Burke in the Land of Silver

by Tom Williams

  James had been at the ranch for almost two weeks, and was just wondering if he would learn anything more there, when Paco announced that Pedro and his men were to cut out two hundred head of cattle and drive them to Buenos Aires.

  ‘You and I, James, will accompany them.’

  They started late in the afternoon. James was surprised at this apparent tardiness but Pedro explained that it would allow the cattle an easy first day, which would help to keep them fresh.

  That night, Paco joined in their feast of carne con cuero and slept with them beside their fire. The next morning, he took James and four of the other men aside.

  ‘Pedro has things well under control now. We’re going to leave the herd to drive to the city while we go about some other business.’

  No one asked any questions and James had little doubt that this was what Paco had suggested he stay on for. Whatever it was, he was confident that the Spanish would not like it.

  Early the next morning, after the coffee that was brewed every day almost as a religious rite, the gauchos began to move the herd on its way and James followed Pedro and the others as they slipped off to the south east. Once they were clear of the herd, Pedro put his spurs to his horse and they rode hard across the prairie. It was not until they stopped for a brief break at midday that he told them where they were going.

  ‘There is a military post-house on the road to Punta Rasa, where the Plate meets the sea. It’s a day’s hard ride from Buenos Aires and there’s nothing else there – just the military use it. They have stabling with fresh horses and less than a dozen men to keep some sort of guard on the place.’

  James saw grim nods from the men around him. The post-houses, allowing the Spanish to maintain communications across the pampas, were an obvious symbol of Spanish rule. There would be stabling, accommodation for the couriers, and fresh horses – a tiny Spanish outpost, isolated in the midst of what the gauchos saw as their own land.

  ‘Our plan is simple. We’ll arrive after dark. We’ll set it on fire. We’ll leave.’

  James, the military man, admired the straightforwardness of the strategy. As a guerrilla action, it was perfect. The place would be isolated and built of wood. The stabling, packed with straw and hay, would burn in minutes. In the darkness, the rebels could strike and be away almost before anyone knew they were there.

  In the event, like most military actions, this was less straightforward in practice than in theory. They travelled until they hit the road to Punta Rasa late in the afternoon. It was ungravelled but the earth was packed down by the passing traffic and they were able to make good speed. They rode steadily for the rest of the day until they saw their destination on the horizon an hour before sunset.

  Paco reached into a saddlebag and drew out a spyglass, through which he examined their target. James was, again, impressed with the professionalism of the operation. This was no ramshackle group of malcontents. Their intelligence was good and their expeditions were carefully prepared and well planned. James felt that there must be some organisation behind this that went well beyond Paco Iglesias. That organisation, he decided, was where the silver captured the previous week would end up.

  Not for the first time, James wondered about that silver.

  When the cattle drive had started out, it had been joined by one of the trail wagons. James had seen sacks of dried beans and various bits of harness loaded aboard and had, at first, thought nothing of it. But they had eaten no beans last night. No one had slept in the wagon. Surely it was not there simply to carry some spare harness? The more James considered it, the more he was sure that was where the silver had been hidden. But where was it to go once they reached Buenos Aires?

  A muttered oath from beside him brought his thoughts back to the present.

  ‘There’s a guard tower and some officious son-of-a-bitch has set a guard up there. We should leave the road and ride northward in the pampas. With luck, he won’t have seen us and, if he has, he’ll think we’re just gauchos about our business.’

  They rode for five minutes until Paco was comfortable that no guard would notice them. Sitting in the long grass, they would, in any case, be invisible and their hobbled horses would just be another small group of animals roaming the grassland.

  ‘We can go no further until dark.’

  They sat quietly. Some of the men chewed tobacco; others just stared ahead. Paco issued strips of dried beef for their supper. They could not smoke or light a fire in case they drew the attention of the guard.

  They waited until the sun was well below the horizon before mounting and riding back toward the post-house. They stayed in the grass where their silhouettes stood out less against the horizon and, half a mile from the buildings, they slipped silently to the ground.

  By now, it was almost completely dark: the guard tower was just a distant shadow against the night sky. As they neared the buildings, they sank to their bellies, the only sign of their progress the waving of grass and a susurration on the night breeze.

  The post house was like a miniature version of the estancia. A shallow ditch surrounded a cluster of buildings. Burke noticed a barn, stables, and a bunkhouse before they were wriggling down behind the low bank that, as at the estancia, had been thrown up when the ditch was dug.

  Paco was gesturing with his hand. Julio – a slim lad, barely out of his teens, slithered up the earthen wall and, crouching, ran toward the guard tower. Even knowing he was there, James could not hear a sound. After a few seconds, James followed the others as they, in their turn, left the ditch, bellies flat to the ground as they crossed the bank and made their way into the compound. They split up, like Julio running in a silent crouch, two to the bunkhouse, two toward the barn. Paco gestured James to move on a cabin set apart from the other buildings and which, he realised, must be the quarters of the officer commanding this tiny outpost.

  The men who had gone to the barn now re-emerged, carrying bales of hay, which their comrades stacked against the outside of the bunkhouse. Meanwhile, Julio was climbing the tower ladder, one slow step at a time.

  To James, every footfall and each creak from the ladder sounded so loudly that he could not believe that the place did not rouse itself into resistance. The only one of the garrison stirring, though, was the duty guard, whose feet James heard stamping from time to time in his tower. He seemed to be the single soul even half-awake. As James slipped through the night, he heard the sentry humming. He imagined that he was thinking of home and some Spanish sweetheart. For him, it would be one more dull night of duty and, if he heard the sounds at all, he must have dismissed them as the natural creaking of timbers or the scurrying of rats.

  More straw was stacked against the bunkhouse door. Julio was ten feet from the ground when a bale dropped to the ground with a dull thud. The guard’s face appeared over the side as he leaned out, the better to see into the yard below. As he did so, he was just five feet above Julio. The gaucho’s knife was flying through the air before the guard could believe what he was seeing. There was a gurgling sound as the blade pierced his throat and a soft thump as his body fell back into the tower.

  Still the alarm had not been raised, but there were sounds of restiveness from inside the bunkhouse. Paco decided that they could not rely on the advantage of surprise for much longer. Pulling a tinderbox from his pocket he struck sparks into the hay until it flamed.

  The crackling of the fire finally awakened the men in the bunkhouse who, finding the door blocked with the burning bales, sought to escape through the window. The gauchos were waiting for them in the darkness. As they tumbled to the ground, the trap was sprung. The first two, still half asleep and with no clear idea of what was happening, were despatched with scarcely any struggle, but the others came out fighting. Inside the burning building, a few of the soldiers had loaded their muskets and fired from the windows, giving some sort of cover to their comrades.

  The door of the commander’s hut opened and the officer appeared, his unbuckled sword belt in his hand as
he hurried to investigate. As soon as he saw Burke, he took his sword by the hilt and dropped the scabbard to the ground. James had no chance here of attacking while his victim was struggling to draw his weapon. Instead, he found himself armed only with a knife, while his opponent wielded a regular sword. His one advantage was that, until the Captain was through the door, the man did not have enough room to make full use of his blade.

  James feinted toward his opponent who stabbed back at him. James swerved his body from side to side, trying to avoid the other’s thrusts and tempt him into a swing with the sword. He wished he had a blanket to tangle the other’s blade for, without one, he had no protection at all. As James swerved and feinted, feinted and swerved, the Spaniard was slowly forcing his way forward. James knew that, as soon as the man was clear of the building, the fight would be over in seconds.

  None of the gauchos was in any position to help James. A shot from the bunkhouse had felled one of them and the others were engaged in a general melee around the window.

  Burke was tiring now, as the officer forced him back. The sword cut into his sleeve and a second blow stabbed at his shoulder. At that moment, though, one of the soldiers in the fight at the bunkhouse let out such a scream that his commander, recognising the voice, turned his face for a moment toward the sound. That second’s inattention was all James needed. Stepping forward he thrust once, hard and deep under his ribs.

  The Captain half turned as if trying to see who had done this to him and, dropping his sword, fell dead at James’ feet.

  By now, the fight was almost over. The bunkhouse was well alight and the soldiers within were no longer able to provide covering fire for those outside. Paco and Julio ran to the stables and started those ablaze before calling for everyone to leave. The body of their dead comrade was left where it lay and the others melted back into the darkness. Only three of the garrison remained alive and they were in no state to mount a pursuit. Besides, they had no horses to follow with, as their beasts had fled in terror from the burning stables.

  James was not sure that they would be able to find their way back to where they left the horses but the gauchos seemed to have an almost mystical awareness of exactly where they were on the pampas. In a few minutes, he heard the shuffling of hooves and the clink of harness and they were mounting up and moving northward. Only when the flames were no more than a flicker on the horizon did they stop and rest for what remained of the night.

  The next day they travelled on toward the city. They rode quietly, their emotions mixed. The raid had been a success and their victory a dramatic one, but Carlos would never ride with them again.

  They met up with the herd late in the day, as the drovers prepared to settle it for the night, ready to drive the last few miles to the slaughterhouses in the morning. Nothing was said about James’ wounds or their missing comrade. Life on the pampas was hard and death an everyday reality.

  They sat together round the campfire and talked about what price the cattle would fetch at auction and the girls they would be spending their time (and their money) with before they returned. Someone got out some cards and they played a few hands and James was so tired he allowed himself to win.

  And then he slept.

  The next morning they were up with the dawn, driving the cattle on the final stage of their journey. James’ wounds were superficial and, in his borrowed gaucho clothes, his bedraggled appearance attracted no attention as they passed through the city gates.

  He looked around for Paco and only then realised that Sr Iglesias was himself driving the trail wagon on this last stretch. If he had had any doubts as to where the captured silver was, they were gone now.

  James kept a careful eye on the wagon and saw Iglesias turn away from the herd to head deeper into the city. For a moment, he considered following, but with the gauchos busy all around him, he could hardly expect to slip off unnoticed. He could only watch as Iglesias and his booty vanished away.

  Any thoughts about the wagon were soon put out of Burke’s head by the demands of driving the herd through the town. Although the streets were straight and wide, the cattle were frightened to be surrounded by buildings and kept trying to break away down the side streets. The gauchos had to force their horses past the nervous steers to get ahead and block off possible escape routes. The last mile of the cattle drive seemed more demanding than all the time that they had spent in the open space of the pampas.

  When the beasts were eventually delivered safely to the stock pens, the gauchos were happy to leave Pedro to attend to the commercial side of their business while they went off to start their celebrations. They led James to a nearby establishment, which was obviously used to dealing with gauchos who had just arrived in town with their cattle. From the street, the place was nothing special but James was assured that here was one of the best asados in the city. He was led through the building to an open space beyond, where long tables were set out around a fire pit with great hunks of steak dripping fat onto the charcoal below them.

  The owner set bottles of wine on the table. A couple of the men had brought guitars and sang songs of their pampas life as the drink circulated while they waited for Pedro to join them. As soon as he arrived, carrying a leather bag that jingled with the reassuring sound of silver dollars, plates of grilled meat and fried potatoes, black pudding, enormous sausages, and slices of ham appeared on the table, and the sound of singing stopped while the men concentrated on their food and wine.

  Once they had done justice to the food, they relaxed with more wine. Toast after toast was made to ‘our Yankee friend’. The guitars began to play again and everybody joined in singing long, slow songs about the loneliness and loss that seemed an inescapable part of living in this vast emptiness at the bottom of the world. The words were sad and the melodies plaintive but the singing evoked the beauty of the landscape and the passion with which they loved it.

  As he sat amongst these men with their mix of European and Indian blood, speaking their own clipped Spanish and singing in a style quite alien to Iberia, James understood why they fought against their colonial masters with such ferocity. This, he felt, was the future of La Plata – a place that was unlike any European country and yet formed by Europeans. Not Spanish or French or English, but fiercely and proudly American.

  At last, with their final farewells, the men were off back to the pampas they loved so much.

  James waited until dark, when his condition was less likely to be noticed, before making his way back to Mr O’Gorman’s house.

  Mr O’Gorman, it transpired, was out for the evening but Mrs O’Gorman was at home. She screamed, prettily, at her first sight of James, dirty, his clothes torn and bloody. Then she directed that he should be taken to his room and, in the absence of William, she would take responsibility for his care.

  And so it was that, after bathing him and dressing his wounds with a skill James was surprised to learn she possessed, Ana put him to bed, and, his condition demanding her continuing attention, slipped in beside him.

  James had been in the saddle for three days; he had been fighting for his life and still carried the wounds; he had spent hours drinking at The Angel. Yet Ana’s nursing endeavours seemed to restore him completely. So completely that a stranger, seeing Ana slipping from the room later in the evening, might have assumed from her dishevelled appearance that it was she who had returned from a long and gruelling journey while James’ sleeping body presented a picture of rude health.

  Chapter Five

  William was at his master’s bedside the following morning, full of remorse for not being there the night before.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, man. You had no way of knowing that I would be returning yesterday; still less that I would be any the worse for wear. Where were you, anyway?’

  ‘I was walking out with a young lady, sir.’

  ‘You dog, William. Who’s the lucky lass?’

  ‘Miss Simkins, sir.’

  ‘And where did you meet Miss Simkins?’


  William reddened.

  ‘It’s Molly, sir. Molly Simkins.’

  Burke gave a burst of laughter.

  ‘Molly! How can you be “walking out” with her? She’s a whore.’

  Too late, Burke saw the expression on William’s face.

  ‘I’m sorry, William. I didn’t realise . . .’

  ‘That’s all right, sir. But you shouldn’t hold the young lady’s profession against her. We all have to eat.’

  ‘Indeed we do, William.’

  There was a short, embarrassed silence, broken by William.

  ‘You look to have had an interesting time away, sir.’

  James needed no more excuse to recount the details of his time at the estancia.

  ‘I’m certain Iglesias and his men are just part of an organised revolutionary movement. If I can get to the man who heads this, I am sure that I can negotiate with him. I’d be representing the king, William. I can offer British help.’ He paused for a moment, imagining himself meeting with the rebel leader and setting out with him the outlines of a new country: the country that Sr Igelesias dreamed of. ‘I can do this, William. I can prise La Plata away from Spain.’

  ‘Is that what we want, though, sir?’

  ‘Of course it’s what we want. With La Plata independent and hostile to Spain, Madrid can be cut off from its supply of silver. Spain boasts of its empire, but it is built solely on the income it derives from the Americas. It’s the silver from here that buys her ships. It’s American silver that pays her armies. Spain is little more than a great trader in silver with a government attached. Deny her the silver and she falls.’