Knight of the Tiger

by W. Michael Farmer

  CHAPTER 30

  TRAIN TO HERMOSILLO

  Leaving Agua Prieta in an early dawn fog, the wounded unable to walk or ride were crowded into wagons moving west toward Naco. Villa, with an escort of dorados, Camisa Roja among them, split off from the main force to meet his Yaqui general, Urbalejo, ten miles south at Cabullona.

  All day and well into the night, beaten, weary, thirsty, and hungry but not ready to quit as long as the charismatic man who led us refused to accept defeat, we crawled toward Naco and reached it near midnight where Villa and General Urbalejo awaited us. A few made fires, but most of the men, after taking care of their animals, just wrapped up in their blankets and collapsed on the ground. It was nearing the last quarter of the night before the other medicos and I managed to ease the wounded out of the wagons and look after them before we, too, fell exhausted to the ground wrapped in our blankets.

  Early in the morning, wagonloads of supplies Villa had ordered from Bisbee, including flour and beans, of which the men had had very little since entering El Paso Púlpito, came across the border and were instantly surrounded in the starving camp. There was good water and enough from Naco’s wells that men and animals could finally drink their fill. At first I didn’t believe I could drink enough, but after a couple of canteens in less than an hour, I wanted no more. I was beginning to understand that the little things in life, like a swallow of cool, clean water and a crust of bread, were its true luxuries.

  Rest, food, and enough water over the next five or six days brought a trembling flicker of life back to most of the men. From death-like silence, life around the cooking fires returned in a low rumble as men staggered up from their knees and began looking after each other and their weapons.

  Two or three days after we reached Naco, Villa called me to his wagon and tossed me a sheaf of papers tied together with loose loops of string through punched holes to make a thin book. He said he expected this proclamation, his Naco Manifesto, would bring Carrancista generals to his side and win over the people who wanted an end to the war between him and Carranza.

  “Read it, Hombrecito. Tell me what you think.”

  I sat down beside his desk and carefully read every word. The proclamation claimed that Carranza would use a Díaz style of government and return lands to the hacendados who would once more enslave the peones as they had before the revolución. He claimed that, in exchange for five hundred million dollars in loans and allowing Carranza soldiers to cross into the United States, Carranza signed an eight-point pact with Wilson giving the United States unprecedented control of and access to Mexico’s resources. Villa clearly stated that, without question, he considered the United States the primary enemy of Mexico and, therefore, his arch-enemy.

  I said, “General, this is a powerful condemnation of the United States for meddling in Mexico’s affairs. I can’t predict how much good it will do. What will you do with it?”

  “I’m publishing it in a periódico, Vida Nueva. I started it during the revolución. We’ll see what happens then, eh? Maybe I’ll send it to Queentin to publish also. The gringos must understand what an ass this Señor Wilson is. In any case, it’s done. Now I’ll plan for attacking Hermosillo, the capital of Sonora. General Urbalejo knows of two thousand Yaqui fighting men who will help us. They can make a difference. They’re great fighters and sharpshooters, like you, mi amigo. Sí, Hombrecito, I’ll have my due with Diéguez at Hermosillo.”

  Over the next three or four days, Villa met several times with his generals. Doctor Oñate, the medico assistants, and I set up a hospital for the wounded as we had in Colonia Morelos. There were over four hundred we would have to leave in Naco. When strong enough, they would be put on a train and sent back to Chihuahua and their homes.

  Villa found a freight train to carry us to Hermosillo. I didn’t know how he’d done it, but I suspected more threats to the mining company at Cananea had helped. The veterans said it reminded them of the old revolución days, and their spirits lifted even more. The rumors claiming the general would attack Hermosillo and drive on to Mexico City spread through Naco like a whirlwind through the mesquite, filling the hearts of every man in the División with a desire to finish what he had started.

  Late in the afternoon of the sixth day in Naco, a long, empty freight train puffed into the little station, and the División began loading horses into boxcars and its meager supplies and artillery pieces onto flatcars. Most of the men rode on top of the boxcars.

  Villa rode with his generals in the caboose. He offered me a place there, but I told him I wanted to be near the men in case I was needed.

  Near midnight, the train engine groaned against its load, puffing and creeping out of Naco, southwest toward Cananea. After it was up to speed, the old engine only made fifteen or twenty miles an hour, but sitting in that little breeze was bad when your clothes were thin. It was freezing cold, and the black, gritty smoke shaded the faces of the men, making their wrinkles and creases stand out like shadowed canyons, and the whites of their eyes bloodshot and yellow. Men sitting toward the front of the boxcars wrapped up in their blankets, turned their backs to the wind, and tried to keep from freezing or drifting into sleep and falling off the train. Still, riding the train was far easier than a march and much faster. No one complained.

  Wrapped in my blanket, I watched the stars and tracked our direction. In a couple of hours, the train swung back toward the northwest and then turned due west for a little while before turning due south. It stopped for water and coal under the dim, coal-oil lantern lights of Santa Cruz, chugged off again, swinging back and forth around a series of tight curves against dark mountains, turned west at San Lázaro for a couple of miles, and began a long northwest run again. Near Buenavista, the sky began to turn gray against the outline of black mountains, and we turned roughly due west again before rolling southwest. The sun was glowing bright yellow against blood-red clouds when we stopped in Nogales for an hour to take on more coal and water and allow the men to make nature calls.

  While we waited in Nogales, men watered their horses and gave them hay from the flatcars. Street vendors appeared out of nowhere, hawking hot burritos and baskets of fruits and vegetables from far to the south. Villa told his commanders to feed the men and gave them money to buy what they needed.

  I hadn’t yet bought any fruit or burritos when Camisa Roja walked up and handed me a couple of burritos wrapped in corn shucks. “Buenos días, Doctor Grace, where are you riding?”

  I pointed to the top of the car next to me, my mouth too full to answer. He nodded back toward the flatcars. “Come on back to the flatcar where I ride. There’s not so much a chance of falling off there, and you can get some sleep. You won’t get much when we reach Hermosillo.”

  “Gracias, señor. I’ll get my rifle and gear off the top and be right along.”

  The train rumbled south, and the sun climbed steadily, its heat growing. We dozed in little catnaps never lasting more than five or ten minutes before the train jerked us back to consciousness.

  At last, Camisa Roja said, “It’s none of my business, but is Muchacho Amarillo on a mission for General Villa?”

  “No. He returns to Mescalero, back to the reservation.”

  Camisa frowned, “Why does he do this? There’s much fighting left to do.”

  “General Villa said Muchacho Amarillo’s debt to him for saving his life was paid many times over and he ought to go if he wanted. So he left.”

  “But why? General Villa and Muchacho Amarillo are amigos, no?”

  “Sí, they’re amigos, but you know that Muchacho Amarillo is an Apache. He might have stayed longer except he thinks there’s no honor in killing yourself by riding, at the demand of a man gone loco, against men in holes with machine guns.”

  Camisa frowned and grunted in surprise. “So Muchacho Amarillo thinks General Francisco Villa is loco? It’s a good thing he leaves. He might not live long around División del Norte if he thinks this.”

  “Sí, Muchacho Amarillo th
inks this, and sometimes so do I.” His brows shot up. He opened his mouth to speak, but I interrupted him. “Remember the two Americanos you nearly executed at Agua Prieta? I brought you a written reprieve from the general for them, and you took them back to the border crossing at Douglas?”

  “Sí.”

  “They were American doctors who came only to help the wounded. Villa saw them in the medico wagons, suddenly decided he doesn’t like Americans anymore, and ordered those doctors executed and Douglas shelled. That’s crazy.”

  Roja stuck out his lower lip and shrugged. “He was just a little angry. He killed no doctors. He didn’t shell Douglas. He just gets carried away in the moment, that’s all. That doesn’t make him loco, Doctor Grace.”

  “You could have fooled me. All right, then, forget that. I learned in medical school that doing the same thing over and over when you know it will fail is loco. How many times has Villa sent División del Norte charging machine guns, barbed wire, and trenches only to see thousands of men and horses die?”

  Camisa Roja stared at his boots for a long time and said, “Too many.”

  “Sí, too many.”

  “So why do you stay, Doctor Grace?”

  “I guess I’m a fool.”

  He smiled and shook his head. “No, I understand. You have great loyalty to the men you have suffered with, as well as the general, but mostly the men, sí?”

  “Sí. Mostly the men.”

  “You’re a good man, Doctor Grace. Be careful around the general. I might be ordered to shoot you, and I wouldn’t like it, but I’d do it.”

  We laughed, but I felt like a man holding a stick of dynamite with a lighted fuse.

  CHAPTER 31

  AMBUSH AT SAN PEDRO DE LA CUEVA

  Generals Diéguez and Flores defended Hermosillo against Villa’s attacks using the same tactics as Calles at Agua Prieta. On the llano east of Hermosillo, thousands of División del Norte men, boys, and horses lay slaughtered, stiff with death and decay, under a brilliant sun and a deep blue sky black with buzzards. All the survivors of the last desperate charge, except my friend General Francisco Villa, knew and felt the end of the war in their souls. Many, deciding not to die, deserted to the Carranza side or began the long walk home alone.

  Villa cursed the gringos and Woodrow Wilson and swore he would personally execute any man he caught deserting. He kept his best, his dorados, in reserve and asked me to stay back from the fighting with Doctor Oñate and the medical assistants to bandage the wounded and give solace to the dying.

  As his army evaporated, Villa wrote a long letter to Generals Diéguez and Flores. He repeated the claims in his Naco Manifesto, which the Carrancista generals had ignored, and asked them to give their opinion to the charges. General Flores sent him back a note. I was at the command wagon when a pompous little Carrancista captain appeared. He briskly saluted, handed the note to Villa, and asked to return to his commander. Villa took the note, waved him away, and sat down to read.

  I heard him mutter, “My God, why are these bastards so blind? Traitors. All of them are traitors.” Villa, his face red, cursed and handed me the note. It said Villa had no proof of his accusations. Carranza’s side had won and was the lawfully recognized government by the major countries in the world. It said Villa should join them in rebuilding Mexico, not destroying it.

  División del Norte, by this point probably not more than five hundred men, began preparations for the long ride home over the mountains to their villages in Chihuahua and Durango. The survivors divided the rations left, and we felt there should be enough to get us all home without starving, because so few had survived to share the sparse supplies.

  Each man carried two full bandoliers, leaving a pack-mule train to carry supplies and extra rounds of ammunition. A couple of miles outside of Hermosillo, Villa stationed twenty men to cover our trail in case cavalry came out to harass us. One of the men guarding the trail told me later that they stayed at their station two days and never saw the first rider leave Hermosillo.

  The road east out of Hermosillo ran straight to the distant mountains across a rugged llano. Macario Bracamontes led Villa’s troops toward the sierras. An older man with kind eyes and a big gray mustache, Bracamontes knew and sensed the trails and roads through the mountains like they were some long, unforgotten lover always fresh in his mind. He spread the column out as we crossed the llano to keep down dust and had the scouts stay far out on the wings to ensure Carrancistas did not catch us with a surprise attack. We made good time the first day, and by late in the afternoon, the mountains, which earlier had seemed not much more than gray and brown lines on the horizon, turned to high peaks covered in dark green and white snow.

  On the second day, we left the road east and turned north into canyons passing between green mountain ridges and along small, normally dry rivers, where water still flowed. We mostly followed firm, sandy riverbeds, but sometimes cut across country when Bracamontes knew the river looped back on itself. The road along the rivers gained altitude but had no steep climbs all the way to San Pedro de la Cueva. For three days, on one of the most pleasant rides I’d ever had, we followed the streams passing through high mountain canyons, the air cool and crisp, the sky a brilliant royal blue. With enough to eat and drink, the men began to regain strength.

  The morning of the fifth day, I was toward the front of the column with Bracamontes, who expected to be in San Pedro de la Cuevas early that afternoon. As we neared the end of the last big canyon before the easy descent into San Pedro, shots poured down on us from the canyon sides, killing men in front and on either side of us.

  At the sound of the first shot, Bracamontes wheeled his horse to face the column. Standing in the stirrups, bullets whistling and ricocheting around him, he shouted, “To the sides of the canyon! Take cover! No shooting until I give the orders! Vamonos! Vamonos!”

  He wasted no time joining me behind a huge boulder as the sounds of rifle fire echoed down the canyon and bullets thumped into the moist sand or ricocheted off boulders into the piñons around us. The shooting suddenly stopped. Deathly quiet, the only sounds came from the men hit and still alive, moaning in pain, begging for help.

  I said to Bracamontes, “Let me and a couple of others drag the wounded out of the line of fire so we can at least stop the bleeding. They don’t deserve to die here after all they’ve been through.” I started to plunge out to grab a man, but he clutched my arm in an iron grip and wouldn’t let go. “Wait! Un momento, por favor, Doctor Grace.” He cupped his hands about his mouth and yelled, “Señores, por favor, don’t shoot while we get our wounded.”

  A bellowed reply echoed down the canyon. “Banditos! Take your wounded and vamos! You die here if you try again to raid San Pedro de la Cueva!”

  Bracamontes frowned at me. He called out. “Señores, we mean you no harm. These men fight in the División del Norte commanded by General Francisco Villa, not with banditos. We return to Chihuahua.”

  Silence, then a voice filled with wonder, “General Francisco Villa of the revolución?”

  “Sí!”

  “Don’t shoot, señores. We’ll show ourselves and come to you.”

  Bracamontes puffed his cheeks in a blow of relief. “Sí. Come forward while we gather our wounded. I’ll meet you in the canyon entrance.”

  Men and boys appeared out of the canyon walls. I heard them speak as I tried to stop the bleeding of two of the wounded men. Four others already stared at heaven with lifeless eyes.

  I glanced over where Bracamontes, ramrod straight, stepped up to the group and saluted their leader. “I am Commandante Macario Bracamontes of División del Norte under the command of General Francisco Villa.”

  A man nodded and looked at the ground. “Commandante Bracamontes, I am Maiseo Garcia, the alcalde de San Pedro de la Cueva, and these hombres came with me from the village. We’ve made a terrible mistake, Commandante. Yesterday, we learned of armed hombres approaching our village. We believed they were banditos who have raided us
many times—burning our homes, raping our women, and taking our grain and beans so we starve in the winter.”

  He lifted his head and stuck his chin up. “We’ll suffer this no more. We came to ambush and kill these raiders. Now, after shooting some of your men in warning, we learn we’ve made a terrible mistake. We attacked General Villa’s soldiers, heroes of the revolución, maybe even killing some. We humbly beg your pardon and ask you come to our village so we can give you a little food and rest, all we have left after many raids by the banditos. For any hombre we’ve killed, one of our village men will take his place, and any hombre we’ve wounded we’ll care for until he can rejoin you. We beg you not to attack us for this grievous mistake.”

  Bracamontes, eyeing the alcalde and saying nothing, pulled out his crook-stemmed pipe and tobacco tin. He took his time to fill the bowl and lit it with a big Redhead match. With a good red coal glowing in the bowl, he blew a puff or two of the fine tobacco smoke into the breeze and nodded to the alcalde.

  “Señor, your mountains are filled with many bad hombres. I’m simpático with your protecting your women, your homes, and your properties. This, every hombre must do. But you shoot my soldiers? You must correct the terrible mistake you and the hombres of your village made. Señor Garcia, you act as a wise hombre acts. I accept your offer to restore my wounded to health and to replace the soldiers you’ve killed.”

  The alcalde sighed and said, “Ah, muchas gracias, Commandante. Por favor, come to our village. Let us share our tortillas and frijoles with you and your hombres. Where is General Villa? When he comes, we’ll give him a feast.”