by John Jakes
Booth had escaped. Stanton proclaimed that the whole South must be prosecuted. Even Grant spoke of retaliatory measures of extreme rigor. In preparation for the state funeral on Wednesday, dry-goods stores quickly fashioned black-wrapped batons, sable sashes, ebony rosettes. Portraits of the slain President appeared in windows. Groups of stunned, grieving Negroes appeared on street corners. Paroled Confederate prisoners turned their coats inside out or threw them away for fear of being lynched.
Early on Tuesday, using a special pass provided by Sam Stout, Virgilia was able to cut into the double line of waiting mourners, as many diplomats and public officials were doing. Only in that way could she be assured of getting into the East Room of the mansion.
The slow-shuffling lines were extremely long. A guard told her an estimated fifteen thousand waited outside. Most would be disappointed when night came. The President was to lie in state this day only.
Carpenters had built a catafalque now covered in black silk. The silk matched the outside of the white-lined canopy high above the casket, which was embossed with silver stars and shamrocks and bedecked with silver ropes and tassels. A silver plate mounted on a shield read:
Abraham Lincoln
Sixteenth President of the United States
Born Feb. 12, 1809
Died April 15, 1865
Black drapes, windings, covers, concealed nearly every touch of color normally visible in the room. White cloth hid the glass of every black-edged mirror. Waiting her turn on black-painted steps which led up to the right side of the casket, Virgilia tugged at one black mitten, then the other, and smoothed her mourning dress. Finally her turn came. She stepped past the army officer at rigid attention at the end of the coffin—another guarded the opposite end—and gazed down at Abraham Lincoln.
Not even the techniques and cosmetics of the mortician could do much to improve his crude, wasted look. She had come here more out of curiosity than anything else, and she studied the corpse with half-lidded eyes. He had been too lenient and forgiving. Too much of a threat to the high purpose of men such as Sam and Thad Stevens.
The newly sworn President, Andrew Johnson, would pose no similar threat. Sam dismissed him as a dull-witted bumpkin. Along with Ben Wade and Congressman Dawes, Sam had already paid a courtesy call on Johnson. He reported to Virgilia that Wade, through pointed indirection, had left no doubt about what he and legislators of like mind expected of the new man.
“Mr. Johnson, I thank God you’re here,” Wade had said. “Lincoln had too much of the milk of human kindness to deal with these damned rebels. Now they’ll be dealt with according to their deserts.”
As the hunt for Wilkes Booth went on, even moderate politicians and newspapers throughout the North were blaming the entire South for the deed. Hinting at a Davis-inspired conspiracy. Demanding vengeance, Sam reported with glee. “By giving his life, Virgilia, our direst philosophical foe has been of infinite aid to our cause.”
The conspiracy theory intrigued Virgilia. But she skewed her version slightly. Booth’s murder ring had included others; a hulk named Payne or Paine had broken into Secretary Seward’s house on the same night Lincoln was shot and would have stabbed Seward to death had not the secretary’s son and a male nurse intervened. Others were said to be involved as well. Was Booth the sole motivator of the group? Suppose some radical Republican had inspired and encouraged him, hoping to produce the very result that had now occurred—a renewed cry for Southern blood?
It certainly wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility, though she supposed the truth of it would never be known. Still, the truth mattered less than what had happened these past couple of days. Ordinary citizens were demanding the same harsh measures men such as Sam had long advocated.
“Madam? You will have to move on. Many others are waiting.”
The usher spoke from the East Room floor, near some chairs hastily painted black and set out for the hacks from the press. The usher’s whisper focused attention on Virgilia, embarrassing her. She almost called him a name. But this was no place to create a scene.
Besides, she felt good. The sight of the dead Chief Executive was not at all depressing. The program of Sam’s group could now be carried forward with less obstruction. The great majority, converted overnight by a bullet, wanted that program. Virgilia gave the usher a scathing look and walked decorously to the steps leading down. She glanced back once and fought to suppress a smile.
Sam was right. In death, the ugly prairie lawyer served his country far better than he ever had in life. His murder was a blessing.
133
HUNTOON WANTED TO DIE. At least once daily, he was positive he would within the hour. He had lost something like twenty-five pounds and all his fervor. Would he never sleep in a regular bed again? Eat food cooked on a stove? Be able to relieve himself in privacy?
Each section of the long road from St. Louis had had its own distinctive frights and travails. On the journey in the overland coach, they had been accompanied and guarded more than half the way by a Union cavalry detachment. The Plains Indians were raiding, they were told.
Huntoon quaked when informed of that. Powell, on the other hand, seemed stimulated to broaden his performance as the loyal, fearless Kentuckian. Huntoon’s loathing grew.
Virginia City, with its looming mountains, belching smokestacks, ruffian miners, was as strange and threatening as China or the steppes. He and Powell had to load the bullion at night at the refinery, laying the half-inch-thick tapered ingots in rows, according to a plan Powell had sketched. The ingots measured five by three inches. Each wagon bed carried ninety of them, for a total weight of around four hundred and fifty pounds. The worth at the prevailing price of twenty dollars and sixty-seven cents an ounce was just short of one hundred fifty thousand dollars. The arrangement and value of the gold loaded in the second wagon was identical.
“This is but the first shipment,” Powell reminded him. “There’ll be more, though not right away. The lode’s rich, but most laymen don’t appreciate the time and the immense ore tonnage needed to produce this much bullion. I’ve been readying this one shipment for over a year. But I was working in secret, through couriers, over a long distance. It will go faster from now on.”
Because of the added weight, the underside of each wagon had been reinforced with special braces. After wooden wedges were placed inside to keep the ingots from shifting, the two men nailed a false floor into each wagon, covering them with dirty blankets. On top of the blankets, boxes and barrels of provisions as well as some crates of Spencer rifles were loaded next day. A six-horse hitch was required to pull each wagon.
Powell then hired his teamsters—two as regular drivers, a third as relief man. They were all thuggish, illiterate young fellows who spoke little and collectively carried a total of seven weapons. This trio constantly intimidated Huntoon with beetling stares and smirks. They would receive a hundred dollars apiece at the end of the trip. The guide, even cruder and more brutish, would be paid double that sum.
The journey had its own horrors: insects, bad water, freezing nights as they climbed to the Sierra passes, then descended to hazy, empty valleys. Huntoon suffered sneezes and ague for a week.
Bearing south through what the guide assured them was California, they were soon broiling and quarreling over the need to drink sparingly from the water casks while they crossed a frightful stretch of desert. Huntoon became so dizzy from the heat he was barely able to reply coherently when anyone spoke to him.
Eventually they turned southeast, whereupon Powell’s hired men started to bedevil Huntoon with tales of Indian signs, which he, of course, could never see. Powell eavesdropped on some of these recitations with a straight face, suppressing amusement bordering on the hysterical. Huntoon took note of Powell’s grave expression and concluded that the warnings were true—which terrified him even more.
He lost track of the days. Was it early May or the last of April? Was there really a Confederacy? A Richmond, a Charleston—an Ashton? H
e doubted it with increasing frequency as they pushed deeper into sinister mountains and arid, windblown valleys where strange, thorny vegetation grew.
The guide had quickly sensed Huntoon’s weakness and joined in to exploit it for the sake of relieving the boredom. Banque Collins was about forty, a brawny Scot with mustaches he had let grow down long and pointed, like those of some of the Chinese on the Comstock. His first name had been bestowed by his father, an itinerant actor born in Glasgow, trained in London, and buried, penniless, in the pueblo of Los Angeles. Collins didn’t know his mother’s name.
He did know he enjoyed making the bespectacled Southron squirm. Collins’s employer, Powell, was something of a hard case. Collins thought him demented but not to be trifled with. Huntoon, however, was born for bullying.
Nearly every day, he would say pathetically, “Where are we?” To which Collins liked to reply, after a number of suitable obscenities to register his annoyance, “Aren’t you tired of asking that question, laddie? I am tired of answering it, for we’re exactly where we were yesterday and last week and two weeks previous. On the trail to bonny Santa Fe. And that’s that.”
And away he would gallop, up alongside the lumbering wagons, leaving Huntoon on foot, swallowing dust.
Bonny, did he say? Sweet Christ, there was nothing bonny about this part of America. Why had Powell chosen it? Why had the Confederacy tried to occupy it? It was as forlorn as the moon, and full of menace. The teamsters delighted in warning him to watch out for coral and giant bull snakes—they neglected to mention the latter were harmless—or tarantulas and the allegedly venomous vinegarroons. “What the greasers call sun spiders. Real poison, those suckers.” Another lie.
Huntoon was uninterested in the occasional sight of hairy buffalo, prairie-dog towns, orioles and hummingbirds and swooping duck hawks, the taste of roasted piñon nuts or the fact that crushed yucca root made excellent suds for washing. “Thass why they call it soapweed down this way, reb.”
He hated all the verbal jabbing, but he was even more frightened when, one day, it stopped. The teamsters kept their eyes on the jagged horizon. Collins began to deluge Huntoon with warnings about red Indians, and not entirely for sport. He wanted to exorcise some of his own mounting worry.
“We’re in the country of the Apaches now. Fiercest warriors God ever made—though some claim it was Satan who whelped them. Got no respect whatsoever for flesh, be it human or horse. The braves ride their animals till they get hungry, then they eat ’em. Makes no difference in their fighting—they always do that on foot. They like to sneak up, and it doesn’t endanger them all that much. In a pinch, many an Apache lad can outrun a mustang.”
“Do—” Huntoon gulped “—do you think there are Apaches close by, Collins?”
“Aye. A party from the Jicarilla tribe, if I read the sign properly. They’re out there somewhere right now, watching.”
“But surely we have enough guns to frighten them off—?”
“Nothing frightens off the Apaches, laddie. They go out of their way to plague white men and each other. Year or two ago, some of your Southron soldier boys rode into this country. The Apaches made a treaty of friendship at Fort Stanton, then endorsed it by ambushing and massacring a party of sixteen. They don’t take sides, though—altogether neutral, they are. In a Union settlement they killed forty-six, including youngsters.”
“Stop telling me that kind of thing,” Huntoon protested. “What good does it do?”
“It prepares you for what we may run into. If we have bad luck and the Jicarilla decide to do more than watch, you’ll have to fight like the rest of us.” He sniffed. “Doesn’t appear to me that you’ve ever done much fighting. But you’ll learn fast, laddie. Mighty fast if you like living.”
Taunting Huntoon with a laugh more like a dog’s bark, he booted his horse forward toward the first six-horse hitch.
After years in the Southwest, Collins had adopted many Indian ways and devices. He didn’t ride with a saddle, only a soft ornamented pad of supple hide stuffed with grass and buffalo hair. His pony had a war bridle: the rope of braided buffalo hair tied around the animal’s lower jaw was the bit, the ends of the rope the reins. Collins had lived with a squaw wife for a while. Despite all this, he hated red men, the lot of them, and now began to regret hiring on with this crowd.
One possibility of profit offset the danger. Banquo Collins knew the two wagons contained something besides guns and provisions. Powell hadn’t told him so, of course. But he suspected from the moment he saw the six powerful horses straining against the traces of the first wagon back in Virginia City. He confirmed the suspicion by discovering the special cross-bracing on the underside of both wagons. The extra weight was not visible, but it was there.
How much precious metal the wagons carried, he didn’t know. But it had to be a goodly amount. Gold bullion, probably. As to its purpose, its ultimate use, he presumed that was Powell’s secret. Maybe it had a connection with the Confederate cause, for which the man was openly keen. All the Southrons Collins had met were fanatics of one sort or another.
The secret cargo prodded him to prepare for various eventualities, for he did fear they were being followed. Had been for three days. Or at least that was when Collins first observed the sign, which he pointed out to no one else until he was sure he was right about it.
He estimated the number of Jicarilla as between ten and twenty. In the event of a hot brush with them, Collins intended to behave like the glass snake, a natural oddity he had discovered down this way. The glass snake was not a snake at all but a legless lizard with the ability to shake off part of its tail when attacked. The tail kept twitching after it separated from the body, and while the attacker was being distracted by the sight, the creature writhed away to safety.
Collins was not only determined to escape with his skin and his hair but with part of the gold. He certainly couldn’t get away with several hundred pounds of it, but even a little would allow him to live handsomely and have fun for a while.
Aye, he would play the glass snake, all right. Having of course made sure, either by observing the Apaches at work or by taking action himself, that Mr. Powell and the lawyer were in no state to tell tales of his thievery, ever.
That evening they encamped among tall standing rocks near a deep gully, part of a line of eroded breaks above a stream they must ford. Collins assured Powell of an easy descent to be found three miles due south, but he preferred this campsite because of the natural fortifications the rocks provided.
“Better here tonight than in the open.”
“You think the Apaches are close?”
“I’m certain of it.”
“How much longer to reach Santa Fe? Three days?”
“Or a wee bit more.” Collins never risked a lie with Powell. The man’s eyes and barely controlled tension warned against it. “Now, sir, I suggest we build a fire and stay close to it. If you take a stroll, make sure it isn’t far.”
“All right.”
“I must go ha’ my dinner now.”
“And we’ll have ours.”
Powell, Huntoon, and the teamsters ate biscuits and jerky, both of which helped relieve the boredom because it took so much time to soften the food with chewing. Collins preferred his own fare, pit-roasted pieces of mescal, an Apache delicacy of which Powell wanted no part.
Powell rubbed a slim hand over his hair. It felt dry, scratchy. He had run out of pomade weeks ago. He disliked hats. The result was more and more gray apparent. He must resemble a scarecrow. An old one, at that. Would Ashton laugh, he wondered. He imagined her naked as he leaned against a wagon wheel.
Huntoon rose, his apologetic expression explaining the reason. He stepped behind a rock. Two teamsters snickered at the sound of water.
Three days to Santa Fe. Apache in the vicinity. Powell decided he had better wait no longer. Huntoon had been useful, performing menial chores and dutifully twitching each time Powell reminded him that no matter how onerous his task,
he must carry it out to prove his mettle. The stupid cuckold had done it, too.
Twilight came on rapidly in this craggy, lonesome land, which resembled nothing Lamar Powell had ever seen. He found it magically beautiful if taken on its own terms. As a teamster stood, stretched, and rubbed his rump, Powell left the fire and threaded through the stones to the gully rim, where he looked down. The gully bottom was already hidden in cool black shadow.
He gazed east, toward clouds that picked up the fiery light slanting from the opposite direction. Eastward, Ashton was waiting. He was disarmed and amazed to realize how much he missed her. In his own way, he loved her. She was intensely physical and warm, something her pitiful husband undoubtedly hadn’t appreciated during his short span on earth. She would be an ideal first lady for the new state he would rule and guard from harm for the rest of his life.
He had planned the first steps months ago. Locate an appropriate site, near Santa Fe but not too near. Hire workers to erect a small ranch house and sink a well. Find some Confederate sympathizer to travel into Texas, spreading the word—rallying the disaffected soldiers, who, if not already paroled after a surrender, soon would be.
At first they would ride to Santa Fe singly or in pairs. But before the year was out, they’d be arriving by platoons and companies, shaking the earth with the sound of their coming. He would devise a new flag for them to carry against potential enemies, and write a proclamation establishing the new government on an equal basis with that of mongrelized Washington and all the nations of Europe.
It would be convenient to employ Huntoon as his first herald in Texas, but Ashton made it impossible. Powell meant to live with her from the moment they were reunited. Therefore—
A contented sigh signaled his decision.
Powell shivered; the evening air was cooling rapidly. Tonight was not only suitable; it was ideal, he thought, gazing east. He felt close to Ashton all at once.
Perhaps she, too, was growing excited as he drew near. He had sent a letter from Virginia City, which he presumed she had received by now; the mail surely traveled faster than his overburdened wagons. In the letter, he had described the contents of the wagons, their probable route of travel and approximate timetable. Was she poring over his words at this moment, thinking of the two of them romping on sheets of presidential satin? Delightful vision—