They Came To Cordura by Glendon Swarthout Page A

generations. They are gentle, loyal, innocent people. If I’d tried to fight either the Villistas or Federales my young men would have been taken off and the women attacked and the old people tortured and the stock slaughtered and the buildings burned. Only the walls of Ojos would stand today. Owls would live in the cottonwoods. I might as well have sown my fields with salt. Besides, there’s a tradition of hospitality in Mexico that Americans cannot understand. Do you know what the peons say? ‘A stranger might be God.’”
    Major Thorn set his jaw. It was a very good speech and a very good act. He respected anyone, man or woman, who could alter his tactics to the situation, but after the gesture of smoking before the men he would not respond if she got down on her knees.
    She waited for his reaction, then frowned. “What will happen to me, Major—I mean, after we get to base?”
    “I turn you over to the Provost Marshal. Probably you will be sent by train to Fort Bliss at El Paso. After that I don’t know.”
    “ El Paso , the States,” she said. “I haven’t crossed the border in eight years. I’ll be frank with you. I had a lot of bad publicity before I came down here, my family also, most of it deserved. Even though the case against me falls of its own weight, the newspapers will hang me. Mothers will scare their daughters into virtue with my name. You may not believe this, but it’s true.”
    He said nothing.
    “Who is in command of the Army down here?”
    “General John Pershing.”
    “I never heard of him. I used to have connections in Washington, but not anymore.”
    He felt her desperation. She was trying everything she knew.
    “Major, do you have any sympathy for me at all?”
    “Not particularly.”
    He started when up ahead, in the full bellow and the bad Spanish, Chawk commenced another song. It was a welcome sound. The sergeant of D was all right.
          “You will see at the time of our parting,
          I will not allow you to love another;
          For if it should be, I would ruin your face,
          And many blows we would give one another.”
    The Geary woman had her head down. When she raised it the officer glanced at her. She was grim.
    “I don’t know what a major’s pay amounts to, but I doubt if it’s enough. Would you be interested in a thousand dollars in gold?”
    “That wasn’t a very good idea,” he said. Lieutenant Fowler had not put a stop to Chawk’s song. He probably did not dare.
               “So I am going to become an American;
               Go with God, Innocencia,
               Say farewell to my friends;
               O may the Americans allow me to pass,
               And open a saloon
               On the other side of the river.”
    She rode silently beside him for so long that Thorn looked at her again. She had loosed her reins and taken the bright bird up into her hands. The muscle under the skin beside her mouth twitched. It was evidently a nervous tic uncontrollable at times when she was under strain.
    “Major, are you married?”
    It was the last question he might have expected. He could not imagine what was coming.
    “No,” he said.
    “Then it must have been quite a while since you’ve had a woman, certainly since this campaign started,” she went on hurriedly. Her voice, customarily low in timbre, became so thick it was difficult to understand her words. It reminded him of his own, the night he had read Hetherington’s citation to him.
    “I’d like to offer myself. I’m supposed to be good in bed, at least I was told so years ago, that was ten years ago, though, and I’ve forgotten about things like that. Use me all you want, just let me go before we get to base. I told myself I wouldn’t beg, but I am, just use me and let me go.”
    “No, thanks,” he said.
    “Why not?” she demanded.
    His anger returned. He wanted to insult her and shut her up once for all so that he