My adventures as a German secret agent

I must leave Europe behind me now and go on to the period embraced in the last five years. A private soldier in your United States Army—the victim of an attempt at assassination in stormy Mexico—major in the Mexican army; once again German secret agent and aide of Franz von Papen, the German Military Attaché in Washington; prisoner under suspicion of espionage, in a British prison, and finally your Government’s central witness in the summer of 1916, in a case that was the sensation of its hour—these are the roles I have been called on to play in that brief space of time.

In the month of April, 1912, I abruptly quitted the service of my government. The reasons which impelled me were very serious. You remember that my active life began with the discovery of a document of such personal and political significance that government agents followed me all over Europe until I drove a bargain with them for it. In the winter of 1912, by a chain of circumstances I must keep to myself, that self-same document came again into my possession. I knew enough then, and was ambitious enough, to determine that this time I would utilize to the full the power which possession of it gave me. But it could not be used in Germany. Therefore I disappeared.

There was an immediate search for me, which was most active in Russia. I was not in Russia nor in Europe. After running over in mind all the most unlikely places I could put myself I had found one that seemed ideal.

While they were scouring Russia for me I was making my way across the Atlantic Ocean in the capacity of steward in the steerage of the steamship Kroonland of the Red Star Line.

The Kroonland docked in New York City in May, 1912. I left her as abruptly as I had left a prouder service. Three days later a sorry-looking vagabond, I had applied for enlistment in the United States Army and had been accepted. I was sent to the recruiting camp at Fort Slocum, and under the severe eye of a sergeant began to learn my drill.

It was toward the middle of May that I—or rather, “Frank Wachendorf”—enlisted. After a stretch of recruit training at Fort Slocum, I was assigned to the Nineteenth Infantry, then at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

I learned my drill—shades of Gross Lichterfelde!—with extreme ease. That is the only single thing that I was officially asked to do.

But early in my short and pleasant career as a United States soldier something happened which gave me special occupation. My small library was discovered. Among the volumes were Mahan’s “Sea Power” and Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall”—not just the books one would look for among the possessions of a country lout hardly able to stammer twenty words in English. But the mishap turned in my favor. My captain sent for me.

“Wachendorf,” he said, “you probably have your own reasons for being where you are. That is none of my business. But you don’t have to stay there. If you want to go in for a commission you are welcome to my books and to any aid I can give you.”

Thereafter life in the Nineteenth was decidedly agreeable. I set myself sincerely and whole-heartedly at the task of winning a commission in your army. I believe I might eventually have won it, too. But fate revealed other plans for me when I had been an American soldier some nine months.

That winter of 1913, you remember, had been a stormy period in Mexico. Huerta had made his coup d’etat. Francisco Madero had been deposed and murdered. President Taft had again mobilized part of the United States forces on the border, leaving his successor, President Wilson, to deal with a Southern neighbor in the throes of revolution.

The Nineteenth Infantry was ordered to Galveston, Texas. And in Galveston the agents of Berlin suddenly put their fingers on me again. It happened in the public library. I was reading a book there one day when a man I knew well came and sat down beside me. We will call him La Vallee—born and bred a Frenchman, but one of Germany’s most trusted agents.

“Wie gehts, von der Goltz?” was his greeting.

I told him he had mistaken me for some one else. He laughed.

“What’s the use of bluffing,” he asked, “when each of us knows the other? Just read these instructions I’m carrying.” He laid a paper before me.

La Vallee’s instructions were brief and outwardly not threatening. Find von der Goltz, they bade him. Try to make him realize how great a wrong he was guilty of when he deserted his country. But let him understand, too, that his government appreciates his services and believes he acted impulsively. If he will prove his loyalty by returning to his duty his mistake will be blotted out.

I read carefully and asked La Vallee how I was expected to prove my loyalty at that particular time.

“You know what it is like in Mexico now,” he said. “Our government has heavy interests there. Your services are needed in helping to look out for them.”

“But,” I objected, “I am a soldier in the United States Army. You are asking me to be a deserter.”

“Germany,” said La Vallee, “has the first claim on every German. If your duty happens to make you seem a deserter, that is all right. Frank Wachendorf must manage to bear the disgrace. Speaking of that,” he added, carelessly enough, but eyeing me severely, “were you not indiscreet there? Suppose some enemy should find out that you made false statements when you enlisted? I believe there is a penalty.”

La Vallee knew that he had me in his power. I had to yield, and was told to report to the German Consul at Juarez, across the Rio Grande from El Paso. So in March, 1913, Frank Robert Wachendorf, private, became a deserter from the United States Army and a reward of $50 was offered for his arrest.

Before I crossed the border I had one very important piece of business to attend to, and I stopped in El Paso long enough to finish it. Mexico, under the conditions that prevailed, was an ideal trap for me. As the lesser of two evils I had decided to risk my body there. But I had no mind to risk also what was to Berlin of far more value than my body—namely, that document which, a year before, had led to my abrupt departure from Germany and her service.

In El Paso, where I was utterly unacquainted, I had to find some friend in whose stanchness I could put the ultimate trust. Being a Roman Catholic, I made friends with a priest and led him into gossip about different members of his flock. He spoke of a harnessmaker and saddler, one E. Koglmeier, an unmarried man of about fifty, who kept a shop in South Santa Fe Street. He was, the priest said, the most simple-minded, simple-hearted and utterly faithful man he knew.

I lost no time in making Koglmeier’s acquaintance, on the priest’s introduction, and we soon were on friendly terms. When I crossed the international bridge I left behind in his safe a sealed package of papers. He knew only that he was to speak to no one about them and was to deliver them only to me in person or to a man who bore my written order for them.

I reported to the German Consul in Juarez. He asked me to carry on to Chihuahua certain reports and letters addressed to Kueck, the German Consul there. From Chihuahua Kueck sent me on to Parral with other documents. And a German official in Parral gave me another parcel of papers to carry back to Kueck.

I had no sooner reached Chihuahua on the return trip than I was put under arrest by an officer of the Federal (Huertista) forces, then in control of the city. I asked on whose authority. On that, he said, of Gen. Salvador Mercado. I was a spy engaged in disseminating anti-Federal propaganda. I had to laugh at the sheer absurdity of that, and asked what proofs he had to sustain such charges.

“The papers you are carrying,” he said then, “will be proof enough, I think.”

Chihuahua was under martial law. I had not the slightest inkling as to what might be in those papers I had so obligingly transported. I had put my foot into it, as your saying goes, up to my neck, the place where a noose fits.

They marched me up to the cuartel and into the presence of Gen. Mercado. That was June 23, 1913, at 9 o’clock in the evening.

Gen. Salvador Mercado, then the supreme authority in Chihuahua, with practical powers of life and death over its people, proved to be a squat, thick, bull-necked man with a face of an Indian and the bearing of a bully.

His first words stirred my temper to the bottom, luckily for me. If I had confronted the man with any other emotion than raging anger I should not be alive now.

“Your Consul will do no good,” he told me sneeringly. “He says you are not a German. You are a Gringo. You are a bandit and a robber. You have turned spy against us, too, I am going to make short work of you. But first you are going to tell me all you know.”

As the completeness of the frame-up flashed upon me I went wild. There was a chair beside me. I converted one leg into a club and started for Mercado. The five other men in the room got the best holds upon me that they could. By the time they had mastered me Mercado had backed away into the furthest corner of the room.

The remainder of our interview was stormy and fruitless. It resulted in my being taken to Chihuahua penitentiary, the strongest prison in Mexico, and thrown into a cell. It was two months and a half before I came out again.

There is small use going in detail into the major and minor degradations of life in a Mexican prison. I pass over cimex lectularius and the warfare which ended with my release. There are more edifying things to tell. For instance, how I came into possession of half a blanket and a pair of friends.

I was confined—incommunicado, a sentry with fixed bayonet standing before my door—in an upper tier in the officers’ wing. Confinement in the officers’ wing carried one special privilege in which I, the desperado, did not share. During the day the cell doors were left open and the prisoners had the run of the corridor and galleries. My sentry’s bayonet barred them from me, but could not keep them from talking of the new prisoner who claimed to be a German and was suffering because he was suspected of attachment to the Constitutionalist cause.

On my third or fourth night there I was attracted to my cell door by a sibilant “Oiga! Aleman!” and something soft was thrust between the bars.

“German,” whispered a voice in Spanish out of the blackness, “it is cold to-night. We have brought you up a blanket.”

So began my friendship with Pablo Almendaris and Rafael Castro, two young Constitutionalist officers. Almendaris, in particular, later became a chum of mine. He was a long, lank, solemn individual, the very image of Don Quixote of La Mancha. I remember him with love because he was the man who gave to me in prison, out of kindness of heart, a full half of his single blanket.

This is how it happened. He and Rafael Castro, who were cellmates, had contrived a way to pick their lock and roam the cell block at night, stark naked, their brown skins blending perfectly with the dingy walls. They had already heard the story of my plight. That night Almendaris had cut his blanket in two, and the pair, with the bit of wool and a bottle of tequila they had bought that day when the prison market was open, sneaked up to the gallery and my cell. They gave the liquor to the sentry, who, being an Indian, promptly drank the whole of it down and became blissfully unconscious.

The blanket was the first of many gifts, and many were the chats we had together, all with a practical purpose.

“If you ever escape or are released,” Almendaris kept telling me, “go to Trinidad Rodriguez. He is my colonel. And if you ever get out of Mexico, go to El Paso and hunt up Labansat. He is there.”

So they contrived to alleviate the minor evils of my predicament, and I shall never forget them. The major difficulty was beyond their reach. The trap had closed completely round me. The charge of spying and Mercado’s general truculence were only cloaks for a more subtle hostility from another quarter. The reason for my imprisonment was soon revealed openly.

I had made various attempts to communicate with Kueck, the German Consul. Always I met the retort that Kueck himself said I was no German. At the same time, managing to smuggle an appeal for aid to the American Consul, I was informed that etiquette forbade his taking any steps in my behalf. Kueck himself, he said, had told him the German Consulate was doing all it could to protect me. It did not need a Bismarck to grasp the implications of those contradictory statements.

After I had been in prison for about three weeks Kueck came to see me and made the whole matter thoroughly plain.

“Von der Goltz,” he opened bluntly, “you are in a bad situation.”

“Do you think so?” I asked him, significantly.

“I have every reason to think so,” he said. “My hands are tied. I positively can take no steps in your behalf, unless”—he looked straight at me—“unless you restore certain documents you have no right to possess.”

They had me nicely. The surrender of my letter was the price I must pay for my life. Acting under instructions, he had made me a definite offer. I had to take it or leave it.

I could not give the letter up. It was my guarantee of safety. As long as Kueck did not know where it was I was valuable to him only while alive. Furthermore, I had some hopes of being freed by outside aid. Through Almendaris I had learned that the Constitutionalists were attacking Chihuahua, with good hope of taking the city. I knew that if they succeeded, the German—whose suffering for their cause, I was told, was known throughout their forces—would be well taken care of. So I reached my decision.

“Herr Consul,” I said, “I will not give up the papers you refer to. I am not a child. Those papers are in a safe place. So are instructions as to their disposal in case of emergency. Let anything happen to me, and within a fortnight every newspaper in the United States will be printing the most sensational story within memory.”

On July 23, 1913, I was tried by court-martial and sentenced to death. That led to a bitter personal quarrel between Gen. Manuel Chao, the Constitutionalist commander attacking the city, and Mercado, who defended it.

Chao sent in a flag of truce, absolving me from any connection with his cause and threatening that if I were killed Mercado personally would have to pay the score when the Constitutionalists took Chihuahua. The Indian bully retorted that if the Constitutionalists ever captured the city they would not find their pet alive there.

Three times in the weeks that followed, the Constitutionalist forces seemed on the point of capturing Chihuahua. Have you ever walked out with your own firing squad and spent an endless half hour on a chilly morning in the company of an officer with drawn sword, five soldiers with loaded rifles and a sergeant with the revolver destined to give you your coup de grace? Three times that happened to me, at Mercado’s orders. My profession has seldom permitted me to indulge in personal hatreds, but as I was marched back from that third bad half hour my mind was filled with one thought: If ever I got Mercado where he had me then I would let him know what it felt like.

Then matters came to a crisis. Reinforcements were brought up from Mexico City and the Constitutionalist besiegers suffered a crushing defeat. I could put no more hope in them.

Kueck came again to see me.

“Give me an order on Koglmeier for those papers,” he demanded. “There’s no use saying Koglmeier hasn’t got them, for I know he has.”

I could see he was not bluffing, and knew the game was up. I signed the release for the papers. There had been no personal animosity between Kueck and myself. I had seen too much of life to be angry with a man simply because he was obeying his orders.

About September 12, 1913, Kueck came to escort me out of prison, and in his own carriage drove me to the railway station, bound north, out of Mexico. I had a sheaf of letters, signed by Kueck, which recommended me, as Baron von der Goltz, to the good offices of German Consular representatives throughout the United States and requested them to supply me with funds.

The last man who spoke to me in Chihuahua was Col. Carlos Orozco, commander of the Sixth Battalion of Infantry, and Gen. Mercado’s right-hand man, though his bitter enemy. His farewell was a threat. “You are lucky to get out of Mexico,” he told me. “If you ever come back and I see you I will have you shot at once.” My next meeting with Col. Carlos Orozco occurred on Mexican soil.

Escorted by Consul Kueck out of Mexico I went up to El Paso, determined to return to Mexico as soon as possible. But before I did anything else, I felt a very great desire to square accounts with Gen. Salvador Mercado.

So I stopped off at El Paso to look for Labansat, the Constitutionalist about whom my friend Pablo Almendaris told me while I was in prison, I lost no time in getting into touch with him and other members of the Constitutionalist junta.

Another acquaintance made at that time proved very useful to me later. Dr. L. A. Raschbaum, Francisco Villa’s personal physician, was a fellow guest at the Ollendorf Hotel.

We were an earnest but impecunious bunch. Juan T. Burns, now Mexican Consul General in New York, may still remember a morning when he and I found ourselves with one nickel between us and the necessity of getting breakfast for two at an El Paso lunch counter. That lone “jitney” bought a cup of coffee and two rolls. Each of us took a roll and we drank the cup of coffee mutually.

I also renewed my intimacy with Koglmeier, the saddler in South Santa Fe Street. He told me a man he did not know had come with my written order for the papers I had left in his safe and he had turned them over.

Despairing at last of obtaining results at El Paso, I availed myself of my consular recommendations and went out to Los Angeles, Cal. There I received help from Geraldine Farrar, whom I had known in Germany, and in November, 1913, directly after the battle of Tierra Blancha, Chihuahua, I received a telegram saying: “Dr. Raschbaum’s proposition accepted; come at once,” and signed “Francisco Villa.” My way lay open before me and I was free to start.

I reached El Paso on November 27th and went on to Chihuahua, which had fallen into the hands of the Constitutionalists. Once there, I looked up my friend of the half blanket, Pablo Almendaris, and by him was introduced to Col. Trinidad Rodriguez, commanding a cavalry brigade, who promptly attached me to his staff, with the rank of captain.

The Federalists had retreated across the desert northward and settled themselves in Ojinaga, the so-called Gibraltar of the Rio Grande, a tremendously strong natural position.

Toward the middle of December we received orders to proceed to the attack of Ojinaga. Our brigade and the troops of Gens. Panfilo Natira and Toribio Ortega were included in the expedition, some 7,000 men. The railway carried us seventy miles. The rest of the journey had to be made on horseback. During four days of marching in the desert I made acquaintance with Mexican mounted infantry, the most effective arm for such conditions and country the world has seen.

Arriving before the outer defenses of Ojinaga, we began our siege of the city. Soon after I got my first sight of Pancho Villa.

Of a sudden one evening, Trinidad Rodriguez told me that “Pancho” had just arrived and we must ride over for a conference with him.

We found Villa lying on a saddle blanket in an irrigation ditch in the company of Raul Madero, brother of the murdered President, a handful of officers who had come up with them, and our own commanders, Natira and Ortega.

Madero, to my mind one of the ablest Mexicans alive, was clad in the dingiest of old gray sweaters. Villa, unkempt, unshaven and unshorn, was begrimed and weary from his ride across the desert. But he seemed full of bottled-up energy, and when Gen. Rodriguez and I came up he was giving Gen. Ortega a talking to because so little had been accomplished in regard to taking Ojinaga.

While we talked I rolled me a cigarette, and all at once he broke off abruptly. “Give me some of that, too,” he demanded. I handed him “the makings” and he attempted a cigarette. He was so clumsy with it that I had to roll it for him. Then for the first and last time in my acquaintance with him I saw Pancho Villa smoke. Contrary to the stories that have gone out about him, he is a most abstemious man with regard to alcohol and tobacco.

On Christmas night, 1913, happened the adventure which made me, quite by accident, and without intention, a hero. Also, I underwent the greatest fright of my life.

My commander, Rodriguez, had received orders to make an attack that night straight-forward toward Ojinaga. After it was completely dark we formed and advanced, finding ourselves very soon among the willows lining the bank of the Rio Conchas, which we had to cross.

It was my first taste of genuine warfare, and I cannot begin to tell you how it affected me, how ghastly it was among the willows in the vague darkness through which the column was threading its way with the utmost possible quietness. The beat of hoofs was muffled in the soggy ground, and the only sound to break the utter stillness of the night was the occasional clank of a spur or thin neigh of a horse.

Then all at once, to the front and in the distance, came a boom—the single growling of a field-gun. Ping! Ping! Ping! broke out a volley of rifle shots, and then with its r-r-r-r-r! a Hotchkiss machine gun got to work. A staccato bam! bam! bam! as a Colt’s machine gun joined the chorus. Somewhere troops were going into serious action. That was no skirmishing.

We finally crossed the river and dismounted. Part of the brigade had gone astray. Rodriguez cursed impatiently and incessantly under his breath until it joined us. He was a born cavalry leader, mad for action. Any sort of waiting lacerated his nerves.

In line, with rifles trailing, we moved across the unknown terrain of low, rolling hills. On our front there had been no firing. Then all at once, directly before us and not far ahead, sounded a startled “Qui vive?” and an instant’s silence while the surprised outpost of the enemy waited for an answer. “Alerta! Alerta!” sounded his shrill alarm.

Hell broke open around us then. Rifles, machine guns and cannon opened fire all at once. Bullets whined above our heads and bursting shrapnel fell around us. We had just come to an irrigation ditch, six feet wide, with a high wire fence on the further bank of it.

“Stay here till they’re all across and look for skulkers,” Trinidad Rodriguez gave himself time to order me, then leaped across the ditch and began to run toward the fence. “Come on here, boys!” he shouted.

The men were quickly across. I followed, or tried to, and just as my front foot touched the further bank the clay crumbled. Down I went into the ditch.

When I recovered myself in that four feet of mud and water and poked my head up over the bank the fence had been demolished. Beyond it countless rifles spat tongues of fire toward me. But not a living soul was near. The night had swallowed up every last one of our men.

Fright had not come yet. I was bewildered. I still had my rifle and began to use it. After a few discharges there came a violent wrench and the barrel parted company with the rest of the weapon. It had been shot to pieces in my hands. I threw the stock away and got out my revolver—a Colt .44 single-action, of the frontier model.

Boom! There was a roar like a field-gun’s and a flash that lit up the night all round me. The wet weapon was outdoing itself in pyrotechnics, and I was unnecessarily attracting attention to myself. So, half swimming, half wading, I moved down the ditch in the direction of the high hill which, looming vaguely, seemed half familiar to me.

I was lost, you understand. I had come at night into unknown terrain. I welcomed that hill, which seemed to give me back my bearings. I reached the base of it, got out of my ditch and began to climb, with some caution, luckily for me. For just as I stole over the crest a roar and a flash obliterated the night. Two enemy field-pieces had been discharged together, almost into my face.

Deeming it more than likely that the flash had shown the gunners one startled Teutonic face, I rolled down that hill and was once more in my ditch. But panic had full possession of me. I climbed out on the far side and ran among the scattered trees there until I realized that no racer can hope to outrun a bullet. Then I stopped.

Phut! Phut! Bullets were hissing into the soft irrigated ground all round me, for by accident I had gotten into a very dangerous zone of dropping cross-fire, while overhead shrapnel was searching out blindly for our horses.

By good luck I knew the trumpet calls. Whenever the signal to fire sounded I took what cover I could, going on again in what I decided was the direction of the Rio Conchas as soon as the bugles called “cease firing.”

After a while I found a small gray horse standing dejectedly by a tree. I mounted him and eventually got among the willows on the river bank. There the horse collapsed under me without a warning quiver or groan, and when I had wriggled myself loose and groped him over I discovered the poor brute must have been shot as full of holes as a flute before I ever found him.

But I had small sympathy to spend on fallen horses just then. Cleaning my gory hands as best I could on breeches and tunic, I stumbled on through the bushes. After a long time I came, by accident, to the place where the brigade had dismounted to go into action. The mounts were mostly gone, but a few still stood there, with perhaps a score of men and one officer, Lieut. Col. Patricio, who was vastly surprised at my sudden appearance from the direction of the front.

Our brigade had been withdrawn within twenty minutes of the beginning of the action—as soon as it was quite certain the surprise had failed. Patricio was waiting there because his brother had been killed and he wanted, if possible, to take back his body.

“But,” cried the colonel, suddenly warming into emotion, “you—where have you been? You, valiant German, refused to come back with the others! All night, all by yourself, you have been fighting single-handed. Let me embrace you!”

He flung his arms about me, to receive a fresh surprise. “You are all sticky with something,” he cried. “What is it?”

“Blood,” I told him simply and truthfully. My reputation was made.

Bravado stirs a Mexican as nothing else can. Counterfeit bravado is just as effective as any so long as the substitution is not suspected. Young Capt. von der Goltz, in his first real engagement, had got stupidly lost and very badly frightened. But of Capt. von der Goltz Col. Patricio and his troopers sang the praises for days thereafter to every officer and every peon soldier they met. He had fought on alone for hours after every comrade left him. He had bathed himself in the blood of his enemies, up to his hips and up to his shoulders. You could see it on his clothes.

By the time Ojinaga fell “El Diable Aleman”—the German Devil—had become a tradition of the Constitutionalist Army.

Ojinaga fell at New Year’s, 1914, the Federalists retreating across the Rio Grande into the United States. We pursued them. And on the bank of the river I had a little adventure.

You remember that when I left Chihuahua, a released prisoner, the last person who spoke to me was Col. Carlos Orozco, commanding the Sixth Infantry Battalion, and his farewell was a threat.

That Sixth Battalion had been engaged in the defense of Ojinaga and had retreated with its fellow organizations. When I came up to the Rio Grande a small body of fugitives was in midstream. My handful of troopers rode in, surrounded them and brought them back to Mexico. Their heroic commander, who had offered no show of resistance, proved to be Orozco, with the colors of his outfit wrapped round his body, under his blouse!

The provocation was too much for me. “Don Carlos,” I asked him, “is it possible you have forgotten me? When we parted last time you promised to shoot me if ever we met again. I am naturally all on fire to learn whether you are thinking of keeping your promise now?”

Prominent prisoners were getting short shrift in those days, and Orozco preserved a sullen silence. But I let him ford the river to safety. He eventually got back to Mexico City and Huerta, by way of San Antonio, Galveston and Vera Cruz. The story of his exploit at Ojinaga, the sole Federal officer to come out of it alive, unwounded, and bringing his colors with him, furnished columns of copy to El Imparcial and the other papers. Friends and admirers of his who heard the lion roar at that time may find some interest in this less romantic record of his adventure.

I had another account to settle with my old acquaintance, Consul Kueck of Chihuahua. During the last battle before Ojinaga an officer struck up a rifle which he saw a peon aiming at my back. The ball whistled over my head. The soldier later saw fit to confess the reason for his act. He said that a big, fat German—Kueck’s secretary, he thought—had come to him just before we left Chihuahua on our expedition and had given him 500 pesos to attempt my life.

Returning to Chihuahua very soon after New Year’s, 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 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 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 Gen. 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 had been put for safekeeping 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 center 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 Gen. 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 honor 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 carousel 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 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 machine guns 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 touched 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 onto our wagons, took them over to camp and laid them side by side in a long row down the center of an empty ware-house in Torreon.

That satisfied me for one afternoon. I went over to Gen. Rodriguez’s quarters.

“I’ve got the guns,” I reported.

“Good!” he cried. “I shall want the platoons ready for action in three weeks. Not a day later.”

It was up to me to have them ready. So I got busy at once.

My first move was an abduction. There happened to be in Torreon jail at that time a first class bank robber named Jefferson, who was being held for the arrival of extradition papers from Texas. The day after my guns arrived Jefferson escaped, and though the authorities made diligent search they failed to find him. He knew more about machine guns than I did. His profession had made him an excellent mechanic. Furthermore, he had Yankee ingenuity and American “git up and git.” We soon had all twenty guns set up in working order.

Then came the problem of the gun crews. Our Indians, slow, thick-headed, stubborn and stolid, were no fit material for such highly specialized work. Machine gun manipulation requires special qualifications in every man concerned. Three men compose the crew. One squats behind the shield and pulls the trigger. The second, prone, slides the clips of cartridges into the breach. The third passes up the supply of ammunition. At any moment the gun may heat and jam. Also, at any moment any one of the trio may fall, yet his work must be carried on. I have seen a gunner sit on the dying body of a comrade and coolly aim and fire, the action being so hot there was not time to drag the wounded man aside. You cannot take an Indian wild from the hills and in twenty-one days fit him to do such work as that by any course of training.

My only resort was to get my gun crews ready made.

A brigade not far away from ours possessed machine gun platoons which were the pride of its heart. I looked at them, and broke first the Tenth and then the Eight Commandment.

To a wise old sergeant I gave a hundred pesos.

“Juan,” I told him, “get the men of those machine gun crews drunk in this quarter of Torreon. And encourage them to be noisy.”

Juan obeyed instructions. Once the beer and mezcal took hold, the men I wanted became boisterous enough to justify our provost guard in running them all in. The rest was simple. The breach of discipline was condoned by Gen. Rodriguez only on condition that the culprits were turned over to him for further discipline.

So I got my gun crews. I was beginning to have hopes. The best saddler in the city was making holsters. When I first approached him with an order he had promptly thrown up his hands. “There is not a scrap of leather left in Torreon,” he said.

I instantly thought of chair backs. In Spanish countries furniture upholstered in old carved Cordovan leather is an heirloom. In time of war ruthlessness is a useful quality. I soon presented my saddler with sufficient leather for my purpose and could turn my attention to pack saddles. Not even the sawbuck frames were procurable in Torreon, but wood was plenty. And there was a jail filled with idle prisoners. Ten days after the first sight of my guns I was able to report to Gen. Rodriguez that the platoons were coming along.

“But I have no mules for them yet,” I hinted.

He sent a hundred next day, beauties, fat, strong, in the pink of condition. But they had come straight down from the mesa. They could be trusted to kick saddles, guns, tripods, holsters and ammunition cases into nothing at the least provocation.

Torreon was celebrating its new Constitutionalism with daily bull fights. Each afternoon, while the fight was on, the plaza before the entrance to the ring was crowded with public rigs in waiting, all drawn by sorry-looking mules, half fed and too worn out to have a single kick left in them.

With a squad of troopers I descended on the plaza one day. No cabbie anywhere is markedly shy or retiring, and these were hill-bred muleteros. But we got the mules in the end.

“You are getting the best of the bargain,” I assured them. “I am only swapping with you. In the corral I have a hundred fine, strong, new mules worth three times as much as these played-out beasts you are getting rid of. You can have the nice new ones to-morrow.”

If Gen. Trinidad ever guessed how thoroughly improvised his favorite outfit was—the second in command a bank robber on enforced vacation, the gunners kidnapped, the equipment made by forced labor from commandeered material, and the mules snatched rudely from between the shafts of cabs—he made no comment.

He did not live long to enjoy the fruits of my labors. In mid-June, during the ten-day attack which resulted in the fall of Zacatecas, he was mortally wounded.

I shall always remember that day, not only for the death of my chief, but for a personal bit of adventure.

I was temporarily away from my guns with some riflemen in a trench. The enemy fire was very hot and the men became exceedingly restive. Something had to be done to steady them, for there was no cover of any sort on the bullet-swept, shrapnel-searched plain behind us. Retreat was impossible. There were plenty of horrors in the situation—the blazing sun, the sense of isolation, the cries and curses of the men who were being struck. And there was the cactus.

Unless you have been under fire of high-power rifles in a region where the common broad-leaved cactus grows you cannot guess its nerve-shaking possibilities. A jacketed bullet can pierce a score of leaves without much diminution of its velocity, and as it goes through the thick, juicy flesh, it lets out a sound like the spitting of some gigantic cat. Ten Mauser bullets piercing cactus can make you believe a whole battalion is concentrating its fire on your one small but precious person.

The men were getting demoralized. If they broke I was done for. If I stayed in the trench alone the Federals would eventually get me and stand me up to the nearest wall. If I retreated with them, nothing was gained. No man can hope to outrun a bullet.

I stood up, exposing my body from mid-thigh upward to that withering fire, and took out my cigarette case. The nearest men watched side-wise, waiting to see me fall.

By some fortune I was not hit, and after a moment looked down at the man beside me.

“Hello, Pablo!” I said, “why aren’t you smoking, too?” I offered my case to him, but took good care to stretch out my arm quite level. To get at the contents he had to rise to his feet.

Habit won. He did not even hesitate, and I held my cigarette, Mexican fashion, for him to take a light. Once committed in that fashion, he was too proud to show the white feather, and he and I smoked our cigarettes out while the bullets flew. It was the longest cigarette, I think, I ever smoked, but it turned the trick. We held on to that trench till darkness put an end to the fire.

After the capture of Zacatecas I went to the staff of Gen. Raul Madero, with the rank of Major. The invitation had been extended several times before. Now that Trinidad was dead, there was nothing to hold me back, and I very gladly joined the official family of the brother of the murdered President. Since my first association with him, before Ojinaga, he had impressed me as the ablest man I had seen south of the Rio Grande.

The closer and constant contact entailed by my becoming a member of his staff confirmed that feeling. Raul Madero has clarity of intelligence, an encyclopaedic grasp of Mexican affairs, social, religious, political and financial, and a winning personality that masks abundant energy and determination.

I was associated with him for only six weeks. On June 28th, 1914, you remember, the Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated. All through July the Austrian Government was formulating its demands on Serbia, which culminated in the ultimatum of July 23. Long before that I had formed my opinion as to which way the wind was to blow. And I had a sufficiently conceited notion of my usefulness as a trained and experienced agent to believe that when the general European disturbance should break out my days as a soldier of fortune in Mexico would be ended.

Toward the end of July a stranger brought me credentials proving him a messenger from Consul Kueck in El Paso.

“The Consul,” he told me, “wishes to ask you one question, and the answer is a yes or a no. This is the question: In case your Government wished your services again, could she expect to receive them?”

“In case of war—yes,” I answered.

It was not very long before I received a telegram from Kueck. “Come,” was all it said.