Casca 17: The Warrior Read online

  The rails were laid at astonishing speed, four rails going down every minute. Behind the rail layers came the spikers and bolters, driving ten spikes to each rail, four hundred rails to each mile, and eighteen hundred miles to go to San Francisco. Forty carloads of rails, spikes, food, and ammunition were needed at the railhead every day to maintain the breakneck construction pace.

  As they both reached Nevada the race between the two companies intensified. The railroad lawyer from Illinois had been generous to the railroad companies. Each mile of track laid was worth nearly $100,000 from the public purse and brought with it a gift of six square miles of public land. On a good day either company might lay six to eight or even ten miles of track for a gain of roughly a million dollars and sixty square miles of land, some of which was to become the most valuable land in the world.

  Each company's survey team sought out its own route, and soon the two roadbeds were being laid parallel to each other.

  It didn't matter a damn if the railroad never ran—the companies were making millions of dollars just laying track.

  General Dodge called a stop-work meeting and paid his Union Pacific gangs to stand in the sun while he lauded "the westering spirit that is carrying us all across the continent," and explained to them that the Chinese were about to take away their jobs.

  "What's the westering spirit?" Casca whispered to his shaker.

  "Greed, matey, simple greed," the old man replied.

  The Paddys needed no further encouragement, and attacked the Chinese with shovels and spikes and boots and fists. The Chinese cookhouses were overturned, the camps set on fire, the thoroughly terrorized Chinese fleeing into the desert.

  The next day the line moved not an inch to the east and five miles to the west. The gangers collected their usual dollar each, and Union Pacific collected half a million dollars and thirty square miles of land that might have gone to its competitor.

  Buffalo meat and beans were the staple diet of the Irish railroad gangs. Professional shooters with heavy muzzle-loading .50 caliber Sharps rifles could creep to within fifty yards of a grazing herd.

  English tanners discovered a way to tan buffalo hides to produce much prized "Buffe" coats of the fine, soft leather for European army officers. The price of buffalo hides leaped and Casca was tempted to become a shooter.

  A good shooter could down a hundred head in a morning, his skinning crew staking the hides out on the prairie to dry. A well-cured hide was worth three to four dollars.

  But to Casca it was a low grade occupation—not hunting, no danger—about like being a butcher in a slaughter-house. So he stayed at the spike and listened to the old Paddy's endless tales of easy money and beautiful women in the South Pacific.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Slaves.

  "There's fortunes to be made in slaves for Australia, now they ain't allowed here no more," the toothless old shaker had said when Casca had lamented his poorly paid sweat for the Union Pacific Railroad.

  He was working in one of the gangs of mainly Irish laborers who were pushing the iron road west a rail at a time to meet the Chinese gangs who were moving it eastward from San Francisco. His impressive physique had gotten him a job as a spike driver, and his talkative work-mate's spindly frame had gotten him the job as Casca's shaker—his job being to hold the six-foot spike, try not to shake, and pray that Casca's nine-pound hammer didn't miss.

  "Slaves?" Casca queried.

  "Aye, sonny, slaves. Slaves for Australia. Most of my father's family were slaves there, convicts they called them. But snaring a hare ain't a hangin' offense no more, so they've had to stop shipping Paddys there. Anyway, Ireland's too far to go for slaves when there's plenty of 'em just offshore in Fiji."

  "But isn't slavery illegal everywhere now?"

  "Not at all sonny. Now that it's illegal here, the Australian plantations are producing sugar and cotton even cheaper than the south used to. Not agin slavery, are ye?"

  Casca thought for an instant of his time as a slave in an Aegean copper mine, on the oar benches of a Roman galley and a Spanish galleon, and a dozen other times in his life. He thought, too, of the numbers of times he had bought slaves, conquered and enslaved whole cities, dealt in slaves, transported slaves. "I'm neither for it nor against it."

  "Ain't ye a Confederate?"

  Casca stopped swinging his hammer, took off his Confederate cap, and wiped the sweat from his brow. "I wasn't fighting for slavery. I was fighting for an independent Virginia—and for pay. Better pay than I'm getting here. Better work too—shooting Yankees.

  "I'm a mercenary. The definition lies in the core of the meaning of the word. You intend to come out in front financially on the deal—and alive to enjoy it. The only word for any other approach to professional warfare is idiocy."

  And Casca was no idiot. If he was doomed to this damned existence forever, then he was going to come out in front all the way, all the time.

  Except, as it happened, when he got drunk, or stoned, or over-ambitious, or fell in love or in lust, or simply fell. Then he'd wake up to find that he had fucked up again, that he'd lost or squandered all his money. Maybe even had to pay for the experience too.

  But at least he knew what the game was about. Or that's the way it looked to him when he felt optimistic, which was most of the time.

  At the other times the very idea of mercenary, or even of soldiery, was as much of a mystery as everything else he'd encountered in his first two thousand years.

  "The Cannibal Isles, young fella, that's the place to be for an adventurous young pup like you. Shipping slaves to Australia, there's fortunes to be made. You take my word for it young 'un. I've been there and seen it. Don't mess with gold in California. Only bankers and saloon keepers get rich on that gold."

  Well, Casca had thought, it can't be any worse than driving spikes for a dollar a day, being fed on beans, and patronized by his shaker, whom he had already outlived twenty times.

  "Strange gods they have there." The toothless old man chuckled.

  "Strange gods? How strange?"

  He heard again the Nazarene's curse on him. For the first few hundred years Casca, hoping for an end to his life, had looked for the new Christ in Rome and Constantinople, Jerusalem and Bethlehem; and then after more than another thousand years, in the places where new Christian religions were appearing—Switzerland, Germany, and then England.

  Eventually he had realized that, just as the Messiah's first coming had confused and dismayed the seers and scholars of the Jewish religion, his second coming would just as surely be a shock to the wise men of the Christian religions. So he'd looked elsewhere. In Moslem mosques, in Hindu temples, in Buddhist monasteries, amongst the pyramids of the Aztecs.

  He had nothing to lose by searching the thatched temples of the South Seas. If the King of Heaven could once visit earth as a carpenter's son who wandered dusty roads in dubious company, might he not come again as a pearl diver?

  "You get yourself to Fiji with just one old musket, and you can get yourself a hundred slaves in a morning's work, ship 'em to New South Wales, and you're a rich man."

  "So how come you ain’t rich man?"

  "How you know I ain't?" the shaker snapped, cringing alongside the spike as Casca rained down on it with the nine-pound hammer, and the old Irishman talked on endlessly of the islands and their women and the money to be made.

  Later that evening Fifi L'Amour arrived at the camp in a wagon with six girls and a piano player. Annie O'Grady, the smallest and prettiest of the girls, fell in love with Casca, and an enormous Irishman named Cassidy fell in love with her.

  Casca didn't want to fight over the girl, but the Irish giant tried repeatedly to provoke him. Casca even allowed him to declaim that: "All Eyetalians is dago scum," and, "All Confederates is traitors."

  Casca parried so many insults and avoided so many invitations to fight that Cassidy came to the conclusion that in spite of his build and his scars, Casca couldn't fight. Resolving to take Annie away fro
m Casca, Cassidy arrived at Casca's tent in the middle of the night, armed with a six-foot railroad spike in case Casca gave him any trouble.

  But when Cassidy tried to take the girl from Casca's bed, Cassidy realized too late that he had sadly misjudged the situation, and a fight erupted, and although Cassidy was a hulk of a man, Casca had the advantage of hundreds of years of fighting experience. He simply kicked the Irishman in the soft spot between his legs, and when the giant bent over howling, grabbing his family jewels, Casca took a wind up with his right fist, and with the bulk of his weight behind the thrust, swung a right uppercut into the man's face, making a pulp of his once prominent nose. When it was over Cassidy had three feet of a railroad spike through his gut, and Fifi's wagon hurriedly left the camp with Casca sharing the driver's seat with the piano player.

  So he had set out across the deserts, passing along the way the remains of countless madmen who had dreamed of gold in California. In San Francisco he had taken passage on the Rangaroa, a trading schooner about to sail for the South Seas with a cargo of iron stoves, crinolines, and corsets for the port of Levuka on the island of Ovalu, the seat of government of Cakabau, king of Fiji, the most infamous of all the cannibal islands of the South Pacific and the new capital of the world's slave trade.

  The Rangaroa was making ready to leave port when word arrived that the cook had been murdered that afternoon in an alleyway along the length of the San Francisco waterfront known as the Barbary Coast. His killer had no doubt mistaken him for a newly landed seaman with pockets full of money, rather than a destitute sailor desperate enough to ship out for the Cannibal Isles.

  This piece of bad luck, together with the Rangaroa's destination, made it almost impossible for the captain to hire another sea cook.

  Larsen had looked at his only passenger. "Suppose I return your passage money and you ship as cook instead? I'll pay you well—if you can cook."

  Casca shook his head. "Then you won't be paying me at all, I have cooked on occasion, and through extremity of hunger I have even eaten what I cooked. But I would not care to do so for the months that we will be at sea. And you would not like it either."

  Larsen let out a long breath. "Can't sail without a cook. I'll just have to find one ashore somehow."

  He turned to leave. At the head of the gangway he glanced back. "Care to have a last look at the town?" he asked Casca.

  Casca leaped at the opportunity. He had only arrived in San Francisco the previous day, and had seen nothing of the city. He snatched up his jacket and cap and followed the captain to the pier.

  They left the China Basin and walked the length of Barbary Coast waterfront, its sidewalks crowded with seamen from every race and nation on earth: tall, blue-eyed Norse men; squat, broad-nosed Baits; small, smartly dressed French matelots; neat, dark Latins off the huge Spanish and Portuguese galleys that plied from South America with their oar benches manned by convicts; groups of rollicking Irishmen out of Liverpool, shouting drunk and looking for someone to fight; and Lascars, Indians, Chinese, Negroes.

  Larsen shouldered his way through the throng as if he knew where he was going, and Casca followed, wondering that this exotic city belonged to the same nation as the states of Georgia and Tennessee where he had spent the years of the recent war between the states.

  Larsen knew that the Alaskan salmon season had just ended and that the city was full of Chinese cannery workers who had returned in the 'tween decks of the ships laden with the canned fish that would be re-exported from San Francisco to the world in ships such as the Rangaroa.

  They turned away from the waterfront and Casca noticed a rapid change around him. Now the sidewalks were even more crowded, but the people were all Chinese, the men blue clad with long mustaches and pigtails; the women mincing along in tiny steps in mostly blue and black working clothes, exquisitely embroidered gowns, and now and then in brilliant yellows, greens, and reds. These brightly dressed women wore their blue-black hair in lacquered curls and were always accompanied by three or four husky young men who made way for them through the crowds.

  They turned into a doorway and down a long passageway to an eating hall. Scores of Chinese working men sat on benches eating with chopsticks from large bowls in the center of each table.

  Larsen found two vacant places and sat down. As Casca sat beside him, Larsen handed him a bowl then filled his own bowl with rice and some light-colored meat. Casca did the same and found the meat delicious.

  "What is it?" he asked, and didn't quite catch Larsen's reply mumbled through a mouthful of food.

  "Pig-aw-gun? What's that in English?"

  "That is English. Pig organ. An organ of a pig."

  Casca studied the meat. "Which organ?"

  Larsen laughed. "From the point of view of the pig, I guess you'd say his vital organ."

  Casca stopped chewing for a moment while he thought over this information.

  "Eat up," said Larsen. "You won't see fresh meat again for a month."

  A busboy came to the table to clear away used dishes, and Larsen spoke to him. "Savvy English?"

  "Oh, yes, savvy English, work English ships."

  "Aha!" Larsen was delighted. "You cook?"

  "Oh, yes, Chou Lui cook on ships Shanghai, Madras, London, New York, Rio, Santiago, San Francisco."

  "You work my ship to Sydney, Australia?"

  The Chinese raised his eyebrows. "Australia? How much pay?"

  "Twenty dollars Tahiti, forty more dollars Sydney."

  "How much profit share?"

  "Half of one percent."

  "When sail?"

  "One hour."

  "Okay. Wait please."

  He moved to another table, and then another and another, scooping up the used utensils and chopsticks and carrying piles of bowls higher than his head to the kitchen at the back of the room.

  He returned from the kitchen without his apron, shrugging into a black embroidered jacket. "Ah, very good, we go now." He led them through a maze of narrow streets, alleys, and stairways and asked them to wait outside a tall, narrow building which housed a Chinese apothecary on the ground floor. While they waited Casca studied the platters of dried sea horses, deer antlers, shark fins, ginseng roots, and other Chinese medicines.

  In a few minutes Chou Lui reappeared toting a small duffel bag, and within the hour the Rangaroa's crew were letting go the lines and Casca was watching the city of San Francisco slip out of sight into its mantle of fog.

  As they cleared the heads of the Golden Gate to the Pacific Ocean Larsen handed the helm over to Sandy.

  "Just keep her out of the potato patch," Larsen said, laughing.

  "You can count on that," the Scot replied as he took control.

  "Potato patch?" Casca queried.

  Sandy jerked his head toward where Casca could see waves breaking on rocks. "Between us and them breakers there's rocks lurking just under the water. They've ripped the bottoms out of so many ships the local seamen say the waves are sown with their potatoes." He gestured toward the many sacks on Rangaroa's deck. "I sure don't intend to add our spuds to the crop."

  "I should think not," bellowed a cheerful Irish voice, and a red head came from the companionway. "Even a sassenach Scot would rather eat a spud than sow it in the sea." The head was followed by a muscular body.

  "And only an Irish bog trotter like Liam O'Dwyer would talk such nonsense," said Sandy by way of introduction. "Mister Case Lonnergan, meet the bosun of the ship."

  "A name from the auld sod I'm thinking," said Liam as they shook hands, "but you don't look Irish."

  "What is in a look or name these days, what with all the traveling and cross-breedin' people do. Let's just say the name has served me well enough and let it go at that, but if you wish, you can call me by another name I've not heard for a long time. Casca!"

  He didn't know why he gave his true name, but it was done and he liked the sound of it. He had carried too many others over the long years, and on this lonely ship heading to the edge of the
world it was not likely that it would do him any harm.

  "Well, then," said the Scot, "we'll call ye Casca, as you're leaving the states and save ye the indignity of carrying an Irish name any farther."

  "In the name of Jesus," Liam shouted in feigned anger, "give me strength not to strangle this idiot who doesn't even know that his own name comes from Ireland in the first place."

  Sandy laughed. "Oh, we're not so ignorant. We know where we came from, but we prefer not to think about it."

  "Well," said Casca, "if it's all right with you warring Gaels, I'll accept Casca and keep Rafferty Lonnergan. The name got me a job with the Paddys on the railroad, and a few of them weren't such bad guys—for barbarians."

  Over the next several weeks Casca got to know all the crew. The first watch of the day was run by Weston, a burly New Englander who was at the helm from midnight. On a thong around his thick, sunburned neck he wore the largest shark's tooth Casca had ever seen. At four Weston was relieved by Ulf, and at eight Liam took over. There were also an able seaman and an ordinary seaman on each watch to handle the sails and keep lookout, and for company for the helmsman. Rangaroa was a working merchant ship, and the officer of the watch ran the ship most of the time from the helm, the two seamen on the foredeck ready to take his orders or relieve him as required.

  There was not much for them to do. Rangaroa was on a broad reach, the northwesterly breezes coming over her starboard side, keeping her nicely heeled to port as she kept her heading of 165, bound for the islands of Tahiti.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Day after day, night after night, week after week the Rangaroa bounded through the seas, and Casca enjoyed the voyage more and more. They passed to the southeast of Hawaii and picked up the northeast trades, replacing the north-westerly winds. Rangaroa changed tack and now lay over on her starboard side, running before the steady breeze, making good time with all sails set.

  They crossed the equator with a great deal of tomfoolery, Casca being the butt of numerous pranks according to custom, since he was the only passenger aboard and claimed to have never previously ventured into the southern half of the planet. His head was ceremonially shaved; he was thrown into the sea in a harness on the end of a line. The idea was to drag him a little way behind the ship, but they were in the doldrums, becalmed between the northeast and the southeast trades.