They Came To Cordura (11 page)

“
El Paso
, the States,” she said. “I haven’t crossed the border in eight years. I’ll be frank with you. I had a lot of bad publicity before I came down here, my family also, most of it deserved. Even though the case against me falls of its own weight, the newspapers will hang me. Mothers will scare their daughters into virtue with my name. You may not believe this, but it’s true.”

He said nothing.

“Who is in command of the Army down here?”

“General John Pershing.”

“I never heard of him. I used to have connections in Washington, but not anymore.”

He felt her desperation. She was trying everything she knew.

“Major, do you have any sympathy for me at all?”

“Not particularly.”

He started when up ahead, in the full bellow and the bad Spanish, Chawk commenced another song. It was a welcome sound. The sergeant of D was all right.

     
“You will see at the time of our parting,

     
I will not allow you to love another;

     
For if it should be, I would ruin your face,

     
And many blows we would give one another.”

The Geary woman had her head down. When she raised it the officer glanced at her. She was grim.

“I don’t know what a major’s pay amounts to, but I doubt if it’s enough. Would you be interested in a thousand dollars in gold?”

“That wasn’t a very good idea,” he said. Lieutenant Fowler had not put a stop to Chawk’s song. He probably did not dare.

          
“So I am going to become an American;

          
Go with God, Innocencia,

          
Say farewell to my friends;

          
O may the Americans allow me to pass,

          
And open a saloon

          
On the other side of the river.”

She rode silently beside him for so long that Thorn looked at her again. She had loosed her reins and taken the bright bird up into her hands. The muscle under the skin beside her mouth twitched. It was evidently a nervous tic uncontrollable at times when she was under strain.

“Major, are you married?”

It was the last question he might have expected. He could not imagine what was coming.

“No,” he said.

“Then it must have been quite a while since you’ve had a woman, certainly since this campaign started,” she went on hurriedly. Her voice, customarily low in timbre, became so thick it was difficult to understand her words. It reminded him of his own, the night he had read Hetherington’s citation to him.

“I’d like to offer myself. I’m supposed to be good in bed, at least I was told so years ago, that was ten years ago, though, and I’ve forgotten about things like that. Use me all you want, just let me go before we get to base. I told myself I wouldn’t beg, but I am, just use me and let me go.”

“No, thanks,” he said.

“Why not?” she demanded.

His anger returned. He wanted to insult her and shut her up once for all so that he could be alone and think about how he would tell them tonight.

“For one thing, it would be like going to bed with a man.’’

He heard the hiss of her breath.

“Then I don’t know what to do. Yes, I do. I’m going to ride. You can’t catch me, you know it. I’m going to ride out of here!”

Thorn turned in his saddle. She had the bird close to her, its beak white at her throat, her hands caressing it as though it were a child she would kill with love. The muscle in her face beat like a wing.

“Don’t try it,” he warned.

“You wouldn’t dare shoot a woman!”

“I wouldn’t try. But I can bring your horse down at three hundred yards with a rifle.”

Her face twisted.

“You stupid military son-of-a-bitch!”

She spurred the mare savagely away from him. He kept one hand on the Springfield in its boot behind him until she slowed and took her place between him and the main body. His palms were slippery with sweat. Somehow, he could not understand it: what she had called him was the most female utterance she had made.

By mid-afternoon the altitude caught up with the detail. Lieutenant Fowler halted the main body and when Major Thorn rode up to inquire why, the Lieutenant and Hetherington were both dismounted and attempting to stanch nose-bleeds. He called a break and had the pair hold their heads back and press their nostrils. Telling Renziehausen to keep an eye on the prisoner, he tore a sheet of paper from his notebook, rolled it into two balls, and put them under the upper lips of those bleeding. While they waited for the flow to cease he had a look at their animals and that of Sergeant Chawk. Two, though saddled properly, had sore backs where the forward end of the blankets had rubbed the hide raw, and he did what he could to correct this, taking his own
maneja
from Sheep’s neck and cutting it into straps with his pocket-knife. Chawk, watching the operation, nodded towards the Geary woman. She sat her horse with a lit cigarette slanting from her mouth.

“Major, you know how long we ain’t had smokes.”

“I know.”

“Well, you tell ‘er we don’t like it. She tants us much more and somebody might stick a few of them shucks up ‘er ass and set fire to ‘em.”

The threat surprised Thorn. Glowering, the sergeant of D stood head and shoulders over him. To meet it he fixed his eyes not on Chawk’s, but, disconcertingly, on his nose, which was nearly as large and hooked as the beak of the bird. The giant’s nostrils were black with hair.

“You carry a tune very well, Sergeant,” he said easily. “Do you know Spanish?”

The question confused Chawk. Before he could reply the officer continued. “Incidentally, make sure the men switch their rifle boots to the opposite side when they saddle up tomorrow morning, then back again the next day. We may avoid some sore withers that way.”

“Yes, sir.”

Within another hour the sun sloped. At once the air chilled. Thorn decided to keep them going until dark; it would make up some of the time lost to altitude and there was a bare chance they would reach water. He might have to take the cigarettes from the Geary woman if she persisted, as Chawk put it, in ‘tanting’ the men with them, and ration them equally among those who smoked. They deserved them more than she. ‘And you have to plan tonight,’ he reminded himself. ‘For a thing like this there must be a plan. Four soldiers have so distinguished themselves in battle that they are worthy of their country’s highest award to the brave; four human beings are suddenly heroes; what must be unprecedented is that all four have been brought together in one place and do not yet know what they have done or what they are. It may be that this time is the only time anyone will ever have so perfect a chance to put his hand on the bare heart of heroism and hear answers to one of the great questions man has asked about himself. But if you tell a human being what he has done, will he then, withdrawing into himself, turning himself into what he conceives he should be if he is what he has been told, be able to explain why? Should you not ask his secret of the child before you make a man of him? And if you do, can you keep him apart from the others until they, too, still innocent, can be asked? I don’t know, I don’t know. Still I am the one to do it. The choice of me is either the most lunatic or the wisest choice which could be made. I wish tonight would come fast and I wish it would never come. It is getting cold.’

Lieutenant Fowler dropped back to ride with him.

“Getting cold,” he said.

“Yes, it is.”

“Have you ever seen such God-forsaken country as this, Major?”

“Don’t believe I have.”

He did not really mind Fowler’s leaving the main body if he had to have conversation.

“I heard what Chawk said about the prisoner. He and Trubee are really worked up about her smoking in front of them, and Chawk is not the type to be pushed too far. Is it true that he once assaulted his troop commander?”

Thorn smiled. “More than that. He beat the pulp out of him. There are a lot of stories about Chawk and probably a third of them are true. It’s said that once, in a pool-room in Deming, he got very drunk and tipped a five-hundred-pound pool table end-over-end on two’ cowhands and then tried with a die to play snooker with their heads.”

“But wasn’t he court-martialed for attacking an officer?” Fowler demanded.

“No. The lieutenant had it coming. Chawk is a good troop sergeant. Men aren’t always court-martialed.”

“I know.”

Thorn stiffened. The words had slipped. He tried swiftly to read meaning into or out of the junior officer’s remark. “We have to watch Chawk, though. The important thing is to make sure he does not get another knock on the head.”

“Why?”

“He had a minor concussion at
Ojos
. As it was explained to me, another blow, even slight, might produce major concussion, in which the small arteries of the brain would break and cause hemorrhage. If this happened, permanent damage might be done to the brain, resulting in—and I’m quoting the surgeon—motor and sensory failure, maybe irrationality.”

“Irrationality?”

“Insanity,” Thorn said.

Lieutenant Fowler peeled thoughtfully at the tip of his nose. He was glad he had not ordered the sergeant to stop singing. An army was only as effective as its discipline, you were drilled at the Point, but a song was not worth a beating and even a beating was preferable to annoying Bliss with insubordination charges against a non-com. “Son, don’t go around shooting at sparrows,” a captain ten years a captain had said to him, “and the eagles will come to you.” Which was good, if colloquial, advice. Besides, it was incredible a man of such violent disposition should sing at all; perhaps he was already irrational.

“I must say it was pretty sluttish,” he said irrelevantly. “And typical of her, from what I’ve heard.”

“Oh?” Thorn said in spite of himself.

“Yes. Wickline was on staff duty in Washington ten year ago, when most of it happened. He was telling us about it when she turned up as the owner of
Ojos
.” Fowler went into detail. Almost simu!taneously with the conviction of her father, Senator Geary of Missouri, his daughter’s third husband had shot and wounded a man he had surprised with her in a Norfolk, Virginia, hotel room. Freed after a re-trial, the husband sued for divorce on grounds of adultery and won custody of their two children. Counsel for the plaintiff made excellent use of the fact that Adelaide Geary had once previously been divorced on similar grounds, that she had been placed on probation several times, because of her position, after arrests for drunkenness. Hers had been a front-page story for months running. Her name had been fired from pulpits to great moral effect. “From what Wickline could gather, she’d been a complete no-good practically from puberty,” the Lieutenant concluded with relish. “Which wasn’t too remarkable. The family made most of its money in beer.”

The horse, Sheep, sneezed and slobbered. The sky darkened fast as the sun slid down the side of the world. Lieutenant Fowler ran off at the mouth, but then, all junior officers did; they itched with ambition and scratched with gossip.

“If she’s sent across the border the papers will have a carnival. I hope she is,” Fowler went on. “I suppose she thinks a six-man escort is appropriate for one of her reputation. And for her parrot, of course.”

He was pumping again. Perhaps, though, Thorn reflected, it was only a reminder of his right to be confided in by his senior so that responsibility might be joint.

“I think it’s a toucan, not a parrot,” he said. “They’re larger, and cannot talk.”

But Fowler would not be put off. “By the way, is this a guard detail, Major?”

“I will tell you tonight,” Thorn said. “In the meantime I want to go on another mile or two before we camp.”

“Yes, sir.”

Still Fowler lingered.

“Will you bring Trubee in a bit and see that they stay closed up?”

Without a yes-sir Fowler went forward at a trot.

Into dusk the party filed. To the west the sinking sun set fire to a mounded hill and burned it rose, sapphire and black. To the northwest a bright star flashed. It was the extreme star in the handle of the Great Dipper, or, to the Mexicans, the lead ox of the constellation called
El Carro,
The Cart. Suddenly the last of the day was snuffed. Major Thorn rode ahead to call his party in.

They made dry camp on a long knoll. Animals were picketed and given a feed of native corn. There were no trees for wood but after search they located stunted thickets of
granjeno
and uprooted them and carried them by armloads and built a large fire. The Geary woman built her own fire twenty yards or so from that of the troopers. During the coming and going Major Thorn took Hetherington aside and asked if he had held his tongue about the purpose of the detail. Hetherington said he had. The officer believed him. Suppers were cooked. Most of the men fried bacon, then made ‘cowboy bread’ using a dough of flour, water and a pinch of salt and frying it in the meat-can in bacon grease. Major Thorn cooked and ate with them. The
granjeno
burned hot and fast. Red sparks streamed upward and disappeared with loud snaps. So bright was the firelight that the officer could observe every movement of the Geary woman: lifting easily she brought her saddle to the fire, the toucan still tethered to the horn, and then her saddlebags and blankets, after which she cooked her own meal, using a frying-pan. To his dismay she cut a potato and broke eggs into the pan. The matter of the cigarettes had been galling enough; he did not know what the men would do when they discovered what she was eating. Perhaps he could prevent it. Drinking his coffee hurriedly, he ordered Fowler to have all weapons cleaned and enough fuel for the night brought before anyone turned in. He then built his own, smaller fire at a point from which he could see what went on at the other two. But the woman ate facing the men until she was noticed. Something was said to her which he could not hear. She continued eating as though the soldiers did not exist. Fortunately they had finished their coffee and at that point Lieutenant Fowler set them to bringing fuel and the moment passed. Thorn watched while she smoked. She had taken off her flat felt
Chihuahueno
hat. Heavy, dark brown except for a gash of grey which ran from her forehead across the top of her head, her hair was coiled at the back in a large bun from which a hairpin stuck. It occurred to him she might once have been a remarkably handsome woman, an adulteress who took lovers as coolly as her father took Indian lands, and over whom one man might gladly shoot another. What Fowler had told him about her was possible. Now, however, hard and weathered, selfish and arrogant, she was only striking to look at. It was inconceivable she had mothered children. It was as though Mexico, altering her identity in its own image, as she wished, had altered her sex.