Chapter 28. The Fifth Day of Siege

At precisely 6:30 in the morning of May 6th, 1846, Captain Dixon Miles ordered a seven gun broadside. It was a ready prearranged signal to Old Zach, roughly telegraphing:the 7th is in T-R-O-U-B-L- E. We sentinels peered up out of our rampart holes, looking for the wings of Ringgold's Flying Cannon, or the long, silken ball of a regimental steam-balloon coming to tether on our flagpole. We were observating hard for the Army of Observation. But we saw nothing but General Lunarista's rows and rows of zapadores, cannons, and horsemen circling round our fort, our fort that was President Polk's declaration maintaining that this disputed crescent of the Moon was indeed, and of right ought to be, (and by gum if that weren't good enough, we'd fight and die for it! ) - just a peninsula of Texas. So it seemed that since no help was a-coming, Captain Walker had successfully rowed his little hot air balloon over the Lunar siege lines all the way to Fort Polk at Point Isabell, all the while braving many innumerably countless dangers &tc. certain to add passels of rawhide pages to the annals of the Ranger's glory. However, from my particular parallaxing point of view, his page entitled "Sam Walker Saves Fort Slow-Polk" was in error, and the daily tallies of his glory in vain, for not only had the bombardment resumed in double-earnest, not only was our dear commander slowly dying of his wounds, but it looked like the ASSAULT was about ready to begin. It was a frightening observation. What faced us was odds no river gambler would wager on. It meant ten mean little Moonmen would be stabbing their bayonets in my dirty belly. Even if I could be so lucky as to zap nine of `em, the tenth would stick me in the ribs. My stomach, realizing this, lost its appetite, and hid behind my liver. My liver would have had more stomach if there was any spirits left in the Bomb-Proof. But there were no spirits in my jug nor in my heart. I was downhearted.

Soon this little American lighthouse of observation would be swamped by the Cold Sea, with a little help from the Sea of Tranquility. Truly, I wished General Taylor would harken to our telegraphed T-R-O-U-B-L-E, and not Walker's "Major Brown says they's doin' jest dandy, Gen'l!"

There I was, hunched in a hollow, high on Wall 4, doing my duty to Angry-Saxon glory, sunburnt and scared with shells a-screaming at me from high, and bouncing over me, and plopping in front of me. I was nervously knocking my musket barrel against my neck, when all of a sudden right there in all the smoke some fiend laid hands on me!

I screamed but it was only by wife who jumped down in my little hole with me, laughing. She said she was sorry with a chuckle and gave me a gourd of water and some salt crackers. Then she kissed me and said she was apologizing for making me seem like such a pip- squeak in front of everybody yesterday. "So that's what she thinks I am," I thought, but swallowed that with some crackers and said I was sure glad to see her and aw shucks she was so pretty, and when would this siege ever end?

"Well," thought Sarah, dimpling her chin on her finger as a black ball whooshed just twenty yards overhead. "I reckon this game of Base- Ball, so to speak, has run `bout two-thirds of its Innings, and the score so far is - well, like this - "

While she spoke the shell blew behind us. Turning back I saw the canvas of the three wheeled chuck wagon burning. Captain Seawell hacked at the canvas with his saber. Some of the sappers were throwing dirt on the fire.


Inning           1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  Score  Errors

Slow-Polks       1  2  1  2  0  0  0  *  *  6      3
Pesky Lunars     1  1  1  2  1  0  0  *  *  6      1
"Now I do believe we already spoke on the score for the first three days," she said, and pointed to her fourth finger. "The 4th of May begun with Cap'n Lowd's big guns scorin' yet another hit against a Fort Pay-reedees 12-pound popgun. Oh yes, and we shut `em Lunar guns up for the rest of the day; more or less they was afraid we was gonna bust `em all with ball-lightning, so they pulled `em back. And then, the Moonmen made a BIG error lettin' Sam Walker through...but then, as Sam pointed out on his way back, we made two bad errors lettin' two blockheads sneak out and swim the sea. Next day was a bad inning for us Slow-Polks. Poor Major Brown! It jest tears my heart to see him suffer so! (Jest between you and me, Jack, I think losin' the Major's worse'n losin' an e-lectric cannon...)

"Since then, well, so far at least it's been even-Steven, our big guns `gainst General Lunarista's new strategy, sneakin' his cannons all round us in the dead of night. Jest between you and me, Jack, I can't see why we can't jest smash `em popguns to pieces, like we did before! ...'Less'n it's because we lost the guidance of the Major - though he ain't dead yet, nope! Not by a long shot! Poor ole feller...) So I reckon it's Slow-Polks 6, Pesky Lunars 6. And the game ain't over yet, Jack. The way I figure, they got to better'n tie us - they got to smash us flat and over-run us and skewer every single one of us with a bayonet in the gut if they's gonna win at all!" She stopped and we both coughed on the smoke and gritty detritus of the iron smoke-stacks of the manufacturies of war.

"There's an easier way they can lick us," I argued, ducking a shell in a routine manner. I came up again. "All they got to do is sit pretty and starve us out. Won't take forever. Won't take a week. Then we'll have to give up or fight our way back to Taylor, if we can..." My fingers found a bug in my beard and crushed with more Saxon anger than necessary. Why did I join the army? Didn't I just give up my life for nothing - looking for glory, ha! That rainbow was just a shimmer of shell-sparks, and at the end of it, bang! What did I listen to Kelly for? Ah, Mama...I thought, tugging on my beard hard enough to hurt. What did I leave you to the clutches of Merlin Spooner for? "Poor Texas," I groaned, meaning, poor me.

Then, between my fingers, I saw Sarah watching me with a tight faced, hard eyed, dismayed expression. I could see that any unhappiness made plain on my part was just yeller-belly whining to her. I knew what she was thinking -

She said it. "Yeller."

"Trollop," I replied.

"Gutless, spineless chicken," she said. "You're less a man than that blasted automaton!"

"Maybe so, but I'm still a man. You can't say that," I said.

Her eyebrows flickered. She got quiet. Frowning thoughtfully, looking down, she put her hands in her rattlesnake apron and gave the barrel of her Colt a spin:"Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick." The five chambers clicked as she tried to make a decision about me, as if the Babbage Calculating Machine of her brain was figuring the sums of man and woman. Man plus woman equals...T-R-O-U-B-L-E.

"No, I can't," she said, looking mean. "Can't say what I am," she snarled like a cornered badger.

We ducked down when we heard another shell whistling. Funny things was, afterwards, this sorry name-calling didn't whip up my dander at all. It looked like for the first time I'd gotten through that tough hide around her heart. But it just made me sorry for her. I remembered how she called herself a corn cob witch. I tried to make amends.

"Ain't nothing wrong with you even if you can't have no babies."

"Don't say that word to me ever again," she said, with a funny expression. "Or I'll kill you." Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick!

I didn't get that funny expression; her face was so soft but her eyes were hot and hard. But I guessed she was thinking that she got a bum deal; that if she was she barren she should have ought to at least been born a man. I'd learnt myself that the frontier was pretty rough on men. It must be heck for woman, sometimes. Then I thought that maybe a bad miscarriage made her barren and that was why I wasn't allowed to say "baby". And then I thought that maybe she made herself barren with a stick or some kind of poison Injun belly-shrinker.

Electric chills went through me. "I'm sorry," I said. "You're right, I'm chicken."

"Hush your tongue," she said. "I got something to say."

Sarah stopped frowning, and I knew she'd made a decision. She dropped her pistol in her apron. For a few seconds we watched another Lunar roundshot struggle up from the east, only to swoosh over the entire fort, and rolled through the mesquite-patches of Timmy's Crater to the west. She took up the empty gourd from me and let it sink in her bucket. "I got something to say," she repeated.

"So do I - " I whooped - for my only recourse when hard times called for tough action was a silly, blind impulsiveness - an impulsiveness impervious to sense and fear - in a flash of Morse-sparks I knew that this was it - she was going to say next - "Maybe we'd best part now while we's still friends..." - and in my desperate last chance rally of besieged love, I sortied out of my fortifications of conscience - and I charged my enemy with a slightly hysterical clowning bravado -

- I jumped out of the hole with a hoop and a holler. Then, arms folded over my chest, I kicked up my knees and did a dumby doe- see-doe. Whooping and hollaring all the while, and waiting for a piece of hot iron to rip through my Reel.

The Number 3 gunners started yelling. Captain Holms shouted "Get down you idiot!"

Sarah stared at me with open mouth, first shocked, then amazed - and then, the corners of her mouth turned up as I began to sing:

"Green grows the laurel, all sparklin' with dew - " My laughter had a shiver in it as I sang.

The Number 3 & 4 gunners stopped shouting for me to get down. They stared.

My sense was starting to catch up to me, and with it, Marster Fear. I was about to give it up, but just then Sarah surprised me by jumping up in my arms, singing so loud -

I'm so lonely my darlin' since partin' with you - "

Sarah twirled her skirts, her eyes twinkling fiercely, and an ace of clubs dropped out of her bloomers, and fluttered out into the powder- burnt air. Some of the gunners joined us in the song, if not in dance.

"But by the next meetin' I hope to prove true...!"

"And change the green laurel for the red, white and blue...!"

Soon nigh a hundred men were singing. For just one instant, as I danced with my gal up high in the iron-torn sky, I felt - I really felt - I finally, finally felt - an electric shiver of GLORY -

Just then, Captain Holms rose up and grabbed both our arms. He dropped on one knee like a wrestler and threw us on after the other down behind the rampart. Sarah tucked and in a flash of skirts rolled neatly down the slope; I fell flat on my back. He jumped and set his knee on my chest. He raised his fist -

Just then the men cheered,

HIP HIP HURRAH FER SARAH!
HIP HIP HURRAH FER MAJOR BROWN!

Panting, the captain shook his fist in my face. "Do it again - you fool! - and I'll give you such a stroppin'!" He pushed up off of me and was gone.

Back in the sentry pit I had to laugh. "Sarah, you are amazing," I said. "Even as you were falling you took off your hat and kept it from getting smashed. Look at my poor kepi!" I punched it into shape again.

Sarah picked up her water bucket and parcel of crackers. She wrinkled her nose in a smile and gave me a wink, and then she was off, warning me, "Watch out - Mallory's coming."

And I thought I heard someone calling at me, far off. Someone was shouting from outside the fort. I peered out of my hole, and saw, far down, on the closest of the little furry rafts shuttling to and from across the Cold Sea, carrying Moonmen to our side.

I glanced back at Sergeant Mallory, who was promising to give me the fist that the captain had omitted. But the bounce of a wayward iron shell slowed him down. I pulled the wires from the musket-tube. I hooked the wire around my top and bottom brass buttons. I turned the knob of my annunciator and it fogged up on 1,000 V. This was a trick I watched Corporal Hernani Klager pull on a pugilist and win two hundred dollars, back at Camp Annex Agonies. The hard part was I had to keep my back to Mallory, so he wouldn't punch me right away. He'd have to grab me.

On the ferry I saw a golden glitter beside horse. The ferry moved a little and the glitter receded to the brass breastplate of a Lunar hussar. I could see him put a speaking trumpet from his ear to his mouth. So he had been listening to my song, then. Did he like it?

And as he shouted something, I recognized him to be the same fellow who invited me to pray, the same fellow whose sweet lunarita daughter I hoped someday to meet.

The same fellow who promised to return my base-ball and instead sent a 9-pounder that knocked Sergeant Weigart's head off.

He called out repeatedly, and in a pause between bombs, I thought I heard him say, so faintly fervent -

"Want to dance, Borginnis?" called Mallory. I closed my eyes and waited. He reached one big arm around my neck, the other around my chest. His hand touched the wire and an indifferent violence seized my bones. The shock jolted us both. Like negative and positive magnets, we united in a savage clutch.

`Green-g'o' de laurel?' Ha!
Green-g'o dee nothing, eh you Green-go!
GO HOME AND SING, YOU GREENGO!

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