Call Down The Hawk

by Richard Folmar

  Beamis uttered a derisive snort, and Captain Earle said grimly, “Commander Waring is our ship’s doctor and will make any physical assessment of Mr. Comfort’s condition that is deemed necessary.”

  Seth glared at the Commandant. The little bastard is stalling. “Forget the processing, Marquez. You have your

  President’s order and that is all you need. It’s unconditional and immediate. Now bring him here now!”

  “I am certain El Presidente did not intend that we ignore established procedure.”

  “Commandant!” Captain Earle snapped. “I strongly urge that you do as Mr. Cane asked and produce Mr. Comfort with the next five minutes or this place will be the scene of an international incident, you won’t like.”

  Colonel Marquez, with flushed face, bristled. “What are you saying?”

  By way of answer, Captain Earle pointed out the window to the large grey dreadnought in the harbor. “Do you see the Michigan out there?”

  Colonel Marquez sneered. “I have been looking at that odious thing for more than a month. So what?”

  “Well, on that odious thing there is a company of very tough marines, armed and standing by to make hash of your rotten little prison. If we don’t leave here in the next 15 minutes with Mr. Comfort, they will be coming hell bent for leather.”

  “Let them come. My brave soldados outnumber them and they are expert shots.”

  “Those marines will be coming only after those big 14 inch guns on the Michigan have reduced this place to rubble.”

  The Commandant paled. “But everyone here will be killed.”

  “Your prisoners in those damned holes ought to be safe enough,”Seth said.

  “And, if not, they would be better off than suffering the rest of their lives in this hell hole, “Beamis added.

  “The target of the guns will not be the cells, but this and surrounding buildings,” Captain Earle said.

  “But what of you and these others?”

  Captain Earle shrugged. “We’ll take our chances, but if unlucky, that is the risk of war”

  The Commandant replied, “You misunderstood me,

  Captain. I never meant to imply we would not release the prisoner. I was just explaining our customary—I see no reason why they can’t be suspended in this special case.” He turned to his lieutenant and snapped an order to bring the Prisoner Comfort up.

  The lieutenant looked hesitant and said in Spanish, “But, what of Major Dominguez?” He wilted under the glare of his Commandant and rendered a half hearted salute and departed with the two soldiers.

  With their departure, everyone stood around tense and silent. Beamis fumbled out his silver pocket watch and absently began to wind its stem. Captain Earle and Commander Waring stood quietly looking out at the two American ships in the harbor. Seth stood stiffly facing the door, his thumbs hooked into his belt. Colonel Marquez stood across the room from the Yankees, nervously puffing on a cigarette, staring apprehensively at the door.

  Ten minutes later the door was pushed open and the lieutenant entered, first looking a question at his commandant. He was followed by the two sweating private soldiers, half carrying, half dragging between them the huge bulk of Hand Otho Comfort, unconscious, battered and bleeding.

  65

  Now THE REASON FOR THE Commandant’s stalling was obvious.

  “My God,” Captain Earle whispered. He motioned Commander Waring forward, “Doctor, quickly!”

  Seth, his face tight with concern, moved swiftly alongside the doctor to the aid of Hand. They both carefully took the big Texan from the grasp of the two soldiers and lowered him upon a straight chair. For a split second they stared at Hand in shock. His face was barely recognizable. The right eye was swollen shut, his nose had been broken, and his slack mouth revealed several front teeth missing. Ugly purple bruises covered almost two thirds of his face.

  Seth looked anxiously at Commander Waring. “What do you think, Doc?” His voice was hoarse with mounting anger.

  The Doctor shook his head in concern. “He has had a brutal beating, with something like a club or steel bar. Can’t tell how bad until I get him back to the ship. Could be a possible concussion but that is not the only thing worrying me. Look at his right arm. It is hanging funny” He ripped the shirt sleeve up and lightly touched the skin and shook his head again. “Without an x-ray I cannot totally assess thedamage, but I’m pretty certain there is a compound fracture above the elbow or the bone has been deliberately crushed. Look at this purple color and swelling from the elbow almost to the shoulder. From the looks of it, I would hazard it has been that way for several days.”

  “We had better get him back to the ship, pronto,” Seth said.

  “Yes, I agree.”

  They tried to ease Hand as gently as possible to his feet again but the Doctor looked at Seth and shook his head.

  “This won’t do.” He said and they lowered him back into the chair.

  Captain Earle said, “Mr. Beamis, are you up to going back to our boat at the landing and ask the petty officer to send back with you four seamen and that stretcher we brought along?”

  “Certainly,” Beamis said and he was out the door.

  Seth whirled on the Commandant. “Marquez, I want an explanation for this,” he said, moving toward the prison official. The Commandant retreated hastily toward the door in alarm, hands held up protectively in front of his face.

  “No, Cane,” the Captain commanded. “We haven’t the time for that. Waring is right. Our main course is to get Comfort back to the ship.”

  Seth hesitated, still glaring at Colonel Marquez.

  “I know how you feel but it won’t help your friend now.”

  Reason reasserted, Seth came back to Hand.

  Colonel Marquez exhaled in relief and pulled his lieutenant just outside the door and whispered in Spanish, “You idiot! Why didn’t you at least clean him up a bit before you brought him here?”

  The lieutenant whined, “There wasn’t no time. That battleship in the harbor was going to blow us up.”

  Marquez sneered at his assistant. “That was a bluff, stupid. It was not the ship but its marines that was the danger.” He nodded toward the two soldiers who had brought the prisoner up and said, “These jibaro peonada we dignify as soldiers would not have stood a chance against those marines.”

  Inside, Hand opened his good eye, and saw Seth. He croaked, “Howdy Pard, bout time you got here,” and passed out again.

  66

  FOR THE NEXT TWO DAYS the Dolphin fought heavy weather and high seas as it headed into the Gulf, its course laid for Hampton Roads. A report on the ship’s wireless disclosed an unseasonable tropical storm of near hurricane strength of 80 miles southeast of Havana, and advised a change of course to New Orleans. The next morning, as the waves grew even more impressive, a subsequent wireless notified them that the storm was now predicted to hit the west coast of Florida as well as Mobile. Captain Earle made a second change of destination to Galveston.

  Seth was unconcerned with the Dolphin’s battle with the rapidly deteriorating weather conditions. His thoughts were of Hand strapped to his metal bunk in the ship’s small infirmary, where he kept slipping in and out of consciousness.

  Dr. Waring explained his condition as a light concussion and that was why they were trying their best to keep Hand awake. He repeated, with a worried shake of his head, the concern he had expressed at the prison, the main problem was with Hand’s mangled right arm.

  On the evening of the third day at sea, Hand was conscious but in severe pain from his arm. Dr. Waring made a decision.

  He nodded for Seth to follow him out of the infirmary into the passageway.

  “Cane, that arm has got to come off. I’ve let it go too long. Thought I could save it but now—”

  Seth felt suddenly s
ick. “Commander, Hand has made his living either as a ranch hand or a lawman. Both jobs essentially require the use of two hands and certainly his right arm It will be the end of his working life, if he loses that arm.”

  The doctor regarded Seth through tired eyes. He spoke low and slowly. “You have been with him constantly. Haven’t you been aware of that offensive smell every time we changed the bandages? That is gangrene, my friend. Why do you think we have not been able to put a cast on it? The straight fact is, it’s either the arm or his life.”

  “Put it that way, Doc., there is no alternative. It’s just damn rotten luck. Somehow I will have to make him see that it has to be done.”

  “No, that is my job. I’ve already ordered Pharmacist Mate Tolliver to get things ready. He will assist. As for your doubt of Mr. Comfort’s ability to adjust to the loss of his arm, I shouldn’t worry too much. I have heard too many vows of not wanting to live after the removal of a limb, by men who later managed somehow to go on working and living.”

  “I want to be there when you do it.”

  Commander Waring shook his head. “I appreciate your loyalty, but no, you can’t be in there. The operating space is barely large enough for me and my assistant, and in these high seas, I don’t need an additional distraction. I’ll let you know directly we are finished.”

  The surgery went faster than Seth anticipated, barely two hours. The doctor came into the passageway where Seth had been pacing, and with a tired affirmative nod, answered Seth’s unspoken anxiety.

  “Hand gives every indication of having come through in fine fashion.”

  “How did he take it when you told him what you were going to do?”

  “He asked what we were doing when we were preparing him, and I just told him that we were going to take his arm off, and why”

  “What did he say?”

  Commander Waring smiled. “He was silent for a few moments while he digested my information, then he said, Shoot Doc, being as how you think it necessary, go ahead and saw that sucker off”

  “Yes, that is Hand for you. Thank you, doctor. Can I see him now?”

  “Give him another eight hours. He’s pretty well doped up with morphine. He doesn’t need company right now, not even yours. But he will need your company when he wakes. The toughest part will come in the next few days.”

  67

  SETH FOUND HAND SITTING up in bed, his muscular upper body nude, except for the bandages on what was left of his right arm. He was wearing an old Stetson the crew of the Dolphin had somehow found for him.

  “Doggone, Hand, I’m sorry as hell about this. It should have been me, not you.”

  “To be honest, Pard, there was a time back there, I wished it had been you. Forget it, you ain’t got no call to feel that way. You want to know something funny? When they captured me, they thought I was you.”

  “Why did they think that?”

  “This kid came to me in the bar and said there was this Captain Nunez in a car outside and he had an urgent message for me from Senator Ernesto Gomez. He called me Senor Cane.”

  “Why didn’t you set him straight?”

  “You weren’t there, so I figured to go along with this Captain Nunez to find out what he wanted. When I went out to the car, I wasn’t thinking too smart, and the first thing I said to this Nunez, was I thought Gomez was either in jail or dead.”

  “Yes,” Seth said. “the only way you could have known that was because we saw him being thrown into that car, that night.”

  “I reckon you’re right, because the first thing this Captain Nunez said was, “Buenas noches, Senor Cane,” and he poked this big gun in my face.”

  Hand described how he was taken to Belem Prison where his hands were bound and he was strapped to a chair in a bare, well lighted room. “Can you reckon who came in then with two tough looking soldiers?”

  “Our old friend, Major Dominguez.”

  “Right on the button. I thought he was going to bust a blood vessel when he saw me in the chair, and not you. He started yelling in Spanish at that Captain Nunez who went about as white as a bed sheet. He turned back to me with a real mean look and started asking questions about what were we doing at El Gallo Rojo that night, who told us to go there, and what did Gomez tell us?”

  “What did you say?”

  “I said that I never heard of that place and who was this Gomez feller? That’s when one of the guards hit me across the mouth with a club. Dominguez called me a liar, and told the guard to hit me again with the club. Then, Dominguez said that he knew you and I had been there and that we had talked with the traitor Gomez.”

  “How did he know we were there? Did Gomez talk before they executed him?”

  Hand looked surprised. “They executed that nice feller? I didn’t know. Naw, he didn’t have to talk, they found the calling card you gave Gomez.”

  “That damn calling card,” Seth said. “I had intended to go back and search his room, when you said that you had found the murdered bar tender, and I forgot to do that. You see, when the Ambassador and I went to see Huerta to demand your release, Dominguez knew we had been to that cantina and demanded to know why we went there. I made up a story about that taxi driver giving us a bum steer as a place to go and see the city’s night life.”

  Hand laughed. “That driver wouldn’t appreciate that. He tried everything to keep us from going there.” Hand then described the long hours of questioning and brutal beatings he had endured from Major Dominguez’s bullies. “That bastard kept demanding what had transpired between us and Gomez. He also wanted to know our real purpose of coming to Mexico and accused us of having connections with the Zapatistas”

  With some hesitancy, Seth asked about San Juan de Ulua. Hand’s face darkened, he shook his head, and said, “Someday, I’ll tell you, but not right now.”

  They sat in awkward silence for awhile, until Hand asked, “Where is this boat going? New Orleans?”

  “No, Galveston. Captain Earle changed direction because of the storm.”

  Hand considered that information for a moment, then said, “Well, I reckon that’s where I’ll get off and head to Brother Coy’s new spread tother side of Pearsal.”

  “Reckon again, Pard. Commander Waring says he’s going to put you in the hospital in Houston for a spell, to see how your—”

  “It’s called a stump.”

  “I know that—to see how it is healing.”

  “Nossir, when we dock this tub, no sawbones is going to slam me into any hospital.”

  “Did I hear you call me a sawbones?” Commander Waring was standing at the entrance to the infirmary. He was accompanied by Pharmacist Mate Tolliver.

  Hand’s embarrassment was evident. “Aw Doc, just shooting my big mouth off. Didn’t mean anything by it. I owe you everything for saving my life.”

  “No offense taken, but Hand, it is important that you spend a few days, well not more than a couple of weeks in thehospital, to see if everything is healing properly and there is no infection.”

  “OK, I’ll play that hand—provided you do one more thing for me.”

  “Sure, if possible.”

  “Can you find me a little snort of real bourbon on this tub?”

  “Mr. Comfort, I have to remind you of two things. First, the Dolphin is a commissioned ship in the United States Navy and it’s worth your life, while on board, to call her a tub. Second, being an American Navy ship of war, liquor is not permitted aboard.”

  “Aw dang—”

  “Having said that, if you play that hand you said you would,” Commander Waring said, with a wink at Seth, “I shouldn’t be surprised that Tolliver might share that half bottle of Old Storm King he is hiding in the overhead over there. Am I correct, Pharmacist Mate?”

  The young sailor colored. “Yes sir. Providing of course, I
should discover a container of that devil’s brew up there”

  68

  “DOGGONE IT!” SETH SAID, GLARING at the torrential downpour turning the brick street in front of the hospital in Houston into a small river. His dark mood mirrored the continuing storm that had harassed the Dolphin all the way into Galveston Bay, making a tricky business of the docking and the subsequent transportation of a feverish Hand on to Houston.

  He used his hand to wipe the steam from the etched glass of the hospital front door, in order to better watch for his cab. The cab company that he had telephoned more than two hours ago for transportation to the Southern Pacific terminal had not been reassuring when he talked to them.

  “We’ll do our best, Mr. Cane, but this rain is messing everything up. Lot of the streets out there are underwater, and we have to take a round about route to get to you”

  For the third time in the last five minutes he looked at his watch. It was a quarter to seven, and the last train to New Orleans was at 7:30 p.m. It was necessary to make that train, if he was going to meet his connection at Jacksonville for the Seaboard Coast line to Washington.

  He was honest enough with himself to realize his angry mood wasn’t entirely the fault of the storm or the cab company.

  Mostly, it was guilt about having to leave Hand, lying under heavy sedation in a hospital bed upstairs, his stump seriously infected. He had to hurry back to Washington. The secretary of state’s telegram was simple and direct. His return was to be immediate, no explanation as to why.

  There was some consolation in the quick answer to his earlier telegram to Coy Comfort, Hand’s oldest brother. Coy wired he and Hand’s younger brother would be arriving tomorrow morning to take charge of matters, and carry his brother back to their ranch, as soon as permitted. Seth had already made arrangements to personally guarantee the medical and hospitalization costs for Hand, since there was no expectation that the Government would pick up such expenses.

  He had just pulled his watch out again to check the time, when he saw the yellow Checker motor cab splash around the corner and head up the brick street to the hospital front door.