Bloody Trail (13 page)

“
So I quit my post and drifted
back West. I found some old boys who felt the same way about
Jayhawkers as I did, and didn’t see the need to follow a lot of
rules when dealing with them.”

“
Quantrill,” Charley
said.

“
Yes, Quantrill. And all the
hardcases that rode with him. There were several bands, and when
they all come together we numbered in the thousands. There was
Bloody Bill Anderson—his pa was murdered by Jayhawkers too, or so
he said. And Frank James and his little brother Jesse—the Union
bastards hung their old step-father from a tree and tortured him.
And there was Cole Younger, Little Arch Clement, Clel Miller, and
George Todd—and there was Jim Danby and his lieutenant, Wes
Hammond.

“
We believed in hitting the
Yankees hard. At first, I hated it and I loved it at the same time.
I was doing things that the Good Book told me it was a terrible sin
to do—but I was doing them to defend my homeland, and to avenge my
pa. Every time I killed a Jayhawker up close, I imagined it was one
of the men that hanged my father—and maybe some of them
were.

“
But it got out of hand…way out of
hand. You know what happened in Lawrence. We pretty near burned
that town to the ground. Four hundred of us rode in at dawn and
unleashed holy hell on them—everybody knew that town was the base
for all the Jayhawkers and Redlegs in the area. I hear we killed a
hundred and fifty men out of the two hundred that lived there. I
don’t know. I wasn’t counting. I just know that the screaming
mothers and wives and children still wake me up nights.”

Charley nodded, almost imperceptibly. He heard
the screams sometimes, though for him, it was not so much a
haunting as an echo.

“
Things got pretty bad for us
around Kansas after that,” Derrick continued. “We had to light out
for Texas for a spell. While we were gone, the Union Army declared
martial law in Missouri. And they arrested a bunch of women for
being guerrilla sympathizers—including Bloody Bill’s sister. They
put them in a stone jail, and it mysteriously collapsed in on
itself and crushed those poor ladies to death.

“
Bloody Bill wasn’t just mad after
that, he was plumb crazy. He started scalping people—and a bunch of
the others did, too. They would tie Yankee scalps to their saddles,
and they’d flap in the wind when they rode into battle. It was
downright savage. It was like the last veil of righteousness had
been lifted away and we had become no better than heathens, you
can’t imagine how terrible it was.”

Derrick realized that Charley was staring at
him curiously, with a bemused smile.

“
Oh,” Derrick said. “I meant no
disrespect. It’s just that—well, I saw the bodies of some
Confederate Cherokees that had been captured by some Union ones.
The bluebelly Cherokees cut those poor bastards into pieces and
then burned what was left, the smell was awful.”

Charley politely nodded his understanding, and
Derrick continued his tale.

“
It weighed on me more every day,”
Derrick said. “I started thinking about Hell. It was hard to
imagine a worse place than where I was already at, but if there was
one I was surely headed straight into its mouth, and I could get
sent on my way there any day. I was just sick of it all. The hunger
for vengeance just sort of petered out after awhile, I guess.
Instead of thinking about my dead pa, I started thinking about my
living ma and how ashamed of me she would be.”

A look of disgust passed over Derrick’s
face.

“
And then came Centralia,” he
said. “We hit the town that morning, just like Danby hit Wolf Creek
today. And we tore up the railroad tracks—when the train rolled in
we ordered everybody off of it and robbed them. There were about
two dozen Union soldiers on that train, coming back from leave.
Bloody Bill made them strip naked and stand in formation—and then
the killing started.”

Derrick shifted uncomfortably on the rock and
then continued.

“
I didn’t join in. Danby did, he
took some scalps and God knows what else—he gave me a real funny
look when he saw me just standing off to the side.

“
I thought I was going to puke. I
feel like puking now. I used to admire Bloody Bill, see. I used to
look up to him. We had a lot in common, and I wanted to be like
him—a cold, hard avenger. But now, he was an animal, a demon from
Satan’s pit—and I didn’t want to be like him anymore. But with all
the things I done, I was scared that deep down, I already was like
him. I’m still scared that I am.”

Derrick’s voice had gone thinner. He took a
few moments to regain his composure.

“
You know the rest,” he said after
awhile. “We knew you boys would come charging in to the rescue, so
we laid a fine trap. I could deal with that, better than I could
robbing old ladies on trains or murdering naked prisoners who was
just on leave visiting their families. The ambush was war. And our
side may have stopped taking prisoners—but so had the Yankees, and
I’d had some good friends shot down in their tracks with their
hands in the air. I didn’t like it, but I had done it—on the field,
in the heat of battle, but not in the cold blooded way Bloody Bill
ordered it done on that train.

“
But when Danby ordered me to—to
help skin prisoners alive, I couldn’t take any more. I snapped.
Funny thing is, if he’d just ordered me to shoot you, out there on
the battlefield, you’d be dead now.”

“
Danby didn’t seem too happy with
you that day, when you didn’t obey him.” Charley said. Despite the
emotion emanating from Derrick like shimmering heat, Charley’s
voice was impassive.

“
I reckon that would describe it,”
Derrick said. “After you got away, he ordered one of his men to
shoot me. I took a bullet in the chest and they left me laying with
the dead Yankees. My dear old friends took my boots and my duster,
and most everything else, same as they did to most of the corpses.
They took all their own dead and wounded with them, except for me.
Some kind folks that lived close by found me and took me in till I
could ride. It was a miracle I was alive.

“
I borrowed a horse from them—I
sent them money for it later—and made my way to the Cherokee
Nation. My pa used to run a school there, before we moved to
Kansas—I still knew people who would take me in and keep me hid
while I finished healing.”

“
So I was right,” Charley said.
“You did live in the Cherokee Nation.”

“
Just for awhile, when I was a
little kid,” Derrick said. “I’m not Cherokee. Pa just moved there
for the job. My people are from Tennessee, like I said.”

Charley smiled. “So are the Cherokee. I bet
you got some Cherokee blood in you, way back yonder somewhere. You
got a Cherokee face.”

Derrick was beginning to tire of Charley’s
talk about his face. Others had made similar comments throughout
his life—especially in Indian Territory—but somehow he found that
the Black Seminole hammering at the subject was making him
especially annoyed.

“
Anyway,” Derrick said, “now you
know my story. I made my way home and tried to put all that behind
me. Then the outlaws hit town, and I saw Danby. And I heard the
screaming women—and that pitiful little Chinese child. And all the
anger and shame came back to me. I felt like—I felt like maybe, if
I could help bring them in, be on the side of the angels just this
one time, then maybe somehow I could make up for all the bad I’ve
done. Maybe the scales would be balanced for me.”

Charley’s head jerked around as if he’d been
struck.

Balance.

Charley Blackfeather understood the need to
restore balance. It was the primary spiritual goal of his people,
before some of them started taking on white man’s ways.

He also understood violence. He thought back
on the Florida plantations he had raided with John Horse, the
soldiers he killed and fed to the alligators, the things he had
done to white and Indian enemies alike in the Civil War. He doubted
McCain’s “sins” could compare to his own actions. He did not
consider them sins, though, and was not ashamed of them. It was the
way of the world.

Charley understood a man fighting to protect
his way of life, and he understood fighting for revenge. Most of
all, he was struck by the parallels in their stories—there was some
strong medicine there which should not be ignored.

“
Well?” Derrick said. “Are you
going to tell them about me?”

Charley stared impassively at the younger man
for awhile.

“
I won’t say nothing,” he finally
replied. “I’ll give you a chance to restore balance. Balance is the
most important thing there is, to an Indian. To white folks, too,
only most of ‘em don’t realize it.”

Derrick nodded his appreciation, but then the
Black Seminole continued.

“
But I will have my eyes on
you.”

“
That’s fair enough,” Derrick
said.

“
Sleep now,” Charley said. “It’s
my watch.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

G.W. Satterlee stretched, yawned, and then
wearily scrubbed a hand over his face. He was getting too old for
this. He had a comfortable bed in his house back in Wolf Creek, and
yet he'd spent the night sleeping on the hard ground, just like in
the days when he'd been hunting buffalo or scouting for the
army.

But, at least he'd woken up this morning, he
reminded himself. That was something four of the men who'd ridden
out with him would never do again, and the same was true for a
number of people back in the settlement. Not to mention Mack
Haskins, the grief-stricken farmer.

The hour was well before dawn. A faint band of
gray tinged the eastern horizon. A few yards away from the spot
where Satterlee had spread his bedroll, Charley Blackfeather was
poking the embers of the fire to life.

"I'll have some coffee boiling soon, Sheriff,"
the Seminole said.

"And I'll be more'n happy to drink some of
it," Satterlee replied. "Obliged to you, Charley. Quiet night,
wasn't it?"

"Real quiet," Blackfeather said. "Except for
the wounded men moanin' now and again. But in war, that qualifies
as quiet, I reckon."

"I didn't know we were at war," Satterlee said
as he hunkered on his heels and held out his hands to warm them in
the glow of the flames that had sprung up. It got chilly at night,
out here on the plains. "I thought we were just chasin' down a band
of murderin' outlaws."

"Same thing. It's all killin'."

Satterlee shrugged and said, "You may be right
about that."

He straightened. A few more of the sleeping
men were starting to stir. Satterlee walked over to where Dr. Logan
Munro had propped himself up on an elbow.

"Mornin', Doc."

Munro pushed his blankets aside. He sat up and
said, "I need to check on my patients."

Munro climbed to his feet. Like Satterlee, he
moved with the creaky stiffness of a man who might not be old, but
was certainly no longer young.

While Munro was making sure that Tolliver and
Zachary had lived through the night, Satterlee walked around the
camp, rousing the other men.

"Reckon there's a good chance Danby and the
rest of his bunch made camp last night, so they shouldn't have
gotten too much farther ahead of us," Satterlee said. "But they'll
be pullin' out early this morning, so we'd better do that,
too."

"What about the men we lost, Sheriff?" Rob
Gallagher asked. "Are we going to bury them?"

"Not unless you've got a shovel tucked away in
your back pocket, son. None of the rest of us brought
one."

Derrick McCain said, "There's a little draw
over yonder. Maybe we could put them in it and cave the bank down
over them. It's better than nothing. Somebody could come out from
town later and retrieve the bodies."

"That's not a job I'd want," Billy Below
said.

"I could help with that," Sweeney put in.
"Assuming I make it back alive."

"So could I," Blackfeather added without
looking up. He set the coffeepot at the edge of the flames. “We got
another body, though, tucked behind that rise back
yonder.”

“
Another outlaw?” Satterlee asked,
and Charley shook his head.

“
The farmer’s wife,” the Seminole
answered. “I found her out a ways, when I was scoutin’ up makin’s
for the travois. I reckon they was done with her, and didn’t want
her makin’ noise or slowin’ ‘em down. So they throwed her
away.”

“
Lord have mercy,” Rob Gallagher
said.

Charley grunted. “I reckon He was runnin’
short on mercy yesterday. And so was they. I didn’t bring her body
on into camp because I didn’t have nothin’ to cover her with, and
it didn’t seem right. She’s been shamed enough as it
is.”

Spike scowled. “So the whole time they was
taunting Haskins, braggin’ on what they was gonna do to her—they
had already done it, and she was dead. Sons of bitches.”

Satterlee nodded his agreement and then said,
"All right, let's get to work while Charley's rustlin' up some
grub. We can strip some clothes off these outlaw sons of bitches
and cover the Haskins woman, then I reckon we can put her with her
husband."