Pemberley Ranch

by Jack Caldwell

  “He said, ‘No, I want you to meet him and give him a chance to convince you to marry him. If you marry a free man, you’ll be free.’ I told him, ‘Yes sir, I know that. But what if I meet him, an’ I don’t want to marry him?’ He told me I’d be free anyway—he’d give me my freedom, and there would be a job for me, payin’ money, at Pemberley.

  “I tell you, Miss Bennet, I just broke down and cried right there. That good man was gonna buy me an’ set me free, an’ all I had to do was to ride back to Pemberley with him. I only asked if Isaiah was a good Christian man, an’ he said he was, an’ that was good enough for me. Mr. Darcy brought me, I said goodbye to my momma, an’ got in the wagon with him. A few days later, we got to Pemberley, an’ I met Mrs. Darcy, an’ a better lady I’ve never met. I could cook, so she had me set up in the kitchen.

  “Mr. Darcy was ready to give me my papers that would make me a free woman, but I said, ‘I haven’t met Mr. Reynolds, yet. A deal’s a deal.’ So, Mr. Darcy calls for Mr. Reynolds, and he come in, not knowing what was going on.” Mrs. Reynolds laughed. “He was so surprised to see me, and he was even more surprised when Mr. Darcy told him what he had done. He then left us two alone in the library to talk things over.

  “And we talked. Isaiah was indeed a fine, good-looking man and as kind as he was good. We came to an agreement in short order, and Mr. and Mrs. Darcy couldn’t have been happier when we told them.

  “The only problem was that the Baptist minister in town— that was before Mr. Tilney got here—wouldn’t marry no former slaves in the church. We was willing to have it someplace else, but that weren’t good enough for Mrs. Darcy. No, ma’am! She heard about that, an’ she took us right down to the mission church, askin’ the priest to marry us. He agreed, as long as we would join the church.

  “So I became Mrs. Reynolds and Catholic on the same day, an’ that was the best day of my life.”

  Beth was enchanted. “What a wonderful story!”

  Mrs. Reynolds smiled. “Isaiah was a good man, and we were happy the five years we were married.” Her smile disappeared. “Then, he left on a cattle drive before the war, and he never came home. He was killed by rustlers tryin’ to steal the herd.” She turned her head to look out the window. “He’s buried out there, somewhere, under a shady tree, the other riders told me. That’s good—Isaiah always liked the shade, you see.” She sighed. “Five years, but I’ve no regrets. I know he’s waitin’ for me upstairs, along with the angels.”

  She wiped a tear from her face with her apron, while Beth and Gaby used their handkerchiefs. “Well, if’n you would excuse me, I’ve got to clean up in the kitchen. Good night, all.”

  Darcy watched her go. “They never had children, but you’d hardly know it from her. She helped raise me, and she was like a mother to Gaby after Momma passed. Daddy always said buying Mrs. Reynolds’s freedom was the best purchase he had ever made.” He coughed, and to Beth it suspiciously sounded like he was covering up a sob.

  “Gaby, I think you said you’d play for us?” Fitz broke in.

  Gaby collected herself and moved to the piano.

  An hour and a half later, Gaby announced a desire to retire, and she and Mrs. Annesley made their excuses. For her part, Beth was restless. She should be tired, she knew, but the revelations of the past few hours would not allow her to rest. The gentlemen showed no inclination to go to bed, so Darcy, Fitz, and Beth walked out to the veranda and, as the storm had abated, watched the now gentle rainfall. Beth sipped a sherry as the men shared brandy and cigars.

  “You’re awful quiet, Miss Beth,” Fitz observed. “You’re sure you’re not tired?”

  “No, not at all,” she said. Seeing the men stare at her expectantly, she continued, “You look like you think I should say something.”

  “Sorry, Beth,” said Will. “It just seems there’s a lot on your mind. We don’t mean to pry. Sorry.”

  “Although, if you need any help, you’ve come to the right place,” added Fitz.

  “Why? Why would you want to help me?”

  Fitz laughed. “Will here is always helping his friends. It’s a weakness o’ his.” Darcy simply glared at his foreman, who wasn’t cowed in the least.

  Beth sighed. “I’m trying to understand… Oh! It seems everything I know is wrong.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Darcy.

  Beth put down her glass and turned to him. “You’ve told me you’ve never owned any slaves. Yet, you fought for the Confederacy. I don’t understand. Why did you fight for a cause you didn’t believe in?”

  Will shared a look with Fitz before speaking. “Beth, the war was about other things besides slavery.” Will sat down next to Beth and collected his thoughts.

  “The South’s economy has always been based on agriculture. There weren’t many factories down here before the war. We shipped out raw materials, be it cotton or tobacco or beef, to other places. The North, on the other hand, was becoming more industrial every day. They used our crops to make goods to sell overseas.

  “The problem was, England and France wanted our crops, too. They wanted to trade directly with us, and sell us stuff, too, at prices less than what the factories up north charged.

  “The big northern industrialists couldn’t have that. They screamed for protection, and the Congress passed high tariffs on overseas goods. We couldn’t sell our goods to anyone but those Yankee industrialists. We also paid top dollar for the goods they sold back to us. So, you see, the Yankees were taxing us to save their businesses. It was a tax on Northerners, too, but Southerners were the ones getting mad about it.

  “This had gone on for a long time before the Congress started thinking about lowering those tariffs. For twenty years it got a little better, but right before the war, the industrialists got together with the Abolitionists in the Republican Party, and they said they were going to raise tariffs again. In other words, they would take money from the South and give it to the North. It was in the Republican Party platform in 1860, and the South had had enough.

  “You see, every time we made a deal with those Yankees, be it bringing new states into the Union or respecting property rights, it always seemed the Yankees would eventually renege on the agreement. It got so that we thought we just couldn’t trust them.

  “We thought we had a lever to protect our rights. A lot of people figured that the Tenth Amendment gave the states the right to veto, or nullify, unfair federal laws. It was called States Rights. When the Republicans promised to raise tariffs again, the southern states said they had the right to declare their independence from the Union, since the Union didn’t respect their rights.”

  “But what about slaves?”

  Darcy grimaced. “It was part of it. Look, no matter what you think about slavery, it was legal. Most Southern folks never owned a slave, though I have to admit most supported it. We knew slavery wouldn’t last forever. The papers were saying how expensive they were getting, and some rabble-rousers wanted to begin the re-importation of slaves. But that would’ve never gotten through Congress. To be honest, we expected slavery to die a slow death. People’s hearts were changing.

  “But the Abolitionists wanted it declared illegal—now—and without compensation to the slave owners. That would bankrupt thousands of farms. John Brown and his terrorist followers were willing to murder innocent people to free the slaves. With Mr. Lincoln’s election, the fire eaters in the South screamed that the Abolitionists who had backed Brown and their northern industrialist friends were in control of the country and that we had no voice in how things would go.”

  “Slavery was still evil, Will,” Beth said.

  “My momma agreed with you. You know, most folks around here were against secession.”

  Beth was amazed.

  Will went on. “We thought that the rabble-rousers were wrong, and that something could still be worked out with the Congress. After all, it was the government that put down Brown. But we were the minority, and Texas voted to throw in with the Confederacy.
The Darcys’ loyalty always was to Texas. Your family loved Ohio when y’all lived there, right? Same thing here.

  “So, when the call went out to defend our new country against the foe, we thought we were living in 1776 or 1835 again. Victory for the cause. Freedom.” Will looked out into the rain. “Well, you see how that turned out. And Congress did raise the tariffs, and they remain high today. And all the factories are still in the North. The whole damn thing was a waste.” He tossed the remains of his cigar into the rain.

  But the slaves are free, thought Beth, but she kept that observation to herself. She was digesting the view of the war from the Southern standpoint. Some northern newspapers had tried to make John Brown a hero, but Mr. Bennet called him a criminal who deserved what he got. She recalled something about the issue of tariffs from those times, but it had been submerged under the calls for preserving the Union and freeing the slaves. She could never understand why the Rebels fought with such ferocity at Shiloh and Gettysburg and Cold Mountain. It made no sense to die to keep men enslaved. But to fight for what you believed was your freedom—that she could understand.

  Was the whole war one big mistake? Did Samuel and six hundred thousand others die because of greedy and stupid men on both sides?

  “The winners write the history, Miss Beth,” said Fitz as he blew a cloud of blue smoke. “I learned that at school.”

  Beth didn’t respond, because Will suddenly stood up, peering into the rain. “Rider coming,” he said evenly. Fitz’s response was anything but calm. Jumping to his feet, he half-ran into the house, startling Beth by returning a moment later with a rifle in his hands. Staring out, he relaxed.

  “It’s Peter, Will,” he said, lowering the weapon. Beth took a breath while Darcy moved forward as the rider jumped off his horse and came up the stairs.

  Darcy looked at the man. “What’s wrong?”

  “There’s trouble in town…” Peter looked first at Beth, then questioningly at Darcy.

  “Go on,” his employer commanded.

  Water pooled about Peter’s feet. “Something bad’s happened at the new settlement.” He glanced at Beth again. “Real bad.”

  “How bad?” Darcy demanded.

  “That Washington family…” his voice trailed off as he shook his head in silent communication.

  “Oh, no,” Darcy breathed as terror gripped Beth’s heart. “All of them?”

  A pause and Peter nodded.

  “No!” Beth gasped, hands over her mouth.

  Sheriff Lucas stood in the downpour, rain dripping off his hat, as the half-dozen men stared at the tableau before them. The scene was lit by the glow of the tall, burning object planted in the yard of the homestead, the flames implausible in the rain.

  “Must be tar on it,” whispered Jones as the men remained frozen in horror. The dancing light and shadows made the figure hanging from the tree look almost alive. But that was not what held Lucas’s attention, nor the thing lighting the place. It was the two bundles at the foot of the tree, one smaller than the other.

  A cart arrived and a furious Reverend Tilney leapt from it. “Don’t just stand there—cut him down! Cut that poor man down!” He seized the sheriff. “Come on, man! We can’t leave him up there! And the rest of you!” He pointed at the burning cross. “Put that… that damnable thing out! It’s an abomination!”

  “With what?” Jones said stupidly.

  “I don’t know!” Tilney cried. “With your hands, if necessary!”

  Sheriff Lucas roused himself to think. “Look around, boys. There must be a shovel or an ax about.” He walked over to the tree with the preacher. A flash of his knife and the tree was empty of its burden. Lucas stared at the bodies huddled close to the roots, his blade held loosely in his hand. Tilney, kneeling down by the victims, ignored the rain falling in his face to look back up at the lawman.

  “The boy,” Lucas said. “They killed the little boy, too?” It wasn’t really a question.

  Tilney bent his head. “Go see if you can find some blankets in the house, Sheriff. They deserve at least that.”

  Lucas nodded and walked towards the front door of the little house, glad to be doing something. The loss of light and the hissing sound behind him as he opened the door told Lucas that the others had felled the thing outside. He welcomed the darkness as he began to search the place for whatever little comfort he could offer the Washingtons now.

  Now that it was too late for anything else.

  Chapter 13

  In her family’s pew in the Rosings Baptist Church, Beth kept her head as still as possible as Reverend Tilney read a passage from the New Testament while her eyes took in those assembled. To either side of her was her family. To her left were her father, looking grim, and her mother, dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief. To her right were Kathy and Lily, both unusually quiet. Next to them were Charles and Jane, little Susan resting quietly in her mother’s arms.

  Beth could not see behind her, but she had seen Sheriff Lucas and Charlotte before the beginning of the service and knew they were in attendance, as were George Whitehead and Billy Collins. Mary was at the church organ. Except for a few others, no one else was present.

  It was embarrassing for a congregation that normally filled the church to stay away from the funeral for some of their own. Beth knew the reasons—some sensible, some appalling—and a bit of her old disgust for the South burned dimly in her breast. Beth was ashamed that the church was mostly empty.

  Mostly, but not quite empty. Beth’s eyes kept returning to the row of pews on the opposite side of the aisle. The seats that usually held the Burroughs family were instead occupied by William Darcy, his sister, Gaby, and two others. She did not know the short man in the black robe, but she assumed it was the Darcys’ priest. It was shocking enough that a Catholic priest would attend a service in a Baptist Church, but even more amazing was that the Darcys’ cook, Mrs. Reynolds, sat next to them. Beth also knew that two Darcy wranglers stood in the back near the front door of the church.

  It would have been a wondrous occurrence were it not for the sorrowful nature of the gathering. She returned her attention to the wooden objects before the sanctuary—three coffins, two about six feet long flanking a much smaller one in the middle. Beth would have cried again over the fate of the Washingtons if she were not aware of one other jarring, frightening fact.

  Every man in the church, except for the clergy and Collins, was armed—even Charles.

  With a final blessing, the funeral service for the Washington family was complete. The women quietly filed out of the church into the noonday sun, Beth taking Gaby by the hand. They stood outside, close to a flatbed wagon with the back unlatched.

  Within moments, the pallbearers began their grim duty. Apparently, an agreement had taken place inside the church. The first coffin that emerged was that of Mrs. Washington, borne by Mr. Bennet and the undertaker’s helpers, assisted by Whitehead and Collins. William, Charles, and the Pemberley hands followed with Mr. Washington. They, too, carefully lifted their macabre burden onto the bed of the wagon, the undertaker directing the securing of the coffins. Finally, the last, small wooden box was carried out with infinite tenderness by Henry Tilney and Father Joseph. Both had tears in their eyes, as did most of the ladies assembled. A moment later, the wagon was ready.

  The assemblage milled about, preparing to begin the procession. Gaby joined her brother and the Pemberley group. To Beth’s displeasure, Whitehead and Collins approached the Bennets and Bingleys.

  “It’s a sad day, isn’t it, Thomas?” Whitehead remarked.

  Mr. Bennet was interrupted by Charles. “Tom, Fanny, I’m goin’ to take Jane an’ Susan back to the house. Y’all come by afterwards, all right?” With one sharp glare for Whitehead, the Bingleys walked toward their house, Beth still unnerved by the extraordinary sight of a pistol on Charles’s hip.

  Whitehead seemed to take no notice of the doctor. “Well, we’ve got to get back to work, eh, Billy? Tom, you going up to the burial?
”

  Told that the Bennet family would join the procession, Whitehead displayed an odd look that appeared to Beth as if he wished to dispose of a troublesome insect. The expression disappeared in an instant; Beth blinked, and Whitehead was his usually implacable self again. The chill that ran down Beth’s spine was her only proof that she had not imagined the moment. With a smile, Whitehead took his leave of the Bennets, Collins trailing behind. Beth was relieved at Whitehead’s departure, because she had disturbing thoughts about a person she once considered a friend and now feared and mistrusted.

  With a word from Henry Tilney, the rest took their positions. The wagon driver flicked the reins, and the horses moved down the street, Henry sitting next to him. In the wagon with the coffins were the undertaker and his men. Following on foot were the remaining attendees. The Darcys were first, Gaby and Father Joseph next to William, while Mrs. Reynolds walked directly behind her employer. Mr. and Mrs. Bennet were next, their daughters trailing, Beth and Mary holding hands. The sheriff and Charlotte, along with the Pemberley hands, brought up the rear.

  The streets of Rosings, usually bustling at midday, were practically deserted. A sense of fear was omnipresent. Beth glanced around her, catching a curtain move at Zimmerman’s store. The blacksmith’s shop was silent. The only sound was the tolling of the church bell and the creak of the wagon’s wheels.

  The story around town was that a roving band of the Ku Klux Klan had descended on the Washington homestead, and outsiders were to blame for the lynching. Beth was surprised and troubled at the rumors, for in the years she had lived in Rosings, there was not even the hint that the feared, masked terrorists were in the area. In fact, all the newspapers had said that the Klan was on its last legs, put down by the power of the army and the federal government. But if the Klan was riding the range killing former slaves, where had they come from? Why hadn’t they heard about such outrages before? It didn’t make sense to Beth.