Ride With the Devil (3 page)

“I’m sorry to hear about that. So, what are you doing out here? I figured you’d be back in Georgia, running Goldcrest. I mean, after all, it is the biggest plantation in the county.”

“It was the biggest,” Hawke said. “But no more. Taxes took it. After Pa and my brother were killed in the war, my
ma just gave up living and died of heartbreak. It stood fallow for two years, piling up debts.” He was quiet for a moment. “At least none of them lived long enough to see me lose land that had been in the family for over a hundred years.”

“You can’t take that too hard, Hawke. My family lost Trailbreak. A lot of county people lost everything,” Culpepper said. “Hell, that’s why I didn’t even go back home. I haven’t seen Georgia since I left for the war.”

“You were smart. I shouldn’t have gone back,” Hawke said.

“So, you have become one of the wanderers, have you?” Culpepper asked. “One of the dispossessed. Well, join the crowd, my friend. Just join the crowd.”

“You seem to have found your place. I notice it’s ‘Colonel Culpepper’ here and ‘Yes, sir’ there. What are you, the mayor?”

“No, not the mayor. I’m just the head of the Salcedo Regulator Brigade.”

“I figured it was something like that. That slab-toothed, pox-faced son of a bitch called you colonel. And you seemed to be calling the shots.”

Culpepper laughed out loud and slapped the tabletop in good humor. “Slab-toothed, pox-faced son of a bitch,” he said. “A rather good description of Rufus Vox, I must say.”

“So, when did you make colonel? Last time I saw you, you were a sergeant.”

“The Confederate army had its promotion schedule and I have mine,” Culpepper said, smiling. “When I formed the Salcedo Regulators Brigade, I just appointed myself colonel.”

“Well, why not?” Hawke answered. “It worked for Napoleon when he appointed himself Emperor. What exactly is this regulators’ brigade, anyway?”

“Some might call us vigilantes,” Culpepper said. “But I
prefer to think of us as a group of concerned citizens who are enforcing the law.”

“What about the sheriff, or marshal? Wouldn’t enforcing the law be his job?”

Hawke’s position at the table afforded him a good view of the piano. There were cobwebs over the closed keylid, and that told him that the saloon had no regular piano player. He wondered how long it had been since the piano was last used.

“It would be the sheriff or marshal’s job if we had a sheriff or a marshal. But we do not. The Dawson brothers killed our town marshal about a year ago. We hired two more marshals, but the Dawson brothers made things too hot for them as well, so they ran out on us.”

“Who are the Dawson brothers?”

Culpepper chuckled. “Better you should ask who were the Dawson brothers. Frank and Earl Dawson were two of the lowest, no-count sons of bitches you ever saw in your life. They made Salcedo their headquarters while they robbed and murdered innocent citizens for miles around. But just because Salcedo was their headquarters didn’t mean the town got a pass. No, sir, they ran roughshod over the citizens here too.”

“You are talking about them in the past tense.”

“That’s because they are past tense. They, and six of their men, are lying buried in the town cemetery right now.”

“From the tone of the conversation, may I assume that was the work of the Regulators?”

“You’re damn right it was. It reached the point where we just decided we’d had enough. So I went before the town council and offered to lead a group of brave and dedicated men on a mission to rid our town of the Dawsons. That was how the Salcedo Regulators Brigade began.”

“If the Dawsons are gone, don’t you think you could hire a city marshal now? Why is the brigade still here?”

“We’ll hire a new marshal in due time,” Culpepper said. “But I don’t like to leave any job half done. And we still have some work to do here. One example is Ed Delaney, the fella you cut down.”

“What did Delaney do?”

“What didn’t the son of a bitch do?” Culpepper replied. “Steal, murder, you name it. He was one of those men who couldn’t settle down after the war. I’m sure you’ve seen them before, restless wretches. He wasn’t quite as bad as the Dawsons, but believe me, he was well on his way.”

“I’m curious as to why you left his body hanging.”

“Look at it from our position, Hawke. We had just come through a period of having our town ruled by outlaws, and Delaney was hell-bent to take their place. We wanted to send a message to anyone else who might have ideas of taking over where the Dawsons left off, so I got permission from the court to leave the body hanging.”

“From the court?”

“Of course from the court. Delaney was legally tried, convicted, and sentenced to hang.” Culpepper chuckled. “Come on, you didn’t think we lynched him, did you?”

“I gave it a passing thought,” Hawke said. “It’s sort of unusual to find someone who has been legally hanged dangling from a tree for two or three days.”

“I reckon it is rather unusual at that. Like I said, things around here have been unusual for quite a while now. But we’re working hard to put things right again.”

“How many do you have in your brigade?”

“Calling it a brigade may be a little overblown. There are actually only nine of us, counting me,” Culpepper said.

“But still, nine of you? For a town this small, I wouldn’t think you would need anything close to that many.”

“If the war taught me anything, Hawke, it taught me the value of force and power,” Culpepper replied. “With this many of us, nobody dares to give us any trouble. As I said, our job isn’t finished yet, but we are getting there. And I’m proud to say that people can walk the street at night without fear of being robbed or murdered.”

Turning in his seat, Culpepper called over to the bar. “Paddy, are we better off now, or before we got rid of the Dawsons?”

“There’s no question about it, Colonel Culpepper,” Paddy replied. “Salcedo’s been a lot more peaceful since you started the Regulators.”

“Sounds like your good work is appreciated,” Hawke said.

“Well, I’m real glad you see it that way, Hawke,” Culpepper said. Finishing his beer, he stood and extended his hand. “It was good seeing you again, but if you’ll excuse me, I have to go make out the roster for the watch tonight.”

Shortly after Culpepper left, Paddy came over to the table to get his empty mug.

“Say, wait a minute,” Hawke said. “I just realized that Titus didn’t pay for the beer. Do you keep a tab on him? Or do I have to pay for him?”

“You don’t have to pay,” Paddy replied. “Nobody from the Regulators pays for their beer.”

“Why not?”

“Call it a courtesy.”

Hawke laughed. “Well, if he doesn’t pay, then it wasn’t all that hard for him to buy me a beer, was it?”

Paddy laughed with him. “No, I guess not.”

AFTER HE LEFT THE SALOON, COLONEL TITUS Culpepper walked down the street to the office of the
Salcedo Advocate
, which billed itself as “the Voice of Salcedo.”

Cyrus Green, the mayor of Salcedo, was also the editor and publisher of the newspaper. He was a work in progress as far as being a newspaperman was concerned, looking for a voice that could create enough controversy to hold the interest of the reading public, while not being so contentious that he lost readers.

When one of his articles had angered the Dawson brothers, they came into his newspaper office, beat him up, scattered his type, and turned over his press.

A battered Cyrus Green put his newspaper back together again, just in time to praise the formation of the Salcedo Regulators Brigade.

He knew that if the Dawsons were to take offense, there was nothing they could do about it. They were too busy trying to escape the Salcedo Regulators Brigade.

In addition to publishing the newspaper, Cyrus did job printing, which was what brought Titus Culpepper to the newspaper office directly from his visit with Mason Hawke.

Cyrus had seen Culpepper walking up the street, so he met him at the front counter with a printers’ proof of the job he was doing for him.

“Hello, Mayor,” Culpepper said. “I was just wondering if you have—”

“Right here,” Cyrus answered, interrupting. “How does this look to you, Colonel?” Cyrus held out a poster for Culpepper’s examination.

VOTE FOR

TITUS CULPEPPER

FOR CONGRESS

A FIGHTER FOR JUSTICE

The text, in black, was set inside two concentric boxes, one red and one blue. The effect was a patriotic red, white, and blue.

“It looks very good to me,” Culpepper said. “You’ve done a fine job, Mayor.”

“Thanks. Oh, and if you would like, I could take a photo
graph of you and send it to Austin, where they’ve got a good woodcut artist. Then we could print the posters with your picture.”

“No, this’ll do fine, just fine,” Culpepper said. He laughed. “Besides, if you put my picture on them, people might think they are wanted posters.”

Cyrus laughed with him. “How many do you want, Colonel?”

“Print up enough to plaster the whole district with them,” he said. He put a penny on the counter and picked up a newspaper. “Is this your latest issue?”

“Yes, sir, just took it off the press an hour ago,” he said.

Culpepper nodded, put the paper under his arm, then left.

Cyrus watched Culpepper through the front window of his office. Culpepper stopped to talk to a sign painter who was working in front of what had been the marshal’s office. And though the painter wasn’t completely finished with the sign, there was enough of it to be read.

SALCEDO REGULATORS BRIGADE

HEADQUARTERS

COLONEL TITUS CULPEPPER, CMNDG

Cyrus Green had been a big supporter of the Regulators. He’d drummed up public support through his newspaper articles, and as mayor he introduced the ordinance to the town council that authorized the recognition and funding of the Regulators.

Like many others from the town, Cyrus Green knew war. But his personal war experiences had a unique perspective, and though he saw more action than anyone else in town, he had not been a soldier. During the war, he was a correspondent for the
Richmond Dispatch
, and in that capacity was present at several of the most important battles. He shared
the dangers and the hardships of the common soldier while writing the stories that brought the war home to thousands of readers.

“I would like to commend your journalist, Cyrus Green,” one reader wrote in a letter to the
Dispatch
. “His command of the language and use of words puts the reader on the battlefield with such intimacy that one can smell the powder and hear the roar of the guns. Bravo for his skills, and may he continue to provide us with his brilliant and insightful contributions.”

After the war, when he was presented with the chance to buy a hand press from the widow of a newspaper publisher who had been killed in the fighting, Cyrus seized the opportunity to produce his own paper. Salcedo was the fourth town in which he had attempted to start a paper, and it was not until he got there that his dream began to show promise of success.

The fact that he had won the last mayoral election by an overwhelming margin was evidence of the degree of acceptance he had achieved since moving to the town.

At the Golden Calf saloon, Hawke had walked over to the piano and was now examining it. Pulling the bench out, he sat down and opened the cover, then wiped away the gathering of cobwebs. He moved his finger up the keyboard, hitting all the white and black keys in order. To his surprise, the piano was in amazingly good tune.

“Well, hell, mister, don’t just sit there,” one of the other saloon patrons said. “Either scratch your ass or play the piano, whichever one you’re the best at.”

The other patrons laughed.

For a long moment Hawke didn’t move. As he sat there, the smoke, the smell of bodies and beer, the noise, the heat, and the stained walls all faded into the background. For him,
the little saloon in a tiny, flyblown town in West Texas became the Place de l’Opera in Paris in 1861.

“You have set all Europe on its ear, Monsieur Hawke,” Monsieur Garneau said. “You are the musical genius of the year.”

“The audiences have been very gracious,” Hawke replied as he buttoned his formal jacket.

On stage, the concert master raised a megaphone to his lips and made an announcement.

“Dames et messieurs, Place de l’Opera fièrement présents Monsieur Mason Hawke.”

The audience erupted into thunderous applause, and Mason Hawke, the most sought after pianist of the season, strolled quickly out onto the stage. Flipping his tails out of the way, he sat down to the keyboard and began playing to the enraptured Parisian audience.

In the Golden Calf saloon of Salcedo, Texas, the patrons were amazed to hear the intricate weaving of chords, melody, and countermelody of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Piano Concerto Number 12 in A major rather than the hesitant and frequent off-key renditions of some familiar cowboy tune.

As Hawke played, he was transported to another place and another time, totally oblivious to the effect he was having on the saloon and its patrons. They sat in stunned silence, listening. Passersby came in from the street and stood quietly, just to hear to the music. Even women, who would never come into the saloon, were drawn by the beautiful sounds coming from the keyboard of the old, scarred, upright piano.

Hawke played every movement, every bar, every note of the composition, holding the now large saloon crowd spellbound by the beauty of the music and the power of his playing. Finally, twelve minutes after starting the piece, he finished it in a crashing crescendo.

The audience cheered and applauded. Not until then did Hawke bring himself back from that distant, ephemeral paradise that such musical interludes allowed him to visit. No longer was he Mason Hawke, the
jeune pianiste brillant d’Europe
. He was, once again, Mason Hawke, the displaced wanderer, sitting at a scarred upright piano in a beer-soaked, smoke-filled saloon in a town that he had never heard of until recently.

Standing, he turned and acknowledged the cheers and applause of the crowd.

“Paddy, give this man a beer, on me!” one of the patrons said.

“Do you know what you are doing there, Doc? You’re not one who’s known for buyin’ many drinks,” someone said.

“I admit to a degree of parsimoniousness,” Doc replied. “But who can put a price tag on what we just heard?”

The one the others called Doc was the same man who had invited Hawke to play.

“Urban is the name, my friend,” Doc said. “I’m a doctor, so folks call me Doc. And who might you be?”

“Hawke,” he said. “And I thank you for the drink.” Hawke walked over to the bar, where Paddy gave him another beer.

“I don’t suppose you would like a job playing the piano, would you, Mr. Hawke?” Paddy asked.

“I would love a job playing the piano,” Hawke replied.

“Can’t pay much. Two dollars a week. But you can put a bowl on the piano and keep all the tips you get. Also there’s a room upstairs where you can stay, and you can eat free here, what food as we have.”

“Sounds good to me,” Hawke said.

“Only thing…” Paddy said.

Hawke smiled. He knew what was coming.

Paddy held his hand up and shook his finger admonishingly. “Don’t play no more music like that.”

“Why not?” Hawke asked. “Your customers seemed to like it.”

“Yeah, that’s just it,” Paddy said. “They liked it too much. Perhaps you didn’t take no notice, but there wasn’t a one of them ordered a drink for the whole time you was playin’.”

“I noticed it,” Hawke admitted.

“Uh-huh. Well, if you’re goin’ to play piano for me, I expect you to play songs like ‘Little Joe the Wrangler,’ or ‘Buffalo Gals,’ or something like that.”

“Whatever you say,” Hawke said. “You’re the boss. By the way, where do you suggest I board my horse?”

“Well, we got a livery just across the street, but he don’t do much boardin’. He mostly takes care of the teams for the stage line and he rents horses, buckboards, and the like. If I was you, I’d try Sarge’s Place,” Paddy suggested.

“Sarge’s Place?”

“The blacksmith shop down at the end of town.”

“Yes, I saw it as I rode in,” Hawke said.

“He does some boardin’ at his stable out back,” Paddy explained.

The anvil was ringing as Hawke approached the blacksmith shop. The smithy had a red-hot, iron wheel band gripped with a pair of tongs he held in his left hand. With the hammer in his right, he was beating the iron band into shape. Sparks were flying from the repeated hammer blows.

As Hawke dismounted, the blacksmith dipped the glowing band into a tub of water.

“Yes, sir, what can I do for you?” the smithy asked.

“Are you Sarge?”

“I just call my place that ’cause I was a farrier sergeant in the Ninth Cavalry,” the smithy answered. His skin was relatively light for a black man; the color of creamed coffee. He
wore a well-trimmed moustache. “My given name is Ken Wright.”

“Well, Mr. Wright, I’d like to board my horse with you, if you don’t mind.”

“How long are you going to be here?”

“I don’t know.”

“Reason I ask is, it’s cheaper if you board him by the week. I get ten cents a night, but fifty cents for a whole week.”

“I’ll board him by the week. Will you feed him for that?”

“Hay for free, but for another ten cents I’ll give him oats twice a week.”

“All right,” Hawke said, handing the reins over, “give him the oats twice a week.”

“You the one that brought in Mr. Delaney?” Ken asked.

“I am.”

“I’ll give your horse oats twice a week for no extra charge,” he said.

“Really? I appreciate that. Was Delaney a friend?”

“We sparred some,” Ken said.

“Sparred? What is that?”

“Mr. Delaney wanted to learn to box, so he come to me for lessons.”

“You’re a boxer?”

Wright pointed to a faded poster on the wall of his shed. The poster showed a picture of him in a fighter’s pose, his fists held up before him.

BOXING MATCH

BETWEEN

YANKEE SULLIVAN

CHAMPION OF ENGLAND

AND

KEN WRIGHT

“THE BLACK TERROR”

“That’s me,” Wright said.

“How’d you do?”

“I knocked him out in the eleventh round,” the blacksmith replied.

“Well, good for you.”

“Not too good,” Ken Wright said. “I was supposed to lose. Lots of folks had money bet saying I would lose. When I won, it upset the applecart some, so I had to skedaddle out of there. That’s how come I wound up with the Buffalo Soldiers.”

“But you aren’t with the Buffalo Soldiers now.”

“No, sir,” Ken replied.

Ken offered no explanation as to why he was no longer with the Buffalo Soldiers, and Hawke didn’t ask.

Hawke nodded toward the sign. “I see you’re not only a blacksmith, but you blast out tree stumps. You work with powder, do you?”

“Not powder,” Ken said. “I use dynamite. It’s a lot easier.”

“Yes, I’ve seen it used.”

“You plan to leave your saddle here?” Ken asked.

“Yes, I believe I will, if you don’t mind.”

“No extra charge,” Ken said. “I reckon you’ll be wanting this, though.” He removed the saddle bags and snaked the rifle from the saddle sleeve then handed them to Hawke.

“Yes, thanks,”

As the big blacksmith took Hawke’s horse toward the stable, Hawke returned to the saloon.

The Golden Calf was not the first saloon Hawke had worked in since the war, and he was sure it wouldn’t be his last. He had no plans to settle there or anywhere, and if someone questioned him, he would tell them that these piano-playing jobs were just stops along the way.

“Along the way to where?” some would ask.

Hawke had the same answer for all of them. “Anywhere in general, nowhere in particular.”

Hawke’s father had been a United States congressman. He was also the owner of Goldcrest, one of the largest cotton plantations in Georgia. But the elder Hawke was a strong believer in primogeniture, which meant that the entire farm would go to Hawke’s older brother, Gordon.