by John Benteen
Mandsidor said, loudly, “It will pleasure me to look into your eyes, gringo traitor!” He fumbled in Fargo’s pocket, took out the cigar, put it between Fargo’s teeth and lit it. Then he turned, dismissed the guards who had brought Fargo from jail. They joined the crowd of watchers.
Mandsidor gave an order and five men lined up, with rifles at port arms. Fargo recognized every one: they had come from his machine gun detachment, the unit he had led over so many months of combat. He sucked in the comfort of the smoke, leaned back against the church wall. In Spanish, he shouted: “Watch how an American dies!”
“We’ll see that soon enough!” Fierro’s voice rapped across the plaza. It was a big square dominated by the church. All the watchers were on its far side, only Fargo, Mandsidor and the firing squad on this side.
“Now,” Ignacio rapped, “you can pray.”
“Just go ahead,” Fargo said, “and get it over with.”
“If that’s what you want,” Mandsidor rasped. He stepped back, drew the saber that went with his rank of Colonel. Fargo saw its blade come up, jointing in the sun. “Listo!” Mandsidor shouted.
Fargo favored his last smoke and looked straight down the muzzles of five rifles. His heart pounded in his chest.
“Aim!” Mandsidor’s saber still pointed high. Every gun was full in line now.
The saber twitched. Then it came down.
“Fire!”
The five guns roared as one, and flame burst from five muzzles. Neal Fargo’s body slammed back against the wall, his face contorted, mouth opening, eyes going blank. Simultaneously his big hands slapped his chest, and blood spouted through his fingers. Then, limply, he fell forward on his face.
Across the square, a cry went up from the watchers. Mandsidor sheathed the saber. “Order arms!” he commanded and drew his pistol. Going to Fargo’s body, he circled it, stopped at the head. He lowered the gun until its muzzle was five inches from Fargo's skull. When he pulled the trigger, Fargo’s head jerked with the impact, as the muzzle flame burned away a dollar-sized patch of silver hair. Mandsidor stood there an instant longer, then whirled, so the watchers across the plaza could see. Fargo’s head was a mass of scarlet. “So die all traitors to the Revolution!” Mandsidor cried out and he strode across the plaza to Villa. “My General, I have carried out your orders.”
“Well done,” Villa said, embracing him. “Take the corpse away and bury it. And—his weapons, all of them, are yours. You have earned them.”
“Thank you, my General,” Mandsidor said.
“Pancho,” Fierro said, and the pearl-handled gun was drawn. “Let me put a shot in him for good luck.”
“That,” Villa said, “is up to Colonel Mandsidor.”
Mandsidor looked at Fierro. “I have done my duty, General. It was not easy for me, because this man was my friend. But now you raise the matter to personal insult.”
Fierro said, “I know you’ve done a good job. I just wanted to put one bullet in him. A matter of pride.”
“My pride, too,” said Mandsidor. “No.”
“That settles it,” Villa said. “Another time, Rodolfo.”
“Hell,” Fierro said and walked away, scattering villagers as he went. Elena was on her knees, screaming. Fierro seized her roughly, yanked her up. “I’ll give you something to scream about besides a dead Yanqui!” he rasped and dragged her across the plaza.
Villa turned to survey the crowd. “All right!” he bawled. “You have seen the American traitor die! Maybe you will see more Americans die later on! You know they die like other men! Never hesitate to shoot them if they come here!” Then he whirled. “Colonel Mandsidor! Have your firing squad bury that carrion in the arroyo south of town!”
Mandsidor saluted, looked at the bloody-headed corpse. “Yes, my General,” he said and gave his orders.
Chapter Four
Fargo’s shirt was smeared with blood, his head a singed, red horror. His body flopped limply as it was thrown without ceremony into a high-sided ox-cart and hauled to a deep arroyo north of town. There, men of what had been his unit, dragged it out, threw it unceremoniously down the twenty-foot cutbank. When it hit bottom, Mandsidor, who had accompanied the cart, began to stamp and kick along the rim, and dirt and rock cascaded down. The bank caved easily, and in a moment Fargo was buried.
“All right, you men,” Mandsidor told the soldiers and the cart’s driver. “Back to town.” He went on stamping as they galloped off. As soon as they were nearly out of sight, Mandsidor leaped down the bank, began to claw at the mound of dirt “Neal!” His voice was frantic. “Don Neal! Are you all right?”
The dirt pile heaved as the Mexican’s scrabbling fingers uncovered Fargo’s bloody face. “Jesus and Maria, Ignacio,” Fargo said. “Did you have to pile the whole damned bank on top of me?”
“I’m sorry.” Mandsidor’s strong grip pulled Fargo free of the pile of dirt. “I had to make it look real.”
“It was real enough. That muzzle blast when you gave me the coup de grace damned near scalped me.” But Fargo’s bloody face twisted in a grin. “The hell with it. It’s better than being dead. Thanks, Ignacio.”
Mandsidor’s look of relief was almost comic. He grinned, clapped Fargo on the shoulder. “It did work, didn’t it? I brought it off.”
“You brought it off,” Fargo said. “Thank God that little bladder of goat’s blood you put in my shirt when you took out that last cigar broke when I slapped my hands against my chest.”
“It was very realistic, the way you fell back, grabbed your body, and then the blood ran. What I was afraid of was that someone, especially Fierro, would see me pour the goat’s blood on your head when I fired the killer shot. But I kept my body between you and the crowd when I emptied the little bottle.” He unslung Fargo’s shotgun, passed it and the bandoliers over, handed Fargo Colt and Batangas knife. Now, once again, he was all business. “Come. We have no time to waste. Pancho’s waiting.”
“Right,” Fargo said. He drew a dusty sleeve across his smeared face and then he was all right again. But, he knew, he would never forget looking down the muzzles of the firing squad’s five rifles, despite the assurance in the note Elena had delivered in the jail. This was, after all, Mexico; and it would be damned unusual for anything to go exactly right. Villa might have intended for all those rifles to be loaded with blanks, but if a soldier had failed to get the word or picked up the wrong gun ...
But they had brought it off, the fake execution, and all he had suffered was banging around and a bad burn on the back of his head. That would heal, and if a man could face a Villista firing squad and come away with no worse hurt, he was doing fine. Besides, he had his weapons back, so everything was all right.
“Down the arroyo,” Mandsidor said. “The horse is waiting there. Keep low and off the skyline until you’re well out of sight of town.”
“Yes,” Fargo said. There were a hundred questions in his mind, but they could wait. He scuttled down the wash, and, two hundred yards farther on, found a good horse with his rifle in its saddle scabbard and his bedroll tied on behind. A canteen hung from the horn and so did a bottle of mescal, clove-hitched with a leather thong. Fargo took a long drink, corked the bottle, washed the fiery liquor down with water, swung up into the saddle. Then he spurred the horse and rode on down the wash until he reached the dry bed of the river, where he turned north, hugging the bank and keeping out of sight as he traveled swiftly away from town.
~*~
By comparison, it was cool in the little jacal, the goat herder’s hut with its adobe walls and thatched roof of brush. As Fargo washed himself with water from an olla, sponging away goat’s blood and dust, Pancho Villa looked at him almost with amusement. “Neal, you should have been a stage actor.”
“Many more days like today and I’m liable to change jobs, that’s for sure.” Fargo put on a clean shirt from the bedroll. The back of his head was sticky with a salve of fat and herbs massaged over the already blistering burn. He took another sw
ig of mescal, held out the bottle. “Doroteo?”
“No, thanks,” Villa said. He squatted on his spurs against the wall. “You know I never drink hard whiskey.”
“I do,” Mandsidor said and took the bottle. Fargo grinned, then sobered as he faced the rebel General. “All right,” he said. “Now can I have some explanations? You condemn me to the firing squad and scare the hell out of me. Then Elena brings me a note telling me it’s all a fake, and explaining what will happen. So now, so far as everybody but you and me and Colonel Mandsidor knows, I’m dead. Okay. There must be a reason.”
“There is,” Villa said gravely. “I had to kill you to save your life.”
Fargo looked at him a moment. “Fierro,” he said at last.
“Fierro,” Villa said and nodded. He stood up, sighed; he was only a few years older than Fargo, but in that moment he looked years Fargo’s senior, and if great weight had settled on him and bore him down.
“Fierro,” he went on, “hates your guts and has, for a long time.”
“The feeling’s mutual.”
“Si. I know that. Sooner or later you would have killed each other and I can afford to lose neither one of you.”
“You can well afford to lose Fierro. General, I’ve told you this before and I’ll tell you this again. Half your trouble with the United States is because of him; his damned cold-blooded butchery, mass executions of prisoners and wounded men, the way he shoots women and children too when he takes a notion ... You’ve had American war correspondents with you, even newsreel moving picture men. They know about Fierro and he turns their stomachs. He makes you look like a butcher, too. And that’s part of what cost you President Wilson’s support. Wilson is a very correct, religious man. He can’t support a man who keeps a Fierro on his staff.”
Once more, Villa sighed. “That may be true. But the fact remains, I have a war to fight. And Fierro is a good soldier and he would die for me. To lose him would be to lose my right hand. Sometimes, Neal, we have to use the tools at hand, because their cutting edges are sharp and they do the work. Fierro’s cutting edge is very sharp.”
He paused. “No matter. It comes down to this. Your country has turned against me. This has given Fierro the chance he wanted to bring you down. Oh, I’ve ordered that you’re not to be harmed. But— with you always in combat, who can tell whether you take a bullet from in front or from behind? And how much Fierro would pay the man that put one between your shoulder blades? Nor would there be any way I could hang it on him, and if there were, what good would it do me, once you were dead? To kill him then would only be to lose you both.”
“You can damn well afford to lose Fierro. Doroteo, I’ll say it again—Fierro’s half your trouble with the United States—don’t think Carranza hasn’t used Fierro’s butchery against you.”
Villa’s dark face was grim, “Maybe. But I still have a war to fight, a more desperate one than ever, and ... I cannot do without him.”
He paused. “What counts is this. I learned Fierro was plotting to have you killed—probably shot in the back when you were in combat. And if he had, what could I have done? You’d be dead, and it would cost me Fierro, too, for I would have to have him shot. And then maybe my whole Army would have turned against me for killing a famous man like Fierro for shooting a lousy gringo. I tell you, Fargo, gringos are not popular now among my men—you understand?”
He grinned faintly. “So ... If he thinks hard enough, Pancho Villa can always find an answer. I need Fierro, I need you. So Mandsidor and I worked out this plan. Now, you are dead, Fierro’s satisfied and … ?”
“And I’m finished with the Army of the North. I’d better get my tail out of Mexico on the sly. Right?” There was an edge of bitterness in Fargo’s voice, but he could not help admiring Villa’s shrewdness.
The rebel leader nodded. “That’s right. But—” His eyes gleamed and he seized Fargo’s wrist. “But your service to the Army of the North is not yet finished. Neal, there’s more to it than just keeping you alive. I need you. I need you worse than I ever have before. It’s important for you to get back to the States alive. More important than you can guess.”
Fargo looked at him narrowly, sensing something strange. “Doroteo, what’s up?”
Villa’s voice was grave. “War,” he said. “Not the Revolution, a different kind of war. Between Mexico and the United States. Fargo, it can happen any day, now. And it mustn’t—it would be a disaster for us all.” He let go Fargo’s hand, stepped back a pace, caught Fargo’s gaze with his own. “And I know of no man but you who can stop it—if it can be stopped.”
~*~
For a moment, the little hut was silent. Fargo felt a wave of excitement drive away the last of fatigue. “Go on.”
“All right. The situation is this. Recognition by your President or not, Carranza still does not rule Mexico. In the north, he has me to deal with and, in the south, Zapata. We work together for the same ideals and he cannot whip us both at the same time. He has the men, but he has neither guns enough nor money. His treasury’s empty and his stock of weapons exhausted. And he knows that the Japanese have come to me and offered help.”
Fargo stiffened. “The Japanese?”
“They’ve offered me much money, plenty of guns, on one condition—and I’ve turned them down.”
Fargo stared at him. “What was that condition?”
“That, after they make me President of Mexico, I declare war on the United States.”
Fargo’s mouth thinned. Before he could speak, Villa went on. “I’ve turned them down. They took me for a fool, but you know I am none. If Carranza gets no outside help, I don’t need their guns to beat him—not as long as you and other connections can smuggle weapons to me from the States. And my country’s had enough war. I want to win the Revolution to make peace, not embroil it in more fighting that it might not win. All they want is to tie down America so they can take the Philippines, and I told them to go to hell. But ... I’m afraid Carranza hasn’t been that clever with the Germans.”
Fargo toyed with the mescal bottle. “Germany has made Carranza the same deal?”
“It has. It fights France and England and its biggest fear is that America will join in against them. So it wants to keep the United States tied down here in war with Mexico. That’s why it’s made its offer to Carranza. All the guns and money he can use, a sure end to Pancho Villa, and German help taking back all the Texas and other Southwestern territory your government stole from us seventy or a hundred years ago!”
“That’s crazy!” Fargo snapped.
“Is it?” Villa began to pace, big spurs jingling. “The Carranza people don’t think so, and neither do my spies in their camp.” He halted. “Here it is, Fargo, the plan they’re working on. It’s already rolling, it started with the mining engineers.”
“What mining engineers?”
“You hadn’t heard? As soon as your President recognized Carranza, Carranza promised Mexico would be safe for Americans who returned to work their mines. Last January, about two months ago, some mining companies took him at his word and sent in more than a dozen engineers. The train they came south on was halted, they, all Americans, were taken off and shot. By, of course, Francisco Villa’s men.”
Fargo stated at him. “Were they yours?”
“Hell, no! They were Carranza men, disguised as mine! But he’s spread the word that I’m furious about being cold-shouldered by President Wilson and have vowed to kill every gringo I can lay my hands on. Of course I’m furious, but not enough to cut my own throat by doing that!”
He paused, continued, “One black mark against me; now, plenty of others. Suppose Villistas had been raiding across the border into Texas, hitting lone ranchers, killing them and rustling stock. But, again, I’ll swear they’re not my men, they’re Carranza’s! Fargo, he’s made the border into a powder keg, and the name of Pancho Villa a fighting word on its northern side! But he won’t stop there! He’ll keep on until your people won’t take any m
ore—until they send the American Army into Mexico, after me!”
He paused. Fargo took a drink and thought, then said: “That would put you in a nutcracker.”
“Absolutely. American troops after me from the north, Carranza from the south, I couldn’t fight them both. If the Americans really come after me, they’ll rub me out. But that’s only the first step. War between our countries would be the next.”
His spurs rang as he paced again. “Chasing me, American troops would be drawn deep below the border. And as soon as they had killed me, Carranza would hit them. He’d pinch them off, wipe than out, and then there’d have to be a war.”
“But he couldn’t win it!” Fargo snapped.
Villa halted, turned, hooked thumbs in his belt, looked at Fargo strangely. “What makes you so sure?”
“Why ... ”
“Listen,” Villa said. “This is what the Germans tell him. First, they say, you’re rid of Pancho Villa. Secondly, if you fight the Americans, every Mexican, no matter what side he was on before, will join you. In one blow, you’ll have the whole country behind you, united, you’ll be a hero. They tell him that. And they say, look: Even Pancho Villa has more men in his Army than the Americans have in all of theirs. And the Mexicans are seasoned by six years of war, the American troops are green. And they say: We’ll arm the Southern black people and the Mexican-Americans in the Southwest, and at the right time, they’ll rise in rebellion, too. And they say: we’ll give you unlimited money, guns, help, send our best officers to advise, and, if you want them, after we beat the English and French, we’ll send good soldiers here to help you and lead our navy, our submarines. You work with us, they tell Carranza, you’ll get back Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, southern California, and be the greatest man in history. But it all begins with Pancho Villa.”
Fargo was silent for a moment. Wild as it sounded, it might, he thought with a chill, just work. It was true: millions of combat-seasoned Mexicans might rally against a few hundred thousand American soldiers before the U.S. Army, always unready, could mobilize and train. Not all the Southern blacks and-Mexican-American would rise behind American lines, but enough would to maybe be effective. And with modem German guns and submarines ...
