How Few Remain Part 18

"G.o.d d.a.m.n you!" Clemens shouted. "Give me that back before I punch you in your stupid nose." He kept on ignoring the Colts leveled at him. So did the men holding them. "If Adolph Imbecile Sutro tries to throw a newspaperman in jail for what he writes, he'll have every newspaperman in San Francis...o...b.. this time tomorrow, and that includes the heathen Chinese. There still is such a thing as the First Amendment to the Const.i.tution, which has a thing or two to say on the subject of a free press. Has either of you blockheads ever heard of it?"

Reporters, typesetters, and printers had been edging through the Morning Call Morning Call offices toward the altercation. A savage grin stretched across Sam's face. If these hooligans tried hauling him away by force, they'd have a battle on their hands. Newspapermen looked after their own. offices toward the altercation. A savage grin stretched across Sam's face. If these hooligans tried hauling him away by force, they'd have a battle on their hands. Newspapermen looked after their own.

But then the bigger intruder said, "We ain't here on account of what you write, Mister Mister Clemens." Unexpectedly, he had the wit to load that with irony, and to add, "h.e.l.l, n.o.body reads it, anyways. We're here on account of it's done been reported that you are a veteran of the Confederate States of America. Is it so or ain't it that you were in the Confederate Army during the War of Secession?" Clemens." Unexpectedly, he had the wit to load that with irony, and to add, "h.e.l.l, n.o.body reads it, anyways. We're here on account of it's done been reported that you are a veteran of the Confederate States of America. Is it so or ain't it that you were in the Confederate Army during the War of Secession?"

Clemens started to laugh. Then he got a look at the faces of the men who worked with him at the Morning Call Morning Call. None of them had ever heard the story of his brief, absurd stint as a Rebel private in Missouri. None of them looked interested in hearing it, either. Even before he could answer, they started slipping back toward the places where they worked.

"Is it or ain't it?" the ruffian repeated.

"Not to speak of," Sam said at last. "The company I was in never did more than mooch around a bit to impress the girls."

"But you were in, were you?" the big man with the revolver said. "You come along with us, then, pal. You can do your explaining to the soldiers. If they reckon you're on the up and up, then they do, is all. But if they don't, they'll put you away where you can't get into any mischief."

"This is an outrage!" Clemens thundered. n.o.body else in the offices said anything at all. The smaller ruffian seemed to remember he had a gun. He jerked the muzzle in the direction of the doorway. With a sigh, Clemens walked to the door. He grabbed his hat off the tree as he went by. "Let's get this over with. The sooner we do, the sooner I can come back here and let the world know what a pack of d.a.m.ned fools we've got running around loose these days."

The men with revolvers didn't seem inclined to argue with him. As long as he did what they said, they didn't care what else he did: stacked against a Colt, what did an insult or two matter? They had a buggy tied up outside the building. The silence behind Sam as he shut the door hurt him worse than his sallies hurt the spy-hunters.

"The both of you are plumb loco," Clemens said as the smaller fellow took up the reins and began to drive. "If I've been such a grand and dreadful terror to the United States lo these many years, what in sweet Jesus' name was I doing as a.s.sistant to the governor's secretary in Nevada Territory even before the blamed war was over?" That the secretary had been his brother Orion, after whom his son was named, he did not bother mentioning.

"Don't know," replied the bigger gunman, the one with some trace of wit. "What were were you doing there?" By his tone, Sam might have been sending a daily telegram to Richmond from Carson City. you doing there?" By his tone, Sam might have been sending a daily telegram to Richmond from Carson City.

Clemens replied only with dignified silence. He also did not ask where they were going, as he had intended. He judged that would become obvious in short order, a judgment vindicated when the little ruffian headed north and west, away from the heart of the city. The only thing of any consequence in that direction was the Presidio, the Army base charged with defending San Francisco.

No matter how long Sam had lived in these parts, he never ceased to marvel at the beauty of the view across the Golden Gate, looking north toward Sausalito: blue sky, green-blue sea, the wooded headland rising swiftly above it. A ferry boat, thin black plume of smoke rising from its stack, gave a touch of human scale to nature's grandeur.

So did the stone walls of Fort Point. When a sentry came forward to demand the business of the new arrivals, the bigger of Sam's captors said, "We got a feller here might be a spy."

"Like h.e.l.l I am!" Sam shouted. As far as the sentry was concerned, he was invisible and inaudible. The bluecoat waved the wagon into the fort.

Having reached the garrison commander's waiting room in jig time, Clemens proceeded to put it to the purpose for which it was named: he waited, and waited, and waited. The bravos who'd shanghaied him didn't wait with him: they had better things to do. When he poked his head out of the door to the parade ground through which he'd come in, a soldier pointed a bayoneted Springfield at him and growled, "You get back in there. The colonel'll see you in his time, not yours." Fuming, Sam retreated.

At last, after what had to be closer to two hours than one, the door to Colonel William T. Sherman's office opened. "Come in, Mr. Clemens," Sherman said. Lean and erect, he wore a close-trimmed beard that had once been red and was now mostly white. His mouth was a thin slash; his pale eyes did their best to stare through Sam. Harsh lines ran down his pinched cheeks, losing themselves in his beard near the corners of that narrow mouth. The word that sprang to Clemens' mind for him was bitter bitter.

His office presented a stark contrast to the genial clutter that made finding things on Sam's desk an adventure. Everything here was obviously just where it belonged. Sam was sure anything that had the gall to go where it didn't belong, even to sidle an inch out of place, would end up in the guardhouse to teach it never to get gay again.

Sherman sat; he did not invite Clemens to sit. Glancing down at the beginning of the editorial the smaller gunman had purloined, and also at a large, neatly written sheet of paper on which Sam could make out his name, he said, "Why don't you tell me why you're here, sir?"

Clemens normally wisecracked without thinking, much as he breathed. Facing this man, he restrained himself. "I am here, Colonel, because I served something less than a month in the Marion Rangers, a Confederate unit of sorts in Missouri, during the War of Secession. Because of that, someone has decided I must be a spy."

Sherman said, "When Louisiana seceded, I was teaching at a military academy there. I resigned at once, and came north to serve my country as best I could. How is it that you fought under the Stars and Bars?"

"I never fought under them," Sam replied. "I marched a bit and rode a horse a bit, but I never once fought. Governor Jackson called for soldiers to repel the U.S. invaders-so he named them-which is how the Marion Rangers came to be. It was a grand and glorious unit, Colonel-there were fifteen of us, all told. The one time we got near a farmhouse that some U.S. troops were guarding, our captain-Tom Lyman, his name was-told us to attack it. We told him no; to a man, we said no. The rest of my so-called military career was cut from the same stuff. I never fired a shot at a soldier of the United States. None of us did, before the Marion Rangers became as one with Nineveh and Tyre."

Sherman's jaw worked. "You put this down to youthful indiscretion, then?-for you would have been a young man in 1861."

"That's just what I put it down to, Colonel,". Sam said with an emphatic nod.

"And you did serve the U.S. government in Nevada," Sherman said, checking that paper again. Sam wondered how much of his life's story was contained thereon. In musing tones, Sherman continued, "Yet these days, you speak out strongly in the papers against the war, as you have here." He let a finger rest on the editorial fragment for a moment. "What connection, if any, has the one to the other?"

"Colonel, you've seen real war at first hand, which is far more than I ever did," Clemens said. "What is your opinion of it?"

"My opinion?" He'd startled Sherman. But the officer did not hesitate long; Sam got the idea he seldom hesitated long about anything. "War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it. Its glory is all moonshine. Only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded cry aloud for blood, vengeance, and desolation. War is as close to h.e.l.l as a merciful G.o.d allows upon this earth."

That was more than Sam had bargained for. "If you can speak so strongly and still defend our country, how does questioning the wisdom and conduct of this war make me a Confederate agent?"

Sherman stroked his chin. "You might be an agent, using such a pretext as concealment." His mouth thinned further; Clemens had not thought it could. "But I have no evidence to say you are, not a particle. What you say of the Marion Rangers squares with what I have on this sheet here-the men who brought you in were overzealous. We were all quite mad twenty years ago. It should never have happened." That thin mouth twisted. "I shall write you a good character, Mr. Clemens, which you must show to be released from this fortress, and may show to anyone seeking to trouble you hereafter." He inked a pen and began to write.

"Thank you, Colonel," Clemens said fervently. "One thing more?" Sherman looked up from his work. Sam went on, "May I beg the use of a horse or buggy? The gentlemen who brought me here did not wait upon the outcome of your hearing." He said not a word about how long he'd waited himself.

"I'll see to it," Sherman said. The pen scratched over the paper. Sam did not mind waiting now, not a bit.

Bountiful, Utah lay about ten miles north of Salt Lake City, on the railroad line. George Custer had come south past it on the army's triumphal march toward and then into the capital of Utah Territory. He'd paid it no special mind then: just one more no-account town among so many. Now, though, he wasn't going to pa.s.s it by; along with the two troops of cavalry at his back, he was going to go through it like a man searching his pockets for a five-cent piece with which to buy his sweetheart a sarsaparilla. His own sweetheart, worse luck, was back at Fort Dodge.

"Blast John Taylor anyhow," he grumbled. "Dash and double-dash him. Why couldn't the old fraud have stayed in Salt Lake City, so we could s.n.a.t.c.h him up and stretch his neck and have done?"

"Don't be such a sourpuss, Autie," his brother Tom said. "If it weren't for Taylor and the rest of the scoops who ran away, we'd be stuck with garrison duty instead of doing something halfway useful out here."

"Halfway useful is right. We ought to be fighting the Rebs, not sitting on these confounded Mormons." Custer paused and sent Tom a quizzical look. "'Scoops'? What's a scoop?"

"A Mormon. Heard it the other day," his brother answered. After removing his hat, Tom mimed removing the top of his skull in the same way and scooping out a large portion of its contents. "Have to have most of your brain missing to buy what they're selling, don't you think?"

"Mm, you're likely right." Custer weighed the word. "Scoops. I like that." He laughed, then pointed ahead. "We've got a whole scoopful of scoops coming up."

Much the biggest building in Bountiful was the Mormon chapel, a wood-and-adobe structure with five spires that looked as if it might have grown from the ground instead of being built. The lands around the chapel were bountiful enough; no matter how foolish the Mormons' religion was in Custer's eyes, he couldn't deny they made skillful, diligent farmers.

People came out into the street from the chapel, from the houses, and from the barbershop and dry-goods store to stare at the soldiers. Their dogs came out with them. The troopers had shot several dogs on the way up from Salt Lake City. They'd probably shoot more here. Mormons' dogs ran from mean to meaner.

n.o.body said anything as the troopers rode up. Custer knew he wasn't loved here. He didn't care. Whatever the Mormons loved, as far as he was concerned, had to have something wrong with it.

He held up his hand. Behind him, the cavalrymen reined in. Every one of them carried a loaded carbine across his knees. That wasn't just for dogs. So far, the Mormons hadn't given any trouble. The best way to make sure they didn't give any trouble was to be ready to smash it down ruthlessly if it arose.

Tom Custer said, "I hate all these staring faces. Back in Salt Lake, at least the Gentiles were on our side. Out here, there aren't any Gentiles to speak of, and n.o.body's on our side."

"We are in the right. We must never forget it," Custer declared. He raised his voice and called out to the people of Bountiful: "We are searching for John Taylor. Anyone who knows where this fugitive from justice is lurking will be handsomely rewarded." He waited. No one said a word. The wind, full of the salty tang of the Great Salt Lake, blew up little dust devils in front of his horse.

He'd expected nothing different, but the effort had to be made. His orders said so. The silence from the Mormons persisting, he moved on to the next step in the program: "We are going to search the houses and buildings of this town for the person of John Taylor, and for the persons of other fugitives from justice in this Territory. You are required to a.s.sist and cooperate with the brave soldiers of the United States engaged in this task. Any resistance will leave the guilty party subject to summary trial and the full rigors of military justice."

That drew a response from the crowd: somebody called, "Where's your search warrants at?"

Custer's smile was anything but pleasant. "We have none. We need none. Utah Territory, having been declared a region in rebellion against the lawful authority of the government of the United States of America, has forfeited the protections enshrined in the Const.i.tution. You people should have thought more about what would follow from your actions before you attempted to coerce the national government into approving of your hideous practices. Having willfully flouted the government, you will have to earn its good graces once more by showing you are deserving of them."

He waved to his men, who swung down off their horses. Custer told a squad to follow him to the Mormon chapel. They searched the grounds, finding nothing out of the ordinary, and then went inside. Other than being ornamented with a large portrait in oils of Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, the interior might have belonged to any church.

One of the men of Bountiful came inside. "Gentlemen, Mr. Taylor is not here," he said. "He has not been here."

"Who are you, and how do you know?" Custer growled.

"I'm O. Clifton Haight, and I have for many years been a lay preacher at this chapel," the man replied, "and I know Mr. Taylor has not been in Bountiful because I should have heard of it if he were."

"Not if he's lying low-and not if you're just plain lying, either," Custer said. Haight a.s.sumed an indignant expression. Custer, feeling briefly charitable, ignored it. He waved. "This church looks nice and fresh and clean, as if people had been in it just the other day, say, or last Sunday. Public worship in Mormon churches is forbidden by order of General Pope, you will recall."

"Oh, yes, of course," O. Clifton Haight said.

"You haven't by any chance forgotten that order?" Custer said.

"Why, no, of course not." Haight's eyes were wide and candid. He was lying. Custer knew he was lying. He undoubtedly knew Custer knew he was lying. But he also knew Custer couldn't do anything about it. Until Pope had enough men to put a permanent garrison into every one of these miserable little towns, the Mormons would ignore every order they could. No one was likely to betray them, not when they all conspired together to set at nought the commands of the military governor.

Shaking his head in angry frustration, Custer stalked out of the chapel. His soldiers followed. His eyes lighted on a house across the square. It was built in a pattern with which he'd become all too intimately acquainted in Salt Lake City: a central structure that had undoubtedly been erected first, with several whitewashed wings spreading out from it. Pointing toward the house, he asked, "Who lives there?"

"That's the Sessions place," Clifton Haight answered. "Peregrine Sessions was the first settler here, better than thirty years ago now. That house there, that belongs to his brother, Zedekiah."

"General Pope forbade more than public worship to you Mormons," Custer said, a certain hard antic.i.p.ation gleaming in his eyes. "He also forbade the practice of polygamy, which has made you people a stench in the nostrils of decent Americans everywhere. Looking at that house, Mr. Haight, how many wives would you say, uh, Zedekiah Sessions is likely to have?"

"I only know of one," Haight said. "Irma Sessions is a pillar of our little community here."

"I'll bet she is," Custer sneered. "And how many other community pillars carry the name of Sessions?"

"I know of no others," Haight said. Custer had heard that in Salt Lake City, too. The Mormons habitually dissembled about their plural marriages.

He gathered up his troopers by eye. "We are going to search that house for John Taylor. We are also going to search it for any evidence the abhorrent vice of polygamy is being practiced within. If by some chances we find such evidence, despite the statements of Mr. Haight here, we shall take whatever action I deem at the time to be appropriate. Come along."

Grinning, the soldiers followed him. As they tramped toward the large, rambling house, they told lewd jokes. Custer pretended not to hear them, except when a good one made him laugh out loud.

He walked up to the front door and rapped smartly upon it. When it opened, standing before him was one of the formidable middle-aged women of the sort Brigham Young had apparently married in battalions: broad through the shoulders, broader through the hips, graying hair pulled straight back from a face that had not approved of anything since the War of Secession. Custer thought how good her head would look stuffed and mounted on the Wall back at Fort Dodge next to a p.r.o.nghorn or a coyote. "You are Mrs. Irma Sessions?" he asked.

"I am. And you are a United States soldier." By her tone, that put Custer somewhere between a Comanche and a polecat.

"My men and I are going to search these premises for the possible presence of the fugitive John Taylor," Custer announced. "All persons inhabiting this residence must first come forth."

"And if we do not?" Irma Sessions inquired.

Custer folded his arms across his broad chest. "Then we shall remove you with whatever force proves needful and bind you over for trial for defying the authority of the United States Army." He pulled out his pocket watch. "You have five minutes."

He watched Mrs. Sessions contemplate calling his bluff. He watched her decide, with obvious reluctance, that he wasn't bluffing. He watched her start to slam the door in his face and then, with even more obvious reluctance, think better of it.

Within the appointed deadline, half a dozen women emerged, the other five as like Irma Sessions as peas in a pod. Along with them came something like two dozen children, ranging from babes in arms up to youths old enough to carry a gun and girls well on their way to becoming stolid copies of their mothers. "Where is Mr. Sessions?" Custer asked when the patriarch of the family proved not to be in evidence.

"In Salt Lake City, on business," Irma Sessions replied. Maybe it was true, maybe it wasn't.

"And all six of you are his wives?" Custer persisted.

"Oh, no," one of the other women said. "I am his widowed cousin." Another claimed to be his sister, still another said she was Irma's sister, and the last two didn't explain how or why they were living there, save to a.s.sert that they were not affiliated with Zedekiah Sessions in any illegal or immoral manner. They were so shrill, so insistent, Custer would not have believed them even had he previously been inclined to do so, which he was not.

In the midst of the women's denials, a leering trooper brought Custer a photograph in a fancy gilt frame. It was a family group: a stout, bearded man, presumably Mr. Sessions, surrounded by the six women and their multifarious offspring. He displayed it to them. They went quiet. Rudely, he wondered if Sessions could get the same effect with it. For the sake of the man's peace of mind, he hoped so.

"I say that this photograph shows me you have been imperfectly truthful here," he told them, having been too well brought up to call a woman a liar to her face. "As you must know, General Pope has commanded that polygamy shall be suppressed in this Territory by all available means." He turned to the cavalryman. "Any sign of Taylor, Corporal?"

"No, sir," the soldier answered. "n.o.body in there now."

"Very well. Put this place to the torch, that sin may have no dwelling place to call its own. If we needs must cleanse Utah with fire and sword, that is what we shall do."

The six wives of Zedekiah Sessions screamed and wailed, as did their female children. The boys, the older ones, cursed Custer and his men as vilely as they knew how. He'd heard worse. Despite screams and wails and curses, the house burned. Going through the town, he and his men found three more homes obviously belonging to polygamists. Those went up in flames, too. He wondered if the Mormons would shoot at his men for that. He almost hoped they would. They didn't.

"It's not so Bountiful any more," he said to his brother as they led the two cavalry troops north to the next little town. Both Custers laughed.

.IX.

Tubac drowsed under the relentless sun of the western part of New Mexico Territory. It had been a Mexican village, adobe houses cl.u.s.tered around a Catholic church that was also adobe but whitewashed. Then it had been a Mormon settlement, one of the many sprouts from the main tree in Utah. Since the War of Secession, unending raids by Apaches and by Mexican and white bandits had left it a sad shadow of its former self.

That left Jeb Stuart, whose army was camped nearby, something short of brokenhearted. "Mormons," he said to his aide-de-camp. "You ask me, the d.a.m.nyankees are welcome to them."

Major Horatio Sellers nodded and said, "Yes, sir." His princ.i.p.al bugbear, though, was not the Mormons, of whom only a handful were left hereabouts, but the Apaches-not those who'd raided Tubac halfway back to savagery, but those now accompanying the Confederate forces (a.s.suming a distinction could be drawn between those two groups, which was by no means obvious). After coughing once or twice, he said, "The more time we spend with these Indians, sir, the more I think one of the reasons the Empire of Mexico sold us Sonora and Chihuahua was to give us the joy of putting them down."

"It could be so, Major," Stuart allowed. "If there were more of them, they would be even worse trouble than they are."

"Too d.a.m.ned many of 'em as is," Sellers said, stubbornly sticking out his chin. "If there were more-" He shuddered. "Sir, we have good men, tough men. But these Apaches, there isn't a one of 'em can't go through this country on foot faster than a trooper can on horseback, come up behind you in the middle of a crowded church, cut your throat, and be out the window before anybody notices you're dead."

He was exaggerating only slightly, and not at all about the Apaches' ability to outperform cavalry. "But they don't want to cut our our throats," Stuart said. "They want to cut the Yankees' throats, and especially the Mexicans'." throats," Stuart said. "They want to cut the Yankees' throats, and especially the Mexicans'."

"Now they do," Sellers said. "When is it our turn?" He looked around and lowered his voice almost to a whisper: "I still say we ought to fill 'em full of whiskey and get rid of them when they're too polluted to fight back." they do," Sellers said. "When is it our turn?" He looked around and lowered his voice almost to a whisper: "I still say we ought to fill 'em full of whiskey and get rid of them when they're too polluted to fight back."

"That will be enough, Major," Stuart said sharply. "That will be more than enough. One of the reasons the Apaches hate the Mexicans so much is that the Mexicans would pull that on them again and again. It would work-they like popskull, no two ways about it-but it made enemies forever out of the braves the Mexicans didn't get. I want to use these Indians against the United States; I don't want to give the d.a.m.nyankees any chance to use them against us."

"Yes, sir," Sellers said.

Stuart hid a smile. He recognized that tone: it was the one a soldier used when he thought a superior was out of his mind. He said, "In the end, my guess is that we civilize them, Major. Geronimo's son, Chappo, now-he's a sharp young fellow. And his cousin, that Batsinas: I've had two different blacksmiths tell me he's been after them to teach him their trade. He's got only a few words of English, and a few more of Spanish, but one of the men who was showing him things said he picked them up as fast as you'd want with a white man."

Major Sellers said nothing at all. He tried to make his face say nothing at all, too. He wasn't as good at it as the Apaches. Clear as if he were shouting, Stuart read his thoughts: learning things from white men doesn't civilize Indians, it only makes them more dangerous learning things from white men doesn't civilize Indians, it only makes them more dangerous.

"Cherokees," Stuart said quietly. "Choctaws. They might as well be white themselves-well, some of them."

"That's different," his aide-de-camp answered, but, when Stuart pressed him, he couldn't say how.

"It doesn't matter, anyway," Stuart said after looking at his watch. "We've got to meet with Geronimo anyhow, get everything in a straight line for his run up to Tucson and where we'll bushwhack the Yankees when they come after him."

Actually, the meeting hadn't been set for a specific time; the Indians, though they used telescopes most often taken from dead soldiers, didn't care about watches. But nine-thirty was a close enough equivalent to midway through the morning, which was how Geronimo had put it.

The Apaches approved of the Confederate-issue tents Stuart had given them: they were roomier and faster to put up than the hide-covered brush wickiups the Indians made for themselves. Geronimo was sitting cross-legged in front of a little cookfire, drinking coffee from a tin cup stamped CSA CSA. Next to him sat Chappo, whose bronze, broad-cheekboned face showed what his father had looked like as a young man.

As Stuart came up to Geronimo, so did the Apaches' war leaders: Cochise's handsome son Naiche (whom half the Confederates called Natchez, that having a more familiar sound to their ears); a clever old man named Nana; and Hoo, a tough veteran. Only gradually had Stuart realized that Geronimo's influence, despite lurid tales to the contrary, came more from religion than generalship.

Polite greetings used up some time; both the Apaches and the Confederates were ceremonious folk. Then, through Chappo, Geronimo said, "Our scouts have found the perfect canyon for us. We can lead the bluecoats into it, and you can be waiting for them with your rifles and your wagons."

"Wagons?" That puzzled Stuart. He and Chappo went back and forth for a couple of minutes before he figured out the Indian was talking about artillery. The cannon traveled on wheels; as far as the Apaches were concerned, that made them wagons. When the misunderstanding was cleared up, Stuart nodded. "It is good. Where is this place?"

"Let me see the paper with places on it, and I will show you," Geronimo said. Stuart drew from his pocket a map of New Mexico Territory and unfolded it. He'd watched Geronimo take in the concept of maps at one big bound. The Apache had gone from complete incomprehension to rapt admiration when he realized what the line of the Southern Pacific (printed complete with little cross ties) represented. From that beginning, he'd made sense of the rest of the symbols in a hurry. Naiche, who could sketch very well himself, also understood maps now. The Apaches weren't stupid. The more Stuart dealt with them, the clearer that became.