The Hot Country (22 page)

Slim looked away. I hit the nerve in him I expected to hit. I was still trying to get Luisa out of my head, and all I could think to do was needle Slim, like punching a pal in a bar for telling me my girl was
opening up for some other guy. “Was there bullion on the train today?” I said. It didn't come out sounding like a question. I was challenging him over his previous excuse.

Slim didn't say anything.

This wasn't his fault. I tried to clear my head by making it up to him, giving him new excuses. “It's the nature of a revolution,” I said. “He's got to find a way to pay for it.”

Slim still didn't speak, but I could sense a little letting-go in him. That was how he'd already rationalized it for himself.

Not that this stopped the squirming in me. I heard myself say, “Plenty of women always around for the cock-dipping.”

“It's the damnedest thing,” Slim said, happy to change the subject. “Every army in every war has got their camp girls, but down here they got that beat. You can bring your own woman or grab one along the way and they're like your own personal cook, nurse, and whore.”

“Does Villa have women fighting for him?”

“Not really. Not like I hear Zapata does.”

Okay. Maybe Luisa wasn't even with Villa. Maybe she'd heard this about Zapata and went south.

“But Zapata's meaningless in this whole thing,” Slim said.

Which put an angry big-dreamer like Luisa right back here. I really needed to get away from this line of thought. I needed to focus on what I was doing here, who I was. The story.

I didn't know how to play this one, whether or not to bring Slim in on the essentials of what I knew and what I was after. For now I simply asked, “So who was the German in the Pullman?”

“I been thinking about that too.”

“And?”

Slim looked at me and I bet he was making the same decision I was, about confiding. Him first. Maybe only him.

Slim shrugged. “I was told there might be somebody on one of the trains we hit. A German official. His name would be Mensinger.”

“Somebody you'd make sure the train keeps running for?”

Slim looked at me like how the hell did I know. But I'd heard him revise his orders to his boys in the middle of a pillage, and I thought he suddenly remembered this. “Right,” he said. “He was cleared all the way to Villa himself.”

“So why isn't he sitting here with us, having some anisette?”

Slim shrugged again. “Arrogant prick of a Hun, I guess.”

“You offered to bring him?”

“Yup. Was told to. He declined. Said he had some things to do. Said he'd ride in on his own. I just told him where.”

I needed to be quick about suppressing it but I managed to keep the smile off my face. I figured it was like I'd figured. I said, “Any idea what his business is with Villa?”

Slim took a pull at his tin cup, let the anisette slide down, relaxed with the burn, looked out at the night beyond the door, and without looking back to me, he said, “Don't know.”

All that preamble. A real “Don't know” would've come quick, it seemed to me. “What is it, Slim?”

“I don't like the Huns,” he said.

“What do they want with Villa?”

“Don't know.”

I believed him this time. I said, “But you worry.”

“You see those boys in Europe and the guy they got rattling their sabers?”

“Not a Woody Wilson,” I said.

“The Kaiser could even provoke Woody Wilson into being somebody he ain't. Not sure how good Wilson would do at that.” Slim was still talking into the night.

“If Vera Cruz is any indication…” I let Slim finish the thought in his own head.

“Like I say.”

We drank. We burned. We watched the stars. I finally decided I might need some help in Villa's camp.

So I said, “I talked to Mensinger along the way up here.”

Slim turned to me.

He waited. I let it rest for a moment.

“About coffee?” Slim said.

It took me a moment to remember I'd told him about the Canadian. “Sure. I sold him a bag of beans.”

“What's with him?”

“I got no proof but a bunch of little things that makes for pretty good guesses.”

“Which are?”

“I think the Germans will bankroll Villa if he goes after Funston and the boys. Make a big show of kicking the
gringos
out of his country.”

“Why would the Germans get involved?”

“To put their chips on the next
presidente
. They see a move like that uniting the country behind Villa. All these divided loyalties in Mexico have one thing in common, thanks to our man Wilson: Every­body hates the United States. The rebel leader who can grab that issue, make it his own, defeat
El Diablo del Norte
,
that guy can finally get some traction in the civil war. Then he can throw out Huerta on Mexican terms and rule the country.”

“Is this what he said?”

“Enough that these are good guesses. But they're guesses. If I had more I'd be at a telegraph office across the border about now.”

Slim nodded.

“Does this make sense to you, though?” I asked.

“Might could,” Slim said.

“So we'd end up with Mexico and Germany latched together,” I said. “And there are lots of good guesses about bad things from that.”

We drank some more and then some more, and we stayed silent for a long while.

The stars started to jitter around in the sky. I was watching this phenomenon pretty closely when Slim flopped his head in my direction.

He looked me in the eyes as best he could. I focused my eyes on him as best I could. And he said, “Me, I'm just a goddam train robber.”

39

Anisette or
pulque
or
sotol,
it made no difference. There was plenty of it in the
casa
and in its courtyard and out on the perimeter, and at the main gate and in the corrals. There was plenty and there was a hard day's ride to Carlos yesterday for most everybody in Slim's gang and the stress and strain of a lot of robbing and a little killing and then an even harder ride back to the
hacienda
on the plateau at night and there was plenty of food and there was the anisette and the
pulque
and the
sotol
. And so, as I have reconstructed it, when the sun came up, there was clearly no one to notice the cloud of dust out on the plain and no one to notice the front-gate guards having their sleeping heads beat in with rifle butts and no one to notice the nickering of horses and the metal slip of gun bolts and the creaking of saddle leather coming up the high ground toward the
casa
and it wasn't till some
Villista
had the good but bad fortune—bad for him, good for the rest of us—to step out in front to take a bleary-eyed,
pulque
-stinking piss that any of us knew there was a band of
colorados
about to lay siege on all of us.

The pisser only barely got his dick out when he knew something was up and, being a shrewd bandit, did not take the time even to put his dick away before drawing the pistol from his belt, which his shrewdness always had him carry around no matter how focused he was on mundane matters, and he shot once—probably to warn us all just before the
colorados
breached the top of our high ground—and we were most of us rushing awake while two or three of the bad boys under their red flag and with red bandanas around their necks were plugging the pisser in several places about his body.

I was fully awake very quickly after that first shot and I found myself on the kitchen floor, curled over in the shadows beneath the fireplace where I guess I came to draw a little heat for sleeping, and there was shouting now and scuffling feet from the front of the house and gunfire and I was on my feet looking for Slim and he burst in through the kitchen door and found me and he threw me a pistol belt pretty near across the whole length of the kitchen and I caught it and he motioned me to follow as he headed for the back door and I did, strapping the belt around me as I went, not even thinking yet what it was I was putting on exactly, and I was behind him and he had his Mauser in one hand and his
bandolera
draped over his other arm and we cut along the back of the
casa
with serious gunfire going on inside.

Slim stopped just this side of another rear entrance to the house and he looked in quickly and drew back. He put on his
bandolera
and began strapping it and he was saying, “
Colorados
. Don't know how many, but we'll try to flank them. Sorry for the pistol. Just kill one of them and grab his rifle.” He winked. From covering a couple of wars, I knew two things about a guy who winks when the shooting starts: You're glad to have him on your side, and you don't want to be following him around.

“Good plan,” I said.

“But it's an excellent pistol,” he said and he was cinching up and almost ready to go.

I looked down to see what I had to work with.

I was wearing a beat-up belt, but in the holster and now in my hand was a very up-to-date Browning-designed Colt Model 1911.

“One in the chamber already, seven in the clip,” Slim said.

This was the standard issue for all of Funston's troops in Vera Cruz. I was glad to have it. On my other hip was a magazine pouch. I had no time to do anything but pat it once and feel something in there. Slim said, “Let's go,” and we were slipping past the doorway and I gave a quick glance through an empty room and an open door onto the inner galleria and the courtyard beyond where I saw a couple of bodies but at least some live
Villistas
were crouched behind a fountain and a couple of overturned tables returning fire toward the front of the house.

We made the edge of the
casa
and Slim held up a hand. I stopped beside him, pressed back against the wall. He set himself, and then, as he looked quickly around the corner, my thumb made sure the safety was off on my pistol. I'd handled these. Fired one that was the proud possession of a Greek officer at Kilkis. It had a sweet little punch and a nice flat trajectory from about home plate to the center fielder. I just wished I was a better shot with a handgun.

Slim flipped his head and we went around the corner. But we angled off away from the house, sprinting for a big side-yard garden that was no doubt the prize of the
hacendado
's wife, with pomegranate trees and pepper trees and Mexican fig and with the roses and asters and calla gone wild now. And most important, the woman had a pretentiousness very useful to Slim and me as we heard the gunfire clustering from the front of the house and we sought cover: Running parallel to the house was a long row of fake Greek fluted columns holding up nothing.

And we were behind these and we were crashing through the flower beds to get to the front end of the garden where we could have an angle of fire on the
colorados
on the attack. Slim went to the farthest column and set himself. I stopped at the column next to his and crouched and looked.

Eight or ten untethered but well-trained saddle horses were calmly backing off in a loose pack to wait as their riders banged away inside the house. But half a dozen
colorados
in front-pinned sombreros and red neck-scarves were in the next wave pounding up and they stayed mounted and they split up and spurred their horses, obviously to circle around back, and of the three who turned in our direction, the center guy, a big guy, a fat guy with a major mustache, this fat guy lifted up from both shoulders and he went wide-eyed and the center of his chest bloomed red and he lifted up from his horse and I'd just heard the crack of Slim's Mauser and the fat guy was flying back and the other two
colorados
were pulling up on their reins and Slim's Mauser popped again and the fat guy's boot-bottoms were flashing in my sight and the
colorado
on the left jerked his left shoulder but just a simple jerk-back and the third guy's rifle was coming up from pointing toward the ground to passing the horse's shoulder, and all of this was going way too slow and I was going too slow, I realized I was just watching, and I had to move, I had to act, I raised my pistol and I pulled the trigger and the pop recoiled into my arm and shoulder and I didn't know where that bullet went but certainly not anywhere useful, though the guy on the right started to shift his face toward me as his rifle was up where he wanted it now and though he was glancing at me I thought his rifle had a bead on Slim and I was telling my hand to hold still and to pull off another round and I did and I realized what I'd done, pulled the trigger of my Browning twice now when
pull
was the wrong thing for me to do and that was where I'd always gone wrong in the times I'd shot a handgun, not doing the same as I did more easily with a rifle because I could lay the rifle against me and hold it with both hands and the pistol was all in my one hand and stretched outward and it was not so easy but I needed to
squeeze
the trigger not pull it, and things were still going as slow as a bad dream, and I was bringing my other hand up to my pistol hand to steady it and the muzzle of the rifle of the guy on the right flared even as his horse was rearing a little and he missed Slim I was sure he had to have missed with his horse moving like that and I was trying just to focus on what I had to do, focus on the chest of the guy on the right as his horse settled and I pulled the trigger again and my Browning popped and nothing happened to my target because I'd pulled again and another pulse-beat of nothing and then the man's throat exploded as if it was his red bandana that was full of blood and had suddenly popped, and this was not from me it was from Slim's Mauser and the
colorado
was flying back and I looked to the guy on the left and he was bringing his winged shoulder around bringing the shoulder with a jagged red chunk out of it back around so he could shoot but it was his bad arm that he was using to hold on to the reins and he lost his grip and the horse was spooked anyway so it veered right even as the man tried with his other arm to aim his rifle and I swung my pistol in his direction but Slim shot again and this one caught the wounded
colorado
in the side of the chest and he was going down and Slim cried “Now!” and I looked and he was motioning toward the front door of the
casa
and I rose and I was running forward and Slim was beside me and I angled toward a lever-action Winchester on the ground near a dead
colorado
as a riderless horse flashed past nearly running over me and I reared back and I needed to watch these other things going on, I felt myself too single-minded and that was okay when I shot but not when I ran, and Slim was angling the other way.

I slowed myself. I turned my head. Slim was twenty yards off, bending to another rifle, probably for me, and I knew what was next, we would storm through the front door and catch the
colorados
in there from behind, and I shifted my eyes away from the bending Slim who was focusing on the rifle he was reaching for, and coming up the rise from farther off to my left, from behind Slim but heading straight for him, was a horseman, was a
colorado
riding hard, late to the party and ready to kill and he was unslinging his rifle from his shoulder and it was starting to come down from aiming at the sky and he was going to shoot Slim in the back and ride him down and I cried out “Slim! Behind!” and my own pistol was already coming up and Slim heard me and he was straightening and was turning and I needed to get off a round just to draw the
colorado
's attention to me, make myself the bigger threat and I tried to squeeze the trigger, squeeze it not pull it, and I did and I missed the horseman but I could see him flinch his head back, I'd gotten his attention and his face was turning to me as Slim was turning to me also and I knew I was not going to hit this guy from the forty yards that separated us now and I knew I needed to be a threat to him and I squared around and I took one long quick stride in the
colorado
's direction and he
was still spooked from the zip of my bullet past him and I saw his muzzle turn to me and I strode toward it and it flared even as he was jerking his bridle in my direction and I was taking another stride as I realized a razor cut of pain had slipped across my left arm at the lower edge of my deltoid, which was okay, the round came and went and was gone, and it was not my shooting arm and I took another stride and I was lifting my left arm and it seemed to be working fine and I braced my left hand under my right and the horse was scrambling to finish its turn and it brought the
colorado
a little off my direct line but full square in my sights and I stopped and the
colorado'
s muzzle flailed a moment as the horse finished veering into its new direction and I squared myself up and the horse took a gallop at me and I clasped my hands together to steady the Browning and the rifle muzzle was adjusting onto me again and another gallop and I squeezed the trigger quick and gentle I squeezed and felt the recoil roll through me firm and sweet and the horse galloped and its nostrils flared and hissed before me and I tried to move my feet and I tried and I moved and the horse flashed past spraying sweat and dust and I stumbled back and the saddle was empty and I planted my rear stumbling foot and I strained to stay upright and I caught myself and squared my feet underneath me and I was standing and the horse was gone and I was facing Slim from twenty yards away and he was looking at me. He'd been watching me. And now, as one, we both turned our heads. And we saw the
colorado
on his back, absolutely still and his chest agape in crimson.