Gringos #8, page 4
Onslow and the other gringos wound their path between them, receiving little more than cold stares from those who bothered to look up.
Although the gringos had been fighting with the rebels for some time, despite the fact that Villa had publicly shown his trust in them and had at times placed them in command of contingents of men, they were not welcome. They were not trusted. They were other, apart. Yanquis. Mercenarios. They were not fighting because they believed in the cause; they were not risking their lives to free the peons, the campesinos from the yoke of virtual slavery; they were fighting for money and money alone. On the day that Villa ceased to pay them, they would ride out and fight for someone with dollars enough to make it worth their while.
So, while some of the Mexicans—those who had fought alongside them—respected the gringos for their skills with their weapons, for their bravery, most despised them.
Especially the one with fair hair, who dressed so smart and had the airs of a gentleman, especially that one named McCloud: he was discolo. When he drank he could not be trusted, he lost control—and if there were women around then he would take them if he could. By force or favor.
Once, not too long ago, he had lain with one of the women and her man had challenged McCloud to a fight, a duel. When that had been stopped and the gringos had ridden away to Mazatlan to take part in a mission, the man whose woman and name had been violated went after McCloud and tried to kill him. He was killed himself. That was the way of the gringos.
Stone faces looked up at them and away: faces above loose white peasant shirts, above tight-fitting jackets trimmed with silver conchos, above crossed cartridge belts of wide, worn leather; faces from below wide-brimmed sombreros, from below hair that was dark and parted at the center of the head, flattened to the skull.
Faces of scorn.
McCloud cared nothing for their feelings, despised them back. They were greasers, ignorant peasants who didn’t know any better than slaving away on the land and ought to remain in their place. He classed them in his mind with all other inferior classes—blacks, Indians and women.
The other gringos understood in their different ways the feelings of the men they fought with; perhaps Jonas Strong understood most of all.
The guards outside Villa’s tent came to a sloppy attention as the gringos approached.
‘Wait here,’ one of them said in a surly mumble, while his comrade fidgeted with the carbine in his hands.
The first guard returned a few moments later and gestured for them to enter.
The tent was large enough for a-man to stand straight; there was a folding table and some chairs at its center, a cot bed over to one side. Villa stood alongside the table, watching the gringos enter. He shook hands briefly with Onslow, nodding only to the others.
Villa’s face was round and full, the flesh hanging below the line of his jaw to give him a clear double chin. His nose was broad, his mouth all but hidden by a heavy moustache. The black hair that thatched over his head was unruly and tangled. His eyes were narrowed, as if the years he had spent in the heat and sunlight of Mexico had brought them to little more than slits across his swarthy face.
He wore a striped shirt that looked as if it had been slept in too many times and which was open at the neck, the top button missing. A dark vest was unbuttoned across the shirt, the chain of a gold watch hanging down from one of the small pockets. His pants were fraying, the conchos that lined the legs tarnished, one hanging loose, several missing. His gunbelt was pushed behind his right hip, so that from where the gringos were standing it was possible only to glimpse a small section of the butt of the Colt automatic.
He did not look like a victorious general; not like a man whose planning and presence were about to lead his men to victory. Villa did not give the impression that Ojinaga was on the point of being taken. Rather, he was a man who had slept too little, dreamed too long; a man who had drunk too heavily and thought too little; a man whose efforts had been in part wasted and on whom disappointment sat as squatly as the ugliest of river frogs.
‘So, you have returned.’
Onslow nodded, alarmed by Villa’s appearance.
‘And you have had success?’
Onslow hesitated, then: ‘Some.’
‘Some?’ Villa echoed, raising one eyebrow and swaying a little unsteadily.
‘We found out for certain that the federales are buying ammunition and who they’re getting it from.’
‘But you did not stop it.’ Villa stared at Onslow directly.
‘Perhaps not.’
‘Perhaps!’ Villa’s voice exploded and his right hand became a fist and when the fist struck the table, the folding legs gave beneath the force of the blow and the table collapsed.
The face of one of the guards showed for a moment at the tent’s opening.
Tour of you spend how long? Three days? Three days across the border and all you can tell me when you get back is that our enemy is buying arms from your countrymen.’ His arms were raised in a sudden gesture. ‘Do you think I do not know this? Do you think this is new to me?’ One arm swung down and Villa’s index finger pointed into Onslow’s face. ‘Did I need to spare you for three days to know this?’
Onslow stared back into the Mexican leader’s face, saying nothing: there was nothing to say.
Villa smiled. ‘Drink.’
He scooped up a bottle of tequila from the ground and jerked the cork free.
‘Drink.’
He waved the bottle under Onslow’s nose and Onslow shook his head. ‘No, thanks.’
Again Villa laughed, but there was something edgy about the tone of his laughter.
‘You will not drink with me, huh? You do not wish to drink to the success of your mission?’
Onslow’s face was a mask.
Villa moved past him, flourishing the bottle towards the others.
‘You, Strong, you will drink with me. Two glorious revolutionaries together, hah. Two fighters for the oppressed and downtrodden.’
Strong looked away. Villa slapped his free hand against his thigh, then rubbed his ample belly.
‘You, Durham?’ And when Jamie opened his mouth to refuse. Villa immediately pulled the bottle back. ‘But no, your pleasures are in other things. Other things than a poor man’s tequila.’
He stopped in front of McCloud.
‘But now,’ he said, nodding his head slowly, ‘here is one gringo who will not refuse to drink with me.’
McCloud scowled at the Mexican, but reached out his hand towards the bottle nevertheless. He wiped the mouth of the bottle against the front of his shirt and then set it to his Ups. He was in mid-swallow when Villa swung his arm back faster than anyone expected and struck the bottle from McCloud’s mouth.
The bottle went flying across the tent and into the heavy canvas.
McCloud yelled and jumped back, left hand to his mouth, right diving for the Colt Lightning holstered at his shoulder.
Villa laughed and swayed away and as he did so, his own hand found the butt of the Colt automatic.
Both guards dived in through the opening.
Onslow was faster than any of them.
He dropped into a crouch and his Colt was in his hand and coming level with a blur of speed that would have matched any of the old time gunfighters of the frontier—Masterson, Earp, Hawk, Hickok, Herne the Hunter. Onslow would have had the edge on all of them.
The gun was aimed directly at Yates McCloud’s chest.
‘Don’t!’
The command stung the air as McCloud’s pistol slid out from the leather.
‘Don’t!’
The word echoed the closed air.
McCloud’s eyes were almost as narrow as Villa’s and one side of his mouth twisted up with anger—the other trickled blood from where the bottled had been knocked from his lips.
Pancho Villa released his own gun and laughed; he clapped McCloud on the shoulders and laughed full into the southerner’s face. ‘It was a joke, amigo. A joke, nothing more. You must not be so short of temper. Hah!’ He slapped McCloud’s right shoulder and McCloud let his pistol drop back into its holster and stepped away.
A thin line of blood curled onto his chin and there was black anger in his eyes.
Villa turned from him, not fearing him.
‘Es nada,’ he said to the guards, waving them away.
‘We have brought a man to speak with you,’ said Onslow after a few silent moments.
‘Which man?’
‘An American.’
‘What does he want? Is he a fighter like you?’
A trace of a smile crossed Onslow’s face, like a cloud drifting fast over the sun. ‘No,’ he replied. ‘This one is no fighter.’
‘He sells arms, then. Supplies.’
‘No.’ Onslow shook his head.
‘What is he then, this yanqui?’
‘He comes from an American film company. He wants to talk with you about filming you and your men fighting. To show in America. All over America.’
Villa looked at him with genuine surprise on his face. ‘Once, I was in Mexico City. Several years ago. I was not supposed to be there...’ He grinned and his moustache lifted. ‘... but I was. In this dark, long room I saw such a film. A woman danced to the tune a man played on a piano before the screen. There were pictures taken from the front of a train. Hills and mountains. Another woman who walked towards the screen wearing veils, taking them off. Some of them off.’
Villa shrugged his heavy shoulders. ‘What has this to do with me? What has this to do with revolution?’
Onslow hesitated. ‘Perhaps it will help your cause above the border. If not, at least they will pay you money.’
The narrow eyes widened a fraction. ‘How much money?’
‘I don’t know. But not a little.’
Villa wiped his hand over his moustache, rubbed his belly as though he were hungry. ‘I shall eat. Then bring this man to me and we will talk.’ His face lit up for a moment. ‘We will talk of money.’
‘Señor,’ said Harry Johnson, ‘I am not empowered to discuss terms. I am sorry, but...’
Johnson fiddled with his gray and cream cap, shifting around in endless permutations of circles over his lap. His cream tie had been loosened at the neck of his stained pink shirt. His wool coat was draped from his left shoulder. Sweat ran through the dust-smeared tangle of hair at his temples and down the round cheeks. He glanced up at the Mexican leader and then hastily away.
‘Why then do you waste my time?’
‘I... I was asked...’ Johnson faltered into silence.
Villa stood and turned away, turning back a few paces off. ‘You are wasting my time. I have a battle to fight, a siege to continue.’ He pointed at Johnson, cowering on his feet. ‘Blood to shed. I cannot waste my time with men who are too weak to make decisions.’
‘Señor!’
Surprised by the sudden urgency in the American’s voice, Villa gave him his attention.
‘There was talk of twenty thousand dollars. Perhaps more.’
Villa’s face changed expression. ‘For what?’
‘To use our cameras. To show you leading your men in battle.’ Johnson twisted the cap between his fingers until it was an unrecognizable shape. ‘It would be seen all over the United States. All over the world.’
Villa nodded thoughtfully. ‘All over the world.’
‘Yes, general.’
‘And twenty thousand dollars.’
‘Yes.’
Villa pushed his fingers through his unruly dark hair,
‘Twenty thousand dollars,’ he said softly, as if forgetting for the moment that anyone else was present, ‘that would buy a great many guns, much food.’
He looked up at Johnson. ‘How soon can you bring these other men of whom you spoke to me?’
Harry Johnson pulled at the peak of his cap, straightening it. ‘As long as it takes the Southern Pacific railroad.’
Villa clapped his hands. ‘Hola!’
Five men came running, either with guns already in their hands or in the act of being drawn.
Harry Johnson’s face went white; his stomach turned. He was convinced that what he had avoided at the ferry was going to happen now. The skin along the backs of his arms and legs tingled like ice. His eyes closed and his legs were about to give way.
‘Fetch Major Onslow,’ snapped Villa. ‘Fetch the major now!’
When Onslow arrived, Jonas Strong walking a pace behind and to his left, Harry Johnson was still not convinced that he wasn’t going to be taken to the nearest wall, stood against it, and shot.
‘Major,’ said Villa, starting to talk before Onslow had ceased to walk towards him. ‘I wish to see the men from the film company. They will need escorting over the border. And,’ he continued, his voice lowering and becoming charged with menace, ‘there is the business of this compatriot of yours who likes to sells arms to the federales. Perhaps that could be settled at the same time, no?’
Onslow nodded curtly. ‘Yes.’
‘Then you will leave as soon as you are able. Bring back these men at once. Perhaps they will film me riding at the head of my troops in triumph into Ojinaga, my enemies fleeing before me.’
‘But that could take too long, weeks even. Surely Ojinaga must be taken before that?’
Villa’s face changed to a bitter scowl. ‘You will leave such things to me. I am commander of this army. You, major, are a mercenario. Such decisions are yours no longer.’
Villa fingered the gold watch from his vest, snapped it open and nodded. ‘You have your orders. You will not take all of your gringos, I suppose.’
The tone implied that Villa wanted the answer, no.
He got it. ‘Two of us will be enough.’
‘Good.’
They were being dismissed. Onslow tapped Harry Johnson on the shoulder and motioned for him to follow.
‘Will I ride with you, major?’ asked Strong as they were striding away.
Onslow shook his head. ‘I wish you were. But I’d better not leave McCloud around here. Not after that brush with Villa. He might just drink enough one night and take it into his head to do something about getting that bottle slapped out of his mouth.’
‘So you’ll take him.’
‘Yes.’
Strong put his hand for a moment on Onslow’s arm. ‘Be careful, major. If Yates loses his nerve again at the wrong time... ’
Onslow nodded grimly. ‘You think I don’t know that?’
‘I guess not.’
‘You and Jamie keep one another’s company. Unless Villa wants you, sends for you, keep out of his way. I don’t like how he’s acting. It don’t sit right with him.’
‘You think he’s scared?’
‘Hell, no, I don’t think the man’s been born can scare Pancho Villa. The army neither. I reckon maybe the way his so-called friends and allies like Carranza and Obregon are stabbin’ him in the back is making him sick in his craw. Maybe he misses being a plain and simple bandit, like in the old days. At least then he knew who his enemies were.’
‘And his friends?’ asked the negro.
‘He didn’t have any.’
Chapter Five
HARRY JOHNSON WASN’T happy to be back over the border in Presidio; that would have been putting it too strongly. But it was true to say that he felt less dreadful than he had in Mexico. There is always the sense—which may of course be mistaken—that when you are in your own country, things are likely to be better for you than when you are on foreign soil. So Harry was marginally happier, marginally safer; he didn’t spend each waking moment and half of his sleeping ones looking over his shoulder to see who was getting ready to shoot or stab him in the back. Just every other moment.
After all, hadn’t it been on United States soil that the attack on the gringos had nearly resulted in his being shot down by any one of a number of stray bullets?
And had he not heard Pancho Villa tell Onslow that the affair had to be finished off?
Finished off—Johnson gulped and felt his throat. It was a phrase which conjured up any number of images and none of them presently pleasant.
‘When d’they say in that wire they’d get here?’
Johnson coughed. ‘The day after tomorrow.’
‘Damn!’ Yates McCloud smacked a bunched fist down into his opposite palm and reached for a cigar from the inside pocket of the jacket which hung over the back of his chair.
The hotel room was low-ceilinged and only ventilated by one small window which overlooked a side alley. The beds creaked and looked suspiciously as though they provided a secure home for a number of bugs and lice. The chairs were hard and rickety. The water was brown and tasted bitter.
The food that was served in the dining room wasn’t fit for a parcel of hungry hogs down on the swamp farm.
Yates McCloud was not a happy man.
He bit the end from the cigar and spat it onto the threadbare patterned carpet; struck a match which spluttered out, tried a second which broke in half in his hand, cursed and swore, clamped his teeth down savagely into the cigar so that he almost bit through it, succeeded in lighting the third match, drew on the cigar until that was alight too, dropped the dead match down beside the chair and blew a cloud of blue-gray smoke towards the yellowing ceiling.
Footsteps sounded along the passageway and instantly, McCloud’s manner altered. He pushed himself up from the chair and went over to the door, stepping quietly, hand drawing his gun from the shoulder rig he wore over his light gray vest.
Onslow knocked twice, once, twice again.
McCloud turned the key in the lock clockwise and pulled the door back.
‘I’ve got a lead on Kennedy,’ said Onslow almost before the door was closed behind him.
‘Where?’ McCloud’s eyes showed the beginnings of excitement.
‘There’s a gambling place near the center of town. Exclusive. Not the sort of place any drifter can wander into. Kennedy plays there, roulette, most evenings he’s in town.’
