Greater love has no man.
John K. Sutherland.
It’s a pleasure to have John back on the Scribbler. He is an award-winning author. His first visit was in December, 2017 when he talked about his short stories and novels. You can read his bio from the last visit HERE
This short story is taken from a
novel of the Civil War, written by this author, and entitled ‘In Love and War.’ There is another version; much more explicit,
entitled ‘Baptism by Fire’. Both stories
may be feely read on inkitt.com along with almost 40 other stories by this
author. Give my profile about 20 seconds
to load.
The story begins at the start of the
Civil War and takes place mostly upon the Belding Plantation, in Mississippi.
Belding, has three grown children at
the time of the story. A stepdaughter,
Angelique; brought into his family when he married his second wife; a son,
Charles, by his first wife; and Elizabeth, his youngest child.
Belding, mostly illiterate, and
estranged from his son, relies upon Elizabeth, as young as she is, to run
things on the plantation. She succeeds,
where he failed. She changes many things
behind his back to alleviate the burdens of the slaves, and to save the women
from the rapacious ways of her father.
After a major argument and violence,
after a slave comes to her defense in one of her many confrontations with her
father, Elizabeth realizes that to save the life of the slave who defended her,
that she will have to kill her father.
She does not hesitate. But first, she writes a will, for her father.
Soon after, encountering her half-brother,
raping her half-sister, she shoots him too.
Peace returns to the plantation even
as the war rages on around them.
Then, one day…after the war had
ended… seven, ragged, Confederate soldiers rode into her yard.
Trouble of the worst kind!
They are saved by a Yankee, leaving
seven renegades dead! He changes
everything.
It ends here, and now.
Elizabeth was first alerted to
something wrong by the sound of horses riding into the yard in front of the
house. How could they have approached without being seen, or without Zeb coming
down out of the woods to warn them that such a group was so close?
She felt a tight knot of
apprehension in her stomach and a sudden feeling of unease gripped her.
They had been careful to have
approached out of sight of the house and of the cabins.
She cursed herself for having let
her guard down, lulled into foolishness by the euphoric news that the war had
ended. She should have known better than to believe that. Wars never ended
cleanly or when they were supposed to; history should have taught her that.
She could still escape out of the
back of the house.
She hesitated, and then, staying
out of sight, she glanced out of the open door of the washhouse and saw seven
men on horseback. Confederates! But they had drawn guns and were not there for
any honest purpose.
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| Photo credit: John Straton |
She saw one man dismount and grab
hold of one of the women close to him; Dorothea, who was not fast enough to get
out of his way; the others threatened anyone who thought to intervene.
Elizabeth began to feel sick at
what their intentions were. She recovered her father’s pistol from under some
cotton sheets in the washhouse, saw that it was loaded, and immediately ran out
of the house, into the yard, heedless of any danger to herself now.
Dorothea was like a sister to
her, and she would do everything in her power to stop them if she could.
The man who had dismounted and
had stopped Dorothea from escaping him, ripped off her dress as he laughed at
her efforts to escape him, revealing her naked body beneath. The other men on
horseback were watching nervously, their guns ready for any resistance, though
they already knew that there were no men worth considering at the main house,
and the rest of the slaves were either in the fields or in plain view. They
would not be trusted with weapons anyway.
They watched as he twisted the
woman’s arm up behind her back and then pushed her ahead of him around the
corner of the building and out of sight. His friends would make sure that no
one followed them. He didn’t like an audience for what he was about to do. The
woman could do nothing to fight him. Some man, possibly her husband if there
was the formality of marriage between them, ran forward to defend her and was
shot. He fell back clutching at his side.
“Next shot, I kill you!”
As the first man went around the
corner to the cabin, pushing his captive ahead of him, Elizabeth moved into the
yard. She pointed the pistol at the man who was obviously the leader, and
pulled the trigger.
It did not function as she'd
expected.
She cursed the wayward thing and
quickly tried to find out what was wrong with it, but by then he had seen her
and what she hoped to do.
On the other side of the small
cluster of cabins, and also out of sight of those in the yard in front of the
house, Forrester had seen the beginning of what was unfolding.
He would have liked to have shot
more of them before they got this far, but the ground here was not in his favor
against so many men, and with too few places to disappear to and melt away, as
he had been able to do before. They were also on horseback and would escape.
There was no one here that he could rely upon. He could see their intent and
what they would likely do to all of those here who witnessed what they
intended, before they were able to escape over the river after torching the
place.
He would get a chance to remove
one more of them, without any sound of a gunshot to give him away, if he was
lucky. He walked around the corner of the building with his revolver trained on
the man roughly handling the woman as he pushed her to the ground and stood
over her.
He did not see Forrester. The
man’s attention was elsewhere, struggling to get his own clothing undone while
restraining the now silent woman, and stopping her from crawling off as he
stood over her. The black woman didn’t say anything. She lay still, thinking of
protecting as many lives of her own people from these men as possible, by
staying quiet, no matter what happened to her. She had seen her own man shot in
the side for thinking to intervene. Both men could hear some ruckus in the yard
on the other side of the building: the sound of horses moving about and of
raised voices.
Dorothea said nothing, but
watched with wide eyes and lay still when Forrester swung his pistol at the
man’s head, breaking bones and knocking him to his knees, at least mostly
senseless if not worse. Before he could fall, Forrester grabbed him by the hair
and then hauled him backward as he holstered his pistol and retrieved his
knife, both with the same action, and then decisively cut the man’s throat
before he could give any sound of alarm. He hoped the woman was not going to be
hysterical at the sight of all of that blood suddenly spurting everywhere, even
onto them both, or the man’s gurgling as he fought for air with suddenly gaping
eyes and hands that rose unsteadily to his throat to find out what had happened
with some horror, finding only blood to breathe on.
She was too terrified to say
anything just watching this second man, wondering what he would do now, and to her. He was not one of the
others, she knew that. He let the man fall off to one side and paid him no further
attention other than to wipe his knife off on the fallen man’s clothing before
he re-sheathed it.
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| Photo Credit: Veronica Shelley |
He signaled for her to remain
silent as she sat up in a tight ball against the cabin wall, whispering for her
to stay where she was.
He had no choice about what he
must do now, but at least he would have the element of surprise on his part. He
picked up the man’s gun and stuck it into his own belt, and then picked up his
Henry repeating rifle as he retreated back the way he had come. The woman,
still scared, watched him leave, but did not stay immobile for long with that
dying man, jerking close by, still spouting blood and looking as he did, with
his eyes wide and staring in horror. She rose to her feet and followed him,
seemingly not put out by her nakedness, which was the last thing on her
terror-filled mind at that moment, but wanting his protection, as uncertain as
that might prove to be, and to get as far away from that other man making a
strange noise, as he kicked at nothing, staring up into the sky. Seeing
nothing.
The men on horseback were
distracted by the sudden appearance of the younger woman, and at her intent, as she had tried to fire her pistol at
their leader. He saw what she intended and rode at her quickly, seeing what had
happened with her pistol.
Before she could correct what had
gone wrong, he rode into her, sending her flying, with the gun lost from her
grasp. As the others watched nervously, he dismounted quickly and hauled her to
her feet. Another shot rang out behind him to discourage any concerted action
by those blacks still standing there who would have come to her rescue. Before
she could get back to her feet and escape, he had grasped her by the hair and
pulled her back to him, holding her around her middle and around her breasts,
endeavoring to trap her arms so that she could not fight him; but she could
bite, and she did so... on the arm that came too close to her head. He struck
her hard in the face for that.
“Well, lads, we got what we came
for. She’s a feisty one.” He laughed. “She even had the gall to come out at us,
as brazen as you please. We didn’t have to flush her out or go lookin’ for her.
We’ll have us some fun tonight with this one, and for a while after that too.
She’ll be a kicker and a screamer. At least for a while. She bites well
enough.”
He recognized that they would
have to leave now, after those shots, before others came out of the fields in
response. He raised his voice and shouted so that their companion, supposedly
still occupied with the woman behind the cabin, could hear him.
He could not have known what had
already happened to him.
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| Photo Credit: Bible Reflections |
“Adam, we’re leaving. Now! Bring
her along too, you can finish up with her later, and bring anyone else you can
snag.” One of his friends passed him a
length of cloth to bind his captive’s hands, and then, as he threw her facedown
over his saddle, he took off his own neckcloth and bound her feet, as she
almost slid headfirst off the horse.
“Adam?” He shouted for the man
behind the cabin. “You hear me? We ain’t got time to waste. Bring her with you.
We’re leaving.”
They had already been here too
long. There would be others rushing back from the fields at the sound of
gunfire. He turned to another man.
“Get us some food, or get some of
those hens. Check inside that cabin and shoot whoever gets in your way, and
then let’s get out of here, and see what’s keeping Adam. He’s never been longer
than a couple of minutes, before.”
He climbed onto his horse and
adjusted the struggling body in front of him, and then raised her long skirt to
reveal her white skin and more.
“Stop struggling, damn you.” He
spanked her hard, twice, on her bare buttocks for being difficult, liking what
he saw there, exposed to him.
It would be an uncomfortable ride
for her, but he didn’t
care. That would be only the start of it. It would quieten her down and knock
some of the fight out of her for later, and a very uncomfortable and busy
night. He raised his voice.
“If any of you try to follow us,
I’ll kill both of the women. You hear me?”
They probably would kill them
anyway. No one moved or said anything, but the angry looks on their faces told
him that they would not be easily discouraged. Let them learn the hard way. He
fired a shot at a dog that had been barking and running in and out of the
horse’s feet. He missed, but set the horses dancing nervously, almost unseating
him, so did not repeat that act.
He heard another single shot, to
one side, probably to discourage the slaves from intervening, and then another
one.
That didn’t sound right!
He looked around and saw one of
his companions lying on the ground,
where he had just fallen, and another slumped over in his saddle with half of
his head shot away. The others were shooting wildly at someone to his right and
behind him.
Something had changed! Downey had
not expected any resistance or anyone to have any guns. Slaves were not usually
trusted with guns. Who the hell was doing this? There were no men in the house,
he knew that. They had watched it for ten minutes and had
learned as much from a small black child that one of them had questioned back
along the road. He had been heading away from the house, or he would not have
survived.
They learned that the men were
all at war, or were working out in the far fields getting the crops planted. He
pulled the horse about with one hand as he steadied his burden with the same
hand resting on her, across her bare buttocks, and the other hand reaching for
his own pistol. He saw one man on foot, shooting at them from about twenty feet
away and taking each shot with deliberation and care but not wasting any time
either.
A Yankee! Where had he come from? There were not supposed to
be any white men here. He felt as though he recognized him from somewhere.
Him again!
His three remaining friends had
already started to open fire at this new target—what little they could see of
him—shooting at them; but
with their horses moving beneath them, startled by the sudden noise of gunfire,
and the dog, and being in each other’s way, they were not having much success,
as they were still picked off with unerring accuracy. The man took his time
over each shot, heedless of the bullets flying around him and with some of them
undoubtedly hitting him as he flinched, but was not deterred. Another man,
fell.
Downey brought his own pistol up
but saw—with complete horror—his hand holding the gun, separated from his arm
by a long blade of some kind—he could not see it clearly—wielded by a black man
who had somehow got too close to him as he had been distracted with the woman;
and then he lost all interest even before any pain could be felt from that, as
a bullet entered his brain, followed shortly after that by that same weapon
that had taken off his hand. It lodged in his head, splitting him down to his
chin.
The black man who had done that
pushed the body off the horse, steadied it from dancing around, then carefully
pulled his mistress off the horse, out of the line of fire, trying to protect
her, as the man fell to the ground under the horse’s feet. He would go nowhere
now, and was beyond feeling anything.
The two remaining men understood
what was happening to them. They threw their empty pistols down, turned their
horses, and spurred off in desperation, riding low over their horses’ necks to
make as small a target as possible.
Unfortunately for them, it was
all open ground with no cover of any kind, and with slaves hurrying along it
back to the house after they heard the shots.
These two, knew the man shooting
at them. They had learned of him in the previous weeks, but had
thought that he was now dead. He, did not miss. They had found that out
to their cost on several occasions as he had painstakingly hunted them down,
picking them off, one after another over the last few weeks from a great
distance, or from unassailable cover until they had laid a trap for him.
Somehow, he had survived that!
Forrester dropped his empty
pistol into the dust and brought the rifle he carried in his other hand up to
his shoulder. He chambered a cartridge and took his time, as he had before. He
squeezed off a shot, seeing one of the two men arch his back as he stood up in
his stirrups before he fell back off his horse. One of his feet was still
caught in the stirrup. His body began flying about in death, like a marionette
at the end of its strings as the horse’s rear feet tore into his head and upper
body, throwing him around enough to break bones and tear him limb from limb.
The man felt nothing by then. Nobody had heard his cry over the noise of the
gunshot. He was already dead. The horse would soon stop and wait nervously to
be freed of that twisted burden.
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| Photo Credit: Richmond Confidential |
Forrester ignored all of that and his own pains as he worked the
action and then focused on the one receding target still left. He ignored all
else around him. He could allow for the increasing distance, but the man made
it relatively easy for him, riding directly away from him.
He had been doing this for the
last four years and was a master at it. He aimed for the top of the man’s body
so as not to hit the horse. He knew that he could hit a target the size of an apple
at two hundred yards, but he was tired, and trembling even, and this target was
moving. He took a deep breath and held it as he brought the man into view along
the sight.
He took his shot and saw the man
slump from the saddle and fall off the galloping horse to bounce and then roll
to lie motionless in a relatively small lump of what seemed like balled-up rags
before he had gone more than four hundred feet. If the shot had not killed him,
the fall from a galloping horse had, breaking many of the bones in his body.
All seven men were accounted for.
Forrester limped over to the four
that he was reasonably sure about, ready to use the other pistol taken from his
belt. He saw the man, Downey, that he had taken pains to be sure he killed,
with a blade cleaving his head down to his chin. He could see that he was
certainly dead, as were the others. He had completed what he had set out to do
all of those weeks earlier. He sat down heavily in the dust, relieved to have
brought it all to an end. At least he had stopped them before they killed
anyone else, or did any more damage. Now he could die. The devil could have him
now after playing with him for the last four years, and throwing ever greater
atrocities in his way.
He lost all consciousness of his
surroundings as he fell over.
Thank you, John for being our guest
this week and sharing your writing with our readers.
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