Bleeding Texas (22 page)

Bill Longley stood at his room window of the Bon-Ton Hotel and stared out sullenly at the sluggish river of mud the good folks of Comanche Crossing, New Mexico Territory, were pleased to call Main Street. Snow flurries cartwheeled in the wind and a wooden sign hanging outside a general store banged back and forth with the sound of a muffled drum.

By times, he was a past-thinking man, especially when it came to reminiscing about women he'd enjoyed and kills he particularly relished.

A grandfather clock in the hallway chimed midnight. The mud outside reminded him of another road in another time and place....

 

 

The Camino Real, the old Spanish royal highway between San Antonio and Nacogdoches, ran within a mile of the Longley farm. On a cold, early December day in 1867 sixteen-year-old Bill was warned by his father to stay close because mounted Yankees had been seen patrolling the road.

Campbell Longley, who'd been a close friend of General Sam Houston and had helped bury the American dead at Goliad, had passed on two traits to young Bill. One was a virtue—his skill with firearms. The other, a vice—a pathological hatred of Yankees and blacks.

As snow flurried and the Camino Real turned to mud, Bill took his father's Navy revolver. Never one to avoid the chance of a confrontation with Yankee soldiers, he sneaked out of the house and headed for the highway.

“There are Yankees on the road! Stay away!” a woman wrapped in a blanket yelled at him from the shelter of a wild oak, frantically waving her hands.

“Where are they?” Bill hollered.

The woman pointed back down the highway. “That way. Stay clear. They'll kill you and eat you.”

He walked up a gentle rise that led to the road. Snow clung to the brush and salted the trunks of the bare trees. As he stepped closer, he saw that the woman was old. Her gray eyes had faded to the color of smoke and the hair that showed under her bonnet was white. She was thin and looked hungry.

She carried a wicker basket, as did all the old men and women who scavenged along the Camino Real. She'd already found an old horseshoe and what looked to be a dented can of meat.

“Go back, son,” the woman said. “That Yankee up there will arrest you and then you'll get skun an' your hide stretched on a frame.”

“Who, grandma? Who'll arrest me?”

“Black man on a hoss, wearing a blue coat. He's got stripes on his sleeves and a rifle.”

“Did he say anything to you?”

The woman shivered, from cold or memory he couldn't tell.

“He told me to get the hell off the road. Said there's too much thievery going on along the highway.”

Bill's dark, sudden anger flared. “A black man spoke to you like that?”

“Son, since the war ended, a black man can speak to a white woman any way he damn pleases. Or didn't you know that?”

“Not in San Jacinto County, he can't. Where the hell is he?”

“That way. Down the road apiece.”

Bill nodded and laid his hand on the woman's skinny shoulder. “You go home now. I'll take care of the black. He'll never sass a white woman again.” He opened his coat and revealed the Navy in his waistband. “I got me some uppity negro medicine right here.”

He watched until the old lady vanished from sight behind a hill, then followed her directions, avoiding the worst of the mud puddles as he walked, head bowed against the chill wind and slashing sleet.

He saw the soldier sitting his horse under the thin cover of an oak. A Spencer carbine lay across the pommel of his McClellan saddle as he intently peeled a green apple with a folding knife.

The corporal spotted Bill and took account of his ragged coat, pale, underfed face, summing him up as local white trash. Taking a bite of the apple, the soldier made a face and tossed it away. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and kneed his horse into motion, approaching Bill at a leisurely walk. The Spencer was upright, the butt resting on his thigh.

When he was a few feet away, the corporal drew rein and again studied the lanky teenager, not liking what he saw. “You, Reb. Git off the damned highway. We've had enough of thieves and footpads preying on decent folks.”

“And if I don't?” Bill said, his anger simmering.

The soldier leveled his rifle. “Then I'll damn well blow you off the road.”

Bill whimpered a little. “Please, mister, don't. I didn't mean no harm.”

“You look like dirty, thieving Reb spawn to me,” the soldier said. “Now get off the highway and run home to your mama and ask her to dry your tears.”

The soldier then made a mistake. He turned his back on Bill.

It was a gesture of contempt that cost Corporal Thetas Washington, age twenty-six, his life.

Bill drew from the waistband, aimed at a spot between the shoulder blades and pulled the trigger. The .36 caliber ball shattered the black man's spine as he cried out in pain and rage at the time and manner of his death.

The sixteen-year-old didn't fire a second time. Powder and ball cost money his father didn't have. He waited until the soldier toppled from his horse then stepped beside him.

A clean kill!

The man was as dead as he was ever going to be.

Working quickly for fear of being discovered, Bill searched the man's pockets. He took twenty-three Yankee dollars, a nickel watch and chain, and a whiskey flask. Made from pewter, the Bonnie Blue Flag was engraved on its side. Under that was another engraving. “Lieut. Joseph Herbert, 17th Georgia Infantry.”

Longley uncorked the flask, fastidiously wiped it off, then took a swig. He gathered the reins of the dead man's horse, picked up the Spencer, and walked back to the farm.

He had his first kill, a black carpetbagger at that, and he was so elated that even the icy wind and spinning sleet could not chill him.

 

 

Bill Longley was pulled from his pleasant reverie by a shadow of movement on the street. A careful man, he turned down the oil lamp and stepped to the window again, one of his beautiful .44 Dance revolvers in his fist.

The night was so torn and dark it took his eyes a few moments to adjust to the gloom. When they did, he saw a tall man on a sorrel horse stop outside the town sheriff 's darkened office.

After a few moments, the rider swung out of the saddle and stepped to what Longley at first thought was a packhorse. Only when the tall man dumped the horse's burden into the street did he see that it was a body.

While the tall man worked the kinks out of his back and looked around him, Longley quickly moved away from the window. Suddenly he felt an odd sense of unease . . . as though a goose had just flown over his grave.