‘Haw, there, Bess!’ they heard the driver shout above their heads. ‘Ho, Buck! Whoa, there, you sonsabitches, damn yore stinkin’ hides!’
Anderson’s face changed. He stuck his head out of the window and shouted something up at the driver which Hinckley could not hear. But the tone of Anderson’s voice told him exactly what kind of thing had been said. He let a small grin loose. Telling a stagecoach driver not to cuss was like telling a month-old baby not to cry. He doubted Pete Colfax even knew he’d said anything.
‘Yeeeehaaaaah!’ he heard the driver shout. ‘Haul in there, you mulehead assholes!’ The coach bucked and slowed, slowed some more and then came to a slewing stop. Hinckley felt the thud of boots as Colfax jumped down from the box and jerked open the door of the coach. His face was a white mask of gypsum from which irate eyes glared at Anderson.
‘What the Sam Hill did you yell at me, mister?’ he growled.
‘Ah told you to moderate yoah language!’ Anderson said, with the faintest shade of uncertainty in his voice. ‘There are ladies present, suh!’
Colfax put on a goggle-eyed idiot face. ‘Shee-hit!’ he said. ‘Imagine me not noticin’ that!’ He took off his battered Stetson and made an elaborate bow. ‘Ladies, I humbly kiss yore asses!’
‘Foul-mouthed pig!’ Felicity Osborn snapped, turning away her head in disgust. Anderson’s face was rigid with anger.
‘Out of the way!’ he hissed, pushing Hinckley aside. He got down from the coach and stood facing Colfax, who had a broad grin pasted on his face. His very stance dared the gambler to do something. Colfax was a big man with powerful shoulders. There was a heavy Colt side-hammer pistol in a holster at his right side. Its butt was worn and smooth as if it had seen much use. Hinckley did not fail to notice how Anderson’s eyes flickered towards it and then away. And neither did Colfax.
‘Four-flusher,’ he said conversationally, and turned away to get on with his chores, spitting dispassionately into the dust. d’Arly Anderson’s hand went inside the silk-faced jacket, then froze as a discreet cough broke the silence. Colfax’s guard was climbing down from the box. He held his shotgun casually in his hand and Anderson, seeing that it was fully cocked, stood stock still.
Jesus, Hinckley thought, nobody move! If somebody coughed there’d be a killing. The shotgun guard leaned against the stagecoach, never taking his eyes off Anderson. After what seemed like an eternity Anderson took his hand away from his breast pocket and turned away, pasting contempt on his face. The guard grinned. Anderson had been faced down, and both of them knew it.
Hinckley heaved a sigh of relief, and got out of the coach. He offered his hand to Felicity Osborn, who had stood up. She looked at it as if it were a four-day-old fish, then gingerly took hold of it to step down from the coach. Hinckley then handed down the dumpy duenna.
‘Gracias, señor,’ she said, smiling.
‘De nada,’ Hinckley replied, offering his hand to Maria Gonzales. She had a grin on her face and Hinckley saw she was looking at Anderson.
‘You weren’t offended?’ Hinckley asked as he ambled across to the stage depot at her side.
‘Mr. Hinckley, my father is a soldier,’ she said levelly. He can curse for fifteen minutes and never repeat himself once.’
Pete Colfax heard what she said and guffawed, slapping his thigh.
‘Well, if that don’t beat all!’ he said loudly. ‘Hear that, tinhorn? That’s one up the ass for you!’
The station manager’s fat wife served them tamales and bean soup. There was an olla of water in the middle of the table with a wet cloth over its top.
‘You got any beer, Mama?’ Colfax shouted to the Mexican woman as she bustled back to her kitchen. She shouted something affirmative and came back with a quart jug of beer. Colfax looked at it for a long moment, then picked it up and drained it in one long series of gulps. He put the jug down on the table and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
‘Thanks, Pete,’ the shotgun guard said.
‘Aw, shit, Henry!’ Colfax looked sheepish. ‘Hey, Mama! Mas cervezas, por favor!’
Hinckley eyed the food and then the bar. The station manager was standing behind it and he rubbed his hands as he caught Hinckley’s eye. Hinckley shook his head and took a seat at the table next to Maria Gonzales.
‘Some soup, Mr. Hinckley?’ she asked.
‘Mighty kind of you ma’am,’ he said. ‘Think I’ll stick to the tamales.’ He reached over and put one of the pancakes on his plate. It smelled very strong. He wondered whether it was goat’s meat and decided not to dwell on the thought. Anyway, he was too hungry to care.
‘How long do we stop, Pete?’ he asked the driver.
‘Fifteen minutes,’ Colfax said, around a great mouthful of pancake. The Mexican woman brought two more pitchers of beer.
‘Ees coffee layder,’ she said, shuffling out.
‘Did I hear them call you “Doc”, Mr. Hinckley?’ Maria Gonzales asked, surprising him.
‘I’m not a medical doctor, ma’am,’ he said. ‘I’m a dentist.’
‘How long have you practiced in New Mexico?’
‘Came out here in ’fifty-eight,’ he told her. ‘Remember it as clearly as if it was yesterday. Damned fool that I was, beggin’ your pardon, ladies. I had a good practice up in Atchison, Kansas. Nice little upstairs office with a young lawyer down below. Nice young fellow, name of McShane.’ He shook his head. ‘Funny ain’t it, the names you remember and the ones you forget? Anyways, I joined up with a party heading out to Colorado. Spent every penny we had putting together an outfit to go diggin’ for gold. “Pike’s Peak or Bust”! we painted on the wagon, and busted’s what we was.’ He shook his head again, fondly recollecting youthful folly. ‘I hung out my shingle in Denver awhile, but I never got to like the place overmuch. So I come down to New Mex and set up in Mesilla. Been there ever since. ‘
‘All through the war, suh?’ Anderson asked. The question was loaded; Mesilla had been in Confederate hands for the first year of the war. Anderson’s question was tantamount to asking Hinckley what his sympathies were. Out here, the Civil War had been over since ’sixty-two, although it was still raging in the East. Feelings still ran high, all the same. You cheered the Federal victories, the fall of Atlanta and Savannah, only if you were sure of the company you were in. You rejoiced in the continuing defense of Petersburg only if you knew, for sure, that you were among like-minded secessionists.
‘I was, sir,’ Hinckley said, his chin coming up. ‘I did my best for any man who came to me. Bad teeth owe allegiance to no flag—’
‘Your practice can’t be very large, Mr. Hinckley,’ Maria Gonzales said. ‘There can’t be more than a few hundred Anglos in Mesilla now.’
‘I keep busy enough,’ Hinckley told her. ‘And you know, ma’am, once they get through taming the Apache and the Navajos, the settlers will start to come out here. It’s a good country and there’s plenty of room to grow.’
‘That’s what Jed says,’ she replied, and there was a glow in her eyes that left no doubt about who Jed was.
‘That your fiancé’s name, Jed?’
‘Jedediah Strong,’ she replied.
Felicity Osborn sniffed and drew herself up. It was plain to see that her worst fears had been confirmed. A Mexican marrying a white! No wonder things were going to rack and ruin!
‘You said he’s from Virginia?’ Anderson said. ‘That is also my home.’
In a pig’s ear, Hinckley thought, as Maria nodded confirmation.
‘What line of business is he in, your fiancé?’ the gambler asked.
Hinckley thought she hesitated momentarily before answering, and he wondered why. ‘My fiancé was a soldier,’ she said.
‘After we are married, he plans to study law.’
‘In the East?’ Hinckley asked.
‘I think not,’ she replied. ‘We intend to live in Santa Fé.’
Felicity Osborn sniffed again. You’ll just have to move out, lady, Hinckley thought, g
rinning to himself. The place will just go to hell if the Mexes start marrying white folks.
‘Ah’ve been livin’ in San Antone,’ Anderson said abruptly. Hinckley caught the alarm in Maria Gonzales’ eyes as the gambler spoke. Now what’s wrong there? he wondered.
‘Seems to me Ah’ve heard yoah fiancé’s name before somewhere,’ Anderson went on. ‘Ma’am.’ He said the word a different way and now Hinckley saw color mantle Maria Gonzales’ cheeks. Guilt? he thought. Anger? Shame?
‘Ah,’ she said, softly. ‘I see.’
Anderson let a thin smile touch his face. I’ve got you now, it said. Felicity Osborn was listening intently and trying to look as if she was not. Maria Gonzales gave an almost infinitesimal shrug.
‘My fiancé killed some men in San Antonio,’ she said. ‘That is what this man is alluding to.’
‘No.’ Anderson said, smiling his viper smile. ‘That isn’t it at all. Ma’am.’ He used the word in the same way he had before, like a drunk bargaining with a whore. ‘That ain’t what Ah heard.’
‘And what,’ she asked icily, ‘did you hear?’
‘Ah heard he was a bounty hunter,’ Anderson said. ‘A man who hunts down other men and kills them. For money. Now isn’t that more like the truth of it – ma’am?’
One – The Story of Jedediah Strong
December 1859
‘Only a damned fool would marry a Quaker!’ Jed Strong said angrily. ‘Blast it, Bo, you can’t do it!’
‘I can,’ his brother said. ‘And I’m going to. We’ve had all this out before, Jed. I’ve talked to you, to Pa, to Ruth’s parents. With the whole damned world, it seems to me. Everyone says the same thing. Don’t do it. Well, to hell with the whole damned world. Ruth and I are in love and we want to get married, and that’s an end of it!’
‘That’s a beginning of it, maybe,’ Jed said. ‘But a long, long way from an end. Listen, Bo. You remember when you left the Point? They offered you a commission in the artillery and I told you to turn it down.’
‘That’s right.’
‘So you took it anyway and they posted you to the back of beyond.’
‘Fort Walla Walla is not the back of beyond.’
‘Don’t split hairs. If the Pacific Northwest isn’t the back of beyond, it’ll do till they discover what is.’
‘Maybe Texas,’ Andrew said unrepentantly. ‘Where you’re going.’
‘Don’t change the subject,’ Jed said. He sat forward in his seat, a stocky, strongly-built young man of medium height, with dark hair and dark eyes that flashed now with angry impatience. He was ‘a typical Strong’, everyone said. Andrew was not: taller than Jed, his hair and moustache a sandy, light brown color, he had the hazel eyes of his mother’s family, the Ten Eycks.
‘So you went to the Northwest,’ Jed went on. ‘Did I try to stop you?’
‘Not unless you’d call nagging me non-stop for a month “trying to stop me”,’ Andrew said. He was used to his brother’s vehemence. That was Jed’s way. He tackled things head-on. Once he had made up his mind, Jed gave his problems no further consideration. I wish I could be more like him, Andrew thought, then amended the thought. I wish I could be more like him sometimes.
‘Well,’ Jed said, spreading his hands. ‘You hated it, didn’t you?’
‘Some of it.’
‘Some, all, what’s the difference? You resigned your commission. ‘
‘Yes, Jed,’ Andrew said patiently. ‘But not because I hated the place. I told you at the time.’
‘I know, I know, you hated what the army made you do there,’ Jed said with an impatient gesture. ‘A soldier’s supposed to do his duty, without question.’
‘Blind duty, Jed?’ Andrew shook his head. ‘I couldn’t do that.’
‘All right, all right,’ Jed said. ‘So you’ve got a conscience. You think you were the only one in the army that had?’
‘Jed, you’re missing the point. A man has to follow his own conscience, not other people’s.’
‘Well, you resigned your commission anyway,’ Jed went on. ‘But did I give you a bad time?’
‘You told me I was stupid. But you didn’t give me a bad time, no.’
‘You know I didn’t,’ Jed said. ‘I tried to understand. We all did. Me, Pa, everyone.’
‘Yes, I know,’ Andrew replied. He remembered his father’s reaction when he returned East after his service in the Northwest. He had thought that if anyone might understand his decision, his father was the one. David Strong had firmly rejected the military life right from the start, resigning his commission immediately after his graduation from West Point. He wanted to do only one thing in life: restore the celebrated Strong bloodstock line to its former pre-eminence in horse-breeding circles.
‘And what will you do instead?’ David had asked his son when Andrew told him what had happened. There was an expectant light in his eye, as if he was hoping to hear something that he had been waiting for for a long time.
‘I’ve joined a firm of civil engineers in Washington, Pa,’ Andrew told him. ‘Chalfont, Latimer & Chenies. It’s a good job.’ They always said that to graduate from West Point was a guarantee of an engineer’s job, even if you didn’t go into the army. Many of the young men who had graduated with Andrew in 1857 had since found themselves fine positions in the burgeoning engineering and building industry.
‘Then you decided to be a civil engineer,’ Jed was saying. ‘Didn’t talk it over with anyone, of course. Didn’t ask anybody whether they thought it was a good idea or not. Just went ahead and did it.’
‘I thought about it very carefully, Jed,’ Andrew said. ‘A long time.’
‘And the fact that Pa was hoping you’d help him run the stud made no “never-mind”, did it?’
‘I didn’t realize … until later,’ Andrew said. ‘It didn’t occur to me.’ But it should have, he thought, remembering that look on his father’s face. It should have.
‘Did anybody try to stop you?’ Jed said. ‘Did Pa? Did I?’
‘No.’
‘There then, you see!’ Jed said triumphantly. ‘That proves what I’ve been saying!’
‘Which was what, Jed?’
‘That the family’s never interfered with your decisions.’
‘I never said it had,’ Andrew pointed out. ‘Till now.’
‘Well, Hell, Bo!’ Jed said. ‘You don’t expect us not to make some sort of protest, do you? I mean, after all, you’re planning to marry a Quaker. A Quaker! It just doesn’t make sense.’
‘It does to me,’ said Andrew doggedly.
‘You plan to join them?’ Jed asked. ‘Turn Quaker?’
‘I don’t know. I might.’
‘You’ll have to or they’ll disown her.’
‘No,’ Andrew said. ‘They’re changing all that. Next year Quakers will be allowed to marry out.’
‘I always thought—’
‘What do you know about the Quakers, Jed?’ Andrew interrupted.
‘Not a Hell of a lot.’
‘Then you’re in no position to advise,’ Andrew retorted hotly.
‘Bo, you’re too much of an idealist,’ Jed said. ‘Maybe you’re right, Jed,’ Andrew said. ‘But I know I couldn’t have done what you did at Harper’s Ferry.’
‘We only did what had to be done.’
‘Hang a man for his beliefs?’
‘John Brown was hanged because he tried to start a slave rebellion, Bo!’ Jed said. ‘Because he damn nearly started a civil war!’
‘The way it looks to me, hanging John Brown has made that more likely, not less.’
‘That’s as may be,’ Jed said. It was his turn to be stubborn now. ‘But that’s not my problem. I’m a soldier. I had my orders and I carried them out.’
‘Blind duty, again.’
‘If you like,’ Jed said.
He had been with the hastily assembled military force rushed to the Virginia town of Harper’s Ferry when the news reached Washington that John Brown, the notorio
us Kansas abolitionist, had led a band of insurgents into town and occupied the Federal arsenal there. It was – depending entirely upon whether or not you were pro- or anti-slavery – a magnificent, bold stroke or a doomed gesture of bravado and folly. Either way, the ‘uprising’ had been put down sharply and shortly by a force commanded by Colonel Robert E. Lee and spearheaded by a hundred United States Marines.
Jed had been part of that force and part of the one later moved to Charlestown to forestall any attempt at the last-minute deliverance of ‘Old Osawatomie’. There was none: John Brown had been tried and sentenced to death. They hanged him on the morning of December 2 1859. The furor which had surrounded these events had not died down when Jed received word at Charlestown that his grandfather and namesake, Jedediah Morrison Strong, had died on the same morning as Brown’s execution. He joined his brother in Washington so that they could travel down to Culpeper together to attend the funeral.
As he sat in the swaying carriage of the Alexandria, Orange and Richmond train, he regarded his younger brother with affectionate annoyance. Too damned set in his ways by a long chalk, he thought. A man had to be flexible; take the moment. Andrew had always been the cautious one. They used to go hunting together. When they reached a river, Jed would just throw himself in and start thrashing his way to the other side. Not Andrew. Andrew would walk along the bank, judging the best place to slide into the water, where the current was perhaps not so powerful. By which time Jed would be on the other side hooting with amusement at his brother’s slow progress. If it ever bothered Andrew, he never showed it. Old Slowcoach, Jed had called him affectionately.
‘Well, Jed,’ he heard his brother say. ‘I guess we’re going to have to agree to differ, like always. I need better reasons to kill other human beings than the fact that they’re wrongheaded or misguided. I suppose that’s why I find the Quakers so sympathetic. They will not lift their hands against their fellow man.’
Call to Arms Page 2