1882: Custer in Chains (19 page)

◆
Chapter 10
◆

“W
ell,” said Lang, “what do you think?”

Ryder looked at the way the barbed wire encircled much of the defensive perimeter on the top of the hill. There wasn’t enough to totally go around the hill’s defenses without making it a fairly useless single strand fence, but what Lang had done with what little he had was impressive.

“I can’t believe the Army wasn’t interested. After all, similar defenses like
chevaux de frise
or
abattis
have been around for centuries,” Ryder said, referring to many styles of obstacles that had been developed over time. “This is so much quicker to install and possibly more difficult to remove.”

“Not only that,” Lang added, “you can shoot through the stuff if it isn’t too thickly stranded. I’m not trying to butter you up, but your idea of using the wire to steer any attackers towards your Gatling guns is brilliant. It’s just human nature to not want to be impaled on something sharp, so, like the way water flows, the Spaniards should go to where they think there is no wire.”

Ryder thought of piles of bodies stacking up in front of his guns. It was unsettling, but what was the alternative? “We need more wire, lots and lots of wire.”

“It’s coming, but just when I don’t know.”

“And you’re paying for it?”

“Consider it my little contribution to the war, along with my troop of cavalry who are entirely useless on this hill.”

Lang’s sixty troopers had been a welcome addition to Ryder’s forces. “Your horses might not have a role to play right now, but you say that your men are all excellent shots and they sure look mean as hell.”

Lang agreed. “Some of the older boys fought for the Confederacy, but the younger ones just wanted to get the hell out of Texas and see at least some of the world and a part of it that is green instead of a desert, and where there’s an ocean. I’ve got ten thousand acres of shit land that is flat and burned dry most of the time, which, I suppose, is better than having only one thousand acres of shit land. Then I’d really be poor and I’m not. You know, sometimes I wonder just why we wanted to take Texas from the Mexicans in the first place. As to my boys, they see this as maybe a once in a lifetime chance to do something exciting. That and they didn’t think it would hurt none to take a few shots at Spaniards. There’s no love lost between Texans and Mexicans and most of the boys don’t see much difference between a Mexican and a Spaniard.”

They walked the perimeter of the trenches, always keeping their heads down. The Spanish had snipers and some of them were good. To prove the point, there was the snap of a gunshot and the sound of swearing a few yards away. The sniper had missed, but the shot had come close and they weren’t always that lucky. Two of his men had been wounded before everyone got the message that some Spaniards actually could shoot straight. Barnes had recalled seeing a contraption consisting of a couple of mirrors and a box that enabled spectators to see over crowds at big events. He also recalled that the Navy had some and that they were called prisms or periscopes. He had a couple constructed and they helped out a lot. The men were protected and they could still see the enemy if they started to approach.

The snipers had made it necessary to install the wire at night, when the soldiers were hidden by darkness. Ryder had his own sharpshooters and there was continuous skirmishing between the two forces.

Ryder yawned. He was exhausted. He missed Sarah. It annoyed him that his stocky gremlin of a sergeant, Haney, was finding many excuses for going into town to see his own lover. He would have to make up his own excuse. Perhaps he would raise an issue about sanitation problems and ask her for assistance resolving them. A lot of his men had come down with diarrhea recently. That, he smiled and thought, would not be a very romantic excuse. He wondered if Sarah would mind making love on a pile of tenting like Haney and Ruth did. She’d probably turn him down flat, he sighed, and she’d be right. Sarah was worthy of far better things.

“Anybody watching the weather?” asked Barnes. “We might want to take a look to the west.”

The trees on the hill had obscured their view and, besides, they’d been concentrating on the barbed wire and the Spanish. A wall of dark clouds was approaching. As they watched, the wind began to pick up and heavy raindrops commenced to fall. They’d all been told that it was a couple of months before hurricane season, but that did not mean that Cuba was exempt from enormous thunderstorms.

Ryder was annoyed. “Barnes, are you telling me that nobody on the towers saw this coming?” Barnes said he’d check it out later. The lookout towers had been built on the hill to extend their view of the bay and the enemy. It was likely that the men fifty additional feet in the air didn’t think a few dark clouds were very important. It was something else that would have to be corrected.

“I think it’s time to batten down the hatches,” Ryder said and the others began to scurry to cover. He thought about sending a warning to the army down below but realized that he had no real way of doing it. He could ring alarm bells but they were supposed to be used in the event of a Spanish attack. Ring them and the American army would run to their positions, which might not be the best idea. He decided to send a telegram from the hill to headquarters on their recently installed line and hope somebody did something about getting the men under cover. And, of course, there was always the heliograph. Maybe Kendrick would write an article about soldiers and tropical storms. The reporter had been hiding with Ryder’s men on the hill.

There was a rumor that Custer, now ensconced in St. Augustine, was mad as hell and wanted Kendrick arrested. That was not going to happen. Ryder had quickly decided that he owed the man too much. Custer could find Kendrick all by himself if he wanted him that badly. Thus, Kendrick had been doing a good job of keeping himself out of sight on the hill with Ryder.

Then Ryder had another thought. When was the last time he’d seen Kendrick? He looked around, “Just where the hell is Kendrick?”

* * *

Sarah and the other nurses took shelter from the violent storm in the magnificent and elegant seventeenth-century church of San Charles de Borromeo that was now being used as their hospital. The thought of going through the downpour to their rooms was put on hold. The rain couldn’t last forever, could it? No more than forty days and nights, they’d laughed. Ruth brought up the thought of thousands of American soldiers stripping off their uniforms to shower in the rain and be clean for the first time in weeks. It reminded them of the sight of soldiers bathing in the gentle surf as they landed at Matanzas.

“I hope they have enough sense to dry off when they’re done. I’d hate to have them all dying of pneumonia,” Sarah said.

“Be honest,” said Ruth, “you’d very much like to see Martin Ryder frolicking naked in the rain and I’ll bet you’d like to be with him.”

Sarah agreed that she’d like to be rained upon and genuinely clean, although jumping around in a rain puddle did not seem like something they were quite ready for. She wondered if they could rig something on the flat roof of the house where they lived that they could use for real cleansing during a rainstorm instead of using water in a metal tub that came from a filthy stream. Water for drinking they boiled, but not the water for bathing.

At first she’d thought it mildly sacrilegious that the church would be used to house the wounded but quickly changed her mind. What could be better than a church to help heal men’s bodies as well as their souls? Statues of the Virgin Mary and other saints gazed benignly down on the men.

A couple of the non-Catholic chaplains and some of the officers had complained about the overwhelmingly Catholic nature of the building and urged that the statues and other symbols be removed or at least covered. General Miles had sternly confronted them and told them that what they wished was impossible without gutting the building and offending the local population even though those people had largely fled. He added that when they left Matanzas, the U.S. Army would not leave a desecrated church in its wake. The protestors had reluctantly accepted that reasoning and the comforting thought that they wouldn’t be in Matanzas forever.

At this time, there were very few wounded being treated. Most of the serious casualties from earlier fighting had been patched up and then sent by ship to St. Augustine where there were better facilities. The hospital ships were clearly marked with very large Red Crosses and the Spanish government in both Havana and Madrid had agreed to honor their safe passage as long as no military supplies were transported. In the event that a Spanish warship hadn’t gotten the message, ships’ captains traveled with passes signed by the Spaniards. It was an oasis of decency in an increasingly ugly war.

At least they were dry in the church, Sarah thought. Most of the permanent buildings in and around Matanzas had been built of a concretelike substance the locals called adobe. Fascinating stuff, it held in the heat at night and kept buildings cooler during the day. Right now she was thankful that it kept them dry. Other than a couple of leaks in the roof, the men in their beds were comfortable and dry.

A couple of the windows had been broken during the invasion, but they’d been covered with wood planking that now served to keep out the thunderous rain. “Once again, we must contemplate building an ark,” said Ruth.

“So much for a tropical paradise,” added Sarah. “If this is a normal rainstorm, I wouldn’t want to be here during the hurricane season. I understand the winds can blow the trees right out of the ground, just like a tornado, only cutting a much broader swath. I guess there’s a lot to be said for living inland.”

“Good morning, ladies,” said a smiling naval Lieutenant Prentice. He’d just ducked into the hospital and was soaking wet. “Once again we meet during a rainstorm.”

Sarah remembered the incident all too well. “Just as long as we don’t spend the day soaking in a trench and have it followed up by gunfire.”

“I have it on good authority that all of the Spanish warships, at least those that can do any real harm, are snugly berthed in Havana, and that is why I’m here. I’m working on the modification of a steamer for some very special purposes.”

“And what might those be?” Ruth asked.

Prentice was about to respond when he suddenly looked distressed. “Oh dear,” said Sarah, “is it possible that you’ve said too much already?”

Prentice looked around frantically. Had anyone else overheard him? “You’re right. I have a very big mouth sometimes. It’s only that what I’m doing is so remarkable that I have a hard time keeping my thoughts bottled up.”

Sarah had a hard time keeping from laughing. Good grief. The young officer was still in his early twenties. How much information could he possibly possess, and how much impact could it have on the course of a war between the United States and Spain?

“Don’t worry,” she said. “Whatever you’re doing—and we really don’t know what that might be—your secret’s safe with us. We have shockingly little to do with the Spanish Army, except to patch up some of their wounded and none are around at this time.”

“I think I should leave,” Prentice said glumly.

“It’s still raining very hard,” said Ruth.

Prentice shrugged. “And not likely to stop anytime soon.”

The nervous young lieutenant stepped outside and headed to the bay and the spot where the
Aurora
was anchored. In only a step or two he was soaked to the skin. He wanted to kick himself. He was so proud of what he was doing with Captain Janson and the
Aurora
that he wanted to shout it to the skies. However, doing that might get him either court-martialed or killed.

* * *

For a man with a strong fast horse and good guides, the distance from Matanzas to Havana could be traveled in a day and a night. Kendrick’s original idea had been to go to Cuba’s capital and simply observe what was happening. However, his informers in the Spanish camp had gotten word to the American that his nemesis, Gilberto Salazar, was in a military hospital and was likely to be there for a while. Therefore, he thought it likely that Juana might be interested in having a visitor.

He knew he should not have left Ryder’s camp without telling him, but he was afraid that he’d be denied permission, which he knew would be the correct thing to do. He knew too much about the American army, its position, leadership, and problems. He also knew that, if captured, he would not stand up very long under torture by the people who had invented the Spanish Inquisition. What he was doing was insane, but he wanted to see Juana and know that she was all right.

With two of Diego Valdez’s men as guides they easily made their way through the Spanish army. As one laughingly said, the Spaniards had a large army but not large enough to be everywhere. Kendrick wondered if the American generals knew of the gaps in the Spanish lines. After a few miles in fields and woods, they took the miserable road to Havana and made no attempt to hide.

When he arrived at Juana’s house a servant directed him elsewhere, to the house of one of her friends. Cursing, he rode the couple of miles to an elegant estate on heavily wooded grounds, where he was further directed to a small cottage several hundred yards away from the main house. He dismounted and nervously walked the few paces to the door. It had begun to rain and if nobody let him in he was going to be a soaked fool.

He knocked timidly. At first, there was no response. Then it opened and a thoroughly surprised Juana stood there, barefoot and dressed in a robe. She stared at him wide-eyed. “How did you get here so fast? I just sent the message!”

* * *

The next morning the two of them bathed, dressed, and went by carriage into Havana. They were exhausted as very little of their night in bed had been spent sleeping. Instead, they had reveled in the rediscovery of each other’s bodies.

If Juana was annoyed that James wanted to take time out from their liaison to see what had changed in Havana since his last visit, she stifled the feelings. She was happy to see him, and it was clear that he felt the same way. After all, he hadn’t had to seek her out in the first place. It obviously meant that he cared for her.