“Childress is an enigma,” Blackthorne said. “Graduated West Point at the top of his class, and in the meanwhile published a slim volume of poetry that drew the attention of the eastern elite; not the helmet-headed, wing-sprouting type of epic you might expect of a warrior, but rather a deep thinker on the order of Emerson. I don’t expect you to grasp the meaning of all these names.”
“I read The Conduct of Life in a lineshack one long winter. Half of it, anyway. The hand who left it used it to start fires.”
“Indeed. I can’t imagine you got much out of it.”
I let him have his head there. The truth was Emerson might have been writing in Chinese.
He sat back and contributed to the nicotine stain on the ceiling. “To the men who rode down there with Childress, and to not a few of the locals, he’s something of a god; a man you listen to rather than discourse with, and feel yourself the better for the exchange, however you come away unenlightened by it. Before the war, there was talk of running him for the U.S. Senate.
“He’s a savant, of sorts; we’re just not sure what: martial, literary, political, or scientific: I’m told he submitted a treatise on galvanization to one of those boards that finds such things of interest. After Juarez’s victory, he sent a letter to the U.S. State Department, recommending we exploit the peons’ near-worship of our civilization to annex Mexico.”
“No wonder he went underground.”
“No doubt his comments led to the assumption he’d been executed. He was already under suspicion for switching his allegiance from Emperor Maximilian to the revolutionists. His success in the field spared him punishment, but once he was no longer needed—”
“That’s the problem with being a born general,” I said. “There isn’t much call for it once peace breaks out.”
“Evidently he agrees. He appears to have spent the last eighteen years assembling his own private army, comprised of former revolutionists, the remnants of his original rebel force, and the Indians who inhabit the Sierra Madre Mountains twenty miles south of the Arizona border. That’s the report, in any case.”
“Who wrote it?”
“A Pinkerton operative, posing as an aimless drifter. He sent a long coded wire to the agency’s headquarters in Chicago and hasn’t been heard from since. Numerous attempts to make contact through pre-arranged channels have failed.”
“That’s two Americans that country’s misplaced. I didn’t know it was so careless.”
He picked up the bottle, frowned, then set it back down and rammed in the cork. “The obvious answer is he was found out and eliminated. Now it’s up to us to confirm or disprove the report.”
“Why us?”
“I volunteered the services of this court, and Washington has generously accepted.”
“That was white of them. How many men did Sweeney leave us with?”
“Irrelevant. One man may succeed where a regiment would not.”
“I’m supposed to comb all of Mexico looking for one Pinkerton?”
“Just the Sierras; and that isn’t the mission. You’re to infiltrate Childress’ command and find out if there’s anything to the report. If it’s mistaken, or Childress is a harmless charlatan, or there’s no truth to it at all, come back and report to me in person.”
“And if it turns out to be right?”
“Must I express the obvious?”
“You must. It might spare me from a firing squad if I can tell the federales I killed him on your orders.”
“Very well. He committed high treason the moment he offered his services to a foreign power. The penalty is death. Especially if any part of that report can be verified. The part that concerns me most is the arms he’s supposed to have stockpiled: Gatlings, Napoleons, and a dozen cases of carbines. A shipment of that very number was reported missing from Winchester’s warehouse in Boston. Wars have been won with less.”
I uncorked the bottle and refilled my glass without asking permission.
“If I’m to start one all by myself, I’ll need some things up front, starting with a decent horse.”
“Black Dan Stuart is holding a bay thoroughbred for you. I made the arrangements when I heard you were back.”
“A good long-distance rifle.”
“Draw one from the arsenal. The deputy in charge has all the paperwork.”
“Two hundred dollars in gold.”
“Absolutely not. Your salary covers all your responsibilities.”
“I can’t bribe my way across Mexico on twenty a month.”
“In lieu of receipts, I’ll need a detailed record of your expenses. It will be checked.”
“And a case of this Scot’s courage.” I lifted my glass.
“More bribery?”
“I get thirsty in the desert.”
“Anything else?”
“If I think of it I’ll let you know.”
“Aren’t you forgetting transportation?”
“You said I had a horse coming.”
“You’ll need it when the tracks end, but until then I’m giving you a train.”
He puffed his cigar, pleased at my uncharacteristic silence.
“We don’t know Childress’ timetable,” he said, “or even if he has one. In any case we can’t risk his plans going into effect while you’re crawling your way across the Sonoran Desert on horseback.”
“Won’t he wonder how I got my hands on a train?”
“You stole it, naturally. It’s your ticket into his camp. The revolutions travel by rail down there; no self-respecting insurgent would be caught dead without one.
“Just return it when you’re through playing with it,” he said. “It’s on loan from President Diaz, Juarez’s successor. He has as much riding on this mission as we do. It’s waiting for you in the railyard.”
It was a smart plan. I wouldn’t say it to his face. “Do I get to blow the whistle?”
“That’s up to the engineer. It has a name, even if he doesn’t.” Blackthorne slid a fold of foolscap from an inside pocket and snapped it open. “El Espanto. I’m told it means ‘The Ghost’; ‘The Terror’; something along those lines. In some remote regions it makes sense to strike fear into the savages who’d oppose progress.”
“All right,” I said.
“I felt certain you’d assent eventually. I was prepared to offer to stock the saloon car with my entire cellar, had you demurred. You should have held out for more than just one case.”
“I don’t mind. I want to talk to Childress. He promises better conversation than I’ve had in a spell.”
He screwed out his cigar in a heavy brass tray. “From what I’ve heard, he’ll do all the talking.”
“That’s grand, too. I never learned anything listening to myself.”
Which was one thing I’d said that turned out to be truer than I knew; and something I’d have torn out along with my tongue when I got the truth of it.
“Is there a settlement where I’m headed? The Sierras cover a lot of ground.”
He hauled an atlas the size of a dining table from the slots where he kept his ledgers and made room to spread it on the desk.
“The map is centuries out of date. We have the pillaging Spaniards to thank for its existence at all; but nothing’s come along to supplant it, and I doubt little has changed there since the death of Columbus. It’s the last wild place in North America.”
He ran a finger down the coast to a ragged hangnail sticking into the Gulf of California across from the mountain range.
“‘Cabo Falso,’” I read.
“‘The Cape of Lies.’ It’s home to an anonymous fishing village, the only source of communication with the outside world for a hundred miles. Even a traitor needs a conduit: That’s where his alleged weaponry would have landed. If you should need to get in touch with this court, it’s two weeks in the saddle from his base of operations. There’s no railway spur. The only line crawls through the foothills of the Sierras; the blankest space on the map this side of darkest Africa, all craggy peaks, deep abyss, and dense jungle, teeming with mosquitoes, venomous snakes, and leeches the size of trout in Montana. I exaggerate, possibly; but better that than to underestimate the hazards. It’s a pity our modern cartographers have grown too sophisticated to make allowances for dragons. If the mystical beasts were to thrive anywhere, that would be the place.”
“What about women?”
“Savages, who’d mate with you and cut your throat in the moment of ecstasy; so I’m told.” He flushed a little, although over the bloodshed or the carnal implication, I couldn’t tell.
“I could get the same at Chicago Joe’s, and save the expense of travel. Why Cape of Lies?”
Here he was on more comfortable ground.
“Legend says Cortes promised to deliver Montezuma to the natives who were rebelling against him, in return for directions to all the gold mines in the region. They delivered, he didn’t. You won’t find its other name on any map: Cabo Infierno; lyrical, don’t you agree?”
“Cape Hell. It’s practically a sonnet.”
“In 1519, the disgruntled Aztecs captured several Conquistadors there and put them to death by pouring molten gold down their throats. Clearly, the concept of irony is as indigenous to the New World as the potato.”
“Let’s hope it hasn’t survived as well. I can’t swallow even a jalapeno without regret.”
“I rather think Captain Childress is at least partially responsible for the endurance of the name. The Pinkerton’s report cites rumors of soldiers beheaded for desertion and their bodies turned over to cannibals.”
“He got into the tequila. Indians aren’t man-eaters.”
“I suspect Childress circulated the stories himself. He’s established in the local cane sugar trade—that’s public record—and when it comes to discouraging competition there’s nothing quite as effective as tales of massacre.”
“Planting sugar for profit makes sense, if he is raising an army. The kind of men he needs don’t fight for love of country.”
“That isn’t all,” he said, helping himself to an unprecedented third helping of spirits; his Presbyterian leanings counseled against them, and he wasn’t a hypocrite in practice. “The federales say he grows poppies between the rows.”
“Opium.”
“The climate is ideal.”
I emptied my glass a second time. “The Civil War’s starting to be the least interesting part of his biography.”