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Updated: June 3, 2025
They've got cars full of clothing, trains full of guns, ammunition, food enough to make a man burst!" Then they spoke of Villa's airplanes. "Christ, those planes! You know when they're close to you, be damned if you know what the hell they are! They look like small boats, you know, or tiny rafts ... and then pretty soon they begin to rise, making a hell of a row.
Once the town had been attacked by Indians; another time, lying in the path of one of Villa's hurried retreats, it had endured a week-end visit from that gentleman, after which horses and canned goods had been scarce for a while. The worst trouble they had had, however, had been with labor. They worked the mine with Mexicans, and the Mexicans were an uncertain quantity.
Luis Cervantes pulled out four crisp "double-face" bills of Villa's issue and placed them in Quail's hands. "I'd like to buy the lot.... Besides, nobody will offer you more than that!" As the sun began to beat down upon them, Manteca suddenly shouted: "Ho, Blondie, your orderly says he doesn't care to go on living. He says he's too damned tired to walk."
Near the fountain, on the green, was a third man. He was in the act of folding up an easel and a camp-stool. The tea-drinkers had gone. It was time for the first bell for dinner. The villa's omnibus was toiling up the winding road among the grape-vines. Suddenly Harrigan tilted his head sidewise, and the long silken ears of the dachel stirred.
"Well, no, Villa's in a class by himself. You can't call a man who has controlled a state and who has dictated to presidents, a bandit, can you? He's on too big a scale. Pachuca took up banditry, in a gentlemanly sort of way; at least they say he did; nobody's proved it on him. He was undoubtedly with Villa at one time. He was with him when he stopped here and nabbed our horses.
He follered me that night an' took a shot at me, thinkin' I was the robber all right but not knowin' I was me. He got my horse, an' when he found it was me, he made me take your pony an' make my get-away, fer he knew Villa's men would croak me sure if they caught me. You can't blame him fer that, can you? Him an' I were good pals he couldn't do nothin' else.
It was the poor who built up and imposed a legend about him which Time itself was to increase and embellish as a shining example from generation to generation. "Look here, friend," one of Natera's men told Anastasio, "if General Villa takes a fancy to you, he'll give you a ranch on the spot. But if he doesn't, he'll shoot you down like a dog! God! You ought to see Villa's troops!
"I'd rather have old Villa's safe conduct than any of the rest of them; I think it cuts more ice with the population at large. But perhaps this chap can do something for us. We'll try to hit the border at Chula Vista the roads that way are pretty fair. Now, Hard, suppose you and I take a turn down the road and have a look at Jimmy before he goes to sleep."
More significant yet, when conditions became bad in the provinces, Insurgent officers sent their women and children to seek American protection in Manila or elsewhere. Cartload after cartload of them came in at Angeles, shortly after General Jacob H. Smith took that place. Aguinaldo himself followed this procedure, as is shown by the following extracts from Villa's famous diary: "December 22.
It would doubtless have interested the travellers to know that the "robbery" consisted in taking the funds out of the province to save them from falling into Villa's hands, and in paying them to soldiers in Nueva Vizcaya to whom money was due. It would further have interested them to know that this unfortunate Spaniard had been twice tortured within an inch of his life by Villa.
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