by Lou Cameron
Villa nodded and said, “I’m counting on that. A lot of my foot soldier are still carrying old single-shot Springfields, or even muzzle loaders.”
Stringer shook his head and insisted, “Never mind your ordnance. What kind of a medical corps do you have? A Mex is a Mex to a rattled army machinegunner going rat-tat-tat, so you’re bound to get a heap of your own men mowed down in the process.”
Villa nodded soberly. “I know. I got no medical corps. We shoot the wounded of both sides, unless they can still march. You would be surprised how far a man with a bullet in him can march, when he knows he has to.”
Stringer swallowed another slug of tequila. The comic opera aspects of Latin American warfare seemed to be losing a heap of humor in the translation. This clown sounded serious about the subject.
The adelita Villa had sent to find a friend came back in with another girl. The one Stringer was supposed to “marry” was younger, a lot prettier, and had her hands tied behind her. Lest that not be enough, a couple of grinning soldados had her covered with their drawn six-guns. Before Stringer could say he preferred his women willing, Villa shot a sharp glance at the plain homespun cotton smock and bright red sash the sullen beauty had on. Then he told the other adelita, “I sent you to fetch us a woman. This is no woman. Can’t you see she’s Yaqui?”
One of the guards chimed in with, “She must have wanted to join your army, General. We caught her skulking in the cactus just outside of camp.”
Villa muttered something dreadful about his follower’s family tree, suggesting they never should have come down from it, before he addressed the Indian captive in a tongue that reminded Stringer of Paiute, even though he couldn’t follow it. The Yaqui girl shot daggers back at Villa with her smouldering sloe eyes as she spat back at him in the same dialect. But whatever he was saying seemed to calm her down somewhat, though she never stopped glaring at him as he nodded, switched back to Spanish, and said, “Her pony gave out on her in the desert. She was trying to steal one of ours when you caught her. Take her out to the remuda and let her pick out a good mount. We’d better give her a couple of canteens of water as well. Then let her go with God. I just told her what will happen to her if she does not go straight home to her own people.”
One of the guards frowned uncertainly and asked, “You wish for us to reward this ladrona with one of our own mounts, General?”
Villa growled, “Do you question your general’s orders? Do as I say, muy pronto. Can’t you see I’m busy here?”
The adelita and two soldiers exchanged confused stares, then started to lead the Indian girl out. She moved with them as far as the exit slit. The she turned to stare back at Villa as if she was examining a bug on a pin. She took a deep breath then, with an obvious effort, she snarled, “Como se llama, Mejicano?”
To which Villa replied with a shrug, “Villa, Pancho Villa. Adios y mucho gusto, Señorita.”
She looked more insulted than pleased as she grudgingly muttered, “Gracias, Pancho Villa.” Then she was gone.
Villa smiled wearily at Stringer and said, “I’ve told them not to be rude to the Yaqui. God knows, I have enough on my hands as it is. She says my men didn’t dishonor her, thank God. Let’s hope that’s the end of it.”
Stringer said, “I wouldn’t want the Yaqui mad at me if I could avoid it. I understand that can be tough, even when you speak their tongue.”
Villa smiled modestly and explained, “I spoke to her in my own Chihuahua dialect. Is close enough. As you just heard, they can speak Spanish when they want to. They just don’t want to. The Yaqui claim to be leftover Aztecs who never gave in to Cortez. I think they are full of shit, but who wants to argue with such a ferocious tribe of lunatics and what are you grinning about?”
Stringer went on smiling thinly, as he replied, “I’m just trying to understand you. One minute you’re talking about killing your own wounded and the next you’re going out of your way to be gallant to a female captive. She was in your power, and was mighty pretty.”
Villa looked disgusted and said, “Carramba, what use is a woman who is sure to bite it off for you the first chance she gets? Most of the women in Mexico want to go to bed with me. For I, Pancho Villa, shall march into Mexico City as the savior of my country by the end of this decade, or, maybe two decades. I got some fighting to do, first.”
Stringer nodded soberly and said, “That’s for damned sure at the rate you’re going. We were talking about you getting half of your boys killed off in that battle with another gang, as I recall.”
Villa sat back down and helped himself to more tequila as he insisted, “A general who thinks he can win battles without losing any men has no business sending men into battle. Is no way to fight a war without both sides losing men. The only way you win is by making the other side lose more. Have you forgotten your own General Grant at Shiloh?”
Stringer stared incredulously at the chunky mestizo in the bandit outfit before replying, “That was a mite before my time, and yours as well, unless you’re fibbing about your age.”
Villa shook his head and said, “A good soldado studies well-fought battles, no matter when they happened. I have had some history books read to me. Your Grant was my kind of soldado. The war you gringos had among yourselves would have been over sooner if they’d put him in command earlier. Your McClellan was a sissy. He could not bear to see his tin soldados damaged. At Shiloh, the other side lay in ambush for Grant. Was a good ambush. Everyone but Grant knew he was getting the shit kicked out of him. But when they begged him to retreat, he told them not to be so stupid. He said to add up the figures. The north had more than twice as many troops as the south at Shiloh. Now that the surprise was over, the bigger army had to win, if only they would stop talking about what was to be done and just do it. You know what happened then, of course.”
Stringer nodded soberly to reply, “Sure. It was one of the bloodier victories in a bloody war. Even his own troops called him Butcher Grant before it was all over.”
Villa chuckled fondly and insisted, “But he won. He won for the simple reason that he kept killing Lee’s men faster than Lee could replace them. War is not so complicated, once you make up your mind to cut out the shit and get down to business.”
He waved a hand expansively at the interior of his tent but must have meant the camp outside as he continued, “My people have been trying to overthrow Diaz since before either of us could say Da Da. Every time a man of the people has risen, Diaz has crushed him like a cockroach. He even calls us cockroaches. Little brown, unimportant creatures. He is so proud of being half Spanish. But I, Pancho Villa, know how to fight him. He is not a military genius. He just has a big army and a ferocious police force. He has to recruit replacements, the same as me. I told you I got more muchachos anxious to join my army than I have arms and equipment for. Each time I win a battle I get more arms and my losses matter less. Padre Tiempo rides on my side, as well. I am still young and brave. Each day El Presidente grows older and less sure of himself. Give me just ten years. Maybe a little more. You will see.”
Stringer sighed and said, “You must be part Chihuahua. Nobody but an Indian would have that much patience, and what if they kill you first, Pancho?”
Villa shrugged and said, “Is not important. I have taught a lot of cockroaches how to fight my way. Someone will just take my place. Mexico will be free because she wishes to be free. Is as simple as that.”
CHAPTER
EIGHT
Considering how little sleep he’d gotten, Stringer was wide awake in the cold gray light of dawn as he rode at Pancho Villa’s side into the sunrise. He was also as hungry as a bitch wolf. So was everyone else in the ragtag rebel army he was marching with. For Villa was against having breakfast on the day of any battle. He thought the gringo notion of feeding the troops a swell meal just before they went into action estupido. He’d asked Stringer what Americano medics did about a trooper gutshot on a full stomach and Stringer had had to confess he didn’t even want to thi
nk about it.
It was obviously all right to smoke, though. Every third or fourth man moving in line with them seemed to be puffing a big cigar. Stringer had already made notes on the cigar smoking grenadiers and what they were packing in those cotton rucksacks. The promoters of the show had issued them smoke cannisters. Villa had made them tamp in more powder and lots of horseshoe nails.
Stringer was riding on Villa’s left, near the south end of the mile-long skirmish line, so there was nothing between Stringer and the border but a thousand-odd wild-eyed Mexicans on foot and loaded for bear. It was tempting. But what the hell, Sam had sent him to cover the battle and this had to be about the best seat in the house. He was mounted on a frisky bay charger that also carried the brand of Los Federales, or the Mexican regular army. Villa’s pony was white, of course. On the far side of the somewhat bloody-minded liberator rode a skinny twelve year old bugler and a teenaged guidon carrying a big red flag, just in case anyone mistook this outfit for anything but rebels. To the further south rode Villa’s cavalry, if that was what one wanted to call about five hundred gents with ammo belts mummy-wrapped about their charro costumes. Stringer noticed that, like Villa himself, troop leaders seemed to favor American cowboy hats instead of the big floppy sombreros everyone else had on. When he asked his mentor if this was a badge of rank, Villa said, “Si. Is good for doing business in your country as well. When I am not doing battle with Terrazas’ riders, as I mean to this morning, I sell a lot of his cows in Texas, sometimes Arizona, too. Your rangers do not seem to get as excited when they see their own kind of hats herding cows, eh?”
Stringer smiled thinly and observed, “Helps when you want to throw a community loop at a Texas cow as well, right?” To which Villa replied in an injured tone, “Is not true! I am not a ladrone, as my enemies say. I have never stolen anything on your side of the border. I have been tempted. Gringo banks are not nearly as well fortified as they have to be in this country. But how would it look for El Presidente to have a criminal record after I get to be El Presidente, eh?”
Stringer lit a fresh smoke as he digested that. Then he asked, “Do you really expect to get that far, Pancho?” To which Villa replied with simple dignity, “Why not? God knows, my poor country has only had one honest government since we got rid of the damned Spanish years and years ago, and Juarez was of Indian blood, no?”
“They say he was an educated lawyer as well.” Stringer pointed out, in a cautious tone.
But Villa just said, “I can hire men of education to help me run the country, once I am in charge of it. Has any pencil pushing maricón ever come forward to fight Diaz for control? Carramba, they are content to kiss his ass. He treats well those he finds useful to him. It is us, the cockroaches, who have no other choice but to fight him.”
Then he raised his free hand and reined in to peer ahead into the sunrise as he added, “Speaking of bugs…”
Stringer raised his own right palm to shade his eyes, or try to, as he did his best to read the dusty glare to the east. He made out the grandstands off to their left. The stands looked full, and some of the crowd seemed to be waving at them. A kid’s balloon escaped to soar upwards as a black dot against the sunrise. Further out, lined up atop a gentle rise, he could just make out the other side. Villa had been right about them all showing up on horseback. They added up to a heap of horses, many more than Villa had mounted or afoot. The open ground between the two armies was gently rolling and harshly studded with clumps of prickly pear. Cactus only made good cover when there was more of it. It didn’t stop bullets worth a damn.
Villa muttered something to his young bugler. The kid blew a call Stringer was unfamiliar with. But while he’d never been at the Alamo that time, he made an educated guess at “No Quarter” and, sure enough, a distant tinny bugle blew it right back at them. Then both buglers sounded the more familiar “charge,” which was more like a brisk walk when one was riding with Villa. But as the ragtag infantry to his left advanced in a fairly well-dressed skirmish line, some of them already reaching for their nail bombs, Stringer couldn’t help muttering, to nobody in particular, “Could I just sit this dance out?”
He glanced back over his shoulder. A quarter mile back, an even longer skirmish line of adelitas was following the advance on foot. Not even a rider’s adelita rated her own pony. But some of the gals were packing rifles as well as their soldier’s packs. At the rate the two front lines were moving at one another, they seemed fated to meet just about in front of the grandstand. Stringer knew that up in their safe seats, his own kind of folk would be cracking jokes about the comical greasers putting on a show for them. From the seat he had, it didn’t look half as funny.
Villa reined in on a small rise, signalling his riders to halt as the foot soldiers kept going. Stringer needed no invitation to rein in with them at a safer range. Then he had to reconsider how safe that might be when the kid holding the big red banner emitted a harsh coughing sound and fell off his pony, flag and all.
The young bugler dropped lightly to the ground to pick up the red banner as Villa muttered, “What did I tell you? Live ammunition, the sons of unwashed nuns and defrocked priests!”
Something whizzed past Stringer’s hat, humming like a metal hornet. He winced and shouted, “They have us ranged, and they know who you are, Pancho! Do we really have to wave that flag at them? Can’t we let ‘em guess?”
Villa shook his head sternly and said, “Is the banner of our libertad. Long may it wave!” Then the small boy waving it took a round in the head and did a back flip off his pony, carrying the flag to the dust with him.
Villa shouted, “Enough of this military courtesy. They are charging at full gallop, so let’s take them on the flank as they reach our infantry!”
Nobody argued, but it was easier said than done. For even as Stringer tried to ride along with Villa, the whole world filled with sun-hazed gunsmoke. Villa’s foot soldiers used black powder in both their rifles and nail bombs, and the riders charging down on them blazed away with black powder, too. From time to time, Stringer’s pony ran over somebody or he’d spot somebody rising above the smoke like a rag doll tossed skyward by a wayward child. But other than that, he was just riding blind through one hell of a lot of noise. And even as one part of him tried not to shit his pants, another part of him kept wondering, with amazing calm, whether battles were always this confusing. When you read about battles in books, they made a hell of a lot more sense. When you were in one, they scared the shit out of you. He’d thought those times in Cuba during the war with Spain had just confused him because he wasn’t one of the officers who knew what was going on. But as he rode right next to one side’s commander, it seemed obvious that Villa was just as confused as the rest of them. Yet the chunky Mex seemed to be having a swell time, from the way he was shouting orders. Villa was likely more used to this bullshit, Stringer decided, just as a uniformed rider emerged from the dazzling mist with a cavalry saber raised to clobber both of them.
Stringer didn’t like that at all. So he drew his .38 and blew the cavalryman over the rump of his horse, sword and all, to hear Villa shouting, “Gracias. Hey! Was that a federale?”
Stringer didn’t get the chance to offer a comment on the snappy olive tunic the jasper had been wearing at the time of his demise. Villa screamed, “A double cross on a double cross! Terrazas changed places with the fucking army! Vamanos, muchachos! Is time to live to fight another day!”
That was easier said than done, too. As Villa led the retreat at full gallop, or thought that was what he was doing, Stringer closed in to shout, “Wrong way!” as somewhere in the haze to the north a U.S. Army machinegun cleared its throat. “See what I mean?” Stringer added.
To which Villa could only answer, “I’ll get them for this! Take the lead!”
Stringer did, even though it wasn’t too clear where they ought to go, save for the fact that any direction but southwest seemed worse. Then things got worse. The federales opened up with the field artillery
they’d brought along. One didn’t have to be a military genius to see that Villa’s side could only run for their lives. It was hard to tell, amid all that dust and gunsmoke, how many of his troops were escaping. Stringer’s mount shied as it saw or smelled a pile of mangled remains on the lip of a shell crater ahead. Then they’d loped past and Stringer hadn’t even tried to guess whether that had been two or four mangled bodies back there. A riderless pony passed on their left, inspired to outrun them by its empty saddle and trailing guts. A shell came down close, on the far side of Villa, who laughed bitterly and shouted, “They’re just guessing. Keep going!” So Stringer did.
As the haze ahead cleared slightly, he spied an adelita in a dusty black dress running barefoot over torn earth and pulverized cactus. Without slowing, Stringer reached down to scoop her up with his free arm and deposit her behind him to ride pillion, clinging to him for dear life with her head pressed to the back of his jacket while she moaned, “Gracias, gracias, gracias!” like a busted gramophone.
A shell landed ahead to shower them all with dirt clods as they tore on through the mustard colored, cordite scented confusion. The next time Stringer could see his hand before his face he saw Villa had scooped up another frightened girl. The burly young Mex shouted, “Veer to the south. They know where our camp is, the triple-crossing, two-faced offspring of three-thumbed toads!”
“What about your followers?” asked Stringer, even as he reined south-southwest, according to the sky above.
“What followers?” Villa called back. “Can’t you see they kicked the shit out of us? I get licked every time I fight the regular army, so far. Now is every cockroach for itself, no?”
That was the way it looked to Stringer. It hadn’t been his army to begin with. Yet even as they rode like the wind in all directions, he seemed to be more worried about Villa’s shattered and scattered followers than Villa himself was.
