Chapter III First Blood
The water train pulled out first. I rode on the cow-catcher of the engine, which was already occupied by the permanent home of two women and five children. They had built a little fire of mesquite twigs on the narrow iron platform, and were baking tortillas there; over their heads, against the windy roar of the boiler, fluttered a little line of wash....
It was a brilliant day, hot sunshine alternating with big white clouds. In two thick columns, one on each side of the train, the army was already moving south. As far as the eye could reach, a mighty double cloud of dust floated over them; and little straggling groups of mounted men jogged along, with every now and then a big Mexican flag. Between slowly moved the trains; the pillars of black smoke from their engines, at regular intervals, growing smaller, until over the northern horizon only a dirty mist appeared.
I went down into the caboose to get a drink of water, and there I found the conductor of the train lying in his bunk reading the Bible. He was so interested and amused that he didn’t notice me for a minute. When he did he cried delightedly: “Oiga, I have found a great story about a chap called Samson who was muy hombre—a good deal of a man—-and his woman. She was a Spaniard, I guess, from the mean trick she played on him. He started out being a good Revolutionist, a Maderista, and she made him a pelon!”
Pelon means literally “cropped head,” and is the slang term for a Federal soldier, because the Federal army is largely recruited from the prisons.
Our advance guard, with a telegraph field operator, had gone on to Conejos the night before, and they met the train in great excitement. The first blood of the campaign had been spilt; a few colorados scouting northward from Bermejillo had been surprised and killed just behind the shoulder of the big mountain which lies to the east. The telegrapher also had news. He had again tapped the Federal wire, and sent to the Federal commander in Torreon, signing the dead Captain’s name and asking for orders, since a large force of rebels seemed to be approaching from the north. General Velasco replied that the Captain should hold Conejos and throw out outposts to the north, to try and discover how large the force was. At the same time the telegrapher had heard a message from Argumedo, in command at Mapimi, saying that the entire north of Mexico was coming down on Torreon, together with the Gringo army!
Conejos was just like Yermo, except that there was no water tank. A thousand men, with white-bearded old General Rosalio Hernandez riding ahead, went out almost at once, and the repair train followed them a few miles to a place where the Federals had burned two railroad bridges a few months before. Out beyond the last little bivouac of the immense army spread around us, the desert slept silently in the heat waves. There was no wind. The men gathered with their women on the flat-cars, guitars came out, and all night hundreds of singing voices came from the trains.
The next morning I went to see Villa in his car. This was a red caboose with chintz curtains on the windows, the famous little caboose which Villa has used in all his journeys since the fall of Juarez. It was divided by partitions into two rooms—the kitchen and the General’s bedroom. This tiny room, ten by twenty feet, was the heart of the Constitutionalist army. There were held all the councils of war, and there was scarcely room enough for the fifteen Generals who met there. In these councils the vital immediate questions of the campaign were discussed, the Generals decided what was to be done,—and then Villa gave his orders to suit himself. It was painted a dirty gray. On the walls were tacked photographs of showy ladies in theatrical poses, a large picture of Carranza, one of Fierro, and a picture of Villa himself. Two double-width wooden bunks folded up against the wall, in one of which Villa and General Angeles slept, and in the other José Rodriguez and Doctor Raschbaum, Villa’s personal physician. That was all....
“Que desea, amigo? What do you want?” said Villa, sitting on the end of the bunk in blue underclothes. The troopers who lounged around the place lazily made way for me.
“I want a horse, mi General.”
“Ca-r-r-r-ai-i, our friend here wants a horse!” grinned Villa sarcastically amid a burst of laughter from the others. “Why, you correspondents will be wanting an automobile next! Oiga, señor reporter, do you know that about a thousand men in my army have no horses? Here’s the train. What do you want a horse for?”
“So I can ride with the advance.”
“No,” he smiled. “There are too many ballasos—too many bullets flying in the advance....”
He was hurrying into his clothes as he talked, and gulping coffee from the side of a dirty tin coffee-pot. Somebody handed him his gold-handled sword.
“No!” he said contemptuously. “This is to be a fight, not a parade. Give me my rifle!”
He stood at the door of his caboose for a moment, thoughtfully looking at the long lines of mounted men, picturesque in their crossed cartridge-belts and varied equipment. Then he gave a few quick orders and mounted his big stallion.
“Vamonos!” cried Villa. The bugles brayed and a subdued silver clicking ringing sounded as the companies wheeled and trotted southward in the dust....
And so the army disappeared. During the day we thought we heard cannonading from the southwest, where Urbina was reported to be coming down from the mountains to attack Mapimi. And late in the afternoon news came of the capture of Bermejillo, and a courier from Benavides said that he had taken Tlahualilo.
We were in a fever of impatience to be off. About sundown Señor Calzado remarked that the repair train would leave in an hour, so I grabbed a blanket and walked a mile up the line of trains to it.