by Ed Gorman
“I’ll see to it. Lieutenant. I have two sons serving with Price, Jared and Levon McKee. Have you…?” But the boy had drifted off again, his lips moving in soundless conversation. Gus waited for what seemed an age. And realized Neeland was staring up at him again.
“I’m sorry I … seem to have forgotten your name.”
“McKee, Lieutenant. Gus McKee.”
“McKee. Of course. And you asked me … Was your son Jared McKee? A sergeant with the Missourians?”
“Yes, he and his brother—”
“Sergeant Jared McKee fell at Westport, sir. I’m sorry. I don’t recall hearing about his brother. I hope he’s well.”
Gus looked away, his eyes stinging. It was too much. Eli’s death. And now Jared. Dear God.
“Mr. McKee, I’m sorry to trouble you at such a time but I find myself in a … quandary. I’m dying. And in truth, I don’t mind much. The pain’s not so bad now. My mother is … May I ask where do you stand, sir? North or South?”
Gus didn’t answer. Couldn’t. He saw Eli falling, his hands upraised in surrender … and Jared. Falling.
Gus shook his head to clear it. “I have sons in gray, Lieutenant.” he said hoarsely. “I stand with my sons.”
“Good.” Neeland closed his eyes. “I was carrying dispatches to General Hood from General Price. I burned them after I was wounded but the message is simple. General Price cannot support Hood at Nashville. We have neither supplies for the march, nor ammunition to fight. Hood must be told.”
“But how can I—?”
“There’s a letter in my runic. It will verify that you come from Price. We have a contact at Cape Girardeau, a storekeeper named Groton, Cecil Groton. Show him the letter, relay the message, and he’ll forward it. Can you do that for me, Mr. McKee?”
“Lieutenant—”
“Please!” Neeland grasped Gus’s forearm desperately, pulling himself up. “For your sons, sir. For the South!”
“All right, son, take it easy. I’ll see to it.”
“Thank you.” Neeland fell back, spent. “The letter is in my blouse. Take it, please.”
Gus reached inside the lieutenant’s coat, found the envelope, then hesitated. He felt no heartbeat. He glanced at Neeland. His eyes were empty. He was gone. Just like that. Gone.
Rising stiffly, Gus looked over the letter. It appeared harmless enough, a short note identifying the bearer as a friend of Ishmael. Which apparently would mean something to the storekeeper in Cape Girardeau.
Good Lord. Three years in these hills, waiting out the madness, and now that it was nearly over, he’d finally been forced to make a choice. Eli Mitchell said there wasn’t any right side to this but he was mistaken. His own death proved it. And Jared’s. And this poor bastard who’d kept himself alive long enough to pass his message. Some part of their Cause must be worth dying for. It had to be.
Gus buried Neeland in the forest not far from the creek, said the Lord’s Prayer over him, then headed back to his camp to pack up. Right or wrong, he’d just enlisted. Again.
Leaving was risky but the horses had forage enough for a week or so in their blind valley and they were well hidden. A straggler might stumble across them and steal the lot, but there was no help for that.
He chose his mount with care, a swaybacked gray plowhorse named Nell. Six years old, she had a canted jaw, broken by a kick when she was a colt. Her crooked mouth kept her gaunt and her disposition was on the surly side of rabid. But most importantly, her injury made her nearly mute. She seldom whickered or whinnied. An admirable trait in a companion, horse or human.
After rubbing soot between her ribs to accent the bones, he smeared small lumps of bloody suet on her legs to simulate sores. It wasn’t perfect but only an expert would spot it. Most stockmen’s tricks were to disguise a nag’s shortcomings, not make them look worse.
Finished, Gus stepped back to admire his handiwork and nodded. “Nell my girl, you are just about the sorriest-looking animal I’ve ever seen, too swaybacked to work and too scrawny to eat. Definitely not worth stealing.”
Nell didn’t reply but her glare was so ferocious Gus couldn’t help smiling. The last time he’d gone to war it was in a proud new uniform with brass buttons. This time he hoped to pass for a ragamuffin, pride be damned.
Saddling Nell with his poorest work rig, he lashed his bedroll to the cantle, tossed a few hardtack biscuits and some jerky in a sack, and climbed aboard. He looked over his camp a moment, making sure he’d erased all traces, campfire buried, gear stowed in the rock cleft. He had half a dozen hideouts like this one scattered through the mountains, moving from one to the other as the horses cropped down the canyon grass or patrols got too close.
Hadn’t been much of a life these past three years, living like a bandit, seeing his wife and youngest boy a few nights each month during the dark of the moon when he could slink out of the hills without being seen.
A sorry way to live, but it was his only chance to save what little they had left. Now he was risking it all for two dead boys he’d hardly known, boys who’d fought on opposite sides. As his own sons were doing.
It was lunacy and he knew it, yet he’d given his word and couldn’t see backing off. Not if he was ever going to look in a shaving mirror again.
But being swept up in the madness of this fight didn’t give him leave to be careless. It meant the opposite. For his family to survive he had to come through this. If he could.
He trailed northeast out of the Ozarks, down through the foothills, making a cold camp that night. Neil’s bony back and plodding gait made for a damned uncomfortable ride and since she tended to balk in the face of rough cover he’d been forced to lead her through it on foot, walking much of the way.
Dog-tired and sore, he stared up at the silent stars, waiting for sleep that wouldn’t come. Seeing Eli fall, his hands raised in surrender; the blood bubbling at the corners of Neeland’s mouth. And remembering Jared as a boy, a tow-headed kid with a gap between his front teeth.
His brothers joshed him, claimed he’d miss every other row on a corncob. Jared grinning, sayin’ it lasted longer that way. Dead now. Probably thrown in a hole with a dozen others and covered over. Lost in a fight with no right side to it.
Gus rose before dawn, impatient to be gone. On the road to Girardeau he could travel openly. The greatest danger was in the foothills coming out of the mountains. As Eli Mitchell had learned the hard way.
Maintaining a steady pace, he broke out of the hills south of Ellington just before noon. He pointed Nell east but he’d covered barely a mile when a patrol filed out of a copse of poplars, blocking the trail.
Yanks. And his heart sank as he recognized them. The same bunch who’d murdered Eli, half a dozen militia troopers with Aaron Meachum as their scout. No officer with them this time.
No point in hightailing it. Nell couldn’t outrun a three-legged stool. So he plodded slowly up to them, feeling the sweat trickle down his back. Where the letter was concealed beneath his shirt.
“Who are you, mister? What you doin” out here?” the sergeant asked, his Hessian accent strong as sauerkraut. Red-faced, stocky. His blue wool uniform coat looked homemade and probably was, but his gray eyes were wary. And dangerous.
“Name’s McKee. Got a place over in Reynolds County. Headed east to visit a cousin.”
“What cousin would that be?” Aaron Meachum asked. The jayhawker slouched in his saddle, eyeing Gus from beneath the brim of his sagging cavalry cap.
“Keith Stewart, at Buckhorn.”
“Didn’t know the Stewarts were kin to you, McKee.”
“You know this man?” the sergeant asked Meachum.
“Know who he is. Reb sympathizer, got boys in gray. Ain’t that right, McKee?”
“Well, he ain’t no deserter so he ain’t worth no bounty,” the sergeant said. “Let’s move on.”
“Not so fast,” Meachum drawled. “He might be carryin’ contraband. Step down, McKee.”
Gus hesita
ted.
“Just do like he says, mister,” the sergeant sighed. “He likes to kill people, this one.”
Forcing his fear back, Gus swung down.
“Step away from that nag and raise your hands. Search him, Dutch.”
“Come on, Meachum, he ain’t got two pennies to rub together. Let’s go.”
“The captain left me in charge and I say we search him, Dutch. Now do it!”
Muttering to himself in German, the sergeant swung down, stalked over to Gus, and quickly ran his hands over his body. And felt the letter! No question, Gus heard it rustle as the German’s hands passed over it. Their eyes met for a split second, then the sergeant stepped away.
“Nothing,” the Hessian said. “I told you.”
“Looked like a pretty careless search to me, Dutch. We’d best make sure. Take off your clothes, McKee.”
“What?”
“You heard me, old man. Strip. Get ’em off. Let’s see your … contraband.”
Gus swallowed, hard, wanting to rush at Meachum, drag him from his saddle or die trying. But he couldn’t. Meachum would kill him, sure as sunup. Gus could see it in his eyes. But if they found the letter, he’d probably die anyway. He could never explain it to this bunch.
“No,” he said. “I won’t do it.”
“‘No’?” Meachum echoed. “Strip him down, Dutch. If he gives you any trouble, kill him. Or I will.”
The sergeant turned to Gus, his face a mask. “Don’t give me no trouble, mister. He means it.”
“Go to hell!” Gus heard a quaver in his voice and hated it.
Grabbing his collar, the sergeant spun Gus around, pulling him close. Gus struggled but could feel the power in the Hessian’s arms, knew he hadn’t much chance against him—then suddenly he was free.
Thrusting him away, the Hessian stalked back to his horse. He said something in German and the troopers roared with laughter.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Meachum said, stiffening. “What did you say?”
“I said now I know why you ain’t got no woman, Meachum. You like lookin’ at old men’s hinterbacken.” The sergeant reached for his pommel to mount and found himself staring down the muzzle of Meachum’s Navy Colt.
“I told you to strip him, Dutch.”
“And I say there’s no bounty on him and no contraband. Look at him, look at his horse. You waste our time here.” He said something else in German, but this time there was no laughter. The others were eyeing Meachum warily.
“What did you say?”
“You don’t put that pistol away, you find out.” Swinging into the saddle, the Hessian wheeled his mount to the west and kicked her to a trot. He glanced down at Gus as he passed but his face was unreadable. The others fell into line behind him by twos.
All but Meachum. The jayhawker scout considered Gus a moment, cocked pistol in his fist, death in his eyes, then shook his head.
“We’ll have another day, McKee. Count on it.” Holstering the Colt, he clucked to his horse, trotting off after the troops.
Gus nearly grabbed him as he passed. Needed to drag him off his animal, stomp his brains in for Eli, for fared—but he didn’t. Couldn’t. They’d kill him and he had to stay alive.
Or maybe it was just cowardice. Gettin’ old, losing heart and makin’ excuses. That was the worst of it. Not knowing the truth of it.
Still shaking, Gus hauled himself into the saddle and nudged Nell to a walk, heading east.
He forded the Black at dusk below Clearwater, planning to camp near Muldick Mountain but pushed on through the night instead. Couldn’t sleep anyway and Nell paced so sluggishly that the long march didn’t seem to tax her.
Kept thinking of the Hessian sergeant. The man had felt the envelope when he searched him, Gus saw it in his eyes. Yet he deliberately misled Meachum about it. He was likely strong for the Union, alt the Germans were. So why had he let it pass?
The best Gus could come up with was that the sergeant had seen enough dead men in the road. Amen to that, Hessian or not.
Dawn overtook him on the post road west of Marble Hill and by mid-afternoon Nell was plodding through the outskirts of Cape Girardeau.
After three years in the hills any town would have seemed strange but Cape Girardeau, with the Mississippi as a main street, its houses and citizens more French than Missourian, felt as alien to Gus as Mexico City had all those years ago.
Even the folk on the streets looked foreign, men in spats and five-button suits, veiled ladies carrying parasols, carriages with uniformed footmen. Union troops in spotless uniforms were casually strolling the boardwalks, window-shopping or chatting up the town girls.
Most were infantry but some were cavalry, and a few were Union sailors from the gunboats in the river. Not a one of them looked like he’d ever heard a shot fired, or expected to.
The merchandise in the store windows was fairy-tale fanciful, racks of bright silk blouses, open barrels of pickles and peaches. One shop was filled with musical instruments, banjos, mandolins, gleaming brass trumpets, and other larger horns whose voices Gus couldn’t even imagine.
Blacks were everywhere, clerks waiting on Union officers and their ladies or wheeling stock down the crowded streets on barrows, better dressed and fed than any Missourian Gus had seen in years.
Eli was right. The fight would end soon. The ladies of Girardeau were picking out parasols to match their dresses while Price’s men were eating horsemeat and boiling hooves for broth.
Plodding through the town, Gus felt like his own ghost. His tattered clothes and scrofulous mount made him invisible to the locals. No one paid him any mind. Which was just as well.
A few inquiries led him to Groton’s Emporium, a run-down dry-goods store on the waterfront, wine shop on one side, ramshackle warehouse on the other. Leaving Nell at the hitching rail, Gus trudged warily into the store. The place stank of the river behind it, coils of tarred rope hung on the walls amid slickers, lanterns, and suchlike.
Two poorly dressed Negros were stacking sacks of meal against the far wall while another was wiping down leather harness straps with neat’s-foot oil. The only white man in the place was behind the counter, a balding, barrel-shaped merchant in a soiled apron, his face reddened by whiskey, a cigar clamped between stained teeth.
“He’p you?”
“I’m looking for Mr. Groton. Cecil Groton?”
“I’m Groton but if you need work—”
“I’ve got a letter for you.” Gus laid the crumpled envelope on the counter. Groton made no move to pick it up.
“I don’t know you.”
“Don’t know you, neither. The letter’s supposed to explain that. Young fella from Arkansas asked me to deliver it to you.”
“I see,” Groton said nervously. “Way things are, I didn’t expect to have any more truck with this business—Boy! What the hell are you doin’ sneakin’ around here?” One of the Negros who’d been stacking feed sacks was standing behind Gus. Big fella in faded coveralls; wide shoulders, tribal scars on his cheeks, curly hair powdered gray from the meal dust.
“You said see you when we finished, suh. We finished.”
“I’ll see you when I’m good and ready! Now get your ass out front and see to this man’s horse. Move, damn you!”
“Which horse, suh?”
“Don’t you sass me,” Groton growled, starting around the counter—Gus grabbed his bicep, stopping him.
“No need for that. She’s the sorry-lookin’ draft animal at the hitchrail, son. If you’d give her some grain I’d appreciate it.”
The Negro was big enough to break Groton in half but as he nodded and turned away Gus caught the roil of fear and resentment in his eyes. And recognized it. The man was tasting the same dirt Gus swallowed facing Meachum in the road.
“Uppity bastard,” Groton said, pulling free of Gus’s grip. “Before the war I had twenty slaves on my pier. Knew their jobs, knew their place. Time was, I’d beat a man half to death for talkin’ ba
ck like that but these damned runaway field hands are all I can get nowadays. Raise a hand to ’em, they quit on you. No gratitude—”
“You gonna read that letter?”
Groton opened it, gave it a quick glance, then carefully touched his cigar to a corner, setting it alight, and dropped it on the counter. “All right, what’s the rest of it?”
Gus stared at Groton as if he hadn’t heard, seeing Eli fall, and Jared. And the look in the Negro’s eyes.
“Well?” Groton prompted.
“No,” Gus said slowly.
“No what?”
“No message.”
“What the hell are you saying? Have you forgotten it?”
“I’ve forgotten a lot of things lately but they’re comin’ back to me. Like why I stayed out of this mess in the first place. Wars never settle nothin’, not in Mexico nor here, either. I was a fool to think any different. I got no message for you, mister. Forget I ever came.”
“The hell I will! You’re a damned yellow dog turncoat, old man, traitor to your own people—”
Lunging across the counter, Gus seized Groton by the vest, hauling him close, their faces inches apart.
“You ain’t my people, mister. A couple days back a boy told me there was no right side in this fight. But there’s definitely a wrong one and you’re it. You and the politicians and the jayhawkers start the killin’ and the rest of us get caught in the crossfire. And the worst is knowin’ boys are still dyin’ for cheapjacks like you—” Gus swallowed hard, couldn’t go on.
He thrust Groton away, sending the grocer stumbling back into a rack of peach preserves, toppling the display, jars smashing on the floor around him as he went down.
Gus was already headed for the door, Needed to be away from this place, from this town, back to me hills.
“Go on, run like a rat, old man!” Groton shouted after him. “You can’t hide! A day of reckonin’ will—”
He was still raving when Gus slammed the shop door so hard the glass shattered, exploding onto the boardwalk.
