by Jerry Buck
Chapter Two
In mid-March there was a sudden break in the weather. The icy winds stopped whistling down from Canada across Lake Erie, and the snow stopped. It seemed a miracle, and when, shortly before noon, the sun came out from behind the gray clouds, I knew it was a genuine godsend.
“Fetch me my hat,” Moses said. “I’m goin’ outside.’’
He threw back the thin cover on his cot and tried to rise. By sheer determination he got up on his elbows.
“Let me move the bed by the window,’’ I suggested. Moses had grown weaker every day as his cough grew stronger.
“It may be th’ last time I’ll see the sun,’’ he said, still pushing with all his might to rise from the bed.
“You stubborn old coot,’’ I said, admitting defeat, and helped him to sit up. I put his shoes on for him. Like the rest of us, he slept fully clothed because of the terrible cold.
I sat him on a box beside the barracks, and he raised his face to the sun. About five or six others came and sat with us. For the longest time we sat there without speaking. I didn’t want to engage him in conversation for fear it would start him coughing.
He turned his pale face from side to side, absorbing the sun’s rays. After a while, he said, “Maybe it’s an omen.”
I was soaking up the warmth, too, and half dreaming. “What?” I said.
“I said, maybe it’s an omen. The sunshine. I think it means we’re going to break into the sunshine.”
“We are in the sunshine,” I said, my mind still wandering a bit.
“The real sunshine, my boy. The real sunshine. The sunshine we’ll see when we come up through the tunnel. God’s provenance. Freedom!”
“You got that right, Moses,” said Liam Murphy.
Liam had fled a famine in Ireland and had not been off the boat in Charleston a month when the South fired on Fort Sumter. He had strolled down to the waterfront that April morning to watch the shelling that had begun before dawn. Before the end of the day, he was loading shells onto boats supplying Fort Moultrie. By the end of the week he was in uniform.
“The end of the week,” he said. “I ’spect by th’ end of the week we’ll sashay through that tunnel—and find a grand rainbow at th’ end.” He chuckled. Liam was the damnedest optimist I’d ever run into. I knew he was dead wrong, but we needed our spirits lifted.
“Irishman, I think you could sell snake oil to th’ devil hisself,” said Simon Keller. “’Member that tunnel we started in ’sixty-three? Wal, y’wasn’t here then, but it rained like hell and it collapsed. Next one we no more’n got th’ shaft dug and th’ Yanks found it. Same for the one after that.”
“Aye,” said Liam, “but we’re past th’ fence this time. Th’ measure tells us that.”
Simon snorted. “Sumpun’ll happen, you wait and see. Allus does. It’ll rain. It’ll collapse. Or the bluebellies’ll find it.”
Poke Bradley took a blade of dry grass from his mouth and said, “It don’t matter nohow.”
We all turned and looked at Poke. Nobody knew what his real name was.
Poke, seeing he had our attention, continued, “You know them Quaker ladies what come in here. You know ’em, Ben. That gal you sweet on comes in with ’em.”
“Abigail Carter, a right fair lass,” Liam interrupted. All eyes turned on me, and I blushed.
“Anyhow, one of them Quaker ladies told me Grant’s knockin’ at Jeff Davis’s door. Says he’ll be in Richmond ’fore the next moon.”
“Sheeeet!” cried Bill Avery. “You start believin’ them lies the Yanks feed us, you liable to believe anythin’. Next moon! I think you tetched by the moon!”
“Never knowed a Quaker to lie,” said Poke.
Moses, coughing slightly, said, “You gotta have faith. My pa was at Valley Forge. He had faith. So did the boys with him. Robert E. Lee, he got faith. And I got faith. You mark my word, we gonna finish that tunnel, and we gonna march out of here with our heads held high. And we gonna—”
He was unable to finish as the coughing grew worse. He doubled over, his whole body shaking from the effort. He pressed a hand to his mouth, and it was quickly covered with blood.
As I picked him up, I said, “I got the faith, Moses. I’m gonna take you through that tunnel, and I’m not going to stop until I reach Canada and find a proper doctor for you.”
Abby held a damp cloth to his head, trying to cool the fever. Moses had not been out of his bed in more than a week. The weather had turned foul again, but I spent most of my time beneath the earth. Digging, digging, digging. We were close, agonizingly close, but we couldn’t go up until we were safely past the pickets.
She placed a hand to his forehead. “He’s burning up,” she said quietly. Moses had been in and out of consciousness, and she didn’t want him to hear. “I can’t bring the fever down. I fear for his life.”
I said, “He’s got to hang on. We don’t have much further to go.”
“Further to go?” Abby asked.
I couldn’t tell her about the tunnel. She was a northern woman, although I trusted her explicitly. Still, knowledge of the tunnel was a burden I did not want to place on her.
Moses stirred and murmured. He opened his rheumy eyes. His breathing was labored, but at least he wasn’t coughing. His lips were dry and he ran his tongue over them, but it was dry, too. Abby raised his head with one hand and with the other tilted a tin cup of water to his parched lips.
Moses reached out, clawing at the air until he found my hand. “Ben,” he said with an effort, “I want you to have ’em.”
I wasn’t sure at first what he was talking about.
“My law books,” he said. “I want you to have ’em.”
He tried to laugh, but it only caused him to strangle. Abby gave him another sip of water.
“Just like a lawyer, ain’t it?” he said. “Dyin’ without a will. I make my will to you and to Abby. With God as my witness.”
He tried to tighten the grip on my hand. His hand was terribly hot and had little strength in it. “I want you to take them and build a life with them,” he said feebly. “You got a feel for the law, boy. You study them books and you’ll be somebody.”
He lapsed into unconsciousness again.
“He’s right,” said Abby. “You can be somebody.”
“The war’s changed everything,” I said. “The South is losing. The North may never let us out of here.”
“It will be a time of healing,” she said. “You can be one of the healers.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I been a hell-raiser all my life. A drifter. It’s hard to change.”
“You just need someone to help you along the way, the way Moses did,” she said.
“I don’t know anybody like that,” I said. “Moses been like a pa to me. More like a pa than my real pa. He wasn’t much of a father. He had an acquaintance with the bottle. The day my ma died he was dead drunk. Now Moses is about to leave this world. I don’t know of anybody to help me.”
The only sound was Moses’s labored breathing.
After a long silence, I heard Abby say, “I do.”
I couldn’t answer. Suddenly my throat went dry. Did she say what I thought she said? I didn’t want to ask her. I was afraid of breaking the spell.
Moses died before the sun came up. He simply stopped breathing. I felt a tear in my eye. I couldn’t recall ever having cried. I wiped the tear away, and I saw that Abby’s face was also wet. Wordlessly we fell into each other’s arms. The emotions bombarded me, one after another. I was sad, I was angry, I was bitter, I was afraid, I was confused.
We buried Moses the next day. The Quaker ladies sang hymns, and Zachary Smith, who had done a little preaching, said the words over his grave.
The day after that, Petersburg and Richmond fell. We didn’t hear about it for three days. There was no denying it this time. The guards were tickled pink and unable to resist taunting us.
“Abe Lincoln’s sitting in Jeff Davis’s office,” san
g one guard. “Where’s Jeff Davis?”
“Hidin’ out with Robert Elite,” said another.
In the next five days, before Lee surrendered at Appomattox, we kept digging. Every inch brought us closer to our goal.
Bill Avery spoke for all of us. “I don’t give a shit. I’d rather go out through the tunnel with my head held high than go home through the front gate with my tail between my legs.”
In the end we didn’t have much choice. Try as we could we could not complete the tunnel. At least not before the prison camp commandant spoke to us at roll call and said we had been paroled.
Outside circumstances had at last brought us the freedom we had so desperately sought. Lee’s surrender meant our freedom. It seemed like history was playing a cruel joke on us.
As I wrapped up my few belongings and tied up Moses’s precious law books in a makeshift knapsack, I wondered about the future. I wondered if there was a future. I looked at Moses’s well-thumbed copy of Blackstone, and my mind conjured an image of him sitting by the window, looking for all the world like Papa Christmas with his snow-white hair and beard. “You have no future,” I said bitterly. “You don’t even have a present. They robbed you of that.”
I tried to choke back the bitterness and see it as Moses would have seen it. Moses had always told me to forgive, but I wasn’t certain that I could.
Outside the camp I faced north toward Canada. Should I go in that direction? I faced south. I was not sure I wanted to go in that direction, either. I did not want to think of what the South would be like in defeat and living under the conqueror’s boot.
I pulled out the piece of paper Abby had given me. It was a note in her fine handwriting. It told me how to reach her home. Abby lived to the west of the camp. She also wrote that she loved me. Nobody had ever told me that before.
I knew the direction I was going.
Chapter Three
It was the last week of July when Angus Finlay rode into Colchester, Kansas, with three thousand head of cattle and a dozen thirsty cowhands.
The little town, just over the border from the Nations, had been home to Abby and me for nearly four years. I was marshal and had worn a badge in a few other places since I’d claimed Abby as my bride at the end of the war.
Angus had just come up the Chisholm Trail through the Indian Territory, and before his visit to the bathhouse he was covered with all the accumulated dirt of the drive. He was a bowlegged little man, with sandy hair, a huge mustache, a permanent squint, and blue eyes, the kind that bore right through you and just naturally made you want to tell the truth. They’re the kind of eyes I could have used as marshal. I don’t think Angus stood more than an inch higher than Major Mosby, even in his high-heel boots, and Lord knows he could be just as cussed. Angus was as sturdy and rock-hard as the Scottish Highlands that birthed him, and no amount of living on the range would ever still the burr that rolled over his tongue like the River Clyde.
Angus could squeeze a double eagle until it screamed or roll a cartwheel farther than any man I knew, as his Gaelic ancestry might imply, but he was a fair man and generous with his friendship. He kept an eye on his hands, settled their mischief, and he and I hit it off.
We’d become fast friends two years before, when Angus’s herd arrived before another trail crew had left. I spent much of that night breaking up bar fights between the rival cowhands and hoping nothing more serious would erupt. My appeal to the first trail boss was ignored. But Angus waded in, chided his own men, and put the fear of God into the other crew.
Colchester was just a few miles inside Kansas and was the first place a thirsty cowhand could get a drink after crossing the Indian Territory. The church folks swore Osage Street was solid saloons from one end to the other. I would have vouched for that myself whenever a drive reached town and bedded down for a few days before going on to Abilene or Dodge City. The cowhands, after a month or so of enforced sobriety, loaded up on cheap whiskey, and those who didn’t immediately get sick or pass out usually got into a brawl or shot up Osage Street. My job was to see that they didn’t hurt themselves, and especially to see that they didn’t hurt any townspeople.
The hands just wanted to let off steam, and, having ridden for a few brands myself, I knew the feeling. Some trail bosses were as rambunctious as a cowhand who had been eating dust on drag all the way from the Brazos River. Angus was an exception, and when he got to town I rarely had to worry about his crew.
Angus was an elder in the Presbyterian Church, and like many another God-fearing drover, he would not permit profanity by his men. A simple “hell” or “damn” brought a fine of five cents. Stronger language was dealt with accordingly. And woe betide the man caught playing a game of chance while eating off his chuck. Angus looked upon gambling as the devil’s own doings. Nevertheless, Angus was not only respected and feared by his hands, but beloved as well. They would follow him through the gates of hell.
“West Texas,” he said one night as he dug into Abby’s beef and potatoes. “Aye, Ben, there’s the place for a man. ‘An honest man aboon his might.’ A bit of Bobby Burns, but it’s nae Caledonia. Texas has room for a man to make himself to home. And no laird to answer to. We could use a man like you to bring law and order to San Miguel. A drunken cowboy shot the marshal two winters ago and we’ve never found a replacement. Have to rely on the sheriff in Logantown.”
“Law and order?” said Abby, arching her eyebrows. “Why, Mr. Finlay, I don’t believe you’ve heard a thing we’ve been saying. Ben has been reading the law since Moses Thatcher made him acquainted with it, and the time has come for him to open his practice.”
“You mean practice the law without backing it up with a six-gun?” Angus asked. He turned to me as he said it, winking with the eye away from Abby.
Abby detected the wink but chose to ignore it. She said, “There will always be rogues who live by the gun, Mr. Finlay. Ben has done his duty as a lawman, but the times are changing. It’s time for him to give up his badge and become a man of the law.”
I laughed and said, “What Abby means, Angus, is that it’s time I started enforcing the law in a courtroom instead of on a dusty cow town street. Mostly, I just take care of rowdy cowhands looking for a little fun after the long drive from Texas. Although I must say you keep yours pretty much in tow. Still, it can get a little more serious now and then.”
Abby eyed me as she poured the coffee. She kept her thoughts to herself, but I knew what they were. Guns had been a natural part of my life since I lit a shuck from Virginia to Texas when I was still a pup. I had a Colt .36-caliber ball-and-percussion revolver, which I had relieved from a gentlemen one night on the journey, and a trusty companion she was in those wild times before I rode back East to join Mosby and his Rangers. I had been marshal in Colchester for nearly four years, and before that there had been other cow towns. And in that time there had been a few tight moments. Once, when I was chasing a bandit through a winter storm, Abby stayed up for three nights, convinced she was going to become a widow. I didn’t want to do that to her again.
“So,” I said, “I’ve given the town council notice that I’m turning in my badge. I’m going to practice law.”
“Aye, we have need of them, too,” said Angus, ignoring the napkin in his lap and wiping his long sandy mustache with the tip of the red checkered bandanna around his neck. “Texas is a bonny place. A man with a legal turn of mind could make a name for himself.”
I took another bite of the meat and potatoes and studied my fork for a moment before swallowing. I said, “I’ll give the council formal notice when the last herd comes through at the end of summer. We’re looking for a place to set down roots, Angus. Tell me about this place of yours. San Miguel, is it?”
I knew a thing or two about Texas, but the spreads I rode for were along the Gulf Coast. The farthest west I had been was San Antone.
We talked by the fire for hours until it was reduced to embers and Abby had long since gone to bed. Angus produced a bottle of
whisky from his possibles bag. It was the smoothest I had ever tasted, and unlike the bourbon I was used to, it had a smoky taste that lingered on the tongue. Scotch whisky, he called it, and raising his glass to me, he said, “‘John Barleycorn got up again, and sore surprised them all.’”
Finally Angus had to return to his herd, but by that time I had determined I would give San Miguel a try.
He told me of an unclaimed section on a little rio where I could raise a few head of cattle and Abby could plant a garden. I knew my first years as a lawyer would be lean ones, and I would need something to see us through.
Chapter Four
The remaining months of summer were hot and dry. For days on end the long cattle drives heading north to the railheads kicked up clouds of dust that cast a permanent twilight over the prairie and turned the sun a dull orange. The wind spread the dust across the land. It reddened the eye, choked the nose, dried the throat, and left a whitish film on clothing. It seeped into every house and building in Colchester. There was no escaping it. You ate it, sat in it, slept in it, breathed it. The grangers starting to crowd in from the east prayed for rain, but none came until September.
The herds coming into Colchester had grown fewer, and finally one day they stopped coming. I turned in my badge, sold our place to a pilgrim from Pennsylvania, loaded our meager belongings onto a wagon, and headed south to beat the first snow.
Several drovers told me of meeting Kiowa and Comanche bands in the Nations. One trail boss said he had lost several cows to about a dozen young Kiowa bucks spoiling for a fight.
So I kept my Winchester by my knee and a Sharps buffalo rifle at my feet. The Sharps was slow, but it was mighty permanent. It only took one slug from a Sharps to blow an Indian right off his mount.
Weeks before we had left I put Abby out behind the cabin and let her pop away with the Winchester until she became both fast and accurate. Abby had been born in Kentucky and grew up in Ohio and was no stranger to a rifle, despite her aversion to firearms.