In the Rogue Blood Read online

  The badged man scowled and said something to Edward in Spanish and then gave an order and Edward was conveyed out of the cantina and into the street and he saw that the Janey horse was gone. They took him up the street and around to the rear of what looked like a municipal building of some sort and up to a low whitewashed structure of stone fronted by a heavy wooden door and showing in the moonlight two small windows covered with iron bars. The guard at the door rattled a set of keys on the ring at his waist and worked one into the doorlock and pulled the door open just wide enough for them to shove Edward through. He sprawled face-first onto a stone floor thinly layered with straw and the door closed behind him.

  The room was dark but for the glimmering of a few scattered candle stubs. The stench of the place seemed to rise off the straw in his face. He heard low voices all about. He pushed up on his elbows and made out the forms of men sitting against the walls, others lying about the floor. Now the smell was worse yet and he spied a slop bucket but a few feet from him. He crawled away from it and sat up.

  And there in the sputtering light of a candle stub, sitting with his back against the wall, was the large blackbearded man who had robbed him at the Sabine ferry.

  The blackbeard was watching him and grinning whitely in the dim light. “How do, friend,” he said.

  Edward jumped up and rushed at him and tried to kick him. But the blackbeard deftly dodged and rolled to his feet and absorbed most of Edward’s flurry of punches on his forearms as the other inmates scrabbled clear of them. The big man grabbed him and flung him against the wall and Edward bounced off and fell to his knees and the blackbeard yanked him to his feet and caught him up in a bear hug and squeezed until Edward could not draw breath. His vision flared redly and then came a dizzy swoon and then blackness.

  When next he opened his eyes he was sitting propped against the wall and the blackbeard was squatting before him. Edward tried to lunge at him but the giant simply jabbed his forehead with the heel of a hand and knocked him back again. “Boy, you have got grit, damn if ye don’t,” he said. “But if ye don’t quit trying my patience I’ll truly put an end to this foolishness.”

  “You robbed me my whole damn outfit,” Edward managed to say. His breath still came hard and his lips were bloated from the punch he’d taken in the cantina. He tried to spit off to the side and got most of the bloody gob on his sleeve.

  “That I did,” the blackbeard said. “But I didn’t kill you, did I? I don’t begrudge ye a try at me for robbing you, but now you have had your try and it fell shy and that it is all the attack I will tolerate from ye. Come at me again and I’ll kill you graveyard dead.”

  Edward considered going at the man again but could not muster the fire for it. Every muscle and bone pulsed with pain.

  “You stole my horse and sold her, damn ye. I had to thump a fella to get her back.”

  “Well hell yes I sold her. I needed the money. It’s the usual reason for robbing somebody, don’t ye know.” He spat to the side and suddenly grinned. “The fella ye thumped, I hope he was a gambler with long mustaches.”

  “That be him.”

  “Good. I didn’t much care for that sonofabitch. I’m real glad to know you got you horse back from him.”

  Edward adjusted his position against the wall and grimaced. “I believe you done bust my spine.”

  “Hell boy, if it was bust you wouldn’t be able to move the least bit. You’re just sore some.”

  A prisoner passing by stepped on Edward’s outstretched leg and Edward kicked at him and cursed and the blackbeard snarled, “Cuidado, bruto! Ya te lo dije!” The man slank into the shadows.

  “Where’s my guns and knives at?” Edward said “My blankets? My goddamn slicker?”

  “Done sold the guns. It aint much left of your possibles but for the blanket and slicker. They with my outfit over in the livery. But it’s the alcalde’s livery so we aint either one like to see our goods again.”

  “What’s the alcalde?”

  “The mayor, ye might say. The fella with the badge arrested ye. Set hisself up his own town this side of the river and calls it Laredo too. Some calls it West Laredo, some say New Laredo, take you pick. It’s the same shithole whatever you call it.”

  “That son of a bitch.” Edward told him of his trouble in the cantina.

  The blackbeard said Edward wasn’t the first to get locked up for abusing the idiot. “The softbrain is nephew to the alcalde’s wife. What with all the sonofabitches in this town ready to kiss the alcalde’s ass it’s a damn wonder they didn’t kill you like they have some others who provoked the fool.”

  “How come you to be in here?” Edward asked.

  The blackbeard said he had been on his way to meet up with some partners in Monclova, Mexico, about 125 miles or so west by south from Laredo. He’d taken leave of the company in San Antonio and gone up to Arkansas to settle a matter involving his sister, who he said was the only living kin he had. He knew his partners would be taking their ease in Monclova as soon as they took care of some business they’d contracted to do in Coahuila state. He’d stopped in the New Laredo for a drink and a poke and a night’s sleep in a bed, but the whore proved such a sullen bitch he’d refused to pay her and threw her out of the room. Next morning when he went to the livery he found the alcalde waiting for him and backed up by a dozen fellows with rifles. He was arrested for robbing the whore and clapped in the cárcel. That had been a month ago. He’d since found out that every whore in town had to give the alcalde half of her take and the alcalde had not appreciated being deprived of a dollar by some passing Yankee.

  “How about a trial? Don’t we get a trial?”

  The blackbeard laughed. “You get you a trial when the alcalde gets around to taking you over to the courtroom where his brother’s the judge. Damn greaser will fine you all you got, including your horse and outfit, and sentence you to six months at whatever labor the alcalde wants you for. You’ll do it in leg irons and under watch of some hardcase guards. I aint had any trial yet.”

  “Well damn,” Edward said. “Looks like I’m here for a while.”

  “Could be ye are,” the blackbeard said. Then he grinned. “Or could be you got youself thowed in here at just the right time.”

  “What you mean?”

  “Well now, just last week a bunch of us was took out in leg chains to dig graves for a family of a half-dozen who burned up when their house caught fire. Well now, as we was shuffling back from the graveyard with our shovels on our shoulders who do I see standing in the door of a cantina and grinning at me over his mug of beer but Charlie Geech. He’s with the company I was headed to meet with in Monclova. He didn’t say nor do a thing but give me a wink. I don’t know what he was doing here but unless he’s quit the company the rest of them’s bound to be close by. I stopped to look at him and maybe say something but a guard come up behind me and poked me with his rifle and said I wouldnt be seeing the inside of no cantina for a good while and just keep moving, so I did. I looked back a minute later but old Geech was gone. I reckon they’ll be here to see about me soon enough.”

  “You reckon? You must got some damn good friends.”

  “Look here boy, you ever done manhuntin? Bandits and Indians and the like?”

  “I never.”

  “Well don’t tell nobody you never. You strike me as you could learn the trade quick enough and this be ye chance. I figure the captain’ll take you on when I tell him the kind a sand ye got.”

  “What captain?”

  “Company captain. Name’s Hobbes.”

  “You think this captain’s gonna get you out of here, no lie?”

  The blackbeard laughed. “I know it for a fact he will. Take you out too if you ready to ride with us. The captain don’t never leave a man of his company in a bad way if he knows about it. It’s the only thing I can say about the man for sure.”

  “Well, it’s the best thing about him I heard you say and I hope you be right about it.”

  Two day
s later as dawnlight was beginning to gray the jail windows they heard an outbreak of shooting and the rumble of horse hooves. Heard yeehawing and curses and screams. A minute later the lock rattled in the door and it swung open wide and admitted a rush of gray light and the door guard came running in with his hands to his throat trying vainly to stanch the pouring blood and he staggered and fell. And even as his life bled away into the filthy straw some of the inmates ran up and began kicking him. Others rushed toward the door but stopped short and moved aside as a man strode in with a revolver in one hand and in the other a bowie slicked with blood. Of unimposing height and build he yet moved with the mien of one who commanded whatever ground he stood upon. Black hair hung from his flatbrimmed black hat to just above the buckskin on his shoulders, his mustaches to his chin. His eyes looked cut from obsidian. He paused inside the doors and never glanced at the throatcut man. The shooting outside continued, the outcries and howls.

  “Bill Jaggers!” the man called.

  “You found him, cap’n!” the blackbeard replied. He started for the door with a wide grin and looked at Edward over his shoulder and said, “Let’s go, boy!”

  V

  JOHN

  1

  On a warm forenoon of pale and cloudless sky they arrived at the Río Grande, known to the Mexicans as the Rio Bravo del Norte. Taylor’s scouts had reported that the town of Matamoros, positioned on the south bank of the river and about twenty-five miles inland from its mouth at the Gulf of Mexico, was fortified by a small Mexican garrison. The river along that stretch was eighty yards wide and the Mexicans had confiscated every boat to be found and taken them all to their side and posted sentinels for miles along the riverbank east and west of town.

  After sending a detachment to secure Point Isabel on the Gulf as the landing point for his seaborne supplies, Taylor chose to give the Mexicans a show. He marched his troops upstream along the north bank and hove into view of Matamoros with regimental bands blaring and colors popping in the breeze. He halted the troops in a wide clearing and rode with his staff officers to the crest of a bluff affording an excellent view of the river in both directions and of Matamoros across the way. The river was the color of buckskin and its banks were lined with cattails except along the Matamoros riverfront and its opposite shore where the ferry had operated before the Mexicans dismantled it on learning of Taylor’s approach. There were hardwood stands upriver and down along both banks and cotton fields shone in the distance on the Mexican side.

  A crowd of townspeople had assembled on the Matamoros bank to gape at the Americans. In the midst of them was a troop of lancers sitting their handsome mounts and resplendent in green tunics with crimson sashes and tall black shakos with horsehair plumes. Alongside them an army band played rousing patriotic tunes hard and loud in competition with the strains of the Yankee musicians. Commanding the lancers was a major who now stood in the stirrups and brandished his saber at the invaders and addressed them loudly and at length in eloquent Spanish which Taylor’s interpreter translated as a directive to the Yankees to go home or die.

  As soon as the major had done with his address, the crowd started in with cursing and shaking their fists and the boys among them threw stones which all fell short in the water. The Americans in the ranks swore back at the Mexicans in explicitly profane terms. The cacophony of martial music and bilingual damnations shook the skies while Taylor conferred with his advisors about defensive positions.

  John and Riley had by now been relieved of their gags but they had fourteen days more to carry ball and chain. When Master Sergeant Kaufmann went striding past them Riley called out, “Say now, sergeant, what if that fancy Mex cavalry comes charging across the river, eh? How are me and Johnny here to fight if we’re chained down by these damn cannonballs?” Kaufmann gave him the barest glance and went on without a word. Riley looked at John and said, “I have prayed to the good Lord to let me have but five minutes alone with that son of a bitch, just five minutes to set things right with him and I can die a happy man.”

  “You best pray I dont beat you to him,” John said.

  The Mexican major now barked orders to his troop and the lancers reined their horses around and the unit trotted off in smart formation down the dusty street and back toward the garrison. The band marched along after, still playing as it went, its volume falling fainter as it moved away from the river. A moment later the only Mexicans still in evidence on the other shore were the sentinels and a few lingering civilians.

  2

  While diplomatic efforts to avoid war continued between Washington and Mexico City, Taylor was under orders to stay in place and take no hostile action except in response to Mexican attack. Rumors were rife, the most common of them that the Mexicans across the river were waiting only for the arrival of several more regiments before making their charge. Against that possibility Taylor ordered work to begin immediately on an earthen defense work to be called Fort Texas. It was positioned on the bluff and would have five sides. Its outer walls would be nine feet high and fifteen feet thick. Toward its construction each regiment provided daily labor in the form of rotating fatigue details, and as compensation each man on the detail received a gill of whiskey at the end of the day’s work. Required to work with the construction crews every day but denied the whiskey allowance were all men under punishment, including John Little and Jack Riley, who had to labor with ball and chain. They fetched and carried materials and tools, mixed buckets of mud mortar, applied pick and shovel, and all the while cursed the army that treated them less like soldiers than as beasts of burden.

  Lucas Malone volunteered for the labor detail at every opportunity and so on most days found himself working in proximity to John and Riley. John introduced Lucas and Handsome Jack to each other one sultry afternoon when they were all shoveling construction debris into wheelbarrows along the fort’s south wall. Thunderheads were rising like bloodstained purple towers over the Gulf and the sun gleamed off the whitewashed houses of Matamoros. Riley asked what part of Ireland his family was from. Lucas said County Galway and Riley grinned widely. “But that’s me birthplace, man! Some Malones lived a few miles north of us. Could they have been kin?” Lucas said they might have been but he couldn’t be sure. They’d had lots of Malone kin in the old country but his granddaddy had fled the sod after killing a man in a donnybrook. He’d kept on running after reaching New York and didn’t stop until he made Tennessee.

  Riley asked Lucas why he volunteered for the labor gang. “Bad enough to have to do this as punishment,” he said.

  “Because I’d anytime ruther work like a man,” said Lucas, “than march around on a drill field playin at being a soldier. March and drill, drill and march. That’s all we do in this fuckin army camp.”

  “Dont be calling it an army camp,” Riley said. “It’s a bloody prison is what it is.”

  Remembering the city prison in New Orleans, John thought Handsome Jack was wrong about that. “Hell Jack, it’s only another seven days with these ornaments on our legs,” he said.

  “Only seven days left this time,” Riley said. “Then comes the next time, and maybe we’ll wear them sixty days, or ninety. Maybe next time it’ll be the fucking yoke for a month or so. Maybe it’ll be the bloody lash. These bastards can do any damn … hello, what’s this?”

  Their comrades were flocking to the riverside in high commotion, hollering and cheering and waving their hats. A dozen young women, all of them with long black hair and red laughing mouths, had come to the riverbank and there disrobed completely and entered the river to their brown thighs and now were busily soaping themselves and each other and blowing kisses the while to the cheering Americans across the way. Behind them a squad of Mexican soldiers stood at the water’s edge with their rifles unslung and held the girls’ clothes and pointed across to the Americans and laughed and said things to the women and quickly back-stepped grinning when the girls splashed water at them. Some of the Americans removed their boots and walked partway into the river
and called for the women to come over to their side. The women laughed and splashed water in their direction and jumped up and down so that their dark-nippled breasts jounced the more. They soaped each other’s gleaming buttocks and threw their heads back and rounded their mouths in mock orgasmic delight as they worked a thick soapy lather into the hairy patches between their legs. The Americans were howling like penned dogs.

  “Sweet Jesus,” Riley said with a grin, “I been struck mad by the bleeding sun, I have.”

  Lucas laughed at the happy vision of all that lovely female nakedness in the bright sunlight. He clapped John on the shoulder and pointed to one girl after another. “Look there at her, Johnny—right over there! Oh, and that one, over there, with the bush big as a beaver. You see her? God damn!”

  Now officers had arrived on the scene with sabers in hand and were shoving their way to the forefront of the crowd of soldiers. The girls were beckoning to the Americans and cupping their pretty breasts to them and calling endearments to them in Spanish. And now some of the Americans had waded out to the river’s depths and begun swimming for the other side and the officers ran into the water to their knees and commanded them to turn back immediately. Some of them did but several swam on and midway across the river one of them began to thrash wildly and quite abruptly sank from sight and his body would be found the next day caught against the bank on a tree root at a point more than twenty miles downstream near the mouth of the river.