Read Online El Paso: A Novel by Winston Groom - Free Book Online

battle and, perceiving their job as finished, they broke off and began trotting back toward the ranch. The herd, panicked by the gunfire, was stampeding, twisting and turning like a swarm of bees. Mix and his men were watching the action but were too far away to be of help.
    “Your Señor Mix don’t seem to appreciate an envelopment tactic,” Fierro commented disgustedly.
    “No,” Villa replied, “he’s young. He’s got a lot to learn.”
    “We can teach him,” Santo offered.
    “We can,” Villa sneered. “But first I’m gonna teach those gringo hacendados something they won’t forget for a while. And I guarantee you, we will not be eating beans tonight.”

SEVEN
    H uge generators hummed and electric lights shone brightly aboard A jax as the festivities got under way. A hundred or more business potentates in their dinner jackets drank from crystal glasses of rye, scotch, champagne, and the finest wines of France. Stewards dressed in the distinctive salmon-and-gray uniforms the Colonel had tailor-made for his yacht served Russian caviar and smoked fish and duck pâté on silver trays.
    The Colonel stationed himself on the promenade deck leading to the grand salon, profusely greeting and mingling with the host of Harrimans, Goulds, Rockefellers, Fords, Guggenheims, Vanderbilts, Mellons, Whitneys, Hearsts, Dodges, Lehmanns, and other luminaries, who, in their turn, complimented the Colonel on his fine ship and splendid hospitality. His guests also knew that his favorite baseball team, the Boston Red Sox, had just won the World Series, and since the Colonel had always made such a big thing of it, they congratulated him on that, too.
    One of those on board was a man named Claus Strucker. Tall, immaculately dressed in a dark spruce-colored velvet dinner jacket, charming, and with a platinum-rimmed monocle fixed in his left eye, Strucker was a wealthy German industrialist and member of the New York Yacht Club, which was where the Colonel had encountered him some years before. He was also a commissioned captain in the German Naval Intelligence Service Reserve, and was on his own mission that was closely held business between him and his country.
    Of course, the Colonel knew nothing of this; he and Claus Strucker had a long history of association ever since Strucker turned up at the Yacht Club in a handsome, varnished thirty-two-meter sloop—suave, debonair, and impressive with the “ladies.” In those days the Colonel was sometimes—perhaps more than sometimes—apt to be seen in private—and sometimes in public—with a woman not his wife. Strucker often not only enabled these trysts by making introductions, but also served as a “beard” in case word should somehow get back to Beatie.
    It was not an entirely foolproof ruse, however, and caused a terrible row in the Colonel’s family eleven years earlier when he was caught conducting an affair with an actress. Beatie stopped sleeping with him then and joined the temperance movement, and now she occupied a place in his life not unlike the Ajax . All that notwithstanding, the Colonel had maintained his acquaintance with Strucker because he usually found the German quite entertaining in an obsequious kind of way, and they would often reminisce in private over their former exploits.
    For his part, Strucker had ulterior motives in joining the affair that evening, to which he had in fact invited himself. His country was at war in Europe—all over the world, in fact—and Strucker’s interest in Colonel John Shaughnessy had more to do with his big spread down in Mexico than any damn yachting party. Truth was, a Junker like Strucker could make trouble even while he was just sitting there.
    Seeing Strucker board the Ajax brought much of the past back to the Colonel and, as all the guests were aboard, he went up to the ship’s bridge with a cigar and glass of scotch to watch the casting-off operations. The scotch went down smoothly and warm and, for some reason, on