Lords of an Empty Land (3 page)

“I ain't riding with no
niggers,
” Basil grunted.

The colonel turned to Basil. “You will if you want the rest of that bullion. I don't recall anything of that nature in the terms we agreed upon.”

Douglas preferred everything around him to be rigid. He liked the army's structure and control. He didn't want a reckless soldier, much less a black one raging with animosity. He already had Basil. But he needed more men, fearless men, and Huff fit that bill. “Have him ready to ride first thing in the morning.”

The colonel stared at the two men. “That's it, gentlemen. Get on with it. I'll be in New Orleans, hopefully by the end of the week, if you need anything.”

Mid-morning the next day, Douglas mounted his fifteen-hand roan mare. He had packed and dressed lightly, donning brown cotton pants tucked into his knee-high leather riding boots and a white cotton shirt under a thin blue cotton coat, impersonating the army-issue version. Atop his head sat his blue, wide-brimmed campaign hat with his silver captain's rank pinned to its front. Douglas had long ago learned that the wool army field uniforms were completely unfit for the brutal Louisiana heat; the blazing sun and thick, muggy air as deadly as Confederate minié balls.

As he swung his boot over the mare and settled into the saddle, sweat beads were already forming on his face. Even after almost five years, he had not gotten used to the Louisiana weather. Cooked by the merciless summer sun, the temperature might stay above ninety until almost midnight. Even late into the night, just the simple exercise of walking drenched one's body with sweat. A breeze of any sort was rare. There never seemed to be a break from the steamy, insect-infested air that instantly turned the skin clammy and hovered over the land like an endless opaque fog. He hated the chronic rains and endless maze of green. He missed winter, and the changing seasons of his home in Ohio.

Douglas gently pressed his spurs against his mount's ribs and started down Commerce Street. The muddy road cut through the immense cotton warehouses and gins abutting the Red River, its banks currently occupied with a half-dozen steamers, some three hundred feet long with smokestacks towering forty feet into the sky. The streets held a mangled myriad of horses, buggies, stagecoaches, and hundreds of bales of freshly picked cotton stacked astride the road or rail line.

Half of Shreveport's five thousand residents were Negro, and its citizens ranged from humble ex-slaves working the docks or rail in sweat-stained shirts to well-dressed Southern ladies or eastern cotton brokers, all mixed together with the ambient smell of manure and sewage. The residents all seemed to mimic the tumultuous, scorching climate. That they carried on with their lives in this malaria- and yellow fever–infested oven often amazed Douglas.

Shreveport was another world, as rough and tough as any western outpost—a haven for all types of outlaws and bandits. But it also had a sophisticated side. Douglas rode on, past the streets all named for Texas heroes: Crockett, Milam, and Travis. He looked down Texas Street at the department stores, banks, ladies' societies, lawyers' offices, and government buildings. The grand Planters Hotel and the Gaiety Theatre stood out, fit for any street in Boston. In the distance and above a canopy of tall trees stood the imposing Protestant churches, all constructed of thick stone. Farther afield sat the rows of shotgun houses for the middle-class whites. The poor whites and Negroes lived in shanties on the periphery of town.

Tension always charged the air here, even more than during the war. All the Southerners abhorred Negro equality and the carpetbaggers, wicked strangers as they called the latter, but most of all, they detested the scalawags. The impoverished whites struggled with the freed slaves for work, and most of the rich plantation class now found themselves downtrodden, willing to do almost anything to reclaim their social stature. Everyone in this land had a score to settle. Enmity and revenge permeated almost every breath, the kind of deep loathing that drives men, and even women, to commit treacherous acts without the slightest guilt. The illicit conduct seemed, if anything, to give the poor souls gratification. It all made for a desperate cauldron, a volcano ripe to erupt. In this environment, the army was charged with the almost impossible task of upholding law and order. In reality, it took the grandest effort just to manage the days, keep some impression of civility and structure in the major towns. Outside of Shreveport, little semblance of government or order prevailed.

At Shreveport's small university, Douglas turned down Fannin Street. He slowly rode past two brothels and arrived at the Red Devil, a two-story wood structure with a single glass window. As he tied his reins to a hitching post, he looked around again at the city. This cruel, uncouth, and deceitful land would be the last civilization they would see for a while.

Douglas had spent the previous night chewing on Colonel James's words, finally deciding Basil might be of use. The hired gun hand was an honest-to-God son of a bitch for sure. But he would use Basil as he saw fit. Douglas had learned that upholding the law was often objectionable work, often requiring one to act against his conscience. Certainly, he could channel Basil's nefarious skills into the outcome the army wanted, what he wanted: a better life for these people who now reviled his very presence. He would try to do this in the most law-abiding manner possible.

He opened the door to the Red Devil and strode inside. The little bar comprising the first floor stood empty, but the smells of sin almost overwhelmed him: liquor, cigars, and cheap perfume. Douglas slammed the door shut loudly, which brought a young, fair-skinned woman from the back to the bar. The prostitute sported a long, proper dress, but Douglas could not help but imagine what she had worn just a few hours earlier.

“I'm here to fetch Basil,” Douglas said.

“Second floor, first door on the right,” the girl said with a deep Southern accent.

“Can you go get him?”

“Basil? I'm not going to get him. You go get him if you want. He doesn't like to be disturbed.”

Douglas ascended the stairs. Arriving at the door in question, he rapped on it firmly with his fist, twice.

“What do you want?” Basil yelled back, his words filtering through the door.

“Captain Owens here. Time to get moving. We'll be lucky to make Ringold if we leave now.” Douglas slowly opened the door. Basil sat naked on the bed, his back against the headboard and his revolver in his hand. Beside him and under each arm lay two women, both without clothes.

Basil put his pistol back in its holster, hanging on the bedpost. “That's it, girls. Got to go to work.” He playfully pinched both women on the bosom, and they giggled before he slowly stood and picked his pants off the floor.

One of the girls stood. She laughed and grabbed Basil's wrist, jerking him back to the bed. “One more time, we haven't earned all our keep yet.”

Basil slapped the girl, sending her to the bed. The loud pop of bone reverberated through the room. Douglas cringed as if he had taken the blow himself. The speed and brutality of the strike scared him. He looked at the woman, now on the bed crying, her face beet red.

“No, bitch. I'll be back in a couple of weeks.” Basil, wearing a stern face, reached over and grabbed a small portion of the stack of money on the nightstand. He picked up the remnants of a bottle of whiskey and finished it. “You can have this then.”

The bright orange sun blazed overhead the next afternoon when Douglas first saw the frontier village of Montgomery, a small river stop a hundred and twenty river miles south of Shreveport. From the deck of the steamer, the town spread out a mile or so to the east, where the plain collided with the hills. The town looked down on the rich Red River delta, the great river, and the fertile auburn soil and ivory cotton fields.

Douglas's feet hurt. It had been a long day on the steamer. The vessel's three decks overflowed with men and cargo, crowding onto almost every square foot of space. He had tried to rest, but the overcrowded planks and boat ride, as always, robbed his attention. He had spent hours on the bow unable to break away from the intoxicating scenery. The cool breeze on his face, the dense smell of the water, the natives waving from the shore, and the endless, untamed arcane landscape rolling by with its own sort of beauty were irresistible, almost romantic. The river served as the corridor to see this land, where almost all waters east met the ocean. There always seemed to be something to see: whitetail deer, exquisite sandbars, the captain working the boilers to run a rapid, a treacherous curve, or avoid a stump, or just the murky red water splashing in the paddlewheel. The craft itself never ceased to amaze Douglas, gliding over the water, a testament to mankind's ingenuity.

The steamer bumped into the bank, and Douglas felt its gentle careening stop. A half-dozen men on the craft's port caught ropes and promptly secured them to the boat's large iron trunnions. He turned to the pilot house. The captain studied the dock, maneuvering the bulky boat. The boilers howled, belching white steam from the stacks. Whistles and bells filled the air. The paddle dug in, turning the water to foam, and the deck vibrated. He reached up and brushed his mount's mane, the animal as uncomfortable on the shaky footing as he.

A woman on the deck, paying no attention to Douglas, jerked on a squalling toddler. “If you don't stop crying, the Yankees are going to get you.”

Douglas chuckled and turned to Huff, standing beside him holding his horse's bridle. Everything about Huff's face was round: his chin, his accentuated cheekbones, even his nose. Private Smith wore his long, regal blue army frock coat, its gold buttons polished. Unlike Douglas, he showed off the uniform proudly with his single chevron affixed to his upper sleeves.

In his early fifties, Huff was over six-feet-two-inches tall, a sculptured statue as black as midnight and constructed of thick bone and muscle, bred and honed for heavy labor under the tropical sun.

Douglas searched for the right words. He knew this man well. Huff had genuine intentions, but also a short temper and a streak of incurable anger burning in his inner depths that had festered for a lifetime. This was a bad combination for someone backed by the authority and power of a uniform. His skin color made him a lightning rod, the onetime slave now the master.

Douglas extended his hand to Huff, gently poking his index finger into his chest. “Huff, you're going to do whatever I tell you. Is that clear? If you don't, there's not going to be any court-martial. I'm going to shoot you dead and leave you for the buzzards. That'll save me a lot of paperwork. It's going to be all we can do just to get through this with our hides.”

“Yes, massa,” Huff said, his tone deep. He smiled and exposed a large gap between his front teeth.

“That's yes, sir. This is the army. Act like a damned soldier.” Douglas turned to Basil, asleep on the deck. He walked over and stood directly over him. The pistol slinger had spent most of the trip either in the steamer's small bar or in his current position. The local inhabitant had not found the scenery very interesting.

“Time to earn your pay,” Douglas said.

Basil gradually opened his eyes and looked around quickly. “Reckon we should go see the sheriff,” he mumbled.

“We won't make Winnfield today,” Douglas said.

“Winnfield may be the parish seat,” Basil countered, “but the sheriff spends most of his time in Atkins. Don't know why, the little hamlet is about the most miserable place in these hills. But we should make it before dark.”

“It's a useless exercise,” Douglas continued. “He won't help us a lick. Even if he did know something, he wouldn't tell us.”

“Reckon so,” Basil answered, slowly getting over his legs. “He may be the one we're hunting. Anyway, we need to let him know there's some new law in town. Law that doesn't answer to him.”

Douglas handed Basil his reins just as one of the dockhands lowered the gangway from the steamer. As Douglas led his mare to firmer ground, the peaceful atmosphere of the river turned to pandemonium. This was the busy time of the year, the harvest, when the placid land came alive with fervid activity, day and night. Scores of men moved about the stacks of cargo and bales of cotton as taskmasters barked orders. Mules and horses hawed under relentless whips. A crew of freedmen readied a large pile of pine logs, stacked near the riverbank, to be loaded onto the steamer to feed its hungry boilers. Douglas stepped up into his saddle and looked down the muddy road leading to Montgomery, its edges blotted white with loose cotton bulbs.

Out in the fields, beside the road, the valuable cotton harvest was still picked as it had been for centuries. Though the Negroes had gained their freedom, they still toiled in the tall, seven-foot-high rows under the heavy burlap cotton sacks and stifling sun. They had not been freed from the drudgery, or their status at the absolute bottom of the social and economic order.

Though the war had been over for more than four years, here it loomed over the land and people's minds as if it still raged, its devastation abundant everywhere. The steamboat and telegraph broke down cultural and geographic barriers in much of the country, but deep in the Red River Valley, these modern advances affected little change.

“At a quick time,” Basil grunted, trotting past. “We need to stretch our legs.”

 

 

A five-minute trot found Douglas in Montgomery. From the saddle, he took a long look at the activity around him, a small sea of humanity on the dirt streets of town, maybe a hundred strong. He looked at the town's diminutive commercial district and all its smokestacks, now belching dark steam, then to a few houses, not extravagant but well built and fronted with trimmed azaleas and gardenias. Nearer the river, the houses were more run-down, most only a single room resting on piles. Around the squalid houses, pigs roamed around heaps of trash, discarded foodstuffs, excrement, and endless garments clipped to scores of clotheslines.

This was the crossroads of postwar Louisiana. To the foreign eye, it all looked simple, primitive, and peaceful. But Douglas understood the little bush towns and backwoods. The shock of occupation and defeat had now waned. Out there somewhere, the land harbored the clandestine leagues, the Knights of the White Camellia or white militia as they were sometimes called that ruled these streets after dark. He had spent most of the last year in a desperate but fruitless battle with these clans and gangs.

The previous year had brought the first free elections to Louisiana since the war: first the state elections in the spring, followed by the Federal canvassing in the fall. Louisiana was half black, and with the aid of a few carpetbaggers and Southern unionists, these outsiders had taken over the state government. The new governor hailed from Illinois; the lieutenant governor was colored. Neither had had any stake whatsoever in the state a few years earlier.

Indigenous white Louisianans, of almost every background, had become incensed by Northern and Negro rule. From the thick forest and dusty towns, the secret leagues materialized overnight. They terrorized the blacks and their corroborators, anybody with Northern interests. Just in Douglas's domain, a half-dozen political leaders, black and white, had been murdered, with scores more beaten, intimidated, or run out of the country. Anarchy ruled like he had never imagined. Anyone who got overzealous exploiting his post or promoting Republican rule became a candidate for mob justice. Schools, businesses, and plantations had been burned to the ground. Most of the rich whites publicly denounced these organizations and their dastardly deeds, but did little to deter their existence.

The trepidation among black voters had been such that statewide, the electorate had gone from majority Republican in the spring to being easily carried by the Democrats in the fall presidential race. To Douglas's consternation, the army and local officials had shown no stomach to oppose this.

The clans understood this, and having achieved their political desires and not wanting to invite further Federal meddling, had since settled down. The only exception was the current band of vigilantes that preyed on travelers. Though a horrendous lot, the scale of their atrocities paled in comparison to the organized terror. Douglas had no doubt these outlaws spawned from the Knights or some other group, having grown bored with peace and the toilsome chores of labor.

Looking at a few dirty, undernourished kids, Douglas wondered how he was to carry out his new orders. Out there in the woods were more than a thousand disbanded Confederate soldiers, organized, and with the silent support of the population. The government had trained him, educated him, manufactured him into a soldier and a symbol. This and his years in this war-torn land had turned him into the hard edge of the government, sent to the fringes of the country to uphold the republic's sanctimonious notions. These years in uniform, behind the firm arm of the army, had transformed him. He had lost his sense of self, becoming almost molded to the government's ideas, a willing instrument and upholder of its wishes, even if he didn't always agree with the mission's goals.

But here, there was no army, no bright proper uniforms, or impressive government buildings for support. To these people, those were only ideas they hadn't seen or felt for years. His daily grind was tedious, dangerous, nothing like the glorified stories of the Southern occupation that filled the Northern papers. He now chased shadows, at best, though he did have a lead—the man he had seen at the riverboat. Douglas groaned as he turned to Huff.

“You wouldn't really shoot me, now would you?” Huff replied and smiled.

“I don't know. I might.” Douglas smiled back. “Probably leave that to Basil. He'd enjoy it. Let's go, so we can make Atkins before dark.”

 

 

An hour and a half later, the three arrived at the sheriff's office. It sat on Atkins's main street, only a small, square wooden building with two glass windows. The town had only two major streets, bisected by four smaller roads, maybe eight blocks total, just a hamlet hidden in the hills that looked like so many others. On the streets, God's injustices stood visible in the meek faces and buildings. Basil dismounted without a word and stepped up on the porch.

“Stay here,” Douglas instructed Huff before following Basil through the open door.

Inside, behind a wooden desk, sat a man, perhaps in his early forties and showing every day of it. Over his tan, leathery skin, the sheriff wore a nice white cotton shirt, freshly pressed, with a red bandanna around his neck. A black goatee covered his chin and a big scar stretched across his face under his left eye—probably a Union slug during the war. The heavy-boned man looked up with jaunty, steady brown eyes as Douglas watched Basil and the sheriff briefly study each other. Did they recognize one another from some event in the past?

“Sheriff Silas Thaxton. Can I help you boys?”

“Don't believe we've met . . . formally. Captain Douglas Owens, Fourth Cavalry.” Douglas nonchalantly removed his hat as he continued to inspect the local lawman. He had the typical look of a frontier sheriff, straight out of a story in an Eastern paper. Douglas almost let out a smirk. Inside these worn, wooden walls so far from home, he now lived those stories every day. “This is—”

“Basil Dubose.” The sheriff stood, putting his thumbs through his belt loops. “I've heard you're working for the damned bluecoats. Doesn't surprise me.”

Douglas tried to take an informal tone. “Sheriff, we're on the same side, just want law and order.”

Sheriff Thaxton grunted. “Well, damn General Banks and his bluecoats burned me out on his way out of here, for nothing more than sport. I saved for ten years and built my place myself. You're a smart lad. That should be easy enough to understand.”

Footsteps rattled on the porch. Douglas turned as two rough hands entered, both in their twenties with long stringy hair, slender builds, and shifty eyes. The two men had dirty, stained teeth, generally looking less well-read and refined than the sheriff.

“Sheriff Thaxton,” Douglas continued, “we're looking for—”

“Let's cut through the bullshit,” Basil snapped. He turned to stare down the two men who had entered the room briefly before returning his tempestuous eyes to the sheriff. “We're looking for Constable Garrett. He was seen at the killing of a Federal soldier, at the
Anne Bell
on the river a few weeks ago. We mean to bring him to justice.”

The sheriff produced a fabricated smile, displaying his big, white teeth. He casually took a step forward, his face now only a foot from Basil's. He stiffened his stance and stared into Basil's harsh eyes. “Well, now, that's impossible. The night that shoot-out occurred on the river, Elisha Garrett was clear up in Winnfield with me and these two Dallon boys.” The sheriff nodded to the two men standing just inside the doorway. “Ain't that right, boys?”

“Sure is, Sheriff,” one of the two said.

“We'll let a judge and jury decide that,” Douglas said.

The sheriff put on his big-brimmed straw hat and looked down at the insignia on Douglas's hat. “Everything is peaceful around here. The war's over. People just want everything to get back to normal. We don't need you boys or the army stirring up a bunch of trouble. No good can come from it.” The sheriff turned back to Basil, giving him a patronizing appraisal. “And we don't need some two-bit, washed-up cutthroat administering frontier justice. I won't stand for it.”