by Alex Myers
Jack stopped his horse, his mouth agape, and gawked at the site.
“It sure be a sight to see, ain’t it, Mr. Jack.”
“It’s not that Hercules, this whole thing, it’s… it’s exactly like mine in Norfolk. It’s laid out the same; it looks like the same number and types of buildings. Wow, they look like they even used the same color of paint.” From the looks of things, the Southerners Against Compromise was better funded than Jack thought.
Jack urged his horse to move in the general direction of the house and stopped at the first group of workers he came upon. “Where can I find Ken Barnett?”
A man holding a blueprint turned from the construction to face Jack. It was Abner Adkins, and from behind him stepped Winston Creed. He at first looked slightly off balance, then oozed loathing. “Mr. Riggs, this is a surprise,” Creed said. “Word has it you and the old man stopped by to say hello up in Williamsburg, but it is a surprise to see you here. Nice of you to stop by to visit.”
“We heard you were at church a couple of weeks ago… sorry we missed you.” Adkins laughed.
“I’m not. Is Kazmer here?” Jack said, the tone edged with ice.
“Maybe he is and maybe he isn’t. What business is it of yours?” Creed said.
“I just want him back.” Jack gestured at the buildings. “What is all this?”
“We call it the Southern Compound. Quite impressive, isn’t it.” A hateful smile filled Creed’s hard face.
Jack turned as Hercules rode up with one hand under his shirt—where Jack knew he kept his gun. The rough looking construction workers closed in around the horses.
“Yes, it is quite impressive,” Jack said, “and quite familiar too.”
“It seems not all Southerners that move to the North are opposed to the idea of helping the South. Ken Barnett moved all the way to Chicago and yet still remembers where he came from.”
Adkins stared long and hard at Hercules. “Nigger, you look familiar. Where do I know you? I never forget a face.” The crew of construction workers continued to menacingly swell.
“What’s going on here?” A man yelled approaching at a gallop. The big Morgan horse stopped ten feet from Jack. “Mr. Creed, what’s the problem?”
“We got ourselves a visitor.” He nodded toward Jack.
“Who are you and what do you want? What kind of trouble are you causing here?”
“I didn’t think I was causing any trouble. I just stopped to talk to you and I was asking where to find you. The name is Riggs, Jack Riggs.”
A dark cloud crossed Barnett’s face and then his look turned to hatred. “Riggs, I have nothing to say to you.”
Barnett was a big man, with massive arms and legs and a thick chest. He had a large, tanned forehead and intelligent looking coal-black eyes that seemed to sear their way into Jack. He spoke to the construction workers, “I need you men to escort this man off the property.”
“Be happy to, sir.” The man with the blueprints and a couple of the meaner looking workers started to move toward Jack. “Come on boys, we got us a couple of trespassers.”
“No!” Winston Creed screamed. “I want them detained.”
“No, this is not Williamsburg, that’s not what this facility is about.”
“Come on Hercules, let’s get out of here.” They turned their horses around and started away.
“I be with you on that one,” Hercules said.
Ignoring Jack, Winston wheeled around facing Barnett. “You Sir, work for me.”
“I’m under contract with the SAC,” Barnett said.
“Who the hell do you think the SAC is? There may be investors, but I am the SAC!”
“And you gave me complete autonomy to run this facility the way that I saw fit.”
“Autonomy my ass, you’re nothing but a Jack Riggs want-to-be. I’m wondering why I need you when the real thing is right here.”
“Ah sir,” a workman said to Barnett as Jack and Hercules were riding away, “do you want us to follow them?”
“Hell yes!” Winston Creed said.
“No, let them go,” Barnett said and smiled at Creed. “Say what you want, these are my men and they are loyal to me.”
“That, Mr. Barnett, was a grave mistake,” Creed said as he watched Jack and Hercules ride away.
As Jack rode away, he saw that Barnett’s family had ventured out to the edge of the crowd. He could see an older woman he figured was Barnett’s wife, two teenage boys, and what he had thought were teenaged girls that turned out to be two young women in their twenties.
Barnett, the only one on horseback other than Hercules and Jack, flanked them as they rode away. He stopped when he reached his family.
Since the construction workers were on foot, Jack wasn’t too worried about trouble; nonetheless, he was pleased to hear Barnett say as much. As he passed Barnett’s family, he gasped at the loveliness of Barnett’s oldest daughter. She looked twenty-three or twenty-four, and had long dark hair and a beautiful face; her smooth, tanned skin contrasted amazingly her shapely white dress. Her eyes were daft and brown and framed by the longest lashes. Her lips were big and full—perky the way only a young girl’s could be. She twirled her hair around a finger. They locked eyes until he was fully past.
As they nearly passed out of earshot of his family, Barnett said, “Next time, I guarantee we won’t be so hospitable.” He turned his horse and he and the workers left in the other direction. Only Creed, Adkins, and a half dozen men stood and watched them leave.
“At the very least,” Jack said, “They’ll follow us, hopefully nothing more than that.”
Jack and Hercules picked up the pace as they made their way back to the ferry dock; upon arriving, they found that the ferryboat driver was on lunch and that the next run wouldn’t be for a half hour. They hitched their horses to a tree and sat with their legs dangling off the edge of the ferry-wharf. Jack wanted to cross and put some distance between him and Winston Creed, but the swift moving water of the narrow channel was too dangerous to even consider it.
“Jack, why that man hate you like that? It be having the hair on my neck standing up. I'd rather been in a thicket looking straight up then be ‘round those men much longer.”
“Which man are you talking about?” Jack asked.
“All them really, but the big one with the yellow hair, that actually let us go. He be the one that caught my attention.”
Hercules was talking about Barnett. “I don’t know,” Jack said. “I’ve never met him before in my life.”
A female voice startled them. “Because he thinks it’s your fault he lost his job with the McCormick Corporation.” Jack and Hercules whirled around to see a vision of loveliness. The oldest Barnett girl was standing behind them. He had been watching for Barnett’s men and was surprised when the woman snuck up on them. “My name is Kady Barnett, Ken Barnett is my father.”
Both men stood and Jack spoke, “I’m Jack Riggs and this is my friend, Hercules.”
“Nice to meet you, ma’am.” Hercules averted his eyes.
She spoke directly to Jack. “I know who you are—only too well, I might add. You’re all my father ever talks about anymore.”
She was even lovelier close up. She had delicate bones and perfect skin. Jack loved the way her long brown hair was parted on the side and swept across her forehead.
“From what I saw today, he’s talking none too well of me. How did I supposedly make him lose his job with McCormick?”
“Papa was in development with McCormick and was his design expert. He helped them upgrade and redesign the reaper. He was working on an idea for a new kind of plow when you beat him to it and sold the design to Deere. He and Cyrus had a big blow-up—really just two stubborn men, neither one of them willing to give in, mind you. My father asked how he could be stupid enough to pay a stranger all that money for a piece of machinery they already had, and Cyrus asked how could he be so stupid to keep paying my father all the money he did when all he needed to d
o to get a new idea was talk to Jack Riggs.”
“How do you know all this?”
“Cyrus is my Uncle and I’m his favorite niece. I took what Papa said, added it to what Uncle Cyrus said, and my Aunt filled in the rest of the details. Papa wasn’t away from the factory a week when we got a visit from these two men—“
“Winston Creed and Abner Adkins,” Jack finished.
“Do you know them?”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“Oh my goodness, that’s exactly how I feel. Papa was in the next room talking to them and I heard everything of that first meeting. I think they’re bullies and thugs, of course my father thought differently, but now…” She searched for the right words, “Now, I think he’s starting to reevaluate.”
“Have you seen a guy named Kazmer? He’s Polish, twenty-seven, about six-four, glasses?”
She shook her head. “There are a lot of workers over there, and no one like that comes to mind.”
“He wouldn’t be a worker. I think he’s been kidnapped.”
“Kidnapped? Oh, goodness no, there would be no place to keep someone here—now Williamsburg, that’s a different story.”
“These same men tried to sabotage my facility in Norfolk, attacked a group of people at a church in New York that almost killed me in the process.”
“That would be the Fire-eaters, not the SAC. The SAC is a group of investors that do manufacturing, the Fire-eaters are the activists, the—“ She searched for the appropriate adjective.
“Terrorists,” Jack said.
“I’ve never heard that word before, but I think it accurately describes them.”
“The SAC has been developing weapons, bombs…”
“But we don’t have anything to do with that here.”
“What is the building at the north-end of the runway?” Jack asked.
“The weapons depot.”
“What’s on the far side of the hill past the hangar?”
“A weapons range.” Kady answered. She seemed to shrink a little and then turned curious, “How do you know?”
“Because this is brick for brick, my same facility in Norfolk. Who do you think designed this place?”
“I know it wasn’t my dad—that creepy Creed man, I suppose.”
“Me, it was all me. They must have quite a network of spies.”
“I don’t doubt that at all. It seems like Papa’s so deep into these men and their money he couldn’t get away from them if he tried. My father wants to make agricultural equipment.”
“He does? Like what?”
“Like a rice harvester, an automatic seed planter, these are just ones I’ve heard him talk about lately.” She looked back over her shoulder nervously. “I’m afraid I might have been followed.”
“Is there some time or someplace we can meet?”
“I already have a trip planned to Norfolk tomorrow. I could meet you somewhere in town.” Her brown eyes clung to his, analyzing his reaction. A breeze blew the fresh smell of her hair in Jack’s direction. She seemed radiant and radiated feminity.
Jack saw that look, recognized it from past life experience, and whether it was the timing or the awkwardness of the situation, he thought he might be misreading her. “Sure,” he said to her with new interest, “where would be a good place?”
With another glance back over her shoulder, she said, “I need to pick up some supplies for my mother and sister, but I can meet you for lunch. Do you know Lulu’s Cafe, it’s right downtown?”
“I do know it.”
“Say about twelve o’clock?” She glanced back over the dunes. “I’ve really got to go. I just took off without telling anyone where I was going.”
“Noon at Lulu’s Cafe, it’s a date.”
She had been looking away and when Jack said the word ‘date’, she snapped her head back to him. Her eyes were magnetic and compelling.
“I’ll see you then.” She hiked up her skirt and kicked sand as she ran over the dune and out of sight.
Jack stood staring at the place she had been. “Man, she was stunning.”
“That she was,” Hercules smiled as he moved to untie the horses, “and might be none of my business, but I think she be sweet on you.” He chuckled.
“I’m glad to hear you say that—I thought it was just my imagination.”
“I be thinking she want to discuss more than her daddy tomorrow. She be prettier than a speckled pup in a red wagon.” Hercules looked across the water at the approaching boat. “Here come the ferry.”
It was just after noon when they got back to Norfolk and Jack said, “I need to buy a few things. You can just head back to the house if you’d like. We can catch an early supper, maybe get a jug of wine and watch the sun go down or something.”
“That be sounding good. These horses really be needing some shoes. I could stop by the smithy and get it done.”
“Okay. Take mine too, if you would,” Jack said, dismounting his horse and handing the reins to Hercules. “Here, take some money. I’ll just catch a taxi back home.”
Jack handed him twenty dollars.
“That be more than I need to get this job done.”
“You need a little walking around money.”
“I ain’t never had this much money at one time in my whole life. Thank you, thank you very much.”
“Consider it part of your first month’s pay.”
“I can buy whatever I want?”
“Whatever you want.”
CHAPTER 11
Wednesday, July 1, 1857
I wonder how many men on the construction crew down here are part of the SAC, the Fire-eater conspiracy? I wonder how many workers at my facility are really spies? Jack was having second thoughts about leaving Hercules alone; first Kazmer had disappeared, then Sam, and he didn’t know how or what happened to them. Jack needed help and didn’t know where to turn. Then he saw Aurellis sitting in his taxi.
“That thing over there for hire?” Jack called out.
He clicked his tongue, gave the reins a slight pull and brought the cab over to where Jack was standing. “Hey Jack, where do you need to go?”
“Wow, what are the chances of running into you again?” Jack asked.
“Actually, pretty good, there are only three of us taxicabs, two of us that work during the day and early evening. The other guy works every time else.”
“I need you to stop over to the Sanger Brothers store over there on Market Square and then possibly out to the Sanger Estate.”
“If I can be so blunt,” Aurellis said, “that Sanger woman, Frances, is she your girlfriend?”
“I think so,” Jack said climbing into the front of the carriage sitting right next to the driver. “A week ago I would have said yes without a doubt. Now I’m not so sure.”
“If I knew something, would you want me to tell you?”
Jack didn’t know where this was going. “Sure.”
“The other night after I dropped you off at your boat, a nice looking gentleman flagged me down and said he needed a lift. Took him out to your girlfriend’s place, he tells me to wait, she answers the door, they hug and whatever, then they have a big fight, she grabs some stuff, they leave together and I bring them back here to the docks.”
“What did they say to each other?”
“Hey Mr. Jack, I don’t listen to my passenger’s conversation.” He gave a mock pretense of being offended.
“No really, what did you hear them talk about?”
“I couldn’t hear.” Aurellis said. “They didn’t say a word.”
“They didn’t say a word? Do you know his name?”
“Like I said, there wasn’t a word all the way to town, all the way to the dock.”
“You dropped them off at the docks—they got on a boat?” Jack asked.
“They got off, he was carrying her bag and holding her hand.”
So that was it, Jack thought. I knew this thing didn’t make sense.
Jack had spent his w
hole life dealing with logic and cause and effect. This blowout with Frances was totally out of the blue. How could we be going along so well, and all of a sudden everything changes? Another man, that totally explains it.
He slid down in his seat and sat with his head in his hands. He couldn’t imagine a future without her in it. It saddened him to think how much she meant to him. This is what I do to other people, this doesn’t happen to me. Wow, this is what it feels like—yuck. He didn’t believe in karma, but if he did, this would be it.
There was a little piece of her in everything he did. He felt empty and numb.
I need to get Kazmer and Sam back, Jack thought. I need my friends.
CHAPTER 12
Thursday, July 2, 1857
Kady Barnett
He met Kady Barnett at the Lulu’s Café the next day at twelve o’clock. Jack couldn’t believe it was possible, but she looked even lovelier than the day before. She rode up in a fancy buckboard wagon and Jack helped tie off the horses.
“Did you get all your errands done?” he asked, extending a hand and helping her down from the wagon. Her hand was warm and she gave his a gentle squeeze that seemed to linger a bit too long.
They sat at a table looking out over the street. Kady’s thick dark hair hung in long graceful curves over her shoulders. She held herself gracefully, confidently aware of the appreciative glances from the other men in the restaurant. The lace at her neck parted and he could see the hollow of her neck filled with soft shadows; he could also see the beginning of rise of her breasts. She placed her hand on the exact spot Jack was looking and spoke, “I had one of your bicycles.”
