by The Perilous Adventures of the Cowboy King- A Novel of Teddy Roosevelt
Colonel Wood and I seized that train. It just happened to be moving in the wrong direction. The engineer was adamant. “This is the coal run.” But we convinced him at pistol point to ride in reverse. I was already half blind from the coal dust on my specs. We were all covered in coal. But we rocked along and arrived at the quay, where the other troopers were already assembled—Shafter’s men and Wheeler’s men in their haversacks. They squinted at us and must have thought that another black regiment had come down to the quays—Buffalo Soldiers.
And we didn’t disillusion them.
A MYSTERIOUS ARMADA HAD materialized off the coast of Cuba, an armada without clear markings that could have sailed from the other end of the world, and Shafter would neither leave the quays nor have his men disembark. He had to be hoisted onto his bright red flagship, the Segurança, with the help of a winch. He sat there in a metal basket, like a bloated sun god, barking orders, while we were condemned to our stinking ship in the still waters of Tampa Bay. Our drinking water soon went sour, and our rations of Army beef rotted as we opened the cans, so we had to survive on hardtack, bitter coffee, and crumbling cubes of sugar.
I managed to smuggle Winters-White on board with his Colt; he and Josephine were the only bits of amusement we had during our “incarceration” on the Yucatán. Our pet cougar was listless without field mice and local tomcats to swipe at with her paw, while mules were dying of thirst in the hold, and they let out long bleats, lamentations that could gnaw at a man’s soul. I did find several gallons of water for them that hadn’t yet gone sour—I had to bribe a grocer onshore.
That ex newsie, Winters-White, performed magic tricks with packs of cards and Rough Rider neckerchiefs he plucked out of his various pockets and sleeves, bewitching us with an arsenal of colors and a cardsharp’s sleight-of-hand. I was one of his victims, discovering an ace of spades behind my left ear, while several troopers endured the crackle of balloons exploding in their trouser pockets. Yet it wasn’t magic that we craved. It was something else—a softness, a solidarity with the regiment, a moment of peace. And our mascot provided all that.
Josephine climbed onto the rail of the main deck, prowling like a queen with golden spots, as she moved with a feline swagger against a startling blue sea. That big cat, I know, shouldn’t have been on board, and the Rough Riders couldn’t have disembarked with their mountain lion. Shafter would have shaved our souls and abandoned us right on the shore. I’d arranged with the captain of the Yucatán to return Josephine to the four Troops we’d left behind in Tampa town. But I sensed that the Rough Riders would need Josephine for the crossing. We were volunteers, yes, a virgin regiment. We’d faced rustlers and Stranglers, but not entire batteries. And the mountain lion made us laugh, as she pawed a particular trooper beside the rail, growled at a seagull, and bumped me with that bullet she had for a head. I nearly tumbled overboard, as I fed her whatever scraps I could find—or steal. We all wanted to ride the trade winds to Cuba, and we were stuck in our berths at Tampa Bay.
When our cooks in their bright middies and waxed mustaches hoarded whatever little we had, trying to fatten their own pockets, I threatened to toss them out of the scullery and have them swab the decks. But they laughed in my face.
“This isn’t your tub, Colonel. You lost your ticket with the Navy, sir. You’re our guest, you and your irregulars. And you have a jaguar on board.”
“Josephine isn’t a jaguar,” I said. “She’s an oversized kitten.”
I could have complained to the captain about these irregular cooks, but they would have been replaced by bigger thieves, so I haggled with them, and they swindled us less.
That mysterious armada spotted off the coast of Cuba turned out to be our own battleships. A novice naval officer hadn’t recognized our colors. It was the usual blindness of war. And we paid a pretty price—six lost days. Still, I rationed well. We had a lick of water every three hours, counting Josephine and the mules.
Shafter, I was quick to ascertain, didn’t have an admiral’s grasp of the sea. He treated our convoy like a caravan that could proceed across some wet Sahara with its own random melody. The cruiser at the head of the pack kept signaling to Shafter’s flagship to tighten its line, but the caravan still moved lazily along at six or seven knots. It was bewildering, you see, as our little armada of battleships, cruisers, and torpedo boats had to escort an invasion fleet of thirty-nine transports that might wander off somewhere into the unknown, at a general’s mad whim. Luckily, the lead cruiser never lost sight of the Segurança’s bright red decks, or we could have ended up in another Caribbean, far, far from Cuba.
The Yucatán, with its enormous hold, was carrying several hundred pounds of nitroglycerin for a newfangled dynamite gun that could hurl explosive charges at the enemy. The pilot on the Matteawan, the ship right in front of us, must have fallen asleep at the wheel. We had to reduce our speed precipitously, or ram into its hull. Our captain stood on the bridge and wailed into his speaking trumpet, “Ahoy, ahoy. You lubbers are putting us all at risk.” We managed to pull away from the Matteawan, or the crates of ammunition in the Yucatán’s bow would have become an inferno, and the flames might have spread from ship to ship with each bite of wind.
BY SOME MIRACLE OF navigation we managed to arrive off Cuba’s southern coast with our full invasion fleet, though my Riders on board the Yucatán lived below in tiny berths akin to animal cages. Their drool had a curious green color. I fed them water out of a jar and dragged one and all up onto the main deck, where they could actually suck some air.
“Ah,” said Sergeant Raddison, “it’s glorious, sir.”
The blue mountains rose right up above the shoreline with a relentless sweep that stole a couple of breaths from a lieutenant colonel who was also a huntsman and an explorer. But I was second in command and had no time to draw sketches of every nick in a mountain. Still, Winters-White could notch that feast in front of our eyes with all the magic of his black pen.
The sea was a burning blue, with the sun reflected in the
water like a tantalizing mask.
We had to land at a dusty little fishing village called Daiquirí, with its rotting port, fifteen miles from Santiago. Our gunboats pounded Daiquirí. The port crumpled up and split like pellets of teeth. I had a solid hour of whistling in my ears, two hours—deafness would soon become a disease in the tropics. There was a smoking black fog from the relentless gunfire, and when the fog lifted, one patch at a time, it was apparent that Daiquirí was gone. Our guns had flattened the entire village; not a house was standing, not a hill. Fragments flew in the air. I followed the twisted rattan of someone’s favorite seat as it was swept up in the hurricane of our cannons. I did not see one corpse floating in the harbor. The villagers must have fled to the mountains before the fusillade and the firestorm began.
Josephine sat between my legs during the destruction of Daiquirí. The cooks promised to feed her on the return trip to Tampa. I parted with her, soldier to soldier. “Goodbye, little girl. I’ll send for you when we seize Santiago.” She wasn’t fooled. The big cat rubbed me with her whiskers and slinked off into the hold.
Whatever horses we had were pitched into the water and expected to swim ashore. I watched several of them drown, cursing the Fifth Corps and its maniacal maneuvers. The horses had been wild with fear after being half starved and living in the dark. I wouldn’t have Little Texas meet a similar fate. I had the sailors on board the Yucatán deliver my prize cowpony—with a white star on his forehead—into the water harnessed to a winch. But something must have gone wrong with the sailors’ boom, and Little Texas hung there in his tangled harness, above the burning blue.
That image of Little Texas hanging in midair went through me like a blinding razor, and I swore at the sailors—the range of my insults astonished me. “You cocksuckers, you spineless sons of bitches, if you hurt my horse, I’ll hang you by your balls ’til they’re hard as hickory nuts.”
The sailors squinted at me. “Yes, Commodore, w
e’ll look after the little dear.”
These sailors managed to untangle Little Texas, release him from his harness, and I watched him plop into the water, break the surface of that blue and silver depth, and bob to Daquirí’s vanished shoreline, while I mimicked every thrust of his flanks, every whip of his mane.
CHAPTER 12
KETTLE HILL
1898
WE HAD OUR DUPLICATES, OUR DOUBLES, REALLY, hawkeyes and cowboy cavaliers who seemed to have their own strange camaraderie. They wore ragged green uniforms—the clothes rotted off your back in the jungle—and were wise enough not to wear hats. Our spotters couldn’t identify such sharpshooters; they hid in the palm trees, nestled there, never moved, and had their Mausers—rifles with smokeless powder that couldn’t be discerned. They communicated by birdcalls. It took me a while to realize that the songs of tropical doves weren’t songs at all, but the musical whisperings of wild men. No one, not even the insurrectos themselves, could figure out where these Spanish cavaliers came from. They didn’t have the funny straw hats with conical crowns that the Spanish regulars wore, together with the pale blue and white uniforms. It was the conical crowns that got many of the regulars killed.
I’d made a fool of myself at first, tripping over the sword between my legs. But I had to learn in the lightning quick of battle, or not learn at all. I rode into danger like some D’Artagnan in white suspenders, a Musketeer with silver-leaf clasps and my blue flannel shirt. The steel spectacles were pinching my nose, and I should have been shot off Little Texas a hundred times, but we took the heights at Las Guásimas, and I’m still here.
Leonard Wood was given his own brigade early on, and command of the Rough Riders devolved upon my shoulders. But after our first charge we had to lay back a little—Shafter must have been planning a long siege of Santiago while he sat on his ass. I established our camp on the side of a hill, with the regimental field hospital in the rear. Still, something deeply vexed me. The faces had been ripped right off our dead, the eyes plucked out of their sockets, and I assumed it was the diabolical work of Spanish cavaliers, who sought to wipe off every trace of their foes. I should have known better—vultures the size of eagles wheeled over our heads, looking for their own special carrion. I couldn’t go on a vulture hunt. Chasing after these buzzards would have revealed our position to the Spanish regulars and those pirates in green uniforms. So we buried the mutilated corpses as quickly as we could. But that had its own risk. Such secretive cowboys weren’t satisfied shooting at soldiers—Rough Riders or regulars. They fired from their jungle posts in the palm trees at our padre in the middle of a funeral service.
As it turned out, the damn burial detail was just as dangerous as leading a charge. The cavaliers preyed on noncombatants. Those human buzzards murdered, wounded, and maimed doctors, mule drivers, and war correspondents—made no difference to them. And they did worse. They shot at child scavengers who collected bloody bandages and other debris. They even shot at nurses of the Army Nurse Corps, who lived in their own little compound. And they seemed to have a special affliction for the Red Cross brassard. Red Cross volunteers had to stop wearing such brassards, or they would have been picked off one by one.
“It just isn’t civilized,” I complained to Sergeant Raddison of Troop H. “Selecting Red Cross armbands as targets.”
“Colonel,” he said, “we ought to shake those bastards right out of their trees.”
He’d been spectacular on our run up that razorback ridge, holding his men to the firing line, with foliage in front of his eyes, yelling like a cowboy from Mulberry Street, driving the Spaniards out of their trenches and rifle pits as if he were still with his bicycle boys. But we weren’t dealing with regulars in conical crowns.
“Sergeant, we can’t shake every tree in the province.”
“Then how shall we dislodge them?”
I had to rely on that poet-correspondent from the World, the ex-newsie, William Winters-White. He’d been on the charge with us, had carried field glasses and a carbine, while all the other correspondents remained at the rear. He’d spotted the conical crowns with his glasses, and led us out of one brutal ambush after another. But his hands were shaking now. The poor fellow could not function without nicotine. And I had to find him contraband tobacco made from dry grass, tea leaves, and manure.
“Will,” I said, “we nearly lost that ridge at Las Guásimas. An invisible enemy is one thing, but someone has to know their antecedents.”
“Capture a general,” he snapped, with his saturnine, tobacco-starved face.
“But the Spanish generals are all in Santiago, sitting in the Governor’s palace.”
He bit into a crumbling cigarette, went off to meet with his confreres in the press, and returned with a sinister smile.
“They’re volunteers—just like you. Vaqueros. Some tended cattle in Morocco and on the Spanish plains. Others are pirates and convicts from the Azores.”
“But why are they here?”
“Ah, Colonel, that remains a mystery.”
Meanwhile, we were near starvation. Shafter had bungled everything. We seemed to have lost touch with the Commissary Department. Nothing arrived from the seacoast, not a single sack of rice or a bag of red beans. We had to plunder what we could from captured Spanish mule trains, and we didn’t capture much. Shafter couldn’t even ride in a sedan chair. His gout grew worse and worse. He lay groaning on a cot at headquarters. He developed a scalp disease in this tropical climate, and his aides and junior commanders had to devote themselves to scratching his head—that’s how he conducted a war. So I borrowed several mules, since most of our mule drivers had disappeared, and started down to the sea on Little Texas, Private Taggart and his ex-Pinkertons as my scouts. The insurrectos were not always reliable; I didn’t want them to steal whatever I might bring back from the coast. And the Vaqueros might come down from their trees and ambush us on El Camino Real, or shoot the eyes out of my head. Taggart, to his credit, did not seem to fear any snipers.
“We can avoid them, Colonel,” he advised.
“How?
“With our noses.”
“But were not bloodhounds, Taggart.”
“Still, they have to defecate from time to time. We will track them by their sweat—and the crap in their green pants. I know what I’m talking about. It’s an old Cherokee trick.”
I suddenly had a little more faith in this professional assassin and his fellow Pinks. I also listened to the birdcalls, and could not discern any signals from tree to tree. Yet I wondered if the Vaqueros had given me a special “pass” to the Commissary Department. We were living carrion to them, a kind of fodder.
Down we went through the foliage, with fronds scratching our faces and an army of red ants at our feet. I even had to climb off my saddle, and coax our mules with a clucking sound. They were restless, ornery beasts, and I didn’t want them to make an idle run and injure themselves. But we arrived in one piece at the commissary near the coast, an abandoned rum distillery with rotting floorboards.
I had to wait in line for an hour to deal with the commissary clerk. He’d established a fiefdom for himself with a mountain of goods guarded by a little corps of factotums. My rank meant nothing to him.
“Colonel,” he said with a sneer, “we don’t deal with irregulars.”
I had to resist the urge to reach across his little booth, pluck him by the ears, and bury him in one of his own pathetic sacks of beans. It would have meant a court-martial. I’d have to stand in front of Shafter, while some poor rascal scratched away at the general’s scalp until his fingers bled. I’d come too far to miss the rest of the show.
“Corporal, you may think whatever you like of me, but my men require seven hundred tins and bags of tobacco and eleven hundred pounds of beans.”
That little potentate sniggered at me and winked at his fellow clerks. “Colonel, you must be blind. Tobacco’s vanished from the market—Bull Durham is scarce as blue jade. And I have no beans for your cowboys.�
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I pointed to all the sacks behind his booth. “But your commissary is full.”
He grabbed a worn bible of regulations from the counter and started to read the rules. “It’s clear as day, sir. According to section C of the codebook, beans and such are strictly for officers and not for volunteers and enlisted men.”
I took off my steel rims and stared right at him. “Then this whole damn commissary is an officer’s club.”
He nodded his head. “That’s the gist of it, sir.”
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll take all the grub you can spare for my officers’ mess—and bags of Bull Durham.”
But I couldn’t daunt him no matter what I said. “Roosevelt, I’d still have to ship your request to Washington—and that would take a week.”
I was prepared to pistol-whip the clerk, no matter what the consequences were. But Taggart leaned over and whispered into the corporal’s collar. That potentate’s eyes lit with palpable terror. He hopped about; he and his fellow clerks provided us with our requisite tobacco and beans, and we loaded the supplies onto the mules. But Taggart was suddenly tight-lipped.
“Trooper,” I finally asked, “how did you get that clerk to go into Ali Baba’s cave?”
“Colonel, he could tell I was a Pink. I told him I would come back and set him on fire with a bottle of kerosene.”
I was bewildered. “But how did you convince him that you’d been with the Pinks?”
“Oh,” he said, with a little wink. “It’s the demeanor we have, sir.”
That bladelike walk of an assassin.
I rode back into the hills with my supplies and my scouts. We had to protect our new treasure of beans and tobacco from red ants and land crabs that were as large as any helmet. Tarantulas whirled in front of our eyes with their porous black capes. I began to worry about the birdcalls—the melodies were a little too detailed. We didn’t find Vaqueros on El Camino Real, but three men stood in our way with repeaters and Rough Rider neckerchiefs they had turned into masks. They pretended to be outlaws, but I could recognize their leader by his bowed legs. He couldn’t really disguise his voice or his cowpuncher’s walk.