In the gloomy light, Dozal nodded. I remembered what he had done at Casas Grandes, helping Fierro to prove his theory that a single bullet would kill three men. If there was any man who wouldn’t hesitate, this was the one.
Whatever pride I had felt before, after being blooded in the battle for Torreón, ebbed away from me in a single rush. To be brave in battle with your friends was one thing; to calmly and knowingly sacrifice your life for strangers was another. In that I was a coward. What Fierro demanded of me was loathsome, but if I didn’t do it I would surely die. He knew how I would choose. He didn’t even wait for me to nod my acceptance.
“Let’s begin,” he said to Dozal. “I don’t want it to grow dark before I finish. Tell the prisoners how it will work.”
“It’s being done, my colonel.”
A low moan reached us from the first pen, where Dozal’s sergeant was explaining the details of the game to the huge lump of Redflaggers. One naked prisoner broke from the pack, trying to leap over an adobe wall in the direction of the hospital. A volley from three revolutionists sitting on the fence hurled him to the ground.
The sergeant wasted no more time. He began to extract ten men from the formless mass, shoving them at pistol point through the chute into the second pen. I could hear him clearly now. The wind blew but made no sound.
“Don’t resist,” he cajoled. “Come on, boys. This way you have a chance.”
Fierro took up a position directly in front of the stockyard office, his back braced against the adobe wall. I knelt on one knee to his right, with the box of cartridges in front of me and the two extra pistols lying on a torn blanket that had been spread between us. To my right, Dozal slouched with the fourth pistol in his hand, ready to kill me if I abandoned my task. We were at a central point in the third pen. If the men ran in a straight line from left to right, trying to cover the distance in the shortest possible time, which would be natural, the range would vary between twenty and thirty yards.
Just then a small bird, a crow, flew overhead and alighted on the far fence, the one that would lead to freedom if Rodolfo Fierro kept his word. It sat motionless, tucking in its black wings. Fierro raised the long barrel of his pistol and fired. The report was a dry, light snap. The bullet passed harmlessly through the air, and the alarmed crow quickly fluttered up and away toward the mountains.
“Come on, boys!” Fierro smiled. His deep voice easily carried across the stockyard to the prisoners, who writhed like a mass of snakes in the gray light. “You see that I missed! I’m not such a good shot! A running target is even more difficult. So! Who’s first?”
The first group of ten bolted from the chute into the third pen. They ran like crazed goats. Fierro extended his right arm straight out and with his left hand gripped the right wrist. He fired five shots, then dropped the pistol on the blanket, where I picked it up with my left hand. With my right hand, holding the second pistol by the barrel, I slapped the butt into his waiting fingers, as a nurse delivers a scalpel to a surgeon.
“Good, Tomás,” he murmured. He fired six more times in rapid succession, and I delivered the third pistol.
He had only to fire four bullets from that one before the group of ten men sprawled all over the pen in the dust, dead and dying. One man had reached the final fence, but he was hit before he could even grip the wooden rail. Fierro smiled again. The shot at the crow had been to calculate the wind.
“Let’s have another ten,” he called brightly.
I had already reloaded the first pistol and was at work on the second one, removing the exploded caps and stuffing the steel cartridges into the chambers. Dozal bent to Fierro’s ear.
“What about the wounded, my colonel?”
“Don’t let them suffer, Juanito. Tell your men to finish them off.”
Dozal shouted the order. The soldiers who crowded to the fence of the second pen, that they might have a better view of the slaughter, raised their rifles and poured a volley of bullets into the three or four prisoners who still groaned and writhed in the dirt.
The second group of ten catapulted from the chute. This time one of them, a Federal officer whose pants flapped in rags like a rodeo clown’s, launched himself directly at us, hands raised to strangle Fierro if he could reach him in time. His face was hatred at its most pure. Fierro neither flinched nor fired at him. He remained entirely concentrated on the other nine who bounded wildly across the pen. He simply said, “Lieutenant …” and Dozal raised the fourth pistol and shot the officer in the chest when he was no more than four strides from us. The man hit the ground with a noise like that of a falling log, muttered something to himself, then lay still.
The other nine men died in the midst of their mad race. Again one reached the fence, planting a boot on the lower rail before Fierro’s bullet drilled a red hole between his naked shoulder blades and he sagged across the bar, bent double and coughing blood.
Now the prisoners realized that there was no hope of escape, that Fierro’s aim was good enough and the illusion of freedom beyond the far fence was as unattainable as their youthful dreams of riches and love and glory.
They began to sob, to wail dementedly. “Little Jesus … blessed saints … Mama!” Apparently they didn’t agree with Fierro’s thesis on death. A few refused to go, and Dozal’s soldiers quickly shot them down.
And so the rest kept coming—a third ten, a fourth ten—then more. Fierro fired in a rhythm as regular as that of a ticking clock. He saw no men in front of him, only darting, crawling targets. The prisoners stumbled over the corpses of the men who had run before them. They slipped in pools of blood, sometimes colliding with another, battering him out of the way in their frenzy to reach the gate not merely to freedom but to life itself. If it hadn’t been a carnival of death, their antics might have seemed comic. They dodged and jostled, kicked, beat on human obstacles with clenched fists. One man, incensed that another blocked his path, stopped to smash him in the face; the other man struck back, and they began to trade blows in the midst of the massacre … until Fierro’s bullets dropped them both to the earth, still feebly swinging.
The Villistas on the fences shouted encouragement at the fighters and the runners, made bets, howled with mirth when a man turned a particularly absurd cartwheel after Fierro’s bullet broke his spine.
Mounds of bodies began to grow in the yard as though some strange human plant, with a hundred heads and double the amount of out-thrust arms and legs, were pushing its way up with unbelievable speed from an earth fertilized with its own blood.
The wind still blew coldly. A flaming ball of red sun touched the bare crest of a peak that was shaped like the breast of Juana Torres. The sun’s fading light matched the color of the stockyard earth.
The yard had become a slaughterhouse. Dozal’s soldiers increased their fire into the heaps of dead and wounded, taking no chances that a man might feign death and so escape. Now and then an arm jerked loose from the pile, touching off a salvo of gunfire until it stiffened into death. The gunfire and the screams of the prisoners grew strangely distant. I felt the coldness of the bullets that I fed into the revolving chambers and the damp grip of the pistols fresh from Fierro’s hand. The barrels had grown so hot that my fingers were blistered. Each steel-jacketed bullet with its tapered, beautiful shape would soon embed its point into a man’s stomach, or his brain, or his madly beating heart, stilling it forever. I tapped them into the chambers and felt them lock into place with a dry click. Even in the cold wind I was sweating, and when I glanced at Fierro I saw that his forehead as well was beaded with the passion of his effort. But his eyes never wavered. His rhythm didn’t vary. He was a machine. He had made one of me too.
More than an hour had passed when the last group of men was finally booted through the chute. The number was uneven, and so the soldiers who dispatched them at bayonet point toward that grisly obstacle course sent a group of thirteen—an unlucky number, but for one man it would mean life. Perhaps the soldiers thought it would be the final tes
t of Fierro’s marksmanship.
The sun had dipped below the mountain, leaving a wake of garish orange streaks against the royal blue sky. All was in shadow. If Fierro had been less proud, less vain, he would have ordered Dozal’s men to shoot the last thirteen, for the dusk would make it difficult for him. He had to be tired. But his vanity and dedication to his task made it impossible for him to give that order.
The thirteen men ran, stumbled, crawled, zigzagging forward through the heaps of dead. Fierro fired as rapidly as he could.
Three fell, then three more, then two …
Fierro leaned forward intently, sweating, left hand locked to his right wrist. The hammer clicked on an empty chamber. I handed him the pistol, and he fired. Three more men twisted to the ground, none dead but all nearly so, tears bursting from their eyes, as through their pain they realized that all hope of life was lost.
My hands were blocks of stone, and I was late in reloading. Some stubborn feeling, some final hatred of what I had helped to do, gripped me.
I let my hands go slack. The pistol slipped to the earth. Fierro glared at me.
“Lieutenant … may I?” He turned to Juan Dozal.
He was not to be denied his chance. He leaned quickly across to snatch Dozal’s pistol.
The only two remaining survivors had reached the fence, where a pile of corpses led up to it like an irregular flight of soft, yielding steps. The bodies steamed in the cold air. With a bound, both men danced to the top of the heap at the same time, gripping the fence rail in a last desperate effort to climb over. Fierro’s pistol snapped twice. Once of the men cried out, a terrible sob that pierced the twilight. He fell back slightly, reeling like a drunkard, blocking Fierro’s view of the second man. Fierro fired again, and the figure atop the pile jerked but didn’t fall. It had been pinned to the wooden post by the blow of the bullet.
Behind him, the second shadowy figure hesitated, then vaulted over the fence into the plain. A howl went up from the troops in the second pen—half a cheer, half a shout of rage at being so cheated. They fired their rifles into the darkness where the man sprinted toward the first hills. But the mounds of dead took the impact of most of the bullets, and the others whistled off into the evening.
The fleeing man became only a faint shape, running low to the scrub, then indistinguishable from the cactus. He vanished.
So one had escaped. One had survived. One among more than two hundred.
Fierro’s arms dropped heavily to his sides. He let the pistol slide from his grasp. It bounced once before it settled on the blanket. He raised his right hand, the trigger finger purple and swollen, then rubbed it tenderly, wincing as he felt pain.
He frowned down at me. “If you hadn’t been so slow at the end, Tomás, even that one wouldn’t have got away. Still, it wasn’t bad shooting … I could have done worse. Don’t you think so?”
“Yes,” I said hoarsely, “you could have done worse.”
“And so could you.”
He meant that I would have been shot if I had failed to help him. Dozal would have seen to that. But the one gesture I had made at the end—the hesitation with the last pistol—had given one man back his life. Poor comfort, but all I had.
Fierro ordered the bodies burned, and we walked back to the car. Hipólito and the chauffeur were asleep, the empty whiskey bottle between them on the front seat. The soldiers, gathering firewood and trotting to keep warm, began to sing softly in the gathering darkness
Chapter 10
“And if words will not,
then our weapons shall.”
In order for me to tell my story properly, another man must tell his own. He wrote in a journal which I have translated from the Spanish. The journal is a ledger, a long, thin, hardbound green volume normally used for keeping accounts of debits and credits in a business—perhaps a small grocery shop.
I came upon the ledger three years after the killing at Torreón, in the saddlebags of a dead man’s horse. That was no accident. But that part of my tale comes later … in the ghost town of Las Palomas, where Miguel Bosques, Rodolfo Fierro, Lieutenant Patton and I faced our final reckoning and paid all our debts.
from THE SCHOOLTEACHER’S JOURNAL
Fort Bliss
El Paso, Texas
December 20, 1913
One of my great regrets is that I could not begin this journal at an earlier date, but for the past two months my right hand, with which I normally write, has been bandaged and partially paralyzed. On that awful October evening, just as my brother Isidoro and I reached the fence in the Torreón stockyards, a bullet from Colonel Fierro’s pistol struck me in the wrist, shattering the bone.
Thanks to Lieutenant Patton, I am receiving treatment from the post surgeon, and there is excellent hope of full recovery. Today the bandages came off.
In the event that these pages should ever fall into other hands:
I, Miguel Bosques Barragán, thirty years of age, was born in the city of Goméz Palacio on January 27, 1883, the oldest son of Antonio Bosques Triano, a carpenter, and Encarnación Barragán, a saint. My parents are dead. My wife, Carmen Bosques Copeda, died in childbirth in 1910. The baby did not survive. I did not remarry.
Both my younger brothers, Roberto and Isidoro, were killed in October 1913 by the revolutionary forces of General Francisco Villa, in Torreón. I dedicate this journal and my life to their memory, for they were pure young men with not a drop of malice in their souls, and I write this account of my recent life because it has lost nearly all meaning for me. Educated as an idealist, I now find myself opposed to every form of idealism. I believe only in facts, and even there I am wary, for what one man swears to another will surely contradict; and I view history as a compilation of the self-serving statements of men who have much to justify and even more to hide, hardening over the years into a literature of lies. I live for only one thing, that most soul-destroying of all human motives: vengeance. This shames me but does not deter me from my purpose.
My escape from Torreón was surely miraculous, as if the hand of God had singled me out not merely for salvation, but to carry out His will, however dreadful it might be. My brothers and I had been unwilling conscripts in the volunteer army of General Pascual Orozco, the former revolutionist who had offered the services of his army to Victoriano Huerta, now President of Mexico. My brother Roberto was killed by an exploding shell in the battle for Gómez Palacio. In that same battle, neither I nor my brother Isidoro fired our rifles.
“It’s wrong to kill,” I told Isidoro. “These men of Villa’s think they are fighting to free the people of Mexico from slavery. They mean us no harm beyond their duty as soldiers.”
With many others, therefore, we surrendered to a squad of Villistas, who made us lie on the floor of a grocery shop for half a day. Another prisoner told me of Roberto’s death. Isidoro and I wept. We were struck several times in the kidneys and head with rifle butts. We were hungry, but we were given no food, although it was all around us in the shop.
Then we were taken in a truck to what had been the military hospital of Torreón. During the night there was fighting among the prisoners; many men were beaten to death. Isidoro and I hid in a toilet.
The following afternoon we were taken into the stockyards to be shot.
I could not believe at first that this would happen, but the other men told me that the army of Francisco Villa showed no mercy, that they killed merely for the love of killing and became crazed by the sight of blood.
I began to realize that we would die. I could not accept this, because I valued the gift of life and believed that evil could not possibly triumph over innocence. Even in that awful hour, I was still an idealist.
Then I noticed two men standing nearby. One was a well-dressed fat fellow with the face of a wild boar. The other was slim, tall, fresh-faced and young. I realized from his features and his gait that he was an American, a volunteer with Villa’s revolutionary army, perhaps therefore an idealist like myself.
W
hen I addressed myself to him in English, he could not hide his surprise. I told him my story and asked if he considered it just that Isidoro and I should die. My only shame is that I did not plead for the lives of all the prisoners, but I knew that was far too much to ask.
The American, Captain Mix, listened politely but refused to answer my question.
He went off to confer with another officer, Colonel Fierro. When he returned, his jaw was set, his eyes were cold. He spoke with no feeling.
He said, “You will be shot with the others.”
The killing began. It was done personally by Colonel Fierro and Captain Mix. One fired, while the other quickly reloaded the pistols. They were like a well-trained team that had rehearsed many times. We were pushed in groups of ten through a cattle chute and made to run across a yard toward a fence. We were told that if we could cross that fence we would be free. But it was soon clear that this was impossible. Colonel Fierro was too accurate a shot. Captain Mix was too swift at reloading his pistols. The men died like hogs being butchered for All Saint’s Day.
I took my brother to one side. “Let the others go first,” I said. “Perhaps they will spare the last of us.”
But these were only the words of a man postponing the dreaded inevitable. Isidoro began to cry. I thought for one insane moment that when my turn came I would rush toward the two officers and try to kill them with my bare hands. Then one of the prisoners did precisely that and was shot down by a third officer long before he reached the murderers. Clearly, there was no way.
But it was growing darker, and by the time our turn had come, the sun had set. The killing ground lay in shadow. Many bodies had piled up near the fence of the corral that led to life.
TOM MIX AND PANCHO VILLA: A Novel of Mexico and the Texas border Page 17
