Returning to Chihuahua very soon after New Year's Day, I made it my business to call on Consul Kueck. He had cleared out across the border to El Paso just before we got in.
Failing the principal, I took the liberty of arresting Kueck's secretary inside the sacred precincts of the Foreign Club. After my adjutant and he and I had had three or four hours' private talk, and he understood how likely he was to occupy the cell in Chihuahua penitentiary which had once been mine, he helped me obtain copies of certain documents in the consular archives, particularly the letter Kueck had written to the American Consul affirming himself to be fully responsible for my safety, at the very time When he was setting Mercado on and telling me that he could and would do nothing for me. Once I got hold of that I felt fairly certain that Kueck would be moderate in his dealings with me thereafter.
Only General Salvador Mercado stood wholly on the debit side of my account book. I had heard that he had been captured on United States soil, along with numerous other fugitive Federal officers, and been put for safe keeping into the detention camp at El Paso.
It chanced that Villa and Raul Madero went up to the border for a few days of the winter race-meet at Juarez, just across the river from El Paso. Don Raul was kind enough to invite me, too, and I went along in fettle, with a new uniform. Our army was in funds and I had all the money I wanted.
From Juarez it was merely a matter of crossing the international bridge to be in El Paso. I went over. I wanted to see Koglmeier, the saddler in South Santa Fe Street, and I wanted to visit the detention camp.
I chose to see the camp first, and had the forethought to fill one of the pockets of my overcoat with Mexican gold pieces, very welcome to my whilom enemies. Poor fellows, they were, most of them, in the tattered clothing they had worn when captured. Their faces were wan and meagre and they were glad enough to accept, along with my greeting, the bits of gold I contrived to slip into their hands.
In the centre of the camp we came upon a tent more imposing than its mates, though by no means palatial.
"This," said my cicerone, "is the quarters of General Mercado, the ranking officer here. Do you wish to pay him your respects?"
As I have said, Salvador Mercado is squat and thick in build, with a bull neck. Some day, I fear, he is going to die of apoplexy, if he does not fall, more gloriously, in action. He shows certain apoplectic symptoms. For instance, as we stepped inside his tent and he saw who one of his visitors was, his neck swelled till it threatened to burst his collar.
"My General," I assured him warmly, "it is indeed a pleasure and an honour to see you again. I trust the climate up here agrees with you?" I did not offer him a gold piece when he said good-bye.
From the detention camp I went to Koglmeier's shop in South Santa Fe Street. Both front and rear doors were standing open, and through the back of one I could see Koglmeier's horse, a beast I had often ridden, switching its tail in the yard, which was its stable. I went into the store. "Koglmeier!" I called. "Oh, Koglmeier!"
From the side of the shop stepped out a man on whom I had never set eyes before.
"Koglmeier ain't here."
"But he must be here," I insisted. "I can see his horse out there in the yard."
"Yes," said the man, "the horse is here, but Koglmeier ain't. Nor he won't be. It just happens that Koglmeier's dead."
"When did he die?"
"The 20th of last December," said the man. "But he didn't die. He got murdered."
On the night of that 20th of December, Koglmeier, the quietest, most inoffensive man in El Paso, had been murdered in his shop. It looked, said my informant, "like his head had been beat in with a hatchet, or something." Robbery apparently had not been the motive, for his possessions were untouched. If he had made an outcry it had not attracted attention, perhaps because a carousal was going full blast in the vacant lot beside his place of business. The authorities were utterly at sea, and still are. The United States Department of Justice agents told me they could find no motive for the murder. I knew the motive. Koglmeier had kept "my documents "for me; therefore Imperial Germany had willed he should die.
Koglmeier was the only German in El Paso who was a friend of mine, and knew of the existence of those documents which I had been forced to give up through the agency of Mercado's firing squads.
His end subdued the festive spirit in me, and I was not sorry when we started back for the interior of Mexico.
Torreon was taken by Villa on April 2, 1914, and we settled down there for a brief period of rest and recuperation. Rest! Torreon stands out in my memory as the scene of the most hectic activity I have indulged in. Raul Madero and I have since laughed over the ludicrousness of it. But at the time it was deadly serious. My reputation was at stake. I managed to save it barely by the skin of its teeth.
Chief Trinidad Rodriguez got twenty machineguns down from the United States and turned them over to me. "Train your gun crews and get the platoons ready for field service," he ordered. "You can have three weeks. Then I shall need them."
Without a word I saluted and turned on my heel. I could not very well tell my General that I had never in my life applied even the tip of one finger to a machine-gun.
The guns arrived next day, as promised. They had been sent to us bare, just the barrels and tripods. There were no holsters, no pack saddles for either guns or ammunition, not one of the accessories which equip a machine-gun company for action. I had to start from the ground, in literal truth. And I had not a soul to advise me how to begin.
We loaded the guns on to our wagons, took them over to camp, and laid them side by side in a long row down the centre of an empty warehouse in Torreon.