by John Harris
The fall of the two great northern cities was clearly going to mean the end of Huerta, and the arc light of international affairs was revealing Villa, not Carranza, as the dominant figure south of the Rio Grande. It was Villa who was getting rid of Huerta – the one thing the American government wanted – and they were beginning to treat him with considerable respect and not a little awe. The ballads and the pictures that appeared in the shops were only of him. His round moustached face grinned from every sheet, and photographers and artists were making small fortunes out of the portraits they made.
The Division of the North was already re-equipping for a new drive south. Most of the men were still in rags, but after the capture of Juárez and the supply trains there wasn’t a single man now without a blanket and a rifle.
In an attempt to introduce some uniformity, Villa had bought surplus American khaki and stetson hats for his crack regiments, though individual taste continued to add ribbons, flowers, plumes and pictures of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Fast-talking American salesmen, their faces wreathed in smiles at the money they were taking from the ignorant Mexicans, unloaded crates of brightly coloured shirts and red silk bandanas. Villa was not deluded.
‘They think they’re putting it across me,’ he said. ‘But their shirts are cheap and a unit in red shirts is easy to pick out from a unit in yellow shirts.’
Despite the changes, however, the army remained basically the same nondescript force, though Villa was already shrewdly weeding out the old men and boys who slowed him down and had formed new and special squadrons of cavalry, carefully picked for their skill as riders and marksmen. They rode the best horses and every man was armed with a rifle and two pistols and was hung about with bandoliers of ammunition. Above all, they were single men unencumbered with wives and children. Because of the polished brass badges they wore, they were known as the Dorados, the Golden Boys.
Surrounded by the euphoria that followed the fall of the city, it was some time before Slattery became aware of carriages piled high with luggage heading out of town.
‘The Spanish,’ Villa explained. ‘I told them that if they’re found here after five days they’ll be shot. I want no Spanish in Mexico. They cross the border at Ojinaga. I’ve forbidden them the use of the railway.’
‘That means they’ll have to make their way on foot across three hundred miles of desert.’
‘So?’
Slattery was aware he was doing Horrocks’ job for him again. ‘The Spanish government will protest,’ he said.
Villa shrugged. ‘Who cares about the Spanish government?’
‘What about the children?’
‘They’re gachupín children. They grow up into gachupín men and women. Mexico has no room for them.’
‘Suppose they were your children?’
Villa gave a snort of rage and, yanking out his pistol, he stuck it under Slattery’s nose. ‘One of these days, inglés,’ he said, ‘I shall shoot you for your interference. One day I shall be unable to stand your frozen English face any longer and will put a bullet through you.’
It seemed that the protest had achieved nothing but Villa liked children and something had been stirred in the murky, murderous depths of his mind. For a moment he stared at Slattery, then the pistol dropped and he scowled. ‘I think you haven’t the stomach any more for war, inglés,’ he said. ‘Was it the wound you got at Torreón? Wounds trouble a man, apart from the pain.’
‘You know it wasn’t the wound. I’ve been hurt before.’
‘But suddenly you don’t like war?’
‘Not Mexican war, Don Pancho.’
‘Perhaps the Mexican way of making war’s different from the European way.’
‘In Europe there are such things as rules.’
Villa scratched his nose, puzzled. ‘They have rules? For war?’ He paused, silent for a long time then he jerked his head. ‘Go after the Spanish,’ he growled. ‘Do what you can for the little ones. Some of the boys are following to see they don’t come back. Make sure they don’t murder them for their money.’
In the belief that her husband might be in Ojinaga, Consuela Lidgett insisted on accompanying Slattery. As they passed Villa’s orders on to the pursuing cavalry, they saw struggling groups of refugees and the graves of those who had died.
The days were scorching and the nights cold and always there was a harsh dry wind lifting the dust in clouds to roughen the skin and chap the lips, and they had to ride in the noonday heat muffled to the eyes, half-suffocated in their blankets to keep out the flying grit.
They slept alongside their hobbled horses near a fire made of torn-up mesquite. Consuela hadn’t realised the hardships she faced, and though she didn’t complain her face became grey with exhaustion and before they reached Ojinaga they were having to help her on to her horse and ride one on either side of her in case she reeled from the saddle.
Ojinaga was a group of square grey adobe houses with here and there the oriental cupola of an old Spanish church. It was set in a desolate land without trees where the sun went down with the flare of a dying furnace. It was surrounded by scorched desert and bare savage mountains, and during the day sweltered in a blaze of light. Federal soldiers in their shabby white uniforms were everywhere, their eyes always on the south where they expected Villa and his vengeful hordes to appear, or on the north where they could cross to the safety of the United States, and there were nervous outposts round the town linked by patrols of cavalry, sharp against the dying sun.
The defeated Federals were burning equipment and the dusty streets of the town were piled high with all the rubbish of a shattered army. The town had changed hands five times since the revolution had first started in 1911 and hardly a house had a roof and all the walls had holes in them. They were full of disillusioned soldiers, most of them snatched off the streets in Mexico City by Huerta’s draft and totally indifferent to who won.
Sick, exhausted and starving civilians were still straggling in, driven on by the fear that Villa was coming. They had spent days crossing the desert, and as they arrived young Federal soldiers were taking advantage of their helplessness to rob them of everything they possessed.
It wasn’t difficult to learn that Consuela’s husband wasn’t there. Nobody had heard of him or could recognise him from the photograph she held out. Crossing the border into Presidio, they made further enquiries. It was a desolate little cluster of adobe dwellings built in deep sand and cottonwood scrub along the river. The storekeeper was making a fortune from outfitting the refugees and supplying the Federal army with provisions. In the daytime heat he worked stripped to the waist, a large revolver strapped to his belt.
In the only hotel po-faced agents of both sides were hatching plots in every corner. Among them were arms salesmen, Texas rangers and United States soldiers, Germans, Americans and representatives of foreign businesses struggling to get information on employees lost in the interior of Mexico. Along the river bank United States troops were matched on the opposite side by Mexican cavalry, each group warily watching the other.
There was no sign of Lidgett and at the telegraph office no one had seen any sign of any American who might resemble him, while the sheriff, who looked like the popular image of what a Wild West sheriff should look like, with a shotgun under his arm, a revolver at each hip and a Bowie knife in his boot, had no time to look because he was at his wits’ end trying to enforce the law against the carrying of arms.
‘He’s not here,’ Consuela decided eventually.
But the following day she heard that someone resembling Lidgett was in the south.
‘I’ll have to go,’ she said.
‘Not on your own,’ Slattery said. ‘We’ll find someone you can trust, to go with you.’
She was silent for a moment then she reached on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek. ‘Thank you, Slattery,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you.’
Two
‘The Germans are back, inglés!’
Villa was
sitting at a table in the Governor’s office in Chihuahua City with his staff, lawyers, civilian adviser and Carranza’s agents, the Holy Trinity, Monserrat, Preto and Vegas. The table was scattered with documents, law books, a few items of military equipment and weapons, and they were discussing the lack of revenue and the fact that nothing was coming from Constitutional headquarters at a time when enormous sums of money were needed to munition the rebel army.
‘They’re very persistent, these Germans.’ Villa pushed a chair forward with his foot. ‘They’re offering everything we want. They only ask that we cut off oil supplies to Britain in case of war in Europe. Is there going to be a war in Europe, inglés?’
‘There could well be.’
‘Very well, compadre, let’s cut it off.’
Here we go again, Slattery thought bitterly. Horrocks’ unpaid agent doing Horrocks’ work; willingly or unwillingly, but still doing it.
‘In the event of war,’ he said, ‘that would make you their ally.’
Villa looked at him shrewdly. ‘Is England frightened of the Germans?’
‘Yes.’
‘So how are we involved?’
‘If it comes to war, without oil the British navy would be unable to sail its warships. And that would mean that unprotected merchant ships would be sunk and innocent people would drown. Some of them children.’
Villa frowned. The fact that most of the children driven to Ojinaga had been saved had pleased him. The frown vanished to be replaced by a grin. ‘Pues, I suppose we must do as El Inglés wants and ignore the offer.’ He scratched his head, digging for ideas. ‘But in that case we still need money, because that old goat, Carranza, isn’t producing any. We can confiscate the estates of the gachupíns, of course. After all, they confiscated them from such as us in the first place. And the cowboys in the army can round up a few more cattle to send over the border. We’ll manage.’
He made his decisions quickly, a statesman without the slightest knowledge of statesmanship making his decrees work in the only way he knew.
Slattery listened silently. Since he had returned to Chihuahua, he had heard nothing of Magdalena. He had been out to her house on the Avenida Pacheco, but Victoria, the housekeeper, had no forwarding address. He wondered what she was doing and where she was. Then the argument round the table started again and dragged his mind back to the present.
‘There’s one problem, mi General,’ Monserrat was saying. ‘The food stocks in the city are low.’
‘Why?’ Villa’s question came like the shot of a gun.
‘The farmers won’t bring in their produce. People are hanging on to their money and they think they’ll not get paid.’
Villa turned to Slattery. ‘What do they do in Europe, inglés,’ he asked, ‘when there’s no money?’
‘Produce more.’
‘You mean, print it?’
‘Carranza’s printing it,’ Vegas said. ‘Why can’t we?’
It was true enough. For some time Horrocks’ friend, Turner, in Mexico City had been turning out ‘cartones’, small notes like tram tickets. They were produced strictly on licence but it didn’t stop other less honest printers risking the death penalty to produce them without a licence.
‘Arrange it.’ Villa was frowning. ‘We’ll have them covered with official-looking signatures and stamped with the faces of Mexican heroes.’
The Feast of the Dead arrived with bunches of yellow cinco llagas – the flower of death – and the children, with their toy death’s heads and toy coffins, ate sugar buns shaped like skeletons over the graves of dead forebears. As Christmas approached, the cold winds brought snow off the sierra.
Villa’s printed notes, known as ‘Dos Caros’ from the portraits on them, appeared to everyone’s surprise to be a good investment. On Christmas morning, as Slattery made his way to the great brown edifice of the cathedral through crowds of Indians and mestizos, a big black Dodge appeared. Villa was riding in it with Monserrat and Preto, and as the crowd surged round him, he began to fill each raised thin brown hand with bright newly-printed notes. Seeing Slattery, he beamed at him.
‘Does your king ever do this, inglés?’ he asked. ‘Fifteen pesos each. Every one of them.’
The last pocket of resistance in Ojinaga vanished. With the Americans across the border watching from roofs and the tops of railway wagons, the Villistas launched one of their tremendous charges and the dispirited Huertistas bolted across the Rio Grande.
The group of Germans who had been hanging round Villa’s headquarters disappeared again, and Slattery learned they had joined Carranza. At any moment he expected Horrocks to appear in one of his pantomime demon acts, as though he came up through a trapdoor in the floor.
Consuela Lidgett was still around, somehow always contriving to bump into Slattery. She was hopelessly out of her depth and struggling to make ends meet, unbelievably poor these days and even looking half-starved.
‘The paper backed off,’ she admitted. ‘They said there wasn’t enough Gordonsboro news to warrant me being here, and they stopped my dough. I’ll have to go home. But I can’t go without seeing Loyce.’
That evening, Slattery was summoned to headquarters. Villa met him with a grin. ‘I have a job for a man who doesn’t like our Mexican way of waging war,’ he said. ‘Tómas Urbina’s cavalry’s down near Torreón, watching the Federals. But Tómas isn’t very active these days. Go down there and tell him – personally – to shoot his mother or something but not to get involved in trouble. Those Germans are interfering again, changing sides so fast they make you dizzy. I’ve heard they’re backing Orozco now, so if you see any of them, shoot them. In the back. It’ll be all right.’
Leaving Atty to look after his affairs, Slattery began to pack his belongings. Apolinario Gomez García, the troubadour, had disappeared again in his wandering fashion and he was taking only Jesús with him. As he buckled straps, Consuela Lidgett appeared, her small face unhappy. She had a desperate look about her these days.
‘Can I go with you?’ she asked. ‘I’ve found him. I really have. He’s near Torreón and I’ve managed to raise a little cash.’
Skirting Camargo and Jiménez, they found Urbina in a house near Jaralito, suffering from one of his bouts of rheumatism and planning a foray towards Yermo after loot.
He listened sullenly to the orders Slattery brought and gestured to the east. ‘See Major Ruíz,’ he said. ‘He’s near La Carga.’
They ran into Ruíz’s troops on the march. They were on jaded horses, saddled with nothing more than a blanket and for the most part ungroomed and scarred by the brush. For the first time they picked up news of Consuela’s husband.
‘Near La Escotadura,’ Ruíz’s men said. ‘He handles the machine gun.’
They followed the column across the plain, a long serpent of ragged men winding through the black mesquite, a red, white and green flag at its head. It was like being in the centre of a vast yellow bowl with the mountains forming ragged lips against a deep blue sky.
Ruíz’s men were poorly armed, short of ammunition and lacking discipline. They rode easily but in little order, those with guitars making up boastful ballads as they went. Half of them weren’t sure what they were fighting for, though they believed it was easier than working in the mines.
They were disillusioned with the revolution. ‘When it’s over,’ they said, ‘it won’t be us who get the land of the hacendados. It will be the pacificos who stayed at home, because they’ll be alive to claim it.’ Most of them had never heard of Madero, the father of the revolution, and those who had thought he was some sort of saint. They hadn’t been paid for months.
At the rear of the column was an old stage-coach which looked as if it had once belonged to Wells Fargo. It was hauled by four mules and was packed with cases of dynamite, which fell off every time it bounced over a rut. The crew didn’t seem worried and simply kept stopping and throwing them back aboard.
They stopped the night at a little town near La Carga where som
eone found a room for Consuela. She looked scared at being surrounded by so many men because, even at their blandest, Mexicans always managed to look like bandits. Slattery found room for his blanket among the soldiers in a stone building filled with stacked rifles and saddles. A guitar softly played a popular song.
Apolinario Gomez García turned up during the night and Slattery wakened the following morning to find him sawing at his favourite, ‘O Sole Mio’, in the middle of the village street watched by a circle of raisin-eyed children.
‘Take care, your honour,’ he warned. ‘The Orozquistas are close and they have German officers.’
For the next night they stopped at a village wrecked in the earlier fighting and, with García sawing away at a new tune from The Dollar Princess, the Mexicans indulged in their love of dancing. With candles stuck in the walls to cast a flickering light through blackened doorways, the blanketed men started shuffling round together and someone shoved Consuela into Slattery’s arms. She seemed startled but then her arms tightened and she clung to him as if she’d fall down without him.
Leaving Jesús to look after their belongings so they could move faster, they covered over fifty miles the following day. There was no water or food to be had and they were choked by the cloud of alkali dust that surrounded them. There wasn’t a breath of wind and the heat was terrific. In the afternoon Consuela insisted she would have to rest, so they allowed the column to move on without them and, finding a spot where there were a few low trees, they spent the afternoon moving round beneath them with the shade. As the heat went out of the day, they moved on again to find that the column had halted at a village where the spring was muddied from the number of men and horses which had drunk there. As they arrived a man with a gun shouted a challenge.
‘Quien vive?’
‘I come from General Villa.’
‘May he live. Continue, amigo.’
