West Of The War Read online

  West Of The War

  L.J. Martin

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Get Your FREE Ebook

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  About the Author

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  Other Works by L. J. Martin

  West of The War

  by

  L. J. Martin

  Kindle Edition

  © Copyright 2016 L. J. Martin

  Wolfpack Publishing

  48 Rock Creek Road.

  Clinton, Montana 59825

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, other than brief quotes for reviews.

  ISBN: 978-1-62918-952-9

  Dedicated to

  the many thousands who died

  forging west to find new hope

  In a new land

  Dedicated to

  the many thousands who died

  forging west to find new hope

  In a new land

  Get Your FREE Ebook

  Join L.J. Martin’s Mailing List for information on new releases, updates, discount offers and a copy of The Repairman, free.

  Chapter 1

  We’ve done our level best to stay out of it, but the rumble of cannon in the distance—a quiet ominous growl most often, enough to rattle your backbone at times—means we’re in the path of something well beyond the control of some simple farm folk.

  It seems the noose is tightening around all our necks.

  The big Mo rolls yellow and muddy almost due north and south in our part of the country, except for a big bend, a bulge to the east then back west, that surrounds our home place—a section of rich Missouri bottom land circled on three sides by the river. Eight more sections of the McTavish farm lay to the west rising up to over two hundred feet above mean water level. The black bottomland is crossed by a slough and sometimes two or three, depending on how high the Missouri runs. Pa had tried to grow rice there a time or two, but the water level is too unpredictable, so just two years ago we planted a small grove of pecans as it's said they like their feet in the water.

  The little trading post of Arrow Rock is to the south of us, run by an abolitionist son-of-a-bitch whom we know cannot be trusted—he's against slavery but beats his two daughters mercilessly, and one of them has her majority. Our thirty nigras have been with my family since long before I was born when they were but a dozen, three generations now, and my father treats them as fairly as a man who is considered owner and overseer could be expected to, as had my grandfather...we'd only had one occasion to run a man down with the dogs in the last dozen years. Rather than put the whip to him my daddy sold him cheap to a neighbor of good reputation.

  Raymond, whose sister and parents are still with us, was a mighty light-footed African who could run like a gazelle and damn near did our red bones in with the chase. He'd heard of others being freed here and there across the state so I guess that put the rabbit into him. Ray is my age, and he and his younger sister, Pearl—as fine a specimen of a female as there is in Missouri, black or white—and I had spent many a hot summer's day gigging carp in the shallows, catching catfish with cane poles, or trapping crayfish.

  As we grew older, Pearl had aroused more than merely my interest, but it was a cardinal sin in my family to risk mixing blood. So I concerned myself with other matters, no matter the occasional strain on my trousers.

  I had spoken up against my daddy selling Ray, but to no avail. I still considered him my friend, rabbit or not. Then I'd convinced pa to sell to a kindly owner rather than one who'd offered almost five hundred dollars more. Daddy called me a damn fool, and maybe I am, but I'll live with it, and hope Ray will live...period.

  Even the fact he'd been sold rather than whipped had caused some consternation among our darkies, but the ruckus soon settled and we were back to business as usual, growing cotton and lots of vegetables and fruit—stone fruit and melons—which we sent downriver to St. Louis.

  But all that seems soon to change.

  The distant boom of cannons is rolling upriver from the south, an ominous rumble, where the Union Army is head to head with General "Ol' Pap" Sterling Price and the Missouri State Guard, as fine a group of boys in butternut as were ever bunched up under one command...or so the word has come to us.

  How-some-ever, they've had their hands full as many of them are fighting with shotguns and squirrel guns and only one pair of cannon against new Spencers with bayonets and a dozen or more big guns.

  I am not surprised that Mr. Lincoln and his cohorts in the north plan to keep those of us below the Mason Dixon line in the fold, as being a cotton grower, albeit a very small one, I am well aware that the south grows two thirds of all the world’s cotton production. And that makes the south the fourth largest economy in the world—even without the industrial might of the north. The north won’t let that slide away. They run their mouths off about slavery, and I’m sure it’s true they won’t abide by new territories becoming slave states as they’d lose the majority in Congress…but to me it’s clear it’s money that girds their good consciences.

  My daddy, Rutherford Jefferson McTavish, Rut to his friends, has held me back from saddling up to ride to join the guard, saying I was needed on the place to defend us from the abolitionists who would gladly burn the big house, the barns, and even the nigra quarters, down around our ears, given the chance...and have done so to neighbors.

  Missouri is a mishmash of secessionists and abolitionists, where a fellow could have one on either side of himself and not know which was which. Quantrill and his Lieutenant Bloody Bill Anderson are running wild across the country and Colonel John C. Mosby is earning a reputation as the gray ghost of the Confederacy and is said to run like a race horse and double back like a fox.

  Many of my friends, most all of whom are sixteen years of age or older, have ridden off to join up, most with the south, but a few with the north. Confederate Colonel Nathan Bedford Forrest put out a notice, "I wish none of you but those who want to be actively engaged. COME ON BOYS, IF YOU WANT A HEAP OF FUN AND TO KILL SOME YANKEES." And he got plenty of takers.

  At past eighteen I was looked at askance by many for not joining up, and I am not fond of the implications.

  But there is plenty of work on the farm. It is fall and the cotton is in. All of us, the darkies, daddy, and me are in the barn picking seed from the fiber, cleaning away the leaves and trash, rolling fiber into bales, and binding them with burlap—when the pounding of shod horses rings through the barn doors. More'n a dozen of them by the clatter. The pounding of hoofs sends a chill up my back, although I've been expecting it. I say a silent prayer it's boys in butternut.

  I kick my way through trash to the doors, but my father pushes by me, "Stay inside, Braden, should worse come to worse, beat a trail and don't look back," he commands. And I know he means it as he normally calls me Brad. I can see out, and the worst has come to pass.

  Bluebellys.

/>   My daddy keeps a shotgun charged and ready on a high rack over the smaller pass-through barn door, but I'm glad when he doesn't reach for it on the way out into the yard. The odds are insurmountable.

  I follow as far as the pass-through and stand beneath the old gun. My pa has at one time or another taken a job as auctioneer, and can talk like no other so I have high hopes that talk is all this will come to.

  "And who might you be?" Pa asks, hands on hips, voice not exactly warm and inviting.

  An officer in the lead answers, "I, sir, am Captain Alfred P. Doolan, under the command of General Nathaniel Lyon. And you, sir, are a secessionist son-of-a-she-dog and we're here to set your slaves free and to hang you, should you resist. Where's your root cellar as we will relieve you of your stores. And we're to requisition all the mules on the place." Only then do I notice a buckboard in the background.

  I can see daddy blanch a little, his back straighten, and his shoulders go back as the red headed Union captain glowers at him. We will not make it through winter without our root cellar being full, and the mules are the heart of the place. Through clinched jaw, he snaps back at the mounted captain, "My....The darkies are all freemen and here by choice."

  From near my shoulder, Pearl, the sister of Raymond, the boy who'd run, yells out. "No sur, that ain't right. No matter what this masser says to you, we ain't free."

  The captain, too, straightens his shoulders, then turns to a mounted sergeant at his side. "Hang the lying son-of-a-bitch."

  Then Pearl pushes by me. "No, no, I didn't mean that there. He been kind to us...is jus we ain't free." Her eyes flare wide, and a fist comes to her mouth, shocked at what she's done.

  A half dozen of the bluebelly boys dismount and are heading for my Pa, who is backing up as his gaze cuts from one to another. One of them carries a coil of line over his shoulder.

  My stomach knots and feels as if a dozen prairie rattlers are nesting and gnawing there.

  When Pearl had pushed me aside I heard my mama scream from the big house, a scream like I've never heard from her. One that floods my backbone with anger and flushes my cheeks. I have to go up on my tiptoes to gather up the shotgun. "Damn you, Pearly," I stammer as I bring the old coach gun down. She looks as if she's about to chew a knuckle off.

  Just as the thick-necked corporal with the rope reaches for my pa—a strange hunger in the bluebelly's eyes and ghoulish grin on his wide face—I am into the space between the double doors, cocked and shouldered, my jaws clamped. The scattergun roars, bucks, and billows white smoke, and blows the old boy back into the yard onto his back with a thump that raises dust. A blossom of blood gurgles on his chest from one side to the other. I turn quickly on the captain intent on blowing the head off the snake and sending the body scampering.

  Cocking the second barrel as she comes back from the recoil, and as Captain bluebelly jerks rein and spins away, I give him a blast that flattens him face-first across the big gray's neck. The horse side-hops and humps into the other troopers, giving me a moment's reprieve as they have to control their mounts. Pearl dives to the side and to her belly, covering head with both arms as if we're under cannon attack. The doors around me begin to splinter as the troop opens up with Remington side-arms and their big bore cap and balls—and billowing gun smoke, to my advantage, suddenly occludes all seeing. The darkies behind me dive behind bales and into piles of loose bolls and fiber as the barn fills with lead hornets.

  It is time for me to abide by my father's wishes and show them my tail, like a bobwhite taking wing, and I do so, flinging the shotgun aside as it's now useless. I'm deep into the barn, then through the mules stall and into their corral, scattering the four of them, and then I throw the rails aside and hope they'll follow my lead...and am into the corn, now gone brown with fall upon us. The corn cuts at me as I pound between the tight rows, luckily we'd had a good stand, at least a head taller than myself, and I'm near six feet. But I hunker low as the lead continues to fly, cutting stalks to either side, and rather than run straight down the rows—which I figure my pursuers will presume—after a hundred yards I cut to the side. If I can make it another two hundred yards, the first of the sloughs will offer me shelter among the bulrushes then into the water if I must.

  There's a fall chill on the land, and I'm dressed in a long sleeve Tartan patterned flannel shirt that's badly frayed from the elbows down, my trousers are ripped and torn above the ankle, and my brogans worn through on the sides are little better...work clothes. They offer paltry protection from the sharp corn or the oncoming cold. But I don't hesitate as I plunge into the rushes then through them and dive deeply into the slough, coming up spitting and sucking air, then turning downstream I let the current help in my escape. I can hear horses neighing and snorting behind me as their sharp shod hoofs sink into the mud and they complain. But the bulrushes hide me from prodding barrels.

  Only then do I reckon that I've left my home and family to the hands of a bunch of bluebellys who have the worst in mind.

  After a mile or so riding a bobbing foot-thick hunk of cottonwood through the slough and into the main river, I cast off it and swim the two hundred feet to the shore, now lined with a dense thicket of river willows. I know of a high spot in our fields that's a half-mile or a little more from the houses and barns and head that way at a trot. The hell of it is, it's in the center of a half section of cotton stalks and they are almost leafless having been picked and abandoned to the winter, and not tall enough to offer cover to a bony coyote, much less a man. I work my way back, then along a deep slough now gone dry which I know circles behind the rise. I'm up and out of it when I reach a spot where the rise is between me and the home place, and do the belly crawl the last thirty feet to the crown of the little hill where, from a distance, my head appears no bigger than a dirt clod.

  The sun is just kissing the treetops to the west, so it will be dark soon. But there's plenty of light in our compound of buildings, as all of them, other than the slave quarters, are afire and flames are beginning to leap twice the height of the barn from its conflagration. And I can see the huge piles of raw cotton next to the barn as they go up in flame. The damn fools have burned a year's worth of work, what will end up...would have ended up...to be more than a hundred bales of fine long fiber cotton. Our yield, we figured, was a bale and a half to the acre, and we had a hundred twenty acres under plow.

  Then I'm ashamed of myself as I don't know the fate of what's far more important...my father and mother, and yes, Pearl and the rest of our darkies. It will soon be dark, but the hell of it is I cannot see into the farmyard as the tall corn is between me and that target. I'll have to wait until darkness, and get in and out before moonrise.

  I'm not hunkered down in the cotton stalks long before I see the column of men on the road between my perch and the river as they pass across a narrow slough at a trot, followed by the buckboard now piled high with hams, pork bellies, potatoes, carrots, and other goods from our smokehouse and cellars. Then I'm a little surprised to see a column of darkies, side by side, hustling along behind. It seems our slaves now consider themselves freemen.

  Bluebellys. The rotten no-account bastards.

  As soon as they're out of sight, I go ahead and move at a rapid walk. I'm almost overrun by a pair of our hogs, leading a half-dozen shoats, I imagine escaping the heat of the farmyard. Following them, only a heart-beat behind, is our four mules—Molly, Mac, Gerty, and Bean, and I'm glad they run free and are not enlisted in the Union Army. As I near buildings I can see where the mules have stomped the corn down. I guess they did follow me and am now proud I thought to slide the rails.

  By the time I'm at the edge of the corn and shuffling through a pile of shucks and can see into the yard, it's almost full dark but the remaining flames give me plenty of light. We have a half-dozen darky cabins still standing and I move to the rear of them, and carefully pick my way between. The bluebellys could have left a small contingent of guards, but I doubt it.

  I’ve got to get int
o the house, but it’s still burning and even if I could get there, everything would be so hot to the touch I couldn’t recover what I hope is still there.

  As I near the farmyard between house—now a stand of fallen, glowing, and burnt timbers—and barn, still aflame as the cotton will burn and smolder for days, I see a body swinging from the branch of a huge cottonwood that's shaded our house for as long as I can remember.

  And not a sign of life anywhere.

  I run across the yard and hoist my daddy up by the legs, but from his bulging eyes and slightly distended tongue I know he's met his maker. The side of him nearest the house is blackened and his clothes burned to tatters. Skin off his blistered legs comes off on my arms. I back away, madly trying to get the gore off of me. The bile rises in my throat and heat floods my backbone at the same time. I'm sickened and incensed by the sight and smell of my father's remains.

  It’s a horrid sight and searing odor that will haunt my dreams to eternity.

  For the first time in all her sixteen years, I hate Pearl to the core.

  Deciding to cut him down later, I move away, as my mother is yet to be found, and I pray for her survival. I search every nook and cranny, and would poke through the ashes of the house, but it's still too hot to get near the smoldering timbers or still burning barn. Or to what I’m sure no one has found.

  Then, over the crackling and occasional roaring remnants of fire, I hear hoof beats and the rattle of sabers.

  It's time to turn tail again. My ma and Pearl, who works in the house, have the lines full of clothes and I grab a pair of hot-to-the-touch trousers and two more shirts as I sprint by.

  I'm leaving my daddy swinging from a tree to have his eyes picked by the crows; my mama, I'm sure, a pile of ashes in her own home of forty years...and everything I've ever known.