[Continuing chapter sixteen]
Stewart smiled to himself. There were maybe two dozen soldiers visible outside the old capitol building, and most of those were walking aimlessly in groups of three or four, clearly confused by the sounds of shooting and the absence of any sort of direction from their officers. Could there possibly be a worse-organized insurrection? he thought. Next to these fellows, that Nat Turner and his followers were military geniuses. It certainly gave one a whole new appreciation for the work done by the provisional Congress of the CSA in getting the Second American Revolution under way.
He could probably walk in and take command of the capitol, releasing the politicians inside, right now if he wanted. Certainly there’d be no shortage of support; most of Washington seemed to have slept little or not at all last night, and the gunfire at the fort had awakened most who had been able to sleep. Stewart could see heads peering out at him from behind curtains; a few of the braver souls stood on their porches or even in the street, asking any who happened by what was going on. Mercer Patton had been more than voluble in answering—until they’d approached the capitol, when even Patton’s grim, bloodthirsty humor had given way to a more sober caution, even wariness.
Stewart had made sure that the reconnaissance stopped behind cover and out of range from any would-be snipers amongst the capitol guards. “They aren’t really making any effort to hide themselves, are they?” Patton asked, joining him behind a large water-barrel in the yard of a house up the street from the old capitol; he had tied up the horses around a corner a few paces back.
“My guess is,” Stewart said, “the moment these boys hear Travis and Miller coming down the road from the fort, they’ll be hauling up that bonny blue flag of theirs—yours—and swearing allegiance to Mirabeau Lamar and William Travis and the Republic for which they stand before you can catch breath.” He tried to spit but his mouth was too dry. “I can’t imagine how anybody could call this a revolution; this is the most pathetic excuse for a liberation I’ve ever seen.”
“Reynolds ought to be ashamed of himself,” agreed Patton. “Wonder what Colonel Walker would think of this if he could see it?”
“The way I see it, he’ll never have the chance,” Stewart said. “We’ll be finished straightening up this mess by mid-day. Throw a handful of the worst of them in prison—I assume Washington has a large enough prison—by way of encouraging the others to behave, and we can organize a force to meet Walker before he reaches the city.”
Patton looked out at the white-clad infantrymen walking in a broad circle around the capitol building. “Wonder if Ben McCulloch’s message reached Colonel Steele in time. I’d feel a hell of a lot more confident if I knew we could count on support from the dragoons.”
“Message?” Stewart asked.
“He sent off a boy to the colonel with word of the invasion,” Patton said. “It’d sure be good if the boy got there in time. We’re going to need all the help we can get here when Walker comes.”
“Well, let’s assume he did get through,” Stewart said. “But plan for him not doing so.” It’s pointless, he told himself even as he spoke the words, to wish for things you aren’t likely to get. Better to focus on making the best of what you know you’ve got. “I’m satisfied here,” he said. “Let’s go on to the president’s mansion and see how many more we’ve got to deal with.”
As he was turning to walk to the horses, the sound of galloping hooves pulled him back. Stewart’s blood chilled a few degrees, and his fingers began to tingle, as he watched the bulky, unkempt man dismount and begin yelling at the soldiers, who reluctantly coalesced into a sort of formation.
He’d seen the man before.
“Damn,” Stewart said to himself. “Cooper.” He turned to Patton. “You know anything about him? I met him yesterday, but unless you asked me to pick him out by smell I couldn’t tell you anything about the man.”
“Samuel Cooper,” Patton said. “A captain in the Rangers. Good man, too, if a bit on the dirty side. What the hell is a Ranger doing working for Reynolds, though? The Rangers are supposed to work on the frontier. Hell, I hardly ever saw ‘em in my time here, and my duties then took me a lot further out of Washington than Thomas Reynolds’s ever do.”
“How dangerous is he?”
“Oh, he’s plenty dangerous,” Patton said. “He doesn’t precisely have the reputation of a reasonable man, if you take my meaning.”
“I do.” Stewart sighed, and drew his revolver. “We have to stop him, obviously. I don’t want him whipping these men into any kind of a fighting force—they’re much more palatable as sloppy and miserable as they are now.” He got to one knee, readied the pistol. “Try to see that no one gets the drop on me or otherwise shoots me dead,” he said to Patton. Then he rose, stepped around the rain-barrel and walked out into the street. I wish McCulloch were here, he thought. He could just arrest the man.
“Samuel Cooper!” he shouted, loudly enough that all of the soldiers and most of the politicians inside the capitol could hear. “You are under arrest for the crime of high treason against the Republic of Texas. Drop your weapons and raise your hands above your head.”
“The hell I will!” Cooper shouted, spinning to face Stewart and drawing a pair of pistols as he did so. Damn, thought Stewart. He didn’t wait for Cooper to fire first.
His first shot missed. Cooper fired a ball from each pistol, and while neither hit one of them passed close enough to Stewart that he heard its angry hornet buzz as it missed him. Stewart fired again, and again he missed. We’re too far apart, he realized, coughing as the powder smoke rose up to wreath his head.
Cooper, looking like a debased Greek god in his own cloud of gray smoke, fired again. Stewart resisted the urge to throw himself to the ground; at this range, he decided coolly, there was a greater risk in trying to dodge a pistol ball than in simply standing his ground. Somewhere, a woman was screaming, but Stewart was only dimly aware of the sound. He was reminded again of New Orleans, and was grateful for the sense of calm that seemed to have descended on him now the shooting had started.
He lowered his pistol to his side—taking care to cock it anyway. Too many more wasted shots and we’ll neither of us be able to see one another, he thought. Cooper seemed to reach the same conclusion, because when the smoke from his last shots cleared he wasn’t standing where he’d been when Stewart challenged him. Then movement on the far side of his horse betrayed his new position: he was pulling something from the left side of the saddle.
A rifle, Stewart thought. He’ll out-range me. He sprinted toward the horse, hoping to close ground before the Ranger realized what he was doing.
“Got you now, you son of a bitch,” Cooper growled. He lifted a huge, heavy-barreled rifle and propped the barrel on the saddle; his horse seemed unconcerned by this. The rifle was a Sharps, and it had a long telescope mounted along the length of the barrel. Cooper pulled back the rifle’s heavy hammer.
Stewart threw himself to the ground, firing up as he did so. It didn’t matter if he didn’t hit Cooper; in fact, it would probably be better if the ball dropped Cooper’s horse instead.
The rifle fired with a sound like the pit of Hell cracking open, followed immediately by a succession of explosions that deafened and dazed Stewart for a moment. When he came to his senses again, he was still intact; he felt no pain, saw no blood on him. A cloud of gray smoke, smelling pungently of sulfur, drifted overhead—from behind him.
Cooper’s horse lay, unmoving, in the street, its body spotted bright red. Cooper himself wasn’t immediately visible, which Stewart took to be a good sign. Wherever he was, the Ranger wasn’t firing at him.
Next Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six
Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter TwelveStewart smiled to himself. There were maybe two dozen soldiers visible outside the old capitol building, and most of those were walking aimlessly in groups of three or four, clearly confused by the sounds of shooting and the absence of any sort of direction from their officers. Could there possibly be a worse-organized insurrection? he thought. Next to these fellows, that Nat Turner and his followers were military geniuses. It certainly gave one a whole new appreciation for the work done by the provisional Congress of the CSA in getting the Second American Revolution under way.
He could probably walk in and take command of the capitol, releasing the politicians inside, right now if he wanted. Certainly there’d be no shortage of support; most of Washington seemed to have slept little or not at all last night, and the gunfire at the fort had awakened most who had been able to sleep. Stewart could see heads peering out at him from behind curtains; a few of the braver souls stood on their porches or even in the street, asking any who happened by what was going on. Mercer Patton had been more than voluble in answering—until they’d approached the capitol, when even Patton’s grim, bloodthirsty humor had given way to a more sober caution, even wariness.
Stewart had made sure that the reconnaissance stopped behind cover and out of range from any would-be snipers amongst the capitol guards. “They aren’t really making any effort to hide themselves, are they?” Patton asked, joining him behind a large water-barrel in the yard of a house up the street from the old capitol; he had tied up the horses around a corner a few paces back.
“My guess is,” Stewart said, “the moment these boys hear Travis and Miller coming down the road from the fort, they’ll be hauling up that bonny blue flag of theirs—yours—and swearing allegiance to Mirabeau Lamar and William Travis and the Republic for which they stand before you can catch breath.” He tried to spit but his mouth was too dry. “I can’t imagine how anybody could call this a revolution; this is the most pathetic excuse for a liberation I’ve ever seen.”
“Reynolds ought to be ashamed of himself,” agreed Patton. “Wonder what Colonel Walker would think of this if he could see it?”
“The way I see it, he’ll never have the chance,” Stewart said. “We’ll be finished straightening up this mess by mid-day. Throw a handful of the worst of them in prison—I assume Washington has a large enough prison—by way of encouraging the others to behave, and we can organize a force to meet Walker before he reaches the city.”
Patton looked out at the white-clad infantrymen walking in a broad circle around the capitol building. “Wonder if Ben McCulloch’s message reached Colonel Steele in time. I’d feel a hell of a lot more confident if I knew we could count on support from the dragoons.”
“Message?” Stewart asked.
“He sent off a boy to the colonel with word of the invasion,” Patton said. “It’d sure be good if the boy got there in time. We’re going to need all the help we can get here when Walker comes.”
“Well, let’s assume he did get through,” Stewart said. “But plan for him not doing so.” It’s pointless, he told himself even as he spoke the words, to wish for things you aren’t likely to get. Better to focus on making the best of what you know you’ve got. “I’m satisfied here,” he said. “Let’s go on to the president’s mansion and see how many more we’ve got to deal with.”
As he was turning to walk to the horses, the sound of galloping hooves pulled him back. Stewart’s blood chilled a few degrees, and his fingers began to tingle, as he watched the bulky, unkempt man dismount and begin yelling at the soldiers, who reluctantly coalesced into a sort of formation.
He’d seen the man before.
“Damn,” Stewart said to himself. “Cooper.” He turned to Patton. “You know anything about him? I met him yesterday, but unless you asked me to pick him out by smell I couldn’t tell you anything about the man.”
“Samuel Cooper,” Patton said. “A captain in the Rangers. Good man, too, if a bit on the dirty side. What the hell is a Ranger doing working for Reynolds, though? The Rangers are supposed to work on the frontier. Hell, I hardly ever saw ‘em in my time here, and my duties then took me a lot further out of Washington than Thomas Reynolds’s ever do.”
“How dangerous is he?”
“Oh, he’s plenty dangerous,” Patton said. “He doesn’t precisely have the reputation of a reasonable man, if you take my meaning.”
“I do.” Stewart sighed, and drew his revolver. “We have to stop him, obviously. I don’t want him whipping these men into any kind of a fighting force—they’re much more palatable as sloppy and miserable as they are now.” He got to one knee, readied the pistol. “Try to see that no one gets the drop on me or otherwise shoots me dead,” he said to Patton. Then he rose, stepped around the rain-barrel and walked out into the street. I wish McCulloch were here, he thought. He could just arrest the man.
“Samuel Cooper!” he shouted, loudly enough that all of the soldiers and most of the politicians inside the capitol could hear. “You are under arrest for the crime of high treason against the Republic of Texas. Drop your weapons and raise your hands above your head.”
“The hell I will!” Cooper shouted, spinning to face Stewart and drawing a pair of pistols as he did so. Damn, thought Stewart. He didn’t wait for Cooper to fire first.
His first shot missed. Cooper fired a ball from each pistol, and while neither hit one of them passed close enough to Stewart that he heard its angry hornet buzz as it missed him. Stewart fired again, and again he missed. We’re too far apart, he realized, coughing as the powder smoke rose up to wreath his head.
Cooper, looking like a debased Greek god in his own cloud of gray smoke, fired again. Stewart resisted the urge to throw himself to the ground; at this range, he decided coolly, there was a greater risk in trying to dodge a pistol ball than in simply standing his ground. Somewhere, a woman was screaming, but Stewart was only dimly aware of the sound. He was reminded again of New Orleans, and was grateful for the sense of calm that seemed to have descended on him now the shooting had started.
He lowered his pistol to his side—taking care to cock it anyway. Too many more wasted shots and we’ll neither of us be able to see one another, he thought. Cooper seemed to reach the same conclusion, because when the smoke from his last shots cleared he wasn’t standing where he’d been when Stewart challenged him. Then movement on the far side of his horse betrayed his new position: he was pulling something from the left side of the saddle.
A rifle, Stewart thought. He’ll out-range me. He sprinted toward the horse, hoping to close ground before the Ranger realized what he was doing.
“Got you now, you son of a bitch,” Cooper growled. He lifted a huge, heavy-barreled rifle and propped the barrel on the saddle; his horse seemed unconcerned by this. The rifle was a Sharps, and it had a long telescope mounted along the length of the barrel. Cooper pulled back the rifle’s heavy hammer.
Stewart threw himself to the ground, firing up as he did so. It didn’t matter if he didn’t hit Cooper; in fact, it would probably be better if the ball dropped Cooper’s horse instead.
The rifle fired with a sound like the pit of Hell cracking open, followed immediately by a succession of explosions that deafened and dazed Stewart for a moment. When he came to his senses again, he was still intact; he felt no pain, saw no blood on him. A cloud of gray smoke, smelling pungently of sulfur, drifted overhead—from behind him.
Cooper’s horse lay, unmoving, in the street, its body spotted bright red. Cooper himself wasn’t immediately visible, which Stewart took to be a good sign. Wherever he was, the Ranger wasn’t firing at him.
Next Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six
Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen
No comments:
Post a Comment