Heaven and Hell (91 page)

"Come on out, niggers. You stay in there, you're going to die."

Madeline recognized the voice of Gettys. Andy flung the globe at the side window, breaking it. The distraction drew a volley of fire on that side of the building. Andy used the cover of the noise to break the back window with his lawbook. He pushed Madeline again. "Hurry up!"

Jane hung behind, tears tracking down her cheeks. She knew what might happen if he ran for help. Her dark eyes begged him silently. His refused her. He gave her a swift kiss on her cheek and said his parting
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words:

"Don't forget I love you. Now go on."

Madeline climbed through the window. Then Prudence lifted Esau through the jagged opening, and Madeline lowered him to the ground.

Andy jumped through the side window and ran into the dark, arms pumping.

A Klansman yelled, "There goes one." Horses whinnied. At least two went pounding in pursuit. The sound of three gunshots rolled back through the night, overlapping, reverberating. Jane had just jumped to the ground after Prudence. She gave one terrible short scream of grief and pain. She knew he was dead.

"The dynamite," someone shouted in front.

"Lit," someone else yelled. Something thumped inside and rolled on the floor. Above the glass sawtooths in the lower window frame-, a snaky line of smoke rose.

Madeline pushed Prudence and dragged Esau. "Get away from the building. Run."

"Which way?" Prudence gasped.

"Straight ahead," Madeline said, pulling the boy. Straight ahead lay a heavy belt of water oaks with spiny yucca growing between. If they could break through that, they'd reach the marsh. The path across was solid but narrow; difficult to find and follow even in daylight. It would take luck and the bright moon for a successful escape.

"Hold hands," she said, groping and finding Prudence's pudgy fingers, cold and damp with her fear. With her other hand, Madeline hurried Esau into the darkness that rose like a wall behind the school.

Low-growing yuccas stabbed her legs. Spanish moss caressed her 576 HEAVEN AND HELL

face like threatening hands. She saw nothing ahead, no light-glossed waters of the marsh. She'd forgotten how thick and deep the woods were.

Esau began to cry. Behind them, a fiery cavern opened in the night, spilling red light over them. They felt the concussion as the dynamite blew the school walls outward and the roof upward. Madeline saw half a desk sail up through the fiery glare as if it were the lightest of balloons. They ran on, hearing the triumphant yells and hoots of the Klansmen.

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Madeline ran faster. A pain spread outward from the center of her breasts as she breathed with greater and greater difficulty. The school was gone. Andy was gone.

Prudence was weeping. "I can't go any

faster, I can't."

"If you don't we'll all die." With a surge of effort, Madeline ran through a patch of burrs that ripped her hem and scraped her ankles like tiny spurs. But they were through the trees--through and standing in shallow water with the moonlit salt marsh spread before them.

She pushed a fist into her breast, trying to stop the pain. She scanned the marsh, searching tor the path over to Summerton. She'd taken it often, but always in daylight, and now, badly scared, she had trouble remembering where it was. The moon-dazzle on the water and the reed thickets confused her all the more.

"They're coming," Jane whispered. Madeline heard them.

"This way." She started across a muddy space, praying her memory wouldn't mislead her.

Two dismounted Klansmen dragged Andy's body from the dark to the firelight. The back of his head was gone, and his shirt was soaked dark red from collar to waist. Des looked at the body, then snatched off his hood as he ran around the burning ruins of the school.

"I saw them run into the trees." He waved in that direction with his old four-pound Walker Colt.

"I'll come with you," Gettys said from behind his hood. His soft white gentleman's hands looked incongruous clutching a shiny pump gun.

"You stay here and take charge of the others. Some of those nigger militia boys may show up. If you have to retreat, disband and scatter."

"Des--"

Gettys whined it like a child denied a toy--"I've waited nearly as long as you to exterminate that mongrel woman. I've just as much right--"

Des jammed the old Walker's muzzle under Gettys's chin, twisting the fabric of his hood. "You have no rights. I'm in charge." He had to The Hanging Road 577

hurry; the white was flickering at the borders of his mind. He didn't want another spell to knock him out and cheat him of success. And
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there was Tillman's warning.

Gettys was stubborn. He started to protest again. Des flung his pistol hand back, then forward, bashing Gettys's hood so hard the storekeeper nearly fell over. Gettys saw the demented glaze of Des's eyes.

With that pale trident in his carroty hair, he looked like some sort of devil.

"All right, Des. They're yours."

Madeline sensed the others faltering; so was she. They were in water six inches deep, struggling over a muddy bottom that sucked them down and slowed them. The moon's reflections on the water tricked the eye, and the reeds swaying and rattling in the wind only heightened the visual confusion. Somehow she'd led them off the narrow path. And Prudence was breaking down. She staggered along sobbing and muttering gibberish.

"Oh, Lord Jesus." That was Jane, looking behind them because of a sudden noise. Madeline stopped, holding Esau's hand tightly.

First she heard the splashing of the pursuer. He was making no effort to be quiet. Then she saw him, a great ungainly figure with immense hands. One held a gun.

"I'm coming for you niggers." The strong, clear voice rolled over the marsh. A frightened heron rose from the reeds, flapping away.

"You're going to die tonight, all of you."

Prudence moaned. She dropped to her knees in the water, hands clasped, head down, mumbling a prayer.

"Will you get up?" Enraged, Madeline bent over the teacher. Only that saved her when Des fired two shots. Esau was crying again.

Madeline shook Prudence. "If you don't get up, he'll kill us. We,'ve got to keep going."

He was coming again, all elbows and lifting knees, a strange terrible scarecrow dancing across the marsh, brandishing his gun. The three women and the boy started to run. Madeline's grief was almost beyond bearing; clumsily but completely, it was all ending tonight. The school, Andy, their own lives. Those ludicrous hooded men still had the power to destroy.

She found the path. She held to it for ten yards, then stumbled, twisting her ankle badly. Prudence lagged again, out of breath, giving up. Jane jerked Prudence's arm, exactly as if it were the halter of a reluctant mule. The night was peaceful except for the loud breathing of the fugitives and the steady splash of LaMotte. Coming on. Closing the
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distance.

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He fired a third shot. Prudence flung her arms over her head as if in praise, then fell and sank under the water.

Jane crouched, hands rattling the reeds, probing the water. "I can't find her. I can't--wait, I've got her." Groaning, she pulled the teacher's head and shoulders out. Water cascaded from Prudence's nose and eyes and mouth. The eyes were without life. Madeline bit her knuckle; at the last, Prudence's hope had failed her.

Esau sniffled, striving not to cry. Madeline took his hand and started on. She refused to surrender herself to execution even though she knew they were finished. Jane's moonlit face showed that she knew it too.

With Esau between them they walked on, their last act of doomed defiance.

Between

the pursuer and the place where Prudence fell, the bull alligator swam silently, submerged. He was sixteen feet from snout to tail tip and weighed six hundred pounds. His dark hemispherical eyes broke the surface. There was great commotion in the water, and something threatening just ahead. The alligator's nostrils cleared the water as his jaw opened.

Des knew he had them. They were no longer running, only walking at a pace that would allow him to catch them in another minute or so. He was sopping, scummy with mud, yet strangely buoyant; he seemed to dance through the water, just as he'd danced for so many years on the polished ballroom floors of the great houses the Yankees had destroyed along with everything else that was fine in the South. The white light lanced his head, spikes of it shooting in from both sides to meet behind his eyes. He felt exalted but anxious. He prayed silently to allay the anxiety. "God, let the light hold back until I've caught them. God, if You have ever favored me as a member of Your chosen race, spare me another few moments--"

The white sizzled and fused, consuming the dark in his mind. He smelled cannon smoke. He heard shells whistling in. He ran through the water screaming, not aware that the women were barely fifty feet ahead.

His screams were full of zeal, full of joy:

"Forward the Palmetto Rifles! Charge to the guns! Glory to the Confederacy!''

Something like a club struck him: the alligator's huge lashing tail.

Des fired a bullet at the moon as he went down. Then, as the alligator
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closed his jaws on his torso, he felt a sensation like dozens of heavy nails piercing his flesh. The alligator killed him in the customary way, holding him in the vise of its jaws until he drowned.

Only then was the body allowed to rise and float. Amid the blood r

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eddying in the marsh water, the alligator began to feed by biting off Des's left leg at the groin.

Shouts and a burst of gunfire surprised and alarmed the Klansmen waiting for Des where the embers of the school gave off dull light and enormous heat. Gettys heard someone order them to throw down their arms. "To the road," he exclaimed, booting his mount.

Because he fled first, leaving the others momentarily bunched together, one of the blacks had- a clear shot with his militia rifle. As Gettys galloped into the turn to the entrance lane, the bullet slammed his shoulder and knocked him sideways. He kicked free of the stirrups, terrified of being dragged. He fell in a vicious clump of yucca as the other Klansmen streamed by, robes flying. Gettys bleated, "Don't leave me," as the last horses galloped away.

Barefoot men approached on the run. A black hand snatched off his scarlet hood. Randall Gettys stared through steamed spectacles at six black faces, and six guns, and fainted.

"It's all right, Esau," Madeline said, trying to calm the crying boy. It was hard, because she was on the verge of tears herself. Andy was gone, Prudence was gone--God, the toll.

Suddenly, clear in the moonlight behind her, she saw the bubbling, roiling water, then a flash of scaly hide. An arm was briefly raised to the sky like some grisly Excalibur. It sank.

Jane leaned her cheek on Madeline's and wept.

With perfect clarity, she saw Des LaMotte's severed hand pop to the surface and float, shiny white as a mackerel. Something snapped it under and the marsh water was smooth and still again.

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A grove of wind-blasted pecan trees shaded the bend in Vermilion Creek. Magee sat by one, his derby inverted in front of his outstretched legs. With hard snaps of his wrist he sailed card after card into the hat. He didn't miss.

Satan and two other horses were tied to a low limb; Gray Owl had left his pony behind and ridden the rangy bay. Charles hunkered near the trees on the shore of the purling creek. The sun was at the zenith.

The spring day was balmy, and he sweated under his shirt and gypsy robe.

Above him, throwing a dark bar across his face, a leafless limb jutted over the creek. He studied the limb, judging its strength. The April wind caressed his eyes and beard. It was too fine a day for matters of fear and death--

"Look sharp, Charlie."

Magee emptied the cards from the derby and put it on as he stood up. They heard hooves splashing in the shallows. Charles drew his Army Colt. Gray Owl trotted from behind a clump of budding willows, hunched in his blanket. The bay was winded and glistening, not used to such a

heavy rider.

Charles holstered his revolver and dashed down the bank to meet the tracker. "Did you find it?" Gray Owl nodded. "How far?"

"One mile, no more." The Cheyenne's expression was characteristically glum. "I saw a small boy."

The noonday sun seemed to explode in Charles's eyes. He felt a dizziness. "Is he all right?"

Gray Owl clearly didn't want to answer. He chewed his bottom lip. "I saw him sitting outside the house feeding a raccoon. His 580

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face--" Gray Owl touched his left cheek. "There are marks. Someone has hurt him."

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Charles wiped his mouth.

Magee scuffed a boot in the shale. "Anyone else around?"

"I saw an old Kiowa-Comanche come out with a whiskey jar, get on his pony and ride away. Then I saw a Cheyenne woman leave the big house and go to a small one, where I heard hens. She brought back two eggs."

"He has a squaw?" Charle's said.

"Yes." The tracker's eyes were full of misery. "She is a young woman. Very dirty and sad."

"Did you see the man Bent?" Gray Owl shook his head. "No one saw you--not the boy or the squaw?" The tracker shook his head again.

"You're certain?"

"Yes. There are some post oaks near it. A good hiding place."

Magee rubbed his hands together, trying to treat this as something ordinary, another field exercise. "We can come in from three different sides--"

"I'm going in alone," Charles said.

"Now that's damn foolishness."

"Alone," Charles said, with a look that killed further protest.

He returned to the trees where he pulled off his gypsy robe. He folded it and put it on the ground. He picked up his Spencer, checked the magazine, snugged his black hat down over his eyes and walked back to Magee and the tracker.

"I'll watch myself, don't worry. If you hear any shooting, come up fast. Otherwise stay here."