"Villa is coming!"
The news spread like lightning. Villa--the magic word! The Great Man,
the salient profile, the unconquerable warrior who, even at a distance,
exerts the fascination of a reptile, a boa constrictor.
"Our Mexican Napoleon!" exclaimed Luis Cervantes.
"Yes! The Aztec Eagle! He buried his beak of steel in the head of
Huerta the serpent!" Solis, Natera's chief of staff, remarked somewhat
ironically, adding: "At least, that's how I expressed it in a speech I
made at Ciudad Juarez!"
The two sat at the bar of the saloon, drinking beer. The "high hats,"
wearing mufflers around their necks and thick rough leather shoes on
their feet, ate and drank endlessly. Their gnarled hands loomed across
table, across bar. All their talk was of Villa and his men. The tales
Natera's followers related won gasps of astonishment from Demetrio's
men. Villa! Villa's battles! Ciudad Juarez ... Tierra Blanca ...
Chihuahua ... Torreon....
The bare facts, the mere citing of observation and experience meant
nothing. But the real story, with its extraordinary contrasts of high
exploits and abysmal cruelties was quite different. Villa, indomitable
lord of the sierra, the eternal victim of all governments ... Villa
tracked, hunted down like a wild beast ... Villa the reincarnation of
the old legend; Villa as Providence, the bandit, that passes through
the world armed with the blazing torch of an ideal: to rob the rich and
give to the poor. It was the poor who built up and imposed a legend
about him which Time itself was to increase and embellish as a shining
example from generation to generation.
"Look here, friend," one of Natera's men told Anastasio, "if General
Villa takes a fancy to you, he'll give you a ranch on the spot. But if
he doesn't, he'll shoot you down like a dog! God! You ought to see
Villa's troops! They're all northerners and dressed like lords! You
ought to see their wide-brimmed Texas hats and their brand-new outfits
and their four-dollar shoes, imported from the U. S. A."
As they retailed the wonders of Villa and his men, Natera's men gazed
at one another ruefully, aware that their own hats were rotten from
sunlight and moisture, that their own shirts and trousers were tattered
and barely fit to cover their grimy, lousy bodies.
"There's no such a thing as hunger up there. They carry boxcars full of
oxen, sheep, cows! They've got cars full of clothing, trains full of
guns, ammunition, food enough to make a man burst!"
Then they spoke of Villa's airplanes.
"Christ, those planes! You know when they're close to you, be damned if
you know what the hell they are! They look like small boats, you know,
or tiny rafts ... and then pretty soon they begin to rise, making a
hell of a row. Something like an automobile going sixty miles an hour.
Then they're like great big birds that don't even seem to move
sometimes. But there's a joker! The God-damn things have got some
American fellow inside with hand grenades by the thousand. Now you try
and figure what that means! The fight is on, see? You know how a farmer
feeds corn to his chickens, huh? Well, the American throws his lead
bombs at the enemy just like that. Pretty soon the whole damn field is
nothing but a graveyard ... dead men all over the dump ... dead men
here ... dead men there ... dead men everywhere!"
Anastasio Montanez questioned the speaker more particularly. It was not
long before he realized that all this high praise was hearsay and that
not a single man in Natera's army had ever laid eyes on Villa.
"Well, when you get down to it, I guess it doesn't mean so much! No
man's got much more guts than any other man, if you ask me. All you
need to be a good fighter is pride, that's all. I'm not a professional
soldier even though I'm dressed like hell, but let me tell you. I'm not
forced to do this kind of bloody job, because I own ..."
"Because I own over twenty oxen, whether you believe it or not!" Quail
said, mocking Anastasio.