Free The Crystal City: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume VI by Orson Scott Card Page A

only been biding their time before striking.
    So it wasn’t just the yellow fever that was decimating the English-speaking population of Nueva Barcelona. Plenty of Americans and Yankees and Englishmen were taking ship out of the city—Americans in steamboats up the river, Yankees and Englishmen in clippers and coastal traders heading out to sea, bound for New England or Jamaica or some other British destination.
    Cavaliers weren’t finding it any easier than the French. The Pontchartrain ferry and all the other passages out of the city were being watched, and those who carried royal passports from the Crown Colonies were forbidden to leave. Since the Cavaliers were the largest single English-speaking group, this left a lot of frightened people trapped in Nueva Barcelona as the yellow fever made its insidious way through the population.
    Wealthy Spanish citizens headed for Florida. As for the French, they had nowhere to go. The borders had been closed to them from the time Napoleon first invaded Spain.
    The result was a city full of fear and anger.
    Alvin was shopping in the city, which was getting harder these days, with the fever making farmers more reluctant to bring in their produce. He was looking through as ratty-looking a bunch of melons as he’d ever seen when he became aware of a familiar heartfire making toward him in the crowd. He spoke before turning around. “Jim Bowie,” he said.
    Bowie smiled at him—a big, warm smile, which made Alvin check to see if the man’s hand was on his knife. Nowhere near, but that didn’t mean much, as Alvin well knew, having seen the man in action.
    “Still here in Barcy,” said Bowie.
    “I thought you and your expedition would be long gone.”
    “We almost made it before they closed the ports,” said Bowie. “Cuss the King for making such a mess of things.”
    Cuss the King? As if Bowie weren’t part of an expedition committed to spreading the power of the King into Mexican lands.
    “Well, the fever will pass,” said Alvin. “Always does.”
    “We don’t have to wait for that,” said Bowie. “Word’s just come down from the Governor-General of Nueva Barcelona. Steve Austin’s expedition can go ahead. Any Cavaliers who are with us can get passage out on a ship bound for the Mexican coast.”
    “I reckon that gave recruitment a big boost.”
    “You bet,” said Bowie. “The Spanish hate the Mexica worse than they hate Cavaliers. I reckon it has something to do with the fact that King Arthur never tore the beating hearts out of ten thousand Spanish citizens to offer as a sacrifice to some heathen god.”
    “Well, good luck to you.”
    “Seeing you in the market here, I got to say, I’d feel a lot better about this expedition iffen you were along.”
    So you can find a chance to stab me in the back and get even for my humiliating you? “I’m no soldier,” said Alvin.
    “I been thinking about you,” said Bowie.
    Oh, I’m sure of that.
    “I think an army as had you on their side would have victory in the bag.”
    “There’s an awful lot of bloodthirsty Mexica, and only one of me. And keep in mind I’m not much of a shot.”
    “You know what I’m talking about. What if all the Mexica weapons went soft or flat-out disappeared, as once happened with my lucky knife?”
    “I’d say that was a miracle, caused by an evil god who wanted to see slavery expanded into Mexican lands.”
    Bowie stood there blankly for a moment. “So that’s how it is. You’re an abolitionist.”
    “You knew that.”
    “Well, there’s folks who are just agin slavery and then there’s abolitionists. Sometimes you can offer a man a good bit of gold and he don’t mind so much how many slaves another fellow owns.”
    “That would be someone else,” said Alvin. “I don’t have much use for gold. Or expeditions against the Mexica.”
    “They’re a terrible people,” said Bowie. “Bloody-handed and murderous.”
    “And that’s supposed to make me want to go fight