by P. J. Keogh
“I don’t know,” Scanlon admitted. “But whatever happens’ll be better than she’d have got from him.”
Lije shrugged. “I guess you’re right.”
He said it, but was not convinced, no more so than was the major. Scanlon had acted in the only way felt possible at the time. As to the girl’s future, he could not claim to know what that may hold. She was part of the jetsam of war, and lay at the mercy of its flotsam. Among that floating scum would be those as bad as the Anglo-speaking legionnaire and others maybe worse.
War! The thought of it gave point to the task they had taken on. If Don Leopoldo’s crazy scheme began to roll, there would be thousands more, on both sides of the border, in the same fix as the girl.
It struck Scanlon, as he urged his mount ahead, that he had not troubled to ask the tabanera’s name. Well, too late now, he thought.
Chapter 22
Oberon Fairchild sat in the deep upholstered leather chair by the window of his study, watching the lights of the Potomac River steamers moving below. A fine French brandy was on a silver tray at his elbow, and a cigar from Havana smoldered in his hand. He had received word from George Chapman that day, word that pleased him. The Coventrian was back in Scranton, about the doing of that which he did best.
By Oberon’s orders, George was moving carefully, since the war in which his guns would sound had not yet been declared.
A smile of self-satisfaction played upon Fairchild’s lips, as his thoughts moved to Sanchez and his madman’s schemes. The Dago was demented. His dream of a reunified homeland no more than fantasy. Didn’t the damn fool realise that Yankee pressure and fear of Prussia had done more than Juarista arms, to chase the French from Mexico?
And he was deluded, believing that Oberon Fairchild, US Congressman from Massachusetts, could be a traitor to the Stars and Stripes. When Sanchez’s warrior-allies donned the paint, they would find the warpath blocked by Scranton’s hardware. And that would be the end of them.
Strange, Oberon reflected, the way that things work out. Sanchez, knowing of the congressman’s anti-war stance, back in ’46, believed him to be a friend of the republic to the south, and had enrolled him in his plot. Well, a man couldn’t but admire the Dago’s memory, even while scoffing at his judgement.
More than twenty years had passed since Oberon suffered public slings and arrows for his opposition to Jimmy Polk’s War. That was fair, he supposed. He had been on the wrong side of the argument, as things turned out. The winning of that war had not enhanced the slave-power, in the way that he and others feared at the time. In fact, the war had hastened its demise.
Better yet, as result of the conflict, the US held a big slice of territory, which, with Sanchez’s inadvertent help, it would soon civilise once and for all. And then would be the time for Uncle Sam to take what he should have seized in ’48—to push on south, and plant Old Glory on the Guatamala line.
In God’s mysterious way, Oberon knew, he was about to be rewarded for what, he had no choice but to admit, was his own bad judgement. Well, it was fitting. Men of principle deserved their just returns. And late was better than never. Oberon savored his brandy and drew deeply on his cigar. Events were moving his way—in Scranton and the southwest both—and he was sure that nothing could go wrong.
Chapter 23
The morning was misty, with cool, damp droplets lying over a line of mountains rising above the high plateau. Through its soothing blanket, the climbing riders felt the Sun’s heat building, and knew the moisture would soon burn away.
At the summit of the trail, they let their horses breathe, as the Sun broke through the mist. Beneath them spread Mexico’s Central Valley. A full day’s ride across, it measured. On its far side, Popocatapetl, dormant but broodingly dangerous, soared three and a half miles into the sky. Closer, a lower mountain rose—perhaps two hundred feet— above the mile-high plain. That would be Chapultapec, Fisher guessed. He had heard long-serving non-coms speak of the storming of it, twenty years ago.
Below them on the flat, la Cuidad de Mejico stood, a sunlit glitter coming from its windows and white buildings. The plain was watery, a basin of marshland dotted with lakes and islands standing in the lakes. Raised causeways lifted roads across this quagmire, providing access to the city’s gates. Lije had heard stirring tales of blue-clad courage and blood expended, in Winfield Scott’s taking of the city. He was soldier enough to see what that had called for, and to wonder at the military incompetence required to have lost the place.
Scanlon pointed. “Down there is where we’ll find Benito Juarez.” He allowed himself a smile.
Careful of their horses’ forelegs, they rode on down the steep trail.
The Palacio Nacional stood in the city’s Gran’ Plaza. The square was alive with people, though this would have been siesta hour in normal times. Scanlon could see that Juarez’s rabble-army and the peasantry that supplied its ranks were still revelling in the glow of victory and celebration of it.
They dismounted. “Best stay by the horses, Lije, ’less you want to walk back to Mora.” Leaving Fisher with the reins, the major strode across to where a sentry stood by the steps to the Palacio.
The man was of the countryside by his look, and barefooted, but he carried an Austrian Mannlicher rifle—one taken from the French—as if accustomed to its use. Its barrel was pointed Scanlon’s way. This fighting peon was serious about his task. “?Quien va?” he challenged.
“Colonel Scanlon, Regimiento Primera de la Brigada Caballeria del Norte,” Scanlon told him. Those had been his rank, regiment, and brigade in Juarez’s army. “Yo quiero parar encontrar el Presidente Juarez.”
The sentry shrugged. “No es posible.” Every hour saw many come, pulling rank and telling stories, making threats and offering bribes. All wanted one thing—to meet with Juarez. His orders were to tell them all the same: “It is not possible.”
Scanlon knew that there was no point in argument with this campesino. “?Donde esta su superior?” he demanded. “?Su capitan?”
“No se.” The sentry shrugged again. This was always the petitioner’s follow-up question. Always the answer was the same. He did not know his captain’s whereabouts. It was standing order to say that. And it was the truth.
Scanlon drew a breath of angered exasperation. He would be damned if he had ridden a thousand miles in nineteen days, to be fazed by this brand of ragged insolence. “!Soldado! No diga me mentiras. Me llamo Colonel Jose Scanlon. Estoy empleado en operaciones especiales por el Presidente Juarez! Encontrare el Presidente ahora! O te tirares!”
The sentry reconsidered, and quickly. He had been told tales of special assignments before. He had been threatened with a firing-squad before. But never with such a ring of truth. “Momento, Senor Colonel,” he said.
He called to another peasant-soldier lounging in the shade of the palacio’s portico. “!Francisco, conducte el colonel al sergento de guardia!”
The lounger came to attention. He ushered Scanlon into the building.
The Irish-Mexican breathed a sigh of relief. Now he would see Juarez.
Later in that hour he made it. It had taken dire threats to the guard-sergeant, and intimidation of three officers of ascending rank, but, at last, he got to Juarez.
Conducted into the President’s office, he smiled, as he saw the Mestizo rising from behind a desk, one crafted, if not for a bigger man, then surely for one of greater pretension. “Buenas tardes, Senor Presidente,” Scanlon said.
Juarez walked around the desk with that awkward gait that was his characteristic. “Jose!” He thrust out his hand. “Jose, I thought that you were dead!” He spoke in English, as was his habit when the opportunity arose, since he valued the practice.
“You damn nearly thought right.” Scanlon took the outstretched hand, his eyes on Juarez’s face. It was his first view in almost a year of the man the peones called ‘el Abogado’—the Lawyer. It had been a year in which much had happened to and for them both.
But Juarez had not chang
ed. He was a small man even by the standards of Mexico where small men abound. He was mostly Indian, and this bloodline was apparent in his features and in the lankness of his black hair, hair streaked with gray now. He wore still the rusty black suit of the rural attorney, which was what his profession had been. He limped, had done so since a childhood illness left him with a withered leg. He was a man it would be easy to walk past on the street, and disregard. He was a man who had inspired a million desemperados to rise up, first against the power of the ricos, and then against the despots of Europe.
To rise against them and to win.
The desperate ones had won—now for the second time—and Juarez was restored by force of arms to the office that was his by right of public approval.
“Sit down, My Friend.” Juarez meant what he said when he used the word ‘Friend.’ Scanlon had come to his colors, almost three years earlier, when Juarista prospects looked less than rosy.
“You need food and drink.” El Abogado put this not as an invitation, but as a legal opinion. His visitor showed all the signs of one who had been too long on the trail.
“I won’t argue there, Senor Presidente. And I’m not the only one. I have a compadre outside who is minding our horses.” Scanlon told of Fisher and of where he could be found.
Juarez went to the door, called out instructions. He came back. “Your horses will be fed and stabled. Your comrade will join us.”
Moments later Fisher appeared, conducted by an officer of colonel’s rank.
The Negro saw the comedy in this, despite the grinding noise his stomach made, as it pressed against his backbone. Juarez’s orders took care of that problem too. Plates of pollo enchilada appeared, with tamales and jugs of rough red wine.
As they ate, Scanlon told of Armandez and his treachery, of his own dead comrades and of the time in Queretara.
“!Madre de Dios” Juarez exclaimed. “Armandez reported that you were ambushed. He said that you had fallen on the field. He claimed to be the sole survivor of the regiment.”
“He was almost that, all right.” Disgust lay heavy on Scanlon’s tone.
“You are certain of the truth of this?” Juarez demanded.
“I got it from a gloating major—one of Maximilian’s troops—who guessed I’d be dead before I told of it.”
Benito shook his head at this. “Armandez! I believed him to be loyal. I thought of him as a comrade.”
The news he had brought had hurt Benito as much as it had shocked him, Scanlon could see, and there was sympathy in his voice, as he said. “I thought that too. We were both fooled, Presidente.”
“Armandez,” Juarez said again. “A traitor—lifted to the rank of general—a rank that would have been yours—for the courage he claimed to have shown. Well, he will pay for his chicanery.”
So, Armandez was a general now. That explained his motive. “With your permission, I will take care of that,” Scanlon said.
“You have it,” Juarez assured him.
Scanlon acknowledged this with gratitude, and went on to tell of Sanchez’s scheme.
Astonishment at what Scanlon had to say brought Juarez to his feet. “He plans a war with the United States? The man is loco! Mad!”
“But we are not.” Scanlon smiled. “And we have the power to stop him and those here in Mexico who are in cahoots with him.”
“Yes. We have that power,” Juarez said.
Chapter 24
General Hernan Armandez was a man of stocky build. Ebony-eyed and mustachioed, he was handsome in a fleshy-faced way. His office was in the presidio at San Luis Potosi. He stood, as Scanlon and Fisher were shown inside. Astonishment transfixed his features, and Scanlon saw the glint of what he knew was fear flicker in his betrayer’s eyes.
The general recovered his balance quickly, as befit a man of power and salted-away wealth, a man who had silk uniforms for each day of the week, and troops available to kill those selected, at his whim. He reached his hand across the desktop. “!Jose, mi amigo! Crei te se muerto.”
Fisher, standing by the major’s side, smiled inwardly. It seemed the whole damn population of Mexico had believed Scanlon to be dead.
“No,” Scanlon said. “Soy vivo.”
I’m alive, you bastard, he thought, but soon, you won’t be. To avoid the hypocrisy of shaking hands, he passed across the letter Sanchez had given to him.
Armandez scanned this, and showed surprise again. “?Trabajes por Don Leopoldo?”
“Si. Esta complicado,” Scanlon was curt. He wanted the long story cut short with this one. “Tambien, mi mision es urgente. Don Leopoldo quiere los carabines, pronto.”
The notion that his paymaster, or one of such, was in a hurry would, the major reckoned, make Armandez move. He judged his man well.
“Los carabines tengen en reserva al almacen Rodriguez a Calle San Clemente,” the traitor said.
Scanlon nodded toward Fisher. “The rifles are in Rodriguez’s warehouse on San Clemente Street.”
The Negro lifted an eyebrow. “Hell! I lived on the Rio Arriba long enough to get that much right, all by my ownself.” He turned to open the door.
Roman Soltero had been an official of police in Tamaulipas. Throwing in his lot with Juarez, he had attained the upper echelons. He was now Provost-General, or equivalent of same, in Juarez’s army. He walked through the door Fisher had opened, an escort guard flanking him. “General Armandez,” he pronounced, “Por orden del Presidented de la Republica de Mejico, usted esta detenido.”
Scanlon did not wait to glory at Armandez’s ashen look, or to listen to his futile protestations. There were rifles to be counted and to be secured.
He and Fisher left the presidio.
Chapter 25
Armandez’s court-martial was held without delay. The chief witness for the prosecution was Scanlon, who told what he knew of the treachery. The list of anti-Juarez conspirators, discovered by Soltero in Armandez’s office-safe, provided nails for the general’s coffin-lid. The letter from Sanchez was the hammer.
The trial being swift and neat, the verdict was inevitable.
Armandez died by firing-squad. As those betrayed ones had. As others would, now Soltero had the list of plotters’ names. Scanlon watched the squad complete its task, not so much for the pleasure of it as from an ill-defined idea of duty to the good men who had been sold-out.
At the end, Armandez went with dignity. In some strange way, Scanlon was glad of that. They had fought side by side, it had to be admitted, before Armandez’s greed for rank and glory reared its head, and stole the man’s honor.
When it was done with, the major and Fisher rode north.
Their journey back was more leisurely than the ride out had been. This was in part because, Sanchez’s plan spiked, the rifles under Juarez’s control, need for haste was no longer. It was also due to what Scanlon knew awaited him at hacienda Sanchez, the showdown he apprehended with dread. Fisher was no more eager than the major. So they spared their horses further hard exertion.
The non-com telegrapher at Fort Stanton came to attention, saluting, as the officer marched in.
Lieutenant Quincey, a New England shavetail, not long graduated from the Hudson’s banks, looked overawed. His return salute was text-book. He stood rigid, as he bellowed, in the way West Point had taught him, “Major Scanlon has a telegraph, top-secret, for General Carson at Fort Garland. Jump to it, Corporal.”
The wireman jumped, holding out his hand for the paper the two-gun major in civilian clothes offered him. The stranger had a battle-hard look, and struck the two-stripe as a good one to walk wide of. When the corporal looked at the tall man’s eyes he read something of the killing those eyes had seen, and knew that his first judgement had been correct.
He sat down at the key and commenced his tapping.
Two hundred miles to the north, Carson read what Fort Garland’s signaller brought to him. What he read took some believing. But it explained a great deal also.
Clumsily, as a man bu
t lately literate will, he wrote out two signals of his own. “Send this reply to Fort Stanton,” he told the signaller, “and this one to Fort Riley, Kansas.”
Then, to the stripe-sleeve in the outer office he called, “Sergeant-Major, request Lieutenant Chavez to report to me.”
Turning from his desk, he walked to the window. His choice of Scanlon had been sound. Soon this Sanchez craziness would be done with.
Chapter 26
James Butler Hickok was a Government man. More than that, he was a legend, one more than ten years in the building. As an eighteen-year-old henchman of Jim Lane, in the bleeding days of Kansas, he had worn a star in free-soil Pocatello. Riding shotgun on a mail-coach through Indian country to Santa Fe, he made news when he bowie-knifed a cinammon bear to death in Raton Pass. Since his showdown with the McCandless gang in Nebraska, he was known as a shootist too. On top of these things was his record in the war. Some allowed—and Hickok did not discourage them—that, but for his scouting mission for Sam Curtis, Van Dorn would have come out on top at the Pea Ridge brawl, in ’62, and taken Missouri for the South.
These days, Hickok was a scout out of Fort Riley, when not fulfilling duty as a US Deputy Marshal. It was in that latter function that he rode into Trinidad, Colorado. The shield pinned to his buckskin shirt-front testified to this.
Tobias Sedgwick stood on his office stoop, his eyebrows rising, as Hickok rode toward him.
He was a tall man was Hickok, and handsome in a flashily flamboyant way. His nose was large and drooped over moustaches that tapered to below his chin. His hair fell to his shoulders from beneath his wide-brimmed hat. His matched six-shot Colt’s Navy .36s were worn cross-draw style. He carried two Colt’s Dragoons in saddle-holsters. A Bowie-knife’s haft protruded from his waistband, and a repeating Henry rode beneath his knee.
Tobias knew Hickok, from his own saddle-pounding days with Jennison, and he knew that none of the man’s armament was carried simply for sake of frontier color.