The General and the Jaguar (41 page)

With the growing heat and large concentrations of men and animals, the risk of disease and illness grew. Meat was dipped in
boiling water and hung in drying huts swabbed down with kerosene. Latrines were fired daily, manure swept up and deposited
far from the camp, and the men encouraged to rinse their eating utensils in boiling water. The sanitary inspectors were particularly
worried about typhus, which was endemic throughout Mexico. The illness was transmitted by lice and the troops were instructed
to air their tents three hours a day, change their bedding, shave their beards, cut their hair, put on clean underwear, and
bathe “all over at least twice a week.”

Pershing despised idleness and drilled the troops relentlessly in the use of overhead machine-gun fire and mounted pistol
charges. The young Patton abhorred idleness even more. “We are rapidly going crazy from lack of occupation and there is no
help in sight,” he groused in a letter to his father on July 12, 1916. Patton blamed their predicament on the U.S. president
and his vacillating policies. “I should like to go to hell so that I might be able to shovel a few extra coals on that unspeakable
ass Wilson.”

On August 31, Pershing decided it was time for a vacation for himself and his restless young aide. Together with members of
the headquarters staff and several newspaper reporters, they drove from Dublán to Columbus over a deeply rutted road. There,
they met Beatrice and Nita Patton and spent the rest of the week as tourists. There was much to see; the raid had put Columbus
on the map in a way the civic boosters could never have dreamed of. “We are well advertised now,” sighed the
Columbus Courier.

“Eat houses,” drink stands, shooting galleries, tonsorial parlors, cigar stands, Turkish baths, ice cream parlors, poolrooms,
laundries, and new grocery stores had been established. The Hoover Hotel was booked to capacity, with two guests to each room
and overflow consigned to the lobby. Miller’s drugstore had reopened under new owners who were skilled at compounding the
latest medicine; Sam Ravel had begun planning a new hotel that would feature “steam heat baths.” And the lot next to the Commercial
Hotel, where two donkeys nosed through tin cans, was being offered for a shocking one thousand dollars.

“There are dozens or more eat houses that feed hundreds and hundreds of people every day,” the newspaper reported. Many of
the eat houses were forced to open in large canvas tents. For fifty cents, a customer could buy a T-bone steak, sirloin steak,
or hamburger steak, and twenty-five cents bought an omelet or a piece of apple pie. The food was often covered with a fine
layer of sand, the dirt floors covered with rain puddles, and the tables obscured by roiling steak smoke, but business was
so good that customers frequently were turned away.

Alfred Everett Wilson, a teenager who dreamed of becoming a writer but was already suffering from the tuberculosis that would
claim his life in a few years, went to work in his father’s eating tent and recorded in his diary the windstorms that thinned
the soldiers into shadows; the fist-sized tarantulas; the adventurous truckers, who outfitted both themselves and their dogs
with sand goggles; and the violent fights among the kitchen help, particularly a dishwasher named Mac, a former juggler who
suffered from pleurisy, biliousness, neuralgia, catarrh, asthma, bronchitis, and drunkenness.

For entertainment, there was a movie house with a rouged blonde at the ticket counter and moving pictures powered by a sputtering
gasoline engine; five marching bands in the army camp; and private drinking clubs that featured such names as the Benevolent
Order of the Bees, the Loyal Order of Moose, and the Fraternal Order of Grizzly Bears. Into the wee hours of the night, the
patrons could dance the Bool Weevil Wiggle, the Texas Tommy Tango, the Bunny Hug, the Buzzard Flap, or the Pappy Huddle.

Pershing and Patton had only a week’s leave, not nearly enough time to savor all the amenities, and before they knew it they
were jouncing back to Dublán. Pershing could not stop talking about Nita. “He’s all the time talking about Miss Anne. Nita
may rank us yet,” Patton told his wife.

The budding romance energized Pershing but did not distract him from his duties, and he continued to monitor closely political
and social conditions in Mexico. A lawless anarchy existed in northern Chihuahua. The Carrancista troops preyed on the local
people, extorting money and robbing them in broad daylight. “No discipline among either officers or men,” an informant told
Pershing. “The latter are un-uniformed, dirty, and ragged, with but scant clothes of any kind. They are paid in Carrancista
money, which merchants do not want at any price, but under coercion exchange at 100 for 1, or practically as so many pieces
of blank paper. Among these so-called soldiers are boys from apparently 12 years of age to old men—a deaf mute, a hunchback,
and a one-legged boy.”

More disquieting was the knowledge that
el jaguar
—Pancho Villa—was on the prowl again.

Although the expedition’s mission, as amended by General Scott, was simply to disperse Villa and his band, Pershing and the
members of his intelligence staff nonetheless concocted a secret plot to assassinate the guerrilla chief. The plan called
for Japanese agents posing as peddlers to infiltrate Villa’s hideout and poison him. (Villa loathed the Chinese but the Japanese
government had made repeated overtures to him and he had many friends among the Japanese expatriates living in Mexico.) E.
B. Stone, the controversial federal agent, had first come up with the idea of using Japanese agents to kill or capture Pancho
Villa. The expedition’s intelligence division, which included an officer who spoke Japanese fluently, had hit upon a similar
idea.

A
CCORDING TO THE
U.S. A
RMY’S
intelligence reports, Villa had remained in the house on the outskirts of Santa Cruz de Herrera until the first of June.
Though his leg was not yet healed, he then marched south into the state of Durango and established a new headquarters at the
Hacienda de Torreón de Cañas. Green fertile fields, cottonwood trees, and flowers of all kinds surrounded the farmhouse. By
inquiring of peasants along the route, two Japanese agents named Tsutomo Dyo and A. Sato tracked Villa to the hacienda. Dyo
and Sato had run a mining operation in Chihuahua that had been looted by the Villistas, and from that unlikely beginning a
friendship developed between Villa and the two Japanese men.

The agents were escorted into the farmhouse, where they found Villa sitting in an armchair. Dyo was greatly startled by Villa’s
physical appearance. In his diary, he wrote, “His long untrimmed jet black beard first attracted my attention and beside him
were two crutches; he wore only one shoe, the right, the swollen left foot was covered with light woolen sock.” When Villa
asked Dyo why he was so far from his ranch, Dyo replied that he had run into Villa’s wife, Luz, in El Paso and she had asked
him if he could take some bandages to her husband. He had readily agreed, telling Villa, “It occurred to me that our former
good relations and friendship counted for something so I consented.”

Villa seemed to pay little attention to what Dyo was saying. Abruptly he changed the subject and asked if the two agents were
hungry. When they nodded, Villa said that he had already given orders for his troops to move out but would have his cook prepare
them a meal. His isolation and long period of recuperation had left him immensely curious about the outside world and he peppered
his visitors with questions. “During the meal, Villa grew inquisitive as to the relations between the United States and Mexico
and propounded numerous questions concerning the location of their forces. I gave him what information I knew on the subject.
I was especially astonished when he asked me point blank: ‘What does the world think about me; what is the consensus of opinion
as to whether I am dead or alive?’ I replied that the consensus of opinion was that he was dead but that a large number did
not believe it.”

When they were finished, Villa rose from the table and announced in a loud voice that he was leaving to attack Parral. Before
departing, however, he said he wanted his leg dressed with the bandages that his wife had sent him. Dyo volunteered, adding
that he had once taken a first-aid course:

This was my first opportunity to examine in detail the wound of which we had heard so many varied tales. I removed the soiled
calico bandage from the left [actually the right] leg below the knee, which was separated from the flesh by two wild leaves,
the name of which I am not familiar; as the leaves were removed considerable pus matter oozed out from the open sore. I observed
that the bullet had entered from the rear, penetrating the leg bone midway between the knee and heel and had come out in the
corresponding part of the leg in front. The bullet hole in the rear is closed and to all appearance healed. The hole in front
is also closed but the pus hole is just above it and as I touched this part I could feel the fragments of broken leg bone.
The leg is considerably swollen from the knee to the toes so Villa is unable to wear a shoe. For very short distances about
the house he moves with the aid of crutches. The wound pains him considerable when he rides a horse, and does so only when
necessary. In order to cover any considerable distance, he rides in a buggy.

While Dyo was wrapping the leg, Villa told him that he had been struck by a stray bullet fired by the Carrancistas—a statement
that suggests that he still had no idea that one of his own conscripts had fired on him. In a musing voice, Villa continued,
“No one will ever know how much I have suffered with this. You know I am a total abstainer but I have fallen three times in
my life; once when my mother died, the second time when my father passed away, and the third time when wounded at Guerrero.
No amount of stimulant seemed to remove my pain.”

It was dusk when Dyo finished his ministrations. The troops were already saddled and marching toward Parral and Villa invited
Dyo to accompany him in his buggy. Fifty Dorados rode three hundred yards ahead of the carriage. Francisco Beltrán and Nicolás
Fernández, who had done more than anyone else to keep the movement together while Villa was recuperating, were in charge of
the main body of troops. The soldiers moved in a northwesterly direction toward Parral, but as soon as enough distance had
been put between them and the hacienda, Villa suddenly switched directions and struck east across the open country. Dyo realized
that his loudly announced plan to attack Parral had been a ruse to throw off any spies who might be listening. Villa’s real
goal, as it turned out, was to attack Jiménez, located about fifty to sixty miles east of Parral, and seize the huge cache
of ammunition stored there. “He took occasion to explain to me that what he sought was ammunition and popularity and that
he needed the former to ensure that latter,” Dyo wrote.

The soldiers marched over mesquite-covered hills that were devoid of even the faintest of trails. When the terrain became
too rugged, Villa got out of the buggy and walked or rode his horse. After traveling about eight miles, he ordered a halt
in an arroyo and instructed the men not to smoke or build fires. That evening, he asked Dyo to change his bandages again.
Watching the procedure, Villa said, “I see no marked change for the better with the application of the bandages sent me by
my wife.” Dyo replied that he should have an operation to remove the bone fragments in his leg. Villa shook his head. “I have
never had any use for doctors. I would rather wait that nature do her duty. I believe that the leaves that grow in the mountains
are much more effective than your doctors.”

The following day, Villa was in an expansive and talkative mood and shared with Dyo some of his military philosophy. The knowledge
of terrain was the single most important factor in winning military battles, he said. “For that reason,” wrote Dyo, “he selected
as advance guard commander the leader acquainted with the ground on the line of march. When the time for attack arrived, he
allowed this leader to have a prominent part in the disposition of forces and when he thought it advisable, he did not hesitate
to place him in absolute command under his supervision.”

Villa and his army, which had now grown to about twelve hundred men, made several stops on the way to Jiménez. At a hacienda
owned by Luis Terrazas, Villa drove off the overseers and distributed the furnishings and land to the peons. Then he continued
marching until he reached the small village of Río Florida. There, he ordered the mayor to assemble the townspeople and gave
a short speech in which he once again alleged that Carranza had sold out the Mexican people to the United States. “I am here
to urge you all to join me in overthrowing this usurper of Mexican right and liberty; we shall then be free to challenge the
United States of North America and demonstrate to them that the Mexican people will not allow themselves to be bought and
sold in bondage.” The speech lasted perhaps ten minutes and Villa repeated himself several times. Yet, the speech was sufficiently
inspiring for nearly a hundred men to join him voluntarily.

Villa had hoped to take Jiménez by surprise but that hope was dashed when a group of Carrancista soldiers quartered at a nearby
hacienda discovered his presence. Villa decided to attack the troops at once, and easily defeated them. The
tira de gracia
was applied liberally to the officers. Villa decided to release about 180 of the rank and file but not until they had been
“branded.” Wrote Dyo: “General Balderio [probably Baudelio Uribe] who is known as the ‘inventor’ of the Villa forces, suggested
the singular punishment for the prisoners of branding them by cutting pieces of flesh from one or both ears so that if caught
a second time in the service of the Carranza government their identification would be easy. Balderio produced shears, knives
and scythes from the farm houses, which he handed to volunteer privates to carry the idea into effect. About fifty or sixty
of the Carranza prisoners were abused and punished in this manner.” Villa ordered the property, which belonged to U.S. businessmen,
burned but rescinded the order when General Beltrán suggested that doing so would harm the tenant farmers.