Knight of the Tiger

by W. Michael Farmer

  Staring into the flames, I tried to imagine how to get close enough to Villa to stop the Japanese and still settle accounts with him. I turned to Yellow Boy and asked, “How is the best way to approach Villa’s camp, and the dorados guarding him, without getting shot?”

  Before Yellow Boy could answer, Jesús said, “Let me go in first. I was a medico and horse holder at Columbus. The dorados with the general know who I am, and they’ll welcome me back when I tell them I’ve brought our friend Doctor Grace to help the general with his wound.”

  I felt like a deceitful traitor, coming all this way and not telling Jesús what I planned to do.

  Yellow Boy said nothing and his poker face showed nothing as he listened to Jesús, but I could tell he wasn’t happy that Jesús didn’t know our plans, and that he thought we were betraying Jesús with a lie. I thought, I ought to tell Jesús what we’re planning, but I can’t risk him telling Villa. Whatever it takes to settle my score, even if it means betraying a trust and telling a lie, I’ll do it. I remembered when I’d told Quent I’d rather die than lie, and marveled at how easy it had been for me to forget that principle.

  I nodded. “What you say is probably the safest thing to do, but there’s still a chance they’ll shoot first and ask questions later. Are you sure you want to risk it?”

  “Sí, Doctor Grace, I want to risk it. They won’t shoot me, and the sooner we can help the general with his leg, the better off we’ll be.”

  He grinned appreciatively when I replied, “You’re a good man, Jesús.”

  At first light, I was up and drank some leftover coffee while I used my old field glasses to study the nearby hacienda, not more than a quarter of a mile away across the river. I had to look through the trees surrounding the place, and that made it hard to see much detail. There were a couple of men who looked like some of Villa’s dorados I remembered from the last December. Could it be possible to have come so far and had the luck to camp next door to Villa’s hiding place?

  A wagon carrying two men rattling down the road running past the hacienda drove through the gate on the fence surrounding the hacienda’s yard. The men who reminded me of dorados I knew sauntered over to the wagon, rifles in the crooks of their arms. Words were exchanged, and one of the men reached in a vest pocket and handed a brilliant white scrap of folded paper to one of the dorados. He unfolded it, looked at it front and back, and walked into the hacienda. A man on the wagon pulled off his hat and wiped the sweat off his forehead with a shirtsleeve. I thought, I don’t believe it. The man is Japanese.

  I motioned Jesús over and handed him the binoculars as I pointed toward the wagon. “Who do you think stays there?” He’d barely put his eyes to the soft rubber eyepieces before he said, “Japanese! I’d bet a hundred pesos they’re trying to get in the house to see the general. I don’t think I need to go into Santa Cruz to find General Villa, Doctor Grace. He’s just across the river.”

  CHAPTER 55

  THE GAMBLE

  The whitewashed adobe hacienda, surrounded by beds of blooming desert plants, its yard fenced by a combination of posts and rails and a stone wall that kept horses in and cattle out, projected a sense of timelessness, like it had been there since before the conquistadores. It reminded me of a big sculptured white rock, part of the natural landscape.

  After a long delay, the Japanese peddlers were led into the hacienda through a door near where several dorados, alert and vigilant, smoked cigarillos or cleaned their pistols.

  Studying the hacienda, I tried to think through what was awaiting us across the river. Since Jesús didn’t know Villa tried to have me murdered, it was likely the dorados wouldn’t know either, and they’d welcome a medico and his assistant who rode with them at Agua Prieta and Hermosillo. Villa was vain enough to ask me to come inside, thinking I’d forgiven his betrayal. I’d need to be alone with him to kill him. Maybe I could claim I had a private message for him. If we could get out of the hacienda alive and back across the river, Yellow Boy could make it look as if we’d disappeared into thin air. The dorados would never find us. Camisa Roja was the wild card. If he was in the house and saw me, it would only be a question of who shot first. If, by some twist of fate, I were lucky enough to execute him, too, and escape, I’d never need to return to Mexico.

  I shook my head. Rationally, there were too many ifs to survive killing Villa in the hacienda. Trying to wait out the situation wasn’t an option, either. The longer we waited, the more likely one of Pershing’s squadrons would find Villa and his dorados or we’d be discovered. I decided to let the chips fall where they may. I wouldn’t live my life in fear, without honor, without power. It was my life or Villa’s.

  Staying out of sight from the hacienda, Jesús and I rode down-river into Santa Cruz, crossed the bridge, and returned upriver on the road passing the hacienda. Yellow Boy crossed the river upstream and came back to hide in the trees behind the yard fence in case we needed covering fire when we tried to escape. We both figured I’d have to drag Jesús with me to get him out of there.

  I felt like Judas for lying to Jesús about what we intended, but since the deception was necessary, it was my only opportunity to take Villa. I had to kill him regardless of the cost. Jesús riding up to the hacienda door with me made him an innocent part of my assassination plot. If the dorados caught him after I tried to kill Villa, they’d kill him. I was fast learning assassination was nasty business, both in its objective and the taint it left on every innocent associated with it.

  Turning off the road and passing through the fence gate, we rode past the peddler wagon and stopped near the door where the dorados watched us with poker-faced indifference. Cold black eyes stared at our faces, fingers wiggled to stay loose, and palms casually rested on the butt ends of their revolvers.

  Jesús and I advanced to the door, stopping six or seven feet from two dorados who stood to face us. Tension filled the air like the dry, electric calm before lightning falls out of an overheated summer sky.

  Jesús held up his right hand, palm facing the dorados, and said with good cheer, “Buenos días, muchachos. Remember us? We marched with you over El Paso Púlpito and fought by your sides at Agua Prieta and Hermosillo. I drove a wagon to pick up the wounded, and Doctor Grace here dug out bullets from some, sewed up what was left of others, and fought for the general. Remember how he shot out the spotlights at Agua Prieta when the Carrancistas and Americanos used them against us?”

  I recognized the tallest dorado facing us. He had a coarse, straggly beard, a hooked nose pushed to one side, and yellow, crooked teeth. He exclaimed, “Ay-ya-yi,” slapped his cheek with his gun hand and said to the others, “Sí, sí, this hombre, he was with the general when we came across El Paso Púlpito. He is a medico. And the young one with him, he drove the ambulance wagon during the fighting at Agua Prieta and Hermosillo . . . he held horses at Columbus, but the other medico was not there.” The other dorados relaxed a little, but their hands never left the butts of their revolvers.

  A muscular, dark-skinned man, probably a Yaqui Indian, hat pulled down over his eyes, a dorado bronze medallion pinned squarely in the center of his hat’s crown, flipped away a corn-shuck cigarette he’d been smoking and stood up from squatting against the hacienda. Head cocked to one side, he ambled over to Jesús and stared up at him. I saw him casually slide his hand around a bridle strap near the bit rings of Jesús’s mustang, making sure Jesús couldn’t whirl the roan away and charge off. He said in a smooth, almost feminine voice, filled with whispery threat, “Why have you come to this place, señor?”

  Jesús grinned and said, “We heard the general suffers from a bad wound. Doctor Grace comes to help his old amigo.”

  The man holding Jesús’s horse shook his head, clearly irritated, and the tone of his voice was pleasant but deadly. “I say again, señor, why did you come to . . . this . . . place?”

  Jesús shrugged his shoulders. “It’s what they say in the village, señor. General Francisco Villa recovers in this house
.”

  I heard the dorado mumble under his breath. “Someday, I will burn down that damned whorehouse.”

  He let go of the bridle on Jesús’s horse and stepped to my saddle. He started to take Satanas’s bridle as he had with Jesús’s mustang. I said in a soft tone, barely loud enough for him to hear, “I wouldn’t do that, señor. If I tell my black devil to run, he’ll drag you until your hand rips off trying to hold him.”

  His hand paused for an instant, and looking at Satanas, he reached over and scratched his jaw below the bridle strap. “Your stud, señor, he reminds me of one Señor Comacho owned before the revolución.”

  I nodded. “Sí, he is one and the same horse, señor. He was left in the Comacho barn after an Apache raid when all the vaqueros and hacienda servants ran away. I took him.”

  The Yaqui stuck out his lower lip and nodded. “He is magnificent, a very lucky find, señor. So you come to heal the general’s wound?” Then his tone changed from one of admiration to an instant challenge. “Tell me, señor, how did you learn that the general was wounded? Perhaps you are a spy and you learn these things from the gringos, sí?”

  I knew that the best lies are those mixed with truth. I replied, “No, señor. I’m no spy and did not learn of the general’s wound from the gringos. I was in an Apache camp in the Sierra Las Espuelas when word came from their scouts that the peones were saying the general had been shot in the leg, a very bad wound, and was heading south. As soon as I could leave my work, I left to find him and offer my help. Along the way, I found my young amigo, Jesús, and he guided me as we followed your trail south. We asked the people along the way about the general who disappeared near Rubio, but they seemed to know little. We crossed trails with the gringo general, and with him was my amigo, the reportero, Quentin Peach. He was with us at Agua Prieta. He told me privately of the rumors that General Villa hides near Santa Cruz de Herrera, and so we came here.”

  The Yaqui’s eyes studied mine as I spoke. When I finished, he slowly nodded. “I believe you speak true, señor. And the Apache, Muchacho Amarillo, who rode with us to Agua Prieta, I don’t see him with you. Where is he?”

  “Ready to shoot you, señor.”

  He laughed a knowing chuckle. “Sí, I’m sure he is. He was angry when he left Agua Prieta. Tell him when you see him, perhaps I’ll come to visit him one dark night, and then he can shoot me. Climb down from your horses, señores. The general has visitors. I’ll let him know you come. His leg smells of infection, and I have to lift him out of bed, or he moans and clenches his teeth in great pain. The local medicos know nothing of wounds such as his. He needs your medico skills and will be glad to see you. The tree over there provides a little shade from the sun.”

  He gave a quick jerk of his head toward an old man, who disappeared into the hacienda as Jesús and I dismounted and led our horses to a big, tall cottonwood. I scanned the tree line behind us, but I saw no sign of Yellow Boy.

  My mouth felt filled with dust, and my heart pounded. My face-to-face with Villa finally came down to my gamble on his vanity and that Camisa Roja didn’t know I was there. If Villa thought I’d come to kill him, we wouldn’t live another ten minutes.

  CHAPTER 56

  EPIPHANY

  Ten minutes ticked by, fifteen, twenty, forty-five. The whitewashed side door opened slowly, letting bright sunlight into the dark, cool interior of the hacienda. An ancient, bent-over old man tottered out of the darkness and spoke to the big Yaqui. It took all my discipline not to put my hand on my revolver and to continue looking relaxed.

  The Yaqui waved us over and said, “The general is glad you have returned. He asks you to come, sit, and talk with him awhile in the left bedroom at the end of the hall. Go on in, señores.”

  We stepped through the doorway and moved a few slow steps before our eyes adapted to the dark. Wide doorways, the doors painted bright white, lined both sides of the hall, its length running the full width of the hacienda. The last door on the left at the end of the hall was closed. I knocked in the middle of the door and stepped to one side in case Villa fired through the door.

  From behind the door, a familiar, smooth voice said, “Sí?”

  “General, Hombrecito and Jesús, the medico assistant, come to help you. May we enter?”

  “Sí, amigos, por favor, entre.”

  Villa, fully dressed, sat in a big, straight-backed ornate chair dating from the time of the grandee sons of the conquistadores. His revolver lay next to him on a bedside table, and crutches leaned against the wall on the other side of the chair. His wounded leg stuck out straight, wrapped in a massive bandage running from four or five inches above the knee to nearly his ankle, and rested on a stool. A light stain showed on the top of the bandage a few inches below his knee. A bottle of gin and a glass, two-thirds full of clear liquid, sat on the table next to the revolver. I was surprised, because I’d never known Villa to drink. His face was thin to the point of emaciation. Barely lifting his hand off the chair’s armrest and curling his fingers, he motioned us through the door. “So muchachos, you come to help me or kill me?”

  Jesús frowned at the question, but he said nothing. I said, “We’re medicos, General. We come to help you, not to put you out of your misery like a horse with a broken leg.”

  He gave me a sad smile and said, “There were times coming over the sierras, Hombrecito, my leg hurt so bad I wished someone would shoot me.”

  We walked over and shook his hand. His grip was still firm but not vice-like as it had been last fall. He watched me carefully as I put my bag on the bed, opened it, and found a pair of scissors to cut away the bandage. I said, “We’re going to need plenty of hot water. Jesús, why don’t you go boil us some?”

  Villa waved his hand toward the bedroom door and said, “The kitchen’s on the other side of the hacienda, down a hall through the door across the hall from this one. A couple of Japanese friends are making coffee. They can help you.”

  Jesús turned to go, saying over his shoulder, “I’ll be back pronto.” As I watched him leave, I thought, This is almost too easy. As soon as the door closed, I heard the hammer on Villa’s revolver click twice to full cock. I turned to stare at the black hole at the end of its long barrel and saw the ends of the bullets in the cylinder.

  “So, you little bastard, you did come back as you wrote on the paper. You came back, even though I let you live after you nearly beat Camisa Roja to death. Now I have you, you little son-of-a-bitch.”

  “Sí, Jefe, I came back. You know me too long to think I wouldn’t. Jesús knows nothing of my plan to kill you. If I die, he is innocent. Let him go.”

  My nervousness vanished, and all I felt inside was astonishment that he believed he let me live. “What do you mean you let me live? On your orders, Roja was about to murder me.”

  Villa shrugged. “I sent no one after you when Camisa came back across his horse. I should’ve killed him for letting you get away, but he’s too good a man to die because of the likes of you. You weren’t chased or killed on the way back to the land of the gringos. No one tried to kill you after you returned to Las Cruces. I left you alone, even though I should have had you shot like the traitor you are.”

  His audacity was stunning. He let me live? I was a traitor? Cold, focused fury began growing in my gut at the insanity and narcissism that filled his mind. I felt a peculiar joy that I was so close to killing him and ending the thoughts in his crazed brain forever.

  “Jefe, you know that every man you might have sent after me would have died, never hearing the shot that killed them. And yes, I tried to stop the outrageous murders you committed in San Pedro de la Cueva. That, señor, was not betrayal. You were loco . . . You were on fire and out of your mind, consumed by flames of hate and insanity.”

  Instantly all the pieces fell into place and I realized what I was saying was what my dream had been trying to tell me for months. “Oh, sí, you were el tigre on fire, a burning, crazed jaguar, who after seeing División del Norte slaughtered, be
came loco because the gringo presidente betrayed you, loco after being beaten by Carranza and Obregón, and in your roaring insanity, you murdered those you swore to protect, not Carranza, not Obregón. You murdered peones, you murdered a priest, and then you tried to murder me, your amigo. You’re the traitor, Jefe, not me.”

  Leaning forward, he leveled the gun to kill me, his eyes filled with thundering rage. The heavy weapon wobbled in his hand as he struggled to focus through his fog of pain and pull the trigger. In a rage myself, faster than a rattlesnake strike, I coolly snatched the pistol’s barrel, effortlessly twisting it out of his hand before his trembling finger could pull the trigger.

  He slumped against the back of his chair, staring at me with fever burning in his eyes, panting through clenched teeth. “Loco am I? Then shoot me, you son-of-a-bitch. Satisfy your thirst for my blood. Put me out of my misery, you little bastard.”

  “Not yet, Jefe, we’ll wait until Jesús returns with the boiling water so he can leave the hacienda and won’t be blamed for what I do. Make your peace with God. It won’t be long before you’ll see him.”

  He spat in disgust. “To hell with you, Hombrecito. You and the pup won’t live through the day. Go on and do it. Kill me now, and we’ll be seeing God together before we burn in hell.”

  There was a knock at the door and a man’s voice said, “Coffee, General.” I gave a quick nod toward Villa and mouthed, Answer.

  “Bueno. Entraren, amigos.” They came in with quick, short steps, thick black hair tied back in twisted buns, their slanted eyes flicking about the room. One carried a big blue and white speckled coffee pot, and one three heavy clay mugs.

  I pretended to examine Villa’s pistol. They bowed and smiled, placing the pot and mugs on a table against the wall on the far side of the room. The one with the mugs said with almost no accent, “Buenas tardes, Doctor Grace, your assistant will be bringing you boiling water pronto. We brought plenty of coffee for the general and you, too. May I pour you both a cup?”