Two in the Field Read online

  Seeming preoccupied, he said he looked forward to spending more time with everybody once the colony was firmly established. He looked much older than I remembered from the furtive glance I’d had of him at Cait’s boardinghouse in the past. The disappointments and the months in prison after his abortive Canadian assaults had taken their toll. Still, I thought, he looked better in civvies than in that silly green Fenian uniform weighed down with epaulets and braid and assorted Irish icons.

  “Lincoln speaks highly of you,” he said, “and I trust his judgment beyond any other man’s.”

  I breathed easier. This didn’t sound like banishment.

  “Are you aware that he won the Congressional Medal of Honor?”

  “Linc did?” I wondered if the old man had drifted into fantasies.

  “Typical of him not to mention it.” O’Neill described an engagement near Nashville in which Linc’s regiment had been ambushed by rebel cavalry and his lieutenant shot down before he could order retreat. They tried to fall back but were disorganized and under heavy fire. As the rebs closed around his lieutenant, Linc ran forward, knocked one of the rebs from his horse, jumped into the saddle, and pulled the lieutenant up with him. He was hit by a minié ball. Then another. Yet he managed to fight his way free on the overburdened mount and lead all the men to safety.

  “My God.”

  “It’s terrible that he lost his family,” O’Neill said, looking at me for acknowledgement that I knew about it. “Lincoln’s a lonely man and I’m glad that he’s elected to be here with us.”

  I seemed to be included in “us.”

  “Do you know who I am?” I said cautiously. “I mean, from before?

  He smiled faintly. “The ballist who caused us such a fuss in Cincinnati.”

  “Yes,” I said. “So much fuss that McDermott and O’Donovan each tried to kill me.”

  “The Fenian Order did not sanction such things,” he said with a frown, “although in truth I was aware that Fearghus resented you and considered you an informer.”

  “Doesn’t it worry you that I’m here, then?”

  “I’ve cut my ties with the old leadership. They broke too many sacred promises.” He gave me a probing look. “I’d naturally be concerned about your presence here, Mr. Fowler, if Lincoln hadn’t spoken up for you—and if young Tim hadn’t come to me singing your virtues practically the instant I returned.”

  Well, all right!

  “And if Caitlin hadn’t told me what you said about Colm.”

  My body temperature seemed to drop five degrees. Jesus, she’d told him?

  He leaned forward, his manner suddenly inquisitorial. “You believe that my nephew’s spirit has helped you?”

  Here I go, I thought, into my Shirley Maclaine gambit. “I believe that, yes.” I looked him in the eye. “I also believe he wants me to take care of Cait.”

  There was a silent interval while he chewed on that. I noted the liver spots and sun damage on his face, the crinkle lines beside his eyes. He’d spent huge parts of his adult life staring out at battlefields, fighting first for the Union and then for his country of birth. I found myself respecting him, wanting his approval.

  “My understanding is that you have some further interest in Caitlin,” he said with a hint of wryness, “beyond the work of a spirit.”

  “I love her,” I told him flatly. “I’m here to win her back for myself—not for Colm.”

  I expected him to bring up Tip McKee about then, but instead he said mildly, “I’m not one to meddle in Caitlin’s affairs. She’s a proud one who goes her own way. But I will say that Fearghus was never the man to her that Colm was.”

  No, he never was, especially since Fearghus murdered Colm in part to get his chance at Cait. I didn’t say it, of course. No point in trashing the myth of Colm’s heroic death.

  O’Neill then surprised me with a conversational leap. “I am presently in need of a man with your talents,” he said. “Have you heard of the Dyson Party?”

  I nodded. An aggregation of prospectors had been captured and forcibly escorted from the Black Hills by several companies of cavalry. Dyson’s group had been rousted before, so this time the troops torched their supplies. We’d heard they were headed our way, still boiling mad.

  “They’ve challenged us to a ball match,” O’Neill said. “Although they have gold enough to pay to re-provision themselves, they prefer to wager. Our goods against their gold dust. I thought it would be good for the colony’s morale to meet their challenge. I’d already earmarked some of the store’s earnings for a Fourth of July celebration. The ball contest would be a perfect topper for the day. Will you train the men and captain our nine?”

  I stared at him, trying to calculate the pitfalls.

  “It won’t be a skilled affair,” he went on hurriedly. “Not like your Cincinnati professionals. However, Tip and a few others are versed in the game. We gave Custer’s troopers a match last year when they came through on their scientific expedition. In several innings we made a score.”

  That didn’t sound promising.

  “Others have arrived since then,” he continued. “Lincoln is worth any three ballists you could want.”

  The Fourth was only a week away. It didn’t seem that I had much choice. “I’ll do what I can,” I told him. “When should I hold practices?”

  “Before work commences each day,” he said. “At dawn.”

  Of course. Dawn.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you got the Congressional Medal?” Linc glanced up, his dark features beaded with sweat. We were taking a break from operating a sod-busting plow outside the planted fields. Since we’d gotten so far ahead in supplying the colony’s timber needs, O’Neill had asked us to leave off our operation until after the Fourth. I suspected his real reason was to allow more time to prepare for the big game.

  “Why would I tell you that?” Linc said.

  “ ’Cause we’re friends and that medal’s a big deal,” I said. “The biggest of all!”

  He wiped his face on his sleeve and reached for a water jug. “You spill out everything ’bout your life to me?” he said gruffly. “Is that how it is?”

  He had a point. “Well, maybe not everything.”

  “That medal helped make me a problem nigger in some people’s minds—and in the end it got burnt up, along with everything else.” His voice was hard and controlled, and I wished I hadn’t started this. “It’s in the past now, and I don’t think about it. ‘Sides, that wasn’t the biggest ‘deal,’ as you call it, for me during the war.”

  “What was?”

  “Readin’,” he said. “The regimental chaplain taught those of us who were hungry to learn our letters. He used to say, ‘What good is it to be free if you’re ignorant?’ ” Linc took a pull from the jug and passed it to me, then looked out with satisfaction at the furrows we’d turned up. “Out on the high-grass prairie,” he said, “it’d take five ox teams or more to break through roots and get down to the soil.”

  End of personal history.

  “This is choice country, Sam,” he said. “I’m real close to gettin’ my share of it.”

  I tacked up a notice:

  BALLISTS WANTED!

  for the Independence Day Match!

  Report to the Grand Hotel at daybreak!

  TOMORROW!

  Next morning found ten hopefuls assembled, including Linc and Tim. The latter looked stressed. I found out later that Cait had tried to stop him from playing. The boy rebelled and they’d had a bitter quarrel. Only after Tim went begging to John O’Neill had Cait yielded.

  A couple of them knew only town ball, and had to be coached not to “plunk,” or throw at runners to put them out. I was less than thrilled when Tip McKee trotted out to join us at the last minute, but it was hard to hold a grudge against him. Good-spirited, he carried on like a stage Irishman, punctuating his sentences with “begobs” and “bedads,” and excusing his tardy arrival with a breezy, “Laziness is a heavy burden for only one man
to carry.”

  As a ballplayer he didn’t look promising—his knock-kneed running style made everybody hoot—but he covered a decent amount of ground, displayed good judgement on flies, and of course would boost morale. “Begorra, ’tis the fool has luck,” he exclaimed when I named him our right fielder.

  I couldn’t imagine Cait being serious about him, and apparently he was ignorant of our history. But if I had to have a rival for her affection, Tip McKee was a definite upgrade from Fearghus O’Donovan, even though he insisted on calling me Sammy, an endearment I’d never welcomed.

  At shortstop Tim showed sure hands and a strong arm, and sprayed hits around with the length of wagon tongue that Linc had carved into a bat. We used Tim’s ball in practice until it grew too lumpy and lopsided, then improvised by sewing a piece of leather around a hard rubber core. New balls and a lathe-turned bat were on the way from Omaha; our bases were sacks stuffed with cornhusks. Tim pestered me to let him show off his pitching, then surprised me by breaking off underhand curves. He said that Andy had taught him, and he’d practiced ever since. I promised that in a pinch he might get a turn in the pitcher’s box.

  Our starting pitcher was a nervous, blade-thin kid named Monohan. He’d be okay if he didn’t get riled. Linc, at catcher, would be a hedge against that. Rock-steady behind the plate, his quick reflexes would prevent a lot of passed balls. By now General O’Neill’s bond with Linc was common knowledge, and while this hadn’t led the colonists to embrace him, they increasingly accepted Linc’s presence. This process accelerated among the ballplayers as soon as they saw how good he was. Several tried to ingratiate themselves with him, which seemed to amuse Linc, who didn’t really give a damn how he was regarded so long as he wasn’t hassled.

  Most of them wanted to slug at the plate and try for sensational plays in the field. Just as Harry Wright would have done, I drilled them on hitting low “daisy-cutters,” placing the ball behind runners and backing each other up on defense. Except for Tim, they couldn’t see the point of it.

  “Trust me,” I told them, and scheduled a second workout each day before dusk.

  With a regular milk diet, Lily was growing fast. A happy little thing, she rarely cried; her skin was a beautiful coppery hue and her button eyes alertly tracked us. Evenings before practices a few of the players—Tip McKee was one—came by to dote on her, and with true showmanship Lily picked one of those occasions to utter her first word. As Linc took her from Kaija, Lily smiled up at him and said his name. It came out “ink,” but there was no doubt what she meant.

  “I taught her,” Kaija said smugly.

  Linc, who practically worshipped that baby, looked ready to burst with pride. Demanding “Who am I?”, he got Lily to say it over and over.

  While that was happening, Cait appeared beside Kaija. Now that I was around the colony I saw her almost every day, but whenever our paths might cross, she turned aside. Our happy cries and laughter must have drawn her to our soddy. I saw Tip McKee gaze fondly at Cait, who smiled down at Lily. I knew that Cait wouldn’t have come if only Kaija, Linc and I had been here. I tried to make eye contact, but not once did she glance at me.

  It hurt.

  Afterward at practice I took out my frustration by putting my full weight into a swing and clubbing our makeshift ball far beyond the boundaries of the field, beyond even Linc’s longest drives. If Cait thought the cold treatment would drive me away, she was dead wrong.

  Sitting side by side on a shaded log, Tim and I dangled our bare feet in the slow-flowing water of a rivulet off the Elkhorn and idly watched our lines. Crickets and frogs sounded. A breeze rustled the reeds and rippled the surface. It was a lazy Sunday and we’d sneaked off to do some fishing.

  “Sam,” he said, “Do I have the makings of a ballist like Andy?”

  “I think maybe so,” I said cautiously. Each day I’d praised his play to build his confidence; now I hoped I hadn’t overdone it. “Of course, I didn’t see Andy when he was fourteen.”

  “Will you talk to Ma?” he said. “Tell her that if I was in Boston with Andy I could be a ballist?”

  “Whoa.” Our Tom Sawyer idyll suddenly seemed charged. “You don’t want to be here, Tim?”

  He shook his head. “If you hadn’t come back, I’d have run off by now,” he said grimly. “Playing on the nine is the only good thing that’s happened”

  From Kaija I’d heard how much trouble he’d been giving Cait. “I’m afraid your mom wouldn’t appreciate hearing from me on that subject,” I told him.

  He yanked his line free of a patch of cattails along the bank. “You still sweet on her?”

  I shrugged, trying to be cool, then gave it up and said, “Of course I am.”

  “If you lived with us,” he said, causing my pulse to kick up a notch, “then it might be okay to be stuck out here in nowhere.”

  “I’m afraid that isn’t likely very soon.”

  “Then I’m still fixin’ to run off.” He glanced up quickly. “But not before the match.”

  I checked my first reaction, which was to tell him to forget any such notion. The boy was confiding his feelings. I needed to respect what he said.

  “I think I understand,” I told him. “It’s tough being young and not able to go after what you want.”

  “Out here,” he said gloomily, “you can’t go for nothing.”

  That evening my unofficial family sat before our soddies eating the catfish I’d caught, along with mushrooms simmered in beef fat and hot buttermilk biscuits baked by Kaija. She nursed Lily while the stones of her sauna heated for the nightly steam soak. Tip McKee came by carrying fire logs and kindling.

  “Top o’ the evenin’, me boyos.” To Tip, everybody was his boyo. “It’s precious snug ye’re lookin’!”

  We were snug, I reflected, and realized that it had been a good many days since I’d last thought of my daughters. I’d left them behind, but they had a wonderful family life. And here I had an approximation of one too. Imperfect, maybe, but it was the closest to “home” I’d felt in a long time.

  Excitement over the contest was spreading, and word came that our opponents had been practicing too. The incentive became clearer when John O’Neill approached me the day before the game and said, “We’re wagering five hundred dollars—the most we dare.”

  “Are you sure we should?”

  He straightened with a military bearing. “My record shows that I am given to calculated risks.” He may have meant it as humor, I couldn’t tell, but his record also showed that on some of those risks he’d lost his shirt. “After we’re victorious”—I noticed he didn’t say if—“our winnings will have immediate uses, one of which will be to settle scores with Devlin and McDermott.”

  I looked at him curiously.

  “I just received this.”

  He handed me a gilt-edged certificate issued by the Bonanza Western Land Company, at the top of which O’NEILL CITY was superimposed on a shamrock. Below it was a romanticized sketch of a town with church spires and railway spurs, a neat gridwork stretching to the horizon. Farther down it read:

  The bearer is entitled to one share in the equal division of lots or the proceeds thereof, to be governed by the Rules and Laws of the Association indicated below in the City of O’Neill, Nebraska, subject to such changes as may be made from time to time.

  “ ‘From time to time?’ ” I repeated. “That doesn’t sound very legal.”

  “The whole thing’s hogwash, including the so-called Association. I should have shot both of those blackguards, but instead I let McDermott go unscathed even after he’d threatened Caitlin.” He voice was agitated, his words coming quickly. “Just as I let myself trust Devlin, despite seeing him in conversation with Red Jim. Devlin was his man all along, feeding McDermott the information he wanted while keeping a lookout here for trouble.”

  “So these shares were sold without your knowledge?”

  “Exactly.” O’Neill’s ruddy face looked almost pale. “While I was off ma
king speeches to recruit settlers, the damned thieves were stealing the colony blind. Now we have investors expecting returns on their money. God knows what all McDermott promised them. Not only are we in no position to pay dividends, we never received any of the money invested.”

  “How much did they get?”

  “Approximately twenty thousand dollars.”

  I whistled, shocked. “Can we go after them in court?”

  “Perhaps.” He shook his head. “But it would drag out, and the attorneys’ fees would sink us even deeper.” He paused as if seeking the right words. “It would weigh the settlement down to learn of this. Will you keep it between us?”

  I nodded, wondering what he had in mind.

  “Lincoln tells me that you are absolutely trustworthy.”

  I waited.

  “Your being an outsider here might prove an advantage,” he said, “for a retrieval mission.”

  I said bluntly, “You’re thinking to send me after McDermott to get the money back?”

  He raised his hands as if to slow me. “It’s something to contemplate at this point, that is all.”

  “Why not send Linc?”

  He shook his head. “Lincoln would agree to it, but with his dark skin he’d never get close enough to pull it off.”

  “Do you know where McDermott is?”

  “According to the informant who sent me the certificate, Red Jim is at Morrissey’s gambling house in Saratoga Springs.” He added contemptuously, “A fitting den for scoundrels.”

  I remembered Morrissey from the Troy ballgrounds, the platinum blonde Elise Holt on his arm. A former bare-knuckle boxing champion and U.S. Congressman, Morrissey could provide formidable protection for Red Jim.

  “Think it over,” O’Neill said.

  I thought it over. The last thing I wanted was to leave, but if the colony’s future was at stake, was I in any position to refuse? And the prospect of settling affairs with McDermott had a strong appeal.