bandolier.
The patio was unusually full of shouting men saddling horses. I saw Don
Petronilo, half dressed, at his door, his mistress buckling on his
sword. Juan Santillanes was pulling at his trousers with furious haste.
There was a steady rattle of clicks as cartridges slipped into rifles.
A score of soldiers ran to and fro aimlessly, asking everyone where
something was.
I don't think we any of us really believed it. The little square of
quiet sky over the patio gave promise of another hot day. Roosters
crowed. A cow that was being milked bellowed. I felt hungry.
"How near are they?" I asked.
"Near."
"But the outpost--the guard at the Puerta?"
"Asleep," Fernando said, as he strapped on his cartridge-belt.
Pablo Arriola clanked in, crippled by his big spurs.
"A little bunch of twelve rode up. Our men thought it was only the
daily reconnaissance. So after they drove them back, the Puerta guard
sat down to breakfast. Then Argumedo himself and
hundreds--hundreds----"
"But twenty-five could hold that pass against an army until the rest got
there...."
"They're already past the Puerta," said Pablo, shouldering his saddle.
He went out.
"The --------!" swore Juan Santillanes, spinning the chambers of his
revolver. "Wait till I get at them!"
"Now meester's going to see some of those shots he wanted," cried Gil
Tomas. "How about it, meester? Feel scared?"
Somehow the whole business didn't seem real. I said to myself, "You
lucky devil, you're actually going to see a fight. That will round out
the story." I loaded my camera and hurried out in front of the house.
There was nothing much to see there. A blinding sun rose right in the
Puerta. Over the leagues and leagues of dark desert to the east nothing
lived but the morning light. Not a movement. Not a sound. Yet
somewhere out there a mere handful of men were desperately trying to
hold off an army.
Thin smoke floated up in the breathless air from the houses of the
peons. It was so still that the grinding of _tortilla_ meal between two
stones was distinctly audible--and the slow, minor song of some woman at
her work way around the Casa Grande. Sheep were maaing to be let out of
the corral. On the road to Santo Domingo, so far away that they were
mere colored accents in the desert, the four peddlers sauntered behind
their burros. Little knots of peons were gathered in front of the
hacienda, pointing and looking east. And around the gate of the big
enclosure where the soldiers were quartered a few troopers held their
horses by the bridle. That was all.
Occasionally the door of the Casa Grande vomited mounted men--two or
three at a time--who galloped down the Puerta road with their rifles in
their hands. I could follow them as they rose and fell over the waves of
the desert, growing smaller all the time, until they mounted the last
roll--where the white dust they kicked up caught the fierce light of the
sun, and the eye couldn't stand it. They had taken my horse, and Juan
Vallejo didn't have one. He stood beside me, cocking and firing his
empty rifle.
"Look!" he shouted suddenly. The western face of the mountains that
flanked the Puerta was in shadow still. Along their base, to the north
and to the south, too, wriggled little thin lines of dust. They
lengthened out--Oh so slowly. At first there was only one in each
direction; then two others began, farther down, nearer, advancing
relentlessly, like raveling in a stocking--like a crack in thin glass.
The enemy, spreading wide around the battle, to take us in the flank!
Still the little knots of troopers poured from the Casa Grande, and
spurred away. Pablo Arriola went, and Nicanor, waving to me brightly as
they passed. Longinos Gueereca rocketed out on his great _tordillo_
horse, yet only half broken. The big gray put down his head and
buck-jumped four times across the square.
"To-morrow for the mines," yelled 'Gino over his shoulder. "I'm very
busy to-day--very rich--the lost mines of----" But he was too far away
for me to hear. Martinez followed him, shouting to me with a grin that
he felt scared to death. Then others. It made about thirty so far. I
remember that most of them wore automobile goggles. Don Petronilo sat
his horse, with field-glasses to his eyes. I looked again at the lines
of dust--they were curving slowly down, the sun glorifying them--like
scimitars.
Don Tomas galloped past, Gil Tomas at his heels. But someone was coming.
A little running horse appeared on the rise, headed our way, the rider
outlined in a radiant dust. He was going at furious speed, dipping and
rising over the rolling land.... And as he spurred wildly up the little
hill where we stood, we saw a horror. A fan-shaped cascade of blood
poured from the front of him. The lower part of his mouth was quite
shot away by a soft-nosed bullet. He reined up beside the colonel, and
tried earnestly, terribly, to tell him something; but nothing
intelligible issued from the ruin. Tears poured down the poor fellow's
cheeks. He gave a hoarse cry, and, driving his spurs deep in his horse,
fled up the Santo Domingo road. Others were coming, too, on the dead
run--those who had been the Puerta guard. Two or three passed right
through the hacienda without stopping. The rest threw themselves upon
Don Petronilo, in a passion of rage. "More ammunition!" they cried.
"More cartridges!"
Don Petronilo looked away. "There isn't any!" The men went mad,
cursing and hurling their guns on the ground.
"Twenty-five more men at the Puerta," shouted the Colonel. In a few
minutes half of the new men galloped out of their cuartel and took the
eastern road. The near ends of the dust lines were now lost to view
behind a swell of ground.
"Why don't you send them all, Don Petronilo?" I yelled.
"Because, my young friend, a whole company of _colorados_ is riding down
that arroyo. You can't see them from there, but I can."
He, had no sooner spoken than a rider whirled around the corner of the
house, pointing back over his shoulder to the south, whence he had come.
"They're coming that way, too," he cried. "Thousands! Through the other
pass! Redondo had only five men on guard! They took them prisoner and
got into the valley before he knew it!"
"_Valgame Dios!_" muttered Don Petronilo.
We turned south. Above the umber rise of desert loomed a mighty cloud
of white dust, shining in the sun, like the biblical pillar of smoke.
"The rest of you fellows get out there and hold them off!" The last
twenty-five leaped to their saddles and started southward.
Then suddenly the great gate of the walled square belched men and
horses--men without rifles. The disarmed _gente_ of Salazar! They
milled around as if in a panic. "Give us our rifles!" they shouted.
"Where's our ammunition?"
"Your rifles are in the cuartel," answered the Colonel, "but your
cartridges are out there killing _colorados_!"
A great cry went up. "They've taken away our arms! They want to murder
us!"
"How can we fight, man? What can we do without rifles?" screamed one
man in Don Petronilo's face.
"Come on, _companeros_! Let's go out and strangle 'em with our hands,
the--_colorados_!" yelled one. Five struck spurs into their horses, and
sped furiously toward the Puerta--without arms, without hope. It was
magnificent!
"We'll all get killed!" said another. "Come on!" And the other
forty-five swept wildly out on the road to Santo Domingo.
The twenty-five recruits that had been ordered to hold the southern side
had ridden out about half a mile, and there stopped, seeming uncertain
what to do. Now they caught sight of the disarmed fifty galloping for
the mountains.
"The _companeros_ are fleeing! The _companeros_ are fleeing!"
For a moment there was a sharp exchange of cries. They looked at the
dust cloud towering over them. They thought of the mighty army of
merciless devils who made it. They hesitated, broke--and fled furiously
through the chaparral toward the mountains.
I suddenly discovered that I had been hearing shooting for some time.
It sounded immensely far away--like nothing so much as a clicking
typewriter. Even while it held our attention it grew. The little
trivial pricking of rifles deepened and became serious. Out in front
now it was practically continuous--almost the roll of a snare-drum.
Don Petronilo was a little white. He called Apolinario and told him to
harness the mules to the coach.
"If anything happens that we get the worst of it," he said lightly to
Juan Vallejo, "call my woman and you and Reed go with her in the coach.
Come on, Fernando--Juanito!" Silveyra and Juan Santillanes spurred out;
the three vanished toward the Puerta.
We could see them now, hundreds of little black figures riding
everywhere through the chaparral; the desert swarmed with them. Savage
Indian yells reached us. A spent bullet droned overhead, then another;
then one unspent, and then a whole flock singing fiercely. Thud! went
the adobe walls as bits of clay flew. Peons and their women rushed from
house to house, distracted with fear. A trooper, his face black with
powder and hateful with killing and terror, galloped past, shouting that
all was lost....
Apolinario hurried out the mules with their harness on their backs, and
began to hitch them to the coach. His hands trembled. He dropped a
trace, picked it up, and dropped it again. He shook all over. All at
once he threw the harness to the ground and took to his heels. Juan and
I rushed forward. Just then a stray bullet took the off mule in the
rump. Nervous already, the animals plunged wildly. The wagon tongue
snapped with the report of a rifle. The mules raced madly north into
the desert.
And then came the rout, a wild huddle of troopers all together, lashing
their terrified horses. They passed us without stopping, without
noticing, all blood and sweat and blackness. Don Tomas, Pablo Arriola,
and after them little Gil Tomas, his horse staggering and falling dead
right in front of us. Bullets whipped the wall on all sides of us.
"Come on, meester!" said Juan. "Let's go!" We began to run. As I
panted up the steep opposite bank of the arroyo, I looked back. Gil
Tomas was right behind me, with a red- and black-checked serape round
his shoulders. Don Petronilo came in sight, shooting back over his
shoulder, with Juan Santillanes at his side. In front raced Fernando
Silveyra, bending low over his horse's neck. All around the hacienda
was a ring of galloping, shooting, yelling men; and as far as the eye
could reach, on every rise of the desert, came more.
*CHAPTER XI*
*MEESTER'S FLIGHT*
Juan Vallejo was already far ahead, running doggedly with his rifle in
one hand. I shouted to him to turn off the high road, and he obeyed,
without looking back. I followed. It was a straight path through the
desert toward the mountains. The desert was as bald as a billiard table
here. We could be seen for miles. My camera got between my legs. I
dropped it. My overcoat became a terrible weight. I shook it off. We
could see the _companeros_ fleeing wildly up the Santo Domingo road.
Beyond them unexpectedly appeared a wave of galloping men--the flanking
party from the south. The shooting broke out again--and then pursuers
and pursued vanished around the corner of a little hill. Thank God the
path was diverging from the road!
I ran on--ran and ran and ran, until I could run no more. Then I walked
a few steps and ran again. I was sobbing instead of breathing. Awful
cramps gripped my legs. Here there was more chaparral, more brush, and
the foothills of the western mountains were near. But the entire length
of the path was visible from behind. Juan Vallejo had reached the
foothills, half a mile ahead. I saw him crawling up a little rise.
Suddenly three armed horsemen swept in behind him, and raised a shout.
He looked around, threw his rifle far into the brush, and fled for his
life. They shot at him, but stopped to recover the rifle. He
disappeared over the crest, and then they did, too.
I ran. I wondered what time it was. I wasn't very frightened.
Everything still was so unreal, like a page out of Richard Harding
Davis. It just seemed to me that if I didn't get away I wouldn't be
doing my job well. I kept thinking to myself: "Well, this is certainly
an experience. I'm going to have something to write about."
Then came yells and hoofs drumming in the rear. About a hundred yards
behind ran little Gil Tomas, the ends of his gay serape flying out
straight. And about a hundred yards behind him rode two black men with
crossed bandoliers and rifles in their hands. They shot. Gil Tomas
raised a ghastly little Indian face to me, and ran on. Again they shot.
One bullet z-z-z-m-m-d by my head. The boy staggered, stopped, wheeled,
and doubled suddenly into the chaparral. They turned after him. I saw
the foremost horse's hoofs strike him. The _colorados_ jerked their
mounts to their haunches over him, shooting down again and again....
I ran into the chaparral, topped a little hill, tripped on a mesquite
root, fell, rolled down a sandy incline, and landed in a little arroyo.
Dense mesquite covered the place. Before I could stir the _colorados_
came plunging down the hillside. "There he goes!" they yelled, and,
jumping their horses over the arroyo not ten feet from where I lay,
galloped off into the desert. I suddenly fell asleep.
I couldn't have slept very long, for when I woke the sun was still in
about the same place, and a few scattered shots could be heard way to
the west, in the direction of Santo Domingo. I stared up through the
brush tangle into the hot sky, where one great vulture slowly circled
over me, wondering whether or not I was dead. Not twenty paces away a
barefooted Indian with a rifle crouched on his motionless horse. He
looked up at the vulture, and then searched the face of the desert. I
lay still. I couldn't tell whether he was one of ours or not. After a
little time he jogged slowly north over a hill and disappeared.
I waited about half an hour before crawling out of the arroyo. In the
direction of the hacienda they were still shooting--making sure of the
dead, I afterward learned. I couldn't see it. The little valley in
which I was ran roughly east and west. I traveled westward, toward the
sierra. But it was still too near the fatal path. I stooped low and
ran up over the hill, without looking back. Beyond was another, higher,
and then another still. Running over the hills, walking in the
sheltered valleys, I bore steadily northwest, toward the always-nearing
mountains. Soon there were no more sounds. The sun burned fiercely
down, and the long ridges of desolate country wavered in the heat. High
chaparral tore my clothes and face. Underfoot were cactuses, century
plants, and the murderous _espadas_, whose long, interlaced spikes
slashed my boots, drawing blood at every step; and beneath them sand and
jagged stones. It was terrible going. The big still forms of Spanish
bayonet, astonishingly like men, stood up all around the skyline. I
stood stiffly for a moment on the top of a high hill, in a clump of
them, looking back. The hacienda was already so far away that it was
only a white blur in the immeasurable reaches of the desert. A thin line
of dust moved from it toward the Puerta--the _colorados_ taking back
their dead to Mapimi.
Then my heart gave a jump. A man was coming silently up the valley. He
had a green serape over one arm, and nothing on his head but a
blood-clotted handkerchief. His bare legs were covered with blood from
the _espadas_. He caught sight of me all of a sudden, and stood still;
after a pause he beckoned. I went down to where he was; he never said a
word, but led the way back down the valley. About a hundred yards
farther he stopped and pointed. A dead horse sprawled in the sand, its
stiff legs in the air; beside it lay a man, disemboweled by a knife or a
sword--evidently a _colorado_, because his cartridge-belt was almost
full. The man with the green serape produced a wicked-looking dagger,
still ruddy with blood, fell on his knees, and began to dig among the
_espadas_. I brought rocks. We cut a branch of mesquite and made a
cleft cross out of it. And so we buried him.
"Where are you bound, _companero_?" I asked.
"For the sierra," he answered. "And you?"
I pointed north, where I knew the Gueerecas' ranch lay.
"The Pelayo is over that way--eight leagues."
"What is the Pelayo?"
"Another hacienda. There are some of ours at the Pelayo, I think...."
We parted with an "_adios_."
For hours I went on, running over the hilltops, staggering through the
cruel _espadas_, slipping down the steep sides of dried river beds.
There was no water. I hadn't eaten or drunk. It was intensely hot.
About eleven I rounded the shoulder of a mountain and saw the small gray
patch that was Bruquilla. Here passed the Camino Real, and the desert
lay flat and open. A mile away a tiny horseman jogged along. He seemed
to see me; he pulled up short and looked in my direction a long time. I
stood perfectly motionless. Pretty soon he went on, getting smaller and
smaller, until at last there was nothing but a little puff of dust.
There was no other sign of life for miles and miles. I bent low and ran
along the side of the road, where there was no dust. Half a league
westward lay the Gueereca's house, hidden in the gigantic row of alamo
trees that fringed its running brook. A long way off I could see a
little red spot on the top of the low hill beside it; when I came
nearer, I saw it was father Gueereca, staring toward the east. He came
running down when he saw me, clenching his hands.
"What has passed? What has passed? Is it true that the _colorados_
have taken the Cadena?"
I told him briefly what had happened.
"And Longinos?" he cried, wrenching at my arm. "Have you seen Longinos?"
"No," I said. "The _companeros_ all retreated to Santo Domingo."
"You must not stay here," said the old man, trembling.
"Let me have some water--I can hardly speak."
"Yes, yes, drink. There is the brook. The _colorados_ must not find
you here." The old man looked around with anguish at the little rancho
he had fought so hard to gain. "They would destroy us all."
Just then the old mother appeared in the doorway.
"Come here, Juan Reed," she cried. "Where is my boy? Why doesn't he
come? Is he dead? Tell me the truth!"
"Oh, I think they all got away all right," I told her.
"And you! Have you eaten? Have you breakfasted?"
"I haven't had a drop of water since last night, nor any food. And I
came all the way from La Cadena on foot."
"Poor little boy! Poor little boy!" she wailed, putting her arms around
me. "Sit down now, and I will cook you something."
Old Gueereca bit his lip in an agony of apprehension. Finally
hospitality won.
"My house is at your orders," he muttered. "But hurry! Hurry! You
must not be seen here! I will go up on the hill and watch for dust!"
I drank several quarts of water and ate four fried eggs and some cheese.
The old man had returned and was fidgeting around.
"I sent all my children to Jarral Grande," he said. "We heard this
morning. The whole valley is fleeing to the mountains. Are you ready?"
"Stay here," invited the Senora. "We will hide you from the _colorados_
until Longinos comes home!"
Her husband screamed at her. "Are you mad? He mustn't be found here!
Are you ready now? Come on then!"
I limped along down through a burnt, yellow cornfield. "Follow this
path," said the old man, "through those two fields and the chaparral.
It will take you to the highroad to the Pelayo. May you go well!" We
shook hands, and a moment later I saw him shuffling back up the hill
with flapping sandals.
I crossed an immense valley covered with mesquite as high as my head.
Twice horsemen passed, probably only _pacificos_, but I took no chances.
Beyond that valley lay another, about seven miles long. Now there were
bare mountains all around, and ahead loomed a range of fantastic white,
pink, and yellow hills. After about four hours, with stiff legs and
bloody feet, a backache and a spinning head, I rounded these and came in
sight of the alamo trees and low adobe walls of the Hacienda del Pelayo.
The peons gathered around, listening to my story.
"_Que carrai-i-i-i!_" they murmured. "But it is impossible to walk from
La Cadena in one day! _Pobrecito_! You must be tired! Come now and
eat. And to-night there will be a bed."
"My house is yours," said Don Felipe, the blacksmith. "But are you quite
sure the _colorados_ are not coming this way? The last time they paid
us a visit" (he pointed to the blackened walls of the Casa Grande) "they
killed four _pacificos_ who refused to join them." He put his arm
through mine. "Come now, _amigo_, and eat."
"If there were only some place to bathe first!"
At this they smiled and led me behind the hacienda, along a little
stream overhung with willows, whose banks were the most vivid green.
The water gushed out from under a high wall, and over that wall reared
the gnarled branches of a giant alamo. We entered a little door; there
they left me.
The ground inside sloped sharply up, and the wall--it was faded
pink--followed the contour of the land. Sunk in the middle of the
enclosure was a pool of crystal water. The bottom was white sand. At
one end of the pool the water fountained up from a hole in the bottom.
A faint steam rose from the surface. It was hot water.
There was a man already standing up to his neck in the water, a man with
a circle shaved on the top of his head.
"Senor," he said, "are you a Catholic?"
"No."
"Thank God," he returned briefly. "We Catholics are liable to be
intolerant. Are you a Mexican?"
"No, senor."
"It is well," he said, smiling sadly. "I am a priest and a Spaniard. I
have been made to understand that I am not wanted in this beautiful
land, senor. God is good. But He is better in Spain than He is in
Mexico...."
I let myself slowly down into the pellucid, hot depths. The pain and the
soreness and the weariness fled shuddering up my body. I felt like a
disembodied spirit. Floating there in the warm embrace of that marvelous
pool, with the crooked gray branches of the alamo above our heads, we
discussed philosophy. The fierce sky cooled slowly, and the rich
sunlight climbed little by little up the pink wall.
Don Felipe insisted that I sleep in his house, in his bed. This bed
consisted of an iron frame with loose wooden slats stretched across it.
Over these was laid one tattered blanket. My clothing covered me. Don
Felipe, his wife, his grown son and daughter, his two small infants, all
of whom had been accustomed to use the bed, lay down upon the soft
floor. There were also two sick persons in the room--a very old man
covered with red spots, too far gone to speak, and a boy with
extraordinarily swollen tonsils. Occasionally a centenarian hag entered
and ministered unto the patients. Her method of treatment was simple.
With the old man she merely heated a piece of iron at the candle and
touched the spots. For the boy's case she made a paste of corn-meal and
lard, and gently rubbed his elbows with it, loudly saying prayers. This
went on at intervals all night. Between treatments the babies would
wake up at intervals and insist upon being nursed.... The door was shut
early in the evening, and windows there were none.
Now all this hospitality meant a real sacrifice to Don Felipe,
especially the meals, at which he unlocked a tin trunk and brought me
with all reverence his precious sugar and coffee. He was, like all
peons, incredibly poor and lavishly hospitable. The giving up of his
bed was a mark of the highest honor, too. But when I tried to pay him
in the morning he wouldn't hear of it.
"My house is yours," he repeated. "'A stranger might be God,' as we
say."
Finally I told him that I wanted him to buy me some tobacco, and he took
the money. I knew then that it would go to the right place, for a
Mexican can be trusted never to carry out a commission. He is
delightfully irresponsible.
At six o'clock in the morning I set out for Santo Domingo in a
two-wheeled cart driven by an old peon named Froilan Mendarez. We
avoided the main road, jolting along by a mere track that led behind a
range of hills. After we'd traveled for about an hour, I had an
unpleasant thought.
"What if the _companeros_ fled beyond Santo Domingo and the _colorados_
are there?"
"What indeed?" murmured Froilan, chirruping to the mule.
"But if they are, what'll we do?"
Froilan thought a minute. "We might say we were cousins to President
Huerta," he suggested, without a smile. Froilan was a barefooted peon,
his face and hands incredibly damaged by age and dirt; I was a ragged
Gringo....
We jogged on for several hours. At one place an armed man started out
of the brush and hailed us. His lips were split and leathery with
thirst. The _espadas_ had slashed his legs terribly. He had escaped
over the Sierra, climbing and slipping all night. We gave him all the
water and food we had, and he went on toward the Pelayo.
Long after noon our cart topped the last desert rise, and we saw
sleeping below us the long spread-out hacienda of Santo Domingo, with
its clump of tall alamos like palm trees around the oasis-like spring.
My heart was in my mouth as we drove down. In the big _ribota_ court
the peons were playing hand ball. Up from the spring moved the long
line of water carriers. A fire sent up thin smoke among the trees.
We came upon an aged peon carrying fagots. "No," he said, "there had
been no _colorados_. The Maderistas? Yes, they had come last
night--hundreds of them, all running. But at dawn they had gone back to
La Cadena to 'lift the fields' (bury the dead)."
From around the fire under the alamos came a great shout: "The meester!
Here comes the meester! _Que tal, companero_? How did you escape?" It
was my old friends, the peddlers. They crowded around eagerly,
questioning, shaking my hand, throwing their arms around me.
"Ah, but that was close! _Carramba_, but I was lucky! Did I know that
Longinos Gueereca was killed? Yes, but he shot six _colorados_ before
they got him. And Martinez also, and Nicanor, and Redondo."
I felt sick. Sick to think of so many useless deaths in such a petty
fight. Blithe, beautiful Martinez; 'Gino Gueereca, whom I had learned
to love so much; Redondo, whose girl was even then on her way to
Chihuahua to buy her wedding dress; and jolly Nicanor. It seems that
when Redondo found that his flank had been turned his troop deserted
him; so he galloped alone toward La Cadena, and was caught by three
hundred _colorados_. They literally shot him to pieces. 'Gino, and Luis
Martinez, and Nicanor, with five others, held the eastward side of the
hacienda unaided until their cartridges were gone, and they were
surrounded by a ring of shooting men. Then they died. The _colorados_
carried off the Colonel's woman.
"But there's a man who's been through it all," said one of the peddlers.
"He fought till his last cartridge was gone, and then cut his way
through the enemy with a saber."
I looked around. Surrounded by a ring of gaping peons, his lifted arm
illustrating the great deed, was--Apolinario! He caught sight of me,
nodded coldly, as to one who has run from the fight, and went on with
his recital.
All through the long afternoon Froilan and I played _ribota_ with the
peons. It was a drowsy, peaceful day. A gentle wind rustled the high
branches of the great trees, and the late sun, from behind the hill that
is back of Santo Domingo, warmed with color their lofty tops.
It was a strange sunset. The sky became overcast with light cloud
toward the end of the afternoon. First it turned pink, then scarlet,
then of a sudden the whole firmament became a deep, bloody red.
An immense drunken man--an Indian about seven feet tall--staggered out
in the open ground near the _ribota_ court with a violin in his hand.
He tucked it under his chin and sawed raggedly on the strings,
staggering to and fro as he played. Then a little one-armed dwarf
sprang out of the crowd of peons and began to dance. A dense throng
made a circle around the two, roaring with mirth.
And just at that moment there appeared against the bloody sky, over the
eastern hill, the broken, defeated men--on horseback and on foot,
wounded and whole, weary, sick, disheartened, reeling and limping down
to Santo Domingo....
*CHAPTER XII*
*ELIZABETTA*
So, against a crimson sky, the beaten, exhausted soldiers came down the
hill. Some rode, their horses hanging weary heads--occasionally two on
a horse. Others walked, with bloody bandages around their foreheads and
arms. Cartridge-belts were empty, rifles gone. Their hands and faces
were foul with sweaty dirt and stained still with powder. Beyond the
hill, across the twenty-mile arid waste that lay between us and La
Cadena, they straggled. There were not more than fifty left, including
the women--the rest had dispersed in the barren mountains and the folds
of the desert--but they stretched out for miles; it took hours for them
to arrive.
Don Petronilo came in front, with lowered face and folded arms, the
reins hanging loose upon the neck of his swaying, stumbling horse.
Right behind him came Juan Santillanes, gaunt and white, his face years
older. Fernando Silveyra, all rags, dragged along at his saddle. As
they waded the shallow stream they looked up and saw me. Don Petronilo
weakly waved his hand; Fernando shouted, "Why, there's meester! How did
you escape? We thought sure they had shot you."
"I ran a race with the goats," I answered. Juan gave a laugh. "Scared
to death, eh?"
The horses thrust eager muzzles into the stream, sucking fiercely. Juan
cruelly spurred across, and we fell into each other's arms. But Don
Petronilo dismounted in the water, dully, as if in a dream, and, wading
up to the tops of his boots, came to where I was.
He was weeping. His expression didn't change, but slow, big tears fell
silently down his cheeks.
"The _colorados_ captured his wife!" murmured Juan in my ear.
I was filled with pity for the man.
"It is a terrible thing, _mi Coronel_," I said gently, "to feel the
responsibility for all these brave fellows who died. But it was not
your fault."
"It is not that," he replied slowly, staring through tears at the
pitiful company crawling down from the desert.
"I, too, had many friends who died in the battle," I went on. "But they
died gloriously, fighting for their country."
"I do not weep for them," he said, twisting his hands together. "This
day I have lost all that is dear to me. They took my woman who was mine,
and my commission and all my papers, and all my money. But I am
wrenched with grief when I think of my silver spurs inlaid with gold,
which I bought only last year in Mapimi!" He turned away, overcome.
And now the peons began to come down from their houses, with pitying
cries and loving offers. They threw their arms around the soldiers'
necks, assisting the wounded, patting them shyly on the shoulders and
calling them "brave." Desperately poor themselves, they offered food,
and beds, and fodder for the horses, inviting them to stay at Santo
Domingo until they should become well. I already had a place to sleep.
Don Pedro, the chief goatherd, had given me his room and his bed in a
gush of warm-hearted generosity, and had removed himself and his family
to the kitchen. He did so without hope of recompense, for he thought I
had no money. And now everywhere men, women and children left their
houses to make way for the defeated and weary troops.
Fernando, Juan and I went over and begged some tobacco from the four
peddlers camped under the trees beside the spring. They had made no
sales for a week, and were almost starving, but they loaded us lavishly
with _macuche_. We talked of the battle, lying there on our elbows
watching the shattered remnants of the garrison top the hill.
"You have heard that 'Gino Gueereca fell," said Fernando. "Well, I saw
him. His big gray horse that he rode for the first time was terrified
by the bridle and saddle. But once he came where the bullets were
flying and the guns roaring, he steadied at once. Pure race, that
horse.... His fathers must have been all warriors. Around 'Gino were
four or five more heroes, with almost all their cartridges gone. They
fought until on the front and on both sides double galloping lines of
_colorados_ closed in. 'Gino was standing beside his horse--suddenly a
score of shots hit the animal all at once, and he sighed and fell over.
The rest ceased firing in a sort of panic. 'We're lost!' they cried.
'Run while there is yet a chance!' 'Gino shook his smoking rifle at
them. 'No,' he shouted. 'Give the _companeros_ time to get away!'
Shortly after that they closed around him, and I never saw him until we
buried his body this morning.... It was the devil's hell out there.
The rifles were so hot you couldn't touch the barrels, and the whirling
haze that belched out when they shot twisted everything like a
mirage...."
Juan broke in. "We rode straight out toward the Puerta when the retreat
began, but almost immediately we saw it was no use. The _colorados_
broke over our little handfuls of men like waves of the sea. Martinez
was just ahead. He never had a chance even to fire his gun--and this
was his first battle, too. They hit him as he rode.... I thought how
you and Martinez loved each other. You used to talk together at night
so warmly, and never wished to leave each other to sleep...."
Now the tall, naked tops of the trees had dulled with the passing of the
light, and seemed to stand still the swarming stars in the deep dome
overhead. The peddlers had kindled their tiny fire; the low, contented
murmur of their gossip floated to us. Open doors of the peons' huts
shed wavering candlelight. Up from the river wound a silent line of
black-robed girls with water-jars on their heads. Women ground their
corn-meal with a monotonous stony scraping. Dogs barked. Drumming hoofs
marked the passing of the _caballada_ to the river. Along the ledge in
front of Don Pedro's house the warriors smoked and fought the battle
over again, stamping around and shouting descriptive matter. "I took my
rifle by the barrel and smashed in his grinning face, just as----" some
one was narrating, with gestures. The peons squatted around,
breathlessly listening.... And still the ghastly procession of the
defeated straggled down the road and across the river.
It was not yet quite dark. I wandered down to the bank to watch them,
in the vague hope of finding some of my _compadres_ who were still
reported missing. And it was there that I first saw Elizabetta.
There was nothing remarkable about her. I think I noticed her chiefly
because she was one of the few women in that wretched company. She was
a very dark-skinned Indian girl, about twenty-five years old, with the
squat figure of her drudging race, pleasant features, hair hanging
forward over her shoulders in two long plaits, and big, shining teeth
when she smiled. I never did find out whether she had been just a peon
woman working around La Cadena when the attack had come, or whether she
was a _vieja_--a camp follower of the army.
Now she was trudging stolidly along in the dust behind Captain Felix
Romero's horse--and had trudged so for thirty miles. He never spoke to
her, never looked back, but rode on unconcernedly. Sometimes he would
get tired of carrying his rifle and hand it back to her to carry, with a
careless "Here! Take this!" I found out later that when they returned
to La Cadena after the battle to bury the dead he had found her
wandering aimlessly in the hacienda, apparently out of her mind; and
that, needing a woman, he had ordered her to follow him. Which she did,
unquestioningly, after the custom of her sex and country.
Captain Felix let his horse drink. Elizabetta halted, too, knelt and
plunged her face into the water.
"Come on," ordered the Captain. "_Andale!_" She rose without a word
and waded through the stream. In the same order they climbed the near
bank, and there the Captain dismounted, held out his hand for the rifle
she carried, and said, "Get me my supper!" Then he strolled away toward
the houses where the rest of the soldiers sat.
Elizabetta fell upon her knees and gathered twigs for her fire. Soon
there was a little pile burning. She called a small boy in the harsh,
whining voice that all Mexican women have, "_Aie_! _chamaco_! Fetch me
a little water and corn that I may feed my man!" And, rising upon her
knees above the red glow of the flames, she shook down her long,
straight black hair. She wore a sort of blouse of faded light blue
rough cloth. There was dried blood on the breast of it.
"What a battle, senorita!" I said to her.
Her teeth flashed as she smiled, and yet there was a puzzling vacancy
about her expression. Indians have mask-like faces. Under it I could
see that she was desperately tired and even a little hysterical. But
she spoke tranquilly enough.
"Perfectly," she said. "Are you the Gringo who ran so many miles with
the _colorados_ after you shooting?" And she laughed--catching her
breath in the middle of it as if it hurt.
The _chamaco_ shambled up with an earthen jar of water and an armful of
corn-ears that he tumbled at her feet. Elizabetta unwound from her
shawl the heavy little stone trough that Mexican women carry, and began
mechanically husking the corn into it.
"I do not remember seeing you at La Cadena," I said. "Were you there
long?"
"Too long," she answered simply, without raising her head. And then
suddenly, "Oh, but this war is no game for women!" she cried.
Don Felix loomed up out of the dark, with a cigarette in his mouth.
"My dinner," he growled. "Is it _pronto_?"
"_Luego, luego!_" she answered. He went away again.
"Listen, senor, whoever you are!" said Elizabetta swiftly, looking up to
me. "My lover was killed yesterday in the battle. This man is my man,
but, by God and all the Saints, I can't sleep with him this night. Let
me stay then with you!"
There wasn't a trace of coquetry in her voice. This blundering,
childish spirit had found itself in a situation it couldn't bear, and
had chosen the instinctive way out. I doubt if she even knew herself
why the thought of this new man so revolted her, with her lover scarcely
cold in the ground. I was nothing to her, nor she to me. That was all
that mattered.
I assented, and together we left the fire, the Captain's neglected corn
spilling from the stone trough. And then we met him a few feet into the
darkness.
"My dinner!" he said impatiently. His voice changed. "Where are you
going?"
"I'm going with this senor," Elizabetta answered nervously. "I'm going
to stay with him----"
"You----" began Don Felix, gulping. "You are my woman. _Oiga_, senor,
this is my woman here!"
"Yes," I said. "She is your woman. I have nothing to do with her. But
she is very tired and not well, and I have offered her my bed for the
night."
"This is very bad, senor!" exclaimed the Captain, in a tightening voice.
"You are the guest of this Tropa and the Colonel's friend, but this is
my woman and I want her----"
"Oh!" Elizabetta cried out. "Until the next time, senor!" She caught
my arm and pulled me on.
We had been living in a nightmare of battle and death--all of us. I
think everybody was a little dazed and excited. I know I was.
By this time the peons and soldiers had begun to gather around us, and
as we went on the Captain's voice rose as he retailed his injustice to
the crowd.
"I shall appeal to the Colonel," he was saying. "I shall tell the
Colonel!" He passed us, going toward the Colonel's cuartel, with
averted, mumbling face.
"_Oiga, mi Coronel!_" he cried. "This Gringo has taken away my woman.
It is the grossest insult!"
"Well," returned the Colonel calmly, "if they both want to go, I guess
there isn't anything we can do about it, eh?"
The news had traveled like light. A throng of small boys followed us
close behind, shouting the joyful indelicacies they shout behind rustic
wedding parties. We passed the ledge where the soldiers and the wounded
sat, grinning and making rough, genial remarks as at a marriage. It was
not coarse or suggestive, their banter; it was frank and happy. They
were honestly glad for us.
As we approached Don Pedro's house we were aware of many candles within.
He and his wife and daughter were busy with brooms, sweeping and
resweeping the earthen floor, and sprinkling it with water. They had
put new linen on the bed, and lit the rush candle before the table altar
of the Virgin. Over the doorway hung a festoon of paper blossoms, faded
relics of many a Christmas Eve celebration--for it was winter, and there
were no real flowers.
Don Pedro was radiant with smiles. It made no difference who we were,
or what our relation was. Here were a man and a maid, and to him it was
a bridal.
"May you have a happy night," he said softly, and closed the door. The
frugal Elizabetta immediately made the rounds of the room, extinguishing
all the candles but one.
And then, outside, we heard music beginning to tune up. Some one had
hired the village orchestra to serenade us. Late into the night they
played steadily, right outside our door. In the next house we heard
them moving chairs and tables out of the way; and just before I went to
sleep they began to dance there, economically combining a serenade with
a _baile_.
Without the least embarrassment, Elizabetta lay down beside me on the
bed. Her hand reached for mine. She snuggled against my body for the
comforting human warmth of it, murmured, "Until morning," and went to
sleep. And calmly, sweetly, sleep came to me....
When I woke in the morning she was gone. I opened my door and looked
out. Morning had come dazzlingly, all blue and gold--a heaven of
flame-trimmed big white clouds and windy sky, and the desert brazen and
luminous. Under the ashy bare trees the peddlers' morning fire leaped
horizontal in the wind. The black women, with wind-folded draperies,
crossed the open ground to the river in single file, with red water-jars
on their heads. Cocks crew, goats clamored for milking, and a hundred
horses drummed up the dust as they were driven to water.
Elizabetta was squatted over a little fire near the corner of the house,
patting _tortillas_ for the Captain's breakfast. She smiled as I came
up, and politely asked me if I had slept well. She was quite contented
now; you knew from the way she sang over her work.
Presently the Captain came up in a surly manner and nodded briefly to
me.
"I hope it's ready now," he grunted, taking the _tortillas_ she gave
him. "You take a long time to cook a little breakfast. _Carramba_!
Why is there no coffee?" He moved off, munching. "Get ready," he flung
back over his shoulder. "We go north in an hour."
"Are you going?" I asked curiously. Elizabetta looked at me with
wide-open eyes.
"Of course I am going. _Seguro_! Is he not my man?" She looked after
him admiringly. She was no longer revolted.
"He is my man," she said. "He is very handsome, and very brave. Why,
in the battle the other day----"
Elizabetta had forgotten her lover.
*PART TWO*
*FRANCISCO VILLA*
*CHAPTER I*
*VILLA ACCEPTS A MEDAL*
It was while Villa was in Chihuahua City, two weeks before the advance
on Torreon, that the artillery corps of his army decided to present him
with a gold medal for personal heroism on the field.
In the audience hall of the Governor's palace in Chihuahua, a place of
ceremonial, great luster chandeliers, heavy crimson portieres, and gaudy
American wallpaper, there is a throne for the governor. It is a gilded
chair, with lion's claws for arms, placed upon a dais under a canopy of
crimson velvet, surmounted by a heavy, gilded, wooden cap, which tapers
up to a crown.
The officers of artillery, in smart blue uniforms faced with black
velvet and gold, were solidly banked across one end of the audience
hall, with flashing new swords and their gilt-braided hats stiffly held
under their arms. From the door of that chamber, around the gallery,
down the state staircase, across the grandiose inner court of the
palace, and out through the imposing gates to the street, stood a double
line of soldiers, with their rifles at present arms. Four regimental
bands grouped in one wedged in the crowd. The people of the capital
were massed in solid thousands on the Plaza de Armas before the palace.
"_Ya viene!_" "Here he comes!" "Viva Villa!" "Viva Madero!" "Villa,
the Friend of the Poor!"
The roar began at the back of the crowd and swept like fire in heavy
growing crescendo until it seemed to toss thousands of hats above their
heads. The band in the courtyard struck up the Mexican national air,
and Villa came walking down the street.
He was dressed in an old plain khaki uniform, with several buttons
lacking. He hadn't recently shaved, wore no hat, and his hair had not
been brushed. He walked a little pigeon-toed, humped over, with his
hands in his trousers pockets. As he entered the aisle between the
rigid lines of soldiers he seemed slightly embarrassed, and grinned and
nodded to a _compadre_ here and there in the ranks. At the foot of the
grand staircase, Governor Chao and Secretary of State Terrazzas joined
him in full-dress uniform. The band threw off all restraint, and, as
Villa entered the audience chamber, at a signal from someone in the
balcony of the palace, the great throng in the Plaza de Armas uncovered,
and all the brilliant crowd of officers in the room saluted stiffly.
It was Napoleonic!
Villa hesitated for a minute, pulling his mustache and looking very
uncomfortable, finally gravitated toward the throne, which he tested by
shaking the arms, and then sat down, with the Governor on his right and
the Secretary of State on his left.
Senor Bauche Alcalde stepped forward, raised his right hand to the exact
position which Cicero took when denouncing Catiline, and pronounced a
short discourse, indicting Villa for personal bravery on the field on
six counts, which he mentioned in florid detail. He was followed by the
Chief of Artillery, who said: "The army adores you. We will follow you
wherever you lead. You can be what you desire in Mexico." Then three
other officers spoke in the high-flung, extravagant periods necessary to
Mexican oratory. They called him "The Friend of the Poor," "The
Invincible General," "The Inspirer of Courage and Patriotism," "The Hope
of the Indian Republic." And through it all Villa slouched on the
throne, his mouth hanging open, his little shrewd eyes playing around
the room. Once or twice he yawned, but for the most part he seemed to be
speculating, with some intense interior amusement, like a small boy in
church, what it was all about. He knew, of course, that it was the
proper thing, and perhaps felt a slight vanity that all this
conventional ceremonial was addressed to him. But it bored him just the
same.
Finally, with an impressive gesture, Colonel Servin stepped forward with
the small pasteboard box which held the medal. General Chao nudged
Villa, who stood up. The officers applauded violently; the crowd
outside cheered; the band in the court burst into a triumphant march.
Villa put put both hands eagerly, like a child for a new toy. He could
hardly wait to open the box and see what was inside. An expectant hush
fell upon everyone, even the crowd in the square. Villa looked at the
medal, scratching his head, and, in a reverent silence, said clearly:
"This is a hell of a little thing to give a man for all that heroism you
are talking about!" And the bubble of Empire was pricked then and there
with a great shout of laughter.
They waited for him to speak--to make a conventional address of
acceptance. But as he looked around the room at those brilliant,
educated men, who said that they would die for Villa, the peon, and
meant it, and as he caught sight through the door of the ragged
soldiers, who had forgotten their rigidity and were crowding eagerly
into the corridor with eyes fixed eagerly on the _companero_ that they
loved, he realized something of what the Revolution signified.
Puckering up his face, as he did always when he concentrated intensely,
he leaned across the table in front of him and poured out, in a voice so
low that people could hardly hear: "There is no word to speak. All I
can say is my heart is all to you." Then he nudged Chao and sat down,
spitting violently on the floor; and Chao pronounced the classic
discourse.
*CHAPTER II*
*THE RISE OF A BANDIT*
Villa was an outlaw for twenty-two years. When he was only a boy of
sixteen, delivering milk in the streets of Chihuahua, he killed a
government official and had to take to the mountains. The story is that
the official had violated his sister, but it seems probable that Villa
killed him on account of his insufferable insolence. That in itself
would not have outlawed him long in Mexico, where human life is cheap;
but once a refugee he committed the unpardonable crime of stealing
cattle from the rich _hacendados_. And from that time to the outbreak
of the Madero revolution the Mexican government had a price on his head.
Villa was the son of ignorant peons. He had never been to school. He
hadn't the slightest conception of the complexity of civilization, and
when he finally came back to it, a mature man of extraordinary native
shrewdness, he encountered the twentieth century with the naive
simplicity of a savage.
It is almost impossible to procure accurate information about his career
as a bandit. There are accounts of outrages he committed in old files
of local newspapers and government reports, but those sources are
prejudiced, and his name became so prominent as a bandit that every
train robbery and hold-up and murder in northern Mexico was attributed
to Villa. But an immense body of popular legend grew up among the peons
around his name. There are many traditional songs and ballads
celebrating his exploits--you can hear the shepherds singing them around
their fires in the mountains at night, repeating verses handed down by
their fathers or composing others extemporaneously. For instance, they
tell the story of how Villa, fired by the story of the misery of the
peons on the Hacienda of Los Alamos, gathered a small army and descended
upon the Big House, which he looted, and distributed the spoils among
the poor people. He drove off thousands of cattle from the Terrazzas
range and ran them across the border. He would suddenly descend upon a
prosperous mine and seize the bullion. When he needed corn he captured a
granary belonging to some rich man. He recruited almost openly in the
villages far removed from the well-traveled roads and railways,
organizing the outlaws of the mountains. Many of the present rebel
soldiers used to belong to his band and several of the Constitutionalist
generals, like Urbina. His range was confined mostly to southern
Chihuahua and northern Durango, but it extended from Coahuila right
across the Republic to the State of Sinaloa.
His reckless and romantic bravery is the subject of countless poems.
They tell, for example, how one of his band named Reza was captured by
the _rurales_ and bribed to betray Villa. Villa heard of it and sent
word into the city of Chihuahua that he was coming for Reza. In broad
daylight he entered the city on horseback, took ice cream on the
Plaza--the ballad is very explicit on this point--and rode up and down
the streets until he found Reza strolling with his sweetheart in the
Sunday crowd on the Paseo Bolivar, where he shot him and escaped. In
time of famine he fed whole districts, and took care of entire villages
evicted by the soldiers under Porfirio Diaz's outrageous land law.
Everywhere he was known as The Friend of the Poor. He was the Mexican
Robin Hood.
In all these years he learned to trust nobody. Often in his secret
journeys across the country with one faithful companion he camped in
some desolate spot and dismissed his guide; then, leaving a fire
burning, he rode all night to get away from the faithful companion.
That is how Villa learned the art of war, and in the field to-day, when
the army comes into camp at night, Villa flings the bridle of his horse
to an orderly, takes a serape over his shoulder, and sets out for the
hills alone. He never seems to sleep. In the dead of night he will
appear somewhere along the line of outposts to see if the sentries are
on the job; and in the morning he returns from a totally different
direction. No one, not even the most trusted officer of his staff, knows
the least of his plans until he is ready for action.
When Madero took the field in 1910, Villa was still an outlaw. Perhaps,
as his enemies say, he saw a chance to whitewash himself; perhaps, as
seems probable, he was inspired by the Revolution of the peons. Anyway,
about three months after they rose in arms, Villa suddenly appeared in
El Paso and put himself, his band, his knowledge of the country and all
his fortune at the command of Madero. The vast wealth that people said
he must have accumulated during his twenty years of robbery turned out
to be 363 silver _pesos_, badly worn. Villa became a Captain in the
Maderista army, and as such went to Mexico City with Madero and was made
honorary general of the new _rurales_. He was attached to Huerta's army
when it was sent north to put down the Orozco Revolution. Villa
commanded the garrison of Parral, and defeated Orozco with an inferior
force in the only decisive battle of the war.
Huerta put Villa in command of the advance, and let him and the veterans
of Madero's army do the dangerous and dirty work while the old line
Federal regiments lay back under the protection of their artillery. In
Jimenez Huerta suddenly summoned Villa before a court-martial and
charged him with insubordination--claiming to have wired an order to
Villa in Parral, which order Villa said he never received. The
court-martial lasted fifteen minutes, and Huerta's most powerful future
antagonist was sentenced to be shot.
Alfonso Madero, who was on Huerta's staff, stayed the execution, but
President Madero, forced to back up the orders of his commander in the
field, imprisoned Villa in the Penitentiary of the capital. During all
this time Villa never wavered in his loyalty to Madero--an unheard-of
thing in Mexican history. For a long time he had passionately wanted an
education. Now he wasted no time in regrets or political intrigue. He
set himself with all his force to learn to read and write. Villa hadn't
the slightest foundation to work upon. He spoke the crude Spanish of
the very poor--what is called _pelado_. He knew nothing of the
rudiments or philosophy of language; and he started out to learn those
first, because he always must know the why of things. In nine months he
could write a very fair hand and read the newspapers. It is interesting
now to see him read, or, rather, hear him, for he has to drone the words
aloud like a small child. Finally, the Madero government connived at
his escape from prison, either to save Huerta's face because Villa's
friends had demanded an investigation, or because Madero was convinced
of his innocence and didn't dare openly to release him.
From that time to the outbreak of the last revolution, Villa lived in El
Paso, Texas, and it was from there that he set out, in April, 1913, to
conquer Mexico with four companions, three led horses, two pounds of
sugar and coffee, and a pound of salt.
There is a little story connected with that. He hadn't money enough to
buy horses, nor had any of his companions. But he sent two of them to a
local livery stable to rent riding horses every day for a week. They
always paid carefully at the end of the ride, so when they asked for
eight horses the livery stable man had no hesitation about trusting them
with them. Six months later, when Villa came triumphantly into Juarez
at the head of an army of four thousand men, the first public act he
committed was to send a man with double the price of the horses to the
owner of the livery stable.
He recruited in the mountains near San Andres, and so great was his
popularity that within one month he had raised an army of three thousand
men; in two months he had driven the Federal garrisons all over the
State of Chihuahua back into Chihuahua City; in six months he had taken
Torreon; and in seven and a half Juarez had fallen to him, Mercado's
Federal army had evacuated Chihuahua, and Northern Mexico was almost
free.
*CHAPTER III*
*A PEON IN POLITICS*
Villa proclaimed himself military governor of the State of Chihuahua,
and began the extraordinary experiment--extraordinary because he knew
nothing about it--of creating a government for 800,000 people out of his
head.
It has often been said that Villa succeeded because he had educated
advisers. As a matter of fact, he was almost alone. What advisers he
had spent most of their time answering his eager questions and doing
what he told them. I used sometimes to go to the Governor's palace
early in the morning and wait for him in the Governor's chamber. About
eight o'clock Sylvestre Terrazzas, the Secretary of State, Sebastian
Vargas, the State Treasurer, and Manuel Chao, then Interventor, would
arrive, very bustling and busy, with huge piles of reports, suggestions
and decrees which they had drawn up. Villa himself came in about
eight-thirty, threw himself into a chair, and made them read out loud to
him. Every minute he would interject a remark, correction or
suggestion. Occasionally he waved his finger back and forward and said:
"_No sirve_." When they were all through he began rapidly and without a
halt to outline the policy of the State of Chihuahua, legislative,
financial, judicial, and even educational. When he came to a place that
bothered him, he said: "How do they do that?" And then, after it was
carefully explained to him: "Why?" Most of the acts and usages of
government seemed to him extraordinarily unnecessary and snarled up.
For example, his advisers proposed to finance the Revolution by issuing
State bonds bearing 30 or 40 per cent. interest. He said, "I can
understand why the State should pay something to people for the rent of
their money, but how is it just to pay the whole sum back to them three
or four times over?" He couldn't see why rich men should be granted
huge tracts of land and poor men should not. The whole complex
structure of civilization was new to him. You had to be a philosopher
to explain anything to Villa; and his advisers were only practical men.
There was the financial question. It came to Villa in this way. He
noticed, all of a sudden, that there was no money in circulation. The
farmers who produced meat and vegetables refused to come into the city
markets any more because no one had any money to buy from them. The
truth was that those possessing silver or Mexican bank-notes buried them
in the ground. Chihuahua not being a manufacturing center, and the few
factories there having closed down, there was nothing which could be
exchanged for food. So, like a blight, the paralysis of the production
of food began all at once and actual starvation stared at the town
populations. I remember hearing vaguely of several highly elaborate
plans for the relief of this condition put forward by Villa's advisers.
He himself said: "Why, if all they need is money, let's print some." So
they inked up the printing press in the basement of the Governor's
palace and ran off two million pesos on strong paper, stamped with the
signatures of government officials, and with Villa's name printed across
the middle in large letters. The counterfeit money, which afterward
flooded El Paso, was distinguished from the original by the fact that
the names of the officials were signed instead of stamped.
This first issue of currency was guaranteed by absolutely nothing but
the name of Francisco Villa. It was issued chiefly to revive the petty
internal commerce of the State so that the poor people could get food.
And yet almost immediately it was bought by the banks of El Paso at 18
to 19 cents on the dollar because Villa guaranteed it.
Of course he knew nothing of the accepted ways of getting his money into
circulation. He began to pay the army with it. On Christmas Day he
called the poor people of Chihuahua together and gave them $15 apiece
outright. Then he issued a short decree, ordering the acceptance of his
money at par throughout the State. The succeeding Saturday the
market-places of Chihuahua and the other nearby towns swarmed with
farmers and with buyers. Villa issued another proclamation, fixing the
price of beef at seven cents a pound, milk at five cents a quart, and
bread at four cents a loaf. There was no famine in Chihuahua. But the
big merchants, who had timidly reopened their stores for the first time
since his entry into Chihuahua, placarded their goods with two sets of
price marks--one for Mexican silver money and bank-bills, and the other
for 'Villa money.' He stopped that by another decree, ordering sixty
days' imprisonment for anybody who discriminated against his currency.
But still the silver and bank-bills refused to come out of the ground,
and these Villa needed to buy arms and supplies for his army. So he
simply proclaimed to the people that after the tenth of February Mexican
silver and bank-bills would be regarded as counterfeit, and that before
that time they could be exchanged for his own money at par in the State
Treasury. But the large sums of the rich still eluded him. Most of the
financiers declared that it was all a bluff, and held on. But lo! on the
morning of February tenth, a decree was pasted up on the walls all over
Chihuahua City, announcing that from that time on all Mexican silver and
bank-notes were counterfeit and could not be exchanged for Villa money
in the Treasury, and anyone attempting to pass them was liable to sixty
days in the penitentiary. A great howl went up, not only from the
capitalists, but from the shrewd misers of distant villages.
About two weeks after the issue of this decree, I was taking lunch with
Villa in the house which he had confiscated from Manuel Gomeros and used
as his official residence. A delegation of three peons in sandals
arrived from a village in the Tarahumare to protest against the
Counterfeit Decree.
"But, _mi General_," said the spokesman, "we did not hear of the decree
until to-day. We have been using bank-bills and silver in our village.
We had not seen your money, and we did not know....'
"You have a good deal of money?" interrupted Villa suddenly.
"Yes, _mi General_."
"Three or four or five thousand, perhaps?"
"More than that, _mi General_!"
"Senores," Villa squinted at them ferociously, "samples of my money
reached your village within twenty-four hours after it was issued. You
decided that my government would not last. You dug holes under your
fireplaces and put the silver and bank-notes there. You knew of my
first proclamation a day after it was posted up in the streets of
Chihuahua, and you ignored it. The Counterfeit Decree you also knew as
soon as it was issued. You thought there was always time to change if
it became necessary. And then you got frightened, and you three, who
have more money than anyone else in the village, got on your mules and
rode down here. Senores, your money is counterfeit. You are poor men!"
"_Valgame dios!_" cried the oldest of the three, sweating profusely.
"But we are ruined, _mi General_!--I swear to you--We did not know--We
would have accepted--There is no food in the village----"
The General in Chief meditated for a moment.
"I will give you one more chance," he said, "not for you, but for the
poor people of your village who can buy nothing. Next Wednesday at noon
bring all your money, every cent of it, to the Treasury, and I will see
what can be done."
To the perspiring financiers who waited hat in hand out in the hall, the
news spread by word of mouth; and Wednesday at high noon one could not
pass the Treasury door for the eager mob gathered there.
Villa's great passion was schools. He believed that land for the people
and schools would settle every question of civilization. Schools were
an obsession with him. Often I have heard him say: "When I passed such
and such a street this morning I saw a lot of kids. Let's put a school
there." Chihuahua has a population of under 40,000 people. At
different times Villa established over fifty schools there. The great
dream of his life has been to send his son to school in the United
States, but at the opening of the term in February he had to abandon it
because he didn't have money enough to pay for a half year's tuition.
No sooner had he taken over the government of Chihuahua than he put his
army to work running the electric light plant, the street railways, the
telephone, the water works and the Terrazzas flour mill. He delegated
soldiers to administer the great haciendas which he had confiscated. He
manned the slaughter-house with soldiers, and sold Terrazzas's beef to
the people for the government. A thousand of them he put in the streets
of the city as civil police, prohibiting on pain of death stealing, or
the sale of liquor to the army. A soldier who got drunk was shot. He
even tried to run the brewery with soldiers, but failed because he
couldn't find an expert maltster. "The only thing to do with soldiers
in time of peace," said Villa, "is to put them to work. An idle soldier
is always thinking of war."
In the matter of the political enemies of the Revolution he was just as
simple, just as effective. Two hours after he entered the Governor's
palace the foreign consuls came in a body to ask his protection for 200
Federal soldiers who had been left as a police force at the request of
the foreigners. Before answering them, Villa said suddenly: "Which is
the Spanish consul?" Scobell, the British vice-consul, said: "I
represent the Spaniards." "All right!" snapped Villa. "Tell them to
begin to pack. Any Spaniard caught within the boundaries of this State
after five days will be escorted to the nearest wall by a firing squad."
The consuls gave a gasp of horror. Scobell began a violent protest, but
Villa cut him short.
"This is not a sudden determination on my part," he said; "I have been
thinking about this since 1910. The Spaniards must go."
Letcher, the American consul, said: "General, I don't question your
motives, but I think you are making a grave political mistake in
expelling the Spaniards. The government at Washington will hesitate a
long time before becoming friendly to a party which makes use of such
barbarous measures."
"Senor Consul," answered Villa, "we Mexicans have had three hundred
years of the Spaniards. They have not changed in character since the
_Conquistadores_. They disrupted the Indian empire and enslaved the
people. We did not ask them to mingle their blood with ours. Twice we
drove them out of Mexico and allowed them to return with the same rights
as Mexicans, and they used these rights to steal away our land, to make
the people slaves, and to take up arms against the cause of liberty.
They supported Porfirio Diaz. They were perniciously active in
politics. It was the Spaniards who framed the plot that put Huerta in
the palace. When Madero was murdered the Spaniards in every State in
the Republic held banquets of rejoicing. They thrust on us the greatest
superstition the world has ever known--the Catholic Church. They ought
to be killed for that alone. I consider we are being very generous with
them."
Scobell insisted vehemently that five days was too short a time, that he
couldn't possibly reach all the Spaniards in the State by that time; so
Villa extended the time to ten days.
The rich Mexicans who had oppressed the people and opposed the
Revolution, he expelled promptly from the State and confiscated their
vast holdings. By a simple stroke of the pen the 17,000,000 acres and
innumerable business enterprises of the Terrazzas family became the
property of the Constitutionalist government, as well as the great lands
of the Creel family and the magnificent palaces which were their town
houses. Remembering, however, how the Terrazzas exiles had once
financed the Orozco Revolution, he imprisoned Don Luis Terrazzas, Jr.,
as a hostage in his own house in Chihuahua. Some particularly obnoxious
political enemies were promptly executed in the penitentiary. The
Revolution possesses a black book in which are set down the names,
offenses, and property of those who have oppressed and robbed the
people. The Germans, who had been particularly active politically, the
Englishmen and Americans, he does not yet dare to molest. Their pages
in the black book will be opened when the Constitutionalist government
is established in Mexico City; and there, too, he will settle the
account of the Mexican people with the Catholic Church.
Villa knew that the reserve of the Banco Minero, amounting to about
$500,000 gold, was hidden somewhere in Chihuahua. Don Luis Terrazzas,
Jr., was a director of that bank. When he refused to divulge the
hiding-place of the money, Villa and a squad of soldiers took him out of
his house one night, rode him on a mule out into the desert, and strung
him up to a tree by the neck. He was cut down just in time to save his
life, and led Villa to an old forge in the Terrazzas iron works, under
which was discovered the reserve of the Banco Minero. Terrazzas went
back to prison badly shaken, and Villa sent word to his father in El
Paso that he would release the son upon payment of $500,000 ransom.
*CHAPTER IV*
*THE HUMAN SIDE*
Villa has two wives, one a patient, simple woman who was with him during
all his years of outlawry, who lives in El Paso, and the other a
cat-like, slender young girl, who is the mistress of his house in
Chihuahua. He is perfectly open about it, though lately the educated,
conventional Mexicans who have been gathering about him in
ever-increasing numbers have tried to hush up the fact. Among the peons
it is not only not unusual but customary to have more than one mate.
One hears a great many stories of Villa's violating women. I asked him
if that were true. He pulled his mustache and stared at me for a minute
with an inscrutable expression. "I never take the trouble to deny such
stories," he said. "They say I am a bandit, too. Well, you know my
history. But tell me; have you ever met a husband, father or brother of
any woman that I have violated?" He paused: "Or even a witness?"
It is fascinating to watch him discover new ideas. Remember that he is
absolutely ignorant of the troubles and confusions and readjustments of
modern civilization. "Socialism," he said once, when I wanted to know
what he thought of it: "Socialism--is it a thing? I only see it in
books, and I do not read much." Once I asked him if women would vote in
the new Republic. He was sprawled out on his bed, with his coat
unbuttoned. "Why, I don't think so," he said, startled, suddenly
sitting up. "What do you mean--vote? Do you mean elect a government
and make laws?" I said I did and that women already were doing it in
the United States. "Well," he said, scratching his head: "if they do it
up there I don't see that they shouldn't do it down here." The idea
seemed to amuse him enormously. He rolled it over and over in his mind,
looking at me and away again. "It may be as you say," he said; "but I
have never thought about it. Women seem to me to be things to protect,
to love. They have no sternness of mind. They can't consider anything
for its right or wrong. They are full of pity and softness. Why," he
said, "a woman would not give an order to execute a traitor."
"I am not so sure of that, _mi General_," I said. "Women can be crueller
and harder than men."
He stared at me, pulling his mustache. And then he began to grin. He
looked slowly to where his wife was setting the table for lunch.
"_Oiga_," he said, "come here. Listen. Last night I caught three
traitors crossing the river to blow up the railroad. What shall I do
with them? Shall I shoot them or not?"
Embarrassed, she seized his hand and kissed it. "Oh, I don't know
anything about that," she said. "You know best."
"No," said Villa. "I leave it entirely to you. Those men were going to
try to cut our communications between Juarez and Chihuahua. They were
traitors--Federals. What shall I do? Shall I shoot them or not?"
"Oh, well, shoot them," said Mrs. Villa.
Villa chuckled delightedly. "There is something in what you say," he
remarked, and for days afterward went around asking the cook and the
chambermaids whom they would like to have for President of Mexico.
He never missed a bull-fight, and every afternoon at four o'clock he was
to be found at the cock-pit, where he fought his own birds with the
happy enthusiasm of a small boy. In the evening he played faro in some
gambling hall. Sometimes in the late morning he would send a fast
courier after Luis Leon, the bull-fighter, and telephone personally to
the slaughter-house, asking if they had any fierce bulls in the pen.
They almost always did have, and we would all get on horseback and
gallop through the streets about a mile to the big adobe corrals.
Twenty cowboys cut the bull out of the herd, threw and tied him and cut
off his sharp horns, and then Villa and Luis Leon and anybody else who
wanted to would take the professional red capes and go down into the
ring; Luis Leon with professional caution, Villa as stubborn and clumsy
as the bull, slow on his feet, but swift as an animal with his body and
arms. Villa would walk right up to the pawing, infuriated animal, and,
with his double cape, slap him insolently across the face, and, for half
an hour, would follow the greatest sport I ever saw. Sometimes the
sawed-off horns of the bull would catch Villa in the seat of the
trousers and propel him violently across the ring; then he would turn
and grab the bull by the head and wrestle with him with the sweat
streaming down his face until five or six _companeros_ seized the bull's
tail and hauled him plowing and bellowing back.
Villa never drinks nor smokes, but he will outdance the most ardent
_novio_ in Mexico. When the order was given for the army to advance
upon Torreon, Villa stopped off at Camargo to be best man at the wedding
of one of his old _compadres_. He danced steadily without stopping,
they said, all Monday night, all Tuesday, and all Tuesday night,
arriving at the front on Wednesday morning with blood-shot eyes and an
air of extreme lassitude.
*CHAPTER V*
*THE FUNERAL OF ABRAM GONZALES*
The fact that Villa hates useless pomp and ceremony makes it more
impressive when he does appear on a public occasion. He has the knack
of absolutely expressing the strong feeling of the great mass of the
people. In February, exactly one year after Abram Gonzales was murdered
by the Federals at Bachimba Canon, Villa ordered a great funeral
ceremony to be held in the City of Chihuahua. Two trains, carrying the
officers of the army, the consuls and representatives of the foreign
colony, left Chihuahua early in the morning to take up the body of the
dead Governor from its resting-place under a rude wooden cross in the
desert. Villa ordered Major Fierro, his Superintendent of Railroads, to
get the trains ready--but Fierro got drunk and forgot; and when Villa
and his brilliant staff arrived at the railway station the next morning
the regular passenger train to Juarez was just leaving and there was no
other equipment on hand. Villa himself leaped on to the already moving
engine and compelled the engineer to back the train up to the station.
Then he walked through the train, ordering the passengers out, and
switched it in the direction of Bachimba. They had no sooner started
than he summoned Fierro before him and discharged him from the
superintendency of the railroads, appointing Calzado in his place, and
ordered the latter to return at once to Chihuahua and be thoroughly
informed about the railroads by the time he returned. At Bachimba Villa
stood silently by the grave with the tears rolling down his cheeks. For
Gonzales had been his close friend. Ten thousand people stood in the
heat and dust at Chihuahua railway station when the funeral train
arrived, and poured weeping through the narrow streets behind the army,
at the head of which walked Villa beside the hearse. His automobile was
waiting, but he angrily refused to ride, stumbling stubbornly along in
the dirt of the streets with his eyes on the ground.
That night there was a _velada_ in the Theater of the Heroes, an immense
auditorium packed with emotional peons and their women. The ring of
boxes was brilliant with officers in their full dress, and wedged behind
them up the five high balconies were the ragged poor. Now, the _velada_
is an entirely Mexican institution. First there comes a speech, then a
"recitation" on the piano, then a speech, followed by a patriotic song
rendered by a chorus of awkward little Indian girls from the public
school with squeaky voices, another speech, and a soprano solo from
"Trovatore" by the wife of some government official, still another
speech, and so on for at least five hours. Whenever there is a
prominent funeral, or a national holiday, or a President's anniversary,
or, in fact, an occasion of the least importance, a _velada_ must be
held. It is the conventional and respectable way of celebrating
anything. Villa sat in the left hand stage box and controlled the
proceedings by tapping a little bell. The stage itself was brilliantly
hideous with black bunting, huge masses of artificial flowers,
abominable crayon portraits of Madero, Pino Suarez and the dead
Governor, and red, white and green electric lights. At the foot of all
this was a very small, plain, black wooden box which held the body of
Abram Gonzales.
The _velada_ proceeded in an orderly and exhausting manner for about two
hours. Local orators, trembling with stage fright, mouthed the
customary Castilian extravagant phrases, and little girls stepped on
their own feet and murdered Tosti's "Good-bye." Villa, with his eyes
riveted on that wooden box, never moved nor spoke. At the proper time
he mechanically tapped the little bell, but after a while he couldn't
stand it any longer. A large fleshy Mexican was in the middle of
Handel's "Largo" on the grand piano, when Villa stood erect. He put his
foot on the railing of the box and leaped to the stage, knelt, and took
up the coffin in his arms. Handel's "Largo" petered out. Silent
astonishment paralyzed the audience. Holding the black box tenderly in
his arms as a mother with her baby, not looking at anyone, Villa started
down the steps of the stage and up the aisle. Instinctively, the house
rose; and as he passed out through the swinging doors they followed on
silently behind him. He strode down between the lines of waiting
soldiers, his sword banging on the floor, across the dark square to the
Governor's palace; and, with his own hands, put the coffin on the
flower-banked table waiting for it in the audience hall. It had been
arranged that four generals in turn should stand the death watch, each
for two hours. Candles shed a dim light over the table and the
surrounding floor, but the rest of the room was in darkness. A dense
mass of silent, breathing people packed the doorway. Villa unbuckled
his sword and threw it clattering into a corner. Then he took his rifle
from the table and stood the first watch.
*CHAPTER VI*
*VILLA AND CARRANZA*
It seems incredible to those who don't know him, that this remarkable
figure, who has risen from obscurity to the most prominent position in
Mexico in three years, should not covet the Presidency of the Republic.
But that is in entire accordance with the simplicity of his character.
When asked about it he answered as always with perfect directness, just
in the way that you put it to him. He didn't quibble over whether he
could or could not be President of Mexico. He said: "I am a fighter,
not a statesman. I am not educated enough to be President. I only
learned to read and write two years ago. How could I, who never went to
school, hope to be able to talk with the foreign ambassadors and the
cultivated gentlemen of the Congress? It would be bad for Mexico if an
uneducated man were to be President. There is one thing that I will not
do,--and that is to take a position for which I am not fitted. There is
only one order of my Jefe (Carranza) which I would refuse to obey,--if
he would command me to be a President or a Governor." On behalf of my
paper I had to ask him this question five or six times. Finally he
became exasperated. "I have told you many times," he said, "that there
is no possibility of my becoming President of Mexico. Are the
newspapers trying to make trouble between me and my Jefe? This is the
last time that I will answer that question. The next correspondent that
asks me I will have him spanked and sent to the border." For days
afterward he went around grumbling humorously about the _chatito_
(pug-nose) who kept asking him whether he wanted to be President of
Mexico. The idea seemed to amuse him. Whenever I went to see him after
that he used to say, at the end of our talk: "Well, aren't you going to
ask me to-day whether I want to be President?"
He never referred to Carranza except as "my Jefe," and he obeyed
implicitly the slightest order from "the First Chief of the Revolution."
His loyalty to Carranza was perfectly obstinate. He seemed to think
that in Carranza were embodied the entire ideals of the Revolution.
This, in spite of the fact that many of his advisers tried to make him
see that Carranza was essentially an aristocrat and a reformer, and that
the people were fighting for more than reform.
Carranza's political program, as set forth in the plan of Guadelupe,
carefully avoids any promise of settlement of the land question, except
a vague endorsement of Madero's plan of San Luis Potosi, and it is
evident that he does not intend to advocate any radical restoration of
the land to the people until he becomes provisional president--and then
to proceed very cautiously. In the meantime he seems to have left it to
Villa's judgment, as well as all other details of the conduct of the
Revolution in the north. But Villa, being a peon, and feeling with
them, rather than consciously reasoning it out, that the land question
is the real cause of the Revolution, acted with characteristic
promptness and directness. No sooner had he settled the details of
government of Chihuahua State, and appointed Chao his provisional
governor, than he issued a proclamation, giving sixty-two and one-half
acres out of the confiscated lands to every male citizen of the State,
and declaring these lands inalienable for any cause for a period of ten
years. In the State of Durango the same thing has happened and as other
states are free of Federal garrisons, he will pursue the same policy.
*CHAPTER VII*
*THE RULES OF WAR*
On the field, too, Villa had to invent an entirely original method of
warfare, because he never had a chance to learn anything of accepted
military strategy. In that he is without the possibility of any doubt
the greatest leader Mexico has ever had. His method of fighting is
astonishingly like Napoleon's. Secrecy, quickness of movement, the
adaptation of his plans to the character of the country and of his
soldiers,--the value of intimate relations with the rank and file, and
of building up a tradition among the enemy that his army is invincible,
and that he himself bears a charmed life,--these are his
characteristics. He knew nothing of accepted European standards of
strategy or of discipline. One of the troubles of the Mexican federal
army is that its officers are thoroughly saturated with conventional
military theory. The Mexican soldier is still mentally at the end of
the eighteenth century. He is, above all, a loose, individual,
guerrilla fighter. Red-tape simply paralyzes the machine. When Villa's
army goes into battle he is not hampered by salutes, or rigid respect
for officers, or trigonometrical calculations of the trajectories of
projectiles, or theories of the percentage of hits in a thousand rounds
of rifle fire, or the function of cavalry, infantry and artillery in any
particular position, or rigid obedience to the secret knowledge of its
superiors. It reminds one of the ragged Republican army that Napoleon
led into Italy. It is probable that Villa doesn't know much about those
things himself. But he does know that guerrilla fighters cannot be
driven blindly in platoons around the field in perfect step, that men
fighting individually and of their own free will are braver than long
volleying rows in the trenches, lashed to it by officers with the flat
of their swords. And where the fighting is fiercest--when a ragged mob
of fierce brown men with hand bombs and rifles rush the bullet-swept
streets of an ambushed town--Villa is among them, like any common
soldier.
Up to his day, Mexican armies had always carried with them hundreds of
the women and children of the soldiers; Villa was the first man to think
of swift forced marches of bodies of cavalry, leaving their women
behind. Up to his time no Mexican army had ever abandoned its base; it
had always stuck closely to the railroad and the supply trains. But
Villa struck terror into the enemy by abandoning his trains and throwing
his entire effective army upon the field, as he did at Gomez Palacio.
He invented in Mexico that most demoralizing form of battle--the night
attack. When, after the fall of Torreon last September, he withdrew his
entire army in the face of Orozco's advance from Mexico City and for
five days unsuccessfully attacked Chihuahua, it was a terrible shock to
the Federal General when he waked up one morning and found that Villa
had sneaked around the city under cover of darkness, captured a freight
train at Terrazzas and descended with his entire army upon the
comparatively undefended city of Juarez. It wasn't fair! Villa found
that he hadn't enough trains to carry all his soldiers, even when he had
ambushed and captured a Federal troop train, sent south by General
Castro, the Federal commander in Juarez. So he telegraphed that
gentleman as follows, signing the name of the Colonel in command of the
troop train: "Engine broken down at Moctezuma. Send another engine and
five cars." The unsuspecting Castro immediately dispatched a new train.
Villa then telegraphed him: "Wires cut between here and Chihuahua.
Large force of rebels approaching from south. What shall I do?" Castro
replied: "Return at once." And Villa obeyed, telegraphing cheering
messages at every station along the way. The Federal commander got wind
of his coming about an hour before he arrived, and left, without
informing his garrison, so that, outside of a small massacre, Villa took
Juarez almost without a shot. And with the border so near he managed to
smuggle across enough ammunition to equip his almost armless forces and
a week later sallied out and routed the pursuing Federal forces with
great slaughter at Tierra Blanca.
General Hugh L. Scott, in command of the American troops at Fort Bliss,
sent Villa a little pamphlet containing the Rules of War adopted by the
Hague Conference. He spent hours poring over it. It interested and
amused him hugely. He said: "What is this Hague Conference? Was there
a representative of Mexico there? Was there a representative of the
Constitutionalists there? It seems to me a funny thing to make rules
about war. It's not a game. What is the difference between civilized
war and any other kind of war? If you and I are having a fight in a
cantina we are not going to pull a little book out of our pockets and
read over the rules. It says here that you must not use lead bullets;
but I don't see why not. They do the work."
For a long time afterward he went around popping questions at his
officers like this: "If an invading army takes a city of the enemy, what
must you do with the women and children?"
As far as I could see, the Rules of War didn't make any difference in
Villa's original method of fighting. The _colorados_ he executed
wherever he captured them; because, he said, they were peons like the
Revolutionists and that no peon would volunteer against the cause of
liberty unless he were bad. The Federal officers also he killed,
because, he explained, they were educated men and ought to know better.
But the Federal common soldiers he set at liberty because most of them
were conscripts, and thought that they were fighting for the Patria.
There is no case on record where he wantonly killed a man. Anyone who
did so he promptly executed--except Fierro.
Fierro, the man who killed Benton, was known as "The Butcher" throughout
the army. He was a great handsome animal, the best and cruellest rider
and fighter, perhaps, in all the revolutionary forces. In his furious
lust for blood Fierro used to shoot down a hundred prisoners with his
own revolver, only stopping long enough to reload. He killed for the
pure joy of it. During two weeks that I was in Chihuahua, Fierro killed
fifteen inoffensive citizens in cold blood. But there was always a
curious relationship between him and Villa. He was Villa's best friend;
and Villa loved him like a son and always pardoned him.
But Villa, although he had never heard of the Rules of War, carried with
his army the only field hospital of any effectiveness that any Mexican
army has ever carried. It consisted of forty box-cars enameled inside,
fitted with operating tables and all the latest appliances of surgery,
and manned by more than sixty doctors and nurses. Every day during the
battle shuttle trains full of the desperately wounded ran from the front
to the base hospitals at Parral, Jimenez and Chihuahua. He took care of
the Federal wounded just as carefully as of his own men. Ahead of his
own supply train went another train, carrying two thousand sacks of
flour, and also coffee, corn, sugar, and cigarettes to feed the entire
starving population of the country around Durango City and Torreon.
The common soldiers adore him for his bravery and his coarse, blunt
humor. Often I have seen him slouched on his cot in the little red
caboose in which he always traveled, cracking jokes familiarly with
twenty ragged privates sprawled on the floor, chairs and tables. When
the army was entraining or detraining, Villa personally would be on hand
in a dirty old suit, without a collar, kicking mules in the stomach and
pushing horses in and out of the stock-cars. Getting thirsty all of a
sudden, he would grab some soldier's canteen and drain it, in spite of
the indignant protests of its owner; and then tell him to go over to the
river and say that Pancho Villa said that he should fill it there.
*CHAPTER VIII*
*THE DREAM OF PANCHO VILLA*
It might not be uninteresting to know the passionate dream--the vision
which animates this ignorant fighter, "not educated enough to be
President of Mexico." He told it to me once in these words: "When the
new Republic is established there will never be any more army in Mexico.
Armies are the greatest support of tyranny. There can be no dictator
without an army.
"We will put the army to work. In all parts of the Republic we will
establish military colonies composed of the veterans of the Revolution.
The State will give them grants of agricultural lands and establish big
industrial enterprises to give them work. Three days a week they will
work and work hard, because honest work is more important than fighting,
and only honest work makes good citizens. And the other three days they
will receive military instruction and go out and teach all the people
how to fight. Then, when the Patria is invaded, we will just have to
telephone from the palace at Mexico City, and in half a day all the
Mexican people will rise from their fields and factories, fully armed,
equipped and organized to defend their children and their homes.
"My ambition is to live my life in one of those military colonies among
my _companeros_ whom I love, who have suffered so long and so deeply
with me. I think I would like the government to establish a leather
factory there where we could make good saddles and bridles, because I
know how to do that; and the rest of the time I would like to work on my
little farm, raising cattle and corn. It would be fine, I think, to
help make Mexico a happy place."
*PART THREE*
*JIMENEZ AND POINTS WEST*
*CHAPTER I*
*DONA LUISA'S HOTEL*
I went south from Chihuahua on a troop train bound for the advance near
Escalon. Attached to the five freight cars, filled with horses and
carrying soldiers on top, was a coach in which I was allowed to ride
with two hundred noisy _pacificos_, male and female. It was gruesomely
suggestive: car windows smashed, mirrors, lamps and plush seats torn
out, and bullet holes after the manner of a frieze. The time of our
departure was not fixed, and no one knew when the train would arrive.
The railroad had just been repaired. In places where there had once
been bridges we plunged into arroyos and snorted up the farther bank on
a rickety new-laid track that bent and cracked under us. All day long
the roadside was lined with immense distorted steel rails, torn up with
a chain and a backing engine by the thorough Orozco last year. There
was a rumor that Castillo's bandits were planning to blow us up with
dynamite sometime during the afternoon....
Peons with big straw sombreros and beautifully faded _serapes_, Indians
in blue working clothes and cowhide sandals, and squat-faced women with
black shawls around their heads, and squalling babies,--packed the
seats, aisles and platforms, singing, eating, spitting, chattering.
Occasionally there staggered by a ragged man with a cap labeled
"conductor" in tarnished gold letters, very drunk, embracing his friends
and severely demanding the tickets and safe conducts of strangers. I
introduced myself to him by a small present of United States currency.
He said, "Senor, you may travel freely over the Republic henceforth
without payment. Juan Algomero is at your orders." An officer smartly
uniformed, with a sword at his side, was at the rear of the car. He was
bound for the front, he said, to lay down his life for his country. His
only baggage consisted of four wooden bird-cages full of meadowlarks.
Farther to the rear two men sat across the aisle from each other, each
with a white sack containing something that moved and clucked. As soon
as the train started these bags were opened to disgorge two large
roosters, who wandered up and down the aisles eating crumbs and
cigarette butts. The two owners immediately raised their voices.
"Cock-fight, senores! Five pesos on this valiant and handsome rooster.
Five pesos, senores!" The males at once deserted their seats and rushed
clamoring toward the center of the car. Not one of them appeared to
lack the necessary five dollars. In ten minutes the two promoters were
kneeling in the middle of the aisle, throwing their birds. And, as we
rattled along, swaying from side to side, swooping down into the gullies
and laboring up the other bank, a whirling mass of feathers and flashing
steel rolled up and down the aisle. That over, a one-legged youth stood
up and played "Whistling Rufus" on a tin flute. Someone had a leather
bottle of _tequila_, of which we all took a swig. From the rear of the
car came shouts of "_Vamonos a bailar_! Come on and dance!" And in a
moment five couples, all men, of course, were madly two-stepping. A
blind old peasant was assisted to climb upon his seat, where he
quaveringly recited a long ballad about the heroic exploits of the great
General Maclovio Herrera. Everybody was silently attentive and showered
pennies into the old man's sombrero. Occasionally there floated back to
us the singing of the soldiers on the box-cars in front and the sound of
their shots as they caught sight of a coyote galloping through the
mesquite. Then everybody in our car would make a rush for the windows,
pulling at their revolvers, and shoot fast and furiously.
All the long afternoon we ambled slowly south, the western rays of the
sun burning as they struck our faces. Every hour or so we stopped at
some station, shot to pieces by one army or the other during the three
years of Revolution; there the train would be besieged by vendors of
cigarettes, pine-nuts, bottles of milk, _camotes_, and _tamales_ rolled
in corn-husks. Old women, gossiping, descended from the train, built
themselves a little fire and boiled coffee. Squatting there, smoking
their corn-husk cigarettes, they told one another interminable love
stories.
It was late in the evening when we pulled into Jimenez. I shouldered
through the entire population, come down to meet the train, passed
between the flaring torches of the little row of candy booths, and went
along the street, where drunken soldiers alternated with painted girls,
walking arm in arm, to Dona Luisa's Station Hotel. It was locked. I
pounded on the door and a little window opened at the side, showing an
incredibly ancient woman's face, crowned with straggly white hair. This
being squinted at me through a pair of steel spectacles and remarked,
"Well, I guess you're all right!" Then there came a sound of bars being
taken down, and the door swung open. Dona Luisa herself, a great bunch
of keys at her belt, stood just inside. She held a large Chinaman by
the ear, addressing him in fluent and profane Spanish. "_Chango_!" she
said: "What do you mean by telling a guest at this hotel that there
wasn't any more hot cakes? Why didn't you make some more? Now take
your dirty little bundle and get out of here!" With a final wrench she
released the squealing Oriental. "These damn heathen," she announced in
English, "the nasty beggars! I don't take any lip from a dirty Chinaman
who can live on a nickel's worth of rice a day!" Then she nodded
apologetically toward the door. "There's so many damned drunken
generals around to-day that I've got to keep the door locked. I don't
want the ---- ---- Mexican ----s in here!"
Dona Luisa is a small, dumpy American woman more than eighty years of
age--a benevolent New-England-grandmother sort of person. For
forty-five years she has been in Mexico, and thirty or more years ago,
when her husband died, she began to keep the Station Hotel. War and
peace make no difference to her. The American flag flies over the door
and in her house she alone is boss. When Pascual Orozco took Jimenez,
his men began a drunken reign of terror in the town. Orozco
himself--Orozco the invincible, the fierce, who would as soon kill a
person as not--came drunk to the Station Hotel with two of his officers
and several women. Dona Luisa planted herself across the
doorway--alone--and shook her fist in his face. "Pascual Orozco," she
cried, "take your disreputable friends and go away from here. I'm
keeping a decent hotel!" And Orozco went....
*CHAPTER II*
*DUELLO A LA FRIGADA*
I wandered up the mile-long, incredibly dilapidated street that leads to
the town. A streetcar came past, drawn by one galloping mule and
bulging with slightly intoxicated soldiers. Open surreys full of
officers with girls on their laps rolled along. Under the dusty, bare
alamo trees each window held its senorita, with a blanket-wrapped
_caballero_ in attendance. There were no lights. The night was dry and
cold and full of a subtle exotic excitement; guitars twanged, snatches
of song and laughter and low voices, and shouts from distant streets,
filled the darkness. Occasionally little companies of soldiers on foot
came along, or a troop of horsemen in high sombreros and serapes jingled
silently out of the blackness and faded away again, bound probably for
the relief of guard.
In one quiet stretch of street near the bull-ring, where there are no
houses, I noticed an automobile speeding from the town. At the same
time a galloping horse came from the other direction, and just in front
of me the headlights of the machine illumined the horse and his rider, a
young officer in a Stetson hat. The automobile jarred to a grinding
stop and a voice from it cried, "_Haltoie!_"
"Who speaks?" asked the horseman, pulling his mount to its haunches.
"I, Gusman!" and the other leaped to the ground and came into the light,
a coarse, fat Mexican, with a sword at his belt.
"Como le va, mi Capitan?" The officer flung himself from his horse.
They embraced, patting each other on the back with both hands.
"Very well. And you? Where are you going?"
"To see Maria."
The captain laughed. "Don't do it," he said; "I'm going to see Maria
myself, and if I see you there I shall certainly kill you."
"But I am going just the same. I am as quick with my pistol as you,
senor."
"But you see," returned the other mildly, "we both cannot go!"
"Perfectly!"
"_Oiga!_" said the captain to his chauffeur. "Turn your car so as to
throw the light evenly along the sidewalk.... And now we will walk
thirty paces apart and stand with our backs turned until you count
three. Then the man who first puts a bullet through the other man's hat
wins...."
Both men drew immense revolvers and stood a moment in the light,
spinning the chambers.
"_Listo_! Ready!" cried the horseman.
"Hurry it," said the captain. "It is a bad thing to balk love."
Back to back, they had already begun to pace the distance.
"One!" shouted the chauffeur.
"Two!"
But quick as a flash the fat man wheeled in the trembling, uncertain
light, threw down his lifted arm, and a mighty roar went soaring slowly
into the heavy night. The Stetson of the other man, whose back was
still turned, took an odd little leap ten feet beyond him. He spun
around, but the captain was already climbing into his machine.
"_Bueno!_" he said cheerfully. "I win. Until to-morrow then, _amigo_!"
And the automobile gathered speed and disappeared down the street. The
horseman slowly went to where his hat lay, picked it up and examined it.
He stood a moment meditating, and then deliberately mounted his horse
and he also went away. I had already started some time before....
In the plaza the regimental band was playing "El Pagare," the song which
started Orozco's Revolution. It was a parody of the original, referring
to Madero's payment of his family's $750,000 war claims as soon as he
became president, that spread like wildfire over the Republic, and had
to be suppressed with police and soldiers. "El Pagare" is even now
taboo in most revolutionary circles, and I have heard of men being shot
for singing it; but in Jimenez at this time the utmost license
prevailed. Moreover, the Mexicans, unlike the French, have absolutely
no feeling for symbols. Bitterly antagonistic sides use the same flag;
in the plaza of almost every town still stand eulogistic statues of
Porfirio Diaz; even at officers' mess in the field I have drunk from
glasses stamped with the likeness of the old dictator, while Federal
army uniforms are plentiful in the ranks.
But "El Pagare" is a swinging, glorious tune, and under the hundreds of
little electric light globes strung on the plaza a double procession
marched gaily round and round. On the outside, in groups of four, went
the men, mostly soldiers. On the inside, in the opposite direction, the
girls walked arm in arm. As they passed they threw handfuls of confetti
at one another. They never talked to one another, never stopped; but as
a girl caught a man's fancy, he slipped a lover's note into her hand as
she went by, and she answered with a smile if she liked him. Thus they
met, and later the girl would manage to let the _caballero_ know her
address; this would lead to long talks at her window in the darkness,
and then they would be lovers. It was a delicate business, this handing
of notes. Every man carried a gun, and every man's girl was his
jealously guarded property. It was a killing matter to hand a note to
someone else's girl. The close-packed throng moved gaily on, thrilling
to the music.... Beyond the plaza gaped the ruins of Marcos Russek's
store, which these same men had looted less than two weeks before, and
at one side the ancient pink cathedral towered among its fountains and
great trees, with the iron and glass illuminated sign, "Santo Cristo de
Burgos," shining above the door.
There, at the side of the plaza, I came upon a little group of five
Americans huddled upon a bench. They were ragged beyond belief, all
except a slender youth in leggings and a Federal officer's uniform, who
wore a crownless Mexican hat. Feet protruded from their shoes, none had
more than the remnants of socks, all were unshaven. One mere boy wore
his arm in a sling made out of a torn blanket. They made room for me
gladly, stood up, crowded around, cried how good it was to see another
American among all these damned greasers.
"What are you fellows doing here?" I asked.
"We're soldiers of fortune!" said the boy with the wounded arm.
"Aw----!" interrupted another. "Soldiers of----!"
"Ye see it's this way," began the soldierly looking youth. "We've been
fighting right along in the Brigada Zaragosa--was at the battle of
Ojinaga and everything. And now comes an order from Villa to discharge
all the Americans in the ranks and ship 'em back to the border. Ain't
that a hell of a note?"
"Last night they gave us our honorable discharges and threw us out of
the cuartel," said a one-legged man with red hair.
"And we ain't had any place to sleep and nothing to eat----" broke in a
little gray-eyed boy whom they called the Major.
"Don't try and panhandle the guy!" rebuked the soldier indignantly.
"Ain't we each going to get fifty Mex in the morning?"
We adjourned for a short time to a nearby restaurant, and when we
returned I asked them what they were going to do.
"The old U.S. for mine," breathed a good-looking black Irishman who
hadn't spoken before. "I'm going back to San Fran and drive a truck
again. I'm sick of greasers, bad food and bad fighting."
"I got two honorable discharges from the United States army," announced
the soldierly youth proudly. "Served through the Spanish War, I did.
I'm the only soldier in this bunch." The others sneered and cursed
sullenly. "Guess I'll reenlist when I get over the border."
"Not for mine," said the one-legged man. "I'm wanted for two murder
charges--I didn't do it, swear to God I didn't--it was a frame-up. But
a poor guy hasn't got a chance in the United States. When they ain't
framing up some fake charge against me, they jail me for a 'vag.' I'm
all right though," he went on earnestly. "I'm a hard-working man, only
I can't get no job."
The Major raised his hard little face and cruel eyes. "I got out of a
reform school in Wisconsin," he said, "and I guess there's some cops
waiting for me in El Paso. I always wanted to kill somebody with a gun,
and I done it at Ojinaga, and I ain't got a bellyful yet. They told us
we could stay if we signed Mex citizenship papers; I guess I'll sign
to-morrow morning."
"The hell you will," cried the others. "That's a rotten thing to do.
Suppose we get Intervention and you have to shoot against your own
people. You won't catch me signing myself away to be a greaser."
"That's easy fixed," said the Major. "When I go back to the States I
leave my name here. I'm going to stay down here till I get enough of a
stake to go back to Georgia and start a child-labor factory."
The other boy had suddenly burst into tears. "I got my arm shot through
in Ojinaga," he sobbed, "and now they're turning me loose without any
money, and I can't work. When I get to El Paso the cops 'll jail me and
I'll have to write my dad to come and take me home to California. I run
away from there last year," he explained.
"Look here, Major," I advised, "you'd better not stay down here if Villa
wants Americans out of the ranks. Being a Mexican citizen won't help
you if Intervention comes."
"Perhaps you're right," agreed the Major thoughtfully. "Aw, quit your
bawling, Jack! I guess I'll beat it over to Galveston and get on a
South American boat. They say there's a revolution started in Peru."
The soldier was about thirty, the Irishman twenty-five, and the three
others somewhere between sixteen and eighteen.
"What did you fellows come down here for?" I asked.
"Excitement!" answered the soldier and the Irishman, grinning. The
three boys looked at me with eager, earnest faces, drawn with hunger and
hardship.
"Loot!" they said simultaneously. I cast an eye at their dilapidated
garments, at the throngs of tattered volunteers parading around the
plaza, who hadn't been paid for three months, and restrained a violent
impulse to shout with mirth. Soon I left them, hard, cold misfits in a
passionate country, despising the cause for which they were fighting,
sneering at the gaiety of the irrepressible Mexicans. And as I went
away I said, "By the way; what company did you fellows belong to? What
did you call yourselves?"
The red-haired youth answered, "The Foreign Legion!" he said.
I want to say right here that I saw few soldiers of fortune except
one--and he was a dry-as-dust scientist studying the action of high
explosives in field-guns--who would not have been tramps in their own
country.
It was late night when I finally got back to the hotel. Dona Luisa went
ahead to see to my room, and I stopped a moment in the bar. Two or
three soldiers, evidently officers, were drinking there--one pretty far
gone. He was a pock-marked man with a trace of black mustache; his eyes
couldn't seem to focus. But when he saw me he began to sing a pleasant
little song:
I thought it diplomatic to leave, because you can never tell what a
Mexican will do when he's drunk. His temperament is much too
complicated.
Dona Luisa was in my room when I got there. With a mysterious finger to
her lips she shut the door and produced from beneath her skirt a last
year's copy of the _Saturday Evening Post_, in an incredible state of
dissolution. "I got it out of the safe for you," she said. "The damn
thing's worth more than anything in the house. I've been offered
fifteen dollars for it by Americans going out to the mines. You see we
haven't had any American magazines in a year now."
*CHAPTER III*
*SAVED BY A WRIST-WATCH*
After that what could I do but read the precious magazine, although I
had read it before. I lit the lamp, undressed, and got into bed. Just
then came an unsteady step on the gallery outside and my door was flung
violently open. Framed in it stood the pock-marked officer who had been
drinking in the bar. In one hand he carried a big revolver. For a
moment he stood blinking at me malevolently, then stepped inside and
closed the door with a bang. "I am Lieutenant Antonio Montoya, at your
orders," he said. "I heard there was a Gringo in this hotel and I have
come to kill you."
"Sit down," said I politely. I saw he was drunkenly in earnest. He
took off his hat, bowed politely and drew up a chair. Then he produced
another revolver from beneath his coat and laid them both on the table.
They were loaded.
"Would you like a cigarette?" I offered him the package. He took one,
waved it in thanks, and lit it at the lamp. Then he picked up the guns
and pointed them both at me. His fingers tightened slowly on the
triggers, but relaxed again. I was too far gone to do anything but just
wait.
"My only difficulty," said he, lowering his weapons, "is to determine
which revolver I shall use."
"Pardon me," I quavered, "but they both appear a little obsolete. That
Colt forty-five is certainly an 1895 model, and as for the Smith and
Wesson, between ourselves it is only a toy."
"True," he answered, looking at them a little ruefully. "If I had only
thought I would have brought my new automatic. My apologies, senor."
He sighed and again directed the barrels at my chest, with an expression
of calm happiness. "However, since it is so, we must make the best of
it." I got ready to jump, to duck, to scream. Suddenly his eye fell
upon the table, where my two-dollar wrist-watch was lying.
"What is that?" he asked.
"A watch!" Eagerly I demonstrated how to fasten it on. Unconsciously
the pistols slowly lowered. With parted lips and absorbed attention he
watched it delightedly, as a child watches the operation of some new
mechanical toy.
"Ah," he breathed. "_Que esta bonita_! How pretty!"
"It is yours," said I, unstrapping it and offering it to him. He looked
at the watch, then at me, slowly brightening and glowing with surprised
joy. Into his outstretched hand I placed it. Reverently, carefully, he
adjusted the thing to his hairy wrist. Then he rose, beaming down upon
me. The revolvers fell unnoticed to the floor. Lieutenant Antonio
Montoya threw his arms around me.
"Ah, _compadre_!" he cried emotionally.