They Came To Cordura

by Swarthout, Glendon

  “I gave you an inch. Another round and I won’t,” Thorn said hoarsely. “Now get on that litter.”

  Trubee sat transfixed with fear and rage, his mouth opening and closing. “Take ‘im, Sarge—take ‘im!” he hissed finally.

  “You might as well snap ass, Milo” Chawk looked at Fowler and Renziehausen. “I plan to take the bastard any time now. I kep ‘im up all night an’ he’s about to drop. First time he turns round or goes down he’s mine. An’ I don’t want no trouble from you two.’’

  Renziehausen was silent.

  Lieutenant Fowler drew himself up. He had broken the blisters on his nose and they had scabbed. “I’ve given him my gun,” he said stiffly. “I won’t help you, I won’t be responsible, but I won’t interfere.”

  “Let’s go,” Thorn said.

  Not until they had the litter up did he holster the weapon. He had thought himself past nerves, but his gun hand still trembled. He bitterly regretted firing: when you demanded all a horse or a man could give it was best to save the whip as long as possible. Now they had watched Trubee escape unhurt, had seen the bluff called. Unless they were too far gone it must come to them eventually that he would not shoot to kill, even to flesh-wound, they must see that what they were to him made him in the end helpless against them, that it was they who commanded, he who obeyed, they who led, he who followed, that in giving them glory he had given them power.

  He made them bear by themselves. He dared not come close enough to take a branch end.

  There was no noon halt. Without good water they could not make pinole and they would not touch the alkali.

  He wished he knew if he could trust Renziehausen. For another half-hour they lurched and staggered before him along the smooth hillsides. They were incapable of noticing that, though the sun flamed, the sky of this day was one of spring, milder, drifted with small and tender clouds.

  Like men in a dream they stared at the hand-car. It lay tipped on its side. On its underside in faded paint were the words Southern Pacific.

  After a time Thorn put a shoulder to it and heaved it on to its wheels. It weighed seven or eight hundred pounds. The wooden platform was roughly seven feet long and five wide. Protruding from the center of the platform was its simple mechanism, mounting and handlebars which operated on the lever, crank and cog principle. The wheels on one side were braked by iron shoes tightened by a foot-press.

  The men sat, watched him. He asked Chawk if the car could be run. If it could, they would ride to base. The sergeant said there was only one way to find out. Ordering them up, Thorn had them push the car to the roadbed. The feat of railing the four wheels took three men on a corner, straining almost to collapse.

  Chawk stepped on and tried a handle. It would not move. Taking a rock he pounded the cog wheels until rust fell off in flakes. Next, facing the officer and the woman, he unbuttoned the fly of his breeches.

  “Ladies an’ gents, this here is the Piss-Call Express. Heroes rides free, ladies at their own risk. An’ as for shit-britches majors, end of the line comes sooner’n they think.”

  With complete assurance he urinated both on the cog wheels and the brass bearings in which they were set.

  Staring at the hulking figure with its frayed head-mound, Thorn recognized the act as that of beast, pervert, or madman. There had been no further dizziness, no motor failure, no second blow on the head which would produce irrationality. But it was likely at this point that none of them, himself included, was entirely rational.

  When Chawk had buttoned his fly he bore down on the handle. With a screech the car moved.

  “All aboard,” he invited, slapping the handle.

  They put blankets down and laid Hetherington on one side of the platform. Lieutenant Fowler and Trubee rode in front. Thorn took the rear handle, at least four feet separating him from Chawk on the other, and put Adelaide Geary and Renziehausen behind him. They began to pump. It was hot and heavy work and the car moved slowly. Each revolution of the main cog wheel caused a high grating sound, a scree-scree-scree which pierced the eardrums. Over this Chawk shouted that he remembered making thirty miles an hour with a hand-car downhill and twenty on the level but they could not do more than five for the bearings on this wreck were worn and the cogs were not meshing properly.

  They found, overall, they could not make even five. Still affected by the alkali water, the men had to stop frequently to relieve themselves. There were stops to give quinine to Hetherington, others while Major Thorn tested water in the holes passed occasionally. So laborious was the pumping that only Chawk and Thorn were fit to team on the handles for more than eight or ten minutes at a stretch. Men spelled sat with heads down, gasping as though their lungs would burst. The advantages over marching were that the burden fell on two at a time, rather than four, and more ground could be covered, but the terrain would not allow the Tex—Mex to run either straight or flat. Where American engineers would fill earth and bore tunnels regardless of expense, the Mexicans had strung the road cheaply along the hillsides, up-grade or down. The up-grades gave the detail most trouble; they could not get up sufficient momentum before the rises, and on them cog slippage due to worn bearings lost them thrust. On the steepest the three at the rear stepped off to push.

  At the top of one Thorn called a break. Ahead of the car Trubee and Chawk together while Lieutenant Fowler, returning from behind some scrub cedar, lay face down. After he had checked Hetherington’s face and forehead and re-wet the shirt, Thorn sprawled out behind the car. Renziehausen squatted beside him. All traces of the boy he had been when they set out from Ojos had been ravaged away. Freckles melded, his smooth cheeks were grilled by sun to the color of fresh beef.

  “Major, I been meaning to tell you,” he began. “I told you a whopping lie. I was no hero, I was really scairt in the fight. You saw my chin-strap was bit through. I shinnied that gate just to prove to myself I wasn’t a kid any more. I must’ve been as scairt as you were at Columbus.”

  “Not quite,” Thorn said wearily.

  “Well, anyways, sir. What I did was for myself, not the boys in the troop. I’d sure never do it again.”

  The officer examined the palms of his hands. They had commenced to blister from pumping.

  “So, sir, would you please not put me in for the Medal of Honor?”

  Thorn groaned. He had intended to ask where the boy stood, if he would take a gun, to confess that he could not endure much more without sleep. He felt as though a weight, hard and massive as one of the hand-car wheels, had been placed under his hat. His temples throbbed with its pressure. He removed the hat and knuckled back and forth through his short hair.

  “Son, you will see everything differently after you have been in base a day or two.’’

  Renziehausen made a stubborn line of his lips. “I don’t want it, sir. I won’t take it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I won’t go home!” the boy said with sudden passion. He touched the bandage. “Not looking like this. I’m never going home again in my life!”

  “But I told you about the sergeant in the Philippines,” Thorn protested. “After they made him one of rubber no one could tell the difference.”

  Renziehausen looked the officer full in the face until his eyes filled, then turned his head. “Major, I don’t believe you. I been trying to and trying to, but I can’t. Before my ear happened I was planning to wait till my picture was in the papers and then go home and be played up to by everybody, and then maybe get up a Wild West show and make a flock of money. Now I don’t want any pictures of me, and my folks and friends are never going to see me. I’ll get out of the army and work on a ranch or go prospecting where nobody’ll see me, and nothing you tell me’ll change my mind.”

  Thorn could understand. The loss of an ear might cripple as grievously as the loss of manhood.

  “I’m sorry, son, but there is nothing I can do about the Medal. Why, your folks. . . ”

  “Thorn!”

  Adelaide Geary’s
scream sent fright through him like a bullet, and he swung his head to see Chawk twenty yards above him with short-handled axe raised. Kicking out with legs and knees, he rolled over and over as the axe hurtled. It would have missed him. But it struck the foot-press with such force that the rod snapped and the rusty spring flew off. He had the gun out as Chawk slid down the hill.

  “Take off them guns!” Chawk roared, furious at failure. “Have it out, best man takes over!”

  Shaken by the close call, fighting shame at his panic, Thorn almost shouted he would, he would be damned glad to, because one more knock on the head would end any fight, and a lunatic could be locked up and the world rid of him. Instead, he retrieved the flung axe and ordered them all back on the car.

  Frustrated, the giant tore off his flapping puttee, revealing an enormous calf muscle, and shook the leather at Trubee and Lieutenant Fowler. “He’s got to keel over soon—up all night, nothin’ in his rotten belly—he’ll shut-eye just once, boys, an’ that’ll be plenty. Such as him ain’t fit comp’ny for us!”

  They set out again. The afternoon ebbed. Beneath the platform the rumble of the wheels deepened as the rails cooled. The scree-scree-scree of the cogwheels eagled between the shadowing hills. Trubee gave out absolutely. It was his ‘ticker’, he said, beating too fast and shortening his wind. He had complained of it to the surgeons often, but they had never minded him. They laid him on blankets across from Hetherington. Two teams alternated.

  Once, after a long grade, Lieutenant Fowler lay upon the handle, his face ashen under its burn.

  “Could we have made too much north yesterday, not enough east?” he breathed. “Could we be above base, not below?”

  Thorn said he did not think so.

  “Then why aren’t we there?”

  “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 sai
d. “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.