by Cotton Smith
“We’ve got the black bastard. Take the school! Come on!”
Inside, Aleta’s first reaction to the gunfire was calm. “Zachim, put out the lamps and stay away from the window. Children, get down on the floor. Now.” She grabbed the bag beside the teacher’s desk and pulled free the gunbelt and holster. Pulling the revolver from the leather sheath, she slung the gunbelt over her shoulder.
“There ees a back door. I saw it. Everyone follow me. Quickly, children. There ees not much time. Stay low.”
Children sprang from their desks and scurried in the direction she pointed. Zachim hurried past Aleta, toward the door.
“No, Zachim, thees way!”
“I must go help Mr. Eliason.”
“No, Zachim—they weel kill you too!”
He opened the door and gunfire filled the space. Slammed backward, he spun awkwardly on one foot, then fell. Blood seeped from his chest and stomach. An ugly crease along his forehead was crimson and widening. He pushed up on his elbows, then on his trembling arms, to stand again. He got to his knees. Five more shots rammed into him. He gasped and collapsed.
Aleta took a deep breath, turned over three chairs pushed against a long assembly table to block their path, and urged the closest child to keep his head down. In the middle of the moving string of children, Mary Ann spun and ran toward her desk.
“Mary Ann, come here!”
But the little girl never hesitated, returning to her desk. She grabbed the book and slate and ran back, carrying them like they were precious and easily broken. A bullet creased the windowsill and skidded toward the floor a few feet from where she had stood.
“Teacher, I couldn’t leave them.” Mary Ann held the book and slate away from her chest and then returned them with a hug.
“I know, sweetheart. I know,” Aleta assured, patting her on the back. “But let us keep going, all right?”
“Yes, teacher. Are you mad at me?”
Aleta tried to smile. “Of course not, Mary Ann. I think you are wonderful.”
With her pistol pointed at the entrance, Aleta kept glancing back as she guided the children half-crawling, half-running into the darkness of the factory. The porch filled with heavy boots and cursing. “Shoot ’em again, right between the eyes. Both of ’em. That black sonvabitch thought he was as good as us.”
“I—I didn’t think a-anyone was s-supposed to get hurt.” The voice was thin and choking.
“Nobody did. Come on, let’s git them colored kids. If’n we kill a few, the rest o’ them will be too damn scared to do this no more.”
“Yeah. Let’s do it.”
“I want that Langford woman, too. She’s too big for her britches.”
“She needs a real man to teach her some manners.” Guffaws trailed the statement.
The same choking voice warned the others. “I—I’d l-leave her alone i-if I were you. You don’t know Rule.”
“Rule? You mean Preacher Langford? Who the hell is afraid of some damn Bible-thumper?”
“H-he isn’t a minister, not r-really. He’s . . .”
“Come on—before they spread out in there and are hard to find.”
“We kin always spot thar eyes. They’s the onliest thing that’s white. Them an’ their teeth.”
Laughter followed the five men as they entered the factory, brandishing pistols and rifles. White sheets, with holes cut for seeing, covered their heads and shoulders. They swarmed into the empty schooling area, kicking over desks and tossing left-behind books and slates to the floor.
“Write a message on that damn blackboard. Tell them no more of this.”
“I can’t write.”
“Mayor, you do it.”
“Shut up, stupid. You’re not supposed to use anybody’s name.”
“Sorry.”
“Where the hell did they go?”
With a motion toward the main part of the factory, the five men rushed into the tables. Behind them three more entered, eager to find something to shoot at. Just inside the back door, Aleta watched the children dash for the row of bushes lining the creek behind the factory. To William James, the oldest, she had quickly given responsibility for seeing that the others followed him. They were to hide in the creek bed on the far side of the trees. She would meet them there and take them home. The boy’s eyes shone with the pride of leadership.
“I ain’t scared, Mrs. Langford. I ain’t scared o’ nuthin’.” William James folded his arms defiantly.
“I know you aren’t, William James, but the others are. So you keep them real quiet—and wait for me in the creek bed. All right?”
“Ya gonna shoot ’em? Did they kill Mr. Eliason—and Zachim?”
“Go on, William James. We can talk about it later.”
“Ya sur you’s a-comin’?”
“Yes. Go.” She looked back at the advancing band of hooded men, then again to the vanishing children. William James was making certain they were close beside him. He looked up and met Aleta’s eyes for an instant before she turned around to wait.
Darkness in the main factory area was contributing to a slow advance. At the front of the charging mob, the clan leader stumbled against the first tipped-over chair and fell headlong. Unable to catch himself, his sheet mask caught on the leg of the second chair and was yanked from his face. His sneering face was contorted with wild-eyed surprise and his pistol discharged as he hit the floor, driving a slug into the roof.
Even in the dull blackness of the building, Aleta recognized Mayor Giles. She gasped as the realization hit her mind. Under her breath, she muttered, “Colonel Bulldog.” Angrily, he got to his feet with two men helping him. He cursed and yelled for his mask and quickly recovered his head. They started through the factory again, this time with a different man in the lead. Fourth in line, Giles urged them to move faster.
With a cocked revolver, Aleta stood beside the opened door. Waiting. Everything in her wanted to shoot, but she knew her gunfire would only speed up their discovery of the back entrance. The children needed all the time they could get. She shut her mind off to the possibility that there were more clansmen waiting in the back. Calmly she stood as they worked their way through the gauntlet of turned-over chairs, boxes, tables, and equipment. So far, they hadn’t seen her or the door. They were less than twenty feet away when the man at the front of the band realized where she was.
“There! There’s a goddamn back door—and the Langford woman’s getting away with them kids!”
“L-let ’er go. It’s t-too late. C-come on, w-we’ve done enough here.”
Without looking back, the first hoodsman snarled, “What the hell’s the matter with you? We came to put a stop to—”
Aleta’s pistol roared twice, then three times. The first intruder buckled and fell, and the intruder next to him spun sideways. Returning gunfire strafed the door, but she had already slipped through it and into the night.
Chapter Twenty
None of the sixteen Regulators, camped on the Ripton ranch—nor their wheelchair-bound leader or his hired killer—paid any attention to the red Comanche moon taking control of the darkening sky. None noticed, either, that a shadow in the long buffalo grass, across from where they were bedding down for the night, was actually a man lying motionless. Watching. It was Rule Cordell.
His prone position was alongside the creek meandering past the Ripton ranch, about thirty yards from the Regulators’ evening campfire. Downstream, it fattened into a year-round pond, used daily by Ripton cattle. His face and hands were rubbed with dirt to minimize his appearance. His spurs had been removed and left behind with his stallion and Shank’s wagon over the closest rise and hidden by a thicket of young cottonwood trees that took their stand near the same creek. Ample grass would keep the horses quiet and content.
The Regulators’ small camp was sheltered from gunfire from the dark main house, lying in the belly of a wide dry creek bed that had once held the stream passing near Cordell. Shallow banks provided a certain structure to their
encampment. Overhead, more cottonwoods provided shade. The fire’s soft crackle carried the wonderful sound of warmth. A wimpering wind brought the sweet aroma of coffee, as well as the sharp smell of green wood smoke. A man with a bandaged head, sitting around the campfire, was likely one of the men Billy had beaten.
Cordell’s arm pounded with each heartbeat, but it wasn’t bleeding. For once, his head was clear and without pain. He wanted to move, to stretch, but knew he dared not. He had long since rebuckled on his handguns and returned the warrior’s stone earring to his ear. Shank had asked about the earring and Cordell had told him it was a gift from a Comanche shaman. The merchant was hoping for more, but Cordell made it clear he intended to speak no more about the gift or the giver.
The weight of his guns at his hips and the soft dangling pebble fueled the strange fire growing within him. A flame that was both cold and hot at the same time. He swallowed, but his own saliva did nothing to quench it. Out of habit, he touched the medicine pouch hanging beneath his shirt and glanced at the dead rose resting on his lapel. For the first time, he noticed that most of the petals were missing.
Six state lawmen were already asleep, stretched out behind high-cut banks; four more sat around the campfire, talking and passing a bottle of rye whiskey. Cordell figured they were waiting to take their turn at guard duty. Four more were stationed as night guards at key points around the perimeter of the Ripton house. Caleb Shank was somewhere on the far side of the ranch yard, studying the guard setup from that angle. Cordell trusted the big man to make good judgments—even though it meant being quiet. Shank had talked nonstop for most of their ride, telling war stories and explaining in great detail about Cordell’s “masquerade battalion” battle in Virginia.
Another Regulator guarded their string of horses held back among the rear guard of cottonwoods; he was fighting hard to hold back sleep. Fifty feet away, a fidgety man stood watch beside Captain Padgett’s unhitched wagon. With the mounted Gatling gun pointed toward the Ripton house, it rested like a giant beast where the creek bed broadened to become the advent of a gentle valley made for grazing cattle. Captain Padgett was in the wagon, sleeping. Cordell knew they would have to take control of the rapid-firing gun if they were to have any chance of success.
Cordell figured the Regulator leader hadn’t used the big gun yet—and didn’t want to. The value of the property would be diminished by the storm of bullets it belched. The crippled Regulator leader was sleeping in the wagon on a padded cot. Cordell couldn’t see him, only hear his steady snoring. The glow of the campfire barely licked the wagon or the guard standing out front.
Not far from the horses was a gathering of saddles and tack, and just to the north were at least twenty rifles, carefully stacked against and around what was once a stone fence pillar. Next to the guns were two large barrels; he assumed they held water. A makeshift cooking area was nestled between them. Cordell hadn’t yet seen the pistol-fighter, Lion Graham, but assumed he was around and wished he knew where. It was possible Graham was one of the men already asleep. A part of him wanted to talk with Graham, to try to understand the man who had come from the boy he knew. Yet he knew that such an encounter could not happen. Not without gunfire.
Everything was muted and uneasy after a day of unsettling news for the Regulators. First had come the likelihood that the Ripton girl had eluded them with the return of riderless horses. At dusk, three more came galloping into camp; two carried the three dead Regulators that Padgett had sent to determine what had happened. Furious about the second setback and the Riptons’ stubborn refusal to surrender, he had become so upset that he couldn’t talk and finally ended his evening downing most of a bottle of whiskey.
The Riptons’ tenacity touched Cordell greatly. He marveled at Lizzie Ripton managing to escape at all. They were holding the main house like a fort, with both parents and Billy shooting effectively whenever a target took shape. Since he had been there, only sporadic gunfire had occurred, mostly from Regulators trying to unnerve the family. So far, the Riptons had been holding their own well enough that Padgett hadn’t risked an allout attack.
Why should he? No one would come to help the Riptons and the family was cut off from water, so it was only a matter of time before they would be forced to surrender. Shank thought the intended owner might be a wealthy Yankee rancher near Dallas; the man had been buying property with tax liens right and left. Cordell thought it could also be Mayor Giles. Whoever it was, they figured Padgett was offered a “finder’s fee” for running the Riptons off. Cordell reminded himself that the would-be purchasers were as guilty as Padgett—and it was likely his Regulators didn’t know about the deal, only Padgett’s word that the family was hiding a wanted criminal.
He continued to study the Regulator camp, deciding on the moves he wanted to make, repeating them in his mind so he could perform them quickly and quietly. War had taught Cordell the power of being patient and waiting, in addition to the added force of doing the unexpected. The patience part had come more easily to his friend Taullery, who liked to know everything about a situation before making any move. Patience had not come easily to Cordell, whose every instinct was to attack, but he had learned the value of waiting.
Since heavy dusk, he had been stretched out sixty yards from the main building, but at an angle where he could see the entire ranch and the Regulator camp. Cordell rubbed his eyes to push back weariness that wanted control. When he and Shank separated, after sharing some food from the wagon and Cordell’s saddlebags, the decision was to meet back at the horses when it was completely dark and decide on their next move.
From his position beside the creek, Cordell had examined the structures that made up the Ripton ranch: a house and large barn, a small bunkhouse with windows patched shut, a blacksmith shed, two corrals, one quite small, and an oddly shaped toolshed. Iron Creek, or Clark Creek as some called it, slowly crossed this side of the open ranchyard, providing a pathway of tall green cattails, fat buffalo grass, flowering yucca, and an occasional cottonwood tree and elderberry bush on both sides of soft black banks.
Closest to the house was a patch of blossoming buttercups, larkspur, and bluebells; Cordell guessed young Lizzie Ripton had tended to the wild flowers on her own. They were shaded by a grandfatherly cottonwood that was bent with age. Against their front porch, three small clumps of wild roses were thriving. The buildings were constructed of planked lumber and adobe. No rawhide outfit, that’s for sure. Old man Ripton had tried to put down some deep roots, Cordell thought.
Glimpses of people moving inside the main house, and shadows flickering on the walls, disappeared with darkness. But never had there been any substantive silhouettes for targets. The family was too savvy for that. Sneaking into the main house had crossed his mind, but it seemed like a waste of time. He would like to see the family—and especially Billy—but this wasn’t the moment for it. And it was too big a risk, likely pinning down Shank and himself. They would go there later and tell them of the plan.
Into his mind came the tall, pale woman from Taullery’s store. She held the copper bowl, shut her eyes, and reopened them. He heard again her pronouncements: “You are thunder. You are lightning. You are a storm to clean the land.” . . . followed by “God brings thunder and lightning. God brings the storm to clean the land. But someone comes . . . from another time, he comes . . . seeking the storm . . . to destroy it.” What a strange woman. Where had she come from? Why had she said those strange things? Was she talking about Graham as the one from “another time”? What was Graham’s insistence about their being together in another life as Roman soldiers? Did Graham believe in reincarnation? Is that what the woman meant? He should’ve asked Taullery if he knew her, or anything about her. When he had the chance, he would describe her to Shank; the merchant knew everyone in the region.
Aleta had used somewhat the same terms to describe how he should get Padgett to leave. “Become a son of the thunder.” That was eerie. Just a coincidence, he assured himself. Aleta was
describing how he should go about this attack. Thoughts of her made him homesick, and he tried to keep them from his mind. She would be home now, he thought, and tried to concentrate. Instead, he mentally kissed and held her until a particularly shrill laugh from the campfire took him away from her.
Daring moves were entrenched in Cordell’s experience. In June 1862, he had been a part of General Jeb Stuart’s unparalleled cavalry ride around McClellan’s entire army. Deep in enemy territory, Stuart’s twelve hundred gray-clad riders had humiliated McClellan’s one hundred thousand troops. They had killed Federals, burned wagons, captured horses and guns, provided Lee with vital information for the successful Seven Days campaign that followed—and, most important, demoralized the North and given a great lift to the South. Stuart’s ride was in all the Southern newspapers.
Unlike his mentor, Cordell didn’t need praise nor seek it. Even though it didn’t make much sense to him, he had obeyed the gallant general’s orders to repeat the ride around the Union army again in October and partly again in June the following year. Unfortunately, Stuart’s third attempt meant he was absent when Lee badly needed his eyes during the early days of Gettysburg. Cordell had never understood why Marse Robert had insisted on fighting there. It was clear, from the start, that his subordinate officers had mishandled the situation, giving the Union force the high ground uncontested. Later, when the South was fighting on without hope, grain, or bullets, he realized that the great leader knew Gettysburg was their only real chance to win. Time was definitely not on their side. Just like the Riptons.
Cordell’s “masquerade battlion,” as the Federal ambush became known, was partly a result of his training with Stuart and partly Cordell’s stubbornness. If things went right tonight, he planned on repeating the concept with Shank’s help. The big merchant seemed eager to try his hand at creating fake riflemen, spouting about the various items in his wagon that would prove useful.