by Len Levinson
“I can manage, thank you.”
Clarissa let herself soak, realizing that Hester must be Captain Ewell's slave, and he'd probably brought her all the way from the old plantation to care for his domestic arrangements. Clarissa hated slavery like any good northern abolitionist, but preferred to avoid arguments with southerners, particularly since so many had settled in New Mexico Territory. Then she wondered how Nathanial was getting along without her, because he was a man not much different from her cowboys, or in other words, not to be trusted. She took a nap in the warm water when someone knocked on the door.
“Has you died?” asked Hester.
“Not that I'm aware of.”
The slave entered, carrying Clarissa's ironed dress, which she'd removed from Clarissa's valise. Clarissa dried herself, put on clean clothes, then returned to the parlor as Hester placed a cup of coffee and cookies on the table. Meanwhile, two soldiers emptied the tub and cleaned the kitchen.
“Do you like it here?” Clarissa asked Hester.
“I miss Virginia, but the massa needs me.”
If he needs you so much, why doesn't he pay you a decent wage? thought Clarissa. And then the fatigue of the journey hit her, not to mention the tension of contending with her cowboys over every little issue. She dragged herself to the sofa, closed her eyes, and it wasn't long before she fell fast asleep, dreaming of endless cactus plains.
She was awakened by the sound of a door. It was evening, and Captain Ewell had returned. “Sorry to disturb you,” he said gruffly. “Didn't know you were sleeping. Hester should have given you the guest room.” He lit a candle on the table, removed his hat, and revealed his bald head, the reason his men called him Old Baldy. With his protruding eyes, he would appear laughable were it not for his steadfast military appearance, and the sense of inner strength that he radiated. Clarissa could understand why he'd been entrusted with remote Fort Buchanan. This is a man who'd fight on even if a leg was blown off, evaluated Clarissa.
He poured himself a glass of whiskey, sat at the table, then hollered, “Hester!”
The kitchen door opened and a dusty face appeared. “Suh?”
“Where's my supper!”
“It'll be there in a minute,” she replied on the other side of the kitchen door. “Gawd—you sound like you ain't et fer a month.”
The door closed, and Old Baldy turned to Clarissa. “The nigras are supposed to be downtrodden, according to what you northerners say, but I've never been able to win an argument against Hester. She always has to have the last word.”
Clarissa did not reply, although she wanted to deliver an abolitionist lecture. Instead she smiled pleasantly as she joined him at the table.
“I'm surprised Nathanial let you travel with that bunch of outlaws you call cowboys,” said Captain Ewell. “Someone told me he lived with the Apaches for a spell. Has it changed him much?”
“He has become disillusioned with the government's treatment of Indians.”
“He loves Indians now, does he? Well, wait till they burn his ranch down. Do you have any idea how precarious your position is in the Sonoita Valley? Even I, sitting at Fort Buchanan with two hundred men, don't feel secure. And those cowboys of yours—I've never seen a sadder-looking bunch in all my days. I wonder how long before they tear up the sutler's store.”
As Clarissa enjoyed polite conversation with Captain Ewell, it was silent in the sutler's store, soldiers and cowboys sitting on chairs or the floor, tin mugs of whiskey in their hands, gazing balefully at each other.
Their lives were so stark, brutal, and loveless, it wouldn't require much to set them off. And Blakelock was maddest of all, because he had fallen in love, although he'd never admit it, even under torture. The object of his desire was the boss's wife, Clarissa Barrington, and his was a love that dared not speak its name.
He was old enough to be her father, she was married, and he knew that she considered him a filthy old drunk, which in fact he was, but that didn't prevent him from lusting after her, even as she humiliated him daily with her outlandish and impractical orders. Blakelock feared that his cowboys were losing respect for him, and he was losing respect for himself, but it wasn't easy to take orders from a woman, especially one who didn't know anything. If only she kept her pretty mouth shut, thought Blakelock.
He drained his glass, then arose from the square of floor where he'd been sitting. His eyes blurred, he blacked out for a moment, then his head cleared, and he stumbled in the general direction of the bar, inadvertently bumping into a corporal.
“Watch whar in hell yer going,” snarled the corporal, a redhead built like a beanpole, teeth stained with tobacco juice.
Blakelock smashed his tin cup into the corporal's face, dazing him momentarily, but like a good soldier the corporal countered with a right hook toward Blakelock's liver. The foreman was shaken by the blow, sank toward the floor, and the corporal bent his knees for an uppercut, when Dobbs leapt onto him, but then Dobbs was crowned with a chair in the hands of a private built like a bull moose.
Soon fighting became widespread in the tiny store, men were knocked off their feet, and everyone threw punches and anything else they could find, including candlesticks and the cuspidor. Mahoney ran out the back door and hollered, “Sergeant of the Guard!”
Meanwhile, the post commander enjoyed roast beef and biscuits with his old friend's wife. “Never figured Nathanial would leave the army,” he declared.
She lay down her knife and fork. “Richard,” she replied, because they had advanced to a first-name basis, “I don't mean to be disagreeable, but what's so wonderful about the army? Look at how you live at Fort Buchanan. Why don't you get married?”
“To whom? In case you haven't noticed, there are no women here, not even Indians.”
There was pounding on the door, and in an instant Captain Ewell was on his feet, gun in hand. He flung the door open, expecting Apaches on the attack, but it was the sergeant of the guard. “There's a fight in the sutler's store, sir!”
“Call the men to arms!”
The sergeant of the guard ran to the barracks as Captain Ewell marched resolutely toward the sutler's store, from which shouts and crashes could be heard. Clarissa followed, holding her skirts in her hands, wearing her cowboy boots and Colt strapped to her waist. How could somebody not be killed in such an uproar? she asked herself.
They arrived at the store, hearing sounds of bodies bouncing off walls inside. “I think you'd better step back, Clarissa,” said Captain Ewell as he reached for the doorknob. “This might get ugly.”
“There's nothing those pigs could do that would surprise me,” she replied.
Captain Ewell drew his service revolver, pulled open the door, and a scene of incredible carnage seared Clarissa's eyes, Blakelock in the middle of it, red-faced and punching wildly, even connecting occasionally. Old Baldy raised his revolver and fired one round at the rafters. The loud report in a small enclosed general store produced an instantaneous effect on eardrums, and everyone stopped suddenly, standing like a fantastical marble frieze in a public square off the Via Veneto in Rome, which Clarissa had visited on her honeymoon, but Caesar's legionnaires never wore cowboy boots.
“Next time I'll shoot to kill!” shouted Captain Ewell.
They could have overpowered him, but he'd shoot a few first, and something about his stance gave them pause. The sergeant of the guard arrived with the rest of the soldiers, armed with rifles and fixed bayonets.
Men picked themselves off the floor, faces bloody. Clarissa followed Old Baldy into the store, and saw something that looked like a tooth lying next to an overturned cuspidor. I will never understand men as long as I live, she said herself. Nor do I want to. It appeared that none of her cowboys had been killed, although there were plentiful split lips, broken noses, and one had a shattered jaw. Blakelock stood in the middle of the carnage, a wicked smile on his mangled features. She wanted to call him a worthless bastard, but insults never had moved him in the past. “You ough
t to be ashamed of yourself!” she said coldly, then with one last expression of disdain, she walked back to the post commander's residence to finish her coffee.
Clarissa's cowboys weren't the only Americans afflicted with broken bodies on that warm summer night, for not even wealthy and famous citizens could escape limitations of the human body. And one of the most celebrated Americans, Senator Jefferson Davis of Mississippi, lay in a dark room in his mansion on G Street in Washington, D.C., his head bursting with pain, left eye ulcerated and covered with yellow mucous.
Jefferson Davis, fifty, was one of the most renowned heroes of the Mexican War, along with Albert Sydney Johnston, Robert E. Lee, and Thomas Jonathan Jackson. Jeff Davis had survived the hottest fighting at Buena Vista, turning point of the war, but at Fort Winnebago, he'd become afflicted with pneumonia, the results of which were lifelong neuralgia and the strange oracular disease. His political enemies said he'd caught it from an unwashed squaw.
The senator's condition had worsened during the previous session of Congress, when he'd led the southern bloc in crucial debates concerning Kansas-Nebraska, the rail-road bill, the Homestead Bill, and the annexation of Cuba. Jefferson Davis had fought hard, even challenging other senators to duels on the floor of that hallowed chamber.
But the harder he'd fought, the worse his old illness became. He'd collapsed at the end of the session, and had been in bed ever since, taking laudanum to control the pain, wishing he'd die and get it over with, but the South needed him, and he could not fail his native land.
Like many Americans that tumultuous summer, Jefferson Davis worried about civil war, and the more he worried, the thicker the film grew over his left eye. But how could he not worry, with his world about to be destroyed?
The bedroom door opened, and his wife, the former Varina Howell of Natchez, entered the bedroom. She was thirty-two, a tall light-skinned woman, but some whispered that her features looked part Negro, however no one chanced such remarks within earshot of the hero of Buena Vista. She sat at the edge of the bed. “How are you feeling, Jeff?”
“Worse,” he grunted.
“I do wish you'd try to sleep.”
“How can I sleep with those damned Yankees trying to ram through their railroad bill, although it'll cost more than mine, and take longer to build? They'll do anything to favor their section, and are incapable of fairness.”
She placed her hand on his forehead. “Shhh,” she said soothingly.
“Why didn't this illness strike Sumner or Seward?” he asked. They were two northern senators.
“Because neither was in the army, and it's the price you've paid for serving your country. But I was thinking, Jeff—why don't we leave Washington for the summer, and I don't mean traveling back to Mississippi, where you'll only become embroiled in local politics. Why don't we have a real vacation?”
“Where?” he inquired.
“I've always wanted to visit Maine. They say it's lovely this time of year, and we can visit Frank on the way.”
She referred to Franklin Pierce, the previous president of the United States, an old friend and war comrade of Jeff Davis's, who had appointed him secretary of war. Pierce had retired to civilian life in New Hampshire, the most unpopular president in American history, but a stalwart defender of the South.
“I can't travel anywhere,” groaned the former colonel of the Mississippi Rifles. “I'm much too ill.”
“The fresh air and sea breeze will do you good, and you can forget politics for awhile. I'll take care of everything.”
He held her hand. “I've forced you to spend your best years caring for a sick old man.”
“I would rather be with you, even when you're sick, than with Edwin Booth himself.”
She referred to the most handsome young actor of the day, much beloved by ladies. “You're mad,” said Jefferson Davis, a smile creasing his aristocratic features.
“May I make plans for a trip to Maine?”
“Anything you like.”
She leaned forward and kissed his forehead, then they lay together in the darkness, yet another American couple fearing the conflagration that lay ahead.
Long Abe Lincoln continued his busy campaign schedule, visiting towns large and small, railing against the evil of slavery. Many citizens listened sympathetically, for morality was the bedrock of their lives, while others hurled insults. But Long Abe stood his ground, because he believed that backwoods reasonableness could solve most problems, even the slavery issue.
The outclassed candidate slept on trains, stage-coaches, even on horseback, his long legs nearly dragging on the ground, as he crisscrossed Illinois. Frequently he wondered why he was inflicting a political campaign upon himself, when he should be supporting his family, but somehow fate and hard work had elevated him among the morass of Illinois abolitionists.
One night, riding a train to Decatur, the weary campaigner read a batch of news clippings in the light of the gimballed oil lamp affixed to the wall. According to the Chicago Times:
Abe Lincoln went yesterday to Monticello, following Douglas's train. Poor, desperate creature, Lincoln wants an audience; poor, unhappy mortal, but the people won't turn out to hear him, and he must do something, even if that something is mean, sneaking, and disreputable!
We have a suggestion. There are two very good circuses and menageries traveling the state, and the Republicans might make arrangements to include a speech from Lincoln in their performances.
Anyone who ever heard Lincoln speak, or is acquainted with his style of speaking, must know that he cannot provide five grammatical sentences in succession.
The words wounded Abe Lincoln, who once had been a dirty-faced poor white child raised in a log cabin. The anger welled up inside him like a white hot righteous flame. The mouth of the wicked and the mouth of the deceitful are arrayed against me, he thought, recalling Psalm 109. But the LORD shall stand at the right hand of the poor, to save him from those that condemn his soul.
Although not a regular churchgoer, Abe Lincoln had been raised on the Bible and believed in its moral principles. I may not be good enough for fancy newspaper reporters, he told himself, but when I meet Douglas face-to-face, I'll show him what I'm made of, and on election day, it won't be newspapers but votes that'll count.
The train chugged into the night, carrying the insulted candidate toward his next speech. He dozed, and dreamed of himself sitting in a theater, watching a play. A shadow loomed behind him, but then he awakened suddenly, a grim foreboding came over him, but Abe Lincoln was a man of many dark moods, as well as the light of the Lord, as he traveled the Illinois election circuit during the summer of ‘58, speaking the truth to the people.
Chapter Nine
Beau noticed activity before the wickiup of Mangas Coloradas. Two women armed with bows and arrows, their saddlebags filled with provisions, were embarking on a journey. Nana, the di-yin medicine man, uttered prayers as he sprinkled the women with yellow powder. Then the journeyers embraced family members, but everyone was somber. The two women climbed onto their horses and rode out of camp.
After they had been swallowed by the wilderness, Beau limped toward Nana. “Where are they going?”
“I cannot say, because you are a Pindah soldier.”
If he won't talk, thought Beau, it must have something to do with war. “Who are they?”
“The wife of Cochise, and the wife of Juh.”
A diplomatic mission, decided Beau. But to whom and for what purpose? He was trying to learn Apache, but the language appeared impenetrable, for nothing had been written down. He returned to his wickiup, where Constanza sat in front, making mesquite bean bread. She looked like an Apache woman, for her skin had become deeply tanned.
“What happened?” she asked.
“No one will tell me.”
“No doubt those women will murder somebody.”
“At least it's not us.”
“Yet,” she replied. Her morbidity depressed him, but she'd witnessed the mass
acre of her family. He placed his arm around her and kissed her cheek. “Be strong.”
“I have nothing to hope for,” she said gloomily.
“A pretty girl can marry and have a family of her own.”
“I would not bring children into this world, because it would be cruel. What is the point of life?”
“We must have faith.”
“I have prayed all my life, but it did not save my family.”
Footsteps approached, and they turned to Geronimo, pulling a pistol, and for a moment, Beau thought he was going to be shot. But Geronimo merely displayed it, a nearly new Colt Navy. “Sunny Bear gave me this,” he said proudly.
Beau breathed a sigh of relief. “Sunny Bear is generous, and I have known him for more than seventeen years. He is my closest friend.”
Geronimo chuckled. “I bet you never realized he would become a medicine man of the People.”
Beau was astonished. “Did he heal people?”
“No, but he saw great visions. I will never forget when he returned from lightning-blasted mountain, the look in his eyes. He is a very holy man, although he does not always appear that way, I admit. You must look to his heart.”
“I have spent many years with Sunny Bear,” replied Beau, “and am quite familiar with his heart. Sunny Bear's main interest has been, is, and always will be women.”
Geronimo laughed. “But I am a medicine man, and feel the same way. We receive power from women for they are closest to the Lifegiver, since He gives life through them. I have two wives, and when I can afford it, I am going to have another.”
“You are a brave warrior indeed,” said Beau, “because who else could manage three wives. How did you become a medicine man?”
“I had a teacher.”
“Could you teach me?”
Geronimo looked at him askance. “It would take long, and you are returning to your people. You are no Sunny Bear.”
