Louisiana History Collection - Part 2

by Jennifer Blake

  Ranny and Lionel, cutting palings at the edge of the woods to be used to repair the chicken yard, the better to pen the roosters and chickens, joined them on the veranda. Nothing was said, but it was apparent that they had seen the arrival of Thomas Ward and had come to see what was happening.

  When they had all had a glass or two of cool fresh-drawn water from the well to allay the effects of the heat, they sat enjoying the vagrant breezes that crossed the veranda and talking of this and that. After a time, Aunt Em, growing impatient, brought the conversation to a head.

  “I suppose you have heard about our excitement last night?”

  The colonel lifted a brow in inquiry. “Can’t say that I have. What took place?”

  He was told in detail, with many exclamations and applications to Lettie and Ranny for corroboration. The officer was silent for long moments when Aunt Em was done, his green gaze considering. Finally he said, “I know the experience was upsetting, but it’s getting to be a common occurrence. Unless you can supply the identities of the men under the sheets, I’m afraid there isn’t a great deal the army can do.”

  “I wish I did know who they were! I’d go straight to them and give them a piece of my mind, that’s what I’d do. The very idea!”

  Thomas turned to Lettie. “You said they spoke of themselves as neighbors. Did you recognize any of their voices?”

  She had thought that something in the voice of the leader reminded her of Samuel Tyler. It seemed so unlikely, however, that she could not say it. To bring the military down on Ranny’s uncle for so small a cause would be unforgivable. “No, I’m afraid not. The sound was muffled by the sheets, you understand, and of course they didn’t say a great deal.”

  “I suppose they didn’t.”

  Lettie, glancing at Ranny in the chair beside her, found him looking at her. It happened so often she was not surprised. She smiled a little, but his gaze remained closed, without expression, as if his thoughts were elsewhere. It was disconcerting.

  It was also reassuring since it seemed that she and the emotions she had aroused had not taken over his attention to the exclusion of all else. He leaned back in his chair, relaxed and yet alert, with his water glass resting on his knee. His shirt clung to his broad shoulders and his hair was damp around his hairline from the perspiration of his labors. The scar at his temple seemed darker and more noticeable this morning, perhaps because the blood was nearer to the surface from the heat and his exertions.

  The colonel was speaking. “Of course, if Bradley wants to file a complaint and can give us something to go on, we will be glad to look into the incident. Is he here now?”

  “He left for town early, just after breakfast.” Aunt Em set aside her water glass and reached to pick up the enamelware pan of peas at her side. Settling the pan in her lap, she selected a pod and began to shell it in a motion so practiced it did not distract her from what she was saying. “I somehow doubt that he will be able to tell you any more than Lettie and Ranny, or that he would if he could. What he’s doing is unhealthy enough as it is, but it would be even more dangerous for him to make a complaint.”

  “Yes, we’ve run into that before.”

  “It’s a sad situation, but there it is.”

  There was a brief pause. Thomas left his chair and went to lean with his shoulder against one of the square columns and his hand resting on the railing behind him. It was a position that put his back to the bright light beyond the line of the roof while they all faced it. His face was grim as he looked at them in turn, and there was about him a sudden air of authority.

  “The incident last night is not why I’m here, nor is this, unfortunately, a social call.”

  Aunt Em’s hands stilled. Ranny turned to look at the colonel with a frown between his eyes. Lettie, for no reason that she could think of, felt a sudden dread, a need to prevent the man in blue from going on even as she waited for him to do so.

  “I have to tell you that yesterday evening at dusk the body of a man was found in an abandoned well some miles from here. The body was identified this morning as that of Johnny Reeden.”

  The handful of pea hulls that Aunt Em held, about to drop them in a bucket placed for them, fell to the floor with a soft clattering. “Oh, dearest God, no!”

  “He had been dead some time,” Thomas went on, “as much as two weeks, possibly more, but identification was established by his clothing and the papers found on him.” He took an envelope from his pocket and opened it to remove a small object, then held it out to them. “This was discovered inside his shirt.”

  The thing he held in his fingers was a crushed locust shell pierced by a needle-sharp thorn. It was stained a rusty red with what could only be dried blood. Johnny’s blood.

  Lettie felt sick, physically ill, with the images Thomas had conjured up, with the grief and rage rising white-hot and deadly inside her. Nothing, nothing she had ever endured in her life had prepared her for the rending horror of the knowledge of how she had been used and betrayed — and of why it mattered so terribly. She could not move, could not speak or breathe for it.

  “Don’t,” Ranny said, the word compressed as he reached out to close his hand around her fingers where she gripped the chair arm. “Don’t look like that.”

  There was a white line around his mouth, and stark grief and pain shimmered in his eyes along with an element of confusion over his friend’s death. His concern was for her, however. His clasp was firm, offering support, comfort, if she would accept them. Lettie felt a small giving sensation inside her, felt a measure of her distress recede. She turned her hand palm-upward, taking Ranny’s, returning the pressure and the comfort with gratitude.

  Aunt Em closed her eyes. With one hand at her throat, she said in ragged tones, “Please, Thomas, put that thing away.”

  The colonel returned the locust shell to its envelope without looking at them. “Forgive me if I’ve upset you. For the sake of past friendship, I wish that things could be different, but I have to inform you that this is an official inquiry.”

  “Official,” Aunt Em echoed.

  “There are questions concerning the object I just showed you and Johnny’s death that require answers.”

  “I see.” The older woman’s face was abruptly haggard, years older. “Very well, ask what you must.”

  Colonel Ward gave a nod and then straightened to his full height, his bearing more military. When he spoke, his voice was neutral, without a trace of its customary warmth.

  “We have, of course, talked to the victim’s mother, Mrs. Reeden. According to her statement, her last communication with her son was a letter received just under three weeks ago. In this letter, now in our possession, Johnny Reeden said that he was in trouble and had been persuaded that the best thing for him to do was to go to Texas. He said that you, Mrs. Tyler, and also Miss Mason were going to help him, that you knew someone who would see that he got across the state line safely. He told his mother not to worry, that he would send for her when he was settled.” Thomas Ward turned to Lettie. “The letter was dated the same day that you, Miss Mason, are said to have been seen with the Thorn.”

  The connection between the three of them, Johnny, the Thorn, and herself, was made with such suddenness that Lettie was caught unprepared. The formal use of her surname while it was made was doubly disturbing. What was she to say? How was she to answer without exposing the whole sordid episode? It was not only herself who would be implicated in Johnny’s death. There was also Aunt Em.

  She lifted her chin, her eyes dark but steady. “Are you accusing me of something, Colonel?”

  Aunt Em broke in before he could reply. “I don’t believe it! I don’t care what you say or how you twist things around, I won’t believe that the Thorn killed Johnny. There was no reason for it, not for him.”

  “The fact remains that he did.”

  “Fact? You call it a fact because of a locust? Anybody could have put that thing on Johnny when he was dead,”

  “Anybody?”
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  “Anybody who wanted to make it look as if the Thorn was guilty.”

  “Don’t you think that’s a little unreasonable?”

  “Not at all. You don’t know—”

  It was the opening the colonel had been waiting for. “No, but I’m trying to find out.”

  Aunt Em licked her lips, her faded blue eyes haunted. She sent a quick look to Lettie, then her shoulders sagged. “Well, I don’t suppose it matters now if it’s told. It can’t … hurt Johnny any longer.”

  There was complete quiet as Aunt Em, faltering now and then, told of how Johnny had confessed to getting involved with the outlaw clan, of how he had been blackmailed into carrying messages, and of how devastated he had been to discover that he had been a party to murder.

  “Lettie discovered the mess he was in. He told her, too, that the only solution to it that he knew of, was to put an end to his life. How could we not help him?”

  “I don’t suppose,” the colonel said with irony, “that it occurred to you to send him to the sheriff or to me?”

  “Certainly it did, but the same thing that caused him to become a messenger for the outlaws in the first place made that impossible. He couldn’t bear for his mother to know what he had done or to have her face the public disgrace.”

  Lettie spoke up. “He was also positive that if he went to the authorities, the outlaws, or their contact in town, would kill him.”

  “He didn’t mention names?”

  Lettie gave a slight shake of her head. “He said it would be too dangerous for me to know.”

  “So you arranged with the Thorn to give Johnny safe passage to Texas. Did you never think that might be like turning him over to the hangman?”

  “That’s a terrible thing to say!” Aunt Em protested in indignation.

  “A terrible crime has been committed.”

  “The Thorn didn’t do it. If he said he would see him across the line into Texas, he saw him across the line. All I can suppose is that Johnny turned back for some reason and that he met some of the outlaws or even this man from town, who had figured out what he meant to do and decided to kill him for it.”

  “And he just happened to have a locust with a thorn handy?”

  “Maybe the Thorn gave it to Johnny earlier as — as some sort of keepsake! I don’t know! I only know that the Thorn couldn’t have done this. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Unless he is either the leader of the outlaws or their contact? Or unless Reeden stumbled on to his real identity during the ride?”

  “I don’t believe it,” Aunt Em repeated, folding her arms and rocking back in her chair.

  Lettie hardly heard the older woman’s stubborn answer. In her mind was the scene that night in the cabin. Johnny in his old woman’s clothing, the Thorn in his. What was it Johnny had said? “You know, the way you look as an old woman reminds me—” He had not been allowed to finish the sentence. Had his memory been jostled by a resemblance, by some past incident that had given him an inkling of who the Thorn might be? It was possible. It was only too possible.

  The colonel’s voice, low and biting, broke in upon her thoughts. “You seem determined to champion the man, Mrs. Tyler. Could it be you know him personally?”

  “I wish I did.”

  “Is that your only answer?”

  Ranny had been following the interrogation with frowning concentration. Now he spoke. “Colonel, I will tell you as I told the men in sheets. This is my house. That is my Aunt Em.”

  Colonel Ward turned his head to stare at him, then gave a brief nod before swinging back to the older woman. “I’m sorry if I offended. I will endeavor to cut this short. It’s fairly obvious, Mrs. Tyler, that if you don’t know the Thorn, you at least know how to contact him. Tell me, how is it done?”

  It was a question that had been inevitable from the beginning, from the moment the Thorn’s name had been linked with Johnny and the two of them. There seemed to Lettie no way that the truth could be avoided, no way Aunt Em could keep from explaining about the message in the hollow tree and thereby betraying the Thorn into the hands of the Union army. But did it matter? Was there really any reason, now, to shield him?

  Aunt Em had regained her self-possession and her wits during the course of the argument, however. Now she looked squarely at the colonel and told a lie that would have her on her knees before nightfall. “It was a chance opportunity, almost an accident, one of those things that seem meant at the time. Who’s to say it wasn’t?”

  “Meaning?”

  “The ways of the Lord are mysterious.”

  “You know very well what I am asking,” the colonel said, his face flushed. “If you think you are aiding in some heroic cause by protecting this man, you are making a serious mistake. For every good deed he has done, there has been an evil one that wipes it out, and then some.”

  “It was the purest coincidence, I tell you. Wasn’t it, Lettie?”

  It was an appeal she could not refuse. Lettie could not brand Aunt Em a liar at this moment, even if she regretted it later.

  “So it was. I happened upon him coming from Dink’s Pond one evening. I heard no dogs, but I suppose he was being careful to confuse his trail. I believe it was you, Colonel, who told me he used it now and again for that purpose?”

  “A second chance meeting?”

  For a moment she thought the colonel might know more than he was saying, then she remembered. The visit to her bedchamber on the night of her arrival. “Strange, isn’t it?”

  Her flat, unemotional tone seemed to disconcert him for a moment. Only for a moment. “I thought you were convinced the man killed your brother? What changed your mind?”

  What, indeed? She wished she knew. “I was persuaded otherwise for a short time. I see now it was, as you said, a serious mistake.”

  Lettie was trembling. Ransom could feel it in her tight grip upon his hand. He was afraid for her, afraid as he had never been in his life. It was peculiar to be forced to sit and listen with scant intervention while his fate was decided, but he could summon little interest. His concern was for Johnny’s death, Johnny whom he had sent, laughing, on his way across the state line, and for the woman at his side. Lettie’s restraint disturbed him as much as it surprised him. He had sat waiting for her bitter denunciation of the Thorn, for her to give her fullest cooperation to the Union commander by exposing the location of the message tree. That she had done neither affected him with an odd jubilant disquiet. He would give all he owned, all he was or ever hoped to be, to know what she was thinking, what she felt, what her trembling meant.

  Weak. She had been morally, mentally, physically weak. She had permitted liberties, had given herself, to a murderer. She could not blame the climate, the circumstances, or even the Thorn. There was no one to blame except herself. She was debased beyond saving, a pitiful creature enslaved to a sensual nature.

  Oh, but how was it possible that the man who had held her, had joined with her in such rapture, could be a cold-hearted killer? It could not be.

  He had come to her with blood on his hands. What an exciting chase it must have been for him, to run her down on the ferry and take her in payment for saving Johnny, knowing all the while that it was Johnny’s life that was forfeit. Her murderous lover.

  Still, he had been so tender, so exquisitely gentle in his strength, so loving.

  Tender and cruel. Gentle and savage. Good and evil.

  There had to be some explanation. Perhaps there were two of them? Two night riders claiming to be the Thorn?

  She was looking for excuses for the sake of her conscience. There were no excuses, just as there was only one Thorn.

  Aunt Em was so sure he was innocent.

  She was a wonderful woman, but deluded. As deluded as Lettie herself had been to believe in a chivalric righter of wrongs. That was only in legends, lovely old tales of knights and honor and great deeds carried out against impossible odds. If such things had ever taken place, they did so no longer. Men only acted when the
y were forced to do so to save themselves, or when there was something they hoped to gain, such as a woman’s favors.

  “All I’ve done, all I’m trying to do, is to see that as few people as possible are hurt—”

  Words. Empty words.

  Ranny was pressing her hand, a warning to recall her attention. Aunt Em was standing. The colonel, it seemed, was preparing to go, for he had his hat in his hand. Lettie, summoning at least the appearance of composure, allowed Ranny to pull her to her feet. With his hand under her elbow, she moved to the top of the steps as the Union commander trod down them.

  He turned at the bottom. “Oh, yes. There is one other thing. The funeral will be this afternoon; where and when I don’t know, but I expect the notices will be up in an hour or so, if they aren’t already. I’m sure you will all want to attend.”

  The funeral notices were tacked on posts and on trees here and there in Natchitoches and for some distance out of town on either side. The black-bordered placards, printed with the proper sentiment under a design of a weeping willow and lettered by hand with the time and place, were already curling in the heat when the party from Splendora drove past them later in the day. The service for Johnny would be held at a small church in the country south of town.

  Aunt Em had taken food to Mrs. Reeden’s house as was the custom, driving there with it the instant it was prepared, well before the noon meal. She had returned a short time later. Her face was pale and her eyes were red from weeping. Johnny’s mother was prostrate, she said, and seeing no one.

  The church of white clapboard sat beside a winding, back-country road. Its narrow width and steep roof gave it the same look as a thousand such churches from New Hampshire to Texas, though the shingles were of cypress that could only have come from the swamps of Louisiana. The congregation was Methodist, the preacher a tall, lanky man with arms too long for his sleeves and a prominent Adam’s apple. He made one of a quartet of men who sang a Wesley hymn, then moved to stand in the simple pulpit looking down on the flower-covered wooden coffin before him.