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

by Clifford Irving

  “Not so many now, señora. But in times past, thirty thousand.”

  “But you know how to command. Don’t speak, but command your soul to return. Command it to kick the fright out of your blood, as I kicked the dog out of the room.”

  I could see Villa’s eyelids tighten, and the muscles of his back grew tense. He was silently commanding. A strange energy seemed to flow from him.

  “Open your eyes.” She peered closely into them, and then she smiled, showing brown teeth. “You see? You’re not frightened anymore. Your soul is back in place. That was easier than I thought it would be. You have much faith.”

  Villa wagged his head brightly. But I didn’t see how that festering leg was going to respond to a shout or a command.

  “Now,” said Doña Corazon, quite pleased with herself, “we’ll see if you’ve really been invaded by cave air.”

  She ordered Villa to take off his shirt, then snatched an egg from a shelf and rubbed it all over his back. When she was done she broke the egg and poured it into a glass of water. The white of the egg rose immediately, whirling about. Little bubbles formed on the surface. Doña Corazon grunted; he was obviously shot through with cave air.

  From another shelf she took a doughnut-shaped gray stone, placed it against Villa’s chest, then bent and began to suck through the stone. After a minute, she straightened up and spat on the floor.

  She continued for nearly half an hour, sucking at his chest and stomach, then his back, spitting out the cave air each time. I grew sleepy. I looked at Elisa, but her eyes were on Doña Corazon. They never wavered. Candelario hardly breathed.

  When she was finished sucking, the curandera brushed Villa’s chest with a handful of geraniums and pepper-tree twigs. She straightened up, her old bones creaking.

  “There! How do you feel?”

  “Stronger,” Villa said. “The cave air seems gone.”

  “Seems gone? Or is gone?”

  “It’s gone,” he said forcefully.

  “And you’re no longer frightened that you’ll die?”

  “I will live, señora, and get well.”

  “Now I understand why you’re a great general. And now,” she announced, “we can cure your leg.”

  She instructed Villa to lie down on her bed, on his back, and then nodded to her son, who tucked the violin under his greasy chin and began to play. His bow squeaked across the strings with one jarring note after another—a strange song, if a song at all, that made the hairs on my neck stand on end. It was like no music I had ever heard, and I wouldn’t care to hear it again. He fiddled all the while that the witch performed the operation.

  First she called in the granddaughter, whispering in her ear. The girl went out and returned with a squirming sack, which Doña Corazon placed at the foot of the bed. She turned to Candelario, Elisa and me.

  “What you will see is sacred. If you tell anyone, your blood will turn to bile. You’ll have headaches that will make you wish you were dead. No curandera will be able to help you. Swear that you will never tell.”

  I swore, and so did Candelario and Elisa. And I’ve never told a soul, not until now, when it no longer matters.

  After that she began to chant again in Tzotzil, and while she chanted she unwrapped the bandages from Villa’s leg. The girl took them, yellow with pus, dark with dried blood, and threw them out the window. Villa arched his back at the pain. The cat on the shelf stared down at him, switching its tail.

  The leg was still black, and the wounds on both sides, where the bullet had struck and exited, had turned an angry red. Doña Corazon bent the leg slightly so that she could see better. Villa groaned.

  “Your fear is gone,” she murmured. “Remember, your soul is back in place.”

  She beckoned to the girl, pointing to a crumpled pack of cigarettes on the table. The girl put one in her mouth and lit it from the candle flame, then handed it to Doña Corazon, who bent over the bed. She inhaled and began to blow gray smoke into the wound. I glanced at Candelario.

  He leaned across to whisper, “So that when the sickness escapes, it won’t infect us.”

  The rest went quickly, and in the candlelight it was hard to see exactly how it was accomplished. From a pile of parrot feathers Doña Corazon drew out another cigarette, handrolled in brown paper, which she gave Villa to smoke. She told him to inhale deeply and take in as much air as smoke. Villa puffed hard, and I could smell the marijuana. Doña Corazon unknotted the sack the girl had brought in and took out a young chicken, its legs tied with string. She muttered the whole time. Her son fiddled. The girl handed her a pair of rusty scissors. Holding the squawking chicken by the throat, she rubbed it over Villa’s wound on both sides of the leg. He smoked and never said a word. Then she stabbed the chicken in the neck with the scissors. The bird shrieked. Blood dripped on the wound.

  Villa’s eyes rose dreamily to gaze at the beams on the ceiling. The girl darted into the alcove and came back with a kettle of hot water and some clean rags. Doña Corazon spread more chicken blood from the wounded knee down to the ankle.

  “The devil must be fed,” she hissed to Villa.

  More Tzotzil gibberish followed. The fiddler’s fingers began to pluck at the strings of the violin. Chanting, the witch tossed the bleeding chicken in the dirt and laid her gnarled hands on the open wound, one in back of the knee, one on the shinbone. The girl blew out one of the candles, and foul black smoke plumed in the air. The room grew darker, and the girl crept closer to the foot of the bed where the chief lay. I really only noticed her then for the first time. She had wild black eyes and a harelip. She couldn’t have been more than thirteen, and she never spoke.

  Then Doña Corazon shrieked, “The devil will come out!”

  While I strained to see, the girl bent swiftly in the shadows. From the sack she plucked a second chicken, and with a rapid slash of a knife she cut it deeply from gizzard to pope’s nose. The bird’s guts and hot blood exploded outward, drenching Villa’s leg. Doña Corazon shrieked again. She fell forward, grabbing at bits of meat and clots of blood. scooping them up as if they were pouring from the leg and not from the chicken. The girl had already thrust the writhing carcass back into the sack.

  “Here is the devil! Look, señor! Look now at your devil!”

  Gasping, Villa tried to sit up. Pinned as he was by the witch, the best he could do was arch his neck forward and stare in wonder. She held up a morsel of the bloody guts.

  “A bad devil, señor! The worst I’ve seen … but it’s out!”

  Swiftly she began to wipe away the mess with a rag, throwing the pieces of guts into the bowl of dead flowers that had cured the chief’s fright. The girl kept pouring hot water over the rags, and the witch kept wiping at the wounds.

  I had almost heaved my own guts, but now I edged off the wooden box and moved slowly across the room in a crouch, toward the bed. Candelario and Elisa were right at my side.

  The leg was still stained with blood, but it was no longer black. The coloring had faded to a reddish-gray. The angry holes were pink now, and the pulpy flesh inside was white with only a few specks of chicken blood. When Doña Corazon wiped the flecks away, the wound showed itself to be clean.

  In the chief’s pale face, his eyes gleamed—the pupils dilated and very black. He looked at us eagerly.

  “It’s cured,” Candelario whispered.

  Villa thumped back on the pillow.

  “The bones will knit well,” Doña Corazon said. “Tomorrow he will walk. In a week he will ride as before. He will not limp. He won’t conquer his enemies, but they will never conquer him. He will die from many bullets, with his hands on something large and round. He will be happy when he dies, and it will be quick. I don’t know when it will happen … but not soon.” Her eyes were glazed.

  When she came out of her trance she and the girl finished cleaning up, bandaged the wound, and Villa walked outside, supported by me and Candelario. He mounted his horse in the cold night air. He never groaned once.


  She charged ten pesos, plus three for the fiddler, which Hipólito paid in silver. I doubt if it covered much more than the cost of the two dead chickens. But Elisa told me they would make soup for a week.

  The next morning Villa woke early, hobbled out into the garden and then to the stables, where I was saddling Maximilian and Elisa was tending to her mare. I was wearing a straw sombrero and the baggy white clothes of a campesino, for I meant to ride out and look for the cavalry.

  “Why are you dressed like that, Tomás? Are you about to do honest work and plow some fields?”

  I stared at him with astonishment. The color had returned to his face and he was using a borrowed hickory cane, but it was obvious that he felt hardly any pain. Doña Corazon had turned me into a believer, no matter what hocus-pocus she conjured up to do it. In my time I had used a bit of hocus-pocus myself.

  Villa limped over to Elisa. “Señora Griensen, I haven’t had a chance to truly thank you. Excuse my bad manners. You are a saint.”

  “In the next life,” she said, smiling. “In this one, unfortunately, too many pleasures are denied to saints.”

  Villa looked at us both, then winked. “I know what you mean, señora.”

  “General Villa, my house is yours. And if I were you, I’d use it. Stay indoors until dark. Tomás may bring us some unfriendly visitors.” Her gaze shifted to me. “Or have you thought of something to keep them away?”

  “Not yet,” I said.

  I rode out on the trail once more, thinking again about Doña Corazon and realizing that there were more than a few things on this earth that fell beyond my understanding, when suddenly, between Parral and a little pueblo called Santa Cruz, over a distant hill I spotted a plume of dust fouling the chaste May sky. The plume became a pillar, and under it, into my view, came the flying column of the Thirteenth Cavalry—a sweaty group of khaki-clad, unshaven men and steaming horses, led by Major Tompkins, Sergeant Chicken and a Carranzista officer.

  Tompkins raised his hand and the column halted. I cantered up to him. To my surprise he was smiling. He thrust out his hand and gave me a hearty shake.

  “Well done! You’re alive and kicking! I’m glad to see you, son! Are you all right?”

  I had almost forgotten about the bandage wrapped around my head under the sombrero.

  “I had a little scrap up at Pahuirachic with those Carranzista troops. They cut me off from the column. I got knocked out, and when I came to, you were gone.”

  “Chicken told me you got spooked by a rattlesnake. Just as well you took a shot at it—otherwise we would have met them head-on, gotten all cut up by that machine gun. Damned fools! They still think we’re an enemy … except for this man. This is Captain Mesa from the garrison at Parral. He claims Villa can’t possibly be there. General Lozano’s got the town sewed up tighter than a button on Lieutenant Patton’s britches. No one can get in or out, and no one has, least of all Pancho Villa.”

  Mexican junior officers have a natural tendency to tell you what you’d like to hear. But I nodded smartly.

  “He’s right, Major. Villa’s scooted. Headed for Durango, I heard. If you hurry, you can get onto his trail. Chicken’s sure to pick it up.”

  “Son, I’m not in that much of a hurry. The men need rest and the horses need forage. Captain Mesa says both are available in Parral. Plus a warm welcome, and a cold whiskey and soda, and a hot bath—all of which would be mighty refreshing.”

  This would never do. I cleared my throat.

  “Major, it’s likely to be the other way round. The bath will be cold, the whiskey and soda warm, and the welcome might be hotter than you’d appreciate. The people of Parral are just about ready to revolt against this General Lozano. And they don’t like us, either.”

  I had taken the chance that Mesa didn’t speak English, and by the blank look on his face I saw that I was right. But Tompkins shook his head. He was coated with dust and he hadn’t shaved.

  “The captain’s also promised to give us a sack of real coffee from his stores. That’s an offer I can’t resist. I’d give my Christian soul for a cup of hot coffee. And while we’re there, we might as well search the town for Villa.” He raised his hand. “Col-ummm … ho … oh!”

  The cavalry surged forward. I had to spin Maximilian around to avoid getting knocked down by Sergeant Chicken, who had been giving me black and crabby looks from his bloodshot eyes ever since I’d appeared. And so we headed toward Parral, where, as I saw it. Major Tompkins’ lust for a hot cup of coffee was about to bring him Pancho Villa’s head on the saucer.

  Chapter 34

  “Knock there,

  and ask your heart what it doth know.”

  By the time the Thirteenth Cavalry had clattered and clopped through the town of Parral, leaving piles of dung steaming on every street, it seemed that half the population was gathered under the trees, in the dappled sunlight of the main plaza, to gawk at us.

  Tompkins left two troops on the trail as well as Troop M by the railroad station, and he rode in with Troop K. General Lozano’s headquarters was under some stone arches next to the bank, and a gang of his soldiers had cleared away the taco sellers and taken their places on the cobblestones, rifles at the ready. The plaza had a raised park with wooden benches shaded by leafy eucalyptus trees, and the park was full of Carranzista soldiers too. Across from the bank, on the plaza, stood the little brick public school that Pancho Villa had built for the children of Parral. I had an uneasy feeling.

  General Ismael Lozano marched out of his office in full-dress blue uniform complete with red sashes and epaulets. He was a fat pig-eyed fellow with only one arm. Tompkins, who spoke some Spanish, introduced himself.

  “And why are you here, Major?” Lozano asked.

  “At the invitation of your Captain Mesa, señor. And to provision ourselves—for which, naturally, we’ll pay you. In Mexican silver.”

  Lozano shot a dirty look at Mesa. “Accompany me to my office, if you please. Major. This will have to be discussed.”

  Tompkins tugged me by the arm. “Come along, Mix. If he rattles too fast, I’ll need your help.”

  We climbed some rickety stairs to the general’s office, which had big French windows opening onto a balcony overlooking the plaza. No sooner did I poke my head out the window to get a view and a whiff of breeze than a mule hitched to a heavy cart came bolting down the street toward the cavalry—some citizen’s form of protest and a way of starting mayhem. A yell rose from the crowd, but a big Yank from Troop K lumbered quickly into the path of the cart, grabbed the mule by the bit and brought it to a halt.

  “Whoa there, Carmencita!”

  The cavalry, dismounted by now, started to laugh. The crowd looked disappointed, but that simmered them down.

  Lozano and Tompkins had seen that too, over my shoulder. The major slipped his holster more forward on his belt.

  “This is the problem,” the general said. “The people of Parral are unhappy that your soldiers are here in Mexico. For that matter, so am I. Intervention by the armed forces of one state into another is against international law. I must stress this so that you fully comprehend. You are not welcome here.”

  “Translate that for me, son, while I think of what to say.”

  I did, and then Tompkins nodded.

  “Okay, General. I appreciate your opinion. As soon as my men have provisioned themselves—I have a list right here—we’ll be on our way. That is, after we take a look around for Pancho Villa. We had a report that he was here a while ago. He may have left some men behind.”

  Lozano’s eyes gleamed with interest. Unlike Mesa, he didn’t think that Villa’s presence was impossible. He studied Tompkins’ list.

  “You should not have come here, Major. But I wish to avoid an incident. If you will be good enough to camp outside of the city by the railroad station, the supplies will be delivered to you. And then we shall conduct the search for this bandit together. Under my command, if you please.”

  My heart sank—I had ho
ped Lozano was going to insult him and kick us out. Nothing was going right for me today.

  “Good enough,” Tompkins said. He saluted, and for the first time the fat general smiled.

  “Viva Villa! Viva Mexico!”

  The shout came from the street through the open French windows—at first one or two voices, then a swelling chorus.

  Lozano said, “I suggest we go right now.”

  “I take your meaning, General.”

  We thumped down the stairs double-time. As soon as we reached the street I understood what was happening. Troop K, at an order from Sergeant Richley, had mounted their horses; the crowd had bunched up and were shaking their fists. Most of the blue-clad Carranzista soldiers had retreated to the little raised bandstand in the center of the park. But a group of white-shirted citizens had come marching up from a side street, and they were the ones making the trouble.

  They were led by a tall, green-eyed woman in a black sombrero, denim shirt, black pants and riding boots. She carried a Mauser hip-high. That was the way I had first seen her at the front door of the hacienda, so I knew how the soldiers felt. She didn’t give the impression that she was one of the weaker sex fooling around at grown men’s games. She urged the townspeople toward the uneasy troopers.

  “Are you men or goats? Are you citizens of Parral? Then tell these gringo bastards to go home!”

  Tompkins’ lingo was good enough to understand most of it. He spoke out of the corner of his mouth to me. “Who’s she?”

  “A tough lady. German, used to be married to a Villista. I think it’s time to leave town.”

  “Richley! Get those men out!”

  Just at that moment Elisa raised her rifle and squeezed off a shot, well above Troop K’s heads. I looked hard at the people surging around her, but she had had enough sense not to let Candelario or Hipólito come along. The bullet banged off the copper sign above the bank.

  Rushing up with a horse, Captain Mesa helped to hoist his general into the saddle.

  “I will lead your men to safety,” Lozano wheezed to us.

  Elisa was still turning the air blue with curses. I hoped Tompkins couldn’t understand the shades of meaning, although Lozano certainly did, and for all his pompousness he was even grinning a little. The troopers kept quiet and held their fire; there was no way they would shoot at a wildeyed beautiful blond woman, even if she was telling them they were sons of whores, goats and one-balled faggots.