paid tribute a hundred years to tribes of naked savages. Given up their crops and livestock. Mines shut down. Whole villages abandoned. While a heathen horde rides over the land looting and killing with total impunity. Not a hand raised against them. What kind of people are these? The Apaches wont even shoot them. Did you know that? They kill them with rocks. The captain shook his head. He seemed made sad by what he had to tell.
Did you know that when Colonel Doniphan took Chihuahua City he inflicted over a thousand casualties on the enemy and lost only one man and him all but a suicide? With an army of unpaid irregulars that called him Bill, were half naked, and had walked to the battlefield from Missouri?
No sir.
The captain leaned back and folded his arms. What we are dealing with, he said, is a race of degenerates. A mongrel race, little better than niggers. And maybe no better. There is no government in Mexico. Hell, there’s no God in Mexico. Never will be. We are dealing with a people manifestly incapable of governing themselves. And do you know what happens with people who cannot govern themselves? That’s right. Others come in to govern for them.
There are already some fourteen thousand French colonists in the state of Sonora. They’re being given free land to settle. They’re being given tools and livestock. Enlightened Mexicans encourage this. Paredes is already calling for secession from the Mexican government. They’d rather be ruled by toadeaters than thieves and imbeciles. Colonel Carrasco is asking for American intervention. And he’s going to get it.
Right now they are forming in Washington a commission to come out here and draw up the boundary lines between our country and Mexico. I dont think there’s any question that ultimately Sonora will become a United States territory. Guaymas a U S port. Americans will be able to get to California without having to pass through our benighted sister republic and our citizens will be protected at last from the notorious packs of cutthroats presently infesting the routes which they are obliged to travel.
The captain was watching the kid. The kid looked uneasy. Son, said the captain. We are to be the instruments of liberation in a dark and troubled land. That’s right. We are to spearhead the drive. We have the tacit support of Governor Burnett of California.
He leaned forward and placed his hands on his knees. And we will be the ones who will divide the spoils. There will be a section of land for every man in my company. Fine grassland. Some of the finest in the world. A land rich in minerals, in gold and silver I would say beyond the wildest speculation. You’re young. But I dont misread you. I’m seldom mistaken in a man. I think you mean to make your mark in this world. Am I wrong?
No sir.
No. And I don’t think you’re the sort of chap to abandon a land that Americans fought and died for to a foreign power. And mark my word. Unless Americans act, people like you and me who take their country seriously while those mollycoddles in Washington sit on their hindsides, unless we act, Mexico—and I mean the whole of the country—will one day fly a European flag. Monroe Doctrine or no.
The captain’s voice had become soft and intense. He tilted his head to one side and regarded the kid with a sort of benevolence. The kid rubbed the palms of his hands on the knees of his filthy jeans. He glanced at the man beside him but he seemed to be asleep.
What about a saddle? he said.
Saddle?
Yessir.
You dont have a saddle?
No sir.
I thought you had a horse.
A mule.
I see.
I got a old hull on the mule but they aint much left of it. Aint a whole lot left of the mule. He said I was to get a horse and a rifle.
Sergeant Trammel did?
I never promised him no saddle, said the sergeant.
We’ll get you a saddle.
I did tell him we might find him some clothes, Captain.
Right. We may be irregulars but we dont want to look like bobtails, do we?
No sir.
We aint got no more broke horses neither, said the sergeant.
Well break one.
That old boy that was so good about breakin em is out of commission.
I know that. Get somebody else.
Yessir. Maybe this man can break horses. You ever break horses?
No sir.
Aint no need to sir me.
Yessir.
Sergeant, said the captain, easing himself down from the desk.
Yessir.
Sign this man up.
The camp was upriver at the edge of the town. A tent patched up from old wagon canvas, a few wickiups made of brush and beyond them a corral in the form of a figure eight likewise made from brush where a few small painted ponies stood sulking in the sun.
Corporal, called the sergeant.
He aint here.
He dismounted and strode toward the tent and threw back the fly. The kid sat on the mule. Three men were lying in the shade of a tree and they studied him. Howdy, said one.
Howdy.
You a new man?
I reckon.
Captain say when we leavin this pesthole?
He never said.
The sergeant came from the tent. Where’s he at? he said.
Gone to town.
Gone to town, said the sergeant. Come here.
The man rose from the ground and ambled over to the tent and stood with his hands resting in the small of his back.
This here man aint got no outfit, said the sergeant.
The man nodded.
The captain give him a shirt and some money to get his boots mended. We need to get him somethin he can ride and we need to get him a saddle.
A saddle.
Ought to be able to sell that mule for enough to get him one of some kind.
The man looked at the mule and turned back and squinted at the sergeant. He leaned and spat. That there mule wont bring ten dollars.
What it brings it brings.
They done killed another beef.
I dont want to hear about it.
I caint do nothin with em.
I aint tellin the captain. He’ll roll them eyes around till they come unscrewed and fall out in the ground.
The man spat again. Well, that’s the gods truth anyway.
See to this man now. I got to get.
Well.
Aint nobody sick is they?
