Page 15 of Two Wars and a Wedding

“It wasn’t knight errantry. It was just common sense.” He was definitely going to stop rescuing people. Next time he met a woman on the train tracks, she could waltz off into the wilderness. “And I wasn’t following you. I’m taking a message to Lieutenant Colonel Roosevelt.”

“To Colonel Roosevelt?” Miss Carson elbowed past her companion to get to Holt. “What is it?”

“That, Miss Carson, is for Lieutenant Colonel Roosevelt’s ears.” Holt’s head was beginning to ache, and not just from the sun. He really hoped it wasn’t a migraine. He turned back to Miss Hayes. “In that case, I’ll bid you—”

Miss Carson jumped in before he could complete his farewells. “You wouldn’t care to give me an exclusive interview, would you? As one of the most notorious of Roosey’s Red Hot Roarers?”

Holt couldn’t help himself. “Notorious?”

“Celebrated, then. The man who stopped the Jakes Brothers from terrorizing the New Mexico territory now turns his talents to defending the innocents of Cuba from the heavy fist of Spain.” Holt wasn’t sure which was worse, her prose or the pain in his left temple, which was growing more acute by the moment. Miss Carson leaned forward, intent. “What do you think of the Fifth Avenue Boys? Are they up to the job or are they too soft in the hoof?”

“I think we’re all here with the same goal and we’re all going to work as hard as we can,” said Holt, trying to keep his voice pleasant with the blood pounding in his temple, sending red-hot pokers of pain through his scalp. “And I don’t mean for you to quote me on that.”

“If I’m not going to quote you, could I at least say something about seeing you?” said Miss Carson hopefully. “The celebrated lawman Hold ’Em Holt delivering messages for his commander, wearing the signature blue bandana of this dashing troop of daring deliverers?”

“I’m not a lawman.” No, he’d seen to that, hadn’t he? He and the law had no more than a passing acquaintance these days. “Don’t write about me. Write about the men who died on the Maine. Write about the Cuban women and children starving in Spanish reconcentration camps. That’s why we’re here. That’s what we should be reading about.”

Miss Carson batted her eyelashes at him, all girlish innocence. “But the fact that you’re all here to avenge them—that’s a story too. Don’t you agree?”

“I’m not interested in stories. These aren’t stories—these are people’s lives at stake.”

“Your life too.” Miss Hayes’s voice rang out rough and raw, like something scraped off the bottom of a shoe. “It’s your life and the life of every man here.”

Holt looked at her sharply. “It’s what we signed up to do. For the women and children of Cuba.” He’d seen the images of Cuban children more skeleton than flesh, grieving mothers clutching their starving babies. In an effort to curb rebellion, the Spanish authorities in Cuba had torn hundreds of thousands of civilians from their homes, herding them into barbed-wire reconcentration camps, where those who didn’t die of starvation were ravaged by disease. No one should have to live in that sort of want and fear. “Now, if you’ll—”

The bones of Miss Hayes’s face stood out too clearly in the sunlight, like a skull. “That’s all very well, but what about the women at home? What about the children who’ll never see their fathers again? You go waltzing off, playing at soldiers . . .”

Holt fought down his irritation. “We’re not playing soldiers. We’re the US Army.” Admittedly, a rather irregular branch of it. But that was the American spirit for you. “What do you think we should do? Ask Spain nicely to treat the reconcentrados better? We tried that. It didn’t work.”

“So you’re going to go in with guns blazing. They have guns too. And they probably know how to use them a good deal better.”

Holt frowned at her, not quite sure he was hearing what he was hearing. “Are you saying we’re going to lose?”

“There’s no winning, don’t you understand? Even if you win you lose.” Miss Hayes looked straight at him, speaking with the detached authority of an ancient oracle. Her eyes weren’t the blue one would expect with that hair but a deep gray, almost black. “The man next to you might be the one to fall. Or it might be you. Gone. Like that. And for what?”

“Maybe some things are worth dying for.”

Miss Hayes shook her head, her hat wobbling. Holt had never seen anything so bleak as those eyes. “Like the Charge of the Light Brigade. They can write a lovely poem about you when you’re all rotting beneath the palm trees.”

With that, she turned and marched up the steps to the hotel, leaving her words to settle around Holt like a chill in the heat of the day.

Chapter Four

Darling Ava,

Look on ye mighties and despair! I’ve been walking in the steps of the Titans this week—gods and heroes and Cyclops.

Don’t mind me. I’m antiquities drunk. It’s intoxicating, seeing all of this in situ and not just in fuzzy photographs and artists’ illustrations. It feels quite different when you’re standing in the midst of it. That’s when the true wonder of it all hits you. These were people, Ava. Actual people, not just creators of vases and myths left for future generations to puzzle over. They lived and ate—and bathed! Oh, the baths I’ve seen. I’m giddy with it.

We saw Tiryns today and we’re bound for Mycenae tomorrow, Professor Sterrett, the Harvard boys, Ethel, and me. There is also a scholar from the French School who has happened to join us. The boys call Ethel the Coffee Angel. She managed to coax the beverage into being over a spirit lamp and served it in a Minoan jar (all right, it wasn’t actually a Minoan jar, but it was its near descendant) and they’re now her devoted slaves and carry her pack for her in the hopes of future favor.

More anon. Don’t you wish you were here? You could be here; I’d arrange it all.

All my love,

Betsy

—Miss Betsy Hayes ’96 to Ava Saltonstall ’96