The latter type of traveler most often had guards, hard-eyed men who carried rifles across their saddle horns. The single wagons were not so well protected. Now and then a man rode into town looking for word of a family who could be traced as far as the Red River but who then seemed to have disappeared.
The jayhawkers were suspected, though nothing could be proven. Wagons could easily be burned or driven across the state line into Texas and sold. There was a ready market for horses, oxen, and other livestock in Arkansas as well as in Texas. Valuables could be disposed of to unscrupulous storekeepers. Bodies could be buried anywhere in the deep woods or thrown down the nearest well if that was more convenient. The backwoods families, clannish and self-sufficient in their isolation, did not encourage anyone to ask questions, and prying around their barns and outbuildings could be downright dangerous.
They were not all so unsociable, however. It seemed that Aunt Em was related on her mother’s side of the family to many of the people who lived along the creeks and bayous and swamps in the deep woods. A cousin who lived some eight or nine miles from Grand Ecore on the opposite side of the Red River was marrying off his daughter, the last of five, and was throwing a party to celebrate. Aunt Em was obliged to go, even if she had not wanted to, which she certainly did. Friends and relatives would be coming from miles around; news and gossip would flow along with the homemade blackberry and possum grape wine and the corn whiskey. It would be a good time to catch up on what was happening with everyone. Sally Anne and young Peter would go, and of course everyone wanted to see Ranny. Lettie must come along, too — it would be a good opportunity for her to meet people, become acquainted.
Ranny did not go after all. During the morning, he had developed a headache so severe that it blurred his vision. Lettie had made a trip into town for Aunt Em to replenish his supply of laudanum and had met Johnny Reeden. Being at loose ends, Ranny’s friend had returned with her to Splendora for lunch. When he heard of the wedding, he had offered his services as escort at once. It was just the kind of frolic he enjoyed, he had said, and he had been wondering what he was going to do with himself for the evening.
The home where the wedding was to be held was a dogtrot house built of weathered cypress. It had a single large room on either side of the open central hall, a sleeping loft, and a porch at the front and back. There was no formal parlor since the beds the large family ordinarily slept in crowded both of the main rooms, leaving only an area around the fireplace where guests were invited to sit. One room had been completely cleared for the wedding ceremony and the dancing and feasting afterward, however, and spare chairs were lined up and down the dogtrot and against the wall of the porches to allow for the overflow.
The ceremony, a Protestant one, was simple. The bride wore a gown of blue lawn and carried a bouquet of white and red roses in a silver foil holder. The groom had on his best suit with a white satin waistcoat and a white satin bow pinned to his lapel. The preacher, a circuit rider in a black tailcoat and dusty boots, pronounced the words over them. There were a few tears, a great many hugs and kisses, and then a rush toward the refreshment table.
In deference to the preacher and many of the women who practiced temperance, there was no liquor in the fruit punch. It was available instead in the kitchen or out in the front yard where the men and boys were gathered around the buggies and wagons. There was also fried chicken, chicken and dumplings and chicken dressing, ham, corn fritters, fried apple pies, coconut pies, lemon pies, egg custards, hot rolls, and, of course, the wedding cake, a confection made with a frosting of coconut and many egg whites.
The food was served on plates that were taken away to be eaten wherever there was a place to sit, from the table in the outdoor kitchen to the front steps. There was a short period when few sounds were heard other than the clattering of knives and forks on plates. When the men were through eating, they put down their dishes where they finished with them. A squad of older women and young girls went around gathering them up and bearing them away to the kitchen to be washed. Then the men and a few older women cut off chews of tobacco or dipped snuff from bottles with a twig, while the unattached boys and girls and young married couples began to call for the fiddlers, harmonica players, and banjo pickers.
After the first waltz by the bride and groom, the music was lively and fast, being mainly reels and square dances, with now and then a polka or schottische. The dresses of the women were of calico and gingham, with here and there one of silk or satin, though most were homemade. The fragrances they wore were of roses and lilacs and apple blossoms, fresh and wholesome. The men smelled of bay rum and corn whiskey and the camphor that had kept the moths from their suits. The odors mingled in the warm night with the lingering aromas of the food. Faces were flushed and voices full of lilt and gaiety. Feet shuffled and stamped in the inevitable grit on the floor. The floorboards sprang up and down and the walls seemed to shake as the lines of dancers in the reels went down the dogtrot.
The children who had been brought were put down on pallets in the loft to sleep with a few older women to see that they didn’t fall down the stairs. The older men, the bearded patriarchs escaping from the noise, gathered on the back porch to spit their tobacco juice into the yard and to talk of crops and horses and politics and, in lowered voices, the night riders.
Lettie, strolling out for a breath of air, overheard a few words, enough to identify the subject if not the substance of what was being said. The moment she was seen, however, the men fell silent. She was not surprised; still, it was frustrating.
Finally the bride and groom left the party, driving away in a buggy with white ribbons tied to the struts and a collection of old shoes dragging behind. There was some talk of a charivari, a serenade with bells, banging pots, and other noisemakers, since it was well known that the couple was going no farther for the night than the house of the bride’s older sister. The mother of the bride squelched the idea with great firmness, however, and the fiddlers struck up another reel instead.
Aunt Em danced with the father of the bride while Lettie whirled with Johnny Reeden, but they did not linger long afterward. Ranny’s headaches were much too frequent these days; Aunt Em was worried about him and wanted to get back. They were among the first to leave, and the chorus of good-byes and urgings to hurry back was loud, following them for some distance down the drive.
Since the buggy was not big enough to hold all of them, they had fitted a wagon with rocking chairs for the excursion. They had a lantern with them to light the way, but the moon was so bright that it was not needed. The sand of the wheel tracks in the road gleamed as white as the satin bridal ribbons they had seen so much of that evening. Johnny, in the driver’s seat, sent the wagon along at a steady pace that fanned their faces with the breeze of their passage. Relaxed, full of good food, pleasantly tired, they were quiet as they rolled along.
Aunt Em, something of a matchmaker as Lettie was beginning to discover, had insisted that Lettie ride beside Johnny while she and Sally Anne sat in the back with Peter on a pallet between them in the wagon bed. Johnny’s attention, however, was on his driving. Lettie allowed her mind to wander, thinking of the friendliness and good nature of the people she had met that evening, of the hard life they were living and yet their obvious enjoyment of it. It did not, apparently, take a great deal to be happy. Why, then, could she not reach that state?
Still, everything was not as it seemed, she thought, remembering the fragment of talk she had overheard. Some of the men at the wedding were among those who donned sheets and rode about the countryside terrifying the freedmen and carpetbag officials.
“Tell me something,” she said to the man beside her after a time. “Is there really all that much secrecy about the night riders, or do men shut up like clams about them when I appear because I’m a woman?”
Johnny swung his head around sharply. He stared at her for a long moment before he grunted. “Depends on which night riders you mean.”
“What?”
“I suppose I meant the Knights, the ones in white sheets.”
“The jayhawkers wear sheets, too, when it suits them.”
“That must be rather confusing.”
“It’s intended to be,”
“Yes, I see,” Lettie said slowly.
“As to why they don’t talk in front of you, being a woman is reason enough, but it’s also because you’re a stranger.”
“And a Yankee?”
“That, too, though the other things strike a man first.”
“Thank you,” she said, her tone dry in response to the humor in his voice. “It’s easy to see what the jayhawkers are after, but don’t the Knights realize that the kind of violence they employ won’t work?”
“What else do you suggest?”
“The political system, of course.”
“They can only vote if they dishonor themselves, and even if they do that, the ballot box is controlled by the radical Republicans, who are backed by the military. Moreover, Congress, which is to say the rest of the United States, has refused to recognize the Democratic representatives elected before the Reconstruction laws went into effect, and there’s less hope to think they would recognize them now. What else is there?”
“Meetings, petitions?”
“Meetings are forbidden, petitions ignored, those, anyway, that ever make it to Washington.”
“But how is the whipping and hanging of Negroes going help?”
Johnny shook his head. “They are caught in the middle, poor devils. The radical Republicans are using them; the Knights see it as necessary to show them the consequences of allowing themselves to be used. The Negroes have also, let it be admitted, become the scapegoats for the frustration and blood lust of a few who spent five years killing men and now can’t accept the fact that the war is over and they were beaten.”
“It’s horrible.”
“Agreed. It’s also human.”
“I shudder to think so.”
“Human beings are capable of great good but also of great evil.”
“Whatever they do, the choice is theirs,” Lettie said firmly.
“Is it? Sometimes I wonder.”
There seemed to be no answer to that. Lettie let it go as she mulled over what he had said. The way he explained it, the motives of the Knights were a little more understandable, but she felt instinctively that they could not be right.
From behind her came a gentle snore. Turning, Lettie saw that Aunt Em had nodded off to sleep, but Sally Anne was still awake, staring out into the stretch of woods through which they were passing. Lettie, exchanging a smile with the other woman, faced forward again.
There was a strong smell of smoke in the air, but there were no houses near to account for it. Then, as they topped a small rise, the orange glow of what appeared to be a campfire could be seen around the next curve. It was hidden from sight for a moment as they rounded the bend, coming closer. The road straightened. Abruptly, they were upon it.
Lettie had a confused impression of an unhitched wagon with the canvas cover ripped open; of a man huddled next to a woman with a child in her arms beside it; of two men in sheets, their hoods thrown back to expose their faces; and of a clumsy, overweight priest on a donkey so swaybacked that the priest’s feet nearly touched the ground. The priest held a revolver in his hand.
“What the hell!” Johnny said under his breath, and began to saw on the reins, pulling the wagon up.
Their appearance around the curve seemed to galvanize the scene they had come across, for in that moment one of the men in sheets turned, springing for his horse, while the other swooped toward his gun, which lay on the ground.
“Halt!” the priest shouted. The report of his gun rang out, once, twice.
The man reaching for his gun pitched forward and lay still. The other screamed and cursed as he lurched against his saddle, but his foot was in the stirrup and his horse reared and plunged around, covering him from fire, before bolting into the night with the man clinging to the horn. The woman screamed and moaned, cradling her crying baby between her husband and herself while he enclosed them in his arms, screening them with his body. The donkey brayed and kicked. The priest threw one long leg up and over the animal’s head, kicked free of his stirrups, and sprang to the ground, landing with amazing lightness for one of his bulk.
Johnny had brought the wagon to a stop. He handed the reins to Lettie and jumped down, but stood where he was with one hand on the wagon seat. In the back, Aunt Em was awake and grasping the arms of her rocker with white-knuckled hands, while Sally Anne knelt in the wagon bed hugging Peter who, frightened at the noise, had begun to cry.
Quiet descended, broken only by the sobbing of the child and the retreating hoofbeats of the escaping man. The priest moved ponderously to where the fallen man lay. He turned him over, raised an eyelid, then made the pious sign of the cross and bowed his head for a brief prayer. Rising to his feet, he walked to the couple beside the wagon. He reached out to the child, a small girl with curling blond hair, speaking softly, huskily as he took her tiny hand in his. The little girl ceased crying except for a small sob or two as she stared at him in wonder.
Lettie felt a pain like a sudden blow in her chest. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak, though she stared so hard at the priest that her eyes burned. It couldn’t be. Not with that big belly, that round face. But the voice, the voice.
The priest inclined his head in parting, moved to the horse of the fallen man, and stepped into the saddle. “Forgive my haste,” he said to the company at large, “but I have urgent business elsewhere. I will report this sorry business to the authorities, never fear. Bless you, my children. Remember: Bona mors est homini, vitae qui exstinguit mala.”
He swung the horse around.
“Stop him!” Lettie said. She looked at Johnny, but he was staring at the priest, his face white, and his hands on the wagon seat were shaking with the uncontrolled tremors of palsy.
The priest saluted her, smiled, and rode away. No one moved until he was out of sight.
“Goodness, sugar, what’s that you’ve got, some nasty bug?”
The woman’s voice was high and scolding with the passing of her fright as she pried the object from her child’s hand. The locust shell fell to the ground and rolled lightly in a stray puff of wind. There was no thorn.
Aunt Em made a choked sound. The man beside the wagon touched the insect shell with the toe of his boot. “A strange kind of priest,” he said, “but God knows where we’d be now if he hadn’t happened along.”
“We’d be dead, that’s where!” his wife said.
Sally Anne, stirring, asked, “What was it he said in Latin?”
“Good is a man’s death that destroys the evils of life.”
It was Lettie who answered her, the words forced from her. She had never seen a man die before. Never.
The sound of her voice seemed to release Johnny. He laughed, a strained, hollow sound, as he stepped forward, moving toward the man and his wife as if to offer his services.
“That’s what the good father said, isn’t it? Bless us, but that’s exactly what the man said.”
9
RANNY CAME AMBLING OUT of the house carrying a lamp to light their way as they straggled up the steps of Splendora. Aunt Em had brought him a piece of wedding cake wrapped in a napkin. When they were settled in the chairs of the sitting area in the hall, he sat munching on it, sharing a bite or two with Peter, who leaned against his knee, while he listened to the story of the shooting. His interest was not overpowering, or perhaps it was only that the effects of the laudanum he had taken earlier were just beginning to wear off, for he yawned through the confused tale as Sally Anne, Johnny, and Lettie added bits to what Aunt Em was saying. His attention was given mostly to Peter, who was still white and subdued and had a tendency to cling to his big playmate.
Aunt Em
blessed herself a half-dozen times as she described in detail the palpitations of her heart during the brief incident. She was sure that the disguised priest had been about to truss up the two would-be robbers and leave them for the authorities when their wagon had appeared around the curve, but she could not suppress a shudder and a fear that he might just as easily have robbed the travelers himself or shot both of the men he had caught in the act in summary justice. Her faith in the goodness of the Thorn, after seeing the swiftness with which he had moved to kill, seemed shaken. She wondered aloud who he might be, putting forth the names of various men. There was a great deal of discussion about the size and experience and skill with weapons of the different men, but no conclusions were reached. There were just too many who were of the right height and build, and practically any man in the area had, from long years of hunting, considerable prowess with guns and knowledge of the country.
The time spent exclaiming and considering and describing their horror and disbelief during the incident served to calm them all. Aunt Em, after saying for the third or fourth time that she did wish she could have persuaded the travelers to come back with them to Splendora for the night, finally fell silent. Almost immediately, however, she remembered her duties as a hostess and suggested making coffee while wishing for something stronger.
“Not for me,” Johnny said, getting up from his chair, “I’d better be getting down the road.”
“You don’t want to drive all that way this late,” the older woman said in shocked tones. “Why not just stay with us? The trundle in Ranny’s room is all made up, just like always.”
“Mama will wonder where I am.”
“She won’t mind this once.”
“You don’t know Mama.”
“At least have some coffee, so you don’t fall asleep on the way.”
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