by Tony Masero
Issuing classic fiction from Yesterday and Today!
It’s 1866 and the Civil War is over.
The night is dark and there is a whisper of death and misadventure in the oppressive mist-laden air as five evil men come calling on a lone plantation building and its solitary mistress.
In the dislocated aftermath of the war, Lomas Bell still saddened by the death of Kirby Langstrom and disenchanted by life as a Pinkerton agent has returned to his old occupation as town marshal. He receives a disturbing letter and must give up his lawman’s ways for a spell. Lomas undertakes a journey back down memory lane to the South he once knew and where he must confront a terrible event that cuts to the bone and calls for a speedy response.
In far off Washington even as she is set up to gather intelligence in a fancy bordello, Belle Slaughter is still on the trail of Xavier Bond, the head honcho of the secret organization known as the Knights of the Golden Circle. Allen Pinkerton advises Belle and her trained team of five beauties to use all their cunning and sexual whiles to discover word on a special gold loaded shipment that looks to be a prime target for the Circle.
But there is another lost soul from the past waiting in the sidelines. Someone that will bring Belle and Lomas together in a bloody and explosive climax, not only for sweet revenge but also a chance to target the roots of the subversive organization that threatens the new Union.
FIVE BELLES TO HELL
BELLE SLAUGHTER 3
By Tony Masero
Copyright © 2013 by Tony Masero
Published by Piccadilly Publishing at Smashwords: April 2013
Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
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Cover image © 2013 by Tony Masero
This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book
Published by Arrangement with the Author.
Chapter One
They came with the dark.
The humid night around them was hot and sultry with a haloed moon partially hidden by slow moving clouds. Only weak stars pinpointed the rest of the nocturnal blackness above. The air felt like it swum in liquid oil and the scent of night jasmine filled the darkness and brought a cloying taste of sweetness as if something ripe and on the edge of rotting were amongst the blocked irrigation levees that paralleled the nearby fields.
It was the sound of jingling harness and the pounding of hooves that let the world know they were coming.
Five men dressed in Union cavalry blues and riding in column-of-two’s with an officer at their head bow-waved through a sulfurous looking ground mist seeping up from the moist soil. Three of the men carried burning firebrands and as they approached the house along the dirt track driveway the light glimmered across the ancient live oaks lining the path and lit up the black roiling smoke coming from the flaring tar-steeped torches with a devilish orange glow.
Passing under the branches of the overhanging oaks their brisk passage and the flickering torches set the hanging bands of Spanish moss swaying and gave them a strange appearance, as if they were ghostly wings of prehistoric sea creatures billowing like sails in a still and humid ocean.
Their leader’s face maintained its intense and steady gaze, never taking his eyes from the house appearing before him in the torchlight. The Rolfe House, its fine white brick and palladium-style Doric columned portico gleaming as pale as stripped bone in the hazy moonlight. It rose regally from amidst the looming vegetation of the surrounding overgrown gardens, where azalea and wild briar rose wrestled together in tangled clumps. The house was in need of some attention after all the war years but it was still a majestic looking property.
Captain Edward Wayland had ridden with ‘Jennison’s Jayhawkers’ throughout the war and his face bore the marks of the experience. Gaunt and expressionless, his hatchet faced was strangely pale with the skin drawn tight over the bone. His glinting eyes were deeply sunken and surrounded by flesh so discolored that they appeared bruised and gave him all the ominous appearance of an entity occupying a living skull.
The 7th Regiment of Kansas Volunteer Cavalry known as ‘Jennison’s Jayhawkers’ had been mustered out not long before in the September of 1865, but Wayland and his men had arrived in the South full of an afterglow of war fever and still in their uniforms, as if prepared to aid officially in what was called ‘The Reconstruction’.
Captain Wayland came with all the self-righteous belief of so many of his kind at that time, that by right of conquest the South was his for the plucking. With this certainty he served as a strong arm for the Freedmen’s Bureau and in that capacity he reinforced the local agent’s directives with a harsh and often merciless hand.
Wayland was well supported in the venture by a number of his old troop, four trusted men in all. Hard and cruel men who had seen and done the worst kind of things during the war and obeyed Wayland’s commands without question.
Riding together with the Captain on this dark night was his old company sergeant, a stern and tough soldier called Marion Dane. He was a stocky, grim-faced but not unhandsome man with densely black curling side-whiskers and always with the chinstrap of his kepi fastened tight under his chin. Three others of the old troop rode side-by-side; keeping pace and maintaining the perfect formation they had studied so often under Dane’s instruction during their service years. Corporal Pat Devlin, a red-headed rogue of Irish descent rode alongside the sergeant, then came Cable Corinth, a dimwit who kept his brain somewhere between his navel and his knees and a small, swarthy-skinned half-breed Cherokee they had nicknamed Little Wait, whom they called that way because he never could.
Little Wait, like the others, was a predator, impatient for everything mean and reprehensible, be it loot, murder or rape, and they were all in an equally eager state of anticipation on this night when they came calling on the widow lady.
This gang of black hearts had been sent on the assignment under the direct orders of the Freedmen’s Bureau agent, a man called Sweet Dean Pye.
Sweet Dean had come south to Colfax County, a small canton situated on the borderland between Virginia and North Carolina, full of the prospect of self-improvement.
His mission was initiated by The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, commonly called the Freedmen’s Bureau, an organization founded after the surrender in the earlier April, when General Lee’s depleted thirty-mile defensive battle line in Virginia finally conceded they were worn out and used up and the only remaining and undeniable course of action was a cessation of the bloody conflict.
Sad to say, for many it hadn’t ended with the surrender, it took time for all the committed combatants across the great country to finally give up the struggle. Various actions, battles and skirmishes continued throughout the intervening months and it wasn’t until a year had passed, in the August of 1866, that the official ending of the Civil War was announced by the new and lackluster president, Andrew Johnson. By then little remained of the majesty and proud standing that had once sustained the secessionist states.
But there were plenty of avaricious vultures like Sweet Dean waiting on the sidelines eager and keen to pick over the bones of the beaten and impoverished South. The battered Confederacy had little left standing after the years of war, its infrastructure demolished and trade ruined, fa
rmlands burnt and wasted. Banks and insurance agencies bankrupted and Confederate currency worthless.
With such decline, property could be bought for a song with so many of the owners either lost in the fighting or barely surviving the aftermath in hunger and starvation. The great ‘King Cotton’ who had once ruled the land so absolutely in the past was now dethroned and impoverished by all the years of naval blockade and destructive war.
Sweet Dean Pye, who was not a sweet man at all, had more secretive objectives. He arrived into these vulnerable lands with motives that were not driven by any particular penchant for charitable kindness. He was more like some subversive species of parasite that arrives in the hot darkness of a Southern night and siphons off the blood of its sleeping victim with an anaesthetizing drop of apparent harmlessness in return for the theft.
He was a round figured fellow, with a partiality for checkered vests, beaver skin top hats and flouncy diamond stick-pinned silk ties. He wore bushy side-whiskers on an outwardly red-cheeked and avuncular face that bore a ready hail-fellow-well-met smile and an eager handshake for all who crossed his path. He was a backslapping politician in the making and fat he may have appeared but his bulk was hard and not the sort that rolled and wobbled. An energetic man, the Bureau had approved his desire as agent to offer food and medical care and preach a missionary message to educate the poor blacks now they were free. Along with this charitable work he was enabled to administer justice and to manage abandoned and confiscated property. This was all mandated under ordinance of the War Department and it was along with a small army of other carpetbaggers sweeping the South that Sweet Dean had arrived in the small town of Columbine in Colfax County.
He had settled in with his outwardly winning way and under the pretense of aiding those freed slaves remaining in the county he managed to milk all he could from the penurious place. His eye though, was primarily set on the old established plantation house that faced Wayland and his men on this night. Sweet Dean saw it as a base for all his activities and a fitting place, he believed, for one in his elevated position. The plantation had fallen on hard times, just as had most others and the four thousand acres of cotton and tobacco on the property had been left unattended for years. But there was potential there and Sweet Dean recognized it.
Problem was, there was a body still in residence. She was a determined and handsome woman in her late thirties and known by the townsfolk as Miss Ladybell Rolfe. She had held out against all adversities and survived the war years by using tact and sensibility garnished with a strong sense of will to preserve her house and lands.
Originally, there had been talk by Wayland of burning her out but Sweet Dean, with his covetous eye on the property, vetoed the notion, preferring as he did that the lady in question merely vanished from sight. No murder he stipulated, as word might reach back to the Bureau and his tenure be remanded. No, ‘disappear’ was his command and Wayland, who was indifferent either way, condescended to obey. For an extra monetary consideration, of course.
Unfortunately, Sweet Dean in his acquisitive eagerness had overlooked direction as to the state in which the lady should be when she was removed to pastures new.
Wayland took his time when he brought his men to a halt and lined them up in front of the darkened house. Striking an arrogant pose with one gloved fist propped on his waist, he sat tall in the saddle and high-stepped the animal up and down before the broad portico steps leading up to the impressive double front doors.
‘You in the house!’ he called out haughtily. ‘Anyone in residence come out, we have edict on this property.’
Ladybell Rolfe was a fine looking widow in her thirty-eighth-year, she had been married once to Claude Lewis Rolfe, a proud landowner from one of the original settling family’s way back in the 16th Century. British in origin, the Rolfe family had made their fortune from cotton and the trade in slaves. Now little was left of that fortune and Claude Lewis had met his sad end in the Peach Orchard before Little Round Top three years earlier.
The couple, to their great disappointment had remained childless and Ladybell had offset this loss by taking into her care and educating many of the young blacks that had maintained the plantation in happier times. There were few left now, the majority having fled, not so much from any harsh rule under the Rolfe’s but more from the adversities of war and the Presidential decree finally giving them their freedom. Those few that remained were loyal to Ladybell and had chosen to stay of their own free will.
Claude Lewis’s widow, when she stepped out onto the porch, carried a twelve-gauge cavalry double-barreled shotgun. She stood tall and erect and brought appreciative murmurs from the soldiers sitting mounted before her. Ash-blond haired and gray eyed, she had hurriedly dressed in a tightly bodiced crinoline dress and her full figure was outlined clearly in the flickering flames of the torches. The dress was out of fashion now, it had a few buttons missing and was worn at the hem and elbow but despite this she gave off an air of dignified authority.
‘What do you want at this hour, Captain?’ she asked in an even voice, low and yet commanding.
Wayland reached inside the breast of his tunic and flourished a sheaf of paper. ‘I have here order for all parties to vacate this property forthwith or be evicted by force if necessary.’
Ladybell snorted a dismissive laugh, ‘And who gives such an order? This is the Rolfe House, perhaps you have come to the wrong place.’
‘No, ma’am. This is it as stipulated here,’ said Wayland, holding the sheet forward. ‘Signed and sealed by Mister Pye, being due agent and authorized to confiscate such property.’
‘And why should I believe a party of bluecoats that come calling in the night with burning firebrands like a bunch of brigands?’
Cold faced, Wayland looked away from her as if bored and gave a slight nod of his ghoulish head. At the motion, his sergeant Marion Dane and corporal Pat Devlin dismounted.
‘You step up here and I fear you will meet no welcome,’ warned Ladybell, raising the shotgun.
‘Dear lady,’ Wayland sighed tiredly. ‘A lone woman with a long barreled fowling piece and two barrels of birdshot against five men does not warrant such a dangerous attitude. Best you lay aside your weapon and go your way peaceably.’
‘And for what cause am I to be evicted, pray tell?’
‘Aiding and abetting the enemy, ma’am.’
Ladybell laughed out loud, her laughter insulting and ringing.
‘I never helped a Federal blue belly in all my life, sir. And they were all the enemy I ever knew, believe me.’
Wayland shrugged, ‘Go bring her down, sergeant,’ he ordered.
As Dane and Devlin approached the lone woman up the steps, she loosed off both barrels of black powder load into the air and called out, ‘Now boys, now!’
The startled ponies of the Union troops bucked, swirled and snickered nervously at the sudden loud boom of the shotgun and the soldiers tensed as out of the darkness several black men rose into sight from amidst the camellia bushes and dogwoods that populated the garden in front of the house, they were all carrying thick staffs and farm implements. Pre-warned by the oncoming sound of horse, Ladybell had previously arranged such a meeting for vagrant troops that regularly plagued the post-war country.
‘It appears,’ observed Wayland blandly. ‘That we are to meet resistance. Very well, do your duty, men.’
They were seasoned troops against untrained servants and without hesitation each trooper pulled out his weapon and fired indiscriminately but with great accuracy into the surrounding Negroes. They cut them down mercilessly in a blazing roar of fire and gun smoke. Screaming, Ladybell called for them to stop but they paid her no heed and continued their murder until every one of the remaining Rolfe House servants lay dead or badly wounded.
Whirling his pony in circles through the heavy smog of writhing smoke, Wayland waved his smoking pistol and called out to her, ‘Get you out now, lady! That is an order.’
‘I shall not,’ Ladybell
replied angrily. ‘You must murder me too before you take my home.’
‘Normally, ma’am, I should be only too glad to oblige but I fear that cannot be. Little Wait, will you see if you can induce the lady to quit the premises?’
The dark skinned half-breed leered a hungry grin and eagerly ran up the steps in a lithe loping run. Holding it by the barrels, Ladybell aimed her empty shotgun in a looping swing at him. The breed did not hesitate, he first blocked and then stepping inside the swing and fisted Ladybell hard in the face, she staggered back and Little Wait tore the gun from her dazed hands. He tossed it aside and grasping her dress front in his gauntleted hand thrust her back against the double doors, forcing them open and pushing Ladybell inside.
‘Lets see what you got to offer in the way of home comforts,’ he growled, his smile broad but his eyes cold.
Dane was behind him and Devlin and Corinth quickly followed the swarthy half-breed, their dark looming presence outlined against the dropped torches still burning in the driveway outside.
As they fell into the blackness inside, Wayland sat stonily on his pony. He was an ascetic with abstemious motivations hard to ascertain but lust for the female kind was not one of his predilections. His real incentive was a sickness born of a bloodlust developed throughout the war. He had an inclination to observe death in all its forms, preferably cruel and bloody and he fed off it as if he were a lost soul addicted to morphine-loaded laudanum.
Wayland arched a dismissive eyebrow at the sound of tearing material and pleading female sobs coming from the hallway. Then he turned his pony and walking in amongst the fallen blacks, offered a finishing shot from his revolver to all those wounded that still breathed and squirmed upon the ground.
Inside, they had her spread on the checkered marble floor of the foyer amidst the faded splendor of what had once been a rich and well-appointed hallway. There was little to show of that previous glory now, most had been sold or pawned off to maintain the property and there were not even candles to light the atrocity as Ladybell was beaten and savagely raped by the men one after the other. Her bared back was pounded against the hard cold marble as they held her down and forced themselves on her, driving at the woman repeatedly until she remained limp and unresponsive to their assaults. The testosterone atmosphere was as thick as the night outside and enriched only by the grunting and ape-like silhouettes of the men as they crouched over their victim and spent themselves on her.