TOM MIX AND PANCHO VILLA: A Novel of Mexico and the Texas border

by Clifford Irving

  Elisa gave her a good greeting. It had occurred to me that she might treat Rosa like a servant and be aloof from her. But I needn’t have worried.

  “Señora, I’m grateful to you. I won’t be any trouble.”

  “You’ll be just fine, Rosa,” she said calmly. “We’ll be friends.”

  They made a fine pair, the regal blond woman and the black-haired Tarahumara girl. It made Elisa look older and Rosa younger, but not in a bad way. Something stirred in me, but I couldn’t quite understand it, or perhaps didn’t want to. Not then.

  “I’d better head back.”

  I realized that I had outfoxed myself as far as any final farewell to Elisa was concerned, and I surely wasn’t going to snatch Rosa’s arm and march her off to a siesta in Elisa’s house. The three of us, with Patricio, went around to the stables, where I saddled Maximilian. He was always glad to see me, and his eyes rolled in his head as if he thought we were going off to rope another longhorn in a charreada. But this time we were going to fight in Sonora. It wasn’t right to expose a fine horse like that to shellfire and barbed wire, but I had been riding an easily spooked young piebald, and I wanted to have brave flesh under my legs for what was going to happen. Elisa had understood; she had insisted that I take him.

  “Try to bring him back, Tom. He’s yours. but I wouldn’t mind seeing him again.”

  With those words she was telling me something else. Leather creaked as I bent down from the saddle and kissed her on the cheek, inhaling her perfume. Then I bent in the other direction to Rosa. The sun sloped toward the western mountains, fringed by swollen gray clouds. The birds warbled in their cages. The women walked with me to the gate.

  Patricio opened it for me. I trotted off toward the camp, looking back once over my shoulder to see Rosa and Elisa standing close together, waving, struck by an odd brown light that made them look as if they were in a photograph—a picture to be engraved in my memory perhaps forever. Motionless, wrapped in dark shawls, hands frozen in the air, smiles fading, faces a trifle blurred in the gathering dusk … and dear beyond belief.

  Amid a wild blaring of bugles and the steady martial thump of a single drum, the column left Casas Grandes. We headed westward in a cold thin rain toward the Cañón del Pulpito.

  We had moved north much too slowly, picking up more men, until in Casas Grandes we had nearly nine thousand. But only two thousand, with Villa in the lead, trotted toward the sierra. We had to secure the pass before the main body could follow. The Dorados had been organized again under Candelario, whom Villa had promoted to general. We had commandeered wagons and pack mules and carried two batteries of field artillery and thirty machine guns, as well as the wagon full of gold.

  The land sloped steadily upward. An icy rain beat fiercely down—a gully washer, a stump mover, a real frog strangler. Soggy clouds humped overhead and rolled menacingly across the plain. I hunched in the saddle, feeling the drops trickle through every chink in my armor and fight their wet way into every pore, murmuring all the while to poor Maximilian that it would end … it would end soon.

  Just before darkness came down on us like a thrown blanket, we made camp at a place called Ojitos.

  Stiff and cold, we woke to a gray morning. We could see the forbidding peaks of the sierra and feel their raw wind. Nothing grew there, and the cold numbed. Sometimes in the high sierra, as Elisa had said, winter came early.

  Men lashed the shivering mules. The wagons creaked and we started forward again.

  A few wretched peasants lived in the foothills. That night, before attempting the climb, we camped in a desolate valley under a moonless sky. The stars glittered frostily overhead. We built a fire to warm our bones, and then Candelario said, “Look!”

  He pointed into the blackness, and I heard the flapping of wings, a thousand of them. Then came a distant mournful cry.

  “What are they?”

  “Cranes, Tomás. Flying south.”

  I could see them now, gray shapes flowing like silk across the firmament.

  “They’re beautiful,” I murmured.

  “It means bad weather,” Candelario explained.

  “Maybe snow,” said Julio, who always thought the worst and was usually right.

  In the morning the sky looked like a blanket of lead. We climbed all day through the passes that led to the Pulpito, over bare rock under that gray heaven. It was high enough to make noses bleed. The wind struck our faces and we had to bend almost double, serapes clutched tight, or it knifed between the eyes and made the head ache. Rattling wagons bounced from boulder to boulder, horses whinnying in protest. Men had to tighten cinches, use both quirts and spurs.

  Dreaming of lost meadows in Parral, Maximilian tried to raise his long gray head to look at me for help, but the wind beat cruelly on him and he ducked down again with a melancholy snort. Ahead of me, borne back by the blast, came the voice of a man who bravely tried to sing.

  Si Adelita me fuera por otro,

  La seguiría por tierra y por mar …

  In the afternoon it began to snow. Fat flakes drifted across the trail, and soon all view of the mountains was cut off. The chill penetrated more deeply. The rocks ahead grew whiter, although the horses’ hoofs trampled slush and mud. Each new peak showed through the gloom like a ghost shrouded in a white sheet. It was beautiful … but there was no more singing.

  We had to make camp that night in the snow. The men were so hungry that Villa ordered spare horses slaughtered for food. The next morning the mules were shoved into their traces and we moved into the pass.

  The Cañón del Pulpito took its name from a giant needlelike rock that soared at the beginning of the pass in the shape of a church pulpit. The trail itself had been carved from rock by the Yaquis a thousand years ago. It wasn’t the only way to cross from Chihuahua to Sonora, but the Carranzistas would never dream that an army could pass through the Pulpito. The canyon was only five miles long, but it was also, in places, only fifteen or twenty feet wide, with sheer drops on one side and vertical stone cliffs on the other. I wondered myself if it were possible. The trail twisted right and left, up and down, like a snake with a broken back. The horses’ hoofs struck sparks off the rock and rang through the defiles, echoing and re-echoing, so that I wanted to clamp my ears shut but didn’t dare let go of the reins.

  Draped in fog, the needle of rock towered over us like the fist of a demon from hell. A cry was raised, muted by the snow but echoing back and forth between the walls of the canyon. “To Sonora! …”

  How many such cries? How many cities? Once it had been “To Torreón!” In Mexico there was always someplace to go, somewhere else to fight.

  An artillery piece tipped over first. The caisson skidded on one of the hairpin turns, then slid toward the edge as the mules brayed in terror. Finally teetering, then toppling, it bounced down with a series of awful ear-shattering crashes into the rocky bottom of the cut. One of the teamsters leaped to safety. One held the reins until the last minute, struggling valiantly and uselessly, and then went down with the caisson, screaming his rage. In Mexico there were always plenty of men left to die.

  It was cold up there. I was glad I had left Rosa behind; more than ever now, I knew it had been the right thing to do. My fingertips under my sheepskin gloves were starting to freeze, and as the snow struck Maximilian and nestled in his mane, it turned to ice. He whinnied pitifully.

  For a while I kept as close to the cliff face as I could, afraid to look down into the canyon, but then the snow began to loosen the overhanging rocks. One of them, the size of a fist, tumbled down to bounce off the scabbard of my rifle. Maximilian shied—his hind hoofs slipped. By the time he regained his balance we were in the middle of the trail. Julio had been forced to spur ahead to avoid collision, and my heart pounded in fear like a jackhammer. More rocks flew down, then ricocheted off into the defile, booming.

  “Single file, Tomás,” Julio called nervously.

  We spread out down the center of the serpentine path. From ahe
ad I heard another fearful crash, then more screams. A munitions wagon had tumbled, carrying both mules and driver into the abyss. I had once hated the desert. Now I would give anything to be back in it.

  Long before darkness, Pancho Villa called a halt. We would have to camp in the middle of the Pulpito. Just after sunset, which we couldn’t see but knew had happened because the grayness had turned inky black, Villa and Rodolfo Fierro came walking back along the rocky inner wall of the trail, inspecting the damage. The night was dark enough to keep the bats in their caves, but Fierro carried a lantern. In the wavering yellow light I could see icicles forming on Villa’s mustache. He took me to one side, crouching with me by the fire we had built under an overhang against the cliff. The wind blew, and threads of snow whipped at our eyes.

  He yelled into my ear, “Tomás, we’ve lost three cannon and a wagonload of bullets! How do you like our Sonora winter?”

  I had to shout too. “In Texas, chief, we call it hog-killing weather! A blue norther! Comes down from the North Pole with nothing to stop it except a barbed-wire fence!”

  He hissed even closer in my ear, but not quite so loud. “Some of the horses won’t last the night. The teamsters’ hands are already frostbitten. The Yaquis say the last half of the pass is the worst part—narrower, with sharper turns. I want you to go back.”

  I wondered if the cold had affected my ears. They felt like glass—I didn’t dare touch them.

  “The gold!” he shouted. “The gold. I can afford to lose a few more cannon. But I can’t afford to lose the gold.”

  The sacks were too heavy to carry in the saddle or be grasped in a man’s arms. Horse or man might stumble.

  “Back to where, chief?”

  He thrust his frozen hands so close to the sputtering twig fire that I thought he would scorch them. I bent to hear him.

  “If you get back through the pass, the only safe direction is north. The first pueblo is Ascensión. You remember it, don’t you?”

  “I remember. We were there a hundred years ago.”

  “I was thinking of the lake. Gold is indestructible, I’m told, but I’ve been lied to so often I don’t know what to believe. Is it true?” he shouted.

  I stamped my feet to keep them from getting numb.

  “Yes, chief,” I yelled. “It never rots! It will outlive us all!”

  “Wrap the sacks tightly with wire and rope, then dump them in the lake. Not too deep, not too shallow. We don’t want anyone else to stumble on them, but we want to be able to haul them up when the time comes.”

  He would keep two sacks, which he might need in Sonora, and take his chances that they got through. The rest would stay in the wagon. At dawn Rodolfo Fierro and a squad of men would go back with me through the eastern end of the pass.

  I felt an old touch of unease. Fierro and I had never had our reckoning, and after Villa’s orders in Juárez I had felt safe. But he wasn’t the man I wanted for company on any long journey. “Let me take Candelario and Julio too.”

  “I need them to fight at Agua Prieta.”

  “You have nine thousand men to fight. You need men you can trust to bury the gold.”

  In the swirling snow he looked at me steadily for another minute, then nodded his head in agreement.

  “Make sure you know exactly where you sink it,” he told me. “Pick out markers on separate banks. I’ve seen surveyors do that.”

  A fresh blast of wind ripped up out of the canyon. The snow had almost stopped falling, but now I felt something harder and more biting begin to flail my cheeks. The snow was turning to sleet. Villa bent to light a cigarette from the fire, which looked as if it might expire at any moment.

  “Luckily”—he had to shriek now against the wind—”the wagon is near the rear of the column! You can start at first light!”

  “And where will we meet, chief?”

  “In Agua Prieta, if all goes well. If not, then on some cloud. I’ll be …” The rest of his words were lost in the wind.

  “What?”

  “I said, I’ll be the fellow with the four wives and the harp.”

  My voice was about to give out too. I roared back at him, in the freezing wind and sleet of that hellish place, “Do you really think, after all you’ve done, you’ll still get to heaven?”

  With a chuckle, he answered me, not very loudly this time, but still

  I heard him. “Yes. why not? I’m not a bad man. And I’ve done my best.” His cigarette went out. And then, with a hiss, so did the fire.

  Going back through the Pulpito, the horses were half frozen. Their legs and hocks were sore, and they left a trail of blood from walking in crusted snow. The sleet turned to icy rain. But we plodded on through the dark day, the wagon of gold sliding in the mud, sometimes wandering almost to the edge of the precipice before the driver could shriek at the mules and haul them back in time. Toward evening, as we moved lower into the eastern passes of the sierra, the wind eased and the rain became a misty drizzle. That night, near Ojitos, we slept like the corpses of drowned men.

  In the morning patches of blue sky peered from among the clouds. The crags of the sierra blazed white in the sun. I smelled dust, and the breeze made it feel like spring.

  We slit the throat of one of the spare horses and grilled steaks for breakfast. Julio ate his horsemeat raw, blood dripping from his lips, patting his lean belly in satisfaction. He felt brave again. From the rest of the meat we made jerky. Fierro kept apart, and no one minded—Julio and Candelario had as little use for him as I. Less, as I soon found out.

  That night we reached Ascensión, camping by the lake very near to where I had first found Rosa. The town itself was almost deserted; the revolution had sucked it dry and then abandoned it. I spent an hour by the campfire, rubbing the stiffness from Maximilian’s muscles, and then let him out to graze with the other horses. He looked thin, but he had survived. The same, I suppose, could be said for the rest of us, except that I had lost my voice shouting at Villa.

  At dawn I surveyed the lake. It looked lower than I remembered, but memories can deceive. Although it was a cool day the sun was shining, and the surface was a bright blue-green with pools of a more sandy color. Those would be the shallows, to be avoided. Wind kicked up a few whitecaps.

  I stepped over to the driver of the wagon and told him we were going to dump the sacks in the lake.

  He looked surprised. “But they contain flour, my colonel.”

  Of course, I realized. Villa hadn’t told them. “The flour is poisoned,” I explained. “We have to make sure no one eats it.”

  “Why not leave it for the Carranzistas?”

  “They may fight that way,” I said, remembering the arsenic at Celaya, “but the chief still wants to get to heaven.”

  He shrugged contemptuously. As far as he was concerned, killing the enemy in any way possible would lead straight to the pearly gates.

  “We’ll dump them far out,” I said. “So we can’t keep them in the wagon. You and your men can go into town and see what’s there.”

  “But there’s nothing, my colonel.”

  “Look hard. There may be some pulque, or a woman.”

  The soldiers went off on their horses, whooping and hollering, toward Ascensión. Candelario, Julio and Fierro began unloading the sacks of gold from the wagon, paying scant attention to me as I stood on the shore.

  I looked for landmarks. In my mind I drew a line from the dead jacaranda tree, where Rosa had first gone down on her knees to me. to a thick clump of barrel cactus on the far shore. Off to the right, about a mile away, I spotted a gutted mud hut and a stand of maguey. The maguey would be there long after the hut was gone. A channel of frothy green water snaked out between the sandy patches, almost as far as the middle of the lake.

  “Let’s ride through that. If each of us carries a sack, it will make six trips. I’ll tell you when to let go.”

  Julio blushed. “Not too deep, Tomás. I can’t swim.”

  “Ride close to me. Candelario
?”

  “In my past life I was a dolphin.”

  “Rodolfo?”

  “It’s of no consequence.” He meant that, unlike the others, there was no possibility of his falling off his horse.

  Julio and I trotted out first, our stirrup irons nearly touching, an unwieldy flour sack full of gold clutched in our arms behind the saddle horns. The bubbly green water was more shallow than I had realized, and the horses were no deeper than their hocks and knees. I wanted them at least belly-deep before we dumped the load. I veered off toward one of the sand-colored patches to try my luck, and Maximilian nickered with fright. I had to put steel into him, and even then he snorted and tried to buck. The gold swayed, almost fell.

  Julio called sharply. “Tomás, it’s quicksand!”

  Maximilian had smelled it. There was a sucking sound—thick, juicy and evil. One hoof and fetlock of his foreleg came up brown, caked with the treacherous gumbo. I wheeled him quickly and kicked my way out of there, trying to soothe him. Up on the Brazos I had seen a remuda of horses and a herd of twenty cattle go down in quicksand in the space of five minutes. We had saved some, but the rest died pitifully.

  I yelled hoarsely to warn Candelario and Fierro who were behind us—they might have seen but not understood. Candelario waved, then spoke some words to Fierro.

  Maximilian plunged deeper, up to his ribs in the foul-smelling green water. Jerking my head to the right, I sighted the maguey in a reasonably parallel line to the far shore of the lake. “Here!” I shouted.

  I heaved my sack of gold off to the right. It struck the surface with a splash that soaked my Levi’s—then sank swiftly, the ripples spreading. I heard another splash to my left as Julio let go. A cloud of mud rose from the bottom, and the sack was nowhere to be seen.