TOM MIX AND PANCHO VILLA: A Novel of Mexico and the Texas border by Clifford Irving

volunteers.
    “Look at these poor souls,” the man said. Indeed, they were a ragged lot, with swollen bellies and protruding cheekbones. “The mine owners have starved them for a hundred years. Why should they not be prepared to die? They have nothing better to do in life.”
    But they had no rifles. How could they fight? Villa sent them off through the desert toward Ascensión.
    We came upon a thin steer grazing alone among the cactus, pitifully trying to nibble at the dry green spikes. A reata circled above Villa’s head and flew lazily through the dark violet air, looping neatly over the cow’s neck. The animal bellowed weakly, but it could hardly move. Rodolfo Fierro bent from his saddle, with one slash of his machete dropping the beast to the earth in a spray of bright blood. Death seemed to be Fierro’s reason for living. Julio told me that it was said he had once shot a stranger in Chihuahua City to settle a bet on whether a dying man falls forward or backward.
    “And which was it?” I asked.
    A macabre argument raged; no one could remember.
    As darkness fell an unseen horseman passed by, iron spurs ringing.
    Villa sniffed the dry air. “We can’t light a fire. I smell the Federals.”
    Fierro skinned the steer expertly, and the men ripped the meat from the carcass. They ate it raw. I had never believed I could do that, but hunger and a new life change a man’s tastes. “You like it?” Julio asked me, blood staining his narrow jaw. He chewed steadily.
    I grunted something that wasn’t either yes or no.
    “But it’s good for you, especially if you’re going to fight. When the battles start, sometimes we have no time to cook. That’s all we eat. It makes us brave. Are you brave in battle, Tomás?”
    “I’ll find out,” I said, and then began to wonder.
    At yet another dusty pueblo whose name I no longer remember, the black shadow of Candelario Cervantes appeared out of the alkali haze, leading a herd of twenty cattle. The mules and rifles were safe in Ascensión. He and the Yaqui boys had rustled the cattle from a hacienda to the north.
    “Did we do the right thing?” he asked Villa, scratching at the lice in his beard. “They wandered into our path … I couldn’t resist.”
    “You did right, compadre. The function of the rich in this miserable country is to feed the poor.”
    But this gave Villa an idea. He had some of the cows butchered for steaks, and then after the rest of the meat had been salted and hung out to dry in the sun, he detailed a force of men under Candelario to ride a few miles east to the estates of Luis Terrazas, the hacienda owner who was Orozco’s patron. Two days later Candelario’s gang of rustlers returned, driving a herd of nearly two hundred fat beef cattle, whooping like banshees and firing their guns into the air. For a minute Villa looked annoyed—we didn’t have that many bullets to spare. But then he grinned and gave Candelario an embrazo, the obligatory Mexican hug. I think, because he was a peasant himself, he understood the nature of his men better than any regular army general could have done. Aside from eating raw meat, nothing made them feel braver than hearing a little boisterous yelling coupled with the din of their own gunfire, even if their precious bullets were only watering the desert with lead.
    Then Villa explained his notion: Candelario and Hipólito were to take the herd north to Columbus, in New Mexico.
    “Hipólito, do you remember Wentworth, the one who tried to cheat us? He spoke of a man named Felix Sommerfeld. I know this man. He has a partner, another Jew trader named Ravel, who lives in Columbus. They’re in the business of selling rifles and ammunition. We have no money yet, but we have the cattle. Trade for them, Hipólito. Beef for guns. Make a good bargain.”
    Sitting hunched on a cane chair in an adobe hut in a godforsaken pueblo called Espindoleño, Villa wrote out a list of the supplies he needed. Writing didn’t come easy