This Old World

by Steve Wiegenstein

“You’ll have some problem with that,” Turner said calmly. “There’s nobody in that house. The man you’re looking for doesn’t live here.”

  The leader’s head snapped toward a rider at the end of the line. “You said this was the house,” he said. “Is this the house?”

  The man shrugged. Something about the rider’s build and posture seemed familiar to Turner.

  “Well?” the leader asked again.

  “Thought so,” the rider said. Even though the man’s voice was muffled by his mask, Turner could tell it was Charley Pettibone.

  “God damn it!” shouted the leader. “What kind of ignorant shit is this? Either it’s the right house or it ain’t.”

  Charley shifted uncomfortably in his saddle and shrugged again.

  “I’ll show you,” Turner said. “Come inside with me.”

  The leader pointed his revolver at Charley. “You go,” he said. “If anybody’s going to get a shotgun greeting, you’re the deserving one.”

  Charley clambered down from his horse and walked slowly toward Turner, torch in hand. Feeling the revolver at his back, Turner led him toward the door of the house, hoping that he had been right and that no Dathan awaited them with a cocked shotgun. He lifted the latch. It opened easily.

  The light from Charley’s torch threw shifting shapes on the bare walls as they stepped inside. There were some pans on the floor, and the head of a hoe, but otherwise the room was empty.

  “You can take your mask off if you want, Charley,” Turner muttered. “I know it’s you.”

  Charley’s head jerked toward Turner, but he said nothing. Nor did he remove the mask, which had a pair of red rings painted around the eye-holes and a jagged red mouth, meant to look terrifying, but in the torchlit room it merely looked silly.

  “Let’s look in the back,” he said.

  They walked to the back room of the cabin and stood in the still darkness.

  “You need to get away from these people,” Turner said.

  “That’s kind of complicated.”

  “I know. But you need to figure it out. This is not going to end well for you down the road.”

  “Ain’t much ever has.”

  “You don’t belong with those people. You belong with us.”

  “Only thing I ever belonged to was the Confederate Army, and that ain’t a going thing anymore. It’s just my own self I belong to now.”

  “You’re wrong there, Charley. Even if you don’t think you belong, you still do. Be careful what you belong to. For that’s what you become.”

  A laugh came from inside the mask. “You were always a good man with the words, Mr. Turner. Take more than words to help us now. Those boys outside are primed up to kill somebody, and if they don’t get the one they want, they’ll just pick the next man. Could be you, could be me.”

  He turned on his heel and walked to the front door. “He’s right,” he called, stepping into the yard. “It’s empty.”

  “Did you check the rafters?”

  “Of course I checked the rafters. First place you look. Ashes in the fireplace were cold, too.”

  “You weren’t in there long.”

  “How long does it take to check two goddam rooms?”

  The leader raised himself in his saddle. “Come out of there, you!”

  Turner stood in the doorway. “I’m right here. Believe me now?” In the light of the torches he could see that some of the citizens of Daybreak had gathered and were watching.

  The man snorted. “I wouldn’t believe you if you told me my pants was on fire. Now where’s that nigger?”

  “I already told you I don’t know, so you can either believe it or not.”

  The man lowered his revolver toward Turner and pulled back the hammer.

  “What, you think that’s going to make knowledge pop into my head?” He was about to speak further, but Charley stepped in front of him.

  “I think I know where we can find him,” he said. “I think they stay in them old huts on the ridge.”

  “We rode right past them huts, you idiot!”

  “Didn’t think about ’em then.”

  The leader released the hammer on his pistol and tucked it into his belt. “All right.” He turned to his men. “But first, burn this house.”

  He stood in his stirrups and threw his torch on the roof. “It is not proper for niggers and whites to live side by side!” he shouted. “People take notice!” He pointed at Turner. “If this happens again, you’re the responsible party. Keep that in mind.”

  Two other men threw torches into the windows of the house, then the gang rode into the street and turned north toward the river crossing. Charley mounted his horse to follow.

  “Remember what I told you,” Turner said.

  Charley didn’t speak, but nodded briefly, then yanked his horse’s reins and spurred it to catch up with the rest.

  As soon as the horsemen were out of sight, everyone rushed wordlessly to their homes to fetch buckets and pans. Wickman had a ladder against the side of the house in an instant; Turner guessed he had slipped away as soon as he saw the first torch fly and had been waiting in the shadows with it.

  The riders’ hasty efforts to burn the house were extinguished within a half hour, leaving nothing but scorch marks on the floor and roof. The commotion had awakened the community’s children, who dashed from place to place in ineffectual excitement—except for Adam, who took his hand and led him to the steps of the Temple of Community, where they sat down together. Turner suddenly realized that he was weak in the knees.

  “Was this what the war was like?” Adam said.

  “Not really,” said Turner. “Men with guns, yes. But lots more of them, not as organized. You didn’t see people face to face very often.”

  “Scarier than this?”

  “No. This was plenty scary.”

  “I was scared.”

  Turner put his arm around his son. “Anybody not scared would have to be plumb crazy,” he said. “But you do what you need to, scared or not.”

  “Are they going to hurt Mr. Dathan?”

  Turner held the boy close. “I’m guessing that Dathan figured out what was happening when they rode by the first time and made sure they wouldn’t find him when they rode back. But when sunrise comes we’ll go up and see.”

  Charlotte joined them on the steps, a smudge of ash across her face.

  “Where’s Newton?” Turner asked.

  She nodded toward the cabin. “Inspecting the work. Making sure we doused everything sufficiently.”

  They exchanged smiles in the breaking dawn.

  “Let's go to bed,” she said.

  Chapter 19

  Charley Pettibone ran through his options as he forded the river with the Law and Order League. None, really. He’d been a damn fool for joining this bunch, and a damn fool for sticking with them this long, and a greater fool for calling out Dathan’s name at the last meeting. Now there was blood to be shed. Dathan’s, if indeed he was bonehead enough not to have sensed the danger and melted off into the night when they had first ridden by, or more likely his own.

  His own fault. But this was no time to kick himself for past deeds. He could drop his torch in the river, feign a loose cinch when they reached the bank, then disappear into the darkness when they rode on. Fat chance, now that Pratt had called him out. His horse, a chestnut gelding borrowed from Landsome, seemed a good mount. Perhaps he could bolt past them, make a dash to town. And then what? Spend his life fearing an ambush? Not damn likely, not for a man who had fought at Chickamauga. If there was to be a fight, then he’d fight. He took his revolver from its holster and held it under his coat.

  The men regrouped on the bank as the last ones clambered up. Pratt turned his horse to face the rest. “Well, that was a goddam mess,” he said, speaking directly to Charley. “Don’t you tell us something if you don’t know it’s true. We lost a half hour of darkness down there, and if we don’t get moving we’ll have to ride home in daylight. And tha
t’s how the law gets on you.”

  “I thought we were going to be the law around here,” Charley answered. “Wasn’t that the plan?”

  “Sometimes plans don’t go as fast as you’d like, smart boy,” Pratt said. “You just better hope Old Zip Coon is up where you said he’d be this time.”

  “Sometimes people don’t sleep where they’re supposed to sleep,” Charley retorted. “I’m starting to see why you never joined the regular army.” Charley backed his horse up a little.

  “What’s that supposed to mean, Arkansas?” Pratt said. All the other riders shifted in their saddles but did not speak.

  “You ain’t got the head for it,” Charley said. “In the real war, you’d have been shot for insubordination or busted for incompetence in a month’s time.”

  “That right? We’ll just see who gets shot for insubordination!” Pratt shouted. He went for his revolver, but Charley already had his out and cocked. He raised and fired, knocking Pratt off his horse, then threw down his torch, jammed his revolver in his belt, and spurred to a sudden gallop past them all. In five seconds he had disappeared into the darkness.

  Charley flung off his hood as he raced through the flat ground alongside Michael Flynn’s farm and reached the spot where the road climbed out of the river valley. He figured the surprise had given him a minute's head start, at most, and riding without a torch another couple of minutes. The others would keep their torches and pick their way up the hill, but he knew the terrain well enough to ride it by moonlight. He could make the ridgetop, pass the Indian camp, and reach the plum thicket at the end of the long lane before the road turned toward town. There he could loose the horse and give it slap down the road, push his way into the thicket and wait. Charley guessed that no more than one or two of them cared enough for Green Pratt to risk their lives chasing him into the woods, and if they did, well, they’d all discover who was the best fighter of the bunch.

  He longed to look behind to see what sort of pursuit he was getting, but couldn’t spare the time. He could hear hoofbeats, though, and urged on the gelding despite its labored breathing. There’d be plenty of time for it to rest once he turned it loose.

  Charley pressed his cheek to the horse’s neck and hissed into its ear. “You can do it, honey,” he whispered. “This ain’t no hill. You’ve climbed worse.” The horse stumbled and then righted itself. “Hay barn up ahead, with sweet clover.” He gripped the cheekpieces of the bridle. “Sweet clover and a bucket of oats, and cool spring water, and I’ll brush you down myself, honey pie.”

  At last, the roadbed leveled off, and Charley could hear the smooth sound of dirt beneath the horse’s hooves rather than the sharp clatter of horseshoes on rocks. All was darkness ahead.

  Another hundred yards and he could ease up. He sensed he was passing the cluster of huts. Although he could not see them, he could feel their silence. Next the long lane of overhanging oaks and hickories, and then the thicket. He made up his mind not to shoot first unless pressed. They could take the horse and go in peace, and that would be a sign.

  Unexpectedly his horse reared and snorted. Charley had to seize the saddle horn to keep from falling.

  “What the hell—” he gritted.

  Then there was an answering snort from another horse, not behind, but ahead. A match was struck, and in its glimmer Charley could see riders—fifteen, maybe twenty—lined across the road ahead of him. They closed around him, carbines and pistols drawn, and all in Federal uniforms except for the man holding the match.

  Harley Willingham.

  The sheriff leaned in and removed the pistol from his belt.

  “Charley Pettibone, you’re under arrest,” he said.

  Charley raised his hands. From the distance behind him came the flicker of torches as his pursuers topped the hill.

  “Don’t you make no noise,” Willingham said. He blew out the match.

  Chapter 20

  It wasn’t the sound of the horses riding past that woke Michael Flynn from his sleep. Nor was it the light from the torches as the Law and Order League surrounded Dathan’s house in Daybreak. He was sleeping too deeply for those things to stir him; after his day on the railroad, he had returned as usual on the flatcar back to town, jumping off as it passed the river valley and walking the last three miles. Then after dinner he had stopped by Angus’s grave for a minute and then cleared trees until dark, too dark really, to where he couldn’t see what he was cutting, just whaling away at trunks till something fell. He would clean them all up another day.

  What awoke Michael Flynn an hour before dawn was the bawling of a calf.

  There was no reason for a calf to be bawling at that hour of the morning unless it couldn’t find its mother. And no reason for it not to find its mother unless—what? Unless the mother had wandered off. But where? Or a bear had gotten her. Or wolves had scattered the herd. But they would go for the calf, not the mother.

  Or somebody had stolen her.

  By now Flynn was fully awake and angry. The woman was sleeping, or pretending to sleep, so he slid out of bed and dressed quietly. He found his boots, took his shotgun from its pegs, and stepped into the night.

  Instantly he was aware that things were not right. He could see flames flickering though the trees across the river; someone’s house was on fire, one of the cabins at the north end of the village. Then he saw the torches and heard the splash of several horses swimming the river, and knew that more was going on than a simple chimney fire.

  Flynn stepped into the shadows of the bushes at the edge of his house and edged closer to the ford. He counted the torches as they crossed: a dozen or more, and some men weren’t carrying torches. Too many for him to confront. And no cattle. Whoever these people were, they were no band of ordinary thieves.

  As they climbed the riverbank, he saw the hoods over their heads. So it was that gang of old rebels, out to make trouble. No surprise that they would raid Daybreak. He felt an urge to knock one out of his saddle, let them know what it felt like to get ambushed, but held back. Another day.

  He watched in silence as the men argued, and recognized the voice of one of them as that bastard Pettibone. They were too far away to be intelligible, but he could tell the tone. Then to his surprise, a pistol materialized in Pettibone's hand, the other man was blown off his horse, and Pettibone disappeared into the night. The son of a bitch was more dangerous than he had imagined.

  There was a moment of stunned silence among the other raiders. Then two men jumped from their horses to tend to the fallen one, while three others raced after Pettibone. The others stirred nervously.

  “He’s alive,” called one of the men kneeling over the wounded leader. “You’re alive, friend,” he said more softly. He took the hood off the man’s head, revealing in the torchlight a mass of matted black hair, a thick black beard, and a face contorted in pain.

  “Set him up,” someone said.

  Flynn hunkered deeper into the shadows of the bushes as the two riders dragged the injured one out of the road. They set him against a tree a dozen feet away. Flynn was torn between his desire to see better and his need to stay hidden. He could hear the man gasp.

  “You’ll be all right, Green,” one of the hooded men said. “I don’t hear no air running in and out. He missed your lungs.”

  “Bring that little fucker to me,” came the rasping reply. “I want to cut his nuts off before I shoot him.”

  “Hold me that torch closer," said the man who was tending his wounds. One of the others dismounted and lowered his torch, while the others stirred nervously on their horses.

  “This ain’t a good place to be standing around,” one of them said.

  “You shut your muzzle,” said the kneeling one. “They'll catch up to

  Pettibone soon enough, and then we’ll parley and decide.” The reproof shamed them all into silence for a while.

  Then as if in answer, the sound of shots came from up the hill. “There you go,” one rider said.

  But th
en came a full volley of shots, more than could be accounted for by four men on a dark road, and some of them were the sharp cracks of carbines. Then the sound of galloping horses.

  “That bastard Willingham is up there with a troop of Federals,” a man cried, reining in his horse in the middle of the road. “McDonald is down. Not sure about Jasper.”

  “We’ve been sold!” another shouted. “That son of a bitch Pettibone has sold us!”

  “Don’t worry about that now,” said a third. “Douse your torches and scatter. We’ll meet at the Rockpile.”

  “I say we stand and fight,” the first one said. “We can take this bunch.” But half the men had already thrown their torches into the river and ridden into the woods. A dwindling handful stayed where they were. “What about him?” he said, nodding toward the tree where their leader was propped.

  “Lewis, you watch after him,” said the rider who had been tending him. “There’s a farmhouse around here somewhere.”

  “First place they’ll look. Hide in the bushes by the river.”

  By then the hoofbeats of more horses could be heard, a lot more, approaching fast. The rest of the men jumped Flynn’s fence into his pasture and rode away, firing a few ineffectual shots behind them as they fled. Willingham and the soldiers arrived, their horses blowing. They formed a line at the fence and fired a quick ragged volley into the field.

  “Come on, boys,” shouted one of the soldiers. “They ain’t far off.” But no one advanced.

  “I don’t know,” Willingham drawled. “You boys know this countryside in the dark?”

  For a moment Flynn considered stepping out and volunteering to guide them, but he stayed put. This wasn’t his fight.

  “All right,” said the soldier. “We got two of them, anyway.”

  The soldiers stirred in their saddles, a little uneasy that the fight had ended so quickly. But Willingham seemed content. “Three,” he corrected the soldier. “Two killed and one captured.”

  “Captured is as good as killed as far as I’m concerned,” the soldier said.