The Warlords

by Matt Braun

  “How far west?”

  “Fifty miles or so.”

  “Too far,” Gordon said with conviction. “If it’s a recruiting trip, why wouldn’t he send Vasquez? A commander planning an invasion sticks close to headquarters.”

  “Verdad!” Martinez leaned forward, intensely earnest now. “I asked myself the same question, señor. Why would he leave Matamoras at such a time?”

  “Has there been any hint of a date for the invasion?”

  “Nada.”

  “So where’s he gone?” Maddox said. “It’s got to be Reynosa or Monterrey. Any place else on that rail line is nothin’ but a wide spot in nowhere.”

  Gordon frowned, shook his head. “Hoyt, it’s not so much where he’s gone. It’s more a matter of why he’s gone.”

  “Yeah, I’d buy that. Got any ideas?”

  “I couldn’t even make an intelligent guess.”

  “Look on the bright side,” Maddox said. “Long as he’s gone, there won’t be any raids. Maybe we caught ourselves a breather.”

  “Maybe,” Gordon said tentatively. “Or maybe it’s the lull before the storm.”

  There was a prolonged moment of silence. No one said anything, but they were all thinking along the same lines. A certainty that went beyond words.

  Augustin Garza, wherever he’d gone, would return.

  Garza stepped off the train in Monterrey early the next morning. Juan Caballo, shoulders squared and eyes alert, waited on the platform. He moved forward with an outstretched hand.

  “Buenos dias, mi coronel,” he said. “Did you have a pleasant journey?”

  “Not too bad,” Garza said, accepting his handshake. “Is everything in order?”

  “Rodriguez knows of your arrival, and Señor Hinojosa awaits you at the ranch. Just as you directed, mi coronel.”

  “Bueno.”

  Garza led the way through the station house. For the past three weeks, he had been corresponding with Hilario Hinojosa, who owned a ranch outside Monterrey. His letters were hand-delivered by a railroad conductor, adequately bribed to ensure discretion. Hinojosa’s replies returned to Matamoras in the same manner.

  Monterrey was situated along the banks of the Rio Santa Catarina. The city was surrounded by the peaks of the Sierra Madre Oriental and sprawled across a wide flood plain. A major industrial center, with a population of eighty thousand, the capital of the state of Nuevo León was second only to Mexico City. The Rio Grande was roughly a hundred miles to the north.

  Outside the depot, Caballo had horses waiting. He and Garza mounted and rode through the Plaza Zaragoza, where a cathedral with a baroque façade was flanked by twin towers. They turned west on Padre Mier Avenue and proceeded to El Obispado, a massive domed structure which once housed a bishop of the church. Only last year, during campaigns across northern Mexico, Pancho Villa had made it his headquarters. The building now housed the offices of bureaucrats in Carranza’s Constitutionalist government.

  The office of Lieutenant Colonel Maurillio Rodriguez was located on the second floor. Rodriguez was in charge of the railroad-dispatching center for Monterrey, and controlled train transport throughout northern Mexico. He was short and heavyset, with a pencil mustache and pockmarked features. He greeted Garza with reserve.

  “Your representative told me little,” he said, motioning to Caballo. “What is this matter of great importance you wish to discuss?”

  Garza smiled. “I am here to make you a rich man, Coronel.”

  “How rich?”

  “Ten thousand American now and ten thousand when our business is finished.”

  Bribery was a way of life in Mexico. The pay of army officers was paltry, and men who sought high office were inevitably corrupted by the system. Graft, if not openly condoned, was an accepted form of commerce.

  Rodriguez tweaked his mustache. “What is it you wish for such generosity?”

  “Trains,” Garza said simply. “Sufficient transport for a thousand men on three, perhaps four, separate dates. All within the matter of a week.”

  “I have heard of you, Augustin Garza. Your Army of Liberation appears to have grown quite rapidly.”

  “Men of good faith embrace the opportunity to drive the gringos from Texas.”

  “You were a Huerta loyalist,” Rodriguez said without expression. “President Carranza would have me shot for assisting you.”

  “Who will tell him?” Garza said, dismissing the notion. “Twenty thousand American dollars is worth such a minor risk. Es verdad?”

  “When do you need these trains?”

  “A month from now, perhaps a little more.”

  “Then let us say I am agreeable to your offer. If, of course, you are prepared to make payment.”

  Garza had carried a small valise from the train station. Two days ago he had finally revealed the full extent of his plan to Otto Mueller, and the German had readily supplied the necessary funds. He opened the valise now and placed a thick packet of American bills on the desk. Rodriguez nodded with a satisfied smile.

  “I like a man who settles matters promptly. Give me a few days’ notice before you need the trains.”

  “A pleasure doing business with you, Coronel. I will keep you advised.”

  “Just between us, I wouldn’t mind killing a few gringos myself. Buena suerte on your Texas adventure.”

  “Gracias.”

  Some two hours later Garza and Caballo crossed a stream twelve miles south of Monterrey. A bright forenoon sun hovered over limestone mountains towering almost ten thousand feet in a cloudless sky. Las Espinas, a rancho of nearly twenty thousand hectares, lay in a spacious valley encircled by the mountains. The main hacienda was an adobe structure, two stories high, with wings extending north and south. Guards with Winchester rifles stood posted at the entrance.

  Hilario Hinojosa welcomed them at the door. He was tall, with a beak of a nose, and a curled mustache that swept to his jawline. The former commander of Huerta’s forces in Nuevo León, he had accepted amnesty from Venustiano Carranza and retired to a ranch owned by his family for generations. But he considered the amnesty merely a means of living to fight another day. His allegiance to Huerta had never faltered.

  Hinojosa greeted Garza with a rough abrazo, the backslapping hug of men who had shared the fortunes of war. Caballo, Hinojosa’s adjutant of many years, was dismissed with an unceremonious wave. After the door closed, Hinojosa led Garza to a shady veranda in the north wing, which offered a spectacular view of the mountains. A servant brought cool drinks, aguas frescas with lime.

  “So,” Hinojosa said, tipping his glass in salute. “Your raids on the Norte Americanos were a success. A good first step, eh?”

  “One of many steps,” Garza replied. “We have much left to accomplish.”

  “Do you trust the Germans?”

  “No farther than I can spit. They care nothing for General Huerta, but we will use them to our own ends. A war with America will rid us of Carranza.”

  “And once he’s gone,” Hinojosa said, grinning broadly, “the general will return to reunite our country. Villa and Zapata will be as ashes in the wind.”

  Garza laughed. “You should see this strutting martinet I’ve written about, Otto Mueller. He thinks I am a simpleton, easily deceived. The fool!”

  “Deception is a two-edged sword. Has he provided the funds we need?”

  “Dios mio! The look on his face when I finally told him of our training camp here. He practically kissed me.”

  Garza opened the small valise at his feet. He held it out for inspection, stacks of cash glinting in the sunlight. “A hundred thousand American,” he said with a sly smile. “We will drain the Germans as we would a milch cow.”

  Hinojosa’s grin widened. “That will buy many soldados, my friend. Life is cheap these days.”

  The Mexican Revolution had impoverished tens of thousands of people. A man felt fortunate to find manual labor for five centavos an hour, and happily worked eighty hours a week. Monterrey’s p
roximity to the border, where Texans earned as much in a day, merely fueled the fires of hatred. Hungry men would willingly fight, and die, to feed their children.

  Garza closed the valise. “How many have you recruited so far?”

  “Four hundred and nineteen,” Hinojosa said, gesturing to the mountains. “They are camped up there, well-hidden and unseen. Caballo trains them in small units.”

  “We must have three or four thousand for our invasion of Texas. The Germans will provide ample funds to arm them.”

  “Do not concern yourself, Augustin. Now that we have the resources, I will raise our army.”

  “How soon?”

  “A month, God willing,” Hinojosa said. “Certainly by September.”

  “No later,” Garza said firmly. “I cannot keep the Germans content with these small raids. They demand a respectable war.”

  “And we will give it to them, old friend.”

  “Si, I know you will not disappoint me.”

  “Fortune and death march to the same drummer.”

  Garza smiled. “Or the Army of Liberation.”

  They clinked their glasses in a toast to fortune. And death to the gringos.

  Chapter Ten

  Stars were sprinkled like diamond dust through a pitch-black sky. The road was faintly visible in the starlight, a narrow ribbon winding through thickets of mesquite and chaparral. The only sound was the muted thud of hoofbeats.

  Luis Vasquez rode at the head of the column. Behind him were twenty men, a mix of Tejano and Mexican, all armed with pistols and rifles. They were approaching Rio Hondo, a town some twenty miles north of Brownsville. Their target tonight was a ranch on the Arroyo Colorado River.

  Garza was still in Monterrey. Three days ago, when he’d departed Matamoras, he had left Vasquez in command and ordered raids to be conducted on July 10. Less than a week had passed since their previous raids, but he reasoned that the Rangers and the army would grow weary of constant vigilance. He felt the gringos needed a reminder that the Army of Liberation might strike anywhere, anytime.

  Three raids were being staged tonight. Miguel Barragan, the junta leader in Brownsville, would attack the ranch of Bud Grant, outside the town of Los Indios. Grant was to be punished, hopefully killed, for providing the Rangers with horses the night of the July 4 raids. Juan Cross, Barragan’s son-in-law, would assault a ranch farther upriver on the Rio Grande, west of Santa Maria. A warning would go out that those who assisted the Rangers would pay a heavy toll.

  Vasquez planned to strike the ranch of Joe Scrivner. His purpose was as much his own as it was military, yet another personal score to be settled. Scrivner was the rancher from whom he’d leased grazeland along the Arroyo Colorado. When he was recruited by Garza, and moved his family to Matamoras, Scrivner had declared him in violation of their agreement for not making the July lease payment. Before he could arrange to sell his small herd, Scrivner had gotten a court order for forfeiture of the cows as recompense for a broken lease. He meant to exact from Scrivner a judgment of his own.

  The ranch of Aniceto Pizana, the Tejano who had declined to join the Army of Liberation, was also on the Arroyo Colorado. Vasquez had briefly toyed with the idea of first calling on Pizana and enlisting him in the raid on Scrivner. Yet he recalled the day Pizana had refused Garza’s offer as a junta leader, pleading the Anglos would kill his sons in retaliation. Pizana was an old and trusted friend, a man with an abiding hatred of gringos, but Vasquez knew his courage was weakened by fear for his children. He decided to leave Aniceto Pizana in peace.

  A mile or so from Scrivner’s ranch, the clatter of an automobile sounded on the road ahead. Headlamps suddenly flashed as a Model-T Ford rounded a curve and caught the horsemen in a glare of light. The driver frantically beeped his horn and the riders reined their startled horses into the brush. Vasquez cursed as two of the raiders opened fire with pistols, drilling holes through the rear fenders of the car. Then, as suddenly as it appeared, the Model-T was gone even as gunshots echoed through the still night air. The horsemen regrouped on the road.

  “Imbecils!” Vasquez roared, gesturing wildly with his arm. “Scrivner will hear the gunfire. Andale! Andale!”

  The raiders strung out behind as he whipped his horse into a gallop. A few minutes later they thundered into the ranch compound, expecting to be met by armed resistance. Instead, they found the main house dark and silent, and Scrivner’s vaqueros milling around outside the bunkhouse. Vasquez reined his horse to a skidding halt, vaulting out of the saddle, and led several raiders into the main house. They discovered rumpled bed clothing, still warm to the touch, and signs of people overturning kitchen furniture as they hastily ran from the house. The backdoor stood wide open.

  Vasquez was in a rage. He knew that Scrivner and his family, alerted by the gunshots, had escaped into the mesquite thickets not far from the rear of the house. In the darkness, with nothing more than faint starlight, a search of the dense thickets would be futile. He had fully intended to hang Scrivner and the rancher’s two oldest sons, one seventeen and the other eighteen. But now, with the family hiding somewhere in acres of thorny mesquite, his long ride from the border had been for nothing. He felt like shooting somebody.

  The raiders were ordered to torch every building in the compound. Scrivner’s vaqueros were marched to the riverbank, where Vasquez waited in a mounting fury. He gave an impassioned speech about liberty and ridding Texas of gringos, and called on them to join in the rebellion. As flames consumed the main house and the outbuildings, they kept their eyes fixed on the ground, and not one stepped forward. He was tempted to shoot them all, but reason prevailed over anger. He cursed them for cowards and stalked away.

  Luis Vasquez was a man who learned from his mistakes. On the last raid, he had stolen the horse herd, which slowed his retreat to the Rio Grande. The result was an ambush by the Rangers at the river crossing, and eight men killed. Tonight, wiser for the experience, he had the horse herd released from the corral and choused into the brush. The compound was a blazing inferno as he led his men toward the border.

  He swore he would one day return to kill Joe Scrivner.

  Gordon and Maddox again rode with Captain Ransom. To the rear, in a convoy of commandeered automobiles, were the Rangers of Company A. Their destination, along rutted country roads, was Rio Hondo.

  The first call had come in a few minutes before ten o’clock. A man who identified himself as Charles Winsfield reported twenty or thirty armed men on horseback. All of them were Mexican, he said, and they had fired on his car as he was leaving the ranch of his brother-in-law, Joe Scrivner. Without stopping, he’d driven to his home in Rio Hondo and called the Rangers. He was desperate with fear for his sister and her family.

  Immediately afterward, calls had come in from the town marshals in Los Indios and Santa Maria. They reported attacks by Mexicans on two ranchers, with homes burned and five people killed. The raiders had retreated across the Rio Grande into Mexico, which eliminated any chance of catching them. Army patrols were already active in the area, and Ranger Company B was dispatched to investigate. Bud Grant, the rancher who had previously assisted the Rangers, was reported to have survived the attack.

  Gordon had decided to investigate the incident outside Rio Hondo. The likelihood of intercepting the raiders was remote, but he nonetheless felt it might uncover new leads. He and Maddox, with Bob Ransom and Company A, commandeered cars from local businessmen and headed north. To cover any contingency, the Ranger companies under Captain Sanders and Captain Morris remained in Brownsville, held in reserve. Their concern was that more raids might occur before the night ended.

  “Goddamn greasers,” Ransom swore as they rattled along a dirt road. “Hit and run, and skip back across the border. Haven’t got the guts to stand and fight.”

  “Always been that way,” Maddox said. “They’ve been raidin’ across the river since God was a pup. Nothing’s changed.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure,” Gordon said. “Garza�
��s off to who knows where and they’re still pulling raids. What’s that tell you?”

  “Well, maybe they’re a little better organized. Garza probably left Vasquez in charge.”

  “Hoyt, I’d say they’re a whole lot better organized.”

  The cars halted in the yard of Scrivner’s ranch shortly before midnight. Every building in the compound had been consumed by flame, reduced to smoldering rubble. Scrivner and his wife, with their three children, stood in their nightclothes, silhouetted against the glow of embers. They were talking with a man dressed in shirt and trousers and a battered Stetson, a pistol strapped on his hip. He walked forward, a badge glinting on his chest.

  “Glad you fellers got here,” he said. “I’m Sam Burnett, town marshal of Rio Hondo. These folks have been hit hard.”

  “Captain Ransom, Texas Rangers,” Ransom said. “This here’s Sergeant Maddox and Special Agent Gordon. Anybody killed?”

  “Wonder they wasn’t,” Burnett said. “Mr. Scrivner and his family lit out for the mesquite thickets. Stayed hid till it was over.”

  “Anybody identify the raiders?”

  “Some of the vaqueros said the leader was Luis Vasquez. He used to run a few cows down the river a ways. Leased the land from Mr. Scrivner.”

  “Damn right, it’s Vasquez!” Scrivner said in a loud voice. “I took his cows when he welched on the lease. Dirty bastard come back and burnt me out.”

  “Sorry about your loss, Mr. Scrivner.” Gordon moved forward, nodding to the rancher. “We’ve identified Vasquez as an officer in this rebel movement, the Army of Liberation. Do you know of anyone he might have recruited from Rio Hondo?”

  Scrivner scowled. “Him and Aniceto Pizana was thick as fleas. Wouldn’t surprise me if they wasn’t still in cahoots.”

  “Who’s Aniceto Pizana?”

  “Got a little cow outfit up the road about five miles. All the greasers hereabouts think he walks on water.”

  “Why is that?”

  “ ’Cause he don’t like anybody that ain’t Mex’can.”