by John Harris
‘Shoot the lock off, you dumb bastard,’ someone yelled at him.
A blaze shot up nearby as the Mexicans set fire to the timber dwellings, and the old houses, dried by the sun, went up like a bonfire. The scene was lit by the flames and there was a confusion of shots, screams and the crackle of burning buildings.
The Mexicans seemed to be spreading through the town now but a few weapons had begun to appear in the hands of the defenders. A Mexican running towards them with a flaming torch stopped dead as Atty rose from behind his barrel. As the Mexican reached for his gun, Atty and Slattery fired together and the heavy bullets lifted him off his feet to drop him on his back in a puff of dust. As Atty picked up his rifle, a horseman in a big hat thundered out of the shadows and he reversed the weapon and swung it with all his strength. The butt caught the Mexican full in the face and he went over the tail of his horse as if he were shot.
‘Two,’ Atty said, tossing the fallen man’s rifle to Slattery.
The Mexicans’ main targets appeared to be the bank, the hotel and the store, and within minutes petrol stacked in drums caught fire, blazing fluid flying in all directions. In the light of the flames, the defenders began to do better as the Villistas – previously enjoying the cover of the shadows – were lit up. Atty was using his rifle with great skill and as two Mexicans dragged away an American from the blazing hotel, he picked them off one after another, so that the American was able to bolt for the darkness.
Together, they moved along the street. There seemed to be bodies everywhere now, most of them Mexican. Eventually, they came to a house standing on its own and, as a group of men appeared round a corner, they both dived automatically for the stoop. Putting their shoulders to the door, they burst in. By the light of a single lamp, a woman in a nightgown threw herself at their feet. ‘Leave the children,’ she screamed. ‘Take me.’
Atty hoisted her to her feet. ‘Get under the bed, lady,’ he said. ‘Look after the kids.’
As the group of horsemen thundered past, Slattery brought one of them down with a crash. The shot emptied his magazine and he slipped out to retrieve the Mexican’s weapon. The Mexican stank like a polecat with sweat, dirt and cheap wine, as if the raiders had been nursing their resentment in some cantina on the other side of the border until the right word had sent them off in a drunken charge against the hated Yanquis.
The shooting in their particular area seemed to have died down a little now but there was obviously fierce fighting further along. ‘Stay here,’ Slattery said to the woman. ‘Hide yourself and the children.’
A few panic-stricken inhabitants had locked themselves in an adobe building nearby and, though Slattery hammered on the door and demanded to be let in, they were refused, so they ran along the street, keeping to the shadows behind carts and boxes and the terrified horses hitched to the ramadas outside the store, which were rearing and tossing their heads and neighing with terror.
The American soldiers had recovered from their surprise now and were appearing with weapons in their hands. One man with a baseball bat was pounding at a kneeling Mexican. Across the street, several more Mexicans were trying to break down a door when suddenly it was snatched open and a woman flung the contents of a steaming pan over them. Screaming with pain, they staggered away, clawing at their eyes.
The woman managed a shaky grin at Slattery. ‘My Ma once stopped Indians with a pan of scalding water,’ she said.
With the hotel in flames, it was as light as day now and the Americans were fighting back fiercely. Frontier instincts they’d imbibed with their mother’s milk had taken over and the raiders were beginning to get the worst of it.
Slattery, Atty and three more men took shelter in a saddlery and every time the raiders tried to get near the bank, their shots stopped them dead in their tracks. Eventually the noise began to die.
Stepping out into the street holding Atty’s revolver, Slattery peered about him warily. The sound of hooves warned him that it wasn’t quite over and he heard the screeching of Mexican bugles, higher and thinner than American bugles, beginning to sound the retreat. Mexicans appeared from the shadows, running for the west, followed by riders blazing away haphazardly behind them. The last raiders tumbled down the front steps of the burning hotel, their arms full of loot, to grab their horses and, sped on their way by a last few shots, thundered out of town. The fight seemed to be over.
As the dust settled and the first light appeared, people began to arrive in the little plaza. Several bodies were stretched out like broken dolls in the grotesquerie of sudden death, the high-crowned sombreros giving the final touch of macabre inconsequentiality to the scene. A few Mexicans, badly wounded but still alive, were being dragged off to jail. The hotel entrance was jammed with a dead horse and two dead men. Their rifles trailing butt down in the dust, the townspeople began to collect, half-dressed, grimy and dazed. A few were struggling to save the store and a few more fought to put out the flames at the hotel. A man wearing a dark suit and a black bowler appeared, driving a flat boxboard buggy with his name on it in white letters and the word ‘Mortician’ beneath. He was collecting the bodies one after the other, his face expressionless.
‘Our boys first,’ he kept saying. ‘Our boys first.’
There was a lot of activity round the army camp and they could hear orders being shouted. Then there was the rumble of hoofs and a squadron of cavalrymen swung out and began to head for the border, their faces devoid of mercy.
Atty stared after them, his face as expressionless as always.
‘That’s it,’ he said in a flat voice. ‘The Germans have finally got their invasion.’
Just when everything appeared to have quietened down and the flames killed, a fresh fire broke out in the livery stable. It was a fierce conflagration, the sparks whirling upwards on the breeze and, though bucket chains were formed from the pumps and the horse trough, it was impossible to put it out and they could hear trapped horses screaming.
‘God damn it,’ the owner yelled furiously. ‘The goddam Mexes never came near us!’
They were all staring hopelessly at the flames when Atty appeared alongside Slattery. In his hand he held a straw boater. It had been trodden on and round it was a pink ribbon.
‘Scheele,’ he said.
Three
‘What in Christ’s name were they up to, to allow it?’ Midwinter snarled. ‘Eight American soldiers and ten civilians dead, and eight more wounded.’
He had arrived with Horrocks in a hurry from El Paso just as the avenging cavalrymen had returned. Behind them were the civilian volunteers who had formed a posse. Some of them were dragging at the end of lariats the bodies of Mexicans they had caught. Others, who had brought their victims home strung across the saddles of their own horses, were just unlashing them and pushing them over to thud into the dust.
Slattery watched with Atty. A woman washing the blood off the steps of the hotel stopped to look. Slattery peered more closely at one of the bodies and, snatching up her bucket tossed the water across it.
‘Hey,’ she yelled. ‘No need for that!’
He took the cloth from her hands and wiped away the dried blood and dust.
‘It’s Vegas,’ he said.
Horrocks had been talking to the army men. ‘They claim they killed a hundred,’ he said.
‘Somebody sure killed somebody,’ Midwinter agreed. ‘Who was it? Villa?’
‘They were yelling for Villa,’ Slattery agreed.
‘Wilson’ll have to act this time,’ Horrocks observed.
‘Any sign that Germany was behind it?’ Midwinter demanded.
‘Just Graf,’ Slattery said.
‘You saw?’
‘I know.’
‘That’s no goddam good!’
Slattery indicated the body at his feet. ‘There’s him,’ he said. ‘He was Graf’s man. And there’s this.’ He held out the crushed boater with its pink ribbon.
‘Scheele,’ Midwinter said at once. ‘Did you see him?’
‘No. But it looks very much as if he was here.’
‘Would you be prepared to stand up in court and swear that Graf was here?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘I didn’t see him.’
‘I wouldn’t mind saying I saw him,’ Atty said.
‘Did you?’
‘No. But I’d be prepared to say I did, to nail the bugger.’ Not only Columbus but the whole border seemed stunned by the raid and there were reports that the American ambassador in Berlin had telegraphed that it had been organised there. Certainly, there seemed no reason for it beyond the fact that Villa was desperate for horses, weapons and revenge.
‘Delirio de grandeza,’ one of the Mexicans in El Paso told Slattery. ‘He’s gone off his head.’
Atty’s view was different. ‘German money,’ he said. ‘Berlin’s going to love it.’
Allied to Villa’s new anti-Americanism, it seemed a sound enough explanation and an isolated American town near the border was an obvious target. More evidence of German complicity was coming in and there was news of German officers in Tampico, German plots along the border and more in Chihuahua, Sonora and Durango. In addition, it was clear the arms Rintelen had bought for Huerta were now going to Villa, transported over the border in coffins or chartered oil tankers.
The activity along the Rio Grande was tremendous. Within days, troops, equipment and supplies began to pour into Columbus.
Midwinter brought the news. ‘They’re sending a force into Mexico,’ he said. ‘To capture Villa. Wilson had to give way.’ He frowned. ‘It’ll be another Veracruz. The Mexes will lose nothing – up here there’s nothing to lose except sand – and we’ll lose our dignity.’
Columbus began to fill up with men, horses and wagons. For the second time the Germans had worked on the passions of the Americans and this time in no way could Washington claim that what they were proposing was a temporary occupation. This time it was an out-and-out invasion of Mexican territory. One column of four thousand men was to head due south, while a second column two thousand strong was to move along the border area.
But the Americans weren’t finding it easy to build up the force they had proposed because American hustle had moved too fast for what America possessed. They didn’t have a single military unit ready for service in Mexico and a week passed before what had become known as Wilson’s Punitive Expedition was ready.
Frantic officers contacted other units, struggling to complete their equipment, exchanging sick, lame or useless horses for healthy ones, and damaged wagons for sound ones. Weapons were checked and sabres sharpened, and ammunition, tents and rations collected.
Slattery and Atty were to ride with the larger column.
‘Midwinter,’ Horrocks explained, ‘thinks you know Villa better than anyone and will know what he intends.’
The whole area was filling up with men, horses, wagons, radio vans and field hospitals, even a tractor in case of emergencies. A new element was introduced with the arrival of a couple of aeroplanes, Curtiss JN two-seaters with wide wingspans, which seemed in greater danger from the curiosity of their own side than from the hostility of the Mexicans.
‘You guys keep back there,’ the pilots yelled furiously at the interested soldiers. ‘You touch that fabric and it’ll tear!’
A third aeroplane landed soon afterwards, sending the civilian onlookers running as its whirling propeller stirred up clouds of red dust which blew over the picnics they had brought.
As the time for departure drew near, regimental musicians began to lick the mouthpieces of their instruments and a man with a camera on a three-legged stand manoeuvred blindly under his black cloth to set everything on record. There was a scream of command and the whole mass of men stiffened. One of the regiments was Custer’s old command, the Seventh Cavalry, and as the column began to move off in a cloud of dust with flapping guidons, Midwinter stared after it with cynical eyes.
‘Let’s hope they don’t run into another Little Big Horn,’ he said.
With all the activity moved from New York to the border, Midwinter and Horrocks settled down in El Paso.
Sent to Juárez, Atty came back with the information that the fleeing Villistas had ransacked stores in Chihuahua City. ‘Except,’ he pointed out dryly, ‘them with German names. They say the German consul’s smilin’ all over his face. He knows the Punitive Expedition won’t get near Villa because he’s had a week to hide himself, and, whether they support Carranza or Villa or who the hell they support, the Mexicans sure as hell won’t support the Americans.’
Atty was dead right and it was Midwinter as usual who brought the news. ‘That goddam Carranza!’ he snarled. ‘He’s forbidden us the use of his railroads!’
‘He’s a Mexican,’ Slattery pointed out. ‘He’s behaving like a Mexican.’
Midwinter wasn’t to be consoled. ‘It means we have to supply our force by motor transport,’ he said. ‘And we don’t have any goddam motor transport!’
Four
Weeks later, three hundred miles inside Mexico, the Americans were no nearer to catching Villa, but were growing nearer every day to a full-scale clash with the Mexican army. Twenty times or more Villa was reported by the newspapers as captured, dead, run to earth, murdered by his own men or hanged by Carranza, until the colossal military fumble became a farce.
Despite their vast financial resources, the Americans had neglected their army so much after the Cuban War they were having to advertise for trucks, and civilian drivers and mechanics to run them.
‘What a goddam army,’ Midwinter grated. ‘We couldn’t fight a monkey in a dustbin.’
There had already been several skirmishes, hardly to be classed as battles, and the wind was blowing strongly, rolling vast clouds of red dust across the plain, as Slattery joined the flying column. It was already in a wretched state, supply vehicles travelling for miles without ever moving from first gear. The troops, dirty, dusty, thirsty and flea-bitten, were shedding useless equipment as they went and lorryloads of discarded sabres had made their way back to Columbus. Saddles were defective, rifle scabbards were not the right shape, stirrup leathers were wrong, and in the scorching days and freezing nights, the gale was the final straw.
Heads down and buffeted by snowstorms, they wound along the mountain trails until the supply wagons were outstripped and they were living on nothing but beans and dried corn. Thirty-six miles from Guerrero they learned that Villa had just taken the place and, riding ahead of the army, Slattery found himself on a twisting dusty trail having to make way for a battered carriage pulled by a bony horse. To his surprise, it was occupied by the bulky shape of Villa, one leg bandaged and raised on to the seat in front. He stared at Slattery with the blank suspicious expression of a fox surprised with its prey. His face was running with sweat and grey and drawn with pain.
‘Why are you here, inglés?’ he snapped at once. ‘Are you seeking me for the Norteamericanos?’
Slattery’s heart thumped as he saw Villa’s hand fall on the butt of that fluky pistol of his.
‘No, Don Pancho,’ he said. ‘I’m nothing to do with the Americans. I’m a British diplomatic official now.’
It wasn’t entirely true but he didn’t fancy a bullet in the back.
Villa stared angrily at him then, as Slattery shifted in the saddle, he relaxed.
‘I’ve been wounded, inglés,’ he growled. ‘I’d been watching the American column for days. They blunder about like blind mules. You can see them coming a day away with the dust they make. But they know how to keep order with their gente, how to transport ammunition and water and food, and I wanted to learn how they did it. We took Guerrero and I was sitting in the square when a boy discharged his pistol as he was cleaning it. The bullet hit me above the knee. The first wound I ever had – and, Dios, by an accident! They wanted to hang him but I said no. He was only a child.’
Villa shifted in his seat, the solid muscled body twisting with an attempt not to
show the agony he was enduring. ‘The bullet’s still there,’ he went on ‘It’s a .45. That’s a big bullet and there’s an infection. I’ve got to find a doctor or I’ll lose my leg.’
‘Be careful, Don Pancho,’ Slattery said. ‘The Americans mean business.’
‘They’ll never find me. I know these hills like my own backyard.’ Villa’s hand fell to his gun again. ‘But I have a problem, inglés. You. What do I do about you? You could tell them where I’m heading.’
‘If you believe that, Panchito, you’ll believe anything.’
Villa nodded and the gun was pushed back into its holster. There was a last wave then the carriage rolled on.
Slattery’s thoughts churned. Where in God’s name in this chaos that was Mexico did his loyalty lie? Mexico needed an end to Villa, the most troublesome of all the leaders it had produced. Slattery’s own country needed an end to him, too, because for as long as he was alive he was a potential ally of the Germans and, after the disaster at Agua Prieta, his one declared desire was vengeance on the Americans.
But Villa was Villa and, against all sense, Slattery knew his loyalty remained with him. He had known him too long, shared too many hardships. Villa was a dangerous man but he had done Slattery many favours and had never shown enmity towards him. Many times they had disagreed but never for long and this pursuit of him by the Americans, Slattery decided, was Washington’s business, not his.
As he returned to the American column, the exhausted horses were being pressed into a forced march through the night.
‘We’ve heard Villa’s at Guerrero,’ he was told. ‘We’re going in.’
Slattery said nothing and, as daylight came, the American cavalry went in with a rush. The first thing they discovered was that, as Slattery was aware, Villa had escaped the previous night.
