The General and the Jaguar (17 page)

Whether it was a deliberate part of Villa’s strategy or not, the regiment’s officers, who lived in the northwest and northeast
quadrants, were now cut off from the camp by the hundreds of Villistas moving toward town. The officers were faced with a
difficult choice: staying with their loved ones or trying to make it through the enemy lines to the camp, where their men
were fighting alone. Each officer solved the dilemma differently.

Herbert Slocum decided he had to first get his wife to safety, and led her through the darkness to the adobe shack of their
laundress. “The bullets were falling like rain,” Mary Slocum recalled. “We were so bewildered, Col. Slocum, even Herbert was.
It seemed as if we were dreaming.”

In the northwest quadrant, Major Frank Tompkins, his wife, Alice, and two female houseguests grabbed mattresses off the beds
and threw them in front of the door. “Our greatest fear, though unexpressed until later, was that they would set fire to the
house and shoot us as we ran out,” Alice Tompkins said. Captain Smyser and his family, who lived to the southeast of the Tompkins
family, concluded that their house wasn’t safe and slipped outside and hid in an outhouse. Soon they decided the outhouse
wasn’t safe either and crept farther into the brush. Lieutenant William McCain decided to make a dash for the army camp and
set off with his wife, small daughter, and orderly. On the way, they ran into Captain George Williams, who lived just a few
blocks south of Colonel Slocum and had apparently decided to make a counterclockwise loop around the north side of the town
in hopes of reaching the camp.

By now, other raiders were converging on Columbus from the east. Harry Davidson and his buddy, R. L. Carlin, both members
of the Texas National Guard who happened to be in Columbus that morning, were sitting on a platform on the south side of the
icehouse waiting for the train to El Paso when they heard Spanish voices. “We sat up and in the moonlight saw three Mexicans
on horseback coming toward us. They were armed. We did not have a chance to get away. I said to Davidson, ‘It’s up to us to
take ’em as they are’ and we sailed into them,” Carlin remembered.

It was an extremely reckless strategy since neither was armed. Harry Davidson was killed instantly when a bullet bored into
his head. Carlin, now realizing the insanity of their decision, took off running. “The three men followed me, firing. I ran
down the railroad track, zigzagging. Then I got into a ditch and made for the north across the field, crawling on my hands
and knees whenever I got far enough ahead for it to be safe. The bushes were not high enough to give me much protection.”
The Mexicans chased him for about three miles and then turned and galloped back toward the corrals and stables, where their
companions were already rounding up the horses. Frank T. Kindvall, a farrier, rushed from his tent to protect the animals.
It was a noble but suicidal move. “When we picked him up later,” said one of his friends, “it was hard to recognize him for
he had been shot several times and rode over.” Another stable guard, though, caught one of the intruders and beat his “brains
out with a baseball bat.”

W
HILE THE FIGHT RAGED
in the army camp, one group of Mexican soldiers advanced to the bank, a second to the train station, a third toward the Commercial
Hotel. In the first minutes of the battle, the Mexican invaders were able to go about their looting in a leisurely way, halting
occasionally to remove their rotting clothes and don the shirts and pants that they were stealing. Eventually they accumulated
so much loot that they commandeered at least one buggy and several mules to cart off things they couldn’t carry. From J. L.
Walker’s place, they hauled off saddles, bridles, spurs, bed blankets, saddle covers, razors, pistols, revolvers and gun scabbards,
ammunition, shirts and socks. From the home of W. R. Page, they took a gray coat with a pair of gold spectacles in the upper
pocket; a pair of “very fine quality” gray trousers; one pair of ladies’ shoes, tan, size five, A-; one black velvet hat trimmed
in white ribbon; a gray cloth skirt; another pair of ladies’ shoes, these size six; sheets, pillowcases, napkins, handkerchiefs,
socks, and men’s underwear. From Harry Casey, the jeweler, they took rings, lockets, chains, buttons, and gents’ cuff links;
packages of rubies, sapphires, and emeralds; nine boxes of chocolates and one jar of chewing gum.

One detachment of Mexican soldiers was charged with finding Sam Ravel, the storekeeper the Villistas had imprisoned in Palomas.
(“We did not go to Columbus to kill women and children as it has been said,” Juan Muñoz, one of the Villistas, told a Mexican
author years later. “We went to Columbus to take Sam Ravel and burn his properties for the robbery and treason which he committed.
Ésa es la verdad.
”)

Ravel’s youngest brother, Arthur, just sixteen, was asleep when the soldiers burst through the door of the house where Ravel
was believed to be staying.
“No me maten!”
—“Don’t kill me!” he screamed. They marched the boy to the family store, which was a block away. Louis Ravel, the middle brother,
was asleep in the store and scurried into the back room and hid under a pile of hides. The intruders smashed in the windows,
broke open the display cases, and took clothing, boots, shoes, hats, cigars, and candy. They instructed Arthur to open the
safe.
Abre la caja!
they shouted. But Arthur didn’t know the combination, and in frustration, they grabbed him by either arm and escorted him
down the street toward the Commercial Hotel, where they hoped to find Sam Ravel. Near the hotel entrance, Arthur saw other
armed Mexicans milling about. Candelario Cervantes was the officer in charge. He shouted,
“No molesten a las mujeres, pero maten a todos los gringos!”
—“Don’t harm the women, but kill all the men!”

The invaders hammered on the door. Laura Ritchie, who had seen a guest off on the 2:45 a.m. train, was the first to recognize
that the hotel was under attack. She heard the sound of breaking glass, wood splintering, staccato bursts of Spanish, and
a volley of shots that sounded like a handful of rocks being thrown at the hotel.

Moving with the slowness of dreamers, the Ritchies donned what clothes they could find and gathered up their three daughters.
They stumbled into the hallway and encountered the frightened faces of their guests: Rachel and John Walker, Charles DeWitt
Miller, Harry Hart, Uncle Birchfield, and José Pereyra. The guests, too, moved slowly, their limbs numb and their heads so
clogged with sleep that they could not yet grasp what was going on. Who were all these half-dressed strangers? Why were they
milling about in this narrow hallway? And what was that noise down below?

William Ritchie tried to calm them, his wife remembered, “telling them what he thought it was, of course, they were all strangers
at the hotel, he tried to tell them the best he could, he thought it was an attack on the town, all this time this shooting
was going on, I can not tell you how it sounded. I cannot explain the noise, then after that they called ‘Viva México’ and
we all ran out to the front of the hotel, the lobby, to see what we could see.”

Since the hotel was on the second story of the building, there was no way to escape except by the front or back exits, which
were blocked now by the Mexican troops. Several of the men had guns, but William Ritchie was afraid the raiders might set
the building on fire if they used them. Instead, he dashed downstairs and bolted the front door, hoping that they would be
safe until the American soldiers arrived. But a few moments later, the door burst open and the raiders thundered up the stairs.

The sight of the soldiers only increased the feeling among the guests that they were dreaming. The Villistas were unlike any
humans they had ever seen: sun blackened and unshaved, smelling of horse sweat and smoke, pants held up with twined horsehair,
sandals and shoes made from untanned cowhide. At the end of their rifles were bayonets and perhaps it was their dull points
that prodded the hotel occupants into wakefulness.

Señor Pereyra stepped in front of the women and begged the Villistas not to shoot, saying that they were all Mexicans.
No disparen, por favor! Somos méxicanos aqui!
The soldiers dragged each of the women into the light and asked in disbelief,
Es ésta una méxicana?

In their harsh voices, so absent of the courtesy of the Spanish language, the attackers demanded money and jewelry. Uncle
Birchfield, the wily old cattleman, scolded them:
Cállate! Cállate!
—Quiet! Quiet! he said, as he began writing checks.

William Ritchie gave the intruders his watch and fifty dollars. His wife struggled to remove her rings, but the Mexicans grew
impatient. One tore the locket from her neck. Another struck her hand with the butt of his pistol, a third clubbed her in
the side. While the guests were being robbed, other raiders were smashing trunks and valises and pawing through clothes. Blanche
Ritchie watched in horror as a dirty soldier stuffed her pink dress and black patent-leather shoes down his shirt. The troops
fired their weapons into the bureaus and beds and demanded to know where Sam Ravel was.
Dónde está Sam Ravel?
they shouted. Laura Ritchie was dragged down the hall and ordered to unlock Sam Ravel’s room. But luck was with the inhabitant
of room 13; he was still in El Paso.

The light in the corridor was a queasy yellow. With each tic of fear that the guests displayed, the Mexicans found their own
cruelty increasing. Using Arthur Ravel as interpreter, the Mexican soldiers asked the male guests to go downstairs to meet
their commander.

Charles DeWitt Miller, wearing one laced boot, a brown wool shirt, and khaki pants, descended the stairs. He may have thought
of his two little girls, ages two and four, who would one day watch the snow fall on the Sandia Mountains and wear flowered
chiffon gowns to college dances, and his wife, Ruth, who would cry bitterly when she received his postcard. Miller stepped
into the street.

“Éste es gringo—mátalo!”
the officer commanded. As the Mexicans raised their rifles, Miller bolted toward his low-slung touring car and managed to
jump in and slam the door. When he tried to start the engine, a bullet sped through the door and pierced his body. He slumped
across the seat.

Harry Hart, the veterinarian, was second down the stairs. He was wearing pin-striped trousers and his ruby and diamond ring,
which the invaders had somehow overlooked. The Mexican soldiers waved their guns in his face and told him to run. As Harry
Hart began to run, no different from the cattle he had inspected that day, the commander ordered his troops to kill him. Shots
rang out and Hart fell motionless in the street.

John Walton Walker, contractor, rancher, and hay farmer, was next. His young wife, Rachel, was determined not to let him go
and clung to him on the stairs. A Mexican soldier dug his fingers into her arm and yanked her back up the steps. As John Walker
turned to look up at his wife, a gunshot blast to the chest sent him reeling out the door.

“They have killed him!” Rachel screamed. She continued to scream, only adding to the terror and confusion of the remaining
hotel guests. She grabbed the hand of Mrs. Ritchie’s eldest daughter, Myrtle, and said, “Come with me. I must go and see if
I can find my husband.” They went out on the upper porch of the balcony and looked down, where she saw John’s body lying in
an immense pool of blood.

“There he is! There he is!” Rachel yelled, her voice filled with hysteria. She called to her husband but knew intuitively
that he was already dead. With some effort, Myrtle managed to drag her back into the hotel, afraid that Rachel was going to
“jump from the porch to her husband’s body.”

Now it was time for William Ritchie, white-haired and dignified, with the thin red skin of a very old man, to begin his descent
to the firing squad. As he slowly raised his hands into the air, he may have thought that it was his own restless nature,
urging him forever onward, that had brought him to this moment. Ritchie had taken to heart Horace Greeley’s advice and had
moved his family farther and farther west. By sea, they had journeyed to New Orleans. By rail to McKinney, Texas. By rail
again to Porterville, Texas, a town that would dry up and leave no trace of its existence, and finally to Columbus. Not until
William Ritchie had built the hotel and five rental houses was he able to rest, and begin to appreciate the joys of a settled
life.

To the Mexicans, he said, “I cannot go and leave the women and children to protect themselves.” But his protestations fell
on deaf ears. “They put their hands on him,” remembered his wife, “and forced him down there; they told him he would have
to go and he found out he had to go, and they took him down, and my daughter put her hand out and says, ‘Don’t go, daddy;
don’t go.’ He says, ‘I will be back in a minute.’” At the foot of the stairs, the Mausers roared.

In the brief pause that followed, the Villistas heard the growing battle in the direction of the army camp. The machine-gun
fire—
el tableteo de una ametralladora
—especially caught their attention, and they decided to withdraw from the hotel, taking José Pereyra and Arthur Ravel with
them. Some of the Villistas marched the Ravel boy toward the Columbus State Bank.
“No lo matamos todavía”
—“We’re not going to kill you yet,” one growled to Arthur. They walked past William Ritchie’s bleeding body. “He said, ‘Humph,’
just like that,” Arthur remembered. The Mexicans gave him no notice.

N
OT FAR FROM
the Commercial Hotel, Milton and Bessie James and their two houseguests cowered in the darkness, listening to the rat-tat-tat
of rifle shots alternating with the long, rolling thunder of the machine guns. When a bullet shattered a lamp, they became
convinced the wooden walls would not adequately protect them and decided to make a dash for the Hoover Hotel, which was three
hundred feet away and made of thick adobe bricks. They flung open the door and began to run. On the far left was the little
girl, Ethel, then came Bessie, then Milton, and finally his stepsister, Myrtle Wright Lassiter. They held hands, clasping
one another, as if the physical bond would protect them from the swarm of bullets that lifted the dirt at their feet.