They Came To Cordura (24 page)

They put the basin behind them and entered the hills. Backed by the sun the hills resembled pieces of crude earthenware, bowls and conical jars, with here and there a pattern of
encino,
scrub oak and cedar, and along their contours the line of the Tex—Mex wound in slow ascent, the bearers panting under their burden. The country reminded Thorn of that around Guerrero where he had found Hetherington and they had camped after the dust storm in the lee of a butte.

Now the water they had drunk took its toll. A man would stop, trying to double up, drop his corner of the litter and hobble bent over behind the nearest tree growth in agony. The effect of the alkali was diuretic and laxative. Waiting, the party could hear him groan, heard the foul and tearing sounds as his bowels opened. Often no cover was at hand and the stricken man was forced to strip down his breeches and squat beast-like in the open while the others turned their heads. One by one, again and again, often by twos, Lieutenant Fowler, Trubee, Chawk and Renziehausen were suddenly griped, tried to relieve themselves, and returned to the detail drawn and weakened. Even Chawk was sapped. Pace snailed. They did not make a mile an hour.

Language became as vile as necessity. Thorn ordered the woman, who followed him closely, to fall back so that she would not hear and to remain at a distance from him during the stops so that the men would have less excuse for resentment.

Hetherington’s fever smouldered. Thorn started him on quinine and resorted once more to wetting the shirt and tenting it over the youth’s face. Towards noon his voice intoned solemnly above them: “‘Thou in thy mercy hast led forth the people which thou hast redeemed: thou hast guided them in thy strength upon thy holy habitation. . . Thou shalt bring them in, and plant them in the mountain of thine inheritance, in the place, 0 Lord, which thou hast made for thee to dwell in, in the Sanctuary, 0 Lord, which thy hands have established.’”

With a thud Trubee dropped his corner of the litter. As the others let down their ends he crouched over Hetherington.

“Shut yer goddam preachin’! Die, goddam you, you better die!” he shouted at the damp shirt, as though the unconscious youth could hear. “I ain’t carryin’ you another foot so you die an’ do it quick!”

He straightened up and waved his arms. His eyes popped out of what had been a face, but was now so sunburned that the eruptions on it had festered into a single flaming pimple.

“I won’t carry ‘im no farther, hear me, Majer! He’s gonna die anyways. You can leave ‘im or tote ‘im but I’m done—I ain’t killin’ myself!”

Weaving to the tracks he sat down on a rail and began to blubber. “I’m too old for tha field—nothin’ to eat an’ my insides drawed inside out! I need me some good water more’n that one does, I tell you!” Tears trickled from his eyes. “We’re all gonna die in this God-fergot country an’ the buzzards’ll pick us clean an’ they’ll say to our skeleytons what heroes we was!”

Taken unawares, his reflexes slowed, Thorn had stopped close to the others. He backed off. They were looking from Trubee to him, uncertain what they should do. He drew a pistol, thumbed the safety.

“Trubee, on the litter. That’s an order.”

“You ain’t had that alk-li goin’ through you!” Trubee wailed.

Chawk hawked and spat. “He done his jobs at Columbus. He don’t have nothin’ to shit with.”

“We’re going on,” Thorn said. “We’ve made the railroad and that’s the last lap. Base may be on the other side of any of these hills.”

Lieutenant Fowler replaced the shirt. He had been studying Hetherington’s condition.

“He must be dying. If it’s a matter of five of us surviving I don’t think we have any choice. I know I can’t carry him much longer. If we are close to base why can’t we leave him and send a detail back after him?”

Thorn pretended not to hear.

“Or don’t you really know how close?” Fowler demanded.

“Make up your mind, Trubee,” Thorn said sharply. “Off your tail or I will wing you.”

“You shoot me an’ my kids won’t have no father!” Trubee cried.

“Up,” Thorn said. He raised the .45.

No one believed he would fire.

The gun slammed, rocking them. The slug spattered crushed stone over Trubee and with a whang ricocheted off the iron rail and yelled away in bright air. For seconds the rail sang.

“I gave you an inch. Another round and I won’t,” Thorn said hoarsely. “Now get on that litter.”

Trubee sat transfixed with fear and rage, his mouth opening and closing. “Take ‘im, Sarge—take ‘im!” he hissed finally.

“You might as well snap ass, Milo” Chawk looked at Fowler and Renziehausen. “I plan to take the bastard any time now. I kep ‘im up all night an’ he’s about to drop. First time he turns round or goes down he’s mine. An’ I don’t want no trouble from you two.’’

Renziehausen was silent.

Lieutenant Fowler drew himself up. He had broken the blisters on his nose and they had scabbed. “I’ve given him my gun,” he said stiffly. “I won’t help you, I won’t be responsible, but I won’t interfere.”

“Let’s go,” Thorn said.

Not until they had the litter up did he holster the weapon. He had thought himself past nerves, but his gun hand still trembled. He bitterly regretted firing: when you demanded all a horse or a man could give it was best to save the whip as long as possible. Now they had watched Trubee escape unhurt, had seen the bluff called. Unless they were too far gone it must come to them eventually that he would not shoot to kill, even to flesh-wound, they must see that what they were to him made him in the end helpless against them, that it was they who commanded, he who obeyed, they who led, he who followed, that in giving them glory he had given them power.

He made them bear by themselves. He dared not come close enough to take a branch end.

There was no noon halt. Without good water they could not make
pinole
and they would not touch the alkali.

He wished he knew if he could trust Renziehausen. For another half-hour they lurched and staggered before him along the smooth hillsides. They were incapable of noticing that, though the sun flamed, the sky of this day was one of spring, milder, drifted with small and tender clouds.

Like men in a dream they stared at the hand-car. It lay tipped on its side. On its underside in faded paint were the words Southern Pacific.

After a time Thorn put a shoulder to it and heaved it on to its wheels. It weighed seven or eight hundred pounds. The wooden platform was roughly seven feet long and five wide. Protruding from the center of the platform was its simple mechanism, mounting and handlebars which operated on the lever, crank and cog principle. The wheels on one side were braked by iron shoes tightened by a foot-press.

The men sat, watched him. He asked Chawk if the car could be run. If it could, they would ride to base. The sergeant said there was only one way to find out. Ordering them up, Thorn had them push the car to the roadbed. The feat of railing the four wheels took three men on a corner, straining almost to collapse.

Chawk stepped on and tried a handle. It would not move. Taking a rock he pounded the cog wheels until rust fell off in flakes. Next, facing the officer and the woman, he unbuttoned the fly of his breeches.

“Ladies an’ gents, this here is the Piss-Call Express. Heroes rides free, ladies at their own risk. An’ as for shit-britches majors, end of the line comes sooner’n they think.”

With complete assurance he urinated both on the cog wheels and the brass bearings in which they were set.

Staring at the hulking figure with its frayed head-mound, Thorn recognized the act as that of beast, pervert, or madman. There had been no further dizziness, no motor failure, no second blow on the head which would produce irrationality. But it was likely at this point that none of them, himself included, was entirely rational.

When Chawk had buttoned his fly he bore down on the handle. With a screech the car moved.

“All aboard,” he invited, slapping the handle.

They put blankets down and laid Hetherington on one side of the platform. Lieutenant Fowler and Trubee rode in front. Thorn took the rear handle, at least four feet separating him from Chawk on the other, and put Adelaide Geary and Renziehausen behind him. They began to pump. It was hot and heavy work and the car moved slowly. Each revolution of the main cog wheel caused a high grating sound, a scree-scree-scree which pierced the eardrums. Over this Chawk shouted that he remembered making thirty miles an hour with a hand-car downhill and twenty on the level but they could not do more than five for the bearings on this wreck were worn and the cogs were not meshing properly.

They found, overall, they could not make even five. Still affected by the alkali water, the men had to stop frequently to relieve themselves. There were stops to give quinine to Hetherington, others while Major Thorn tested water in the holes passed occasionally. So laborious was the pumping that only Chawk and Thorn were fit to team on the handles for more than eight or ten minutes at a stretch. Men spelled sat with heads down, gasping as though their lungs would burst. The advantages over marching were that the burden fell on two at a time, rather than four, and more ground could be covered, but the terrain would not allow the Tex—Mex to run either straight or flat. Where American engineers would fill earth and bore tunnels regardless of expense, the Mexicans had strung the road cheaply along the hillsides, up-grade or down. The up-grades gave the detail most trouble; they could not get up sufficient momentum before the rises, and on them cog slippage due to worn bearings lost them thrust. On the steepest the three at the rear stepped off to push.

At the top of one Thorn called a break. Ahead of the car Trubee and Chawk together while Lieutenant Fowler, returning from behind some scrub cedar, lay face down. After he had checked Hetherington’s face and forehead and re-wet the shirt, Thorn sprawled out behind the car. Renziehausen squatted beside him. All traces of the boy he had been when they set out from
Ojos
had been ravaged away. Freckles melded, his smooth cheeks were grilled by sun to the color of fresh beef.

“Major, I been meaning to tell you,” he began. “I told you a whopping lie. I was no hero, I was really scairt in the fight. You saw my chin-strap was bit through. I shinnied that gate just to prove to myself I wasn’t a kid any more. I must’ve been as scairt as you were at Columbus.”

“Not quite,” Thorn said wearily.

“Well, anyways, sir. What I did was for myself, not the boys in the troop. I’d sure never do it again.”

The officer examined the palms of his hands. They had commenced to blister from pumping.

“So, sir, would you please not put me in for the Medal of Honor?”

Thorn groaned. He had intended to ask where the boy stood, if he would take a gun, to confess that he could not endure much more without sleep. He felt as though a weight, hard and massive as one of the hand-car wheels, had been placed under his hat. His temples throbbed with its pressure. He removed the hat and knuckled back and forth through his short hair.

“Son, you will see everything differently after you have been in base a day or two.’’

Renziehausen made a stubborn line of his lips. “I don’t want it, sir. I won’t take it.”

“Why?”

“Because I won’t go home!” the boy said with sudden passion. He touched the bandage. “Not looking like this. I’m never going home again in my life!”

“But I told you about the sergeant in the Philippines,” Thorn protested. “After they made him one of rubber no one could tell the difference.”

Renziehausen looked the officer full in the face until his eyes filled, then turned his head. “Major, I don’t believe you. I been trying to and trying to, but I can’t. Before my ear happened I was planning to wait till my picture was in the papers and then go home and be played up to by everybody, and then maybe get up a Wild West show and make a flock of money. Now I don’t want any pictures of me, and my folks and friends are never going to see me. I’ll get out of the army and work on a ranch or go prospecting where nobody’ll see me, and nothing you tell me’ll change my mind.”

Thorn could understand. The loss of an ear might cripple as grievously as the loss of manhood.

“I’m sorry, son, but there is nothing I can do about the Medal. Why, your folks. . . ”

“Thorn!”

Adelaide Geary’s scream sent fright through him like a bullet, and he swung his head to see Chawk twenty yards above him with short-handled axe raised. Kicking out with legs and knees, he rolled over and over as the axe hurtled. It would have missed him. But it struck the foot-press with such force that the rod snapped and the rusty spring flew off. He had the gun out as Chawk slid down the hill.

“Take off them guns!” Chawk roared, furious at failure. “Have it out, best man takes over!”

Shaken by the close call, fighting shame at his panic, Thorn almost shouted he would, he would be damned glad to, because one more knock on the head would end any fight, and a lunatic could be locked up and the world rid of him. Instead, he retrieved the flung axe and ordered them all back on the car.

Frustrated, the giant tore off his flapping puttee, revealing an enormous calf muscle, and shook the leather at Trubee and Lieutenant Fowler. “He’s got to keel over soon—up all night, nothin’ in his rotten belly—he’ll shut-eye just once, boys, an’ that’ll be plenty. Such as him ain’t fit comp’ny for us!”

They set out again. The afternoon ebbed. Beneath the platform the rumble of the wheels deepened as the rails cooled. The scree-scree-scree of the cogwheels eagled between the shadowing hills. Trubee gave out absolutely. It was his ‘ticker’, he said, beating too fast and shortening his wind. He had complained of it to the surgeons often, but they had never minded him. They laid him on blankets across from Hetherington. Two teams alternated.

Once, after a long grade, Lieutenant Fowler lay upon the handle, his face ashen under its burn.

“Could we have made too much north yesterday, not enough east?” he breathed. “Could we be above base, not below?”

Thorn said he did not think so.

“Then why aren’t we there?”