They Came To Cordura

by Swarthout, Glendon

  Thorn rubbed the stubble on his chin. “An ordinary detail I would have taken out last night.”

  “I wonder if you would. In any case, you don’t know which end is up now, do you, Major?”

  He did not answer.

  “Oh, I know what you’ll do.” She leaned into a jeffery and blew smoke. “Eventually you’ll get starved and desperate enough to do something ridiculous in the best cavalry tradition. I personally don’t care a damn if you are wiped out to the last hero. Unfortunately, though, you’ll try to take me along, and Arreaga’s peons won’t be choosy about targets. I’d rather take my chances with the military mind at Fort Bliss. Besides, this is my last cigarette.” She inhaled deeply and flipped the shuck butt into the open. “So I’m going to offer you a safe way out.’’

  She said the band on Arreaga’s hat meant he had turned red-flagger again, or bandit, which was what they had been before joining Villa, and that he now probably intended to operate in the wide-open country behind the scattered American units. He could shoot game and locate water, he had weapons and ammunition, but six years of revolution had put one commodity in shorter supply than anything else.

  “Horses.”

  “Brilliant. You must be a West Point man. The fact is, Villa and the Federals even stripped my stable except for my mare and a few nags I persuaded them to leave for the hands. Didn’t you notice yesterday that eight or ten of their horses were being ridden double?”

  ‘‘I saw some were.’’

  “All right. Arreaga can get a little fun from tying you all down and riding back and forth over you until you die, but at this point he has to be practical. He has a band and he can start raiding as soon as he has them mounted. So my hunch is he wants the horses, not us. If I were you I’d let him have them on the chance he might call off the siege.”

  Thorn looked at her. She stood straight, her boot heels planted firmly in the needles.

  “I’m doing you no favor,” she said. “I just happen to be quite fond of my own skin. And there’s something else. You sit around on your brass rear another day, and from what I heard last night that sergeant of yours may put a bullet in your back. I don’t fancy a camping trip with him. So think it over, Major, but not too long.’’

  She swung away. Thorn put the binoculars in the case. The sun was high over the canyon and the air warm even in the partial shade of the pines.

  Rather than tell them personally, he called Lieutenant Fowler and had him order the men not to prepare noon meal; he was putting them and the animals on two feeds a day.

  For more than two hours after that Major Thorn stayed to himself. On the move almost constantly, he crossed and recrossed the clump, avoiding the men.

  He used the binoculars infrequently.

  He took time to unflap and clean his forty-five. It had been newly issued to him at Columbus, and he had oil-stoned the sear so that the action would be fast and smooth, but he had never fired the pistol except in practice.

  Once he passed near the two youngsters and overheard them discussing the likelihood of keeping a rubber ear in place all day with wax. Hetherington tried to convince Renziehausen, who did not believe it possible: an arm or leg would be another matter, but an ear did not weigh much, and his mother had taken him to a play in Oklahoma City where an actor wore a false nose and it did not come off.

  Once he stopped to check the swelling on the left pastern of Trubee’s horse.

  He did whatever he could to keep from thinking. The afternoon limped. Fire from the Villista positions was desultory, but the intermittent shots into the jefferys told on the troopers’ nerves. To be doing something they returned it wastefully. The unity imposed upon them by common danger the preceding day was broken by conviction they would not be attacked. Hunger and inactivity shortened tempers. There was an argument between Hetherington and Trubee over the best way to escape the trap, the former defending the commander’s delay, in the course of which Trubee blabbed about Hetherington’s secret talent for religious recitation and called him a ‘snot-nose, holy-rollin’ preacher’, so that Lieutenant Fowler had to step between them before blows were struck.

  At approximately 16.30 hours, as shadows crawled like claws down the western slope, Major Thorn called the junior officer to him. He said he had made a decision. He did not expect concurrence, but as second in command the other should have access to his reasoning. To the best of his judgment, there was no way out of the canyon mounted except by its mouth, on this and the other side of which the Mexicans would have an eight-hundred-yard field of fire. A dash for it either by night or day would bring casualties, and these he was resolved to prevent at any price. At present the situation was a stand-off, but with food and feed and water low they could not stay where they were. The Geary woman recognized the Villista leader and had made what seemed to be a good estimate of what he was up to.

  “You don’t trust her!” the Lieutenant interrupted. The stress of the last twenty-four hours upon Lieutenant Fowler was obvious. He had peeled the tip of his nose raw. The white circles under his eyes where goggles had protected the skin from sun had darkened. ‘Pluck him and he will twang,’ Thorn remembered. ‘Pluck him too hard and he will snap.’

  “I have to proceed by the best information I can get,” he said, going on to relay what Adelaide Geary had guessed about Arreaga’s intentions. But Fowler was too fast for him.

  “My God, you’re going to give them the horses!” he burst out.

  ‘‘I am.’’

  The junior officer spun on his heel, then about-faced. When he could speak his voice shook.

  “It’s—it’s as unthinkable as surrendering!”

  “Another day without water and the animals won’t be worth keeping,” Thorn said. “We will have to walk it to base either way. We can manage a two-day hike.”

  “If they are all mounted they may attack, have you thought of that? We can stop some of them, but the rest will get to us. Why not give them our weapons in the bargain?”

  “Don’t be a fool,” Thorn said. “It’s a gamble, I admit, but if we lose and they don’t pull out we are no worse off than now. I am willing to gamble to save your skins.”

  “Ours or yours?” the junior officer cried, stepping closer. “And who are you saving them for? For us or for yourself?”

  “Mister, you better explain. . . ”-

  “You say this is your best judgment, Major.” Fowler scrubbed at his moustache as though polishing it. “That’s another reason I don’t want a Medal of Honor written by you. I’m not sure of your best judgment. After what happened at Columbus I don’t know if four awards from one fight written by you will stand up under examination—and I’m sure tactics like turning over the animals to a few irregulars won’t either!”

  “You are insubordinate!” Thorn snapped.

  “There are worse things!” Fowler cried. “For United States Cavalry to give up horses to enemy anywhere any time is cowardice—and I protest it formally! I want you men to remember this for the record—that as an officer I protested any such act!”

  Thorn shot a glance behind him. All the men had come to enjoy the fracas. He saw Adelaide Geary, too. For an instant he wavered. Then the power reservoured by years of command and added to by insult sluiced into him. He moved forward and put his face close to the Lieutenant’s.

  “What the hell do you think this is, George Armstrong? A polo game? I’ve had a crawful of protests and playing Custer! I am responsible for getting this detail to base, not you. It is my command and I will give the orders.” He swung around. “That goes for every man-jack of you! If I have to decorate you one day and slap you in a stockade the next, I damn well will!” He unsnapped the flap of his holster. “I want those horses untied and led after me—nothing on but halters. Now move!”

  A perceptible tremor ran through Fowler’s body. Sergeant Chawk stretched his long arms as though he were crushing something.

  “This don’t work, Major, that’s the last order yer ever gonna give.�
��

  Thorn drew his pistol.

  “Move, I said!”

  They moved. Thorn followed them to the animals, then pushed ahead through the pines to the south side of the clump. He led swiftly so there would be no time for second thoughts. As soon as the seven horses were bunched, with a harsh cry and a whip of his hat across their rumps he sent them at a gallop down the canyon.

  The instant it was done the enormity struck them all silent.

  It was almost as though they had surrendered themselves. They stood without moving, listening to the rolling hoof-beats of the freed horses receding, waiting.

  There were yells from the stand of bull pines at the mouth as the animals neared. Riders and men on foot came out to catch them, milling in the chute.

  Five minutes passed. Three shots were fired, evidently a signal.

  In response to it the Mexicans on the height opposite appeared, and clambering upwards were silhouetted for a moment on the western skyline. Down the hill behind the jefferys loose shale and pebbles rattled.

  Five more minutes passed. Light waned. It was nearing night. If the Villistas were to attack they must do it soon. A large number of mounted men moved into the open at the mouth, probably the whole band. They let loose a volley up the canyon and bullets wailed high over the jefferys head-on into rock. When the echoes ceased there was dust in the chute and far shouting, and when the dust settled the Mexicans were gone.

  It was unbelievable.

  Then Adelaide Geary ran from the pines waving her arms and calling Arreaga by name at the top of her voice, telling him in Spanish to stop, the Americans were helpless, to attack and kill them, screaming that he and his peons were cowards, half-males born without testicles, she had given the gringos to him and he was a cobarde not to take them. Only Thorn understood her Spanish, but the others recognized the grief and hate and betrayal in her tones. She was beside herself. Stumbling, she began to run away, still screaming to stop, to come back, to slaughter the Americans and take her with them.

  “Hetherington, go get her,” Thorn ordered.

  The youth went on long legs, and after a hard run caught her by one arm and whirled her around and tried to pull her after him. Scratching and shrieking, her Chihuahueno hat off and flapping by its leather band, she matched his strength for nearly a minute before giving way to fight him every step back, so that when he reached the jefferys with her his face was ribboned with red streaks from her fingernails. She was hysterical, her mouth open, the pupils of her eyes rolled upwards. Rough with her, Trubee and Renziehausen dragged her dead weight through the trees to her belongings and let her slump on her face.

  Thomas Thorn ordered more fuel cut and two fires built and all saddlebags brought to them, the woman’s as well. He next went alone to the edge of the pines and for a while leaned wearily against soft branches and watched stars of silver, worn and smooth as old coins, set out for show in the black above and let peace come upon him.

  He had saved them in spite of themselves.

  When he returned to where the fires now burned his first task was to inventory whatever was eatable. In the Geary woman’s bags he found only two strips of jerky and another bottle of tequila, both of which he left. A check of the men’s showed there would be, if they were careful, enough salt, flour and bacon grease for two more meals, tonight’s and the morning’s. The half-feed of native corn remaining in the grain-bags he consolidated into one bag; they could use this to make pinole when the other rations gave out. This process he repeated with the water, emptying all six canteens so that he ended with two full and one half full. The men observed him with morbid interest.

  “Ain’t enough to go much of a ways, is there, Majer, sir?” Trubee asked.

  “We may as well talk about what we have ahead of us,” Thorn said. “According to the Mexican officer at Ojos, it was a three-day ride to Cordura. No towns, no ranches, just a few harmless Indians in the mountains, the Tarahumares. We have done two days. If the infantry could hike the other one in two more, we can. In fact, we have to. We should find water and possibly kill some game if we look sharp, but on the chance we don’t, I will take charge of the food and water and issue it twice a day. We won’t get fat, but we will survive. If my reckoning is right, we ought to strike the Tex—Mex Railroad tomorrow afternoon. We follow that northwest into base.”

  “We have to take that tiger bitch along?” Chawk asked.

  “Yes.”

  “An’ feed ‘er out of our grub?” the sergeant demanded. “We’re on to her, we ain’t dumb. She goddam near give our tickets to them greasers.”

  “We have no choice,” Thorn said.

  “Far as I can see, she’s only use for one thing. We oughta screw ‘er till she can’t walk an’ leave ‘er here.”

  “She is a military prisoner,” Thorn said. He began to issue them each hard bread, flour, grease and water. “I have a little of my coffee left,” he said. “We may as well make it up. I think we owe ourselves a celebration.”

  He broke custom and cooked and ate with the men. Lieutenant Fowler did likewise. But the presence of officers at a meal discomfited them, besides which each was busy forming an attitude towards the day’s strange deliverance. As he wolfed the soggy cowboy bread Thorn realized that except for a bit of hard bread he had not eaten all day. His coffee boiled up into enough for a half-cup per man, and while he sipped his he let his gaze move from one man to the next. Even by firelight the nail marks on Hetherington’s sheep face were apparent. Painfully self-conscious, as though all eyes sought out his mutilation, the boy Renziehausen sat sideways, his hat still pulled low and hobo-like. Trubee ate from his tin plate with his fingers, dipping the bread into the remains of the bacon grease before putting it into his mouth. Occasionally he followed it with a finger to rub the gums about his twingy teeth. He squatted beside Chawk, who ate hatless and with evident disgust at Trubee’s habits. The webbing of bandage about his head had begun to unravel; one loose end hung down over an ear and another dirty strip fell in a loop at his back. The junior officer would not meet Thorn’s look. He appeared to have been drawn through a physical and emotional knot-hole. He sat a little apart as though to indicate that while he might unbend enough to mess with enlisted personnel in the field, a proper, commissioned distance must yet be maintained. Surveying the grimy, whiskered faces, the patched and ragged uniforms, Thorn thought he had never seen a more motley outfit. They looked like robbers in a children’s story. It was remarkable that a single day at base or garrison would metamorphose them into troopers. Inexplicably, the feeling of tenderness for them which he had known as he watched over them in sleep the first night out returned. Had any one of them resolved to take matters into his own hands, or had they united behind Lieutenant Fowler when he ordered them to untie the horses, they might have shot him, fought themselves out of the trap somehow, made their way to Cordura and reported him a casualty to Villista fire. No one would have been the wiser. But they had not, and he was convinced his small show of force, drawing his pistol, had not prevented them. In the end they had soldiered their other sins, their distrust of him, their slow and grumbling obedience, their suggestions for the treatment of the prisoner, the crime of the bird, he gladly forgave. Suddenly he spoke.

  “I want to say something to you about my decision today.”

  Tin cups lowered.

  “If we had been on scout, or if this had been courier or supply duty or anything else, I would have taken you out of here last night. I mean that. Most of us would have made it. But you five have had more than your stint of luck lately. Congressional Medals of Honor are usually posthumous; that is, awarded to the dead. My duty was to get you to base without losing even one of you to the law of averages.’’

  He looked into the fire. He could not tell if they were silent because they followed and accepted or because it was habit to hear an officer out. He went on slowly. He said there had never been another detail like this. Normally a campaign might produce one or two highest awards, ye
t from Ojos and Guerrero there were five of them, all to be bestowed upon living men, and this presented an opportunity no one had ever had before. Referring to the belief, universally held, that the strongest instinct is that of self-preservation, he said this was surely invalid since a few men by their deeds proved there is something stronger, something called courage or heroism or sacrifice or bravery, but which by any name has always remained a mystery to men, and that this is what he meant by an opportunity. Here he stopped, back-tracking. Someone sipped coffee noisily.

  “What I am trying to say is that men have always wondered about courage, what it is and where it comes from and how it works. If we are ever going to find out, the best chance may be from men like you. It may even be that if there is an explanation for everything, a reason why things happen as they do, you five have been brought together for this very purpose. That is why I had to see you were spared today. That is why I have asked each of you why you conducted yourselves before the enemy as you did. None of you has been able to tell me. But I hope you will think about it between here and base and see if you cannot remember what you felt at the time, or if there is anything in your past life that might account for your behavior. What you say may be very important and valuable to all men. And I would consider a personal favor any help you can give.”

  At this Trubee’s eyes widened, caught the firelight, glowed.

  What Thorn had said, now that there were no horse sounds to listen for, no rip and ricochet of bullets through the branches overhead, seemed to hover in the cold air. And with his last words he felt the old constriction of his throat. He had told them enough. It was time to go to his own fire.

  He rose, only to find himself speaking again, swiftly, unable to stop, giving all of himself.

  “Night before last I said that at Ojos you had lived beyond the limits of human conduct. It was the truth. I am humble in your presence. For a few minutes you proved that there is something above and beyond the law of nature, that the human race is human after all. In the space of those few minutes you became great men. And for the rest of your lives you will have to live up to what you have shown you can be. You have a new responsibility now and a new privilege. Whatever it is you discovered in yourselves at Ojos and Guerrero you must guard and build on. You must be better soldiers than you were before, do you understand, you must be nobler men!” So hoarse with passion was his voice that it was almost unintelligible. “You do not realize what will happen to you. You have heard about the war in Europe. As surely as I stand here our country will be in it soon, and we will need heroes to look up to and to show us how to behave in battle. You will be our example. After the Medal of Honor is put around your necks you will probably be sent home on furloughs, your pictures will be in the papers and people will point you out on the streets. It may even be that you will be given discharges from the service if you want them. But no matter what you do, you can never escape your new selves, you can never shirk your new duty. You will marry and raise sons in your image, you will grow in the soil of our country and we will reap your harvest! Men like you must be the bread of the earth, the rock of the world!”