The General and the Jaguar (14 page)

Sitting on Slocum’s desk was a pile of yellow telegrams, all of which claimed to have solid information on Villa’s whereabouts.
Like other military commanders along the border, Slocum knew Villa personally. “The old scoundrel and I had become very good
friends,” he once told a military officer in an affectionate, rueful tone. Slocum had been in Arizona when Villa had suffered
the devastating defeat at Agua Prieta and afterward threatened to lay siege to Douglas. He had not followed through with the
threat and Slocum judged an attack on the United States even less likely now, especially given the fact that Villa’s army
had dwindled to perhaps a twentieth of its original size. Besides, he thought (unwittingly echoing the same sentiments that
Pancho Villa himself had expressed), what glory was there in attacking such an insignificant outpost as Columbus?

D
ESPITE PANCHO VILLA’S
efforts to keep his whereabouts secret, both U.S. and Mexican officials were tracking his movements with a good degree of
accuracy. His motives, though, remained obscure and contradictory. The man responsible for much of the confusion was undoubtedly
George Seese, an ambitious, thirty-three-year-old reporter for the Associated Press, who had been in touch with Villa’s agents
since the time of the train massacre. Villa was purportedly anxious to prove himself innocent of that crime and Seese had
offered to personally escort Villa to Washington so he could make his case. Villa had allegedly agreed—provided he could be
promised safe-conduct—but Seese’s supervisor in New York had quashed the scheme on March 2. (It’s unlikely Villa ever actually
intended to cross the border peacefully but he may have deliberately encouraged Seese in order to confuse both Carrancista
and U.S. authorities).

The first to suggest Villa was planning something serious was Zach Cobb, the U.S. Customs official in El Paso, a sparrowlike
man with hair that was parted in the middle and plastered to either side of his skull. A staunch Democrat, perennial political
candidate, and lawyer by training, Cobb was from an old Georgia family whose members had served in both national and local
politics for decades. His grandfather had lost his family plantation during General Sherman’s march to the sea and as a consequence,
writes his biographer, Cobb was passionate about the need to protect private property. In 1901 he had moved to El Paso, and
quickly ingratiated himself with the powerful men who ran the city. In the run-up to the 1912 presidential election, Cobb
had stumped tirelessly for Woodrow Wilson and had been rewarded for his effort with the coveted job of customs collector.
He got a second job working as an intelligence agent for the State Department through his friend George Carothers, the special
agent assigned to Villa, who suggested that his reports be filtered through Cobb. He worked tirelessly to crush Pancho Villa
and in the fall of 1915 had largely succeeded in blocking the exportation of coal needed for Villa’s troop trains, as well
as the importation of Mexican beef, which Villa depended upon to raise cash for his army.

Cobb had good connections in El Paso and Juárez and in March of 1916 these sources paid off. He sent six telegrams to the
State Department, his sense of urgency increasing as his information grew more accurate. On March 3, he sent his first telegram:
“Villa left Pacheco Point, near Madera, on Wednesday, March 1 with 300 men headed toward Columbus New Mexico. He is reported
west of Casas Grandes today. There is reason to believe that he intends to cross to the United States and hopes to proceed
to Washington. Please consider this possibility and the necessity of instructions to us on the border.” The State Department
forwarded the message the following day to Hugh Scott in the War Department. From there, it was relayed to General Frederick
Funston in San Antonio, who commanded the Southern Department, which had jurisdiction over all the cavalry posts along the
border. Funston, in turn, passed the information along to Colonel Slocum. During the ensuing days, Cobb sent five more messages
to the State Department. At least three of those messages were forwarded to the War Department:

*
March 6:
“My March 3, 2 p.m. seems confirmed. Commanding General Gavira in Juárez announced to reporters this morning that Villa was
proceeding to the border and that he had asked the American military authorities to be on the lookout for him. My tip is that
he is due tonight or tomorrow. I have instructed deputy at Columbus to rush any information.”

*
March 7 (8:00 p.m.):
“Deputy Columbus phones report that Villa with estimated four hundred men is on river southwest of Columbus, fifteen miles
west and fifty odd miles south, where they stopped round up of cattle by employees of Palomas Land and Cattle Co., all of
which employees except one are reported to have hastened to American side.”

*
March 8 (12:00 noon):
“Villa party captured and holds fourteen employees of Palomas Land and Cattle Company, thirteen Mexicans and one American
named McKinney. Villa camped at point stated, and apparently unafraid. He is reported to have three hundred and fifty men
and eight hundred saddled horses in good condition. His purpose is indefinite. He could take the part of Palomas, which has
a Carranza garrison of about forty men all of who are prepared to cross to the American side if Villa appears. I suspect that
Villa is in communication with agencies of himself and others on this side.”

In addition to Cobb’s warnings, General John Pershing, stationed at Fort Bliss in El Paso, had also received at least three
reports of Villa’s whereabouts from Gabriel Gavira, the Carrancista general in Juárez. Six days before the raid, Gavira’s
secret service agents had learned that Villa was not coming to the border to make a case in his own defense for the Santa
Isabel train massacre but to “commit some act of violence” that would force the United States to intervene in Mexico. Gavira
had passed the information along to Pershing, who, however, was singularly unimpressed. “The General replied that he had heard
similar stories so many times before that he was inclined to take them all with a grain of salt. All of the army officers
stationed at Columbus felt as did General Pershing. For years, we of the border patrol, had heard many rumors, which had never
materialized,” wrote Major Frank Tompkins, who was stationed in Columbus at the time.

Pershing received a second report from General Gavira on March 6 stating that Villa had been seen one mile south of Palomas
on the previous evening. He passed the information along to Funston in San Antonio, who once again relayed the information
to Colonel Slocum in Columbus. And on March 7, Pershing received a third report indicating that “Villa, with 500 men southwest
of Palomas, had raided the ranches of the Palomas Land and Cattle Company; that the Mexican consul stated that his information
was that Villa was near Boca Grande, and that one of the stockholders of the company reported that his information was that
Villa was about fifty miles southwest of Palomas going south.”

Other military officers stationed along the border were also picking up the disquieting reports. Colonel George Dodd, who
was based in Douglas and was Slocum’s direct supervisor, had also sent a telegram to Funston reporting Villa’s appearance
on the Palomas ranch and the capture of horses and the foreman. And finally, George Carothers, on March 8, had dashed off
a telegram to State Department officials in Washington saying that Villa was supposed to be at a ranch about twenty-five miles
south of the border, and headed west into Sonora.

The knowledge of Villa’s whereabouts was not confined to a handful of officials within the War Department or the State Department.
Newspapers in El Paso and in Mexico were filled with front-page stories about Villa’s approach to the border and speculation
about his motives. Some of these stories were picked up and carried in newspapers such as the
Chicago Tribune,
New York Herald Tribune,
New York Times,
and
Washington Post.
Thus, virtually every member of Wilson’s cabinet and even the president himself could have read of Villa’s movements simply
by opening their morning newspaper. The
New York Tribune
even reported that Villa was depending on his friendship with General Scott to secure favorable terms for political asylum
and planned to confer with army officials near Columbus.

Colonel Slocum had the unenviable task of trying to make sense of the conflicting reports. Was Villa in Palomas? Or was he
sixty-five miles away? Was he coming to the border on a peaceful mission or a violent one? Was he moving west into Sonora
as George Carothers had reported? Or south as General Gavira had reported? Army scouts could have cleared up the mystery but
Slocum was barred from sending troops across the border. Still, he did what he could to chase down the rumors, checking frequently
with civilian authorities and questioning the “supposedly friendly” Mexicans in town.

On Tuesday, March 7, Slocum received strong confirmation of Villa’s whereabouts from two eyewitnesses: Juan Favela and Antonio
Múñez, the two cowboys who had narrowly escaped being caught by Villa’s men on the Boca Grande River. When Nicolás Fernández’s
troops surged up the hill after them, they had eluded the soldiers in a canyon. Juan had urged Antonio to remain behind and
watch the soldiers through his field glasses in order to ascertain the direction in which they were headed. Meanwhile, he
said, he would race ahead and warn the cavalry. At about eleven o’clock on Tuesday morning, Favela had reached Gibson’s Line
Ranch, fourteen miles southwest of Columbus. Exhausted and perspiring, he told a young lieutenant of the morning’s events.
The lieutenant advised him to take the information on to Slocum. “I came on to Columbus and notified Colonel Slocum about
4 o’clock in the afternoon of that day,” said Favela.

Múñez—who hadn’t hung around for too much longer—also reached Columbus on Tuesday and went to Slocum to report what he had
seen. Slocum hit upon the idea of sending Antonio back into Mexico to spy on Villa, persuading him with the promise of twenty
dollars.

Slocum’s troops patrolled a strip of border sixty-five miles long. Most of their work was concentrated west of Columbus, the
thinking being that it would be the most likely point of incursion since to the east there was almost no water, which was
necessary for horses and men. At the Border Gate, three miles south of town, were 2 officers and 65 men of Troop G under the
command of Captain Jens. E. Stedje. Another 165 men and 7 officers under the command of Major Elmer Lindsley were at Gibson’s
Line Ranch. On the evening of March 7, Slocum also ordered an officer’s patrol from the Border Gate to go to Moody’s Ranch,
which was located between these two outposts. These soldiers were to scout in both directions, meeting up with the other patrols.
His troops thus deployed, Slocum was confident that his old friend Pancho Villa couldn’t slip through.

O
N
W
EDNESDAY
, M
ARCH
8, while the people of Columbus went about their business, Pancho Villa’s spies drifted through town,
scoping out the layout of Camp Furlong, the location of the stores, and the homes where the officers lived.

Milton and Bessie James hurried to the depot as soon as they heard the whistle announcing the afternoon train from El Paso.
The train was Columbus’s lifeline to the outside world and stopped at the little wooden depot three times a day, dropping
off passengers, mail, and household goods. The couple chatted happily as they awaited the arrival of Milton’s stepsister,
Myrtle Wright Lassiter, who was going to spend a few days with them. Milton, thirty-one, was an engineer and pumpman for the
El Paso and Southwestern Railroad. Bessie was just nineteen and studying to be a telegraph operator. They had been married
for less than two years and were full of plans for their future.

When Myrtle arrived, they greeted one another happily and then walked back to Milton and Bessie’s home, a wooden, three-room
house that they had begun to fill with the first proud possessions of their new life together. Myrtle, who had just celebrated
her twenty-seventh birthday the day before, was glad to see her stepbrother married. He had not had an easy upbringing; his
father had died several months before he was born and his mother passed away soon after giving birth. Myrtle’s parents had
taken him in and raised him as one of their own. While he was never formally adopted, the two were as affectionate and close
as any siblings could be.

The James house was crowded; Bessie’s little sister, Ethel, was also staying with them while she attended the new brick elementary
school. When she came home that afternoon, she may have remarked about how empty the classrooms were; only a handful of the
Spanish-speaking children who attended the school had shown up for classes. It was an ominous sign.

While Milton and Bessie James chatted with their houseguests, Susan Moore, a lovely woman who wore her dark hair in a loose
pile on top of her head, sat in the rear of her husband’s dry-goods store doing her lacework. Nothing had prepared the former
New Yorker for Columbus’s windstorms, which often began as an innocent but robust breeze on a cloudless blue morning and blotted
out the sun by noon. Sometimes, when she listened to the shrieking wind, she caught herself thinking that she had inadvertently
committed some terrible offense. Why else would the Lord have plunged her, still living, into this hell on earth? But it was
Susan herself who had brought this about when she rekindled her romance with John Moore, appearing in El Paso in 1912 and
inviting him to visit her there. They had not seen each other in eighteen years. They were both middle-aged, single—and alone.
Soon they had married.

The couple owned a little spread called Mooreview, which lay southwest of Columbus and about a mile and a half from the border.
Their house was constructed from adobe bricks, with porches on the north and west sides and another off the kitchen. The walls
were plastered, the woodwork gleaming, and a handsome fireplace in the center of the house provided warmth and light. “Altogether
one of the finest houses in the valley,” a local booster gushed. Susan had a taste for beautiful, impractical things and anything
French. She had brought with her to Columbus silk petticoats, silk gloves, silk hose, beaded evening slippers, a hand-painted
chiffon waist dress (not yet sewed up), French gowns, French blouses, French corsets, French underwear, and a feather fan
made in Paris. Sadly, there was no place to wear her pretty things and everything lay packed away.