They Came To Cordura (10 page)

“I believe it is.”

“Which anyone but a fool would see I couldn’t do. Another point.” She tried to fix his eyes with hers, but the black knot of tape at the rim hinge of his glasses intruded.

“What’s wrong with your glasses?”

“I broke them.”

“Another point. If there is such an act, it must apply only in war-time. We are not at war with Mexico, are we?”

“No.”

“So Villa’s men are not the armed forces of another country, are they?”

“Not exactly.”

“Then don’t you have to admit anyone would have a mighty hard time trying to take my citizenship on grounds like these?”

“I guess they would.”

“Won’t you also admit that my arrest was ordered by an excited old man who will have forgotten about me in a week and who may not have had the authority to arrest an American civilian in the first place?”

“That may be.”

She sat erect. “Then why the devil don’t you let me go, Major? Won’t you appear pretty ridiculous trying to explain all this to your superiors? Why not let me go and be rid of me? I give you my word I won’t go back to
Ojos
until your people have cleared out.”

When he hesitated she was certain of him. To her shock, the corners of his mouth moved into what was unmistakably a trace of grin.

“Ma’am,” he said, “you’re entirely too logical for a woman.”

Adelaide Geary pulled up, the officer with her.

“Fortunately the Army gives a man a choice,” he continued. “He can be logical and face a court martial or he can follow orders. I intend to follow orders.”

“Even though they’re absurd?”

“Yes.”

“And you let me run through the whole argument without even listening?”

“Oh, I listened. I enjoy logic. It’s a luxury a soldier can seldom afford, particularly in the field.”

He had to admire her effort to hide her hatred. He could not know it was compounded by her misjudgment of him. Narrowed, her eyes changed color from sea-blue to grey. Beside her chin a muscle twitched under the tanned skin. With a weapon she would be dangerous.

“Major, I’m trying to keep my temper. I suppose I should play the damsel in distress. Damned if I will. You’re going through with it.”

“Believe me, there is nothing personal in it. But I am.”

“And this bobtail bunch of Army cowboys is to be my triumphal escort.”

“Your guard,” he corrected. “And if I were you, I wouldn’t size them up too quickly.”

“I haven’t,” she snapped. “I saw them trying to charge like an illustration out of a history-book, falling into the
acequia,
fighting the cornfield like a regiment of
Don Quixotes
. You know very well I could ride away from here if I wanted to and run your animals into the ground inside of a mile.”

The sun, nearly noon high, flashed from the mirror in her saddle-horn. The bright bird preened itself. Major Thorn felt his own anger quicken. In manner and attitude she was the most unwomanly woman he had ever met, though that might be the way she had to be, running a ranch in the middle of a revolution; but it sharpened her sarcasm about the regiment, sarcasm typically civilian, ignorant, hasty, and made him determine to base matters between them.

“I guess I have to be specific,” he said evenly. “You are a military prisoner. For three days you are my responsibility. I didn’t want it, but I drew it. You will be about as valuable to this detail as a sick animal. I plan to see you are as little bother as possible. When dismounted you may move freely, even out of sight when necessary. You will stay away from my men. My advice is not to try to take off. If all this is clear, I suggest we both get back in formation.”

She started to say something. She knotted her reins until her fingers went white. Then she spurred ahead, he following, until they came in sight of the party.

To cool his anger the Major busied himself with observation. The terrain was monotonous. Breasts before, the peaks flattened gradually into long low shapes resembling burial mounds. For vegetation there was only grey bunch grass and here and there clumps of a weed called
sacahuiste.
He saw no green which would mean water. They would have a dry camp tonight. The case against her was ridiculous and could never be made to stick, but that was none of his concern. He saw neither human nor animal sign, no trails, no smoke, no horse droppings, no birds. And it was true, the party, like the regiment, was ragged and flea-bitten and mangy, but day after next he would have them patch and wash and shave and they would ride into base with their tails up. Always and always the low clouds passed overhead like hands.

At noon he rode forward, halted the detail to eat and ordered them not to cook, for they would move out in half an hour. They did not like it, but he could not help that. To compensate for time lost to altitude he would keep them in the saddle longer. The animals were let graze. While the men lounged on grass bunches munching hard bread and grumbling he went from horse to horse checking gear. There was enough forage corn for the animals. Lieutenant Fowler came up to ask if he could help. Thorn said he wanted to find out where they stood on rations; the packmaster at
Ojos Azules
was supposed to have issued enough for three days. Together they looked into the saddlebags. What they discovered was that the men had been given three days’ hard bread, some flour and a little parched corn, but no more than one meal of bacon and two, perhaps, of coffee.

“I have about the same, sir,” Fowler said. “I should have checked before we left.”

“It will do if they stretch it,” Thorn said. He caught the implication. It had been his duty, or his to delegate, and here was the oblique, gold-bar reminder. “See that they do.”

“Yes, sir.”

Thorn took his own bread and squatted a few yards from the men. The Lieutenant joined him. He was twenty-five or -six, of average build. He had fine, well-bred features. To appear older he had raised a small moustache which did little for him because there were gaps. When he pulled his auto goggles down about his neck, as he did now, his blue eyes blinked from white circles in his sunburnt face. The tip of his nose was peeling, and the backs of his hands, for his was the fair complexion which usually accompanies carroty hair. Although one sleeve of his khaki shirt was slit, he was somewhat of a dandy. He made a point of shaving daily. Under his collar he wore a handkerchief of blue silk. The spread eagles and numerals of his Academy ring glittered as he ate.

“You think it will take us three days, Major?”

“According to the Mexican, Ramos. We keep due north today and tomorrow, then the next morning northeast until we strike the Tex—Mex railway. We follow that northwest into base.”

“What is the name of the base?”

“
Cordura
.”

“Will it replace
Dublán
, do you think?”

“No. The railroad between them is beyond repair, as I understand it. But they can run trucks in and out of
Cordura
.”

“I see.” Lieutenant Fowler nodded gravely.

Major Thorn knew something about him: three years out of the Point, he had put in two of them at Fort Riley as an aide and the third at Columbus under Colonel Rogers and himself, with A Troop his first command. He took himself and his career seriously. Column of twos into line of charge, column of fours into line of charge, he drilled his men half an hour after the other troops were dismissed; he took the train to El Paso regularly to play polo, not because he enjoyed the game or was good at it, but because, for second lieutenants on border duty, it was the game to play; it had been he who protested, with due deference, when the sabres of the regiment had been stored at
Dublán
, for which he had been called, to his face by his fellow officers and behind his back by his men, George Armstrong, after Custer, Fowler. A soldier by training and not by nature, Thorn believed, he was strung tight as a bow. Pluck him and he would twang.

“I hope we won’t be at base long,” Fowler hinted. ‘‘I don’t like to be away from my troop.”

“Oh?”

Major Thorn swallowed the last of his hard bread. He was being pumped and he would not be. Tonight would be soon enough for them to know why they had been detached, and he wanted Fowler’s mind on the formation this afternoon. He wondered how the junior officer would take the news. He stood, signifying the conversation ended, and took some water.

Over the end of his canteen he watched the Geary woman start towards her horse. She walked with a long stride. She had eaten her own food with her back turned on the men. Now she found something in a saddlebag and cupped her hands before her face. He saw smoke. She had cigarettes. She leaned against the mare beside the tethered bird with one hand on her hip and facing the troopers inhaled deeply. It was an act of contempt as expressive as spitting. The men sat up. It was possible the younger ones had never seen a woman smoke. But none of them had been issued tobacco after the Expedition crossed the border and until now, since the hardship was a shared one, they had accepted it. Thorn heard oaths.

“Get them going, Lieutenant,” he ordered quickly.

“Yes, sir.”

Chawk fell while mounting. He went all the way over his saddle like the rawest recruit, striking ground on hands and knees, which broke his fall, then collapsed face downward. The men clustered round him until Thorn backed them away to give him air and with effort turned the great bulk of his body over on its back. His eyelids fluttered, opened, his eyes focused. They were black and the corneas were threaded with red.

“Whud I do?”

“You went over like a rookie,” Thorn said with relief. “Lie still a minute.” He found Chawk’s hat and laid it upon the mass of bandage to shade his eyes, removed his own and fanned. The giant did not protest. Stretched out, he appeared the largest man Thorn had ever seen in uniform. For a frame six feet four or five inches long the amount of flesh on him was not proportionate, though there must have been close to two hundred pounds of it. He had huge bony jaws and wrists and hands and feet. The bushy misshapen moustache was black as his eyes; a piece of hard bread protruded from the lower edge; some of the longer hairs splayed down between his lips; a white scar-line ran from his mouth to his chin as though he had been bottle-ripped in a fight and carelessly resewn. The second finger on his left hand was missing above the knuckle. He was thirty-one or -two.

“How come I did, Major?”

“The surgeon told me you might have dizzy spells for a day or so. They often accompany a good knock on the head.”

“Thought somebody throwed a blanket over me,” said the sergeant of D wonderingly. “I don’t get it. I been conked before, with chairs and bottles and suchlike.”

“Not by a rifle-butt. And I expect the altitude had something to do with it. Do you think you can stand?”

“Sure.”

Major Thorn helped him stand, then with an arm about his waist walked him back and forth until his head cleared. Telling Lieutenant Fowler to put Trubee on the point and keep Chawk with him, he mounted up and waited as his detail passed and took position to the rear of the woman.

The sun was hoisted high as a torch. Leather saddle pommels and anything of metal burned the fingers. The party rode north silently with hat-brims low. For a time Major Thorn kept the head of Chawk, built up with bandage until it resembled the white shell of an egg, as a reference point. He remembered Ben Ticknor’s warning about additional damage to the skull and brain cells beneath. Humpty Dumpty had had a great fall and he had been lucky enough to break it with hands and knees or all Pershing’s soldiers and all Pershing’s men might have been unable to put Humpty Dumpty together again. He did not amuse himself. The oversight of the rations still rankled him, that and leading the detail out before taps was blown. Little things, both of them, but it was handling little things, the ability to master detail, which had made him invaluable as a staff man to half a dozen commanders. He could not recall in all those years making two administrative mistakes in a single day. He had been in every respect a good garrison officer. Perhaps he had begun to unseam. The Geary woman halted and waited. He did not slacken pace and she swung in beside him. Reaching back, from a saddlebag she took a round bundle of corn-shuck cigarettes tied neatly with a shuck string.

“Will you have a cigarette, Major?”

“No,” he said, without thanks. “I don’t smoke. Most of the men do. They have not had tobacco for weeks.”

She ignored the suggestion. “An old woman of my ranch makes them for me. She may be a hundred years old, no one knows, and making cigarettes has been her life work. She picks the shucks with great care and cures them for two years. Her cigarettes are as good as any in Mexico.”

Thorn allowed himself only a glance. Made of
macuche,
the native blackleaf tobacco, the cigarettes were perfectly round, the shucks smooth, twisted to a point at one end and doubled inside at the other. He wanted one very much.

She put them back in the bag. “The old woman is typical of the
gente,
my people,” she said. “I have families who have lived at
Ojos
for six generations. They are gentle, loyal, innocent people. If I’d tried to fight either the Villistas or Federales my young men would have been taken off and the women attacked and the old people tortured and the stock slaughtered and the buildings burned. Only the walls of
Ojos
would stand today. Owls would live in the cottonwoods. I might as well have sown my fields with salt. Besides, there’s a tradition of hospitality in Mexico that Americans cannot understand. Do you know what the peons say? ‘A stranger might be God.’”

Major Thorn set his jaw. It was a very good speech and a very good act. He respected anyone, man or woman, who could alter his tactics to the situation, but after the gesture of smoking before the men he would not respond if she got down on her knees.

She waited for his reaction, then frowned. “What will happen to me, Major—I mean, after we get to base?”

“I turn you over to the Provost Marshal. Probably you will be sent by train to Fort Bliss at El Paso. After that I don’t know.”