by Blake, J
Three made it across to the shallows opposite and one of them might yet have drowned even then except several off the girls came out and helped him to his feet. The other two Yankees were also helped to wade out onto the bank in their dripping pants. They all three looked back at their cheering comrades and waved and hugged naked girls to them and patted the girls’ haunches and buttocks and squeezed their breasts. The girls playfully slapped away their hands and now hurried back into their clothes as the Americans kept at kissing and fondling them the while. The Mexican soldiers laughed and shook the Americans’ hands and patted their backs in the manner of old friends. Again dressed in their loose cotton skirts and lowcut sleeveless blouses the girls put their arms around the necks of the American soldiers and the Americans stroked their hips and all of them walked away laughing together down the street and around a corner and out of sight.
A half-dozen officers now stood in the shallows on this side of the river with pistols in hand and commanded the men away from the bank and back to their units. The soldiers were still dazed and breathless from the spectacle of the Mexican girls and were slow to comply, but they did as they were ordered.
All evening the talk around the campfires was of the wonderful exhibition the girls had put on and of the grand time the three who swam across must be having. Bets were made whether they would return, the odds favoring that they would, because the penalty for desertion was far more severe than for simply being absent without leave to have a good time with a girl.
They were struck that night by a violent storm that jarred them awake in fearful certainty that the camp was under artillery attack, so explosive were the thunderclaps. Lightning lit the night with a ghostly incandescence. The wind shook the trees and tore at the tents and carried some away. The river rushed and swelled and overran its banks. It ripped through the brush and made a mire of the lower reaches of the American camp. The storm raged through the night and finally broke just before dawn. The water receded swiftly and the sun rose red as blood over a landscape sodden and fetid with mud and littered with tents and roof straw and river reeds, with uprooted shrubs and drowned dogs and half-plucked chickens caught on driftwood at the river’s edge.
That afternoon one of the three who’d crossed the river to be with the girls came back, rowed across by a pair of Mexican soldiers with a white flag attached to the muzzle of a rifle. They let him out of the boat in the shallows and quickly rowed back to their own side.
The soldier, Thomson by name, was brighteyed with excitement and told the men who gathered round him on the bank—John and Lucas and Handsome Jack among that avid audience—what a wonderful and generous people the Mexicans were, how religious, how beautiful and affectionate the women, how delicious the food and delightful the music. Thomson said the other two were not coming back. The only reason he himself had returned was that he did not want to break his mother’s heart.
Now a guard detail showed up and the lieutenant in charge placed him under arrest and they took him away. None of them ever saw him again.
The next morning another seven soldiers swam the river, and then five more the day after that. Taylor increased the number of guards along the bank and gave specific orders that nobody was to go in the water except to bathe and then no deeper than his knees. The next day fourteen men swam across. Taylor posted a new directive: Any man seen swimming toward the other side would be warned to turn back and if he did not he would be shot. When one of Taylor’s staff officers pointed out that desertion in peacetime was not a capital offense, Taylor responded gruffly: “Disobeying my orders can damn sure be.”
The following day four men pretending to bathe in the shallows suddenly began swimming hard for the other shore and ignored the American guards’ calls to turn about. In full view of the camp and the Mexicans watching from the other bank the guards opened fire and two of the swimmers spasmed and flailed and bright red billows spread around them in the brown water and they sank from sight. The other two made it across and were hastily hustled away by the Mexican guards.
3
A week after the exhibition at the river, the sergeant of the guard led John and Riley to the smitty’s tent next to the main corral where each was relieved of his ball and chain. As they came out of the tent Riley clicked his heels and John laughed.
That evening dozens of copies of a Mexican handbill were somehow smuggled past the sentries and were soon circulating throughout the camp. They bore the signature of Pedro Ampudia, commanding general of the Mexican Army of the North:
Know ye: that the government of the United States is committing repeated acts of barbarous aggression against the magnanimous Mexican Nation; that the government which exists under “the flag of the stars” is unworthy of the designation of Christian. Recollect now you men born in Great Britain; that the American government looks with coldness upon the powerful flag of St. George, and is provoking to a rupture the warlike people to whom it belongs; President Polk boldly manifests a desire to take possession of Oregon, as he has already done to Texas. Now, then, come with all confidence to the Mexican ranks, and I guarantee to you, upon my honor, good treatment, and that all your expenses shall be defrayed until your arrival in the beautiful capital of Mexico. These words of friendship and honor I offer in Christian brotherhood not only to the good men of Great Britain, but, as well, to all men of Catholic brotherhood presently enslaved in the army of the United States, whatever your nativity, and urge you all to separate yourselves from the Yankees.
“What you make of it, John?” Lucas asked, reading the broadside over one of Riley’s shoulders while John read it over the other.
“The man wants the Brits to quit this army and join his,” John said.
“I know that” Lucas said. “Do ye reckon he means Americans too?”
“It dont say he’d turn a Yankee down,” Riley said. “He’s awful shy, though, aint he, about saying just how much he’ll pay a man to go over?” They all three looked at one another but none said anymore about it.
All over the camp soldiers were ridiculing the handbill, pretending to wipe themselves with it and putting matches to it and pointing at each other and calling, “Catlick slave! Catlick slave!” But some among the Irish were not laughing, nor some of the Germans. They looked at each other and glanced repeatedly across the river. And each look they gave to the other side was longer than the one before.
That night John dreamt he was running hard through a wide marsh and every time he looked back he saw Daddyjack coming behind him at a walk, following a tracking hound on a leash and steadily gaining ground on John. And then it was no longer a hound on the end of the leash but Maggie, fully naked and moving on all fours as smoothly as a hunting dog, her face close to the ground and hard on his scent, leading Daddyjack on a zigzag course but always toward John, always closing the distance though John was running hard and gasping and felt his heart would burst in his chest. Daddyjack was closing the distance and now yelled, “Blood always finds blood! Always!” And now Maggie was upright and laughing, her pretty breasts jiggling as she trotted ahead of Daddyjack on the leash….
And then he was awake, sitting up and gasping and pouring sweat, and Lucas Malone and Jack Riley were sitting up too and staring at him in the moonlit tent and he guessed he must have cried out. But neither said anything to him. After a moment he lay back down and heard them sigh hard and resettle themselves too. And each man of them lay awake late into the night with the rough company of his own thoughts.
4
One afternoon Colonel Truman Cross, the army’s popular quartermaster, went out riding in the chaparral and did not return. There had been reports of Mexican guerrilla bands prowling on the north side of the river and now rumors flew through the camp that they had killed Cross. Some in the local populace told the American authorities that most of these guerrilla troops, whom they called rancheros, were nothing more than savage bandits who had for years terrorized the borderland, gangs of robbers, killers, renegades, rustlers an
d scalphunters. The two most notorious ranchero bands were led by Ramón Falcón and the infamous Antonio Canales, once president of the short-lived and violent República del Rio Grande. Both men were long-time and bitterly despised enemies of Texans. They had been young officers under Santa Ana at the Alamo and had both been at Mier. Each with his own band had raided Texas throughout its ten years as a republic. The locals warned Taylor that in addition to robbing and killing Mexicans as they always had, the rancheros would now also plunder U. S. supply trains and freely murder Americans in the name of defending the fatherland. Testifying to this view of the rancheros as bloody marauders unworthy of military respect were the Texas Rangers now serving with Taylor. Under command of Colonel Samuel Walker they were the first volunteers Old Zack had accepted into his army, and they had countless tales to tell of ranchero barbarities. Those familiar with the Lone Star way of warfare knew that many such tales could be told about the Texans as well. Indeed, Taylor had accepted the Texas volunteers in the belief that the best way to fight a band of savages was with his own band of savages. Still, some who heard the Texans’ stories did not believe the larger portion of them. They attributed the Rangers’ gruesome narrative excesses to their well-known hatred of all things Mexican.
And then the ten-man patrol that had been sent out in search of Colonel Cross came back on five foundered beasts and none of their own good horses. Came back two men per horse and every manjack of them naked and tied belly-down over the animal. Two of the corpses were altogether headless and the rest dripping blood and gore from their scalped crowns and the raw wounds between their legs wherefrom the genitals had been severed. Some bore the detached privates in their mouths and some lacked hands and some had been docked of their ears or noses and some were eyeless. Many of the young Americans who looked upon them had never seen such things before except perhaps in nightmares or in imaginings roused by the vile tales of drunken old Indianfighters. And no man among them did now disbelieve the Texans’ stories of ranchero cruelty.
Shortly afterward the body of Colonel Cross was found in the chaparral and it too had been mutilated.
The Yankees seethed with yearning for revenge.
5
The first handbill urging Americans to desert was soon followed by others, each more detailed and explicit in its arguments and inducements than the one before. The fliers pointed out that, unlike the U. S., Mexico was a devoutly Catholic country where slavery was outlawed. They asked why Yankee Catholics or any men who truly believed in liberty and justice for all should make war against one another. They argued that the Irish, especially, had stronger bonds with Mexicans in their common religious faith than they did with American Protestant soldiers. They pledged that any Yankee who chose to fight in defense of Mexico and the Holy Mother Church would be well rewarded for his honorable action. They promised an enlistment bonus to every American who joined the Mexican side. They promised that every man would be given a rank commensurate with his training and experience but in no case would he hold a rank lower than that which he had in the American army and in all cases he would be better paid. And they promised land. Every man who came over to the Mexican side would receive a minimum of 200 square acres of arable land with at least another 100 acres added for every year of service.
On a clear evening shortly after the most recent bunch of these leaflets had as mysteriously as always found its way across the river and into the Yankee camp, the three friends sat on the bluff and looked across at the brightly lighted town where a fiesta was taking place. Taylor had now posted sentries every few yards along the bank as much to keep his own soldiers from absconding to the other side as to defend against infiltrators. The guards were under order to shoot any man who set foot in the water.
The sounds of music and laughter carried to them from the fiesta. The aromas of spicy Mexican foods mingled with the ripe smells of the surrounding countryside. Fireflies flared greenly yellow on the soft night air.
Lucas Malone was scooping handfuls of dirt and sifting it through his fingers. His gaze was vague and far away.
“I was talking to this Mexie fellow today over by the corral who everybody thinks is a muleskinner but he’s not,” Riley said, speaking barely above a whisper and looking off across the river. “He’s from the other side, dont you know. Name’s Mauricio. He speaks good English and he’s been talking to lots of the fellas, he has. Other harps mostly, but to the Germans too. Says there’s forty or more of us already over there.”
John looked at him but said nothing. Lucas looked at the dirt slipping through his fingers.
“He says I’d be made an officer,” Riley said, still not looking at them. “Says Ampudia will know me for the soldier I am.”
No one spoke. Then Riley said: “How else are you ever to get that piece of land ye claim to want so dearly?”
Lucas looked at him sharply.
“I dont believe they can lose the war,” Riley said in a whisper. “There’s too many of them. Hell, the country itself will beat this army. Have you seen the maps? It’s all mountains from one end to the other.”
He turned to them now. “It’s not everybody gets a chance for the thing he most wants. It’s the chance for me to be the soldier I am, to have the rank I deserve. You, Lucas Malone, I know what ye want. This is your chance too, it is. And you, Johnny, what is it ye be wanting above all else? Is it your own plot of ground, like Lucas here? I’ve seen the look in your eye when he talks of it, but I’ve never heard ye say.”
John looked from one to the other. What he wanted was unsayable. No way is there for a man to explain what he cannot put in words to himself, what he knows only in the pulsing of his blood. How might he tell that he wanted an end to the dreams of Daddyjack and Maggie? An end to waking in the night with his heart wild in his throat, choking on his own fear, feeling hunted by some dire nemesis drawing closer with every bloody sundown?
“Without a place to call his own,” he said, “a man aint but a feather in the wind, now aint he?”
6
He favored waiting another few days until the moon waned out of sight—or at least until a cloudy night gave them better cover—but Riley and Lucas were set on crossing that very night. And so shortly after midnight they slipped out of the tent and worked their stealthy way through the Cottonwood shadows upriver for a quarter-mile and then scanned the near bank from cover of the trees. They spotted a lone sentry singing softly to himself and strolling in the pale light of the cresent moon blazing brightly in a starry sky. No other guard close by. John attracted his attention by lightly rustling the brush and the guard warily approached with his longarm ready at the hip. As the sentry passed by him Riley stepped out from behind a tree and drove the heel of his riflebutt into the back of his head with a wet crunch. He and Lucas quickly relieved him of his rifle and pouch and the few dollars he had in his pocket and then joined John in the riverbrush. John asked if the sentry was killed and Riley whispered that he was not but he might have a bit of trouble walking a straight line ever again.
They stripped naked and bundled their clothes tightly and tied the bundles to their rifle barrels. They eased down the bank which was steeper here than it was down by the town and pushed through reeds that cut them like little razors and slipped into the moonlit water. The river tasted of mud and rot. They held their rifles and bundles above their heads and swam one-handed but the river was running faster and deeper than they had thought and they found themselves being carried swiftly downstream.
“Christ,” Lucas gasped as he pulled for the other bank, “we’ll be in front of the camp in hardly a damn minute.”
But they were all three strong swimmers and made an angled headway across the river. They were within twenty feet of the opposite bank when a voice cried, “You there! There in the water! Turn back now or we’ll shoot!”
They stroked with furious desperation now, John in the lead as they reached the cattails and a rifle flashed and cracked on the far bank and the ball smacked the wate
r a foot to his right. He wished the moon would die and go dark. His feet now touched a bottom of soft mud and his breath came hard as he grabbed at the cattails to pull himself to the sloping bank. He felt the reeds cutting his hands but did not feel pain. He flung his rifle and bundle up on the high ground as more rifleshots sounded and a ball buzzed past his ear and smacked the mudbank. He heard Lucas Malone grunt and curse softly behind him and he turned and looked but Lucas was not there. But here came Riley drifting fast alongside and John caught hold of the rifle barrel Handsome Jack extended to him and pulled him into the reeds. Riley slung his sopping things up on the bank and scrambled past him up through the cattails and crawled away into the dark.
As he followed Riley up the bank a half-dozen rifles discharged almost simultaneously and he felt a sharp blow to his lower leg and then a burning and he cursed and squirmed his way up through the reeds. He tumbled up on the bank and pushed his rifle and clothes ahead of him as he crawled into the brush and more shots sounded and rounds hissed through the scrub
He lay low in the thick scrub brush and looked to his left and saw the pale naked form of Lucas Malone crawling awkwardly into the darkness of a willow stand.
The shots were hitting scattered now and John knew the sentries had lost sight of them. The shooting continued for another minute before it finally ceased. He stayed put in case the shooters were simply waiting for him to give some sign of his position. His lower leg was throbbing and he felt of his shin and sucked a hissing breath when his fingers found the wound. He did not move from his hiding place for some time and then a passing cloud momentarily dimmed the moon and he crawled out of the brush and across an open stretch of ground and into the trees. And there found Riley dressed and waiting for him. Riley helped him to his feet and John quickly put on his muddy clothes. When he pulled on his left boot a white flare of pain behind his eyes made him momentarily dizzy. As they moved downstream through the shadows he felt the inside of his boot slickening with blood.