The Titans Page 18

  “Damn you,” Jeremiah said. “You had it after all.”

  Price’s blue-black face wrenched into a chilling smile.

  “Did you really think I didn’t, mister soldier? Or that I wouldn’t come back an’ use it?”

  Chapter III

  The Bummers

  i

  JEREMIAH TOOK A STEP toward Price. With his attention centered on the black man, he only heard the slither of metal on metal as Major Grace pulled his saber and extended his arm.

  “Hold on!”

  Jeremiah found himself blocked by the blade. The point touched his shirt. The major twisted the sword slightly. The point pierced cloth, pricking Jeremiah’s chest.

  With mock seriousness, the major added, “I can’t have you threatening one of our most valuable informants.”

  Furious, Jeremiah yearned to reach up and knock the saber aside. But if he did, he’d probably be gutted on the spot.

  Some of the cavalrymen snickered as he stood motionless. The laughter as much as called him a coward. Humiliated, he promised himself he’d get back at them—every one.

  Catherine appeared more shaken than he’d ever seen her. Her voice was barely audible as she spoke to the slave with the Enfield. “How could you do this? My husband always treated you decently. So did I.”

  Price’s brown eyes brimmed with animosity. “I don’ call bein’ kept as property decent treatment.”

  “But we always tried to take good care of our—”

  “Your little bitch stepdaughter took care of me, all right,” he broke in. “She took care of me with the whip, her an’ Leon. They tried to make me tell about this here gun.”

  “They did no such thing!”

  Price shrugged. “She never told you, that’s all. Miz Serena, she ain’t just mean, she’s a sneak.”

  “You foul-mouthed bastard!” Jeremiah cried. Only Ambrose Grace’s blade pressing into his breastbone kept him from lunging.

  “That’s enough,” Grace said to him. To Price: “You mean to say there’s another white female on these premises?”

  “Yes, sir. Mighty fetching little piece, too. She might strike your fancy,” the black added with a quick smile.

  “Have to look into that,” Grace murmured. Catherine fisted her hands. Jeremiah’s belly hurt.

  Grace gigged him again. “Would you kindly step back so I can dismount? I’d like to conduct our business as politely as possible.”

  Jeremiah didn’t budge. Grace frowned.

  “Now see here, Reb. If you don’t obey I’ll have to split you wide open. That’s a poor beginning for a friendly visit to this fine home.”

  “You aren’t setting foot inside my—” Catherine began.

  “We certainly are,” Grace interrupted. “Else this young man’s dead on the spot.”

  ii

  Catherine drew a deep breath.

  “You’d best do as he says, Jeremiah.”

  It was the surrender of Stock all over again—only this time the roles were degradingly reversed.

  For a moment he was unable to think clearly. He wanted to snatch the saber and turn it on the snide, smiling officer whose undipped hair straggled from beneath his hat to his frayed blue collar.

  “Jeremiah!”

  “No, Mrs. Rose. I’m not moving till we get a promise from this—gentleman that we’ll receive honorable treatment. You especially.”

  The Indiana cavalryman looked thunderstruck. “Honorable treatment? My God, you Rebs have brass! Fair treatment’s what you’ll get, boy. Fair treatment appropriate to your treason. You and your kind want to keep the niggers penned up ’till the trump of judgment blows. You tried to tear this nation apart to do it! You expect sweet forgiveness? Hasn’t it occurred to you that you’ll have to pay a penalty for your little adventure in rebellion?”

  “We paid the price in the field. We’re still paying it.”

  “Won’t come close to settling the debt. And I’ll dictate what happens around here, not you.”

  Grace exerted more pressure on the saber. “Now either stand back or we’ll dig you a nice grave.”

  “Jeremiah, please!” Catherine cried. “We’ll report this man to his commanding officer.”

  Another burst of laughter from the lounging riders. Grace shared it, then said, “Go right ahead. Lieutenant Colonel Fielder A. Jones. We haven’t met up with him for three days.” The major’s eyes pinned Jeremiah. “What’s it to be? I’ll give you about five more seconds.”

  White-lipped and feeling the worst sort of idiot for thinking he could reason with such a man, Jeremiah retreated.

  “Much better!” Major Grace slid his saber back in the scabbard and dismounted, asking Price, “Who is this pup? The woman’s son?”

  “No, sir. Some Reb who showed up a few days ago.”

  “Too yellow to stay and fight, were you? One skirmish and your hair turned white—typical of your side, I’d say.”

  Jeremiah’s cheeks darkened.

  “Price?”

  “Yessir, Major?”

  “You come indoors with us. We need your guidance to forage efficiently.” He addressed a mounted corporal: “Burks, locate General Skimmerhorn—immediately.”

  Jeremiah didn’t understand why some of the cavalrymen nudged one another until Grace explained to Catherine, “General Skimmerhorn is our forager-in-chief. I believe he came from one of General Howard’s infantry regiments. Quite a number of men have been wandering away from their units. Skimmerhorn and some others—ah—attached themselves to us. Up near Gordon, the local folk referred to them as bummers. I prefer to call ’em foragers. Skimmerhorn’s turned out to be so excellent at supervising them, I gave him an unofficial promotion. Private to general.”

  Grace talked as though he were making light conversation at a social gathering. He reached for Catherine’s arm to escort her inside. She pulled away, the mole beside her mouth stark black against her white skin.

  Grace chuckled in a tolerant way, continuing, “Have you heard what we did between Sparta and Gordon? The rebel plantations over there put up so much resistance, General Kilpatrick had us burn out every one of them. I trust the same thing won’t be required here. Of course we can’t display too much leniency. I’m not positive about Uncle Billy’s whereabouts, but if he and his headquarters guard were to come jaunting along that road tomorrow or the next day, I’d surely want them to see signs of a job properly done.”

  The threat was stated in a good-natured way. Grace concluded, “I sincerely hope you appreciate what you’re involved in, ma’am. A military masterpiece. That’s truly the only word for it—masterpiece. I predict people will marvel over it for generations.”

  Evidently Grace expected Catherine to agree. She was so dumbfounded, she couldn’t even speak.

  “Uncle Billy’s a genius. No other general would have the nerve to cross enemy country.”

  “I’m delighted to be informed that what you’re doing is a masterpiece,” Catherine replied with a withering look. “Otherwise I might have reached a mistaken conclusion that it was something much less grand. Vile, in fact. Disgusting and vile.”

  “Oh, I can appreciate how it looks from your side. But try to keep my view in mind. That way, we’ll have fewer problems. We surely don’t want problems of the sort we encountered around Gordon, do we?”

  Speechless again in the face of the smiling threats, Catherine turned and walked across the piazza. The major followed. He was distinctly bowlegged.

  Price went next, giving Jeremiah a sideways glance of amusement as he walked by. The black’s bare feet were caked with dried mud.

  The other troopers began to dismount. Down by the highway, half a dozen men were using hatchets to destroy a section of the fence, ignoring the gate and creating a wider entrance for the canvas-topped supply wagons.

  The dust raised by the cavalry horses was settling. Jeremiah was able to see the fields directly across the road. Men were still moving through them in ragged columns of fours. The line
s stretched all the way to the woodlands on his left. Somewhere a regimental band blared the old South Carolina hymn tune that had been transformed to “John Brown’s Body,” and then, with new lyrics by some Northern woman, into the hated “Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

  On the fringes of the marching companies smaller groups of men drifted, keeping to no particular formation. Some of these men were breaking away and heading toward Rosewood, whose fence was now being systematically smashed a length at a time.

  Jeremiah thought of the Kerr revolver in the attic. Much as he wished he had it right now, he didn’t intend to go after it with Yanks in the house.

  I must save it, he said to himself. Save it until I can make every one of those four balls count.

  iii

  In the sitting room, Price was plumping himself down in a wing chair as Jeremiah entered. The black drew up an ottoman and put his right foot on it. Tiny bits of mud fell on the embroidered fabric.

  Price stared at Catherine to see whether she’d react. Though she was still furious, she didn’t.

  “Now, ma’am,” Major Grace said, “we’ll be requisitioning supplies and equipment from you.”

  Nodding in a weary way, Catherine said, “I’ve heard that speech before. Within the last twenty-four hours, in fact.”

  Grace’s eyebrows raised. “Another unit stopped here?”

  “Much better looking and considerably more polite than yours?”

  The major’s voice lowered. “The less of that sort of talk, the safer you’ll be. Evidently I wasn’t sufficiently clear when I made the point outside.”

  “You were. Go on. Just have the decency to avoid words like requisitioning. Say what you mean. Stealing.”

  “Call it whatever you damn please, we plan to take most of your foodstuffs. We’ll leave a few kitchen implements, but we want all your cooking utensils. The War Department’s so tightfisted, we aren’t issued any. We’ll require every oven you have. Every skillet. Every coffee mill and coffeepot.”

  “That’s Sherman’s idea of a military masterpiece?” Jeremiah fumed. “Robbing homes of coffeepots?”

  Grace’s eyes nickered angrily. “Don’t feel sorry for yourself, Reb. You have no idea what war’s really like. Georgia has no idea! You think the people of this state are faring badly? Wait till we reach the state that first fired on the Federal flag. We have orders to reduce everything to ashes. Everything. Believe me, South Carolina will be made to feel the sin of secession much more than Georgia—unless a lack of cooperation here forces me to provide a sample of what’s in store for Charleston.”

  Alarmed, Jeremiah watched him stroll toward the horsehair sofa, still speaking harshly. “I suggest you limit your antagonistic remarks and consider yourselves fortunate.”

  “Fortunate?” Catherine exclaimed. “Your gall is absolutely—”

  Before the confrontation could grow any hotter, there was a diversion—Serena’s sudden appearance in the hall, yawning.

  “I was trying to nap but I heard a fearful—Oh, my God!”

  A single glance took in Price’s foot on the ottoman, and Grace’s uniform as he pivoted toward her. The major greeted her with an insincere grin.

  “Good day, ma’am. I haven’t had the pleasure.”

  He swept off his hat. His long, dirty hair began as a fringe midway down the sides and back of his head. Above, he was bald.

  “Ambrose Grace. Major, United States Cavalry.”

  “My—my stepdaughter Serena,” Catherine said with effort.

  Grace licked his lips. His eyes slid to the bodice of Serena’s dress. Jeremiah was barely able to stand still.

  “Charming child. Lovely. We don’t raise them one bit handsomer in Indiana. However”—a falsely rueful expression—“we’re here on business, not to be social.”

  Slapping dust from his hat, he sprawled on the horsehair sofa, which gave off a series of jingling sounds.

  Grace sat upright, blinking. “What’s this? A musical sofa?”

  “’Spect they hid stuff in there,” Price remarked. “Like I said, they been hidin’ it all over.”

  “Let’s find out, shall we?”

  Grace rose and drew his saber. With two crisscrossing strokes he slashed the sofa’s back. Catherine pressed her hand to her mouth as he reached into the opening and began flinging handfuls of stuffing and silver on the carpet.

  Boots thudded in the hall. Serena darted aside as a man stomped in—the most appallingly unclean human being Jeremiah Kent had ever seen, or smelled.

  “General Skimmerhorn reportin’ for duty, Major.”

  “Just in time! Here’s a trove for you.”

  Six more pieces of silver clattered on the rug. Jeremiah couldn’t take his eyes off the odd, hulking creature Grace had characterized as his forager-in-chief. If the bearded, broad-shouldered Skimmerhorn had ever belonged to a military unit, it was impossible to tell. He wore a bizarre collection of stolen and improvised apparel. A black stovepipe hat. A coat stitched together from four contrasting sections of Oriental carpeting. Gray trousers with one knee torn out, and each leg decorated with the red stripe of the Confederate artillery. Cracked work shoes with the tips gone and grimy toes showing. In his right hand he held a gunny sack.

  Under Skimmerhorn’s coat Jeremiah saw a Navy Colt, and tied to his belt by thongs, two souvenirs of his work: a small skillet and a dead chicken with its neck wrung.

  General Skimmerhorn gave Serena an appraising look, then turned his attention to his superior. Grace gestured.

  “You may have all this silver as your reward for supervising the foraging.”

  “Yes, sir—thankee!” Skimmerhorn crouched and began to grab knives and spoons and shove them into the sack.

  Catherine rushed forward at the sound of boisterous men in the hallway. There were half a dozen, two in uniform, four in civilian clothing. They pushed and shoved to be first up the stairs.

  “Where are they going?” Catherine demanded of the major.

  “Why, to forage.”

  “They have no authority.”

  “Indeed, they do.” The major slapped the hilt of his saber. “This.”

  The men vanished. Serena looked nearly as distraught as her stepmother. A few seconds later, there was a crash from the second floor.

  At the back of the house, Maum Isabella cried out as a door splintered. The cry was followed by a horrendous clatter of crockery breaking.

  “Now,” Grace said to Price, “what else should we be searching for?”

  “They’s a clearing back in the pines where they put a lot of things. Mules. A wagon—”

  “You followed us!” Jeremiah whispered. “It was you I heard in the brush!”

  “That’s right, mister soldier.” Price grinned. But the smile didn’t reach his eyes.

  He hates me and he’s going to kill me, Jeremiah thought. He’s liable to kill us all before this is over.

  Price described the contents of the cache in the clearing. When he finished, Grace asked, “Catch that, Skimmerhorn?”

  “Most of it,” the forager replied in a phlegmy voice.

  He shoved the last pieces of silver in his sack, hawked, and blew a gob of spit on the carpet.

  “We’ll confiscate the cotton, kersey, and denim cloth,” Grace advised him. “If the clock’s fancy like the nigger says, I’ll keep it for myself.” Price didn’t seem annoyed at being referred to as a nigger by the Union officer. “Could use a good clock in the feed store back in Vincennes. Turn the wagon and mules, over to the wagon master. Mix some kerosene with the molasses. Oh, and don’t forget kerosene in the well when we’re ready to go.”

  “Jesus!”

  Grace glanced at Jeremiah. “What’s wrong, Reb? Did you expect us to leave you amply provisioned? You still don’t understand Uncle Billy’s style of fighting. He makes war for a double purpose—I’ve heard him say so. First he fights to gain physical results and second, to inspire respect. Respect for—”

  Price snapped his fin
gers. “Major?”

  “What?”

  “Jus’ remembered. They put salt an’ flour in the ground out behind the slaves’ graveyard. Two barrels of each. I can show you where.”

  “Excellent. Dig them up, General. Kerosene in those too.”

  “And mebbe a little piss to spice it?” Skimmerhorn asked, scratching his gray-streaked auburn beard with a hand on which an open sore glistened.

  Grace shrugged. “You’re in charge.”

  “I’ll see to it.” Skimmerhorn tipped his stovepipe and ambled out with the sack over one shoulder.

  A man came clattering down the stairs and burst into the room wearing a lacy, ivory-colored gown over his uniform.

  “Lordy, Major, lookit! First time I ever been a bride!”

  “Absolutely stunning,” Grace chuckled.

  Catherine lunged.

  “That’s my wedding dress!”

  Grace shoved her back. “Union property now.” He held her wrist until she realized she wasn’t strong enough to break loose. When she ceased struggling, he let her go with another warning.

  “Your outbursts are going to make this genuinely unpleasant, ma’am.”

  “It couldn’t be any more unpleasant than it already is. You’re filth!”

  Grace turned scarlet. Lifted his hand to hit her, but managed to restrain himself. His voice shook.

  “I personally am going to conduct the search for arms and ammunition. Give me your keys.”

  Catherine stared at him, her lips moving without sound. Grace raked a palm across his hairless skull. “Goddamn it, I’m losing patience! Your keys!”

  “I—I have them put away in a private place. I’ll have to retire to get them.”

  “What private place?”

  Now it was her turn to redden.

  “I said, what private place?”

  “On”—Jeremiah could barely hear her—“on my person.”

  “Oh.” Grace brightened again. “Well, this is wartime. We’re forced to overlook the niceties. Get them out.”

  “Not in front of—not while everyone’s—?”