The Last Ride of German Freddie Read Free

are from the American South, of course, that defeated country now sunk in ruin and oppression. They are too young to have fought in the Civil War, but not so young they did not see its horrors. This exposure to life's cruelties, when they were still at a tender age, must have hardened them against pieties and hypocrisies of the world. Not for them the mad egotism of the ascetic, the persistent morbidity—the  sickness —of the civilized man. These heroes abandoned their defeated country and came west—west, where the new Rome will be born!
    If only they can be brought to treasure their virtues as I do. But they treat themselves as carelessly as they treat everything. They possess all virtues but one: the will to power. They have it in themselves to dominate, to rule—not through these petty maneuverings at the polls with which Brocius is so unwisely intoxicated, but through themselves, their desires, their guns ... They can create an empire here, and must, if their virtues are to survive. It is not enough to avoid the law, avoid civilization—they must wish to  destroy  the inverted virtues that oppose them.
    Who shall win? Tottering, hypnotized, sunken Civilization, or this new Rome? Ridiculous, when we consider numbers, when we consider mere guns and iron. Yet what was Romulus?—a bandit, crouched on his Palatine Hill. Yet nothing could stand in his way. His will was greater than that of the whole rotten world.
    And—as these classical allusions seem irresistible—what are we to make of the appearance of Helen of Troy? Who better to signal the end of an empire? Familiar with Goethe's superior work, I forgot that Helen does not speak in Marlowe's  Faustus,  she simply parades along and inspires poetry. But when she looked at our good German metaphysician, that eye of hers spoke mischief that had nothing to do with verse—and the actor knew it, for he stammered. Such a sexual being as this Helen was not envisioned by the good British Marlowe, whom we are led to believe did not with women.
    I do not see such a girl cleaving to Behan for long—his blood is too thin for the likes of her.
    And when she tires of him—beware, Behan! Beware, Faustus! Beware, Troy!

    *

    Freddie met Sheriff Behan's girl at the victory party following the election. Brocius' election strategy had borne fruit, of a sort—but Johnny Behan was rotten fruit, Freddie thought, and would fall to the ground ere long.
    The Occidental Saloon with filled with celebration and a hundred drunken Cowboys. Even Wyatt Earp turned up, glooming in his black coat and drooping mustaches, still secure in the illusion that Behan would hire him as a deputy; but at the sight of the company his face wrinkled as if he'd just bit on a lemon, and he did not stay long.
    Amid all this roistering inebriation, Freddie saw Behan's girl perched on the long bar, surrounded by a crowd of men and kicking her heels in the air in a white froth of petticoats. Freddie was surprised—he had rarely in his life met a woman who would enter a saloon, let alone behave so freely in one, and among a crowd of rowdy drunks. Behan—a natty Irishman in a derby—stood nearby and accepted congratulations and bumper after bumper of the finest French champagne.
    Freddie offered Behan his perfunctory congratulations, then made his way to the bar where he saw John Ringo crouched protectively around a half-empty bottle of whisky. “I have drunk deep of the Pierian,” Ringo said, “and drunk disgustingly. Will you join me?”
    “No,.” said Freddie, and ordered soda water. The noise of the room battered at his nerves. He would not stay long—he would go to another saloon, perhaps, and find a game of cards.
    Ringo's melancholy eyes roamed the room. “Freddie, you do not look overjoyed,.” he said.
    Freddie looked at his drink. “Men selling their freedom to become  citizens,” he snarled. “And they call it a victory.” He looked toward Behan, felt his lips curl. “Victory makes