not set. We might not do it. But if we do?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “They make you bow and scrape to officers, I hear. If I wanted to do that sort of thing, I’d just surrender.”
“You know we can’t surrender and live,” Cave said.
“Yes, I do know that.”
Sayles and Cave shook their heads at me. Cave, who I’d known long and well and joked with many a time, actually seemed sad about me. He said, “Pitt Mackeson and some of his crowd are going to kill you, Dutchy. Ain’t you got no damned sense at all? You put a pistol on him and didn’t use it. They’re going to kill you for that.”
“I been planning on trouble,” I said. “But could be it’ll come out different.”
My comrades just stared, and by their expressions I knew that their thoughts on me all had the word fool in them.
Clyde kept us lollygagging around the river for a few weeks. When the big paddle boats tried to pass, we potshotted them so fiercely that they turned around. We stopped the river traffic. I always had liked these boats, and now it seemed strange that I was running them off. But war is for hurting, I guess.
Counting Holt I had two shadows. He was around me even more than he was around George Clyde. I could tell he had been changed some. The Lawrence raid made him queasy. There are lines you can’t go over and come back the same.
In early October Black John called us all together. We rallied at Dover, near the river. The first thing I noticed was Pitt Mackeson watching me with a vulture visage. I gave it back to him as best I could, but he was the better at it. Cave Wyatt, Howard Sayles and Holt stayed near me, as Pitt had several constant companions of his own.
Holt, who had lethal aspects, sidled up to me.
“Jake, I could have a pistol mishap and top the man’s head. You say the word and I have a streak of the terrible clumsies.”
“They’d kill you on the spot, Holt. And me, too.”
“Oh, yes,” he said, and he grinned grimly. “But that threat is getting to be a old one.”
Black John led us on a few outings into the countryside. North of the river we burned some wagons and busted up a Dutch settlement. A couple of niggers got in the way, too. All the hearts weren’t in this sort of thing anymore. It was always the same men who did the murders while the rest of us went mute, but we went along.
All the gore and glory of the conflict seemed pointless. The Lawrence massacre had only prompted Order Number Eleven from the Federals. This order emptied four counties of every citizen. They just emptied those counties entirely. The newspapers carried accounts of all the rebel whippings in the east, and we could see the damage to our own state. It was only a question of how long we would go on losing before admitting we had lost. In many cases that would be forever, no matter the cost.
The boys were split now. Some comrades didn’t care for others. Many were merely robbers with the bulk of numbers to back them up. To see this collapse of purpose was worse than being whipped.
George Clyde had developed into a fair-to-middling thief himself, but I knew the man well, don’t you see? So I was loyal to him still. In the cold weather he took a few of us on a foray to scout places to lay up when the weather really went cold. The ground was hard and I was tired of the whole thing.
On the edge of Fire Prairie we stopped at an old gray house. We had stopped there before, and Clyde rode right up to the door in his carefree way. I was behind him with Holt and Cave. We had Yankee jackets on, and the sky was all clouds.
“Halloo in there,” Clyde called out. “Mr. Mills, you in there?”
He was still smiling when the shot came. He’d been waiting for this moment, I think, and didn’t even seem that surprised when it tore into his throat. He fell off his horse, gagging, and bounced on the ground.
Me and Holt jumped down to drag George back. More shots came from the house and tufted the ground around us. The other boys shot back, and me and Holt dragged our friend on out of the yard and into