When great men die, they say, the room in which they expired always seems larger; as if the soul that had passed from it had filled it to the walls.
Oscar Childress’ death-room didn’t look or feel any different from when he’d been brought there, his heart still beating, feeding that singular brain. The man himself seemed smaller; but even dolts shrivel a bit when the life-force has departed.
He lay with his eyes open—less bright by the moment—and his lips still parted just enough to let his last three words escape. He’d have hated them, I was sure. He had to have known his time was near, and thought to draft a valedictory worthy of a giant; but even a gifted actor can forget his lines in a role more challenging than the rest. God forgive me: a plea so banal as to be worthy of any of his brainless creatures.
McCready—inspired, perhaps, by his commander’s triteness at the finish—performed the conventional duties, kneading shut his eyes and tipping the jaw closed. Comically, it dropped back open, forcing him to repeat the operation and hold it for a moment like a cabinetmaker clamping two pieces of wood together until the glue set. From Moses to Alexander to Washington, and all the saints and generals who had come before and between and after, the epilogue would have proceeded similarly, with a lesser light sweeping up the ashes of the extinguished blaze. I left then. He’d forgotten about me, and would hold that position until the dead muscles went rigid, if that was what it took.
The infirmary was built on the shotgun plan, with the rooms connected end-to-end like railroad cars. I went through a door, crossed a vacant room with the mattress rolled up against a plain iron headboard, and entered the next. There lay Joseph, on his back with a thin blanket drawn to his bare chest and his hands folded on top of it. I stood watching for several seconds before I confirmed his chest was rising and falling. His eyes didn’t open and I chose not to wake him. There was a forest of brown bottles on a plain table beside the bed, some with rubber droppers. The air was strong with a sharp smell I’d grown accustomed to lately: the fumes from the juice distilled from cinchona bark, Mexico’s answer to malaria. I took myself back out.
The captain was still standing beside Childress’ bed, with his chin on his chest and his hands crossed at his waist. Whether he was praying silently or waiting for his master to rise from the dead I couldn’t say; more likely for a military man he was considering the next move. I left, making as little noise as possible. He seemed to have forgotten I existed, which was how I would have had it.
There was no sign of my saddle or bridle in the stables. Likely it had been left aboard the Ghost when my bay was hitched to one of the wagons. I outfitted it with the tack available and picked my way back down the trail, dismounting and leading it when the way narrowed and an attack of malaria might throw off my balance at any minute. The creatures clearing away fallen debris went on working as I passed; without Childress along, I might have been a bird pecking for grubs in cracks for all I was visible to them.
Nearing the house I passed the cannon I’d heard earlier, a blue-black six-pounder Napoleon mounted on wheels as tall as a man, stinking, like the dead grizzly, of rancid fat greasing the barrel and also the sulphur stench of burnt cordite, and here and there a soldier on foot or on horseback, their uniforms tidy but as patched and darned as ancient quilts. Once again, I attracted little attention. I could have pranced around in the arrogant scarlet of a Yankee Zouave and drawn no more than a sneer. In an armed camp, much is taken for granted.
* * *
“Major Childress is dead.”
The captain’s drill-trained voice rang without emotion; he must have finished tidying up just after I left and ridden straight back to the barn. A contingent of men wearing uniforms in varying degrees of repair would be gathered in formation before the house, with their immediate commander standing at parade rest on the front porch. There would be a general removal of hats.
Apart from the announcement itself, which reached me in Childress’ study, I assumed the scene had played out as described; I’d only heard the bugle call to Assembly and the jingling of raiments and sabers.
The key was missing from the lock, but I rolled the desk chair across the room and tilted it, jamming the back under the knob. I wished it hadn’t had casters; a strong shove would clear the path inside, but it would slow an intruder down for a second or two.
The room was as the major had left it, with the enormous book he’d been reading still flayed open on the desk; a thing of stiff heavy leaves unevenly cut and decorated with pen-and-ink illustrations tinted by a hand that had been skeletal for at least two centuries, lettered elaborately in a language I will never know; from the charted coastlines and studies of animals I recognized as pumas and buffalo despite their exaggerated features, it seemed to be a tract on the New World based on early French explorations; in all likelihood his talk of monsters on the map had prompted him to crack it. The pipe he’d smoked while reading, carved from ivory (or what I hoped was ivory) into the likeness of a horned creature with an amber stem, lay still warm in an onyx bowl, permeating the room further with its rich fragrance.
Another smell, coarser and acidic, drew my attention to the parlor stove and to its door, which was slightly ajar. I took it by its dangling coiled handle, tipped it open, drew a short poker from the brass rack beside the stove, and separated the ashes, which had gone out but for a few sparks that erupted into vertical threads of flame when I disturbed them. A bit of charred cloth came apart from a thick sheaf of burned paper, which itself separated in two sections, exposing under it an image impressed on stiff cardboard curved at the corners. A hole had burned through the center, obliterating the face, but the flames had cast a rose hue on what was left of a high-collared dress—bombazine, beyond doubt. I felt no need to go into the room where I’d slept to confirm that he’d taken the photograph from the silver frame on the nightstand and burned it along with the letters the woman had written to him. He hadn’t even bothered to untie the ribbon, much less read them. I’d fretted for nothing over whether they’d reached him and what might happen to his creatures if they’d failed to deliver them.
I remembered Childress’ notes on his report to the American authorities, and the possibly mistranslated suggestion to “plant seeds” (matea) among the unsophisticated natives of Mexico to foster their awestruck regard for their neighbors to the North America: What he’d actually written was mata: “kill.” The error had not been his. A man who would exterminate the creatures, as he had been doing piecemeal on the pretext of setting an example to the others, would destroy every link to the civilized life he’d known in Virginia.
For months or years, he’d slept beside that likeness, until it occupied his thoughts no more (or not as much) as his paintings of fierce peasants torturing prisoners of war to death, until the letters came to remind him. Then he’d thrown the photograph in the fire with the lot.
I went back to the desk. The belly drawer was unlocked, but there was nothing of interest in it. The same was true of five of the six deeper drawers that flanked the kneehole. The last I tried was locked. I’d seen nothing resembling a key, but took a silver-plated paper knife from the blotter and poked it this way and that inside the keyhole, tugging on the bronze lion’s-head knob, until something snapped and the drawer came open.
The first thing that greeted me was my old Deane-Adams in its gun belt. I inspected the cylinder, found all the chambers loaded, and buckled the rig around my waist. I looked for the Bulldog revolver, without success; but I hadn’t had it nearly as long and was less familiar with it, so I didn’t spend much time regretting the loss.
On the bottom of the drawer lay a black iron strong box edged with gilded oak leaves. It, too, was locked, but I inserted the scratched paper knife under the lid and forced it open.
Some of the papers inside were in Latin. These I set aside. At the bottom was a long parchment envelope sealed with the K.G.C. crest impressed in red wax. I broke it open and unfolded the parchment sheets from inside. It was lettered in copperplate and signed by Childress.
I skimmed through the bequests; for it bore all the highblown obsolete language of a will. There was no mention of his fiancée’s name, and I recognized none of the others. Upon the signer’s passing, command of the army was to pass to Eustace McCready, Captain (to be promoted to the brevet rank of major upon acceptance). On the fourth page was the passage I’d been looking for:
Under no circumstances is my death or incapacity to interfere with the purpose of this militia, which is to march upon Mexico City and by military engagement induce the government of Mexico to surrender the command of its forces to Captain McCready, who will annex them to the militia and invade the United States of America.
A sound outside brought me to my feet; it was the clank of a dangling saber in its metal scabbard banging against a boot-top. Either Captain McCready or one of his subordinates was coming to gather the personal effects of their deceased leader or was looking for me.
I refolded the sheets and put them in the inside pocket of my coat.
My way was clear. If my suspicions were right and I had been allowed to live only because Childress wanted fresh conversation, my usefulness was at an end. Unless McCready disobeyed the posthumous command—and if anything the man would be even more fanatically devoted to the major now than when he breathed, he’d be more interested in taking possession of the Ghost, in which case Joseph the engineer’s existence was more secure than my own. The Indian had saved my life, but he was in no condition to escape that place, and from what I’d seen of the infirmary his chances were better there than anywhere within a hundred miles.
But a hundred miles from where? I had no idea how far I’d been brought from the train, or in which direction other than up. To miss it by fifty yards in either direction would be the same as missing it entirely. I could wander along the rails for days, then blunder into an ambush; or break my neck riding down a grade as steep as a grain elevator in search of a fly-speck on the map called Cabo Falso.
Map.
The saber was jangling down the hallway. I spotted the ancient Spanish wall decoration in its frame. I took along the paper knife and slashed the map all around the inside edge. The doorknob rattled, someone pushed at the door, encountered the resistance of the chair. Whoever it was put his shoulder into it. The chair’s wheels skidded out from under it and it fell on its back. It bought me a second.
I bought another. A slug from the Deane-Adams split a heavy panel. I hadn’t hoped to hit anything, just play for time. I loped to the connecting door to the bedroom.
The key was in the lock. I turned it and swung open the door just in time to stop a slug from the man who’d pushed in from the hall. Just as I jerked the door shut, I caught a glimpse of a gaping eye socket in a face black with fury.