Pemberley Ranch - Jack Caldwell [72]
Beth waved as the young cowpoke rode off. She then leaned over and whispered into Turner’s ear, “Ready to kick up some dust?”
The paint shook its head and took off at the slightest urging. Within moments Beth was flying across the ridgeline, her hair trailing behind her, horse and rider in perfect harmony, reveling in the summer sun.
Tom Bennet rubbed his forehead as his favorite daughter left his study. He knew she was angry, but he could do nothing about it.
Beth had tried to warn him off George Whitehead. She calmly told him wild tales about false imprisonment and the torture of captives, of lies and chicanery. Once she finished, she asked if he was going to continue to have dealings with Whitehead and was flabbergasted when told that he would.
“How can you?” she had demanded. “Don’t you believe me?”
“Yes, dear. I believe you.”
“Then, why? Is Whitehead holding something over you?”
“No. I’ll tell you the same thing I told Charles. War is a terrible thing, and I won’t judge a man by his actions under fire. George has been a valuable counselor, and I’ll deal or not deal with him on that basis. The past is in the past, my dear. Let the war go.”
“But, Father—”
“Enough, Beth.”
At that, she had stormed out of his small study, leaving an aggrieved and disappointed parent behind.
Bennet stood up and looked at the portrait of his son. How much Samuel resembled his late grandfather, he thought. My son, my dear son. How I miss you. How I miss your grandfather, too.
Tom Bennet worshiped the very ground his father walked; he considered him a man without fault until the night—the first he had shared drinking with his father and uncles—when they talked of the “old times.” What he learned shook him.
Bennet knew his father fought in the War of 1812. What he didn’t know was that he was with General Zebulon Pike during the failed invasion of Canada of that year. For the first time, his beloved father talked about the looting and other atrocities committed by U.S. troops during their weeklong occupation of York, the capital of Upper Canada later known as Toronto, culminating in the burning of the government buildings.
“And that was the worst thing we ever did,” he remembered his father saying, “because two years later, the Brits used it as their excuse for burning Washington D.C. Never forget, son—‘For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.’”
Later, his uncles would talk of the Indian Wars and his cousins of the Mexican War. All talked of friends reduced by battle, fear, and anger to do unspeakable things. His beloved uncles killed Indians indiscriminately during attacks on hostile camps. It was impossible to distinguish between the belligerent and the innocent during the heat and smoke of battle, he was told.
It was then Tom Bennet had his epiphany—that good men can do bad things during war and should not be held to account for their actions. Wasn’t his father the best man he had ever known? Yet he looted a helpless city. His uncles were church elders. His cousins would walk miles in the snow to help a neighbor. Should he shun them for what they felt they had to do while wearing a uniform?
Yes, Bennet believed the stories told to him by Charles and Beth. War was awful enough for such things to occur. Besides, he was a born cynic. He took the propaganda in the newspapers with a grain of salt. He knew the South wasn’t the only side to commit atrocities. He knew of men—good men—who had been thrown in prison and had their habeas corpus rights suspended simply because, as anti-war Democrats, they had spoken out against the policies of the Lincoln administration. Bennet supported the war, but he wasn’t blind to the hypocrisy of violating the Constitution in order to save it. Bennet was friends with the sheriff who arrested these men and the judge who sentenced them to prison, but he knew they were wrong. History taught him that war was so evil it could corrupt whole governments, and here was proof of it. But Bennet never held anything against either