Unholy Fire (21 page)

The teamster was looking back at the mass of men we had just come through, his face a pasty yellow. I saw his lips moving, but no sound came out as he urged the horses into motion. The young lieutenant stepped forward, giving us an offhand salute. He was about my age, with corn-colored hair and startlingly blue eyes.

“Lieutenant Hanks … temporarily assigned to the provost marshal,” he said. “These were all the men I could scare up on short notice. I have another ten inside covering the doors and windows.”

“You did well, Lieutenant,” said Val.

“Give 'em up, you nigger-lovin' sons a bitches!” shouted one of the men behind the post-and-rail fence. The soldiers around him took up the same call. I watched as one of them, bolder than the rest, began climbing over the top rail.

“Two steps forward!” shouted Lieutenant Hanks, and the single rank of guards advanced, their bayonets extended at chest height. The man quickly crawled back behind the fence.

“I will need ten minutes, Lieutenant,” said Val.

The blond officer tossed his cigarette to the ground and carefully crushed it with his boot.

“I just hope it's important, Colonel,” he said with a lazy grin. “A man could get his pants mussed here.”

“One of the Negroes inside is our only witness to a murder last night,” said Val. “He and his son are innocent of any wrongdoing.”

Lieutenant Hanks stared at him earnestly for a moment. Then he said, “Well … don't much like a mob anyway.”

“Can we get them out from the other side of the house?” asked Val. With his back to the mob, the lieutenant gestured toward a thick line of six-foot-high boxwood shrubbery that extended out from each wing of the overseer's cottage. From the left end, it ran about fifty feet to a brick carriage shed and a large woodpile. The section on the other side connected the cottage to a small brick summer kitchen.

“Those boxwoods effectively divide the mob,” he said, “but the last time I looked, there were already a hundred men gathered at the back of the house.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a large rock come sailing toward us through the air like a mortar shell. It fell harmlessly to the ground, but another quickly followed, smashing through one of the downstairs windows.

The mob erupted with a bellowing, almost feral roar. As it rose to a deafening wave of noise, I saw the fence rails bulge toward us as the men farther back in the mass pressed forward, driving those in the front rank toward the line of bayonets.

Lieutenant Hanks shouted an order to his men. They raised their rifles to the sky and fired a ragged volley. In its wake the tumultuous roar slowly subsided to a dull clamor.

“Are you going to try to parley with them, Colonel?” asked Hanks.

“There is no one to parley with,” said Val, surveying the crowd. “They are no longer men.”

With one last intimidating glare, he pivoted on his heel and strode toward the front door of the cottage. As soon as we were inside, a guard barred the door behind us. Mr. Beecham was standing with his son in the doorway to the parlor. He took hold of my arm as I went past.

“They will be coming soon,” I said, trying to avoid his eyes. I did not want him to see the utter hopelessness I felt at what was about to happen.

“I know that,” he responded, his voice strained. “Captain, I do not care what happens to me … but Daniel … he has never known … he has had no chance to live.”

His black eyes gazed into mine, completely bottomless.

“We will try,” I said.

I followed Val up the stairs to the second floor. The large rear window in the center hall gave us a good view of the terrain at the back of the house. A large vegetable garden, its evenly furrowed rows still crowded with the detritus of the fall season, filled the expanse directly behind the cottage. It was bordered on each side by parallel mounds of small field stones that had been cleared from the garden patch.

The cultivated area extended away from the house about twenty yards toward a long, trellised rose arbor that bordered another farm lane. Beyond the lane a large rocky field led off to a copse of mature elm and maple trees. From off to the right, our coach came slowly into view and stopped in the middle of the muddy lane. A half-dozen soldiers quickly surrounded it.

By then there were about two hundred men behind the house. Most of them were clustered near the back door. The rest were standing near the lines of boxwoods so that they could keep track of what was happening in the front.

Val pointed to the stationary coach.

“That is our only chance of getting them out of here,” he said, “but not where it is now. The men down there would overwhelm us as soon as we headed for it.”

As we watched the soldiers around the coach began drifting back toward the cottage. One of them stayed behind. He climbed up on the box with the teamster and began shouting.

“I want you to take the coach across the field and into that tree line,” said Val, pointing at the elm and maple stand a hundred yards across the field. “Once you're into those trees, stop there and wait for us. Don't draw any attention to yourself or attempt to come back toward the house. You must wait for us to bring them to you.”

I nodded.

“In the meantime, I'll try to create a diversion in the front. Hopefully, it will draw some of the men away from the garden before we bring them out. If we can make it to the open field, we'll have a chance.”

We were walking back toward the front stairs when several rifle shots rang out in quick succession. The guard covering the hall window spun backward and dropped heavily to the floor in front of us. As Val knelt beside him, I looked through the shattered window frame.

The rage of the mob became a living thing.

With a roar that filled my ears like a buffeting wind, it surged forward in a monstrous wave, smashing the post-and-rail fence and flooding into the yard.

The line of men commanded by Lieutenant Hanks never moved from their positions. I saw one of them thrust his bayonet into the chest of a man at the head of the mob. They were both swallowed up an instant later. Another guard wildly swung the butt of his rifle before he too, disappeared.

Lieutenant Hanks stood alone before them. Although it was useless to resist, he raised his pistol at the oncoming mass and fired twice before being dragged backward in the crush. He was still striking out at the men swarming around him when his blond head vanished into the maelstrom.

The house actually shuddered as the blue tide slammed into the front wall of the building. I watched as a raw log, maybe ten feet long and a foot wide, was passed above the crowd to the soldiers nearest the front door. There was a great thudding sound as it pounded into the oak frame.

Pulling out my pistol, I fired into the mass of men around the log. One of them dropped from sight but was immediately replaced by another. Then Val was pulling me toward the back of the house.

“Before I bring the Beechams out, I will have our men fire a volley from the rear windows to scatter them right and left,” he said, swinging open a casement window that faced onto the garden. “That will hopefully clear a path for us. Once they are with you in the coach, head for Sam's headquarters.”

I nodded and shook his hand.

“Good luck,” I said, forcing myself to smile.

“And to you, my son,” he said, grasping my elbow.

Feet first, I dropped from the second-story window to the ground below. Several of the men in the garden took up a shout, but the others must have decided I was no more than a rat deserting the sinking ship. They didn't interfere with me.

I ran to the coach. The teamster had disappeared, but he had left the reins tied around the whipstock. Climbing onto the box, I urged the horses forward, and the crowd of men ringing the garden parted to let me through. I kept going until I arrived at the stand of elms and then continued ten feet inside the tree line before reining up.

As I turned to look back at the cottage, a volley of shots rang out from the rear windows. Just as Val had surmised, the men in the garden scattered toward the protection offered by the mounds of cleared field stones that bordered it.

A few seconds later, the rear door burst open and soldiers started pouring out of the house, their rifles at port arms. There were six of them and they formed up in two lines of three. Val came next with the Beechams right behind him. Moving in a rough square, they began to come on at a run across the garden. Sitting helpless in the wagon, I could feel the brutal pounding of my heart.

A great clamor went up from the men at the back of the cottage, and within seconds, the horde still in front began smashing through the boxwood shrubs to join in the pursuit.

“You're too late, you bastards!” I screamed, seeing the start that Val and the others had already achieved.

What he hadn't counted on were the loose field stones that bordered the garden. The men who had taken shelter behind the mounds immediately started hurling them like missiles at the fleeing figures, and their flight through the garden became a bloody gauntlet. Two of the guards went down in the first hail of rocks, dropping like deadweight. Another staggered and fell as the group reached the end of the garden.

A line of soldiers stood waiting for the fleeing men at the edge of the farm lane. Val headed straight for the center of the line, sending two of them flying and clearing a space for the Beechams to break through behind him. As Mr. Beecham knocked down one of the soldiers with his fists, I could hear him shouting at Daniel to run ahead. Even then nothing could have stopped the boy from reaching me, but he refused to leave his father. Together they started toward me on the run as Val and the three remaining guards continued to battle the men at the lane. I watched as the monstrous blue tide swept over them.

Mr. Beecham and Daniel were now only fifty yards away from me, but the fastest of the pursuers in the mob had closed the gap behind them to less than twenty feet. I could see from the angle of pursuit that it would be a close call. The reins were taut in my right hand, and I held the whip in my left, ready to lash the horses forward as soon as they were safely in the coach.

Daniel could run very fast. He would race ahead of his father, turn to see him lagging behind, and then slow down to wait for him to catch up. With each yard Mr. Beecham labored harder, his chest heaving as he tried to keep his legs plunging forward. With only ten yards to go, he looked up and saw me waiting in the coach just inside the tree line.

“You can make it!” I yelled. Gritting his teeth, he nodded and came on again, lunging through the snow. Daniel was already at the tree line when Mr. Beecham lost his footing for the last time and went down.

Daniel gazed up at me in the coach and then back at his father.

“No!” I cried as he started running back. Reaching his father in three steps, he leant down and helped him to his knees.

“Run, baby!” I heard Mr. Beecham cry. “Oh, God, run!”

He tried to shove the boy toward the wagon, but by then, the fastest pursuers had caught up. I saw Daniel embrace his father just as the rest of the pack engulfed them.

Leaping from the coach, I pulled my pistol from its holster and ran toward the writhing mass of bodies. They had already dragged Daniel to his feet and were raising him aloft like a sack of grain, the upstretched arms of the mob passing him forward toward the stand of elm trees.

“Let him go!” I shouted, cocking my pistol and aiming it at the man who was holding his leg. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw someone coming up on my right. A sudden blossom of pain exploded at my right temple, and I felt myself falling forward.

I was on my knees and holding onto the man's waist with both hands when something struck me in the back of my neck and I slid down to the ground. Although I did not fully lose consciousness, I could no longer move. I was vaguely aware of men stepping on my legs and back as the mob surged around me.

I felt a sickening pain on the right side of my head, although the icy ground was soothing where my cheek lay flush against it. Legs and boots continued to flail in front of me, and I heard inarticulate shouting followed by the wild, frantic trumpeting of a horse. The sounds all seemed to echo down to me through a long tunnel.

The cataract of noise ended abruptly. There was a moment of silence followed by a long roar of exultation. It ended when a shot rang out, quickly followed by another. Suddenly, there was a tumult of slashing feet and legs. I was kicked again, and someone fell sprawling over me. More shots were fired. I could hear the mob running.

The pounding of their boots slowly ebbed away.

Raising my cheek from the frozen ground, I saw a mounted squadron of cavalry slowly riding toward me from the direction of the cottage. The rider in front was carrying a carbine across his saddle.

I slowly rolled over on my back.

Daniel and his father remained as close together in death as they had been in life, side by side. They were hanging from the same limb of the largest elm tree. A thin stream of blood was flowing out of Daniel's eyes and nose.

Two dead soldiers lay spread-eagled on the ground beneath them. The face of the one closest to me was canted in my direction. There was a small black-and-blue hole over his right eye where a bullet had entered.

“You got two of them, Frank,” I heard one of the cavalrymen call out as they dismounted.

“Evens the score some,” came the gravelly reply.

They cut the bodies down from the tree and dropped them on the ground.

When the dizziness finally passed, I regained my feet and slowly walked back to the cottage. The ground around the building looked like a battlefield that had been raked by artillery fire. All the windows in the cottage were smashed. The front door lay shattered inside its torn-off frame.

I looked for Lieutenant Hanks among the dead men in the front yard, but he wasn't there.

I found Val lying on his back on the glass-littered floor of the front parlor. A surgeon was dressing a terrible gash on his forehead. His shirt linen was soaked in blood, and he appeared to be unconscious.