Free They Came To Cordura by Glendon Swarthout

roosterishly to the other end. His tanned face blackened.
    “Five,” he said, “five. And you won’t even consider the possibility of mine!”
    “I didn’t think you would ask me to, sir.”
    “Why not? And why not! I’ve done as humanly much for you as one man can do for another—more than an officer should—John Pershing and you and I and Paltz are the only ones in this life who know how much. God help you if anyone else puts two and two together! Oh, don’t misunderstand me—it was for your father, not for you. He was a gentleman in the true sense of the word—a gentle man. When my wife was dying of malaria off San Fernando, it was your father and mother brought her ashore and nursed her through—or she’d never have lived to see Manila. Lord, my corns. I’ll have Ticknor pare them tomorrow.”
    The Major returned the envelope to his pocket. His finger hurt where the bird had bitten him.
    “They should probably start for Cordura tomorrow, sir. Can you detail an officer to take them? Fowler may be too green, I’m afraid, and. . . ”
    “Take them yourself!” Selah Rogers tugged as though he would tear the hair-spike from his ear. “They’re yours, aren’t they?”
    “Sir, I can’t operate as Awards Officer that way. There may be a fight at Pilon Cillos , and if I’m not there to see. . . ”
    “Take ‘em—it says nothing in the order about who!” The Colonel’s voice rose with rage. “And take this Geary woman, too! I have her under guard. Take her back under arrest on my charges, see that she is locked up until we can send a full report on her to Bliss. From what I once heard, she was no better than a gilded woman of the streets before she came down here—her father was Senator Adolf Geary, you’ve heard of him. But I do not sit in judgment on her. The point is, she has knowingly given aid and assistance to foreign troops engaged against the armed forces of the United States, her own country. She supplied the Mexicans and let them fight us from her property. If that isn’t treason it’s enough to revoke her citizenship—there’s something to that effect in the Loss of Nationality Act. So take her with you. I make you responsible.”
    “Sir, if I may object. How can . . .”
    “That’s an order!” Selah Rogers glared at the officer. Slowly his expression altered. “Unless you’d like to reconsider. That is, about the Medal.”
    Major Thorn took his hat from the table, re-angering the Colonel, who interpreted correctly the gesture.
    “You are not dismissed! I could give you one alternative-only one, don’t forget—and you’d crawl to Washington with a citation! I tell you the reverse is true—the sins of the sons are visited upon the fathers—how he would suffer to see you skulking at the rear—picking up the scraps from the banquets of victory!”
    Run out of rhetoric, his choler spent, the Colonel sank into a chair at his end of the table. “If I had it to do again, Tom, I never would. I would never compound it. You have to live with yourself, yes—but I have to live with what I did for you. It’s justice, I suppose—what I saved you, I cost myself.”
    Thorn stood. The room was darkening. He could just see the Colonel now, who for the first time looked his sixty-three years. The flesh of his neck was slack, wrinkled.
    “You may be a sick man, Tom—what you’re trying to do. And you can’t do it, of course—not if you write a thousand Medals.”
    Their eyes met.
    “His son. I can think of only one thing worse— you might have been mine.” Selah Rogers averted his face. “Go, Tom. I don’t care to look at you.”
    Major Thorn left the room and the casa grande. Walking swiftly he did not see the bird, watching him, move upon its perch. His body was bathed in sweat, and the cut of the twilight air made him shiver. A light flickered from the stables. That would be the surgeon with the wounded. Two months ago he might have gone to Ben, who would have