Rough Justice

by Lyle Brandt

  Ryder supposed that he could log that as a victory of sorts, but he still had more work to do. He rose and crossed the rooftop, hurried now, and scrambled down a ladder fastened to the outer southeast wall with rusty bolts. Checking the street once more for enemies, he ran across and made his way around the backside of the little, bullet-punctured house.

  *

  Thomas?”

  Josey’s voice surprised him, made him whip around and nearly point the shotgun at her, but he caught himself in time. “You weren’t supposed to come until I called you,” Hubbard said.

  “I had to see if you were hurt, with all that shooting,” she replied.

  “I’m fine. Can’t say much for the house, though.”

  “I don’t care about the house.”

  “You may, next time it rains.”

  “Thomas, what’s happening?”

  He glanced back toward the empty street outside and said, “They ran away. I think someone was shooting at them.”

  “That was you. I know that much.”

  “Not me,” he told her, frowning at the night. “Somebody else.”

  “Make sense,” she chided him.

  “I’m telling you, somebody opened up on them before I did.”

  “But who?”

  “I couldn’t answer that. It sounded like a rifle. Shot one of the torches”—Hubbard had to smile as he explained—“and set one bastard’s hood on fire.”

  “Language!”

  “Be serious,” he said, losing the smile.

  “Who’d help us out against that mob, in Corpus Christi?” she demanded.

  “They don’t speak for everyone. You know that, well as I—”

  “What’s that?” she interrupted him.

  A rapping at their back door, soft but clearly audible.

  “Back in the tub!” he ordered.

  “Tom—”

  “Do like I tell you!”

  Josey ducked into the bathroom. Hubbard checked the street again, saw no one lurking there, and started moving toward the back door, shotgun ready in his hands. It struck him as peculiar, that the mob or members of it would come creeping back and knock politely on his door after the skirmish sent them fleeing. Still, he knew they weren’t all idiots. Some of them might try stealth, where a direct attack had failed.

  Halfway between the bedroom and the back door, Hubbard paused. What if the knocking was a trick to draw him from the street-side window, while the mob or part of it came back? They wouldn’t have to rush the house, just sneak back long enough to pitch a torch or a kerosene lamp through one of the windows. Hubbard couldn’t fight fire with a shotgun, and once he fled the house with Josey, they would be exposed to gunmen waiting in the dark.

  He almost doubled back to watch the street, then realized that someone with a mind to burn the house could set a fire as easily behind it as in front. He mouthed a silent curse, then detoured to the tiny bathroom and spoke into its shadows.

  “Be ready to run if I tell you,” he said, then retreated, not waiting for Josey to answer.

  It was imagination, he supposed, that made him hear her whisper back, “I love you, Thomas.”

  Only half as much as I love you, he thought.

  Hubbard would die defending her, and gladly, but he knew it wouldn’t help if she was trapped inside the house by flames or gunfire, with him dead.

  Moving toward the back door, Hubbard placed each step precisely on floorboards, cringing when they groaned beneath his weight. The little noises he’d grown used to in the weeks they’d occupied the rented house all worked against him now, marking his every movement for whoever waited in the night, outside.

  Go slow and take it easy.

  Hubbard knew it wasn’t the police. Most of them thought no better of him than the men who’d come to lynch him, and if they’d arrived belatedly, they would be kicking in his front door, probably arresting him and Josey for the crime of self-defense. He thought about the man he’d wounded in the butt and knew that if he died, Hubbard might well be charged with murder.

  Hang me one way or another, will you? Then I may as well die fighting.

  He was almost at the back door when the knocking was repeated. Slightly louder now, or was that just because he’d moved in closer? Hubbard stayed as far to one side of the doorway as the narrow hall permitted, knowing that a fusillade of gunfire blasting through the door could cut him down before he had a chance to use the Sharps.

  What now?

  The knock came for a third time, urgently, and someone whispered through the door panel, calling his name. A man’s voice, but he couldn’t place it.

  Should he answer, or just blast the prowler straight to hell?

  “Who is it?” Hubbard asked, throat dry and croaking.

  “I’m a friend,” the disembodied voice replied.

  And what else would it say? I’m here to kill you?

  “State your name,” Hubbard demanded, knowing that the answer might well be a lie.

  “Gideon Ryder.”

  “Never heard of you.”

  “Be disappointed if you had,” the stranger said.

  The Sharps was trembling in his hands like a divining rod with water underfoot. “What do you want?”

  “You’re in a spot of trouble here.”

  Hubbard choked back a sudden bleat of hysterical laughter. “You think so?” he answered. “Thanks for the tip.”

  “I want to help you, if you’ll open up.”

  “Mister, I’ve had all the surprises I can stand for one night,” Hubbard warned him. “If you’re laying for me, I can promise you we’ll die together.”

  “Trust me,” said the voice. “A minute’s all I need.”

  “It’s all you’ve got,” Hubbard replied.

  Half crouching, apelike, sweating through his nightshirt even with the chill breeze from the broken windows trailing him, Hubbard inched forward, cautiously unlatched the door, then flung it open, leveling his shotgun at a solitary stranger’s face.

  The tall man had a rifle in his left hand, while his right was holding up some kind of badge shaped like a shield, with a five-pointed star in its center.

  “Gideon Ryder,” the man said again. “United States Secret Service.”

  2

  I don’t know what that is,” Hubbard said.

  “That’s because it’s a secret,” said Ryder. “You mind?”

  Hubbard checked the back alley for lurkers, then let him come in, latched the door at his back, and stood watching, the long shotgun ready. A woman emerged from a room to the left, alluring in a nightgown, less so when he saw the cleaver in her right hand and the long knife in her left.

  “Are you all right, ma’am?” Ryder asked her.

  “So far. Who are you?”

  He introduced himself again and let her see his badge.

  “The Secret Service? What’s that?”

  “We can talk about it while we’re moving. If you have a safe place you can go—”

  “And leave our home?” Hubbard managed to seem dismayed by that idea. “I won’t be driven off by ruffians.”

  “Right now, I’d worry more about the cops,” Ryder replied. “They’re bound to show up here, sooner or later, and with two men wounded that I’m sure of, there’s a good chance they’ll arrest you.”

  “What? For defending our lives and our home?” Hubbard’s wife sounded outraged.

  “You’re Yankees, they’re Texans,” Ryder reminded her. “Some of them—most of them, maybe—are friends of the men who attacked you. The police see you disrupting their established way of life and don’t appreciate it. They’ll use every means at hand to stop you.”

  “But—”

  “We don’t have time to argue,” Ryder cut her off. “There’s nothing I can do to help you, if they show up while we’re standing here.”

  “What can you do to help us, anyway?” asked Hubbard.

  “Stash you somewhere,” Ryder said. “Then see what I can do about the KRS.”r />
  “You know about them?”

  “Save the questions,” Ryder said, “and pack now. Anything you can’t collect within five minutes, leave it here.”

  He watched them scrambling through the darkened rooms, collecting their possessions, while he stood guard at the street-side window with his Henry, counting off the seconds in his head. They whispered as they worked, the woman tearful, Thomas Hubbard trying to be strong on her account.

  And Ryder knew about the KRS, all right. Knights of the Rising Sun, they called themselves, an outfit that had sprung up in Texas soon after Robert E. Lee surrendered to General Grant at Appomattox Court House, in Virginia. They were regulators of a sort, sharing some traits in common with the vigilance committees that had operated in California, Kansas, and Montana before the war broke out in ’61. The major difference was that they didn’t target gamblers, whores, and rustlers, but were focused on the northern carpetbaggers and home-grown “scalawags” who thought black people, liberated from their bondage at war’s end, should have a say in government and how they led their lives.

  In Dixie, talk like that could get you ostracized, boycotted if you ran a business, murdered if you didn’t see the light and knuckle under on command. The Hubbards had come down to Texas from St. Louis, with a plan in mind to help the freedmen gain equality, and they’d been butting heads with local whites since they arrived.

  That wasn’t Ryder’s problem. He was not a do-gooder in any normal sense, although he tried to do the right thing when he could. His mission, delegated to him by Secret Service chief William Patrick Wood in Washington, was to find out whether members of the KRS were bent on stirring up a new rebellion from the ashes of the old one, or if they were just another gang of crackers persecuting people they regarded as a servant class ordained by God.

  If they were Rebels, Ryder had been told to use his own best judgment in discouraging their treason. That sounded familiar to him, after being left to deal with Galveston’s smugglers and pirates alone, on his first assignment. Plenty of excitement, working that way, but the tough part could be getting out alive.

  The Hubbards beat his deadline by the best part of a minute. They had given up on salvaging whatever dreams inhabited their rented home, dressed warmly for the night, and packed sufficient clothes to get them by, with ammunition for the husband’s guns. Josey Hubbard, he observed, had also packed the cleaver and the knife, wanting to do her part if there was trouble.

  “Ready, then?” he asked them, when they stood before him, bags in hand, Tom Hubbard with his big Sharps shotgun.

  “As we’ll ever be,” Hubbard replied.

  “So, where’s your safe house?”

  “I can guide you there,” said Hubbard. “Emma Johnson’s place, a half mile west of here, or so.”

  “Among the Negroes,” Josey added, as if she expected Ryder to object.

  “You think she’ll take you in?” he asked.

  “I’m sure of it,” Thomas replied. “She’s offered more than once, but I was leery of directing trouble toward her family.”

  “That still applies,” said Ryder.

  “But we seem to have no choice. And the police aren’t likely to go looking for us there.”

  “How dumb are they?” Ryder inquired.

  “Not dumb, so much, as raised to think a certain way. The thought of whites and Negroes sharing quarters likely won’t occur to them.”

  “Okay, let’s go,” said Ryder. Thinking to himself, I hope you’re right.

  If the police or vigilantes did go looking for the Hubbards among black folk, it could spark a massacre, and Ryder didn’t want to have that on his conscience. The alternative, however, was abandoning them to their fate, and he wasn’t prepared to live with that, either.

  “Shall I lock up?” Tom Hubbard asked.

  “Your choice,” Ryder replied.

  They both knew that if the police arrived, or members of the scattered mob returned, they’d simply force the doors, ransack the house, and burn it if they had a mind to. Still, the simple act of locking doors felt civilized and might dissuade some random thief from entering.

  “I’ll lock it,” Hubbard said and plied his key, while Ryder and the lady stood by, waiting. When he’d finished, he directed Ryder westward, following an alley littered with rubbish. Rats ran squeaking from their path, together with a couple of the cats that preyed on them. They did not speak until they’d crossed a line that Ryder couldn’t see, and Hubbard said, “We’re in the Negro quarter now.”

  It didn’t look much different in the dark, the homes seen from behind, but Ryder saw that some of them were smaller and in need of more repair than those they’d walked past earlier. The former slaves of Texas and the other Rebel states had been emancipated to a state of abject poverty, in most cases, the vast majority illiterate because the governments that held them captive also punished anyone who taught them how to read and write. Some had been promised forty acres and a mule to call their own, but hasty offers made in wartime were forgotten easily with peace restored. Ryder thought simple fairness might require a helping hand, rather than simply striking off their chains, but it was not his place to meddle in official policy.

  They reached a side street, Hubbard pausing there with Josey at his side. “We turn here,” he told Ryder. “If we meet someone, let me do all the talking.”

  Ryder nodded, thinking, That depends on who it is and what they want.

  They turned the corner, walked about ten yards, and then were suddenly surrounded by a dozen men with guns, pitchforks, and clubs. The men were black and emanated raw hostility.

  “The hell you want round here?” one of them asked.

  “Is that you, Lazarus?” Tom Hubbard asked the man who’d spoken.

  “Mr. Hubbard? We wasn’t expectin’ y’all. And who’s that with you?”

  Ryder went through his introduction one more time, flashing his badge and waiting while a number of the freedmen scrutinized it by the little light available.

  “First time I heard of any Secret Service,” said the one called Lazarus.

  “I’m getting that a lot,” Ryder acknowledged.

  “Maybe oughta put the word around some, in the newspapers and such.”

  “I’ll pass that on.”

  Hubbard broke in to say, “We’ve had some trouble, Lazarus. The KRS—”

  “Already heard about it, Mr. Hubbard. Wasn’t sure you made it out alive, but we’re right glad to see the two of you.” Lazarus peered at Ryder, asking Hubbard, “Can you trust this one?”

  “He helped us out tonight,” said Hubbard. “I will trust him till he gives us reason not to.”

  “Be too late by then,” another member of the group declared.

  “If Mr. Hubbard trusts him,” Lazarus announced, “that’s good enough for me.” He cut another look toward Ryder, adding, “If he prove me wrong, we’ll deal with it accordingly.” Then, back to Hubbard, “Where you headed?”

  “Emma Johnson has offered several times to let us stay with her, if there were … difficulties. It’s an awful imposition, but we’ll try to keep it brief.”

  “Let’s get you there,” said Lazarus, “before the wrong eyes see us lingerin’.”

  Surrounded by the freedmen, Ryder and the Hubbards walked another three blocks north, then stopped outside a little house that had a knee-high picket fence around its scrap of yard, more dirt than grass, and bricks laid down to form a walkway from the street, up to the porch. Gate hinges squealed as they passed through, and Ryder saw a giant rise up from a rocker on the porch to bar their way.

  “Teeny,” said Lazarus, “we brought some visitors to see Miss Emma.”

  “Do she know you’s comin’?” asked the giant.

  “It’s the Hubbards. She invited ’em.”

  “I know my numbers,” Teeny answered. “I count three white peoples.”

  “That’s a fact,” admitted Lazarus. “Third one’s some kinda secret fella.”

  “Hunh. Wait he
re a second.”

  Teeny went inside, stooping to clear the lintel with his head, and shut the door behind him. When he came back, half a minute later, he seemed more relaxed.

  “Miss Emma say c’mon inside, them that’ll fit.”

  “Rest of y’all stay out here and keep a watch,” Lazarus told his armed companions. “Jonas, you and Ezekiel go scout around. Make sure they ain’t no crackers comin’.”

  Tom and Josey Hubbard followed Lazarus into the tiny house, with Ryder bringing up the rear. Teeny regarded him with thinly veiled suspicion, maybe wondering if he should ask for Ryder’s weapons—or, perhaps, just twist his head off like a jar lid. Either way, he let them pass, then moved to block the door. Ryder imagined that he might not leave the house alive if this Miss Emma looked at him and disliked what she saw.

  She was a tiny woman, as befit her miniature home, in stark contrast to the behemoth standing watch outside. Ryder could not have guessed her age, although he reckoned she was somewhere on the downhill side of fifty, gray hair pulled back in a bun that drew most of the wrinkles from her sharp, angular face. He would have been surprised if she weighed ninety pounds.

  “Miss Emma,” Hubbard said, “I must apologize for this intrusion on—”

  “Invited ain’t intrudin’, Mr. Hubbard.”

  “Thomas, please.”

  “Ain’t gonna call you by your Christian name. I told you that before.”

  “Yes, ma’am, you did.”

  “They run you off, I guess.”

  “They’re trying to,” Hubbard replied. “We’re not done, yet.”

  “This fella helpin’ you?”

  “I’m trying to,” said Ryder, speaking for himself. He offered one more introduction, hoping it would be the last tonight.

  “I heard somethin’ about your Secret Service.”

  “Ma’am, I’m pleased somebody has.”

  Her sly smile twinkled. “Wouldn’t be much of a secret if they all knew, would it?”

  “I suppose not,” Ryder granted, smiling back at her.