The Best American Mystery Stories 2007

Brent Spencer The True History

From Prairie Schooner

Let it be said here and now that a Texian has no taste for discipline. This I freely admit. But when a man of parts hears the call to arms, when his mind’s eye imagines the sweep of his country’s swift sword of destiny, there can be little choice but to heed the call. And so, as a servant of God and the state, being twenty years of age, bold, fearless, and believing the Mexicans to be a feeble, mongrel, Priest-ridden race, I took it upon myself to enlist in Sam Houston’s Army of the Republic. There was also, I admit, some talk of treasure. But then, there’s always talk of treasure, the soldier’s goad.

I had made a hash of farming, or so my good wife ceaselessly insisted. My name is Ellet Mayfield, and even this she turned against me with “May-Not-Field,” her constant joke to the ladies of her circle. Not content to stay at home and play the fool for her amusement, and desperate to establish some other way of life before next planting season, my enlistment was, I admit as well, an effort to reassert the manhood that God bestowed upon me. I yearned for the crisp uniform, the polished boot, the sound of the charge arousing noble hearts. These fine features, I was soon to learn, were not part of Mr. Houston’s army, which was so poorly supplied that we looked more like a band of brigands than a well sorted out brigade of soldiers. Still, it was well-known that the towns along the lower Rio Grande were groaning with the weight of treasure heretofore beyond calculation. The stores of silver alone would make each of us a rich man. But there was more, as any faithful reader of the Telegraph and Texas Register well knew. Mountains of gold and the landscape a moving black mass of livestock as far as the eye can see. How such a backward race had been able to amass such riches was a question that did not much trouble us.

Our little company of thirty-four volunteers was bivouacked for the night on our way to San Antonio. Not two days before, General Santa Anna had taken the city, but reports of late had him already leaving. Was it cowardice or deep strategy from the Napoleon of the West? For us, it was the first of many confusions. Why did we make haste to San Antonio if he was already half-way to the River? Houston would never give the order to follow. He believed a war on Texas soil was winnable but not on Mexican soil. And yet he had surprised us before this sudden about-face, now sounding the call to arms where before he played the coward’s part.

Our lieutenant joined a few of us at our campfire, where we enlivened ourselves with liquor. We talked as if we’d been soldiers for many years, when in fact, we were veterans of a day. He was a fair-featured man whose brown hair, even in the field, was oiled and combed smartly to the side. Indeed, some said he dressed his hair with so much pomade it was proof against any musket ball. And though his jaw was fringed with a trace of beard, there was something womanish about his face, a softness that I took for good breeding. He had the eyes of a poet, focused distantly on other worlds. He did not impress as a man of action. But then, right few of us did.

“Lieutenant,” I said, trying to draw out our commander, “how did you busy yourself before enlistment?”

“I had a business concern in Virginia.” He seemed about to go on but, instead, stirred the fire with a piece of kindling. Joe let fly a low chuckle, for it was widely known that the Lieutenant’s “business concern” was a shop for ladies’ garments.

The Lieutenant seemed a man unsuited to the company of men. It was as if he had started the conversation because it seemed the right thing to do, and now, once into it, he wasn’t for certain how to handle himself.

“Mr. McKendrick?” he said, turning the topic to another at our fire.

McKendrick was the constant companion and “business partner” of Joe Sprague, who had made something of a companion of me from the first moment of enlistment. But the business he, McKendrick, and a third man named Blaine conducted was beyond the limits of all honesty. They were partners in cattle-rustling. They had prospered by raiding only Mexican herds, which the law was loath to prosecute. In the eyes of some, Joe and his freebooters were contributors to the cause of freedom.

McKendrick was a tall, taciturn man who sat beside Joe like a shadow and whose deep-set eyes went untouched by fire light. He wore mismatched boots and woolen trousers that were too short. His shirt was a former feed sack that gave him cause to scratch, often his only contribution to conversation.

At the lieutenant’s question, he turned to face him but without the slightest hint that he would speak. It was a discomfiting gesture. After a moment, the lieutenant turned to me.

“And you, Mr. Mayfield? What was your profession?”

“I was a farmer,” I said, “though it was never a life I cared for.”

“I should say not!” said Joe Sprague, whose bottle we passed. “Farming’s nothing but a fool’s game.” In contrast to his partners, Joe dressed in plain buckskin and a heavy cotton shirt of indeterminate color. He was a man whose face you forgot the second after seeing it, the round, self-satisfied cheeks, the darting eyes always alert for the main chance. I liked him for a quick-spoken saucebox and someone to help pass the time. War, I was finding, could be powerful boring.

“And you, Joe,” I said, “what were you before enlistment?”

Joe looked at me with scornful eyes over the bottle he raised to his mouth. When he finished drinking, he said. “Same as I am now — a young man in search of oppterunity.”

Joe passed the lieutenant the bottle, who swirled the brown liquor and held the bottle high to look through it in the moonlight. “And what ‘oppterunity’ is that?” he said.

“Never you mind what all I done in life. More than you, I’ll tell you what. But right now? Right now, I’m fixing to put ole Santy Anny to the knife.” He flashed a hunting knife that glinted awfully in the fire light. “Mexico’s nothing but a nigger republic. I’ll take my knife to the lot of them. And if Sam Houston isn’t careful, he’ll feel the nick of my blade, too.”

Your knife is your sure stopper of conversation, but the young lieutenant was unflummoxed. “Is it everyone you’re after killing?” came his mild reproof.

“Them what needs killing will get killing. That’s all I’ll say.”

The lieutenant fell into a dark study of his drinking companions. “And does that include your superior officers?”

At these words, Blaine, the fifth and last of our party, entered the clearing with an armload of firewood. He was a small, rough man of misshapen features, accented by his habit of cutting his own hair with a hunting knife. Hearing the lieutenant’s words, he dashed the firewood to the ground and, with fearsome aspect, said, “There ain’t no superior officers in the Texian army.” He dropped to the ground heavily beside me and clawed at the air for the bottle.

I plucked at the front of my shirt. Emboldened by drink, I said, “There’s no superior anything in the Texian army.”

After a long drink from the bottle, Blaine said, “That’s the God’s honest truth of it.”

He himself wore an odd assortment of clothing — buckskin trousers with a frilly French shirt whose cuffs he’d tied closed, making it impossible for him ever to take the shirt off without tearing it from his back.

Eyeing me with a mixture of suspicion and pride, he said, “Mr. Sam Houston hisself never had so fine a shirt as this here’n.”

“Sir,” I said, “you must be wondrously dextrous of hand to tie such knots in your own sleeve ends.”

He brushed the side of his nose with a finger and in a hushed tone said, “Nor I but the feller what… dedicated… this here shirt to me.”

To the lieutenant, whose wife had fashioned a personal uniform for him, complete with a bit of modest brocade at the shoulder, I said, “I ask you, sir, how we are to feel like proper soldiers wearing nothing but our own soiled homespun? A soldier’s not a soldier without a proper uniform.” At the very least I wanted to smell of blood and bravery, but the smell of the stable was still overmuch about me. And my spirits were not kindled by our inglorious mode of transportation — three buckboards that had also been “dedicated” to the cause. I was beginning to feel badly humbugged by the “grand campaign.”

The lieutenant said, “These are hard times, but there will be better days ahead.”

Joe stuck his knife in the ground between his legs. “Better times indeed! I hear tell border towns are chockablock with silver and gold. I expect we’ll soon have ourselves some fine uniforms and then some!”

“How is it,” I wondered aloud, “that a nation so phlegmatic has been able to store up such riches?”

Joe’s eyes narrowed, suspecting betrayal. “All I know is there’s gold and glory and more beeves than you can eat in any number of lifetimes. And that’s not to mention the headright land we’ll get once our services are no longer needed. Boys, there’s no way we can lose!”

“You’ll follow orders,” the lieutenant said as he lowered the bottle. I could see that he had stoppered the mouth of the bottle with his thumb. He wasn’t really drinking with us, only making a show of it to help maintain decorum. “Do you hear me, Mr. Sprague?” he said, stiffening. “You’ll follow orders. And orders will never be given to sack the Mexican towns of the border.”

Joe looked at him long and hard. “Maybe not,” he said finally. “But there are orders and then there are orders. And him what gives them today may not give them tomorrow.”

The lieutenant launched himself to his feet. “Is that a threat?”

Casually, as if his only aim were to amuse himself by the fireside, Joe pulled the knife out of the ground and flipped it, catching it first by the hilt, then by the blade, then by the hilt again. His was a marvelous dexterous hand. I have seen carnival performers who have not half his ease with a blade. At last, he looked up at the lieutenant and said, “Only the guilty man would see that as a threat.”

The lieutenant, with a grievous tone, said, “What of patriotism?”

“What of it?” Joe replied. “Patriotism is not high on my list. And soon as I make the thing pay, I’ll light out for parts unknown.”

The lieutenant, stepping forward, said, “You’ll follow orders. You hear?”

Just then Joe flung his blade hard at the ground before the lieutenant’s feet, where it buried itself to the hilt in the soft dirt.

The lieutenant could not help darting backward, dropping the bottle as he did so. His first step made the next step all the easier, and then the next. Soon the darkness took him to its bosom. He had all the courage of a ten-year’s child.

Joe retrieved the bottle, calling after him, “Your Mexican is the boon companion of the bloody Comanch, a feaster on infants. Tell me anything we do to him would be unseemly in the eyes of God or even Sam Dam Houston!”

McKendrick sat stone-like before the fire, but Blaine did not miss the opportunity to catch me by the buttonhole and, raising his close-set eyes to mine, say, “Ain’t he the original Dare-devil? Ellet Mayfield, have we not seen a true man at last?”

From that moment on, the lieutenant kept pretty much to himself, his commands taking the character of suggestions. The whole affair made Joe, whose cohorts gave him a battlefield promotion to General, feel powerful important.

The closer we came to San Antonio, where we would join up with General Somervell’s army, the more our spirits grew. At last, Sam Houston had put his cards on the table. The glory of Texas would amass on the frontier and run the alien marauders to ground. With each town, more and more of our brave lads answered the call. They fell in behind our wagons, they clung to the sides of our wagons. They came on their own mounts, some of them plough horses. In one town a judge dismissed murder charges against a woman so he, the lawyers, and the jury could join our great march to glory. We were near about one hundred strong, though we still looked as ragtag as any band of gyps. But the president himself was reported to be moving among his foundling troops, predicting the stern rebuke with which we would confront Santa Anna.

And so it was that we came to the crest of a hill covered with mesquite and prickly pear, within sight of our goal, San Antonio. My first thought on seeing the white stone walls of the city was of the New Jerusalem. It was the largest and most glorious city I had ever laid eyes on. It was not so much a city as it was a brilliant whiteness in an otherwise empty place. But as we made our way down the hill toward town, our eyes revealed Nature’s cunning deception. The city was a ruin, its fair white walls peppered with grapeshot and musket balls, its streets strewn with Comanche arrows, its residents too fearful even to find hope in our advance. Like a ghost ship adrift on the desert, San Antonio’s five thousand residents had been reduced to a frightened few hundred, and not a white face among them. Even the Alamo itself seemed less like the site of that heroic battle and more a glorified sod house. What was here, I asked myself, that was worth defending?

We made camp with many other volunteers in a pecan grove just south of town, near an abandoned mission one of the townsmen called “Conception.” Our immediate task was to procure supplies — wood, food, whatever we could lay hands on. Joe himself turned up with the copper baptismal font from the mission, which was used to cook soup for the company. For we were a company now, ill fed, ill shod, and lacking in even the very rudiments of military training, but still a company of free men bound to free the Republic from barbarous hands.

While we waited for orders, most of the men kept to camp, either sleeping or consulting the book of prophecies (of which there are fifty-two one-page chapters). Orders were given but few were obeyed. In truth it seemed as though we had been forgotten by Washington-on-the-Brazos. Rumor told of some men slipping away into the night, having no stomach for such waiting.

I and some others spent our days gathering pecans from the groves and selling them in town. I scoured the streets for ammunition, communicating my needs quickly to prospective sellers by holding up a musket ball between the thumb and finger of one hand and a coin between the thumb and finger of another. Even the meager pecan profits were more than I could spend. There seemed to be very little powder and lead to be had in the town, and some of the balls I bought were so misshapen that I feared they would fly no faster or truer than a toad, but I was determined to be as well equipped as possible.

In this way, I came to know the people somewhat. I learned a few words of their language and took the odd meal with them now and again, finding them a warm, outgoing people. Now and again I visited a rancho, where I was a quick study of Mexican farming practices. Black cattle were the stock of choice in all the places I visited. The need for water — something that had vexed my own efforts at farming — was satisfied with a system by which a hoodwinked mule was made to turn a shaft that connected ingeniously to a configuration of drum and buckets, bringing a constant supply of fresh water from underground to a reservoir on the surface. The mule, being blindfolded, loses all of its mulishness and turns the shaft until another is hitched in its place. In this way, one man may tend a small herd. I must say they were so skilled at disguising their savagery that the Mexicans seemed as civilized as the best of us. In short, I began to suspect they did not deserve the lot they had drawn.

There came a day, after two months, when my hunger was so great that I could not bear to part with the pecans I had collected, not even if it meant I would forego the purchase of the musket ball that would save my life. There was almost no meat to be had, fresh or jerked. Some men set snares for jacks, but I could not bring myself to eat the stringy-looking creature. Eventually, the men were hard put to find even a jack and subsisted on naught but pecans and acorns. So when General Somervell ordered us to move farther west, to a place where game was more plentiful, not a man grumbled but made the move and gladly.

We ate well for the first time in two months — deer, mostly. And we were grateful for the chance to ease them of their jackets, with which we made breeches that helped us endure the unseasonable cold. There were so many skins lying about that our camp resembled a tanyard. Yet full bellies could not chase the thought each man feared to put into words — that our brave campaign for glory and treasure was now no more than a distant memory. To the naked eye, we were little more than a straggling band of idlers.

At last General Somervell gave the order to march on Laredo. Once on the main road, we were ordered to make a left-oblique into the chaparral in order to confuse Santa Anna’s spies. But it was we who found ourselves confused, losing our way in the heavy rains and losing whatever good spirits remained to us. We foundered in a place called Atascosa, a post-oak bog and very like hell. The ground was solid enough under a man’s tread, but a beast could not move forward by ten feet without sinking to the haunches in the morass. We pulled the animals out of one bog hole — three to five men per beast — only to mire it in another. We found that the muck was so deep that at times we had to roll the animals through it until they could find purchase on drier ground. Men carried the burdens mules once bore. Our progress was measured in feet per hour. After a time some of the animals refused to be moved and had to be shot where they stood, the muck so thick that they could not fall down but stood there in a grisly parody of life, blood streaming down their lowered heads.

Hip-deep in oozing mud, we slaughtered the last of the beeves we had taken from the residents of San Antonio, thinking that it would be easier to carry the meat derived than to drive the beasts through the bog. But soon it was clear that we had merely traded one horror for another.

And yet, despite the horror, I felt strangely content. Atascosa, ludicrous beyond all power of description, was no more than we deserved. I would have been happy without measure at the sight of Joe, his cohorts, and I myself sinking forever into the brutal bog. I had to settle for the sight of their booty dislodged and made worthless, like so many of our supplies, when it was ground into the mud under flailing, desperate hooves.

At length we found more secure footing that allowed for better progress, and we shifted our thoughts to other matters than mud. Hunger, for one. There was little to eat but a small portion of meat, a bit of jerky, and some panola, corn meal that we would moisten and mold into balls, eating them like apples. “Mexican musket balls,” we called them. Somehow, there seemed never enough to serve Joe and his cohorts. They were reduced to eating tubers they’d dig up from the roadside, producing so powerful a tumult in their stomachs that, once, Blaine prayed every man who looked in his direction to blow his head off and put him out of his misery.

In another few days, we reached the Nueces, the border to Mexico and a peaceable stream during good weather. The rains, however, had turned it into a torrent so broad that it prompted some men to think we had marched all the way to the Gulf. Somehow our advanced guard had constructed a passable bridge and we were able to cross. There was talk of Mexican soldiers to the west. Owing to our ordeal in Atascosa and the certainty of impending battle, General Somervell authorized a two-day rest, after which we would at last have our try for glory.

Joe Sprague, resourceful to a fault, brought a freshly killed three-hundred-pound bear back to camp, causing shouts of joy to spring from the men. But Joe made plain that he would share not of his bounty, except with his friends, whom I was surprised to find he counted me among. For the rest, dark looks were the fare of the day.

With the help of McKendrick and Blaine, Joe dragged the carcass a little way from our camp and dug a pit in which to cook it. I took part, so as not to offend him, and at the insistence of my hunger, but I feared for my reputation among my comrades.

“Do you not think, Joe,” I said, “that we might share our bounty with our fellow soldiers?”

“General Sprague chooses not to share his vittles with no man!” His pick fell viciously to earth. After some time, we finished the pit and dressed-out the bear, and soon the smell of roasting meat carried over the camp. Men gathered, but at a distance, like frightened animals around a clearing. With no way to change his mind, I fell to the bear meat at the end of my stick and ate with gusto. Before long our appetites ran aground, our bellies full, our faces raised to the sky.

It was then that we heard the shots, first one, then two more. “Indians!” came a distant cry. And then another rifle report split the air. A search party was assembled and it seemed like the grossest injustice that we of the bear feast had to take part. In the general tumult I lost track of Joe, busying myself with the hunt under every bit of brush and in every cat hole. I began to suspect something when I realized my comrades gave all manner of commands but did precious little searching themselves. I returned to camp only to find that Joe had never left. He stood guard over his bear, a smoking rifle in his hand. Nearby, a man sat on the ground glowering up at him and clutching a bloody arm. Joe had shot him in the act of stealing our meat. It turned out that the entire alarm was a sham inspired by the taste for bear. Joe had singlehandedly turned us into a band of conniving chancers. But later on, when one of our comrades shot another bear, enough to feed the rest of the men, tempers cooled considerable.

On the third morning, having oiled our muskets and made ready to meet the enemy as best we could, we set off in a most cutting north wind toward the town of Laredo. I was now grateful for the foresight that led me to collect upon my own hook upwards of fifty musket balls and powder to add to the meager ration we were given. We marched for all the world like a real army. So many men were clad in deerskin breeches that we even seemed to be in uniform. My blood drummed with war-fever, and I steadied my nerves by reading the bloody mottoes on my fellow soldiers’ caps — Liberty or Death, Patriae Infelici Fidealis, No Quarter. For one mad moment I thought of trading some of my ammunition for one of the caps, they made my heart swell so, but sanity prevailed and I kept my mind on the march.

Before long we found ourselves on the outskirts of Laredo, the war-storm raging in our blood. The town presented a fair prospect, though not so grand as San Antonio. At the center was a square flanked by the palacio and other important buildings surrounded by modest adoby houses, some with arched doorways of cunningly fitted stones. As we came closer to the square, we could see people shopping and visiting with each other. Near the center of the square was what looked at first like a wrought-iron throne, but then it became clear to me that it was a shoe-shine stand. On one of the two perches sat an elderly gentleman reading the paper and smoking a cigar. Every few moments he’d say a word or two to the man shining his boots, who returned a comment of his own. I had never, for all the world, seen a sight so civilized under the blue sky. I longed to be in the empty seat next to his, trading pleasantries, discussing independence, discussing anything.

It was not until a group of townspeople including the alcalde came forward that I realized what was missing from the town. Soldiers. There were no soldiers to greet us, no volleys of musket fire or grape to lay our ears back, no mounted men charging us in the narrow streets. I listened for the rattle of cavalry gear, but heard only birdsong. Instead of soldiers, a delegation of townspeople greeted us with cakes and cries of “Buenos hombres! Buenos Americanos!” It was as if we were arriving at a party where we were the guests of honor. They gave us the run of town, promising to bring to our camp all the supplies on the long list presented to them.

In consideration of civility, we withdrew to a position outside town, where we made camp and waited for the supplies, but the wait was in vain. After many hours, the alcalde, which I understood to be the mayor, brought only a dozen mangy beeves, a few dirty hats, and blankets not thick enough to warm a gnat.

General Joe’s fury knew no limit. He paraded up and down the camp, rousing his fellow soldiers to bloody deeds. “Is this what we come all this way for?” Joe cried, his knife flashing. “For a few skinny beeves and a sack of mite-infested flour? The pumpkin-colored heathen has proved hisself a coward and a liar! His iniquity knows no bounds!”

“It’s true, Joe,” I reasoned. “These are poor people. I know. I have been inside their homes.” More than once, of an evening, I was a guest at the tables of various San Antonio families. And later, the amiable ladies of the house would beguile the heavy hours by singing and playing upon the guitar. And sometimes there was dancing. I am not much for the step-and-hitch, but I could not resist the lightsome ladies, who taught me the mysteries of their quadrilles and contra-dances, their waltzes and gallopades being too much for my unsophisticated toes.

Joe looked at me as though I had admitted to having the small pox. He addressed the men and me at once. “Little Ellet among the greasers! What’s next? Will you forego suspenders and tie up your pantaloons with a red bandanna?”

Men laughed, casting me scornful looks.

“I only meant these poor people have—”

“These poor people gone and betrayed us with a show of kindness, hoping to take the heart out of our blood-lust. But we will teach them and their friends a thing or two about Texas.” A cheer went up among the men, and, fearful of the fire in their eyes, I cried out, “Do, men, for God’s sake, remember yourselves!”

But the men had eyes and ears only for Joe’s windy gasconnade. “And now they act like they ain’t sitting on King Midas’s gold, going so far as to wear these ragged clothes and live in these mud huts, all to throw us off the scent! My nose tells me there’s gold here, boys! And I for one aim to take my share! We were not put afoot the earth to suffer such indiggities. Are you with me?”

Men cheered, desperate men, and began to gather around Joe. Somehow they had found reason in his words, or a mirror for their desperation. They followed him into town. I followed, if only to talk sense into Joe. I should have known better. There was talk of treasure, of gold doubloons. Even a sudden shower of rain could not dampen their enthusiasm. When we came to town, the men split off into small gangs. Soon I could hear the sound of breaking glass and frightful laughter.

This time, of course, the streets were empty and the houses were closed up tight against us. No doubt the townsfolk had had enough of armies. The only living thing we saw was an old burro, the fur gone white around his eyes, giving him a look of permanent surprise.

“Look at that,” Joe said, his face streaming rain. “Too stupid to get in out of the rain.”

“Joe,” I said, gesturing at our sorry band, which was comprised of McKendrick, Blaine, and myself, “the same might be said of us.”

He whipped the steaming rain away from his face. “Watch how a real man takes destiny by the reins!” He stalked through the flooding street to the nearest house of mud-stained adoby and banged on the heavy plank door. Receiving no satisfaction, he banged again, louder.

Words of encouragement came from soldiers passing in the street. “Go to it, General Joe!”

Before we knew it, the frenzy was upon Joe and he began charging the door, using his shoulder as a battering ram. Soldiers watching, approving his brave display, battered their way into other homes. The sounds of destruction filled the streets. Joe’s two friends gave him a hand, as if housebreaking were a talent they shared, and soon the door was tom from its hinges, and we stood in the dark interior of what appeared to be an uninhabited house.

The whitewashed walls contained prominent niches filled with carved figures in various postures of holy rapture.

“Ho!” said Blaine, taking up a dark-skinned figurine, “a nigger doll for priests!” He began to dance it around the room, upending small tables. When the joke was cold, he dashed the relic to the floor, then took it upon himself to knock all the relics out of their niches, including the one they called The Lady, whose golden halo was the only gold to be found among these poor people.

Joe peeled off his soaked shirt and headed for the cook room at the back of the house, intent on a real meal. When Blaine tired of destruction, he and McKendrick began to collect all objects of value. They found beaded necklaces, a tin of tobacco, a dress in mid-repair, and a cross embedded with small silver medallions.

“Sacrilege,” Blaine said of the medallions, using a corner of the cross to knock the glass out of a silver frame.

“Do we not make fine soldiers, men, fine sons of the Republic?” I said, trying to josh them out of their appetite for looting, but my words only seemed to spur them on. Their arms were full of the goods of the house, and I soon realized I had been a fool to think all they wanted was a dry roof over their heads, a fool to think anything I said or did ought matter to them.

Joe came back into the room nearly knocking his head on the low arch of the doorway. He held a coffee pot in his hand. “Feel that,” he said, pressing the pot to the side of Blaine’s face.

“Ye gods!” Blaine yelled.

“There, see?” Joe said. “It’s not true what they say, that you’re as dumb as a cow-pie!”

“Why’d you want to go and do that for?” said Blaine, rubbing his burned cheek.

Joe turned to McKendrick, addressing him with his honorary title. “Captain? Would you care to educate him?”

McKendrick, true to form, just stood there staring blankly back at him.

“Hot coffee,” Joe said, “means people. People who had no time to clear out when we came a-calling.” He tossed the pot over his shoulder, its contents crashing to the floor, and began to search the rooms with alacrity. McKendrick and Blaine fell in.

“To what end, Joe?” I said, following from room to room. But the house was small and the search soon ended. My relief knew no bounds. I did not know what Joe was planning, but I knew it could not be for the benefit of those whose house we had upended.

Then Joe’s eyes fell on the carpet at the center of the room. It lay askew, as if hastily twitched into place. With the toe of his boot, he drew it aside, revealing a door set flush in the floor. Joe’s eyes lit as he held a finger to his lips and leaned down to the inlaid handle, jerking it with sudden force to reveal, in the shadowy interior as narrow as a grave, a woman lying stiffly, her eyes closed tight, the only sign of life being the fact that she was all atremble with fear. Joe grabbed her harshly by the waist. She made no sound as he hauled her up into the room and dropped her to the floor.

She rolled over quickly onto her stomach and curled into a ball, her eyes still clenched tight, but not tight enough to prevent tears from dampening her cheeks.

“Look at them hams,” McKendrick said quietly, the only words I had ever heard him say.

“She’s Mex,” Blaine added.

“She’s mine,” said Joe, quickly undoing his buckle and dropping his trousers.

“Joe!” I cried, but the beastly fire was strong in him, and my appeal had no effect. He began to paw at the woman’s white cotton dress, tearing at it. I laid hands on him but was pulled back by McKendrick or Blaine. I shook free and flew at Joe again, this time falling on him and on the woman, who still made no sound. She might have been a piece of furniture. Joe rolled me off and hauled me to my feet by the collar, his knife in his hand. In a flash, the tip of his blade was inside the bone of my jaw. When it slid inside my skin, I could not keep from shivering.

“My friend,” he said, “you shall wait your turn like a good boy.”

“Don’t do this, Joe,” said I through clenched teeth. And though it exacerbated my wound to do so, I could not help but speak again. “We have not marched these long miles and endured such privations to be reduced to this.”

“You may not, my good little Ellet, but this is exactly what I come for.”

Joe gave the knife a quarter-turn, and I felt a warm finger of blood move down my neck. “But are we not men of honor?”

At this, McKendrick and Blaine laughed heartily. I tried to pull my jaw free of Joe’s blade, but his cohorts had me by the hair.

“And if you interfere,” Joe went on calmly, “I shall cut her from groin to gullet, and you to follow.”

At that, McKendrick and Blaine threw me toward the door. I righted myself and prepared for another assault, but Joe tossed his knife to Blaine and turned to the woman, making himself ready like a beast in rut. He turned her and roughly pulled apart her legs, instructing McKendrick and Blaine to plant a boot on each ankle. They took to the task as if they had apprenticed in evil.

I moved toward them, but McKendrick pointed the knife at her and then at me.

“Think, men,” I said, my voice filled with tears. “Think of the fires of hell!”

Joe turned to me. His face was not a face. “I already been,” he said and then dropped to his knees to perform the Devil’s work.

I could not stay. I could not go. I could not watch. I cried out for help, but the woman’s hands covered her face, and she could not know what help I meant to bring. I threw myself into the rainy street, intent on finding a sheriff, an officer, someone. But there was no one in the street save more marauders and the stunned burro. I ran from house to house shaking the latches, rattling the windows, and pounding on the planks, but no one would answer me. In the distance, I heard the muffled sound of musket fire. I stopped a soldier who came careening out of a shop, a sack of tobacco held in his arms like a baby. Words would not give shape to what I had seen.

“Terrible!” I cried. “A terrible thing!”

“Yeah,” the soldier said, eyes glinting with long withheld joy. “I guess we seen the elephant now!”

I stood in the driving rain, the dumbest of brutes. At length, the woman’s tormentors came out into the street, their arms loaded with the goods of the house. I ran to them and pushed past them roughly, as if any show of violence now could undo the horror within. Inside, the woman lay on her side again. Her eyes were open and she did not tremble, but merely stared at the floor before her face. I knelt to give what comfort I could.

“No,” she said in a dull voice, a voice beyond pain, “No mas.”

I recoiled, as if the point of Joe’s blade had come to my throat again, and staggered out into the driving rain. My cohorts had made their way a little down the street in the direction of camp but turned when I came out.

“You get you some after all?” Blaine called.

Then Joe added, “Sure hope we left a little bloom on the rose!”

The three men laughed and headed down the road, bearing the proceeds of their iniquity, looking for all the world like refugees being driven from their homes. I followed at some distance, sick at heart, eyes burning, the wound in my neck swollen and stinging. I felt every bit as guilty as they should have felt.

Back at camp, it was clear that Joe and his friends were not alone in their misdeeds. What they did, many had done. Men staggered painfully into camp, their backs heaped high with loot — coats, trousers, blankets, nightclothes, ladies’ dresses and undergarments, even baby clothes. They drove mules stacked high with saddles, furniture, cookpots, and embroidered pillows. So overburdened were the mules that they could barely set one foot in front of the other. Mountains of loot stood everywhere, a thieves market. To whom could I report their behavior? There was no law, and the eyes of God were closed to this infamy.

Joe and his cohorts went straight to their hidden cache of bear meat, pulling off the clever covering of mesquite branches and brush. Not clever enough, it seemed. They uncovered charred hunks of glistening, dripping meat. It seems the men who stayed in camp had found Joe’s private store and unburdened their bladders upon it, every man contributing his share like a pack of amiable hounds.

Joe cried out and stamped the ground and kicked at his pile of booty, while his henchmen stared fiercely at their former comrades. The men stared back with mild amusement, but already the joke was stale and they were ready to move on to some new enormity. Joe paced back and forth in front of them, filling every ear with the story of his suffering and lamenting the lack of honor among his fellow soldiers.

“A man sacrifices for his country, and for what? I hereby take my bloody vow never to follow another order and to stay in Damn Houston’s army only long enough to get my share of treasure.”

While he ranted, McKendrick and Blaine stood by his side, nodding sagely. But I could listen no longer, my mind in other ways intent.

The lieutenant, passing, caught my eye. “Leave them to Heaven,” he said.

Without a word, I took myself some distance apart and stood in the driving rain as I watched their shameful tableau. I felt dreadful small. I had shaken the yoke of the plough, only to take on the yoke of a burden I could never shake. While shameful men did shameful deeds, I stood by. And now the eyes of Heaven would be forever turned away from me.

That night, under cover of midnight darkness, I smote them with my Barlow knife. I slew them, first one then the other, as each man lay sleeping, delivering a sharp blow to their throats to prevent any cries of alarm. I do not know whether I did the right thing or merely made myself a part of the bad. When it was finished, I made my escape through the chaparral and prickly-pear with naught but the North Star to guide me.