by Andy Kutler
“As you know, several officers within our squadron resigned earlier this month to return to their homes in the Southern states. Similar resignations have been tendered at Fort Pierce, and I imagine at Army posts all over this country. It is unfortunate. It is unfortunate for our country, and I must admit, unfortunate for me, as I consider most of those men my friends.
“It is still the hope of some, myself included, that armed conflict between the states can be avoided.”
He paused, unintentionally glancing at Cal. “Most believe it is inevitable. It is no secret that many of you enlisted men are considering leaving the regiment to return to your homes as well. However, as we all know, you men do not have a commission to resign. You have an enlistment agreement that each of you signed voluntarily. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that any unauthorized leave of absence will be considered desertion.”
This caused a visceral reaction among the men. Not only was that last word an affront to any self-respecting soldier, but most had assumed that anyone wishing to return to the South would be allowed to leave on their own accord.
“Should there be armed conflict, whether it is rebellion in the eyes of some or another War of Independence in the eyes of others, I am confident that our chain of command will provide proper discharges to those who wish to leave the service of the United States Army. If necessary, I will personally petition Colonel Gaylord, General Cardin, and President Lincoln himself to allow those who wish to leave, to do so honorably.
“But until that time, make no mistake about my intentions. This patrol is a military operation. Any attempted desertion will be answered with swift and appropriate punishment. I will arrest and drag any deserter back to camp for a formal tribunal and court martial.”
He paused, allowing the weight of his words to be absorbed by all while he glanced again at Cal. His expression was blank, his eyes locked straight ahead. But Ethan knew the man too well, could feel his disapproval. He looked at TJ and Whitaker, saw they were each staring at him, less successful in masking the surprise on their faces.
He softened his tone. “We all come from different places, and different cultures. But today, we wear the same uniform and carry the same flag. And we have an obligation to uphold. An obligation to those ranchers and homesteaders out here we are charged with protecting.
“You know them well by now. They have lived for years in defiance of those who wish to sweep them away from this land, persevering through the greatest of adversities. First it was the Navajos, then the Apaches. These families have fought the Indians as courageously as any soldier I have ever known. They have survived thievery, kidnapping and extortion from Mexican outlaws. Not to mention drought and fever, and even typhoid. It is these people that we are obligated to protect. To give our lives for, if necessary.
“You men know how thin this regiment is stretched right now. Four companies responsible for some 100,000 square miles. You know that today we don’t have the numbers to protect all of these people, and you know that if this regiment’s strength is cut by a third, or even a quarter, people out here will die. By the hundreds.
“Duty, men. I know that’s what many of you believe in, more than anything else. I do as well. And that is what this comes down to. I will do mine and all I ask is that each of you does yours.”
Ethan signaled to Cal, who led the other officers and sergeants in re-forming the men into a single column and resuming their southerly course.
The mass of men was considerably quieter now. Conversations were few and mostly hushed as the men contemplated what they had just heard. The only audible noise came from the horses and the jostling of equipment and supplies as the column pressed on.
Ethan and Cal rode alongside each other in silence, a hundred yards ahead of the column with Kirch nearby. It was Cal who finally spoke.
“Your father teach you how to speak like that? You ought to be on a ballot somewhere.”
“I didn’t think you were listening.”
“I didn’t think you knew that many words.” He turned to Ethan. “You understand what would happen here if someone ran and you dragged him back to camp in chains? You would be lighting a very short fuse.”
“Then let’s make sure it doesn’t happen. Look Cal, those weren’t just words. I meant what I said about discharges. It should happen, but back at camp. Properly. Leaving is not their decision to make. Not yet. This is my watch, and I’m responsible for them. When they leave, they will do so with permission and with my support. Are we agreed on that?”
Cal nodded. “We are.” He turned his horse.
“Cal?”
“Yeah?”
Ethan called out to the bugler. “Kirch, give us a minute.”
The boy spurred his horse, riding ahead to where Terrell and Kelsey were leading the column.
“Did I do the right thing there?”
“I’m not the person to be asking that question, Ethan.”
“I’m asking anyway.”
Cal exhaled, considering a response. “I’m not avoiding the question. But how would you answer?”
“I wouldn’t be asking if—”
“I know. But in your gut, what do you think?”
Ethan hesitated. “I think that I’m damned proud of this company and our record. No desertions…the men want to serve under me. Under us. I’m proud of that. I don’t want to see that tarnished. Those who want to leave, their time will come. But until that time, every day that this company remains intact, and whole, is a good day.”
“Then trust your instincts, Ethan. Go with what you believe, and pay no mind to what Calvin Garrity or anyone else out here thinks. That is leadership.”
Ethan looked at Cal thoughtfully. “So you’re still with me?”
Cal smiled at him, tipping his hat. “My dear captain, consider me your guardian angel, perched on your shoulder for eternity.”
The smile was genuine, Ethan was sure of that, and his spirits lifted as he felt the relief wash over him.
“I was hoping,” he said, “for a guardian angel who was prettier and could fill out a dress better.”
Cal grinned and trotted back to his platoon.
CHAPTER 11
“You ride expertly, monsieur.”
It was late afternoon and the sun had begun its ritual descent. The two men were riding well ahead of the column, crossing a stretch of flattened desert that Terrell ventured had once been a water basin of sorts. It was devoid now of any growth, and of all things, the emptiness here reminded Kelsey of the ocean.
He took little solace in the Frenchman’s compliment about his horsemanship, shifting his weight to relieve the aching muscles the ride had called back into action. It had been more than a decade since he was last in a saddle. When Sergeant Walsh had first shown him a horse at the camp stables—Old Abe they called him—he had felt a bit insulted, the animal’s advanced age more appropriate for a rider still in grammar school. Walsh was offering him a broken in, if not broken down mount, the man’s expectations of Kelsey’s riding skills apparent.
Kelsey kept his mouth shut, however, as he took the reins from Walsh, placed a foot in the stirrup and threw his other leg over in a single fluid motion. The feel of the saddle was immediately familiar despite the years of absence, and Kelsey was relieved at how easily the mechanics came back to him. Everything was intuitive. The subtle movements with the reins, pressing his heels into the belly, pulling back with just the right pressure. The ranch hands in Texas had taught him well. The ranch hands who wouldn’t be born for another forty years.
He and Terrell were nearly a mile now out front but they could still see the haze of dust kicked up by the company. Despite their isolation, Terrell seemed surprisingly relaxed, and Kelsey assumed from the man’s nonchalance that there was little danger to the scouts or the column on such open terrain. He said this aloud to Terrell—his first words in nearly two hours—who confirmed his hunch, adding that as they progressed further south, the ground would become incre
asingly elevated and rocky, providing more advantageous conditions for their adversaries.
Terrell asked if he had additional questions but Kelsey just shook his head and the men rode again in silence. Kelsey welcomed the quiet as there had been little time to process his new surroundings and consider the adjustments he would need to make to survive here. His ire toward Leavitt was like a simmering cauldron. He was livid about the man’s deception; the promise of an erased memory was the only reason Kelsey chose this “path” as Leavitt called it. Back on his ship, they would be at war with the Japs for certain, but at least he belonged there.
“You are very quiet for an American.”
A pause. “Don’t have much to say.”
“Ah yes, the memory. Yet you seem to be in deep thought.”
Kelsey finally spoke. “You like riding alone out front? I’ve heard a lot about the Indians. Aren’t we sort of vulnerable up here by ourselves?”
“Au contraire, Monsieur Kelsey. You see, the Navajos, or the Apaches for that matter, have little interest in one or two men. If they seek a fight they will want more than the two of us. They will allow the small fish to pass so the big fish comes closer.”
“Bait,” Kelsey grumbled. “Swell.”
“Mais oui, I like riding alone. It makes a man feel…free. And our responsibility here is very important. We are the Capitaine’s eyes.”
He winked and tapped his temple. “And sometimes his brain.”
“How long you been doing this?”
“I have served under Capitaine Royston for a year now.”
“You like it? I mean, in the cavalry.”
“Dragoons,” Terrell corrected. “This is all very different from my country, monsieur. It is sometimes difficult to think of these Indians as an army. Those are not uniformed soldiers out there. They do not observe the traditional rules of war.”
“Can they fight?”
Terrell smiled knowingly, as if appreciating the question. “Yes, they can fight. You must not mistake their small numbers for weakness. Man for man, they win. That is why we never fight them man to man.”
“Lieutenant Whitaker told me they mostly attack in small numbers. Do we really need a hundred men here?”
“Do you know your Shakespeare, monsieur? ‘In cases of defense, ’tis best to weigh the enemy more mighty than he seems.’”
“You sound like an educated man, Monsieur Terrell.”
Terrell removed his hat and gave Kelsey a small bow. “University of Cambridge. Class of 1851.”
“That would explain your English.” Kelsey raised an eyebrow. “The Brits took French students?”
“My mother was an Englishwoman.”
Kelsey waited for Terrell to continue, but he didn’t.
“So, Shakespeare was talking about defense. Who’s playing defense out here, us or them?”
Terrell chuckled. “Ah, Trooper Kelsey, you have been here only days and your wisdom is already shining through. The answer to that question is, yes.”
Kelsey considered that. “These people out here…working the land. Seems awfully dangerous with the Army so far away. Is it worth the risk?”
“Only they can answer that. For most, this land is the only land they can afford. I believe they accept those risks out here, happily. Mostly, they just wish to be left alone. But there are risks. And if you ever find yourself in a gunfight with these Indians, and especially the Apaches, always make sure you save at least one bullet. You must never allow yourself to be captured alive. We are not on their, how do you say, good side, and they are skilled with their knives. Very skilled. You understand?”
Kelsey nodded. That wasn’t something the ranch hands had taught him.
But he did learn quite a bit out there.
It started when he was just a kid, maybe twelve years old. The Marines weren’t much for overseas deployments back then, but they sure seemed intent on keeping his old man away from California. With his mother working full time at a bank in La Jolla, it was decided that their boy would spend his summers in Texas under the watch of his uncle. That led to a sweltering bus ride each June through some of this same country to the ranch, roughly forty miles south of Lubbock. Kelsey came to love that ranch as a kid, despite the searing heat and dryness of West Texas.
Midway through high school, his father returned from Central America and urged him to stay in La Jolla between semesters to focus on baseball, which Kelsey had lettered in his freshman year, and work with the local college coaches at San Diego State who ran summer clinics on the side. Returning also meant he would be able to help more at home, since his mother’s frequent migraines often left her bedridden and unable to keep a steady job. But baseball would be his ticket to college, insisted his dad, where no Kelsey had ever set foot.
As much as he loved the ranch, he hadn’t argued the point, not that anyone ever argued with Gunnery Sergeant Ray Kelsey.
His additional work on the diamond paid off with a scholarship at UCLA, where he first met Susanna. She was a sophomore when he arrived on campus, more interested in the intellectual upperclassmen than the eighteen-year-old jock who found himself tongued tied as he sat behind her in an English literature class, intoxicated by her Chanel No. 5 perfume. Susanna was pretty and tanned, a beach girl from Santa Barbara with a non-conformist streak that drew a straight-laced son of a Marine gunny like a moth to a flame. Her lack of inhibitions drew him in. They went surfing on their first date, and by the end of that month, they were officially a couple.
He was still the straight-laced son of a Marine gunny though, so his sophomore year he joined the Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps.
Lucy was a surprise, and looking back now, he could see neither of them was ready for parenting. They had little help, as his dad was abroad again and his mom still mostly out of commission. Susanna’s parents were in San Francisco, but because of her strained relationship with her father, Susanna insisted she and Kelsey try and make their own way. They needed income but the economy was still stuck in the mud. And that was when his ROTC instructor made him an offer that, given their predicament, he could not refuse. He walked away from college and baseball, trading the dreams of Malcolm and Ray Kelsey for a naval commission and a steady paycheck from Uncle Sam. It would have been a difficult decision for most anyone. But not anyone who had ever held a newborn baby in their arms.
Which is, of course, how I ended up in the New Mexico desert wearing a cavalry uniform with a Frenchman at my side.
Terrell looked at Kelsey again. “If I may, monsieur, North or South?”
“Huh?”
“Ah, that is right, no memory. Well, very soon I think, you will have to make a choice.” He gestured at Kelsey’s carbine. “The column will soon stop for their supper. Make camp. We practice then, with that. D’accord?”
Kelsey gave him a grateful look. “Oui.”
CHAPTER 12
The company was bedded down for the night, weary after pushing more than thirty miles for the second straight day across the rugged terrain. Ethan had doubled the number of usual pickets, ostensibly because of the escalating risk as they neared the Mexican border. Yet Cal couldn’t help but notice that not a single man assigned sentry duty was a Southerner. He kept that thought to himself.
The air had cooled again by evening and the officers were gathered around a small fire, sipping Tennessee whiskey from tin cups. Peter Kirch was covered head to toe by his blanket, fast asleep as always, his head resting at an unnatural angle atop his saddle.
Tyler Whitaker poked at the fire with a stick. “The day that Gaylord told me they were making me a lieutenant, I thought the man had a case of the crazies. Before that day, I figured I’d put a few years in the Army, maybe make corporal or sergeant. Go back to my daddy’s farm, probably take it over some day. So maybe Thatch ain’t that far off. Maybe he has me pegged right.”
“Like hell, Whit,” said TJ, sitting on his bedroll. “And I don’t care who overheard what. You deserve that commission. You�
�re twice the officer that Rutledge or Harvey was.”
Cal was nodding in agreement until that last shot. “Oh really, Lieutenant? Is that because you believe they were poor officers, or because they were from the Carolinas?”
“No disrespect, Sir, I—”
“Sam Rutledge is a prick,” interrupted Cal, “but that has nothing to do with his ability. Whit inherited a crack platoon, and they’ve been that way since Rutledge knocked them into shape. No offense, Whit.”
“None taken,” Whitaker grinned. “I’m not the one you just called a prick.”
“Tick Harvey let his men drink too much. And he gave them a much longer rope than I would have. But he always had his boys ready to ride and fight when the time came. I agree with you, TJ. Whit deserves that commission and if Thatch had been here longer he would know that, instead of flapping his gums to Hildebrand like he did. But to suggest that Sam and Tick were half the officers Whit is would be—”
“Obviously what TJ meant to say,” interrupted Whitaker, “was that I’m twice the prick and twice the drunk as those two amateurs.”
They all laughed, the tension quickly broken, and Cal caught the look of gratitude TJ gave to Whitaker for his subtle rescue.
The friendship between those two had been a surprise. Whitaker was a humble, even-tempered man who came from a large farming family in rural New Hampshire. As a child, he had been reared to be a planter, not a soldier, but his passion for adventure continued to blossom during his adolescence. Few other than Ethan and Cal were aware that Whitaker could barely read or write, something that had gone largely unnoticed during his seven years in the Army. Or perhaps no one cared, as behind the constant jesting and easy banter with his peers, Cal knew the former sergeant had become a highly intuitive cavalryman.
Cal still hadn’t come to know TJ that well. There was a sometimes awkward gulf between them despite their common West Point background. Cal doubted politics was a factor, as TJ kept his own mostly to himself. Hildebrand had told him once that TJ came from affluence and a military lineage, but beyond that, little was known about him. The young man, as gregarious as he was, didn’t seem to have much interest in talking about himself, especially to Cal. Ethan had taken a liking to him, constantly asking Cal about his development and adjustment to his frontier posting.