squad were loading their rifles when a messenger appeared with a firing squad cancelation order from Madero and ordered that Villa be sent to prison.

  “Villa was in prison for months, and that’s when he learned to read well and write passably. He began writing long letters to Madero begging him for help. Six weeks before Madero was assassinated, Villa escaped.”

  I shifted my weight and asked, “How did he do that? Somebody slip him a gun?”

  Quent, shaking his head, leaned back on his hands and grinned. “No, it’s better than that. He told me he walked out through the front gate disguised as a lawyer. He had on a long black coat, dark glasses, and held a handkerchief in front of his face as if the smell of the place was bad. He got through to Juárez, crossed the border into El Paso, and stayed under the name Doroteo Arango at a seedy place exiles used, the Hotel Roma.

  “I ran into him one day in 1913 at the Elite Confectionary. He was sitting there in a bowler hat, eating ice cream, and drinking a strawberry soda pop. I didn’t recognize him at first, but he remembered me. He jumped up and shook my hand. We must have talked for a couple of hours.

  “I visited him at the Hotel Roma a couple of times and interviewed him once at the Emporium, a Greek bar popular for men who left Mexico to escape one firing squad or the other. Even then, he kept his ear to the ground about what was going on in Mexico. In his hotel room, he kept a cage full of pigeons that maintained his connection with someone in Ciudad Chihuahua. He never did tell me who sent the birds. I had to laugh when he told nosy neighbors he had a very delicate stomach condition and had to eat squab.”

  I laughed when I heard that, and Quent continued, “When he learned Huerta had assassinated Madero, he sent word and asked me to meet him at the Elite Confectionary for a bowl of ice cream. He roared up on his motorcycle just as I arrived. His face looked like thunderclouds rolling off the Franklins, and there was lightning in his eyes. He shook my hand but said nothing. We went inside, and he bought us each a bowl of ice cream. We sat in a corner and ate a few spoonfuls before he said, ‘Queentin, you hear that no-good, murdering bastard Huerta has killed Madero?’

  “I said, ‘Sí, Pancho, I’ve heard that assassins killed Madero and that Huerta has taken power. I didn’t know he was behind Madero’s murder, but I suspected as much.’

  “He said, ‘Oh yes, Queentin, Huerta ordered this disgusting thing, this a little bird told me. I don’t doubt it’s true. When I return to Mexico, I’ll castrate Huerta myself before I order him dragged to death. He’s not worthy of a firing squad. This I promise you. I’ll bring down Huerta!’

  “I nodded and said, ‘I don’t doubt that you will.’ He put down his spoon, looked me in the eye, and asked, ‘Queentin, will you lend me three hundred Americano dollars?’

  “I said, ‘Three hundred dollars!’ That’s a lot of money in any man’s bank account, but I had it and wanted to give it to him, even though I didn’t think I’d ever see it again. I shook my head and said, ‘No, señor, I won’t lend you three hundred dollars.’

  “He bowed his head and nodded. ‘Sí, comprendo, amigo. It’s mucho dinero I ask, I know.’ I didn’t have the heart to tease him and said, ‘Pancho, I won’t lend you three hundred dollars, I’ll give it to you.’ His head jerked up, his eyes wide and smile big, and he said, ‘Hombre! Muchas gracias, muchas, muchas gracias. I thank you, and the revolución thanks you!’

  “I said, ‘I suspect I know, but why do you need the dinero?’ He replied, ‘With the dinero I have already and this dinero from you, I’ll be able to buy horses, rifles, and bullets for me and my amigos before we return to Mexico to end the reign of Madero’s murderer.’ I said, ‘Three hundred dollars won’t buy many horses and rifles. How many of you are returning to Mexico?’

  “He looked at me with somber eyes and said, ‘There are eight amigos and myself. Nine hombres. Nine is enough to bring down the murderer, eh?’ ”

  Quent paused a moment to light a cigarette and said, “On March 6, 1913, I waved goodbye as I watched him and eight men ride their horses across the river and disappear into the dust. By September, he had an army of six to eight thousand men and was kicking the hell out Huerta’s army. By November of that year, in less than eight months, a man who’d never been to school, and who’d learned to read in prison, controlled the state of Chihuahua and was rebuilding it. I figured the dollars I gave him were well spent.”

  Sitting there in the cold night air, I marveled at Quent’s story, but I understood
fully how Villa had gathered a big army so fast. He had recruited Yellow Boy and me, and he’d never asked us to join the fight.

  CHAPTER 14

  RUNS FAR AND HIS WOMEN

  We didn’t sit on the platform long before an old gentleman wearing an engineer’s hat and jacket and carrying a lighted coal-oil lamp, came ambling down the street. He paused to give us the once-over, looked around to see if others were with us, and continued down the road toward us. Off in the distance, we heard a train’s faint rumble and saw a flickering light far out in the mesquite.

  Raising his lantern to get a good look at our faces, the old man said, “Howdy, boys! Yuh expectin’ somebody on the train? Kinda early fer travelin’ ain’t it?”

  Quent nodded to him and said, “Mornin’. Yes, sir, it’s early, and I need a ticket to El Paso.”

  Up close, the old boy had a comical look, his white hair sticking out from under his hat like straw under a barn door. “Well, son, you come to the right place. Come on inside, and I’ll fix you up.” Soon the train pulled into the station.

  Quent and I shook hands on the platform before he stepped aboard. He looked tired and sad when he said, “Henry, thanks for all your help. Be careful in those mountains. I just hope Villa doesn’t kill you or get you killed. Send a telegram to the Herald a couple of days before you want me at Agua Prieta. I’ll be there before you.”

  “Thanks, Quent. I appreciate your coming so far to see Villa and all the background you’ve given me. Give my best to your family, and call me any time I can help you. Adiós.”

  Quent’s smile said it all. “Adiós, amigo.”

  Minutes later, Yellow Boy and I tightened cinches and headed back toward the Big Hatchet Mountains. Taking a little different route than the one we’d used to approach Hachita, and stopping to rest the horses only once, we were back at the previous day’s camping spot as the sun drove away the dawn.