A Sinister Splendor

by Mike Blakely

  “War over Oregon is more likely. The Mexicans can be bought. You’ve heard the rumors that Mexico wants to sell her northern frontier.”

  “Bah!” O’Malley exclaimed. “Mexico won’t sell anything without a fight.”

  Riley shook his head. “Mexico is racked with debt. She is more likely to treat with the United States than England. The war will be here, in the north.”

  O’Malley sighed. “If you’re wrong, you’ll end up in Mexico, fighting your fellow Catholic brothers. Don’t rush to enlist, John. Wait and watch things develop.”

  Riley pounded his fist on the bar. “The wheel has been set in motion. I’m damned if I can stop it now. I’ll not miss a chance to take a shot at a redcoat!”

  O’Malley tossed back a shot of potcheen, slammed down his cup, and squared his shoulders to Riley and the whole crowd in his store.

  “Service in the U.S. Army is no stroll across the glade for an Irishman. Here on Mackinac, you lads live on a frontier island where the Americans have not yet learned to hate your guts. You’ve heard of this movement spreading across the states, haven’t you? The so-called nativist movement? It’s anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic, and especially anti-Irish. It’s infected the army, too. You’re likely to be serving under nativist officers who would just as soon give you fifty lashes as return your salute.”

  Riley set his jaw and arched his back. “I survived service in the British Army. The Americans can do no worse.”

  “They’ll march your Irish arse straight to the front lines.”

  “I am well aware of the dangers. I, too, am a danger to any bloody British redcoat within reach of my rifle, my sword, or my bare hands!” He lifted his half-full cup of potcheen, eliciting huzzahs and cheers from his fellow sons of the Emerald Isle.

  Charles O’Malley shook his head and smiled, as if to say he had tried. “You’re a hard man, Riley. I suppose you’ve got reason.” He yanked the jug of homemade whiskey from the arm of a teamster and poured himself another drink.

  SARAH BOWMAN

  Corpus Christi Bay, Texas

  August 15, 1845

  The skiff caught a small wave that lifted it and sped it toward the broad, sandy beachhead off the bow. Sarah Bowman, army laundress, sat at the stern, looking forward, anxious to get her feet on solid earth again.

  The oarsman facing her was a rough frontier sort. He wore a slouched Mexican palm leaf sombrero, tattered clothing, and holey leather shoes. His beard grew long, dark, and unkempt. He rowed much too languidly for Sarah’s approval.

  Ahead, on higher ground above the gentle slope of the beach, she saw rows and rows of tents erected by infantrymen who had arrived before her. Having seen her share of army camps, she guessed that a thousand men had arrived here on the Texas shore. She knew a couple of thousand more were likely to follow. Beyond the tents, she made out a formation of soldiers marching at drill on what must have been designated as a parade ground.

  “Put your back into it, sailor,” she said to the oarsman, the only other soul aboard the small vessel, which was otherwise filled with her laundry cauldrons, cooking vessels, and personal effects.

  “I ain’t no sailor,” the man said. “I just own a boat, that’s all. And I don’t take no orders, especially from no woman.”

  The skiff had stalled in a swell. Facing the man with the oars, she drilled his eyes with hers beneath the ruffles of her bonnet, though she had to blink at the afternoon sun glaring down, glimmering off the waves. She was bigger than the boatman, but then again, Sarah was bigger than most men. Standing just over six feet tall, she weighed 195 pounds, according to the Fairbanks scale she had stepped on a couple of years ago at a cotton gin.

  “Well, ain’t you some kind of Blackbeard,” she said to her shipmate. “Let’s dance.”

  “Huh?”

  She grabbed him by the shirt and, using the rocking of the boat to her advantage, lifted him from his seat amidships.

  “Hey!” he protested, losing hold of his oars.

  Whirling her weight forward in a counterclockwise circle, she deposited the smart-mouthed boat owner where she herself had recently sat at the stern and in turn took his vacated seat between the oarlocks.

  “Now, let me show you how to row a boat, you lazy scalawag.”

  Shocked at his sudden ouster, the deposed captain quickly scanned the beach and looked over his shoulders for other skiffs, hoping no one had seen a woman so easily unseat him aboard his own vessel.

  “Don’t get her turned sidewise or she’ll flip,” he warned, trying to recoup some dignity.

  “Just sit still and watch, Commodore.” She smiled at the befuddled look on his face.

  “I ain’t no commodore.”

  Looking aft now, beyond the boatman and back out to sea, Sarah took in some two dozen dories and skiffs ferrying soldiers and supplies to the beach. Farther out, the smoke plume of a shallow-draft steamer marked the sky—the very vessel that had carried her from the sailing ship, anchored offshore, to Blackbeard’s skiff for her landing.

  Taking hold of the oars, she thought about her voyage, happy to have it nearing an end. After leaving New Orleans, the three-master had sailed for two solid days and nights, beyond sight of land, across water a shade of purplish blue the likes of which Sarah had never seen. Fish with wings would leap amazingly from the prow of the vessel and actually fly farther than a bobwhite quail.

  Many if not most of the soldiers on the sailing ship had become seasick from the first day, vomiting uncontrollably over the gunwales, day and night. Her husband, Sergeant John Bowman, had been one of them. Sarah, somehow unaffected by the rolling and tossing of the ship, had spent hours carrying freshwater to the debilitated men, some of whom slept on the decks, curled up like sick little puppies.

  The oceangoing vessel had anchored in deeper waters, outside the bay, for the pass leading into Corpus Christi Bay was too shallow for big ships. The seasick men were sent ashore first. Sarah’s husband had been too ill to say good-bye to her. Off-loading men, wagons, artillery, weapons, ammunition, tents, tools, and her own laundry cauldrons from the ship to the smaller steamer in roiling seas had been accomplished, in spite of the difficulty and peril, by lowering one load at a time from a boom on the ship to the deck of the steamer. Shifting her goods from the small steamer to Commodore Blackbeard’s skiff had been somewhat easier, in the protected waters of the bay.

  Glad to be looking back on all this, she now gazed beyond the scowl of the boatman and caught sight of the next wave swelling up behind the small craft. She dipped the oars deep and pulled hard, getting a head start on the rising wave curling shoreward. Pulling again, and again, she caught the wave at the moment it broke, sending the skiff skidding up onto the sandy beach, white sea foam frothing her landing like a welcoming carpet.

  “There,” she announced with satisfaction, shipping the oars. “That’s how you beach a skiff, Blackbeard.” She hiked her skirt up and stepped over the starboard gunwale, finally setting foot on terra firma, albeit knee-deep in surf.

  “The name’s Baker, and you caught a lucky wave, that’s all.”

  “My husband always says, ‘Give a man luck, and shit’ll do for brains.’” She trudged out of the bay waters, oddly feeling as if she were still riding on a rocking vessel. Looking between her feet, she saw a perfect sand dollar, which she picked up and studied with a smile.

  “Husband?” Baker said, as if shocked.

  “My husband’s a soldier. Do you know that I make more money than he does, doing laundry and cooking for the officers?”

  “Do tell? I guess that makes him a lucky man. Give a man luck…”

  “And shit’ll do for brains.” She laughed. “You’re all right, Baker. My name’s Sarah, by the way.” She shook his hand.

  “Pleasure,” he growled.

  “Help me unload my things. I want to get my camp set up and wood gathered before dark.”

  “Yes, Your Highness,” he muttered, grabbing a large laundry cauldron and lugging it
out of his skiff.

  “How come you own a rowboat in a place like this?” Sarah asked, carrying a heavy trunk up above the tide as cool water lapped around her ankles.

  “I’m a smuggler,” he announced. “Or was, before I hired on with the army to land men and supplies ashore.”

  Sarah raised her eyebrows with approval. The life of a smuggler somehow appealed to her. “What all do you smuggle?”

  “Tobacco mostly.”

  “To who?”

  “Well, the Mexicans, Your Majesty. Who do you think?”

  “Don’t they grow their own tobacco in Mexico?”

  “Yeah, but the government buys it all and taxes the hell out of it. We smuggle in American tobacco here, at Kinney’s Ranch, and sell it to Mexican mule skinners a lot cheaper than they can buy it from their own government.”

  She added a couple of Dutch ovens to her growing pile of equipage on the beach, watched a brown pelican dive for a fish near the shore. “Well, you’re a damn fine pirate, Mr. Baker. I’m impressed. You know, you ain’t bad lookin’, either, aside from that missin’ tooth. If I wasn’t already married…”

  He looked up at her and chuckled. “Don’t start that kind of talk. My senorita would cut your throat, if she should reach it.”

  “If she couldn’t, she’d have to settle for yours.”

  “That’s what worries me. A man’s got to sleep sometime.”

  She laughed with the boatman and finished unloading her things. By now, a number of soldiers had noticed that a woman had come ashore and were standing at a distance, leering, talking, and laughing. She expected no less. Most of them would recognize her from Fort Jessup or Jefferson Barracks. Sarah tended to stand out in a crowd of men or women or both.

  A gull swept over her head, causing a small crab to scuttle up under her cooking equipage. She scanned the bay, the dunes, the orderly rows of army tents, trying to get her bearings on this unfamiliar shore.

  “How far are we from the Nueces River here, Mr. Baker?”

  “Look here,” he said, taking her by the arm, and pointing to the north. “See that cut around the bluff? That’s Nueces Bay. The Nueces River empties into it. Mind the gators up in there, you hear?”

  She ignored his warning and his rough palm caressing her upper arm through her sleeve of calico. You couldn’t blame a man at this lonely smuggler’s outpost for a little polite groping. “You mean this camp is south of the Nueces?”

  “That we are.”

  “You mean, this is it? This sorry, sunburnt patch of sand and cactus? This is what the Mexicans are willing to face the U.S. Army for?”

  “Loco, ain’t it? They call it no-man’s-land, but seems like every son of a bitch in the world wants it.”

  “Explain something to me, Baker. They say Mexico still claims all of Texas.”

  “Yeah, that’s what they say.”

  “But, at the same time, they say Mexico only claims this strip between the Nueces and Rio Grande.”

  “Yeah, they make that claim, too. The Nueces River was the border between the old states of Tejas and Tamaulipas. So the Mexicans claim it’s always been the southern border of Texas, since the Spanish times.”

  “So what are they claiming? Just the Nueces Strip, or the whole damn state?”

  Baker shrugged. “They make both claims. Whoever the hell ‘they’ are.”

  “How can they claim all of it with one breath and just part of it with the next?”

  “Don’t try to make no sense of it. Nobody’s got control of anything south of the border, wherever the hell the border even is.”

  She turned her face seaward so the wind would blow back the strand of wavy auburn hair that had escaped her bonnet. “Well, if anybody can settle it, Old Rough and Ready is the man for the job.”

  “Who?”

  “General Zachary Taylor, that’s who.”

  “Oh. Well, I wish he’d get on with it so I can get back to the simple life of a smuggler. This army contract is hard work. I’d better get back at it, Your Majesty, Queen Sarah.” He winked at her and flashed his gapped row of crooked teeth.

  “See you around camp, Baker.” She returned his smile.

  After Baker shoved off, she turned and scanned the beach. She saw soldiers swimming naked down the way. Others tried fishing with improvised tackle. She spotted a cluster of strong young men not far away, staring at her as if she were some kind of mermaid washed ashore.

  “Hey, boys!” she yelled, her voice carrying over the Gulf breeze and the rush of the surf. “Don’t just stand there; get your rear ends down here and help a lady ashore!”

  * * *

  By the time the sun stood just above the rim of the high sand bluff to the west, Sarah had located her husband’s regiment—the Seventh Infantry—and had chosen her campsite near the officers’ tents. She had set up her laundry cauldrons and cooking vessels and had cajoled some loitering soldiers into gathering firewood for her.

  She was driving the last of her tent stakes deep into the Corpus Christi sand when she looked up and noticed a rider approaching on a crow-hopping horse. She recognized the horseman as Lieutenant Grant of the Fourth Infantry. She considered him one of the more likable young officers from Jefferson Barracks and had heard a rumor that Grant had become engaged to his best friend’s little sister. This “army of observation,” as President Polk had labeled it, was a close-knit community.

  She admired the way Grant stayed with the Texas mustang, which he must have just purchased and begun to train, judging from the antics of the mount. “Stay with him, Lieutenant!” she cheered, though the horse bucked precariously close to her camp.

  She had noticed, over the months, that young Grant’s health had improved. He had looked like a scarecrow back in Missouri. Then, at Camp Salubrity in Louisiana, he had begun to gain weight and to look more like a man than a gangling boy.

  Grant succeeded in getting the pony stopped without landing on the sand. He loosened his reins to let the beast relax.

  “That’s some nice trick ridin’, Lieutenant!”

  The officer tipped his hat. “Thank you, Mrs.…”

  “Bowman. Sarah Bowman.”

  “Just arriving?”

  “Just this afternoon, sir.”

  “Make sure to check that tent for rattlesnakes before you crawl into it.”

  “Any rattler I catch will make fine stew, sir.”

  He smiled. “No wonder the officers of the Seventh look so well fed.”

  She laughed with him. “Sir, if a lady needed to buy some supplies, where do you think she might find the nearest store?”

  “Ma’am, I am sorry to report to you that there is no marketplace within a hundred and fifty miles of here.” He pointed to some shacks up on the bluff. “The village of Corpus Christi numbers only a hundred souls, and everything edible there has already been purchased. But we have supply wagons coming from Austin soon. And you might ask around about fish or venison to be had.”

  “I will do that, Lieutenant. One more question, if you please, before you get on with your pleasure riding.”

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “Would you be so kind as to direct me to the infirmary? I’ll be needing to look after my husband.”

  He pointed southward. “All the way to the end there, Mrs. Bowman.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  The lieutenant touched the pony’s flanks with spurs and the green mount moved off sideways toward the dunes. Oh, well, she thought, if he got bucked off, at least he’d have soft sand to break his fall.

  Sarah started walking south between the beach and the rows of tents. She noticed her shadow on the smooth, wet sand to her left. It stretched across ten feet of ground, due to the low angle of the sun. She hadn’t seen a mirror in days, but she admired her own hourglass figure moving gracefully over the lightning whelks and patches of seaweed washed ashore. She might be a large woman, but she was all woman, by God. Even now, at thirty-two years old, her figure looked so shapely and lean t
hat a man might think she wore a corset.

  She glanced to her right to see the reddish ember of the sun melting into the bluff. The fife and drum players, up ahead, found a terse ending to their march, and Sarah heard a sergeant shouting orders for the men to form a hollow square from their columns. She stopped to watch the maneuver as the snares resumed the marching beat. Always impressive on any parade ground, the troop movements seemed even more magnificent here on this desolate beach. The companies moved in swinging gates and shifting blocks to form the defensive square. Within a minute, the soldiers stood two ranks deep, shoulder to shoulder, with bayonets jutting outward from the hollow formation.

  The regimental commander yelled an order, dismissing the men on the parade ground. Sarah smiled. She loved military life.

  Then she saw him. General Taylor! Old Rough and Ready himself! Though aging and portly, sitting atop his white horse, he still made her heartbeat quicken. There was something very attractive about a man who wielded that much power. He had been watching the men at drill, and now he was joshing with them as they walked near Old Whitey, his horse.

  Turning her attention back to the beach, Sarah noticed a party of men ahead, lugging a long, rectangular seine net ashore. When they lifted it laboriously above the water, she was astonished to see dozens of fish flopping crazily in the net—each big enough to make a meal for a man. In addition to the larger creatures were hundreds of small baitfish an angler might skewer on a hook.

  “Hey, where’d you boys get that net?” she said, walking past.

  “Bought it in New Orleans,” the man nearest to her said.

  “Them fish for sale?”

  “You can take as many as you want,” the soldier said, smiling.

  “Leave me half a dozen right there and I’ll gather them up on my walk back.”

  The private nodded and politely touched the bill of his campaign cap.

  Striding on down the shoreline, she noticed a few buildings standing up on the bluff to her right, some distance from the houses of Corpus Christi that Lieutenant Grant had pointed out. That must be the place Baker had told her about, she reasoned. Kinney’s Ranch, the smuggling outpost for American tobacco.