Sue Mundy

by Richard Taylor

  At first, the annihilation of the thirty sickened Jarom. Though he understood the provocation as well as any and better than most, he felt the punishment was too harsh, knowing that it went against every parable of mercy he’d grown up hearing. Faced with shooting even so conspicuous a scoundrel as Robertson, whose heart was stained with the blood of his victim as surely as his shirtfront with tobacco stains, he knew he could not have pulled the trigger. Could he have shot the scoundrel who blinded Patterson? He knew that he would have squeezed the trigger without hesitation, having pulled it in his waking dreams time after time after time. Still, he knew he could not shoot unarmed men who had meant him personally no harm, not as long as he held some residue of faith in the human species, some notion of guilt that portioned into stations and degrees. He knew that earlier these moral distinctions graded like colors on a palette whose hues and variations covered the entire spectrum. He also knew that as the war progressed these patterns were losing their intricacy and subtlety, that even the primary colors from which all the others proceeded were distinctions dissolving in a wash of violence.

  Sam knew he could no longer live in his home county. Having broken his neutrality, he went to Lexington, where he soon enlisted in the Confederate army. He joined Company G of the Sixth Kentucky Cavalry in a regiment serving under John Hunt Morgan. He mustered in as sergeant in October of 1862 when two Confederate armies invaded Kentucky, converging near a little town on the Salt River named Perryville, where a great battle would be fought and lost under the misdirection of Braxton Bragg.

  He accompanied Morgan’s mounted infantry on the raid through Indiana and Ohio in July of 1863, escaping across the ford into West Virginia with Adam Johnson and several hundred others, including Jarom, whom he had never met. Rejoining the remnants of Morgan’s command, he had also been at Cynthiana, escaping again when Morgan’s regiments were routed at the town’s covered bridge, where Jarom had been wounded in the hand. Like Jarom, Berry came back to Kentucky with Colonel Jack Allen to recruit more troops but stayed home on the appointed day of rendezvous when they were to march back south. He sent word to Allen that he had taken sick but that he intended to rejoin the army when he recovered. Soon after, he met Magruder and took to guerrillering.

  HARRODSBURG

  Zay Coulter, Ben Froman, Sam Berry, Billy Magruder, and Jarom stopped the stagecoach on the Harrodsburg Pike about five miles outside town, not far from Pleasant Hill where the Shakers fashioned their flat-head brooms and worked their communal farm. The wagon was a Concord, drawn by four horses and controlled by a driver, or jehu, who sat in a box that rocked upon two through braces attached to a standard that ran between the axles. Its compartment, which rode in suspension to cushion the jars of the road, was built of white oak and strapped with iron. Each time he saw one, Jarom imagined its suspended state as a metaphor for humankind, caught between the hardpan of the roads and vagaries of sky, its occupants hoping to ride out the friction without too much injury.

  Sam Berry knew the driver, an obliging sort named Billy Wilkinson. A teamster older than the combined ages of any two of the guerrillas, he’d become a “whip of the road” by dint of endurance rather than any crowning skill. To stop the coach, Coulter met him in the right-of-way with a drawn pistol and demanded that Wilkinson halt. While the horses stood in their harness pondering why they’d stopped at such a desolate and unaccustomed spot, Coulter demanded the mail. Wilkinson, hoping to hold back the Louisville mail, told him he could not throw it off the coach but that Coulter could take it off himself if he wanted it so much. He did not mean this as defiance so much as professional protocol, not to seem too compliant with a highwayman’s wishes.

  Jarom and the others sat their horses while Coulter dismounted and rummaged about the rack on top and the baggage hold on back, pitching down three bags with U.S. stenciled on their canvas. Coulter ordered a soldier inside to come out and help sort the mail, which with scant ceremony he dumped on the roadway. Coulter helped himself to what money he found, discarding bank drafts and other negotiable instruments of no use to them, since they were fearful of banks. When the soldier turned out his own pockets, Coulter found a total of sixty cents.

  “Well, it’s clear,” he said, “that you didn’t join for the pay.”

  More interested in horses, Jarom eyed the team and ordered Wilkinson to unhitch the left rear horse. With neither saddle nor lead, he hopped on its back, put spurs to its flanks, and took a brief trial up the road. Returning, he declared the gelding a poor horse for riding. About this time Sam Berry came up and greeted Wilkinson, asking about several citizens he knew Billy would know, both of them laughing at something Jarom couldn’t hear. Then Berry went back to the coach, still containing two ladies, both middle-aged, with whom he struck up more small talk, mainly, Jarom guessed, to allay their fears.

  Wilkinson, his own jitters beginning to show, asked Coulter if he could have the mail back when Coulter finished rifling through it. Coulter allowed that he could. Then Froman, who’d looked on in his amused way, told Billy Wilkinson that he would have to turn the stage around and go back to Nicholasville. When Wilkinson asked why, Froman explained that they wanted to use the road that night and that Wilkinson was not to pass until after three o’clock in the morning.

  “Fine,” said Billy Wilkinson. “That’s just fine with me.”

  Coulter, before things became too convivial, warned the driver that in the future every coach would be burned if guards were put aboard them. Except for the obvious discomposure of the ladies, the robbery came off relatively free of rancor and observable tension. The coach went one way. They went the other.

  In less than an hour the five of them rode into Harrodsburg, a place that eighty years before had been a stockade in the wilderness where survival had been precarious, as much from sickness and disease as from the Shawnee and other peoples determined to keep the vastness free of those they described as long knives. Sam Berry, who knew the town as well as he knew any place, directed them to the bank, which occupied a corner off the courthouse square. Though none of them wore Confederate uniforms, Jarom knew the plumes in their hats would immediately mark them as guerrillas.

  Almost immediately, they captured two Union soldiers who had been lounging outside a local tavern called Morgan’s. Not knowing what to do with them, Berry fetched their mounts and added them to what soon became a procession. In a moment of brilliance, he gave them back their rifles, unloaded, and told them he would shoot them if they discarded them. This increased the size of their party and gave belligerent townspeople additional targets. One of them had the name of Robinson. The other, never asked, never said.

  Jarom, his pistol drawn, followed Sam Berry up to the Harrodsburg Savings Institute, an imposing two-story brick building whose doors were closed despite the courthouse clock indicating it was twelve ten, a time when, of a Wednesday, it would ordinarily be open for business. Sam Berry had got wind that the local home guard cached guns there to be dispensed among the loyal. Intent on making a show, Sam threw one foot over the saddle as he dismounted and started shooting pistol loads into the paneled doors. Jarom followed suit and fired two rounds, splintering more of the varnished oak. Not drawing any response, Sam Berry approached the door and gave it a kick. It did not give and clearly had been secured from the inside. Without hesitating, he strode to his horse and galloped up the street while Coulter unhitched his horse from some salt barrels near the porch of the express office.

  At that moment Jarom spotted a young woman got up in full skirts and hat, carrying a basket of goods. Having stepped back into a doorway to wait out the storm, she looked like someone out of Godey’s, proper and resplendent in her Sunday clothes. Something glittered from her mid-region. Lowering his pistol, Jarom went over and politely asked her to show him what had caught his eye. Frightened, unable to look at him, she managed to unclasp the fobbed watch and hand it over. Jarom, his need for bravado outweighing any guilt, thanked her, winked, and slipped both watch and fob in
to his pocket before she could protest. The watch would be a gift to Mollie Thomas, though he had no notion of when he might be able to give it her.

  Sensing he had used up too much time, he quickly remounted Papaw and followed Berry up the street to protect his rear should there be firing from any of the buildings. Sam reined in at the front of a two-story building with “Bowman and Company” lettered across its front. Jarom could just hear him talking to the young woman whose fob and pocket timepiece he’d taken. Animated, she claimed the watch and its fob had been a gift from her deceased father and she must have it back.

  “Miss, you shall have your watch,” he assured her. “I’ll go and get it for you. My name is Berry, and you shall have your watch.”

  Jarom looked on as Berry continued up the street toward Froman and Coulter. They raised their pistols as though expecting to be fired on at any instant. Turning to look back down the street, Jarom saw five or six men with guns outside a blacksmith’s shop. Berry, still mounted, went back to the bank and waited outside. Following, Jarom saw a man come out of his way to speak to Berry, someone who seemed to know him.

  “How are you, Tom?” Berry said. “Will you shake hands with a damned son of a bitch?”

  “Certainly, I will,” the man said, smiling and stepping over to where Berry’s horse stood swishing flies with the black knot of his tail.

  When Berry laid his pistol aside and reached out his left hand to the man, Jarom noticed that Berry had affixed a line to his stump and tied it round the pistol’s grip to prevent its getting away from him.

  “The last time you saw me,” Berry said to the man, “I was a gentleman. Now I’m a damned thief, murderer, liar, and robber.”

  The man said nothing but continued to smile, stepping slowly toward the walkway.

  Jarom glanced back toward the blacksmith’s and counted five men in the open with guns at the ready. Across the street by the engine house he counted four more milling near a fence. As he watched, one of them crouched, rested his rifle barrel on the fence, took aim, and fired up the street toward Berry and him. Berry, now in front of the Baptist church, let out a whoop and fell over the side of his horse like an Indian. He may have been hit, but Jarom felt fairly certain he’d simply advantaged himself with the horse’s flesh as a shield.

  Jarom looked up the street again and saw a group of men forming a line about two squares up Main Street at the Military Asylum, where the state housed and cared for veterans of former wars, a large brick building that once had been a hotel and spa for those visiting the nearby springs. These against them now weren’t regular soldiers but Saturday sportsmen, armed with antique muskets and shotguns as though equipped for a rabbit hunt. Jarom followed Berry, Froman, and Coulter up the street toward the men, who started firing as they approached. Jarom fired back twice and looked around him for cover, moving his horse to the corner where the road turned toward Perryville. About that time he saw Coulter boost himself onto his horse, his pistol leveled at two prisoners with their hands in the air.

  The five of them reunited outside the asylum to make a dash up the street and out of town. A spatter of firing started now, but the only visible shooters gathered by the smith’s shop, most of them filling the air with balls from shotguns gauged for bagging rabbits, not men. About fifty yards from the shooters, Berry’s horse went down, pitching Berry into the dust of the street. Jarom saw him rise to his feet, shaken, dredging up the pistol still tied to the horse’s reins. As it became clear he couldn’t take both it and the horse with him, he turned it loose and drew another pistol from his belt.

  Jarom, still firing at the jumble of men standing in the street, yelled to Berry that he would pick him up, at the same time jerking Papaw’s head to the right to bring her around. At that moment Berry ran to one of the two captives, who was looking for a way to break clear but whose horse was whirling erratically in the street. The rider, a hatless man in a dusty federal uniform, still carried an unloaded Springfield rifle. He made an effort to turn his horse away from the firing. From the soldier’s rear, Berry came up and poked the barrel against the man’s lower ribs. Jarom interpreted this as a gesture to make the man dismount. Instead, Berry fired, so close the man’s tunic caught fire, the impact knocking him senseless off the opposite side, his boot still ensconced in the stirrup, his weight in drag so heavy Jarom expected the saddle to wrench free. Coolly tucking the pistol in his belt, Berry went around the horse, whose eyes were bugged out with fright, loosed the dazed man’s boot, then managed to grab the horse first by its mane and then by its bridle, lifting one leg deftly over his back. Swinging about, he fired several more shots at the men outside the smithy’s before heading down the street that led south toward Danville. As a parting gesture of contempt, Jarom pulled off his plumed hat and waved it at the shooters, then ducked his head and spurred after Berry and the others as they rattled out of town.

  A NAME IN THE PAPER

  A week later, Sam Berry showed Jarom a tattered number of the Louisville Journal, its editor known as a strong Unionist.

  “You have a new father,” Berry said, amused at himself. “His name is George Prentice. Not only has he created a new name for you, he’s created a new sex for you, to boot.”

  “Lookee here,” he said, thrusting the paper at Jarom. “We’ve entered the papers. I’m a one-armed, notorious character, a desperado, and you’re Lieutenant Flowers or Miss Sue Mundy, take your choice.”

  Flecked with mud and torn in one corner, the paper carried the date October 11, 1864. To Jarom it looked as if someone had wadded it up to start a fire and changed his mind before finding a match. Curious, his eyes ran down the columns looking for the black impression that would tie him to print for the first time in his life. He couldn’t locate the item at first and thought Berry might be having a joke at his expense. Then, at the head of the first column, just under “Geo. D. Prentice, Public Printer for the Commonwealth,” his eye fixed on an account of the whole affair, starting with the robbery of the stage:

  Guerilla Desperadoes in Mercer County

  A FEMALE GUERILLA—On Friday evening a band of guerillas, led by a notorious character, a man with but one arm, named Berry, formerly of Morgan’s command, attacked the stage near Shawneetown, robbed the passengers and rifled the mail-bags. Mr. James Saffell, the stage conductor, was driving behind the lumbering vehicle in his buggy, and while attempting to make his escape from the guerillas, was thrown from his buggy over a stone fence and badly bruised by the fall. The horse and buggy were secured, but Mr. S. escaped discovery. The cutthroats then proceeded down the road and robbed the toll-gate keeper near Shawneetown of a small amount of funds. After this daring exploit, the band moved in the direction of Harrodsburg, relieving the toll-gate keeper near that place of cash and various articles, and then dashed into the town.

  The Savings Bank was honored with the first call. The managers of the institution observed the movement, and hastily closed and barred the doors before the scoundrels could gain an entrance. The robbers fired several shots as the doors were being closed, but no injury was done by the same. Finding they could not force the doors, the guerillas proposed to fire the building but, before they could put the design into execution, the citizens, who had armed themselves and collected to defend their homes, commenced firing on the robber band. The outlaws were taken by surprise, and, greatly alarmed, fled from the town, retreating in the direction of Perryville. Capt. Berry had his horse shot from under him in the skirmish. He sprang to his feet, and deliberately fired at a Federal soldier on horseback, wounding him so badly that he fell from his steed, and, securing the riderless horse, the guerilla commander hastily mounted it, and escaped from the town with his band.

  Up to this point, Prentice, as Jarom interpreted what he read, presented an evenhanded account of what had happened, though “desperado” carried a certain sting. He didn’t think of himself as a desperado, a desperate fellow. Neither did he regard himself or even Magruder, the man among them who had shed the
most blood, as a cutthroat. But it was what followed that captured his full attention:

  One of the peculiarities of this band of cutthroats is the officer second in command, recognized by the men as Lieutenant Flowers. The officer in question is a young woman, and her right name is Sue Mundy. She dresses in male attire, generally sporting a full Confederate uniform. Upon her head she wears a jaunty plumed hat, beneath which escapes a wealth of dark-brown hair, falling around and down her shoulders in luxuriant curls. She is possessed of a comely form, has a dark, piercing eye, is a bold rider, and a daring leader. Prior to connecting herself with Berry’s gang of outlaws, she was associated with the band commanded by the notorious scoundrel Captain Alexander, who met his doom—a tragic death—a short time ago in Southern Kentucky.

  Lieutenant Flowers, or Sue Mundy, is a practiced robber, and many ladies, who have been so unfortunate as to meet her on the highway, can testify with what sangfroid she presents a pistol and commands “stand and deliver.” Her name is becoming widely known, and, to the ladies, it is always associated with horror. On Friday evening she robbed a young lady of Harrodsburg of her watch and chain. If the citizens had not unceremoniously expelled the thieving band from the town, in all probability this she-devil in pantaloons would have paid her respects to the ladies of the place, and robbed them of their jewelry and valuables. She is a dangerous character, and for the sake of the fair ladies of Kentucky, we sincerely hope that she may soon be captured and placed in a position that will prevent her from repeating her unlady-like exploits.

  Woman, she-devil in pantaloons, dangerous character, watch thiever—so inventive was Prentice’s imagination that Jarom wasn’t surprised when Berry informed him that the editor also wrote poetry in the style of sentimental versifying published in Godey’s and other magazines, whose subscriptions were underwritten mainly by members of what he was too savvy to regard as the weaker sex. His verses regularly rounded out gaps in the gathered copy of his rag. Only a poet or a writer of romantic fiction like Sally Rochester Ford could rival the extravagance of Prentice’s fanciful depictions. Was the article simply an extension of Prentice’s facility in writing a ten-penny romance? True, Jarom wore his hair long and unkempt. He had no barber, he had lost his comb. His head, his hair, might have impressed someone as a woman’s, but the frame it sat on, nearly six feet tall, made him distinctly masculine. Bold rider maybe he was, but only once had he ever got himself up in feminine garb, only once donned skirts as a kind of joke in camp when he became Queen of the May and paraded about on a pony in the spirit of playing a prank.