Sons of Thunder (Rule Cordell)

by Cotton Smith

  Sometimes he felt Moon’s spirit was close. It was easy to imagine that a shadow was more than darkness. His Comanche friends knew both were so. Since his rebirth as a minister, Cordell had spent considerable time learning their approach to life. It was his way to pay Moon for making him think and change. He loved the fact that they called themselves Noomah; it meant “The Real People” or “True Humans.”

  It was also a way to move on. Rule Cordell was dead, or so the newspapers said. He was James Rule Langford, a different man with a different calling. A miracle of resurrection, Moon would have told him, just like a dead warrior returning. Whatever. He was a man of God, not a man of the gun. A man of good horses, not of fierce violence.

  Of course, the young minister had no organized theological training, nor claimed any. Instead, he explained that he had studied privately and had been ordained a minister several years earlier. He never said where, exactly. If pushed, he might have said, “By God, just outside of Waco, while on my knees praying.” But no one asked. Directly. Taullery had planted most of the misinformation about his background, including the idea that his ordination had been in Houston. It didn’t really matter. Cordell’s command of the Bible and worship services in general had long since dispelled any concern about his calling to preach.

  His mind gradually recalled a more recent happening, one that seemed unbelievable as the memory of it passed through his consciousness. He was certain that yesterday he was in church. Aleta? Aleta was hurt! And Douglas Harper? Oh my God, they took him. What . . .

  He jumped to his feet, and the throbbing pain brought him to his knees. A trembling hand pushed against the side of the bed, and he stood again. Long, deep breaths sought to regain control of his body, driving the weakness into the shadows of his mind. Soft noises were coming from the main room of the log-framed house. From where he stood, he could see the banked stone fireplace and the southern edge of kitchen shelves.

  “Aleta?”

  No answer. His memory raced to the church to determine how badly hurt she had been, fearing what he might find. But all he could recall was a frantic battle against too many Regulators. If only I had a gun. The thought sped through his mind faster than a bullet and slammed itself against his conscience. Forgive me, Lord, I didn’t mean that.

  “Good morning, preacher. Thought you were going to sleep all the way to next Sunday.” Around the corner came a smiling Ian Taullery with cups of steaming coffee in both fists. “How are you feeling, Rule?”

  As usual, Taullery was dressed nattily in a three-piece suit with a fresh collar and carefully tied cravat. A gold stickpin was centered exactly three inches above the V in his vest—where it always was. Cordell couldn’t remember when his friend wasn’t obsessed with detail, especially when it came to figuring out how to get something he wanted. Yet when they were together, it was like nothing had changed since childhood. They were simply best friends, Ian Taullery and Rule Cordell—not storekeeper and part-time minister with a phony name.

  “Good to see you, too, Ian.” Cordell accepted the mug and sipped its hot contents, but his mind was on Aleta. “Where’s Aleta? Hey, that’s good. Who made it?”

  “Well, who do you think? I made it. Mighty tasty, I’d say. Although I like to grind the beans a bit more than Aleta does.” Taullery chuckled at his own presentation. “Aleta’s doin’ fine. Got conked on the head real good—but came around pretty quick. You, on the other hand . . .”

  “Where is she?”

  Taullery sipped some of his own coffee. He rolled the hot liquid around in his mouth before swallowing. A frown collected on his forehead, and his eyes found refuge at the window. “She’s at the school. Mary went with her. After school, the plans are to be . . . with Missus Harper. All of us are, if you’re up to it.” He swallowed the coffee and coughed. “They have to get off their land today. Taxes are due. Regulators are comin’ at noon. Haven’t heard who the new owner is. Some carpetbagger, I’m sure. You know, that’s good land.”

  Cordell stared at his friend as the meaning of the answer fully sank into him. “They hanged Douglas.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Big as you please. Strung him up . . . at the old cottonwood by the creek. Soon as they left the church. Padgett had one of his boys play ‘Dixie’ on a harmonica while they all watched—an’ laughed. That killer, Lion Graham, he shot Harper’s brother when he came to help. Shot him in the heart four times from thirty feet. Only one man I’ve ever known could handle a pistol like that.”

  “That man is dead.”

  Taullery’s face reddened and his eyes narrowed. He was not the fierce warrior that his friend, Rule Cordell, had been. Few were. But his passion for the South ran just as deep—at least, his vision of what it was and should be. Wetness gathered at the corners of his eyes, and he wiped them brusquely with his free hand and tried to return himself to a controlled manner. Everything Ian Taullery did was careful.

  Even the simple task of lighting a cigar or eating an apple became a complete ceremony. It didn’t matter what it was—apple, cigar, or battle—Ian Taullery rarely did anything without thinking through all the steps first. He liked knowing what he was doing before he did it. That wasn’t an excuse for not taking action, just a detailed map to follow to the letter. Cordell teased him that he must have written out what he was going to do on his wedding night. Taullery’s reply was “only a few notes,” followed by a big smile.

  His general store in town was already known for carefully displayed merchandise. Actually, just having merchandise was something of a miracle in this ravished country. But that talent had blossomed as the other scouts increasingly depended on him to find food, horses, and bullets. He was known to follow customers around, straightening canned goods and refolding cloth as they shopped. A customer’s pause at a can of peaches could yield a thorough assessment of the contents—usually with an enthusiastic description of how it tasted and ranked with similar foods.

  Taullery was still thinking about the hanging when Cordell asked where the Harper family would be going. Cordell asked again, this time staring at his coffee: “Where will the Harpers be staying?”

  “Huh? Oh, Widow Bauer invited them to stay—as long as they wanted. I think she’s lonely. So it worked out. Sort of. She’s a real Yankee hater, you know. Says she gets up early just so she can have more time to hate ’em. Quite a lady.” Bitterness laced his words, and the laugh that followed was forced.

  “What about Douglas’s . . . funeral? Did you . . .”

  “Well, we buried both him an’ his brother—in the town cemetery. No service, though. Figured you could do it when you were up an’ around again. That’s the way . . . widow Harper wanted it. Virgil Harper didn’t have any family—except his brother’s.”

  “About all I’m good for—saying words over the graves of friends.” Cordell’s chest rose and fell. Fierceness fought for control of his mind.

  “The South lost, Rule. We said states had the right to secede; they said no. They won. We’re paying for that.” Taullery walked to the window and looked out. “Even the mayor is a scalawag—an’ the sheriff too. Think on it, Rule. All the way down to li’l old Clark Springs. Yankees control it all. No way any of us are going to get to vote. Or have much of anything. Unless we play smart.”

  “I never thought it would be this bad. Guess I never thought we’d lose.”

  “Hard to imagine anything worse. Even your Bible’s hell,” Taullery said, glancing back at Cordell. “Sorry, didn’t mean it that way.”

  “Man, I forgot about the horses. I—”

  “Don’t worry. They’ve been grained, watered, and brushed down,” Taullery interrupted. “Aleta and Mary helped me. Say, how’s that little brown gelding coming for Mary? She fed him this morning. Thought he looked real cute. But you know if that damn horse so much as hiccups, she’ll be complaining for months.”

  Cordell studied his feet for a moment before answering. His head seemed to be full of disconnected thoughts. “Aleta rode the br
own to school all last week. I wanted to make sure it was used to a lady early on. I’ve seen gentle horses go crazy when a woman gets on them—if they’ve never been around one before.”

  “And?”

  Cordell chuckled. “Aleta liked the way he handled.”

  “Well, that’s good.”

  “Not really. Aleta likes fiery horses. You ever ride her paint?”

  “No, I guess I haven’t.” Taullery rubbed his chin. “What are we going to do?”

  Cordell looked around. “Where are my pants?”

  Taullery pointed in the direction of the chair and asked if his friend was changing the subject. Cordell said he planned to start looking for a mount for Mary after he delivered four head promised to Jacob Evans, a nearby rancher. Taullery laughed and said the rancher wouldn’t be able to pay him, except in eggs or something.

  “I owe Jacob. He and his boys came over and helped me reroof the barn and fix up the corral when we bought this place. Figured it was the least I could do to repay him,” Cordell said, slipping into his pants.

  “Four good horses for a little roof repair? That’s pretty good pay.”

  “Without the Evanses’ help, we wouldn’t be where we are today.”

  Taullery licked his lower lip and changed the subject. “Man, I like that roan stallion. Where’d he come from?”

  “Traded some guns for him. Caleb Shank—you know, ‘The Russian’—came by two weeks ago, trailing that big rascal behind his cart. Had papers. He traded a rug and a few pots for it.”

  “Can he run?”

  “Like a Texas storm.” Cordell pulled off his nightshirt and poured water in the washstand bowl. “But he’s quieter than you’d think. Doesn’t act like a bull. Even good around my geldings. Been thinking about breeding him with Aleta’s paint mare. Wouldn’t that be a colt to have!”

  “Reminds me of that big-shouldered roan Billy Rip had . . . when we were in Virginia. Near the end.”

  “Yeah, I suppose so. Say, that reminds me, have you heard anything from Billy Rip recently? Or Whisper?”

  Billy Ripton—or “Billy Rip,” as his friends called him—and Whisper Jenson were two of their Rebel friends from the War. The four cavalry scouts had managed to stop a Union division from successfully attacking Longstreet’s unsuspecting flank with a ruse of a phantom Confederate army that was still talked about in Rebel circles.

  “Not since that letter from Whisper a while back. You know, the one about the Riptons thinking about driving longhorns to where they’d be worth real money. Twenty dollars a head, Whisper said. Crazy talk, just plain crazy.” Taullery turned away from the window.

  “Maybe not, Ian. I read where Charlie Goodnight and Oliver Loving drove a herd of longhorns all the way to Fort. Sumner over in New Mexico Territory,” Cordell responded. “You know, there’s been talk of a drive all the way to Abilene, Kansas.”

  “Yeah, where maybe there’s a railroad—and maybe there isn’t.”

  Cordell smiled. He wasn’t in the mood to argue.

  Taullery’s grin was immediate. “How about some breakfast? I’ll get it going while you get dressed.”

  “Best offer I’ve had today.”

  “Best you’ll get, too.”

  Taullery’s attention was drawn to a dark corner of the room, away from even the most daring sunlight. There, a handmade, waist-high Mexican cabinet, accented with hand-carved flowers, had been turned into a strange display of guns. The sight surprised him, and he swallowed to keep his surprise from appearing on his face. Even to the casual eye, the placement of pistols and rifles was a measured one, almost ceremonial.

  On its clawed top, rubbed raw by a half-century of use, lay seven .44 revolvers of mixed origin. Resting on the guns was a Bible. Two were settled in holsters with their belts snugly wrapped around them. Two more were short-barreled, positioned with their noses facing each other. Another brace of guns were silver-plated and pearl-handled. He guessed these were Aleta’s; he couldn’t imagine his friend using such fancy revolvers.

  Propped alongside the seventh, a five-shot Dean & Adams pistol, was a dried rose and a lone rose stem without petals. He recognized them immediately as reminders of the Confederacy and their leader, Jeb Stuart, who liked to wear a rose on his uniform. The rose had also been a trademark of the outlaw Rule Cordell, worn in Stuart’s honor. The stem was all that was left from the flower given to him by Stuart’s widow at his funeral. Stacked on each side of the cabinet were two Henry carbines. His curiosity badly wanted an explanation about it—and why his friend had risked everything by yelling out his real identity at the church—but something told him not to question his friend about it. At least, not now.

  Chapter Four

  With a casual “Breakfast will be ready when you are” salutation, Taullery left the bedroom, glancing again at the display as he left Cordell to his toilet and his memories. Billy Ripton and his family had cared for him at their ranch outside of Waco after Cordell’s father had shot him during the jail break. “Billy Rip” wasn’t yet twenty, having joined the Rebel forces while barely in his teens. Like his father and older brothers, he was husky and strong, but his ways with horses were gentle and that had made him an immediate favorite of both Taullery and Cordell. So far, Riptons had avoided any problems with the Northerners in charge of Texas.

  On the other hand, Whisper Jenson was in the thick of the political foray, battling the carpetbaggers and scalawags with his exceptional legal skills. A successful lawyer before the War, Cordell liked him for his hard questioning manner, a style that usually forced better decisions—even if it did embarrass a few foolish officers along the way, or a few Northern bureaucrats.

  His raspy voice was the result of a Yankee rifle bullet early in the conflict, and now even his family called him “Whisper” instead of his real name, “Franklin David.” At the “mascarade ambush” near the bitter end, he had been severely wounded and lost an arm to amputation. The doctor who did it almost lost his life to an angry Cordell.

  Since most of the courts were military tribunals and held little resemblance to courts of law, Jenson’s effectiveness was greatly limited. Still, he had already saved a few homesteads from the grasp of unscrupulous bankers and gained the wrath of the men in control. There was a happy tale of Whisper spitting tobacco juice in the face of a government witness who kept lying under oath. Whisper’s aim had been a source of wonderment during the Conflict. Taullery often compared Whisper’s spitting with Cordell’s pistol shooting, and joked that if tobacco juice were gunpowder his friend might have a problem.

  If any of the former Rebel soldiers could have voted, Jenson would have been elected almost anything he wanted to run for in the area—even if his brand of oratory was little more than hoarse statements. But the “ironclad oath” required of every voter—that he had not willingly borne arms against the United States of America—omitted most white males, except the very old, from the decision-making process.

  Finished with his shaving, Cordell walked toward the gun display that had attracted Taullery earlier. He paused there, and his fingers touched first one gun, then another, then the dried rose, like a bird not daring to light. Finally, his hand reached the Bible and stayed. This had been a daily routine since both he and Aleta had turned away from the outlaw trail. They decided to keep their weapons where they could see them as a reminder of their commitment.

  Without saying so, Rule knew that Aleta’s decision was based more on the eventuality of needing them again quickly than on any thought of peace through disarmament. That was all right. His decision was anchored to his determination to change. Each day, Rule made a commitment to himself and to God to follow His will and leave violence behind. He never cleaned the weapons, but he knew Aleta did. He smiled to himself, remembering how smitten he had been by this beautiful she-wolf from the very first time he saw her.

  His cheeks still stinging from the straight razor’s application, Cordell entered the main part of the house, encouraged by the smells of
frying salt pork, potatoes and onions, eggs, coffee, and tortillas. Sunlight from the lone kitchen window awaited like a proud conquistador. Freshly made blackberry jam was already on the planked table, along with stoneware plates and heavy iron utensils.

  “Man, that smells great! I could eat a horse,” Cordell said, rubbing his hands together enthusiastically.

  “Not one of yours, I presume. I don’t think that roan stallion would let you.”

  Cordell laughed. His simple black broadcloth suit with the full black vest and white collar was a bit crumpled. Around his neck dangled the familiar silver cross on a leather cord, but Taullery noticed the slight bulge slightly above it and knew the significance. This was the outfit Cordell always wore when traveling on ministry concerns. He liked its stark simplicity. The white bandage surrounding his forehead seemed out of place.

  “Well, I can’t take too much credit. Aleta made the tortillas before she left. Oh, she also told me to tell you—she loves you,” Taullery responded with a lopsided grin. His eyes glanced at Cordell before returning to the two skillets resting on the orange bed of coals in the fireplace.

  Cordell returned the grin with only a slight blush reaching his face. He went to the coffeepot and repoured his cup. Aleta was his life, and he missed her fiercely already. Just having her beside him made everything seem right in a land that was harrowed with retribution and harvested hopelessness. Inside he was attacked by a gush of guilt over the hanging of Douglas Harper. Why hadn’t he been able to stop it? A sadness seeped into his thoughts, dragging a malaise of spirit that wouldn’t go away. He was a minister, a man of God now, a calling he knew was right. Why couldn’t he shake off this awful sense of being . . . useless.

  “Brought the potatoes and onions from the store. Thought they might taste good to you,” Taullery said, shoving an iron spatula under the tantalizing mixture of sliced potatoes and onions. “Eggs came from your chickens in back. Took me a while to find the best ones.” He chuckled.