FRANK AND CROCKETT WERE climbing a rocky path with the Gatling gun slung between them, sucking wind, their boots slipping on mossy stones and loose dirt. The air was thick with flies; the heat heavier with every step. The faster they marched, the better chance they had of punching through the Gap before the defenders could regroup and put up another line of resistance.
Frank’s heart felt like a piston in his chest, driving the blood through him, pushing a sea of sweat up through his skin. He didn’t mind the fry-oil crackling in his shoulders and thighs. He was all man now, putting his strength to work. The big Gat had become his swinging pick. With it, he would cut the guts from whatever stood in their way. Mud, man, or machine. He would cut a hole through the mountain if he had to. The spike of triumph had lingered with him. He wanted more of it. They all did. They weren’t going to be stopped.
Aeroplanes droned in and out of hearing, tracking them, and barefoot boys ran along the higher paths, acting as scouts and messengers. The miners kept coming to slap Frank and Crockett on the shoulder or shake their hands, offering them prized cigarillos or nips of corn likker. Marching along, they began to piece together a rowdy ballad, their voices rising to the tune of “John Brown’s Body.”
Davy Crockett has arisen from the grave,
Davy Crockett has a nation he must save,
Davy Crockett has arisen from the grave,
And he’s got him a Gatling gun!
Glory, glory, hallelujah! Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah! The Rednecks are march-ing on!
A Devil Dog unleashed on the kings he once warred,
He’s wield-ing the lightning of a terrible swift sword,
He will loose their souls before the fury of the Lord,
Davy’s got him a Gatling gun!
Frank thought back to the songs of Lick Creek, those nights when they’d gathered round roaring fires and sung at the tops of their lungs, and it seemed the steep dark slopes of the holler projected their voices high into the night sky, racing starward with the embers. He thought of Mama-B back there in that camp all but emptied of menfolk, waiting for news from the march.
She’d been the only mother he ever had, and he knew the world had taken its picks and shovels and axes to her heart. The unspoken atrocities of her childhood, raised in bondage, and the ropes and night riders of Reconstruction. Her husband dying of dust in his lungs, her daughter-in-law—Frank’s mother—in childbirth, and then her son—Frank’s father—vanished, killed at the rumored hands of company men, his body never found. A life lived under the thumbs and heels of thugs.
Frank did not want to drive another nail into her heart. But he was standing against the same forces that had taken what she loved. No matter what happened, he hoped she’d be proud. Around him, the miners were throwing in a verse of the Union hymn, which went to the same tune—a song their voices had carried so many times at Lick Creek.
They have taken untold millions that they never toiled to earn,
But without our brain and muscle not a single wheel can turn.
We can break their haughty power, gain our freedom when we learn
That the Union makes us strong.
Solidarity forever, solidarity forever,
Solidarity forever, for the Union makes us strong.
Their voices carried up and down the creek, as powerful as a river, a changing tide, and Frank joined in the next chorus, feeling their power flood through the hills, toward those men standing on high before them, looking down their rifles. High as the stars over the mountains. They would reach those storied heights, he thought. They would pull them down to the earth, where the rest of them lived.
BAD TONY SLAPPED A mosquito from the base of his neck, then spat into the dirt of his freshly dug trench. Fat earthworms were still wriggling in the turned earth.
“Davy Crockett, huh?”
“Yes, sir,” said the runner boy, relaying the latest rumors come bounding through the lines. “That’s what the miners are calling him, that machine-gunner of theirs. The one running the Gatling gun. They say he’s a overseas man. A Marine. Said he run a Vickers gun in the war, put a hundred Krauts in the ground at Belleau Wood. Got him a Navy Cross.”
Tony squinted down the sights of his machine gun. He’d paid the boy a nickel for the latest news. “Did he now.”
“That’s the story going round,” said the boy. “They say he’s from the back of beyond, the far side of the mountains someplace. Name of Crockett. Say he’s Davy reborn with six barrels instead of one. A Devil’s Hound.”
Tony sniffed. “Teufelshund,” he said. “A Devil Dog.” His own machine gun had cooled, the red glow gone from the muzzle. The barrel was gun-black again, glistening with fresh oil and a new belt of cartridges. He watched the approach trail, waiting, thumbing the medal on his watch chain.
The reporter was holed up beside him, his notepad out. He licked his lips. “Major Gaujot, is it true you and your brother are the only pair of brothers to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor in different wars?”
Tony’s eyes flitted in the reporter’s direction. “Sure, it’s true. Jules, he got his for actions in 1911, just a couple months after they given me mine, said he’d bust if he didn’t get one for himself. He was down in Arizona when the Mexican Revolution broke out. First Cavalry. There were some American POWs trapped on the other side of the border. Jules gets on Old Dick, his horse, rides down there under heavy fire, and arranges a surrender. Saved those prisoners’ lives.”
“And is it true he got into some hot water back during the Philippine Insurrection?”
Tony shrugged. “That was way back. It was the water cure is all.”
“The water cure?”
Tony traversed the gun slowly along the approach trail, not looking up. “Only way to get them padres down there to talk. Force four, five gallons of water down their throats, till they look like they’re expecting twins. Then kneel down hard on their bellies, pump it back out like a bubbling spring. Makes the truth come babbling out.”
“Christ.”
“They docked him a month’s pay, three months’ command suspension. Ten years later, he wins the Medal of Honor. Shows what they know.”
The reporter was scratching furiously in his notepad, while the runner boy knelt there hang-jawed, awaiting orders. Bad Tony sighted along the approach trail, poking holes in the brush with his eyes. The Rednecks would appear any moment. He cleared his throat. “Tell me something, boy.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Old Davy Crockett never earned himself no Congressional Medal of Honor, did he now?”
Before the boy could reply, a flash of red bandannas along the trail.
Tony squeezed the trigger.