They stomped into the house and found the girls sitting in the parlor with their hands in their laps. Annette stared pointedly at the lieutenant’s muddy boots tracking the carpet and sighed.
“You’re both under arrest for conspiring against the government of the United States,” the lieutenant said.
He knew just where to go, demanding of Annette that she lead the way to the cellar. One of the soldiers held a lantern. Finding the storeroom door padlocked, the lieutenant held out his hand and said, “Key!”
“Why, I ate that for breakfast this morning,” Annette said with a smile.
The officer backhanded her across the face and she swayed but kept her feet.
“You goddamned bully!” Hazel shouted and hit the lieutenant on the back with the heel of her fist. He whirled and slapped her harder than he’d hit her sister, buckling her knees—and then she lunged and tried to claw his eyes and he cursed and punched her in the breast. She slumped back against the wall, holding herself as if she’d been shot, mouth open but mute with pain, tears streaming.
The officer drew his pistol and put the muzzle to the lock and fired. The room flashed with the discharge and the lock blew apart and the bullet ricocheted and Annette felt it pass through her hair and it hit a soldier on the stairway. The man yelped and dropped his rifle and sat down hard, clutching his shin. The soldier with the lantern went to illuminate his wound.
“God damn it!” the lieutenant said, glaring at the fallen soldier. Then pulled the broken lock off the ring and opened the door and stood peering into the darkness. He grabbed Hazel by the arm and pushed her inside and demanded, “Lamp!”
She had a box of lucifers in her apron and her hand went to it. She saw Annette standing behind the officer but couldn’t see her expression clearly. Annie put her fingers to her mouth, whether to stem the bleeding of her cut lip or in realization of her intention, Hazel would never know.
If she had given it a moment’s thought she might have seen the act as one of utter folly, perhaps even madness, and refrained. But her only thought—if thought it might be called—was to even things with this bastard who’d hurt her and her sister.
She struck the lucifer to reveal in the sudden sulfurous flare the tables and bolted lanterns with the small wire cages over them, the boxes of lead balls, the cans of black powder stacked to the ceiling, the open cans on the table, the dark spills around them….
She held the burning match over the table and laughed at the look on the lieutenant’s face. And let the match fall.
A PARCHMAN VISIT
They say it busted windows all the way up in Westport. There were portions of the house fifty yards in every direction. Part of the roof was blocking the road till a mule team pulled it out the way. One fella who lives close by said it sounded like several explosions all at once and shook his house so bad he thought it was Confederate shells. He heard a thump on his roof and went up there and found a man’s bare leg with an army boot still on it. The crows showed them where to collect the pieces of bodies.”
“Lord Jesus,” Mary Anderson said softly. She pushed away her full supper plate and sighed and put her face in her hands.
They were at the table in the Parchman house, nearly a week after the explosion, which the Andersons had not known about until today. Socrates Johnson and Frank James and Riley Crawford had been out scouting for George Todd and stopped by to get a feed and tell them the news.
“Those poor girls,” Sock said. “So young and pretty—and both of them damn able. There was nobody better at smuggling powder and ball out of K.C. Quantrill sent Lionel Ward to Fort Leavenworth dressed like a preacher to say he was Jimmy Vaughn’s cousin with some bad family news. Lionel said Jimmy cried when he told him about his sisters.”
“That must’ve been some bang,” Riley Crawford said through a mouthful of greens, his face avid, as if the talk had been of a wagon-show entertainment they’d missed seeing. Josephine glowered at him, and Frank James frowned and nudged him with an elbow. Riley looked at them in puzzlement, his child’s nature untuned to the force of the Anderson girls’ grief.
“It’s a mystery how that powder store got touched off,” Sock Johnson said, “but I figure some fool Yank got careless.” Jenny came around the table with a steaming pot and spooned more beans onto his plate. He smiled at her and patted her lean girl’s haunch.
“I guess nobody’ll ever know exactly how it was,” Bill Anderson said. He cut his eyes to his brother and thought he could read in Jim’s face his own selfsame suspicion: The Vaughn girls had done it and only they could have said why. The brothers would later talk about it and arrive at no conclusion except that, whyever the girls did it, they’d been brave to the bone and had killed more Yankees in that moment than many a bushwhacker ever would.
They ate and drank in silence for a time before the talk turned to the company. Sock said Quantrill and Todd had returned to their women at the cabin to wait on the Yanks’ answer to a trade for Jimmy Vaughn. But just two days later Todd came back to camp in a blackass temper. A story went around that he and Frances Fry had got in a drunken fight and she’d tried to put a knife in him and he’d broken her arm in defending himself. Kate was so mad she ran him off the place. There was no telling how true the story was, or who’d even been the first to tell it, and nobody dared to ask Todd. Quantrill was anyhow still at the cabin with Kate—and with Frances Fry too, most likely—and Todd was in charge of both their bunches at Blue Springs.
“Speaking of Todd,” Frank James said, “he’s been wondering when you boys might be riding with us again.”
“I’m not leaving my sisters alone,” Bill said. “Not with the Feds rounding up every woman with bushwhacker kin.”
“They might not know the first thing about your sisters,” Sock said. He winked at Jenny, who winked back and smiled. “Hell, they might not know the first thing about you and Jim. They don’t know all of us.” “Or they might know plenty,” Bill said. “I ain’t chancing it. I’ve got to find the girls somewhere safe to stay.”
“There’s no such a place in Missouri,” Frank James said.
“I know,” Bill said. “I’m thinking of going to Arkansas, to Texas maybe. I don’t know yet.” He restrained a sigh. In truth he was restless and not at all sure he wanted to leave Missouri. He often found himself wondering what the company was doing. He’d been delighted when these three showed up and hallooed the house. “What-all else you boys been up to?”
They’d been giving the Yanks fits all up and down the border, robbing mail shipments, bushwhacking whatever militia patrols they fell on, burning railroad bridges, harrying steamboats from the trees along the banks. They’d been taking horses too, like always.
“Problem is,” Sock said, “there’s more mustangs showing up lately, and them unbroke jugheads don’t fetch near as good a price.”
“Well hell,” Jim said, “why don’t you all break them before selling?”
“Who all?” Sock said. “There’s not a man in the company can’t ride like an Indian, but there ain’t a true broncbuster in the bunch neither. Buster Parr said he could break any horse alive, said that’s why he’s called Buster. The first one he got on about threw him over the trees and near busted his head and everybody said that’s why he’s called Buster. He ain’t got on another one, I’ll tell you that.”
“Bring the jugheads to us,” Bill said. “We’ll bust them. Hell, I could use the work.”
Jim was avid for the idea too and said there was a big clearing about a quarter-mile into the timber that was perfect for the pair of corrals they’d need to put up.
“The captain’ll be obliged,” Sock said.
Jim asked about the Berry boys. Frank James said they rode mainly with Gregg but sometimes went with Dave Pool too. They’d both proved ready and fearless fighters, but Butch was making a name for himself as having extra-hard bark. “He started him an ear collection,” Frank said. “Says he’ll have a longer one than Riley’s.”
&n
bsp; “He’ll never,” Riley Crawford said. His fingers went to his chest where the necklace usually hung and he gave a start to find it gone—then remembered that Mary Anderson had told him she wouldn’t stand for having that filthy awful thing at the supper table and made him leave it outside the house.
A CEREMONY OF HEMP
Fort Leavenworth. A warm and sunbright morning of pale blue. At the request of the chaplain, the band plays “We Shall Gather at the River,” plays it lustily to be heard over the babble and laughter and clamoring of the nearly one thousand spectators, all of them bright-faced and eager for the proceeding to get under way. Children sit on their fathers’ shoulders to have a better view, women work their fans against the rising heat. The rooftops lined with onlookers. Dogs yapping, chasing after each other through the crowd, excited by the celebrant air. Hawkers plying their trade, selling boiled potatoes, bags of salted cracklings, sugar candies. The air carries the smell of these treats and of unwashed men and perfumed women, of the ripe prairie grass beyond the town, of the new-sawn lumber used to replace certain worn portions of the Leavenworth gallows.
An open, two-seat wagon bears Jimmy Vaughn from the guardhouse to his instrument of execution. He sits beside the driver, and a pair of armed guards sit behind him. He looks out at the newrisen sun and the thin range of redstreaked clouds above it, at the gentle roll of green hills, and says to the driver that it sure is pretty. The driver glances eastward and nods.
The crowd raises a great cheer at the sight of the condemned. The wagon arrives at the foot of the gallows steps, and Jimmy Vaughn, his hands manacled behind him, hops out and boldly ascends the steps and turns to stare without expression on the audience of his death—most of them cursing and mocking him, calling for his soul to rot in hell, asking how damn tough he feels now. But some few are shouting encouragement, to trust in God and be brave. Many of them quietly admit to each other that they’re impressed with his fearless aspect.
The officer in charge of the execution party asks Jimmy Vaughn if he would care to address the assembly, and Jimmy says he would. The officer raises his hands to quiet the crowd, and it complies. Most of the members of this gathering have heard a number of gallows valedictions in the past year, and following Jimmy’s execution, there will be debate in taverns and liveries and general stores about the quality of this one. Every man is interested in the last words of another, for every man wonders, sometime in the course of his days, what his own might be.
He tells them his name is James Jefferson Vaughn and that he is a devout believer in Jesus Christ and southern rights. His only regrets on leaving this world are that he will not again see his beloved Mary nor fight for brave Bill Quantrill—whose name incites the crowd to a clamor of jeering and catcalls.
“I ask you to tell the truth about my death,” he says, “to say I died bravely, a rebel to the backbone. And I ask of my executioners the courtesy of a Christian burial.” He pauses and scans the crowd as if he would take with him the clear memory of every face. “Know this,” he says: “Not hell nor King Henry will prevent my comrades from avenging me. My life will be paid for by two dozen or more. Take it for a promise.” He hawks and spits on the planks at his feet, at once expressing contempt and proving that his mouth is undried by fear. “Now do your damned worst.”
Some hard jeering follows, but a scattering of applause as well, of nodding respect for his courage. The officer in charge guides him to a spot directly in the center of the trapdoor. As the executioner places a black hood over his head Jimmy Vaughn catches the scent of pipe smoke on the man’s fingers. The hangman snugs the noose around his neck and someone presses a glove into one of his manacled hands and whispers for him to release it when he’s ready. He hears the hanging party shuffle back from the trap. He thinks of his good parents and his beautiful sisters, imagines them smiling and waiting at heaven’s gate. He thinks of Mary’s lovely face and remembers the feel of her last fine kiss. He drops the glove.
A blistering noonday three weeks later.
A Federal cavalry column of a hundred men makes its slow way back to its post in Kansas City, now but two more miles to northward. From the high branches of the cedar woods to either side of the road ahead come the risible callings of crows.
The days have been long and sultry and every man of them rides slumped and haggard, exhausted by lack of sleep and the constant tension of watching for ambush. Now, drawn so close to Kansas City, they put aside their fears and snug their carbines into their saddle scabbards and give themselves over to reveries of the good times to come later this night in the bagnios and saloons.
The guerrillas burst out of the cedars like the very avatar of nightmare, shivering the air with a rising chorus of rebel yells, shattering the afternoon with a rage of revolverfire. The Yankee horses plunge and veer, their riders slinging blood, pitching from saddles. Most of the Federals panic, lash their mounts to a gallop in the other direction with no purpose in this world save escape, deaf to the shrill commands of their captain to stand and fight.
The captain sees a beardless bushwhacker bearing on him with his reins in his teeth and revolvers in each hand—and then feels the world tip sideways and goes facedown into the dirt without knowing it or anything else evermore.
An hour later a Federal force from Kansas City will find forty-three of their fellows littering this portion of prairie, many of them already made eyeless by the crows. In the captain’s mouth they find a note: “Todd did this. Remember Jim Vaughn.”
CAPTIVES
“I’m glad you’re here, Billy.”
“I know it, Joey. You only tell me three times a day.”
“Is that all? I think it a lot more times a day than that.”
“Sometimes you think too damn much is what I think.”
“I know you’d ruther be off bushwhacking and I don’t blame you. I’d ruther be off bushwhacking too, if I was you.”
He slapped her lightly on the behind. “You think you know everything.”
“Billy?”
“What?”
“You know I love you? I mean, you really know it?”
He turned on his side and stared at her dark form, felt her breath warm on his face. “Oh, I guess.”
She giggled softly and stroked his beard and kissed him.
“You love me?”
“Course I do—except when I feel like wringing your neck. Now let’s go to sleep.”
“I mean do you really?”
“Go to sleep, dammit.”
“I know you do.”
“Joey, will you hush up.”
He could sense the grin on her. “Me you too,” she said. “I’ll love you for always and always. I don’t care we can’t…you know.”
They fell asleep holding each other, though they could not, could never, hold each other close enough.
As it happened, the several members of the Westport Sewing Circle who’d succumbed to Federal threats of imprisonment and told the Yankees about the Vaughn girls had also revealed the names of other members of the club, including those of the Anderson sisters. When asked where the Anderson girls might be, the informers said they didn’t know. All they knew about them was that they had once lived with relatives called Parchman on a farm by Brushy Creek just off the Blue River.
They were in the kitchen and readying dinner, Jenny fetching water from the creek. Mary was still darkeyed from hard weeping for Jimmy Vaughn, and Josephine was trying to cheer her with funny rhymes she’d heard Bill and Jim tell. Mary managed a small smile at the first innocuous few, but when Josie began intoning, “There was a bad girl from the city, who on a poor farm boy took pity; so for only a dime and a bit of her time, she let him have fun with—” She broke in, “Josie—don’t you dare!” but was grinning in spite of herself.
Then from out in front of the house Jenny screamed.
Josephine streaked across the room and grabbed up her Navy from a chair and raced for the front door, Mary already there and Jenny now hollering, “Le
t go! Let me gooo!”
She ran onto the porch and smack into Mary and the Federal soldier who’d seized her. She raised the pistol to shoot him but someone snatched her arm upward and the round discharged through the porch roof. The gun was wrested from her by a large corporal with a potent smell of spoiled onions. She tried to kick him and he slammed her against the wall so hard she went breathless and her legs quit and she fell on her rump, mouth ajar and trying to draw air. She saw Jenny kicking wildly in the arms of a Yankee carrying her toward the road and the army horses there. Saw Mary crying in pain and fury, pinioned from behind, being dragged away by a grinning soldier clutching her breasts.
The corporal yanked her to her feet and pulled her down the porch steps, her legs flaccid, her strides awkward, and still she could not breathe. Other soldiers now hurrying from the barn and from behind the house and all of them converging on the horses. Then her lungs abruptly inflated and she joined her sisters in howling for their brothers.
Bill and Jim were breaking horses at the corrals, the bushwhackers who’d brought the mustangs—Lionel Ward, Hi Guess, Frank James and Buster Parr—sitting on the rail and watching, when the pistolshot sounded from the house. Bill dropped the hackamore he’d been about to put on a dappled gray Jim was holding steady, and the brothers vaulted the corral rail and ran to their horses. The six of them set off for the house at a gallop with revolvers in hand, following the narrow serpentine trail, branches and shrubs slapping at them as they went, the horses’ hooves throwing clods.
They pounded into the farmyard and spotted the mounted Federals making their way along the fence-bordered lane leading to the main trail. There were six of them, and three rode double behind an Anderson girl. The Yanks saw them coming and reined around with pistols drawn. Those holding the girls as shields formed up across the narrow lane in front of their comrades and the guerrillas drew up a dozen yards from them. A sergeant was clutching Jenny to his chest, and she shrilled, “Billy!”
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