“Might have been.” The man with the shotgun smiled. “Once. We been here nigh on two years now. Heard it was a Rebel farm. Reckon if’n yer Rebels, you’ll be the last ones we drive out of Benton County.”
“Two years?” Doc whispered.
“Federals cleared this country of Rebels after Prairie Grove. Ain’t none o’ yer kind here no more. Now, why don’t you be smart, Johnny Rebs, and turn that wagon around. If’n ye don’t, you’ll end up good Rebels. You can tell yer a good Rebel ’cause you’ll be buried next t’ them two graves out back.”
Doc swallowed hard. “There’s two graves out back?”
“Ain’t no names on ’em.”
“You don’t understand! This is our home! Where is our mother? My brother Billy and sister Sarah? Have you at least heard of them? Do you know where they are?”
As he spoke a young woman stepped out on the porch, her belly distended in pregnancy. She cocked her head, studying Doc and Butler. “Who’s this, Dube?”
“Says they used to live here.”
She stared distastefully at Doc. “I heard tell that the girl was carried off by jayhawkers. That boy, Billy? Word is Crawfords, from down to Van Buren County, was hunting him. Heard he killed one of old Amos’s boys. Either they got him, or he done left the country a couple of years back.”
“What happened here?” Doc asked, throwing his arms wide.
“Reckon y’all went to war with the Union and ye lost. Now, spoils of war, mister. This hyar land is ours. We found it. Took it. And ain’t no two broke-down Johnny Rebs coming to take it away from us. So, this hyar’s my last words. You git your arse back up on that wagon seat, and if’n I ever sees your stinkin’ face around here again, I’ll kill ye!”
“Dube?” one of the younger men asked as he raised his carbine. “We shoot ’em, we could sure use that spring wagon. Looks a mite used, but it’s better’n what we got.”
“War’s over, Grady. We cain’t jist shoot ’em down.” Dube grinned evilly behind his beard. “Unless, of course, these two Rebs want to open the ball again.”
“Sergeant,” Butler called out, “form up the men!”
Dube’s eyes widened as he brought the shotgun to his cheek, taking a sight on Butler.
“Whoa!” Doc shouted, throwing his arms up. “We’re leaving! Don’t shoot! For God’s sake, he’s crazy. Sees things that aren’t there. Just … please let me get him out of here!”
“Well, go on. And don’t ye never come back, neither.”
Doc was shaking as he climbed up on the seat, reaching for the reins where they lay in Butler’s hands. Even as Doc clawed them away, Butler shouted, “Advance by the right oblique. At the quick step. Forward!”
Doc slapped the reins across the mule’s back, wheeling the animal around the yard, and started him down the lane toward the river road. He only looked back once to see the invaders, lined up, weapons at the ready. Three dark men and a pregnant woman. Standing between him and the last of his memories and hopes.
56
July 4, 1865
“I tell ye, it whar them damned high-an’-mighty politicians in Richmond what done the Confeder’cy in. We’da won the war if’n it hadn’t been fer that Jeff’son Davis and that collection o’ skunks he kep’ around hisseff back East.”
The speaker was a gray-headed old man with a wedge of a face, and deep lines around his oversized hooked nose. The few teeth in his mouth were tobacco-brown incisors that matched the color of his faded brown eyes. White wisps of beard clung to his cheeks. He held a chipped ceramic cup above his head as he pontificated.
The duffer stood atop a chair in the middle of McMannaman’s Saloon; the place was a dusty and drab clapboard structure along a similarly dusty and drab trail on the bank of the Trinity River just outside of Fort Worth.
Billy waited in the darkness outside. Through the open door he studied the saloon’s lamplit interior. The Confederate leanings were apparent given the battle flag hung behind the plank bar where McMannaman held sway. The central table was the codger’s domain along with his collection of elderly companions: fiery gray and white-headed elders in faded flannel and canvas coveralls. A huge Texas flag covered the north wall, its bottom stained from the high-water line the last time the Trinity had flooded.
Two tables of young men, barely more than boys, sat in the back right. They wore the attire of stock herders, what the locals had taken to calling cowboys, as more and more of the border ruffians and “bush soldiers” had taken to rounding up strayed and unclaimed beef, herding them north into the Nations, and selling them to the army.
The table nearest the door was empty, but a lone man sat at the back table next to the open door that led out to the outhouse. Though he wore his hat pulled low, Billy knew Charlie Deveroux when he saw him. The bulk in the man’s shoulders just couldn’t be disguised. At Charlie’s elbow was a second mug, the chair pulled back as if just vacated.
Taking one last look around, Billy satisfied himself that the fifteen horses tied around didn’t seem interested in anything but switching their tails and shifting from standing hipshot on the left to hipshot on the right.
An owl hooted out in the brush along the river, and a bat fluttered past his ear.
“Hell, did ye ever see Texas invaded? We beat them bastards back time after time!” the old man crowed.
“You want to know where to cast blame?” a round-bellied elder at the table asked. “It’s them damn Easterners. Shoulda let Texans fight the whole thing. What in tarnal hell does a Virginian know about war? Not like Texas boys what fit the Commanch’ and Mexicans all their lives.”
“Eastern bastards,” the
