Mississippi Raider

by J. T. Edson

  Having no doubt what their fate would be if they were captured, the pair also concluded that—regardless of their orders or how others engaged elsewhere in the South upon the same mission might be faring—they would make all haste in returning to the safety of an area with stout pro-Northern sympathies.

  Having the small-minded, vindictive, and untrustworthy natures of their kind, the pair decided to take revenge upon the local “liberal” businessman they held responsible for their predicament. Confident there was no way in which he could retaliate, as he did not even know that the names they were using were assumed for the assignment, they would betray him to the authorities when clear of the immediate danger area. However, having similar characteristics in his makeup, the intended victim, on hearing news of what happened, and also fled to security from capture presented by settling in antislavery-committed territory.

  Chapter Four – Our Menfolks’re On Their Way

  With the load from the second Manton dueling pistol discharged, Belle Boyd did not waste as much as a second by indulging in futile mental recriminations, despite experiencing a surge of anger over the failure to hit her intended target even though she was aware that her aim was not at fault. Allowing the English-made weapon to fall alongside its earlier-fired and discarded mate, watching more of the invaders coming her way and realizing she must acquire the means to deal with whatever evil they might contemplate, she turned and darted back toward the door of her suite. Seeing her coming, having been on the point of following her into the passage, Martha Jonias drew back with an alacrity that seemed out of place for one of such an age and bulk.

  “Please get the Colt from my bedside table!” the girl said as she went by the elderly Negress, the lessons she had received in good manners causing her to employ the first word despite the extreme urgency of the situation.

  Without waiting to reply, Auntie Mattie showed a similar speed when getting out of the girl’s way by closing the door before going to carry out the request. However, knowing there was no way in which it could be secured—locks and bolts never having been considered necessary for rooms inside the mansion of Baton Roy ale plantation—she immediately and just as swiftly went to carry out the instructions she was given. Paying no further attention to her former nurse and now mentor, Belle hurried toward the fireplace of the sitting room.

  Reaching up, the girl lifted the outer of the two swords from where it hung across its almost identical mate below the fencing mask. Giving it a swishing motion as if limbering up to engage in a practice bout, then hearing a crash and guessing at its cause, she turned in the direction from which she had come. As she guessed had happened, one of the men, being unaware of the rules that prevailed in her home where such things were concerned, had charged into and burst open the door. Because the entrance to the sitting room had been effected far more easily than he anticipated, he staggered out of control across the threshold. However, two more of the raiding party were close on his heels.

  Much to her annoyance, Belle saw that none of the men were the pair she had seen shoot down her parents. However, she felt some slight relief from observing that they were not carrying firearms. Because each held a knife of sizable dimensions, she concluded on that account that they were far from being innocuous. Passing his still-staggering companion, the first of the pair darted toward her. Despite seeing the sword she was grasping, he felt sure he had nothing to fear from the skimpily attired and curvaceously slender girl regardless of the expression of grim determination and deadly loathing on her beautiful face.

  The hard case soon discovered how wrong his conclusion had been.

  Responding as her training at fencing taught her, Belle went to meet her would-be assailant with the swift and competent precision of one well-versed in such matters, despite putting the knowledge to use in earnest for the first time. Going into a close-to-perfect classical lunge, she sent the shining blade of her weapon driving toward the man. Showing an appreciation of his peril and possessing sufficient control over his movements to be able to take evasive action, he made a rapid withdrawal that carried him beyond the range of the attack, even though doing so caused him to run up against the man who had effected the entrance.

  Following up the thwarted attack, the girl prepared to make the best possible use of the qualities that made the epee de combat she was holding such an effective weapon. Unlike a foil, which could only be employed to make a lunging thrust with the point, the edges of its blade were sharpened so as to permit cutting and slashing after the fashion of the heavier saber. It was this kind of tactic she elected to put into practice. However, while commencing to deliver the cut at the head she was contemplating—despite the rage she was still experiencing over the shooting of her parents—her instincts and upbringing revolted against inflicting an injury that would almost certainly cause the death of another human being. Therefore, at the last moment she changed her target. Instead of slashing into the man’s throat, the blade laid open his right cheek in a way that would scar him for life.

  Watching the devastating speed and obvious competence with which Belle was making the attack, the third of the men decided against taking her on with the knife he held. Despite the length of its blade, it was considerably shorter than the sword she was wielding so effectively. With that thought in mind, he saw a means of avoiding the need to do so. What was more, he considered that he was suitably equipped by virtue of his birth and upbringing to make the most of the opportunity. A French Creole from a moderately wealthy family who had turned to a life of crime after having been disowned by his father for being caught cheating at cards, he had received instruction in fencing while growing up. Although he had not kept up the practice after fleeing from the wrath of the men he had cheated, he was confident that he could still use the more suitable weapon he had noticed on entering the room.

  Transferring the knife into his left hand, the Creole darted over to reach with the right for the second epee on the wall.

  Hoping to achieve surprise, as he had no liking for the prospect of having to engage in serious combat with one who was such an obviously capable antagonist regardless of her sex, the Creole swung around with it in his grasp. Much to his relief, as he had been made aware of how effectively she could wield the weapon, he found that the girl had turned her attention to the man who had forced the entry for them. Confident he would be able to make the attack before being detected, he advanced and went into a lunge, as he had been taught. In his haste, he made it from slightly farther away than he intended.

  However, with his intended victim’s attention being distracted, the Creole felt sure he would still achieve his purpose.

  Having recovered his equilibrium and thrust the wounded man aside, the hard case who had gained admittance to the room with an unneeded charge at the door found himself able to tackle the beautiful girl. On the point of lunging at her, he heard a feminine bellow redolent of a close-to-bestial rage and swung his gaze toward its source. Although he realized that there was a potentially grave danger threatening from that direction, he reacted too slowly to prevent it from happening.

  Returning with the five-shot ivory-handled Colt Little Dragoon Pocket Pistol revolver that Belle kept loaded and capped in the drawer of her bedside table, Auntie Mattie, never having fired any kind of weapon, made no attempt to use it. Instead, letting it fall from her grasp, she rushed forward while emitting the roar that drew the attention of the burly man her way. Before his never-swift wits could cope with the unexpected turn of events, although he read the menace in the massive old Negress’s demeanor, he felt his throat grasped by a hand with a grip like a closing bear trap.

  Having the waist band of his trousers seized at the same moment that the other hold was applied to inflict a choking that further numbed his already bewildered senses, the man felt himself being propelled backward with a force he would have been hard-pressed to resist even if the grip were not being applied so vigorously. Just as he was trying to halt, he found he was being subjected to
a surging thrust that sent him against the window. Going through to the sound of shattering glass, a wail of alarm burst from him as he was falling to crash on the ground. Unable to halt before, Auntie Mattie contrived to do so by placing her palms on the wall alongside the ruined casement. Seeing and hearing certain happenings that were taking place below, she swung around with the intention of alerting Belle to them.

  Although the Creole made the lunge as he had intended, he found that it failed to achieve the desired effect. On coming into contact with the left biceps of the girl as she started to turn his way, instead of her back as he had intended—satisfied that being struck there would leave her sufficiently incapacitated for him to take the retaliatory measures his lecherous disposition was planning to extract—the anticipated penetration failed to materialize. Instead of the point sinking into flesh, the blade began to bend upward in a graceful curve.

  The error made by the girl’s latest would-be attacker was one of ignorance.

  Although coming from the same maker as the epee de combat and matching its dimensions exactly, the sword taken from the wall appeared identical only in some respects to the one in Belle’s hand. In fact, although the Creole failed to take the matter into account when grabbing it from the wall, it had two vitally important differences in its construction. Designed for use at fencing practice only, in the interests of avoiding the chance of injury to an opponent, the edges of the blade were not sharpened and the tip had been fitted with a protective metal “button” intended to prevent its penetrating when making a “hit” at the conclusion of a successful lunge. Therefore, its employment as a means of defense and attack was far from being as dangerous as was the case with the weapon—rather than a sporting device—she was holding.

  Feeling the pain as the contact by the blade of the practice epee came, the girl reacted with speed. Coming around, she once more struck back with what started as a cut to the head and, still being under the influence of her instinctive objection to doing something that could possibly take the life of another human being, she lowered her point of aim to lay open the Creole’s right upper arm to the bone. The pain and severing of the biceps caused him to drop both the knife and the ineffective sword with which he had hoped to counter the epee de combat she was using so effectively.

  However, despite having disposed of her assailant and seeing that Auntie Mattie had coped with an even greater severity while removing the other threat, the girl discovered that she could not account herself safe from further danger.

  Nevertheless, Belle was given an intimation that help might be forthcoming.

  “Our menfolks’re on their way, gal!” Auntie Mattie yelled, turning from the window after having seen the figures armed with a variety of improvised weapons who were approaching rapidly from the living quarters allocated to them. A glance farther away allowed her to deliver a further piece of information, which she regarded as being of equal importance if she should be correct in what was portended by it. “And there’s riders a-coming fast!”

  Although gratified by the news given by the Negress, as she knew the loyalty all their workforce showed toward her family and deduced that the approaching horsemen would be the rest of the hunting party returning from assisting Joe Lassiter in attending to the muck ponies they had ridden, and knowing they would all be armed even though no weapons were carried while going out for the evening’s sport, the girl realized that the peril she and Auntie Mattie were facing was not yet at an end. The two men she had wounded were put out of action, or at least sufficiently incapacitated to be rendered close to innocuous until recovering from the injuries sustained, but she saw yet another of the attackers coming through the door. What was more, unlike his three predecessors, he was carrying a cocked muzzle-loading pistol in his right hand.

  Skidding to a halt, the man brought the heavy-caliber firearm into a shoulder-height alignment upon the girl.

  Before the latest intruder could squeeze the trigger of his weapon, Auntie Mattie made her presence known in the same way she had done previously. Hearing the awesome roar and looking at its source, the man was not led into a sense of false security by discovering it was emanating from an elderly woman—and a Negress, at that. Deducing the very real threat she was posing to himself, while the girl at whom he was aiming stood a greater distance away, he swung the pistol around and completed the pressure already commenced. With a deep coughing roar, the charge was detonated and the heavy ball of lead left the muzzle to plow into Auntie Mattie’s ample torso. Not even her massive bulk could offset the effect of the impact. Giving a cry of pain, she had her advance turned into an involuntary retreat that ended with her sprawling supine on the floor.

  Seeing what had happened to the elderly woman, Belle was filled with a desire to take revenge upon the man responsible. However, the instincts that came from being the product of a race of fighters on both sides of her family warned that attempting to do so while armed only with the epee would be ill-advised. She had not noticed that the pistol had only a single barrel and so was useless as a firearm until reloaded. What she did know was that there were other would-be attackers who might soon be arriving and some more effective means than cold steel would be required if she was to defend herself and Auntie Mattie from them.

  Fortunately, Belle thought, the means she required was close at hand.

  Allowing the epee to fall from her grasp, Belle went in a rolling dive that took her to where the Negress had dropped her Colt. Closing her right hand around the ivory butt, which had never felt so comforting as it did at that moment, she came to her knees. With her left hand joining its mate, she completed the move on her knees facing the man and started to raise the short-barreled weapon. The move was as smoothly accomplished as if it had been practiced a great many times until a peak of perfection was achieved, instead of being made for the first time and only by instinctive reflexes. However, she was prevented from bringing it to the kind of conclusion she desired.

  Seeing the response being made by Belle and hearing yells accompanied by other significant sounds from outside the room, the man was all too aware of how precarious his situation had become. Letting out a snarl of rage, his instincts warning that she possessed sufficient knowledge to be able to shoot with enough accuracy to put his life at risk, he hurled the empty pistol at her with the intention of distracting her aim before she could open fire. Having done so, he ran to the shattered window and, springing through, alighted on the feebly moving body of his predecessor to leave—albeit involuntarily—by that route. Ignoring the moan of agony that greeted his arrival, he started to run across the grounds as swiftly as his legs would carry him.

  Chance rather than a skilled aim caused the pistol to achieve a result the man would have been pleased to witness.

  Caught on the side of the head by the butt of the approaching weapon before she could deflect it, Belle was toppled sideways; She was stunned by the impact, and blackness descended upon her.

  Chapter Five – I’m Going to See Both of Them Dead!

  Shortly after Belle Boyd was rendered unconscious by the pistol thrown at her, two of the men who had been on the fox hunt earlier in the evening and a pair of Negroes clad in attire suggesting that they were field hands rather than members of the mansion’s domestic staff dashed into the room.

  Already from below the sounds of fighting had died away from the ground floor, although there were other indications that activity of a hostile nature was continuing in the grounds.

  Furthermore, originating from somewhere on the ground floor, there were other noises suggesting that efforts were being made to put out the fires that had been started in various parts of the mansion. These had been started, using kerosene, by the members of the mob holding a grudge against the owner of Baton Royale plantation for his part in curtailing some of their unsavory activities. Therefore, although Belle and the others on the upper floor were unaware of the problem, because of the highly inflammable nature of much of their surroundings as well as the fluid
employed to set each blaze going and the primitive means that were being employed in an attempt to douse the resulting blazes, the men fighting the fires were finding great difficulty in achieving anything against the ever-growing flames.

  Realizing the danger posed by the spreading conflagration, the quartet had come to the second floor to give whatever succor was needed to its occupants and ensure that there were no more of the attackers about. It had only needed a quick examination to inform them that there was nothing anybody could do for the owner and his wife. However, as neither had put in an appearance down below, they had surmised that the daughter of the house and possibly her former maid were upstairs. It had been the biggest of the Negroes who guessed where the women could be found.

  “Quickly!” snapped Phillipe Front de Boeuf, iv the young white man in the lead. Dressed as he had been during the hunt, although lacking the most undesirable qualities some of his family had had and one at least still possessed, he had the size and bulk for which most members his family had long been renowned. v “Get them downstairs and outside.”

  “You ’tend to my li’l lamb first!” Mattie Jonias croaked, trying to force herself up from a kneeling position while still keeping her right hand clasped to the wound in the right side of her torso just below her massive bosom.

  “We’ll see to you both!” Front de Boeuf asserted. He was a medical student and knew enough about such injuries as the old Negress had sustained to appreciate the danger of what must be done, but he was aware there was no other choice if she was to be saved from the flames. “Danny, help get Belle downstairs. We’ll see to Auntie Mattie.” His eyes went to the woman and he continued in a gentle voice, “It’s going to hurt, but we have to carry you out of here.”