Rough Justice (6 page)

If
he could make that shot, with pistols barking at him, enemies he'd never met before shouting their threats and curses, all intent on killing him.

Sweating, he raised the Henry, tried to hold it steady, index finger curled around its trigger, praying that the rifle wouldn't be shot from his hands.

*   *   *

C
hance Truscott covered one full block before it hit him: if he ran away, how would his men, his Knights, ever have faith in him again? He was afraid, no doubt about it, but if he let
them
see that, he would be finished as their leader.

Was it already too late, the way he'd bolted from the Southern Cross, shoving his men aside to save himself? Maybe. But if he went back now and rallied them, led them to kill the traitor who'd deceived him earlier that evening, he could likely win their trust back. Spin some story about going off to look for help, and then deciding he was needed more among his men than fetching reinforcements.

That could work. But it meant going back
right now
.

Reluctantly, he turned and ran back toward the Southern Cross, breath wheezing in his lungs. His mind was racing, searching for a handle on the situation. Rodgers, or whatever he was called in fact, had said he worked for something
called the U.S. Secret Service. True or false, Truscott thought he could use that to distract his men from any doubts or disappointment they might feel toward him, directly.

Paint it as another federal incursion on the sovereign State of Texas, once its own republic, now crushed under Yankee boots and likely to remain so, if a force of loyal native sons did not arise to sweep the blue plague from their soil. If Rodgers had credentials or a badge, it would confirm a charge of spies among them, undermining every aspect of the old traditions his supporters had been raised to view as part of God's eternal plan.

His courage was returning as he reached the Southern Cross—at least, until he heard the storm of gunfire echoing inside there. As he neared the bat-wing doors, the light appeared to shift in the saloon, immediately followed by a crash that shook the place. Men cursed and howled, more guns went off, and when he peered in through the nearest window, Truscott saw the place was burning now, its wooden floor a sea of spreading flames.

Stupid to go in now,
he thought.
The place is burning. Anyone with any sense will make a break for it.

But leadership and common sense were not always compatible. Sometimes a leader had to take a chance, risk everything, if he was going to inspire his men and hold their confidence. He couldn't urge them into battle, when a situation called for him to lead them by example. If he didn't joint the fight, those who escaped the Southern Cross tonight would carry two grim memories: their own fear, and his failure as their captain. They would shun him as a coward, maybe even seek revenge against him for deserting them.

Truscott drew his pistol—nothing big, a Colt Pocket Police revolver in .31-caliber, weighing just over a pound and a
half—and moved forward against his better judgment, shoving through the bat-wing doors into the anteroom of Hell.

*   *   *

R
yder had missed the wagon wheel's suspension line with his first shot but cut it with the second, while the raving drunks around him ducked and wondered what he had in mind. They found out seconds later, when the ring of lamps came plunging down and trapped one man beneath it, six lamps shattering on impact with the floor and spewing liquid fire. The man beneath it screamed and tried to wriggle free, his legs acrawl with biting flames.

Ryder couldn't get a clear shot at the second wagon wheel, but didn't think he'd need to. Panic swept the room, men's voices shouting, “Fire!” as if nobody else could see the spreading smoke and flames. A woman screamed, one of the upstairs girls, and Ryder hoped she'd make it out all right, but couldn't turn the fight into a rescue mission. He was focused on escape now, tracking Truscott and—

“Captain!” one of the shooters cried, over the din of general confusion.

And another, right behind him, hollered, “Cap'n! You come back!”

“Discretion,” Truscott's deep voice answered, “dictates we evacuate this place.”

“We got 'im cornered, though,” a third man said. “If we can root 'im out real quick—”

“Indeed,” Truscott replied, cutting his soldier off. “We cannot leave an enemy to possibly escape, then harm us further on another day.”

That earned a rousing cheer, over the crackling of the fire, and Ryder braced himself for what he knew was coming. They would charge en masse and overrun him, kill him
where he stood—or crouched, more like—and that would be the end of it. If he tried bolting out the back, they'd shoot him as he ran.

Unless . . .

He still had thirteen rounds left in the Henry, six more in his Colt without reloading. If he fought back hard enough, there was a chance that he could rout them. Not a
good
chance, but it beat his odds if he did nothing. And if he could turn the charge, there was a chance that he might reach the back door with a slim head start.

And Truscott?

Drop him if you can,
he told himself.

It took another smoky moment, even with the place in flames, for Ryder's enemies to rally, summon up their nerve, and rush the point where they had seen him last. By then, he'd edged further behind the bar, gaining more cover for himself, and when he rose, his Henry shouldered, several of his would-be killers gaped at him in stark surprise.

Log them as drunk
and
stupid.

Ryder rapid-fired into the charging crowd, dropping two men in the front rank before he spotted Truscott, swung around, and nailed him with his third shot. Ryder saw his .44 slug drill through Truscott's cheek, then had no time to watch him fall or see if he was trampled by the others rushing up behind him. Blazing at his human targets like a madman, Ryder barely had to aim. The wall of angry flesh before him made a wasted shot impossible.

His fusillade tore through the ranks, causing a ripple that became a rout, the men he hadn't killed or wounded yet changing their minds about the wisdom of hurling themselves at a repeating rifle, while the building that contained them filled with smoke and threatened to collapse.

Their mass retreat began when someone cried, “The cap'n's
hit!” More voices joined the lamentation, and the charge broke ten feet short of a collision with the bar. To keep them moving, Ryder started lobbing whiskey bottles after them, each one exploding into bright flames as it shattered, setting fire to trousers, bodies, furniture—whatever was nearby.

Ryder took advantage of his adversaries fleeing toward the street, a couple of them smashing windows to leap through them when the flapping doors seemed too congested. No one noticed as he scuttled down the hallway to the back door, bursting through it, bleary-eyed and coughing from the dense smoke roiling through the Southern Cross.

The place was done, cooking away with Truscott and a number of his people still inside it. Ryder didn't plan to stay and watch it all fall down, particularly since that meant police, the fire brigade, and far too many other witnesses to suit him. Starting on the trek back to his boardinghouse, slapping his clothes to shed some of the smoky odor, he began to think about his next report to Washington.

What would he write?
Got tired of waiting, so shot up the place and burned it down.

He wasn't sure that anything he'd done so far, in Corpus Christi, fell within the law. He could have said the same for Galveston, of course, and that turned out all right, as far as his director was concerned. He'd lost Tom Hubbard to the KRS, along with several freedmen, but that would have happened anyway, he guessed, whether he'd been in town or not.

The thing to work on now was moving forward. Ryder wasn't finished with the Knights, by any means. He'd only started, and his next move would be taking him into the hard heart of their territory, to disturb a hornets' nest.

He needed to be ready, or his bones—like those of Yankee soldiers in the Rebel song—would soon lie still in southern dust.

T
he train left Corpus Christi for Houston at nine o'clock on Friday morning. Ryder had passed a restless night, sitting up in his room at the boardinghouse, half expecting the police or sheriff's deputies to turn up anytime. He was relieved when they did not appear, managed to eat a double helping of the landlady's biscuits and gravy, then packed his gear and headed for the station two hours ahead of schedule, taking back streets all the way.

The railroad station had a fresh coat of paint, but the tracks were rusty and the train that pulled into the depot at half-past eight consisted of three passenger cars trailing a boxy prewar locomotive, its giant funnel smokestack out of all proportion to the boiler and the engineer's cab. In motion, he knew from experience, it would spew gray smoke and cinders, proven by the staining on the cars it towed.

They killed time while the locomotive took on fuel and water, but Ryder had his ticket ready and sat out that time
in the last of the three aging passenger cars. His half dozen fellow passengers sat in the first car, treating themselves to the worst of the smoke and jolts from the journey, and he left them to it. Assuming they stayed on the rails, all three cars should arrive in Jefferson at the same time.

He had plotted the trip beforehand. The stretch from Corpus Christi to Houston covered 184 miles, at an optimistic top speed of twenty miles per hour. With at least one other fueling stop along the way, call it ten hours on the rails. At Houston, he'd be switching trains for the 218-mile journey to Jefferson, eleven hours minimum, not counting any stops along the way. A full day of rattletrap travel, but once he got used to the noise and vibration, Ryder supposed he could catch up on sleep from last night.

And what would his adversaries be doing, in the meantime?

He was leaving Corpus Christi's Knights of the Rising Sun in disarray, momentarily leaderless, but Ryder guessed they wouldn't stay that way for long. They didn't have his name, and Truscott—dead now—was the only one to whom he had identified himself as a federal agent. Beyond that, he assumed that general alarms would go out to other KRS chapters statewide, and the organization's headquarters in Jefferson should logically be first to get the news.

That meant he'd be walking on eggshells tomorrow, when his train arrived. The KRS might have a welcoming committee at the depot, watching out for strangers, maybe even with a general description of their target from survivors of the shootout at the Southern Cross. If so, he would be ready for them—or, at least, as ready as he could be in the circumstances. One man in a hostile city, where his badge was nothing but a bull's-eye, and he couldn't count on any help from local lawmen.

Perfect.

As he sat and watched the arid countryside roll past beyond his smudged window, waiting for sleep to overtake him, Ryder went back over what he'd learned about the Knights. Their “grand commander” was a former Rebel captain, Royson Coker, known to friends and enemies alike as Roy. He'd been attached to the First Texas Partisan Rangers, a cavalry unit organized by another Jefferson resident, Colonel Walter Lane, in June of 1862. The unit had seen its first action in Arkansas, then retreated into the Louisiana bayou country for a series of guerrilla engagements lasting until the Trans-Mississippi Department's formal surrender in May 1865. Colonel Lane had been pardoned and worked as a shopkeeper now, but Coker had apparently decided to continue fighting on his own terms, loyal to the Lost Cause.

No one could say how many “Knights” Coker commanded statewide, but the bulk of them were thought to live in Jefferson and surrounding Marion County, flush against the Louisiana borderline. They had already tarred and feathered the publisher of Jefferson's only Republican newspaper, running him out of the county with threats to do worse if he ever returned, and Ryder had reports of half a dozen freedmen murdered since war's end. Their “crimes” consisted of refusing to continue working for their former masters and, in two cases, of having the temerity to register as voters. Coker's men, it seemed, intended to preserve the antebellum status quo as best they could, and so far, no one from the county sheriff's office had restrained them.

Ryder wasn't looking forward to another one-man war against long odds, but he had taken on the job with both eyes open, and he'd see it through as best he could.

Or die trying,
a voice inside his head retorted.

Maybe. But one thing that he
wouldn't
do was quit.

Two hours out of Corpus Christi, reasonably sure that he
was safe for now, the train outrunning any horsemen who might try to follow, Ryder closed his eyes and willed himself to sleep. He kept the Henry rifle wedged between his left leg and the window, right hand resting on the curved butt of his Colt Army revolver.

Just in case.

*   *   *

R
yder's train arrived in Houston with two hours to spare before his scheduled departure for Jefferson on the Eastern Texas Railroad line. No one was waiting for him on the platform, a relief, and Ryder found a restaurant nearby, on Commerce Avenue, where no one raised an eyebrow at his guns or luggage. Hungry from his long ride north, he ordered steak with all the fixings. The waitress brought a slab of beef that could have fed two men, plus fried potatoes under gravy, mushrooms, and a heap of collard greens.

Ryder surprised himself, putting it all away within an hour, then examined downtown Houston for another thirty minutes, before hiking back to catch his train. It still amazed him, coming from the North, that no one in a city of this size thought anything about a man walking amongst them with a rifle, six-gun, and a Bowie knife on full display. Most of the other men he passed were armed with pistols, either on their hips or peeking out of shoulder holsters, and he would have bet some of the women had shooting irons stashed in their oversized handbags.

He wondered what would happen if a fight broke out, or someone tried to pull a daylight robbery. A scene of bloody chaos came to mind, and Ryder hoped that his imagination was exaggerating.

From what Ryder could see, it seemed that Houston was recovering from the war in fair style. He knew the city's
economy had been hurt by a Union blockade of Galveston, in 1862, but Rebels had recaptured that port city early the following year, restoring the flow of commerce to some degree. Houston's Chamber of Commerce held the city together until General Lee's surrender, and there'd been no local skirmishing to damage any of the shops or homes, but postwar government seemed problematic. A newspaper he bought from a cigar store, near the railroad station, carried articles about the anarchy enveloping some rural parts of Texas since Appomattox, with local officers and U.S. cavalry incapable of keeping order.

There were bad days coming, Ryder realized. He wondered if his mission to East Texas would improve matters, or only serve to make them worse. He understood his duty, didn't want to second-guess it, but there was a human element to be considered, also.

Had he made things worse in Corpus Christi? Thomas Hubbard had been killed despite Ryder's best effort to protect him. Now his Josey was a widow and would wind up God knew where, assuming she escaped from Texas with her life. If Ryder had abstained from intervening that first night, if he had let the lynchers have their way, would it have spared Miss Emma and the others from a second lethal raid? Were two lives worth the dozen-plus eventually sacrificed, when he had wound up losing one of them regardless?

Ryder didn't know, and knew that pondering the question overlong would make his head ache, likely rob him of the sleep he craved. He couldn't turn back time, undo what had been done, and self-flagellation wasn't Ryder's style. He made mistakes, like any other man, and tried to learn from them.

Unfortunately, when he dropped a stitch in his trade, people sometimes suffered.

Sometimes died.

He thought of Hubbard: young, idealistic, off on a crusade to help the freedmen rise above their miserable lot. That quest had killed him, but would it have been successful if he'd lived? Ryder believed the odds were poor. A chasm yawned between the races, both in Texas and across the country, had divided them for some two hundred and fifty years, and showed no sign of closing. Race, religion, the economy, and rage over the war were all tied up together in a strangling knot which, Ryder thought, might choke the South to death if nothing changed.

But could it change? Would it?

From what he'd seen of how free blacks were treated in the North, before the war and during, Ryder saw no reason to be optimistic.

Still nobody at the depot appeared to be a KRS lookout, and Ryder took his seat in the second of four passenger cars. Three other travelers were already seated when he arrived—one he pegged for a salesman, the other two clearly a mother and child. A final rider boarded as the warning whistle blew, a rangy man whose coat was a couple of sizes too large, slouched hat riding low on a minimal forehead, his thick mustache drooping almost to his chin on both sides of a straight, thin-lipped mouth. He barely glanced at anybody else inside the car and took a seat three rows in front of Ryder, on the left side of the aisle.

Someone to watch? Or just another Texan riding on the cheap from one point to another, one job to the next? Ryder decided not to borrow trouble on a guess, but kept his weapons handy when the train began to move at last, leaving the depot with a blast of steam and smoke that drove onlookers from the platform, hands and handkerchiefs raised to their faces.

Ryder waited till they cleared the city limits, then slouched back and closed his eyes to rest. Eleven hours,
minimum, before he reached his destination, and he couldn't say when he would have a chance to sleep again, in Jefferson. Other towns along the Eastern Texas line included Lufkin, Nacogdoches, Henderson, and Marshall, where the train would gain or unload passengers, say half an hour for each stop, to extend his time inside the railroad car. No time to grab a meal, but he'd make do.

A smooth ride was the best that he could hope for, and the odds of that were slim.

*   *   *

R
oy Coker lit a slim cheroot, eyes narrowing against its acrid smoke as he reread the telegram from Corpus Christi. It was from the Nueces County sheriff, filling Coker in on grim events that had occurred during the night.

REGRET TO INFORM YOU OF SERIOUS LOSS STOP CHAS TRUSCOTT AND OTHERS DECEASED STOP SEARCH FOR THOSE RESPONSIBLE CONTINUING STOP BE ON GUARD STOP

Coker scowled, crumpling the flimsy paper in his fist, and was about to drop it on the street when he thought better of discarding it, and tucked the telegram into his pocket. Careless errors could prove fatal, as he'd learned during the war.

He understood the friendly sheriff's need to be discreet. It wouldn't pay for an elected law enforcement officer to be caught fraternizing with a group of Rebel vigilantes, after all, no matter how the voters in his county felt about the Yankee occupation of their territory. Carpetbaggers and the bluecoats who supported them could build a case against him, probably remove him from office, perhaps lock him up on some kind of conspiracy charge.

The warning he'd received would have to do, for now. Coker would send a couple of his men to Corpus Christi on the next train out—quicker than riding, some four hundred miles overland, that could take them a week to arrive—if they weren't picked off in transit by redskins or border trash looking for drifters to rob.

In the meantime, he would have to wait and see what happened next.

“Search continuing” told Coker that the sheriff hadn't caught the man or men responsible for killing Truscott and his boys, however many might have fallen. Had the killers even been identified? Were warrants in the works for their arrest? It was the damned uncertainty that set his teeth on edge, like scouting in the wartime wilderness for Yankees, never knowing when the woods in front of you might blaze with musket fire and cut you down.

He had survived those years by guile, audacity—and, yes, a fair amount of luck. Shot twice, still carrying fragments of shrapnel from an artillery round in his scarred left thigh, Coker was a survivor. He'd overcome the limp—well, mostly—and it could have been a damn sight worse, if he'd been hit a few short inches to the right. That would have disappointed several women he could name, if he were not a gentleman.

Well, more or less.

There was a chance, though he regarded it as slim, that Truscott and his other men in Corpus Christi had embroiled themselves in something stupid and had died as a result. He couldn't put it past them, necessarily, but Coker had been cautious in selection of his field commanders, passing over slack-jawed yokels to select the kind of men who looked before they leaped, thought through a situation before taking any action that would be their own undoing. Granted, there were situations when you couldn't see too far ahead, but in
those situations you took stock, decided whether to proceed or not based on potential for success.