El Paso: A Novel by Winston Groom Page B

well.” He took a final swallow of lemonade and flipped the rest to the ground. “I think I’ll invite you to dine with us this evening, señora. We need an ornament for our table.”
    Callahan’s anger overcame the fear in him.
    “The lady’s just trying to help her husband. Why don’t you let the señora take care of him?”
    “She called us some pretty bad names,” Villa said. “You want to defend her?”
    “Look, General,” Callahan said, “we’re peaceful people here. We ain’t done you any harm, and won’t, if you’ll just let us alone.”
    “Yeah, I let you alone too long, I think,” Villa retorted. “You and Señor Hearst with his millions of acres down here in Mexico and Mr. Guggenheim and Mr. Whitney and Mr. Buckley and all the rest of you Americanos that have stolen the people’s property and turned them into slaves on their own lands with your stinking mines and stinking oil wells and stinking railroads and stinking cow ranches. And now your stinking government has closed the border to us so we can’t even buy coal for our military trains or ammunition or even rations, so we go hungry, huh? And you want me to let you alone?”
    “I don’t know nothing about any of that,” Callahan said.
    “Well, Señor . . . what was your name?”
    “Callahan.”
    “Well, Señor Callahan, you don’t know nothing about that, huh? So I think maybe I’ll make you understand. Maybe I make an example of you for your gringo Señor Shaughnessy, so maybe he will go to your president Woodrow Wilson and get him to change his mind about us. Your Señor Shaughnessy is a powerful man, right?”
    “He owns a railroad. A muy big railroad. And that boy you just cut down there, he is the Colonel’s favorite. And the Colonel don’t take to this kind of thing very lightly, either.”
    “Do you value your life, Señor Callahan?”
    “Yeah, I value it.”
    “Well, that’s too bad,” Villa said, “because all you gringos have got to know that you are here at our pleasure in Mexico and not because you claim you own a bunch of land that those crooks like Díaz and the rest of them in Mexico City said they sold to you for a few stinking pesos. And maybe the message will finally get through that we aren’t fooling around down here.”
    Villa turned to a lieutenant at his side and said something, and three or four men jumped off their horses and seized Callahan roughly. Villa gave more instructions to the lieutenant, who barked orders to the men to carry Callahan to the courtyard gate. They put a rope around Callahan’s wrists and hoisted him to the bridge of the gate so that he dangled eight or nine feet above the ground while everybody watched in fearful silence.
    “Now we will have a little saber practice,” Villa said. “My men have gone too long out of battle. They’re getting rusty.” Several men, wearing sabers at their sides, fell out and backed their horses in a line some distance from Callahan, who had stopped struggling and was hanging there, with his eyes on Villa.
    “God save me,” Callahan said.
    “Why not let the crooked priests do that for you?” Villa replied.
    The women on the balconies or under the eaves either turned their backs or retreated into the hacienda. Villa gave a nod and the first horseman drew his saber and made a gallop toward Callahan. His blow struck a leg as he passed beneath the gate and out into the open lawn. The leg was half severed by the gash and blood spurted through Callahan’s torn pants leg. The second swordsman tore a hole in Callahan’s side and part of his intestines spilled out. Callahan kicked, and his cries became pathetic and feeble. Several other riders had joined the line. After the fourth or fifth pass, Callahan fell still. They kept on, though, as if they were sabering a straw dummy. It was rare these days to have a live person to practice on.
    Outside the gate, in the gathering darkness, half a dozen men were skinning Toro Malo. They took good care to