TOM MIX AND PANCHO VILLA: A Novel of Mexico and the Texas border Read Free Page A

true, Tomás? Is it possible? Did you see Pancho Villa?”
    “Are you kidding? I didn’t even see a priest. I made it all up. What’ll you have to drink, Julio? I quit the rodeo. Let’s get drunk.”
    He shook his head at my offer. I noticed they were drinking orange soda pop. With the shutters closed against the heat it was dark in the cantina. I took an even closer look and realized that he and his large friend were wearing trail boots and spurs, their bandoliers were filled with cartridges and big horse pistols were stuffed into their belts. That wasn’t something to remark about: everyone in Old Mexico had gone armed for as long as I could remember, but there was something about these two, some kind of wary excitement, that made me rein up for a minute. They seemed a trifle nervous too, and kept glancing over my shoulder into the street.
    “Julio, enlighten me. I ask for you, and your mama treats me like a leper. You’re hanging around in a bar drinking soda pop. The town’s full of Federals with machine guns, and they tell me that Pancho Villa is in Juárez. What’s going on? Is the goddam revolution starting all over again?”
    “You don’t know what’s happened?” he asked, narrowing his dark eyes.
    “ Hombre, if I knew I wouldn’t ask. And I don’t even want to ask,” I added, “if it’s going to rub your fur the wrong way.”
    I knew enough to be closemouthed around Mexicans when they were drunk, which was often, and I had an idea it might be wise to shut up completely when they were dead sober, which was practically unheard of.
    “I thought you knew,” Julio said, “because you tricked the soldiers. It’s true. Pancho Villa is here in Juárez. He was hiding in Texas, but he crossed the border after he heard President Madero was assassinated by Huerta. That pig, Huerta, sent Villa into exile before it happened.”
    “So what’s Pancho Villa going to do about it?” I asked. “Will he fight Huerta now?”
    “Fight? Of course he’ll fight. Who else is there to do it? Do you think Carranza can fight? Villa will fight, and Villa will win.”
    Pancho Villa was a name to stir men’s hearts, but at the time he was more of a myth to me than a reality. His real name was Francisco—Pancho was just a nickname—and his name before that had been Doroteo Arango, back in Durango before the hacienda owner’s son raped his sister (or so they said by the campfires) and young Doroteo killed him and bowlegged off into the sierra at the age of fifteen to take his new name and become a bandit.
    But anything I tell you won’t make much sense unless you know what had been going on in Mexico since I had been born, and for a long time before that.
    It was March of 1913, as I’ve said, when I walked—or was yanked—into that cantina, and for years Mexico had been ruled by one man, Porfirio Díaz, whom they had called “The Iron Hand.” He kept the peace with the aid of the Federal army and the red-jacketed rurales, his licensed thieves who pretended to be police. Diaz made a few people very rich and a lot of people very poor and miserable, which is a system you would think the majority would refuse to tolerate for very long, but from what I had read in my history books it had been successful in a great many countries for centuries. Three years ago, in 1910, Diaz had just celebrated his eightieth birthday when that scholarly little fellow, Francisco Madero, rallied the people and started a revolution.
    Men either loved Madero or considered him a jackass. The fighting lasted about a year, and it could have gone either way except that Diaz developed a toothache, lost part of his jaw to a quack dentist and finally, in terrible pain, left the country on a German steamship. He took up residence in Paris, where the good dentists are. Madero was elected president.
    Madero was an honest man, but apparently a man had to be more than honest in order to govern Mexico. The revolutionary generals became restless. One of