by John Jakes
About an hour later, with night settling, he examined his four-barrel Sharps to be certain it was fully loaded. He tucked the gun away inside his frock coat, yellowed by travel dust, and sought Huntoon at the smoky fire. Collins was napping against a boulder on the far side. Two of the hired men still squatted next to each other, chewing jerky. The third had gone to take the first turn at picket duty.
“James, my friend?” Powell said, touching his shoulder. Huntoon’s spectacles flashed with firelight as he turned.
“What is it?”
“Would you come for a short stroll? I have a matter to discuss.”
Pettish, Huntoon said, “Is it important?”
A charming smile. “I wouldn’t ask otherwise.”
“I’m infernally tired.”
A level stare, once more demanding that he prove his mettle. “Just five minutes. Then you can have a long rest.”
“Oh, all right.” Sounding like a cranky child, Huntoon wiped biscuit crumbs from the corners of his mouth. He had grown slovenly on the journey. Powell distastefully noted black dirt under the lawyer’s nails.
They moved off among the rocks as the fire crackled beneath the black sky. From the near distance came the cry of an animal, half yelp, half growl. Banquo Collins sat up instantly, raising the brim of his buckskin hat. One of the teamsters glanced at the guide.
“Mountain lion?”
“No, laddie. That animal has two legs.”
134
EARLIER THAT DAY, CHARLES rode north in the Carolina springtime, through green rolling land where bowers of azalea blew to and fro in the warm wind and wisteria bloomed in purple brilliance. He saw little except Gus.
He saw her in the face of a much older farm woman who gave him a dipper of water when he asked politely. He saw her in a cloud formation. He saw her on the backs of his eyelids when he tethered the mule and rested by a roadside tree.
In all the muddle and madness of the past four years, he was trying to find something of worth. She was all there was. His memory held scores of small, touching portraits of her racing across the grass to greet him, cooking in the kitchen, scrubbing his back in the zinc tub, bending to embrace him in bed.
He had found one thing of value in the war, and out of confusion and some stupid, contradictory sense of duty—the same duty still driving him along these unfamiliar dirt roads—he had thrown it away. The hurt and regret that followed the dawning realization were immense. His physical wound was healing nicely, but the other one—that never would.
While still in his home state, he had chanced upon a rural store on whose counter stood a glass jar containing four old, dry cigars. He had the remainder of one in his clenched teeth at this moment; he had smoked the first half last night. The other three protruded from the pocket of his cadet gray shirt.
He was riding in hot sunshine, the gypsy robe rolled and tied behind him. Suddenly he saw a mounted man crest the next rise in the road and come cantering in his direction. Alarm gripped him until he realized he was still in North Carolina, though damned if he knew where. And the emaciated horseman raising dust in the afternoon wore gray.
Charles reined in the mule and waited. Birds sang and wheeled over nearby meadows. The rider approached, slowing his mount while he took Charles’s measure and decided he was all right, though the man—an officer—still kept his hand near his side arm.
Charles chewed the cigar nervously, a glassy look in his eyes. The officer walked his skeletal roan closer and stopped.
“Colonel Courtney Talcott, First Light Artillery Regiment of North Carolina, at your service, sir. I gather from that shirt and your revolver that you’re a soldier?” He scrutinized the scrap of sword in Charles’s belt and his peculiar, dazed expression. The tone of the colonel’s question hinted at lingering doubt.
Almost as an afterthought, Charles muttered, “Yes, sir. Major Main, Hampton’s cavalry scouts. Where’s the army?”
“The Army of Northern Virginia?” Charles nodded. “Then you haven’t heard?”
“Heard what? I’ve been down on the Ashley, finding this remount.”
“General Lee requested terms from General Grant more than three weeks ago. At Appomattox Court House, in Virginia.”
Charles shook his head. “I didn’t know. I’ve been taking my time riding back there.”
“You certainly have,” Talcott replied, not hiding his disapproval. “You needn’t continue. The army has disbanded. The last I knew, General Johnston and his men were still in the field, though he, too, may have surrendered by now. If he hasn’t, he soon will. The war’s over.”
Silence. A tan female cardinal fussed in a bush when a jay swooped too near her nestlings. The artillery officer looked askance at Charles, who showed no emotion. The colonel said again, more emphatically, “Over.”
Charles blinked. Then he nodded. “I knew it would be. I just didn’t know when.” The officer scowled. “Thanks for the information.”
Frostily: “You’re welcome. I would turn around and go home if I were you, Major. There’s nothing more to be done in Virginia.”
Yes, there is.
The artilleryman cantered past, raising dust. He had no intention of riding beside the listless and slightly mad-eyed junior officer even for a few miles. The fellow had even forgotten to salute. Disgraceful.
The dust settled. Charles sat on his mule in the middle of the road, slumped, as the news sank in. It was official. They had lost. So much blood, suffering, effort, hope—wasted. For a few blindly wrathful moments, it made no difference that the cause was misbegotten. He hated every goddamn Yankee in creation.
Quickly, that passed. But to his surprise, the defeat hurt more than he would have expected, even though it was inevitable. He had known it was inevitable for at least a year. Seen portents, read prophecies, long before that. The horses slowly starving in Virginia. Articles in brown old newspapers about Southern governors defying Davis with his own sacred doctrine of states’ rights. A Union carbine that fired seven shots—
Feelings of relief and despair overwhelmed him. He plucked the fragment of the light cavalry saber from his belt and studied it. Suddenly, while light glanced off the stub of blade, his eyes brimmed with rage. A savage outward lash of his arm sent the metal cross whirling over the meadow, there to drop and vanish.
He knew the only course left to him if he were to stay remotely sane. He must ride on to Virginia and try to repair the damage done by his own foolishness. But first there was duty. Duty always came first. He had to make sure those at Mont Royal were not threatened by occupying troops or other dangers whose nature he couldn’t guess. He would cover the distance to the plantation much faster than he had when riding north. Then, the moment he was finished at home—Virginia.
He lifted the rein, turned the mule’s head and started him rapidly back the way they had come.
135
UNDER A BRILLIANT FULL moon, Huntoon and Powell reached the edge of the gully. Huntoon was glad to stop. His feet hurt. Powell slipped his right hand in his coat pocket.
Huntoon took off his spectacles, pinched up a bit of shirt bosom and polished one lens, then the other, saying finally, “What is it you want to discuss?”
With a cryptic, “Look down there,” Powell bobbed his head toward the gully bottom. Huntoon leaned forward, peered down. Powell pulled out the four-barrel Sharps and shot him in the back.
The lawyer uttered a short, gasping cry. He spun and reached for Powell’s lapel. Powell smacked him with his free hand. Huntoon’s spectacles flew off and sailed into the dark below.
Blinking like a newborn animal, Huntoon tried to focus his eyes on the man who had shot him. Pain blazing through his body, he understood the betrayal. It had been meant to happen on this journey. Planned from the start.
How stupidly naïve he had been. Of course he had suspected Ashton and Powell were lovers. For that reason he had mailed the letter to his Charleston law partner. But later, filled with renewed hope of regaining Ashton
’s affection through a display of courage, he had regretted the instructions in the letter. But he had done nothing to countermand them, always assuming there would be ample time later. And what he’d seen in St. Louis had prompted the second letter; the one he’d given her—
Now, as if he could somehow cancel both past and present pain by will and action, he seized Powell’s sleeve. Formed in his throat a plea for mercy and help. But the fiery wound and saliva rendered the words gibberish.
“Let go of me,” Powell said with disgust, and shot him a second time.
The ball went straight into Huntoon’s stomach, forcing him to step back. He stepped into space. Powell had a last brief vision of the poor fool’s wet eyes and mewling mouth. Then Huntoon dropped.
Powell blew into the barrels of his pistol and put it away. Over the strident barking of coyotes across the gully, he heard the clump and thump of Huntoon’s body striking, rebounding into space, falling and rebounding again.
Then it grew quiet. He could hear Collins and the others shouting to him. Was he all right?
With a smile, he stood regarding the high-riding moon. Despite the alarms from the campfire, he lingered a moment, studying the sky above the wind-scoured land and congratulating himself. He imagined Ashton’s dark-tipped breasts, his alone now, together with the wild thatch below. He felt youthful. Content. Refreshed.
Over a hump of rock behind him, a small, skinny man with stringy hair and a waist clout appeared, bathed in brilliant moonlight for a moment. In his right hand he held a buckskin-covered war club consisting of a wood handle connected by sinew to a round stone head. Powell didn’t see the man, or the second one, who rose into sight as the first man jumped.
He heard the man land and turned, terror clogging his throat. He clawed for the Sharps, but it caught in his pocket lining. The stone struck his head, one powerful and correctly aimed blow that broke open his left temple and killed him by the time he dropped to his knees, open-mouthed. Blood rushed down the left side of his face as he toppled forward.
The little Apache grinned and thrust the dripping club over his head, triumphant. His companion leaned down and landed beside him. Half a dozen others glided from behind other rocks, barefoot and light as dancers. All of them stole toward the voices and the fire glow.
The moment Banquo Collins heard the two shots and the teamsters started hollering, he quietly but quickly looked to his own gear. One of the teamsters said, “Who fired? ’Paches?”
“I doubt it. Sometimes they carry stolen pieces, but customarily it’s a club—or a wee knife to slit your throat. Also, they’ll not risk a fight and possible death at night. They believe conditions existing when they die follow them to the spirit world, and they want to rest forever in pleasant sunshine. Nothing to fear, see?”
Throughout the speech, Collins had finished gathering his gear. He tugged his hat over his eyes, turned and started away from the fire at a brisk walk. The teamster was too tense and stupid to compare the guide’s statements with reality: the full moon lent the landscape a clarity and whiteness almost like that of a wintry noonday.
But Collins’s rapid stride woke up the teamster. “Where the hell you goin’?” he yelled.
Head down, the guide kept moving. A few more steps, and he would have cover among the big—
“Collins, you yella dog, you come back here!”
Not a dog, a glass snake, he thought, recognizing hysteria in the voice and flinging himself sideways while reaching for his revolver. The wild shot fired by the teamster missed by two yards, pinging off rock. He didn’t waste a bullet of his own—he might need every one—but his leap threw him against a boulder, bruising his shoulder. Recovering, he lunged on.
After a few steps he turned again, glimpsed part of the clearing between tall stones. He saw the Jicarillas swarm out of the dark beyond the fire and surround the three hired men. Genuinely frightened, Collins fled, leaving behind the capering Apaches and the wild, sharp barks with which they imitated a coyote. The barks were not quite loud enough to drown out the screams.
Running, stumbling often, Collins drove himself until pain and shortness of breath forced him to slow down. His chest felt close to bursting. After a brief rest he pushed on until he found a place where he thought he could descend. Hand over bloodied hand, he went down the rock wall. He misjudged one hold and fell the last twenty feet, knocked nearly unconscious.
Dust-covered, his hands and face red from cuts and scrapes, he rested again, then lurched to the edge of the stream, which he crossed with a minimum of noise. Not that the Apaches would hear the splashes. They were whooping and yelling to celebrate.
Collins knew they would take the horses to ride awhile, then butcher. They would also break open the gun crates and take the Spencers. He wanted to learn the fate of the two heavy wagons, the object of the late Mr. Powell’s attention. The moment Collins saw the Apaches at the fire he knew they had disposed of his half-crazy employer and that worm of a lawyer. Neither man mattered to him, nor any of the teamsters. The teamsters were the tail of the glass snake.
What mattered was his own skin and, secondarily, the wagons. When he reached the shallows on the other side, he headed upstream until he located a good observation point in some twisted junipers. He was almost directly opposite the mouth of the deep gully near the campsite. The Apaches had added fresh wood to the fire. He saw flames leap above the tall rocks occasionally.
He was wrong about the source of the fire, he quickly discovered. It came from one of the wagons, which appeared between the rocks, pushed by fifteen or twenty angry Indians. The whole forward third of the wagon was burning. The front wheels blazed brightly.
The Apaches pushed it to the gully rim and with grunts and exclamations tipped it over. The emptied wagon—if indeed it was completely empty, which Collins doubted—stood perpendicular a moment, tailgate toward the moon. Then it dropped, the front end decorated with two swiftly spinning disks of fire, like the Catherine wheels he remembered dimly from a childhood visit to his pa’s home city of Glasgow.
Wood splintered. The fire separated into several gaudy sections, each of which hit a different place on the bottom. The Apaches disappeared, returning soon with the second burning wagon, which they also sent into the gully. Then they howled and shook their clubs and lances.
To Collins they sounded angry. Maybe they had expected some greater prize from the wagons than rifles and provisions. Maybe, he speculated, fingering an oozing gash in his left cheek, they didn’t know where to look. The heaviness of both wagons in relation to their appearance had long ago convinced him of the existence of false floors.
He would investigate, though he certainly wouldn’t remain here through the night to do so. He wanted no contact with the Jicarillas. It wasn’t wise to buck the odds. A man won a pot with a pair only once in a while.
Merely by surviving the night, he would win plenty. He would win the chance to come back to the gully. He doubted these particular Apaches would ever come back to it, and they would be gone by daylight. The debris in the gully was safe for a while; this was not a heavily traveled route. He could return weeks, even months later, and be confident of finding whatever the burned wagons had concealed. Especially if it were gold.
Banquo Collins didn’t know a lot about metallurgy, but he knew some. Gold could change its form. Mingle with other elements in the earth—that was gold ore. But it couldn’t be destroyed. So long as no one chanced on the gully or examined the ashes, any gold that was there would remain there, his for the claiming.
Feeling good, he slipped away from the junipers by the stream. The red light down in the gully faded as he limped east beneath the huge full moon, wetting his lips occasionally as he imagined himself a wealthy tourist swallowing raw oysters and bouncing a San Francisco whore on each knee.
136
HOMEBOUND SOLDIERS STOPPED OCCASIONALLY at Mont Royal, bringing the Mains vivid word pictures of the ruin in the state. These they traded for water from the well. Coope
r had no food to offer the travelers.
Although no partisan of the South, especially of the reasons it had waged war, Judith broke down and cried when she heard descriptions of the huge swathes of burned forest, trampled fields, looted homes that marked the passage of Sherman’s juggernaut.
Columbia was scorched earth, whole blocks gone except for a fragment of wall or an isolated chimney standing amid acres of rubble. The new statehouse, roofless and unfinished, had been spared, though its west wall had been marked forever by four Union cannonballs fired during a bombardment from Lexington Hills, across the Congaree.
Bands of blacks clogged the roads, the visitors said, free but generally baffled by their new status and, for the most part, starving. There was no food available for white or black, and many village storekeepers had closed and boarded up their places. Altogether, the picture was one of desolation.
Since the danger of crop damage from the spring rice birds was past, Cooper decided to plant three squares for a June crop, something his father always did in case the earlier planting was ruined by the birds or by a storm-summoned infusion of salty water. To help him prepare the ground with a few rusty, unbroken implements remaining, he had only Andy, Cicero—too old for the work—Jane, and his daughter. Judith helped when she wasn’t cooking or tending the small house built of raw pine.
Unused to physical labor, Cooper stumbled back to the house every night insect-bitten and hurting from his ankles to his neck. He would eat whatever tiny portion of food was offered, saying little, and go straight to his pallet. Often he moaned or exclaimed in his sleep.