Gringos #6: Mazatlan (An Adventure Novel of the Mexican Revolution)

By JD Sandon

When Yates McCloud tried to rape the Mexican’s woman he forgot about revolutionary justice. And Mexican pride.
Pancho Villa needed reliable men to help a bandito take the bank at Mazatlán. The Gringos were chosen. What they didn’t know was that a vengeance-bent killer was dogging their trail. Or that the ruthless outlaws they were forced to work with planned a double-cross.
But The Gringos had their own answer to betrayal. The answer was spelled ... DEATH.
With the word painted in blood.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Piccadilly
• Release date: Jun 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215452769

JD Sandon

J.D. Sandon was the pseudonym used by two authors: Angus Wells and John Harvey to write an exciting series of books set in the Mexican Revolution of the early 1900's. Both writers ave contributed to other series as well as their own.

Book preview

Foreword

IN 1911 FRANCISCO Madero wrested power from the Mexican dictator, Diaz. Under Diaz’ rule the people had suffered badly. His guiding principle had been pan o palo—bread or the club. As Diaz became more and more an agent for foreign capitalism, the bread became increasingly scarce and the club was wielded with increasing ferocity. Things under Madero were slow in improving. In 1913 a counter-revolution forced him to flee Mexico City and hand over command of the army to General Victoriano Huerta. Huerta defeated the rebel army officers and seized power for himself. He had Madero executed and made himself President.

There were three main factions opposed to Huerta. In the north, the Governor of Coahuila, Venustiano Carranza, established an alternative seat of government at Nogales. His armies, led by Pablo Gonzalez and Alvaro Obregon, fought in an uneasy alliance with the bandit leader, Pancho Villa. To the south, the forces of Emiliano Zapata continued to advance over the land, leaving men in their wake to till it.

From north of the border, America watched the progress of the Revolution with self-interest—the investments of American money in Mexico were considerable. The American government was prepared to support whichever leader seemed most able to bring peace and stability—and a return to good profits. It lifted an arms embargo which had been in existence through most of 1913 and 1914 so that some of the Revolutionaries, at least, could buy arms legally. The Americans supported Carranza but denied official assistance of any kind to Pancho Villa.

Villa was forced to make his own—unofficial—arrangements to secure arms and aid. There were Americans who were anxious to be of service: at a price.

Author’s Note

SOME OF THE terms used here may be unfamiliar to those readers not acquainted with the parlance and politics of Mexico, circa 1915. The more common words—amigo, colonel, teniente, etc.,—are self-explanatory, but a few others may need enlargement.

The Federales represented the bulk of the Government forces: a kind of military police that controlled the populace and was based mainly around the towns.

The Rurales controlled the hinterlands—a country police force.

The colorados were elite units inside the Federales. The term comes from the red band worn about the kepi. They were to the main body of the Mexican Army what the SS was to the Wehrmacht in another war.

The term gringo stems from the marching song adopted by American mercenaries fighting with Juarez: they sang Green Grow the Rushes, Oh. The Mexicans found that hard to pronounce and shortened the first words to ... gringo.

J. D. Sandon, 1979

Chapter One

THE HANDS WHICH drew the weapon from the shoulder holster and then slipped the wooden holster itself from the rig were practiced and sure. Calloused and hard. The fine dust of the Mexican hills clogged the lines that were deeply etched into the palms and thickened beneath his fingernails.

Even in hands such as those the weapon looked clumsy, ugly.

The grip resembled a broom handle, round and stubby; the magazine in front of the trigger was square and awkward; the hammer jutted backwards too prominently. When the hands fitted the holster onto the back of the butt to form a stock, the gun seemed even more incongruous.

As in so many things, appearances are deceptive.

The Mauser 7.63mm automatic pistol has a muzzle velocity of nearly 1500 feet per second and is accurate up to four hundred yards with its shoulder stock fitted. In those hands—the hands of Cade Onslow, former major in the United States army—it was perhaps the most deadly handgun in existence.

Onslow pushed the ten-shot magazine down into place and flicked off the safety.

Dust rimed his eyes.

He held the Mauser in his right hand and used the left to bring his field-glasses up to his face. Kneeling as he was, he swung the glasses through an arc which took in the edges of rock on the opposite side of the arroyo and moved beyond it, away to the east.

A small, significant cloud hung over the land.

A cloud that moved.

Moved towards where Onslow and the others were waiting.

He continued to observe its movement, waiting for the time when the one cloud of dust would separate out into many; when the blurred shapes would take on more definite form; when every rider would be recognizable and a target.

Then the Mauser would do its work.

There was no trace of emotion on Onslow’s grained face as he waited. His hair was brown and worn short, parted unevenly to the left. A thick, darker moustache covered his upper lip. The lines that ran from his nose to the edges of his mouth were deep; more lines were etched beneath the small, dark, intent eyes.

It was the face of a man who gave orders and expected that they would be obeyed immediately and without question. A face which welcomed trust and not deceit. Stern and honest.

The face of a man little short of forty years.

Luis Amaya was a long way off forty. His fifteenth birthday had been less than a month before. There had been rejoicing in his home, poor as it was. His brothers and sisters had danced round him and sung. His father had killed their best cockerel; his mother had made cakes and bread that was warm and smelt of spices. His father had allowed him to drink wine for the first time. Even permitted him to share his cigar.

When he had vomited behind the shack in which they lived, his father had only laughed and slapped him on the back and his mother had wiped his mouth with a cloth and smiled indulgently.

Her Luis was a man!

‘You are a man!’ his father had exclaimed, a little drunkenly. ‘A man! Today is the proudest day of my life. My son is a man!’

Early on the morning of the following day, Luis had made a bundle of his things and run off to join Pancho Villa. He had walked for seventeen days before reaching Villa’s temporary headquarters. When he arrived he had been weak from thirst and hunger and his feet had been shredded through. But his heart had been strong. After all, he was a man. He wanted to be a Villista.

He wanted to fight.

Now he was fleeing; but without shame—with pride. He was the decoy that would lure the band of rurales into the trap. The lure. Fleet of foot and expert on the back of a pony Luis had been chosen as the ideal one for the task.

Sweat stained his loose-necked white shirt and the crotch of his white cotton pants. It ran down his forehead and over his eyebrows, making the eyes themselves smart. It trickled into the corners of his mouth as he gasped air and tasted warm and salt.

He could feel the warm flesh of the pony, its coat damp with sweat also. The hard land jarred up through the galloping animal’s body and into his own. The land: the land he was fighting to take back from those who would starve himself and his people. He knew all this, knew it from when men had ridden into his village and made speeches. They had talked and later shown their weapons and their horses and smoked many cigars and drunk wine. Luis Amaya had been dazzled: the words, the weapons, the wine.

He looked up and saw clearly the opening of the arroyo. Minutes now only. A smile slowly spread over his young face. Minutes and it would be done.

A ragged volley of shots sounded from behind him and he turned his head. The leading rurales were firing their pistols, intent upon bringing him down before the arroyo was reached.

Luis’ smile grew into a laugh, a laugh of triumph.

A bullet smashed into the back of his left arm, inches above the elbow. Luis was swung round on the pony’s back; he grabbed at the rope bridle and clung fast. Pain seared his brain. Mouth wide open he gulped in air. Heard a shout of triumph from his pursuers.

Luis lifted his right hand and slapped it down on the pony’s side.

‘Hola! Hola!’

He kicked with his heels. Shots rang out about his head.

The trail dipped down and the rocky walls rose steeply on either side. Luis glanced upwards anxiously. Where were they? Where were they? They should be there now, they should be shooting down from the canyon walls.

Why?

Why?

The pony half-stumbled and again Luis clutched at the rope; the sudden movement sent a scream of jagged pain from his shattered arm through his body.

The rurales were getting closer with every second.

The pony gave a swift lurch and its front legs gave way beneath it. Luis hurtled through the air, arms and legs flying. He landed on his right side and rolled over. Glimpses of men and horses advancing directly at him. He scrambled desperately to his feet.

Where?

Where?

The canyon walls seemed to give him no answer. The leading rurales were almost upon him. He grabbed at his arm, feeling the broken ends of bone protruding through the skin. Stared into the muzzle of a gun. As he dived for the ground the world seemed to explode about him.

Cade Onslow fired a quick burst with the Mauser, moving it through a small arc, left to right, aiming at the two rurales who rode towards the young guerrillero. One of them threw back both arms immediately and fell backwards from his horse, a neat line of three holes stitched diagonally between stomach and shoulder. His companion rode on, slowly falling forward, gray eyes closed, fingers loosing their grip on the reins. Blood pumped from two places in his left side, out through flesh that had been plucked clear, ribs that were smashed to little more than fragments.

At Onslow’s signal, men on both sides of the arroyo opened fire. For what seemed a long time but was less than two minutes the day was flooded with the brittle noise of gunfire, the smell of smoke and cordite.

Trapped in the arroyo the remaining six rurales twisted and turned their mounts and sought escape. One managed to get as far as the opening to the canyon before a bullet through the neck tore him from his saddle. Another, pistol in hand, charged at the rocks, his face a mask of hate and terror. He gained fifteen, twenty feet before a volley of rifle fire from four different directions lifted him from his horse’s back and seemed to hold him suspended as the bullets ripped through and through him.

Onslow slotted his third magazine down into the Mauser and stood up, lifting the weapon over his head and signaling to the men to cease fire.

Gradually the shooting stopped. Villa’s men hurried down to seize souvenirs, capture horses. Luis Amaya crawled slowly along the hard ground, unaware of where he was going or why. Only knowing that he had to move, to keep moving.

‘Hey!’

A voice close above his head and then a hand laid on his back, but not roughly.

‘Hey, we’d better get you back to camp an’ fixed up.’

Luis stopped crawling and rolled onto his back. He blinked and looked up at the face above him. After a moment he recognized the man. A gringo. The leader of the gringos who were always close to Pancho Villa himself.

Luis stared into the hard, lined face and the first tear rolled from the corner of his eyes.

‘You did well.’ Onslow knelt beside him and touched him once more, this time on his right shoulder, the firm grip of a comrade. ‘You did it just right.’

Luis smiled, winced, smiled again.

‘Did we kill them all?’ he asked weakly.

Onslow nodded. ‘We killed them all.’

‘Good. Good.’ Luis rested his head back on the rocky ground and closed his eyes. Onslow looked at the arm, the bone jutting awkwardly through the sleeve and skin, blood running steadily, freely away. It might set, might eventually mend; he was young and his bones were young. Onslow stood up and looked at Luis’ face—that was young no longer. The eyes brimmed with pain and more besides: a knowledge of the closeness of death. Wherever he went now, however long he lived it would always remain: close.

Chapter Two

‘BITCH!’

McCloud swung his left arm towards the girl, the fingers grazing her cheek as she ducked out of the way.

‘Fuckin’ bitch!’

He pushed