Purgatory's Shore

by Taylor Anderson

  “Something to remember,” Lewis said lowly, then decided to change the subject as Leonor, Boogerbear, and Varaa-Choon trotted their horses up to join them. As he often did of late, Lewis wondered how he’d never realized Leonor was a woman during the campaign in Northern Mexico, culminating—for him—at Monterrey. He’d only seen what he expected, subconsciously defining what he now saw as a very pretty face as only boyishly handsome. Of course, the intense, even severe expression she almost always wore went a long way to support that delusion. It still disconcerted him. “You were looking at the locals, Mistress Samantha,” he prompted. “What’s your opinion of them?”

  Samantha was grimacing at a procession of captives, still wearing weathered remnants of the grisly paint they’d fought in, being led away by armed Uxmalos and Ocelomeh, but her gaze settled back on the brightly garbed townsfolk still observing the newcomers. Some had gone boldly into the camp, likely to greet returning family members, but most remained respectfully, almost fearfully out of the way, making no effort to cross the defensive perimeter under construction. “They’re a good-looking people,” Samantha acknowledged. “Some of what must be the ‘quality,’ as they deem such things, seem rather soft and puffy”—she smiled—“but that’s probably universal. Otherwise, a large percentage seem strong and hardy, well suited to life on this dreadful, perpetual frontier.” Her eyes flicked mischievously at Lewis. “And don’t tell me you haven’t noticed that their women are quite beautiful—even if their wardrobe does them no justice.”

  Lewis felt his face heat. He had noticed that, of course, as had every man under his command, no doubt. He even somewhat shamefully hoped that might help soften the blow of truth he must reveal.

  Samantha continued, “Still, all I can base an informed opinion on are the ones who joined us at the battle site, and upon the march.”

  Lewis knew she and Angelique, along with Reverend Harkin, had spent quite a lot of time amongst those men.

  “They strike me as an honest, friendly lot, no different from your soldiers.” She frowned slightly. “Aside from a generally shorter stature and darker skin, of course. Somewhat to my surprise, such dissimilarities have passed almost unnoticed thus far. I hope that indifference continues.”

  Varaa spoke up. “I’ve learned a lot about the culture most of your people spring from, and it isn’t so different, deep down, from the Uxmalos. They too have a ‘democracy’ of sorts, with those who support the government through taxes on property or revenue eligible to select their alcaldes.” She grinned. “They can unselect them too.” Then she blinked something else and glanced sharply at Lewis. “And they have what you’d call ‘slave labor,’ though there’s no racial element to it, as seems to be the case where you came from. Only enemies are used so.” She shrugged. “Even then, I can only defend the practice by saying it’s been the way of these people since before they ever came to this world, hundreds of years ago, and I suppose it’s slightly less barbarous than slaughtering their foes to the last woman and child—as you just heard their enemies threaten to do to them.” She looked over at the encampment. “Nor have I seen much friction arise, attributable to Mistress Samantha’s ‘dissimilarities.’ Perhaps, as I’ve said before, it’s because we’ve already fought together. One who is pressed sorely in battle cares little about the appearance of whoever—or whatever—comes to his aid.” Her grin widened. “And after that initial shock—admit it, Captain Lewis, it was amusing!—your people have been amazingly accepting of me. If they can look past my dissimilarities, they can hardly notice those of the Uxmalos!”

  Lewis was nodding. “I hope you’re right,” he said.

  Samantha waved at the watchers. “Back to my point, these city folk appear little different from the Uxmalos we’ve already met.” She became more animated. “And I was extremely impressed by Alcalde Periz and Father Orno! My God, how they stirred their people, and led that detestable Tranquilo into the snare they set for him!”

  “Colonel De Russy acknowledged that was masterfully done,” Lewis agreed. “Periz has certainly prepared his people to embrace the idea of what we’ve proposed, if only out of dire necessity.” He gazed into the camp, the tents and company streets already almost completely established, and saw what looked like a disturbance erupting near where the command tents and colors had been placed. Even as he watched, more men were drawn from what they were doing to see what was happening.

  “Damn,” he muttered, whipping his horse around. “Periz has done his part. I only hope we don’t disintegrate before we do ours!” Jabbing Arete with his blunted spurs, he dashed into the camp, the others close behind.

  CHAPTER 17

  Private Felix Meder of the US Mounted Rifles and Private Elijah Hudgens, R Company, 1st Artillery, were as different as two men can be, yet their shared experience on that first day had made them friends. They even shared a tent. The forty surviving riflemen fit for duty, from both Mary Riggs and Isidra, no longer had an officer, and only their election of a sergeant and two corporals had been confirmed. They were learning their jobs, directing details, and reporting their men’s fitness as best they could, but the Rifles had lost their distinct identity and remained somewhat at loose ends. They had no horses of their own yet and had been used primarily as pickets and security forces, most often for the two artillery batteries on the march. Naturally, they’d more or less attached themselves to those batteries for mess and billeting, and their sergeant looked to Lieutenant Olayne, the acting artillery battalion commander, for guidance.

  With half the guns now positioned around the perimeter of the camp and half held in a central reserve, Meder and Hudgens, and a few others still on light duty, were released to gather firewood for the battery cook. Passing through what was becoming a modest parade ground in front of the command and hospital tents where troops of the 1st US Infantry were rigging large awnings, Hudgens hesitated and started easing wide enough around that they had to duck under ropes and dodge men pounding stakes on the other side of the open area.

  “What’s the matter?” Meder asked.

  “That big bugger there, you see ’im?” He nodded at a tall, black-bearded mountain of a man wearing the three white stripes of an infantry sergeant on his sleeves.

  “Sergeant Hahessy, right? Big fellow,” Meder conceded.

  “Aye, an’ ’e hates me guts.”

  “Why? For what?”

  “No reason.” Hudgens shrugged. “Partly because I’m British an’ he’s Irish. Mainly though, he’s a cruel, heartless bastard, an’ we’ve . . . met before.”

  Mystified, Meder asked no more. It seemed to him that even such long-standing ethnic tensions had eased of late as everyone grappled together to come to grips with their new circumstances. Particularly after the battle on the beach. But he trusted Hudgens’s instincts. They’d almost made it past and would’ve soon blended with other men, busy erecting more shelters or digging fire pits, when Meder glanced back and saw Hahessy slap his own back, grasping for something under the sky-blue shell jacket.

  “Goddamn it!” Hahessy shouted, “I’ve popped a button off me braces!” Turning to peer at the ground, he pointed triumphantly at a spot under the short green stubble of grass. “There’s the little bugger! Fetch it for me, somebody. I’ll be poppin’ the other if I stoop.” When no one rushed to seize the little pewter button, Hahessy’s face clouded and he glared around. His gaze paused on Barca, supervising some cheerful Uxmalos in their effort to arrange De Russy’s things in his tent, but must’ve realized—black or not—pestering the colonel’s servant was a bad idea. His gaze settled on Hudgens who’d turned to watch with Meder, but something he saw in Hudgens’s eyes, and the way he stiffened and clenched his fists, must’ve made him decide a button wasn’t worth a real fight right now, especially with so many watching. Maybe later, his eyes seemed to promise as they moved on. They stopped on the skinny, towheaded Private Cox of the 3rd Pennsylvania, carrying two sloshing b
uckets from a large public water well just outside the east gate. “You there, Hanny Cox,” he growled sarcastically. “Yer a ‘volunteer’ so-jer. Volunteer to take up me button, why don’t you?” He grinned wickedly. “An’ sew it back fer me too!”

  Cox flinched but ignored the big man, whose face went purple with rage. “I’m talkin’ to ye, Private Cox! Insubordination, is it? I’ll have ye flogged!”

  “He’d flog a man over a button?” Meder hissed. Hudgens nodded grimly. Meder realized now, though everyone had been getting along amazingly well, that amity might’ve been artificial and more fragile than it seemed. The relief of being near civilization—of whatever sort—made them feel safer, and the veneer of shared purpose and goodwill might already be cracking under the strain of an ill-defined but ever-present pressure.

  Shaking with fear and fury, Cox set his buckets down and turned to face the now gleefully belligerent infantry sergeant. “M-my name’s Hannibal. Only my f-friends call me ‘Hanny,’ ” he stuttered defiantly.

  “Aye, ye’ve destroyed me now, young Hanny, not to number me amongst yer snivelin’ ‘volunteer’ friends! Now I’ll hear ye volunteer to get me damn button an’ sew it on me backside!” He slapped his back above his rump, where the threads had parted. A few men laughed uneasily, but most, even many of the infantry in Hahessy’s detail, stood stone-faced.

  “I will not,” Cox almost whispered, voice cracking.

  Hahessy rushed him and seized his shoulders, shaking him violently. “Refuse a direct order? I will see ye flogged, by God!”

  Without thinking, Meder burst through the circle quickly forming around the two, plucked up the button, and tried to hand it to the big sergeant. “Here,” he shouted. “Here’s your damn button!”

  Hahessy sneered. “I don’t want it from you. All ye damn riflemen, so high an’ mighty ’cause ye can strike a man down from afar, while us proper so-jers has to get close enough to smell their breakfasts on their nasty breaths an’ poke a bayonet in their guts.” He shook Cox again. “No, this is the one I want, a pansy volunteer—not even a real so-jer a’tall—who defied me order!”

  Hudgens was there now. “That’s a damned black lie! He refused no order; he just wouldn’t volunteer to do somethin’ no real man would stoop to, you filthy, villainous bastard!”

  Hahessy’s eyes flared, and he nodded brusquely. “He wouldn’t be here if he didn’t volunteer—as bloody volunteers so often remind me to prove their temporary courage. I’ll do what I will with him now that he is. An’ I’ll be floggin’ you for insubordination as well, Private Hudgens!”

  “And me?” Meder demanded, flinging the button on the ground and grinding it in the grass and dirt with his heel.

  “Aye!”

  Meder was a regular and had seen his share of capricious discipline, but this was beyond the pale: utterly pointless, mere meanness and wanton cruelty. Something inside him snapped, and without even thinking he whipped his rifle off his shoulder and swung it back to drive the buttplate straight into Hahessy’s leering face. Before he could, someone snatched the weapon from him, almost pulling him over backward. Another man—not as young or large as Hahessy, but with a presence just as powerful, handed the rifle to someone else and shoved his way between Hahessy and Cox.

  “Why, Sergeant McNabb!” Hahessy crooned at the craggy face staring up at him. “Is it yer intention to interfere in me business, then?”

  “Aye. I watched yer heartless, bloody-minded tyranny over yer helpless lads for much of a year at Pensacola an’ New Orleans. There was never any purpose to it then, an’ now there’s even less. Ye’ll finally start tendin’ yer duties like the ‘proper soldier’ ye claim to be, or I’ll break yer jaw for ye. At least I’ll shut yer flappin’ mouth!”

  The mood of the men quickly changed. Before, even the infantrymen were sympathetic to Hahessy’s victims, but now an artilleryman was threatening one of their own.

  Hahessy saw, and realized he had some support. He grinned. “You all heard,” he shouted, then smirked at the smaller man. “Yer soul to the Devil, Sergeant McNabb. Strike me, will ye?” He laughed. “I think n—” His statement ended with a loud crack when McNabb’s scarred, powerful fist slammed upward under the point of his jaw and sent blood and broken teeth spraying in the air. Hahessy’s head whipped back, and he fell like a poleaxed ox.

  “That’s it, then,” roared some of Hahessy’s soldiers as they rushed at McNabb. Meder and Hudgens squared off beside him, and Cox picked up one of the buckets and threw the water at the oncoming men before swinging the bucket and shattering the light wooden staves against the side of a man’s head. Meder and Hudgens joined McNabb in punching and kicking as more men came shouting and surging. Most of the newcomers didn’t even know what started everything, but long-standing rivalries combined with pent-up frustration and fear were enough to ensure that sides were taken without thought. The only confusion stemmed from the unlikely alliance between regular artillery, riflemen, and volunteers. Still, the melee quickly spread. Uxmalos watched in wide-eyed horror as men they’d been among so peacefully suddenly smashed together in battle against themselves, roaring and swinging fists.

  There came the thunder of more running feet and horse hooves as well, then another crack as a shot sounded out. As if by magic, most of the men simply froze in place, some still grappled together, and all looked to see Lewis Cayce furiously whipping his smoking pistol over his head while Arete stomped in a circle, hot gusts blasting from flared nostrils as if the horse was as angry as her master. Captain Anson and Leonor were there, revolvers also raised, and Boogerbear, joined by Sal Hernandez and Alferez Lara, was just behind, as if shielding Varaa and Samantha from the sight of such a scene.

  “Get these men under control, damn you,” Lewis shouted at Lieutenants Olayne and Burton and Captain Beck as they came panting and shouldering their way to the front, followed by NCOs and a handful of troops. “God in heaven!” Lewis roared. “Haven’t we enough troubles without nonsense like this? I’ll instantly know what started this outrageous behavior . . . under the very walls and eyes of the city that welcomed us so handsomely such a short while ago!”

  “It was I, Cap’n Lewis,” growled Sergeant McNabb, nodding at the groggy Hahessy, trying to rise. “I struck the first blow, right enough.”

  “With cause, sir!” Meder blurted at Lewis, to the murmured assent of more than could’ve seen.

  “No cause was worth this, lad,” McNabb whispered gently at the rifleman from between bloody lips. Then he stood at attention and called out loudly, “Cap’n Lewis, beg to report a dispute between regulars an’ volunteers. The usual aggravations, but I take full responsibility for not containin’ it.”

  Hudgens hissed, “But you were defendin’ the bloody volunteers, Sergeant!”

  “Shut yer mouth,” McNabb snapped.

  * * *

  —

  LEWIS HAD WATCHED the exchange, simmering. All this time he’d agonized over how and when to break his news with the least amount of trauma. Now it all seemed so simple. Seeing Private Willis just standing there, he tossed him the empty pistol. “Clean that and reload it,” he said harshly, then called out to the officers, “Assemble the men. All of them. Right here, at once.” He turned in his saddle. “Private . . . Leon, fetch Reverend Harkin and—oh, I see Colonel De Russy and Dr. Newlin are already coming. But do bring Reverend Harkin, if you please.”

  Beck had been on the other side of the camp when the disturbance erupted and still hadn’t caught his breath. “Drummers,” he croaked, “beat assembly! Lieutenant Burton, you have buglers. Have them sound assembly as well.”

  A bugle, quickly repeated by a couple more, blew the general assembly call while an increasing number of drums rattled out the same command. At present there was only one place where such an order might call the men together so all who were able to move, along with many of the Ocelomeh and Uxmalos, rapidly crowd
ed onto the parade ground in front of the headquarters area and among the half-erected tents. Varaa-Choon and Samantha moved to join Lewis and Anson, while Boogerbear, Sal, and Lara spread out a bit among the troops. They were the only ones mounted until Leonor pushed through with a puffing Reverend Harkin perched on her horse’s rump, clinging almost comically to the saddle cantle to avoid laying hands on her. He looked profoundly uncomfortable for more than the obvious reasons, but Leonor must’ve described the situation, because he seemed as furious as Lewis.

  “Should I form the men?” Beck asked.

  Lewis shook his head. “No. I want them all to hear what I have to say, so let them come as close as they need to.” He waited while men shuffled nearer, some looking merely curious, others ashamed. A few seemed filled with dread. Almost none were talking now, and NCOs swiftly silenced those who were. Finally, gazing out at the small sea of upturned faces reflecting the hot glare of the midday sun, only their eyes in shadow under the small, pointed brims of their wheel hats, Lewis took a deep breath and began to speak. His voice was still angry, but under complete control.

  “I heard Private Meder say there was ‘cause’ for what happened here. ‘Cause’ for what nearly became a riot, with all of us fighting one another.” He shook his head disgustedly. “The same stupid animosities and rivalries between regulars and volunteers, but it just so happens there’s now a much greater ‘cause’ at stake, and if we don’t face it together, we’re lost.”

  There was some murmuring, but Lewis pressed relentlessly on. “On its face, our new purpose is simple: we must seamlessly work together—and with our new Ocelomeh and Uxmalo friends—just to stay alive. You all must know or guess by now that we’re not where we were supposed to be.” As he’d hoped, there was nervous chuckling when he uttered such an understatement, but he licked his lips and continued in the same heavy tone, “I think you’ll agree it’s equally clear we aren’t simply—somehow—somewhere else on our known world. Captain Holland assures me the moon and stars are all where they belong, but even here—a hundred miles from where we were wrecked—we should be swimming instead of standing on an undiscovered land full of unknown creatures and people. All these things you know, but evidence amassed by the officers of this . . . Detached Expeditionary Force, and more presented by our new friends and allies”—he jerked a nod toward Varaa-Choon and Ixtla, who’d stepped up beside her horse—“convinces me our unexplainable presence here and isolation from all we’ve known is in fact”—he paused—“the result of some . . . unimaginable transportation from our own world to another one entirely.”