Read Online TOM MIX AND PANCHO VILLA: A Novel of Mexico and the Texas border by Clifford Irving - Free Book Online
Authors: Clifford Irving
Ads: Link
it, so it was paid for me by the hacienda owner, and my debt kept growing.”
“Why didn’t you just quit?” I didn’t tell him that in the past it had been my specialty.
“Under the dictator, Tomás, if you ran away from a job or debt, you could be shot on sight. There was even a bounty to whoever brought you in. I was a slave until my twenty-seventh year. My mind as well as my body. Asleep! The revolution awakened me.”
As soon as word spread of Madero’s uprising, Candelario joined a local brigade. He knew how to ride, but he learned to shoot only after he slit a Federal officer’s throat with a machete and stole his rifle. When his own captain was killed near Tecolete, the brigade was given to Pancho Villa. Camped outside Juárez, the little revolutionist army was eager to fight, and Villa sent a patrol upriver to draw fire from the defenders.
“I was in that patrol,” Candelario recalled. “I was shot in the face, and the bastards left me there. I dragged myself to the riverbank and then passed out. I assumed I was dead. It’s a strange feeling, hard to describe. Not truly unpleasant. But Villa had seen all this through his field glasses, and he knew I still lived. He sent Julio out to get me. So I owe my life to them both. I lost an eye—the bullet cracked it like an egg—but I was very lucky. And a one-eyed man, they say, brings good luck wherever he goes.”
It was in that same battle that Julio’s young wife had been captured near the railroad station and then shot.
“Poor Julio! He had married for love, which is often a mistake but in this case seemed to work. He is a serious man, and religious, although I don’t know how a revolutionist can believe in sin and Jesus and the rest of that shit the Church forces down your throat. Anyway, since she died he won’t touch another woman.”
Candelario sighed, and then his good eye sparkled powerfully, making the glass one look even deader than usual. “I, Tomás, am just the opposite. Sometimes I feel cursed. I can’t do without women, and I think of them all the time. When I ride, when I eat, when I try to sleep—why, even when I’m fucking one, I’m already thinking of the next one I’m going to fuck! Isn’t that a curse? I love them too much. Perhaps that’s my fate.” He cast a quick look at me to see if I was scandalized. “I hope you won’t be offended by this, but I like the gringo women above all. Their skin excites me. And among the gringos, especially the yellow-haired ones. The chief won’t touch a woman who doesn’t look like Moctezuma was her grandfather, but those blond pussies drive me wild, even if I know the bitches have dyed them.” His tongue flicked across his lips. “Hipólito says there’s a whorehouse near Columbus that has two blond sisters. They’re famous. They come from New Orleans and have French blood. We’ll see Do you crave women, Tomás?”
If he knew how little experience I’d had with them, he would have laughed at me, and I didn’t want that. But I was saved by the bawling of a cow that had become tangled in the chaparral. I trotted off to help her, and so Candelario was forced to wait for his answer. But not too long.
The United States Cavalry had set up shop on the western edge of Columbus, in the state of New Mexico. When we crossed the border we gave their pup tents and pine barracks a wide berth and brought the herd in well to the east, where we bedded it down behind some small buttes that humped up from the desert. The morning was hot, and there wasn’t enough grass there to chink between the ribs of a sand fly. Carrion crows wheeled lazily in a faultless blue sky.
Hipólito Villa, in charge now that we had reached our destination, decided to ride into town right away and start negotiations with the Jews.
“You have my brother’s list, Tomás?”
I tapped the breast pocket of my denim shirt where I kept my dwindling sack of Bull Durham. We rode off on the yellow plain, Hipólito in
“Why didn’t you just quit?” I didn’t tell him that in the past it had been my specialty.
“Under the dictator, Tomás, if you ran away from a job or debt, you could be shot on sight. There was even a bounty to whoever brought you in. I was a slave until my twenty-seventh year. My mind as well as my body. Asleep! The revolution awakened me.”
As soon as word spread of Madero’s uprising, Candelario joined a local brigade. He knew how to ride, but he learned to shoot only after he slit a Federal officer’s throat with a machete and stole his rifle. When his own captain was killed near Tecolete, the brigade was given to Pancho Villa. Camped outside Juárez, the little revolutionist army was eager to fight, and Villa sent a patrol upriver to draw fire from the defenders.
“I was in that patrol,” Candelario recalled. “I was shot in the face, and the bastards left me there. I dragged myself to the riverbank and then passed out. I assumed I was dead. It’s a strange feeling, hard to describe. Not truly unpleasant. But Villa had seen all this through his field glasses, and he knew I still lived. He sent Julio out to get me. So I owe my life to them both. I lost an eye—the bullet cracked it like an egg—but I was very lucky. And a one-eyed man, they say, brings good luck wherever he goes.”
It was in that same battle that Julio’s young wife had been captured near the railroad station and then shot.
“Poor Julio! He had married for love, which is often a mistake but in this case seemed to work. He is a serious man, and religious, although I don’t know how a revolutionist can believe in sin and Jesus and the rest of that shit the Church forces down your throat. Anyway, since she died he won’t touch another woman.”
Candelario sighed, and then his good eye sparkled powerfully, making the glass one look even deader than usual. “I, Tomás, am just the opposite. Sometimes I feel cursed. I can’t do without women, and I think of them all the time. When I ride, when I eat, when I try to sleep—why, even when I’m fucking one, I’m already thinking of the next one I’m going to fuck! Isn’t that a curse? I love them too much. Perhaps that’s my fate.” He cast a quick look at me to see if I was scandalized. “I hope you won’t be offended by this, but I like the gringo women above all. Their skin excites me. And among the gringos, especially the yellow-haired ones. The chief won’t touch a woman who doesn’t look like Moctezuma was her grandfather, but those blond pussies drive me wild, even if I know the bitches have dyed them.” His tongue flicked across his lips. “Hipólito says there’s a whorehouse near Columbus that has two blond sisters. They’re famous. They come from New Orleans and have French blood. We’ll see Do you crave women, Tomás?”
If he knew how little experience I’d had with them, he would have laughed at me, and I didn’t want that. But I was saved by the bawling of a cow that had become tangled in the chaparral. I trotted off to help her, and so Candelario was forced to wait for his answer. But not too long.
The United States Cavalry had set up shop on the western edge of Columbus, in the state of New Mexico. When we crossed the border we gave their pup tents and pine barracks a wide berth and brought the herd in well to the east, where we bedded it down behind some small buttes that humped up from the desert. The morning was hot, and there wasn’t enough grass there to chink between the ribs of a sand fly. Carrion crows wheeled lazily in a faultless blue sky.
Hipólito Villa, in charge now that we had reached our destination, decided to ride into town right away and start negotiations with the Jews.
“You have my brother’s list, Tomás?”
I tapped the breast pocket of my denim shirt where I kept my dwindling sack of Bull Durham. We rode off on the yellow plain, Hipólito in
Similar Books
