The Bride of Texas (70 page)

The butcher reached up involuntarily, ran his hand over his bald scalp, and said, “Seriously, now. Would you go fight red cannibals?”

There was silence for a while, then Salek-Cup said, “If it’s over freedom, I would.”

“That’s because you’ve got a bad conscience from ’48,” said the cigar-maker. “You told us yourself how you fired on the students.”

“I was young and stupid then,” said Salek-Cup, “and loyal to my emperor. Now I’m a grown man and an American!”

In a voice like a bull-horn Mihalotzy began declaiming a poem. Unfortunately it was in Hungarian, so they could only guess what it was about from his emotional recitation. In any case it failed to dispel the butcher’s fears of an armed encounter with Indian cut-throats
.

Frowning, Talafous reread the translated petition, and Vasek Lusk said, “I wouldn’t mind having a go at the Indians. I’m ready for a fight. I’m tired of all this drilling.”

“You’ve already got it in your blood,” said Shake. “Some people still have to get it there.” He glanced meaningfully at the butcher and the cigar-maker
.

“This is easy for you to talk,” said Kabrna. “You don’t have wife and kids.”

“But it still shouldn’t be in here,” the butcher interrupted, glowering at the translated document. “Now the governor can snap his fingers whenever it suits his fancy and we have to march to his tune.”

“Why did you sign up if you’re scared already?” Padecky yelled
.

“Don’t insult me, neighbour!” the butcher retorted. “You can never be too careful.”

“This is terrible!” Shake rolled his eyes over the translated missive
.

“What now, dammit?” hollered Padecky
.

“The phrase ‘gladly offer our services to the Government of the United States’,” said Shake with a horrified expression. “It should say exactly what kind of services it’s talking about.”

“What do you mean, what services?” bellowed Padecky. “We’re a company of soldiers, aren’t we? What are we supposed to do, go and shovel manure for the governor?”

“ ‘If the need should arise’ —” Shake shrugged
.

“Soldiers!” thundered Mihalotzy, who could follow just enough of the Czech to know it was time to intervene. “The governor will use our company if war breaks out with the South.”

“It’s not going to,” said Shake. “Not according to Padecky here.”

“Exactly,” said the butcher. “So what else can the governor ask us to do as soldiers? Fight the Indians. They’re the only ones making war right now.”

“The governor has his regular army for fighting Indians,” said Mihalotzy. “We’ll march against the South.”

“Yes, but Kabrna has a family,” said Shake
.

Suddenly the door opened and Marticka Lusk sailed into the tavern, radiant with good news. Tailor Hubatty had told Mr. Ohrenzug about the stolen proceeds from the ladies’ dance and that patriotic gentleman had first flown into a rage and then asked how much uniforms with red trousers would cost. Then he’d done some figuring on a piece of paper and worked out that for fifty-two volunteers the cost would be a total of one hundred and eighty-two dollars
.

“And, neighbours, he’s offered to pay for them out of his own pocket!” raved Marticka
.

“The man is too generous,” said the cigar-maker gloomily. “There got to be a catch.”

“There’s no catch,” said Marticka, “but there is a condition.
He’s too old to go to war, but he wants you to name him honorary colonel.”

“How old is he?” Padecky asked darkly
.

“Just short of fifty,” said Marticka
.

They were silent. Padecky, who had turned fifty in September, flushed a little, but the thought of the red trousers silenced him. “He’s not in very good shape for his age, and that’s the truth,” he grumbled
.

“He has one other condition,” said Marticka
.

“What else? Being a colonel ought to be enough, for a miserable hundred and eighty-two bucks,” snapped Kafka the anti-Semite
.

“He wants you to hang an oil painting of him in the assembly room,” said Marticka
.

“Does that mean here?” asked Slavik, glancing at the front wall, where two portraits were hanging already: Frantisek Palacky and George Washington
.

Over Kafka’s protests, it was agreed that Honorary Colonel Arpad Ohrenzug would hang to the left of George Washington. And so Lincoln’s Slavonic Rifles were saved, at least for the time being
.

Dawn brought the sounds of daytime and the sounds of war, which drowned out the noise of creaking axles and the occasional braying of a mule. Dawn also brought a rider from General Carlin, which was how Sherman found out that he had lost the wager from the previous day. Johnston’s army was still in the field, with a single avenue of retreat, the bridge across Mill Creek. They had remained there, however, not because the experienced commander had suddenly decided to go for broke, but because the relentless battle with Carlin’s and Morgan’s divisions had overstretched the capacity of Johnston’s field hospital, and tending to all the wounded was more than his medics
could handle. The only bridge was in constant use by ambulances transporting their bloody cargo across the river to Smithfield. Johnston hadn’t expected such high losses, and there was a shortage of vehicles as well. Once in the town, the casualties were placed in churches and schools, and the ambulances returned for new loads.

After reading Carlin’s dispatch, Logan suggested launching a general battle. The sergeant knew what his general’s response would be.

“No, John,” Sherman said. “Have you seen this?” He indicated the preliminary report of the chief medical officer. “Our casualties are up to about a thousand already.” He glanced out from under the lean-to set up among the pines to protect the staff and the less than useful maps from the rain. The sounds of war were muted by the drumming of raindrops on the slanted canvas fly. “Johnston’s on his last legs. Even without a general battle.”

“The war could be over in one fell swoop,” argued Logan.

Sherman turned away from the view of the green meadows among the trees, veiled by the driving rain.

“How many more weeks or days do you think it could take, John?”

“Today could be the last day.”

“For how many men?” asked Sherman.

He did not issue the order for a general battle.

But then another messenger came, with news of a sudden and unexpected battle on the far end of the right wing shortly after four in the afternoon.

“It must be Mower,” the general said. “He’s one of our best young commanders.” The sergeant smiled to himself. Mower was only seven years younger than Sherman, but the general was “Uncle Billy”, the elderly, congenial leader. “Did anyone give him the order to do this?”

No one had. They bent over the map and saw that Mower’s
flanking manoeuvre was an imaginative way of striking at the enemy’s Achilles’ heel. But they also saw it as a risky decision. Mower was a brawler who sometimes relied too heavily on the exceptional skills of his soldiers and on luck.

Until that afternoon, Mower’s division of Blair’s Seventeenth Corps had stood almost idle at the far right flank of Sherman’s army. Then Mower discovered that the enemy ranks in that sector had thinned out considerably, since Johnston had moved his troops to reinforce the centre. Like everyone else, Mower knew that the bridge across Mill Creek was Johnston’s only avenue of retreat, and he reasoned that he could close that retreat off by a swift offensive march; the only resistance would come from a few units, and they were likely to consist of reconnaissance rather than combat troops. So he set out at the head of his division along a forest path that curved north-east and then, after emerging from the forest, wound across meadows and skirted marshes until it reached the bridge a bare two miles away. By the time Mower’s first courier arrived at Sherman’s headquarters, the van of his division had already broken through the sparse line of defence — cavalrymen on foot, there to protect Johnston’s left flank — and were approaching the bridge. The courier reported that hastily assembled reserve and cavalry units were trying to slow them down. The bridge, however, was already in full sight.

They all looked to the general. He scratched his dishevelled hair and pulled on his cigar.

“We must skirmish along the entire front,” he said, “otherwise Johnston will move all his reserves and all of Hampton’s and Wheeler’s cavalry units against Mower. And if that’s not enough, he’ll even yield his position against Slocum to keep Mower from getting to the bridge. We have to keep them busy, or he’ll do to Mower’s division what he failed to do to Morgan’s.”

He looked around at his staff. No one said a word.

“He has the very best reasons to defend that bridge. He’s moving his wounded out. When that’s done — well, I won’t make any bets like yesterday’s, but I’d say that he’ll take what’s left and withdraw to Smithfield tonight.”

“All the more reason for us to initiate a general battle,” insisted Logan.

The general shook his head. “Skirmishing along the whole front line is enough. Johnston won’t be able to leave his defences, and Mower will manage against the reserves.”

But would Mower close off the avenue of retreat, the sergeant wondered. If he did, Sherman couldn’t avoid a general battle even if he wanted to.

The general walked out from under the lean-to and looked out over the verdant, rain-soaked North Carolina landscape rolling away before him. Flashes of faraway gunfire poked through the grey curtain of rain. He could feel spring in the air. A gust of wind brought a whiff of gunpowder from the battlefront.

Thanks to the generosity of Colonel Arpad Ohrenzug, participation in training exercises was now one hundred per cent. The circle of ladies and girls from the Czech community had widened again, especially when Captain Mihalotzy started drilling the soldiers in the art of man-to-man combat with fixed bayonets. True, they were using broom handles instead of rifles and bayonets (the brooms came from Salek-Cup’s warehouse), but the glint of steel and stench of hot blood were provided by the imaginations of the blood-thirsty female patriots and the battling defenders of the Union, who in turn were inspired by visions of red trousers, the fabric for which was already being cut in Hubatty’s workshop.
Alone in a corner of the meadow, the outcast Schroeder stood balefully observing the mock battle
.

One time there was almost a mutiny. The postman had brought Mihalotzy a letter at Slavik’s Tavern. It was a letter he had written to Lincoln, and Lincoln had sent it back from Washington with a signed comment in his own hand appended to it. That evening, Molly Kakuska read it aloud at a meeting
.

“Dear Sir,” Mihalotzy had written in English (transcribed from the draft by Trevellyan), “We have organized a company of Militia in the city, composed of men of Hungarian, Bohemian & Slavonic origin. Being the first company formed in the United States of said nationalities we respectfully ask leave of your Excellency to entitle ourselves ‘Lincoln Riflemen’ of Slavonic Origin. If you will kindly sanction our use of your name, we will endeavour to do honour to it, whenever we may be called to perform active service. Respectfully on behalf of the Company, Geza Mihalotzy, Capt.”

Under it stood, in Lincoln’s hand, “I cheerfully grant the request above. A. Lincoln.”

The phrase “whenever we may be called to perform active service” once more evoked fears of combat with the Indians. Honorary Colonel Ohrenzug, sitting beneath his own portrait at Slavik’s Tavern that night, was aghast. “Men,” he said, “when you join the army, you expect to fight. If I were younger, I’d lead you to the battle front myself.”

“But not against Indians,” insisted the stubborn butcher
.

“Why not?” Vasek Lusk chimed in. “If Bondy and Weiner could join John Brown fighting slave-drivers, why couldn’t Colonel Ohrenzug —”