The Raven's Honor

by Johnny D. Boggs

  “Your family needs you, too.”

  “Texas needs me,” he had repeated. “And I do not know how much longer she will need this old vagabond.”

  “Texas.” She had sighed. “Sometimes I am jealous of this woman named Texas.”

  “Don’t be.” He had managed to eat another piece of toast, just to please her—and keep her and the other women off his back this day. “I made Texas. But you saved Sam Houston … from himself.”

  It had worked. She had even helped him dress, suggesting that he don his blue velvet cap, the leopard-skin vest, and that flamboyant crimson coat that she despised and he adored.

  “To the spring,” he directed Joshua.

  * * * * *

  He had never met the two Indians waiting for him at the spring, but he knew who they were. Butternut blouses and grimy kepis told him all he needed to know.

  They spoke no Cherokee or English, and Houston had never met anyone, white or red, who could speak or understand Alabama and Coushatta tongue except Alabamas and Coushattas.

  They used hands—after, of course, they smoked the pipe.

  The Indians thanked him, and related that their chief, Billy Blount, thanked him. They offered him whiskey stolen from a Louisiana private, but Houston said his whiskey-drinking days lay far, far behind him. He did take the kepis and blouses as gifts, though, thinking that some damned provost marshal might shoot them as deserters on their way back to the reservation. He also told them that those uniforms were of too much value for what little he had done, so he handed them two hundred and fifty dollars in Texas notes—which would buy little these days. They accepted.

  “Before you leave for your home,” he signed with his hands, “I ask for one thing in return.”

  “What?” the thinner of the two asked.

  “Sing a song for me,” he signed. “One of the old songs.”

  They did. Tears ran down his cheeks, and when they had finished, he embraced the two Indians. He asked that they tell Chief Blount it was his honor and duty to have helped them, and that he was glad the Confederate War Department had realized the mistake made when they had conscripted the Indian warriors into the army.

  “Are all of your brothers returning home?” he signed.

  The squat one with the missing left earlobe shook his head. Two, he signed, had gone to the other world.

  “I wish,” Houston whispered in English, “Billy had come to me sooner.” After nodding farewell, Houston watched them disappear into the trees, then, sighing, he moved away to the surrey, where Joshua waited.

  “That was a real sad song those Indians sang, Mister Sam,” the slave said. “What was it about?”

  Houston shook his head. “I do not know. It is one of the old songs, though.”

  “Sure was pretty.”

  “Yes. The Indians always sang beautiful songs, Joshua. Back in my younger days, I even sang a few with the Cherokees.” He let himself be boosted into the surrey. “Today, all we hear are songs about war, about glory, about Yankee tyranny. The Indians sang songs of beauty.”

  “You must have sure enjoyed living with them.” Joshua climbed into the driver’s box.

  “I was at peace with them,” he said. Even when I was the Big Drunk.

  “Where to next, Mister Sam?”

  He sighed. “The prison.”

  * * * * *

  The red-bricked gloomy structure called the “Walls” quickly came into view beneath pine trees.

  Back in the late 1840s, Houston had helped get the state penitentiary established in town. Not that he wanted to live in a town that was home to a sprawling prison, but he did want to assist those in town who could use the business. Prisons always helped towns grow. Governments went broke. State pens prospered because men did stupid things. The Huntsville prison prospered better than most. A decade ago, a cotton and woolen mill had been established inside the prison, and convicts worked hard these days to produce uniforms for soldiers, even shirts, pants, and coats for civilians.

  “Wait here,” Houston told Joshua after he found his cane and adjusted his cap.

  “I got no desire to go through that gate, Mister Sam.”

  Houston grinned. “There but by the grace of God, I could be behind those walls, myself.”

  “You’d be runnin’ the place, Mister Sam, even if you was in chains.”

  He laughed, bent his withering frame against the cane, and hobbled toward the entrance.

  “Hello, Cousin.” Major Thomas Carothers, superintendent of the state penitentiary since 1859, held out his big right hand and grinned. Once he gripped Houston’s hand, he pulled him into a hard embrace. It almost knocked the wind out of Houston, and he cursed himself as he sank into a settee in the warden’s office.

  “I’m sorry, Sam. Are you all right?”

  At first, Houston could only nod, but eventually the shock and pain and damned old age passed long enough that he was able to smile. “You ambush all your guests this way, Tom?”

  Carothers grinned. “We ambush them before they come here, Sam. That’s how we get them here.”

  They exchanged pleasantries. Carothers’ wife Mary had gone back to Kentucky, visiting family. The Texas General Land Office had given Carothers a third-class land grant of one hundred sixty acres, and he thought he might try raising stock. Houston updated his cousin on his family, then came down to the first part of business.

  “Tom, I made out my will Saturday with Woody McKay. I’ve named you one of my executors.”

  Carothers leaned against his desk. “Sam …”

  Houston raised his right hand. “I don’t know how this all will turn out, Tom. Well …” He snorted. “No, I do know. In the end, we lose. We all lose. But don’t go off half-cocked. The way I keep gallivanting across Texas, I don’t stop long enough in one place to die.”

  “Well, you look fit, Sam.”

  “Don’t be a damned liar, Tom. I look like hell. And I feel worse.”

  Carothers’ voice turned somber. “Sam, I will do everything to help your family and …”

  His cousin stopped when Houston’s hand raised again. “Don’t tell Margaret. Don’t tell Mary when she returns from Kentucky. And don’t think I came here because I wanted to stay one step ahead of the Grim Reaper. I saw Doc Walkup yesterday … not for him to poke and prod me and hit my knee with a damned hammer. He came to see me.”

  “Yes.” Carothers wet his lips. “He was here Friday.”

  “He told me. I would like to see the prisoners, Tom.”

  “Which ones?” Carothers’ face told Houston that the warden already knew the answers.

  “You know the ones, Tom. The prisoners captured from the Harriet Lane.”

  * * * * *

  The copper-plated steamer had been captured in January during General Magruder’s surprise attack on Galveston Island. Rammed by two “cotton-clads,” the Harriet Lane had been boarded by Confederates. From what Houston had read in the newspaper accounts, the hand-to-hand fighting had turned gruesome, with the Yankee captain killed before he could blow up his ship, to keep her from falling into enemy hands. At least four other crew members had died, and the rest had been marched all the way to the Texas State Penitentiary.

  In the prison hospital, Houston shook hands with gaunt men in nightshirts with hollow eyes. When they stepped into the yard, Houston said, “The others, Tom. Show me the others.”

  “I am,” his cousin said, and walked away from the cells, past the whipping posts and to the sweatbox, an iron crate painted black on the inside and outside. Two guards standing by the entrance snapped to attention.

  “Open it up,” Carothers ordered.

  The two men hesitated.

  “Now.”

  It took both men to push the iron door open, and Houston started inside, but the stink stopped him. He almost gagged. Carothers st
ruck a match and, holding a handkerchief over his nose, moved past Houston and stuck the Lucifer inside the box.

  The flame flickered out a moment later, but Houston had seen enough.

  “This,” he roared, raising his cane as if to strike, “is how you treat prisoners of war?” For the past few days, he had been able to speak hardly past a whisper. Now rage enveloped him, and he spoke as Sam Houston of ten, perhaps twenty years earlier. One guard dropped his nightstick. The other stumbled back a full rod.

  “Damn you, Tom Carothers, you are no kin to me.” He pointed into the opening. “These are soldiers. Soldiers. Not banditti terrorizing our state with acts of robbery, murder, rapine. You put officers in with enlisted men. That’s one thing. But you put these men of honor in a place I would not put a dog, or even my worst enemy. I would not even put you in such filth, although, by Jehovah, this is where you should be.” He shifted the cane toward the petrified guards. Other guards hurried from the cellblock. More stopped in front of the woolen mill.

  “Get them out! Damn your miserable hides, I say get those prisoners out of this hole.”

  “Sam …” Carothers started. “There’s no place …”

  “I don’t give a damn, Tom. I do not give one tinker’s damn where you put them. Put them in your own home. Hell, Mary is up in Kentucky. She won’t mind. But you will not leave these brave men in this sweatbox for one minute longer!” He moved. He did not need his cane to move, not when he felt like this.

  “Move, damn you insolent sons of bitches. By God, if these men are not out of this hole in two minutes, I will go back to the Steamboat House, I will load my revolver, and I will arm my sons … even Temple, all but two and a half years old … my daughters, my wife, and my slaves, and you lowdown, miserable excuses for Christian men will taste what war is truly like. We will slaughter you damned cowards!”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  May 2–July 8, 1863

  “And how was your supper last night with Tom?”

  He finished pulling on his boots, surprised he could get them on at all, and straightened up on the footstool. Standing in the doorway to the upstairs bedroom, Margaret looked so damned lovely this morning that he hated to be leaving—again.

  “Fine,” he answered. “The first and second mates are staying with him these days. Doc Walkup has put up another officer. The whole town has come out to take in Yankee prisoners.”

  “Thanks to your … ahem … would tirade be an understatement?”

  “I merely spoke my mind.”

  “Which you always do.”

  She offered her hands, and he let her pull him to his feet.

  “But no Union prisoners here, Sam?” She gave him a mischievous grin. “I would think Yankee sailors would enjoy being imprisoned in a house built like a steamboat.”

  Bending down, he kissed the top of her head. “I would not like young sailors to be alone with my beautiful wife. Sailors cannot be trusted.”

  The laughter left her eyes, and she stepped away from him, sighing. “I wish you would not go, Sam. You travel too much. And you have not been well.”

  “Balderdash.” He found his cane and the blue velvet cap. “Doc Walkup’s concoctions have me feeling forty years old, and I have not coughed in at least a week.” Margaret did not call him on that white lie. “Joshua and Jeff have loaded my grips?”

  “Must you go?” she pleaded without answering the question.

  “They have asked me to give a speech in Houston City, my darling,” he told her. “You know that General Sam Houston cannot turn down the opportunity to say a few words.”

  “Still …”

  He held up his hand. “No one has taken a shot at me in years, Margaret, and I have not been hanged in effigy in months.”

  “I would like to have you to myself, Sam.” She handed him a cape. “Just once.”

  “That you would regret.” Which, at least, got her to laugh, and she helped him to the door.

  “How long will you be gone?” she asked as Jeff ran up the steps to help Houston down the staircase and into the top buggy.

  “A few weeks. Your mother will arrive shortly. I’m sure you will enjoy her company whilst I am away.”

  “And her casket?” Margaret grinned.

  “At eighty-two years and no sign of slowing down, Nancy Lea will live forever.”

  “You should slow down.”

  His head shook. “This will be a vacation. One speech in Houston. I would like to see the bay from Ben Lomond once more,” he said. “And a stay at Sour Lake might do my leaking wounds well.”

  “Good,” she said. “By all means, soak in the mud. It shall be my daily prayer that you find relief in those springs.”

  She followed him down the steps and to the buggy, where he turned, bent once more, and kissed her briefly on the lips. When Jeff and Joshua helped him into the wagon, she stepped closer, and put her hand on his. “Sam,” she said.

  He stared at her.

  “Tell me again, that if a newspaper scribe has the audacity to ask you if you plan to run for governor, you will tell him no.”

  He patted her hand and felt his blue eyes twinkling. God had blessed him with a woman who knew his ego all too well.

  “As I told that inkslinger at the Item the other day, under no circumstances will I permit my name to be used as a candidate.” He straightened, but kept his blue eyes trained on his wife. “A man of three score years and ten ought, at the very least, to be exempt from the charge of ambition.” Then he barked at Jeff that they should be off.

  Before they reached the street, he leaned out of the buggy and shouted back to her, “But were I to run for governor again, I daresay that I would receive the largest vote ever counted in the state of Texas!”

  * * * * *

  The trip to Houston City wore him out. He wasn’t sure if he could make a speech, and he had to get past another sentry at White Oak Bayou. When they came to the railroad tracks, Houston told Jeff to stop, and wait. He pointed at the black smoke.

  “Mister Sam,” the slave said, “that train be a long way off. It ain’t gonna run over us if I go now.”

  “I just want to watch it pass, Jeff,” he said.

  Five minutes later, Houston knew Jeff regretted that command, for the horses fought the driver, snorting, shaking their heads, stamping their hoofs on the hard road. Frightened of the locomotive, Houston understood, and he laughed.

  Wouldn’t that be a story to read in newspapers across the world? sam houston killed. horses panic. train collides with rig. witnesses pick up bits of flesh and clothing as souvenirs.

  He inhaled deeply the thick smoke, saw the embers, and lifted his hand in greeting at the man on the last car as the train rocked and moved on down the line toward Beaumont.

  “We go now, Mister Sam?” asked Jeff, exhausted and drenched with sweat from keeping the team under control.

  “When I was born,” he said, “there were no steamboats. There were no locomotives. We traveled by horse … or canoe. Mostly, we walked. A pistol fired just once. If you wanted a likeness of yourself, you sat down for an artist. Daguerreotypes? No one dreamed of such inventions.”

  “Yes, sir. Can I go now, Mister Sam? Before the next train comes along?”

  He laughed. “Yes, Jeff. Drive on.” But he kept watching the smoke and disappearing cars of the locomotive as long as he could.

  * * * * *

  As he stared across the street at the crowd of men, women, and children, he waited before speaking, not to see if more people came to hear him, but to catch his breath. He thought of the train he had seen on the way into town, of looking across the bay when they had stopped at Cedar Point. Now, he thought of the gifted poet Robert Burns, and he began, “I have been buffeted by the waves, as I have been borne along time’s ocean, until shattered and worn, I approach the narrow isthmus, which divi
des it from a sea of eternity beyond. Ere I step forward to journey through the pilgrimage of death, I would say, that all my thoughts and hopes are with my country.”

  Women put their hands to their ears. Others leaned forward. One, standing in front of Oliver’s Saloon, called out, “Speak up, Houston! We can’t hear you!”

  Scarcely can I hear myself. He turned his head to cough.

  “Once I dreamed of empire,” he said after he had recovered, “vast and expansive for a united people. That dream is over. The golden charm is broken …”

  The drunk on the boardwalk hollered, “Hurrah for Jeff Davis! Down with the damned Yanks!”

  Houston paused, glared, before continuing.

  “Damn all the Yankees!” the drunk roared. “Damn them, and especially that bastard Abe Lincoln, all to hell’s hottest flames. Hurrah for the gallant Southerner, Jeff Davis. Jeff Davis forever!”

  He had heard enough. “My friend,” he said, and felt his voice rising more than he thought possible. Everyone in the streets could hear him now. “I do not approve of cussing your worst enemy. There are ladies and children present. And as for us gallant Southerners, I would not call Jeff Davis one. The gallant Southerners are those, like my son, who wear the gray and have been tested in battle. My friend, you seem to have been tested in saloons, and have yet to come out the victor.”

  * * * * *

  The cough returned. He caught a cold. Jeff told him that they should head home, find Dr. Walkup, but Houston said a week in the springs at Sour Lake would do him good.

  One week at Dr. Mud’s Curing Water House & Inn stretched into another, and yet another.

  Savvy Texas businessmen had transformed the Hardin County town into some sort of mecca for the affirmed, and Houston sank into a basin and allowed servants to cover him with mud as thick as tar and as smelly as pitch pine. Dr. Mud washed off the mud with mineral water, and sold bottles of Sour Lake water for five Confederate dollars each.

  Dark-skinned, black-haired, tattooed Dr. Mud claimed to be a Cherokee medicine man.

  “I don’t trust that doctor,” Jeff told Houston after bringing him a newspaper.