The boys in the bedrooms began descending the staircase.
Alistair stepped toward Mrs. Shea, offering her a hand, which she timidly accepted. He helped her to her feet, then guided her to the sofa. Behind him, Conor Shea righted himself, touched his bleeding forehead, and slowly pulled open a drawer.
“I’m sorry, Missus Shea,” Alistair said. “We won’t be troubling you any more.” He spun around, and tried not to look at Maura, but couldn’t help himself. He stopped when he reached her, thinking of something to say, though there were no words. The bushwhackers landed at the bottom of the stairs. Unspeaking, Beans turned to leave.
Maura looked Alistair in the eye. Her face had changed. She looked tired. Old. Down-trodden. Her eyes were rimmed red. Her face filthy.
“Conor!” Mrs. Shea’s voice. “No! They’ll kill …”
Alistair started to turn, but the explosion roared behind him at the same time a mule punched him hard in the back. Alistair’s breath left him, and he felt himself falling past Maura, who screamed. His hands reached out, catching the table before he smashed into it, and he bounced over it, landing face up on the rug. He could not breathe. His hands reached to his chest, and he felt the warmth, the stickiness.
“You damned, thieving, low-life Missouri scum!” Conor Shea stepped toward him, holding a smoking Kerr revolver in his hand. “And, you, Daughter. You helped these border ruffians. I’ll kill …”
He never finished. Alistair heard the roar, knew the two bushwhackers by the stairs, and maybe Beans Kimbrough, had filled their hands.
Conor Shea’s muslin undershirt exploded in at least a half dozen splotches of blood, and he staggered back against the cabinet. Another bullet smashed through his left cheek. One caught his Adam’s apple. The mirror behind him shattered from balls, crashed to the floor, but Conor Shea stood, if only for a moment. His mouth tried to work, but his eyes rolled into the back of his head. The English-made .45-caliber pistol slipped from his fingers.
Conor Shea fell dead.
Mrs. Shea screamed. She tumbled off the sofa, crawling on her knees to her dead husband. She reached down, sank to her buttocks, lifted his head, blood pooling all around her and his body.
“No …”
Alistair’s chest burned with fire. When he coughed, pain intensified. Maura was kneeling beside him, mouth open. Beans ripped open Alistair’s shirt, muttering, “Oh, God,” and jammed a silk handkerchief into a hole.
The two bushwhackers stood over him. “He’s done for,” one said.
“No. He’ll be all right.” For once, panic filled Beans Kimbrough’s voice.
Beans pulled Alistair to a seated position. Alistair vomited.
“Get out! Get out of this home. Get out!”
He thought Mrs. Shea was screaming at Beans … at himself … at those bushwhackers who had shot her husband dead. Blinking, he saw her pointing a finger.
“You hussy. You harlot. You’re no daughter of mine. You brought them here. Brought them … to … kill … your … father … my …” Into bloody hands, she buried her face, and wept.
“Help me,” Beans said to the two bushwhackers.
“Hell,” one of the guerrillas said, “he’ll be dead in a minute, and the Yanks is a-comin’. Best save your own hide.”
The other added: “And leave him to Saint Peter.”
Alistair glanced down at his shirt covered with blood. He felt himself being lifted, and he reached out, tears pouring down his face, feeling his bladder release, feeling a terrible panic. He coughed. He thought he saw Maura on his left, helping Beans half drag, half carry him into the morning air. The two other bushwhackers had fled.
“Maura?”
Nothing.
“Beans?”
“Hush up. You’re gonna be fine, pard. Just fine.”
“Don’t tell them,” Alistair heard himself wail. “Don’t let them know. Don’t tell them I was scared, Beans. Don’t tell them I was scared.”
Chapter
Twenty-Two
For as long as they could, they kept up with the retreating Missourians, Beans riding double with Maura, pulling Alistair’s mount behind them, Alistair’s hands lashed to the saddle horn, a rope binding his feet underneath the blood bay’s belly. Out of Lawrence and onto the Fort Scott road, they moved, crossing the bridge over the Wakarusa.
The bushwhackers did not ride hard, not at first. They stopped to torch farmhouses and barns. They rode through cornfields, destroying as much of the crops as they could, although they also plucked a few ears, stuffing those into saddlebags and war bags. They killed a preacher in Dunkard. When they hit the town of Brooklyn on the Santa Fe Trail, they burned it, too.
By that time, Quantrill had hand-picked a rear guard of some sixty raiders, and those men rode perhaps a quarter or half mile behind Alistair, Maura, and Beans. Between fleeting bits of consciousness, Alistair thought he heard the popping of revolvers. Finally Alistair heard and felt nothing, until a retching pain jerked him awake.
He blinked, groaning, felt himself being lifted from the saddle. His eyes opened, but he saw only darkness, and, then, to the north, an eerie light, like the sun was setting below the horizon. The sun, however, was also setting to his left.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“Lawrence,” Maura said.
Then shouts. A pistol shot. And nothing else as he welcomed that cold void that took him deep into an eternal darkness.
* * * * *
When his eyes opened, he saw a sweating, grim-faced black woman with white hair. He could smell her as she worked on his chest. She glanced at him, frowning, and he closed his eyes.
* * * * *
When he awakened next, the Negro woman had changed. She was younger, though her face just as hard. She was white. She was wiping his brow with a damp towel. She was Maura.
Again, the eyes closed.
* * * * *
Voices pulled him out of a deep sleep. He felt as if he were freezing, heard his teeth chattering, felt himself shaking underneath a ton of blankets. The room stopped spinning, and he saw Beans, standing against a sod wall, the door open, light of day streaking into this miserable house. The black woman stood in the doorway, holding a bucket. Beans held cocked revolvers in each hand.
The voices outside grew louder.
“You sure you haven’t seen any Missourians?”
“No, sir.”
“They burned Lawrence, damn you. And Brooklyn. We still know not how many lives those cowards have taken. And there are two horses in your corral.”
He wanted to sit up. That was a voice he’d always recognize. Senator Jim Lane.
“My Navies!” he cried out weakly, and tried to move his arms, to find those .36-caliber revolvers. “My …”
A hand clasped over his mouth. He looked up, frightened, saw Maura Shea.
“Quiet,” she whispered.
“Yes, sir,” the voice said outside. “They comes up one night to my trough. I ain’t no horse thief. Figured I’d just water and feed these hosses till their owner …”
“We will relieve you of those horses. Cotton,” Lane called out, “go inside that soddy. Make sure this darky isn’t lying to us.”
“Ain’t I a free man?” the voice turned proud, determined. “I recollect you saying that I was free, after you-all fetched me and my wife out of Osceola. Ain’t I still free?”
“Of course you are!” Jim Lane barked.
“Then, iffen I be free, don’t that mean I get to say who be welcomes in my home, and who ain’t?”
Another voice: “Why of all the uppity little nig—”
“That’s all, Cotton.” Lane again. “Mister McMinn, there is something you can write about in the Conservative. We free this man and his wife from a chattel’s hard life, provide him with a farm, and this is the thanks we get in return.”
The voice lowered. “You are sure no one has come by here?”
“Ain’t nobody visited us. Just you-all.”
“Pray to God you are telling the truth.”
Maura’s hand lifted off his lips. He could hear saddle leather creaking, the jingling of harness and spurs, sabers, revolvers. Hoofs clopped. The white-haired Negro woman stepped aside, and a man of color entered the home, closing the door.
Beans Kimbrough lowered the hammers on his revolvers, slid them into holsters, and smiled. “You done good, Reginald. Saved a couple of bushwhackers, certain sure. I always knew you loved me, Dilly, but never knowed your husband held me in such high regard.” He laughed.
The blackness returned.
* * * * *
No longer did he feel as if he’d freeze to death. The blankets had been removed. Dilly spooned broth into his mouth, but, a few minutes later, he threw it up.
And slept again.
* * * * *
On the fourth try, the broth stayed in his stomach. He even managed to sip some tea Dilly had brewed, but when he tried to sit up, to get out of the bed, the room spun so crazily, he almost passed out.
A few hours later, or maybe it was a couple of days, when he saw Maura carrying the chamber pot through the door, he cried.
This time, he could not fall back asleep.
* * * * *
“How long have we been here?” he asked. Sitting up now, though still on the straw bed in the corner of the one-room sod house.
“Two weeks,” Beans answered.
Maura brought another spoonful of broth toward his lips, but he weakly lifted his right hand, stopping her momentarily. “Two weeks? Beans, you need to get out of here.”
“Can’t.” Beans nodded, and Maura made Alistair take the broth.
“But the Yankees …” Alistair started to say after he had swallowed.
“They’ve been by here twice, maybe three times,” Beans said.
Another spoon. Another question.
“Was that Lane I heard?”
“Which time? He came by the night we left Lawrence, the night we first arrived here. ’Course, I don’t think he, nor any of his so-called army, was in no particular hurry to catch up with the boys. Next time, maybe three days later, he came by again. Ol’ Reginald stood his ground, though. Else we’d ’a’ been goners.”
The spoon returned. Alistair felt as if he could taste it now.
“So you brought us to your slaves’ place?”
“Providence brought us here. Pure luck. Our horses had played out. Oh, I guess any old home would have done us right, though. Reginald and Dilly knew I’d kill them if they brought any Yanks down upon us. Same as I’d’ve done any Kansan, black or white.” He laughed. “Or maybe God’s on our side in this war.”
“God,” Maura said dryly, “is on no one’s side.”
* * * * *
Fever returned. He would sweat fiercely, then shake uncontrollably with chills. He couldn’t eat, couldn’t drink, just lay on that straw bed, wasting away. This time, he figured he was dying, that when he next opened his eyes, he would be facing St. Peter—and he knew what his judgment would be, what he deserved.
This time, he welcomed death.
* * * * *
It was not St. Peter, not Christ, not Satan, not God, but Maura who greeted him.
“Welcome back,” she said, and tried to, but couldn’t quite, smile.
His hands rested on his stomach, and he managed to move his right one over and cover Maura’s hand. “I’m sorry,” he said.
She tilted her head, her eyes questioning him, as if she did not understand.
“It’s all my fault,” he said. “You should go home. Get out of here.”
“I have no home,” she said. “I’m like you.”
“And me.” Beans came over, cup of coffee in his hand, and squatted. “We got nobody but Quantrill. How you feeling?”
“Better,” he lied.
“You should be dead.” He sipped coffee, shaking his head. “Wait till you see the size of that hole under your ribs. Bullet hit you in the back, went all the way through. Criminy, I figured you’d be singing in the sweet hereafter before we even got you out of Miss Maura’s home.”
“She should go back to Lawrence,” he said.
“There is no Lawrence,” Beans said. “And don’t you remember what her ma told her? Maybe not, almost dead as you was. Her mother kicked her out. And those other ladies of Lawrence … hell, they all consider Maura one of the boys now, a traitor.”
Alistair closed his eyes.
“That’s right, pard,” Beans said, lowering his voice, his joints creaking as he stood, “you rest. Don’t talk so much. You ain’t out of the woods yet.”
“She should go home,” Alistair said before drifting back to sleep.
* * * * *
“Beans,” he tried again. “Get out of here. Get back to Missouri.”
Behind Beans, Reginald scrubbed a pot while the white-haired woman darned socks. The door was closed, the soddy dark except for the light shining through the open window. Maura sat at the uneven table, staring at a cup of coffee.
“Not till you can ride, pard.”
“This doesn’t make a lick of sense, Beans. Send Maura home, and you find Quantrill.”
Grinning, Beans reached over, squeezed Alistair’s hand. “You think I’d leave you?”
Alistair’s mouth opened. He didn’t know what to say.
“You and the colonel,” Beans said. “You’re the best friends I got. Hell, you’re the only friends I got. Don’t you know that? I may be ‘Beans the Butcher,’ but I’m true to my pards, my pals. I’m—”
Suddenly he stood, right hand gripping the butt of one of his revolvers. Maura also rose, placing both hands on the end of the shaking table, black coffee sloshing over the tin cup’s rim. Reginald dropped the pot, and looked up at the roof. With a gasp, Dilly lowered the socks.
Alistair heard it, too, and felt the earth trembling. Hoofs. Bawling cattle. Men’s curses. The soddy began quaking. A wooden cross fell off the wall, onto the floor. Dilly rose, clasping the cross dangling from her neck. The ceiling began sprinkling dirt.
“Cattle?” Beans had drawn one of his revolvers. “Buffalo?” Then, hearing the curses of riders, he swore himself.
The dirt began pouring down. A timber creaked.
“We gotta gets out of here!” Reginald yelled.
Chapter
Twenty-Three
“Come on out of there!” a voice yelled above raining dirt, pounding hoofs, crumbling walls. “Or we bury all of you.”
“Don’t open that door, Reginald!” Beans drew the second revolver, moved to the window, tried to peer outside, but only managed to cough from all the dust. He had to holster one of the revolvers to wipe his eyes with his bandanna.
Alistair tried to sit up, but the room began spinning again, and he slipped back down. His heart pounded against his throbbing chest. The broth in his stomach roiled. Dirt fell into his hair, over the blankets covering him. He heard horses snorting on the roof. Dirt hit his eyes, blinding him, too.
The air inside the soddy filled with choking dust.
“We know you’re in there, you son-of-a-bitch!” another voice commanded. “Throw out your guns. Or we bury you alive.”
Beans coughed, managed to shout: “There are two freed coloreds in here! And a white girl!”
“We’ll bury them, too!”
A timber brace fell, knocking over the table. A hole appeared in the earthen roof. A steer’s leg fell through, the animal bawling and kicking. Even with the new openings in the roof, dust remained too thick to see much of anything other than a few streaks of sunlight.
Reginald and Dilly were dragging away a cupboard, then rolling up a rug—the one patch of color on an earth-toned h
ut.
“Good God!” Beans covered his mouth with his arm. “A tunnel?”
“No, sir.” Reginald had covered his mouth and nose with a bandanna. He moved to Alistair. “But they tells us this place once was part of the Underground Railroad.” He paused, coughed, and continued. “They hided coloreds like us in this here hole sometimes. Y’all get in there.”
Alistair felt himself being lifted. Reginald scooped him up as if he were a puppy, stepped over the fallen timber. Dilly dropped into the hole, and they eased Alistair down.
“You, too, Mister Benedict,” Dilly said. “And you, Miss Maura.”
A mound of earth collapsed.
“Cover him,” Beans said, smiling.
“You gets in here, Mister Benedict!” Dilly ordered, coughing, spitting out grit, wiping her mouth.
“Cover him! We ain’t got much time!”
“But …”
“Damn it, do it, or I’ll save them redlegs the trouble and kill you right now!”
Reginald helped Dilly out of the hole. Alistair tried to climb out, but the room blurred, his eyes stung, and then he saw the rug being pulled over him. Fear hit him savagely. First, that he’d be buried alive. Second, that Beans was walking away.
“Beans!”
Beans Kimbrough stopped, turned, his smile bright. “You remember Benedict Kimbrough,” he said, “your pard.”
The rug covered the hole. Blackness enveloped him. He was in his grave. More dirt fell. By then, Reginald was coughing, as he repositioned the cupboard over the rug and hole. Inside the darkness, Alistair felt hot, yet chilled, all at the same time. His chest burned. He bit his lip to keep from crying out, then couldn’t help himself.
“Beans …” All that came out was a hoarse whisper.
A second later, he heard a challenge:
“All right, you Yankee bastards. Here I am! Let’s see how many Beans the Butcher can take to hell with him!”
Above the pouring dirt, crashing hoofs, snorting horses, bawling cattle, and Dilly’s prayers came a cannonade of gunfire. The last thing Alistair heard, however, was Maura Shea’s scream.
Wreaths of Glory Page 17
