by John Jakes
Des jammed the old Walker’s muzzle under Gettys’s chin, twisting the fabric of his hood. “You have no rights. I’m in charge.” He had to hurry; the white was flickering at the borders of his mind. He didn’t want another spell to knock him out and cheat him of success. And there was Tillman’s warning.
Gettys was stubborn. He started to protest again. Des flung his pistol hand back, then forward, bashing Gettys’s hood so hard the storekeeper nearly fell over. Gettys saw the demented glaze of Des’s eyes. With that pale trident in his carroty hair, he looked like some sort of devil.
“All right, Des. They’re yours.”
Madeline sensed the others faltering; so was she. They were in water six inches deep, struggling over a muddy bottom that sucked them down and slowed them. The moon’s reflections on the water tricked the eye, and the reeds swaying and rattling in the wind only heightened the visual confusion. Somehow she’d led them off the narrow path. And Prudence was breaking down. She staggered along sobbing and muttering gibberish.
“Oh, Lord Jesus.” That was Jane, looking behind them because of a sudden noise. Madeline stopped, holding Esau’s hand tightly.
First she heard the splashing of the pursuer. He was making no effort to be quiet. Then she saw him, a great ungainly figure with immense hands. One held a gun.
“I’m coming for you niggers.” The strong, clear voice rolled over the marsh. A frightened heron rose from the reeds, flapping away. “You’re going to die tonight, all of you.”
Prudence moaned. She dropped to her knees in the water, hands clasped, head down, mumbling a prayer.
“Will you get up?” Enraged, Madeline bent over the teacher. Only that saved her when Des fired two shots. Esau was crying again.
Madeline shook Prudence. “If you don’t get up, he’ll kill us. We’ve got to keep going.”
He was coming again, all elbows and lifting knees, a strange terrible scarecrow dancing across the marsh, brandishing his gun. The three women and the boy started to run. Madeline’s grief was almost beyond bearing; clumsily but completely, it was all ending tonight. The school, Andy, their own lives. Those ludicrous hooded men still had the power to destroy.
She found the path. She held to it for ten yards, then stumbled, twisting her ankle badly. Prudence lagged again, out of breath, giving up. Jane jerked Prudence’s arm, exactly as if it were the halter of a reluctant mule. The night was peaceful except for the loud breathing of the fugitives and the steady splash of LaMotte. Coming on. Closing the distance.
He fired a third shot. Prudence flung her arms over her head as if in praise, then fell and sank under the water.
Jane crouched, hands rattling the reeds, probing the water. “I can’t find her. I can’t—wait, I’ve got her.” Groaning, she pulled the teacher’s head and shoulders out. Water cascaded from Prudence’s nose and eyes and mouth. The eyes were without life. Madeline bit her knuckle; at the last, Prudence’s hope had failed her.
Esau sniffled, striving not to cry, Madeline took his hand and started on. She refused to surrender herself to execution even though she knew they were finished. Jane’s moonlit face showed that she knew it too. With Esau between them they walked on, their last act of doomed defiance.
Between the pursuer and the place where Prudence fell, the bull alligator swam silently, submerged. He was sixteen feet from snout to tail tip and weighed six hundred pounds. His dark hemispherical eyes broke the surface. There was great commotion in the water, and something threatening just ahead. The alligator’s nostrils cleared the water as his jaw opened.
Des knew he had them. They were no longer running, only walking at a pace that would allow him to catch them in another minute or so. He was sopping, scummy with mud, yet strangely buoyant; he seemed to dance through the water, just as he’d danced for so many years on the polished ballroom floors of the great houses the Yankees had destroyed along with everything else that was fine in the South. The white light lanced his head, spikes of it shooting in from both sides to meet behind his eyes. He felt exalted but anxious. He prayed silently to allay the anxiety. “God, let the light hold back until I’ve caught them. God, if You have ever favored me as a member of Your chosen race, spare me another few moments—”
The white sizzled and fused, consuming the dark in his mind. He smelled cannon smoke. He heard shells whistling in. He ran through the water screaming, not aware that the women were barely fifty feet ahead. His screams were full of zeal, full of joy:
“Forward the Palmetto Rifles! Charge to the guns! Glory to the Confederacy!”
Something like a club struck him: the alligator’s huge lashing tail. Des fired a bullet at the moon as he went down. Then, as the alligator closed his jaws on his torso, he felt a sensation like dozens of heavy nails piercing his flesh. The alligator killed him in the customary way, holding him in the vise of its jaws until he drowned.
Only then was the body allowed to rise and float. Amid the blood eddying in the marsh water, the alligator began to feed by biting off Des’s left leg at the groin.
Shouts and a burst of gunfire surprised and alarmed the Klansmen waiting for Des where the embers of the school gave off dull light and enormous heat. Gettys heard someone order them to throw down their arms. “To the road,” he exclaimed, booting his mount.
Because he fled first, leaving the others momentarily bunched together, one of the blacks had a clear shot with his militia rifle. As Gettys galloped into the turn to the entrance lane, the bullet slammed his shoulder and knocked him sideways. He kicked free of the stirrups, terrified of being dragged. He fell in a vicious clump of yucca as the other Klansmen streamed by, robes flying. Gettys bleated, “Don’t leave me,” as the last horses galloped away.
Barefoot men approached on the run. A black hand snatched off his scarlet hood. Randall Gettys stared through steamed spectacles at six black faces, and six guns, and fainted.
“It’s all right, Esau,” Madeline said, trying to calm the crying boy. It was hard, because she was on the verge of tears herself. Andy was gone, Prudence was gone—God, the toll.
Suddenly, clear in the moonlight behind her, she saw the bubbling, roiling water, then a flash of scaly hide. An arm was briefly raised to the sky like some grisly Excalibur. It sank.
Jane leaned her cheek on Madeline’s and wept.
With perfect clarity, she saw Des LaMotte’s severed hand pop to the surface and float, shiny white as a mackerel. Something snapped it under and the marsh water was smooth and still again.
61
A GROVE OF WIND-BLASTED pecan trees shaded the bend in Vermilion Creek. Magee sat by one, his derby inverted in front of his outstretched legs. With hard snaps of his wrist he sailed card after card into the hat. He didn’t miss.
Satan and two other horses were tied to a low limb; Gray Owl had left his pony behind and ridden the rangy bay. Charles hunkered near the trees on the shore of the purling creek. The sun was at the zenith. The spring day was balmy, and he sweated under his shirt and gypsy robe.
Above him, throwing a dark bar across his face, a leafless limb jutted over the creek. He studied the limb, judging its strength. The April wind caressed his eyes and beard. It was too fine a day for matters of fear and death—
“Look sharp, Charlie.”
Magee emptied the cards from the derby and put it on as he stood up. They heard hooves splashing in the shallows. Charles drew his Army Colt. Gray Owl trotted from behind a clump of budding willows, hunched in his blanket. The bay was winded and glistening, not used to such a heavy rider.
Charles holstered his revolver and dashed down the bank to meet the tracker. “Did you find it?” Gray Owl nodded. “How far?”
“One mile, no more.” The Cheyenne’s expression was characteristically glum. “I saw a small boy.”
The noonday sun seemed to explode in Charles’s eyes. He felt a dizziness. “Is he all right?”
Gray Owl clearly didn’t want to answer. He chewed his bottom lip. “I saw him sitting outs
ide the house feeding a raccoon. His face—” Gray Owl touched his left cheek. “There are marks. Someone has hurt him.”
Charles wiped his mouth.
Magee scuffed a boot in the shale. “Anyone else around?”
“I saw an old Kiowa-Comanche come out with a whiskey jar, get on his pony, and ride away. Then I saw a Cheyenne woman leave the big house and go to a small one, where I heard hens. She brought back two eggs.”
“He has a squaw?” Charles said.
“Yes.” The tracker’s eyes were full of misery. “She is a young woman. Very dirty and sad.”
“Did you see the man Bent?” Gray Owl shook his head. “No one saw you—not the boy or the squaw?” The tracker shook his head again. “You’re certain?”
“Yes. There are some post oaks near it. A good hiding place.”
Magee rubbed his hands together, trying to treat this as something ordinary, another field exercise. “We can come in from three different sides—”
“I’m going in alone,” Charles said.
“Now that’s damn foolishness.”
“Alone,” Charles said, with a look that killed further protest.
He returned to the trees where he pulled off his gypsy robe. He folded it and put it on the ground. He picked up his Spencer, checked the magazine, snugged his black hat down over his eyes, and walked back to Magee and the tracker.
“I’ll watch myself, don’t worry. If you hear any shooting, come up fast. Otherwise stay here.”
He said it with the officer’s tone and the officer’s challenging stare. Magee fumed. Gray Owl gazed at the bright water, full of foreboding.
He won’t know me, Charles thought as he stalked along the creek bank. Not with this beard down to my belly. He was thinking of Gus but it applied equally to Elkanah Bent. He couldn’t imagine how Bent looked after ten years. It was immaterial. He just wanted to get the boy away safely. That was the most important issue, the boy.
The spring air was gentle as a woman’s hand. It reminded him of similar days in Northern Virginia when hundreds of poor boys died in sunny meadows and glades. Those thoughts, and what Gray Owl said about Gus being marked, put a bitter taint on his anxiety.
He saw the post oaks ahead. Beyond them he glimpsed a structure of mud brick. Smoke drifted out of a chimney at one end, like a twist of sea-island cotton pinned to the sky. Charles thought he heard a child’s voice. His hand on the Spencer grew white.
He tried to purge himself of fear. Impossible. His heart lubbed so hard it sounded like an Indian drum in his ear. He knew he would probably have one chance, no more.
He crouched and peered from behind a post oak. He almost cried at the sight of his son seated on the ground doling corn kernels to the raccoon one at a time. The raccoon took a kernel in his forepaws and stood on his hind legs like a paunchy little man in a mask while he ate the kernel. Then he wobbled over to Gus for more. The boy fed him with absolutely no trace of pleasure on his sad, gruel-colored face.
Even from a distance Charles saw the scabbed-over cuts and the bruise around Gus’s eye. The boy’s feet were so filthy Charles almost thought he was wearing gray stockings. Gus sat in the dirt near the front door of the whiskey ranch. The door was closed.
Charles saw a handsome chestnut horse and two mules in the corral at the end of the building. He saw the outbuilding where the squaw had gotten the eggs, and he heard a hen flutter and cluck. The loudest sound was the gurgling of Vermilion Creek.
He almost couldn’t move because of his worry that he’d make a mistake. He tried to forget the size of the stakes and look at the situation as some kind of abstract problem. It helped, a little. He counted five, and on the last count stepped from behind the post oaks into the open, where his son could see him.
Gus noticed him. His mouth flew open. Fearing he’d cry out, Charles put a hand to his lips to signal silence.
He could tell the boy didn’t recognize him, a stranger popping up in the wilderness, beard and hair matted, eyes sunken. He held perfectly still.
Gus dribbled the remaining kernels on the ground but he made no sound.
The raccoon loped forward and began to feast. Charles kept every sense tuned for other noises—a voice, a door’s creak. He heard nothing but the water. He took three long strides toward his son, raised his hand, and motioned, a great hooking sweep toward his chest. Come here.
Gus stared, clearly anxious about the stranger now. Charles wanted to shout, tell him who he was. He didn’t dare. He gestured again. And a third time.
Gus stood up.
Charles was jubilant. Then the boy began to back toward the building, keeping his eyes on the stranger.
Oh God, he’s scared. He still doesn’t know me.
Gus sidestepped toward the closed door, ready to dart inside. Desperate, Charles crouched and laid his Spencer on the ground. He extended and spread his arms. The muscles were so tight he shook from shoulder to wrist.
Somehow the inviting outstretched arms reassured the boy. His face changed, showed a hesitant smile. He cocked his head slightly.
Charles said in a loud whisper, “Gus, it’s Pa.”
Wonder spread over the boy’s face. He started to walk toward Charles.
The front door of the whiskey ranch banged open.
Bent was yawning as he stepped out. He wore an old plug hat and Constance Hazard’s teardrop earring on his left ear. His claw-hammer coat shone as though grease had been spread on it with a knife. He was older, paunchier, with seams in his face, and scraggly eyebrows, and thick uncombed hair hiding the back of his neck. His left shoulder was lower than his right.
Bent saw Charles and didn’t know him. Charles snatched the Spencer and leveled it at Bent’s grimy waistcoat, which was secured by one button. “Hands in the open,” he said loudly, standing.
Bent lifted his hands away from his sides, peering and blinking at the wild man with the rifle. Charles started forward—slow, careful steps. Bent’s brambly eyebrows shot upward.
“Charles Main?”
“That’s right, you bastard.”
“Charles Main. I never thought you’d follow me into the Territory.”
“Your mistake.” Charles halved the distance between the post oaks and the house, then halted. “I know what you did to George Hazard’s wife.” Bent reacted, stepping backward, startled. “I can see that you hurt Gus. I don’t need much of an excuse to splatter your head all over that house. So don’t even breathe hard. Gus, come over to Pa. Now!”
He watched Bent rather than his son. The boy couldn’t grasp his sudden release. As if to test it, he looked at Bent and took a step toward his father. Two steps. Three.
An Indian woman in a dirty buckskin shift came out the door carrying a bucket of night slops. She had a sleepy, sullen look. Charles thought she resembled someone he’d met when he rode with Jackson. Then, stunned, he realized it was Green Grass Woman.
She saw him, recognized him, dropped the slops, and screamed. Gus spun around, alarmed. Bent jumped, and in an instant he had the boy.
Charles’s head filled with denials of what he saw. Bent was smiling, the old sly smile Charles remembered with such loathing. Bent’s begrimed hand clamped on Gus’s throat. His other hand came out of his coat pocket with a razor. He shook it open and laid the shimmering flat of it against Gus’s cheek.
“Put your guns down, Main.” Charles stared, his forehead pounding with pain. Bent turned the blade. The edge indented Gus’s cheek. The boy cried out.
Bent held him fast. “Put them down or I’ll cut him.”
Charles laid the Spencer in the shale in front of him, and his Army Colt beside it. “Now the knife.” He added his Bowie to the pile. The sight of Charles unarmed pleased Bent. His smarmy smile broadened, became almost cordial. Failure pressed on Charles like an invisible block of granite.
“Pick up those things, you bitch. Main, step to the side. More—more—”
Green Grass Woman ran toward the weapons in a kind of crablike
crouch. As she took them up, she gave Charles a pleading look and spoke in English. “He said it was a trader’s boy, a bad trader.”
Charles shrugged in a bleak way. “What are you doing here?”
“She used to belong to the owner of this place,” Bent said. “I sell her. She’ll hump man or beast for gin, but you won’t have the pleasure. I have other things in mind.” His face wrenched. Charles remembered how crazy he was. “You bitch, hurry up!” The cry echoed away. The wind blew.
Bent eyed Charles and giggled. “Now, Main. Now we’re going to enjoy this unexpected reunion. I’m going to give the orders. You’ll obey them to the letter unless you want this child to bleed to death before your eyes. When I say forward march, you come this way and take two steps through the door. Not one or three, two, keeping your hands raised at all times. Any mistake, any disobedience, I’ll slit him.”
Bent could barely contain his good humor. “All right. Forward—march.”
Hands above his head, Charles walked to the house.
Magee strode away from the pecan trees carrying his rifle in the crook of his arm. The wind fluttered the wild turkey feather in the band of his derby.
Gray Owl called out, “He said wait.”
“He’s been gone too long.” Magee kept walking.
“Wait. That was his order.”
Magee broke stride. Stopped, stared across the bright water at a pair of redbirds swooping in the sunshine. With a fretful look down Vermilion Creek, he turned and slowly walked back to the tracker wrapped in his blanket.
62
THE ROOM REMINDED CHARLES of a sutlers. The dirt floor bore the imprints of boots, moccasins, bare feet. Dark lumps of cold food scummed the tops of two tables. The chair where Bent ordered him to sit creaked and swayed when he put his weight on it.
Then he saw the crookedly hung portrait. He stared at the woman for about ten seconds before recognition went off in his head like a shell.
“That picture—” He had trouble enunciating clearly. Fear for Gus dulled his mind, slowed his reactions. And coming on the portrait here, he felt propelled into some unreal place, some world where anything was possible, and nothing was sane.