“But cunts like to breed,” Nelson said, chuckling to himself.
Wolf was glad Flora was back with Shugart and the horses so she wouldn’t be subject to such uncouth conversation.
“Ain’t right to talk about a man’s dead mother if you ask me,” Roberts said, shaking his head.
Hogan took stock, counting softly. “Must be two, three companies of the graybacks.”
His count was no exaggeration. Groups of infantry milled around waiting to change trains for the journey north. Some sat, others dozed, a cluster drank coffee, and a few sat around a campfire cooking bacon.
Wolf knew if he had to, he could get the jump on these men. What happened after that was the problem. He had no means to sustain a prolonged engagement with the rebels, and as they mobilized, more and more pressure would be put upon his small unit.
He could have the sharpshooters focus on taking out their officers and noncommissioned officers, hoping to create chaos among them, but again, they had no means to sustain any action. Surely he would lose men, and he wasn’t here to lose men. He was here to acquire a lady and wreak havoc on Stuart’s psyche.
“You think we can make it past?” Roberts said.
“No. Wilhelm.” Wolf waved the broad sergeant his way. He bounded down their line, dropping to the ground near Wolf with a grunt. “Lieutenant?”
“What’s your assessment? That’s our route north.”
Wilhelm’s blue eyes regarded him for a moment. “We can’t go north without a fight.”
“Aye, and we can’t go west without running into Beaver Dam Station.”
“I warrant they will be ready for us this time. I think you have your answer.”
Wolf continued to eye the rebels lounging in the distance. The thought of dashing through and around the junction with sabers and pistols drawn like a band of desperados faded away as quickly as it had come.
“If we can’t escape north, we will be trapped south with the rivers.” Wilhelm knew this. They all knew this. “If we go in the other direction of our army, we could be signing our own death warrants.”
Wilhelm’s cool eyes studied Hanover Junction with methodical logic as if he balanced their odds on a scale. Going north meant they would face a suicidal battle cutting their way through the junction. Then they would still have to circumvent Lee and reach Sheridan. All together not a great prospect for success. On the other side of the scale, he could recall the doomed Dahlgren raid, fleeing across enemy territory with their hounds nipping at their heels. “Das Beste kommt selten hernach.”
Wolf understood him right away although it had been some time since he’d heard his native tongue. Bad is the best choice. The idiom summed up the entirety of their situation.
“Hogan, can we get south?”
“Taylorsville is about two miles south of here. From there we can cross the Little River then the South Anna.” Hogan got closer to Wolf. “We will be far from home if we go that way.”
“We don’t have much of a choice. If Stuart hasn’t already found out, he will soon. And when he does, he’ll come looking.”
Hogan rubbed a tired eye. “Yes, but we are supposed to go back toward Sheridan.”
“Can you think of a way through? We’ll be cut to pieces if we try to go through there. The only path we have is further south.”
Hogan eyed the train station, gulping. “We can try and follow the Pamunkey River, ford there, and then swing north toward Fredericksburg.”
Flashbacks to Dahlgren’s fleeing men flickered in Wolf’s eyes. “Like we did before?”
“It’s a way back where we can cross without confrontation.”
“Then that’s what we do.”
His men mounted their horses. Flora judged them with indifferent eyes. “Finding things tougher than you imagined, Lieutenant?”
Wolf struggled a moment to secure his disabled leg’s foot in the stirrup. It always caused him grief, but the added angst of Flora made it worse. It was like she was not only judging him for being a horrible person but a cripple too, something that he never really understood until after the accident.
“Things are just fine, ma’am.”
“Really? Is that why we are going south instead of north to your invading horde? Seems to be the opposite direction I’d want to go if I were in your godforsaken shoes. Or perhaps you have a death wish? If that is the case, you would do well to turn yourself in now to those brave soldiers at the depot and put this expedition to rest.”
He glanced at Flora Stuart with her treacherous tongue lashing out this way and that like a menacing overseer with a bad toothache. No wonder Stuart was so beloved by the South’s womenfolk. Anything to put distance between him and Flora.
“Everything is going according to plan. If I were you, I’d prepare for a hard ride.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Late Afternoon, May 9, 1864
Near Beaver Dam Station, Virginia
Payne’s men were some of his finest. He’d left the rest of the Red Shirts in the capable hands of Lieutenant Samuel Hendricks, a friend from childhood and trusted comrade from a rich family outside of Charleston. The Red Shirts would be fine while Payne handled this task for Hampton and Stuart.
Every man in his platoon knew enough to keep their mouths shut after the task was complete. Stuart’s image and his pride would be damaged, perhaps even indefinitely, if the incident was leaked to the Southern or Northern Press. The press on either side were a bunch of journalistic vultures hovering above a distraught man. It needed to be handled with a brisk but delicate hand, one that swung a saber into the bare necks of the enemy.
He galloped in the lead of his platoon, their mounts a thundering cloud of Southern vengeance. Their horses were fine Southern stock bred for speed and endurance, the best and most expensive that they could purchase. Each and every one paid a dividend in the field.
His platoon was a full one, not like the decimated companies, regiments, and divisions that languished in the regular Army of Northern Virginia. Even while the commands of other captains dwindled from illness and combat, the ranks of his company had always been kept at a hundred men. His men were always replaced with the best the South had to offer.
The Red Shirts were men of class that had been raised in the bosom of privilege. Most came to them wishing to join, some were recruited in ones and twos, the reputation of the company enough to draw them in.
They had taken men of lower standing within their ranks, men of moderate societal stature and wealth, but nothing of the lower classes that filled the Army of Northern Virginia’s coffers. His men were nothing like the men that populated the Iron Scouts, a much more salt-of-the-earth type.
The Iron Scouts were usually poor men with the unusual ability to go and be anywhere relatively unnoticed. There was a certain discrepancy between his men and the Iron Scouts. But all men had their use, even to him, so he accepted the Iron Scouts for their unique capabilities.
No matter how long they’d fought in Virginia, one could not replace a man who had lived there his entire life. He was familiar with every nook and cranny of the land. Every hideout, farm, village, sympathizer, waterhole, tavern, and trail.
William Scott was one such man. His blackish beard was streaked with gray. Of average height and build, he had a wild glimmer in his eyes, not a calculating violence like Payne himself. No, Scott wasn’t capable of what Payne could do. In fact, he’d never really met a man “like” himself. Scott was more like a mountain lion, extreme violence bred into him, but out of necessity. He wasn’t a man who enjoyed the violence, just a man who could use it.
He carried a long-rifled musket on his back. Payne had never seen one longer, and it would be wildly inefficient for horseback. It was so long that the Red Shirts had started calling him Tiny Will Scott. That nickname would have caused a least a dozen fights by now if Payne hadn’t threatened to cut everyone’s balls off. His men quietly continued the mockery, sending Scott for the knife on his belt every so often. As long
as they focused on the enemy, he wouldn’t have to punish anyone.
Altogether, he had twenty-four superior horsemen along with three of Hampton’s Iron Scouts. They would overtake the renegades and he would administer a slow justice. How dare the Northerners operate with such sinister impunity! The thought made him smolder inside. The enemy would scream under the knife no matter how hard their constitution.
“We cut through here, and we will be on the house before a mile,” Scott called at them as they rode.
Payne gestured down the deer path with a sharp hand, slowing their gait. He trusted Scott, but if they lost a horse, they lost a man because they could not wait for him to acquire another.
They trotted through fresh green leaves that grew thicker and fiercer by the day. Spring growth would soon transform into a fertile summer. An early wet spring had seen to that.
Back home they would be planting. His family’s 220 slaves would be working the fields, and that was only on their main plantation. They had almost another hundred slaves they rented to other smaller farm operations. George Archer and Jeremiah Richie would have been on horseback directing the field hands.
Richie had taken a Minié ball at Second Manassas, and Archer had died of a fever before Gettysburg. But there were always new men, younger or disabled ones from the war, to take their post.
Men trying to improve their status. Men who would try to save enough to buy their own land and own slaves and live the blessed life of a plantation owner. Easier said than done, but men toiled the earth, scratching together wealth while clinging to dreams of a better life only to find they’d been digging their own graves the whole time. He would have to write his mother and ask who ran the fields in their absence.
The rich smell of burnt wood filled his nose as they grew close. He couldn’t see anything at first, but his intuition told him that it came from something much larger than a campfire, more of a conflagration. It reminded him more of the Battle of the Wilderness where acre after acre of dry woodland had gone up in flames, turning it into a holocaust with wounded men screaming in the orange and yellow flames.
As he neared the edge of the forest, hazy black tendrils dissipated into the sky above the treetops. They emerged from the path and into an unplanted field of brown dirt and grass. No slaves worked the open land, and the spots where the earth had been tilled revealed dark soil. The wreckage of the plantation home on the other end of the field appeared complete as if it had grasped at its last throes of existence.
“Come on!” Payne shouted. They galloped over the field, turning the topsoil in the process. The charred, blackened skeleton of a once beautiful mansion greeted them. Formerly redbrick chimneys still stood in the framework of the giant smoldering carcass of wood and stone.
Payne glided from his saddle to the ground followed by Scott and Dan Tanner. They walked the premises, searching for clues as they went. His Red Shirts spread out over the grounds searching for anything that would lead them to their prey.
The fire consumed everything it could and died away. Only the aftermath remained. Payne squatted down and dug out a handheld mirror that surely belonged once to the lady of the house.
The glass had bubbled from the heat and lifted around the edges. It reminded him of how human skin bubbled under just hot enough flames. Not enough to sear the skin clean off, but enough to blister. He chucked the mirror back into the rubble.
A lanky rider came up. George Turner had a long face with a trimmed brown beard and wore sergeant stripes on his sleeves. “No bodies in the surrounding area.”
“Slaves?”
“They’re gone too.”
Payne gave him a quick nod. Local men would round up the slaves. They were of little threat to Payne and his men but perhaps held important information. More importantly, the telegram possessed a level of truth. The people of this home had fled or were taken. He turned his eyes to Scott.
Crouched on his haunches, the scout studied the ground. “Looks like two groups. One atop horse.” He spit tobacco on the ground. “I’d say ‘bout ten, maybe fifteen of ‘em. Mounted. They went east, but there be footprints that go west. Little ones too.”
“Couldn’t have gotten far with children. They will know what this is and who’s responsible.”
His men mounted, following the tracks to the west. A little over a mile away they came across another more modest country mansion. With two-stories, clapboard sides, and short steps leading to the door, it was more of a farmhouse to Payne.
He quickly dismounted, marching with some urgency. He planted a fist into the door, pounding in three loud thumps. His men remained mounted. He glared back at Scott. “You sure this is the right spot?”
Scott lifted his chin with a challenging eye. “This be where the tracks went. I’m sure of that.”
Payne pounded away again, vibrating the door. “Open on up.” He stood back looking at the second-story windows. White curtains blocked any sight inside. “I am Captain Marshall Payne, Hampton’s Red Shirts. We need to talk.” He scanned from window to window. “Well, Mr. Scott, it appears that no one is home.” A curtain trembled as it fell into place. “Or everyone is too scared to make themselves known.”
“We mean no harm. We are loyal Southern gentleman here.” Payne stood waiting. He would hate to have to kick in the door to get answers, but there were worse things that could befall these people. Yankee brigands for one.
The door cracked open and a wary eye stared out. “We already took the letter to Beaver Dam Station to telegraph. We don’t want any more trouble.”
Payne close-lipped smiled at them. “My good sir, we are here to rectify that situation. We are here to make things right.”
The door shut, and he could hear arguing on the other side. “We are here on behalf of Major General James Ewell Brown Stuart. I believe you know the whereabouts of his wife?”
The door opened, and an elder gentleman with a stained double-breasted colonel’s frock coat stood inside. His face had been wiped clean of soot and smoke, but the rest of him was filthy. His whitening hair stuck out to the sides reminding Payne of a duck’s tail feathers.
He stepped outside and tugged his coat down. “I am Colonel Edmund Fontaine, and that was my home they burned.”
Payne glanced back toward the out-of-view smoking mansion. “I truly am sorry for your loss. I would love to catch those men that did this and put this inconvenience to bed.”
“Inconvenience? By God, I am in ruin.”
Putting his hand over his heart, Payne said, “Dastardly and depraved, and I want to bring these men to justice.”
“They were heathens the lot of them. Brutish monsters. Ambushed me they did. In my own home,” he said, his eyes growing larger with each unthinkable thought.
A short smile lifted on Payne’s left side. If they’d wanted him dead, he’d be dead. “Mischievous devils, huh? Can I come in and chat?”
Fontaine became agitated, shaking a bit. “If it please you, Captain, just yourself. The children and womenfolk have had quite a scare.”
Payne removed his gray slouch hat and brushed his long curly brown hair back behind his ears. Taking off his fine gloves, he slipped them through his belt with all due care.
“Not a problem at all.” He turned back to Scott. “Take the Tanner boys and head back to the good colonel’s home. Follow the tracks as far as you dare. We won’t be long behind you.”
“Yes, sir.” Scott and the Tanner brothers spurred their mounts in the direction of the plantation home.
Payne stepped inside, his boots echoing. The colonel stunk like he’d been tending a fire for two weeks. And Payne was sure that was not something he did without the help of a slave.
“What can you tell me, Colonel?”
Fontaine’s eyes shifted under the question, drawing Payne’s attention. “To be fair Captain, I was knocked unconscious right from the very beginning.” His eyes lowered in shame. “I didn’t see the men who did this. There was one that spoke, but I can’
t recall him.”
“Did anyone see them?”
“Oh yes, my wife and the children.”
Payne gestured almost as if he were offering his hand to the colonel at a ball. “Do lead the way, my good colonel.”
They stepped into a parlor where there was an elderly woman and multiple younger women, all covered in soot, along with two young children. One wrapped her protective arms around the boy, and the matron held the girl, who could have been no more than a year old.
All were in various states of distress. Watery eyes peered at him as he entered. More tears flowed on the young ones’ cheeks.
“Maria,” Fontaine nodded to his wife and then his girls. “Rosalie and Lucia, this is Captain Marshall Payne, one of Hampton’s most loyal lieutenants and sent by Stuart.”
“You have nothing to fear from me,” Payne said with a charming smile. But they had everything to fear. Their weakness disgusted him, and that made it hard to disguise on his face. He forced it down. He would protect them despite their feminine frailty. They had things he wanted, so he would attempt to be kind. After all, these were his people and well-bred.
He took a seat across from them, resting his hands on his elbows and leaning in. “Please be brief. Every moment we give them, they slip further from our grasp. What can you tell me about who did this?”
Maria coughed dangerously into her hand. “Sorry, the smoke.” She composed herself and rocked the little girl on her hip. “They were horrible monsters.”
His grin didn’t fade. “Aren’t they all?”
The Fontaine matriarch waved him off. “No, more heathen than the usual Yankee.”
“What made this roving band of brigands different?” Every piece of information could be used. His eyes focused on her with his unusual intensity.
“There were redskins.”
“You mean Indians?”
“Yeah, that’s what I meant. Two or three of them.”
“Indians did this?”
Her eyes scolded him. “You talk too much. Now quiet down and I’ll tell you.”
Payne grinned at her. If she was my property, she would not have a tongue like that in more ways than one.
Northern Blood Page 19
