Front matter (continued 2)

"Quien sabe?" he laughed. "I guess I'll run!"

It was late. The sentinel at the door had long since gone to sleep. "Don't go," said Luis, grabbing my coat. "Let's gossip a little longer...."

'Gino, Juan Santillanes, Silveyra, Luis, Juan Vallejo and I rode up the arroyo to bathe in a pool that was rumored to be there. It was a scorched river bed filled with white-hot sand, rimmed with dense mesquite and cactus. Every kilometer the hidden river showed itself for a little space, only to disappear at a crackling white rim of alkali. First came the horse pool, the troopers and their wretched ponies gathered around it; one or two squatting on the rim, scooping water up against the animals' sides with calabashes.... Above them kneeled the women at their eternal laundry on the stones. Beyond that the ancient path from the hacienda cut across, where the never-ending line of black-shawled women moved with water-jars on their heads. Still farther up were women bathers, wrapped round and round with yards of pale blue or white cotton, and naked brown babies splashing in the shallows. And, last of all, naked brown men, with sombreros on and bright-colored serapes draped over their shoulders, smoked their hojas, squatting on the rocks. We flushed a coyote up there, and scrambled steeply up to the desert, pulling at our revolvers. There he went! We spurred into the chaparral on the dead run, shooting and yelling. But of course he got away. And later, much later, we found the mythical pool—a cool, deep basin worn in the solid rock, with green weeds growing on the bottom.

When we got back, 'Gino Güereca became greatly excited, because his new tordillo horse had come from Bruquilla—a four-year-old stallion that his father had raised for him to ride at the head of his company.

"If he is dangerous," announced Juan Santillanes, as we hurried out, "I want to ride him first. I love to subdue dangerous horses!"

A mighty cloud of yellow dust filled all the corral, rising high into the still air. Through it appeared the dim chaotic shapes of many running horses. Their hoofs made dull thunder. Men were vaguely visible, all braced legs and swinging arms, handkerchiefs bound over their faces; wide-spreading rope coils lifted, circling. The big gray felt the loop tighten on his neck. He trumpeted and plunged; the vaquero twisted the rope around his hip, lying back almost to the ground, feet plowing the dirt. Another noose gripped the horse's hind legs—and he was down. They put a saddle on him and a rope halter.

"Want to ride him, Juanito?" grinned 'Gino.

"After you," answered Juan with dignity. "He's your horse...."

But Juan Vallejo already was astride, shouting to them to loose the ropes. With a sort of squealing roar, the tordillo struggled up, and the earth trembled to his furious fight.

We dined in the ancient kitchen of the hacienda, sitting on stools around a packing box. The ceiling was a rich, greasy brown, from the smoke of generations of meals. One entire end of the room was taken up by immense adobe stoves, ovens, and fireplaces, with four or five ancient crones bending over them, stirring pots and turning tortillas. The fire was our only light, flickering strangely over the old women; lighting up the black wall, up which the smoke fled, to wreathe around the ceiling and finally pour from the window. There were Colonel Petronilo, his mistress, a strangely beautiful peasant woman with a pock-marked face, who always seemed to be laughing to herself about something; Don Tomas, Luis Martinez, Colonel Redondo, Major Salazar, Nicanor, and I. The Colonel's mistress seemed uncomfortable at the table; for a Mexican peasant woman is a servant in her house. But Don Petronilo always treated her as if she were a great lady.

Redondo had just been telling me about the girl he was going to marry. He showed me her picture. She was even then on her way to Chihuahua to get her wedding dress. "As soon as we take Torreon," he said.

"Oiga, señor!" Salazar touched me on the arm. "I have found out who you are. You are an agent of American business men who have vast interests in Mexico. I know all about American business. You are an agent of the trusts. You come down here to spy upon the movement of our troops, and then you will secretly send them word. Is it not true?"

"How could I secretly send anybody any word from here?" I asked. "We're four days' hard ride from a telegraph line."

"Ah, I know," he grinned cunningly, wabbling a finger at me. "I know many things; I have much in the head." He was standing up now. The Major suffered badly from gout; his legs were wrapped in yards and yards of woolen bandages, which made them look like tamales. "I know all about business. I have studied much in my youth. These American trusts are invading Mexico to rob the Mexican people——"

"You're mistaken, Major," interrupted Don Petronilo sharply. "This señor is my friend and my guest."

"Listen, mi Coronel," Salazar burst out with unexpected violence. "This señor is a spy. All Americans are Porfiristas and Huertistas. Take this warning before it is too late. I have much in the head. I am a very smart man. Take this Gringo out and shoot him—at once. Or you will regret it."

A clamor of voices burst out all together from the others, but it was interrupted by another sound—a shot, and then another, and men shouting.

Came a trooper running. "Mutiny in the ranks!" he cried. "They won't obey orders!"

"Who won't?" snapped Don Petronilo.

"The gente of Salazar!"

"Bad people!" exclaimed Nicanor as we ran. "They were colorados captured when we took Torreon. Joined us so we wouldn't kill 'em. Ordered out tonight to guard the Puerta!"

"Till to-morrow," said Salazar at this point, "I'm going to bed!"

The peons' houses at La Cadena, where the troops were quartered, enclosed a great square, like a walled town. There were two gates. At one we forced our way through a mob of women and peons fighting to get out. Inside, there were dim lights from doorways, and three or four little fires in the open air. A bunch of frightened horses crowded one another in a corner. Men ran wildly in and out of their cuartels, with rifles in their hands. In the center of the open space stood a group of about fifty men, mostly armed, as if to repel an attack.

"Guard those gates!" cried the Colonel. "Don't let anybody out without an order from me!" The running troops began to mass at the gates. Don Petronilo walked out alone into the middle of the square.

"What's the trouble, compañeros?" he asked quietly.

"They were going to kill us all!" yelled somebody from the darkness. "They wanted to escape! They were going to betray us to the colorados!"

"It's a lie!" cried those in the center. "We are not Don Petronilo's gente! Our jefe is Manuel Arrieta!"

Suddenly Longinos Güereca, unarmed, flashed by us and fell upon them furiously, wrenching away their rifles and throwing them far behind. For a moment it looked as if the rebels would turn on him, but they did not resist.

"Disarm them!" ordered Don Petronilo. "And lock them up!"

They herded the prisoners into one large room, with an armed guard at the door. And long after midnight I could hear them hilariously singing.

That left Don Petronilo with a hundred effectives, some extra horses with running sores on their backs, and two thousand rounds of ammunition, more or less. Salazar took himself off in the morning, after recommending that all his gente be shot; he was evidently greatly relieved to be rid of them. Juan Santillanes was in favor of execution, too. But Don Petronilo decided to send them to General Urbina for trial.

CHAPTER IX

THE LAST NIGHT

The days at La Cadena were full of color. In the cold dawn, when the river pools were filmed with ice, a trooper would gallop into the great square with a plunging steer at the end of his rope. Fifty or sixty ragged soldiers, only their eyes showing between serapes and big sombreros, would begin an amateur bull-fight, to the roaring delight of the rest of the compañeros. They waved their blankets, shouting the correct bull-fight cries. One would twist the infuriated animal's tail. Another, more impatient, beat him with the flat of a sword. Instead of banderillas, they stuck daggers into his shoulder—his hot blood spattering them as he charged. And when at last he was down and the merciful knife in his brain, a mob fell upon the carcase, cutting and ripping, and bearing off chunks of raw meat to their cuartels. Then the white, burning sun would rise suddenly behind the Puerta, stinging your hands and face. And the pools of blood, the faded patterns of the serapes, the far reaches of umber desert glowed and became vivid....

Don Petronilo had confiscated several coaches in the campaign. We borrowed them for many an excursion—the five of us. Once it was a trip to San Pedro del Gallo to see a cock-fight, appropriately enough. Another time 'Gino Güereca and I went to see the fabulously rich lost mines of the Spaniards, which he knew. But we never got past Bruquilla—just lounged in the shade of the trees and ate cheese all day.

Late in the afternoon the Puerta guard trotted out to their post, the late sun soft on their rifles and cartridge-belts; and long after dark the detachment relieved came jingling in out of the mysterious dark.

The four peddlers whom I had seen in Santo Domingo arrived that night. They had four burro loads of macuche to sell the soldiers.

"It's meester!" they cried, when I came down to their little fire. "Que tal, meester? How goes it? Aren't you afraid of the colorados?"

"How is business?" I asked, accepting the heaped-up handful of macuche they gave me.

They laughed uproariously at this.

"Business! Far better for us if we had stayed in Santo Domingo! This Tropa couldn't buy one cigarro if they clubbed their money!..."

One of them began to sing that extraordinary ballad, "The Morning Song to Francisco Villa." He sang one verse, and then the next man sang a verse, and so on around, each man composing a dramatic account of the deeds of the Great Captain. For half an hour I lay there, watching them, as they squatted between their knees, serapes draped loosely from their shoulders, the firelight red on their simple, dark faces. While one man sang the others stared upon the ground, wrapt in composition.

"Here is Francisco Villa

With his chiefs and his officers,

Who come to saddle the short-horns

Of the Federal Army.

"Get ready now, colorados,

Who have been talking so loud,

For Villa and his soldiers

Will soon take off your hides!

"To-day has come your tamer,

The Father of Rooster Tamers,

To run you out of Torreon—

To the devil with your skins!

"The rich with all their money

Have already got their lashing,

As the soldiers of Urbina

Can tell, and those of Maclovio Herrera.

"Fly, fly away, little dove,

Fly over all the prairies,

And say that Villa has come

To drive them all out forever.

"Ambition will ruin itself,

And justice will be the winner,

For Villa has reached Torreon

To punish the avaricious."

"Fly away, Royal Eagle,

These laurels carry to Villa,

For he has come to conquer

Bravo and all his colonels.

"Now you sons of the Mosquito,

Your pride will come to an end.

If Villa has come to Torreon,

It is because he could do it!

"Viva Villa and his soldiers!

Viva Herrera and his gente!

You have seen, wicked people,

What a brave man can do.

"With this now I say good-bye;

By the Rose of Castile,

Here is the end of my rhyme

To the great General Villa!"

After a while I slipped away, and I doubt if they even saw me go. They sang around their fire for more than three hours.

But in our cuartel there was other entertainment. The room was full of smoke from the fire on the floor. Through it I dimly made out some thirty or forty troopers squatting or sprawled at full length—perfectly silent as Silveyra read aloud a proclamation from the Governor of Durango forever condemning the lands of the great haciendas to be divided among the poor.

He read:

"Considering: that the principal cause of discontent among the people in our State, which forced them to spring to arms in the year 1910, was the absolute lack of individual property; and that the rural classes have no means of subsistence in the present, nor any hope for the future, except to serve as peons on the haciendas of the great land owners, who have monopolized the soil of the State;

"Considering: that the principal branch of our national riches is agriculture, and that there can be no true progress in agriculture without that the majority of farmers have a personal interest in making the earth produce....

"Considering, finally: that the rural towns have been reduced to the deepest misery, because the common lands which they once owned have gone to augment the property of the nearest hacienda, especially under the Dictatorship of Diaz; with which the inhabitants of the State lost their economic, political, and social independence, then passed from the rank of citizens to that of slaves, without the Government being able to lift the moral level through education, because the hacienda where they lived is private property....

"Therefore, the Government of the State of Durango declares it a public necessity that the inhabitants of the towns and villages be the owners of agricultural lands...."

When the paymaster had painfully waded through all the provisions that followed, telling how the land was to be applied for, etc., there was a silence.

"That," said Martinez, "is the Mexican Revolucion."

"It's just what Villa's doing in Chihuahua," I said. "It's great. All you fellows can have a farm now."

An amused chuckle ran around the circle. Then a little, bald-headed man, with yellow, stained whiskers, sat up and spoke.

"Not us," he said, "not the soldiers. After a Revolucion is done it wants no more soldiers. It is the pacificos who will get the land—those who did not fight. And the next generation...." He paused and spread his torn sleeves to the fire. "I was a school teacher," he explained, "so I know that Revolucions, like Republics, are ungrateful. I have fought three years. At the end of the first Revolucion that great man, Father Madero, invited his soldiers to the Capital. He gave us clothes, and food, and bull-fights. We returned to our homes and found the greedy again in power."

"I ended the war with forty-five pesos," said a man.

"You were lucky," continued the schoolmaster. "No, it is not the troopers, the starved, unfed, common soldiers who profit by the Revolucion. Officers, yes—some—for they get fat on the blood of the Patria. But we—no."

"What on earth are you fighting for?" I cried.

"I have two little sons," he answered. "And they will get their land. And they will have other little sons. They, too, will never want for food...." The little man grinned. "We have a proverb in Guadalajara: 'Do not wear a shirt of eleven yards, for he who wants to be a Redeemer will be crucified.'"

"I've got no little son," said fourteen-year-old Gil Tomas, amid shouts of laughter. "I'm fighting so I can get a thirty-thirty rifle from some dead Federal, and a good horse that belonged to a millionaire."

Just for fun I asked a trooper with a photo button of Madero pinned to his coat who that was.

"Pues, quien sabe, señor?" he replied. "My captain told me he was a great saint. I fight because it is not so hard as to work."

"How often are you fellows paid?"

"We were paid three pesos just nine months ago tonight," said the schoolmaster, and they all nodded. "We are the real volunteers. The gente of Villa are professionals."

Then Luis Martinez got a guitar and sang a beautiful little love song, which he said a prostitute had made up one night in a bordel.

The last thing I remember of that memorable night was 'Gino Güereca lying near me in the dark, talking.

"To-morrow," he said, "I shall take you to the lost gold-mines of the Spaniards. They are hidden in a cañon in the Western mountains. Only the Indians know of them—and I. The Indians go there sometimes with knives and dig the raw gold out of the ground. We'll be rich...."

CHAPTER X

THE COMING OF THE COLORADOS

Before sunrise next morning, Fernando Silveyra, fully dressed, came into the room and said calmly to get up, that the colorados were coming. Juan Vallejo laughed: "How many, Fernando?"

"About a thousand," he answered in a quiet voice, rummaging for his 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 Güereca 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, compañeros! 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 compañeros are fleeing! The compañeros 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 compañeros 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, compañero?" I asked.

"For the sierra," he answered. "And you?"

I pointed north, where I knew the Güerecas' 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 Güereca'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 Güereca, 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 compañeros 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 Güereca 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 Señora. "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.

"Señor," he said, "are you a Catholic?"

"No."

"Thank God," he returned briefly. "We Catholics are liable to be intolerant. Are you a Mexican?"

"No, señor."

"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, señor. 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 compañeros 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, compañero? 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 Güereca 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 Güereca, 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 Güereca 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 compañeros 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, señorita!" 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, señor, 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 señor," Elizabetta answered nervously. "I'm going to stay with him——"

"You——" began Don Felix, gulping. "You are my woman. Oiga, señor, 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, señor!" 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, señor!" 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 portières, 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.

Señor 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 compañero 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 naïve 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!"

"Señores," 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. Señores, 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."

"Señor 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 compañeros 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.