She left at once, and Clay sat at the table, not believing what he had heard. He took several drinks from the bottle; then when the half hour had passed, he got to his feet—somewhat unsteadily—and went to pay the bill. When he got to the carriage, he took one look and laughed out loud.
Ellen had done exactly what she had said and now stood beside the carriage looking for all the world like a young man. “Hello, Clay,” she greeted him in the deepest voice she could muster. “Let’s go to the fight.”
Clay grinned broadly, amused at her audacity. She had done a good job and looked like a young dandy. She had obtained a suit that was somewhat too large and a brown overcoat, so her figure was concealed. Her abundant hair she had managed to cover with a large bowler hat, and the effect was of a rather effeminate young man with large eyes and a smooth complexion.
She climbed into the buggy, saying, “Come on, we’ll be late,” and Clay got in and took the reins. “I even brought a flask,” Ellen said, pulling a leather-covered bottle from her side pocket. “Have a blast, sport!”
Her attempts to emulate a young dandy brought a laugh from Clay. He took a drink, then said, “Here we go!”
The liquor was working on him, and he was delighted by Ellen’s strange antics. He only wished that Taylor Dewitt and Tug Ramsey were along for the fun. It took some time to find the warehouse, and he stopped and refilled the flask at a saloon.
“You better keep that hat on,” he warned Ellen as they entered the old warehouse. “This is a pretty rough place.”
Ellen gave him a dig with her elbow. “Give me a drink, chum,” she said roughly. Her eyes were sparkling, and he saw that she was having a fine time. She took a swallow of liquor, then said, “Let’s get close to the ring.”
Clay had seen many fights and knew what to expect. He thought at first that the coarse language of the spectators would offend Ellen, but she seemed to pay no heed to it. He was also apprehensive that someone would see through her disguise, but fortunately no one did. Clay paid little heed to the fight. By the time it was over, he had finished the flask and was almost too drunk to walk.
Ellen caught at him as he staggered getting into the carriage, and said, “I thought you could hold your liquor better than that, Clay Rocklin!”
The remark offended him, and he said belligerently, “Can drink all I want! Let’s go—find a place. Not too late.”
The rest of the evening was a blur to Clay. He was aware of going to a bar, then to another, but soon he lost all ability to make decisions. He laughed a great deal, hung on to Ellen for support, but the world began to lose focus.
He became dimly aware that night had gone. The morning sun was up, almost blinding him as they left one saloon, and he knew that he was supposed to do something. But he seemed like a man in a dream, and as he moved from one place to another, guided by Ellen’s firm hand, he could not pull his thoughts together. There were some people around, and he spoke to them, but his words didn’t make sense—even to him.
Finally he found himself being led into a room, and when the door was closed, the sound was faint and far away. Then he heard Ellen’s voice, saying, “All right, Clay. We’re here.”
He didn’t know what that meant, nor did he know where he was, and when her hands touched him, he fell forward. But the fall was never complete, and instead of touching the floor or a bed, he fell endlessly, never stopping until the warm darkness enveloped him.
The darkness rolled back and Clay awoke slowly, sluggishly. A rough blanket was over his face, and he threw it off and lay there with his eyes closed, fighting a fierce headache, trying to think. Shreds of memories floated past his mind—a few snatches of conversations, a quick flash of one moment of the fight, Ellen’s laughter as he tried to get into the carriage—but they all jumbled together in a meaningless fashion.
Then another memory came to him, and the abruptness of it caused him to open his eyes and look around the room wildly. It was a strange room, with one large window through which the sun was filtered by an opaque shade. The wallpaper was white with small red flowers, and there was no furniture in the room except the bed and a washstand.
A hotel room, he thought. Then the memory came back, unmistakable, and turning his head, he saw that the pillow beside him was rumpled and dented.
Ellen!
He threw the covers back and got to his feet, ignoring the pounding at his temples. Moving to the washstand, he poured water into the basin with an unsteady hand, then splashed his face with the cold water. He found his clothing thrown on the floor. He grabbed his clothes and dressed as rapidly as he could, then moved to the mirror and stared into it.
His eyes were bleary, underscored by circles. He had no comb, so he tried to use his fingers to push his wild hair into place. Even as he was engaged in this, the door suddenly opened and he turned to see Ellen enter.
“Why, you’re up at last!” she said at once. Her face was pale, and she looked drained. She was wearing the dress she had worn to the minstrel show and was carrying a tray with a white napkin covering the contents.
“Sit down and have some breakfast,” she said nervously.
“Don’t know if I can keep anything down,” he mumbled. He felt as bad as he had ever felt, and worse than the physical misery was the knowledge that he had made a fool of himself. He could not bring himself to look at Ellen. In an attempt to disguise his self-disgust, he sat down on the bed and picked up the cup of coffee from the tray. It was hot and strong, and he muttered, “Thanks, Ellen. This is what I needed.”
“Try some of the eggs,” she said. “I’ve already eaten.”
Clay picked up a fork and pushed the eggs around listlessly. The situation was abominable, and he wished he had never come to Washington in the first place. The Bentons were old family friends of the Rocklins, and he felt he had betrayed them.
Finally he said, “I’ve been a fool, Ellen.”
She suddenly reached out and caressed his cheek, saying, “I guess we both were pretty carried away. But I’m not sorry.”
Clay shook his head. “I took advantage of you. Wish I hadn’t done that.”
The apology seemed to hang in the air, but she sat down beside him. Putting her arm around him, she squeezed him, saying, “I’m happy, Clay. And you must be happy, too.” She drew his head around, and her eyes were intense. “This isn’t the way I planned to get married, but we have each other, so it doesn’t really matter.”
Clay sat there still as a stone, doubting his ears. “Married?” he asked hoarsely.
Ellen looked at him strangely. “Why, yes. Don’t you remember?”
Clay shook his head, trying to free it from the cobwebs. His mind was reeling, and he wanted to run out of the room. “Ellen, marriage is a serious thing. What we’ve done was wrong, but it’s not—”
“Clay! We are married!” Ellen rose and moved to pick up her coat. She retrieved a paper from the pocket and handed it to him. “Don’t you remember?” She watched as he stared at the paper. “It’s our marriage license. I wanted to wait, to have a nice wedding at Gracefield, but you wouldn’t listen.”
Dimly Clay remembered a trip to some office and an argument with some official, but it was vague and fuzzy. “But—we can’t be married!” he protested. “It takes more time than a single night to get the papers done.”
Ellen shook her head. “You bribed him to set the dates back, Clay.”
Suddenly Clay came to his feet, despair and confusion on his lean face. “Ellen! We’ve got to get it annulled!”
Ellen stood before him silently. Her eyes were enormous, and there was a vulnerability in her that seemed to make her smaller. “And do we annul what happened here?” She gestured at the tumbled bed, then quickly came to him. “Clay, I love you. Maybe you don’t love me much, but I’ll make you forget Melanie!” She began to weep, and suddenly she was in his arms.
Clay held her, feeling her grief, and for the next hour they talked. He tried to tell her that it would never work—b
ut she clung to him, begging him not to leave her. The guilt that gripped him weakened him, and—despite his past—there was a strong steak of honor in Clay that wouldn’t let him just walk away.
Desolate, defeated, he said wearily, “Ellen, we can’t do this. I’d be ruining your life if we go on like this. I’m not fit for you.”
But in the end, she had her way.
The next day they were on their way back to Gracefield. They didn’t deceive Stephen and Ruth about being together the night before. Indeed, they didn’t try. They only agreed to say nothing of their marriage. After listening to what had happened, Stephen had said only, “Clay, don’t be hasty.”
Later when they were alone together, Ellen urged, “Let’s get married by the minister at Gracefield. We’ll get a better start that way.”
And that was what happened. A week after they returned, there was a wedding at Gracefield. Such a hasty marriage could not help but cause talk, but it was inevitable that people would say Ellen was getting Clay on the rebound.
Thomas and Susanna went through the ceremony with smiles, but when they were alone, they could not conceal their grief. Still, nothing could change what was happening, so they put the best face they could on it.
But it was Taylor Dewitt who spoke the sentiments of most people. As Clay kissed the bride, Dewitt leaned over and whispered into the ear of Tug Ramsey, “I hate to say so, Tug—but I’m very much afraid that Clay got the wrong bride.”
PART TWO
Incident in Mexico—1846
CHAPTER 8
THE GUNS OF MONTEREY
A blistering gust of wind heated by the white-hot sun overhead washed over the face of Second Lieutenant Gideon Rocklin as he stared across a wide plain broken by a crooked arroyo. He looked down the line of blue-clad infantrymen, then took a sip of water from his canteen. It was tepid and tasted strongly of rubber, which was not strange since that was what the canteen was made of. The putrefying smell of decomposing corpses seemed to have somehow gotten into the water and even the food. At least, so it seemed to Gid.
Two hundred yards out on the rocks lay strange bundles—dead men who had turned black and swollen to such proportions it seemed that they had been pumped up like huge balloons. Their legs burst the seams of their pants. Many of them lay face upward, their arms lifted in eloquent gestures toward the pale sky that looked down on them pitilessly.
“You reckon we might move up again, Lieutenant?” The question came from Sergeant Boone Monroe, a tall, rawboned man of thirty from the hills of Tennessee. He had been with Gideon since they had left Texas as part of General Zachary Taylor’s small force back in March.
“Looks like it, Sergeant,” Gid said, nodding. Looking down the line again, he noticed the ragged uniforms and torn boots of the men. He looked at the men’s faces, burned by the Mexican sun and thinned by poor rations. He hesitated, then said, “The men are pretty tired, Boone.”
Monroe spit an amber stream of tobacco juice that hit a small brown lizard directly on the head. He admired his shot, grinned, and said, “Shore am glad those greasers can’t hit with them artillery pieces like thet!” Then his face sobered. He shook his head slightly, saying, “We come a long way, Lieutenant, since we left Palo Alto.” He studied the thin line of troopers carefully through half-closed eyes, then added, “Some of those boys we lost on the way here … it sort of eats at a man, don’t it, Lieutenant?”
“They were all good men. None better.”
As Gideon turned his gaze across the broken field, he thought of home, picturing the green grass and cool breezes of New York. But the war with Mexico had exploded—and had destroyed his world. He had known, they had all known, that the war was coming—but few of them were prepared when President Polk asked the Congress to declare a state of war in early May 1846.
Only four months ago, Gideon thought, his eyes burning from lack of sleep. Seems like ten years! But I guess being in a war always does strange things to a man’s thinking.
He thought of how he and almost every other regular army officer had been gathered up with scarcely time to get their belongings together. No time for furloughs now! He had been stationed at Fort Swift in Dakota Territory and had barely been granted permission to take Melanie and their three boys back to his parents’ house in Washington before leaving for Texas, where he had joined General Taylor’s force. Officers were scarce, and Gid, like most of the other green lieutenants, was given command of troops with no experience in combat at all.
The experience had come soon enough. Taylor had driven his army to Palo Alto. The general was expecting a fight, but his small army, reduced by illness and desertions, now numbered only twenty-three hundred men. The Mexican army tallied over four thousand. Gideon thought of that fight as he stood beside Sergeant Monroe. He remembered how he had struggled with the unknown factor every new soldier faces in his first battle: Will I fight—or will I run away? Fear had been thick in his throat as he had led his men toward the battle, moving slowly with their supply train of two hundred wagons and the two eighteen-pound cannons that were drawn by twenty oxen each.
The scene came to him sharply—the Mexican line stretched a mile in length; infantry anchored on a wooded hillock to the right and extending left, interspersed with eight-pound cannons on massive carriages. To the left was a line of lancers, the sun glinting on their bayonets and on the razor-sharp lances from which bright pennants streamed.
He remembered General Taylor—“Old Rough and Ready,” as he was called by the troops—sitting placidly on Old Whitey, his horse. Sergeant Monroe had looked at the general, then winked at Gideon as they had marched into the line of battle. “Looks like he’s on a possum hunt, don’t he, Lieutenant?” he had said. The easy manner of Monroe had braced Gid up, and he had grinned back, the fear gone.
But not for long. When the two armies had lined up no more than a few hundred feet apart, it had returned. When the bullets began to whistle past his ears, and when men began dropping abruptly out of the line, fear was replaced by a blind terror that weakened his legs and emptied his mind. Once again it had been Sergeant Monroe, who had stayed at his side whistling a tuneless melody as he loaded and reloaded his musket, who had kept him in place. Gid never knew if Monroe was aware of his lieutenant’s fear. He suspected he was, but the tall Tennessean never referred to it.
There had been other battles, and the glamour of war, what little there had been for Gideon Rocklin, soon faded. There was nothing glamorous in what he saw … or what he did. Eventually he had learned to accept the terrible wounds, the sickness, and the constant presence of death.
The sound of a running horse came from behind, and Gideon took his eyes off the long hills that lay between the American army and Monterey. A smile creased his dry lips as a smallish man pulled his horse to an abrupt halt and came to the ground.
“Hello, Sam,” Gid called out. “Glad to see you, but the rear is the other direction.”
Second Lieutenant Ulysses Samuel Grant, a cigar clamped between his teeth, looked over, found Gideon, and came to stand before him. “Thought I’d better come and see the show.” Grant and Gid had been classmates at West Point. Sam—as he was fondly called—had been a silent man who kept to himself, but he and Gid had become friends.
Grinning at Grant now, Gid remembered some of the times they’d shared in their relatively carefree days as cadets. Sam Grant was not a colorful soldier, but there was some quality in the man that other men respected. Now he looked at Gid, allowing a small smile to touch his lips. “Things are pretty bad when a quartermaster has to lead you dashing young infantry lieutenants into a fight, Gid.”
“How’d you get out of your duty, Sam?” Gid asked curiously. Grant was under orders to serve as a quartermaster in charge of supplies. The stubby soldier had tried every way he knew to get out of the hateful duty but had not succeeded.
“My curiosity got the best of me, Gid,” he said. “I couldn’t stand being out of it all.”
“You’ll ge
t court-martialed!”
“Well, maybe I’ll get killed in this charge that’s coming,” Grant said lightly. “That would answer. Anyway, I had to come. This letter came for you yesterday.”
Gid stared at the envelope that Grant pushed at him, then grabbed it and ripped it open. Just the sight of Mellie’s handwriting brought her before his mind, and his hands trembled as he read the letter quickly, slowing down at the last paragraph:
My dearest husband, I miss you more than I ever thought possible! I am one of those women who lose themselves in their husbands, I suppose, and even after nearly six years of marriage, I still feel like a bride! I suppose that’s foolish, but it’s true, my dearest.
The boys are fine. You mustn’t worry about them. I know your parents (and mine, as well) thought we should have waited to have children, but we did well. When I take the three of them out for a walk, people turn and stare at them. “Such fine boys!” they say. Tyler, Robert, and Frank all send their love. Every night we pray, our boys and I, and though they’re only three, four, and five years old, I know their prayers for your safety will be heard! They all look so much like you it gives me a start!
I must close, with all my love. I enclose a letter I received from Ellen. It is not good news, and I thought perhaps I ought not to send it, that it might be a burden to you. I know you are very fond of Clay, and according to Ellen, he is not doing well at all. But I decided you should see it, so I enclosed it with a prayer that he will wake up to the terrible ruin he is making of his life. He has so much! Yet he seems determined to throw everything away.
Be careful! Oh, be careful, my dear!
Your loving wife,
Mellie
Hastily Gid unfolded the other letter and scanned it. It was the letter of an unhappy woman, which Gid and Melanie had long known Ellen to be. It was three scrawled, poorly spelled pages, all with the same lament—Clay was acting like a fool! Gid let his eyes run over it, doubting if the situation was as bad as Ellen painted it. And yet he knew that his father had received similar word from Clay’s father. He read a sentence: “… and not only does Clay neglect me, but he pays so little attention to the children! I hate to tell you, Mellie, but he’s been seeing other women!”
Three Books in One: A Covenant of Love, Gate of His Enemies, and Where Honor Dwells Page 11
