Chapter XII Contreras’ Men Assault
Wednesday my friend the photographer and I were wandering across a field when Villa came by on his horse. He looked tired, dirty, but happy. Reining up in front of us, the motions of his body as easy and graceful as a wolf’s, he grinned and said, “Well, boys, how is it going now?”
We answered that we were perfectly contented.
“I haven’t time to worry about you, so you must be careful not to go into danger. It is bad—the wounded. Hundreds. They are brave, those muchachos; the bravest people in the world. But,” he continued delightedly, “you must go and see the hospital train. There is something fine for you to write your papers about....”
And truly it was a magnificent thing to see. The hospital train lay right behind the work train now. Forty box-cars, enameled inside, stenciled on the side with a big blue cross and the legend, “Servicio Sanitario,” handled the wounded as they came from the front. They were fitted inside with the latest surgical appliances and manned by sixty competent American and Mexican doctors. Every night shuttle trains carried the seriously hurt back to the base hospitals at Chihuahua and Parral.
We went down through San Ramon and beyond the end of the line of trees out across the desert. It was already stinging hot. In front a snake of rifle fire unfolded along the line, and then a machine gun, “spat—spat—spat!” As we emerged into the open a lone Mauser began cracking down to the right somewhere. We paid no attention to it at first, but pretty soon we noticed that there was a little plumping sound on the ground around us—puffs of dust flew up every few minutes.
“By God,” said the photographer. “Some beggar’s sniping at us.”
Instinctively we both sprinted. The rifle shots came faster. It was a long distance across the plain. After a little we reduced it to a jog-trot. Finally we walked along, with the dust spurting up as before, and a feeling that, after all, it wouldn’t do any good to run. Then we forgot it....
Half an hour later we crept through the brush a quarter of a mile from the outskirts of Gomez and came upon a tiny ranch of six or eight adobe huts, with a street running between. In the lee of one of the houses lounged and sprawled about sixty of Contreras’ ragged fighters. They were playing cards and talking lazily. Down the street, just around the corner, which pointed straight as a die toward the Federal positions, a storm of bullets swept continually, whipping up the dust. These men had been on duty at the front all night. The countersign had been “no hats,” and they were bare-headed in the broiling sun. They had had no sleep and no food, and there wasn’t any water for half a mile.
“There is a Federal cuartel up ahead there that is firing,” explained a boy about twelve years old. “We’ve got orders to attack when the artillery comes.”
An old man squatting against the wall asked me where I came from. I said New York.
“Well,” he said, “I don’t know anything about New York, but I’ll bet you don’t see such fine cattle going through the streets as you see in the streets of Jiminez.”
“You don’t see any cattle in the streets of New York,” I said.
He looked at me incredulously. “What, no cattle? You mean to tell me that they don’t drive cattle through the streets up there? Or sheep?”
I said they didn’t. He looked at me as if he thought I was a great liar; then he cast his eyes on the ground and thought deeply.
“Well,” he pronounced finally, “then I don’t want to go there!...”
Two skylarking boys started a game of tag; in a minute twenty full-grown men were chasing each other around in great glee. The card players had one short deck of torn cards, and at least eight people were trying to play some game and arguing about the rules at the top of their voices, or perhaps there weren’t enough cards to go around. Four or five had crawled into the shade of the house, singing satirical love songs. All this time the steady infernal din up ahead never relented, and the bullets spattered in the dust like rain drops. Occasionally one of the men would slouch over, poke his rifle around the corner and fire....
We stayed there about half an hour. Then two gray cannons came rocketing out of the brush behind and wheeled into position in a dry ditch seventy-five yards away on the left.
“I guess we’re going in a minute,” said the boy.
At that moment three men galloped up from the rear, evidently officers. They were entirely exposed to rifle fire over the roofs of the huts, but jerked up their horses with the shots yelling all around, contemptuous of them. The first to speak was Fierro, the superb great animal of a man who had murdered Benton.
He sneered down at the ragged soldiers from his saddle. “Well, this is a fine-looking crowd to take a city with,” he said. “But we’ve got nobody else down here. Go in when you hear the bugle.” Pulling cruelly on the bit, so that his big horse reared straight up and whirled on his hind legs, Fierro galloped off rearward, saying as he went, “Useless, those simple fools of Contreras——”
“Death to the Butcher!” said a man furiously. “That murderer killed my compadre in the streets of Durango—for no crime or insult! My compadre was very drunk, walking in front of the theater. He asked Fierro what time it was, and Fierro said, You ——! How dare you speak to me before I speak to you first——”
But the bugle was blowing, and up they got, grabbing their guns. The tag game tried to stop, but couldn’t. Furious card players were accusing each other of stealing the deck.
“Oiga, Fidencio!” cried one soldier. “I’ll bet you my saddle I come back and you don’t! This morning I won a nice bridle from Juan——”
“All right! Muy bien! My new pinto horse....”
Laughing, joking, rollicking, they swept out of the shelter of the houses into the rain of steel. They scuttled awkwardly up the street, like little brown animals unused to running. Billowing dust veiled them and a hell of noise....