Wreaths of Glory Page 2

  “Raw corn ain’t appetizin’. Druther have ham and eggs.”

  “I ain’t stealing a pig, and I ain’t raiding a chicken coop.” He shook his head in exasperation, not only for his companion’s lack of morals, but the fact that ain’t was entering his vocabulary after one afternoon with Beans Kimbrough. “Good way to get shot.”

  Beans shrugged. “Reckon we could roast ’em ears.” He opened his mouth to speak again—maybe, Alistair hoped, to volunteer to fetch the corn so Alistair could have the smoke and stump to himself—but the sound of hoofs on the road stopped him, and he was unbuttoning his blouse, his right hand gripping the butt of a small revolver.

  The horse had stopped. Above the crackling of the fire, Alistair heard the creaking of saddle leather, but he didn’t look at the road. His eyes fixated on the revolver, and his mouth dropped open. He had not known that Beans was armed.

  Beans pulled the revolver, squatting now, but backing deeper into the thicket, whispering: “You stay here. I’ll cover you iffen he comes.”

  Alistair wanted to protest, but couldn’t find his voice. He could hear Beans’ bare feet trudging through the mud, then a voice called from the road: “Hello, the camp!”

  “Uh.” Alistair swallowed, inhaled deeply, and blew out air from his mouth. “Yeah?” he called out.

  “Might I come in? I am alone. Mean you no harm. But coffee would hit the spot.”

  He found himself looking all around, expecting the woods to be filled with Confederate provosts hunting down Beans Kimbrough. His companion had tried to murder a sergeant. Certainly the Confederate Army would go hard on anyone traveling with a scalawag like that, even if Alistair did have a parole paper signed by some Yankee officer.

  “We ain’t got …” He sighed, swallowed, tried again. “I don’t have any coffee.” Nothing but smoke and skeeters, he thought bitterly.

  “I do.”

  Alistair blinked.

  “Bacon, too. And six ears of sweet corn.”

  Behind Alistair came the metallic click of Beans Kimbrough’s pea-shooter pistol. “Invite him in,” Beans whispered.

  “Well …” Alistair licked his lips. He wanted to warn this wayfarer to keep on riding, that if he came into this camp he might wind up dead, but the stranger had already dismounted and was leading his horse off the road, and into the clearing.

  “I mean you lads no harm,” the man said. With the fire in front of him and smoke burning his eyes, Alistair couldn’t really see the man, but he could hear just fine. Lads, he had said. Plural. “Either of you,” the stranger continued. “You at the fire. And you in the mud with a revolver.” He wrapped the reins around a bush, and stepped closer to the fire, extending his hands as if to warm himself.

  Slowly Alistair rose.

  The stranger smiled. He cut quite the figure. An inch or two taller than Alistair, but well short of matching Beans Kimbrough’s height. Sandy hair, a plumed hat set at a rakish angle. Waxed mustache. Eyes a brilliant blue, with lids that drooped and made him look serious or sad, Alistair couldn’t quite make up his mind as to which. His unbuttoned jacket was gray, with yellow French braids stitched onto the sleeves. Tan trousers stuck inside black boots. And slipped inside a yellow sash was a brace of pistols, the ivory grips reflecting the flames of the fire.

  “The coffee and grub are in my saddlebags,” he said. “I even have the necessaries for cooking. If you will accept my company this evening. I thought I might continue on north, but since the weather remains hot, and I have ridden far already, and alone, I decided company would be delightful. I also have a volume of Shakespeare. I can read for my meals.”

  He had an easy way to make you relax. Spoke like a schoolteacher.

  “Seems we should be reading to you,” Alistair said. “You providing the food and all.”

  The man slapped his palms together, and laughed. “Then I choose Hamlet.” He looked over Alistair’s shoulder, into the woods, and Alistair knew he sought out Beans. “Shall I gather the food? Or keep riding?”

  “Fetch the chow.” Beans Kimbrough stepped out of the dark.

  The man slapped his hands again, and returned to his fine black mare while Beans moved beside Alistair, slipping the little Colt into his pocket. When the stranger returned with the saddlebags and a canvas sack, Beans straightened, and his hand gripped the weapon’s butt.

  “My name,” the newcomer said, “is Charley Hart.”

  The gun reappeared in Beans’ hand. “Funny,” he said, “I recollect it as Wilson Cantrell.” He pulled the hammer back to full cock, and pointed the barrel over the fire and into the mustached man’s face.

  The stranger was a cool one. Alistair had to give him that. All he did was grin. “Quantrill, actually,” the man said. “And William, not Wilson.” Ignoring the pistol, he lowered the saddlebags, and squatted, opening one, retrieving coffee, small pot, and two cups. They’d have to share. Next, he dumped the corn from the canvas sack and opened the other leather pouch, pulling out a wrapped slab of bacon and a skillet. “‘What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.’”

  “Romeo and Juliet,” Alistair heard himself saying.

  Quantrill or Charley Hart, whoever he was, looked up from unwrapping the bacon, those eyes sparkling in appreciation, before he finally turned his attention to Beans Kimbrough, who hadn’t lowered the revolver or eased off the trigger. “You have me at a disadvantage, young man. You know me, by any of my names, but I cannot quite place your face. Which, trust me, is rare for me.”

  “Last December. I was at my Uncle Morgan’s plantation when you come by.”

  The sandy-haired man nodded at the memory, drew a knife from a sheath hidden somewhere on his back, and began carving thick slices of bacon. “Then you know,” Quantrill said without looking up, “that I saved your uncle’s property and his life.”

  “There are those,” Beans shot back out, “that figured maybe we shoulda hung you.”

  “‘Hanged’ is the correct usage, young man.” He dropped the slices into the skillet. “Let us not mince words, gentlemen. Do I take my bacon, coffee, and corn elsewhere, and, perchance, find a more hospitable pair with whom to pass the evening? Do I share it with you? Or do you, sir …?” His eyes were icy as he stared up past the short-barreled revolver into Beans Kimbrough’s face. “Do you murder me and take my horse, food, and plunder?”

  “Beans,” Alistair said softly. Trying not to sound like he was pleading, though that’s exactly what he was doing.

  Hearing the click as Beans lowered the hammer, Alistair felt a weight removed off his tight shoulders. Beans started to return the revolver, but changed his mind, and kept it in his right hand. “I ain’t et in a while,” he said as he found his place on the stump. “Mayhap I’ll shoot you after we’ve et.”

  Quantrill laughed heartily, and returned to fixing supper.

  * * * * *

  The way William Quantrill and Beans Kimbrough retold the story over coffee, corn, and bacon, things had happened something like this.

  December last, a few weeks before Christmas, Beans had been eating dinner at his cousin’s house when Quantrill knocked on the door. Andrew Walker lived about a quarter mile from his pa’s. Quantrill must have mistaken the home for Morgan Walker’s place.

  “So he tells Andrew and me that he’s come with a bunch of jayhawkers to rob Uncle Morgan and free all his slaves.” Beans swallowed bacon, and bit into an ear of corn. “Says it like he’s readin’ from some newspaper. Bold as brass. I thought Andrew was gonna fetch his flintlock off the wall and blow your brains out.”

  With a grin, Quantrill shook his head. “Till you heard my plan.” He stretched back, leaning his head against the saddle, rolling an ear of corn in his fingers.

  “His plan was he goes back with his Kansans, comes back that night, but by then we’ve set up an ambuscade. All we g
ot to do is shoot the devil out of jayhawkers.”

  “Sounds like a good plan,” Alistair said, just to say something.

  “It worked.” Beans bit into the corn again. “Andrew rounded up some neighbors, we loaded our shotguns with buckshot, and Uncle Morgan comes home late that eve. Just maybe, I don’t know, ten, twenty minutes before ’em thievin’ jayhawkers arrive.”

  The ambush worked. The jayhawkers even brought a wagon to cart those slaves back to Kansas. Didn’t expect anything till Quantrill, making a beeline for the door, dropped to his belly. Shotgun blasts shattered the stillness, and one Kansan fell dead. Two others were wounded, one of them managing to crawl into the wagon, which took off down the road. Another jayhawker helped the remaining wounded thief out of the yard, and they disappeared in the woods.

  “What happened?” Alistair asked.

  Beans looked at Quantrill, but the man merely waved his cob at Beans, like he was a schoolteacher choosing a student with pencil or ruler to answer a question.

  “Waited till first light, then taken after the two afoot. One of Uncle Morgan’s slaves found ’em hidin’ in the brush, and they promised him his freedom if he could steal ’em a wagon and get ’em back to Lawrence. Instead, the darky come to us. And we went to rid us of some jayhawkers.”

  “You weren’t there,” Quantrill said softly. “I remember that much.”

  “No, sir. I wasn’t. So maybe you could retell the story? Since you was there.”

  “The two jayhawkers were killed. Justice is swift.” Quantrill pitched the cob toward the pond, but no splash sounded.

  “I hear that Uncle Morgan killed one,” Beans said. “Then you run up to the injured one, sticks your pistol in the poor guy’s mouth, and blowed his head off.” Likewise, Beans flung his ear into the darkness, and it splashed in the water, silencing croaking frogs for a moment. “Like you wanted to shut him up forever.”

  “I’ve heard the same story, young man.” Quantrill pushed himself to a seated position. “But you weren’t there. I was. No, your father killed one of the Kansans, and your cousin dispatched the other. But only because they were quicker than I. Still, I was satisfied. They were the last.”

  Silence fell like an avalanche. Seconds later, bullfrogs resumed their serenade. Alistair wiped kernels from his face, rubbed his hands on his trousers. “Last of what?” he asked.

  This story William Quantrill told without interruption. Thirty jayhawkers had stopped Quantrill and his brother on the Kansas plains earlier. The brutes robbed them, but that wasn’t all. They shot Quantrill in his chest and leg, then left him to die. He had been lucky. His brother had been tortured, screaming for death long before one of the Lawrence fiends found mercy enough to send a .44-caliber ball into the poor soul’s brain.

  Here, Quantrill paused long enough to retrieve a silk handkerchief from his breast pocket, and dab his eyes. “I felt blame. Shame. We should have stayed in Kentucky. Now, my brother … poor, brave Thomas Henry … lay dead. I longed to join him, but resolve slowed the flow of blood. Saved my life. Nay, I recovered. Wound up in Lawrence. And joined the jayhawkers. To exact my own revenge.”

  Eighteen of the barbarians had been killed by Quantrill’s own hand. It had taken months, luck, duplicity, the will of God. Yet no Kansan suspected Quantrill. The last to die had been those at Morgan Walker’s plantation.

  “Criminy,” Alistair said.

  For the longest time, William Quantrill stared into the flickering flames. At last he looked up, tears welling in his eyes. He smiled weakly at Alistair, and eventually made himself look at Beans.

  “My pa always said your story stank like a bucket full of shit.”

  Quantrill grinned wickedly. He slapped his thigh. “I must meet your father, young man. He has a singular wit. Was he in the ambush of those rapscallions, too?”

  “Nah. He don’t do nothin’ to risk his neck. Runs a store in Osceola. Hides behind the counter all day.”

  “But you are men of action.” It wasn’t a question. Alistair straightened, then thought about all the action he had seen. Sitting on a chamber pot while brave Missouri lads died. “As was Morgan Walker.” He gestured toward the black mare. “If you remember everything, son,” Quantrill told Beans, “your uncle presented me the following morning with Black Bess. And a saddle, bridle, new suit of clothes, and fifty dollars. Other fine Southern men of Independence added to the reward, though I sought nothing but to avenge my brother’s death. Morgan Walker believed me. And his plantation near Blue Springs is where I am bound.”

  Beans stared at their guest with suspicion. “What for you goin’ back there?”

  “Sterling Price won a great battle for the South,” Quantrill said, “but this war is not over. It has barely begun. General Lyons may be dead, but we must send others to hell after him. And mark my words, lads, there are many others. Fiends as wicked as that crazed demon John Brown now burning in eternal damnation, thank the heavens. Men like Lane. Others we must fear. Others we must strike dead. Jayhawkers will continue to raid Missouri. Thusly I seek to recruit an army of brave Missourians who believe in the righteous cause of the South, the Confederacy. We will fight them on our terms, our way.”

  He stared first at Beans, then at Alistair. Like he wanted them to join up right then and there. When they didn’t, Quantrill leaned back on his saddle, and smiled. “You think I am mad.” He snorted. “Not that I blame you. But you have yet to see madness.” His voice fell into a whisper. “You have yet to see madness.”

  Chapter Three

  “Well, now,” said the tall boy leaning against the ivy-covered brick wall, “my prodigal brother has returned home.”

  “Hello, Darius.” Beans Kimbrough spoke without any emotion at all. He half turned, giving a slight gesture toward Quantrill and Alistair, and introduced his companions. “I promised them some food.”

  Darius’ grin lacked any mirth. He must have been four or five years younger than Beans, but had to be as tall as Alistair. “No fatted calf, Benedict.”

  Hard to figure. Now, Alistair had no brothers—he was the middle kid, two older sisters (though one, married and living up in St. Joseph, had died in childbirth three years back), and two younger twin sisters who needled him incessantly. He wouldn’t say he was close to any of them, but he sure loved them, and would have expected a hug from all three had he just returned from war. Darius didn’t seem pleased at all to see Beans. Beans didn’t care one way or the other. So Alistair stared at the red-brick house.

  That surprised him, too. So much, in fact, that Alistair felt shamed. He had figured Beans Kimbrough—even his given name, Benedict, didn’t seem to fit—lived in some white trash shanty. Yet this two-story brick house stood in a neighborhood full of impressive structures. Three large windows, all open to catch the breeze, on the front of the upper story, two on the lower, fireplaces on both sides. Round white columns on the small porch. Ivy. Shade trees. A gazebo next to a raised flower garden in the front yard, and a swing hanging from the limbs of a stout oak on the west side. A circular driveway in front of the house led from the main street. This mansion was certainly fancier than Alistair’s home in Clay County.

  “Pa at the store?” Beans asked his brother.

  “Where else?”

  “Is Ma …?”

  Beans didn’t get to finish, because the white door swung open, and a woman in a collarless day dress of red and green calico, no hoop, raced out, lifting the hems of her skirts, and screaming: “Benedict! Benedict! God be praised! God be praised!” She wasn’t tall at all. Beans had to kneel a little so she could kiss his cheek.

  Two Negroes, one white-haired woman, the other a husky fellow with a shaved head, maybe the age of Alistair’s pa, stopped in the doorway.

  Dabbing her eyes, Mrs. Kimbrough backed away, almost said something, before she realized that her son hadn’t come alone.

  “Found these sc
amps on the road.” Smiling, Beans again made the introductions. “They’re bound north. I told them that you set the finest table in Saint Clair County.”

  “Goodness.” She curtsied, and tried to wipe the flour off her cheeks and hands. “You are most welcome, though I dare say my son has exaggerated. Besides …”—her head tilted toward the two slaves—“Reginald and Dilly do most of the cooking.”

  Alistair managed to smile, yet couldn’t think of any proper response, but Quantrill slid from the saddle and began speaking all sorts of things. First, he pointed out that unless he was mistaken, he detected flour on Mrs. Kimbrough’s hands, so she must have plenty of say in some of the food. Be that as it may, Quantrill continued, she need not go to any trouble, that it was too hot for a lady of the house to be cooking for strangers.

  “It’s no trouble at all,” she said. “You gentlemen wash up … you especial, Benedict. You look a fright, son. Did they not feed you in that army? How long are you home? Goodness, we were so worried after hearing of that dreadful fight near Springfield! Darius, you must run and fetch your father from the mercantile.”

  “He won’t come,” the younger brother mumbled, but Mrs. Kimbrough didn’t hear.

  “Benedict, show your friends to the washroom.” She hurried back inside.

  “You can stable your horse behind the house,” the brother said. He grinned at Beans. “You don’t look like a soldier.”

  “Anybody been snooping around here?” Beans asked. “Anybody been asking about me?”

  Darius straightened. “No.” His eyes brightened with a look of devilment. “What have you done?”

  “Nary a thing. Go tell Pa I’m home. And tell me how sick he looks when you give him the news.”

  * * * * *

  Everything about Beans Kimbrough changed the moment he returned home. No longer did he speak like some bumpkin, losing the ain’ts, the dropped Gs. As Alistair and Quantrill sat in the parlor, sipping tea and exchanging pleasantries with Mrs. Kimbrough while chicken and biscuits baked in the summer kitchen, Beans disappeared to his upstairs bedroom. He returned in striped britches, silk shirt, gray waistcoat, puffy blue tie, and Wellington boots. Duds liked that shamed Alistair, in his rags and filthy bare feet.