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[Continuing chapter six]
Walker sent the two men over the brow of the hill; he wanted them to be immediately visible to the men in the yard, and to anyone watching from the house. The two talked as they negotiated the downward slope, no doubt discussing tactics. As soon as it was clear that Pickett and James Walker had been seen—Blair and his son dropped what they were doing and rushed to the house, emerging seconds later with shotguns—Walker had the rest of the scouting party walk up to the top of the hill, rifles to the fore. “We’ll just stand here,” he told the men, “and let Mister Blair know that our envoys aren’t alone.”
Walker saw Pickett and James Walker approach the Blairs, who—apparently recognizing Pickett—lowered their shotguns so that they were aimed square at Pickett’s midriff. Picket and James Walker stopped where they were. Walker saw them gesture back up at the hill, then at the woods surrounding the farm buildings. As though responding to direction, Fontaine’s and Wheat’s men emerged from the trees, their rifles clearly visible.
The elder Blair gestured wildly at Pickett, his shouting audible though the words themselves weren’t. Pickett showed admirable restraint; to this point he hadn’t even lifted his rifle in Blair’s direction. Walker silently complimented Pickett on his sense of discipline.
Eventually, common sense won out, as Walker had known it would. The Blairs lowered their shotguns, and walked toward their house, followed by Pickett and James Walker. The four men disappeared inside, and it occurred to Walker to wonder why they’d gone into the house. Surely the barn would have been more appropriate, since that was likely where any fodder would be stored.
As these thoughts occurred to Walker, explosions burst from the house in a roaring tumble. “Quick!” he shouted to the men beside him. “To the house!” How many shots was that? he wondered as he ran. It had sounded like at least two, but there could have been three or four if several men had fired simultaneously.
It took Walker just a few minutes to reach the farm buildings. In that time his mind raced through the negative possibilities presented by this turn of events. If the shots had been heard by anyone on the way to Carthage, it could be only a matter of hours before their presence in Texas was discovered by the law. If that happened, he’d be fighting his first battle a lot sooner than his plan had called for. He didn’t doubt that he’d win, any more than he’d doubted that his men could defeat the Canadian militia. But every unplanned incident along the way increased the amount of time it would take him to get to Washington-on-the-Brazos, which in turn increased the possibility that his agents in the capital would be discovered and that part of the plan foiled. Timing was still vital; that was why he’d taken the potentially dangerous step of deciding to forage for supplies along his route of march.
Pickett emerged, waving, from the house as Walker and his men passed the barn. “We’re all right!” Pickett shouted, and James Walker soon appeared behind him, looking somewhat unsteady and his face white with shock, but otherwise healthy.
“What happened?” Walker asked as he approached the two.
“Old Blair had a pistol in his shirt pocket,” Pickett said. “He seems to have decided he wanted to settle with me before handing over his crops. I had to shoot him.”
“His boy tried to use his shotgun then,” James Walker said. He sounded a bit shaken. “I never killed anyone before.” Then the young man smiled, as though he’d passed some sort of test.
Walker looked closely at Pickett. The Texan looked a bit too unconcerned with what had just happened. If I had more time, Walker thought, I’d look more closely into this. I can’t afford to have my men taking advantage of me to settle old scores.
The fact was, though, that he was in a hurry to get through these woods and into the rolling hill country of the northern Trinity and Brazos watersheds. “Find the animal feed, Mister Pickett,” he said crisply. “You can be the first to start loading oats and corn onto the wagons when they arrive.”
For a second Pickett’s expression darkened. Then he was his usual smiling self. “Yes, sir,” he said with exaggerated respect. “Come on, Jimmy,” he said to James Walker. “Let’s go and find us some fodder.”
Walker sent the rest of the scouting party to do an inventory of any useful supplies the farm might offer. Then he walked up to the house. The building was essentially a series of log cabins that had been added onto one another; the roof had been patched numerous times, testimony to the amount of rain this country received. Crude though its construction was, an effort had been made to make a comfortable dwelling of the house, and Walker noted a few pieces of furniture that must have been shipped here from New Orleans or Mobile. There were curtains on the windows and other feminine touches that argued for a woman’s presence on this farm. Where was she now?
The bodies were in a bedroom. Both men had been shot at close range, and from the speckling of buckshot in a wall, at least one of them had fired at Pickett and James Walker. A heavy chest had been kicked over or otherwise dislodged, and its contents were scattered over the rush-strewn floor. Walker bent down to examine the detritus. Mostly junk, though the Blairs had evidently had enough money or mattered enough to someone that they had a daguerreotype of a young woman amongst their treasures. Walker didn’t look too closely at the woman’s face, nor did he open the Bible that sprawled, its spine cracked, in the dirt. The Bible would contain a history of the Blair family, and there was no profit, only pain, in knowing any more about these people. Alive, they might have meant something. Dead, they were simply unfortunate victims of his need to move quickly. Tragedy is a hand-maiden of war, he reminded himself. Still, I should find a few men to give these unfortunates a decent burial. He left the house to supervise the loading. He had an idea who he could assign to see that the Blairs were properly buried.
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