Sons of Thunder (Rule Cordell)

by Cotton Smith

  “I’m sure you got them, though.”

  Taullery glanced back at his friend and asked the question that had been boiling inside him since Sunday. “Rule, why in the world did you shout out your name to Padgett? Lion Graham studied you hard. He had to recognize—”

  “I thought it might save Harper’s life,” Cordell interrupted.

  “Well, I’m damn glad Padgett thought you were making it up. Graham was going to kill you, Rule. He was angry as hell when Padgett wouldn’t let him.”

  “I doubt Lion recognized me, Ian. We were just kids when his folks moved away.”

  “We knew him.”

  “Of course we did.” Cordell sipped the coffee and realized it was too hot to continue. “He’s well known. He wasn’t expecting to see me—or you.” He blew on the black liquid.

  “Well, Rule Cordell is a helluva lot better known than Lion David Graham.” Taullery flipped over the potatoes and examined them to make sure none were burned.

  “Rule Cordell is dead.”

  “Come on, Rule, aren’t you worried about him telling people?”

  “Who’s going to believe him?”

  The discussion wandered backward to childhood adventures and those that included Graham before his family moved to Ohio. Taullery remembered him as always crying about something and always wanting to do whatever Cordell was doing, or be the character Cordell was pretending to be in their make-believe game. He recalled them teasing Graham about his unusual name, Lion, and calling him “Growl” and “Bobcat.”

  “Remember when we played like we were Roman soldiers? Down by that old creek? There was a whole bunch of us. You, me, Lion, Jimmy Watkins . . . ah, what was his name—oh yeah, Howard Green.” Taullery tasted the potatoes and decided to add pepper. “We all took those long creek canes with the sharp roots for spears—and had branches for swords. Man, we played war for days.”

  “Yeah, I remember you worked on a branch sword every night—to get it just right.”

  Cordell smiled and tried his coffee again. It was good, and he swallowed eagerly. Dipping his finger in the liquid, he drew a spear on the table with the wetness. What was it about Lion David Graham that bothered him? Was it really that the gun professional suspected who he was? No, it was something he hadn’t experienced often.

  It was fear. A fear he didn’t feel about Captain Padgett. That was only frustrated anger.

  Graham had gunned down Luke Robbins in a fair fight, and Robbins was as good with a gun as anyone in Texas. There were fourteen other known killings attributed to Graham. Down deep, was he afraid to face this bespectacled killer? Or was it that he felt the man was going to pull him back to his old life as a gunfighter? Or was it that the evil man reminded him of his own father in some strange way? Or was it all three?

  “When I ran into him—in town—a week or so ago, all he could talk about was you.” Taullery spread the pepper with his fingers from a canister. “Kept asking me if I really thought you were dead.”

  “You saw him? When was that? You didn’t mention it before.” Cordell looked up from his table drawing.

  Taullery’s face tightened. “Sure I did. You were probably thinking about that roan, or next week’s sermon, instead of listening to me.”

  “Yeah, probably.”

  “Anyway, Graham talked about that Roman soldier stuff. Only, he sounded like he thought it was real. Said something about killing you—when you were both Roman soldiers. Said it was . . . his, ah, fate . . . to do it again,” Taullery said, and waited for a response.

  None came, and he returned to cooking, knowing his friend had no intention of discussing the matter further.

  “Did you notice the mayor and his wife were in your church Sunday?” Taullery said as he pushed the steaming potatoes and onions onto two plates. “Or did that knock on your head push away all the good stuff like that?”

  “How I could I miss him? He practically invited Padgett to hang Harper.”

  Taullery bristled without turning around. “That’s not the way I saw it, Rule. Giles was doing the smart thing, keeping people from—”

  “From protecting Harper?” Cordell interrupted.

  “Oh come on, Rule. Mayor Giles, he’s an important man around here—and he’s going to be even bigger.”

  “I’m sure he would agree with you.”

  “What’s that mean?” This time Taullery turned toward Cordell.

  “Don’t overcook my eggs. I like ’em runny.” Cordell’s eyes twinkled.

  Taullery’s smile was slow, but it came. “Hey, Rule, I was serious. Giles is a man who can help you—and me.”

  “I’m sure you’re right, Ian. Let’s eat.”

  Talk during breakfast ranged from a former wealthy rancher who was working as a crew hand repairing one of the many dismantled railroads strewn about the South . . . to the thousands of freed slaves traveling across the land in search of something, anything . . . to the constant worry that debt would swallow the entire South . . . to speculation about the money Charlie Goodnight and Oliver Loving made from driving a herd of longhorns all the way to Fort Sumner in New Mexico Territory. There was talk of a drive all the way to Abilene or Baxter Springs, Kansas, where the railroad was supposed to be. Taullery was mostly concerned about his own store and the need to start turning down requests for food without some form of payment.

  “Last week, Issac Roark came in with a big sack full of old bullets and scrap metal. Picked them out of his land when he was plowing. Wanted to trade for some canned goods.” Taullery rubbed his hands together and studied the interaction before continuing. “I agreed. Don’t have the faintest idea of what I’m going to do with that sack, though.”

  “Yeah, that’s tough. Any more blacks bring in things to trade?” Cordell asked between mouthfuls of potatoes and onions.

  “Every week some Negro is at my door with something. I don’t know why they keep coming to me. I’m sure most of it’s stolen. I don’t want to do business with ’em. Ignorant black bastards should know their place.”

  Cordell didn’t respond—partly because his mouth was full and partly because he was remembering something. Swallowing the last of the potatoes, he told his friend about a black newspaper he’d read that was filled with requests by former slaves trying to find lost loved ones. It grieved him to think of their anguish, and he wondered what they could do to help. Taullery warned him that he should be careful about his sermons concerning the treatment of blacks and the sin of slavery. Cordell reminded him that he had fought for the South but that didn’t mean he supported slavery. He hated the whole idea of it—but he thought a state had a right to decide what it wanted to do.

  Taullery knew better than to press the matter further; his friend might wear a collar of the ministry on Sundays now, but he used to be one of the most dangerous pistol-fighters in Texas and, before that, a daring Confederate cavalry officer. The storekeeper tried hard to push that old image of his friend away, but every time he saw Reverend James Rule Langford, he always first saw the intense Confederate warrior Rule Cordell.

  He saw a wild man with four or five revolvers shoved into his belt. A chiseled face hardened by war, winter, and starvation. Dark eyes that cut into a man’s soul peered from under a wide-brimmed cavalry hat with an eagle feather instead of a cavalry plume. Long dark hair brushed along his strong shoulders, barely hiding a Comanche stone earring.

  But the thing that said the most about his friend was the dried stem of a rose, pinned to his uniform collar. A tribute to General Stuart, the dramatic cavalry officer who liked to wear a red rose on his jacket. At his funeral, Stuart’s widow gave a rose to Cordell and several others. Rule Cordell never took his off, even after it became nothing more than a shriveled stick. Taullery’s mind tiptoed back to the dried rose lying on the altar of guns in Rule’s bedroom. His thoughts stayed there to wonder.

  Taullery was brought back to the kitchen table by Cordell’s harsh observation that Harper was the third former Confederate soldier hang
ed and his lands taken in the past month. Taullery agreed that Padgett and his men were getting ever bolder, pretext for their actions becoming nothing more than a dare to be stopped. Cordell said he heard that things were worse in Atlanta, Richmond, Mobile, and other Southern cities to the east. They lay in absolute ruins. He stood and went to the fireplace to prepare a second helping of eggs and potatoes.

  Taullery watched his friend and said, “You know, the papers are full of stories about secret bands of Texans going after all these Yanks—and Negroes too. ‘Knights of the Rising Sun,’ they call themselves.” He took a sip of coffee, waiting for a response from Cordell. Not getting one, he continued, “Got ’em all over the South, you know. Secret bands an’ all. Started in Tennessee right after Lee’s surrender, they tell me. Some got a real strange name. Ku Klux Klan. Fancy sounding, I suppose. Don’t know what that means. Latin, I guess. All kinds of secret rituals and rules, like a college fraternity, you know. Hear tell they’re forming one around here, too. Long overdue, I’d say.”

  He stared at his friend, but Cordell didn’t comment as he returned to the table, concentrating instead on adding a spoonful of blackberry jam to a tortilla.

  “Heard anything about a pardon for Marse Robert or Jeff Davis?” Cordell’s question came just before he bit into the rolled tortilla. He studied the end to make sure the jam didn’t escape out the end, then decided it would be safer to fold the edge into a flap.

  Realizing that Cordell didn’t want to talk about the Knights of the Rising Sun, Taullery wanted to ask if there had been any news about a pardon for them—and all the others who fought for the Confederacy. Instead, he decided to say only that he hadn’t heard anything new about either Robert E. Lee or Jefferson Davis. Davis had been released on bail and promised a speedy trial for treason. But so far nothing had happened. He reminded his friend that Union generals had stepped in to keep Lee from further Federal harassment. Cordell wondered what would have happened to Jeb Stuart if he had lived.

  “They hate us, you know. Them damn Yanks. They’d like us all dead so they can give over everything—to the Negroes.” Taullery put down his fork on a cleaned plate and swallowed the rest of his coffee. He stared at the plate, then rearranged the utensils.

  Cordell finished his tortilla and wiped his chin with the back of his hand. “It’s way past time for the blacks to have their own, Ian. I didn’t fight for slavery. I thought we had the right to be our own country. We were—for a while. Now we’re not. Maybe we were on the wrong side, ever think about that? All men are the same under God. Maybe that’s why the North won.”

  “Don’t give me that crap. The North won because they had more guns, more supplies and more men, that’s all. Besides, I have to deal with those ignorant Negroes all the time, and you don’t. They were better off as slaves. I fought for the Stars and Bars, an’ I’m damn proud of it.” Taullery straightened the fork twice more before he was satisfied.

  Cordell shook his head and bit his lower lip. Sensing a need to change subjects, Taullery said he read where the North was blossoming with industrial growth and railroads were springing up everywhere. The words were a snarl.

  A knock at the door interrupted their conversation.

  “Wonder who that is?” Cordell asked.

  “Probably some poor soul in need of saving,” Taullery teased.

  Cordell frowned at his friend’s remark and stood slowly. At the door was a black man.

  Chapter Five

  Swinging open the door, Cordell smiled broadly and put out his hand. “Jacob Henry Eliason, it’s been too long. Come in, Suitcase. Come in.”

  “Thank ya, Reverend Langford. It’s mighty good to see ya too. How’s the sweet missus? She sure be a sight for these old eyes.” Jacob Henry “Suitcase” Eliason stepped inside and extended his open right hand, keeping the hat in his left at his side.

  Nearly bald with a full, graying beard, he was about Cordell’s height, wearing a navy blue three-piece suit with a gray silk cravat. A gold chain crossed his vest. His matching hat was in his hands. Behind him was a black buggy pulled by two gray mules. In the back seat was a large leather suitcase, heavily marked and scratched from much wear. Friends knew Eliason kept his legal papers there, close at hand, as well as clothes. A double-barreled shotgun rested within easy reach when he drove.

  Cordell shook Eliason’s hand enthusiastically and asked, “Had any breakfast? Ian and I are just sittin’ down at the table. Got some of Aleta’s good tortillas. Plenty of eggs and potatoes. Jam, too.”

  “Already broke the fast, but I’d sur ’nuff have some of that coffee. Smells fine.”

  “Hey, Ian, guess what? Jacob’s here.”

  From around the corner came a friendly greeting. “Suitcase, you old rascal! What business have you bought today?”

  “Hey, Ian, how’s that store doin’ these days?”

  “Just fair, Suitcase. Hard to find folks with any cash money.”

  Jacob Henry Eliason was one of the more fortunate former slaves. As a teenager, he had escaped from a Texas ranch on the underground railway and been educated by a sympathetic white family and later graduated from Knox College in Illinois. After the War, he returned to Texas and shrewdly began buying bankrupt businesses and turning them into successful enterprises. He was well connected with Northern bureacrats who liked to point to him as an example of how well a freed slave could do.

  Eliason’s true feelings about the carpetbaggers were kept to himself—or, occasionally, to friends like Cordell and Taullery. He despised their interference in Texas but had no illusions about how it could help him. He had done a good job of cultivating the Northern controllers, and it was paying off with opportunities like these.

  His nickname, Suitcase, had stuck with him because he apparently had no place of residence, even though he was wealthy enough to buy most any home in Texas. He preferred to sleep at one of his businesses and carry his few belongings, and all of his legal papers, with him. No one was certain where he kept his money, and it was well known he was handy with a gun and a knife.

  “You menfolk dun run off all your pretty ladies?”

  Cordell chuckled. “Not if we’re lucky. Aleta and Mary are at the school, then they’re going to be with the Harper woman. You heard . . .”

  “Yessuh, I did. Awful, Reverend. Lord a’ Mercy, what’s gonna happen to us all?”

  “I wish I knew the answer to that. All I know is God has a plan.”

  “Sur do wish the ol’ boy would up an’ let us in on it.” Eliason’s eyes twinkled, and he patted Cordell’s shoulder. Cordell laughed.

  Cordell and Eliason entered the small kitchen, and Taullery offered the black man a hot cup of coffee and asked again about having some breakfast. Eliason enthusiastically received the coffee but again declined eating. Cordell went directly to the counter, retrieved the plate of tortillas, and brought them to the sitting Eliason. He smiled and said, “Well now, I bin eyein’ that jam—an’ I do think it would be a mighty fine thing to taste.”

  “Please do,” Cordell said. “Think I’ll have one.”

  “That’ll be three already, Rule,” Taullery said with a grin.

  “Who’s counting?” Cordell answered, and dipped his spoon into the jam jar after Eliason finished filling his tortilla.

  When the black businessman leaned forward to take a bite of his rolled treat, sunlight twinkled off the silver-plated, pearl-handled revolver carried in a shoulder holster. He also carried two derringers, one in each vest pocket. His lean frame and gentle manner belied a man who could handle himself well in a dangerous situation, whether political or physical. Rumors said he had killed three men in self-defense. Taullery thought the black man had likely started the story himself, just to add a threatening dimension to his presence for the sake of protection.

  Conversation resumed easily among the three men, mostly about a small boot-making company Eliason had bought from the county for back taxes and was trying to get reopened. Eliason, Cordell, and Tauller
y had been friends for more than a year, a friendship that began after Cordell stopped eight Rebels from hanging a black man because he was riding a mule. He followed that with a sermon about black people being God’s children, equal in his sight, and deserving of help in finding jobs and getting educated—a sermon that cost him some churchgoers.

  “Heard a bunch of Negroes took over a ranch way north of here,” Taullery said, avoiding Cordell’s frown. “Word is they just up an’ marched into the big house—and told the white folks there to get out.”

  “Yeah, I heard that too.” Eliason sipped the coffee and shook his head with pleasure. “My, my, your lady can sure make fine jam, Reverend.”

  Cordell smiled at Eliason’s smooth dismissal of Taullery’s racial concern, thanked him for the compliment, and asked, “How’s the new boot factory coming?”

  “Pretty good. Hired back some folks that used to work there. Really know how to make good boots. Got real pride in it. I like that. Yes sir, I do.”

  “White folks?” Taullery’s question had an edge.

  Eliason’s wide smile pushed his cheeks as if something inside his mouth extended them. “Well, yes, Mister Taullery. They be the only folks that know how to make boots.” He paused and added, “For now.”

  Cordell glanced at Taullery and frowned again. The storekeeper wanted to ask more questions concerning the changing labor situation but decided against it. He and Cordell had disagreed on the subject of slavery long before the War. Taullery thought the condition had a proper place in the social and economic way of things, although he didn’t condone mistreatment of slaves. Cordell had hated the very thought of one man presuming to own another from the time he understood the situation. His fight for the South had been to defend its right to leave the Union—and a love of battle, even though he would never have admitted it. If he was honest with himself, it was also a way to strike back at his evil father without actually doing so.

  Eyeing the young minister carefully, Eliason put down his coffee cup and said, “I came to ask a favor. A big one, Reverend.”