In the Rogue Blood

by Blake, J

  Segal said so many of Old Zack’s troops had made use of the muddy and sluggish river for everything from a horsewash to a laundry to a latrine that the San Juan had quickly become a cesspool, and yet it served for the camp’s drinking and cooking water. Hardly a man in camp was unafflicted by diarrheal distress the soldiers called the “blues.” There was no escaping the stink of shit within five miles of the camp. The most common complaint from Segal’s whores was of men fouling the bed as they humped. Dozens of soldiers were stricken daily by dysentery, yellow fever, measles, typhus, God knew what. The hospital tents were always full and the groaning carried through camp day and night. At every dawn and sundown the dead were taken from the tents and heaped on carts and trundled to the burying ground. Anybody with eyes, Segal said, could see that more troops would die of disease in this forsaken country than would ever be killed at Mexican swordpoint. Except for the two girls who took sick and died, however, the rest of his whores seemed immune to everything save the common venereal afflictions.

  “When General Zack left for Monterrey, we followed along,” Segal said, “and I tell you, once our boys took that town we did a better business than ever.”

  Dominguez watched the whoreman as if he were an enthralling freak of nature on par with a talking dog, but most of the compañeros now paid the gringo little mind, being far more interested in the smiling girls and stepping their horses nearer to them.

  Segal and his party had then tailed Taylor’s army to Saltillo and provided respite to the boys at Buena Vista, then returned to Monterrey in Taylor’s wake. But by now other American whoremen had showed up with their stables and the Mexican clergy were complaining loudly that the Yankee cyprians were a disgrace to their noble city. Because he was trying to maintain cordial relations with the local population Old Zack ordered all the American whores and their mongers out of town. Some of the operations set up in tents just outside the city but Segal had heard that Taylor’s next move would be to Victoria and he wanted his troupe to be among the first to get there. Rather than take the well-traveled Monterrey-San Luis Road down to Salado and then cutting through the pass to Victoria, Segal thought to take a shortcut via Linares and the open country to the south of it. They’d been trudging over that flatland for more than a week when the mule broke its leg not an hour ago. Segal scowled at the crippled animal whose breath was coming hard and whose eyes were white and rolling.

  “Porqué no han matado esa mula?” Dominguez said.

  “Why aint you shot that mule?” Spooner asked the whoreman.

  “We was just talking about doing it, me and the Ethiopian here, when you fellas come along. We was thinking maybe—”

  “Chingados!” Dominguez snarled. He pulled his Colt and shot the mule twice through the head and the whoreman flinched and the horses shied as the dead mule crashed to the ground in its traces and the girls squealed and huddled closer together.

  Dominguez spat and reholstered the pistol. “Dijo que eran ocho,” he said. “Donde están las otras?”

  “You said it was eight of em,” Spooner said to Segal, “but we don’t count but six of the little darlins here.”

  “Two of em took sick just before we left Monterrey this last time,” Segal said, speaking even faster than before. “Worked in that pesthouse of a Camargo camp for weeks and didn’t neither of em even say a-choo and then they both of a sudden turn sick as dogs and been steady puking and shitting and just generally making a smelly awful mess so I put em in the other wagon by theirselfs and let the nigger drive it and hope none the other girls catch it from em. But I swear I’m bout ready to leave them two by the side of the road someplace cause it aint no damn hospital train nor deadcart I’m—”

  “Is any a these sweeties sick?” Spooner asked. He smiled at the girls. They were grinning at the compañeros and letting the wind swirl their skirts up high on their thighs and folding their arms under their breasts to swell them in the low-necked Mexican blouses.

  “These here girls? No sir, nary one,” Segal said. He looked at his girls and then back at Spooner and abruptly smiled as if suddenly suspecting that not only might this proceeding yet be survived, it might even prove profitable. Edward looked on him in wonder. The man’s turn of optimism struck him as lunatic.

  “They’re hardy stock as well as finelookin, these gals,” Segal said, “not a tainted one in the bunch and each of them more fun than—”

  Dominguez put his horse forward and the pony snapped at the whoreman’s face like a mean-tempered dog and Segal’s smile vanished as he fell back. The chief beckoned a tall redhead whom he’d been giving the eye and who had been smiling at him in return. The girl came forward and took his proffered hand and her thighs flashed whitely under her blown skirt as he swung her up behind him on the horse. A look passed between him and Pedro Arria and then Dominguez reined the animal about and hupped it into a canter toward a clump of mesquite some fifty yards away and there he halted and dismounted with the girl and drew her into the sparse chaparral.

  “Yo no soy tan modesto como el jefe,” a compañero named Julio said as he slid out of the saddle, his eyes fixed on a darkhaired vixen who smiled at him and stood her ground as he approached. “Aquí mismo me sirve bien.” He grabbed the girl’s arm and pulled her to him and her smile vanished as he ripped open her blouse to expose her breasts.

  “Hey now, amigo!” the whoreman said. His protest was lost in the compañeros’ cheers. The girl tried to pull away but the bandit twisted her arm and forced her to her knees and held to her with one hand as he unbuttoned his pants with the other. The compañeros laughed and dismounted and started for the other girls who were now all of them big-eyed with fear, their backs against the wagon.

  The whoreman made no move for his pistol but only raised his hands and patted the air and shouted like a carnival barker: “Hold on now, boys, hold on! Let’s do her in a orderly fashion! Just form up a line at the wagon here and all of ye have ye money ready and—”

  Pedro Arria stepped up to him with a wide smile and put a hand on his shoulder in the manner of an old friend. A Green River knife appeared in his other hand and without losing his smile he thrust the blade to the hilt into Segal’s heart and the man was dead even as he fell. The Negro turned and ran and two of the compañeros shot him in the back and the man collapsed with his feet still striving for purchase in the sand for a few seconds more before they stilled.

  The compañeros fell to the girls and there followed carnal riot on that sandblown flatland. They took turns at holding some of the girls down for their fellows who went at them with their pants bunched at their boottops and their buttocks bared to the wind. Dominguez returned with the redhead whose hair was now wild and her mouth bruised and a pair of compañeros quickly set upon her. Most of the whores were acquainted with mean turns of the trade and bore their violation with little outcry. They would all of them survive the brutal visitations of that afternoon although two of the them would take ill and die before summer and one would perish a year later in a San Antonio hotel fire and one would be disfigured by smallpox and spend her remaining days attending in an East Texas pesthouse. The redhead would make her way to Saint Louis and within months enrapture a wealthy silverhaired shoe manufacturer who would die of heart failure while they made love on their wedding night and she would thereafter become a woman of fashion and a patroness of the arts and live a life of sophisticated ease into the next century.

  The wind slowed and then ceased altogether as the compañeros continued to sport with the girls into the late afternoon. But now Edward’s interest waned and he belted up his pants and went to rummage through the lead wagon. He there found a sealed jar of peaches in syrup and just as he opened the jar Spooner came over to join him. They shared the peaches and then went to see what might be found in the other wagon.

  Spooner pushed aside the cover flap and the stench that befell them from the darkness within was a fierce and sickly composite of body wastes and mortifying flesh and it loosened their si
nuses and watered their vision. They fell back from the wagon and hawked and spat and wiped their eyes and nose. “Sweet Mother Mary,” Spooner said. They tied bandannas across their lower faces and again pulled back the flaps and peered over the wagon gate and saw the two girls the whoreman had spoken of.

  They were lying naked on blankets befouled with their wastes. All Edward and Spooner could see of them in the dim light was that one was darkhaired and the other fair. They let down the wagon gate and pulled out the brunette by her heels and Edward felt the stiffness in her heelstrings and knew she was dead even before they saw her distended belly and that her eyes and mouth were full of ants. They gently lowered her to the ground so as not to jar the pent gases from her. Then they brought out the other and saw that she was yet alive.

  She was wasted to skin and bone and crusted with filth. Her eyes were red slits against the light of the late afternoon. Her pale yellow hair was a rank tangle. Edward knelt beside her and saw her eyes move from him to Spooner and then cut back to him. She was breathing through her partly open mouth and showed a chipped front tooth. A white razor scar followed the line of her jaw from ear to chin. Her eyes showed a rim of blue and roamed over his face and her little breasts rose with a deep breath. A small choked sound issued from deep in her throat.

  “I be damn,” Spooner said, looking on her closely. “I believe I know this little thing. Sported with her in a Galveston house about a year ago or I’m a striped-ass ape. I gotta say she looked a sight bettern now. Drank like a fish but a load of fun. Hell, I went to that same house three nights in a row for the pleasure of her. I tell you I knew this gal real good but bedamn if I recall her name.”

  “Margaret,” Edward murmured. And thought: She lied, she lied!

  “No,” Spooner said, staring hard at the wasted girl, “that aint it. Jeannie … Janey … Julie, more like, somethin like that.”

  Goddamn crazy bitch. I knew she lied and she did and oh sweet Jesus look what’s come of it, just look. Because she lied, she lied, she lied….

  Her gaze held on Edward at her side and her eyes glimmered wetly. She made as if she would raise her hand to him but the pain of the effort was evident on her face and she groaned and let a long breath and closed her eyes. Edward clutched her hand and raised it to his lips and held it there.

  “Hey pardner,” Spooner said, puzzled and unsure if he should be amused. “What the hell’s this?”

  Edward did not say anything nor look at him.

  Spooner watched him for a long moment, then said, “Hey, Eddie,” in a different voice. Edward kept his gaze on the girl, kept her hand to his lips. A while later Spooner went away.

  After a time the girl opened her eyes again and looked at him and her hand pressed against his mouth with no more strength than that of a baby bird. She tried to speak but could form only a small rasp. Her breath labored. She worked her blackened tongue over her lips and tried again. “What they … done … to you.” Her eyes brimmed and tears cut thin pale tracks down the sides of her face.

  His throat felt as though hands were seized hard on it. Her face wavered and he brushed at his eyes to clear them. His hand tighted on hers but he immediately eased his hold for fear he’d break the bones of it.

  “Ward,” she rasped. “Ward.” Her fingers applied the barest pressure to his lips and then her eyes again closed.

  He watched the rise and fall of her breasts and would never in the rest of his life remember what he was thinking then or if he was thinking anything at all. The western sky was afire with the remains of the day. Two compañeros came and carried off the other girl. Dominguez appeared in the twilight and sat beside him without speaking. After a time he got up and left.

  Darkness rose over the country. He became vaguely aware of a campfire flaming near the lead wagon and of the movements of shadows and silhouettes. He smelled food and heard low voices and the soft singing of a compañero. Then again came shrieks of women, most now sounding more of pleasure than of pain.

  He wondered if she would open her eyes again. He would not know it in the dark. He thought of fetching a torch to stick in the sand beside her so he could see her face but decided against it because he did not want to be away from her for even a second while she yet lived, nor did he want anyone else to look on her. Because he now could not see if she was breathing he placed his fingers to her parted lips and felt there her vague warm exhalations. He felt her breath become fainter until he felt it barely at all and then he did not feel it but kept his fingers on her lips for a time longer until he felt them cooling and knew she was dead.

  At first light he took off his shirt and covered her nakedness and went to the lead wagon and there found a spade and used it to dig her grave at the foot of a sand rise some fifty yards away. Fredo and Spooner came to ask if they might help but he did not speak nor look at them and they withdrew. When the hole was deep enough to defy the scavengers the sky was burning red over the distant eastern range. He went to the wagon and picked her up and cradled her spare flesh against his chest and breathed deeply the entire mortal truth of her. Then he carried her to the grave and placed her in it and buried her. Then he went about gathering large rocks and when he had covered the grave with them he was done.

  He had thought to ask among the whores what they knew of her, where she’d been and what she’d been doing and what she’d talked of, but then decided it was folly. He had seen what there was to know, seen it in the dying light of the day before, seen it and smelled it and felt it under his fingers and buried it this sunrise. What else was there to know that mattered?

  The whores were standing around the smoky remains of the campfire, dressed now and hugging themselves against the morning chill and all of them watching the compañeros add the wagon mules to their string. Some of the girls asked how they were supposed to get out of there without mules to ride but no man paid them heed.

  None of his fellows questioned him then or later about the girl. Dominguez gave him a shirt to wear and Chucho brought him his saddled horse. He mounted up and looked back once at the cairn he’d erected in that lonely waste and then hupped his mount forward and rode away with his compañeros.

  That night and on many to follow he dreamt of her. Saw her laughing on the porch back home and putting her legs up on the railing and letting him and his brother see up her dress all the way to her cotton under-drawers. She was smiling wickedly and then reaching down and ruffling his brother’s hair with her hand and his brother flushed and quickly ran the back of his hand along the underside of her leg and then snatched his hand away and blushed even more furiously.

  And he dreamt too of Daddyjack, of course. Who pointed at Maggie and grinned at him and cackled, “I tole ye blood always finds blood! I tole ye!”

  24

  They rode the passes up into the Sierras de Tamaulipas and descended the eastern slope on the pine forest switchbacks and debouched onto the tierra caliente of the gulf coast plain. The air turned moistly heavy and smelled of salt and swampland. In the port city of Tampico they saw American soldiers and sailors everywhere who looked with suspicion on them and their half-wild ponies and rank aspects and clattering array of arms but none did confront them. Marimba music plunked and tinkled in every plaza. They entered a restaurant from which their mien and reek drove away a good portion of the patrons. A quartet of nervous policemen came in and sat at a doorside table and watched them noisily gorge on crab legs and shellfish and turtle steaks. When the gang had done with its supper it trooped out with its armament aclatter and hardly a glance at the police who kept their seats. They went to a bagnio overlooking the harbor and they bathed in large tin tubs and every tub was left with a thick and sudsy pink-gray surface of bloody filth. And then they each of them repaired to a room in the company of a girl.

  Edward was attended by a young mestiza who did not seem bothered by his scarred face but she went pale when he exposed his mutilated crown so he put the bandanna back on. Her skin was smooth and honey-colored, her eyes black
as a night of rain. She smelled of damp grass and earth.

  She was astraddle him and working her hips smoothly when a man in the white cotton clothes of a peón crashed through the door and screeched “Puta!” and slashed at her with a machete. He hacked at her upraised arms and at her shoulders and blood flew to the walls and even through the girl’s screams Edward heard the machete striking bone as he struggled to get out from under her and clear of the bed. The blade clove her neck and blood fountained to the ceiling and then Edward was on him and twisting his arm and the machete clattered to the floor. He beat the man to his knees and snatched up the machete and stanced himself to swat off his head but was set upon from behind by several men who wrested the weapon from his grasp and pinioned his arms behind him. A jabbering crowd was now at the door of the tiny room and Dominguez appeared and barked an order and Edward was instantly released.

  Blood dripped from the ceiling and streaked the walls and slicked the floor and soaked the bed where the girl lay nearly decapitated with her dead eyes open wide. The killer was sobbing as he was taken away by policemen. And now Edward learned that the girl was a newcomer to the trade who had been working in the house but a few weeks and the man who killed her was her brother. He had shown up three days ago to take her back to their family’s village in the hills but she’d refused to go. When he tried to drag her out, the house guardian had evicted him bodily. He’d since been drinking in the neighborhood cantinas and holding muttered conversations with himself and seemed at a loss about what to do. Today he’d made up his mind.

  25

  They ascended the Sierra Madre and entered cold blue clouds that made ghost figures of the trees. The trail narrowed as it rose. The steep rock facings were dark and slick. They rode single file with their rifles across their pommels and spoke hardly at all for days, their mounts’ hooves clacking on stone, bits chinking, saddles creaking. Birds whistled and flew from the trees and deer bounded across the trail and small creatures rustled in the brush. The sundown sky looked like marbled, freshly butchered meat. Timber wolves howled like woeful souls.