“Let’s just say there’s a personal matter to settle between us.”
He buried the cigarette butt in the sand as he blew the last of the smoke out his nose and spat a stray piece of tobacco off his lip. “Damn, Henry, it seems like I’ve been away from home forever.”
We relaxed for a couple of minutes, saying nothing, sipping coffee, watching the sun’s reflection move across the smooth lake’s surface. Pershing lowered his binoculars and called to his executive officer, “Mr. Patton, I want a meeting with the staff in five minutes.”
The officer, a tall blond lieutenant not yet thirty, wearing a fancy nickel-plated .45 caliber revolver with ivory handles, jumped to his feet, saluted, and said, “Yes, sir!”
After Lieutenant Patton was out of hearing, Pershing turned to me and said, “Doctor Grace, if you find Villa before I do, and you survive settling your business with him, I’d very much appreciate your giving me his body. It’d prove we didn’t need to be down here any longer, and I could send my boys home.”
I answered, “I’m sorry, sir, but I’d never let you treat Villa’s body like a scalp, like some kind of Roman spoil of war to be hung from the city gates. Villa and these people deserve better than that. I’ll bury him in a respectful grave and let his dorados know where it is so they and the peones he fought for can come to pay their respects or hurl their curses, but I’ll never hand him over to you.”
Pershing stared at me a moment, stuck out his lower lip, and nodded. “I can respect that. You’re an honorable man, Doctor Grace.” We shook hands.
“Sir, my friend and I will be leaving for our own camp shortly. I expect you’ll still be with your staff when we leave. Thanks for breakfast. Adiós.”
“Good luck finding Villa. If our success is any indication, you’ll need all you can get. Remember to come join me when you finish your business.”
I smiled and snapped him a salute as he joined his officers.
Hands in his back pockets, Quent followed us as we walked over to the horses and prepared to mount. “I hope you boys make it and don’t get filled with Mexican lead. Pershing’s intelligence corps believes Villa is somewhere near Santa Cruz de Herrera, about fifty miles northwest of Parral. It’s at least a long three-or four-day ride south through very rough country. Chances are you’ll be too late to get any satisfaction, even if you do find him.”
I looked at him and frowned. “What are you talkin’ about?”
He shook his head and appeared disgusted. “Villa and several Japanese peddlers who rattle around down here selling everything from pots and pans to rifles and bullets are friends. Pershing’s intelligence staff found a couple who claim to know Villa well, made a deal to give them a promissory note for several sacks of gold up front, with more to come if they slipped Villa some poison the army intelligence staffers gave them.”
I laughed out loud.
“Are they crazy? Everybody in Mexico knows Villa doesn’t touch his food until somebody else samples it. Besides, they have to know that, even if they’re successful, the dorados will drag them all over the desert and turn them into greasy spots riding over them with horses. It’s a miserable way to die.”
“Delayed reaction.”
“What?”
“The Japanese said almost exactly the same thing. The army boys say the poison has no taste and is odorless, but, most important, it doesn’t do anything until three days after it’s taken. That’s supposed to give the poisoners time to get away, and the death looks like it’s from a heart attack or stroke. The Japanese gave a small dose to a dog that was hanging around camp and waited around to see what happened.”
“So what happened?”
Quent gave me his sly-fox grin. “Three days after running off with some meat they poisoned, the dog gave this long mournful howl, got stiff-legged, started shaking all over, and fell over dead. The Japs were impressed, and agreed they’d try it on Villa.”
“How long ago did they leave?”
Quent flipped through his notebook and, looking at me from under raised brows, said, “Two days ago.”
CHAPTER 53
BLIND MIND’S EYE
Back in our camp by the creek, Jesús cooked andYellow Boy ate a second breakfast of tortillas, seasoned meat, and coffee. I told Jesús what we’d learned about the Japanese poison plot and how they were two days ahead of us out of Ciudad Chihuahua, looking for Villa.
Jesús’s eyes grew round. An angry, red, thundercloud frown began to gather around eyes narrowed to a squint and a thin, straight slash mouth. He shook his head and said, “Those men, the Japanese, they were good amigos with the general. He was always fair with them and treated them like brothers. They take gringo dinero to murder him with poison? Who needs bastard amigos like these traitors? They deserve to die. I hope Villa catches them and the dorados drag them for miles through the cactus and trample them to pieces. Where did the gringos give the Japanese this poison?”
“Somewhere near Ciudad Chihuahua. Why?”
Jesús stared off down the creek, scratching his jaw. “They’ll be in their peddler wagon. That means they’ll take the road to Parral and turn west where it forks to Valerio, go across the mountains to San José del Sito, and over the mountains on a very rough road to Valle del Rosario. From there, the land is mostly flat, and the road follows the river past Balleza and finally cuts across country to Santa Cruz de Herrera. Maybe it takes these peddlers six or seven days to reach Santa Cruz de Herrera this way.
“If we go cross-country past Cusihuiriachi to the San Pedro River, the ride will be very hard, but we can be in Santa Cruz de Herrera in four nights. Maybe we can get there at about the same time or before they do and stop them without riding the horses to death. We can go faster if we take the roads and probably catch them in the mountains between San José del Sito and Valle del Rosario, but we’ll wear out the horses, and the mountains will be filled with Carrancistas and Villistas looking for a fight. It’s better to take the way along the San Pedro and Conchos rivers. There’s time. The Japanese, they will stay a day or two before they leave. They won’t poison the general before we find him.”
We looked atYellow Boy, who nodded and said, “Jesús speaks wise words. Go by way of Cusihuiriachi.”
We rode out of camp up into the fields on the south side of the river. Just before dawn, Yellow Boy turned up a large creek coming down a valley out of the western mountains. We rode around a bend, and within a few hundred yards of the river, stopped for the day. We’d only taken three breaks to rest and water the horses.
While Yellow Boy kept the first watch, Jesús and I made beds in a thicket of piñons filled with inky shade. The cold air rapidly disappearing with the rising sun, it was warm and toasty wrapped in my blanket, and soon the dream came as it always had in the last year.
The jaguar, flames roaring and whistling like a mighty, red wind, dug its claws in the creek’s flat, limestone bottom, dragging its paralyzed hindquarters forward, expending all its strength and roaring its rage. It strained to reach a paw forward to hook me with its awful claws and drag me into its snarling fangs and the fiery burning wind . . .
My eyes snapped open, my heart pounding. I lay there a moment, knowing Yellow Boy would soon come to tap on my foot for my turn to keep watch. Sitting up in my blankets, I felt sweat pouring off my face. Jesús was on his back, still asleep. Waiting for my pulse to slow, I asked myself why I kept dreaming of my fight with the jaguar and why he was consumed with fire.
The air was hot and still in the thicket, my throat, dry. I found a canteen and took a couple of long pulls. The cool trickle never felt so good going down. Wiping my mouth with my sleeve, I tried once more to understand what the dream was trying to tell me. My mind struggled, but I just couldn’t see the dream’s message. I saw Yellow Boy rise out of the tall grama grass up on the hill. He waved me forward to take my turn at guard.
CHAPTER 54
THE HIDING PLACE
Yellow Boy studied the valley, north and south, up and down the river,
and across the valley to the Sierra El Alamo Mocho Mountains, looking for signs of movement, men, dust clouds, light or smoke from fires, reflections off glass, brass, or silver, but he said he saw nothing.
I asked, “Do you think Runs Far has gotten in front of us and waits in ambush?”
He shook his head. “They must follow. Don’t know where we go. Hang back and follow tracks. We wait for mistake. Maybe he makes mistake and we ambush him. Watch close for Runs Far.”
A smooth, sandy trail stretched over most of the way to San Francisco de Borja, and there was plenty of water for the horses from occasional pools that had not yet disappeared in the sandy bottom of the nearly dry San Pedro River. The stars were out and the moon still a bright yellow glow behind the northeastern mountains when we saw twinkling lights in the village of San Francisco de Borja, and turned east off the river trail to follow a road that swung around the mountains standing behind the village.
As Jesús and I rode on, Yellow Boy sat his horse and watched our back trail from the deep shadows of a bridge in front of the village. He caught us three or four miles down the road and nodded when my eyes asked a question. “Sí. Runs Far follows with his women. Time for them to leave. We send them back to Pelo Rojo pretty soon now.”
A big, bright yellow moon floated above the tops of the eastern mountains as we rode through Santa Ana, just a few adobe houses clustered around an ancient adobe church.
Crossing the river on Santa Ana’s little wooden bridge and following the trail south for a mile or so, Jesús led us east into the mountains. We climbed steadily until, looking back down the trail, I guessed we were at least a thousand feet above the valley.
The trail wasn’t bad, but it was steep and bathed in icy gray light as it led us up to a small lake with maybe six hundred feet left to climb to the top of the ridge. Yellow Boy pointed toward a grove of trees in a sheltered niche at the south end of the lake, near where the trail began for the ridgeline.
“Rest horses. Eat. Ride over pass when sun goes away. Maybe fix Runs Far.” I was tired and ready to stop, and there was no argument from Jesús.
The lake water was icy cold. As high as the lake was, the swirling wind, desperately cold, blew nearly all the time, making our hands shake as we tried to light a fire several times until, hunkering down together, and using our bodies to shield a wavering flame from a Redhead match, we finally got the tinder lighted. It had been a long, exhausting night ride, and wrapped in my blanket near the fire, the unconsciousness of sleep took me, swift and sure.
The fading light from the western sun pouring through the canyon was like a spotlight on the trail before us. Yellow Boy had explored the canyon while I slept and thought it was a perfect spot to ambush Runs Far: A large boulder balanced precariously on a ledge on the south side of the canyon. He wanted to roll it off on Runs Far. If we killed him that way, there would be no blood feud between Yellow Boy and the relatives of Runs Far. They’d never know if the boulder fell on its own or not. If it didn’t kill Runs Far, he’d likely think we were on to him and either leave or hang so far back he wouldn’t be any threat at all anymore.
We took Yellow Boy’s telescope, gave the horses and jenny to Jesús, and told Jesús to lead them to the top of the ridge and wait there for us. The way up the trail was clear as we broke camp, and Jesús led the horses forward while Yellow Boy and I walked down the trail to the canyon entrance and climbed the steep wall to the shelf where the boulder sat.
We tried rocking the boulder a little to determine if, between the two of us, we had enough strength to get it started off the shelf edge. When we put our shoulders to it, it teetered a bit. There were only a couple of feet between the boulder and the canyon wall. It would be close, hard work with little room for leverage, but Yellow Boy thought we could move it. He sat on the edge of the ledge to study the canyon trail with the Big Eye.
In an hour, the canyon was bathed in moonlight and shadows, but there was no sign of Runs Far and his women. I was worried. If we spent too much time waiting on Runs Far, we might not get to Villa before he was poisoned, and, for some inexplicable reason, that was important to me. We were there on the ledge ready to push a two thousand-pound rock onto a member of our own tribe and weren’t giving it a second’s thought. As I shivered in the cold, dark shadows, I marveled at the vagaries of the human mind.
In a little while, Yellow Boy smiled, handed me the telescope, and pointed to the shadows near the north side of the entrance to the canyon. I saw nothing until one of the shadows moved. I looked closer and watched a few seconds. It was a horse moving up the canyon. Yellow Boy took the telescope and said softly near my ear, “Roll rock now.”
By my estimate we had only minutes before Runs Far, his women, and their horses were past us. Yellow Boy and I strained to give the boulder a good strong push using our shoulders. It rocked back and forth a little, but didn’t budge. We got lower and tried again. The rocking back and forth increased, but still no joy. Runs Far would be past us soon. The night air was freezing cold, but sweat poured in torrents from both of us.
Yellow Boy scrambled to gather a few fist-sized rocks. When he had four or five, he gave them to me and whispered for me to put one as far under the boulder as I could when he pushed it forward. He braced himself between the cliff and the boulder and pushed with all the power in his legs. The boulder tipped forward. I put a couple of rocks under it before it could tilt back. I heard the horses in the wash gravel below as they approached us.
Yellow Boy took a deep breath, pushed with all his might, and I shoved hard against it, too. The boulder suddenly tipped over and went crashing down the canyon side in an instant, starting a minor landslide and nearly takingYellow Boy with it. I managed to grab his arm and hold on long enough for him to steady himself and not slip over the edge.
From below we heard, “Wah! Run, sisters! Run!”
Moments after the explosive cracks from the boulder bouncing down the canyon side and taking other rocks with it, we heard horses screaming but no human voices—none at all.
A thick cloud of dust hovered in the canyon, hiding everything under it. Yellow Boy nodded at the ridgeline. Time to leave. Up the trail, we stopped at the lake for a few swallows of water before climbing the rest of the way to meet Jesús on top of the ridgeline.
“Do you think we killed them, Grandfather?”
He shrugged.
“Maybe, maybe not, but horses are no more. They go back to Pelo Rojo now. Forget Yellow Boy and Hombrecito. After Villa, we return to Rojo’s camp. Know then if they live. Go now. Burning moonlight. Vamonos.”
I had to smile. I’d heard cowboys say, “We’re burning daylight.” But I’d never heard anyone use “burning moonlight” before Yellow Boy.
We soon found Jesús and headed down the other side of the pass in deep shadowy darkness that made for slow going getting to the river canyon below us. After a long rest and grain for the horses at the river, we set off for Ojitos. Once out of the river canyon, we crossed long rolling ridges that, from their tops, looked like an angry, frozen ocean in the white moonlight. It was as rough a country as I’d ever seen except high in the northern Sierra Madre, and the horses and mule worked hard to get us across it.
Reaching San José del Sito, we rode around the village and down the Conchos River trail toward the low, rough mountains covered by moonlight and shadows in front of us. The river soon branched off to the west into a narrow valley with the Sierra Azul Mountains on one side and high hills on the other.
About a mile down the river, we came to a hard ride between cliffs in a quarter mile of rocky, boulder-strewn canyon. The horses had to swim a hundred yards or so when the trail disappeared at the canyon edges. Leaving the canyon, we passed another village, La Joya. It looked much like Santa Ana. In the cold gray light, no dogs barked, no roosters crowed, and no pigs snuffled. La Joya appeared abandoned.
We followed the river until there was good light and made camp in the trees on a small bench above the river. Jes
ús believed we might reach Santa Cruz before dawn the next day. I hoped so. I wanted to finish my business with Villa and get on with my life. My time with Lupe had made me think more about living than killing.
We left our camp on the little bench by the river while there was still light. The river was wide and shallow with broad, sandy banks that made for easy riding. Finally leaving the canyon, we rode east along the river, which was used to irrigate broad fertile fields already planted. Passing Valle del Rosario, we saw a few lights after an hour or so from what Jesús said was Balleza.
When we stopped to rest the horses and jenny, Jesús smiled. He’d been studying any landmarks he could see. “Señores, I’m glad to say Santa Cruz is not far. It’s an easy ride, and we ought to make it before the daylight.”
The river was easy to follow until it narrowed into a canyon with high, nearly vertical, striped sandstone walls. Even then the narrow trail was clear, and we didn’t have to get in the water as we had when we approached La Joya.
The lights from Santa Cruz, not more than a mile away, and a ranch house, not more than a quarter mile away, were easy to see as we left the river canyon. My heart raced as I realized we were close to finding Villa. If I was very lucky, I might also find Camisa Roja with Villa and take care of business with both men.
We found a small canyon off the river that gave us a clear view of Santa Cruz and good tree cover to keep us out of sight. I was a little uncomfortable being so close to the ranch house across the river, but all things considered, we were safe enough. The little canyon led into the Sierra Azul Mountains, giving us a back door getaway.
We made camp, and Jesús volunteered, “Señores, when the sun comes, I’ll ride into Santa Cruz and ask the old men at their coffee where the general hides.”
Yellow Boy nodded as we unloaded the horses and jenny and gave them their end-of-ride rubdown.
Jesús made coffee, and as he cooked a meal, we slurped the hot, precious brew, enjoying it warming the insides of our bellies, and the fire’s warmth on our faces. Listening to the homey scrape and clank of Jesús’s pots and pans, we were quiet, tired from the long night ride and pushing a rock weighing at least a ton off a cliff onto Runs Far.
Knight of the Tiger Page 30
