Chasing the Texas Wind Read online

  Maeve opened the package and found a slender chain supporting a piece of bronze cast in the shape of a garland of flowers with tiny dark blue stones set as the petals. “This is beautiful, Ham,” she exclaimed. “I have never seen the like. How do you come to have such a treasure?”

  “A treasure?” Ham echoed. “While I was recovering from San Jacinto the Army tried to interest me in training for various civilian occupations that could be done sitting down. I met a jeweler who let me try a little work in his shop but made it clear I was not to waste any of his valuable materials. He had some bronze left over from making coffin handles, and some rough bits of Lapis Lazuli that he let me experiment with. I made a ring for a friend of mine, and the jeweler consented to engrave it. I also made this necklace for my sister. Forget-me-nots were her favorite flower.”

  “For your sister?” Maeve repeated. “But – then – why –”

  “Sarah gushed about it too,” Ham said softly, lost in remembrance and hardly aware of Maeve’s presence. “She talked about how it would become a family heirloom and get passed down to one of her two daughters. Then Sarah and her girls died of Cholera, and her husband sent me the necklace when he wrote to tell me the news. He said it reminded him too much of her to keep it.” Ham came to himself abruptly. “I’m – I’m sorry, Maeve. Awfully sorry. I had no intention whatsoever of telling you that. It was ghoulish.”

  “Hamilton, I couldn’t possibly accept this,” Maeve said, holding it out.

  “Oh, please,” Ham said awkwardly. “Look, Maeve, what we have here may be a sham, but right now you’re the only woman in my life, and this is decidedly a woman thing, and the only thing I have except my walking stick that your money didn’t pay for. I wish you’d take it. Please.”

  Maeve looked at the necklace lying in the palm of her hand. “It’s so pretty,” she said. “And you made it. Hamilton, it seems wrong, somehow, for me to take this. But I will, to please you. Thank you. By the way, when is your birthday?”

  “April twenty-first, ma’am,” Ham replied.

  “Really?” Maeve exclaimed. “The same as the Battle of San Jacinto.”

  “Indeed,” Ham acknowledged.

  “A triumph once again, Maeve,” Nathaniel Grover gushed as Maeve entered the reception area from the concert. “Your voice was in magnificent form.” He offered a cup of punch and Maeve drank it gratefully. He passed one across to Ham, who had led Maeve out of the concert hall on his arm.

  “Should have you taste it first, Grover,” Ham drawled, artfully slipping a silver flask out of his pocket and dosing the punch from it. He put it to his lips, then patted Maeve’s arm. “Well, darling, I suppose we ought to circulate and work the crowd, eh? Accept the adulation, show the war hero around, all that? Should be a highly profitable night.”

  “I’m so tired,” Maeve said suddenly, sagging against Ham. She was very flushed and drained-looking. He shifted his stance quickly and put an arm around her tiny waist. “Why is it so hot in here?” she asked faintly.

  “You look done in,” Grover said. “Jessup take her out in the back hallway where it’s cooler. I’ll tell them to bring your carriage around right away.”

  Ham almost had to drag Maeve out into the passageway. She tugged at the lace around her throat as if she couldn’t breathe. Ham was startled to see that she wore the necklace he had given her that morning. A door presented itself but when Ham opened it he was horrified to discover three rickety steps down into a deserted alleyway. He couldn’t balance against Maeve’s sudden collapse and they tumbled down and landed in a heap against the side of the steps. Ham scrambled to shield Maeve from hitting the ground and took the impact hard on his right knee.

  A hand darted out and Ham saw the flash of a knife much too close to Maeve’s white throat. His walking stick lashed out and the man’s wrist made a crunching sound as he writhed out from his hiding place under the steps. The attacker howled and immediately tried to bolt. Ham whipped the stick between his legs and he cartwheeled into the shadows and lay without moving. Carriage wheels and horse’s hooves sounded close by. Arthur, Ham’s valet, a trim little fair-haired man with a waxed moustache, appeared suddenly bearing a lamp.

  “Sir, what happened?” he cried.

  “Mrs. Jessup fainted, I believe,” Ham responded. “Arthur, get her to the carriage and see her safe and comfortable, and then toddle on back here, if you please.”

  “But are you all right?” Arthur persisted.

  “I hope to be before long,” Ham responded. “Mrs. Jessup must be got off me, Arthur. Now.”

  The coachman had followed Arthur and the two of them bore Maeve to the carriage. Ham grunted deeply and shifted his weight off his right leg with difficulty. He heard movement behind him, squirmed around and nabbed the stunned attacker, dragging him close and unsheathing a finely-edged sword blade from inside his cane. He laid it against the dazed fellow’s throat and placed a thumb alongside the man’s eye.

  “Suppose I just pop this eyeball out of your head and you see if you can catch it,” Ham suggested coldly, applying some pressure to the man’s eye. He squealed horribly. “Well, if you don’t like that game,” Ham grated, “tell me why you just tried to kill that lady.”

  “I just wanted to cut the chain on her necklace,” the man choked. “Looked like it’d be worth a bit.”

  “Nonsense,” Ham spat. “Tell me something that isn’t a lie quick or I’ll remove both eyes and let you hunt them out of the gutter.” He shoved his thumbs forward as if to make good on his threat.

  The man wailed, “Stop! Stop! I was told to wait for a crippled drunk with a lady coming out that door. They was both supposed to be drugged and it was to be an easy mark.”

  “Not so easy after all, eh?” Ham sneered. “Suppose I let you escape the law and trot off with nothing but a broken wrist as a souvenir of your dance with the drunken cripple. Will you tell me who paid you and why?”

  “Can’t,” the man whined. “A friend of mine give me the money and said it was from another bloke. I got no idea who.”

  “Sure about that?” Ham growled. The man’s eyes bulged and he screeched.

  “Sure!” he cried.

  “And if anybody asks you what went wrong, you just say the coachman and the valet showed up too quick and you missed your chance. The cripple was plenty crippled and drunk, right?”

  Right,” wheezed the man. Ham pushed him away and the man stumbled off, clutching his arm. Ham groaned, set his back against the building, dug his cane into the dirt, and slowly slid himself upward into a more or less erect position. A circle of light heralded the approach of Arthur with his lantern.

  “I hope you sent the coachman on home,” Ham said, expelling a deep breath. “This may take some time.”

  “Yes, sir, and I brought my kit,” Arthur replied.

  “Poor Timmy,” Ham sighed.

  Ham entered Palacio Del Oro much later that night, his arm draped around Arthur’s shoulder, singing about ripe cherries and staggering more than a little. Consuela hushed him and he clapped a hand over his mouth.

  “I beg your pardon,” he said in a loud stage whisper, pronouncing each word very carefully. “Arthur, I shall collapse on the den in the sofa, I believe. I mean, on the sofa in the den. I don’t see the stairs as a possib – a possib – don’t see me going upstairs tonight.”

  “No, sir,” Arthur grunted, half-dragging his master toward the designated room.

  “Mrs. Jessup safely bedded into tuck, eh, Consuela?” Ham asked.

  “Yes, Señor,” Consuela said through pursed lips.

  “Why, Hamilton, did you sleep here last night?” Maeve tapped on the den door, and then poked her head inside. “Aren’t you going to work today?” Ham straightened from his hunched position on the sofa with his back to Maeve and Arthur flipped a blanket over his lap.

  “Ah ... No, I have a … a headache, my dear,” Ham responded. “Are you all right, though? You were quite done in last night.”

  “I
feel a little headachy myself, but I’m sure it will pass,” Maeve replied. “I can’t think why I was so tired last night. I don’t remember a thing after I drank that punch. I was so thirsty, and it was so hot.”

  “I’m glad you’re all right,” Ham said. “I believe I’ll camp out here and try to go over some papers I brought home, if that won’t disrupt your plans.”

  “No, of course not,” Maeve answered. “I have that ladies’ brunch at eleven in the morning room. I hope we won’t disturb you. Won’t working make your headache worse? You should try to sleep a little longer.”

  “I have to finish this job,” Ham grunted. “Pray don’t let me detain you in your preparations for your guests. Someone may come by later for me. Arthur will show him in here. Don’t trouble yourself about him.”

  Ham held his head up with his hands and tried to content himself with laying his papers out across the coffee table in front of the couch. Finally he got his cane and unlimbered the sword blade. He stuck a paper on the end of it, reached out, and shook it loose onto the soft, warmly-colored Persian rug. Though this was a very unsatisfactory method of arranging his papers he managed to stay on the couch. His puzzling absorbed his attention completely for a long time, until a high-pitched voice from the morning room distracted him.

  “But another war seems so far away,” a woman’s voice said peevishly. “And there are other demands on our purses that are with us all the time, here and now.”

  “What can be more important than being sure we have ample medical supplies, trained personnel, field hospital equipment, ready for the war Mexico has promised is coming?” Maeve’s voice demanded. “We are already a U.S. Territory. Sometime soon Texas will become part of the United States, and make no mistake; the war machinery is already moving into place.”

  Ham looked up in astonishment, left his papers scattered on the floor, leaned heavily on his cane, opened the den door, and stood beside the morning room door, listening.

  “I know for a fact there are lieutenants moving supplies and ammunition northward toward the border,” Maeve continued. “And we, ladies, are within the border area Mexico plans to dispute.”

  Ham silently cracked the breakfast room door open. Maeve stood at the head of the table, flushed and lovely, conviction in every line of her face, every tone of her voice. Ham desperately wanted to shout, “How do you know this for sure? What intel have you got that I haven’t? Do you have pieces of my puzzle? Give them to me!”

  “Mrs. Jessup, what about these poor unwanted animals I’ve been reading about in the papers?” Ham started and stared at the fat, dull-witted woman down the table from Maeve. “I for one want to contribute to stopping their cruel treatment. Imagine! They are shot with guns or clubbed to death, then burned! Dogs! Puppies! Killed because no one wants them!”

  “A noble cause,” Ham was speaking before he even realized it, from the doorway of the room. The women swung their heads around and stared at him. Ham scarcely noticed them. “Unwanted animals. A worthy notion, to spend your money saving them. But madam, perhaps what you need to consider is whether both causes might not be worthy of your attention and support. Obviously you have educated yourself about the sad fate of the puppies and dogs. Allow me, if you please, to try to educate you about some unwanted men. This story is from the past, but it is the same enemy who will no doubt repeat his actions if given a chance.

  “At the Battle of San Jacinto we cried, ‘Remember the Alamo! Remember Goliad!’ People seem to have no trouble remembering the Alamo, but Goliad may have slipped your minds. It was a place where nearly four hundred Texians, captured trying to defend their country, their homes and families, their friends the Tejanos, died. They surrendered because they had many wounded and no water to cool their cannons and care for their casualties. Their guns were useless, their men suffered, they were unlikely to win. So they surrendered, making written terms, expecting civilized treatment. They were allowed to believe they would be ransomed.

  “Instead they were marched out in three separate groups and those unarmed men were shot at close range, then clubbed and stabbed with bayonets. Twenty-eight men escaped that butchery, one of them an acquaintance of mine. He was wounded himself and tried to hide under a dead comrade, until he saw what they were doing to the bodies. The Mexicans stacked them like refuse and set them on fire. My acquaintance ran for the woods, chased by Mexican cavalry. He found a fallen tree with a sandy pit beneath it and buried himself. There he hid until nightfall, listening to the crackle of flames, smelling the burning flesh, praying not to be discovered and added to the pile.

  “Finally a comrade who had escaped from among those spared the butchery found him and carried him to safety. No one buried those remains until weeks later, when a few bones gnawed by vultures and coyotes were gathered and laid to rest. Pity the poor animals. Pity the poor men more. Remember Goliad, ladies. Remember that it is the same enemy we still face, and that it can happen again.”

  Ham suddenly came to himself, realizing where he was and what he had been saying. The women looked at him aghast for a moment. Ham started to stammer an apology, but they all rose to their feet and began to clap. And they opened their purses and threw down money around the fragrant centerpieces. Again Ham saw ladies remove costly pieces of jewelry and add them to the banknotes. Many women were weeping. All of them stared at him. He flushed scarlet and fled, stiff-legged, back into the den.

  Maeve knocked on the door a few minutes later. No one answered. She opened the door a crack and found Ham staring out a window, a death grip on his cane, white and trembling, a glass in his hand. She approached uncertainly.

  “Are you all right?” she asked. Ham nodded curtly. “You felt your friend’s agony so deeply,” she said softly. “It was almost as if it was your own. How could anyone bear to witness such a thing and keep his reason? How did he endure it?”

  “He had a friend who carried him on his back out of the mouth of Hell,” Ham said shakily. “For the sake of his friend, he endured that, and more.”

  “You look so unwell,” Maeve said timidly. “Can I help you lie down, do anything to ease you?”

  “Find Arthur and send him here, please,” Ham said. “And please go back to your guests. I seem to have been the one to disturb you, not the other way around. I apologize.”

  “I don’t understand what you think you need to apologize for,” Maeve protested. “Did you see how your words affected them? I could never have made them give so generously. I wanted to thank you.”

  “There,” Ham said wryly. “I’ve contributed to the partnership again. My existence is justified once more. Now, if you please, I’d appreciate having Arthur come, and, if I can say this without being too blunt – well, no, I can’t, so I’ll just say it -- I’d rather you left.”

  Ham thrashed wildly and suddenly realized someone bent over him. He lay on the couch in the den in semi-darkness, and a man’s face loomed up over him.

  “Dr. Evans?” Ham said hoarsely. “What the devil do you think you’re doing?”

  “Your wife called me,” the large, bluff gentleman responded. “You’re running a high fever, and she was worried. Let me take a look at you. There’s an infection somewhere.”

  “I’ll thank you to keep your hands off me,” Ham said sourly. “I have my own physician, and he’s on his way. Can’t think why he isn’t here yet. What time is it?”

  “Just after one,” the doctor answered.

  “Why’s it so dark in here?” Ham demanded.

  “Mrs. Jessup drew the blinds so the light wouldn’t disturb you.”

  “Oh, no! Oh no!” Hams sat up and looked wildly around. “My papers – Did you scatter them? Look, I need a light, and I don’t need you.” He shifted and his silver flask fell onto the carpet. Dr. Evans looked down at it and straightened at once, disgust clearly written on his face. He withdrew to the doorway while Ham turned up the lamp and mumbled about his papers. Maeve watched anxiously.

  “Doctor, can’t you help him?
” Maeve asked.

  “Yes, if he’ll stop drinking,” Dr. Evans replied. “He’s probably suffering from alcohol poisoning. The fever, the ranting; they’re typical symptoms. I suppose he complained of headache, said he couldn’t go to work this morning.”

  “All of this is because he was drunk?” Maeve looked at the doctor in disbelief. “But when he spoke to my guests this morning, I’d have taken an oath he was sober, deadly earnest –”

  “Probably delusional,” grunted the doctor. “Whatever he said, I wouldn’t put too much stock in it. Hope he didn’t frighten any of your donors away.”

  “On the contrary –” Maeve broke off. “Doctor, I’m terribly sorry to have wasted your time.”

  “Anything for you, my dear,” Dr. Evans patted Maeve’s hand. “Your concert last night was lovely. I’m sorry you have to put up with this. Consuela was telling me he sent you ahead alone after the concert and came home roaring drunk last night.”

  Maeve flushed. “Consuela should be more discreet,” she said.

  “Maeve, she wanted me to know about what happened to you last night,” Dr. Evans said. “You fainted? You had to be brought home? Why wasn’t I called?”

  “I don’t -- I don’t remember what happened,” Maeve said. “Just a blur -- I drank some punch-- Hamilton took me out the back way. But we -- Did he fall? Doctor, he slept there on the couch last night. He’s been walking with such difficulty all morning and he looked so ill. Perhaps he hurt himself trying to help me and is just too proud to say so.”

  “If he refuses to be examined, what can I do?” Dr. Evans demanded.

  Arthur appeared from the front hall. “Ma’am, Mr. Jessup’s er – physician is here,” he reported. “Forgive me for suggesting it, but perhaps privacy would be best.”

  Dr. Evans looked over the bearded young man carrying a heavy metal case. “I don’t know you, and I know all the doctors in the republic of Texas,” he said sharply.