The General and the Jaguar (28 page)

When the U.S. troops entered Guerrero, they discovered that it had been completely sacked by the Villistas. “Such a mess I
had never seen,” recalled William Eastman, the physician assigned to the Seventh. “Men lying around wrapped in dirty serapes,
ragged women squatting over fires cooking ‘Jerky’ or making tortillas. Sorebacked ponies, dogs and pigs with their refuse,
scraps and bones and drying hides.” He treated a Carranza officer who was ill from a “debauch,” as well as soldiers suffering
from ulcers, infected wounds, or fevers, and one man who had come down with bronchitis, “which he said he had contracted about
a week ago from having taken a bath.” In a courtyard behind one of the more successful stores, they found the body of a Frenchman.
The shopkeeper had displayed an ear purportedly belonging to a Villista in his store window, offering five hundred pesos for
its mate. Unfortunately, the man had neglected to remove the display when Villa’s men arrived and they hanged him from a tree.

Although the Guerrero fight had been a small one, it made big headlines back home. President Wilson nominated Dodd for promotion
to brigadier general and the nomination was quickly approved by the Senate. Dodd’s victory was bittersweet. After the skirmish
he had learned that Villa had, in fact, been in Guerrero but had left only hours earlier. If Dodd had had more reliable guides
on that cold march, he might well have caught
el jaguar
himself.

T
HE CARRIAGE CARRYING
V
ILLA
clattered south. In agony, Villa guzzled gin in large quantities to dull his pain. He wept and cursed, slipping in and out
of consciousness. At one point, he asked to be shot. At another, he ordered that the driver of the wagon be shot. Remembered
Modesto, “I noticed that after that he entirely lost his courage and at times seemed to be unconscious; he would cry like
a child when the wagon jolted and cursed me every time I hit a rock.”

Villa’s party was now moving to the southeast, following a route that would take them to Parral, a town of twenty thousand
inhabitants located approximately 150 miles southeast of Guerrero and the southernmost town of any size in the state of Chihuahua.
The residents of Parral had been among the first to answer Francisco Madero’s call. During the long-running revolution, the
town had been bombarded and plundered by various factions and the residents subjected to threats and torture and terror. Through
it all, they had maintained their revolutionary fervor. Villa had lived in Parral for many years and considered it his hometown.
He knew he would survive if he could get to Parral, which was five hundred miles south of Columbus, but getting there was
the challenge.

Like the American troops, the Villistas were also caught in the freezing sleet and snow that had swept down out of the mountains.
The trails were treacherous and men and animals staggered from exhaustion and hunger. The Mexicans were wet and cold but could
not build fires because the countryside was crawling with Carrancista troops. One of the most aggressive detachments was led
by José Cavazos, who had repelled Fernández’s men at San Ysidro. Cavazos hated the Villistas; they had killed 250 of his men
following a battle in February and he wanted revenge. Once again, the Villistas were forced to restrict their movements to
darkness.

On March 29, they paused at a small ranch house on the outskirts of the mountainous town of Cusihuíriachic, the destination
point for the ill-fated mining party and 350 miles from Columbus. In the grayish light of dawn, they shook the stiffness from
their limbs only to feel their muscles tightening again at the sounds coming from Villa’s carriage. Villa’s leg had swelled
grotesquely and had begun to turn black for about twelve inches above and below the bullet wound. Villa refused to go into
the villages where medical care and a warm bed might be found, camping instead in the shadowy bottoms of arroyos or in mesquite
thickets. “They traveled almost day and night,” Modesto remembered. “When they wanted to stop, General Villa would not stand
for it. He was the worse scared man I ever saw.” To compound their gloom, one of the wounded officers was found dead in his
carriage. A second officer was so close to death that they were forced to leave him behind. Once past Cusi, their progress
slowed considerably and they covered only a few more miles before going into camp. On March 30, they killed four cattle and
spent almost all day resting. The Mexicans had not eaten or slept since leaving Guerrero and six men deserted at this point.

The following day, the entourage stopped and a litter was made for Villa from tree limbs and rope. A litter was also prepared
for General Pedrosa, though his was not so elaborate or sturdily built as Villa’s. Sixteen men, all staff officers or personal
friends, were detailed to carry Villa. His brother-in-law rode next to him, leading his horse, a beautiful blue roan pinto.
“He is a very strong, well-built man and he lifted Villa around in his arms like a child,” remembered Modesto.

Their progress was unbearably slow. Even under the best conditions, the two litters, each carried by four men, could not travel
more than two miles an hour. The
cargadores
tried to be gentle, but a certain amount of jostling was inevitable. “When I last saw him,” continued Modesto, “his big fat
robust face was very thin and frail. His staff officers hunted everything dainty for him that they could find for him to eat.
He ate very little, and seemed to grow weaker day by day.”

On April 1, the Villistas approached the Hacienda Cieneguita, twenty miles south of Cusi. It was still snowing and the road
was very slippery. Two miles before they got to the ranch, the driver of Villa’s carriage lost control of the horses and the
vehicle flipped over and was smashed so badly that it was left behind. Villa was in such great pain that he failed to notice
his close brush with death. Instead, he put two poison tablets in a gin bottle and swigged down the mixture. His staffers
waited for him to die, but noticed later that he had not given the pills time to dissolve.

At the ranch house, the Villistas were cheered by the food they found—corn, sugar, rice, cheese, and coffee. On April 2, still
moving in a southeasterly direction, the group passed the settlement of San Francisco de Borja. They continued on for another
ten miles, bivouacking in an arroyo on the outskirts of the tiny village of Santa Ana. It was here, according to a detailed
map prepared by the Punitive Expedition’s intelligence section, that the Villistas decided to split up.

Juan Pedrosa wrapped his wounded foot in a blanket, remounted his horse, and headed south. Nicolás Fernández and his men proceeded
separately in the same direction. Villa and a small escort, meanwhile, were taken in extreme secrecy to a place called Ojitos,
five miles to the southeast. To get there, Villa had to mount a horse and travel over extremely rugged terrain. His purpose,
wrote the expedition’s intelligence officers,

was concealment for a period long enough to enable him to recover from his wound. He could not have accomplished this if he
remained in contact with his forces, deserters were frequent enough even when in command, now that he was wounded they would
occur with much greater frequency. His location, if surrounded by his troops, would undoubtedly have been known sooner or
later. His decision, it appears, was to lose temporary contact with everyone, except the close relatives with him and to remain
at a place known only to them.

Villa remained in Ojitos for only four days—not nearly long enough for his leg to heal, but ample time for General Pershing
to reorganize and send more troops against him.

G
ENERAL
P
ERSHING WAS CONFIDENT
the reports that Villa had been shot were accurate and was determined to keep up the pressure.
His columns galloped on, fluid fingers moving parallel to each other, detouring frequently to search villages and ranches,
hoping to catch the wily guerrilla leader before he disappeared forever. They passed looted haciendas, where the corpses of
vaquero
soldados
filled the arroyos, and the few chickens and hogs that had not been butchered roamed the fields. The Americans searched house
after house, proceeding ever more cautiously after having been directed to several homes that allegedly harbored Villistas
only to find men suffering from smallpox.

Like Colonel Dodd and the men of the Seventh, the other columns also made arduous night marches, appearing in the dawn light
on the outskirts of sleeping villages only to find their quarry had vanished or, even more frustrating, that they had deliberately
been given false information. The commanders of the provisional columns were skilled counterinsurgency fighters and their
bleary eyes wandered restlessly over the brush and rock looking for the telltale scuff and half-moons of horseshoes. But the
Villistas had many advantages; this was their country, their people. They had been toughened by six years of privation and
war and could go two to three days without food or water. The Mexicans doubled back on their tracks, made fake trails, planted
rumors and false stories with the villagers. And the weather, particularly in the mountains, was still frigid.

Pershing and his small entourage followed the columns in their heavy automobiles. From Dublán, they motored south to El Valle,
170 miles south of Columbus; then to Namiquipa, 240 miles; on to San Geronimo, 265 miles; and then Bachíniva, 285 miles below
the border. Pershing was “on the prowl” constantly, writes historian Clarence Clendenen. “Little mention is made in any official
record of this habit, but letters and diaries of veterans of the expedition frequently speak of his sudden appearances, usually
after dark, observing closely, questioning closely, and occasionally giving terse orders. People who ‘were on their toes’
and performing their duties to the best of their abilities had nothing to fear, but his tongue was a sharp goad to all others.”

Pershing traveled like a gypsy, washing up in a collapsible canvas bucket, using overturned cans for camp chairs, a box for
a desk, and the headlight of the touring car for a lamp. He was lashed by the same cold winds, slept on the same hard ground,
and ate without complaint his nightly repast of “slum”—a stew made from beef jerky, potatoes, and carrots.

With each passing day, George Patton’s admiration for Pershing grew. He was especially impressed by Pershing’s efforts to
maintain a fastidious appearance. “No frost or snow prevented his daily shave so that by personal example he prevented the
morale destroying growth of facial herbiage which hard campaigns so frequently produce.”

Pershing also found much to admire in the young lieutenant. Patton was enthusiastic and tackled his assignments without complaint.
Knowing how much his young aide craved action, Pershing sent him on frequent missions to deliver messages to the columns in
the field. Patton used the excursions to do a little military sleuthing of his own. While delivering dispatches of Dodd’s
fight to other military commanders in Namiquipa, for example, he made a detour to a hacienda, where he found all the occupants
drunk. He took into custody a man who was wearing shoes identical to those issued to the American soldiers. “On the way to
town he told me he lived in Namiquipa and that his children had small pox. They did, so I let him go.”

To aid them in their hunt, Pershing sent for Apache scouts from the White Mountain Reservation in Arizona, who were known
for their uncanny tracking abilities. “On a rock ledge that seems to show nothing they will find some little stone lying in
a position they know is unnatural. That is enough to establish the new direction of the trail. They seemed to know unfalteringly
which way a man will logically turn under certain conditions,” one supervisor said. The scouts had skin the color of “well-used
saddles” and waist-length hair and went by the names of Chicken, Ska-lah-hah, Nonotolth, Loco Jim and Chow-big, Skitty Joe
Pitt and B-25. Comfortable as they were outdoors, they also enjoyed their creature comforts and demanded moisturizer for their
lips, sand goggles for their eyes, pistols, web belts, regulation uniforms, and watches, which they referred to as “time on
wrist.”

One of Pershing’s biggest challenges was coordinating and directing the chase over hundreds of rugged, poorly mapped miles.
Telegraph wires were frequently cut by Villa’s allies; telephones were scarce, and field radios had a range of about twenty-five
miles. He often found himself unable to communicate with General Funston in San Antonio, or the jittery folks back at the
War Department. More often than not, that suited him just fine but he needed to communicate with the soldiers in the field.
Most messages between the columns and field headquarters were delivered by human messengers traveling alone and unprotected
on horseback, or by the pilots of First Aero Squadron. But the Jennies were so poorly designed and ill suited for the mission
that four weeks into the campaign, almost the entire fleet had been destroyed or permanently grounded. With their small, ninety-horsepower
engines, the planes were unable to attain the altitude necessary to fly over the Sierra Madre. They were frequently sucked
up into whirlwinds and dashed toward the trees in precarious downdrafts. The dry climate wreaked havoc on the wooden propellers,
and the water in the radiators often became so hot that the motors would splutter and stop in midair. “All officer pilots
on duty with Squadron during its active service in Mexico were constantly exposed to personal risk and physical suffering,”
Benjamin Foulois would later write. He continued: