Chapter XIV The Fall of Gomez Palacio
“El Niño” was now within half a mile of the town, and the workmen of the repair gang labored on the last stretch of track under heavy shrapnel fire. The two cannon on the front of the trains bore all the brunt of their artillery, and bravely did they return the fire—so well, in fact, that after one Federal shell had killed ten workmen, “El Niño’s” captain put two guns on the Cerro out of action. So the Federals left the trains alone and turned their attention to shelling Herrera out of Lerdo.
The Constitutionalist army was terribly shattered. In the four days’ fighting about a thousand men had been killed and almost two thousand more wounded. Even the excellent hospital train was inadequate to handle the wounded. Out on the wide plain where we were the faint smell of dead bodies pervaded everything. In Gomez it must have been horrible. Thursday the smoke from twenty funeral pyres stained the sky. But Villa was more determined than ever. Gomez must be taken, and quickly. He didn’t have ammunition or supplies enough for a siege, and, moreover, his name was a legend already with the enemy—wherever Pancho Villa appeared in battle, they had begun to believe it lost. And the effect on his own troops was most important, too. So he scheduled another night attack.
“The track is all repaired,” reported Calzado, Superintendent of the Railways.
“Good,” said Villa. “Bring up all the trains from the rear to-night, because we’re going into Gomez in the morning!”
Night fell; breathless, silent night, with a sound of frogs along the ditches. Across the front of the town the soldiers lay waiting for the word to attack. Wounded, worn out, nervously broken, they straggled to the front, keyed up to the last notch of desperation. This night they would not be repulsed. They would take the town or die where they stood. And as nine o’clock approached, the hour at which the attack had been set, the tension became dangerous.
Nine o’clock came and passed—not a sound or movement. For some reason the order was withheld. Ten o’clock. Suddenly off to the right a volley burst from the town. All along our line awoke the answer, but after a few more volleys the Federal fire altogether ceased. From the town came other, more mysterious sounds. The electric lights went out and in the darkness there was a subtle stir and movement, indefinable. At length the order was given to advance, but as our men crept forward in the dark the front rank suddenly gave a yell, and the truth spread through the ranks and out into the country, in one triumphant shout. Gomez Palacio had been evacuated! With a great babble of voices the army poured into the town. A few scattered shots sounded where our troops caught some of the Federals looting—for the Federal army had gutted the whole town before it left. And then our army began to loot. Their shouts and drunken singing and the sounds of smashing doors reached us out on the plain. Little tongues of flame flickered up where the soldiers were burning some house that had been a fort of Federals. But the looting of the rebels was confined, as it almost always is, to food, and drink, and clothes to cover them. They disturbed no private house.
The chiefs of the army winked at this. A specific order was issued by Villa stating that whatever any soldier picked up was his and could not be taken from him by an officer. Now up to this time there was not much of stealing in the army—at least so far as we were concerned. But the morning of the entry into Gomez a curious change had come over the psychology of the soldiers. I woke at our camp beside the ditch to find my horse gone. Bucephalus had been stolen in the night and I never saw him again. During breakfast several troopers dropped in to share our meal—when they had gone we missed a knife and a revolver. The truth was that everybody was looting from everybody else. So I, too, stole what I needed. There was a great gray mule grazing in the field near by, with a rope around his neck. I put my saddle on him and rode down toward the front. He was a noble animal—worth at least four times as much as Bucephalus, as I soon discovered. Everybody I met coveted that mule. One trooper marching along with two rifles hailed me. “Oija, compañero, where did you get that mule?”
“I found him in a field,” said I unwisely.
“It is just as I thought,” he exclaimed. “That is my mule! Get off and give him to me at once!”
“And is this your saddle?” I asked.
“By the Mother of God, it is!”
“Then you lie about the mule, for the saddle is my own.” I rode on, leaving him yelling in the road. A short distance farther on an old peon walking along suddenly ran up and threw his arms around the animal’s neck.
“Ah, at last! My beautiful mule which I lost! My Juanito!” I shook him off in spite of his entreaties that at least I should pay him fifty pesos as compensation for his mule. In town a cavalryman rode across in front of me, demanding his mule at once. He was rather ugly and had a revolver. I got away by saying that I was a captain of artillery and that the mule belonged to my battery. Every few feet some owner of that mule sprang up and asked me how dared I ride his own dear Panchito, or Pedrito, or Tomasito! At last one came out of a cuartel with a written order from his Colonel, who had seen the mule from his window. I showed them my pass signed by Francisco Villa. That was enough....
Across the wide desert, where the Constitutionalists had fought so long, the army was winding in from every direction, in long snake-like columns, dust hanging over them. And along the track, as far as the eye could reach, came the trains, one after another, blowing triumphant whistles, crowded with thousands of women and soldiers cheering. Within the city, dawn had brought absolute quiet and order. With the entrance of Villa and his staff the looting had absolutely ceased and the soldiers again respected other people’s property. A thousand were hard at work gathering up the bodies and carrying them to the edge of the city, where they were set on fire. Five hundred more policed the town. The first order issued was that any soldier caught drinking should be shot.
In the third train was our car—the private box-car fitted up for the correspondents, photographers and moving-picture men. At last we had our bunks, our blankets, and Fong, our beloved Chinese cook. The car was switched up near in the railway station—in the very front rank of trains. And as we gathered in its grateful interior, hot, dusty and worn out, the Federals in Torreon dropped a few shrapnel shells right close beside us. I was standing in the door of the car at the time and heard the boom of cannon, but paid no particular attention to it. Suddenly I noticed a small object in the air like an exaggerated beetle, trailing a little spiral of black smoke behind it. It passed the door of the car with a zzzzzing noise and about forty feet beyond burst with a frightful Crash—Whee-e-e-eeaa!! among the trees of a park where a company of cavalry and their women were camping. A hundred men leaped for their plunging horses in a panic and galloped frantically toward the rear, the women streaming after them. Two women had been killed, it seemed, and a horse. Blankets, food, rifles—all were discarded in the panic. Pow! Another burst on the other side of the car. They were very close. Behind us on the track twenty long trains, laden with shrilly screaming women, were trying to back out of the yards all at once, with a mighty hysterical tooting of whistles. Two or three more shells followed, then we could hear “El Niño” replying.
But the effect on the correspondents and newspaper men was peculiar. No sooner had the first shell exploded than someone produced the whisky jug, entirely of his own impulse, and we passed it around. No one said a word, but everybody drank a stiff swig as it came his way. Every time a shell would explode nearby we would all wince and jump, but after a while we did not mind it. Then we began to congratulate each other and ourselves for being so brave as to stay by the car under artillery fire. Our courage increased as the firing grew far between and finally quit altogether, and as the whisky grew low. Everybody forgot dinner.
I remember that in the darkness two belligerent Anglo-Saxons stood at the door of the car, challenging the soldiers who passed and abusing them in the most discourteous language. We fell out among ourselves, too, and one man almost choked a driveling old fool who was with the moving-picture outfit. Late that night we were still trying earnestly to persuade two of the boys not to sally forth without the pass-word and reconnoiter the Federal lines at Torreon.
“Aw, what’s there to be afraid of?” cried they. “A Mexican greaser hasn’t any guts! One American can lick fifty Mexicans! Why, did you see how they ran this afternoon when the shells hit that grove? And how we—hic—we stayed by the car?”