They Came To Cordura (25 page)

“I don’t know.”

“If we should be north of it, what’s the next town?”

“I’m not sure. Possibly
Dublán
.”

“How far?”

They waited.

“Fifty miles, maybe.”

“Dear God.” Lieutenant Fowler sank to the platform and leaned his head on the handle.

The car rolled on into twilight. Girthing each hill they ceased pumping, listening, peering ahead for sounds or lights or movement which would signify base or a pueblo, even a
jacal
of brush in which there would be life. Fowler and Chawk wanted to press on as long as they had strength, but Thorn, realizing that the dusk would be brief and that he could not chance darkness among them, ordered them off the car at the next waterhole. While they cut
encino
he tested the water. It was alkaline. Fowler pointed out three fiery circles ringing the middles of hills miles away. He asked the Geary woman what they could be, and she said that would be farmers burning off the winter grass and brush so that when the rains of April fell they would have new grass for their stock.

One large fire was built. They had to help Trubee from the platform to his blankets. There could be no doubt of his condition; the veteran was clearly exhausted.

Hetherington was carried to the far side of the fire. When Adelaide Geary touched his skin she shook her head and began at once to use the alkali water to try to lower his temperature. Thorn got two quinine tablets into him. That left one tablet and a few mouthfuls of good water.

The fire burned in time, beating back night. On the side near the Tex—Mex the boy Renziehausen bedded down quietly, nursing his unhappiness. Sergeant Chawk opened the grain-bag, and throwing a handful of the kernels into his mouth began to grind on them. Lieutenant Fowler swayed as though the saddlebag and blankets on his shoulders were a heavy load.

“We can’t go on, we have to do something.” He spoke across the fire to his superior. “Chawk is the strongest, let him walk ahead and follow the railroad to a town. He can send help back and food and water.” When Thorn did not reply his voice shrilled at the others. “Don’t you see what he’s doing, trying to kill us one by one? Giving up the horses so none of us could get to base and talk—marching us till we drop and he’s the only one left? He knows where we are—he probably has water hidden so he can hold out after we’re all dead! You ignorant fools!”

“Shut up,” Chawk said. “We might eat, dependin’ on preacher over there. Could be stringy, but he’s been cookin’ a long time.”

The Lieutenant’s face contorted with nausea, then set into what he had been taught was a command expression. “Sergeant, I order you to start out. Follow the railroad to the nearest town.”

The non-com chewed. “Did you hear me?”

A paw flicked out and up, almost idly, and with a single cuff tumbled the Lieutenant flat on his back.

“Go to bed, Georgie.” With difficulty Chawk swallowed the meal he had made. “Major an’ me gonna sit up together. In the morning I give the orders.”

Lieutenant Fowler lay still before crawling farther from the light into darkness.

Thorn and the woman gave their attention to Hetherington, Thorn moving so that he had Chawk ever at the edge of his eye. During the next two hours Hetherington’s temperature rose to such violent heights that Adelaide Geary whispered she did not believe they could save him. She guessed it at a hundred and five or six. They stripped him to the waist, bathing his gaunt chest and shoulders with the tepid alkali water, though the spasms of his arms and hands hindered them. The officer gave him the last quinine tablet. The sheep-like face worked, in their deep sockets his eyelids fluttered, while out of the long chamber of his skull, as though it contained a gramophone, were spun the Scriptures, babbled, chanted, tongued unintelligibly. Only twice could they understand him. Loudly he delivered the question, asking it for those here in the hills of
Chihuahua
and those far away in Dancey, Kansas: “‘Is it a small thing that thou hast brought us up out of a land that floweth with milk and honey, to kill us in the wilderness, except thou make thyself altogether a prince over us? . . We will not come up!’” The second time occurred during the crisis when the youth’s sufferings were so severe that it seemed he must expire from them, when he appeared to be in convulsions, eyes rolled back, whites staring, teeth gritting, hands clawing at the woman as she supported his upper body in her arms. From his mouth came the plea and the accusation, shouted: “Father! Father!” Shortly thereafter the tremors subsided and Hetherington fell back as though lifeless. Thorn listened for heart-beat, found a faint one, and covered the youth with blankets.

“He won’t live,” Adelaide Geary said. “Oh, God, I am so tired.” Drawing up her knees, she put her face down on them. “Maybe none of us will. I’m so thirsty and hungry. I think my feet are broken. I ache all over. I have to go through all this because the Army decided to shoot up my home, be dragged across this God-forsaken country because the Army decided I’m a traitor, and if that isn’t enough, wear myself out trying to save the very people who’ve done it all to me.”

She put her mouth to the whip-cord, fighting for control. “You have no right to ask a woman to bear this. I can’t go on myself. I don’t give a damn if he does. I don’t care if they all die—let them get their medals in hell, because that’s where they’re going! And as for you, Thorn, you’re crazy, jackass military crazy, and I hope they do kill you and put you out of your misery—I swear to God I do!”

Thorn laid one of the automatics on his leg. No more than ten yards separated him from Chawk. In his condition he could not unholster it in time. He tried to think of what he would do this night. He could not count the stars. To the east, above the burning hills, smoke obscured them.

Adelaide Geary lifted her face. He was outlined against the fire. His head, its close-cut hair the color of the insignia on his collar, his shoulders, his chest, had the solidness of a cottonwood stump. But his movements were those of a child crippled in mind, slow, tentative, painful to watch. He took off his glasses, studied them. When he tried to pinch together the little tape left at the rim hinge the bow came off in his fingers. He stared at the two parts as though they were pieces of a puzzle.

“Can’t use any more,” he said. “Can’t see without.” Handling them carefully, he buttoned them away in his breast pocket.

“You had no sleep last night,” she said.

“No sleep.”

“And you took no water this morning. How can you keep going?”

“Don’t know. First time been proud myself a long time.”

Over his shoulder she saw Chawk. He was busy stripping the bandage from his head, arm revolving slowly. When he had reached the end he wadded and tossed it in the fire. Underneath the matting his hair had continued to grow, and now his head took on the shape of a black bush. He poked within the bush, pulled away scales of dried blood, felt with his stub and four fingers along the scalp to the place where damage had been done, sitting motionless, feeling, the corneas of his eyes threaded with red.

“What happened to him?”

“Rifle-butt. Brain ‘cussion.”

“Will he recover?”

“Don’t know.”

“Is he all right now—his brain?”

“Don’t know.”

“And you have to sit all night, waiting for him?”

“Waiting.”

“How can you stay awake?”

“Don’t know.”

A thought iced her veins. “And when he does come, you won’t shoot him.”

“Won’t.”

Suddenly, derangedly, Chawk began to hum off-key a song of the
gente
called ‘The Abandoned One’, the song of a lover desolate at his loss. She shuddered. The night was not yet cold. She had never witnessed murder in the making.

She made herself stand.

“I can give you sleep,” she said, repeating it again and again, “I can give you sleep.”

He heard her boots fall, the rustle of clothing. He did not comprehend.

She moved past him, around the fire. The pure white of her naked body blinded him as though he had glimpsed heaven.

“Chawk,” she said.

The giant turned his broken head.

“Chawk,” she said, coming closer.

His mouth opened, he made a strange, an animal noise, and lunging forward on all fours reached with both arms, and seizing her by bare hips hurled her to the ground beneath him.

Thorn’s eyes closed.

The sound they made was that of a bird being killed, beating its wings in dust and terror.

As Thorn’s eyes closed a great and compassionate hand was placed upon him and the stump of his body toppled sideways and he slept.

When she awakened him it was the neither time, the catch-breath between dark and dawn. She bent over him as he lay. The hills about them were hushed. The chill air was crystal. Chawk snored among the soldiers. She had dressed.

“I am ashamed of what I said last night,” she murmured. “I am ashamed of what I have been all my life.”

“Here.” He sat up, and from his breast pocket took the oilskin envelope. “In this are their citations. Hide them. If anything should happen to me keep them and turn them in to the commanding officer at base. Swear to me you will do this.”

“I swear.”

She unbuttoned her shirt and put the envelope inside.

He came to his knees.

“I thank you.”

They knelt facing each other. Her hair was down. He put both blistered hands gently, with wonder, in the tangled mane.

Without glasses his face was that of a stranger to her, yet revealed, young in the quarter-light, haggard, hungry, alone. She trembled. At the corner of her mouth the tiny muscle beat. Her fingers brushed the cracked lips, the hollowed eyes.

“You are the bravest man I have ever known,” she said.

He stilled the moving muscle with his finger.

“I could cherish you,” he said.

As do the blind they touched each other, meeting for the first time through their fingers.

“What is your name?” he asked.

“Adelaide,” she whispered. “What is yours?”

“Thomas.”

LIKE
ghosts the men rose from the ground. Rags of mist tattered the hills.

Trubee told the commander he could not take a step, could not stand his turn on the handles. His heart ‘done a jack-rabbit’ on him every few minutes and he could not breathe. He doubted he would last the day out. His eyes rheumy, he begged the Major to see his wife and children at Columbus after ‘Old Scratch’ had him. The veteran seemed an old man, shrunken, as the eruptions on his face were reduced in size, and, touched by his condition, Thorn assured him he would do what he could. They assisted him to the platform and placed him on blankets.

Hetherington slept. His forehead was cool. The typhoid had spent itself. He recognized Major Thorn. Soon he became conscious of his resurrection. Tears welled from his eyes and his hands clasped. It was the doing of the Lord, he whispered. For performing His work in war the Lord had spared him. He was hungry and thirsty, but they had neither food nor water for him or for themselves. He was too weakened to walk and they carried him to the handcar.

Blankets and saddlebags were strewn upon the platform. Trubee lay at one side, Hetherington across from him, Lieutenant Fowler climbed on front, Renziehausen and the Geary woman behind. Major Thorn and Sergeant Chawk took the handles.

The car rolled. The scree-scree-scree of the cog-wheels commenced. On iron the wheels rumbled. It was the sixth day out of
Ojos Azules
.

The three far hills seethed, their lower slopes black, the peaks pouring smoke.

The Tex—Mex did not change. It worked the flanks of the hills as before, and as before there were the rails winding, the spaced piles of boulders for repair, the long grades up which the car labored, the three at the rear pushing.

Heat of the sun struck the five on their feet the final blow. Past the point of physical exhaustion, some began to behave strangely. It was as though, having so long been part of a detail, a unit, they sought instinctively to free themselves, to escape the handcar and the proximity of the others, to act as individuals.

During the stops they wandered away from the tracks. To Major Thorn, who had each time to round them up, they played out the proof of Ben Ticknor’s observation, that men tested beyond their capacity by thirst became emotionally unstable. The alkali water drunk the preceding day had left their systems dryer than before. They were dehydrated men.

Once he could not find Adelaide Geary or Lieutenant Fowler. He forced himself to mount a ridge. In the gully below, by a waterhole, the woman had removed her shirt and appeared to be bathing her bared upper body, her arms, her breasts. He could not focus clearly. But only a few feet from him, screened from the woman by scrub cedar, Lieutenant Fowler gazed, intent on her, unbuttoning the fly of his breeches. Something made him turn his head. He saw the officer on the ridge.

At one stop Renziehausen helped Hetherington try his legs. They walked to and fro together, Hetherington on stocking feet because his shoes had been lost crossing the mineral basin.

“Better get real friendly with yer pal,” Chawk advised Renziehausen. “No girl going to look at you with no ear.”

“I will so have one,” the boy said, taking Hetherington to the platform. “Major says the surgeons’ll make me a rubber one so real nobody can tell. It fastens on with wax.”

“Hell! You b’lieve that? You’ll be lovin’ up some biddy an’ she’ll pull it right off! Why, honey, she’ll say, all yer other parts made outa rubber, too?”

“Leave him alone,” Thorn ordered. He was seated on his end of the car.

Chawk cocked his bushy head. His attitude towards the officer this day was one of bewilderment, as though during the night he had rutted out his hate and ferocity upon the woman and had nothing with which to replace them.

“You know what, square-head,” he jeered, “you better hitch up with a freak show!”

It happened with stunning swiftness. Furiously, recklessly, the boy flung himself at the non-com, head first, as he might have over a wooden gate. The giant wrestled with him momentarily, spun him around, raised him from the ground, viced him with one arm, and with his free hand tore at the bandage at the side of his head, gripped the flap of lobe flesh which was all that was left of his ear, and as the boy screamed, ripped it out of the surrounding skin.