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

to him, and he gripped the pencil until his knuckles showed yellow. Twice he tore through the paper with the point—not in anger, but because he was pressing so hard, trying to translate his thoughts into these impossibly difficult squiggles. Julio and I were standing nearby, smoking some cigarettes I had rolled from my sack of Bull Durham.
    With the smoke wafting past his nose, Villa’s concentration broke. He looked up and saw me. Then his eyes widened.
    “Madre de Dios! It must have been providence that sent you to me, Tomás.” Smiling wonderfully, showing all his red-stained teeth, he thrust the note at me. “Translate this into English, and write it out neatly.” He wrapped an arm around my shoulder and moved me outside into the sunlight. “Can I trust you?”
    I wondered exactly what he meant by that, remembering with considerable unease how he had punished Wentworth for a breach of trust. So I thought it prudent to show some enthusiasm.
    “You can trust me,” I said. “I’ll never lie to you again. I’m on your side.”
    “I believe that. I want to tell you how I’m going to win the revolution, so you won’t think I’m some kind of Moses wandering in the desert, waiting for God to give him a new set of commandments. Look at this map.”
    We bent down and he dropped it in the dust between us, smoothing out the wrinkled edges. There was Mexico spread before me, from its long northern border with the United States, through the high central plateau and Mexico City, then narrowing and swinging east to the Yucatán peninsula. Pancho Villa couldn’t read, but he had studied the map so often that he knew the shapes of the names as well as the veins on his brown hand.
    “Here we are,” he said, pointing, “in the desert of Chihuahua. Carranza is to the east in Coahuila, with General Pablo González. Obregón, who is also on our side, is in Sonora, to the west. Zapata’s near Cuernavaca, south of Mexico City, in the state of Morelos. Those are the leaders of the revolution. The Federals and the Redflaggers, unfortunately, are everywhere—we’re like little islands in an unfriendly ocean. So the first thing to do is consolidate our forces, which is what I intend to do when we reach the pueblo of Ascensión.”
    His own objective, he explained, would be to gain control of the state of Chihuahua. To do that he would have to achieve three things: control of the main north-south railroad line that meandered all the way from Juárez on the border to Mexico City on the high plateau, the capture of the major industrial cities of Torreón, Chihuahua City and Zacatecas; and finally the capture of Juárez itself.
    “The railroad is the key,” he went on, “because not only will we cut the link between Mexico City and Huerta’s garrisons in the north, but we’ll be able to move freely on it. And Juárez is the prize, because then we’ll have a port of entry for arms and supplies from the United States.”
    Once he controlled Chihuahua, he said, Mexico City would collapse like a piece of soft fruit between a hammer and an anvil, with Zapata in his small southern base of Morelos playing the part of the anvil.
    “And then,” he grinned at me, “the revolution will be won. Don Venus Carranza will be interim chief of state, we’ll elect a new president and maybe we can live happily ever after. What do you think of my plan?”
    “I think you need a big army, and rifles, and bullets, and maybe even some machine guns and artillery. And a lot of luck.
    “Good, Tomás!” He looked pleased, as if I had said something brilliant. “That’s what I think too. And that’s why I’ve given you this list. I want you to go to Columbus with Candelario and my brother. After you’ve translated it, give the list to the Jews. Tell them, if they ask, that I wrote it out myself—it’s best they don’t think I’m a barbarian.” He considered for a moment, squinting into the sun. “There are two gringo generals at Fort