The White and the Black of It: The Christmas Chronicles: 1

By D.R. McNachten

In this fictionalized version of the American Civil War, the fall of Vicksburg eclipsed all rational Southern hope of prevailing, but the Confederacy refused defeat. Black citizens are obliged to raise their own military in defense of their new freedom. A pitched racial battle occurs that ends in a deadly inferno and, ultimately, a standoff. What happens when James, the Blacks’ leader, returns and meets Lee Christmas, a white man raised in conflict? D. R. McNachten’s The White and the Black of It will begin to answer that question for readers in this thrilling first volume of the Christmas Chronicles…

• Language: English
• Publisher: Outskirts Press
• Release date: Jun 30, 2022
• ISBN: 9781977264961

D.R. McNachten

Following graduate work in English Literature and Playwriting, he spent just short of six years employed on deep-sea ships running out of New York into the Caribbean and down the West Coast of South America.            More recently, he spent a decade researching the project and more than that in drafting the book and the Cycle it begins. Written mainly in Mr. McNachten spent just short of six years working on deep-sea ships that ran out of New York into the Caribbean and down the West Coast of South America. More recently, he spent a decade researching the project and more than that in drafting this book and the other books of the Christmas Chronicles. The writing was done mainly in Jalapa, the Capital of Veracruz State in Mexico. At an altitude of l0,000 feet, it lacked beaches and tourists, but it was heavy on coffee houses and the writer’s blessing of isolation.

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The White and the Black of It

All Rights Reserved.

Copyright © 2022 D.R. McNachten

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

The opinions expressed in this manuscript are solely the opinions of the author and do not represent the opinions or thoughts of the publisher. The author has represented and warranted full ownership and/or legal right to publish all the materials in this book.

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Table of Contents

Part One: War Within the War

Part Two: Out of Bondage, into the Fire

Part One

War Within the War

(Louisiana, 1862-1863)

For Tom Lyon     

For Springfield, Livingston Parish, the War within the War began with the killings at the town’s bridge on July 5, 1862, some seven months before the birth of Lee Christmas.

When the three mounted Confederate soldiers – a Lieutenant, a Corporal, and a Private – picked their way across Springfield’s aging bridge, it was early yet, and they did not stop to visit with neighbors on their quiet passage through town, only smiling and waving briefly to those they knew, soon pushing westward along the road out of town.

The informer may have been among those that saw them pass, the one who had brought them here today. For it was on an informer’s word that they had been sent to arrest a local man for desertion from a Confederate Regiment posted North of Louisiana’s border with Mississippi.

Springfield did not yet know, nor would it have changed the soldier’s duty, that on the day before, July 4, 1862 – a date not yet widely celebrated, the National identity still in doubt – the besieged Confederate river bastion at Vicksburg had surrendered, nor that when this word reached the siege of Port Hudson downriver, it too had given way.

These great losses, ceding the Mississippi from New Orleans on the Gulf to its headwaters far to the North, would eclipse most rational southern hopes of prevailing, though it needs noting that any despair ran very much deeper in prosperous cotton country than it did further back from the Great River, as here in Springfield.

The deserter was reported to be at his home some five miles West of town on the far side of the Blood River. This river was not substantial enough to justify a bridge, seldom running more than 20 feet in width and 10 inches deep. The blood of its name came from its color and not the bloody tales that had gathered about it. And the color derived from the heavy fall of fleshy red leaves from trees uncommon here, though the leaves declined being carried elsewhere. Instead – quick to absorb water and sink to the bottom – they formed a most unpleasant stream bed to walk on, turning a red yet darker than they had shown on the tree. It was thought the stream’s poor taste made for alcoholism among the people who lived along it and bad temper among the hogs and other livestock obliged to drink from it.

Thinking of their one-time neighbor – the deserter, Henry C. Kinchen – the three soldiers paid little mind to the color or depth of this familiar watercourse as they splashed through it. The horses made no objection to the stream bed, but they did not dip their muzzles down even for a sip.

The Kinchen family name was to be found everywhere in this and the neighboring parishes, comfortable across a range of social roles from vigorous farmer to outlaw to Sheriff. Whatever the role, it was performed with great energy. Undeniably fruitful on the evidence, they were as aggressive as seemed necessary, though peaceful once satisfied. Except as a tactical matter, they formed their views with little reference to those in general circulation. And while they were entirely familiar with misfortune along the family’s extended reaches, they were unlikely to bow to it easily.

Henry C. Kinchen had gone off to the Confederate Army just as the men in his family had before him in the wars at hand. It was not something he felt comfortable missing, and maybe the North was messing around with the South, though he was considerably less clear about this. In truth, he wasn’t much interested in reasons, and the recruiter had known better than to question the young man there at his table voluntarily.

Once in uniform, Henry had seen more bad health than fighting, and he had trouble respecting the men directly over him, the more so as they sought to inspire him through harangues he found perfectly mysterious. They failed to understand the fury was innate and more likely stilled than aroused by manipulation. Besides, the Confederate Army was at this point backing off the election of its line Officers by the men. But whether the Army would otherwise have enjoyed Henry Kinchen’s attendance any longer is hard to say.

On his return to the farm weeks earlier, he had found the home place did indeed need him badly. This was more for the everyday hiding and fetching of stores than for any planting, cultivation, or harvest. He had discarded the Army’s heavy uniform shirt, but he had found its stout field trousers and the boots entirely suitable for workaday use on the farm.

Unburdened for the moment, having just moved their modest herd of cattle to graze where human predators were less likely to find it, he was returning to the farmhouse when he saw the three uniformed riders at a distance. He took them at first to be Provost Marshal’s men, their confidence apparent in travelling so small.

Like his family and all the countryside, he felt such men should have the decency to give rest to a productive teat. The duty despised as it was, they would be outsiders.

They saw him and turned to approach leisurely, still at a distance outside sure identification, but he did not consider flight or resistance of any kind. And by the time he thought they might be the Army here to reclaim him, he knew it was too late and generally useless to run from men on horses – undignified if they proved to be men and boys known to him.

Now he could see that these were soldiers of the town. The Lt’s father – Tait was the family name – kept a general store that was Sassoon’s only competition. Not much competition, but more would get Sassoon upset, and he was doing well as such things went. The Corporal was unknown to him, but the Private was another matter. He was of the Harvey family on the other side of Springfield. They’d been marketing table vegetables from a small but fertile farm close by town, mostly for big city tables – or had been until that was prohibited. They hadn’t been there more than 15 years and so could not be considered truly local, but the war had taken three of their boys, taken meaning killed. This boy coming with the others now would be James, the last of the sons. He couldn’t imagine how that felt. Not for the father, not for James. The other three had been taken far from home in places like Tennessee and Pennsylvania. If he had been the father, he felt sure he’d have kept this boy at home, far from bullet and bayonet. The farm, any farm, was bad enough for accidents and illness and what animals might do on purpose. He was sure if he was old-man Harvey he would have kept this boy out of harm’s way.

But what were they about for sure? he wondered, thinking they looked pretty serious, and he came back to the worst at last.

As they pulled up, it was James Harvey who smiled a bit shame-faced, raising his hand in greeting near involuntarily. How goes it, Henry?

All right, James, so far as I can tell. What brings you boys out here? he responded. He ignored that Lt. Tait was refusing to put aside his rank even for a moment. Henry nodded to the Cpl. as well, who seemed uneasy but returned his nod just the same.

The Lieutenant finally drew a breath as he set himself straighter in the saddle. Henry C. Kinchen, he said.

That’s the name, Paul, he said with some irritation, thinking, well shit, so here it is.

We’re here to place you under arrest, Henry, he said. He continued after a brief pause. For desertion from the Army of the Confederate States of America.

Yes, well, said Henry. The folks needed me here, the way things are with the war.

Not here to argue, Henry. Things are pretty much the same all over.

Well, it takes a damn fool not to know the war is over.

Thus challenged on a point already tender, the arresting party felt its task considerably eased, for they could now deny the terrible fact and do their duty all in one.

We’ll be taking you over to Camp Ruggles, Henry, said the Lieutenant.

What about my family here? Henry said. What’ll they think?

Well, they knew what to think when they sent for you, Henry. Besides, there’s Oran over there, and Tait gestured off toward a nearby crest-line where a young man, Henry’s brother, stood observing this encounter. He can tell your family what’s happened.

Oran called out from his distance. What are you boys up to with my brother?

They knew well enough why Oran kept his distance. For no man in health and long pants was in the clear where service was concerned, no matter what militia he might claim membership in. Coming within disputing reach could get him snapped up along with his brother for lesser charges to start, but likely ending in the uniform of the C.S.A.

We’re going off to Springfield, Oran. He’ll be in the little compound there a while before we take him on over to Camp Ruggles, Lt. Tait called. If you want to talk to your brother, come see me at home there in town. But not now. We’re going along now.

Once Private Harvey had been disarmed as a precaution, Henry had been loaded up behind him on his horse, and then they were on their way back the way they had come.

Oran called out he would be riding in to see Henry, and he shouldn’t worry.

The return of Lt. Tait’s detail to Springfield was at first not much more noted than its arrival that morning, mainly because Henry Kinchen’s status as a prisoner was not immediately clear. For by agreement, Henry had not been put under physical restraints, and he seemed in no distress. But prisoner Kinchen had decided in a smiling and careless way to declare his status to first one and then another of the passers-by, and there was little that his escort felt able or inclined to do about it. Clearly, he did not feel it a disgrace to be in custody.

Crossing town to the shanty-built holding compound, the question of who had informed on Henry – likely there among the observers on the street – had occurred to everyone. But this was never to come to light, happily for him or her. For even before word of Vicksburg and Port Hudson in this summer of 1862, most of Springfield was ready to fend off the Army’s claims on its young. They felt that all that remained of the war was surviving the consequences of defeat. But this dominant belief only sharpened what remained of militancy in Springfield and the many towns like it.

Tait, Harvey, and Smith were regarded as being under duress like the other soldiers stationed nearby at Camp Ruggles, Ponchatoula, and Camp Moore. They were accepted in a friendly but wary fashion, understood to be doing a duty they had calculated it would be wiser to do than not.

Yet acts of positive resistance were breaking out across the countryside against the uniformed forces sent to arrest the men and boys who had made a different calculation. So military excursions of this kind had become larger and more cautious. The towns of the countryside were closing protectively around those who had left one duty for another, or refused to leave one for another, usually at the urging of a wife or family.

So it was thought the size of the party sent to arrest Henry Kinchen represented a calculation – a successful one to this point – attracting little attention on its arrival and catching Henry and his family off guard and unprepared.

By the time Henry had been delivered to the raw-built, airless little coop, joining several other prisoners – two outright evaders, another pair from a too-shady cavalry troop, and a last three for simple misbehavior that would likely now be amended in uniform – his arrest and incarceration were known in all the households of the town.

The dinners that awaited Tait and Harvey and Smith were subdued among friends and family. They resented the dangerous duty that had been laid upon their young by strangers, but they saw no acceptable resolution.

Oran Kinchen’s arrival at Lt. Tait’s home in the middle of the family’s strained and quiet meal was not unexpected, of course, but inspired in them a lively sense of guilt even so. Excusing himself, Tait conducted Oran toward his promised meeting with Henry at the compound, the family watching from a front window as the two young men passed down the street.

Rather stiffly, Tait cautioned Oran that he would have to hand over his weapon to the guards outside and that he and his brother would have no more than half an hour. For Henry and the others would be proceeding to Camp Ruggles under his escort in about 90 minutes.

Put off, Oran considered asking how it was that the Lieutenant’s family had bought an exemption for his older brother – for the family business – but none for him. But he judged now was not the time to put the Officer on his mettle, for the responsibility for his own brother now rested with him alone.

He knew the Army of the Confederacy would very soon place Henry on a train under guard with others like him. And he and the others would be force-fed into one or another of the worst-mauled Regiments within a week. There he would find himself in a forward element whose trials he might or might not survive, an unspecified period regarded as instructive.

But the Kinchens were clear that no such price was owed the C.S.A. While the farm could ill afford what would now become the loss of both brothers for a time, surely the fool’s war could not continue for long. Better they should return in good time and intact to play their part in the trials sure to come after the war’s end.

When they reached the compound, it was largely without a further word between them that the Lt. got Oran’s admission for half an hour’s visit inside with his brother. He then walked directly back to his home where he made every effort to enjoy his carefully reheated lunch under the eyes of his kin.

Sweltering among the raw building’s prisoners, the Kinchen brothers awaited their chance of a private exchange. When it presented itself, Henry drew a deep breath. He said 90 minutes, did he, Oran?

Oran nodded. Not much time. So who? I’m thinking Elijah.

Right here in town, said Henry. But you know him better than I do. He’s youngish.

Don’t worry about him, brother. I think he’s been ready all his life, just waiting for the right question.

After a very few minutes more, agreeing the rescue would be attempted at the turn to the town’s bridge, the two of them walked back to the door. The guard expressed surprise they were not using the full half-hour, but Henry explained his brother had some business that wouldn’t wait. They would catch up bye and bye.

The brothers shook hands and struck each other on the shoulder lightly, Oran passing outside with renewed urgency. He reclaimed his weapon and then his horse quickly to make his way to Elijah Gainey’s home.

His good fortune held in finding Lije at home, the family already abuzz with the news of Henry’s arrest. But Oran managed to draw Lije outside and apart to put him in the picture, putting the question the other’s life required. Lije held still as Oran cautioned him on what they could be sure of – and Elijah’s freedom to back away.

But Elijah’s whole response was that he had the use of a good horse and time enough to say good-bye, but while he could see Oran’s horse, what was Henry to ride?

At which Oran smiled broadly. Elijah should saddle his horse and say his good-byes, but only if he was sure this was what he wanted.

Most of Elijah’s family saw him off.

But Elijah was still puzzled as he and Oran arrived at the little stand of trees near the Springfield end of the bridge. Persistent, as was his way, Elijah asked once again what Henry would do for a horse.

Oran’s reply was good-natured but blunt. We’ll have more horses than we need, Elijah, if you don’t shoot them.

They waited in the shade of a copse of poplars, eventually dismounting when Lieutenant Tait’s party proved tardy. In response to Elijah’s questions about their escape route, Oran had them heading North but avoiding the railroad, perhaps bearing off West toward where, the last he’d heard, the Union was laying siege to Port Hudson.

A lot depends on what happens, Lije, and we need to wait on that. Who gets hurt and how bad, you know, he added in what Lije took to be a reassuring tone.

As Elijah digested this prospect, Oran added that though they hadn’t taken time to talk it out at the compound, he was sure Henry would have some ideas about what came next. Oran paused. I know you’re not scared, Elijah, or you wouldn’t be here and I wouldn’t have asked you to start. But it’s new enough, now ain’t it? He laughed, looking at his young friend with affection. The main thing is not thinking, Lije, just the way you shoot. The main thing is, you’re a helluva shot, and don’t you forget it.

Oran pointed out a spot some few yards short of the road’s abrupt turn toward the bridge. When they get about there on the road, he said, we come slow out of here as if we’re seeing them off or tagging along to Camp Ruggles, which wouldn’t suit the Lieutenant at all. But he’ll be thinking how to send us away, and meanwhile we’re coming up on them, Elijah, and we’re already drawn, you see, with our pieces out of sight on the off side.

You understand what I’m sayin’, Lije? he asked. When Elijah gave him an abrupt nod in response, Oran looked carefully at him. This will be no foolin’ now. They got three shooters to the two of us, and we don’t plan to be the ones end up with holes in us.

Oran continued to study his young friend, who seemed to be brooding a little.

Lije, they a bunch of fools takin’ my good brother to be target practice in Tennessee. Just so they can keep on bein’ damn fools a while longer.

Elijah who had found himself holding his breath, let it out with some relief. O.K., Oran. It’s for Henry. I understand all right.

They got no rights to do this, boy, and we’re about to play them a tune they refusin’ to hear.

O.K., Oran. It’s all right.

All right? I’d say so. Damn right.

The silence among the poplars, apart from the grazing of the horses, had lasted a good 20 minutes – Elijah wondering what was keeping them – when the two young men first made out the sounds of Tait’s party approaching, the clink of small harness and the routine grumbling of the seven prisoners seated on the floor of a plain, freight wagon. Alvin Bell, an older man of the town, drove the wagon behind a single horse.

At about the same time, but nearer by, a lone man entered the road on foot from the gated yard of the nearest house. On the smallish side, well-dressed for this country town, he was of advanced middle age and seemed to carry himself with a dignity noticeable even at this distance.

Damn, Oran, said Elijah, that’s the Judge. What do we do now?

Settle down, Lije. We don’t do a damn thing. He gritted his teeth. It doesn’t make a nickel’s worth of difference, Lije. He’s another witness, and that’s fine. Let ‘im tell it in court. Besides, he doesn’t go armed.

The prisoner-wagon in advance of the three-man mounted escort was approaching the Judge, who had halted by the roadside to allow the party free passage. There were calls from the prisoners to Marcus Carter, the Judge. Could he see what was happening to Springfield? Were the planters running everything their way now, even here?

The remarks, carelessly thrown off as they were, seemed to affect the Judge, bringing him to cast down his eyes, then raise them again to acknowledge the nods of the escort. Most of the prisoners and each of the escorts were well known to the Judge.

Of a sudden, he decided to join them, talking to Lt. Tait and walking along beside the mounted men, refusing the Lieutenant’s earnest admonition that he keep apart.

Oran and Elijah now mounted up.

What’s he doing, said Elijah? What’s Judge Carter up to?

I tell you, Lije. To us, it doesn’t matter what the Judge is doing. He could be going to Camp Ruggles on his hands and knees to talk to the Army, but they’re not about hearing a piney-woods Judge. What he does is what he does. And what we do is up to us. Now come, Elijah! Now’s the time. Nice and easy.

Their horses were restive with their agitation, but all was in good order as they appeared out of the stand of poplars, angling toward the single wagon and the three-man mounted escort, with Judge Marcus Carter there on foot with them.

Lt. Tait had caught sight of Oran and Elijah when they were just yards into the open, and perhaps would have seen them sooner had he not been remonstrating with Judge Carter, still walking beside him. The good Judge, of course, became the lesser of Tait’s problems on the instant. He recognized Oran to start and then identified the other as his younger cousin, Elijah. Were they thinking to come along? Or just seeing Henry off? Tait was a little comforted that Oran and his cousin showed no urgency, but he did not like the look of their arms hanging to the off-side of their horses.

Oran called out. We’ve come to take Henry off your hands, Lieutenant. We think we need him worse’n you damn Confederates do.

Just stop right there, Oran. You know you can’t have him, Tait said.

Oran and Elijah had slowed but hadn’t stopped as the Lt. had the wagon brought to a halt, his horse turning slightly with the situation, the two groups now about 30 yards apart.

Seeing Oran and his cousin had not fully stopped, Tait became angry enough to shout. I said Halt right there, goddammit!

His horse steadier, Corporal Smith went to drawing his rifle in precaution.

Judge Carter, fearful no time remained, called out. Now boys, boys! Stop this while you can.

But Oran needed no more reason than what the Cpl’s draw gave him, and he lifted his rifle barrel over his horse’s neck and fired in one action, striking Corporal Smith a crippling blow just above his waist at his left side.

Elijah had brought his rifle up when Oran had fired, but he had not yet pulled the trigger when he became aware that Private Harvey had fired at him. The Private’s shot had missed him by a margin he did not stop to calculate, but Elijah’s return shot, his first against such a target, loosed more in surprise than anger, did not. It drove Private Harvey backward off his horse and to the ground, likely dead about when he got there.

Meanwhile Oran had loosed a second and mortal shot on Corporal Smith, leaving him lolling dead in his saddle.

None of the prisoner escort had been expert horsemen, and the gunfire had sent all three of their horses into a whirling confusion that would have done for a more experienced rider than the Lieutenant, who found himself unhorsed and unarmed on the ground at the mercy of his adversaries. As we’ve seen, the shot from Elijah had taken poor Private Harvey dead to the ground, but Corporal Smith’s dead body had somehow retained his seat, though only just, and his horse, while quietened for the moment, seemed ready to act up again.

Oran waved his rifle at the Lieutenant, advising him to just stay put. He then briefly turned to Smith and Harvey to be certain they would be offering no further resistance.

Judge Carter had moved to Corporal Smith’s side and shook his head now that the toll seemed final, looking back to Oran and Elijah. My God, he said hopelessly. Now you boys have done it. There’s no going back now.

You’re right about that, Judge Carter, Henry said as he vaulted down from among the prisoners to the ground – shackled hands and all. But you’d best stay out of it, he said. Smith and Harvey are beyond help, but you can call in Doc Colmer once we’re gone.

Pick your horse, Henry, Oran said, adding after a beat that Elijah had been worried about getting him a horse.

A right thing to worry about, too, Elijah. And a weapon, he said, recovering Lt. Tait’s rifle from its scabbard and inspecting it as he took the horse’s bridle in hand.

Humiliated and in considerable pain from the fall, Tait had gotten to his feet. He ventured Henry was making free with Confederate property, but Henry’s smile was the closest any of them came to a reply.

Elijah asked Henry who had the keys to the handcuffs. Not Harvey, I suppose, he said, staring over at the private’s splayed body.

No, Lije. It’s Corporal Smith, I think, on his belt-loop.

Elijah dismounted to approach the dead rider still on his horse as if to pick the dead man’s pocket in place.

No, No, Lije, Henry said. Best get the Corporal down to the ground before his horse goes off on you. Just go at it slow and make sure his boots are clear before you pull him down. Elijah did as Henry said, and indeed, by the time he’d freed both boots, the Corporal’s horse had begun to back away from both the stranger at his side and the rider he no longer knew.

A little shaky himself, Elijah found the necessary key and freed Henry’s hands first off and then those others who wanted to be freed as they let themselves down from the wagon. This was everybody but the three fellows taken up for misbehavior.

The other four prisoners in flight wanted to take Bell’s wagon horse as well as the two remaining horses of the escort. But Alvin Bell had objected, and Henry Kinchen had not backed their play. So the four of them doubled up on Smith’s and Harvey’s horses to cross the bridge North and make off out of town as quickly as they could.

Oran, Elijah, and Henry, each now mounted and ready to depart, looked to Judge Carter, who had gone to closing the eyes of Corporal Smith and Private Harvey, and then turned back to them.

They exchanged stares briefly until Oran spoke with exasperation. Well, don’t you be lookin’ at us that way, Judge Carter. Nothin’ got done didn’t have to be.

But killing, said the Judge. That’s the Harvey’s fourth boy. Who’ll tell them? Not you, I don’t suppose.

You or Doc Colmer, I would think, Henry said quietly. Its too bad, truly, he said. But they had a choice, too, just like us.

Did they? Judge Carter asked.

Well, and if they didn’t, that put them in a bad place, it looks like, said Oran.

And we’d best be goin’ before this draws the town, said Henry. Tell them we’ll be back to talk it over in a few years when this war is over. And they can be damn sure we will be back here to stay and talk to anybody who feels the need to talk.

I’ll tell them, said Judge Carter.

And be damned to you, said the crestfallen Lieutenant to Henry, regathering his courage for the moment. But a meaning gesture and look from Oran’s rifle quietened him again, as might be understood.

Henry and Oran and Elijah turned their horses aside and into a fast walk across the bridge and along the road North out of Springfield, only Elijah turning for a last look at the scene.

When I was told about it, Dr. Colmer said, it was clear there was nothing to be done, but I went all the same, of course. So did half the town, and there were those that wailed and others just watchful.

The quiet ones respected the others’ grief, but they soon enough left for home again, knowing how deeply torn the town was. This left Marcus Carter and me and some close kin to wait a while longer for the Sheriff along with Smith and Harvey. The wagon would carry them from the scene, the remaining prisoners choosing to walk rather than bear them close company.

Dr. Colmer had practiced medicine in and around Springfield since his arrival from England nearly 40 years before and was naturally known to his enemies as King George. His open admiration for the Abolitionists during the War had complicated his public standing to a degree, but not greatly. He was, after all, English and understood to be eccentric. Besides, this was Livingston Parish, where the serious slave-holders could be numbered on the fingers of one hand with one or more to spare. Most of the land held here was for subsistence – when it would – and Springfield’s business apart from farming came down to wood-milling and shipping. Free of the moral burdens of prime land, they had neither the means nor the inclination to pursue the slave-holder’s way of life.

The Doctor and Winfield Christmas and I comprised a lesser cabal within the village, the two of them telling this tale while I, Matthew Bands, did most of the listening. Then as now, Colmer’s medical offices were in the same building as the town’s newspaper, a weekly the good Doctor owned and edited as time permitted and where I had spent instructive years as a journeyman printer.

But now I had returned to Springfield from New Orleans, lying low – briefly, I hoped – shortly after filing a Yellow Fever story that threatened to put paid to my new reporting career in the Great City, of which more later.

I spoke up to ask whether they had in fact come back like they said they would? Oran and Henry and Elijah? Even after the war, you might think they’d have a problem with the families of those boys. And the law in general, having killed them, I said, beginning to stumble a bit.

No trouble I know of, said Winfield.

Nothing? I said.

You not being there, Dr. Colmer said, I can see it would be hard to understand, Matthew.

The way they looked at it, Winfield said, that was wartime, something set apart.

But those boys quit on the war.

No, said Dr. Colmer after something of a pause. I don’t believe so. They felt they had found the war and taken it up at the last.

Well, you’re right, it’s hard to understand, I said, backing off a bit.

Early in the war, Winfield said, the young men and boys of these slaveless backlands came forth in their hundreds and thousands to the great battlefields.

Yes, said Colmer, and many were to make the only claim such soldiers were likely to make on such land. I have always thought they were paying back some old exactions, with the Yankees standing in for the old oppressors, the land agents and the long bayonets of a distant time and place.

For after the great land-lords had tried and failed there across the seas to annihilate the headlong crofter people in battle and their livelihoods, they had at the last found success in setting them adrift through the corruption of their Chieftains. And I think what they heard down the generations here was the call of the Chieftains restored to honor.

Bear in mind, Winfield said, how many went off willing and eager, though there were a power fewer returned than went.

Yet they persisted in the fight, Colmer said, erecting in the bearing walls and rafters of an ancient enemy a phantom cause that consumed even as it ennobled the young soldiers. It was only upon the pointless and profligate expenditure of their young in waves and surges – valiants now lost to any common future – that the families began bracing against the war’s demands wherever they knew to find it. They knew well enough where the killing was, or most of it, but they began to think the real war was so nearby it was hard to see – the real war and the dispute that was right in front of them. They came round to thinking the bad boys had somehow got it right, after all, sad as it was to accept all the losses gone before, including the dutiful Smith, the dutiful Harvey.

Elijah Gainey and the brothers Henry and Oran were not easy boys, Winfield said. After they came home and somebody said somebody did his duty, they could say whose duty did they mean, and make it stick. And sometimes even discuss it like they said they would.

And are they here in town still? I asked.

Oh, yes, said Winfield. You’ve seen ‘em and didn’t know it. A sawmill hand and a couple of farmers. Married. Kids and all.

So nothing happened, I said?

They never got the Kinchen boys or Elijah – not then and not later – but plenty happened before the C.S.A. was done with it and finished with us. Plenty happened that same day.

The Army sent 50 or 60 men in all, Cavalry and Infantry from Camp Ruggles and Camp Moore, but they weren’t sent to be satisfied with just the chase, which was useless from the start.

Dr. Colmer and Winfield had both seen parts of what might be called the Army’s punitive expedition first-hand and had the rest on witness they trusted. When the military documents from the war were published years later, it was not hard to fit their accounts into the official ones.

But making sense of the historian’s versions was harder by way of emphasis and sometimes by plain omission, and these versions became more respectable and less real with the passage of time.

Captain Bradley arrived with 18 men later the same day that Cpl. Smith and Private Harvey were shot dead. ‘… under orders to scour the country around Springfield in search of the man Kinchen … and Elijah Gainey … and to arrest them, as well as all persons supposed or known to be enemies of the Confederate States.’ One would have thought that a broad enough mandate for the young Captain.

Bradley was interested to hear that a certain R. C. Simons was in Springfield with his so-called ‘negro dogs’ and found him fully agreeable to tracking the Kinchen brothers and Gainey with them. They went to the site of the murders, but they would need mounted men to follow on the dogs, and Bradley’s men were searching elsewhere.

Simons had been eager to demonstrate his dogs could track down a white man as readily as a black. For he had heard that hounds were being used in ‘drives’ to round up defaulters from the Army, and he was ever one to press to the forefront of current usage. But the approach of darkness had extinguished the last of Bradley’s hopes of the dogs, and he had had to release Simons, assuring him he and his dogs would be called in when proper use could be made of them.

Capt. Bradley’s own Cavalry rejoined him the following morning, reporting they had on the previous evening driven two of the lesser escaped prisoners out of their hiding place with friends and into the waiting arms of the civil authorities. But these men could add very little to what was already known of the assassins’ movements. The captives’ single horse had been overtaken by the Kinchens and Gainey well before they crossed West over the Blood River. This told their captors that the killers hadn’t made straight North, but not much more than that.

That same morning, Bradley set forth at the head of a swollen patrol of Infantry and Cavalry, passing through Wadesboro and over one of the branches of the Natalbany. Here, the Capt. procured a boat and dispatched eight of his men to pass down river to Lake Maurepas. They were to take up positions at the mouths of the Natalbany and Amite Rivers to look into any boats issuing from them into the lake.

A half-dozen men detailed earlier to scour-search the homes of their murderous quarry rejoined Bradley en route with little to report apart from resentful silences. They guessed defaulters would need to stand in place long enough to be found, the time of volunteers now become quaint and distant.

A new Cavalry unit under a Lt. Evans also joined them early on this day, enabling Bradley to divert four mounted men under Sergeant William Duncan to cover some of the least populated and most obscure areas ‘to make inquiries and search for the criminals.’ Only a few years older than the soldiers in his unit, Sgt. Duncan had ‘the knack’, as Lt. Bradley called it, of securing their entire loyalty. The Sgt.’s mission, while not critical, was ticklish enough in this difficult region and would call on another of Duncan’s ‘knacks,’ namely, performing his duties in a way that left the community no more outraged than it already was.

The fresh Cavalry unit under Lt. Evans was by contrast an unknown quantity for Bradley, but he must needs trust him just the same. For only such Cavalry could cover all the ground between Springfield and the Tickfaw that night and the next, scouring certain houses along the way.

Bradley resented the fact he was sometimes compelled to place his career and reputation in a stranger’s hands, his only consolation that the official report would be his alone to write. He saw them off, balancing encouragement and caution.

The small party of horsemen under Sgt. Duncan was sent off at early light to Rome on the Tickfaw River. This town was hard to locate even on maps of the time and found a natural home on the Tickfaw. Threading its wandering blue line South and a little East, it is saved from the swamp by a nameless bayou that conveys it to the Natalbany just before that familiar stream finds Lake Maurepas. Surely a backwater at two removes, but well known to Sgt. Duncan as the family seat of some close cousins. But it was just as well he had some local credit, better known there out of uniform than in.

His party would from time to time become aware of solitary men in cover off to one side or another. But just as it was his particular virtue – being without commission – not to know what the Confederate States might want inflicted on this people, so too he could remain to all appearances blind to the threats round about them.

Though he had been convinced from the start that the Kinchen brothers and Elijah Gainey were not hereabouts, he kept to his assigned duties and communicated his approach to his squad without apparent effort. Indeed, along with most of the parish population South of a line between Springfield and French Settlement, he could have sworn the assassins were not here short of coming here to look. But investigation and inspection