Soul Catcher (69 page)

^{"You goddamned son of a bitch," the man cried. Cain cocked his gun and squeezed the trigger again, but there was only a hollow click followed by the most sickening silence he had ever heard.}

^{At this point, Preacher rushed into the cabin. He was still wearing his derby, but instead of the North pistol, in each hand he clutched a revolver. He stood there for a moment, laughing, a kind of wild, high-pitched braying sound, like a mule gone mad on jimsonweed. "I told you, dint I?" he said. "That I'd kill you." Then he moved toward Cain, firing as he went. Cain took cover behind the table, the lead splintering the wood as it tore into the top. When he reached Cain, Preacher grabbed the table and flung it aside. Smiling the demented grin of the mad, he stared down at Cain, his dark snake eyes cold and glossy, the birthmark on his neck blazing.}

^{"You oughtn'ta messed with me, Cain," Preacher proclaimed.}

^{"You're a gutless fool," Cain taunted.}

^"Gutless?"

^{"That's right. A gutless fool."}

^{Preacher let out a laugh. Instead of shooting him outright, though, he holstered his guns and removed his bowie knife from the sheath on his leg. "Now we'll see who's got guts, Cain," he said, licking his thumb and testing the sharpness of the blade.}

^{Cain watched him, waiting.}

^{As he squatted down, Cain pulled the derringer from his pocket and cocked it in one motion. Preacher stared at the thing, dumbfounded for a moment. Then he started to lunge at Cain with the knife, but}

^{Cain fired first, the ball striking Preacher in the face. It entered below his left eye, and the force of it jerked his head back so that he was looking at the ceiling. His arms commenced to flap awkwardly at his sides, as if he were a bird trying to take flight for the first time. Finally, his chin dropped to his chest and he fell backward onto the floor, his legs bent beneath his body like some contortionist.}

^{One of Preacher's guns had fallen out of the holster and lay just a few feet away. Cain tried to slide over and get hold of it, but with his wounded leg, he found the going difficult. Still, he'd almost reached it when he heard a voice say, "Hold it right there, Cain."}

^{He looked up to see Eberly standing in the cabin's doorway. He held a small-caliber pocket revolver and was glancing around the room. At first Cain thought it was in distress at all the bodies littered about, all the men he'd sent to their deaths. But then he realized Eberly was only looking for Rosetta, that the dead didn't matter a jot to him. Eberly picked his way carefully through the bodies and gore, as one wearing a new pair of boots would a cow barn, and came over to Cain and stood looking down at him.}

^{"It didn't have to be like this," Eberly said.}

^{"You're right," Cain replied. "You could've gone home."}

^{The man didn't think it funny. "This wasn't any of your affair."}

^{"You made it my affair. I didn't want to go after her, remember."}

^{"Where is she?"}

^{When Cain shrugged, Eberly kicked him in the face with his boot.}

^{"Do not try my patience. Where is she?" he asked again.}

^{Cain just stared at him with a smug look.}

^{Eberly squatted down beside Cain. "Do you want to live?"}

^{"We both know you're not going to let that happen."}

^{"Tell me where she went and I shall let you go. You have my word."}

^{Cain laughed. "Go to hell."}

^{Eberly stood and cocked the hammer of his gun.}

^{"I shall find her with or without your help."}

^{"You found me, then," a voice interrupted. Cain angled his head to see Rosetta standing in the doorway. She was holding the big Tranter in both hands and aiming it unsteadily at Eberly. Cain doubted she could have hit him from that distance.}

^{"Rosetta," the old man exclaimed. "I have missed you so."}

^{She snorted.}

^{"I have. Please, come back with me."}

^{"You let him go."}

^{Eberly still had his gun pointed at Cain. "Put it down, Rosetta," he said, "and we'll talk."}

^{"No, you let him go first."}

^{"Give me the gun," Eberly said.}

^{Cain spoke up then. "Don't, Rosetta. Don't listen to him."}

^{"I will let you keep the child," Eberly offered, reaching out his hand toward her. "Just come home with me."}

^{Cain thought it funny that he used the word
home.
As the old man took a step toward her, she yelled, "You stay there." When he continued, she turned the gun on herself, placing it against her temple.}

^{"Easy," the old man called to her.}

^{"Rosetta, no," said Cain. "Don't do this on account of me."}

^{"It ain't on account of you."}

^{"Put the gun down, Rosetta," Eberly said, "and I'll let him go. I promise."}

^{"Let him go first."}

^{"All right," Eberly conceded.}

^{"Go, Cain," Rosetta said.}

^{"I'm not going to let you do this."}

^{"You don't have any say in this, Cain. Now go. Go or I'll shoot this here gun."}

^{Cain grabbed hold of the fowling piece and used it as a crutch to stand. When he was upright, he glanced at Eberly, then hobbled toward the door. He stopped before Rosetta. "Don't do this," he said in an undertone.}

^{"Go," she told him, her eyes cold, a metallic gray. He saw in them a deadly resolve.}

^{"Think of your baby," he said to her.}

^{"Just go."}

^{He thought of trying to wrest the gun from her, maybe getting off a shot at Eberly, but then, he might only end up messing up her plan, if she had one. As he limped past her he said, "I love you." She didn't take her eyes off Eberly.}

^{"Go," she said. "Whilst you still have the chance."}

^{Cain had almost reached the horses when he heard the first shot, followed shortly by another. He recognized the first; it was, he knew with dread in his heart, the vicious retort of the Tranter. The second must have been Eberly's gun. "Rosetta!" he'd cried as he hobbled back to the cabin. "Rosetta!" He didn't know what to expect. When he entered, he saw her kneeling beside the old man. Eberly had taken a round in the middle of his chest and it was obvious he was dying. His eyes were hollow shells, his breathing already a death rattle.}

^{Cain got down beside Rosetta. "Are you all right?"}

^{When she looked up at him, he saw that she had tears in her eyes.}

^EPILOGUE:

^{Sharpsburg, Maryland}

^{September 16, 1862}

^{N
ight. He sits by the fire, drinking a cup of strong, bitter chicory and trying to read. He feels as he always does the night before-- expectant, his belly filled with a nervous energy. He knows full well what the morning will bring. He will have to lead men into battle, some to their deaths, many hardly more than green recruits just signed up to fight. Two days ago at South Mountain, they'd skirmished with McClellan's Federals and were handily routed, driven back through Crampton's Gap. Recently he has noted the subtle change in the eyes of his men. The early victories in the first year of the war have come at a high price. The sweet taste of success at Sumter and Seven Pines, Cold Harbor and the First Manassas has spoiled them, made them vulnerable to the eventual setbacks that had to follow. Even as late as a few weeks ago, with victories at Second Manassas and Chantilly, there was the bright glow of confidence in his men. Now, though, that optimism and swagger has leached out of their eyes, and the jaunty bounce has left their step. Cain sees a creeping doubt in all things they do, a tentativeness that corrodes the will.}

^{From the beginning, he felt that the Old Man's plan to invade the North was a grave mistake. Now he knows it to be the case. A gambler himself, Cain knows when a man is bluffing, and for all of Lee's bluster about finally bringing this damned fight to the Yankees, this sortie into the North is mere show. An act of desperation. The South's best, in fact, its only hope, was in staying home, fiercely protecting its own soil like a she-bear its den. Now he's certain that it isn't just this campaign, but the entire enterprise that is doomed. Utterly, irrevocably doomed. More than ever since the war commenced, he's reminded of Milton's Satan. Like his fight, the South's is both noble and doomed from the start. Then again, hadn't he known that from the start, when he first decided to return? In fact, wasn't the South's cause lost with the first cottonseed that was shoved into the soil, the first African setting a manacled foot on these shores, the first crack of a whip across a Negro back?}

^{Cain had been living in San Francisco when the news about the war reached him. He had struck his own gold in California, though he never lifted a pick or shovel. He'd been doing well for himself, winning at the card table, parting drunken miners of their hard-earned gold. Well enough that he was living at the fancy Oriental Hotel, dining at the best restaurants, employing the services of a tailor to fashion him a whole new wardrobe. He'd managed to give up the laudanum, and while he still enjoyed his whiskey, he made it a rule not to drink while playing. He'd had no plans on ever returning east.}

^{And yet, as soon as he'd read about the outbreak of war, he knew he had no choice. No matter where he lived, no matter how far away he went, he was and always would be, at heart, a southerner, and he felt it his sacred duty to come to the defense of his home. Despite everything, the South was his birthplace, where his mother was buried, where his roots were. It had nothing whatsoever to do with defending slavery. In fact, he'd come to detest the peculiar institution and everything associated with it. Once, in a card game at the International Hotel, an ill-mannered Texan, on a bad losing streak, asked Cain if he might put up as a wager his Negro valet. When Cain objected, saying that he didn't condone such a thing as betting a man, the Texan started to harangue him, called him a nigger-loving disgrace to his southern heritage. In the past Cain might have beaten the man silly, but instead, he gracefully acquiesced and permitted him to wager the slave. After winnng the hand, Cain promptly gave the slave his freedom. No, it wasn't what the South was fighting for that stirred his heart and his allegiance. It was the simple fact that it was fighting, fighting for its very existence, for its way of life. So he bought passage on a steamer that took him back to Richmond.}

^{* * *}

^{S
everal days earlier they had come up the Potomac under Jackson's}

^{command. When they passed within sight of Harpers Ferry, he'd heard a soldier behind him say, "That there's where this whole mess started with that crazy fool Brown." He thought of John Brown, dead now these past three years. Captured by Lee, tried for treason, hanged like a common criminal.}

^{But the man he remembers is not the one most southerners imagine. Not the simple, crazed demon that others have made him out to be. And he was sure as hell no fool. He knew exactly what he was doing. Their conversation stays with him even now. He recalls what Brown had told him, how the country needed a lot of killing, and, indeed, in that respect, he's gotten his wish--in spades. The soldier was right about one thing: if there had ever been doubt of the war's ironclad inevitability, Brown's storming of the arsenal put an end to that once and for all. After that, there would be no turning back, no more compromises or appeasement, no more conciliatory- minded Websters and Clays to work out further delays. Only war. In death now, Brown has, to some at least, become a kind of martyr. For Negroes, he has taken on the divine status of a Moses leading his people to the promised land. Cain also recalls that day in Harpers Ferry, ages ago it seems now, when he sat on the grass with Rosetta and she asked him what he would do on such a fine day.}