The Rift Page 22

  The men sat frozen in their seats. The colonel shouted, “Now, please!!” Many of the miners were immigrants who understood little English and no Spanish. When the men who understood moved, they mimicked them. Most were frightened. Some like Auguste, tried to soothe them. Auguste had been with Charlie only a year, but he had seen a lot.

  “Where in the hell are Carranza’s troops?” Charlie spoke aloud.

  While the men began to leave the train, one man, a Pole who had only been in America for a year, sat in his seat, his hands clutching the seat next to his legs. His knuckles were white, his body pressed against the back of the seat. One of the miners put his hand on his shoulder, talking softly to him.

  “Come, Kaz. Everything will be alright. They will let us go.” As the man spoke, a Villista pushed him aside and faced the terrified man.

  “Stand up, gringo.” He was laughing, enjoying the fear on the face of the wretched miner.

  While the Villista was standing over the man, most of the miners were outside, being herded into a line outside the car. Charlie heard a shot. A second man on the step started back in the car and was shot in the back.

  Seeing the momentary chaos, Charlie and Tom Perrin ducked between the cars and started to run. From behind them, they could hear firing then heard the rounds hitting around them. Charlie felt the breath leave him as a round struck him in the small of the back. Wiping away the pain, he climbed to his feet and started to run again. The second bullet entered the back of his skull, releasing him from his nightmare. As Charlie was hit, Tom hit the ground and lay still, waiting for death which never came.

  Lieutenant Carrero stood before Lopez. “We were to rob the train of the payroll. Why are you allowing the men to rob the workers, Colonel?”

  “Do you think our men will follow us if we do not allow them to rob the miners or others we find? They will find someone else to follow who will allow them to take what they want.”

  “What are you going to do with the Americanos, Colonel?”

  “We have already killed four of them. It would be foolish to let the rest live. Lieutenant Carrero, pick two men to execute the gringos.” Carreros looked at the colonel. He is nothing but a stinking bandit like so many Villistas, he thought. Lopez never took his eyes off of Carrero. He did not trust the man. The son of a government official, he had too much education and was not like the rest of them. The young lieutenant had to decide whether to obey the order. He knew if he did not he would have to kill the colonel. The colonel never moved without two bodyguards, who stared at Carrero, along with the colonel. Perhaps another time. Auguste stood with the men. He thought of Charlie and Tom running. He would not do that. The bastards were going to shoot us. Well, to hell with them.

  He spoke to the frightened men, his voice calm.

  “If any man chooses to ask forgiveness, now is the time, boys. They’re goin’ to kill all of us. Stand together, don’t let them ugly bastards know you’re afraid.”

  As he spoke, he could hear some of the men begin to whimper; some started to reach for those standing beside them for support. A few knelt in prayer. Auguste had left France after the battle at the Marne. He knew the smell of death. He had not thought he would find it beside a railroad track in Mexico.

  March 7

  It wasn’t hard to find the cattle. The land was dry, been that way for months. Along the streams where water still flowed, the cattle would find shade under the mesquite and pines. William Cobb had been at it for a while, and knew where to look. With him were Johnny Cortez and Pedro Moreno. The three of them had found a cool area shaded by a cottonwood, and had dismounted, enjoying the cigarettes they had rolled. Their foreman was on the west side of the ranch. They could take their time. The glade they had selected was shaped like a flour scoop, closed on three sides, the open side facing the stream. Thick brush grew on the other side of the stream, allowing the band of five riders to come upon them before they could move.

  Perez whispered to Cobb. “They are Villa’s men.”

  Cobb was a tall, spare, carrot-topped man, with a faced colored like new copper. He wished he had taken his rifle out of its scabbard. He knew there was trouble.

  On the west side of the ranch, Bart MacArthur, foreman for the El Primo Land and Cattle Company, was riding with the chuck wagon to rendezvous with the men who had left that morning in search of stray cows and their calves. B. W. Benson was driving the chuck wagon.

  They were an hour away from the arroyo where the hands would be when ten men appeared out of the brush beside the road and surrounded them. Their leader signaled the wagon to follow the small band.

  Bart MacArthur had no idea that Pancho Villa still had this many men. He thought that Obregon had destroyed the army, and Villa was finished. He had heard stories about the raid at Santa Isabel but that could have been any band of renegades. Mexico was full of them.”

  “How many you figure, BW, five, maybe six hundert?” When Bart looked at the swarming camp, he shuddered when he thought there were this many Villistas in the vicinity. He thought of the Kane family, the owner’s wife, Kitty, and their three boys. Somebody’s got to get back there and warn them.

  “Hard to say, the way they’re movin’ around. But that sure looks right. Somethin’s up, Bartholemew.”

  BW knew MacArthur hated that name, and being good friends, he would hit him with it at the most bizarre moments. Now he wanted only to take his friend’s mind off of death.

  “You’re tryin’ to get under my skin, you damn sodbustin’ old buzzard.”

  BW looked at the bound hands of his friend. “You gonna’ hit me, Bartholemew?”

  The Villistas turned in surprise as BW’s loud cackle and Bart’s great guffaws carried through the camp.

  Cobb said nothing. No one at the ranch expected him to talk. Bart and BW knew he had been in the Spanish war but he never talked about it. Everyone learned not to ask. Young men who would want to ask about his missing eye would be warned away by the old hands who understood there were some things a man didn’t want to talk about; that it didn’t do any good to talk about.

  As the banter between the foreman and his cook was going on, the camp, like a single, living thing, became excited. It began to shout, and men started running toward a group of horsemen riding into camp. In the center of his Dorados, El Jefe rode. BW could see that the man was still a glorious hero to the Villistas, someone who gave them reason to think they, too, were important.

  Cobb watched the man. He had never seen Villa. Cobb liked to read, and had read the reports of Villa. What he saw now he didn’t like. He saw hate instead of courage in those eyes and self-indulgence, not nobility in his face and bearing. That he could be cruel, everyone knew. That he could be brave beyond recklessness, Cobb wondered. As Cobb’s one blue eye fixed on Villa, he saw the general look his way. For a moment, the man seemed to concentrate on fathoming Cobb’s thoughts, and as if having done so, looked quickly away.

  Villa walked his horse up to the three men. He did not look at Cobb.

  “The people of Mexico will never have peace and land until the gringos leave Mexico. If you will not leave on your own, then we will assist you.”

  He looked at BW Benson, who was staring defiantly at Villa. Bart MacArthur had lowered his eyes, as if willing himself to be back at the ranch in his room in the bunkhouse. For a moment, Bart’s spirits lifted as he thought they would be escorted to the border. He began to think there was hope, that he had to warn Jim Kane somehow.

  Villa backed his horse off and spoke sharply to the men with him. Cobb watched as two men untied the rope that bound him to the tree, leaving his hands still tied. Unlike Bart, he knew what Villa intended to do. He had read enough and heard enough. BW was left tied to the tree, while men grabbed Cobb and MacArthur and dragged them by their bound arms toward a tall cottonwood. MacArthur began to struggle as they were pulled beneath the tree. Two riders had tossed the ropes over the tree limb above them and slowly lowered the nooses to the merriment of the blo
odthirsty crowd.

  Cobb spoke to his foreman, whom he liked as a tough but fair man. He saw in this brief moment before death that he was about to bequeath to posterity the memory of cowardice in the face of the enemy. Cobb would not allow that.

  “MacArthur, you’ve been a strong man in your life. You stood when others would run. Don’t let them remember you any other way. It’ll be over before you know it.”

  MacArthur took the advice to his rest as the two men were raised off the ground by the ropes tied to the saddles of the pulling horses. BW watched with tears in his eyes, anger overcoming the fear. What did they have in mind for him? They dropped the two men, removed the ropes and gathered round BW Benson. BW was not a tall man. His short arms and legs made him appear almost round, but without any fat to speak of. Nor was he a young man, having been a cook at the ranch for as long as Bart had been there. He remembered when the two of them had trailed the Chiricahua into the mountains, killing at least two and retrieving their stolen cattle. He remembered chasing rustlers into the States, and hanging one not far from the town where the rustlers lived. Nothing about the ranch had been easy but they had earned a reputation throughout the territory as men not to be fooled with. That it would not end easy was not a surprise to BW; he had not expected it to. He wished it would have ended for the three of them with guns in their hands, but that was not to be. Vaya con Dios, Bartholemew. Rest in Peace, William. It was pure pleasure ridin’ with you.

  He felt the men, their breaths reeking of mescal, gather around him and begin stripping him. As he fought, he managed to bite the finger off one; they stripped him naked then spread-eagled him in the middle of the clearing. Wild yells came from the camp. BW found he could easily pull the stakes out of the ground but waited. Suddenly, a piercing shriek came from one of the Yaqui riders who galloped toward him. Somehow he avoided the deadly hooves. He knew his luck would not last. Coming from the direction of his feet, a huge black stallion bore down on him. As horse closed the distance to him, the rider whooping as he rode, BW ripped the stakes out and bounded to his feet. The surprised rider tried to swerve, but BW was able to grab the pommel of the saddle and swing himself up behind the rider. With his powerful hands, he crushed the larynx of the small rider and tossed him to the ground. As he grabbed the reins, the bullets began to strike his body from every direction. He fought to stay in the saddle but consciousness vanished and he slipped to the ground, only yards away from Bart and William.

  March 9

  The reports of the capture of the three ranch hands reached Colonel Slocum. Since January, the border had been on alert. Commander of the Thirteenth Cavalry, Slocum had responsibility for sixty-five miles of border and less than five hundred fighting men to do it with. Slocum, like his commander at Fort Houston in San Antonio, Texas, was worried about Pancho Villa. But they were working without eyes. Forbidden to ride into Mexico to scout, they had to rely on informants and any other source of information they could get their hands on. The most reliable information Slocum had was that Villa was moving away from the border to the south. Although the Thirteenth was on alert, Slocum went to bed in his house several hundred yards from Camp Furlong without anxiety.

  Columbus wouldn’t have been much of a town without Camp Furlong, still a small stop on the El Paso and South West Railroad, seventy-five miles west of El Paso and thirty-two miles south of Deming. A collection of adobe and frame houses, it had a post office, a bank, two hotels, and several general stores. It sat on open, flat ground surrounded by mesquite, cactus, and tumbleweed. All in all, a desolate outpost for the soldiers of the Thirteenth. On leave, the men would travel to El Paso, and return on what became known in the barracks as the rotgut special.

  As the moon dropped down below the horizon that evening, the town was darker than Jolly Garner had ever seen it. A customs official, he shared the worries along the border and had heard all the wild rumors about Pancho Villa. Ten o’clock and the town was dark except for a few lamps inside houses which were kept lit for some special reason. Only barking dogs and an occasional coyote’s call broke the silence.

  Shortly after midnight Lieutenant John Lucas arrived on the train from El Paso. He had spent a week playing polo with the other cavalry officers at Fort Bliss. Feeling his way back to his small house he shared, he let himself in. He lit the lamp, checked the room for rattlesnakes.

  Before going to bed, he placed a clip in his .45 Colt, hung the belt on a peg, left the box of cartridges on the table and went to bed.

  The man moved silently to the barbed wire. With his cutters, he cut an opening wide enough for horses and riders to pass through. Completing his task, he moved silently back to the ravine where the horsemen waited. He nodded to the general as he climbed aboard his horse. To avoid the possibility of a trap prepared by the American soldiers, General Villa sent a troop of twenty horsemen forward to scout the area beyond the fence. Twenty minutes later they returned and over six hundred horsemen poured through the opening then turned north into the United States and toward Columbus. Three hours before daylight.

  John Lucas normally shared his small house with Lieutenant Clarence C. Benson, who had been sent to a border station with his troops. Their house sat near the edge of the railroad track on its south side, close to the intersection of the railroad and road running from Mexico to Deming. It was 4:30 when he heard them. Jumping from his bed, he went to the house’s lone window, which faced north toward the town. Blessed with good night vision, Lucas could see the outlines of the high sombreros.

  The Villistas broke into two columns near the edge of town on the south side of the railroad. One column headed north into town, the second headed due east toward Camp Furlong. As they split, they broke into a gallop, intending to surprise the town. On guard duty in front of Camp Furlong was Private Fred Griffith. He heard the hoof beats and challenged. The response was rifle fire, hitting him in the stomach. Quickening their pace, the Villistas fired as they rode, the flashes like a swarm of fireflies in the darkness.

  Half-dressed soldiers grabbed their rifles and ammo belts and rushed toward their units. Lieutenant Lucas ran to the barracks where his machine gun troop slept, rousing them, then rushing two hundred yards to the armory where the Benet-Mercie machine guns were kept.

  One of the first targets of the Villistas was the Commercial Hotel. Rushing inside, they found the proprietor, William Ritchie, with his family. Standing between his wife and daughters and the door, he did not resist as the Villistas pulled him into the hallway. Grateful to get them away from his family, he went down to the lobby with them.

  One of the men spoke English. “Open the safe, hombre. Quickly.”

  As Ritchie passed the door to the street, he made a decision. He headed for the blackness. Two steps and two bullets slammed into his back, dropping him dead onto the street. Rushing up the stairs, the Villistas began searching the rooms. Finding Walton R. Walker, they shot him. They dragged Dr. H. M.

  Hart, a veterinarian, and Charles DeWitt Miller into the street and robbed, then shot them.

  As the Villistas began firing from the north end of Main Street, Lucas had his men set up their machine guns at the south end, behind the railroad bed. Joining Lucas were thirty riflemen led by Lieutenant Horace Stringfellow. The Benet-Mercie was light, only twenty-seven pounds, capable of firing seven hundred rounds a minute. Within minutes from the time the fire team assembled, all three machine guns and the infantry rifles were pouring over two thousand rounds a minute up the street to the location where the Villistas had taken cover. In less than thirty minutes, the Villistas that had headed for Camp Furlong were now in retreat, caught in a cross fire from men firing from the camp and Lucas’s machine guns. In their attempt to destroy the town, the invaders had torched the grocery store, which caught the hotel on fire. The fires gave the defenders something they could take great advantage of...light. Now targets were silhouetted and the sharpshooters in the Thirteenth began to fire with deadly effect.

  As the sky began t
o turn gray, the Villistas began to gallop out of town, moving quickly to the south. When the firefight started, Major Frank Tompkins was in his home. He headed for the highest point in town to get a sense of what was happening. He found Colonel Slocum there. As the Villistas began to flee, Tompkins turned to Slocum. “Permission to pursue, sir.”

  “Granted, Major.”

  Dashing for the camp, he was able to form up twenty men from F Troop and twenty-eight from H Troop. As he started to leave town, he was intercepted by Captain Williams, who had stayed with one of the families during the battle.

  “Can I join you, Major? I was in hiding during the whole fight. I don’t want to miss this.”

  “Private, dismount. Climb aboard, Captain.”

  As they headed out of town, the men were fired on by a rear guard set up to delay pursuit. The firing was coming from the top of the ridge to their front.

  “Bugler, mount the charge.” As the bugle blew, Tompkins moved ahead of the troops up the hill. The Villistas broke. Reaching the top of the hill, the men jumped from the horses and began firing into the retreating men with their Springfields. Grabbing his message pad, he wrote a note to Slocum:

  General Villa’s men still in sight. Request permission to pursue. In forty five minutes came the reply, Use your own judgment.

  Tompkins immediately mounted.

  “We are not finished yet, Captain.” Tompkins made three forays that morning, carrying them fifteen miles into Mexico. The trails growing colder, and being short of ammunition and water, they crossed back into New Mexico.

  ---

  The column crossed into Mexico. A clear crisp day, the alkaline dust kicked up by the horses began to roll southeast as the wind bit the faces of the point men of the Thirteenth Cavalry. They were on their way south to find Pancho Villa. Riding at the head of the column, Major Frank Tompkins looked around him. Cactus, mesquite, tumbleweed, dry alkaline dirt. There had been little rain for nine months. He could feel the grains of dust sting his face and his mouth grow dry. His mount began to swing its head, smarting from the tiny dust shards. A veteran of border skirmishes, he felt the anger again as he thought about what happened a week ago. The Thirteenth was after blood.