When Kenton rejoined the sentient world, he was glad to find himself alive but dismayed to see that he was back inside the same cabin he’d escaped. He remembered rolling down that bluff, being picked up and carried away by someone. Obviously it had been some of the soldiers.
But as he sat up and looked around, he realized abruptly that he wasn’t in the same cabin at all. This one was larger, better-built, an entirely new place to him. It had walls of hewn logs and a ceiling that sloped down from back to front.
The door opened and a man he’d never seen before entered. The fellow was about Kenton’s own age, burly, gray-bearded. He stopped abruptly when he saw Kenton sitting up.
“Well, howdy!” he said, breaking into a warm grin. “I was just coming in to see if you might have broke out of that daze you was in.”
“Hello,” Kenton said, standing, looking warily at this newcomer, whose most distinctive garment was a gray coat with the sleeves cut off.
“You rolled down a mighty sheer bluff, Mr. Kenton. As best I can tell, though, you broke no bones. You could have been hurt bad. If Ottinger’s soldiers had caught you, I think they’d have killed you.”
He knows my name, Kenton thought. This, however, was not particularly surprising. Kenton was often recognized.
The stranger went on: “When I saw them chasing you, we thought to ourselves: ‘That man there is in need of some help.’ So we gave it to you. Any man being chased by soldiers under the likes of that massacring Ottinger is bound to be a man I’d consider a friend. Well, you can imagine our surprise when we got you back here and discovered who you are!”
“Thanks for your help.”
“Welcome. Hey, hell of a thing that’s happened at Gomorrah. I never seen such a thing before.”
“Unusual, certainly. Tell me something: Am I at Confederate Ridge?”
“So you are, Mr. Kenton. I hope you don’t mind it, having been a Union man and all.”
“Believe me, I don’t mind it. I’m glad to be away from Ottinger.”
“You’re lucky to be away. He’s already murdered one fellow in cold blood.”
“Murdered? Who?”
“Some young fellow who he was trying to get to write a story for him. I was close enough to hear some of it, but not all. Your name was called, though.”
Kenton felt weak. He sat down again.
Callon! “Tell me what happened,” he said.
“Don’t know, really. This fellow and Ottinger were arguing. He wouldn’t do what Ottinger wanted, I reckon. Ottinger even tried to bribe him and he turned that down, too. So Ottinger up and shot him. I could hardly believe I saw it happen. I thought about gunning Ottinger down myself, right there, but we got a policy against that here. No engaging any official representative of the United States in battle or doing any harm to such except in clear self-defense. In other words, we ain’t here to fight, but to mind our own business.” He paused. “But I swear, I think it would have been right to shoot Ottinger. It was hard not to do it.”
“Poor Callon,” Kenton whispered. “Dear God, I feel partly responsible.”
“Can’t be your fault. You weren’t even there.”
“No, but I’d earlier turned down the same offer Ottinger made to Paul Callon—the man you saw shot—and if I’d handled it differently, maybe Paul would have never been put in that situation.”
“He got wordy with Ottinger, losing his temper and so on. I think that’s really what got him in trouble.”
“Paul could be that way at times.”
“I can tell you’re grieved by this. I’m sorry to have had to tell you.”
“Tell me: Does Ottinger know you saw the murder?”
“I think he suspects that somebody saw it. He heard me, I’m pretty sure.”
“Would you testify in court to what you saw?”
“Sorry, Mr. Kenton. None of us here recognize the courts of the United States. We’re free citizens, not Americans.”
“And still at war with the U.S., as you see it.”
“No, not at war. The war is done, and sorry to say, the war was lost. We accept that. Like I said before, all we want is to live in peace. We have a firm policy against any kind of confrontation with the forces of the United States.”
“But you exchanged fire with the soldiers who chased me.”
“Yes,” the man said, now turning very solemn. “We did. In pure, outright violation of our own policy. And though it may have saved your skin, I’m afraid it was a mistake in every other way. That’s what Pernell says, anyway. He says that we’ve given Ottinger a truly good reason to send his soldiers against us. I think he’s right.”
“Are you talking about Pernell Jones?”
“Yep. You know his name well, I’m sure.”
“Of course I do.”
“You may even known mine.” The man advanced and put out his hand. “Milo Buckner.”
“Buckner!” Kenton repeated, shaking the hand. “I do know you. You were the chief lieutenant of Jones through all the war years. His right hand.”
“That’s me.”
“Is Jones still the leader of your group?”
“The closest thing to one that we’ve got. The honest truth is that we’ve found a way to live that don’t really need a lot of leadership in terms of one man being the strutting rooster over everybody else. We kind of just take things as they come, and when we got to, vote amongst ourselves. Majority wins.”
“That’s a simple system.”
“We’re a simple people.”
“How’d you come to be all the way out here?
“We never patched things up with the Lincolnites. Just said hell with them, that’s all. Never wanted to be part of their country after the war. After the war was done, we turned our horses west and kept riding, going wherever we had to stay out of the bluebellies’ hands. We’ve had a lot of different refuges through the years, always in the wilderness, out of the way. But we’ve always been detected. I’ve been amazed many a time at how hard it is to mind your own business and let everybody else mind their own. We ain’t lived nowhere that everybody and his brother ain’t learned real fast who we are. Hell, we’ve had reporter folks, like yourself, come riding up to our gates wanting to talk to Pernell for some story or another.”
“So finally you drifted this far.”
“Yep. And it’s been good here. We’ve had this mountain to ourselves, mostly, apart from a few redskins and hunters and so on, for several years. But since the mines came in, and the ranchers, well, there’s no place you can go, it don’t seem, that you can escape the growing of the cussed United States.”
“The cussed United States is going to be on us again, far too soon,” a voice said. Kenton looked up and Milo turned. The door had quietly opened and a man had entered from the darkness outside, unnoticed, while Milo and Kenton conversed. The newcomer strode across and put out his hand to Kenton, who knew as he shook the hand that he has just made the aquaintance of the famed old Rebel renegade Pernell Jones.
“Hello, Mr. Kenton,” Jones said. “You are Brady Kenton, I believe?”
“I am,” Kenton replied.
“Pleased to meet you, sir. It’s an honor to meet the man who told the truth to the world about J.B. Ottinger,” Jones said. For a former Rebel rural insurgent who had spent most of his life since living among roughcut folk on the edges of society, he spoke in a surprisingly urbane manner. Kenton abruptly remembered something he’d been told about Jones once, but had forgotten: Jones had studied briefly at Harvard, but had been forced to cut his education short after his aging parents fell ill back in Virginia. He’d returned there and taken over the family’s farm.
“My ‘Lincolnite’ past doesn’t stifle my welcome?” Kenton asked.
“The war is over,” Jones replied. “And your exposure of Ottinger covered a multitude of sins, as far as I’m concerned.”
“But yet it never brought down Ottinger himself. He was never charged, much less tried.”
“And now he threatens our safety,” Jones said. “Milo was privileged to overhear an extended private conversation of Ottinger’s. It’s his scheme to blame the fire at Gomorrah on us, and use that as a pretext to overrun us.” Jones looked coldly at Milo. “Of course, that’s perhaps a moot point now. He has new grounds for coming after us now.”
Kenton nodded. “Yes. Because his soldiers were fired upon while carrying out their assigned duty of chasing me down.”
“That’s correct. Glad as I am you were saved—and even though I admit I’d have done the same as Milo if I’d been the one who saw them chasing you—the truth is, we’ve put ourselves in a truly fine fix.”
“I feel responsible,” Kenton said. “But let me suggest something. Milo has witnessed Ottinger committing a murder—a murder of a friend of mine. If he would testify to what he’s seen, Ottinger could be prosecuted for that murder.”
Jones was already shaking his head. “No, Mr. Kenton. It’s no good. We don’t recognize nor participate in the United States judicial system. Even more importantly, Milo’s testimony would never be believed. The right hand of Pernell Jones, giving unsupported testimony against the same man Pernell Jones once mangled with a shotgun blast? No. It would be a waste of time.”
Kenton thought about it, and nodded.
“What will you do, then?” Kenton asked. “Try to resist them?”
Jones stared at his own feet a few moments, then looked up at Kenton again. “Mr. Kenton, you’ve been run through the mill, I know, but do you have the strength and interest to attend a little gathering? To see how we do things here at Confederate Ridge?”
“Of course.”
“Good. We’ll try to round up some paper and pencils for you. This may be something you’ll want to record, because it may be the last time that our people gather here together, ever again.”