He had not gone far. He was sitting on the high steps of the house with his chin propped in his cupped hand, watching them. His lips held the suspicious quiver of a smile, his brows had a quizzical lift, and in his eyes was bright hilarity.
It was a joke, a practical joke. Ranny had deliberately used Peter to entice them all down into the yard to scrabble in the dirt like children, like the child they thought him to be. The conviction was so strong that Lettie drew in her breath. Then Ranny met her accusing gaze. The laughter vanished and in its place was disconsolate but resigned pain.
What she had seen, Lettie realized, had been nothing more than a mercurial mood. It might amuse Ranny briefly to watch the adults playing, but he was left out of the game.
Lettie got to her feet and shook the dirt from her skirts. Almost as if drawn, she moved toward the big blond man on the steps. What she meant to say or do, she did not know, but in any case she did not have to decide. At that moment Aunt Em called to them all to come and partake of coffee and Mama Tass’s pound cake.
The Union commander did not stay long after the refreshments. When he had taken his leave of his hostess, Lettie thanked him once more for the map he had brought and walked with him to where his horse was tied near the gate in the fence.
During the war, Lettie, like most young women her age, had followed the course of the battles and scanned the lists of casualties for friends and relatives. The reasons for the conflict had been firmly established in her mind: to prevent the division of the United States into two weaker sections and to abolish slavery. With the surrender of the South at Appomattox Courthouse, she had assumed that the objectives for which so many had died had been met and that life could therefore return to normal. The political squabbles that had ensued had lacked importance compared to her grief over the death of first her fiancé and then her brother or to the necessity of making some place for herself teaching. The assassination of Lincoln had been devastating, but afterward she had lost track of events except in a vague kind of way.
That was, until she had set out for the South. As she had listened to people on the train and stagecoach that had brought her, she had tried to piece together just what it was, besides the natural bitterness between former foes, that still divided the country. It appeared to be a contest over power.
The Republican majority in Congress, to prevent what appeared to be a resurgence of Southern Democrats as the defeated Confederates returned home and took up office, had discarded the conciliatory policies of Lincoln and his successor, Andrew Johnson. They had refused to recognize the congressional delegations of the Southern states on the grounds that since these states had seceded from the Union they were now conquered territory. This seemed an odd turn of events in view of the fact that the whole aim of the war was to prevent their secession. Surely, since the North had won, the attempt to secede must be considered unsuccessful? That being so, the South could only be viewed as never having been a separate entity. Not that it mattered in the long run. It was traditionally the right of the victors to lay down the terms of future relations.
The terms of the Republican Congress were simple. In order to be accepted back into the Union, the Southern states had to guarantee the abolition of slavery within their borders by their own laws; further, they had to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment granting Negroes citizenship and the Fifteenth, which gave them the right to vote. Former Confederate officers were denied the privilege of running for public office; men who had served in the Confederate army, along with other white males, were required to take an oath of allegiance, one that contained a request for pardon for their crimes, before regaining their voting privileges. The former slave states would be divided into five military districts, the commanding officers of which would have the power to make an official count of the vote in elections.
The effect of these so-called “Iron Laws,” the Reconstruction Acts of 1867, had been to bar the natural leaders of the South from office and to disfranchise many white voters, those who declined on principle to take an oath that would brand them as former criminals. In the most recent election in Louisiana, the radical Republican party had gained an overwhelming majority, securing a legislature in which nearly fifty percent of the state representatives and twenty percent of the senators were Negroes.
Lettie had accepted the situation as a natural outcome of the war without question. In the past few days, however, she had seen too many men like the elderly gentleman on the street that morning and those in the post office, defeated men with hopelessness in their faces, men who clung to odd ideas of justice such as those represented by the night riders or even the Thorn. They bothered her, those men.
The colonel had released the reins of his horse and gathered them in his hand. He turned to Lettie. “Well, it’s been a pleasure to hear a crisp Yankee voice again. I rather like the Southern sound, but I do get homesick sometimes for something more familiar.”
Lettie gave a wry nod. “It’s rather like being in a foreign country, isn’t it? The same, and yet, vastly different. I catch myself watching every word, afraid of offending.”
“It isn’t hard to do. They are rather touchy.”
“I suppose it’s natural.”
“Yes,” the colonel agreed.
“Do you mind — Would it be an imposition to ask you what you think of it all? Of what is happening with Reconstruction and the attempt to better the condition of the Negro, with the men they call the carpetbaggers and the Knights of the White Camellia?”
A smile rose into his green eyes, crinkling the weathered skin around his eyes. “You expect quite a lot.”
“There’s no one else to ask, no one who might be unbiased. However, if you would rather not say because of your position…”
“It isn’t that. It’s just that it’s a complicated problem. Officially, I’m here to keep order and make certain the duly held elections are fair. Personally, I think the thing has gone too far. Of the Negroes I have dealt with, perhaps a third have sufficient education and understanding to vote intelligently and to hold an office. Another third could probably be taught and certainly have the willingness to learn to be good citizens. But the last third are plain thieves and immoral rascals who think that freedom means they are free from work forever.”
“I expect the same could be said for most slave races when they are first freed.”
He nodded. “Unfortunately, the radical Republicans have been more likely to attract officeholders from the last group than from the first. The rascals are all too ready to accept the inducements offered in the way of bribes and booty, while the educated Negroes — those other than the free men of color — are mainly those who were house and body servants under the old regime and who hold fast to the standards and beliefs of their former masters. The one exception that comes to mind is Tyler’s former manservant, Bradley Lincoln. If more like him could be recruited, we might see something.”
“You are saying, then, that the present state government is as bad as — as the editorial writers for the New Orleans newspapers claim it is?” She could not keep the shock from her voice.
“It could hardly be worse. Give the Negro the vote, make him a true citizen — that in itself is a worthy ambition. But the way the Republicans are going about it has turned the legislature here into a forum for nothing less than petty vengeance and a form of pillage that, had the Northern armies been guilty of committing it, would have made them liable for hanging to a man. I feel sometimes as if I had defeated a soldier in a fair fight, given him terrible wounds, but that now I’m under orders to hold him down while the vultures feast.”
“A harsh indictment, surely, Colonel?”
He shrugged. “If you like.”
“You condone the actions of the men who hide under sheets to terrify the countryside?”
“I’ll put it this way. It’s my job to stop the night riders, but I can’t say I’m surprised that they are riding. This so-called Reconstruction is being imposed on a group of men who hav
e had their blood at fever heat for years during the longest and bloodiest war this country has ever seen. The wonder isn’t that they are fighting back but that it hasn’t turned into another civil war. Make no mistake, if the South ever gets to the point where it can feed itself and have anything left over again, it will. After all, what has it got to lose?”
“Their lives, their homes?”
“We killed them in the thousands before, and the only thing that stopped them was starvation and lack of ammunition. We burned their homes and stripped their fields, and still they fought. It’s stupid to grind men like that into the dust. You don’t make them humble that way; you turn them into deadly enemies. As for the homes that we left to them, the tax collectors are taking those right and left now.”
“Big places like Splendora?” she scoffed.
“What’s here? A house and land. Most of the planters like the Tylers, both here and at Elm Grove, are house and land poor. They can’t eat them, can’t spend them. They could sell a few acres here and there, but nobody wants to buy because they haven’t the money to pay the freedmen to work it. Still the legislature increases the taxes every few months until it amounts to near confiscation of property. Where is the money to pay them to come from?”
“Do I detect a note of treason, Colonel?” she asked, her voice light.
“It probably sounds that way,” he agreed, his smile grim. “But it’s the politicians who make wars, then scuttle for safety while the men like me fight them. And I’ll tell you the truth, Miss Mason. Like Aunt Em, I’ve had enough fighting.”
The colonel’s words were disturbing, not the least reason being because he had no reason for saying them beyond simple conviction. Lettie was thoughtful as she watched him ride away, then moved back up the path toward the house.
She was climbing the steps when Aunt Em looked up from her pan of snapped beans. She had poured all the different pans of beans into her own large one, finished snapping the crisp green pods into lengths, and was sifting through them for trash.
“Mighty fine-looking man, the colonel,” the older woman said.
“Yes,” Lettie replied.
Ransom scowled, his gaze on the back of the departing officer as his blue uniform merged with the gathering dusk.
Lettie, when morning came once more, did not intend to be deceitful. She told Aunt Em that she was going to take the buggy and drive to Campti, the small town across the Red River where she — was assigned to teach, just to look over the buildings, to gain some idea of the distance she would have to travel each day and the difficulties involved in crossing the river. The conversation took place at breakfast. Ranny looked up from his plate, his gaze searching.
“I could drive you,” he suggested, his voice light.
Lettie gave him a quick smile. “It’s kind of you to offer, but I don’t know how long I’ll be.”
“I don’t mind. I can wait.”
“You wouldn’t like it, really. Besides, if Aunt Em will trust me with the horse and buggy, I would really rather drive myself. It will be best if I get used to it.”
Ranny nodded his understanding with his gaze on his plate. On impulse, Lettie reached out to touch his hand in apology for his disappointment and reassurance. The moment she felt the warmth of his skin, she drew back. It was, she realized, the first time she had ever voluntarily touched a man other than her brother Henry or her father, who had died when she was a child. It was embarrassing, that impulse, and confusing. Her only consolation was that Ranny hardly seemed to notice.
Ransom looked up to give her his most meaningless smile. He reached for his coffee cup in unconcern, though the place on his wrist where she had touched him burned like a brand.
The problems in getting to and from her assigned post were not insurmountable, but there were problems. In the first place, if she remained in her present lodging, Lettie would have to cross the Red River by ferry twice each day, coming and going. That was in addition to a drive of some few miles on the other side. The Freedmen’s Bureau had promised to provide her with a horse and conveyance so that she need not impose on Aunt Em for hers. Still, it might be better if she changed her place of residence.
After looking around the Campti settlement, however, and noting the few small houses left by the Federal troops who had burned it during the Red River campaign, the stretching fields of cotton, and the inhabitants who watched her from behind their curtains but did not approach, she was not certain that was a reasonable option.
The school was much what she had been led to expect. It was a one-room cabin built of logs. The front door had no more than a leather thong for a latch. Inside, the walls were sheeted with rough, unpainted planks of random widths. There was a mud daub fireplace in the end wall that showed traces of the Spanish moss and deer hair used to keep the mud on the framework. The furnishings were just as spare: a few benches, a few books, a desk for the teacher, and a fly-specked picture of President Washington on the wall.
Lettie sat for a few minutes at the desk, trying to picture the students she would teach and the joy they would bring to learning. It wasn’t easy. She thought of the neat brick school building she had left, with its cheerful bell, clean, plastered walls, and tight iron stove, and her heart misgave her.
What in the name of heaven was she doing in this place?
Her lips tightened, and she got to her feet. Never mind. It would be all right. She would make it all right.
No one displayed any curiosity about Lettie’s brief explorations or seemed to notice when she left the schoolhouse. She climbed up into the buggy seat, then sat holding the reins for long moments.
The spring where her brother was killed was in this direction. The morning was not at all far advanced. Mama Tass had packed a lunch of fried chicken, biscuits, pickles, and chocolate cake, and provided a jug of water. The map the colonel had given Lettie was on the seat beside her since she had been following the route to her post on it. The day was so bright and quietly peaceful that it seemed impossible that there could be any danger attached to driving a bit farther into the countryside. If there was any sign of trouble, any feeling of disturbance of any kind, she could always turn back. She might be a little later than expected returning to Splendora, but her time was her own and she need not account for it to anyone. The idea of going had been in the back of her mind since breakfast, though no formal decision had been made. Until this moment. There was, she told herself, no deceit involved, not really.
The road was scarcely more than a wagon track with landmarks instead of signs to guide her. Its deep ruts and numerous holes were at least-evidence that it was well traveled and served to separate it from the many side roads going to small towns, churches, gristmills, sawmills, or farms that led from it, roads that were not drawn on her map.
It was an ancient route, once an Indian trail, that had been used by the troops of the old French fort, St. Jean de la Baptiste de Natchitoches, as they traveled to another settlement on the Ouachita River some ninety miles north, where the town of Monroe was now located. Designated for more than a hundred years as a military highway, it had served the Spanish, the Confederates, and also the United States Army.
Over the route she was following, the Federal payrolls, after coming upriver along the Mississippi and the Red to Natchitoches, were transferred to the troops stationed at Monroe and points east. The officers charged with carrying such payrolls could, and usually did, request an escort for the sake of safety. In the past, however, it had been thought just as well not to call attention to the gold in that manner, that there was as much safety in having a man ride through as if he was no more than a messenger, with the payroll in his saddlebags. That method was satisfactory so long as no one knew what was being carried.
On the day that Lettie’s brother was killed, there had been some delay in the forming of the escort that was supposed to ride with him. Henry Mason had not waited but had gone on alone. Either someone had seen him ride out and noticed the fullness and weight of his
saddlebags or else there had been a leak of information concerning the payroll movements. The result was that someone had been waiting for Henry at the spring and had shot him dead.
Not just someone, but the Thorn. Henry Mason had been interested in the man’s activities, had written to Lettie of some of them. He had been assigned to investigate the Thorn and had seemed puzzled by his deeds, finding as much to admire in many as he did to deplore in a few. Gradually, he had compiled a written portrait of the man, though one he had admitted might be flawed. He had judged him fearless and daring and sometimes fiendishly clever, had conceded to him a woodsman’s knowledge of the countryside and the devil’s own luck. Moreover, he had discovered in him a puckish sense of humor in the most unlikely of situations, but also the most conscienceless cruelty when the occasion demanded. Alternately intrigued and repelled, Henry had watched the men in the vicinity of Natchitoches whom he thought might fit into the picture he had constructed.
Then he had hit upon a promising lead. He had written to Lettie about it, his excitement as much for penetrating the Thorn’s daytime disguise as for the hope of bringing him to book for his crimes. He would not set the name down on paper, he had said, until he was sure, but by the next mail he would tell Lettie the man’s identity. Two days after that last letter was posted, he was killed.
It did not take a genius to understand that the Thorn had removed Henry with two motives in mind: the theft of the money and the silencing of a threat.
The sun shone down on Lettie unremittingly. The sand of the road seemed to capture and hold the heat. It made a whispering sound as it fell from the wheels and billowed into a long white cloud behind the buggy. Flies droned, zipping about the lathered horse and around Lettie’s face. As the day advanced, there was little shade, even in the stretches of woods, as the shadows retreated nearer to the tree trunks. The air took on a thick, sultry feel that made breathing a chore.
Louisiana History Collection - Part 2 Page 120
