Stranger At Plantation Inn

CHAPTER ONE


The rain fell straight and heavy like silver-gilt shawl fringe in the dusk through which they could see the river in flood. They sat on the wagon seat huddled into their woolen blankets, watching the river as it flowed swiftly, filled with mud and silt, swollen with the rain of weeks, and carrying with it the past winter's dead leaves and the early spring's new growth. The riverbanks were several yards beyond their normal locations, and trees, which ordinarily stood aloof from the water, were now partially submerged. The rain's spattering added a treble sound to the rushing roar of the river, a sound that changed to a dull splat where the drops fell into the gluey red mud of the road, a road which led to the river bank where the bridge was supposed to be. All that was left was the stout log support on either side, and a beam dangling into the water.
Lillian Newton shivered into her blanket and tucked her chin into its folds to hide a smile. She didn't mind the cold, wet rain, unusual though it was for springtime in the South. It didn't bother her at all that the bridge was out. As a matter of fact it amused her in a mild way because she knew it annoyed her traveling companion, and it also held possibilities which made her shiver in suppressed excitement.
"I should have known," said the Reverend George Bolt. "The way this day has been going so far, it just had to be."
Lillian smiled again without answering, knowing very well that the day, from its start at the break of a rainy, rooster-crowing dawn, through four potholes where George had to get out and push the wagon through the mud, until now, was enough to try any man's patience. George was wet from crawling in and out of the wagon without his blanket—muddy to the knees, sneezing with the onset of a fresh head cold. He was still across the river and seven miles from the church where he was supposed to begin a two-week revival that night, and he still had Farmer Newton's daughter on his hands, a young woman who had just refused to marry him, but whose company he had to endure until he could deliver her two miles across the river to her aunt. Lillian felt it was perhaps a little heartless of her to laugh at him, but it was such a comical comedown from his usual pompous assurance.
To tell the truth, it wasn't all George's fault that he had been so sure she would say yes to his proposal; she placed the blame for that partially on her father's shoulders. He never wanted her to leave home despite the fact that she was twenty-four years old and had turned down every man who had asked her to set up a home and family of her own. She had never found a man she could talk to about books and music and stray thoughts without getting queer looks, blank looks, or don't-worry-your-pretty-little-head-just-come-here-and-kiss-me looks. Finally, after helping her mother raise her ten younger brothers and sisters, she had decided to accept Aunt Sara's invitation to come and live with her. She would be a housemother to the teen-age girls attending her aunt's Young Ladies' Seminary.
Aunt Sara had feministic leanings, a trait that made Lillian's father snort with exasperation and Aunt Sara retaliate by calling him an oppressor of the fair sex, meaning her sister and nieces. Aunt Sara had never married, a fact Farmer Newton felt to be unnatural, the crux of her troubles, and dangerous, though he couldn't say how. Since Lillian was set on going to such a den of dangerous ideas and was well on her way to being a spinster herself, her father saw little need to be subtle. The bachelor preacher came twice a month to conduct worship services at their small church, and had stayed with them overnight while conducting the Easter services on Sunday, the day before. Her father had given him a few broad hints on availability and willingness and prevailed upon George to escort her to her aunt's school.
It had taken all of her tact and eloquence to convince the Reverend Bolt that she had no wish to be a clergyman's wife, and all her restraint to keep from laughing at the rain dripping off his nose and the mud he smeared across his forehead in his exasperation with her implacability. She was a little irritated at the denseness of his florid face, but she knew it was her father's meddling that made it so hard for him to take no for an answer, and she was even more certain that her decision to leave the farm was the right one. While she remained she would always be a daughter, not a person with tastes and views and a separate personality.
Still, though she would be free to think and act for herself in her aunt's school, it was not exactly the most exciting place to be—among teen-age girls, middle-aged old maids, and one man, the just-married history teacher. The supervision of her private life would still be there, though well meant and more tactful perhaps, in the person of her aunt. So, stranded on the opposite side of the river, she felt suddenly reprieved and elated. Before her lay, perhaps not adventure or anything of that kind, but something different, something unplanned.
"Since we can't cross the river, I'm going to have to go back to the pastor's house, and I can't take you with me."
"No?" she asked.
"The pastor's wife has seven children and no spare room. Even I will have to sleep on a pallet in the kitchen. It will be miserable tonight, cold as it is," he added with a hollow tone in his voice.
"Pastor Gage in the town a mile or two back?" Lillian asked, then added with seeming irrelevance, "Isn't his wife the one with the gossipy tongue?"
"That's beside the point," George said, flushing and avoiding her straightforward gaze.
"Well I hardly think my reputation is beside the point, but go on," she said.
"If your reputation wouldn't be safe in the home of a man of God I don't know where it would be," George said with asperity.
"I was thinking of the state it would be in when the man of God's wife found out it took us twice the time it should to come the distance we have."
"I can't help it if this lop-eared mule of a horse drug us into every mudhole between here and the farm."
"A matter of opinion," she said, aware that they were both on edge with the cold and wet and delay.
"If there is one thing I can't abide, it's a vinegar-tongued woman," he said.
"Then it's a very good thing I didn't marry you, isn't it?" she said, not at all impressed by his loud voice or belligerent face.
"Perhaps it is," he said, calmed a little by her lack of anger.
"I believe the best thing to do is for you to take me back to Plantation Inn. It's off the road a few yards back; then you can go on to the pastor's."
"I know where the inn is, Lillian," he answered with heavy emphasis, "but I don't think your father would approve."
"Well, I hate to say this, George, but rather than turn around and hawk me door to door in Gransville or ask Brother Gage's wife to put me up, I don't know what else to suggest. And before you take a chance on the preacher's wife let me tell you I refuse. It may be days before we can cross the river and I …" she stopped in mid-sentence, her eyes caught by a furtive movement on the side of the road just behind them. Indistinct in the rain, a figure long and tall, or made to seem so by an ankle-length rain coat of some kind, stepped back into the trees that lined the road. Though she peered intently, she could make out no more than an impression of dark height, and then the man was gone.
"What is it?" George asked, glancing nervously over his shoulder.
"There was somebody there, on the edge of the woods, but he's gone now," she said, still trying to penetrate the rain dusk and darkness under the trees.
"Are you sure?"
"Quite sure," she answered and then went on, "oh well, he was probably harmless, a tramp or something like that." But there was doubt in her voice. There had been something about the figure, a tense watchfulness, that made her feel she was being spied upon. She shivered, not entirely from the damp cold that reached her through the blanket, and forced a smile. "Let's turn back to the stage stop, please, George. We'll both have pneumonia if we don't get out of the rain soon. Since we can't reach where we were going we'll just have to make the best of it."
They pulled up before Plantation Inn minutes later and George jumped down and pulled her trunk from the back of the wagon. He was determined, it seemed, to be on his way in as little time as possible. As Lillian negotiated the tricky descent from the high seat without help, she glanced up at the house before her. It was large and white with a high front porch, slender square pillars, and a black wrought-iron lantern swinging on a chain from the porch ceiling. Lillian had often looked at the inn in curiosity as she passed on the main road, straining for a glimpse of it through the trees, and now she was actually going to stay. It had once been a private home in the days before the Civil War, but Mrs. Jenkins had been widowed in the war and had been forced to open her home to the stage line in order to remain there. Although there had been some criticism at first because of the taint of commercialism, over the years the Jenkins home had become something special in the way of stage stops. It was a place with an air of welcome, the easy accommodation of true hospitality, and the friendliness of a private home where everyone who stopped was treated as an invited guest.
The light from the lamp was reflected in the rain drops that still fell steadily and glistened on the wet, brick steps that led up to the front porch. Lillian threw her blanket up into the wagon and made a run for the steps, hurrying up them breathlessly just as the front door opened.
"I told you I heard a wagon," the woman standing in the doorway called back over her shoulder. "Come in, come in before you catch your death." She included George in her invitation, as he puffed up the steps with the trunk. There was an encompassing smile on her round beaming face.
Lillian stepped into the wide entrance hall laughing, relieved at being so readily accepted in her disheveled state. A strand of smoky blond hair had loosened from its usual tidy chignon at the nape of her neck and fell across one gray blue eye, tangling in her sooty lashes. She pushed it back impatiently into place. Her dress was rumpled and damp from being crushed under the blanket, and she found that her new red wool shawl had run in the damp, dyeing the shoulders of her somber gray dress a sickly magenta. She shook her skirts out and readjusted her shawl across her shoulders, however, and looked about her with a serene, undismayed smile.
"I'm the Widow Jenkins," the woman who had greeted them said in her warm voice. "What can I do for you?" Her soft brown eyes and gray-streaked brown hair combined with her slightly rotund body to produce a remarkably motherly appearance.
"I wondered if you could put me up for a few days until the river goes down," Lillian asked, "I'm Lillian Newton and I was on my way to stay with my aunt Sara Langtree at the Seminary."
"Is that so?" Mrs. Jenkins said in a slightly breathless voice. "I know Sara Langtree well, living just across the river from her. Well, so you're her niece. And you've brought Brother Bolt, I see," she finished as George set the trunk down in the hall with a thud and shut the door behind him.
"It's the other way around, I'm afraid," Lillian said. "He was taking me to my aunt on the way to his next church."
George stepped forward and shook hands with his best manners, losing his petulance and gaining dignity as he resumed his clerical bearing. "Sorry I can't stay, but I had better put up with the pastor at Gransville. I daresay he will be expecting me with the bridge being out. He knows this is my week to swap churches."
"Oh, we would so like you to stay," Mrs. Jenkins said. "I'm sure we could find room, even if someone had to double up. It's such a cold drive tonight, and in this rain too."
When George still declined she did not press him further, but offered him a bite of supper and something hot to drink which he accepted with profound and audible thankfulness.
"Emmeline!" Mrs. Jenkins called loudly, and when a young girl appeared she directed her to show Lillian to her room. "I know young girls," she said with a dimpled smile, "would rather pretty up before they eat, but you come right down when you have changed and thaw out in front of the fire. I'll have something hot for you by then."
"Thank you," Lillian said gratefully and turned to follow Emmeline, a fresh-faced, brown-haired girl with a score of pale gold freckles powdered across her nose. Emmeline nodded her obedience, picked up a lamp standing on the drop-leaf table against the staircase, and began to ascend the stairs. As Lillian turned she caught a glimpse of the interior of the room opening out of the hall on the right, and of a man standing in unnatural immobility watching her.
She stopped with one foot on the stairs that rose on the left wall and her hand on the banister. Something in the way he stood, his straight erectness, his unblinking scrutiny, reminded her of the figure she had seen at the edge of the woods. Then he smiled and gave her a tilting nod that was almost a bow and the resemblance was gone.
A gentleman, she told herself shortly, noting the cool insolence of the smile that went, somehow, with his well-cut suit of fine black wool, silver gray waistcoat embroidered in black, and pleated linen shirt. His dark hair curled crisply over his head in disciplined lines, except for a curl that fell forward. Slowly he raised a smoldering cigar to his lips and drew on it, then blew the smoke out slowly, his eyes closed to slits and one thick, dark brow arched sardonically.
Suddenly Lillian flushed, pure anger flooding her at the calculated insult of the man's gaze, as if she were a gauche schoolgirl he could reprimand for staring. But with an effort she controlled her feelings and kept her features composed. She allowed her eyelids to drop languidly and then rise with a sweeping dismissal in a bored look as she inclined her head, and she moved regally up the stairs after Emmeline. Thankfully she was nearly at the top of the staircase before she thought of how very unregal she must appear in her bedraggled state.
Emmeline was waiting for her at the top of the stairs. "Do you have many guests?" Lillian asked her as they went along the upper hallway.
"We're nearly full," Emmeline answered, smiling in friendly shyness.
"Are there any more young women?" Lillian asked.
"I'm afraid not, only a couple of older ones and one of them is married. We get mostly men."
"Nicer men, I hope, than the one in the parlor."
Emmeline frowned in puzzlement, then her face cleared. "You must mean Mr. Marsh. I do believe he was there when I came through from setting the table for tomorrow's breakfast. He rode in this afternoon."
"He isn't from around here then? He reminds me of someone."
"No, I know he's not because Mama asked him when he came in where he was from, and he gave her what she called a you're-a-stupid-female-worm look. Mama was put out about it. She says he gives himself airs, but I think he is a nice-looking gentleman," Emmeline finished as she stopped at the door of a room at the back of the house.
"Yes, well," Lillian said, "I'm sure he thinks so too."
Emmeline smiled suddenly and her eyes danced. "He has been nothing but friendly to me so perhaps that's why I favor him," she said, and took a key from the ring she carried in her pocket, opened the door, and stood back for Lillian to enter.
Lillian stared at her a moment and then returned the smile with a quick laugh. "Perhaps," she said as she took the proffered key and entered the room. She had made a mistake, she realized with a small feeling of shame, the mistake she deplored in others—of underrating the intelligence of someone else. It smacked of conceit.
"My brother will bring up your trunk in a few minutes. He's still out feeding the stock just now," Emmeline said as she put the lamp on the dresser and went out again, closing the door behind her.
"Thank you," Lillian said, and taking off her shawl, threw it over the corner of the bow-legged Queen Anne dresser. She examined her dress in the mirror, but knowing the tenacity of faded dye when it lands somewhere it doesn't belong, she thought the only help for it would be to dye the whole dress maroon.
Her room was nice, without much imagination but clean and comfortable. Next to the bed, with its high headboard and corner posts, was a Boston rocker with brown cushions, and an oval braided rug in rose and brown tones. Each crocheted square of the yellowed bedspread was embroidered with a tiny pink rosebud done in satin stitch. An embroidered scarf with crocheted ends was draped over the dresser upon which stood a lamp, wash bowl, pitcher, and spray of forsythia in a plain porcelain bud vase. Three black paper silhouettes hung between the curtained windows.
In the darkness, rain still fell, for she could hear its rattle on the roof and spatter on magnolia trees somewhere near, sounds that sent a chill over her and made her realize it was scarcely warmer in the room than outside. She tilted the forsythia to a more pleasing angle, moved the lamp from in front of the mirror, and began to dress her hair as a knock came at the door.
"Come in," she called, and Emmeline walked in followed by a man carrying her trunk as if it were a breakfast tray.
"Where do you want it?" he asked cheerfully, then set it down on the exact spot she had pointed out and stood at ease, smiling down at her with appreciation in his hazel eyes. A clean, windy, outdoor scent clung to him, and his blond hair glistened with raindrops.
"Miss Newton, my brother William," Emmeline introduced them with a gesture and a smile.
"How do you do," Lillian said, feeling slightly flustered that she should have to meet so many new people while looking her worst.
"Pleased to meet you," William said, standing at ease with his hands on his hips.
"Thank you for bringing up my trunk," Lillian said, when the silence threatened to stretch.
"Anytime," he answered, his lazy grin widening to give an added hint of meaning to the word.
"Come along, Will," Emmeline said with sisterly sharpness. "Lillian can't change with you hanging about."
When they had gone she changed into a light blue chambray with white piping and lace collar, and draped a soft white shawl over her arms against the drafts that waft through large old houses. Her hair had waved in the dampness. She let a deep swirl fall on each temple and swept the rest of its great length into a smooth roll at the back of her head.
Feeling presentable at last, she left her room in search of the hot meal that had been promised. When she entered the front parlor Mrs. Jenkins got up hurriedly. "Come right with me, honey," she said, "I've got your supper all laid out. Brother Bolt said give you his 'goodbyes.' He was sure you would be awhile changing and wanted to get on before it got too late."
"I understand," she answered, smiling and nodding pleasantly at the group around the fire. She let her glance slide over those assembled, but there was no dark gentleman and she felt her nerves relax while she was also conscious of disappointment.
"Now don't you finish that story 'til I get back," Mrs. Jenkins admonished a small middle-aged woman dwarfed by the wing chair in which she was sitting. Then, with a gathering motion, she led Lillian around the backs of the chairs and couch and into the dining room. Waving her to a seat, Mrs. Jenkins went on through to the kitchen regions and returned with a steaming bowl of soup and a thick ham sandwich. She sat down at the table, nursing a cup of black coffee to keep Lillian company.
"It looks delicious," Lillian said, "and is!" she added seconds later.
Mrs. Jenkins smiled and asked in friendly curiosity, "You going to be a teacher?"
"No, at least not right away. Aunt Sara is going to help me get my teaching certificate, but at first I'm to be a mother hen to the girls who live in during the school term. She thinks I will be better at handling them than she is because I am nearer their age."
"Your aunt's getting on all right… ain't we all! And I can see where she'd like a bit of help."
"Yes, I do hope I can be a help to her," Lillian said, voicing a little of her doubt in the tone of her words.
"You will. You have that look about you, like you could do anything you put your mind to."
Lillian thanked her warmly, surprised at the compliment since she was not used to thinking of herself as particularly competent. Then she asked, "I'm not crowding you, am I?"
"Gracious no, whatever gave you that idea?"
"My room, it was all ready, the bed made, flowers, and it has the children's silhouettes. It seems more personal than a room for rent should be, so I wondered if one of your family had moved out so I could have it," she answered.
"Now that's what I like to hear, because that's how I want my rooms to be. This is my home and I like to pretend that my guests are just company, that's why I left the children there. I have three, you know, William, Emmeline, and Marty. I think you met the older two. Marty is around somewhere, if he's not out in this rain, catching his death. I swear, half the time I can't keep up with that boy."
"Well, I wanted to be sure," Lillian said, "I know how hard it is to find room for company sometimes."
"Put your mind at ease. Though you have the last room in the house, it's all yours. But I can't think where I'll put any more. I guess we'll have to double up somebody, but it's been done before and can be again," her face assumed a pensive expression as she went on. "Emmeline and I share a room, the first on the right at the top of the stairs, then William and Marty, and Mr. Marsh on the end makes that side." She ticked them off on her fingers, a faint frown as she mentioned the man named Marsh. "Then on the other side is Mr. and Mrs. Wake and their Utile girl, no, I put Mrs. Bonnet in the front room—the Wakes are next to you, and you are on the end."
"I see," Lillian said, "you do have a full house."
Mrs. Jenkins failed to see the little joke. "Just think," she said, "yesterday, nobody—today, six people come in out of the rain. It certainly keeps a body in spirits."
"About the rate, Mrs. Jenkins," she began.
"Rate? Fifty cents a day, or ten dollars a month. I realize it's a bit steep, but that's room and three meals a day. United States, no Confederate money. I got enough of that kind of money to stuff a mattress…." She broke off as a woman appeared in the door. "Yes, Mrs. Wake? Something I can do for you?"
"Yes please. My little girl wants a drink of water," Mrs. Wake answered looking slightly startled. She smiled as if to cover her confusion, a well-practiced smile that hardly reached her pale blue eyes. She had astonishingly colorless hair that fell in wispy white tendrils around her face giving her a helpless look, a look that was belied by the buxom heartiness of her figure with its wasp waist.
"There is water in the pitcher on your dresser," Mrs. Jenkins told her kindly, "but I'll fetch you a glass." She rose and moved to the dish closet against one wall, took down a glass, and handed it to the woman.
Mrs. Wake thanked her with a brief smile and, clasping the glass in her long thin hands, left the room at a fast walk with a look of relief on her face. Lillian stared after her puzzled by the emotion that seemed to come from Mrs. Wake, a feeling quite like hysteria. She looked for her when they joined the others before the fire, but Mrs. Wake was not there.
The glow of the warm fire on her face made Lillian realize just how chilled she really was, and she sat down on a three-legged stool, and held her hands out to the blaze. The room held the odor of wood smoke with the crisp undertone of oak logs, lichen, and, yes, parched peanuts. A pan on the brick hearth held the peanuts, and William, Emmeline, another man, and a middle-aged woman sat cracking the nuts and throwing the hulls into the fire.
It was a comfortable room with deep, high-backed chairs to keep off the drafts. Tables with lamps were conveniently placed near the chairs; the lamps had pink globes trimmed with painted roses. In one corner stood an enormous piano, a squat-legged mahogany giant with inlaid strips and yellowed ivory keys. A red India silk shawl with foot-long fringe was thrown over the piano as if to keep it warm since it stood so far from the fire.
Emmeline smiled to welcome her to the group, but the middle-aged woman spoke first. "I'm Mrs. Bonnet," she said as she moved her feet to one side to make room for Lillian, "and this gentleman is Mr. Wake. Mrs. Wake said she would be down shortly, as soon as she gets the baby to sleep." She waved a hand in the direction of the man sitting next to her and he nodded before she went on. "Emmeline has been telling us all about you and I want to say how pleased I am to meet you. Of course, I've worked with your aunt these years and admire her drive and energy … I teach at the Seminary you know, did I say that … no I can't have yet, anyway as I was saying, such energy is so exceptional in a woman. Sara and I are good friends too, but it could hardly be otherwise, living in each other's laps as we do. I am so glad you are coming to us. We need a little youth to bring the faculty closer to the students. But just listen to how I run on. Sara always tells me that I have a positive gift for conversation. I wonder sometimes if she is being strictly complimentary!"
"I'm sure she is," Lillian said, smiling at the small dark woman. Mrs. Bonnet's tiny, thin frame combined with her quick movements and dry voice reminded Lillian very much of a cricket.
Mrs. Jenkins motioned to her older children to slide over on the overstuffed sofa, and she dropped down into the vacant spot with a sigh. "You can go on now with the story you had started to tell when I left," she said to Mrs. Bonnet.
With a swift nod and an avid look in her dark eyes, Mrs. Bonnet said, "Oh yes, I've been just dying to get on with it, but first I'd better bring Lillian up to date. The Seminary, you know, is closed Easter week so the girls can spend the holiday with their families, and I went back home, too, to my brother's house some sixty miles south of here. After dinner yesterday a neighbor passing by told us the most hair-raising tale. It seems a gang of outlaws have been working … if working is the right word … only a few miles from where my brother lives. They robbed and killed travelers, such as the settlers we're getting through Louisiana now on their way to free land in the West. Once their victims were killed, women and children included, they would sell the horses or change the animals' appearance until they could be taken out of the state, repaint the wagons, keep whatever valuables the gang wanted and sell the rest of the families' possessions. … Oh there you are Marty," she interrupted herself as a boy with hair in his eyes ambled into the room, a piece of cornbread in one hand and a baked sweet potato in the other. Behind him came a large yellow cat with warm emerald eyes. Both boy and cat sank down in front of the fire.
"Mind your manners, Marty," Mrs. Jenkins warned.
"Oh, hello," he said. He gave a startled look around the room before he leaned back against the couch arm and resumed his concentration on dispatching his cornbread without losing a crumb.
Mrs. Jenkins sighed, "Go on Mrs. Bonnet."
"Well, this gang of outlaws, it seems, was no small outfit, although it was a relatively small group that did the actual holding up and killing. Dozens of others were in with them in a small way, some say as many as two hundred in a three-state area—Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. These others repainted wagons, sold the horses or stabled them, and helped get rid of the furniture and other furnishings, jewelry, keepsakes, and the like."
"How could they get away with such a thing?" Emmeline asked.
"Years ago, before the Civil War, there was a small gang of outlaws. That was some mighty rough country, sparsely settled, almost no law; the kind of country that collects riff-raff. But everybody thought the bunch had died out with the war. It seems that part of the original gang came back and set up a different kind of operation. With the state government in chaos and the law under control of the occupying Federal troops, there was still no real restriction on the gang's activities. They took to wearing white sheets like the Ku Klux Klan and the Knights of the White Camellia to cover their night riding. In the beginning their main targets were Union soldiers and Republican Negro officials. Nobody much cared what happened to them. I'm afraid that the community, when they knew about it, figured the victims deserved whatever happened to them."
"The occupation hasn't been over so long that I can't find it in my heart to agree with them on that," Mrs. Jenkins said.
"In principle, perhaps," Mrs. Bonnet said, "but those killed were individuals with families and mourners at the funerals, not the Federal Army nor the Republican Government in themselves. People tend to overlook that when they go out for revenge."
William sat throwing peanut hulls one by one into the fire, his long legs stretched out as he slumped in his chair. "Sit up straight, Will," his mother said, her attention momentarily wandering. He glanced at her and smiled lazily but made no move. Mrs. Jenkins glanced down at Marty. "And you too," she said. "Heavens. What am I raising? You are both slouching around like outlaws yourselves."
Marty looked up at her and grinned and made a move to sit up straighter but the large tiger cat lying half across his leg dug his claws in. "Ouch, Tasket!" Marty said, looking pained and subsided without moving.
In the lull they could hear the faint sound of a child crying and Mr. Wake lifted his eyes toward the sound and then with a deep sigh returned his gaze to the darkened window and the rain falling in silver streams against the panes. Lank black hair lay flat on his head topping a long rawboned face. He might have been any age from the deepset lines about a muscular mouth. He was dressed in farmer's homespun dyed a brown that looked almost as tired as he did.
"Anyway," Mrs. Bonnet resumed her story, "the leaders of the gang were John West and Lawson Kimbrell, as nice a two men as you could expect to meet, to hear this neighbor tell it. John West was a deacon in the church and a justice of the peace, and Laws Kimbrell was a quiet man, kept to himself, but so do a lot of people. Old man Kimbrell and his wife, Polly … everybody called her Aunt Polly … were Laws' parents and they opened their house to travelers, they say. If they were poor folks they moved on, if not they didn't. The old man had been one of the gang members before the war, it seems.
"But anyway the gang grew. There was the inner core, the ones who did the bloody work, and the outer fringe, the wagon painters and the like. Rumors began to get around about the strange doings at night on the Kimbrell place; a few people saw things, strange horses appearing, people disappearing, and they began to talk and ask questions. One man, a James Maybin, went to the governor for help, for troops or an investigating lawman of some kind, but the governor could give them nothing but permission to form a Citizens' Committee and twenty-five pardons-in-blank."
"What's that?" Marty asked, the first indication that he was listening to the tale.
"John Doe pardons, a piece of paper pardoning a man in advance for anything he might have to do to bring about law and order, including killing," Mrs. Bonnet answered gravely.
"Then what happened?" he urged her on.
"Where was I? Oh yes, well, the citizens got help about this time from Dan Dean. This Dean was a member of the gang on the outer edge, but he got involved in one of their jobs. He refused to help kill a family of travelers and, because he had seen Kimbrell kill them, he was a danger to the gang. West and several other members of the gang tried to kill him at his home, but Dean drove them off with the help of his brother and father. Then his mother went to her relatives and neighbors for help, involving them."
"It never fails, thieves fall out," Mrs. Jenkins said complacently, folding her hands over her stomach.
"A pronouncement based on your vast experience no doubt," the man named Marsh said from the doorway.