“Because your Gringo president has recognized my enemy!” he answered.
For months they remained prisoners. The chieftain used Mrs. Sturgis as a messenger to other bandits, on missions which he considered unsafe for his own men, always holding her husband as hostage for her return. At last, when illness had rendered the Doctor unfit for further work, they were released, with one horse for the two of them, and with only five tortillas as food for their journey of sixty miles through a tropical jungle. When, after six days, they reached their farm, they found that the Carranza government had declared them rebel sympathizers and had confiscated their property. Strange natives were gathering the crops they had sowed. Friends provided funds for their journey to Vera Cruz, where they were to embark for New Orleans. When I met the frail, gray-haired couple in the Vera Cruz consulate, they were on the verge of nervous breakdown.
Yet compared with some Americans, they were fortunate. Many of the stories one picked up at that time were unprintable, particularly those of young girls who fell into bandit hands.
“We went up to Washington,” said one Old-Timer, “with actual photographs of two American women after the rebels were through with them. And those fellows in the State Department just raised both hands and shook their heads, and told us: ‘But such things can’t possibly be true!’”
VII
Everywhere in those days Carranzista generals could be seen disporting themselves in the plaza.
“If they’d get busy, couldn’t they clean up the bandits?” I asked an Old-Timer in Manzanillo.
“Quite likely. But that’s hard work. And they don’t really want to. If they licked all the bandits, the need for so many generals would cease. A general has a pretty good job, you know. Even though he doesn’t get so much salary, he pads his expense account with fodder that the horses never smell, and his payroll with the names of several hundred soldiers that don’t exist.”
He showed me the newspaper account of a battle wherein General Somebody-or-Other with a force of four thousand men, had just defeated Villa in a bloody engagement.
“Now I happened to see the General start on that campaign. He had only two hundred men. And if my suspicion is correct, he never met Villa. It was a lot easier to sit down and write a telegram describing an imaginary victory. The President cited him for distinguished service, and he came home a hero. Carranza does the same thing. Instead of cleaning up the country, he just sends out reports telling the rest of the world that Mexico is now at perfect peace.”