GENERAL KILBY LOOKED feverish when he appeared next morning for the eight o’clock meeting. Gatling and Tolliver had been waiting for forty-five minutes when he finally came downstairs, assisted by Uncle Jed. They knew the general would be late because earlier Uncle Jed told them he was feeling poorly when he let them into the house. There was no sign of Otis Kilby and Uncle Jed offered no explanation.
“Stop fussing, you black rascal,” the general kept saying as he creaked down the stairs. But he allowed the old servant to help him into his chair. Although Uncle Jed was in his eighties, there was nothing feeble about him. It was obvious that the general relied on him, trusted him completely. They made an odd pair, two old men so set in their ways, so very different. Gatling decided that Uncle Jed was the more intelligent of the two.
Tolliver’s cheery morning greeting got a grunt. The general was sick or in a bad mood or both. Uncle Jed brought him his morning coffee, but he spurned the oatmeal and the poached eggs on toast. “That’s no white man’s food,” he complained. “Slop it to the hogs.” Uncle Jed whisked away the tray and got out of the line of fire.
General Kilby stared at Gatling and Tolliver as if surprised to find them in his library so early in the morning. Then he seemed to remember why they were there and asked Tolliver where Otis was. When Tolliver said he had no idea, the general rang his bell and Uncle Jed came scurrying in. Uncle Jed said he figured Mr. Otis must still be sleeping. But he wasn’t sure because he’d been busy in the kitchen.
“You’re supposed to know everything that goes on around here,” the general roared. “Get yourself upstairs and tell that drunken no-account to be down here in five minutes. Tell him never mind the washing and shaving and changing clothes. Most likely he slept in them. Just get him down here.”
Just then Otis Kilby came in looking fairly sober. He was wearing a white silk shirt with puffed sleeves and tight cuffs, riding britches, boots and a wide-brimmed planter’s hat. A woven leather quirt was looped around his wrist. Gatling thought he looked better than he’d ever seen him. At least he wasn’t as shaky and sick looking as he usually was in the morning.
“Where the hell have you been?” the general wanted to know.
Otis Kilby took off his hat and sat down. “Sorry I’m late, General. I was out for a ride.”
“Where did you go?”
“Nowhere special. Here and there. You don’t look too good, sir. The malaria kicking up again?”
He’s been drinking all right, Gatling thought, else he wouldn’t talk like that to his father. And he’d put away a lot more than an eye-opener. It had steadied him for the moment, even made him cocky. He seemed pleased to see his father sick, though he made some effort to hide it.
The general gave him a baleful look. “I don’t look so good, is that what you think? I look better than you the sickest day I ever was. Hold your tongue, you insolent cur.”
Gatling spotted Uncle Jed peeping out of the kitchen. He didn’t look surprised at what was going on. He just wanted to know. What surprised Gatling was that the day before the old man had been so careful not to call down his son in front of Tolliver. At that moment, it looked as if he didn’t give a damn and maybe his head was touched by more than a recurrence of malaria. Could be the old bastard was just plain touched, but didn’t show it all the time. Fever could only make a loony loonier. And that loony was the man who was going to lead them into battle!
Otis Kilby sat quietly twirling his hat between his fingers. The general ignored him and said to Tolliver, “What was it you wanted to see me about?”
“The meeting, General,” Tolliver said. “The eight o’clock meeting. We were going to talk about the attack on Parimba.”
“Yes of course, the meeting.” General Kilby reached for his coffee cup and knocked it over. He rang his bell furiously and Uncle Jed came in with a sponge and began to clean up the desk. “Get out! Get out, you damnable Ethiopian!” the general roared before Uncle Jed was quite finished.
“I’ll fetch some fresh coffee,” Uncle Jed said, retreating toward the kitchen. “Nice hot fresh coffee, General.”
Pounding his cane on the floor, the general roared, “Never mind the blasted coffee! Bring me the usual and don’t get stingy with the bourbon or I’ll sell you down the river, you and that quack doctor.”
“Now then, Tolliver,” the general said, suddenly calm.
A bad sign, Gatling thought, bad as could be. Once he’d known a teetotaling man, a town marshal, who blew hot and cold when it came to moods. One of the hot moods took hold of him for too long and one afternoon he shot up his own town and killed six people before he was shot down by a storekeeper. “Tolliver,” the general said. “I’d like to get on with this.”
“The ten days training,” Tolliver prompted him. “Yesterday you said you wanted our entire force to get ten days training in the wild jungle south of the Rankin place. To toughen them up for the attack on Parimba.”
“Yes. Yes.” The old man frowned. His face, sallow like his son’s, looked unhealthy. “You can’t have heard me right, Tolliver. I probably said ten days training would be a good thing if we had the time for it. We don’t. Why do you think this training is so important? To me the men look to be in top fighting shape. Didn’t we have the parade that Sunday before you went downriver to get the guns? I was proud of the way the men marched.”
“It was a good parade,” Tolliver said.
“I think you’re wrong, Tolliver,” the general said. “The men don’t need any training. They all know how to shoot and are hard as nails from hard work. Why do you think I sentence a man to sixty days hard labor for public drunkenness or for neglecting his work because of drinking?” He scowled at his son. “It’s because I don’t want my men turning into swinish sots. Sixty days in the fields will teach the worst drunkard to drink in moderation or not at all. My method has worked. The men are ready to fight and need no training. Except, of course, in the use of Mr. Gatling’s new weapons. You will begin this very morning, Mr. Gatling.”
Gatling nodded. “I’ll start right away, General.” At least the goddamned jungle training was out of the way. For the moment it was, but there was no telling when the old loony would change his mind. Be thankful for small mercies, he told himself. He knew Tolliver was relieved; neither of them had come up with any ideas for scotching the training plan.
After another swig of julep, the general gave Gatling a hard look. “You have a week, Mr. Gatling, no more than that. At first light on Sunday morning, a week from today, we will move out to attack Parimba. You, Tolliver, will go first. We’ve gone into that. When you signal the all clear with a dark lantern, the main force will cross the river on the Ruffin. Will the boat carry four hundred men?”
Gatling was thinking the plan wasn’t so bad; he’d been half-expecting the general to say they’d cross the river on rafts.
Tolliver said, “The boat should be able to take that many men.”
“Make sure, Tolliver. After the men are ashore, the Ruffin will return to our landing, where it will be protected by the Maxim guns. We don’t want to leave our only boat in an exposed position.”
Tolliver nodded. “Yes, General.”
General Kilby said, “I have chosen Sunday for the attack because Suarez’s army of degenerates will be sleeping off the effects of the night before. Not even Suarez will be able to stop them from indulging in the usual Saturday night orgy of drunkenness and sex. Many of them will still be drunk when we attack. Those who aren’t will be sick, their rat brains befuddled by bad rum. Even such sentries as there are may be drunk or asleep. I doubt that we will meet much opposition. How do you like my plan now, Mr. Gatling?”
“I like it very much, General,” Gatling said. “No better time for an attack. My hat’s off to you, sir.”
He didn’t mind the old man’s malicious smile. Choosing Sunday for the attack was the best part of the plan. He didn’t much like the rest of it, but maybe, just maybe, they could get through twenty-five miles of jungle undetected. If they could do that, then Suarez was done for. The general massacre of the men and boys would see to that. Even if Suarez managed to escape, he could never again raise an army of that size. News of the massacre would spread far and wide, through all the backland villages and rubber camps, all the tiny towns along the river. Suarez would find himself alone; no one would join him. It was a brutal plan, but it made sense.
“I’m pleased that it meets with your approval, Mr. Gatling. I was afraid you might have some objections.” The old man was so pleased with himself that he rang for another mint julep. No refreshment was offered to the others. After all, this was a staff meeting and he didn’t want his subordinates drinking.
Otis Kilby jerked nervously when his father spoke to him. Gatling knew the morning booze was dying in his system; that first display of cockiness was gone or going fast. Gatling wondered where he had gone so early in the morning; usually he slept half the day, waking up only long enough to drink the drink that would put him back to sleep. But there he was, washed and shaved and wearing fresh clothes, and that must have taken some effort. He had to have an important reason for going to all that trouble. Sure as hell, he had gone somewhere. Gatling decided to talk to Tolliver later.
“Naturally you will be coming with us, Otis,” the general said. His smile was vicious, but for a change his voice was soft. “Naturally you will want to come with us. No home duty for you, eh, Otis? You know, it’s not often a man gets a chance to redeem himself. You failed us in New Orleans when you allowed the money to be stolen and poor Ravenel murdered. You got us eighty thousand five hundred dollars into debt at a very bad time. You don’t have to look so embarrassed, Otis. I’m sure Tolliver knows all about it. I’m sure Mr. Gatling told him. But no matter, the Maxim Company will get its money. Now I can’t very well send you with Tolliver’s squad for obvious reasons. But you will be in the thick of things when we attack. I think I can promise you that.’’ Then came the roar. “If you try to run, try to hide, if you show yourself to be a coward, I will shoot you myself.’’
Trembling and white faced, Otis Kilby went upstairs without a word. He stumbled once on the way. A door banged shut.
“And now, gentlemen,’’ the general said, back to his quiet voice, “that will be all for today. There will be a meeting of all our subordinate leaders on Saturday morning, same time. Both of you will keep me informed as to your progress. Come here only if there is something you can’t deal with yourselves. If I am unavailable, leave a short written report stating the problem. I have many things to think about.”
Gatling and Tolliver walked away from the house and were glad to go.
“Is he often like that?” Gatling said.
“Well, he always was a bit peculiar,” Tolliver said. “Lately, though, I’ve got to thinking maybe he was a little crazy as far back as the War. Some of the things he did then were pretty crazy, but everybody is some crazy in a war. Anyway, I was young and didn’t think much about it. I was just a blacksmith, good with men and horses, no brag, and he was a general. Same thing after we came here. Over the years he’s said and done some strange things. But we flourished in spite of that, as you can see.”
Peacocks were strutting on the bright green lawns and flowers were everywhere. It would have been a peaceful scene, Gatling thought, if he could put the Kilbys out of his mind. But there was no easy way to do that.
“I’m talking about more recent times,” Gatling said.
“More up to date is how he’s been behaving since the trouble with Suarez started. Nothing that serious ever happened before. Like I told you, we had to fight bandits and savages, different kinds of fever, crop disease, weevils, the usual. Ten years back an ambitious fool name of Newhall got some misfits behind him and tried to seize control by armed force. The revolt and the shooting didn’t last more than a day. Those we didn’t kill in the fighting we hung in front of the courthouse. Most everybody thought they got what they deserved, but it was like the general took pleasure from the hanging of twenty-one men.”
“And now?”
“Well the Suarez business was and is a real threat. Since it started, whatever is wrong with the general is more out in the open. I know he’d never admit it, but I think he’s afraid everything he’s built up is in danger of being destroyed. That’s possible, sure, but I think it goes deeper than that. New Columbia is kind of a monument to him and he doesn’t want the settlement and the memory of him wiped out. You see, he was relieved of his command and sent home months before Lee surrendered. You get my point?”
“I do.”
“He doesn’t act peculiar all the time,” Tolliver said. “He can go for weeks without doing or saying anything peculiar. But then there are times when he’s forgetful, worse than forgetful, and doesn’t remember what he said an hour before. Sometimes minutes before. Like with the jungle training bullshit. He contradicts himself, gets hopping mad for no reason, issues orders and then takes them back, forgets the names of men he’s known since back in Carolina. One day he’s ready to take over the governorship, the next he wants no part of ruling dirty half-castes and nigras.”
Gatling put it bluntly. “You think he’s crazy? I know you have respect for the man that was. I just want to know what you think.”
They were halfway back to the town and the courthouse. It was nine o’clock, with the sun beating down hard. The white town, so neat and orderly in the harsh sunlight, didn’t look completely real.
“I don’t know if he’s crazy,” Tolliver said. “I’m no doctor, so all I can tell you is this. Sometimes he acts crazy, sometimes he doesn’t. The bad part of it is when a sensible mood suddenly turns crazy. One mood runs into another. Some of it is getting old, I would think, but old age can’t be all of it. I wish he’d stay behind when we head out.”
“Not much chance of that, I guess.”
“No chance at all. He’s like an old fire horse. More like it is a scaly old crocodile that smells blood. Nothing can turn the croc or the general aside when there’s killing to be done. He’ll be right there with us, more’s the pity.”
Gatling smiled at the blacksmith. “I hate to bring this up because it makes me feel kind of dumb, but how is General Kilby going to walk to Parimba through twenty-five miles of jungle?”
Tolliver grinned back. “He’s going to ride a mule. A white fucking mule! Why can’t it be a brown mule so it would blend in better with the jungle colors? He has other mules, but Whitey is his favorite. When he’s in one of his moods he says Whitey and Uncle Jed are his only friends. The man is so thickheaded and stubborn, he’ll probably come back as a mule after he dies.”
“Too bad that doesn’t happen before we attack Parimba. We could keep him in the corral.”
“Pretty soon he’d be bossing all the other mules.” Tolliver laughed. “That’s the way he is and there’s no changing it. He got onto the mules when he read about General George Crook of the United States Army. Years back when Crook was fighting Indians, he rode nothing but mules, claimed they were tougher and smarter than horses, which is true. Even now the general still hates Yankees, especially Yankee generals, but he took a leaf from Crook’s book and bought himself some mules. Now he swears by them, especially his brother Whitey.”
Things were getting crazier by the minute, Gatling thought. “Has he ever ridden Whitey any distance?”
“Lord, yes. All the way to the mountains and back and that’s a good seventy miles each way. And if you want to know if he’s ridden that mule in the jungle, the rain forest, yes, he has. Whitey is a big strong mule and can keep going forever. And he’s young, no more than twelve years.”
“Will Uncle Jed be joining us?”
“You bet. That old nigra goes everywhere the general goes. A good thing he does. If anybody has any influence on the general it’s that old nigra.”
Gatling was thinking maybe he should sneak up to the library window after dark and put a bullet through the general’s good leg. He could kill the old crackpot; but then how would he collect the eighty thousand? Besides, killing or wounding the old man was a bit too drastic. And in his way he did hold New Columbia together. Gatling knew he wasn’t about to shoot the general, but he liked the idea.
They got to the courthouse and Tolliver asked the sentry how it was going.
“Everything quiet,” the sentry said. “Only thing happened was a visit from young Kilby. Came riding up on that fine Arabian of his. Was surprised to see him.”
Usually Tolliver was a mild man, but the news made him angry. “You let him go inside?”
“Why wouldn’t I? He’s the general’s son.”
Tolliver looked ready to knock the man down. “Didn’t I tell all of you on guard duty that nobody is to go in there but Mr. Gatling, the general and me? No exceptions, I said. I said anybody didn’t like it they could come to me.”
“Why are you blaming me, Tolliver? Longley is in charge here, not me. Longley should have turned him out.”
“Did he?” Tolliver’s big fists swung like hammers. The sentry eyed them before he answered.
“No, he didn’t. He was in there a good ten minutes talking to Longley. When he got through, he rode off.”
This time Longley was reading a stained dime novel with a tattered paper cover. A mug of coffee stood beside him on the weapons crate he was sitting on. His new Winchester was on the other side of him.
Tolliver slapped the book out of his hands. “Good morning, my ass! What’s the idea letting young Kilby in here?”
Longley wasn’t a small man and he jumped up red faced and ready to fight. “Something eating on you, Tolliver? Got a sugarcane head or what?”
Tolliver ignored the insult. He wagged a thick finger in Longley’s face; his voice dropped to a growl. “Like I told that fool outside, nobody is allowed in here but Mr. Gatling, the general and myself. Didn’t I say that loud and clear?”
“Sure you did. But I didn’t think you meant the general’s own son. Why would you want to exclude him?”
Tolliver picked up the book and handed it to Longley. “Never mind the reason. I just don’t want Otis or anybody else in here. You don’t want them in here anymore than I do. Would get in the way of your reading for one thing. What’s the book about?”
Longley held up the book so Tolliver could see the cover. It was called The True Story of the Reno Brothers. “The Reno Brothers were the first train robbers in America,” Longley said.
“What happened to them?”
“They got lynched by a mob that broke into the jail.”
“You’ll get lynched if you let more people in here.” Gatling and Tolliver went out and walked over to the old cannon so the sentry couldn’t hear what they were saying.
“Otis has been a busy little bee,” Tolliver said. “I don’t get it. He had plenty of time to look at the crates on the boat.”
“Could be he wanted to see how the crates were placed, in the courtroom or down where the lockup is. Maybe he wanted to see what kind of a guard there was.”
“I have deep suspicions about that man,” Tolliver said. “Something’s not right about him. I mean to find out.”
“Me too,” Gatling said. “Soon as I get the guns out of the crates I’m going to set up a couple of Maxims. Two of the gun crews from the boat can sit behind them. The cannons will be just for show till I get some men trained. Untrained men could level the town with those cannons. Where’s a good place to start the training? I need plenty of open space to set up targets at different distances from the cannons and the Maxims.”
Tolliver thought for a minute. “Sure,” he said. “The parade ground. It’s about a mile wide and a mile long. Wasn’t meant for a parade ground, just cleared land that was meant for nothing in particular. The general decided to keep it as it was for parades, maneuvers and such. Part of it the boys use for baseball games on Sundays. You think it’s big enough?”
“Sounds just right. I’ll start opening crates while you get wagons and men to help us load. We have ten cannons and twenty Maxims. Thirty guns with two-man crews. Sixty men. I’d like you to pick a hundred likely men to make up fifty two-man crews. Some of the crewmen will be killed if we don’t take Parimba and the war goes on. We have to be prepared for some losses among the gun crews. When you’ve got your hundred men, divide them up so I can work with twenty men every day for five days.”
“What about the new Winchesters?”
“No training needed there. The rear sight makes them more accurate is all. Nothing that doesn’t explain itself. All the men can shoot. I would think fifty rounds per man for practice is enough. I’ll have the guns out of their cases by the time you get back.”
Tolliver went to get his horse. Gatling and Longley opened crates while he was gone. After his guard duty, Longley knew what Maxims looked like, but he gaped at the 37mm Hotchkiss Cannons. They were light army models mounted on wheels with hard-rubber rims. They used top-loading magazines containing ten shells. They weren’t automatic like the Maxims, but were fired by means of a crank handle. The gunner could fire them single shot until he got the range right by loading one shell at a time. When the range was figured out, a ten-cartridge magazine was top loaded and could be fired as fast as the gunner could turn the crank. Jamming of cartridges was prevented by a mechanism that evenly spaced the incoming rounds. The shells were nearly seven inches long and weighed two and a half pounds.
“With a fast loader,” Gatling told Longley, “the gunner can fire eighty rounds a minute. That many rounds a minute can spray the target area with over two thousand pieces of jagged iron and lead bullets.”
“God Awmighty!” Longley said.
They heard the rattle of wagons and Tolliver came in.