Chapter 9
9
Libby had been to Harper’s Ferry before the war, a town that had changed hands often the last three and a half years. That autumn the Yankees held it, and the word was that they had no plans to relinquish it anytime soon. She knew well the stretch of the Shenandoah Valley from the Potomac River south, from Falling Waters to Woodstock. But she had never been on the turnpike as early as six fifteen in the morning, and that was the time that she and Joseph had set off. She was wearing one of her husband’s coats against the autumn chill, though she expected that by midmorning she would have shed it against the sun. In one of its pockets she had her late father’s watch; in another, she had the papers she found in Jonathan Weybridge’s shirt. She held in her hands the dead ranger’s Colt. The sky to the east had ripples of rust above the Blue Ridge, and, in the west, in the valley toward Flint Ridge, there were waves of white mist.
“I remember when John Brown was hanged,” Joseph said, thinking of their destination, “I knew for sure war was comin’ right then—soon as he tried to take that town.” He was holding the reins loosely, the wagon’s wheels well greased. The horses were moving easily on this patch of road, the macadam hardpacked and flat, the fields on either side leveled now that the last of the wheat and corn had been harvested before the Union could arrive and burn it. “When Mr.Steadman died and his son gave us all our freedom, I just hoped the war would be short.”
“It wasn’t. It isn’t,” she said. But they had all thought the war would be short. She, like everyone she knew or had known, the living and the dead, supposed the North would fold quickly.
“You peek in on the captain before we left?” he asked.
“He was sleeping. Seemed like a good sleep. His breathing was deep and steady. Quiet.”
“On his back?”
“Yes.”
“He said something to me that he don’t like sleepin’ on his back.”
“I don’t either.”
“But that’s good he was sleepin’. Means he’s not in terrible pain. Can’t sleep when you’re hurtin’.”
She nodded, though he was staring ahead and couldn’t see her. She watched three crows chasing a hawk across the sky, and wondered what the raptor had in its talons that had the black birds so angry. This time of year, she doubted it was a baby or fledgling. But she didn’t know for sure. Most of her education before the war had had very little to do with the natural world. Her father was a lawyer, and her mother raised her brother and her, arranged flowers, and managed the small household in Charlottesville. The woman played the piano every day until a week before she died, when she grew too sick to leave the bedroom. They weren’t wealthy, but they were prosperous: it certainly wasn’t a childhood with deprivation or want. The house was in town, two blocks from her father’s firm, where he made his money on contracts and negotiations involving railroads and real estate. Most of Libby’s education since moving to Berryville had been the logistics and economics of a gristmill. The rest? Coping with Jubilee, a child at least as heedless and hard-nosed as she herself had once been. Trying to keep food on the table. And, lately, how to bury one body and keep another breathing when all signs suggested it was a futile proposition.
There were long stretches some days when she could forget the dead man on her property, the feel of his weight upon her, his hands like snakes. But then the memory and his presence—intangible, invisible, but as real as the malarial stench of bad air—fell upon her with the ferocity of the water that powered the mill.
“Ma’am?”
“Yes, Joseph?”
“Up ahead. Keep that gun ready. You might need it.”
Down the road, she saw two men on horseback riding toward them. They weren’t wearing blue, but she couldn’t tell whether they were Confederate soldiers, guerrillas, or drifters. Their faces were hidden at this distance by the brims of their slouch hats.
“Keep going,” she told Joseph. “Perhaps they’ll doff their hats and ride by.”
But they didn’t. They drew their revolvers and blocked the road, one turning his horse so it was perpendicular to the wagon, the other riding up beside Joseph. They were young men with long, hard, bitter faces, and neither had a semblance of gray or butternut on their clothing. They both had holsters with two guns, and one had a carbine attached to his saddle pack.
“Mornin’,” said the one who had brought his animal beside Joseph. “What we got here?” His tone was feigned cordiality. There was an undertow of menace in his greeting. They might have been slave catchers, but it was daylight, and those beasts usually did their work after dark, when runaways were most likely to be traveling. He had more beef on him up close: a barrel for a chest, all muscle, and thumbs like sausages.
“Good morning,” Libby replied. Joseph knew not to answer unless he was addressed specifically. “We’re going to see a friend who’s feeling poorly in Charles Town.”
“You don’t mean South Carolina,” he said. “That’s the other way. And a long way off.”
“No.”
“You mean our Charles Town. One here in the Valley.”
“I do. Yes.”
“Awfully close to the Yankee line. Charles Town, that is.”
She knew this. “But didn’t we whip the Yankees just yesterday in Winchester?” she asked him, hoping she sounded naive.
He ignored her. With his revolver, he pointed at the back of the wagon. “What you got there?”
The back of the wagon had a canvas tarp across it, because Libby was hoping it would be filled on the trip home. “Nothing,” she replied.
“Pull back the canvas,” he ordered Joseph. He had no right to make this request, but there was no alternative but to obey. The older man gave Libby the reins, which she took with her left hand, her right still holding the Colt, hidden now beneath the flap of Peter’s coat. Then Joseph climbed down from the seat, judiciously placing one foot after the other onto the toe board.
“Hurry up,” the man demanded of him.
Hoping to diffuse the situation, Libby smiled at the riders. She knew it would be inadvisable to try and make conversation by asking in a tone that veered toward coquettish if they were part of General Early’s army, because it was evident they weren’t. They might be with John Mosby, and the idea that this was her best hope exacerbated her anxiety. “How is the road up ahead?” she asked instead, an innocuous pleasantry.
“Don’t know,” he answered, walking his horse a few paces behind the seat, watching as Joseph carefully untied the canvas. When Joseph drew it back, revealing it was indeed empty, the marauder stared at it for a moment. “I was sure you was lying to me,” he remarked.
“No,” she said.
“But you are lying about somethin’. I got a good sense about that. Always know when someone’s lying.”
“He does,” said his partner, speaking for the first time.
“Where are you really going?” he pressed. “Why would you take a wagon to see a sick friend up in Charles Town? You expect she’s going to die and you’re planning on bringing the corpse back to”—he paused, then resumed—“Where you coming from?”
“Berryville.”
“What’s your name?”
“Libby Steadman. My husband, Peter, is a captain in the Second Virginia. Now he’s lost somewhere in a Union prison.”
“That’s a damn shame.”
She said nothing. Joseph stood beside the back of the wagon, dwarfed by the man’s great chestnut horse, not daring to tie back the tarp until this white man with the gun had told him he could.
“So, Mrs.Steadman,” the stranger continued, speaking slowly, as if there was something he didn’t like in her name, “You ain’t told me the truth. It’s like you don’t want to. But I got me all day. I’ll just ask it again: Where are you going? Truth, this time. Don’t you lie to me.”
He wasn’t a slave catcher, but he was, Libby decided, one of those men who were either just born bad or raised in such a way that they festered until their souls grew putrid. She’d seen her share. The war had allowed them to be themselves—execrable and unrepentant—in ways they couldn’t before Sumter. She wasn’t sure how this was going to end, but as she prepared her response, she gripped her own pistol a little tighter and wrapped her finger on the trigger. If this were a military confrontation, he would think he had her outflanked, but, in truth, he didn’t. Her gun was pointed at him—or, given the fact that she had no experience with guns, pointed in his general direction.
“I don’t lie,” she said, a lie itself, hoping she had quelled the quiver in her voice. She had lied plenty lately, and was about to lie once again. “We are going to see Mary Garrison. She’s eighty-two, but has always been like a grandmother to me. We’re bringing the wagon because her son needs it and I don’t. The army took his wagon.”
“So, you’re just giving away your wagon?”
“Lending it to her son. We’ll get it back.”
“You’re comfortable with that kinda generosity? Really?”
She said nothing.
“Your man here,” he said, drawing one of his two pistols and aiming it cavalierly at Joseph, using the weapon the way a schoolmarm might a pointer. “You generous with him, too?”
“Please. That gun. It might go off,” she said.
“You think I’m the sort who might accidentally shoot off a gun?” he asked, smirking. Then he pointed it straight into the lightening sky and fired. Joseph’s shoulders curled in, a reflex. She supposed hers had, too. “This slave of yours. Why—”
“Joseph isn’t my slave. He’s a freedman.”
“Well, Joseph freedman. Show me your papers. Show me just how free you are.”
Joseph looked between Libby and the outlaw with the gun and then asked him, “May I please put my hand into my pants pocket, sir? Under my jacket?”
“?’Course you may. After all, you ain’t got a holster with a gun beneath that coat. If you did, I’d have to kill you for breaking the law.”
Slowly Joseph reached into his pocket and withdrew the paper. The bummer yanked it from him and stared at it. His partner started laughing.
“What’s so funny?” the one with the paper asked.
“You can’t read, you idiot. Them letters don’t mean shit to you. Give it to me.”
“I can read.”
“About six words, Webb, six. Maybe seven.”
“You’re a deadbeat, you know that?”
“I do,” his friend agreed, still chuckling.
“I see nothing in this paper that says this old darkie shouldn’t be helping the cause. I think the army needs you more than this here lady you’re driving. So, I hereby requisition you for the right esteemed General Jubal Early.”
His friend cackled again. “Esteemed. You wouldn’t know esteemed if it kissed you on your sorry lips.”
“You can’t requisition him,” Libby said. “You can’t just do that.”
“I can’t? I can and I will. It’s what I aim to do.”
Joseph gazed at the other bandit, his eyes imploring him to intervene, but it was clear he had no intention of helping him.
“Lady,” said Webb, “this man, free or not, has value. You claim to be so generous, but you’re hoarding property. Either hand him over willingly or we take him anyway and turn you in as a traitor. You all are low-hanging fruit, and we aim to harvest the pickings.”
Libby looked to the one blocking the road with his horse. He looked back, raising both eyebrows. In response, she raised one. And in the pause, the world growing perfectly still in the stalemate, she shifted the pistol a hair more toward the bastard holding Joseph’s proof of emancipation, and fired the Colt through Peter’s coat. Almost at the same moment that she pulled the trigger, he barked and dropped the paper, glancing reflexively at his left shoulder. She’d grazed him, tearing a hole through the sleeve of his shirt, the blood already starting to stain the fabric the deep color of ripe cherries. Before he could turn his own pistol on her, Joseph grabbed his arm, and even though the younger man was stronger and faster, he was wounded and surprised, and Joseph was able to pry the pistol from his grasp. Libby stood in her seat and pointed her gun at his partner.
“Don’t touch your holster. Don’t touch either gun,” she said, her voice an unattractive bray in her head. “Move your hands and I’ll kill you.”
He nodded and smiled, and the grin, so condescending, offended her. They had no idea if she was a sure shot or a novice. If she had had more bullets, she imagined she’d shoot past him, firing for no other reason than to scare him and wipe that smirk off his face. Still, Joseph walked to the front of the wagon and disarmed him too, standing on his toes to take the carbine off his pack. He placed the pistols and the rifle on the seat of the wagon beside Libby.
The wounded outlaw kept glancing down at his shoulder, his eyes drawn there as if the blood were a magnet. It wasn’t a deep gash. It was likely to stop bleeding on its own soon enough. He said to her, his tone cold and condescending, “You ain’t gonna kill us, lady. You do not have the stomach for that. But here’s why we got ourselves a problem now. Your so-called freedman is holding a gun. He attacked me. You just shot me. And you can’t outrun us, not with plow horses and a wagon. So, what we got here is a standoff, and even if my friend and I don’t got guns right this second, we still got the better hand.”
“You think I plan to negotiate with you?”
“I think, in the end, you’re going to surrender to me. And then I’m going to take your old man and the army can put him to work, and as for you, I will…”
“You will what?” she pressed him.
“I wasn’t rightly sure. But I am now. You are one fetching girl, Libby Steadman, but you are mighty cantankerous. Too ornery for your own good. I aim to fix that.”
Was it the way he said her name that caused the blood inside her finally to boil over, all her fears to dissolve into air? It was, she decided, definitely it was. But she doubted her aim. No, it was more than a doubt. She knew she had none. And she was down to four bullets.
Actually, that wasn’t true. Not anymore. She only had four bullets in the Colt she had taken off the dead ranger. She had more, far more, in the arsenal—three loaded pistols and a carbine—beside her. Plus, there was the gun in Joseph’s hand.
Still, the issue of her aim dogged her. A thousand bullets were no help if she couldn’t shoot straight.
And so she climbed down from the wagon. She walked to the assailant called Webb who had done most of the talking and put the Colt she knew at least a little into his chest.
“How are you going to fix that?” she asked him.
“You’re going to give me that gun for starters.”
“You sure about that?”
“I am. And then, because you’re so damn difficult, I’m going to kill your old darkie—at this point, shooting him will give me more pleasure than turning him over to General Early—and take a switch to your backside. Bend you over them wagon wheels and let some hickory or a piece of birch teach you to heel.”
“Any chance I can change your mind?”
“Nope.” Then he laughed, and she felt his muscles move across the barrel of the gun and into her fingers and wrist. Either he was fearless or he doubted her.
“That’s really your plan?” she pressed. It was, she decided, his very last chance, though a part of her knew already how this was going to end. He’d given her no choice.
“That’s my plan, little girl. Kill your old man, give you the whupping you deserve, and take your wagon and horses.”
“And I walk home?”
“If you can. I don’t guess you’ll be able to walk much when I’m done with you.”
“Fair enough,” she said, and then she pressed the Colt hard against where the bastard’s heart would be, if he had one—one that did more than pump blood, one that knew decency and honor and kindness—and shot him dead on the spot.