“How you keepin, then?”
“I got on with some Jewish people, mind their little boys. Ira and Reuben. They had a German girl, but she gone moody and set their place on fire.”
“You a nursemaid.”
“They too old for nursing.”
“Jewish people.”
She raises her eyebrows. “I aint seen no horns, if that’s what you wonderin.”
He laughs. “May I offer you a ride, Miss Alma? I got a wagon.”
She looks him over. She is maybe five, six years older than him, and nearly a inch taller. “What you haul in it?”
“Cameras,” he says. Mr. Harry give it to him to have the springs changed out but the shop don’t open till Monday. “For the moving pictures.”
Miss Alma laughs. Her laugh is just as good as her singing. “You always been a lucky one. Jubal Scott fall in the creek, he come out with a catfish in both pockets.”
“You member Mr. Harry Manigault? Mr. Harry is who I’m working for.”
She look like she just swallow something bad. “That other one aint up here, is he?”
“No, M’am. Mr. Harry say he went over fightin Filipinos, just like my brother, and now he gone missin.”
She is still frowning. “Well let him stay missin.”
She stops to ponder the writing on the side of the panel wagon, looking struck by it. “Cameras, huh. What they take pictures of?”
“Mostly people act out stories and they take pictures of that.”
She nods. “I heard of it, but I aint never seen one.”
“Maybe I take you to see it sometime. They put the stories up and then there’s singing and dancing and whatnot.”
Miss Alma looks the wagon over like she doesn’t know if it’s safe to get on it. “You carry a lot of gals around on this?”
“No, M’am,” he says. “You the first one I ast.”
She smiles at him then — Lord, that smile — and he unties Hooker and climbs quick into the seat and pulls her up after. People walk by and stare at the writing on the panel and he gathers the reins and the horse’s ears go up.
“That up there is Hooker,” he says, pointing. “She been through a lot, but she got plenty good years left.”
“Her and me both,” says Miss Alma Moultrie.
AMBUSH
Royal is loaded with the rest of the food, with sticks for the fire, with the cookpot and ground mats and the empty Winchester of Joselito, who has come up lame, when they are surrounded by the other band. He counts about thirty of them, just as hungry-looking as his own outfit, many of them stepping close to look him over. He puts only the cookpot down, meeting their stares evenly as the Teniente palavers with the head man, who is staring at him suspiciously. It isn’t an argument exactly, but the Teniente is tight and frowning when he comes back to talk to Royal.
“I told them you are with us. If I don’t say this they will take you as a prisoner with the others.”
“Others.”
“Act as if you are not afraid.”
The new band escorts them up a rocky, zigzag trail to the saddle of the mountain. They’ve seen yanquis patrolling the area, says the Teniente, and an ambush is planned.
There are three American prisoners in the camp.
Two of them are Colorado Volunteers in uniform, a lieutenant and a private, and the other a man in civilian clothes, sitting with their hands tied, backs to the trunk of a stunted acacia tree, with a single rope around their necks that holds them tight to it. They look even more starved than the rebels, and the private is only half-conscious, eyes swimming.
“Oh, Jesus,” says the lieutenant when Royal passes, “it’s him. It’s Fagen, come to murder us.”
They are allowed to unload and start a cookfire, the rebels around them watching Nilda as she moves. There is no joking. Royal’s legs are knotted from the climb, his back sore. The Teniente squats beside the head man, who is taller than most of them and bearded, some kind of a Spanish mix, scratching in the dirt with a stick. Bayani steps by Royal on his way to join them, catching his eye and putting a finger to his lips.
There is nothing he can do for the prisoners. He is in his underwear shirt, his uniform blouse sewed up by Nilda to make a carrying pack, the arms serving as straps, and he hasn’t shaved or had his hair cut since the river. Look like some nigger gone wild, he thinks as he steals a look over to the hostages. The private’s head is lolling, rope cutting into his neck.
“They want us to join the ambush with them in an hour,” says the Teniente when he returns. “You will have to attend.”
“What they gonna do with those three?”
“Perhaps they will able to trade them for some of our own people,” he says. He doesn’t sound hopeful about it.
The new band has not been resupplied for a week, so Royal’s bunch shares their food — handfuls of corn, the sweet-potato-looking thing they dug up on the way, some bananas. There is not much for anybody once it is all divvied out. The prisoners are not fed. Nilda sits by Royal while they eat, which she has never done before. A couple times she has done for the chigger bites on his legs without him asking, spitting tobacco juice on them and rubbing it in, and the welts have gone down some. There is no taste to the food, but it is gone quickly and then they are preparing for battle.
The Filipinos have rituals. Some kneel and pray and make a cross — head, heart, and shoulders — with their right hand. Others of them have charms they wear around their necks or wrists or put in their hats or in their mouths and some do the kind of witchy business his mother used to, like they’re putting some kind of spell on their rifles and bolos.
The Teniente gives him Fulanito’s Mauser and its one round. The boy sits sulking by the dying cookfire.
“They’ll be watching you.”
“They can watch all they want,” says Royal. “I aint shootin nobody.”
The men from Teniente’s band, Bayani, Kalaw, Legaspi, Pelaez, Ontoy, El Guapo, Puyat, and Katapang, seem to take no notice of him as he joins them filing back down the mountain. They walk for nearly an hour, silent, then deploy in the pass at the bottom, some in the sharp rocks jumbled at the base of the slope and some in the trees a bit ahead and on the other side where the pass makes a bend, offset so they don’t shoot into each other when the smoker begins. They are supposed to wait for the head man, whose name is Gallego, to fire before they open up on whoever walks into the trap.
If it is the 25th or one of the other colored outfits he supposes he will have to try to switch sides. If it is white soldiers he doesn’t know. There are a couple of Gallego’s rebels in the rocks just above and behind him and when he looks back one has him sighted.
It is hot again and the shade is on the other side of Royal’s boulder. The one round for the Mauser is still in his pocket. He tries to work his way into a position where nothing is digging into him, then closes his eyes.
The first gunshot wakes him. Regulars, white men, one hit and writhing on the ground and the others forming up, kneeling or flopping down in a rectangle to return fire. Royal stands and works the bolt a couple times, pretending to shoot, and hears one of them shout “Get the nigger!” before he ducks and the rocks before him are blasted into chips by a concentrated volley. The firing is wild on all sides then and Royal keeps his head down till he hears whooping and looks out to see the white boys charge the woods, shooting as they run, and take the position in a moment. The two sides, dug in, trade shots and insults for a while, the engagement hot at first and then cooling down to an on-and-off, harrying fire. Royal does not bother to pretend to shoot again. If they try to retreat back up the mountain now they’ll be exposed, so he has to hope the regulars won’t make another charge before it gets dark.