Page 21 of Two Wars and a Wedding

Guilt stabbed him in the gut, still sharp after all this time. Over the past three years, he’d tried to drink himself numb; he’d tried to fight himself clean; he’d tried to escape by putting miles in between. But if he’d learned anything, it was that there was no wilderness far enough, no oblivion deep enough; he took his sins with him, like the pack on his back, welded there for eternity.

The coal cars shuddered toward the end of the line. Holt could see the gleam of water, the harbor thick with ships, waiting to carry them across to Cuba. To free starving women and children from the yoke of Spanish tyranny.

If he could strike a blow for them, if he could relieve one woman of her suffering, he would have, not atoned—there was no atoning—but he would have done something. He might be able to look himself in the mirror again.

And as for Miss Betsy Hayes, she could just take her pronouncements of gloom and doom and stick to splinting legs.

In a spirit of exaltation, Holt swung himself off the coal car—and sank ankle deep into the sand. He had to do a fancy quickstep to keep his pack from bowling him over backward, flailing in the sand like a bug on his back.

Around him, the rest of the troop was floundering, trying to get their footing. One man fell flat on his face and was hauled up, spitting out mouthfuls of sand.

“I knew I should have brought my bathing costume,” gasped Paul. “Which one of these transports do you think is ours?”

“I don’t know.” Holt looked around for someone else who might.

It was hard to miss General Shafter. He had settled his bulk on a makeshift chair composed of two cracker boxes, overseeing the operation from a packing crate. He was surrounded by indignant, red-faced officers all demanding to know what to do with their troops. As for the twenty-odd thousand troops of Shafter’s army, ranks had long since broken. Some men made a beeline for the water, wading fully clothed into the surf in a desperate attempt to cool off; others had wandered off to a row of shanties that seemed to have sprouted from the sand overnight.

One of the other members of the troop came slinking over. Bill called himself a cowboy, but he was, as far as Holt could tell, more of a two-bit card shark, long on stories, short on action. He’d been running a good trade in bilking the credulous Ivy Leaguers, dazzled by their brush with the real Wild West.

Ignoring Holt, Bill sidled straight up to Paul. “This looks like it’s gonna take a while. You wanna come get some General Miles grape juice?”

The residents of Tampa, unnerved at the reputation of Roosevelt’s men for rough drinking as well as rough riding, had begged that spiritous liquors not be served. So the good bartenders of Tampa had gotten around it by creating innocent-sounding libations with a kick like a mule.

Paul’s flushed face lit up. “First round’s on me. General Robert E. Lee milkshakes all around!”

“Whoa.” Holt grabbed his bunkmate by the sleeve. Sweat dripped down his forehead, stinging his eyes and blurring his vision. “You want to miss the call to board?”

“Doesn’t look like we’re going anywhere fast,” said Bill, defending his right to Paul’s company, or, more accurately, Paul’s wallet.

Holt felt like a very unlikely nursemaid. But Paul was one of life’s innocents. It would be plain wrong to let him be fleeced by Bill. Besides, if Paul didn’t make it over, he might have to share his tent with someone else. “You never know. You want to tell your kids you didn’t make it to Cuba because you were caught with your pants down in a one-room whorehouse?”

Paul scratched his chin. “You put it that way . . .”

“We’ve come this far.” To rot beneath the palm trees. Holt pushed Miss Hayes’s voice out of his head. “Think of the boys back in camp cursing because they didn’t get to join us.”

“Well, if Holt says you can’t come out and play . . .” Bill shrugged, looking around for another Easterner to pay his bar bill. “Your loss.”

Paul looked longingly at a shack selling General Miles grape juice. “Maybe just a small one?”

“You drink liquor in heat like this, you’re going to feel a thousand times worse,” Holt said tersely. “What you want is water and lots of it. Coconut milk’s fine as long as no one’s put rum in it. Or juice. Actual juice.”

Paul looked at him as though he were an early saint dispensing the gospel. “Good thing I’ve got you to show me the ropes.”

“It’s just common sense.” He had never asked to be held up as an icon of the Wild West. He was about as much of a real cowboy as Paul. “Doesn’t take a genius to tell you that dehydration isn’t your friend.”

“My old nanny used to say there’s nothing common about common sense,” said Paul blithely. “Oh, look! What’s that?”

That was Lieutenant Colonel Roosevelt, sprinting for all he was worth, shouting, “The Yucatan! The Yucatan! You! You there! Take a group of men and guard the train with our supplies! You! Round the boys up and get ’em on board! Double-quick! Step lively, men! Time and tide wait for no man!”

With a whoop, the Rough Riders charged toward the ship, fatigue forgotten, heat forgotten, their thick coating of coal forgotten, hats waving, voices hoarse with cheering as they picked up the cry, “The Yucatan!” They thronged the gangway as the ship moved with painful slowness to the dock, and two other groups of soldiers advanced.

“Guard the gangway, boys,” muttered Lieutenant Colonel Roosevelt, striding to the front, as the men clustered around the gangway in the unforgiving sun.

“Tell your men to move aside,” barked the colonel in charge of the 71st New York. Holt recognized some of the men who had been shouting for Teddy that morning as they chugged past the Rough Riders on their comical coal cars. “We’ve been assigned this ship.”

“So were we,” said Roosevelt serenely. The gangplank was being laboriously attached to the ship. Roosevelt made shooing motions behind his back, urging the men to board. “You may have been assigned it, but we seem to have it.”

“Wait!” It was the commanding officer of the 2nd US Infantry. “Just a minute! That’s our transport! As your ranking officer . . .”