by Zina Abbott
The two walked with Jubilee and left the colt to meet his grandsire and join him grazing the field. “I’ll have to do something so we all can eat. First, I’d like to get hobbles on these two.”
“Yes, suh. When you done, you come to the house.”
Eustace returned to the yard behind the house. One of the wooden dining chairs with an upholstered seat stood in the yard under the tree. One of the arms had been broken off, and the cross support for the two legs on the same side had been replaced by a limb shaped to fit. Next to it, he saw one of his mother’s side tables from her parlor. Other than a gash across the surface, it remained in fairly good condition. He watched as the old cook, Janus’s wife, crossed the yard carrying a bowl and a spoon in her hand, and a cloth draped across her arm.
Shifting the bowl so it balanced against the front of her hip, she tossed the cloth on the table and, one-handed, straightened it flat. After she set the bowl and spoon on the table, she bowed. “Welcome home, massah. I’d serve you indoors, but there’s not much left inside. The Yankees…”
Eustace waved a hand to stop her explanation. He had seen enough in recent months, he needed no further details to know most of what the house contained had been vandalized. “Thank you, Minerva. Like I told Janus, you’re free now, so there’ll be no calling me master anymore. Mr. Cantrell or Eustace will be fine. Please get dinner for you and Janus and find a place in the shade to sit. I’d like to talk to both of you. I need to find out where things stand around here.”
Minerva’s eyes widened. “Yes, Mr. Cantrell.” She rolled her eyeballs until her gaze fell on her husband. Upon seeing his nod, she returned to the cook shack next to the back door of the main house.
Janus brought a stool to the shady side of the stairs leading to the back door of the main house.
Minerva returned with two smaller bowls. She handed one to Janus and held the other as she sat on the second stair from the bottom that remained in the shade. “Sorry I couldn’t do better, suh.”
“This will be fine, Minerva. Believe me, this food looks like a feast compared to some of the victuals I’ve eaten.” Some days, there were no meals at all. “More than once, I’ve missed your cooking.”
“Tha-Thank you, Mr. Cantrell.”
Eustace picked up his spoon and stared at his bowl. Minerva had fixed grits with some kind of greens. If his nose did not deceive him, she had added a little fatback—certainly not the type of meal he would have been served before the war. He filled his spoon and, once the food was in his mouth, he closed his eyes, leaned back, and held the gruel on his tongue. He savored both the flavor and consistency.
My mother would still insist on saying grace over the meal, no matter how simple. Eustace could not bring himself to do it. He knew of many men who claimed their faith in God kept them going during the war. However, after he left home to fight for the Confederacy, especially after hearing of the death of his last close living relative, his great-uncle on his mother’s side that he put in charge of his plantation, something within him died.
Halfway through his bowl, Eustace’s stomach already ached with fullness. He set the bowl on the table and turned to Janus. “I need to know, Janus, where things stand with the plantation. I see no one around but you two. The rest all leave?”
Janus glanced at Minerva and, turning back to Eustace, nodded. “Yes, suh. Abner’s second boy, he struck out early, soon as he heard of Mr. Lincoln’s proclamation. We don’t know what happened to him, seeing there was still a large Southern army between here and the Northern states. Abner, now, he got uppity once your uncle died. I told him, whether he free or not, he got to eat, and food don’t grow itself. He and his waited until the Yankees come through before he left. The lieutenant in charge, he tell Abner he don’t have to stay here and work, they free, but they on their own. The Army only got room for young fighting men. My two boys go north, hoping to join the Army. Juno, she jumped the broom with Abner’s second oldest a couple years back, so she gone with Abner and them.” A wide smile appeared on Janus’s face. “Juno give us a grandbaby, a girl. Call her Junie, after her mama.”
“Congratulations.” Eustace forced a smile, even though his heart was not in it. “That explains why I haven’t seen anything planted. I couldn’t see much of the orchard. Did it survive, or did the Yankees destroy that, too?”
Worry lines creasing his face, Janus squirmed on his stool. “They set fire to it. Of course, it was already picked. Abner and them, they dried what they took and most their portion went with them. Minerva and I got what we could and dried it best we could. Yankees took some but, since no one here but slaves, didn’t take much. Peaches we dried about gone now. There’s some trees survived, about a third. They won’t give you much of a cash crop.”
“And the house? What will I find inside? If this chair you brought out for me is any indication, I suspect not much.”
Janus dropped his gaze to the ground and shook his head. “No, suh. Yankees come inside and took anything of value they could carry. Then Abner’s youngest boy goes and shoots off his mouth, telling them you an officer in the Confederate Army. They don’t figure no Johnny Reb officer deserves consideration, no suh. They broke most of the furniture, slit the beds wide open—it was a terrible mess. They was about to fire the place until the lieutenant stopped them. Minerva and me, we cleaned up best we could. But, inside, you won’t find much left worth keeping.”
“Might any seed be left?”
“Just a small sack each of corn and oats, suh. Abner, now, they let him take some. The Yankees took the rest.”
What he gathered after what he had seen since he entered his property, and from what Janus just told him, was that he had very little of anything to work with as far as coming up with a cash crop. He no longer had a stable of horses he needed to feed. The question was, did anyone, anywhere, own enough horses he could sell them feed at a good price—however much two small sacks of seed might grow?
“Janus, why didn’t you and Minerva go with your sons? Why did you decide to stay?”
Once again, the old couple glanced at each other. Minerva looked down to study her bowl and allowed Janus to speak for them both.
“Well, suh, our sons couldn’t join up with the Army if they had us tagging along to worry about. And, as much as we miss Juno and the grandbaby, we couldn’t see our way going with Abner and them. We decided this our home, we stay here until someone says we need to go.” He paused, and his voice dropped in volume. “We hoping you won’t tell us we need to be going.”
Eustace shook his head. “No, you don’t have to leave. I can’t promise I can provide for you like I once did. You might need to get by the best you can. If it gets bad here, and your sons ask you to go with them, you should consider it. Until then, you can stay.”
“We been getting by best we can these past years, suh. Guess we’ll continue doing so. What about you?”
The sigh Eustace released seemed to last forever. “I don’t know, Janus. After my dinner settles, I’ll check on the horses and walk around the land. They took our Enfields but left us our sidearms and horses so we could go home and plant crops. If the land looks hopeful, that’s what I will do.”
Minerva sat up straight. Her eyes wide once more and a questioning expression on her face, she turned to her husband.
Janus scrunched his eyes. “You mean, work the fields like what Abner and his used to do?”
“Yes, Janus. I can no longer afford to be a proud plantation owner who lets others do the back-breaking labor. If you and Minerva are willing to continue doing what you are doing, I’ll get somewhat of a crop in and then go look for work. I’ll need cash money to pay taxes.” He focused on Janus. “I cannot thank you enough for saving Jubilee. As much as I hate the idea, I might have to sell him in order to keep the place—to help us all get by. I’ll get a better price for him than I will Brigadier. With rest and good feed, that old warhorse will come back some. Unfortunately, he’s showing his age. He won’t like being hi
tched to a wagon, but he’ll have to learn. He’ll be the last to go.”
“What about the house, suh?”
“I’ve lived without a house these past four years. Fixing that up can wait.”
Janus nodded. “You know, suh. The mistress’ uncle, while he still alive, he had me help him bury the good china and silver belonging to the mistress. He found a trunk and put some of her nice lacework in there, too, wrapped it all in oilcloth. It all under the garden. Abner and his bunch, we didn’t tell them nothing about it, so it didn’t get dug up to go with him. Only Minerva and me know.”
Eustace smirked and shook his head. “You mean the Yankees didn’t dig up the garden looking for buried treasure? By the end of the war, a lot of us knew folks buried things in their gardens.”
Janus shook his head. “Oh, they done some digging, suh. All they done was loosen the soil for a winter garden. Look.” He pointed toward the kitchen garden planted with a variety of spring and summer vegetables. “Notice anything different?”
Eustace twisted in his chair and studied the garden. It took him a several seconds to realize what had changed. “You moved the garden plot closer to the kitchen shack. It used to be over there.” He pointed to a fairly level piece of ground with overgrown grass dotted with small bushes, berry vines, and rusted, rotting farm implements.
“Yes, suh. I can show you the three bushes that mark the place where they buried. I know you don’t want to part with your mama’s special things. Be nice to save them for a wife and children. But worse come to worse…”
Eustace rolled his tongue over his front teeth. Wife and children. I’m too dead inside to do a woman any good as a husband. “Thank you, Janus. I’ll probably let them go before I do Jubilee.” He scrunched his eyes shut and rubbed the fingers and thumb of his left hand down his face on either side of his mouth. “I’ll do what I can with what we still have around here first. One thing I do know is this—no one in the South has any money to speak of. If I’m to get a decent price for either the horses or my mother’s things, I’ll have to take them somewhere people have money.”
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Chapter 2
~o0o~
Atchison, Kansas
August 12, 1865
E ustace clenched his back teeth as he untied Jubilee’s lead from the post. Ben Holladay might be the biggest and most successful freighter and stagecoach operator west of the Mississippi, but he certainly had been abrupt in his dealings with Eustace—a set-down that still smarted. It evidently had not done him much good to use the sale of part of his mother’s china and silver service to buy new clothes, including a decent set for conducting business as a gentleman. Unlike what he was used to, the suit he bought was not custom-made by a tailor. It was store-bought and altered by a seamstress in Kansas City.
In Missouri, no one had batted an eye at his Southern accent. Here in Atchison, a city only fifty miles to the north but on the Union-supporting Kansas side of the river, he suspected that, more than his appearance, clothes, or Jubilee himself, his Georgia accent accounted for Mr. Holladay deciding against him. Holladay not only refused to consider buying the colt, even though Eustace assured him the horse was broken to both the saddle and a harness, he declined to consider Eustace as an employee in any capacity. Evidently, far more war veterans now looked for work than there were decent-paying jobs. Since the Holladay Overland Mail and Express company held the mail contract to San Francisco and much of the West, and it was the largest and most established of the stagecoach lines, men looking for work came to his company first.
Eustace rode to the stockyard for Holladay’s stagecoach business. As he studied the livestock in the corral, he understood better part of the owner’s reluctance to take Jubilee by himself. He did see matched pairs—enough matches among both the horses and mules—to appreciate the man’s claim that he bought only the best and he drove them as matched teams. If Eustace had more than Jubilee—if those who had stolen his horses for the war had left them on his property—he might have had a matched team of four to sell. Unfortunately, he was lucky to still have Brigadier and Jubilee.
An overheard bit of conversation while he was in Mr. Holladay’s office stuck with him. Evidently, another stagecoach company had raised the funds and was in the process of building a series of stations through Kansas. The eastern office was here in Atchison, an occurrence over which Ben Holladay had expressed his displeasure while speaking to someone on the other side of the partially-open office door. Instead of following the established route along the Platte River like Holladay’s freight wagons and coaches did, it intended to cut time off the trip between Atchison and Denver, Colorado, by following the Smoky Hill Trail through northern Kansas.
A few questions later, and Eustace tied up both horses in front of an unimposing building that housed the office of the division agent responsible for managing the eastern half of the Butterfield Overland Despatch stagecoach line. He was not inside very long before the agent returned outside with him and walked around Jubilee.
“A fine young colt. He’s too high-spirited to team up with most of the horses we’ve bought for the line so far. If we can work out a deal, I might be interested in him for myself.”
Eustace nodded. Finally, something is going right. “It would give me great pleasure to discuss it further, sir. He comes from quality stock.” He reached over and patted Brigadier’s withers. “This here is his grandsire. You can see the colt inherited good form.”
With his arms folded, the agent again eyed Jubilee. “Yes, I can see that.” He next turned his attention to the older horse and rubbed his hand down his right leg, pausing as he reached the scar where a Union cavalry sword slashed it. He walked around the back and again stroked his palm across the healed gash from a bullet wound. “I take it this horse saw battle with you, Mr. Cantrell.”
“Yes, sir. He and I fought our way through some serious scrapes. He’s given me good service.”
The agent nodded and lifted Brigadier’s lips to check his teeth. “He’s a little older than I like to consider for pulling a stagecoach.”
“I’m not ready to sell Brigadier yet, sir. If I do, where he would end up might depend on where I find work. I’ve heard the stage for your company is getting ready to run. Would you still have openings at any of the stations?”
The agent considered. “We still have a few openings. I’m fortunate in that most of my stations are in more settled land. We won’t have the problems with the hostile tribal people like those stations farther west. My only concern is –” The agent studied him. “You’re from the South, Mr. Cantrell. I personally have nothing against Southerners, mind you. Several of my friends gave their allegiance to the Confederacy. But if you took this horse with you when you enlisted, my guess is, you served as an officer.”
“Cavalry, sir. But, yes, I went in as a second lieutenant and came out a first.”
“The war is over, Mr. Cantrell, and it is time for us to rebuild. I’m reluctant to hire someone who might clash with those who supported the Union.”
Eustace tipped his head. “I understand, sir. However, no paying work to speak of exists in the South. I do not care to go north. I decided my best opportunities lay in the West.” He heaved a sigh and stared the agent in the eye. “I will not back down from a fight if someone challenges me, but I do not intend to continue fighting the war. I also have my own life to rebuild.” And my plantation, if I can keep the land out of the clutches of the Northern vultures.
“I see.” The agent scratched behind one ear and focused on Brigadier as if lost in thought. “Tell you what I’ll do, Mr. Cantrell. I don’t have any stationmaster positions open. You’d need a wife for that job, anyway, since we only hire families to run the home stations. However, if you are interested in a stock tender position, I will give you a try at my station in Ellsworth. I warn you, it doesn’t pay very much, but it does include room and board. Isaac Peterson is my manager out there
. His children are grown and out on their own, so it’s just him and his wife.”
Eustace suspected more was involved with the offer. “I’m not familiar with Ellsworth. What can you tell me about the town and the station?”
“Ellsworth is a fort, named after the lieutenant sent there to guard the military road as well as the Smoky Hill Trail, which is pretty much the road the Butterfield Overland Despatch uses. There’s not much of a town to speak of. A few years ago, before the fort was set up, more settlers in the area. The Cheyenne drove them off.” The man heaved a sigh. “It’s been pretty peaceful out there lately. However, a little over a year ago, the Cheyenne came through and stole stock from both the fort and the Kansas Stage Company that had a station at the old ranch out there.”
Eustace folded his arms and studied the agent. He was beginning to suspect why the man might hire him. “And you, sir, think perhaps these Cheyenne might attack your station?”
The man nodded. “They might. Mr. Peterson is a good man, but he’s old enough he didn’t fight in this last war. The two stock tenders I’ve hired for him are good farm boys but not old enough to have enlisted. The fort’s close by, but with the way Mr. Butterfield had the station built like a fortress, they’re more vulnerable to an attack than the B.O.D. is.” The agent’s gaze met that of Eustace. “Neither Isaac nor those boys have any experience dealing with an enemy attack, especially by people who use guerrilla tactics like the Indians do. I would like someone with battle experience out there. If you’re interested, the stock tender position at Ellsworth is yours.”
Eustace fought the sense of feeling insulted over being offered a job as a bottom-of-the-rung stock tender. Still, the job was paying work.
On the other hand, the B.O.D. agent offered him the job because of the special skills he could bring to the station. Yes, he knew guerrilla tactics. He fought many times using traditional battle methods. However, especially as the war wore on and he found himself with smaller groups of men, many times they resorted to the clandestine, surprise attack form of warfare. He did not understand the native mind, but he had a better chance going up against men who fought that way than someone who had only used a firearm to bring down game for the stewpot.