They Came To Cordura (20 page)

Forgetting her, the officer knelt, uncorked the bottle and pouring a little tequila into his cupped palm applied it to the youth’s forehead, cheeks and throat. Hetherington’s eyelids fluttered but he continued to speak, now in a whisper, now in a quaver punctuated by moans. The Geary woman said it sounded like something from the Bible, and Thorn, his anger absorbed by his task, replied it was. Sitting, in order to keep from spilling the liquor, he went on rubbing all the exposed areas and unbuttoned the youth’s shirt to reach the skin of his ribs and chest. After a time the woman, still standing behind him, questioned him about the private and in low tones Thorn told her what he knew.

“‘I will heap mischiefs upon them,’” Hetherington recited. “‘I will spend mine arrows upon them. They shall be burnt with hunger and devoured with burning heat, and with bitter destruction: I will also send the teeth of beasts upon them, with the poison of serpents of the dust.’” When she asked what the youth had done, Thorn found his citation in the oilskin envelope and handed it over his shoulder. She came close to the fire to read and then, saying nothing, passed it back. Hetherington’s fever seemed to rise steadily. His legs stirred, his hands moved constantly.

Thorn raised him and put another quinine tablet between the parched lips and lowered his head and let water run into his mouth. Looking around, he saw the Geary woman had left. He counted the tablets. Twelve remained. He went on with the tequila, applying it with care so as not to lose a drop. Loudly, as though performing before a congregation, the boy recited: “‘Wherefore hast thou afflicted thy servant? and wherefore have I not found favor in thy sight, that thou layest the burden of all this people upon me? Have I conceived all this people? Have I begotten them, that thou shouldst say unto me, Carry them in thy bosom? I am not able to bear all this people alone, because it is too heavy for me.’” Coming out of coma some of the words were slurred, but they were delivered with such force that they carried beyond the pines, into the black canyon, and returned from rock. In the firelight his skin glistened with the oil of the tequila and Thorn sickened with the odor of the stuff. He could not tell if the alcohol evaporated rapidly enough to lower the skin temperature. His hands were cooled but the night air itself might be responsible. His shoulders ached with bending and rubbing. After another hour the fever appeared to crest. For several minutes the boy suffered intensely. Sweat beaded his forehead. His head twisted from side to side. At last his body relaxed. He seemed to sleep. Thorn took off his glasses and holding them sank face down upon the needled earth beside him, exhausted. Close to his eyes, where Hetherington’s feet protruded from the blankets, through a hole already worn in one of the clean socks the officer had given him, stuck a big, bony toe.

THEY
had to wake him. There was grey light and monotone of ground wind through the lower branches of the jefferys. Hetherington’s fever, after sleep, had subsided and he believed he could walk if the pace were slow.

Dividing the last of the flour, salt and bacon grease among the men and the Geary woman and dribbling portions of water into tin cups, Major Thorn reminded them they would have no more water until night unless they found it. Renziehausen cooked for Hetherington and fed him the little he could eat and helped him rise and stretch his legs.

While the senior officer ate he issued orders for the march. Saddles and saddle blankets would be left but each man might carry one bag, making a shoulder-hitch for it from a hobble. The axes were to be taken, the picket ropes, all weapons and ammunition, first-aid packets, and two blankets rolled. Hetherington’s equipment was to be split up and the load shared. He would carry the canteens and Lieutenant Fowler the bag of corn.

They turned to and in a quarter-hour left the jefferys, not in formation but in straggle, Hetherington being assisted on either side by Major Thorn and Renziehausen, the Geary woman at the rear. It was the fourth day out of
Ojos Azules
. No one looked back at the place where they had been pinned down, at the place where all might have died. First sun struck their faces. What lay before them did not seem impossible now that it was begun. Taking a chance on refusal, Thorn asked Chawk to start them out with a song suitable for cavalry to march to, and after a grunt the sergeant obliged, his grudging bellow filling the canyon.

     
“If to thy window comes Porfirio Diaz,

     
Give him for charity cold tortillas;

     
lf to thy window comes General Huerta,

     
Spit in his face and slam the door.

     
If to thy window comes Inez Salazar,

     
Lock your trunks so he can’t steal;

     
If to thy window come Maclovio Herrera,

     
Give him dinner and put the cloth on the table.

     
If to thy window. . . ”

Hetherington sagged, already too weak to walk. They had not even reached the canyon mouth. Thorn left him with Renziehausen and took the others forward telling them to break out axes, they would have to make a litter. In one of the stands of bull pines at the chute he selected and helped them cut and lop two six-foot branches and, using one of the picket ropes, knot a webbing between them. There would be no more songs.

“How many miles you figger to base, Major?” Chawk asked unexpectedly.

“Forty, more or less.”

“Christamighty.” The giant stood, dropping an end of the rope. More of his bandage had come loose overnight and strips hung from his hat to his shoulders. “We can’t pack nobody forty miles.”

“We can try,” Thorn said. He tied the free end and picked up the litter.

“The rest ain’t apt to make it,” Chawk said. “I seen this tried before. Corporal I was on scout with up in the Big Bend busted his leg an’ our horses took sick from bad water an’ when we seen it was him or the rest we put ‘im out of his mis’ry.”

“We will all make it. Or none will,” Thorn said.

“As easy leave two behind as one.”

Thorn turned his back on him and with Lieutenant Fowler went to unroll Hetherington’s blankets in the litter and assist him on to them. When the enlisted men rejoined them he did not like their looks. He wondered if Trubee had told Chawk about Columbus. Since there were five men he said they could change off on the carry, one man being relieved a half-hour out of every two. He teamed himself with the Lieutenant on the front end and Chawk with Renziehausen at the rear and gave the word to hoist. The webbing held and after a moment to balance and adjust equipment they started a second time, Hetherington on their shoulders.

Slowly the detail moved through the chute and out of the canyon, toeing the foot of the hill mass until it slanted slowly to the northeast. From distance it would have appeared ant-like, halting, starting, worrying along an enormous burden. At first the sick youth was not too much load but unless there was outward pressure on the poles his weight drew them together so that he sagged out of sight in the webbing and maintaining this pressure strained the muscles of forearms and shoulders and caused the bearers to walk aslant which in turn caused them to misstep and stagger. A stop was soon made to shift blankets to pole shoulders to prevent the bark from rubbing through shirts and galling flesh, another to put Trubee on and relieve Renziehausen, another to separate Chawk and Trubee who could not pair on the same end because there was a foot difference in height between them.

They seemed to leave the sierra. Noble peaks shrank to hills and then to foothills. Trees thinned and stunted and then the hills were bare. Brown grass seared so that once more the land was the familiar ochroid hue. It had, luckily, a gradual down-slope.

Major Thorn gave them ten minutes at each half-hour stop to alternate a man, taking himself off the litter last and walking behind it. The Geary woman kept twenty yards between herself and the party, her stride easy though she carried both her saddlebags. He noted how laden the bearers were, the slung Springfields tending constantly to slide from off shoulders, the belts heavy with ammunition dragging at their hips, but he did not see what could safely be dispensed with. The three canteens he had tied together and fastened round his neck; the bag of feed corn he had hung from Lieutenant Fowler’s belt. He looked for Hetherington’s rifle and saddlebag and could not find them. Chawk had carried one, Trubee the other.

Coming up with the litter he asked where they were. Neither would reply. He halted them and demanded an answer. Trubee said they had left them at the last stop because he, Hetherington, would not need them. Thorn said whatever personal he owned in the world was probably in that bag. Chawk said he might not need that, either. Telling them the cost of both items would come out of their next pay, Thorn started the litter.

The sun was high now, the sky metallic as a gong. Sweat darkened the khaki shirts of the bearers. Pace slowed. The sick youth complained of the sun. He tried to keep his campaign hat over his face, but the motion of the litter tipped it off. His face was already reddening, his temperature up a degree or two. The senior officer went to the Geary woman and asked if she had anything of cloth. From one of her bags she gave him a good cotton shirt. This he moistened with water, emptying the least full of the canteens, and putting Hetherington’s hat on with the strap under his chin so that the brim made a support, he draped the shirt over his face like a small tent. Then they went on.

During each break the men stretched full length. On one of them Lieutenant Fowler lay near Thorn. He had exchanged no words with his superior since the decision to give up the horses.

“Will he pull through?”

“I don’t know. He has some kind of typhoid.”

“You told Chawk forty miles.”

“Give or take a few.”

“Have you thought he might be right?”

“About what?”

“About the rest not making it unless we travel light?”

Thorn waited a moment. That Fowler was deliberately not ‘siring’ him might be as dangerous a sign as the implication of his question.

“Don’t let me hear that again,” he said softly.

The Lieutenant was silent.

“Listen.” Thorn sat up. “If you reckon thirty-five miles a day mounted, we had come thirty before the ambush. If it was a two-day ride to the Tex—Mex, we were only five miles short of it. We should strike it by noon or a little later. Then if we can do two miles an hour the rest of today and tomorrow. . . ”

“We can’t.”

“We have to. And another thing. One of us had better be behind Chawk and Trubee every minute.”

Lieutenant Fowler sat up. His neckerchief of blue silk, clean and jaunty when they had ridden north from
Ojos
, was scummed with dirt. He fixed the brown circles of his sun-goggles on Thorn.

“Are you afraid of them?”

“I don’t want to be jumped.”

“I don’t want the Medal of Honor.”

Thorn could not see through the goggles. He did not have to. He broke it off by getting the detail under way.

They reached and passed noon. Still the detail moved with steadiness, the land continuing to fall away and fall away until the foothills flattened and there was no elevation. The sun raged. Rifle barrels and hard-leather slings seared at touch. Nostrils dried. Heads bent, the bearers plodded as sweat burst under tight hat-brims and ran to nose ends and dropped.

They did not look up when the earth underfoot became shale. Then someone slipped and cursed and they raised their heads.

They stood on a ledge. The ledge overhung a vast and prehistoric basin. Like a mirror the sky fell. With a crash of light it shattered upon granite, mica, limestone, porphyry, basalt, feldspar, quartz. The soldiers shut their eyes as though slapped. In a moment, squinting, across the great glitter they could make out a snake of low and blue hills on the horizon. The hills were three or thirty miles away as light refracted. In the basin below, age upon age, the earth had alternately tortured and treated itself. Knives of ancient ice had ripped arroyos deep as wounds and the sides of these had been healed by the wash of old waters. The hammers of the elements had pounded the surface to a conglomerate of sand and pebbles and given it to bear and nourish
chamiso,
the
agrito
of many thorns, mesquite, cactus, and the Spanish bayonet. The colors of the basin were two only: rust and grey.

They stood appalled, forgetting to lower the litter. Search as they might they could see no green which would signal water. All was emptiness and glaze and loud silence across which lay their only way.

Major Thorn gave them half an hour. Shoes were removed. Renziehausen had a badly blistered heel. Thorn found Hetherington’s fever higher but not so high as to be dangerous and he decided to save the quinine until the next crisis. Before replacing the shirt over the youth’s face he re-wet it, dripping water carefully. Every man watched him. He moved then along the ledge, stooping, and brought back six small pebbles, giving one to each man to suck, saying it would start and keep flowing the saliva. When he offered one to the Geary woman she opened her mouth to show the stone already on her tongue. Promptly on the half-hour the detail moved into the basin.

Within two hundred yards none of them believed a passage possible. The direction of the arroyos was entirely north and south so that in order to keep northeastward each of them had to be crossed. No sooner was one traversed then another yawned. The sides were frequently steep and in the loose conglomerate the bearers slid and lurched and only by extreme effort kept the litter aloft. They were subjected to other punishments. Often the arroyo bottoms were barricaded with
agrito,
that cactus which grew green in Texas but grey here, every leaf of it daggered with odd-numbered spines, and as the bearers fought through it spines penetrated breeches and embedded in legs. The pebbles swelled tongues and the clamp of jaws during the strain of climb and descent grated them against teeth. Wide hat-brims protected from the sun above but so intense was the re-radiation of mica and quartz that faces began to burn and lips to crack.