by John Harris
‘You don’t have to be quarrelsome these days,’ Slattery said. ‘It’s too easy to get shot without.’
They were late returning to the hotel and, going to his room, Slattery was surprised to find Jesús stretched on his bed, clutching one of his shoes and sobbing as if his heart would break. As he entered, the boy sat bolt upright, stared at him wide-eyed, then, flinging the shoe aside, rushed to him clutched his hand and kissed it fervently.
‘What in the name of God’s all this about?’
‘I thought you were dead, your honour. There was another shooting. An hour ago. I went to the street to wait for you because you were late, and I heard shots and saw a man lying under the street light. I saw them lift him up. It was you, mi Coronel. It was you.’
Villa was furious. ‘Another of my aides,’ he stormed. ‘Who keeps killing them?’
There had been no witnesses, but the dying man had managed to gasp out that he had been fired on from a two-wheeled carriage as it had driven past him, and enquiries showed that a two-wheeled spider had also been seen driving furiously near the spot where Preto had been found a few nights before. Questions at livery stables revealed nothing, however. Nobody had hired a spider and it seemed that no private owner had been on the streets.
When Slattery returned to headquarters he learned that Vegas had disappeared and Villa was in a foul temper, obsessed with the idea of treachery around him and the usual need to remove a few hats.
The dead man was buried with the same show of grief as Preto. With Vegas still missing, Villa’s face was dark with fury and Slattery’s suspicions, which had started while he had been hunting coal in El Paso, resolved themselves into a hard core of certainty. When Atty appeared, he took him aside. ‘How good are you with a gun, Atty?’ he asked.
Arranging for a squad of soldiers under Monserrat to be placed at his disposal, that night, as he left the headquarters train, he noticed occasional spiders still on the streets. It was midnight by the time he had stabled his horse and begun to walk to his hotel. Almost at once, he heard the crack of a whip and the sound of a horse’s hooves.
Gripping his revolver, he strode towards where Atty waited in the shadows. The sound of galloping came again and he saw a spider driven by a man in a wide-brimmed hat approaching. As it neared him, he stepped quickly from the light of the street lamps into the doorway where Atty waited. The driver of the spider held a gun but before he could pull the trigger Atty fired.
A whip cracked and the horse picked up speed, but further down the street Monserrat’s men were waiting and a volley of shots whined past. The spider turned back on its tracks at once but, as it approached the street light again, it swung into one of the cross streets. There was another volley from more of Monserrat’s hidden soldiers and it was forced to whirl back towards the light.
‘Shoot the horse!’
As Slattery gave the order, a slight figure leapt from a doorway into the path of the galloping animal. Just as it seemed it would be knocked flying, there was a flash and the roar of a gun. As the horse went down, the recoil of the ancient weapon bowled its owner over backwards. Running to him, Slattery dragged him to his feet. It was Jesús and he was beaming all over his face.
‘I stopped him, mi Coronel,’ he grinned. ‘I stopped him.’
As the horse had fallen, one of the shafts of the spider had broken and it had slewed round, flinging out the driver who was sprawled on his back in the road. There were two bullets in his chest and he was dying. He turned out to be the owner of one of the livery stables, and as the priest was sent for to give absolution he started talking.
‘Vegas?’ Villa was puzzled. ‘Why should Vegas pay him to murder you, inglés?’
It didn’t take them long to learn at the station that Vegas had been seen catching the train to the Tex-Mex border and, carrying a rifle, Slattery turned silently and headed for the hotel next door. As he entered, the old American woman was at her desk and she jumped to her feet as she saw his expression.
The bar was still open and at the far end, in front of a large mirror decorated with curlicues of frosted glass, Graf was sitting at a table. A gun lay near his hand. Sjogren sat with him. They both looked nervous.
As Slattery stopped in front of them, hefting the rifle to the crook of his arm, the bar became silent. His eyes glued to the muzzle, Graf rose slowly to his feet, the colour draining from his cheeks, his eyes flickering one way then the other. Almost as if pulled by the same strings, Sjogren rose also. Atty poked him with his gun.
‘Sit down,’ he said.
The owner of the hotel appeared with a policeman in a kepi and white spats, who tried to put a hand on Slattery’s arm. As he shook it off, Graf reached for the gun.
The rifle roared and Sjogren gave a yelp of fright as the mirror shattered. Graf had stopped dead, his body rigid, his face pale, the hole where the bullet had smashed the mirror only a few inches from his head. Chairs scraped and a sliver of glass slipped slowly from the mirror and tinkled at his feet.
As the policeman moved forward, Slattery gestured to him to stay where he was.
‘I’m the law at the moment,’ he said. ‘If you’re in any doubt, see General Villa.’
He spoke slowly, staring at Graf. ‘Vegas got the wrong man, Fausto,’ he pointed out. ‘Twice. You weren’t clever enough. Neither here nor in El Paso. If I laid the facts before Villa he’d have you shot at once. But that would make it too easy and it’s something I hope eventually to do myself. Get out of Jiménez, Fausto.’ He gestured at Sjogren. ‘And take your lapdog with you. If you don’t, I’ll kill you where you sit.’
Seven
The army moved on again, construction trains driving ahead to rebuild burned bridges and repair torn-up track. Behind them came the artillery, the hospital train, and the gypsy procession of troop trains, so crammed with horses and men that at a distance they appeared to be covered with foliage. Every boxcar had its guitar-twanging, joking, singing complement, banging out ‘Adelita’ and ‘La Cucaracha’. Every yard of roof had its sarape spread against the wind, its cornhusk fire smouldering on a sheet of tin, its patient, inscrutable Indian woman grinding corn and slapping out tortillas for her man. As they waited at Yermo, sorting themselves into regiments and brigades, one of Fierro’s telegraphists tapped the wire and the listening men grinned as they realised they were picking up Federal reports of alarm.
With darkness the wind rose, lifting the sand and shifting the scraps of vegetation. As it grew stronger a vast cloud of driving sand swept across the landscape to raise an opaque curtain to the south.
‘Nobody can see us now,’ Jesús said. ‘Even God’s on the side of General Villa.’
From the fires alongside the track and on the roofs of the boxcars, sparks, whipped by the wind, streamed away. All around were pinpoints of light where the soldiers smoked their cornhusk cigarettes and chanted their ballads. Apolinario Gomez García had arrived, limping and ragged and scraping his fiddle. He had been in Torreón and had information on numbers and guns.
‘Today, your honour,’ he told Slattery, ‘we meet the enemy.’
Atty touched the instrument under his chin. ‘You keep your head down, Old Man,’ he said. ‘You can’t fight the Federals with a fiddle.’
The flying sand bit into faces, dried lips and parched throats, but, above the low susurration of its movement, through the darkness there was the constant murmur of the huge army, the occasional nervous cry of ‘Quien vive?’ – ‘Who goes there?’ – and the high yells of engines calling to each other like worried monsters.
Jesús had been put on sentry duty and had even been prevailed upon to clean his ancient carbine for the occasion.
‘Now keep guard,’ Atty said. ‘And stay awake.’
Within ten minutes, Jesús was fast asleep.
When they woke, peering squint-eyed into the driving dust, the cavalry was already moving off, spreading out like the spokes of a wheel, bits jingling, equipment clattering. Each column had its stand
ard bearer with his red, white and green banner slapping harshly in the wind, the great brim of his sombrero bouncing under the gusts. An occasional pale shaft of sunlight picked out a gleaming rifle barrel as the horsemen streamed away into the mesquite, the devoted plodding women behind them.
Villa was leaning in the doorway of his red caboose, collarless, his hands in the pockets of his store suit, watching his army come to boiling life with the yelling of commands, the blare of the bugles and the shuffling of trudging feet. Gnawing at an orange and spitting out pips and pith, the juice running down his chin, he gave his orders as officer after officer appeared. Torreón was protected by a mesh of irrigation ditches and a tumbled area of low hills and deep ravines. It was also covered by the stoutly-built little towns of Gomez Palacio and Lerdo and further protected by the Cerro de la Pila, a barren cone of land commanding the railway that had to be stormed before any advance could be made.
The first moves came to nothing. Every attempt to move forward was blasted to ruins by a strategically placed battery of Federal quick-firers and by next day the road through the hills had become known as the Calzada de la Muerta, the Highway of Death.
The dead and wounded had been removed during the night and the waiting troops kept to the shelter of the rocks and folds of ground on either side, camping along a nearby stream-bed, a confusion of half-disciplined soldiery, unruly animals, women, children and flea-bitten dogs. A few shifted restlessly, like maggots on a carcass, hacking hunks of meat from slain steers, tossing fodder to weary horses, buckling on weapons. While their women slapped clothes in polluted water, others deloused themselves or crouched over a game of cards. Swarms of flies hovered over the sore backs of animals, the food and the eyes of the babies.
Occasionally, someone wanting to join a compañero at the other side of the road jumped up and ran across, bent double, to yell and dance with glee when he reached safety, but the slightest movement of any number brought immediate retaliation from the Federal guns. To keep up the spirits of the waiting men, Villa had sent forward one of the regimental bands and it was playing a selection from Bizet’s Carmen.
Waiting for the move forward, Slattery brooded on his future. He had agreed to stay on at Villa’s headquarters until the campaign was ended one way or another, but after that he could see little that could continue to attract him. After the fighting would come the politics and the manoeuvring for power and, with German help, the anti-Huerta armies were already beginning to disagree among themselves. Afterwards, every ‘general’ who had taken part would demand some say in what happened.
He wondered where Magdalena was and whether her plans were working out. She always seemed to be in his mind, returning when he least expected it, her image always bringing with it, like the ache of an old bruise, a feeling of futility.
Suddenly he became aware of laughter and looked up to see Jesús hurtling towards him. As he arrived, he tripped over the guy rope of a tent and fell flat on his face. He leapt up as if on a spring.
‘Mi Coronel,’ he yelled. ‘Don Apolinario is bullfighting with the enemy! He’s been at the aguardiente!’
Scrambling after the boy, Slattery saw the tattered figure of the old troubadour strutting up the middle of the road, his worn red cloak over one shoulder, one hand on his hip like a torero advancing in the grand parade in a bullring. The murmur of voices around them died as he halted and stood erect, waiting. As Slattery moved, Atty grabbed his arm and held him back.
‘No,’ he snapped. ‘No, me dear!’
They became aware that the music had changed to the blood-curdling ‘Deguello’, the traditional Spanish march of no quarter, the hymn of hate that spurred soldiers in their final assault. There was an immense silence as the old man swept off his hat, which he had twisted into a vague resemblance of the black-knobbed montera worn by a torero, and bowed with a flourish towards the enemy guns. His straggly hair had been screwed up into a bullfighter’s stumpy pigtail.
Flinging the hat over his shoulder, he slowly unfolded the worn sarape. Immediately, they heard a distant shot, and a round from the quick-firers whirred past to explode among the rocks. It was close enough to stir the tattered cape as García swung it defiantly in a posture, as if playing the missile like a charging bull. Pirouetting, stiffening, swerving into graceful veronicas, half-veronicas, mariposas and naturals, he swept the cloak close to the earth as if dragging a bull’s head down for the kill. Once again the distant gun fire and a second shell whirred past to explode behind the scarecrow figure.
‘Y’old fool!’ Atty yelled. ‘Come away in!’
García paused and, seeing Slattery, his faded smile appeared. ‘The Germans are in Torreón,’ he said. ‘Did you know?’
‘Never mind the Germans. Get under cover.’
‘El Señor Horrocks will want to know.’
Slattery’s jaw dropped. García was still posturing and weaving in the roadway.
‘Who the hell are you?’ Slattery demanded.
The old man smiled again, then he gestured at the smoke still hanging over the road where the shell had burst. ‘Mucho teatro,’ he said. ‘They have a big bull in Torreón today. It has long horns and moves very fast.’
He was in full view of the enemy, posturing wildly, and some officer somewhere in the town had restrained the musketry which would have brought him down. Everybody, both the Villistas and the Federals, was watching every shot, and the artillery were timing their fuses so that the shells exploded well beyond the old lunatic. The band was still pounding out its music and the watching men began to cheer every pass, every twirl of the cape. Again and again the old man turned and acknowledged the onlookers, gesturing to the band to play harder.
‘Jesus,’ Atty said. ‘Belmonte never fought a bigger bull than this one. And he never fought it better.’
Another shell whirred past, and sombreros were flung upwards in delight as the ragged figure curvetted and turned to the wild dianas of the band.
There was only one way it could end and finally, as if the battery commander, who had been enjoying the show by the gentle old idiot, had been instructed by a senior officer to end the charade, there was a charge of shrapnel. As the red-hot balls whipped down, the old man stiffened then sagged slowly to the ground to lie in a dusty huddle in the middle of the road. The band slowed in the middle of its music and one by one the instrumentalists stopped, until only a solitary trumpeter, occupied with his task, played on. Then he, too, stopped. The firing ceased and there was a strange silence over the battlefield.
Atty crossed himself quickly. ‘They’re getting a good fiddler in Heaven,’ he said.
They brought the body in after dark and buried it at the side of the road, wrapped in the sarape that had one duty as a cape. As the priest said the final words over the small dusty mound, they stood bleak-faced in the lamplight, Jesús weeping openly.
Slattery was deep in thought. Who the hell was Apolinario Gomez García? The fact that he was a troudabour of sorts was by the way. There were a dozen questions that needed asking. Was he one of Horrocks’ agents? Otherwise, how would he know of Horrocks? Horrocks had said he’d been building up a team. Was the mad old fiddler one of them? Come to that, who the hell else were his agents? Was Atty one? He had attached himself happily to Slattery as soon as he’d appeared in Chihuahua. Was he there to watch him?
As he struggled with his thoughts, his arm was touched. It was Monserrat. ‘Vengase pronto,’ he said quietly. El jefe le llama. The Chief wants you at headquarters.’
Villa was worried. Sitting at a table outside a little cantina picking food from a tin with his knife, he looked up angrily. Things weren’t going as well as he’d expected and Slattery suddenly wondered if he were as good at war as everybody thought he was. Or had he just been lucky? Had the newspapermen persuaded him he was better than he really was?
The massive head was down and Villa was frowning. ‘I’ve got a job for you, inglés,’ he said. ‘A nice easy job for somebody who doesn’t like fighti
ng.’
Slattery let the insult pass and Villa went on. ‘We’re short of coal for our trains again. That old billy goat Carranza’s keeping it from me because he’s afraid of me. As of now, you’re an Englishman again and a civilian. A tourist. A spectator. Go down to Mexico City. Find coal for me. Let the Federals think it’s for them if you like, but find it. If there’s none to be had there, try Veracruz. And, while you’re down there, go see Zapata. All he does is sit in his hills and pull faces at Mexico City. Tell him, for God’s sake, to make some sort of move so Huerta can’t send reinforcements against me. Blow up the railway. Knock down a bridge or two. Ambush a few Federals. Tell the bastard to move!’
As the first assaults began against the Cerro de la Pila, Slattery drove south with Atty and Jesús, the Studebaker’s huge wheels making light of the desert road. The capital was in a ferment. The newspapers carried stories of Villa, black with powder, rallying beaten troops, of men armed with cigars and sticks of dynamite crawling up to the muzzles of machine guns. It was clear that everybody thought Huerta was almost finished.
The last news of Magdalena had come from Chihuahua and the house in the Avenida Versailles was empty, so they found a hotel and, at Atty’s suggestion, threw themselves on the mercy of Pilar, the housekeeper, for a meal. She greeted them with delight.
‘La Casa de Ustedes,’ she said. ‘The house is yours. The diva would have it so, and I would like it. The brother was here.’
‘What did he want?’
‘To talk with the diva.’
Did Magdalena supply him with information, Slattery wondered.
There was no coal in Mexico City. It had all been bought up by German agents.
‘Why?’ Slattery demanded. ‘Why do Germans want Mexican coal?’
‘Because they prepare for war, señor?’ the coal factor asked, shrugging.
Since there was no coal available, Slattery decided to head next day for Zapatista territory in Morelos. Zapata had attacked a number of towns recently but Huerta’s generals had retaliated by burning villages and dragooning farmers and field hands into uniform and shipping them to the northern front. But the plan had backfired because now, whenever Federal troops approached, the villagers fled to the hills, to filter back after the troops had left, so that it was the planters who suffered, losing their field hands to the army while their haciendas remained subject to raids. Morelos had lapsed into a stalemate, with Huerta’s soldiers little more than policemen, and the Zapatistas moved through the hills at will, robbing a train here, collecting a ransom there, never trying anything more ambitious than a raid against a small garrisoned town.
