Robert Butler - The Hot Country

“That’ll be my final little contribution to the cause,” I said as gravely as I could.

Now the wink. But he did that going into battle as well. I was starting to grind in the chest a bit as we rode on forward along the tracks. Not from fear of Pancho Villa shooting me. That was the least suitable, certainly, of a range of things that he could do that would make it impossible for me to get the story I came here to get. But I was happy to find that it was the story which was my main concern.

By the time we neared the engine of the penultimate train, there were only three of us left. Hernando, it seemed, was Slim’s lieutenant. I was glad to have him able to vouch for me now. We passed the engine. And before us, at the end of the lead train, was a classic red caboose, the paint faded and peeling, all but one of the windows of the crow’s nest shot out. This was where Slim and Hernando pulled up and so, then, did I. We dismounted.

The windows of the main cabin were hung with chintz curtains, the flowers faded almost beyond recognition, and behind them the place was full of male laughter, the voices of many men. Slim and Hernando looked at each other and then Slim turned his face to the west, noting, I think, the time of the day. Then he said to me, “Wait a moment.”

I did. Hernando appeared beside me and waited also as Slim went up the back steps and stood in the open doorway. He did not go in but almost instantly the laughter stopped. From the abrupt silence I heard a single voice, a faintly nasal voice at once commanding and barroom-friendly, speaking loud enough for me to clearly hear it but giving the impression of casual conversation. The voice told his muchachos to get the hell out now. And there was a scrambling sound full of the ringing of spurs and the clacking of boots on the wooden floor. Slim stepped out of the doorway and to the side and a dozen muchachos streamed out and they were not, as I imagined, a group of Slims and Hernandos, veterans, officers, but rather a group of young men, muchachos indeed, awkward in their flight, pretty clearly privates and corporals of Villa’s army.

When the stampede was over, Slim motioned us to come up, and Hernando and I climbed the stairs and I took off my sombrero and I stepped through the door and into Pancho Villa’s field office. On the left-hand wall was a rough-hewn wood desk, and beyond was a long, built-in bench seat with stuffed green leather cushions. On the right-hand wall was another, even longer bench, and at the far end, a potbellied stove. The walls were hung with magazine-page chorus girls. What were those chintz curtains doing there? Patterned with what I could make out now as trellised roses.

And in the center of the room, sitting near the desk in a wooden swivel chair, clad in a shiny-cheap, frayed brown suit and a buttoned-up gray cardigan, was Pancho Villa. He was facing us. He abruptly leaned back in his chair at the sight of me. His eyes were wide-set — but not separated widely, just wide, their inner edges normal in their nearness to the bridge of his nose but the outer edges extending even beyond his thick, matinee-villain mustache — and they were dark, his eyes — and they were, for all their width, rather narrow, as if in a perpetual squint, with an almost Oriental feel to them — and they were very dark — and they were restless even as they were commanding you, jittering ever so slightly and you got the feeling that if no one was in the room they’d be paranoid in their restlessness, checking the door and the windows constantly. A Smith & Wesson.32-caliber top-break revolver lay within Villa’s easy reach on his desk. Farther back on the desk lay a British thrust-optimized cavalry sword with a honeysuckle hilt.

Instantly, Villa said, “Put that back on.” His voice was soft-edged, almost diffident in tone. Which somehow made it all the more commanding.

I began to lift the hat and he said, “No clicking your heels either.”

I settled the sombrero on my head once more and I was beginning to figure out what the last remark was all about.

“Who do you think I am?” he said. “President of Mexico?” He threw back his head and laughed.

And we all laughed. Just enough.

He thought I was Friedrich Mensinger. Of course he did. I was the man he expected to arrive with Slim and the boys. Which meant Mensinger had not yet arrived.

Villa stopped laughing. We all stopped.

His restless gaze fell on my bandaged arm and bloody sleeve.

“Did they drag you here?” Villa asked with a smile.

“ Jefe, ” Slim said. “This isn’t the German.”

Villa looked at Slim and his dark eyes grew even darker.

Slim said, “The German did not expect us. He had some business to do at his destination. He will ride in.”

At mention of the riding-in, I saw the slight nod and pinch of the mouth in Villa that said Mensinger knew his man. Villa liked that the German was riding in on his own. He looked back at my wound. Then searingly into my eyes.

“Who are you?” Villa said.

“I am Christopher Cobb,” I said.

“A gringo? ”

“Yes.”

“A hostage then?” Villa said to Slim.

There was a beat of silence. I was standing between Slim and Hernando, but half a step behind, and in my periphery I could see the two exchange a quick glance. They did not want to anticipate Villa’s attitude toward me, but any answer to this question would carry an implication. They both looked back to Villa and this had all been done in only a tick or two of a watch but I could see that Villa’s eyes did not miss a thing and he had taken it all in and those eyes of his suddenly had the narrow alertness of a predatory animal deciding whether to pounce.

Slim said, “The hat he wears belonged to the colorado he killed.”

Villa’s eyes moved instantly to me. The flexing to pounce vanished. He looked back to Slim.

Slim said, “We were quartered at the Guerrero hacienda, after the train, and a band of colorados came in while we slept. They killed our guards quietly. We fought. Their company is dead. To a man. We lost ten.”

Villa rose from his chair.

His mouth was set in rage. His eyes were filling with tears.

He looked at me.

“The colorado he killed would have killed me,” Slim said.

Villa’s eyes slid on past me to Hernando. I had a sudden sense — though I could’ve been wrong — that in spite of Slim being in charge of the company of train bandits, in spite of Slim having a second tour of duty with the Villistas and the Army of the North, Villa still was quite aware that it was Tallahassee Slim, not Chihuahua Slim. And the two Mexicans in the room looked at each other and, to my surprise, Hernando said, “He killed two more colorados who would have come through a door when I was facing still another one of them. He saved my life as well.”

I did not look at Hernando. He did not look at me.

Villa turned his face to mine. “Are you a soldier?”

“I am a newspaper reporter.”

Villa’s eyes widened, and then he laughed. He laughed and he strode across the floor and he threw his arms around me and clasped me to him and hugged me, his right arm squeezing tight on my wound and sending a shock of pain running up my shoulder and down my arm. But I bit off any sound and put my arms around Pancho Villa in return and we pounded each other on the back and he reared away abruptly and then he lunged to kiss me on the cheek, and I thought of Slim’s observation about this very thing, that it did not exempt me from later being shot dead by Pancho Villa.

He let me go and he took a step backward and he seemed to remember something and he looked at my arm and at my blood, which had soaked through the bandage that he’d just pressed to his arm, and he looked at my blood on his own sleeve and he laughed again. And the laughter stopped and he looked at my sombrero. And his face seemed to collapse toward the center in thought for a moment, and then it opened again in a smile and a nod and I was having trouble keeping up with this man and the flow of his feelings. He was living very fast. But he was still looking at my sombrero.