1859-60
‘Well, Miss Jane,’ Jed was saying to the Maxwell girl. ‘You’re lookin’ prettier every time I see you.’
‘Why Jedediah Strong!’ she said. ‘You ole heartbreaker, you!’ She dropped her eyes momentarily and then looked up again directly into his. It was a trick her cousin Amabel from Atlanta had told her about. She said it never failed to make a beau fall for you. Course, she wasn’t at all sure that she wanted Jedediah Strong to fall for her, even though he did look kind of dashin’ in his lieutenant’s uniform. Just the same, she wanted to see whether she could make him. Maybe that would teach that Scott Yancey a lesson, show him what she thought of his flirtin’ like that with Sally Cosgrove. As if she didn’t hear enough about Sally Cosgrove! Sally, Sally, Sally, that was all her brothers could talk about.
‘How long are you home for, Jed?’ she asked, resting a gloved hand momentarily on his sleeve. ‘Are you all goin’ to the ball at the Wallach house on Christmas Eve?’ She gave him the look again; it seemed to work because he smiled. He was real handsome in his way, Jane thought. Not as good-looking at Scott Yancey, maybe. She just hoped Scott was watching, that was all, eating his silly old heart out.
‘I sure am, Miss Jane,’ Jed said. ‘And I’m hoping you’ll save at least half a dozen dances for me!’
‘Here, here!’ Travis said. ‘You can’t monopolize Miss Maxwell that way. She’s got to give the rest of us a chance, too! How about it, Miss Maxwell? Will you promise me the first waltz?’
‘You don’t have a chance, Trav,’ Jed grinned. ‘Once I get started I’m a dancing fool.’
‘You always were, old chap:’
Jed turned to see Paul Maxwell smiling at him, not a sign of friendliness on his face. Jed felt the hostility surge up inside him. No, he told himself. Don’t let him start it all over again. Paul was twenty-three, the older of the two brothers. He was dark-eyed and curly-haired, his face square and his middle already thickening. David Maxwell stood just behind his brother, the same truculent expression on his face. They’re spoiling for trouble, he thought, and decided not to allow them to goad him. It was too nice a day. The Maxwell boys were only kids, after all. Spoiled rotten, but still just kids.
‘True, true,’ he said. ‘Got to make the most of every furlough. The army doesn’t give us too many chances to go dancing!’
‘Too busy hangin’ old men, I imagine,’ Paul said, and now there was no mistaking the hostility in his voice. Damn him! Jed thought. He’s tried to make trouble already over the John Brown business. Obviously he was going to keep pushing, pushing, like his Bible-spouting father. If it had been up to Edward Maxwell alone, every single slave-owner in the South would have been slowly roasted over a fire. Only to be expected that his sons would be the same.
‘Look, Paul,’ he said tightly. ‘We’ve had this argument before. A soldier follows orders. Regardless of his opinions.’
‘You tryin’ to tell me you were opposed to the hangin’ of old John Brown?’
‘I’m saying that my opinion doesn’t matter, Paul,’ Jed said. ‘I was ordered to do what I did and I carried out my orders. Let’s leave it at that, shall we?’ He turned back towards Jane Maxwell, who was standing to one side, her face bland. She was totally unaware of the tension, just annoyed at her brothers for interrupting her flirtation. They were always spoiling her fun. Now they’d started talking about all this silly war stuff, as if she didn’t hear enough of that every single solitary mealtime.
‘You must tell us all about it,’ Paul said, not willing to let go. ‘How Colonel Lee managed to subdue that terrible renegade and his thirty desperate men with only three companies of artillery and a hundred marines.’
‘It wasn’t like that,’ Jed said.
‘Listen!’ Travis said, pushing forward, the blue eyes bright with anger. ‘What the deuce do you know about it, anyways? Jed was there, and you weren’t.’
‘If I had been, I’d have fought with Brown!’ Paul said.
‘Paul, Paul,’ Andrew said, coming across towards them. ‘There’ll be all the fighting anyone could want, soon enough. Let’s not have any today!’
Paul turned to face Andrew. ‘Coming from you, that’s a laugh!’ he said. ‘Aren’t you the one resigned his commission because he didn’t have the stomach for fighting bare-assed Indians?’
‘Now, listen—’ Jed said, starting forward.
‘No, Jed,’ Andrew said softly, taking hold of the arm which his brother had been about to raise. ‘Don’t start anything. Let him say what he likes. He doesn’t know any better.’
‘You damned poltroon!’ Paul Maxwell snapped. The sound of the slap was like a pistol shot in the stillness of the moment. A small worm of blood trickled from Andrew’s lip and dropped, staining the collar of his shirt. He shook his head and turned away, eyes flooded with shame. As he did, Paul Maxwell moved as if to strike him again. This time Jed stepped between his brother and Paul. He did not speak, nor did he need to. He saw the quick flare of panic in Paul’s eyes, the darting look towards Sally Cosgrove, who was watching with wide eyes, her mouth an ‘O’ of shocked delight. Jed realized all at once that Paul Maxwell had picked this fight deliberately, to show off to the girl. He had slapped Andrew knowing that his challenge would not be taken up, shaming him to look manly for this simpering child. Somehow the thought made Jed killing angry. He took off one of his white cotton gloves and threw it into Paul Maxwell’s face. It fell to the ground. Paul stared at Jed, his face like stone.
‘Stop!’
The deep, commanding voice turned every head. The speaker was Edward Maxwell, who stood on the steps of the church, glaring at them. He was a giant of a man, with shoulders wide enough to necessitate his coming sideways through most doors. His brows were drawn thunderously together, his eyes alight with the fire of anger.
‘Will you squabble like rowdies on the very steps of God’s house?’ he roared. ‘Damnation take you, boy! Come away from there, this moment, d’ye hear? This moment!’
Paul Maxwell looked at his father as if he was seeing him for the first time in his life and contempt twisted his face.
‘I see, sir,’ he said. ‘You’d rather I ran, is that it?’
Edward Maxwell’s face turned dark with rage, and he hit one great fist into the palm of the other. It was well known that he did not believe in sparing the rod. His wife had high standards he said, but God,’ s were higher still. People said he had beaten everything out of the boys but their mother’s vanity.
‘You’ll do what I say, damn you!’ he thundered.
‘And I will, sir,’ Paul said, every word dripping acid. ‘Pray tell me how you would have me reply to this insult?’
‘Mr. Maxwell,’ Andrew said softly. ‘I beg you, sir, do not allow this to go any further. It is not a matter of honor.’
‘No, it never is,’ Paul sneered, ‘for those who have none.’
‘Stop this, Maxwell!’ David Strong said, coming across towards his sons. ‘Tell your boys to go home, and I’ll do the same. That’ll be the end of it, as far as we are concerned. ‘
‘No!’ Paul Maxwell shouted. ‘I’m going to kill this damned nigger-lover! That’ll be one less to kill when we go to war with the bastards!’ He bent down and picked up Jed’s glove, then flung it into Jed’s face. The silence around them was complete. People stood watching, as if the whole thing was a tableau and they wax dummies.
‘All right, Maxwell,’ Jed said. ‘Name the time and the place!’
‘No, Jed,’ he heard his father say softly. He shook his head: no.
‘Old Ford Crossroads!’ Paul Maxwell said. ‘Saturday at sunup.’ He turned to his brother. ‘You’ll act for me, David?’
‘I will, and gladly,’ David responded.
‘And you for me, Andrew?’ Jed said, turning to his brother.
‘No, Jed,’ Andrew replied. ‘I won’t be a party to this.’
‘Don’t you worry none, cousin,’ Travis Strong said. ‘I’ll go you. Fight the sumbitches m’self, if you’d rather!’ He stepped forward to face the Maxwell boys, the hellish light in his eyes daring them to take offence at his words. He saw David Maxwell react and saw Travis smile his wicked smile as he did.
‘You have the choice of weapons, Maxwell,’ Jed said. ‘What is it to be?’
Paul Maxwell smiled, triumph in his eyes. He was one of the best shots in Culpeper County and everyone watching knew it.
‘Pistols,’ he said. ‘At twenty paces.’
Dawn.
There were wisps of mist between the trees, like ghosts caught unaware by the coming of day. Every sound was magnified by the silence. Moisture dripped from the branches of the trees. Here and there a small bird chirruped sleepily, as though reluctant to awaken. Jed shivered, hoping it was because of the morning chill. Although he was not afraid, he was apprehensive. Life was sweet, and dying over such a triviality would be a pointless way to end it.
On the far side of the clearing in the woods where the roads crossed he could sec Paul Maxwell, his brother David, and Tom Cosgrove, Sally’s brother. Halfway between them and where Jed stood, Dr Michael Webber, family physician and friend of both the Maxwells and the Strongs, stood swathed in a dark cloak, his leather bag on the grass beside him. He looked peevish and out of sorts, like a man asked to participate in tomfoolery before he has had his breakfast.
‘They’re goin’ through with it, then?’ Travis said. There was no regret in his voice: rather, a fierce anticipation, his attitude that of a man who can’t wait for the shooting to start. They watched David Maxwell walk towards them, carrying a heavy wooden pistol case.
‘Maxwell.’
‘Will you choose a weapon?’
David Maxwell opened the mahogany box to reveal a pair of Manton dueling pistols lying on a bed of Irish baize. They were fine weapons, long-barreled and without fancy ornamentation. The metal parts were of blued steel of the highest quality, their origin proclaimed on both lock and barrel.
Travis took one of the pistols out of the case and cocked it, squinting at the frizzen and touch-hole, unlimbering the ramrod and pushing it down the barrel.
‘Who’ll load?’ he asked.
‘I’ll do it myself,’ Jed said.
He took the powder flask and one of the hand-made balls and carefully loaded the pistol. As if my life depended on it, he thought. It was strange how clichés popped into the mind at times of stress: as if their very ordinariness might provide comfort. Across the clearing, Jed could see Paul Maxwell watching him. He hefted the weapon in his hand. Its feel, the way it came up, its balance was as perfect as any he had ever held. Well, Joseph Manton of Dover Street, London, I wonder whether, when you made these pistols in 1783, you had any idea that three-quarters of a century later two men would meet in a forest glade in Virginia to kill each other with them.
‘Gentlemen!’ he heard David Maxwell say. ‘Are you ready?’
Travis looked at him and Jed nodded. ‘Ready,’ Travis said.
‘Here, too,’ Paul Maxwell called.
‘Very well,’ David said. He was trying very hard not to appear self-important, but unsuccessfully. He looked as if he might burst with it, Jed thought. ‘You will stand back to back. At my command, you will take ten paces forward. You will not turn, nor will you fire, until I say that you may do so. On my command you will turn and fire. If either man turns before the command, Tom will shoot him.’ He nodded towards Cosgrove, who held a musket at port. Cosgrove nodded grimly.
‘Is that all understood?’ David Maxwell asked.
‘Of course,’ his brother replied.
‘Paul,’ Jed said. ‘It’s not too late to call this off.’
‘You turnin’ yeller like your brother, Strong?’
‘No,’ Jed said, reining in his temper.
‘You think throwin’ your glove in a man’s face ain’t a matter of honor, that it?’
‘It was done in the heat of the moment, Paul,’ Jed said. ‘There’s no need of a killing over it.’
‘I’d say otherwise, sir,’ Paul sneered. ‘And I intend to be satisfied.’
Jed shrugged. He did not feel angry any more. A little sad, perhaps, that so petty a squabble should have escalated to this. A little sad about the stupidity of it.
‘Very well,’ he said.
They took their places. He could feel the heat of Paul Maxwell’s body through the loose coat he was wearing. The birds were all awake now, singing to the brightening sun as if this was the only day they would ever have to do it. Somewhere he heard a skylark. Death sat in the shadows between the trees, waiting.
‘One! Two! Three! Four! Five! Six! Seven! Eight! Nine! Ten!’ He took the steps automatically in time with David Maxwell’s voice, thinking about the Indians Andrew had once seen, singing about it being a good day to die. The gun butt felt slightly slick in his hand; he knew his palm must be sweating.
‘Turn!’
David Maxwell’s face was set, closed down, as though some furious anger was coursing through him. Paul Maxwell looked calm, relaxed, confident. How near we are to each other! Jed thought.
‘Fire!’ David Maxwell shouted, and even as his lips framed the word his brother was raising the pistol, taking no time to aim. Jed felt a solid blow on his left side, a sharp pain. He staggered slightly as the crack of Paul Maxwell’s pistol laid a flat, undramatic sound across the leafy glade which for a moment stilled the birdsong. A tendril of gunsmoke drifted from right to left, dispersing in the bright, green tracery of oak leaves. Paul Maxwell stood with the pistol held down at his side.
‘Good God, have I missed him?’ he said. His chin came up defiantly. ‘Well?’ he shouted.
Jed raised the pistol. He saw Dr Webber, off to one side, lift a hand as though he might say something. Jed looked down the long octagonal barrel of the pistol. Paul Maxwell glared back at him. Kill him, something said, go ahead and kill him. He pointed the pistol at the ground and fired it. The bullet kicked up a few leaves and smoke writhed around his legs.
‘Damn you, Strong!’ Paul Maxwell screeched, as if all the tension inside him had been suddenly released. ‘Why didn’t you fire at me, you craven bastard?’
‘Death will find you soon enough, Paul,’ Jed said quietly. ‘He needs no help from me.’
‘You—’
‘Be still, sir!’
The great voice was like a lion’s roar, and every man in that clearing turned to face him as Edward Maxwell came through the trees and into the open. His brows were knotted together in anger, and his hand clenched and unclenched, as though wanting to strike something. Tall as Paul Maxwell was, his father made him look reedy and weak.
‘You’ve taken your shot, sir, and had your satisfaction!’ Edward Maxwell roared. ‘It’s only by the grace of God you’re not lying dead on the ground. I will not hear you curse the man who spared your worthless life!’
He looked towards Jed, who still had the pistol in his hand. He extended a hand and Jed nodded, laying the weapon in it. Without taking his eyes off Jed, Edward Maxwell extended his other hand and Paul put the other gun into it, retreating almost shyly like an acolyte in a temple.
‘I cannot find it in me to thank you, Jedediah,’ Edward Maxwell said.
‘There’s no need,’ Jed said. He felt strange, lightheaded. He wondered where Paul Maxwell’s bullet had hit him.
‘That’s to the good,’ Maxwell said. ‘Because by what has happened here today your family and mine are declared enemies. If God provides the moment, in business or in battle, we will destroy you. Understand me? Destroy you!’
‘As you see, sir,’ Jed said. ‘We are not so easily destroyed.’
Edward Maxwell glared at him for a moment as though there was more he wanted to say. Then he turned towards his sons, eyes burning.
‘Get on your horses!’ he said. The roar had gone from his voice now. He spoke softly, but his very gentleness seemed to alarm them more than his shouted anger. They literally recoiled from his glance and hurried to do his bidding. They mounted up, and with drumming hoofs muffled by the centuries old loam of the forest, rode away from the clearing and out of sight.
Then and only then did Jed sink to one knee. With an exclamation of surprise, Dr Webber hurried across to him.
‘You’re hit, Jed?’ he said, concern in his voice.
‘I think so,’ Jed said. ‘Here, in the side.’
He lifted his coat. The left side of his body was wet with blood and when he inhaled there was a sharp, piercing pain in his side. He winced as the doctor cut away his shirt and gently palpated his rib cage.
‘You’re a fool for luck, Jedediah Strong,’ he said. ‘The ball glanced off your rib and nothing more. Maybe a fracture, but that’s all. That damned floppy coat of yours must have taken the speed out of the ball. I’ll strap it up. You come in and see me tomorrow.’
He went about his work deftly and precisely. He was a good doctor. He always said he could tell what was amiss with most people the minute they walked into his surgery to talk to him, and he was rarely wrong.
Jed and Travis rode slowly back towards Washington Farm. Jed’s feeling of light-headedness had passed; the wound in his side merely throbbed dully, like a toothache. He felt cast down; what before had been dislike between two families was now hatred and to no point.
‘That there old Maxwell, he’s a mean sumbitch an’ no mistake,’ Travis observed. ‘He was mad enough to bite a chunk out of a fencepost.’
‘You think he meant what he said, then?’
‘Nary a doubt o’ that, Jed,’ Travis replied. ‘You better just make sure you never give him any opportunity to do you harm.’
‘I can’t understand it,’ Jed said.
‘Hell, of course you can!’ Travis said. ‘You shamed his son. That’s the same as shamin’ the old man hisself. Worse, maybe.’
‘You think he’d rather I shot Paul?’
‘I reckon,’ Travis said.
‘But that would have been pointless,’ Jed said. ‘Stupid.’
‘You get an old turkey like that, all puffed up with pride and damn all else, he don’t see things the same way you an’ me might.’
‘Pride,’ Jed sighed. ‘Stupid, mule-headed pride.’
‘What’s that?’ Travis said, with that wolf s grin he had. He was trying to make Jed feel better, and Jed smiled to show his appreciation. This damned shooting-match would be the talk of the county by nightfall. It would cast a shadow across the whole holiday.
‘Thank the Lord I’m going to Texas,’ he said. He had received confirmation of his new posting just before leaving on furlough. He had applied to serve under Colonel Robert E. Lee, in command of the Military District of Texas.
‘Where they sendin’ you, Jed?’ Travis asked.
‘San Antonio,’ Jed replied. ‘Why?’
‘Well,’ Travis said, shrugging and grinning at the same time. ‘I might just come on down there with you.’
‘What the devil for?’ Jed frowned.
‘Shoot, Jed,’ Travis grinned. ‘It’s there, ain’t it?’
The army day began at five-thirty.
Bugles blared. Tired men, hung-over men, men with aching joints and uneasy bellies, old sweats with the yellow hash marks of long service on their sleeves, cocky kids on their first tour, fell unarmed and dismounted into ragged lines as the sergeants called the rolls. ‘Armstrong!’
‘Yo!’
‘Aspinall!’
‘Yo!’
Texas mornings were usually pleasantly cool and sometimes there was a mist along the banks of the San Antonio River that diffused the strengthening sunlight. Each morning, the same routine, the sergeants doing their about-face to salute the officer, shouting the same time-honored assurance that all the men were present and accounted for.
Routine: it was their way of imposing order upon an indifferent world. All army posts observed the same routines. That way, no matter where a soldier found himself, he could fit in immediately. Up at sunrise, make your bed, sweep your quarters, set everything in order for inspection twenty-five minutes after reveille. After breakfast, clean your musket, polish your brasses, brush your clothing ready for parade at nine to watch the colors being raised and hear the national anthem. At nine the cavalry buglers blew drill call. They drilled for one and a half hours every day, six days a week. Half an hour after drill finished, the bugles sounded mess call.
The afternoon was utilized for fatigues: there was never any end to those. Police the fort, shoe the horses, fix the chimneys, mow the grass, repair boots, saw and plane the lumber, burn the debris. Roll on sunset, they used to say. Roll on, retreat, when the colors came down the pole to the sad, sweet accompaniment of the bugles blowing, tattoo and roll-call, then taps sounding on the drums at nine-thirty. Every day the same, monotonous yet reassuring, repetitive and necessary, for without the routine there would be nothing but barrack room poker or the Mex women in Dobie Town.
September, October: the seasons were awry this far south. You looked for a change in the weather, the three-day blow that stripped the leaves from the trees up North at about the same time each year. In Texas it never came. Summer ended: winter began. In the summer, although it might get very cold at night, the sun shone relentlessly by day until you cursed it and wished for any kind of change. Then, when the rains came and turned the streets of San Antonio into a quagmire of red mud, you longed for the dry heat of the summer mornings.
Headquarters at San Antonio of the Military District of Texas was a two-story building at the corner of Houston and St Mary’s streets, just four blocks from the Alamo. It was to this building, and to the office of Lieutenant Colonel Robert E. Lee, commanding, that Lieu tenant Jedediah Strong had reported when he arrived in Texas on the first day of May in 1860. Now, in late October, the place was as familiar to him as had been his room at the Military Academy.
When he got to headquarters, he found his friend, Lieutenant Jonah Harvey, waiting nervously in the commandant’s anteroom. The adjutant bade Jed take a seat: the colonel would be with them directly, he said.
‘What’s up, Jonah?’ Jed muttered.
‘Search me,’ Jonah said. He was tall and stoop shouldered, and his dark hair was already receding. He had a prominent, beaky nose, and deep-set brown eyes with dark shadows beneath them. Before he could speak again, the door of Lee’s office opened. They came to attention immediately: Lee tolerated no sloppiness in his command.
‘Gentlemen,’ he said. ‘Please come in.’
At fifty-three, Robert Edward Lee was still a handsome man, his dark hair and moustache only faintly touched by the gray to come. Jed knew Lee’s history as well as his own, for Lee had been superintendent at West Point when Jed was there. The son of a famous Revolutionary War cavalry officer, member of a Virginia family long distinguished in public and military life, Lee had been a successful army engineer for fifteen years prior to the Mexican War, in which he served with distinction under Winfield Scott. Lee had left West Point the year after Jed’s graduation to become Lieutenant-Colonel of the Second Cavalry at Jefferson Barracks in Missouri, later moving to Texas. In his company Jed felt the calm assurance that any soldier feels who knows he has a good commander. He had sensed it as a cadet at West Point; tasted it for the first time during the siege of the engine-house at Harper’s Ferry in which John Brown and his followers had barricaded themselves; and experienced it a dozen times more since his arrival in Texas. If Lee had told Jed to ride into the jaws of Hell itself, Jed would have done it without question. Lee was a soldier’s soldier. Jed could think of no one he would rather emulate, no one whose approbation he valued more.
‘Well, gentlemen, I think I’ve a little excitement for you,’ Lee said, sitting down behind his desk. There was no litter. He was a methodical and ordered man who abhorred clutter, deeming it the mark of an undisciplined mind. ‘That damned terrorist El Gato is up to his tricks again down Brownsville way.’
El Gato! The army had tried a dozen times to put an end to the terror-raids of the Mexican bandit they called ‘The Cat’. His base was somewhere south of the border. Every few months he led his carrion crew on a sickle-shaped raid into Texas, plundering farms, stealing stock, raping and killing. More than once, his bandidos had ambushed cavalry patrols and cut them to ribbons. The moment a force of any size appeared, El Gato retreated across the border to safety: the army could not cross without creating an international incident.
‘I would like you, Lieutenant Strong, with Lieutenant Harvey as second-in-command, to mount two columns of cavalry and proceed immediately to Ringgold Barracks, there to rendezvous with Colonel John Gallehawk of the Texas Rangers. You will place your command at his disposal. El Gato and his thugs have invaded the town of Brownsville, burned buildings in the town and raped several Mexican women. They have sequestered old Fort Brown and defy anyone to get them out.’ He leaned forward, arms on the desk, and looked them both straight in the eye. ‘I want that renegade, gentlemen. I want him so badly that it makes my teeth ache to think about it. And I am looking to you both to see that he is caught and, if possible, hanged from a tall tree. If,’ he added with a wry smile, ‘you can find one.’
‘We’ll get started at once, sir,’ Jed said.
‘No other questions, lieutenant?’
Jed looked at Jonah, who shook his head. ‘No, sir.’
‘Very well,’ Lee said. ‘Good luck, and may the Lord watch over you all.’
They set out from San Antonio the following morning, with the regimental band playing. They made good time across the undulating plains. Jed sent right and left-flankers a long way ahead; he was in Comanche country and the Comanch’ were as treacherous as they were cunning. It transpired, however, that it was not the Indians who attacked them, but the weather. Towards noon it began to rain and the rain turned rapidly to hail that struck them in furious gusts. The men lurched in their saddles as the storm turned the ground to sucking mud. The column slept wet that night and rose sour and sullen in the hostile morning.
They moved steadily south. The rain had swollen the rivers. The Frio and the Nueces were running bank-full. Clouds of mosquitoes, quick-born in the soaking midday heat, swarmed feasting upon them, driving the horses frantic. They cursed their way through hordes of buffalo gnats, slapping at them ineffectually, grabbing for a hold as the horses suddenly jump-kicked or sunfished. Two troopers were thrown, one of whom broke his arm. He was put in one of the ambulances and they pushed on.
‘Goddamn weather!’ Harvey shouted through the bitter wind. ‘This country reminds me of what Cromwell said about Ireland: “Not enough water to drown a man, not enough trees to hang a man, and not enough earth to bury a man!”.’
The rain grew colder and turned to sleet. The cooks had trouble lighting their fires and the men slouched grouchily in their tents.
‘This is a Hell of a life, Jedediah,’ Harvey said as he hunkered down in their tent. The canvas flapped like the sail of a boat, a brittle, cracking sound. Their coffee was only lukewarm, but it was welcome.
‘It’ll get worse,’ Jed grinned, ‘If Father Abraham really frees the slaves.’
‘You think he will, Jed?’
‘I think he will.’
‘And if he does?’
‘We’re soldiers, Jonah.’
‘You’re a Southerner.’
‘I know it.’
‘But you’d fight for the Union?’
‘I don’t know, Jonah. How about you?’
‘I’m from Ohio,’ Harvey said.
So your choice is made for you, Jed thought. He did not know whether that made Jonah lucky or stupid. If war were to come a man ought to have a choice as to which side he would fight on. He knew he would be torn between duty to the army in which he had already served six years, and loyalty to his own people. How could he take up arms against Virginia? There seemed little doubt that the state would secede, but the thought of looking down the barrel of a gun at his friends and neighbors sickened Jed. By the same token, this army had in it many men whom he admired and who were also his friends. If he fought for the South, he might well have to look along the line of a saber at some of them. Men like Jonah, he thought, looking across at his fellow lieutenant. Well, no way to decide it now. He unfolded his maps and concentrated on the route to Ringgold Barracks instead.
They traveled in an arc that went from San Antonio to Fort McIntosh and from there to Ringgold, making the 350 mile journey in something under twelve days, a good average. The weather improved and the spirits of the men revived with it.
Ringgold Barracks lay in the center of a flat plain alongside the Rio Grande and covered in all about a thousand square yards. Into that area were packed quarters for four companies, with a gimcrack clutter of other buildings scattered around the parade ground: brush sheds for cavalry mounts, stables with a small corral, officers’ quarters, a small guardhouse. Between the buildings they could see the glint of the river. Beneath their ramadas Jed saw infantry officers watching his troopers ride by.
The commandant of Ringgold was Major Samuel Heintzelman. He looked about sixty, but Jed guessed he was younger than that. He had the eyes of a man who takes a lot of surprising.
‘Well, lieutenant,’ he said, when Jed reported to his office. ‘I’m glad to have you down here. That bandit has killed a lot of people between here and Brownsville. The whole damned country is in a ferment.’
He told Jed that the citizens of Brownsville had got up a vigilante party called The Brownsville Tigers and sallied forth against El Gato. He “ran” across the river and they thought they had him.
‘What they had, lieutenant, was a tiger by the tail, and a damned sharp-toothed tiger to boot. He cut them to pieces. Damned rout. They ran like rabbits. Now they want the military to pull their chestnuts out of the fire.’
‘That’s nothing new, sir,’ Jed observed.
‘That’s why I asked for cavalry,’ Heintzelman said.
‘How many men has El Gato got with him, sir?’
‘Reports vary,’ Heintzelman replied, stroking his moustache. ‘More than a hundred, less than two hundred and fifty.’
Jed let out a long, low whistle of surprise. ‘That many?’
Heintzelman smiled. ‘Bother you, lieutenant?’ he said.
‘Only if I think about it, sir,’ Jed responded.
‘That’s the spirit,’ Heintzelman said, still smiling. ‘You’ll dine with my wife and I this evening? You and Lieutenant …?’
‘Harvey, sir,’ Jonah supplied. ‘We’d be delighted.’
‘Seven sharp, then,’ Heintzelman said.
They saluted and left the stuffy headquarters building. It was even worse outside. The air was so humid that just walking across the parade ground drowned them in sweat. There was no wind; the fronds of the banana palms were as motionless as the flag hanging limply from the pole in the center of the square.
‘Welcome to Ringgold Barracks,’ Jonah muttered. He looked ill at ease and Jed wondered why.
‘Something bothering you, Jonah?’ he asked his friend.
‘No!’ Jonah said sharply. ‘Why should anything be bothering me?’
There was a snap in his voice that brought a frown to Jed’s forehead. Harvey was usually the more relaxed of them, happy to leave all the executive decisions to Jed, happy, as far as Jed had been able to discover, to be a lieutenant without a scrap of ambition.
Jonah was from Columbus, a little town in western Ohio. His father was a hardware merchant who had moved there shortly after the opening of the Erie Canal. Jonah was a country boy. He had a sweetheart back home named Henrietta. He picked wild flowers and all the different kinds of grass, pressing them in his Bible before sending them to her. He drew little sketches of prairie dogs and snakes, anything he encountered that he thought might interest her. He once told Jed that he’d always wanted to be a botanist, but that he’d never got the right grades at school. Jed had told him about his grandfather, who had been with Lewis and Clark in 1803, and his uncle Sam, who had been on one of General Frémont’s expeditions.
‘If only I’d been alive then,’ Jonah would glower. ‘Didn’t need a piece of paper to say you were a good scholar in those days. Just up and went. It was all fresh, everything new. There’s nothing left for people like you and me to discover, Jed. They’ve already invented everything, mapped everything. It’s all been done. Frémont, Pike, Whipple; we’re a whole damned generation too late.’
They learned at dinner that after the Seminole War, Major Heintzelman had served for twenty years on the team surveying of the Tennessee River. His anecdotes rekindled all of Jonah’s boyish enthusiasms, and they talked animatedly while they ate.
‘How long have you been at Ringgold, sir?’ Jed asked.
‘Posted here in ’55, when I got my majority,’ Heintzelman answered. ‘Likely this will be the last frontier posting for me. There’s a war brewing, gentlemen, a dirty, nasty war. And we’ll all be in it.’
‘Now, Sam,’ Mrs. Heintzelman said gently. ‘No war talk. You promised. You give these boys one of your good cigars and some of that whiskey you keep locked away in the sideboard.’
‘I was going to, dammit!’ Heintzelman said, not all of his exasperation simulated. His wife smiled at him as if he had agreed with her and bustled out of the room. He watched her go with aggrieved affection.
They went out on to the porch to smoke their cigars. The sun was sliding into long, low banks of red herringbone cloud lying on the eastern hills beyond the Rio Grande. The fast-flowing river slid past like molten gold. The smoke of their cigars kept most of the bugs at bay. Big moths blundered noisily against the lamp lit windows and out again into the deepening darkness. At about ten Jonah Harvey excused himself, said his good nights, and left Jed alone with Heintzelman to talk of the morrow.
‘Old Rough-and-Ready built Fort Brown when he occupied this country back in ’46,’ the old soldier told Jed. ‘Tapped the Rio to make a lagoon with an island in the middle, so that the only approach to the Fort on the Texas side was over a strip of land maybe five hundred feet wide. You’ll have to go in that way: there is no other.’ The lagoon, he said, lay in a long, pear-shaped ring, east-west in the arms of the looping river. Beyond the fort, marshy ground stretched half a mile to the bottom of the loop.
‘Well,’ Jed said, ‘I’ll talk it over with Colonel Gallehawk, sir. When he arrives.’
‘You know him?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Hm,’ Heintzelman said. ‘Word in your ear, then. Don’t sass him any.’
‘Touchy, is he?’
‘Let me put it this way; he’s seen a lot of young lieutenants come and go. Many of them were the kind who talked a good fight.’
Jed grinned. He was prepared to bet Sam Heintzelman was speaking as much for himself as for the Texas Ranger.
‘I’ll try not to – talk too much, then, sir,’ he said, getting up. Heintzelman looked at him for a long time, as though assessing how he felt about Jed. Then he stuck out a gnarled hand. ‘Good luck, boy,’ he said.
‘Thank you, sir,’ Jed replied. He went in to say good night to Mrs. Heintzelman, then walked across the parade ground to his quarters. The lamp was still lit, although the curtains were drawn. As Jed opened the door he caught the unmistakable whiff of alcohol.
Jonah was sitting in one of the wicker chairs, suspenders dangling, boots off, feet on the commode. He was very, very drunk.
He wasn’t drunk in the way a man will sometimes get if he’s got the blues and is a long way from home. He wasn’t drunk in the way a man gets if his sweetheart sends a letter of good-bye, or even drunk the way a soldier gets when he wants to forget for one lousy evening that he’s stuck in the goddamned army and there’s no goddamned way he can get out of it. This was something else entirely: Harvey was drunker than a Kiowa who’s found a barrel of coal oil. And he was going to be sicker, Jed thought.
‘Leef pleess smitheth uss,’ Jonah said.
‘Well, Jonah,’ Jed said, picking up the empty aguardiente bottle. ‘You didn’t even save one for me.’
‘Onna shable,’ Jonah mumbled.
‘Thanks,’ Jed said drily. He uncorked the second bottle. It smelled like horse liniment and he decided not to bother.
‘Leef pleess—’ Jonah began.
‘Sure, sure,’ Jed said. ‘You’re sober as a judge.’ The traditional regiment test of a man’s ability to take another drink was to recite the phrase ‘The Leith police dismisseth us.’
‘Shoberjudgzh’ Harvey repeated. ‘Havnother.’
‘No, Jonah,’ Jed said. ‘That’s enough.’
‘Perfly awright,’ Jonah said. ‘Havnother.’
‘What’s wrong, Jonah?’
‘Nosh-nothing ’samatter!’ Jonah said, pulling himself upright and blinking owlishly. ‘Makes you think anything ’samatter?’
Jed held up the empty bottle. ‘This,’ he said.
Jonah frowned as though trying to remember where he had seen the bottle before. ‘Jed?’ he said weakly.
Jed got an arm over his shoulder and helped Jonah out of their quarters and around to the rear. He got him there just in time. Jonah bent over the hitching rail, emptying his belly in a coughing, retching explosion of vomit.
‘Oh, Jesus,’ he groaned, tears streaming from his eyes as he hung on to the rail, legs trembling. ‘Oh sweet Jesus Christ.’ He heaved a few more times, but he was done. Jed got an arm around him and started to help him back to their room. Jonah pulled himself away and got himself upright. He was still very drunk; he staggered and nearly fell.
‘You want to talk about this, Jonah?’ Jed said. ‘You want to tell me what it’s all about?’
‘Wouldnerstand,’ Jonah mumbled.
‘Try me.’
‘Tomorrow,’ He shook his head. ‘Oh, Jesus.’
‘Come on,’ Jed said. ‘Drink some water and then get your head down. You’re going to feel pretty bad in the morning.’
‘Worse than this?’ Harvey groaned. ‘Oh, Jesus!’
Brownsville was a cheap border town, full of liquor joints, brothels and deadfalls. The streets were thronged with itinerant Tejanos and Mexicans wearing flared trousers and cartwheel sombreros. Yellow dogs scampered away from the horses’ hoofs. Rats foraged in the littered alleyways between the adobe houses.
The Texas Rangers were waiting for Jed’s column in the plaza. They were hard-eyed men with the lean bodies of horsemen. All carried a formidable complement of weapons, with the ubiquitous bowie knife stuck in either belt scabbard or boot top. They looked villainous enough to eat raw horse, and Jed was reminded of the remark made by the Duke of Wellington when he inspected his troops before the battle of Waterloo: ‘I don’t know what effect they’ll have on the enemy, but by God, sir, they frighten me!’
Colonel John Gallehawk was a strongly-built man of about Jed’s height, but he was a good ten years older. He had a long, handlebar moustache that gave his face a lugubrious expression, and deep squint lines around his eyes. His skin was tanned the color of saddle leather. He wore a faded blue shirt, dark pants and cowboy boots. A fleece-lined coat was rolled up in the soogan behind his saddle. Around his middle, like all of his men, he wore a heavy cartridge belt and holster. Jed noticed that nearly all of the Rangers had Sharps rifles in their saddle scabbards. They’re better armed than we are, he thought.
‘Colonel,’ Jed said, saluting.
Gallehawk nodded in acknowledgement. His eyes were the color of frozen water. He favored the troopers with a sour look. ‘You know how many men that Messican sumbitch has got down there in that fort, so’jer boy?’ he drawled.
‘I’ll bet you’re going to tell me,’ Jed said.
‘Somethin’ over two hunnert,’ Gallehawk went on.
‘Well,’ Jed grinned, ‘I’ve heard that one Texas Ranger is a match for ten ordinary men. Looks to me like we’ve got them outnumbered.’
Gallehawk grinned: on, off, just like that. ‘I like your style, sonny.’
‘I’ll treasure the thought,’ Jed said. ‘Let’s get down to business, shall we?’
Gallehawk looked at Jed for a long moment, brows drawn together in what Jed realized was a typical expression.
‘You a fan of Clausewitz, so’jer boy?’ he asked.
Jed could not conceal his surprise; the question was just about the last one in the world he would have expected from this monosyllabic Texan. Gallehawk saw Jed’s reaction and permitted himself a sour grin.
‘We ain’t all shitkickers, son,’ he said. ‘Some of us can even read ’thout movin’ our lips.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Jed said, and he was. ‘It isn’t every day you meet up with a Texas Ranger who’s read Clausewitz.’ Carl von Clausewitz, Prussian general and writer on military theory and tactics, notably in his epoch-making On Warfare, had been required reading at West Point. It was something else to hear the name quoted on a heat-baked chaparral in southeastern Texas.
‘Ain’t every day you meet a Texas Ranger who had a German general for a grandfather, either,’ Gallehawk retorted. ‘But you’re doin’ it today.’
‘So, what about Clausewitz?’
‘I’m gettin’ good an’ goddamn tired o’ this Messican sumbitch we got down here,’ Gallehawk answered. ‘Tired o’ chasin’ him back across the river and watchin’ him thumb his nose at us from the other side, ’cause we can’t go over the border after him. I’d kinda like to put him outa action permanent, like.’
‘You thinking what I think you’re thinking, Gallehawk?’
‘Bet yore ass I am, so’jer boy,’ the Ranger grinned.
‘You want me to chase him out or lay the ambush?’
‘You West Point?’ Gallehawk asked abruptly.
‘Class of ’54,’ Jed said. ‘Why?’
‘Fust one I come across had any damned brains at all,’ Gallehawk responded. ‘You take your Bluebellies and chase that sumbitch outa there for me, so’jer boy. Me an’ my boys’ll take care o’ the proceedings from that point on.’
‘You won’t mind if we watch?’ Jed asked innocently.
‘Go to Hell,’ Gallehawk said conversationally. He wheeled his horse around and cantered over to where his Rangers were waiting, their impatient expressions unchanged. Jaw, jaw, jaw, their faces said; let’s get on with this.
‘All right, lieutenant,’ Jed said to Jonah Harvey. ‘We’ll move out now. Company “A” to take the eastern bastions, and “B” the west. Have you any preferences?’ Jonah shook his head. ‘I’ll take the left.’
‘Very well,’ Jed said. ‘Move them out!’
The blue-clad lines of cavalry moved four abreast through the town in the wake of the Rangers. Slouched in the shadow of saloon ramadas, unkempt men watched them with hooded eyes. Children ran alongside asking for pennies.
‘Will yez look at the bastids!’ Trooper Burke commented as they swung along the main street. ‘Sure and they’d slit our t’roats as soon as look. And us goin’ out there to get our balls shot off to save them!’
‘Man wants applause!’ Aspinall said, so that his fellow-troopers could hear him but Sergeant Rafferty, up front, could not. ‘Where’ll he find it?’
‘In the dictionary!’ came the time-honored reply. ‘Between agony and asshole!’
Jonah Harvey heard the coarse burst of laughter behind him and wondered how men who knew they might be dead in an hour could laugh like that. All he could think of was the pounding in his head and the sick certainty in his stomach that he was going to be killed.
The mean houses at the edge of town fell behind them. Up ahead they could see the squat hulk of the old fort. Beyond it lay the low line of trees and scrub timber that marked the edge of the river. Dust rose high behind them.
‘Good luck, so’jer boy!’ Gallehawk called and led his men away towards the river. Jed stood in the stirrups and looked back at his men, halted on the neck of land between the lagoon and the river.
‘Lieutenant Harvey, take your company in skirmish line to the east of the fort and await my signal!’
‘Sir!’ Harvey moved his men out.
Jed nodded to Sergeant Rafferty, who snapped upright.
‘Carbines ready, I think, sergeant!’
‘Sor!’ Rafferty responded. ‘Troop, on the command, draw rifles. Troo-oop – drawhaw rifles!’
The guns came out of their scabbards. Regulation First Cavalry issue was the Springfield pistol-carbine, but out here on the frontier, troopers horse-traded upwards for better weapons: a Sharps carbine maybe, or one of the much-coveted new Remington Army model revolvers. The result was a motley ragbag of firearms, but no less effective for that.
‘At the walk, forward, ho-oh!’ Jed shouted, pumping his arm up and down in the approved manner. As he did so he heard the echo of Harvey’s voice on the far side of the fort, a thin sound in the vast daylight.
‘At the trot, ho-oh!’
The rumble of hoofs drowned everything except the sudden flat spiteful snap of small-arms’ fire up ahead of them. The Mexicans were running towards the broken bulwarks. The soft zip of bullets threaded through the air as the bugles blared and they thundered towards the earthen walls, two hundred, a hundred and fifty yards, a hundred. Jed could see dark-skinned men crouched behind piles of stone and hummocks of earth. The muzzle-flash of their guns looked like fireflies. The cavalry column rolled forward between the bastions, shouting, firing their guns. Jed heard screams, curses. He was icy calm and madly excited all at the same time.
‘Dismount!’ he shouted as loudly as he could. ‘Advance on foot!’
He scrambled up on to the broken earthworks of the old fort. The Mexicans were all over the place, clambering over the broken walls like monkeys, firing their guns and then ducking back to safety. There was smoke everywhere and the constant flat clap of pistols being fired.
Jed ran forward to the broken wall, conscious of other men to one side and behind him. A Mexican stood up and fired at him and Jed felt the air beside his head expand and contract as the bullet went by in the same moment that flame blossomed from the Mexican’s gun. He heard the ugly sound of a man being hit behind him as he shot the Mexican. The man went over backwards without a sound, as if he had never been there in the first place.
A flicker of movement on Jed’s right made him turn. He saw one of the bandits fire a pistol point-blank into the face of Trooper Burke, who went backwards as if he had been hit with a two-by-four. Jed fired at the man. The hammer snapped. The man grinned evilly. Jed had time to notice that he had a squint as the man raised the gun and aimed it at him. Without conscious thought Jed leaped forward hitting the man with his pistol. The Mexican fell to his knees, his face a mess of broken bone and flesh, dropping his pistol. Jed snatched it up and shot him.
He ran forward, shouting. His men were surging over the broken bastions and into the inner ring of the fort. Jed saw another Mexican and fired at him with the pistol. The bullet missed and the Mexican turned and fired hastily at Jed. Jed heard a cough behind him and turned to see one of his troopers, Gurney, sink to his knees, clutching his arm with a fist through which blood gouted. Shouting to his men to follow him, Jed moved ahead, leaping up on to one of the bastions so they could see him. He felt irresistible, immortal. There were three Mexicans below him, muskets in their hands, waiting. They saw him in the same instant that he saw them and he fired both of his pistols at them simultaneously. One of them got off a round that went zot! past Jed’s ear and whanged off the dried earth of the wall behind him. When the smoke cleared he saw one of the Mexicans lying flat on his back, arms and legs askew. The second one was on his side, his hands clutching his belly, while his feet propelled him around and around on the bloody earth. The third one leveled his rifle for another shot at Jed, but as he did so the troopers came up cheering and firing through the smoke and he was snatched off his feet like a leaf in a high wind. The soldiers rolled forward like a blue tide and the Mexicans fell back, back, regrouping for a moment here and there in twos or threes, firing at anything that moved. The skirmish line of troopers stretched prone, and laid a steady fire into the wreathing smoke. Jed fumbled cartridges into his pistol with hands that felt like a bunch of bananas. His heart was pounding mightily and his throat felt dry and tight. He did not know until someone told him later that there was a grin on his face that Satan might have envied.
‘Come on!’ he shouted to his men. ‘Come on!’
He ran forward, crouching low, into the roiling smoke and dust, and saw that the Mexicans were all in the corral, trying to mount their panicking horses. Where the hell is Harvey? he wondered as he ran forward. A hail of bullets made him slew to one side and take refuge in a doorway. He saw another trooper slide into the dust, legs kicking high. He eased out of the doorway, and as he did so he heard the cheers of Harvey’s men on the far side of the corral.
A big man with a flat expressionless face was in the center of the corral, shouting orders at the men around him. He had a knife-scar down one side of his face and wore a uniform with tarnished gold braid on the sleeves and shoulders. El Gato himself, Jed thought, running forward. As he did the man looked his way and for a fleeting second their eyes met. Then Jed reached the spot he was aiming for. Running up the dropped tail of a wagon, he leaped off the wagon bed in a crashing dive that smashed El Gato off his horse. The two men hit the earth with a bone-jarring crash. The hoofs of the frantic horses stomped around their flailing bodies. The Mexican was a giant of a man and strong with it. He smelled strongly of sweat and liquor. Jed hit him as hard as he could and heard the wind woof out of El Gato’s lungs. He got to one knee and clubbed him with his pistol. El Gato went down in the dust, rolling away, blood coursing down his jaw. His eyes were empty, mad. He came up with a gun in his hand, an enormous gun whose yawning bore looked like a cave. Jed kicked at it frantically as the bandit fired it, and the bullet boomed away into the sky. Again Jed hit the man with the empty pistol in his hand and El Gato went over sideways, the great gun falling from his nerveless hand. Jed stood up and, as he did, one of the Mexicans saw him through the churning dust and rode at him. The horse’s shoulder sent Jed reeling against the rough fence of the corral and he fell, winded, to one knee. There was a thunder of noise around him now. There was only one way for the Mexicans to retreat, and they were taking it, erupting out of the corral and thundering across the star-shaped, interior courtyard towards the gateless entrance of the fort. Jed saw El Gato, his shirt front soaked with blood, swing up into the saddle and spur his horse after his men.
Jed ran across the corral and picked up the huge gun that El Gato had dropped. He ran out into the quadrangle and steadied himself against an upright, holding his right wrist tightly with his left hand, aiming the gun he had captured at the fleeing horsemen. The big gun boomed and he saw one of the men snatched out of the saddle as if he had hit a wire. In the rising dust, Jed saw the flickering glint of gold, and fired at the spot. As he did the dust swirled and he saw, as clearly as if he had been watching through a pair of binoculars, that the bullet had torn a great hole in El Gato’s body just below his ribs. The bandit lurched in the saddle, gasping in agony. My God! Jed thought, awed by the power of the weapon in his hands. This damned thing is like a cannon! He fired again and again as the Mexicans burst out of the entrance to the fort and out on to the open plain above the river, but whether his bullets, or those of the cheering cavalry troopers, brought down the fleeing Mexicans, who bounced like dummies on the sandy scrubland, Jed could not tell.
He shouted for the buglers to sound the recall as the Mexicans, lashing their animals cruelly with quirts, thundered down towards the bank of the river west of the fort, where a sandbar halved its hundred-yard width. Spray glittered in the sunlight as the horses hit the shallows at a gallop, lunging clumsily in the water, unseating one or two men.
Then all at once Gallehawk’s Rangers turned loose from the dense undergrowth where they had concealed themselves on the sandbar. A wall of death met the oncoming Mexicans, cutting a swathe through their ranks that was awful to see. Wounded men thrashed screaming in the suddenly bloody water; dead men floated face down like logs in the swift current. Volley after volley thundered as the Mexicans struggled in the heartless river. Men picked up and out of the saddle by the sheer weight of lead looked as if they were standing in their stirrups before leaping into the swirling water in one long, sliding, final motion.
By this time Jed had his men positioned in two lines facing the river. The shattered Mexicans forced back from the edge of the river turned back towards the fort, and as they did, Jed gave the order to fire. Horses screamed in agony as they sprawled, thrashing wildly. Dead men littered the chaparral. The wounded shouted hoarsely for water, mother, God. The hanging smoke drifted away like a dream. It was over.
Jed’s buglers began to blow assembly as the few Mexicans who had made it struggled out of the water on the far side of the river, spurring their horses towards Matamoros as fast as they could go. Jed saw for the first time that people from the town had come out to watch the fight. Some of them were moving among the wounded with water. He delegated the task of calling the roll and counting casualties to Harvey, and rode down to where Gallehawk was regrouping his Rangers on the bank of the river. The dour Texan looked up, unsmiling, as Jed called his name.
‘Well, so’jer boy,’ he said. ‘You did all right.’
Jed looked at the Rangers. Their faces revealed nothing.
‘Anyone wounded?’ he said.
‘Eight dead,’ Gallehawk told him. ‘But no wounded.’
‘I’ll organize a burial detail,’ Jed said.
‘I’d be obliged. How many o’ yore people hurt?’
‘Lieutenant Harvey’s just calling the roll.’ Jed looked back across the open plain. The troopers were already drawn up in columns of four. Jonah Harvey came across on his horse.
‘Ready to move out, lieutenant,’ he said.
‘Casualties?’
‘Four dead, eight wounded, two of them pretty seriously.’
‘What about the Mexicans?’
‘Haven’t counted the dead,’ Harvey said. ‘Some of the wounded have crawled away and hidden. The Brownsville people are out hunting them.’
‘Keep an eye on those people, Jonah!’ Jed snapped. ‘I want no butchery!’
‘I’ve sent Rafferty and the other sergeants to make sure that prisoners are brought in alive, if possible,’ Jonah said. ‘Do you want me to impress some of the civilians into a burial detail?’
‘Good idea,’ Gallehawk said. ‘Tell ’em if they don’t bury them, we’ll leave these Messicans to stink up their town even worse than it already stinks.’
‘One more thing, Jed,’ Jonah said. ‘There’s a deputation waiting to talk to you. The alcalde, some of the local merchants.’
‘What about?’
‘Want to thank you for chasing El Gato, I imagine.’ Jed looked at Gallehawk. ‘We didn’t do it alone,’ he said. ‘You care to join me, colonel?’
Gallehawk grinned. ‘That’ll be the day,’ he said.
By the time the dead had been properly buried and the wounded tended, it was almost dark. Jed decided to bivouac the men near the scene of their victory, while he and Harvey fulfilled their obligations. Dinner with the Brownsville notables was a prospect considerably less than enticing, but it was part of an officer’s duty to promote goodwill, especially on foreign borders.
It took Jed longer than he expected to shake off the after-action lethargy which gripped him. He had experienced it before, but not like this. All he wanted to do was fall on to a bunk somewhere and go to sleep.
‘I could do with a couple of stiff whiskeys, Jonah,’ Jed told his friend as they dressed. ‘How about you?’
‘Damned right!’ Jonah replied.
They rode into town slowly, as if each sensed the other’s reluctance to socialize. But their silence was companionable and conducive to confidences.
‘You were a fighting fool out there today, Jonah!’ Jed said. His friend’s face was unreadable in the faint light of the stars. The horses plodded on. Then, as if he was afraid the words would not come at all unless he said them in a rush, Jonah blurted out what was bothering him.
‘I’ll tell you the truth, Jed,’ he confessed. ‘I was scared shitless!’
‘What?’
‘I was scared, Jed. I’ve never been so scared in all my life. The only thing that kept me functioning was the fact I was even more scared of anybody noticing how scared I really was.’
Jed shook his head. ‘That why you got drunk?’
‘That’s why,’ Jonah said. ‘I realized we were going into action. That I might get killed. This precious, wonderful person: me! I just fell apart, Jed. I never fired a gun in anger before today.’
‘Damned fool!’ Jed said. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I was too ashamed.’
‘You think you’re the only one it ever happened to?’
Jonah looked at him, but said nothing. He thinks I’m saying it to make him feel better, Jed thought. He felt a surge of affection for his friend. It was one thing to be afraid. It was quite another to think that, among a hundred men, you were the only one who was.
‘Jonah, listen to me,’ he said. ‘Anybody who’s got a lick of sense gets nervous before a fight. It’s the most natural thing in the world.’
‘Oh, sure.’
‘It’s true, you damned idiot!’ Jed said, exasperatedly. ‘I’ve been in this man’s army for six years; I know what I’m talking about. I’ve seen good men weeping the night before a fight, sure they’re doomed to die. I’ve seen men run gibbering from a skirmish where the biggest danger was putting your ankle in a gopher hole. There’s no pattern to it. Sometimes it’s worse than others, but one you can be sure of: everybody gets it, one time or another.’
Jonah looked at him again: ‘Honest, Jed?’ he said.
‘Would I lie to you?’ Jed grinned.
‘Damned right you would,’ Jonah growled, but Jed sensed his relief.
The deputy-governor’s house was large and imposing. It was surrounded by a low stone wall with cultivated bougainvillea and fruit trees growing behind it. The house itself was U-shaped, the two arms enclosing a cool stone patio with a tinkling fountain. Someone was playing a guitar: Cielito Undo, Jed thought, recognizing the melody. A peon took their horses away and a serving woman showed them into a stone-floored hall. On the walls hung several old oil paintings and a pair of fine Toledo dueling swords.
‘Señores, gentlemen!’
They turned to see a tall, stooped man coming down the polished wooden staircase. His hair was pure white, his dark eyes lively. His face was lined, and there were liver spots of age on the backs of his hands, but his grip was firm as he welcomed them. His name was Antonio Lopez y Varga; he apologized for the absence of the governor who was visiting his family in Mexico.
‘Permit me to introduce you to our other guests. Come in, come in! José, a copita for our brave guests!’
They were introduced to the town’s leading merchant, Sam Wilkes, a portly man who told them he had come to Texas from Cincinnati. His wife was a pudding-faced woman with limp black hair and an incipient moustache. She spoke with the flat Kansas drawl.
‘May I also introduce to you my nephew, Coronet Rodolfo Lopez y Hoya,’ Varga continued. ‘And the Señorita Maria Gonzales y Cordoba, who is visiting us from San Antonio.’
The Mexican officer was tall and slender, with a thin, foxy face and eyes that seemed to glitter with contempt. Jed hardly saw the man: he saw nothing except Maria Gonzales y Cordoba. For the first time Jed experienced the truth of a cliché: she took his breath away.
She was not beautiful and yet she caught the eye and held it. Her hair was as black as the wing of a raven, her eyes dark and frank, her mouth full. She wore a dress of green silk and her bare shoulders were covered by a beautifully embroidered shawl. When she smiled, it was impossible not to smile back. She was striking, Jed thought, but he saw pride too, and courage and intelligence in the fine dark eyes.
He bent low over her hand, aware of the strongest feelings of attraction towards this woman and wondering at them. He was more than old enough now to know the difference between the quick burst of lust that runs in every man’s juices when he meets a beautiful woman, and the deeper, more meaningful knowing that is beyond conscious impulse. Something about this one drew him and held him and he knew that she had sensed it too. There was just the faintest hint of uneasiness in her eyes as he stepped back and Jonah Harvey moved forward to take her hand. Jed realized that Maria had the same effect on his brother officer and thought it might well be she had that effect upon many men.
He saw Harvey’s back straighten and tense, like a good horse awaiting the sound of the charge. Jonah’s deep set and somewhat mournful eyes gleamed with his delight in the girl’s beauty, and the conquering instinct rose inside him and fashioned a broad and handsome smile. He ran a hand through his too-long hair, an instinctive preening that Maria did not miss, any more than she missed the slight swagger to show off the uniform, briskly brushed clean before this meeting, the trousers with their broad yellow stripe, the bright-buttoned fatigue jacket, the white wing collar and the black cravat.
‘A pleasure, ma’am, an honor,’ Jonah said, throwing caution to the winds. ‘I’ve heard a great deal about the beauties of Mexico, but until now I had thought them all to be architectural.’
Maria, Gonzales smiled at his extravagance, her eyes merry. Jed did not fail to notice the way Varga’s nephew glowered possessively as Jonah paid the girl the fulsome compliment.
‘The gallantry of American cavalry officers is renowned, lieutenant,’ Maria said. ‘I am pleased to discover that it is not exaggerated.’
A servant in a white coat brought sherry in the tapered copitas; it tasted dry and light on the tongue. They talked of small things at first, the weather, the affairs of the town, trade. After a while Maria Gonzales asked about the running fight with El Gato.
‘We gave the scoundrel a drubbing today and no mistake!’ Jonah said, perhaps a little vaingloriously. He was peacocking for the girl and Jed smiled, knowing it. Hell, he supposed he was doing the same thing himself: his way was just a little different to Jonah’s, that was all.
‘I understand that Colonel Gallehawk and his Texas Rangers played a small part in your success, Teniente,’ Rodolfo Lopez y Hoya said, his word lightly coated with a venom which Jed noticed and Jonah did not. His boyish desire to impress the girl drowned his awareness of the Mexican’s hostility.
‘I’d say it was their day, not ours,’ Jed interposed. To give the Rangers the success was also to rob Lopez of the opportunity of using them as a stiletto. The dark, smoldering eyes turned to meet his, with a naked animosity. Jed felt as if the man had struck him a physical blow.
‘You are too modest,’ Lopez murmured.
‘He certainly is!’ Jonah said. ‘We gave that “cat” a turpentining out there.’
‘I understand he’s dead,’ Wilkes said. ‘El Gato. That right?’
‘Yes,’ Jed said, once more seeing the great hole appear in El Gato’s side as the gun boomed. He had shown it to Harvey after the fight. Harvey reckoned it threw a .65 slug at least. No wonder it had done so much damage.
‘Of course,’ Lopez y Hoya said, ‘fighting rabble of that kind is somewhat different from facing trained troops, Teniente.’
Jed saw the unease in the eyes of the other guests as they sensed Lopez y Hoya’s hostility. His questions were a gauntlet thrown down to invite a duel fought with insults.
‘If anything, I’d say it was harder,’ Jed said. ‘Irregulars don’t have any rules.’
‘Ah, I see,’ the Mexican replied. ‘You kill them by the rules.’
‘They were bandits, sir,’ Jed said. ‘They plundered your villages and killed your people as well as mine. Yet you sound as if you disapprove of our killing them.’
‘Not at all,’ Lopez y Hoya said. ‘Someone has to do it, I suppose.’
‘Now, just a damned minute, Coronel!’ Jonah Harvey retorted hotly. Anger stained his cheeks. He looked at Jed, his chin coming up. No, Jonah, Jed told him with his eyes. Jonah took in a long, long breath and let it out slowly. Lopez y Hoya saw it and smiled, victorious.
‘Well,’ Sam Wilkes said, a shade too heartily. ‘I imagine you gentlemen will be heading back north presently?’
‘We’ll leave at sunup tomorrow, Mr. Wilkes,’ Jed said, glad to be offered a way of lowering the temperature. ‘Plenty of work waiting for us back at San Antone.’
‘Pacifying the Indians, no doubt,’ Lopez y Hoya said, silkily. ‘I am told your cavalry spends a great deal of its time policing these ferocious Indians of ours.’
‘To use your own words, Coronet,’ Jed said, ‘someone has to do it. There isn’t any other army worth the name in this part of the world.’
It was a well-aimed shaft and it went straight to its target. A dull scarlet flush stained Lopez y Hoya’s face. He blinked slowly, like a lizard, and again the perverse pleasure flooded his eyes, like a swordsman who discovers he is matched with a worthy opponent. He wants to keep at this, Jed thought, and impatience swelled in him. He had no time any more for stupidity and wrongheadedness of the Maxwell variety and he wished he could say so. He turned away from the man and towards Maria Gonzales.
‘Did someone say that you are from San Antonio, señorita?’ he asked her.
‘That is correct, Teniente’, she said. Her smile was warm with promise. He could smell her perfume and it aroused him. ‘Sit beside me at dinner, and I will tell you about my family.’
‘I’d like that,’ he said, trying with the words to tell her what he would really like, which was to be alone with her. Flickering pictures of her locked in his naked embrace dashed past the windows of his imagination.
They went in to dinner shortly afterwards and Maria told him about her father, a general in the Mexican Army who had been wounded at the battle of Cerro Gordo. Retired now, he spent his days on his estate outside San Antonio, where he grew peaches, plums and sugar cane.
‘But come, Teniente,’ she said. ‘This is dull stuff. Will you not tell us about your own family?’
‘That would be dull indeed, señorita,’ Jed smiled. ‘And besides, I get so much pleasure from listening to the sound of your voice.’ It was only the truth: he had been openly admiring the soft, smooth roundness of her arms and bosom, the animation in her eyes, the proud way she held her head. He could see the Mexican colonel watching him with eyes that were liquid with dislike. But he gave the man no opportunity to resume their feud of words and Lopez y Hoya sat silently for the rest of the evening, his face sullen.
The conversation gradually became more general and more relaxed. They talked of affairs up North, the long arguments over the rights of slave and free states which were now taking on the dimensions of firm conviction.
‘It’s the same for us civilians as it is for you soldiers,’ Wilkes said. ‘Soldier’s got to know where he stands. So have we. When the moment comes, we won’t need to be told where our dooty lies. No, sir, by George!’
‘You say Texas will secede, Mr. Wilkes?’
‘Texas will be among the first, Mr. Harvey!’ Wilkes replied. ‘Among the very first!’
‘You are from Virginia, Teniente,’ Lopez y Varga said, softly. ‘Yet you wear the uniform of the Federal Army. You have a terrible choice before you.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Jed said. ‘I believe I have.’
‘You would fight to defend slavery?’ Lopez y Hoya said, seeing a chance to resume his warfare of sneer and innuendo.
‘Slavery exists, Coronet,’ Jed answered. ‘It is foolish to pretend otherwise. We can either tolerate it where it now exists, and allow it to spread no further – or go to war to ensure its extinction.’
‘There will be war, then?’ Maria Gonzales asked, softly.
‘I fear there must be.’
‘I am sad to think of all the fine young men of your country who will die in it,’ she said. Her words revealed much of the woman and Jed was aware again that in her he had met someone totally different to all the rest. So it was that later, as they were riding back to their encampment, he found himself totally dumbfounded by what Harvey told him about her.
‘You didn’t hear what Mrs. Wilkes was saying?’ Jonah said.
‘I expect I was talking to someone else,’ Jed said.
‘Yes, Maria of the dark eyes, I saw you. You hardly took your eyes off her all night. ‘
‘She was worth looking at.’
‘Well, forget her, Teniente,’ Jonah said, putting the same sneer into the word the Mexican officer had done. ‘She’s engaged. To that snake-eyed bastard Lopez y Hoya!’
Stunned, Jed said no more. He hated the idea of that fine and lovely woman being wasted on someone as slimy and sly as Lopez y Hoya. It was impossible, he told himself, knowing that it was not. In Mexico, as in Old Spain, hidalgo marriages were arranged by older and nominally wiser heads and not by the bride and groom-to-be.
Well, what does it matter to me? Jed asked himself, a shade angrily. And knew the answer.