They Came To Cordura (4 page)

Listening as though to a tale told many times, as remote, as unreal as that of David, Hetherington heard beyond the light the nicker of a horse, and in a moment, farther off, a coyote’s yelp. He heard the reader’s voice thicken. He watched the officer close the notebook, then rise and come to him. The Major’s face was shadowed but the figure towering over him was suddenly the awful shape by his bed from which he had run away. He was terrified.

“Hetherington. I would like to ask you a personal question. I would appreciate your answering. What made you do it?”

The youth was silent. Looking down, the officer saw that his eyes were screwed shut.

“Try to remember, Hetherington.”

He could not recognize the guttural voice as his own. He found himself on one knee beside the bedroll.

“Hetherington. It is very important. Try to remember how it was. What you felt, what you thought.”

The private shook his head, would or could not answer. All at once, shockingly, tears issued through the tightened eyelids. Uncertain, the Major stood. He should not have asked. Or should have asked before reading the official language which would embody and transmit the deed as long as an Army existed. As he took his seat again across the fire Hetherington began to cry audibly, his sobs choked by the bedroll.

Tearing the citation page from the notebook, folding it, placing it in a small oilskin envelope which tied with a string, buttoning the envelope in his pocket, the officer leaned against the rock and let tiredness wash over his embarrassment. He had been in the saddle twelve hours the day before and ten hours this day. In his boots his feet were swollen. Dust was caked on his lips. He had not had a cigarette since
Dublán
. Overhead the night sky was clean and black once more and stars, no higher than the towering butte, burned. Still Hetherington cried. Opening the notebook, Major Thorn printed with the pencil:

‘Notes for Cavalry Journal’

The editors of the
Journal,
published monthly at Fort Riley, Kansas, had urged that all officers send in from the field notes on equipment and training plus accounts of action which would be of interest to cavalrymen everywhere. Publication, except for duplicating items, was promised. Major Thorn had already filled several pages.
The Davis saddle,
he wrote,
is unsatisfactory. A revised McClellan would be better. At long distances the Davis seat is uncomfortable and most of these saddles become defective—the steel frames that connect pommel and cantle arch break. Some crack on one side, some both sides, some break all the way through. All our saddles are modeled to fit the backs of horses in full flesh, while as a matter of fact horses on campaign always run down in weight. Why not have saddles made to fit a horse when he is thin?

By asking those questions I gave up something I can never get back. If I find others I will ask them, though. What they tell me may be worth more than what I lose. I was too late to ask Boice.

Major Thorn had lately become aware that he was mixing military and personal entries in the notebook. When he had time he would separate them.

He has stopped crying.

Now he has two accomplishments: reciting the Old Testament and what he did this morning at Guerrero.

If Rogers can possibly fight at that place,
Ojos Azules
, he will. I hope he can.

The Springfield rifle is too long and heavy for cavalry. Suggest a carbine about the size of the old Krag carbine, chambered to shoot same ammunition as the Springfield.

It may be hereditary, something plasmal passed on. The God of this boy’s father certainly a God of wrath.

Now and then, still filtering down unseen, dust motes touched his face. The fire was dying.

Chihuahua
. Cold nights, hot stars. We had snow and roses at
Dublán
in a single day. The principal product: not beef or gold but loneliness.

Individual cooking in the field is a mistake. There is a waste of rations, sickness, and neglect of the horses. The time better spent in resting, cleaning arms, overhauling equipment, etc.

Yesterday, the day Boice killed, my 40th birthday.

He was watched. Hetherington’s eyes were open.

“Still can’t sleep?”

“No, sir. I’m too keyed up, I been ever since this morning. I keep thinking about those men I shot, how I didn’t even know them and they didn’t know me. I wasn’t afraid then, Major, but I am tonight. I’m sure glad we won’t have to fight. Besides, it’s so awful cold I can’t sleep.”

Major Thorn put away pencil and notebook. “I’m ready to turn in myself. We’ll be warmer if we double up.”

He brought his blankets and shelter-half and after Hetherington unrolled showed him how to make a sleeping bag: one shelter-half on the ground, four blankets, then the other shelter-half. Officer and enlisted man got in together, covering their heads. Gradually their breathing evened.

“Major?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry I got to crying. I couldn’t help it. I did remember how it was, but I didn’t want to say.” Hetherington shivered. “The honest truth was, the Lord took hold of me.”

The fire coals faded. Vast night came down the butte upon them. They lay stiffly, each waiting for the other’s warmth.

GROUNDED
at
Guerrero
by mechanical trouble due to the sandstorm, Aeroplane 44 landed at Gral. Trias at 11.30 hours with orders from Pershing, and within twenty minutes Provisional Squadron, 12th Cavalry, Colonel Selah Rogers commanding, pulled out and south.

March formation was by column of twos by platoons in this order: Apache Scouts, Troops A, C, D, E, F, G, Machine-Gun Troop, pack train.

Total strength of the force was 14 officers and 319 men. Troops which normally numbered 64 men had been depleted by fever and injury and remount shortages to around 40 men per troop.

Major Thorn and the enlisted man Hetherington rode at some interval from the rear of the Machine-Gun Troop.

Estimated distance to
Cusihuiriachic
was thirty-two miles. At the alternate walk and trot by which cavalry covers five to six miles per hour, it was believed the Squadron would reach there by nightfall, terrain and the condition of the animals permitting.

The 12th Cavalry was equipped with the revised McClellan saddles. The saddlebags easily contained two days’ rations, or four packages, of hard bread, plus bacon, coffee, sugar, mess kit, curry comb, brush and personal gear. Each soldier carried two days’ forage of native corn in a grain-bag strapped across the pommel of the saddle, and in his web belt ninety rounds of ammunition. Second blanket and shelter-half were tied rolled at the cantle. Springfields stood upright on the left side of the horses in leather buckets, or boots. Bayonets, usually strapped behind the left shoulder, had long before been discarded. All sabres were stored at
Dublán
.

More formidable than when in garrison with men and gear spick-and-span and animals sleek with brushing, is cavalry on campaign. It is not colorful, it does not stir the blood; it is a weapon much worn, but ready for sharp and instant use, sand-edged, professional, deadly. It awes. This squadron had been in the field more than a month. Horses were gaunt, their ankles road-puffed, their withers prominent, for the muscles on either side had atrophied. Some limped for lack of a shoe. A cast shoe seen beside a road stopped a column. A dropped beast was simultaneously shot and stripped of its iron. The troopers rode for the most part silently, shoulders hunched, hat-brims low, dust goggles or neckerchiefs up, and what could be seen of their faces was tanned and grimed and whiskered. Uniforms were sorry: many leather leggings, straps rubbed through against the canteen, were tied on with twine; woolen breeches wore out first at the knees, then at the seats, and many troopers sported makeshift patches cut from canvas shelter-halves; bare elbows stuck from holes in shirtsleeves. But the barrels and stocks of the rifles, butts down in the ‘Old Oaken Buckets’, gleamed with oil and the muzzles menaced the sky. Though leavened with boys on their first enlistment, the squadron was made up mainly of men in their thirties, but whether eighteen or fifty, all were Regular Army. They had spoiled for two years in barracks at Columbus until the entire regiment, the 12th, had been attacked in the night and hurt badly. After the first recoil it had found itself. It knew now that it could, when well led, deploy efficiently under fire and kill efficiently. Walk to trot to walk to trot alternately, intervals between platoons and troops maintained without effort, almost carelessly, the sole flaw of the formation was the two who rode alone between Machine-Gun Troop and pack train, private and officer upon whose glasses sun glinted. The orders of the squadron on this fifteenth of April were what they had thrice been before: the enemy is reported at such and such a place, see if he is there, if he is, fight him, if he is not, wait for further orders. They had not yet found him. In the five weeks since Columbus a half-dozen rounds had been fired, and those at long range. One man, the one named Boice, had caught a stray bullet. Officers and men hoped much but expected little of this march, hoped because they had seen in Mexico the trains of trucks. White one and a half tons and Jeffrey Quads with four-wheel drive, trucks, not mules, hauling supplies; they had heard the rumors. If they did not find the enemy they could not fight, and if they could not fight they could not prove anything about cavalry. They did not speak to each other about the trucks or the rumors, but these were in their minds, and they rode sweating this afternoon in long quiet column curling hour upon hour across wasteland under a sun like a brass eye.

They passed near two small towns, or pueblos,
El Iguaje
and
Delicias
. The hovels were identical, made of adobe, windowless, and against the walls men and women and children stood taking the sun. In Mexico the sun is called ‘The Stove of the Poor’. The people watched without moving.

For miles the earth tilted up. They came into country treeless and seven thousand feet high. Small mountains took the shapes of breasts and loaves of bread. Their color, as the hot sun wheeled, changed from copper to rose to the grey of ash. There was no grass here, only outcrop of rock, scrub oak, thorny
nopal,
and the daggers called
lechuguilla.
To some it seemed they rode the back of the world, as close to the sky as men could stand, and so rounded was the world that, had their legs been longer, they might have touched boots under its belly. Climbing, the column slowed. No halts were called. At dusk no one knew how far they were from
Cusihuiriachic
.

The dusk was quick, and as darkness followed fast, orders passed down the column to close up, and they moved on at a walk under stars like small lamps.

Provisional Squadron reached
Cusi
at approximately 22.30 hours. To march thirty-two miles had required over ten hours. Troops were dismounted to make coffee while Colonel Rogers and his Executive Officer, Captain Paltz, went into town to find guides. No one knew the direction of or distance to the ranch called
Ojos Azules
. Fires were built. There was no order to feed grain, since it was expected the halt would be short. But it was two hours, past midnight, before Rogers returned with a lieutenant of Mexican Federal troops who had been, after much palaver, persuaded to serve as guide. In its essentials the report to Pershing was verified: two days previously close to four hundred Villistas, under Cruz Dominiguez and Javier Arreaga, had attacked; the garrison platoon of Federales had been slaughtered; three, not four, Americans of the
Cusi
Mining Company had been shot and all cash of the Company taken; cleaning the town of horses and young men, the Villistas had moved on south and west, it was said, to
Ojos Azules
, and were either there or not there now. The woman, Geary, took no sides in the Revolution, supplying food and forage to Federales and bandits alike, even quartering Villa himself on one occasion, which was how the property remained fat and unseized. The lieutenant of Federales thought the ranch was at least three leagues, or nine miles, distant. He believed there was a trail which, near the ranch, became a road.

Provisional Squadron resumed the march. As the night lengthened the stars receded, so that there was little light. The cold was now absolute. Men rode stiff and swaying in the saddle, wrapped to the ears in blankets with jaws clamped against teeth-chatter. Frost plumed from nostrils. There was no talk, only the click of hoofs, the squeak of leathers, the tink of bit-rings, the huff of three hundred animals breathing hard. After much time the trail narrowed, climbing higher, winding among the breadloaf hills, and orders passed back to dismount and lead in columns of troopers, or single file. Night march without moon across unfamiliar terrain is the most difficult cavalry maneuver. These men and beasts had had enough. In total dark the trail could not be seen. Over rocks men stumbled, drunk with fatigue, reins grasped in one frozen hand, with the other trying to hold to the tail of the horse ahead. When grip was broken the file spread out, men at the rear of a platoon lost and cursing until the point halted and the inevitable series of collisions occurred. Mules of the Machine-Gun Troop and the pack train, carrying heavier loads, were so played out and bewildered, a handkerchief having been wound about the clapper of the bell on the white lead horse, ‘Blinky Jim’, that they had to be hauled along. To keep awake was agony. When, each hour, a ten-minute halt was called to breathe the horses, most men sank blanket-wrapped to the ground and slept instantly, holding reins in hands. Those who tried to drink found canteens skim-frozen. Icicles formed in the stubble of the chin. Noses bled freely from height and many men suffered headaches. For those whose faculties were not too numbed to think, discomfort was increased by certainty that this was no more than another wild-goose chase, that they would reach the objective only to learn the Villistas were long gone. For three hours the pace was a forced walk. Finally open ground, high and level, was struck, and word came down the column. They were within a mile of sight of
Ojos Azules
. There would be an hour’s halt to rest and feed again. Fires were permitted. At 03.50 hours there would be an officers’ call.