Free El Paso: A Novel by Winston Groom

but I have a man—a nameless man, mind you—who has access to the office of Mr. Bryan,” the Colonel said, referring to the U.S. Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan. “And he tells me there is going to be a shift in our Mexico policy.
    “As you know,” the Colonel continued, “we have all tried to get along with this fellow Pancho Villa. We have arranged for shipments to be made to him for his military operations. We have repaired his railroad trains in our yards at a discount and with credit. We have freighted him millions of tons of coal for his engines. We have loaned him money for medical supplies. We have paid taxes and duties to him—bribed him, if you will—for the oil and minerals and timber and cattle we raise down there . . . and we all know that in exchange for this, he and his men have left our interests in Mexico alone. So far . . .”
    The Colonel looked at a scrap of paper in his hands and cleared his voice. “Now, however, because some military reverses have befallen General Villa, it seems as if President Wilson—our schoolteacher in the White House—may have decided to recognize General Carranza as the legitimate president of Mexico. What will happen now?” the Colonel asked. A grumbling of disbelief filled the room as this news sank in.
    The Colonel answered his own question. “I fear,” he said, “that Villa may no longer be willing to respect our position vis-à-vis our property. We all know he is a bandit at heart, even though the press portrays him as a great revolutionary savior, or some such nonsense. Now, I have met Mr. Villa personally on several occasions and our discourse was always pleasant and conciliatory. And yet I ask myself, what is to stop him from looting our interests? He still commands an army of some sort. I tell you, gentlemen, I own nearly one million acres of ranchland down there, upon which there are some hundred thousands head of cattle, and I shudder— shudder —at the idea that Pancho Villa and his people have had their eyes on them for quite a while now. My word, gentlemen, this calls for action.”
    In other, less auspicious gatherings, this news might have provoked a panic of sorts, but these were cool men. The captains—no, admirals—of industry in the greatest industrial nation on earth, and they did the only sensible thing that might have been expected of them. To a man, they got up and ran to the bar for another drink.
    Herr Strucker was astonished by their reaction, these so-called American tycoons who went for whiskey at the first sign of trouble. Strucker had known some of these men socially, but this was his first inside glance at how they behaved when the chips were down. What, he thought, would they do when the helm was hard down and water coming in over the lee rail—scramble down to the cabin like scaredy-cats and take a drink? He knew what his own countrymen would do in similar circumstances. They would immediately demand war! And have this Mexican’s head on a pike at the end of a week.
    When some attitude of calm had been restored, the Colonel continued his address.
    “I think we all understand what the destiny of Northern Mexico finally must be,” he told them. “We must bring it into American hands. Why, my word, we own most of it by deed already, but we’re constantly frustrated and even threatened by some tinhorn dictator-of-the-moment down in Mexico City. This is no way to run a business enterprise, is it?
    “Naturally,” Colonel Shaughnessy continued, “the left-wing press will scream that we’re just a bunch of jingoistic imperialists. Well, let them—they’re right! We proved that when the great Texas patriot Sam Houston kicked the bloodthirsty dictator Santa Anna back to where he came from, and again seventeen years later when we had to send our army to capture Mexico City. What would be the fate of Texas now, or for that matter Arizona, New Mexico, and California, if the Mexicans were still in charge of it? Same as