TOM MIX AND PANCHO VILLA: A Novel of Mexico and the Texas border by Clifford Irving Page B
Authors: Clifford Irving
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Bliss. Their names are Scott and Pershing. This Jew, Felix Sommerfeld, knows them both. Find out from him what they think of me, and if that pig Orozco is in touch with them. Go to El Paso if it’s necessary. Hipólito will give you the money. Is all that clear to you?”
I nodded gravely, delighted with his trust.
“And get rid of that fucking blind nag I wished on you. Tell Candelario to give you a decent horse.”
Candelario found a big chestnut that belonged to one of the mine workers. He was twelve or thirteen years old and stood over fifteen hands high, with a good topline and heavily muscled hindquarters. I took the ring bit out of his mouth, slipping in a hackamore to keep him from getting cold-jawed, and I could see he appreciated it. Within an hour we had provisioned ourselves with water and jerked beef, and we set out with the herd for New Mexico—a trip that would introduce the next piece in the new jigsaw of my life. But if the first huge angular piece was Villa, this next shape—rounder by far; you might say, an hourglass figure—connected at only one narrow bridge. And it would bring me an entirely different sort of trouble for the next two years.
The chaparral slashed my cheeks, and the cholla cactus pricked my legs and gashed the chestnut’s flanks, but he stepped along with a natural fox trot and I hardly ever had to tickle him with my spurs. Candelario quickly found out I knew more about trail driving than he did, and so he and I were the point riders while the Yaqui boys rode swing and Hipólito drew the disagreeable job of riding drag, getting the dust of the whole herd kicked into his teeth. His good blue suit was a mess. The rippling line of mountains seemed to march beside us—gray, forbidding, desolate beyond a man’s understanding. The heat turned the land into a cauldron. At night, under diamond-hard stars, coyotes howled like wounded children. I shivered under my serape, rubbing my icy feet together until sleep canceled the pain.
Just before dusk on the second day out, the chestnut picked up a stone in his shoe and I dismounted to cut it out with a hoof hook. Riding herd here for a single year would kill a good trail horse and burn ten years of weather into a man’s face. Candelario swung down out of the saddle and tromped over to me, boots kicking up pebbles.
“You look unhappy, Tomás. Are you all right?”
“Candelario, this is the most godawful place I’ve ever been.”
“Isn’t it? But let me tell you a story I heard when I was young. When God was busy making the world, He said, ‘I’ll try an experiment. I’ve given some countries rivers—to some I’ve given forests—to others, beautiful women. With this land I’m making now, I’ll give it … nothing!’ You see, God had a sense of humor then. But He repented. Nothing, after all, seemed too harsh a gift. He had to give it something. So He said, ‘I know. I’ll give it rocks. ‘ And He did, and He called it Chihuahua.”
We trotted through the wilderness toward Columbus …
Candelario told me how he had lost his eye. He was from Camargo, a town south of Chihuahua City, and although he had been brought up on a ranch he began working in a potash mine when he was eleven. A twelve-hour day, six days a week. His father was a foreman there, and his mother, when she wasn’t in the final day of a pregnancy, sold tacos on the street. She had sixteen children, ten of whom had lived.
The unlucky ones, as she would say. My father, naturally, was deeply in debt, and the debt fell on his sons as well. One day when I was fifteen I came home and my father told me I was betrothed. My bride was to be my cousin Annabella, who was pregnant. ‘Not by me,’ I protested. He knew that, and she had been a maid at the hacienda, so it was all fairly clear. I married Annabella and we had our first child, a daughter. There was a fee due to the church at the time of the marriage, then another one at the christening. I couldn’t pay
I nodded gravely, delighted with his trust.
“And get rid of that fucking blind nag I wished on you. Tell Candelario to give you a decent horse.”
Candelario found a big chestnut that belonged to one of the mine workers. He was twelve or thirteen years old and stood over fifteen hands high, with a good topline and heavily muscled hindquarters. I took the ring bit out of his mouth, slipping in a hackamore to keep him from getting cold-jawed, and I could see he appreciated it. Within an hour we had provisioned ourselves with water and jerked beef, and we set out with the herd for New Mexico—a trip that would introduce the next piece in the new jigsaw of my life. But if the first huge angular piece was Villa, this next shape—rounder by far; you might say, an hourglass figure—connected at only one narrow bridge. And it would bring me an entirely different sort of trouble for the next two years.
The chaparral slashed my cheeks, and the cholla cactus pricked my legs and gashed the chestnut’s flanks, but he stepped along with a natural fox trot and I hardly ever had to tickle him with my spurs. Candelario quickly found out I knew more about trail driving than he did, and so he and I were the point riders while the Yaqui boys rode swing and Hipólito drew the disagreeable job of riding drag, getting the dust of the whole herd kicked into his teeth. His good blue suit was a mess. The rippling line of mountains seemed to march beside us—gray, forbidding, desolate beyond a man’s understanding. The heat turned the land into a cauldron. At night, under diamond-hard stars, coyotes howled like wounded children. I shivered under my serape, rubbing my icy feet together until sleep canceled the pain.
Just before dusk on the second day out, the chestnut picked up a stone in his shoe and I dismounted to cut it out with a hoof hook. Riding herd here for a single year would kill a good trail horse and burn ten years of weather into a man’s face. Candelario swung down out of the saddle and tromped over to me, boots kicking up pebbles.
“You look unhappy, Tomás. Are you all right?”
“Candelario, this is the most godawful place I’ve ever been.”
“Isn’t it? But let me tell you a story I heard when I was young. When God was busy making the world, He said, ‘I’ll try an experiment. I’ve given some countries rivers—to some I’ve given forests—to others, beautiful women. With this land I’m making now, I’ll give it … nothing!’ You see, God had a sense of humor then. But He repented. Nothing, after all, seemed too harsh a gift. He had to give it something. So He said, ‘I know. I’ll give it rocks. ‘ And He did, and He called it Chihuahua.”
We trotted through the wilderness toward Columbus …
Candelario told me how he had lost his eye. He was from Camargo, a town south of Chihuahua City, and although he had been brought up on a ranch he began working in a potash mine when he was eleven. A twelve-hour day, six days a week. His father was a foreman there, and his mother, when she wasn’t in the final day of a pregnancy, sold tacos on the street. She had sixteen children, ten of whom had lived.
The unlucky ones, as she would say. My father, naturally, was deeply in debt, and the debt fell on his sons as well. One day when I was fifteen I came home and my father told me I was betrothed. My bride was to be my cousin Annabella, who was pregnant. ‘Not by me,’ I protested. He knew that, and she had been a maid at the hacienda, so it was all fairly clear. I married Annabella and we had our first child, a daughter. There was a fee due to the church at the time of the marriage, then another one at the christening. I couldn’t pay
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