by Lyle Brandt
“You gonna make these lousy crackers stop what they been doin’ to my people?”
“That’s my plan,” he said. “I’m working out the details.”
“Somethin’ tells me you are a determined man. That right?”
He nodded. Said, “I like to look, before I leap.”
“But mostly, you leap anyway.”
“Sometimes.”
“There’s somethin’ to be said for pure audacity.”
Surprised by her turn of phrase, Ryder smiled and said, “Yes, ma’am, there is.”
“You know about these fellas, call themselves a bunch of Knights?”
“We’ve had reports in Washington.”
“Before the war, they woulda been the paddyrollers hereabouts. What you’d have called the slave patrol. It kept some of ’em out of battle, after the secession, ever’body and his donkey scared to death about some kind of uprisin’ amongst my people. Hear ’em talk today, o’ course, it sounds like they won every scrap from Bull Run down to Chickamauga by theirselves. Windbags, but that don’t mean you get enough of ’em together, they won’t kill you.”
“I saw some of that tonight,” said Ryder.
“Did they wear their pillowcases?”
“Something similar.”
“I haven’t seen ’em, personally,” said Miss Emma. “Mebbe they’ll come by to check on me one of these nights.”
“I’ll try to see that doesn’t happen,” Ryder said.
“How you gonna do that?” she inquired.
“I’m not sure, yet. Maybe get close to them, see what they’re up to.”
“Better lose that Yankee accent, first,” Miss Emma said.
“Is it that obvious?”
“Except to deaf folk, I imagine.” She was laughing at him now.
“I’ll do my best.”
“Them Knights ain’t very smart, but they’s suspicious. Best remember that.”
“I will.”
“Miss Emma,” Hubbard interrupted, “we don’t mean to rob you of your sleep.”
“Don’t need much, when you get to be my age,” she told him. “Long sleep’s comin’ soon enough. Your missus, on the other hand, looks like she needs some ole shut-eye.”
“We can sleep out here,” said Hubbard.
“That you will,” Miss Emma said. “Ain’t room for two in my bed, anyhow, but I can spare a couple blankets. Get them pillows off the chairs.” She paused and asked, “You stayin’, Mr. Ryder?”
“No, ma’am. I’ll be on my way, if everything’s secure for now.”
“Teeny won’t let nobody in, ’less I instruct him to,” she said.
“Good night, then. Thomas, Mrs. Hubbard, you’d be wise to stay out of the public eye, the next few days.”
“They’ll be right here,” Miss Emma said. “Gwan, now, Secret Service man.”
*
Teeny stood far enough aside for Ryder to edge past him, on the porch. The other freedmen watched him go, a nod from Lazarus to see him on his way. Ryder imagined a policeman passing by would be alarmed, seeing the group of them outside with weapons, but he guessed that warning them about white law would be superfluous. They’d all been born and raised under the gun and lash. Nothing in Ryder’s personal experience could match what they’d lived through.
He had kept track of streets, while he was escorting the Hubbards to Miss Emma’s, and he knew the way back to his rooming house. It had a private entrance, at the rear, and no curfew on boarders. The walk let Ryder clear his head and gave him time to think about his plan, such as it was.
Miss Emma had a point about his infiltration of the KRS. He had done something similar in Galveston, on his first job, but posing as a smuggler obviously differed from pretending to be Texas born and bred. He’d need another angle of attack to make it work—but what?
It hit him when he’d covered roughly half the distance to his rooming house. With only minor effort, Ryder thought that he could turn himself into a copperhead, one of those northerners who’d given aid and comfort to the Rebels while the war was on, and who were clamoring for readmission of the states that had seceded on their own terms, meaning that the freedmen would not vote, hold public office, or by any other means disturb the “southern way of life.” He knew the arguments by heart, believed that he could sell himself as a Confederate devotee, but a slip could get him killed.
What else was new?
He detoured past the Hubbards’ place on his way back and smelled the smoke three blocks before he got there. Closer in, he saw the house engulfed in flames and sagging at the roofline, almost ready to collapse. The street was lined with sullen-looking men and members of the Corpus Christi fire brigade, their horse-drawn ladder wagon standing idly by, its Deming four-man end-stroke hand pump unattended. Someone had decided just to let the house burn down, and no one was prepared to buck that plan.
He moved on, keeping to the shadows, unobserved. All eyes were on the fire, some of the watchers doubtless disappointed that the house would be unoccupied when it collapsed. Police were just arriving on the scene—some kind of record for a slow response, Ryder supposed—and huddled with the fire brigade’s commander on the sidewalk opposite the blaze. They didn’t notice Ryder passing, Henry rifle down against his leg and mostly out of sight.
Another block, and he was clear, the fire and crowd behind him. Ryder knew he should feel something, maybe outrage, but he’d seen too much during the war and since to make believe that much of anything surprised him now. Brutality was commonplace, and he was not above employing it himself, as need arose.
There were no guidelines, in particular, for how he did his job. The Bill of Rights applied, of course, but Ryder’s chief in Washington seemed less concerned with legal niceties than with results. His first case hadn’t gone to trial, but Ryder had achieved what he set out to do, albeit at a bloody cost. This time, he hoped it wouldn’t turn into a massacre.
But if it did, he planned to be the one who walked away.
Two blocks west of the boardinghouse, he passed the Stars and Bars saloon, a favorite watering hole for Knights of the Rising Sun. The tavern’s name was borrowed from the Rebel battle flag, commonly mistaken among Yankees with the national flag of the late Confederacy. In fact, the real flag of the severed southern states had changed three times during the four-year Civil War, and while the last two versions had incorporated versions of the stars and bars, most Yanks—and many southern partisans, besides—still mistook the national banner for that of General Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia.
Ryder stood across from the saloon a while, watching the celebration that was going on inside. He doubted that the man whose hand he’d shot away was boozing with the others, or the one whose backside Tom Hubbard had ventilated with his Sharps. Both of them likely would survive, unless a clumsy sawbones made things worse, but Ryder wasn’t overly concerned with them. It was the rest of their fraternity that worried him, a gang of thugs and louts bent on undoing what had cost four years of blood and sweat, more than one hundred thousand Union lives, and untold millions from the U.S. Treasury in order to achieve.
The slaves were free. They needed help beyond lip service out of Washington. And any die-hard Johnny Rebs who thought they could refight the war, and maybe win it this time, had a rude surprise in store for them. The lesson that they should have learned at Appomattox needed to be driven home, by any means available.
Was Ryder the man for that job?
Maybe not. He just happened to be the man sent to perform it, however. And one thing he’d never been able to master was quitting.
Ryder knew the leaders of the KRS, had shadowed them around town for the past four days and nights, getting a feel for their routines and methods of communication with their underlings. The man in charge for Corpus Christi, Chance Truscott, sold dry goods when he wasn’t putting on a flour sack and terrorizing former slaves. He was a portly fellow, with an extra set of chins and a peculiar sense of personal superiority that wasn’t borne out by his t
ubby frame or waddling gait. Ryder had also learned that Truscott didn’t run the whole shebang but took his marching orders from a “grand commander” named Coker in Jefferson, Texas, some four hundred miles northeast of Corpus Christi, near the border of Louisiana.
One step at a time.
The local chapter had been raising hell to beat the band, and had attracted Chief Wood’s interest in the process. Bad mistake—and one they didn’t even realize they’d made, as yet.
Those were the kind that brought men down.
One thing that Ryder would not do was let himself grow overconfident.
Which was the quickest way he knew of getting killed.
3
It doesn’t look so bad,” Chance Truscott said.
“Don’t look so bad?” Rex Fannon raised his bandaged hand, wincing. “I only got two fingers left, Cap’n!”
“Two fingers and a thumb,” Truscott reminded him. “I’ve seen men do with less.”
“Easy for you to say, still sportin’ ten.”
“Your wounds are badges of honor,” said Truscott.
Same speech he’d made to mutilated members of the Texas Invincibles—Company K of the Ragged Old First Infantry—during wartime. It turned out that they weren’t invincible at all, with most of the ones who managed to survive scattering bits and pieces of themselves on battlefields so far from home they didn’t understand what they were doing there. Truscott himself had managed to come through unscathed, at least in body, and had soon discovered that the long war wasn’t over yet.
Fannon was simmering with pain and anger, needed someplace to unleash it, but he wasn’t fit for battle at the moment. And, if Truscott was being honest with him, they were short one major target now, because of him. Fannon had cut and run when he was wounded, which encouraged his companions to desert the battlefield.
“How’s Stacy?” asked Fannon.
“He lost some hair. Has burns around his face and neck, but not too bad. He got the hood off pretty quick, all things considered.”
“Not too bad. Like me, huh?”
“That’s the way I look at it.”
“And Abe?”
“Shot in the ass. He won’t be sitting easy for a while.”
“I guess we missed the carpetbagger.”
“That’s a fact,” Truscott agreed. “His house is gone, though, so that’s something. If he’s still in town, we need to find out where he’s hiding.”
“Ask the darkies,” Fannon snarled.
“It’s something to consider, but I doubt they’d be forthcoming.”
“Make ’em talk. I know some ways.”
“I’m sure you do, Rex. But we have to keep from overreaching, after last night’s failure.”
“Wadn’t my fault,” Fannon told him, sullenly. “Nobody told me he was gonna have a sniper lookin’ out for him.”
“In combat, we expect the unexpected,” Truscott said. “And speaking of the sniper, did you catch a glimpse of him, by any chance?”
“Nossir.” The sullen tone shifted toward bitter. “Shot come outta nowhere, hit ol’ Stacy’s torch ’n’ set his mask on fire. Next thing I know, there’s shootin’ back ’n’ forth between us and the carpetbagger, then some bastard shot my hand off.”
“Not your hand. Two fingers.”
“Feels the same to me.”
“I’m sure it does, but try to focus now. The sniper.”
“Told you that I never seen him. He was off behind us somewhere, mebbe on a roof.”
“And to your right,” said Truscott.
“What the doc says, way the bullet hit me.”
“I don’t suppose it could have been the woman?”
Fannon snorted. “Shot like that? You joshin’ me?”
Somebody else, then, handy with a rifle. And he didn’t have a clue who that might be.
“All right, Rex. If you think of something else—”
“I’m gonna practice shootin’ with my left hand,” Fannon told him. “Hope you’ll save the carpetbagger for me, since I owe him one.” He raised the bandaged paw again and glowered at it. “Make that two.”
“We can’t do anything until we find him,” Truscott said. “You just fix your mind on healing up.”
“Ain’t much else I can do,” said Fannon. “Last I heard, there’s no call for one-handed farriers.”
“You won’t go wanting. Brothers take care of their own.”
“I’m comin’ back, Cap’n. Won’t let this hold me down.”
“Good man. Now, try to get some rest.”
Outside, the early morning sun already warming Corpus Christi’s streets, Truscott turned toward the waterfront, where he helped run a hiring hall for stevedores. He had to earn his keep, like anybody else, no matter what the cause demanded of him after hours. Dealing with the freedmen made his skin crawl, an infuriating imposition that he had to pay them for the same work they’d have done for free last year, but cursing circumstances would not change them.
Only force would put things right.
He had to take it one step at a time, remembering that Texas and the other Rebel states were occupied with bluecoats now, and some of them were black. The bottom rail on top, for God’s sake, and he wouldn’t have believed it when he first marched off to war. Truscott had never owned a slave, himself, or ever wanted to, but the society he had been born and raised in was dependent on its human chattels for a multitude of dirty jobs that kept the system ticking like a fine ten-dollar watch. That watch was broken now—or, rather, its components had been forced out of their rightful slots, ordained by God Almighty at the moment of creation—and it wouldn’t work again until true order was restored.
That might require another war, one fought by different rules, guerrilla-style, but Truscott figured he was up to it. He’d come through four years hale and hardy. If it took another four, or more, to put the South back on its feet, what pure, red-blooded son of Dixie would refuse?
Rex Fannon, maybe, now that he was wounded, though he’d seemed to have a measure of the old fire welling up in him again, when Truscott left his company. As for the others, he would have to wait and see.
Their first task, he decided, was to find the sniper who had interrupted them.
And after him, the carpetbagger.
*
Ryder had breakfast at the rooming house that morning: hash, fried eggs, and biscuits, washed down with strong black coffee. His fellow boarders were an elderly woman who wore her hair pinned at the top of her head, and a sallow ex-soldier who walked with a limp, as if one of his legs had been shortened a couple of inches. The landlady helped out with small talk, but got little back for her effort.
No one at the breakfast table talked about the shooting overnight. The only newspaper in town, the Crier, came out in the afternoon, but Ryder guessed that word of mouth would spread distorted versions of the incident to every corner of the city by midmorning. Whether it had reached his landlady or not was anybody’s guess. The other tenants, if they knew, were keeping mum.
From breakfast, he went out to find Chance Truscott. It was time for him to be at work, although the prior night’s bloody business might have altered the routine. Ryder went by the dockside hiring office first and was relieved to spot his target through one of the windows facing out to sea. Selecting stevedores to load and unload waiting ships would keep Truscott tied up for two, three hours minimum, and Ryder could return to check on him before the one-time Rebel captain went to have his lunch.
That left the Hubbards, but there wasn’t much more he could do for them, until his business with the KRS was settled. In the meantime—
He was heading back uptown, considering how he could try to get some information from the local cops, when something caught his eye. A poster on a lamppost, red letters on white, trimmed all around in black. It read:
Knights of the Rising Sun!!!
Our State requires assistance in her hour of need! All able-bodied men are summoned by the call for selfless he
roes! Rally to the cause this evening, 7 P.M., at La Retama Park. Bring friends and comrades! Come to hear the word of reason and to consecrate yourselves anew! Remember glory days and make them come again!! Hail victory!!!
Ryder read it twice, wondering how the third sentence had managed to escape without an exclamation point. It was an invitation to rebellion, and he wondered how the local garrison of Union troops would take it, but he didn’t plan on asking them. The last thing Ryder needed was to be seen consorting with the bluebellies. He was a foreigner, by Corpus Christi standards, but he hadn’t drawn any undue attention yet and hoped to keep it that way for another little while, at least.
On the other hand, an open invitation to a rally of the KRS was something Ryder couldn’t very well pass up. Truscott would probably be there, speaking as their commander, and it should help Ryder pick out other members of the brotherhood. He’d watch for wounded suspects—one shorthanded, one scorched, and another limping—but he couldn’t count on those three turning up in public for a while.
If they were taking applications, he’d consider it, but cautiously. The Knights were likely watching out for infiltrators, and a Yankee suddenly appearing in their ranks would be a prime suspect. They might decide to ease the pain of last night’s loss with an impromptu necktie party, if he pushed too far, too fast.
That was the rub. His mission was to pin the local outfit down and trace its roots back to the men in charge. Ideally, he would manage that before the KRS found Thomas Hubbard’s hiding place and other chapters started raising hell all over Texas. The attack on Hubbard’s home had been the first raid staged against a white opponent—and, from what he understood, had mustered up the largest mob of Knights fielded so far. Each raid encouraged more and drew more backers to the group.
The war, as Ryder knew too well, had left thousands of men soul-seared by the atrocities they’d witnessed and committed. Some would never be the same again, transformed from modest patriots or hapless draftees into killers who’d forgotten what remorse felt like. Given the least excuse—or none at all—they’d run amok, and if they had a cause to fight for, sanctified by loss and suffering, so much the better.