1920: America's Great War

CHAPTER 1

His horse was near collapse and the six armed men chasing him were gaining steadily. The old and scrawny mare’s chest was heaving and her whole body was covered with sweat and foam. It hadn’t been such a great horse in the first place, and was thoroughly outclassed by the well-bred cavalry mounts pounding behind him and gaining with every stride.

Luke Martel would soon be helpless on the ground, confronted by a half dozen German lancers—Uhlans—who would like nothing better than to spit him like a rodent on one of their spear points. The Uhlans’s uniforms and weapons were archaic, but archaic or not, their lances could impale human flesh with ease.

Since he was pretending to be a civilian, Martel was armed with a Colt revolver and not his more powerful .45 automatic service weapon. Even though he thought lancers were an anachronism in twentieth-century warfare, the revolver he carried was an inaccurate weapon and carried such a light round that it might not stop a horse, much less a human being. That assumed he could hit either if forced to fire at a gallop from his staggering nag.

The river and safety were to his right, maybe a quarter of a mile away. But first he had to reach the river and, second, he had to cross it without getting captured or killed.

He looked behind him. His pursuers were momentarily hidden from view. A curve in the dirt track that passed for a road gave him an opportunity. Another curve was just in front of him. He slipped from his horse and slapped it hard on its flank. Freed of its unwelcome burden and motivated by the slap, the mare lurched forward and behind the curve where it disappeared from view.

Just make it a little farther, Martel begged his horse. He clambered up and behind some rocks to his left and away from the river. When the Germans realized he was on foot, he hoped they would logically assume that he’d headed directly for the river and salvation. He counted on their logic. If nothing else, Germans were so bloody damned logical.

He began to backtrack in the direction of his approaching enemy. Again, he hoped their orderly minds wouldn’t expect him to do anything other than run like hell from them and their damned lances, which any reasonably sane human being would do. Of course, a reasonably sane person wouldn’t have gotten himself in this mess in the first place.

Martel could hear the pursuing horses clearly now and, seconds later, they thundered past as he hid behind a rock. The lancers’ faces and their gaudy uniforms were covered with dust and grime, but the Germans were grinning, laughing, and riding easily, their lances canted slightly forward. The well-conditioned German horses seemed to be enjoying themselves as well. They were hunters after the ultimate prey.

And then they were gone. But they would be back. A moment later, he heard a gunshot. He presumed they’d found his exhausted horse and put it out of its misery. Too bad, he thought. The beast had served him well.

Now the Germans were confused. They returned to a point where he could see them again, and broke up into three pairs. They began to comb the ground between the road and the river. From his perch on the rocks and behind some thin bushes, Martel could see them searching along the riverbank that was a lot closer than he’d thought. It was maybe only a couple of hundred yards away. Of course, it might as well be a hundred miles with the Germans patrolling between him and it.

After maybe an hour, the Germans formed up and returned back down the road. Had they truly given up, or were they going back for more men to conduct a more comprehensive search? If the latter was the case, someone with a brain might figure out that maybe he hadn’t run directly for the river, but was waiting for an opportunity to make a move.

Martel decided it was time to get the hell out of there.

He clambered down from the rocks and, after looking as far down the road as he could, ran across. The ground was sandy and open and he felt like he was totally exposed and could be seen for miles.

He ran hard. The river was in front of him. It didn’t look deep, and he knew that it oftentimes wasn’t. Maybe he could dash across without having to swim.

He heard a shout from behind him. The bastard Germans had spotted him. They weren’t as dumb as he’d hoped. They’d circled back along the riverbank and not the road. And now one of them was less than a hundred yards away and coming hard.

Martel ran as fast as he’d ever run in his life. Almost immediately, he was in the river, splashing in water that was knee deep and getting deeper. He could hear the sound of the German’s horse breathing behind him and he could almost feel the lance going into his back and coming out his chest.

He threw himself into the water as a Uhlan roared past him, jabbing down. Martel rolled away, lunged upward, grabbed the cavalryman’s boot and jerked hard, causing the German’s horse to stumble and the rider to fall into the water. The Uhlan dropped his lance and tried to stand up, but fell back to his hands and knees.

Martel kicked the German in the head and pushed himself onward. He thought about grabbing the German’s horse, but the animal was already trotting back to the riverbank.

At some point, he’d be in the middle of the river and safe. At least that’s the way it worked in theory. The international boundary was the middle of the river. Maybe, though, the Krauts wouldn’t be too concerned about such niceties as international boundaries with countries for which they had utter contempt. They might also be enraged that one of their own had been humiliated, another reason to disregard vague boundaries.

Two more mounted Germans had entered the water and were plowing towards him. The German he’d kicked was standing unsteadily, dazed but apparently not seriously hurt.

Martel could hardly breathe as he pushed himself onward. The water that had been up to his waist was growing shallower and he looked up. The rocky north bank of the river was just before him. He turned around and saw that the mounted Germans had picked up their comrade and were withdrawing to the south bank. One turned and glared furiously at him and made an obscene gesture. What the hell had just happened? Maybe he would live long enough to see his thirtieth birthday.

Now on his hands and knees, gasping and vomiting dirty water, Martel reached the north bank and crawled through the sand and mud. He didn’t consider himself safe, not yet. Along with their ridiculous but deadly pig stickers, the Uhlans carried carbines. Would they fire across the border? Well, there wasn’t much he could do about that except gather himself and continue to run like hell.

“Where you goin’, boy?”

Martel looked up. Several rough-looking white men with rifles, mounted on scraggly but tough-looking horses, had emerged from the brush that had hidden them and were staring hard at him.

“I’m an American,” he managed to gasp.

“That’s what they all say,” said a lean and wiry man in his thirties who appeared to be their leader. “Now tell me just why the fucking Germans chased you all the away across the Rio Grande and into Texas.”

Martel stood up and tried to regain his dignity. “Because I’m an officer in the United States Army, and the fucking Germans didn’t like me snooping around them and their camps in Mexico this spring of 1920. Now who the hell are you?”

That seemed to amuse the man in charge who grinned amiably before spitting on the ground. “First off, my name is Marcus Tovey and I’m a Texas Ranger just like all these fine young gentlemen who are accompanying me, and anybody who’s being shot at by the fucking Germans can’t be all bad.”

Luke Martel noted that the cowboy was carrying a Winchester 30-06 carbine and that he was wearing a badge. “That’s an old weapon,” Luke said.

“It’ll still kill,” Tovey said. “So we are now going to take you to our post and let you prove your tale. Then you can try to answer a question for me?”

Martel relaxed. “I’ll try.”

“Then tell me, young soldier, just what the hell are the Germans doing along the Rio Grande and the boundary of the state of Texas this spring of 1920?”