Hard Country

by Michael McGarrity

  Not all the boys are gonna get to go, and those to be left behind are plenty sorrowful. Tell Cal that George Curry and Albert Fall won’t be going to war leastways in Cuba. But I’m sure they’ll make up for it once they get back home, if Pat Garrett hasn’t already killed Oliver Lee.

  I met up with an old pard who rode for the brand with me in Arizona. Jake is his name, and he was a sailor before he took to being a hand. He’s told me all about going to sea, but since it’s a short trip I’m hoping to do all right.

  It’s possible that our next post office will be Havana, and I’ll write again, if not from there, then from wherever the regiment lands. I am all right and going to war with the best men a fellow could ask to be with in dangerous times. Col. Roosevelt told us he knew of no better men more willing to do their duty.

  Tell Cal that Captain Llewellyn sends his regards. He remembers him most kindly. Ask George to make sure he takes Jefe for a ride once in a while so he doesn’t get fat or ornery while I’m gone.

  Your affectionate husband,

  Patrick Kerney

  He rolled another cigarette and watched the sun dip low on the horizon, turning the shimmering water golden. It was sure pretty enough, but he didn’t like the empty surface of the vast ocean at all.

  * * *

  Rumors of lurking Spanish warships off the Florida coast kept the invasion fleet of warships and transports, loaded with thousands of soldiers and tons of supplies, in port for seven days before sailing. Because of a lack of ships, only the officers’ ponies had been loaded, which meant all the boys would be on foot. Nobody liked the idea of it at all.

  On smelly, hot, overcrowded ships the men sweltered, cursed, and made do without adequate food or water. When the fleet finally weighed anchor, the Rough Riders were about ready to rebel against the generals who bossed the army and the admirals who ran the navy.

  They steamed for six days, and the big, empty ocean didn’t bother Patrick that much, not with thirty-five ships stretched out over the water. At night, the ship’s lights made it look like a town floating on the sea.

  When the fleet raised Santiago, the ships stopped. Ahead, navy picket ships, tiny in the distance against the high mountains of the coast that rose from the water’s edge, blocked the harbor. Set back from the bay with its narrow passage to the sea overlooked by a large castle on a high bluff, Santiago didn’t strike Patrick as a promising place to start a war. His doubts were eased after Captain Llewellyn told the troops the Spanish ships were bottled up inside the bay and the regiment would disembark at a place called Daiquirí, a small mining village down the coast.

  Most of the boys were glad to see land and were eager to shuck the ship. The flotilla steamed a short ways and after warships shelled the village and other settlements close by, the troops went ashore in rowboats that were tossed around in the heavy seas. The officers’ horses brought on the deck jumped off the ship. Most swam to shore, but some drowned out to sea.

  Patrick managed to keep his food down on the boat to shore but felt unsteady for a time after reaching dry land. Jake said it was because of sea legs.

  There were no Spanish to fight in Daiquirí, which was a darn good thing, because getting the camp organized turned into a mess just like in Tampa. This time they set up in a grove of palm trees, with the colored Buffalo Soldiers of the Tenth Cavalry camped next to them.

  In the morning, a trooper from another outfit brought over a mail pouch that had been put on the wrong ship in Tampa. In it was a letter to Patrick from Cal.

  Patrick,

  Emma shared your letter and I read it to George, who is laid up with a bad case of gout these several weeks that has settled in his knee, causing considerable pain. He chuckled at your message to him and it raised his spirits mightily. If he doesn’t improve shortly, I’ll haul him to town and have the doctor look him over.

  With George hobbled up, Emma has pitched right in to help with the ranch and I tell you she has the makings of a hand. That little gal works as hard as any cowboy and shirks from no chore. I swear, taking on a man’s work suits her as she is now as cheerful and lively as she was in the past. I suspect you’ll be greeted by a wife who’s a top hand when you come home. And I can tell you for a fact she is pining for your return.

  Here we’ve got our own war brewing. Oliver Lee and several of his pards have been hiding from Pat Garrett, who put together a posse of Republicans bound to hunt Lee down. Last week, I came upon Lee and Jim Gilliland with Gene Rhodes on Double K land. They said they were just moseying through, but I figure they were scouting hideouts for once the shooting starts.

  I reckon they’re using Gene’s ranch as their headquarters right now.

  I’ll take this letter along with one Emma has written to you to town tomorrow with the hope that you are safe, healthy, and unharmed.

  Your partner,

  Cal

  Patrick put the letter in his pocket, found the trooper who’d brought the mail pouch, and asked if there was another letter for him that might have been misplaced.

  The old boy shook his head. “All that came was in that there pouch,” the trooper replied.

  Patrick returned to his troop, cogitating on the unhappy idea that with George laid up, Cal and Emma were getting along just fine at the Double K without him. He didn’t like it at all but had no time to brood, as the troops were soon assembled and the regiment moved out.

  * * *

  They marched all day and into the night. Patrick was certain his sore feet would give out, but he made it without complaint, although he sure did miss his pony. When they arrived in Siboney, a coastal town abandoned by the Spanish, Captain Llewellyn explained that the troops were now part of the Fifth Corps, with orders to encircle the town of Santiago, twelve miles distant, where the Spanish waited in great numbers.

  “There will be fighting up ahead before we get there, boys,” Llewellyn added, “so eat and rest.”

  They made fires, cooked pork and coffee, and filled their bellies before a tropical storm soaked them for several hours. Jake and Patrick cut huge palm leaves and used them for shelter. When it ended, they dried out as best they could and rested for a time on soggy ground before moving out at first light up a narrow mountain trail surrounded by heavy timber. As they neared the front, the advance guards came under fire.

  Captain Llewellyn soon had the boys in the midst of the fighting, pushing their way through thick jungle against a hidden enemy firing down from several mountain positions. They moved forward under a withering attack from camouflaged soldiers using smokeless powder, with no clear targets to shoot at.

  Clutching their rifles, Patrick and Jake Jacobi plodded through a clearing of chest-high grass with men on their left and right. It was slow going, with everybody ducking for cover as the Spanish poured down fire. Behind them the units had gotten all mixed together during the advance, and troopers and regular soldiers were right on their backs. Men fell and never got up.

  On the far side of the grassy clearing, Patrick and Jake dropped on their bellies, wiggled under wire fences strung in the dense jungle, and worked their way cautiously to a ridge at the foot of a sheer mountain. Bullets clipped the brush around them. On either side, troopers joined the line.

  “Where are those sons o’ bitches so I can shoot them?” Jake griped as he pressed himself to the ground.

  “Damn if I know,” Patrick replied, his chin buried in spongy dirt. Craning his neck, all he could see were trees climbing the steep incline. “Maybe Captain Llewellyn can tell us.”

  Jake looked around. “He ain’t nearby, so I guess we’re on our own.”

  Close to the right, they heard heavy firing from some troopers. Crouching low, they ran under a hail of bullets to join the fray. Through an opening in the jungle they could see a group of men advancing slowly on some red-tiled ranch buildings. They joined up where the troopers had taken cover in thick underbrush to find Colonel Roosevelt in command.

  Roosevelt smiled at them, his teeth flashing.
“Ah, my two New Mexico bronc riders. If you can fight as well as you break horses, we’ll have these rascals whipped in a jiffy.”

  “I’m from the Arizona troop, Colonel,” Jake Jacobi said.

  Roosevelt clamped a hand on Jake’s shoulder. “No matter, my boy; we’re all Americans.”

  A cheer went up from some troops down the line, and Roosevelt sprang to his feet. “I believe Colonel Wood has made his charge. Let’s join in the fight.”

  The troopers rose as one and rushed the buildings. Heavy firing passed over their heads and then abruptly stopped. Out of breath, they reached the buildings, to find two dead Spanish soldiers. The rest had retreated.

  “Well done, men,” Roosevelt boomed delightedly.

  The boys heartily congratulated each other before moving ahead.

  After the shooting stopped for the day, Patrick learned they had fought the first land battle of the war at a place called Las Guasimas. The Rough Riders had eight men killed and thirty-four wounded. In all, sixteen American soldiers had died and fifty-two were wounded.

  The next morning, Patrick and Jake helped bury the dead troopers on a hillside near a big tree with vultures circling overhead. A chaplain read a service, and the men bared their heads, sang “Rock of Ages,” and walked silently back to camp.

  * * *

  The Fifth Corps moved camp several miles to a marsh next to a pleasant stream and awaited orders that didn’t come for five days, making all the boys restless. When the corps finally started marching toward Santiago, the regiment was bunched in the back of a long column of Regular Army soldiers. During the long, hot slog, they waded through streams, plodded through thick jungle, and pushed on until nightfall, when they stopped and slept on open ground with no cover, near an abandoned ranch on a hill.

  Up before dawn, the men ate a quick breakfast and assembled as the sun rose in a clear sky. A battery of field guns arrived, pulled by huge horses. Once the guns were placed and trained on the enemy above, the men were much pleased. They gave a shout when the cannons opened up on the Spanish, filling the sky with great clouds of white smoke.

  A minute or more passed before the Spanish artillery replied and shells started exploding overhead, sending shrapnel into the assembled troops. A piece of shrapnel sliced the skin off a knuckle on Patrick’s left hand, but it hurt no more than a skinned shin. Four men were wounded and one lost a leg.

  Colonel Roosevelt hurried the regiment over the crest of the hill into some thickets and re-formed the columns. When the big guns fell silent, he moved the troops behind Colonel Wood’s brigade down a trail to a ford in the San Juan River. They crossed under heavy rifle fire and passed through a field of smooth, high grass, men pitching forward or sinking out of sight as they got hit.

  They entered a sunken lane, fenced by wire on either side, that led straight up between two hills where the Spanish were entrenched, the Mauser bullets from their rifles whirling and popping in the air. They found cover were they could, but a few of the boys got shot anyway.

  To the right and left of the regiment, soldiers were advancing slowly up the hill with a logjam of men behind them.

  Patrick and Jake were flat on their stomachs ten feet away from the colonel when his orderly collapsed, shot dead.

  Roosevelt called Jake over to him.

  Bent low, Jake moved quickly to Roosevelt’s side.

  “Trooper, find Colonel Wood and ask if we’ve been given permission to advance. Tell him we are being much cut up.”

  “Yes, sir.” Jake stood and pitched forward across Roosevelt’s knees with a bullet through his throat.

  Patrick reached Jake in a single leap and pulled him off the colonel. Blood was pumping from his cut artery. Patrick tried to stem the flow with his hand.

  “It’s no use,” Roosevelt said quietly, his face grim, his leggings covered in Jake’s blood.

  Patrick waited until Jake stopped breathing and closed his eyes. “I’ll carry the message for you, Colonel.”

  “Good lad,” Roosevelt said over the sound of renewed fighting. Down the line another trooper slumped, shot through the mouth. “Be careful, my boy.”

  “Yes, sir,” Patrick replied. He crawled to the end of the trench, bent low, and started running. A bullet caught him in the side, spun him around, and knocked him off his feet. He looked over at the colonel, who waved at him to return to the trench. He shook his head, got up, and started running again, slowed by the pain. The ball had hit bone, probably a rib, and it hurt like the blazes.

  On the other side of the river he came upon a general on horseback and gave him Colonel Roosevelt’s message.

  “He is to advance,” the officer said. “I’ll go to him immediately. Have your wound attended to.”

  Patrick pulled out his shirttail and inspected the wound. It was bleeding, but not badly. He could feel the exit hole in his back, so he knew the bullet had passed through. He wadded his neckerchief against his side, secured it with his belt, and got back to the line in time to join the last contingent of men advancing up the hill.

  He moved slowly, dizzily forward, telling himself not to quit the fight or go yellow. Up ahead he could see Colonel Roosevelt moving back and forth across the line, encouraging the men. He kept ducking bullets even though he knew they had already passed by. Suddenly, he felt faint and crumpled to the ground. The next thing he saw was an officer kneeling next to him.

  “You’ve been nipped in the side,” the officer said as he inspected Patrick’s wound.

  “I know it,” Patrick said. “Anywhere else?”

  “Not that I can tell.” The officer finished dressing the wound. “You’ll live. Let’s get you down the hill.”

  “I can go on,” Patrick said.

  “Not today. You got a bit of a fever.” He called a soldier over as he helped Patrick to his feet. “Take this man to the field hospital.”

  Woozy and wobbly, Patrick made his way slowly down the hill on the soldier’s helpful arm. By the time a surgeon had him stretched out on the ground at the field hospital, he was burning up.

  47

  In early May 1899, ten months after his return from Cuba, Private Patrick Kerney was released from the post hospital at Fort Monroe, Virginia. He’d survived a Spanish bullet, malaria, dysentery, pneumonia, and the hospital at Camp Wikoff on Montauk Point, Long Island, where all the sick and wounded men were first treated upon their arrival home.

  Thousands of men had been hospitalized at the camp. The lucky ones, who were not sick or who had recovered from their wounds, remained quarantined with their units until they mustered out. Most of Patrick’s troop left for home in September. The very ill were sent to civilian and military hospitals for further treatment. Fortunately for Patrick, the doctors and nurses at Fort Monroe had kept him alive through some rough times with fever that often made him senseless. When he wasn’t delirious, unconscious, and racked with pain, he suffered from chills, headaches, vomiting, diarrhea, and a raw, dry cough. There were days he was too weak to move from his bed, and when he did get up, exhaustion quickly overtook him. At times his deliriums took him back to the ranch, except it wasn’t Emma waiting for him at home, but Ida. When he did dream of Emma, she was with Cal, not him.

  As he slowly recovered, the doctors told him he had miraculously survived the most dangerous, potentially life-threatening form of malaria. He believed them. Back in the hospital wards at Camp Wikoff he had seen men as sick or sicker, dying like flies. Thousands had died of the disease, far more than those shot down by Spanish guns. It was a grim business.

  Wearing a brand-spanking-new Rough Riders uniform with almost a year’s pay in his pocket, Patrick left the massive, six-sided stone fortress, which had been built decades before the Civil War. Situated on a point of land at the tip of the ocean, completely surrounded by a moat, Fort Monroe had brought back memories of Yuma Prison. He was glad to be rid of it.

  He bought a train ticket all the way to Engle and sent a telegraph to Ignacio in Tularosa, asking him to let
Emma and Cal know he would be arriving in four days. He’d written home a week before saying he would soon be released and asking that they bring his pony to the station so he could ride home. Now with his energy low again, he wasn’t sure that had been such a good idea.

  In Baltimore, there was a two-hour wait for his train. He passed the time rereading the letters from home he’d received over the months. Cal and Emma had written faithfully, mostly with news of the ranch and doings on the basin.

  George had recovered from gout only to crack his head on a fall from his horse in rough country. He’d healed up nicely under Emma’s care and was back in the saddle. Last summer’s rains had brought more grass back in the high pastures, and a couple of winter storms had put a good mantle of snow on the peaks.

  Patrick had missed both the fall and spring works, but Cal wrote about them in detail, praising Emma’s growing skills as a hand. With her help, the outfit had made enough profit from stock sales in the fall to put a little money in the bank and build a line cabin in the high country. Cal reckoned he’d reached a point where he didn’t need to sleep on the cold, hard ground anymore when he was out tending cattle. The cabin had been supplied with a stove, two cots, firewood, and provisions. Cal figured it would add some years to his life if he could avoid gunfights and accidents.

  With George’s help, Emma had built a chicken coop near the barn and had stocked it with six hens and a rooster. So far, the hens were producing a steady quantity of eggs, much to Cal and George’s delight at breakfast. Within a month of getting the chickens, Emma had shot a coyote and a bobcat trying to raid the henhouse. She wrote that some Troop G boys back in Las Cruces had told her about how Patrick had gotten wounded carrying a message for Colonel Roosevelt, and she was eager to hear all about it when he got home.

  He wondered how long he’d be worthless once he returned to the ranch. He’d lost thirty pounds, was as pale as a banker, and ran out of steam real fast. The doctors had told him getting back to his old self could take a while and he could expect to have relapses that might be mild or severe. But he’d fixed on the notion that no matter how long it took him to get well, he damn sure wasn’t gonna let Emma, Cal, or George coddle him like some invalid. He’d had enough of that in the hospital.