by John Jakes
Idiot, Des thought, simmering. He heaved a keg to his right shoulder, and then another to his left. His knees buckled a little as he absorbed the weight.
He was as impatient as ever to see the Mains brought down, starting with Colonel Orry Main’s widow. He didn’t want to hang for the crime, though. And Mr. Cooper Main of Tradd Street, while having no truck with the occupying soldiers, had quite enough influence to turn the soldiers in pursuit of Des if he grew suspicious.
So he had been lying low all these weeks, awaiting a suitable pretext. He believed a nigger uprising inevitable. Some hot night, inflamed by spiritous liquors and the agents of the Yankee government, the freedmen would go wild. There would be arson, rapine, hell to pay for any man with white skin. Such an outbreak was the sort of screen he needed.
And now Jolly had drawn attention to himself, and to Mont Royal. Jolly was accustomed to doing whatever he pleased, terrorizing both whites and niggers in the Ashley district. Well, he wouldn’t do as he pleased with the Main woman. Des had already sent off a reply to Gettys demanding that Jolly be restrained until ordered to act.
Groaning and sweating, Des bent his back and struggled up the plank step by painful step. A trio of elegant young ladies, one of whom, Miss Leamington of Leamington Hall, had been a pupil, came promenading along the crowded quay under their parasols. Threadbare dresses told of their poverty, but the easy arrogance of their class—something understood by Des, and even shared—showed in their amused looks at the stevedores and their lively chat.
Miss Leamington stopped suddenly. “Dear me. Is that—?” Des hunched to hide his head behind a cask. “No, it couldn’t be.”
“What, Felicity? What couldn’t be?”
“You see that white man carrying kegs like a nigger? For a moment I thought he was my old dancing master, Mr. LaMotte. But Mr. LaMotte’s a white man through and through. He would never demean himself that way.”
The young ladies passed on without glancing back. Who cared to waste a second look on dirt?
That was Friday. All night the memory of Miss Leamington’s scorn kept Des awake. He drifted to sleep on his sodden pallet around four, waking several hours late for work. He dressed without eating and hurried toward the docks, hearing the blare of a small band on Meeting Street.
When he reached Meeting, he was prevented from crossing by a parade. He saw niggers marching in formation, each man wearing a frock coat of white flannel with dark-blue facings and matching white trousers. They were festive, waving and chatting with people in the mixed crowd that had turned out to watch. At the head of the parade, two men carried a banner.
CHARLESTOWNE VOL. FIRE CO.
Number 2
“BLACK OPAL”
Des stood in the third row of the crowd, glaring as the firemen passed. Behind the marchers, horses decorated with flowers pulled two pumping units. Small American flags were tied to the burnished brass rails of the pumpers. Des’s hands knotted at his sides. All that black skin, those Yankee flags—it was almost more than he could tolerate.
A shiny-cheeked, strapping buck waved to someone at Des’s left. “How’d you do, Miss Sally? Fine morning.”
Des turned to look. The name Sally resonated in his head with sharp echoes. He saw a fat, trashy girl waving a hanky at the fireman, who grinned at her as if he wanted to stroll right over and lift her skirts.
Miss Sally was a white girl. She waved and waved her hanky, taking notice of the nigger, demeaning herself, her race. Des felt as if the blood would burst his temples.
A small five-piece marching band, part of the fire company, had been counting cadence with drumsticks clacked together. Now the brasses struck up “Hail, Columbia!” and the white slut beamed so broadly at the fireman, he blew her a kiss.
Which she returned.
Des’s huge hands flew up, one fastening on a shoulder at his left, one at his right. He parted the human wall. Someone protested, hurt, as he lunged into the street.
Then his mind turned to flame, and he remembered nothing.
Col Munro here, inspecting the school and complaining about duplicate and triplicate reports he must file over “outrages.” He left two young corporals, charming and friendly Maine boys, to guard the school for a few days. One said he wants to settle in Carolina, he finds the climate and people so winning.
Before Munro marched back to town, he issued a gloomy warning which I quote as best I can recall it. “I have now been in the Palmetto State long enough to understand something of Southern feelings. So far as my observation goes, I do not find the white people hostile to the Negro as a Negro. They like him in most instances. But when he threatens them as a possible office holder, juror, voter, political and social equal, he goes too far. Freedom’s not the issue, but equality. Any persons or institutions promoting that are the enemy.”
“Perhaps so,” I said. “But Prudence and I will keep the school open.”
“Then I predict you will keep having trouble,” he said “Someday it will be of a magnitude that neither luck nor courage will overcome.”
… Cooper writes that D. LaMotte is jailed. On Saturday he attacked a colored vol. fireman with no apparent provocation, and the authorities arrested him. C said he has lately been skeptical of LaMotte’s willingness to carry out his threats. He is no longer skeptical. For some while, however, we are, to use C’s word, “reprieved.”
23
THE CHEYENNE’S RIFLE SHOT blew out the left eye of Wooden Foot’s horse. Amid blood and animal bellowing, the trader tumbled into the wind-whipped grass. Charles was already dismounted. He grabbed his Spencer and slapped Satan to send him trotting away. Boy, upset by the sudden attack, vainly tried to control the pack mules from horseback.
“Get down, get off your horse,” Charles shouted. The Cheyennes rushed their ponies up the rise. A bullet snapped Charles’s hat brim; the hat sailed away. He yelled at Boy again but the howls of the Indians and the bray of the mules competed. But after a few seconds, Boy understood the look on Charles’s face and slipped clumsily to the ground.
Wooden Foot knelt and shot at the Cheyennes nearing the top of the rise. He missed. Charles fired as the brave next to Scar flung a feathered lance. Charles dodged it. The Indian took Charles’s bullet, blasted off his pony.
Everything was noise and confusion. A few miles west, lightning sizzled down from approaching storm clouds and struck the dry prairie. The grass smoked and sparked. Boiling, tumbling, the black clouds sped on toward the Cheyennes and the embattled traders.
Boy cried out. Charles saw him stagger, clutching a reddened sleeve. A lance had grazed him. Tears of pain and bewilderment rolled down his face.
Wooden Foot shouted, “Behind you, Charlie,” and fired his long gun almost simultaneously. Charles pivoted and saw a mounted Cheyenne about to hammer him with a stone-headed war club. Charles shot at the red-painted face, but not soon enough to stop the blow. The club pounded his shoulder with an impact that drove him sideways. The Cheyenne sagged from his pony, his face a sheet of blood.
The storm clouds passed over like a lid closing on the world. Thunder rolled. Lightning glittered. On the wind from the west, Charles smelled smoke. He saw Scar jabbing at Wooden Foot with his lance, from horseback.
The Cheyennes crowded their ponies in close, though with less zeal since a couple of their own had fallen. Wooden Foot dodged back; Scar’s thrust missed. He thrust again. The trader gripped his rifle with both hands and used it like a staff to deflect the lance. His face was flushed.
Charles levered a round into the Spencer, aimed at Scar, and pulled the trigger. The rifle jammed.
Another Cheyenne rode by and lanced Charles’s right arm. A rush of blood followed the hot pain. He dropped the Spencer, yanked out his Bowie, and drove the blade into the Indian’s side. The Indian screamed and jerked forward over his pony’s neck. The pony raced away, taking the Indian and the protruding steel too.
Determined to finish Wooden Foot, Scar worked his pony in again. Wooden
Foot blocked his thrusts expertly with his rifle. Scar’s face showed his frustration. The struggle was taking a toll on Wooden Foot, though. His cheeks were dark as plums.
Charles found himself momentarily free of adversaries. Then he saw why. Three Cheyennes were riding down on the mules and Boy. Weeping, the youngster struck at them feebly, as if swatting flies. One brave jumped down and grabbed Boy. Fen leaped from concealment in the grass as if sprung. The collie’s jaws closed on the Cheyenne’s forearm. Another Indian beat at the dog with the butt of his trade rifle.
Amid the buffeting of the gale wind, the white flashing of the lightning, Wooden Foot uttered a strange choked cry. Drawing his Colt and dodging as a Cheyenne shot at him, Charles saw his partner lurch sideways in the high grass. Wooden Foot gasped, as if he couldn’t get air. He plucked the front of his beaded shirt as if to tear something out.
Charles remembered seeing Wooden Foot’s face flushed the same way before. “It ain’t nothing—” But it was: a heart seizure, brought on by the enormous strain of the attack.
Scar had his hatchet in hand, raised high. Charles fired. The prancing of Scar’s pony caused the bullet to miss the target and ping the hatchet blade. Charles jumped in front of Wooden Foot to shoot again. Scar quickly trotted away down the rise, bent low over his pony.
Blood leaked from Charles’s wound. He yelled in frustration, a wordless raw cry of rage, because two things demanded attention at once: Wooden Foot, kneading his shirt with both hands and trying to get air in his lungs, and three dismounted Cheyennes who were dragging Boy out of sight beyond another part of the rise. Fen chased after them, foam flying from his jaws. Wooden Foot’s fingers clawed beads loose from his shirt. They sparkled and winked in the lightning glare.
Charles couldn’t help both of them. He chose the one visibly near and in peril of instant death.
Wooden Foot swayed backward. Charles caught him with his left hand while firing at the nearest Cheyenne with his right. Because of his wound, his gun arm throbbed and shook. His bullet sped yards wide of the target.
The Cheyennes were going to finish them, so all Charles could do was go out fighting. He knelt and worked his knee under his partner’s sagging back. The trader braced there, his eyes wide, his limp hands falling away from his shirt. Helpless, Charles watched the color leach from his face.
Wooden Foot recognized his partner. He tried to touch Charles but couldn’t lift his hand. Beyond the rise, Fen abruptly stopped barking, then yelped once.
Charles put his ear near Wooden Foot’s mouth. He thought he heard, “Thanks for all—” Bright lightning whited out everything. When he recovered his sight he almost cried. Wooden Foot’s eyes were still open but nothing lived behind them.
From over the rise the three Cheyennes appeared and recaptured their ponies. They trotted down toward Scar, who was waiting at the spot where Charles had first seen the Indians.
Charles raced toward the place where Boy had disappeared. As he ran, the storm threw bits of grass and particles of dirt into his eyes. When Scar saw Charles move away from Wooden Foot’s body, he signaled his remaining cohorts to ride toward it.
Charles passed two fallen pack mules bleeding to death from bullet wounds. Lightning blazed. The ground rocked under him. He sensed rather than saw a fence of fire spring up behind him, where lightning had struck again. “Boy?” he shouted, struggling up the rise on legs shaking with weakness. “Boy, answer me.”
The lightning answered, a scorching sizzling swordstroke straight down into the hollow between rises, the place the three dismounted Cheyennes had just quitted. Grass smoked, glowed orange, then burst into flame. Godamighty, the end of the world, Charles thought as he stumbled down the slope toward a dry stream bed. On the near side, trampled grass glistened wet and black. Amidst that blood lay something as shapeless as a potato sack.
Over the rise behind him, flames six feet high burned in a rampart of scarlet, orange, white. The rampart spread forward and backward and sideways simultaneously. Once in Texas he’d seen a similar prairie fire. It destroyed forty square miles.
He reached the shapeless thing and gazed down, driven past feeling by shock. Boy lay with his sadly swollen head resting in the dry stream bed. A blade had split him open from throat to groin. From the chest cavity already swarming with flies protruded the remains of Fen. A leg, the bone visible in bloody fur; part of the collie’s snout and skull, including an eye. Other pieces were strewn on the glistening grass.
Charles stared at the butchery no more than five seconds, but it might as well have been a century. Finally he turned and started back up the rise and the fire rampart behind it. Wooden Foot’s dead, Boy’s dead, he thought. I’ll go next but I’ve got to take that scarred bastard with me.
From the rise he saw Scar and five others sitting their ponies some distance away, appearing and disappearing behind the blowing smoke. The Cheyennes had shifted slightly to the south of their original position and despite the smoke, Charles recognized something new on their faces: apprehension; or at least doubt. The fire had advanced nearly halfway up the rise where the Jackson Trading Company had made its futile stand.
Sweat dripping from his face, he stumbled back to the place he’d left Wooden Foot. It’s Sharpsburg all over again, he thought. It’s Northern Virginia all over again.
Behind fuming smoke, Scar smiled. Charles wondered about that as he staggered to Wooden Foot’s corpse. Looking down, he choked.
His partner’s pale body lay denuded of clothing. A red hole between the legs crawled with flies. Bloody genitals had been forced into Wooden Foot’s mouth. On his eyes the Cheyennes had poured little mounds of diamond and triangle pony beads. The fire made them sparkle. Scar had a fine touch when it came to barbarity.
“You bastards,” Charles screamed. “You filthy, inhuman bastards.”
Scar stopped smiling. Charles pointed his Colt at the Cheyenne leader, steadying it with bloody hands. Smoke thickened, hiding Scar and the others. Charles squeezed off a round. Another. Another. Until the cylinder emptied.
By then the wall of smoke and fire completely hid the Cheyennes. To reach Charles they’d have to ride through or very wide around one of the ends that kept extending north and south. Gusty wind blew his hair. The fire roaring on the slope lit his wild face as if it were noonday.
The smoke parted again. The Cheyennes were still there. Every one of Charles’s shots had missed. Scar signaled the others to advance.
One Cheyenne shook his head, then another. They had no more stomach for the shouting madman on the rise protected by a wall of fire and smoke. Though they didn’t understand his words, they understood the meaning of his yelling. “Come on, show me how brave you are! You killed an old man and a boy and a dog. Let’s see what you can do with me!”
One of the reluctant Cheyennes shook his head again, emphatically. That displeased Scar. He grabbed the last man to shake his head. The Cheyenne knocked Scar’s hand away, turned his mount, and rode off into the stormy darkness.
Four others followed in single file. Left alone, Scar gave Charles a scornful look before he joined the retreat.
“Come back, goddamn it. You yellow sons of bitches!”
The starch went out of him as the fire once more leaped high and hid them. Charles kept yelling at Scar. “You deserve to be wiped off the earth, you and your whole tribe. I’ll find a way, you can count on that.”
Count on that … count on that …
He turned and moved from the heat and glare. Using his wounded arm, he tried to jam his Colt into the holster. He kept missing. The gunsight ripped his pants and dug his leg so that it bled. He neither saw nor felt it. From his left hand dangled Wooden Foot’s personal parfleche, which he didn’t remember snatching off his partner’s dead horse.
The storm front flew on eastward, miles away now. A light rain started, not strong enough to put out the fire. Charles staggered among the dead mules to see what else he might salvage from the disaster. Two mules were still ali
ve, unhurt. With their reins gathered in his left hand he started back toward the rise.
The fire stopped him. The great white-and-scarlet wall now curved across the main rise and around to his right, behind the continuation of the rise shielding the creek bed where Boy and Fen had died. As he watched, the fire completely engulfed the rise where Wooden Foot’s body lay.
I can’t even bury them.
At that, he wept tears of wrath.
By a lucky chance—his only luck of the day—Charles found his piebald about two miles northeast of the fire site. He was riding one of the two mules and leading the other. A wide strip of cloth torn from his trousers and twisted with a stick had stopped the bleeding of his right arm. The wound hurt and needed attention, but it was far from fatal.
When he came on Satan, standing head down, still as marble except for the movement of his eye, Charles changed mounts and headed on into the north, his emotions a raw mass of sorrow and outrage. At dusk he stopped to rest and camp. He built a buffalo-chip fire, then chewed some pemmican from his own parfleche. Two bites and his belly ached. Four bites, it all came up.
After the storm the sky cleared, leaving him huddled in a cold breeze under brilliant stars. Shivering, he opened Wooden Foot’s parfleche. He found the paint pots and the rolled-up winter count. He untied the thong and spread it at his feet.
Although he couldn’t explain the reason, something compelled him to try to finish it. He opened the pot of black, moistened the brush, dipped it in, and poised it over the pictograph history of the Jackson Trading Company’s final year.
He studied the various figures Wooden Foot had painted, including the three of them in the sanctuary of the Buffalo Hat tipi. How he had misunderstood that incident. It had fooled him into believing the Cheyennes were capable of compassion. They weren’t. Only the sanctity of the object, the hat, had saved the traders. The Cheyennes hated all whites, and never mind if they had reasons. They had no reasons good enough to justify the barbarity he had seen. They simply hated whites. The same way he now hated every last one of them.