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[Concluding chapter ten]
Patton took stock. A knot of white-clad Texans had gathered in the near distance; Patton could hear the uncertainty in their voices as they murmured to one another. Some of the Texans who’d been part of Pickett’s gang were more definitive in their anger. No one, though, made a move toward the bodies.
“Damn,” Fontaine said. “God damn. I am sure getting tired of this.”
Wheat laughed, but the sound of it was more brittle, more sour, than Patton had yet heard from the man. “I’m starting to miss Cuba,” he said, mysteriously.
“I don’t understand,” Patton said to Wheat. “What was that all about? Pickett was rotten, but is there more to this than what I know?”
Wheat looked at Fontaine, who shrugged. “What the hell,” Wheat said. “We’re going to be dressed down anyway.” He turned to face Patton. “You’ll have noticed that we’re traveling light.” Patton nodded; Walker’s column had little more than half the wagons of Parsons’s column, for roughly the same number of men. “Walker decided it made more sense for us to provision ourselves by requisitioning food and fodder from the farms we passed.” Patton raised his eyebrows. Then the full import of Wheat’s words hit him.
“You’ve been taking food from people?” That wasn’t something liberators did. It was invaders who lived off the land, “foraging” for the food and goods of the local population. They’re behaving as though they’d been invaded, he remembered Cleburne saying. So that explained it.
“Fresh out of school,” Wheat said to Fontaine, “and with us only a few days, and Patton here seems to instinctively recognize how—how stupid a decision that was. Why couldn’t Walker have seen that?” Fontaine said nothing, but his spitting into the dust spoke volumes.
“Well, we don’t know this part of Texas,” Wheat continued. “So Walker got one of the locals to lead him to appropriate farms.”
“That would be Pickett.”
“And of course Mister Pickett, recognizing opportunity when it kissed his backside, took advantage of our colonel to settle a few old scores and make himself a little bit richer in the process. I’m sure that when we go through his things we’ll find a healthy collection of coin, paper and jewelry. We did get our supplies, of course. But I think we’ve paid a pretty substantial price for those supplies.” Wheat sighed heavily. “We probably aren’t even aware yet of the full price we’ve paid.”
“It’s enough for me that discipline’s shot to Hell,” Fontaine said. “Time was, Walker never would have got himself this sloppy.”
“Perhaps there’s a greater reason for this than he’s made you aware of,” Patton said. “And I don’t think the discipline on this march has been all that bad.”
“You’ve seen us at our best, boy,” Fontaine said, spitting. “Give it a couple more days, and you’ll see us at something less.”
Patton shook his head. Subordinate officers complained all the time, or so he’d been told. But this seemed to be far more than the griping and whining of men who would somehow find the mettle to fight when the time came. There was a soul-deep dispiritedness in the way Wheat’s head hung; in Fontaine he detected a grim determination to see something bad through to its inevitable end. He didn’t want to believe that things had come to this. He didn’t want to believe that Merce and Cleburne had been right in running.
“You did the right thing in dealing with Pickett,” he told them, chin up and shoulders squared back. “I think that this column is equal to any force this country’s corrupt government can throw at it—even a force twice its size, if it comes to that. We can’t let the men know that you think there’s anything wrong—and I repeat, I don’t think there is. Not that we can’t deal with. You just have to make Colonel Walker understand that he’s got to present this to the men as an example of discipline, of what happens to looters. If he has to pretend that he didn’t know what Pickett was up to, then that’s fine. For all I know, maybe he didn’t know. The colonel’s got an awful lot to worry about, commanding this expedition. He can’t be expected to know what every man under his command is up to.” He faltered to a stop, aware that at some point he’d begun babbling.
Wheat smiled at him, then at Fontaine. There was a bit more life in the captain’s smile, now. “I think maybe we ought to get Patton to explain the situation to the colonel,” Wheat said. “His enthusiasm might be contagious.”
“I’ll be satisfied if I can infect you gentlemen,” Patton said. “The colonel’s much more likely to listen to you. He doesn’t seem to like me all that much. I can’t think why.”
Wheat looked uncomfortable at this, and Fontaine turned away. Patton was startled at the reaction; his comment had been meant as more of a throw-away line than any sort of accusation, and now he found himself wondering, in some discomfort, just what it was about him that Walker didn’t like and that the two captains were obviously aware of.
He didn’t get the chance to ask them, though. Wheat walked to Fontaine, tapped him on the shoulder, and said, “Might as well get this over with now.” To Patton he said, “See that our men are squared away for the night. I’m thinking that under the circumstances we won’t do any drill tonight. Double tomorrow though, eh?” He grinned at Patton, and then the two captains walked off into the early evening gloom.
We’re maybe two days’ march from Washington, Patton thought as he watched them go. We’re bound to have a fight between now and then. What sort of a fight are we going to be able to give, if our captains have started doubting our commanding officer? He walked back toward the camp himself. Fires had sprung up as the sun had set, but to Patton they promised no comfort.
Next Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six
Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten
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