“But how can I bathe? I am unclean. I have my curse.”
“You won’t die. My sisters do it all the time. It’s a hot day; you’ll dry off quick. And your hair’s a hell of a lot more unclean than the other place. Go on in, girl.”
She considered all that, then finally nodded. “You don’t have to turn away. I am not ashamed.”
Rosa slipped off her dress. Under that shapeless brown sack I hadn’t seen much more than the outlines of a young girl’s slim body, although it was clear enough that she had a generous portion of what constitutes a female. And she was right—she certainly didn’t need to be ashamed of the way nature had fitted it together. She was a little taller than the average Mexican girl, with well-curved brown legs and muscular thighs, a flowering black bush between them, hips on the slim side, strong shoulders and a narrow equator. She wasn’t stooped yet like most of the women were from their years of grinding corn. It was her breasts that stood out: not just in a manner of speaking, but rising out of her ribs in a swollen and perfect curve as in pictures of Greek statues in museums. They might have been a little too big for the rest of her body, but that wasn’t anything that a man with some tallow in his bones would grouse about, and they were tipped with the neatest pair of brown buttons I had ever seen, although I hadn’t seen so many as to make me an expert.
But I had to catch my breath and half turn away, lest she see my pecker come to attention in my pants as if Old Glory were passing by on parade. How many times was that to happen to me, and with how many women? Was that my fate in Old Mexico?
She didn’t hurry. She walked off into the water as if she didn’t have a care in the world and this was the Fourth of July at Galveston Island. Her rump swished from side to side, beyond her control, in a way that made me almost bust the rivets off my Levi’s. I watched the smooth arch of her back slide into the cool water and I had a sudden vision of her husband rotting in some well out by Corralitos, and how he had been graced by life’s lottery to enjoy all that, but now it was gone to him forever and was some other man’s booty. I had a pang of sorrow for that boy that swelled inside my heart with almost as much intensity as I felt in the lower region.
After she had dried her hair in the sun and put on her dress, I walked with Rosa back to the house in town, keeping an eye skinned for this so-called officer who, in her view, had claimed her. I didn’t really want to lock horns in debate with him until I’d had a word with Villa, and when I got home—it was that, for the moment at least—Julio, Hipólito and Candelario were swilling coffee and playing dominoes under a framed print of Mary and Joseph in the manger. Their shirts were open to the waist, letting out a powerful aroma. They wore cartridge belts and pistols, and sweat dripped from their faces to the rickety wooden table. Taking one look at them, my Indian waif turned pale. I may have done the same. Was the officer one of them?
But Rosa was only frightened at the malevolence of their appearance. I had grown used to it, but I realized that if you came on that trio fresh, you might appeal to all the saints in heaven for protection.
“What’s this?” Candelario jumped to his feet; his head almost banged the ceiling. Grinning cruelly, he stroked his black beard. “You spend the night with one, and in the morning you turn up with another! You gringo bastard! Have you no shame? No respect for Mexican womanhood?”
“It’s the same one,” Julio said dryly. “He’s just given it to her so many times that she’s lost thirty pounds.”
Candelario took the privilege of a closer look. “She’s Tarahumara. Are you not, señorita?”
“True,” Rosa said.
“The worst women in all of Mexico, Tomás. They have vinegar in their blood. They steal horses.”
“No, señor,” Rosa said. “We catch them wild, then eat them for dinner.”
Candelario became suddenly friendly; he liked her spirit, and so did I. “Listen, girl, this is our gringo compañero. He crossed the Rio Bravo with Pancho Villa. We too were there. He has no ambition to die young, so be careful with him. Don’t break his back. Don’t bite off his cojones. “
My cheeks were scarlet by then, and they howled brutishly, pounding the little wooden table and upsetting all the dominoes. When they quieted down I told them Rosa’s story, about her husband and the skirmish at Corralitos, and the man who had claimed her the night before. For her husband it was clear they felt nothing. He was a Federal soldier, an enemy, and they probably would have shot him too. To the other part of it, however, they paid some attention.
“It sounds like Urbina or Contreras,” Julio said thoughtfully. “Except that a little blood wouldn’t stop either of those roosters.”
Hipólito laid a chubby hand on my shoulder. “If it was Urbina, it’s been pleasant knowing you, Tomás.”
Candelario said, “He’s right. This is serious. Remember what the chief told you. Don’t aim. Just shoot and pray.”
I couldn’t really tell to what extent they were joshing, but I knew that Mexicans didn’t settle arguments with their fists. They believed that if God had intended human beings to fight like dogs, He would have provided them with teeth and claws.
“Can’t the girl do as she pleases?” I asked, frowning.
Candelario tugged at his mustache. “Do you think this is the first dance at the cotillion in El Paso? The girl is pretty, but she is of no significance. What is of significance in this matter is the honor of men.” Rosa hadn’t said a word. I had read The Three Musketeers, and I wondered, if there were going to be any kind of a serious scrap with this unknown officer, whether they would be willing to play the parts of Porthos, Aramis and the other fellow, the melancholy one whose name I had forgotten. I also wondered if I really wanted to be D’Artagnan. I surely wasn’t in the market for a fourteen-year-old girl I might have to drag along with me wherever we were going to fight this long-awaited war.
I said, “I’m going to talk to Villa about her.”
“That’s a good idea,” Julio decided, “but make sure he’s not looking for a newer wife.”
They howled again. Rosa stood by with no expression on her brown Indian face. I guess in her own way, at the time, she subscribed wholeheartedly to Candelario’s theory that women were of no significance in such matters, and as far as she was concerned her fate was now in the hands of superior forces—namely, men—and whatever it was, she would accept it. So I left with her, and my compañeros picked the spilled dominoes from the dirt floor and resumed their game, jostling and shouting. I wasn’t D’Artagnan.
In the street some boys were playing leapfrog on the back of a tired old sow, and a pack of mongrel dogs snapped at each other in the dust. One of them, I noticed, was stuck inside a bitch and whining pitifully. Rosa smiled, but not I. It’s a warning, I thought glumly. Then in the blaze of the morning I spotted Pancho Villa, Rodolfo Fierro and Tomás Urbina emerging from the shadows of the chief’s house across the street. They looked businesslike, and I assumed they were off to inspect materiél or new troops. I decided it would be better to postpone this problem to another time. But with a word Fierro detached himself from the other two and strode toward us, out of the shade into the brazen sunlight. Since we had brought the new supplies from El Paso, he had outfitted himself with U. S. Army puttees, hip-high cavalry boots and a white Stetson. He cut an imposing figure: tall, robust, with smooth skin and wide sloping shoulders, his silver spurs inlaid with turquoise—Pancho Villa’s butcher.
I was about to tell Rosa who he was when she touched my arm gently. “That is the man,” she murmured. “That is the officer who claimed me.”
Rodolfo Fierro? I had to hold back a groan. God, I thought, I would rather it had been Villa himself!
He came straight up to her, ignoring me completely. He was his usual polite and chilly self, which I knew by now wasn’t a mask but simply the only way he knew how to speak.
“Señorita, you didn’t return last night. That was wrong of you.”
Rosa showed no fear. Why should she? She didn’t know
that Fierro was a killer of men, that he pulled the trigger of his pistol with as much emotion as a man usually saves for slapping mosquitoes. And she had me at her side to protect her. I had promised, hadn’t I?
She answered him with equal politeness. “Señor, I didn’t want to stay. I told you that my husband’s body was not yet cold. I slept alone by the lake. Now I have found another man. I will stay with him.”
“Hold on a minute—” I got that much out, then stopped, not knowing what more to say. But my flesh began to leak sweat.
“This man?”
“Yes, señor.”
Fierro’s brown eyes shifted to me. They weren’t cold or angry, just curious. He measured me while I waited, my heart beneath my sweaty shirt starting to beat like a telegraph key. We both carried pistols. I hadn’t any idea what I was going to do when Fierro challenged me, which it seemed he must if his honor and machismo were at stake. The best thing, I realized, was to tell him the spotless truth. The girl was wrong. She had found a man with whom she wanted to stay, yes—but that man, namely me, hadn’t been consulted.
Still, I held my tongue. I had made a promise. Even more, I didn’t fancy sending a homeless widow kid off into Fierro’s clutches. From what I had seen at Casas Grandes, his tastes might have been pretty unpleasant.
But I had to face something else, and quickly. Could I kill for a woman? I truly doubted it, even if she were mine. More to the point, could I die for one? No doubt about that answer. Life was sweet, and I had Hannah waiting for me, and I wanted to grow old in her arms and rich in her father’s business. This Tarahumara girl had put me in a boghole of her own devising; she assumed that if I took her in tow it had to be because I wanted her to pound my tortillas and share my saddle blanket. No, señorita! I’m engaged. I won’t die for you. You’ll have to wriggle out of this on your own.
Fierro shifted his eyes from me back to Rosa. His business was with her. He didn’t deign to argue right and wrong with the likes of me.
“This man is one of us, but he’s a gringo. He’s not clear about certain things. Have you slept with him?”
“No, señor. I told you, I slept alone by the lake.”
“Then he has no reason to be offended when you return to my house. Do so now. I have business. Then I’ll come to eat.”
Rosa didn’t budge. I wondered if she was enjoying this—it wouldn’t have been unnatural for a young girl to conjure up a fantasy that two men were arguing over her. But I don’t think so. Looking back on it now, after all these years, I think the Tarahumara, once they decide to ride through fire, spur forward and will their blood to ice. And Rosa was Tarahumara to the bone.
“Señor, I don’t wish to go. I will stay with the captain.”
The captain! Then, truly, I was almost willing to die. Fierro jerked his head toward me, and finally there was an expression in his eyes of amusement mixed with scorn. I was only saved, if that’s the right word, by the fact that Villa and Urbina had ambled across the dusty square and finally appeared at Fierro’s side. Villa walked in his awkward pigeon-toed gait, arms thrust out at the side by the bigness of his chest. He was pulling at the curly ends of his mustache, and he shot a gob of spittle into the dust.
“For Christ’s sake, what’s going on?”
My fear that Fierro would ask what Rosa meant when she called me a captain prodded me to speak first.
“Chief, it’s the matter of this girl. I was coming to your house just now—I wanted to ask your permission for her to stay with me awhile. She’s fourteen. Her husband was one of the Federals shot yesterday at Corralitos. I’ll care for her until she can get back to her family in Tomochic. She’s Tarahumara, as you can see.”
Villa eyed me keenly. “What about my wife’s sister?”
“With respect, she didn’t please me.”
He laughed with great mirth. “So, Tomás! You too are an expert with women.” Then he looked suddenly puzzled. “But why, for such a simple thing, do you need my permission?”
Fierro had opened his mouth to speak, but again I darted in. “Last night,” I said, “when our soldiers brought her to camp, Rodolfo took her with him. She ran away. He claims her now. The girl doesn’t want to go with him.”
“So …” Villa sighed. “I must be Solomon once more, as I was with the rifles. Unfortunately, if you divide a woman in half to please two men, one gets the half that fucks and the other the half that whispers pleasant things in the darkness, and neither is much good without the other, not even considering that they’ll both soon rot if they’re separated. But still … I think the problem has a solution. Which of you has fucked her?”
“Neither of us, chief,” I said.
“But you took her to your house, Rodolfo!” He frowned, for his solution had gone up in smoke. “For God’s sake, what the men say—is it true?”
This was news to me; I hadn’t any idea what he meant. Fierro darkened for a moment, then got hold of himself and eased back into his calm attitude.
“She came to my house,” he said quietly. “But she was bleeding, and so I let her be. Then she ran away. She is Tarahumara, as has been stated. They are not so quickly tamed.”
For the first time Villa examined Rosa, his pop-eyed glance roving appreciatively up and down her body.
“Do you ride, girl?”
“Yes, señor. I traded my mother’s tit for the saddle.”
Villa clucked his tongue a few times, like a chicken, and then made up his mind. “I’m a busy man. I have much to do today. Moreover, I don’t want any bitterness between my friends, and to encourage it over a stray woman would be so stupid that I wouldn’t respect myself for having made a choice. So there is a simple solution. Neither of you will have her. I’d consider taking her myself to end the quarrel, because I like what I see, but that would only lose the love of both of you.” He turned to Fierro. “She ran away from you. What women do once, they’ll do again. That will make you crazier than you already are. Count yourself lucky to be rid of her.” His paunch rippled silently with a chuckle.
Then he turned to me. “You’ll thank me one day for this, Tomás. This kind has a sharp tongue. They lack the dignity of a true Mexican woman, and they use unseemly language, as you just heard. Let her find another man. You’ll see, it won’t take more than a few hours.”
My luck had been running kind of brown ever since I had come out of the lake, and I thought his solution wasn’t bad at all. But the girl had other ideas.
“I want this man, señor.” She inclined her head toward me.
Villa’s back arched. He wasn’t used to a female stating her preferences so clearly, particularly when she was a child, alone in the world and obviously at the mercy of the men around her, to most of whom she was considerably less valuable than a horse or even a good saddle. And of course she was implying a willingness on my part that wasn’t there. But I was in too deep, like the dog in the street—which had been an omen even more than a warning—to back out.
With bite in his voice the chief said, “There are plenty of good men in the camp. Are you so choosy?”
“It’s a matter of honor,” Rosa said flatly. “I have promised myself to this man.”
He didn’t know how to reply. You couldn’t easily spit in the face of honor. But whose honor was she talking about? Villa ground his teeth. If he let her have her way he was either going to have to contradict himself or eat crow, neither of which pleased him. He was the leader now of five thousand men, and he couldn’t let a girl bully him into a decision. He looked at Fierro, who for the first time had an expression of annoyance on his smooth and handsome face. He’s willing to give up the girl, I thought, as long as I don’t get her, but he can’t accept her choosing me over him. I could see that clearly. Villa opened his mouth to decide.
“Chief, let our Tomás have her.” The gruff voice, startling me by its closeness, came from Candelario. “We’re planning a little fiesta tonight. Life is dull when we’re not fighting. This would please us.”
Spinning around, I almost bumped into him, standing behind me with Julio and Hipólito. Absorbed in the dealings with Fierro, I hadn’t even heard them troop up through the dust. Dirty, warlike and mustachioed, legs widespread, thumbs hooked into their gun belts, they looked like an armed Praetorian guard. Guessing I might find trouble, they had ambled along to make sure I could handle it. So after all, I was their D’Artagnan.
Hipólito said, “She can cook for us. Our Frenchwomen do the other thing well, but then they lie about. Even if we kick them, they don’t move. This one is young and strong.”
Fierro’s eyes were cold now, and he looked at the three friends as if he were measuring each of them for a pine box. They returned the look with equal hostility, and I had the first inkling then of how much they despised him. He was the outlaw wolf—Villa’s animal. I had oversimplified, thinking that they were all Mexicans, all revolutionists, and therefore held each other in equal esteem.
But Villa couldn’t say no to his brother and two who served him so faithfully that they would die if he crooked his finger. Moreover, they had solved his problem.
He looped an arm about the butcher’s shoulder. “Rodolfo, it’s settled. Unless you choose to object, which I hope you won’t.”
“It’s of no consequence,” Fierro said calmly, with eyes like cold ice. “Besides, she has a foul mouth.”
“You have more sense than Tomás.” Villa wheeled on Candelario. “Are you inviting all of us to this fiesta?”
“We’d be honored, chief. If you don’t mind seeing us drunk and disorderly.”
“I’ll suffer it. You have all day tomorrow to rest, which you’d better do”—he paused dramatically—”because on the next day we’re going to ride south and fight. At Torreón.”
A hoarse murmur of approval and excitement rose from every man’s throat. We had all been waiting for this day. It was to be the beginning of the battle to conquer Mexico. I felt twin stabs of fear and expectation—and I thought it was time, in the midst of everyone’s jubilance, to assert myself.
TOM MIX AND PANCHO VILLA: A Novel of Mexico and the Texas border Page 12
