Paymaster Gambles With the Devil

Captain Horace Fletcher, a Regular Army Paymaster, is sent across the border into Mexico to pay and report on a Volunteer Regiment. He has no doubt the Volunteers will prove to be the usual rabble, a shameful waste of a proud Army’s valuable time. As requested by his Judge Advocate pals down the hall at Expeditionary Headquarters, he will be looking into the kinds of misbehavior that has already sent another Volunteer Regiment home in disgrace, formally de-Commissioned. On arrival, he finds that all of its Officers are off in search of the enemy, though presently at rest some 20 miles away at the Hacienda Herrera. He is obliged to assume Command, and this is a new and rather agreeable experience for him. He has yet to meet, however, a rising gambler named George Devol among the camp’s civilian following. Ambitious, Devol has begun to tire of the easy but meagre pickings to be had of fuddled soldiers. He has been thinking to raise his game, taking on quicker prey with more money to show for it. But it was not until Horace Fletcher discovered he liked being boss and set himself to lay down the law for the civilian quarter that George Devol sees the Paymaster himself as a target. Poor, dim Billy, a liquor-dealer who should’ve known better, gave the Captain some backtalk. Billy scared him, meaning nothing at all in fiddling with his holster, as anyone knew including George. But George saw his chance to gain favor with the Paymaster and snatched it up, the devil. He laid Billy out cold with a skull-stroke, a specialty of his. That was the beginning of it.

Before a more recent stint as a publications editor in Washington, I spent several years working on ships running out of New York and down the West coast of South America. The book was written in Jalapa, Veracruz, Mexico, which sits on a plateau at about 7,500 feet, far from any beach. But its climate and its many coffee-houses proved ideal for the purpose.