The head man ignored the insult and considered the point Hedges was making. The silence was as brittle as spring ice as his mind mulled over the Captain’s words. Finally, he nodded. “Black concedes, mister. White wins.”
“Obliged,” Hedges said. “You want to clear your men off the board?”
The head man sighed and stepped away from the steady pressure of Seward’s rifle. Seward looked disappointed, the feeling swamping the viciousness in his eyes as he watched the big Negro mount his horse. The other freed slaves followed the example of their leader.
“What’s happening?” Rhett demanded, poking his head through the back flaps of the wagon, holding the canvas closed about his neck so that his white gown could not be seen.
“Relax, Bob,” Forrest muttered as the riders began to move off among the trees. “You’re safe. Captain just made an end play to protect our queen.”
“I don’t think that’s funny,” the New Englander complained ducking back inside the wagon.
“You trust ’em, Captain?” Forrest asked as the final riders went from sight among the pine trunks.
Hedges’ lips curled back in a sneer. “Only man I trust in this war is me,” he rasped. “But since your hide is as much at stake as mine, I’ll believe what you say when you come back, sergeant.”
Forrest snapped open his mouth for a retort, but staunched it. He filed it in the back of his mind as one more score to settle with Hedges when the right time and place presented themselves. He spun around and moved stealthily off in the wake of the departing Negroes.
Scott sank down on to the grass and leaned his back against a wheel of the wagon. “One thing we forgot to heist from the Rebs,” he muttered.
“What’s that?”Bell asked.
Seward belched emptily. “Grub, I reckon.”
“So go look around,” Hedges ordered, suddenly ravenously hungry himself. “We need food and water.”
“Not me as well?” Rhett called from inside the wagon as the four troopers moved off among the trees.
“No, not you, Rhett,” Hedges said wearily as he sank to the damp grass. “You just get down from there with a rifle and shoot anything that moves in the trees — providing it’s not one or our own men.”
“How will I know, Captain?” Rhett whined as he emerged from the rear of the wagon.
Hedges showed him a cold grin. “We all got our problems, Rhett,” he said softly. “You want to trade? I’ll stand sentry while you figure out how to get us through Bragg’s positions to our own lines.”
Rhett, looking more fragile than usual in the white gown, climbed up on to the front of the wagon and stood on the seat, casting nervous glances through the trees as he thrust the Spencer out in front of him.
Ragged lines of gray were streaking the night and a lighter colored mist was rising among the pines when a crack of a snapping twig galvanized Rhett into a crouch. He brought the rifle up to the aim.
“Who goes there?” the New Englander demanded thinly.
“If I say friend, people might talk about us,” Forrest responded gruffly as he loomed up out of the mist.
There were other sounds of other men approaching as Forrest circled the wagon and squatted down in front of Hedges. Rhett chewed his lower lip and swung the rifle back and forth, emitting a nervous giggle as he recognized the figures of the other troopers.
“They’re on the road and heading north,” the sergeant reported. “Large as life and twice as ugly. Riding along like they was on a Sunday picnic.”
“Rebs get them, maybe they’ll forget about us,” Seward said.
“You want to bet on it?”Hedges asked him.
The kill-happy youngster grinned. “Any wagering to be done, my money’s on the big house the other side of the hill having grub for us.”
“Don’t bet with the Captain,” Rhett urged with a simpering smile. “He’s liable to hedge his end.”
“Your sense of humor is downright queer, Bob,” Roger Bell put in as Hedges hauled himself to his feet.
Seward reported that there was a way through the trees for the wagon and when the team had been hitched, Forrest took the reins, with Hedges up on the seat beside him. The five troopers rode in the rear, checking the stolen weapons for faults.
“Something I forgot to say, Captain,” Seward called.
“What’s that?” Hedges answered, peering ahead through the gently swirling mist.
“Looks like there’s a lot of people at the big house, sir.”
“Nice of you to mention it,” Hedges replied wryly.
“You’re welcome.”
Hedges sighed. “And you’re a stupid bastard.”
*****
“They don’t look very rich, Clay,” the shorter of the two mounted men said sadly, looking over the dejected figures of the stage passengers.
Clay held his grin in place and stabbed the shotgun towards Elizabeth and the dancehall girl. “Reckon these two got some valuable pieces on them, Henry,” he answered.
Elizabeth gathered the boy to her, as if drawing comfort from his nearness rather than as gesture designed to help him.
Darkness was falling fast now, but the first light of the rising moon tempered it, emphasizing the wan faces of the passengers and the ebony features of the hold-up men. A breeze, slight but cold, whispered along the ravine and tugged playfully at the dangerously balanced stage, quickening its rocking motion at the lip of the ledge.
Clay drew a highly polished French Le Mat single-action from his black leather holster and sent a .40 caliber shell into the padlock on the express box. The sound of the report rolled across the hills like an isolated clap of thunder. The dancehall girl began to scream, holding her broken arm hard across her breasts with her good hand. Blue veins stood out on her forehead and in her neck as her vocal chords strained to their highest pitch.
Clay flipped open the lid of the box and nodded m satisfaction as he saw the stacks of bills, neatly blocked by bank stickers.
“We knew we had honey/Now we got money,” he chanted casually, then whirled, leveling the under-and-over double barreled revolver.
The smooth-bore lower barrel spat its charge of buckshot and the dancehall girl stopped screaming. She took the load in the stomach, exhibiting a wide circle of blood-run intestines before she folded forward and sank to the ground. A piece of half-digested jerked beef floated away from her on a river of scarlet.
“Never could stand a noisy woman,” Clay said easily, and grinned at the disappointment on the faces of the other Negroes. “This one we’ll keep,” he promised, nodding towards Elizabeth. “Three into one’ll go, I reckon.”
“What...” the drummer began, his voice shaking. “What about me...” he coughed, tried to fight back his nausea, but vomited on to the body of the dead girl.
Elizabeth sobbed and pressed the tear run face of the boy into the skirts of her gown.
“You’re a sick man,” Clay told the drummer, shaking his head in a mockery of sympathy.
“Don’t reckon he’ll recover,” Henry said.
“Don’t—” Elizabeth pleaded.
“We’re agreed,” Clay said and fired one barrel of the shotgun into the top of the salesman’s head.
He was lifted from the ground and flung backwards, his cracked skull spouting gray-flecked scarlet, leaving an arc of color to point the way he reached the edge of the trail. The thud of his body impacting on the side of the overturned stage caused a spasm of shuddering to grip Elizabeth’s body.
The preacher fell to his knees and held his arms high in the air, clasped in an attitude of prayer.
“Bad luck to kill a priest,” Clay said reflectively.
The taller of the two mounted men moved forward and suddenly thudded his spurs into the flanks of his horse. The animal snorted in pain and reared. The preacher shrieked in horror and dived to the side, clawing at the hard-packed trail with his fingers. One of the animals' hooves stomped down on to the preacher’s neck, snapping it with a dry sound. The m
an lay still.
“This is one irreligious nag,” the Negro murmured reflectively.
“He sure won’t get to that lush green pasture in the sky,” Clay said, swinging slowly around to stare at Elizabeth and the boy.
“No!” Elizabeth implored, clutching the youngster even tighter into the folds of her dress.
Clay shook his head. “What you take us for, missy?” he defended. “Some kind of animals? We don’t kill kids.”
“Not while Will has anything to do with it we don’t,” Henry supplemented, nodding to the other mounted rider, a tall man with gaunt, pock-marked features in which deep-set eyes seemed to burn with white fire around dead cores. “Will gets a lot of thrills out of little folk.”
Revulsion twisted Elizabeth’s prettiness into an ugly mask. “You disgusting pervert!” she flung at the hollow-cheeked man.
Clay shrugged and pursed his lips to emit a shrill whistle. A white horse broke out of the pine trees on the slope and sidled down to the trail. “Hell, missy, don’t be too hard on Will,” he said easily as he stooped to gather up the money from the express box. “So he happens to like them under age. Ain’t important” He showed his white teeth in a broad grin. “Only a minor thing.”
CHAPTER THREE
THE pines grew thicker on the far side of the hill and the grass was taller, the earth beneath it spongy with underground water. Forrest handled the big wagon expertly, cursing softly all the time, keeping the animals moving on a zigzagged course among the trunks sp that the wheels had no chance to bog down.
They broke clear of the wood at the top of a low cliff which formed one side of a valley in which the big house and the plantation were situated.
“Looks good, uh?” Seward said excitedly from the rear of the wagon. “There’s a way down about a quarter of a mile to the north, Frank.”
Hedges reserved judgment on Seward’s opinion as Forrest headed the wagon north along the firmer ground of the cliff top towards a place where the sheer drop gave way to a shale-covered incline. Dawn was almost full-born now and it was possible to see the whole tobacco plantation from the cliff top vantage point.
Almost the entire valley floor was given up to symmetrical fields of neatly planted tobacco, each surrounded by a hard-packed track wide enough for a wagon to pass along. Additional demarcation lines were formed by rows of cypress trees acting as wind breaks. The two-storey mansion, built as a perfect square with a colonnaded porch along the front, was positioned at a central point in the plantation.
Barns, drying sheds and a stable block with a fenced corral at one end splayed out from the rear of the house like the remaining spokes in a broken wheel. At the front was a vast area of emerald green lawn beyond a graveled circle on which perhaps a dozen buggies, surreys and buckboards stood, the shafts empty of horses.
Had it not been for the vehicles, the plantation would have had a deserted air, for no smoke rose from any of the four chimneys and the windows and doors, recently painted and polished, were tight shut against the chill morning air.
“Late sleepers,” Forrest muttered.
“Party, maybe,” Hedges mused. “House full of hangovers.”
“And some leftovers, I’m hopeful,” the sergeant said as the wagon came level with the most likely point of a route down into the valley. He licked dry, cracked lips, savoring the prospect of hard liquor after a long period of enforced abstention, “How you figure to play it, Captain?”
“Cool, unless they try to warm it up,” Hedges answered, nodding for Forrest to steer the wagon down the gradient.
Douglas rested two Spencers across the seat between Forrest and Hedges. “In case there’s an unexpected change in the weather,” he said as the sergeant glanced down at him.
The slope was not particularly steep, but the loose shale offered little traction to the iron wheel rims and the wagon slid rather than rolled down, the team straining to keep ahead of the slithering monster at their backs. To the men aboard, the noise of their progress sounded like a major rock fall. But the house was at least a mile away and the intervening rows of trees acted as a sound screen.
“We riding all the way in?” Forrest asked as he spotted an opening in the boundary-marking trees and steered the team through, on to one of the tracks between two fields.
“We have to get out fast, I ain’t going to set up any records on my bum leg,” Hedges pointed out
Forrest turned to look at the Captain and showed him a cruel grin, his lips forced into such thin lines they almost disappeared. “We got room for a cripple, so long as he keeps calling the shots right,” he rasped.
The leading arc of the sun crested the eastern ridge of the valley, adding reflected light to the glitter in the sergeant’s eyes. It glistened on the white tips of the black stubble which was forested on the lower halves of both men’s faces.
“Still waiting for the right time, sergeant?” Hedges asked, painting his features with his own brand of curled-lipped, narrow-eyed hate.
“Ain’t natural for a man to be right all the time,” Forrest answered. “You gotta make a wrong move sometime, and that’ll be my time.”
They lapsed into a brittle silence, each man aware that when the showdown came, death was a foregone conclusion: and that it might well be his own death.
“I smell smoke,” Rhett exclaimed softly.
The two men on the seat looked ahead and saw the gray and blue of wood smoke smudging the clear sky above the tree tops. A few moments later the wagon cleared a gap and hooves and wheels changed their note as they crossed the gravel of a driveway that curved around the lawn towards the brick and wood house. The fire was under a chimney at the rear of the house.
“Reckon, somebody’s starting to fix the ham and eggs,” Forrest said.
“Tell ’em not to bother,” Scott growled. I’m so hungry I’d eat mine raw.”
Hedges spun around on the seat and thrust his head through the canvas flaps. “Rhett stays in the wagon - close to the Gatling,” he rasped, “The rest of you are wearing gray, so act like Rebs unless they try to call our bluff.”
“Then?” Seward wanted to know excitedly.
Hedges showed him a grin that didn’t reach his cold eyes. “Then, I figure you’ll know what to do,” he answered.
“And how!” Seward exclaimed, slapping the stock of his Spencer.
The wagon was now on the area of gravel immediately in front of the gleaming white porch and Hedges made a circular motion with his index finger, indicating that Forrest should turn the team so that the Gatling gun covered the big, brass-studded front door.
Close up, apart from the smoke, the house looked as desolate as it had from the west side of the valley. But Hedges ignored the impression He was a farm boy turned into a man of war. Back on the farmstead in Iowa he had been used to rising before dawn and since becoming a soldier the difference between night and day had often become a blurred insignificance. But he knew the kind of people living in a mansion like this had to be rich — and the rich could afford to let the sun wake many hours before they did.
“Beautiful – I can smell coffee,” Rhett said ecstatically as the others climbed down from the wagon.
“It don’t cover the stink of fear on you,” Forrest hissed back at the New Englander as Hedges led the way up on to the porch and thudded the brass lion’s head knocker against the plate.
Schooled by the practice of war into the theories of tactics, the troopers split into two groups, flanking the doorway. Their revolvers were bolstered and they held the rifles casually in the crooks of their arms. But the tautness of the stubbled skin of their faces and the quick movement of eyes in sockets betrayed their readiness for instant action.
The door opened and a gray-haired old man with a stooped body looked out at them, screwing up his eyes against morning sunlight and fumbling in his vest pocket.
“Soldiers?” he posed, found a pair of wire-framed eyeglasses and put them on. He nodded. “Yes, soldiers.”
“Confe
derates,” Seward confirmed, and scowled as Forrest glared at him.
“General Bragg’s compliments to the owner of the house,” Hedges rapped out, stepping over the threshold and driving the old man into retreat. I’d like to see him.”
The troopers crowded in behind the Captain, entering a broad, lavishly decorated hallway with paneled walls hung with mirrors and oil paintings and an elegant curve of stairway at the far end.
“Mr. Crane? You wish to speak to Mr. Crane?” The old man glanced towards the stairway. “Mr. Crane is sleeping.”
“So go and wake him!” Hedges snapped. “We’ll wait in the kitchen. It’s been a long, hungry ride from Chattanooga.”
The old man pumped his head in understanding and pointed to a door beneath the stairway as he started up the curving flight. “I’ll tell Mr. Crane.”
“It ought to give him a lift,” Forrest muttered as he joined the other troopers in following Hedges under the stairs and into the warm, aromatic kitchen.
Three pots were bubbling and giving off coffee-scented steam. A moon faced woman in middle years with an enormous bosom threatening to pop the buttons of her bodice was attending to four shallow pans in which thick slices of ham were sizzling.
“I been killed,” Scott whispered. “I been killed and sent to heaven.”
“That dame don’t look like no angel to me,” Bell pointed out.
“You can have the kind that play harps,” Scott retorted. “Give me one that can cook.”
The fat woman looked at the intruders with a blank, unintelligent stare and returned to her chore. She had reached a certain stage in a certain kind of life when nothing could surprise her anymore.
“Let’s eat,” Hedges instructed, taking a plate from the rack and a fork from an open drawer. He speared a slice of ham from a pan and crossed to pour himself a mug of coffee.
The troopers jostled each other to be next in line, then wolfed down the meat in order not to miss out on a second helping. The woman, her impassiveness unshakable, simply went into a large larder and returned with another pile of slices to replace those taken from the pan.
Vengeance Is Black Page 3