Country of the Bad Wolfes by James Blake Read Free Book Online Page A

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    After two of the Patricios escaped from the city penitentiary—both breakouts abetted by visitors—the prisoners were moved to the nearby fortress of Chapultepec castle and visiting privileges were curtailed. One of the escapees had been a diminutive man named Duhan, who dressed himself in smuggled women’s clothing and then simply walked out with the female visitors when they departed. The other to escape was John Little, who had spoken hardly at all since their capture at Churubusco. His liberation also entailed a disguise sneaked in to him by a woman visitor, a rich Mexican sympathetic to the Patricios, though none of them had any notion of why she had specifically chosen John Little to help escape. His disguise was designed to let him walk out in place of a servant who had accompanied her, but the guards became aware of the ruse just as the party was exiting the prison and was within sight of the carriage waiting at the curb. A gunfight ensued and the woman’s two employees were killed and the woman herself arrested. But John Little made away, and none of his comrades would ever know what became of him.
    On a day in late spring, less than two weeks before the last American troops withdrew from Mexico, the Saint Patricks were mustered into the central courtyard and there shorn of their hair, every man of them razored to the scalp, blood lacing down their heads, and then made to march in single file around the yard to a drum-and-fife rendition of “The Rogue’s March” while they were vilified and spat upon by the troops. And were finally directed out the front gate and set free. Jack Riley and a few other stalwarts would return to the Mexican army, but the others had had enough of the soldier’s life, and after sharing a common cell for nine months most of them had had enough of each other. As soon as they were into the park and out of view of the American soldiers they began drifting apart in different directions without words of farewell nor mentions of destination, and few of them would meet again. As for the promise of land grants, it had been made by a government anticipating victory over the Yankees and since then usurped many times over.

    Even if he’d had the use of both hands and could walk properly, Samuel Thomas would never have returned to the ranks. Nor would he go back to the U.S.The brand on his face was a mark of Cain to Americans and he would be a despised pariah. He might have done as some of the other Patricios had and disfigured the “D” to an unrecognizable scar, but the scar would still attract notice and raise questions, as would his crippled hand and pronounced limp. To say the maimings were war wounds would oblige him to answer queries about the unit he had served with and of some of his officers and comrades. And what of his name? “Samuel H. Thomas” was on the official roster of punished deserters, so he would have to revert to his real one or assume another one altogether. There were any number of pitfalls to such deceits, just as there were to any personal history he might invent for the past two years that did not include the war but accounted for his maimings. Such were the arguments he gave himself and he accepted them as sound enough. But the main reason he would not go home was his brother. He could neither lie to John Roger nor face him with the truth. His twin—the collegian, the man of principle—would never understand his desertion and for sure not his turned coat. Better that Johnny should imagine him dead by whatever misadventure struck his fancy than to see what had become of him. And to learn why. So he stayed in Mexico City.

    Through the rest of that summer he was frequently drunk, as much to blunt his memory as to ease his chronic pains. He kept to the heart of the city, which had been little damaged by the war and where the fashionable neighborhoods of the privileged flanked the Plaza de la