They Came To Cordura by Glendon Swarthout Page B

riders. The party was eight thousand feet up, Thorn guessed, or more. The thin air was insufficient to the needs of the lungs. Some of the men would suffer from altitude. Unstirruping his left leg he laid it forward along the dampening side of Sheep to listen. The chestnut’s heart battered at his ribs. He would hate to have to run a horse at this height. They would keep to the walk, he decided, until lower land. Two days to the Tex—Mex, three days to base. Suddenly someone broke into ballad.
               “I lay at the foot of a green maguey,
               My treacherous love ran away with another;
               To the song of the lark I awoke,
               O what a hang-over and the bar-keep won’t trust me!”
    It was Sergeant Chawk out on the point. It was not so much a song as a bellowing in bad Spanish. Thorn’s command reflex was to ride forward and stop it, but he checked himself. If a man could sing in this country, especially a man with a partial concussion, let him. So enormous was the figure of the sergeant that the animal under him seemed burro-like; his campaign hat perched atop a head swollen with bandages, he rode roaring.
               “0 God, free me of this illness,
               I feel as if I am going to die;
               The Virgin of pulque and tequila must save me,
               O what a hang-over, and nothing to drink!”
    The Geary woman pulled up and waited for the officer to come abreast.
    “You are the officer in charge?”
    “Yes. I am Major Thorn.”
    “I am a military prisoner. Is that right?”
    “Yes, ma’am.”
    Thorn found much masculine about her. Her seat on the Arab mare was boneless and easy, like that of a vaquero. Her hands, wrists and face were tanned as dark as a Yaqui’s , and at the corners of her eyes, which were sea-blue and steady, the sun had drawn many fine squint-lines. He guessed she would be a sure shot with a rifle. Her age he placed near that of his.
    “Then I expect to be told what this is all about. You ride in, shoot up my ranch, put me under arrest and take me somewhere to face some kind of charge. I’m not Mexican, I’m American, and I have a right to know.”
    “I agree,” Thorn said politely. “I’ll tell you what I know, but that is very little. My orders are to escort you to base under guard.” He explained that according to the Loss of Nationality Act, he had been told by Colonel Rogers, who had ordered her arrest, an American who knowingly aided the armed forces of another country engaged against United States troops could be deprived of citizenship. “You did quarter Villistas,” he said, “and you must have known American cavalry was operating in this area.”
    She looked at him scornfully. “Major, for the last five years, if you lived in this country you quartered anybody who came along or they quartered themselves. Be realistic. I’ve had to be. That ranch has been the only home I’ve had since my father died eight years ago. I’ve done what I had to do to save it. Villistas, Federales, red flaggers—I’ve let them in and rationed them and thanked God when they were gone. As a result, Ojos is the only ranch in Chihuahua State still in the original owner’s hands. Do you mean to say an American has no right to protect his own property?”
    Thorn did not reply. Tethered in front of her, the toucan or macaw distracted him. Upon the eye its colors, violent in sunlight, had a hypnotic effect. The high horn of her Mexican saddle was inset with a small mirror, for decoration, and on this horn the bird rode backward, head down, turning from side to side its pure white beak and peering over its claws at its reflection, fascinated by itself. Unconsciously Major Thorn rubbed his finger.
    “Well, Major?”
    “In this case, though, American troops were involved,” he said. “You must have heard about Columbus.”
    “I did.”
    “You must have known we were after