Bitter Trail and Barbed Wire

by Elmer Kelton

  The Mexican led them through narrow alleys, down dark streets. Dogs picked them up and trotted alongside, barking and making false runs at them. Candlelight flickered inside tiny brush jacales, leaking though cracks in the walls and doors.

  “How much farther is it?” Frio asked. “If I had known it was this far, I’d have brought a horse.”

  “Not far now, señor,” the man said and kept walking.

  Frio didn’t like the neighborhood. Dark doorways frowned upon the narrow dirt streets, doorways big enough to hide waiting men in their deep shadows. He kept to the center of the street.

  He wondered at even the reckless Happy Jack coming into a section like this.

  At last the Mexican pointed. “This is the place.” He reached for a latch and swung the wooden door inward. “Pasen, señores.”

  Frio gripped the six-shooter a little tighter, peered a brief moment into the Mexican’s face, then stepped through the open door toward the guttering light of a small candle.

  Too late he sensed that the thing was all wrong. Too late he saw the dark shapes step away from the wall. He spun, bringing the pistol around. Someone shoved him from behind, and he went stumbling across the dirt floor. Heavy bodies landed on top of him almost the moment his shoulder struck earth. A boot stomped his wrist. Rough hands tore the pistol from his fingers, taking some of the hide with it.

  He heard a dull thud as a sombreroed man clubbed Felix from behind with the butt of a rifle. Felix went to his knees. The rifle barrel swung savagely and struck Felix across the back of the head. The teamster went down like an empty sack. His blood made a dark stain on the dirt floor.

  A harsh voice said in Spanish, “You hit him too hard, Florencio. He is dead.”

  Florencio Chapa shrugged and snarled, “It is a just punishment for any Mexican who carries a gun for a gringo. Be sure he is dead before you drag him away. If there is any doubt, shoot him behind the ear.”

  “There is no doubt, mi jefe.”

  “Then drag him out of here. Leave him somewhere for the dogs.”

  In anger Frio tried to arise, tried to reach Chapa. Strong hands restrained him. Chapa waited until Frio’s face was turned up to his own, the eyes flashing hatred. Then he kicked. Frio twisted away, but the heavy boot caught him on the side of the head.

  “So you came for your friend,” Chapa gloated. “Like a rabbit to the wolf’s den, you came.”

  Held tightly, Frio could do nothing but watch as a couple of the men dragged Felix’s body out into the darkness. The door closed behind them. Eyes glazing from the pain of the blow he had received, Frio blinked hard. Helpless anger surged through him. He knew he had to curb that anger, had to keep his head. Rage was a luxury he could not afford now.

  He looked at the men standing around the wall. There were four of them besides Chapa, and besides the two men who held him down. One was the gringo renegade, Bige Campsey.

  Campsey smiled crookedly. “I been listenin’ to you rebs talk for two years. Thought I’d enjoy listenin’ to one of you scream awhile.”

  Frio had often wondered why Chapa, hating gringos so passionately, allowed Campsey to ride with him almost as a partner. Perhaps it was that he sensed in Campsey a kindred spirit, a senseless sadism that transcended any national barriers.

  Chapa said, “Stand him up!” The two men pulled Frio to his feet. Chapa smiled. It was a cold, cruel smile, the bandido’s eyes like those of a snake. “You owe me two thousand dollars, Frio Wheeler. I am going to collect in blood!” He laughed harshly. “You gringos are stupid, the yanqui army as stupid as the rest of you. They could do nothing about you, so tonight they gave me money to get rid of you. Fools! I was about to do it for nothing.”

  Frio said in disbelief, “They paid you?”

  Chapa nodded. “A very funny joke, sí?”

  His fist darted. Frio tried to turn away but could not. Fire flashed before his eyes as the blow struck him full in the face. He tasted blood.

  Chapa ordered crisply, “Off with his coat and shirt. Tie his hands.” They tore the clothing from him, down to the waist. He struggled against them, but they stamped the breath out of him and then tied his hands with rawhide so tightly that he knew the circulation would be badly impaired. They stood him with his stomach to the wall, stretching his hands overhead and tying them by the rawhide thong to the rafter above him.

  Chapa had a whip. He flipped away the coils and snapped the end of it. “You are a mule driver, amigo. You know how to use a whip on mules. Now see how it feels to you!”

  Frio shrank against the wall as the lash cut into his back. He wanted to cry out but managed to control himself.

  “Scream if you want to,” said Chapa. “No one will hear you—no one who cares.” He struck again. The lash was like fire. Frio’s knees sagged.

  Chapa said, “You will think you are going to die. You will wish you could die. But I do not intend to let you go too soon. You are going to die slowly, gringo. You are going to die a two-thousand-dollar death.”

  Chapa quit talking and used his strength in swinging the whip. Each time, Frio thought he would scream, thought he could not stand one more. Cold sweat stood on his face. Teeth clamped, fists knotted, he cringed against the wall each time he heard the cruel hiss of the lash starting to move.

  He was no more than half conscious when they cut him down. He fell heavily to the dirt floor. They threw cold water into his face.

  “Bring him outside,” said Chapa. “We will see how well he drags.”

  On his hands and knees, Frio watched, while Chapa mounted a splendid horse in the dim starlight—a stolen horse, without doubt. Chapa took down a rawhide rope from the big horn of his Mexican saddle and pitched the loop end out to Bige Campsey. Campsey put it around Frio’s arms and jerked up the slack. Dallying the reata around the horn, Chapa touched wicked spurs to his horse. Frio was jerked forward onto his stomach. He felt himself dragging in the street, blunt rocks bruising him, tearing his skin.

  The dragging stopped for a moment. Chapa came back in a lope, the big horse barely missing Frio. The bandido hit the end of the rope and jerked Frio around backward, dragging him again. Sixty or seventy feet and he stopped once more.

  Head pounding, his body ablaze with pain, Frio knew he couldn’t last much longer. Another drag or two and he would be unconscious, or nearly so. If he was to fight back, he had to do it now. He pushed to his hands and knees as Chapa turned the horse around for another run. Frio’s hands were still bound, but his fingers closed over the rawhide rope and went tight.

  Chapa spurred and came running. Frio waited, his heart pounding desperately. When Chapa was almost upon him, Frio arose on wobbly legs and flipped the slack in the rope. He saw it go around the horse’s forefeet. He turned his body into the rope, hands behind him, binding the rope across his hip. He saw Chapa desperately claw a pistol from its holster and at the same time try to rein the running horse to a stop.

  The Mexican was too late. The horse was running full tilt when his feet tangled in the reata. The rope came suddenly tight, and the jar of it sent Frio to his knees again. But he had done what he had hoped. The horse went down threshing, on top of Chapa. The barrel of the pistol drove deep into the dirt. Frio pushed to his feet and ran unsteadily. He was aware of Chapa’s men shouting and surging toward him. But he was much closer to Chapa than they were.

  On his side, his legs pinned under the still struggling horse, Chapa swung the pistol around. He held it in both hands, near his face. He aimed it point-blank, and Frio felt the heart drop out of him. Chapa squeezed the trigger.

  The gunbarrel was jammed full of dirt, and the pistol exploded with a blinding flash. Chapa screamed in agony, clasping both bleeding hands across his face. Blood flowed out between the broken fingers.

  The horse was struggling to his feet. With the little strength still in him, Frio swung into the saddle. The bandidos came running, Bige Campsey in the lead. Frio drummed his heels against the horse’s ribs and hoped the animal did
n’t step on the long reata that trailed from Frio’s wrists. Frightened, the horse broke into a run. He faltered a little, for the fall had hurt him. Frio kicked him again to keep him running. The bandits ran along behind, afoot. Frio bent low in the saddle, knowing they would shoot at him but hoping the darkness would protect him until he could get around the rock buildings down the street.

  He heard the slugs whine by his head. For a moment he thought he was going to get away clean.

  Then the bullet struck him in the back, deep in the shoulder. He reeled in the saddle, almost fell to the ground. His fingers grabbed desperately for the big horn of Chapa’s saddle. They closed around it, and he managed to catch himself.

  Moments later he realized dully that he was in the clear. The bullet was like a heavy, glowing coal in his shoulder. He felt his blood running down his bare back. It took all the determination he could muster to hold himself in the saddle. But somewhere yonder, somewhere ahead of him in the night, lay his wagon camp. He clenched his teeth in agony and swore to himself that he would stay alive until he found his wagons.

  10

  Tom McCasland rapped his knuckles gently against the wooden door. A voice answered, “Come in.” Tom pushed the door open and saw Major Luther Quayle seated behind a table that served as a desk. Quayle stood up in pleased surprise.

  “You didn’t waste any time getting here.”

  “Came as soon as I got the word,” Tom replied. He strode across and shook hands. The major reached behind some rolled maps on a shelf and brought out a bottle. He gripped a pair of small glasses between his thumb and two fingers. He poured the glasses full and handed one to Tom.

  “This,” he said, “is the only thing that makes life endurable in this godforsaken assignment.”

  Tom said, “You didn’t call me over here to drink.”

  “No, but a drink might help. You’ll need another one or two before I’m through.”

  “You must have a tough job for me this time.”

  Quayle only frowned, not making an answer. He sat on the corner of the table, his eyebrows knitted, and he studied Tom McCasland with a keen eye. Tom flinched, uncomfortable under the penetrating gaze.

  “McCasland, you have a good reputation with us. When we came, you told us you would do anything for the Union. Up to now you’ve done everything we asked of you and never held back for a moment.” He scowled down at his near-empty glass. “Now I’m afraid we’re about to put you to the supreme test. Before I tell you what it is, I’ll say this: We didn’t want to ask you. We’ve tried alternatives, to no avail.”

  Tom said, “I’m a soldier, of sorts. I won’t turn away from danger.”

  Quayle poured himself another drink. Tom waved the major away when he reached for Tom’s glass. Quayle took a long swallow, obviously dreading what he was to say. “It’s not so much the danger that concerns us.”

  He set the glass down and turned away from Tom. “McCasland, you’re a longtime friend of this Frio Wheeler, aren’t you?”

  “From a long way back. We used to be partners.”

  “You know he’s been a thorn in our side. You know he’s a kingpin in the border trade.”

  “I know all that.”

  “Did you know he was badly wounded in Matamoros a couple of nights ago?”

  Tom sat up straight. “No! How bad?”

  “Bad. But for us, not bad enough. He’s still alive.”

  Tom breathed out a sigh of relief. Quayle turned to frown at him. “I can understand your feelings, McCasland. He’s your friend. But at the same time, he’s our enemy. It would have been better for us if he had died.”

  “How did it happen?”

  “That bandit Chapa.” Quayle pushed away from the table. “You won’t like this, McCasland, but I think you’ll understand why we tried it. We paid Chapa to kill him.” When Tom’s eyes widened in quick anger, Quayle explained, “Wheeler stays out of our reach. So long as he’s across the river, not a hand can be raised against him—by us. But by a Mexican, that’s another matter. Through our intelligence work we found out that there was bad blood between Wheeler and this Chapa. We thought that with a little extra incentive, Chapa would take care of the matter for us, and our hands would have been clean.” He paused. “They would have looked clean, anyway. Hell, everybody knows war is a dirty business.

  “What we didn’t count on was Chapa’s method. We assumed he would do the job the way we would, the quickest way possible to get it over with. But no, he wanted to do it by torture. He wanted Wheeler to die a slow death.”

  Quayle glanced at Tom again and looked quickly away from the steady, cold gaze he encountered. “If we’d known he was going to do it like that, we wouldn’t have gone to him at all. We don’t sanction torture, McCasland. Be that as it may, Chapa became so eager in his work that he got careless. Somehow Wheeler tripped Chapa’s horse and made it fall on him. Wheeler dragged himself onto the horse and got away.

  “Not completely away, though. That”—his nose wrinkled with disgust—“that patriot Campsey was there, and he wounded Wheeler as your friend rode off. Best we can tell from our intelligence reports, it was a rather bad wound, somewhere in the shoulder. Wheeler lost a lot of blood, but he got back to his camp. His men brought a Mexican doctor and saved him from bleeding to death. They took him across the river in a boat, in the night, and put him on a wagon right under our noses. They hauled him to his ranch.” He scowled. “If all the secesh were that hard to kill, we never could win this war.”

  Tom said, “I heard his wagons moved out with a load of supplies this mornin’, bound upriver. I thought he was with them.…”

  Quayle shook his head. “He has a young fellow working for him—Fleet, I think the name is. He took the wagons. You can bet that if we don’t find a way to stop Wheeler he’ll be back with that train as soon as he has the strength to ride.”

  The officer poured Tom’s glass full. “Better drink that, McCasland, before I tell you the rest.”

  Tom sipped suspiciously.

  Quayle said, “This occupation of Brownsville has been a severe disappointment to us, as you surely know. We thought all we had to do was take the town and we would stop the Confederate border trade. It didn’t work that way. All we’ve done is inconvenience them. The trade goes on while we stand here helplessly and watch.

  “The key to it is the wagon trains. They stay pretty well out of our reach. Our troops don’t know this country, and they can’t do much by themselves. That’s why we’ve hired all the border renegades we can find to help us, to guide our patrols to the striking points and back again. We do all we can to disrupt those trails. But the wagons keep coming. The reason is the influence of a few key men. Captain Richard King is one. Your friend Wheeler is another. King isn’t my problem; someone else has that assignment. But Wheeler is my problem. I won’t have a moment’s peace until that man is dead.”

  Tom took the rest of the drink and stared again at the floor. “I don’t know why you called on me. You know I can’t help you.”

  “Wrong, McCasland, you can. The question is, will you?” The major walked around the table and stood directly in front of Tom. “We are reasonably certain that Wheeler is at his ranch right now, wounded. He’s vulnerable. We doubt strongly that he has a guard that would give us any real trouble. Our only problem is to get there. We didn’t want to ask your help on this, McCasland. We’ve tried for most of two days to find someone who would guide us to Wheeler’s ranch. But the Mexicans who know the way are loyal to him or afraid of the others who are. We can’t find one who will take us. You’re our only hope.”

  Tom stood up, angry. He placed the glass on the table and strode stiffly across the room to peer out the window. “Major, what kind of a Judas do you take me for? Send me out on any decent kind of a job—I’ve never turned you down yet. But to do a thing like this.…” He shook his head violently. “Court-martial me if you want to, I won’t do it.”

  Quayle said sympathetically, “I expected you
to be angry. But I also thought that when you considered it, you’d see why we had to ask you. Sure, I know he’s your friend. That’s what makes this war so monstrous, McCasland—we’re fighting men who were our friends, even our blood kin.” A sadness came into his eyes. “I had a cousin when I grew up. He was more than kin, he was the best friend I had. But when the war started we went separate ways. I chose the blue and he chose the gray. I saw him after Shiloh, dead. For all I know, my own bullet could have killed him.

  “This is my point: Every day that the war goes on means more men dead on the battlefields. Every day by which we can shorten this war means that many men saved. Now, I’m not claiming that this border trade is the major factor keeping the Confederacy alive; it isn’t. But it is one of the factors. If we can stop it, the Confederacy dies sooner—by days, maybe weeks, perhaps even months. No one can say how many lives would be saved. Thousands, maybe. Your friend is one of the keys. If we kill him, we can save men who otherwise would have died.”

  Quayle placed his hand on Tom’s shoulder. “Think, McCasland. Think with your head, not with your heart. Is your friendship with this one man worth the lives of thousands? Would you stand by and see them die because you lacked the strength to kill one man?”

  Tom swallowed. He stared out the window a long time. “God, Major, you make it hard.”

  “No one ever claimed war was easy.”

  “Whichever way I go, I’ll regret it to the day I die.”

  “Our side didn’t start this war.”

  Tom shook his head. “Who did? I guess when it’s over we’ll find that none of us was completely guilty, and none of us innocent.”

  “It’s your decision to make, McCasland.”

  Tom rubbed his hand across his face. Misery dulled his voice. “I’d rather be dead than make it.”

  * * *

  LUISA VALDEZ STOOD in the doorway that led to the tiny candlelit bedroom and stared with narrowed, worried eyes at Tom McCasland. Tom sat slumped in a chair, gripping a bottle of whisky at the neck. His eyes had long since gone glazed. Luisa walked over slowly and took the bottle.