Lost Era 05_ Deny thy Father - Jeff Mariotte [73]
“You’d best put down that gun,” Thaddius said. “Or you won’t have to worry about breathing for much longer. I told you we’re not here to hurt you or your kin, or damage your house. But we can’t hold with keeping human beings in a pen.”
“If I had a dog I suppose you’d take that too.”
“That would depend on the dog,” Railsback offered helpfully. “Yesterday we shot a hound that was used for tracking escaped slaves.”
“Y’all killed old Clarence?” Lucius asked, breaking into a grin for the first time. He displayed a ragged scar on his calf. “I wisht I’d’a been there for that. Dog has left his mark on me a few times.”
“I don’t know as it was Clarence,” Thaddius said. “But if it wasn’t, we’ll find him too. I’ll even give you the pleasure of pulling the trigger. Now let’s see that pen.”
Miz Lily didn’t stand in their way, so Lucius led the others to a low wooden structure behind the barn. It was unpainted, as if the slaves held inside were even less important than the animals in the neat, whitewashed barn. When Railsback broke off the padlock on the door and Lucius pulled it open, the stink washed over Thaddius like a wave. Inside, there were nineteen slaves, men, women, and children, in a space that might have accommodated six. They had wooden pails for toilets, a barrel with some water in it, and straw for beds. The men had been tied to beams with leather straps.
“These kind gentlemen is here to free us,” Lucius said. “Miz Lily don’t want none of it, but they won’t back down from her. It was a sight, I’ll tell you.”
The people inside burst into laughter and thanks, and some even began to cry, pray, or both. Children ran out into the yard and dashed in wild circles, exuberant at being let out of the pen without a chore assigned to them. One of the women told Lucius that she’d go into the big house to get his family out. He warned her to be careful of Miz Lily, but Frankie volunteered to go along to make sure she didn’t try anything.
“Where we gone go, suh?” one of the women asked Thaddius.
“Anywhere you want, I reckon,” he told her with a grin.
“Ain’t got nowhere special in mind,” she said. “But most places we go, someone will just catch us up again.”
“But you’re free now,” he said.
“You think so, and I might think so,” the woman argued. “Are most other folks in these parts gone think so?”
“I see your point,” Thaddius admitted. This had become a problem already-freed slaves, with no place better to go and no guarantee of safety anywhere in Georgia, had taken to following Sherman’s army around. But that meant more mouths to feed, slower progress, and more targets for Johnny Reb. There was no good solution to the problem, but Thaddius didn’t feel right about turning these people away now that he’d rescued them from a slave pen. “I reckon you can stay with us awhile if you’ve a mind to.”
The slave pen had been put to the torch and the smoke-house raided for stores of beef and pork. Livestock was shot and fire set to the edges of the fields and then, with twenty-two former slaves in tow, the foragers went to rejoin their regiment.
The trouble started on a wooden bridge over a slow, narrow river. From a copse of trees on the far side, shots rang out, and Private Joyce, one of Thaddius Riker’s men, was hit in the gut. He fell, and the rest flattened themselves, drawing their weapons. Thaddius waved the ex-slaves down. But then gunfire came from behind them, up a hillside that banked down toward the river.
“They got us pinned down here,” Railsback muttered. “It’ll be like target practice for ‘em to pick us off.”
“That’s because we’re on the wrong side of the bridge,” Thaddius said.
“But they’re on both sides!”
“I’m talking about over and under,” Thaddius explained. “We’re over. We need to be under. Give ‘em some hell, boys!” he shouted. “And let’s get wet!”
The men all started shooting then, setting up a covering barrage that drove the rebs back into the trees and those up on the hill into hiding while the Federals dove from the bridge into the lazily moving river. The water