They Came To Cordura (7 page)

Far to the rear, Machine-Gun Troop now got two of its guns into action. Two of the Benét-Merciers had jammed and the stoppages could not be reduced.

The other two began to give overhead support to A Troop, firing at the stone fence, their only target of opportunity.

It was long-range fire, however, at 1,500 yards, and could not be effective.

Even this fire ceased shortly, for the twenty-odd men left in A reached the hillside, were stopped by a steep, almost vertical bank which they could not ride, and were there pinned down by Mexican fire from the stone fence sixty yards above them. To keep the machineguns in action at this range would endanger those under the bank.

The Lieutenant of A dismounted below the bank. Enemy fire whirred over his head towards the lower slopes alive with chase. It had been he who regretted the storage of sabres at
Dublán
because without them there could not be a classic charge. He could not explain the presence of enemy on this hill unless they were herd guard for the horses left to graze during the night. His men huddled against the bank, waiting his orders. This was his first command. The position above could not be flanked. There was no cover on the bare hill. He must order an assault. Instead, he scrambled over the lip of the bank, slipped to one knee, and commenced a rush upward. It was a run of sixty yards through fire now directed only at him. Something hot slit his shirt at the shoulder. He dodged in reflex. He fell once, stood, ran gasping for breath to the fence, uncertain what to do. Two Mexicans wearing baggy white peon trousers and
charro
hats rose and ran. He saw four brown, surprised faces within arm’s length and jumping atop the stone emptied his pistol at them. A bullet blasted whole teeth and bits of bloody bone enamel from an open mouth. The Lieutenant retched. He heard his men coming up the hill and tried to stop retching.

There was only sporadic shooting now. The area of the
casa grande
and its out buildings had been cleared. Dead or foundered horses dotted the arid slopes.

What was left of the force of Cruz Dominiguez and Javier Arreaga was dispersing into the hills south of the ranch and scattering east and west upon the high plain as well, some men on foot, some riding saddled, some bareback two to a horse. Provisional Squadron’s animals were physically incapable of pursuit.

Several troopers dismounted to let go a few rounds at the fleeing enemy with Springfields.

Finally the last shot was fired. Its echo cracked off the hills until space swallowed it.

In the blue sky of early morning the black and billowing swarm of crows still hovered above the scene of harsh and surpassing beauty, curious, calling.

The officer who had looked at his watch before the charge looked again, having to hold one hand with the other to steady it.

It was 05.59 hours.

Elasped time of the fight at
Ojos Azules
had been twenty-six minutes.

THESE
were the results of the fight. Of the Americans, 6 were killed and 14 wounded or injured. Forty-nine horses were dead of exhaustion or had been injured and destroyed. Of the Mexican force, its strength estimated at 300 to 400 men, 44 dead were counted, 17 were captured, and an unknown number of wounded had escaped. One hundred and four horses and 112 rifles were left behind. One of the enemy dead found in the log corral wearing a sombrero ornamented with silver and a colored picture of Christ and the Virgin was identified by the Lieutenant of Federales as Cruz Dominiguez, an officer of Villa’s who, with Arreaga, had commanded the Mexicans.

These results were dispatched at once by a messenger on a fresh horse to Pershing, who was understood to be west, at
Pilon Cillos
. Provisional Squadron was ordered to water and feed grain, then slaughter beef for breakfast. It would quarter at the ranch until orders to move on were received by aeroplane or return messenger.

The horses were attended to first, getting a good feed of corn and some fodder found in the stables of the ranch. It was the first hay the animals had seen in weeks. Then a detail drove in four young steers, slaughtered and butchered them and hung the quarters from a scaffold in the corral as troops lined up to cut rations of fresh meat. Fires were built. Men broiled beef and made coffee.

After eating there was much to do and doing it required most of the day. Platoons were turned into work-parties. One policed up the
terreno
and the grounds of the ranch, hauling away carcasses and stripping them of shoes. A second had the sad chore of collecting the six American dead and laying them in the stables under blankets for burial the following day. Another party rounded up the horses left behind by the Villistas, over a hundred of them. Ponies beside the American horses, thriving under conditions which wilted the cavalry animals by virtue of the fact that they were native to these conditions, they would make fine remounts, especially since soldiers would give them the care Mexicans never gave. When a party got around to collecting the enemy dead they found the Apaches had preceded them, looting the bodies of all valuables, particularly silver teeth fillings and the crucifixes worn around the neck. These the Indians would soon have melted down and re-worked into
concho
slides and belt buckles for sale to the soldiers. Troopers had to content themselves with sporting sombreros. The dress of the dead was a fantastic assortment of uniforms stolen from Federal troops, peon garb and gringo suitings. Some wore shoes, some knee boots, some high leather leggings, some were barefoot. The looks on their faces ranged from the violent to the amused to the beatific, depending on the state of preparation in which death found the spirit of each. Even more fantastic was the conglomeration of rifles which was gathered: there were Winchester levers, Mausers, Remingtons, Krags left over from the war in Cuba, Marlins, Sharps, Ballards, Borchardts, Mannlichers, Evanses, Colts, Lebels, Springfields, and even Henrys; they ran the gamut of American and European calibers. Most of them were badly fouled from the black-powder loads. Many cartridges were simply re-sized leaden and jacketed slugs. A remarkable variety of weapons and ammunition was available to the revolutionaries in El Paso at five times the price originally paid. Villa had often been heard to state profanely that, had only one rifle and one caliber been invented, he could have taken all Mexico in ninety days. A deep, narrow grave was dug south of the ranch and in it, while the black-frocked vultures winged last rites, the forty-four enemy dead were stacked and covered.

Troopers worked hard all the hot day, red-lidded from lack of sleep but still keyed up by the nervous excitement of the fight. By late afternoon, however, details dismissed, horses picketed to graze on the slopes and horse guard posted, nearly the entire command was bedded down under the cottonwood trees. A cleanly few washed underclothing in the pool in the
terreno.

The stocky figure of an officer walked about the ranch. It was Major Thorn. The day had worn him to the bone, first the fight, trying to see everything and watch Hetherington at the same time, then going among the men, questioning, taking notes, fearing their response to him, then as their faces proved, one after another, that they did not know, relief so complete that it left him trembling. But if they could be at ease with him, he could not with them, ever. Hat brim pushed back, he walked now without direction or purpose. He would have liked to talk with his best friend, Captain Ben Ticknor, surgeon to the squadron, who was with the wounded in the stables, but he did not dare. He had been lucky enough for one day. Being too close to it he could not write about the fight in his notebook, even think clearly about it beyond the fact that it was over and that everyone had got from it what he wanted, himself included, except the Mexicans and the dead, and maybe some of the dead as well. His walk was a delaying action by means of which he put off reporting to Colonel Rogers, who had his headquarters in the
casa grande.
It was like those he had fought as a small boy when ordered by his father, then a captain, to report for punishment to the first sergeant. That had been his father’s way: too tender-hearted to whip his son himself, he had turned the task over to a succession of first sergeants on a succession of posts. To them the boy had reported after loitering as long as he could. Punishment was public, usually on the parade-ground, and as the sergeant laid to, the father stood by stiff-faced, forcing himself to witness duty done, justice satisfied. Major Thorn could remember that the sergeant at Fort Riley, Kansas, was the hardest spanker, and the one at the Presidio, in California, the gentlest. ‘Report,’ he ordered himself. ‘You are not a boy, you are forty, so report.’

From the doorways of the adobe houses little children peered gravely at him. He heard the slap, slap, slap of their mothers’ hands making tortillas. From the fields two teams of great oxen were driven in from ploughing, the drivers carrying on their shoulders one-handled wooden ploughs. Much of Mexico was tilled by such ancient means; the peons, believing that corn and beans require warm earth, that “steel makes the ground cold” and the mules had a “cold hoof,” preferred to use wood and oxen. As he walked among the outbuildings he came to a conical stone granary with rock steps worn by generations of peon feet, and near it the circular rock wall and floor of a threshing-pit in which mules tramped out wheat.
Ojos Azules
was very old and had much history, he supposed. It was incongruous that American soldiers should fight in a place of such sealed and feudal peace. It was a trick played by time upon itself. They had not been properly equipped to war here. He wondered what the reaction of the Quartermaster would have been to requests from the field for armor, crossbow, and the arquebus. He wondered how the ranch came to be called
Ojos Azules
, or Blue Eyes. He wondered how much longer he could loiter. ‘Report,’ he ordered himself. ‘The boy does not exist. The young Captain died a Colonel and will not have to watch. The Sergeant spankers are retired. No punishment can hurt you now as it did then. So report, boy of forty.’ He straightened his hat, adjusted his glasses, turned towards the
casa grande
.

A wide, covered passageway between walls three feet thick cut into the
hacienda
. From its dim coolness Major Thorn emerged into sun and colour of a patio. Bougainvillaea climbed the wooden pillars of
portales.
Centered was a second, smaller pool. Water purled from the head of a bull, long-horned. A lime tree grew to roof height. In summer there would be bees here, and the fan of hummingbirds. The silence was old-worldly. He recalled a description of the Alhambra as day closed, in a book by Washington Irving. About the patio the
hacienda
squared, the windows facing it small-paned and shuttered, a series of Moorish doors opening into rooms. As the officer stood, uncertain, he sensed that he was seen. Under the
portale
to his left sat a bird on a perch. It was some tropical variety, a macaw or toucan. Crude green, cardinal, blue, its plumage glittered in sun-ray, while its beak, enormous in proportion to its body, evilly hooked, rich as ivory, was of purest white. When Major Thorn moved towards it, pink unblinking eyes swivelled, following him, and it shifted weight on yellow claws. He put out a hand to stroke the bird, and with deliberate, almost sensual movement it seized his forefinger cruelly in its beak. Hurt, surprised, he pulled away his arm, toppling the bird from its perch so that it let go and with heavy wing-beat flew upwards to its perch, facing him inscrutably once more. He examined his finger. The sharp bill edge had broken skin.

Across the patio a trooper lounged beside a door. The officer asked where he would find Colonel Rogers, and the soldier pointed to another open door under the
portale.
Major Thorn went to it, hesitated, entered.

Unadjusted to the dimness, his eyes first made out only whitewashed walls, then a continuous bench along the outer wall covered with Indian blankets, then, in the middle, an arrangement of formal wooden furniture, straight carven chairs with leather seats along a high, narrow table. At one end of the room a stone fire-place yawned, in its face a design of Valencian tiles depicting an animal drama, a fox eating a drake. Suddenly he saw Selah Rogers. The Colonel knelt before the fire-place. He was praying. When he became aware of another presence he squinted, rose abruptly in recognition.

“Tom!” He crossed the room on bare feet. “Tom, what are you doing here?”

“Hello, Colonel. I’ve been with you since
Trias
. After
Guerrero
I was told . . .”

“Tom, I have such corns you’d think my horse had been riding me. But I’ve been praying, Tom, thanking God for giving me a victory. A charge—think of it, Tom—maybe the last one for the old cavalry! How I wish your father had seen it!” Selah Rogers’s eyes watered with emotion. “This will make a whole issue of the
Journal,
Tom—they will cheer it on the floor of Congress! Do you realize I may have my star before the week is out? Thirty-nine years I’ve waited for today, Tom—I’m sixty-three, you know—in August they will put me out to grass. But God-in-His-goodness has let me gather the fruits of my years!”

They stood in slanted light from a window. In a state of exultation such as this, Selah Rogers did not look his age. A small, summery man, his face was tanned and seamed as a butter-nut. Though white, his hair was thick and curly, and two tufts of it bristled from his ears.

“You were here this morning. You didn’t fight?”

“No, sir.”

“All right. We can’t have that. Now come and sit.” They took chairs at one end of the long table. The Colonel asked about Boice. When Thorn told him he shook his head. “Poor lad, poor lad. Well, we must pay our tithe of sorrow. You were at
Guerrero
, Tom? It won’t rank with today, will it?”

Thorn described the fight as principally long range. He said that he had found one man at
Guerrero
, though, for whom he had already written a citation, a private named Hetherington, and told briefly what he had done.