four
THE HOURS ON THE TRAIN from Memphis gave Zane plenty of time to ascertain details of the case from Riggins, as well as a bit about the Daughtry family. But he waited until the two prisoners, Jefcoat and Moore, had both dozed off before he addressed the Pinkerton agent.
“It would help,” Zane began, “if I knew exactly what we’re involved in. I’ve told you why I’m after Jones in particular. But if he’s connected to Beaumont’s murder, as well as the riots in Tuscaloosa and atrocities in Tupelo—well, there’s more going on here than Eaton indicated.”
Riggins shrugged. “It’s no secret President Grant is set on bringing violence in the South under control. It’s why he pushed for the Enforcement Act and appointed Amos Akerman as Attorney General.”
“I’d heard that,” Zane said, “but I’m not familiar with Akerman.”
“He’s a good man,” Riggins said, “in favor of protecting Negro voting rights. He’s convinced these Mississippi church burnings, newspaper vandalisms, intimidation, and murders are connected to similar events all over the southeast, so the President commissioned him to identify the leadership of those rings and bring them down. Akerman is friends with Pinkerton and brought him in to help, which is how I got involved.”
“Marshal Eaton says you managed to infiltrate the Mississippi Klan.” Zane gave Riggins a skeptical look. “Passing yourself off during the war as a butternut soldier while on a flash raid through the state with Grierson was one thing. But this investigation seems to have taken several months. I have trouble believing they’d accept a stranger with a Northern accent as one of them.”
Riggins responded with a grim smile. “Schuyler Beaumont volunteered to be our spy.”
“Beaumont?” Zane couldn’t control his surprise. “Related to Ezekiel—the one who was murdered in the Tuscaloosa riot?”
Riggins nodded. “His youngest son, engaged now to my wife’s sister. You’ll meet him when we get there. After his father was murdered, Schuyler agreed to use his somewhat wild—and, I might add, well-deserved—reputation to become a member of the local Klan organization. That stratagem resulted in these indictments in Tupelo. The Klan isn’t happy about it, obviously, which is why we’re preparing for all-out war.” He paused. “I hope it won’t come to that.”
Zane nodded. “Since the trial’s in Tupelo, who’s the presiding federal judge?” He was familiar with the Alabama and Tennessee departments of justice, but Mississippi was new territory.
“Robert Hill will be coming over from Oxford. He’s experienced and moderate, from what I hear. Prosecutor will be US Attorney Wiley Wells.”
“Headed by Alonzo Maney, a lawyer from Tennessee. Ironically, it’s common knowledge that Maney is a Klan muckety-muck of some sort, if not a Grand Titan. During the course of the investigation, his name has surfaced over and over.”
“Maney?” Zane shook his head. “Sounds familiar.”
“It should,” Riggins said. “Maney was a Confederate general, and intel indicates he’s been a guest at the Forrest plantation in Memphis on multiple occasions.”
“Confederate General Nathan B. Forrest, I assume—the one they called the ‘Wizard of the Saddle.’”
“The very same.” Riggins flipped notebook pages backward. “Forrest and his wife were staying at Daughtry House when the kitchen and blacksmith shop burned. He was probably directing events, though we can’t prove it yet.”
“Hmm. Interesting. I meant, the reason Maney’s name sounds familiar is because he’s named in the money-laundering scheme I investigated for Congress.”
“Exactly. Maney seems to have gotten suspiciously rich during his stint in the House. They’re building quite a case, though it may be a while before they can bring him up on charges. Documents surfaced in the hands of former employees of the Maney family—an interracial couple who were the governess and tutor of the Maney children. Schuyler’s father wound up with those documents, and they could be a motive for his murder”—Riggins glanced over at the sleeping Jefcoat—“despite the fact that Jefcoat claims to have hit him by accident.”
Zane felt as if he’d just tried to drink from a waterfall. It occurred to him that if Sam Jones was involved in this web of criminals, he had gotten himself into more than he could handle alone. Even so, he set himself to memorize what Riggins had just told him. Every detail would add up, he was sure.
He just had to stay alert and focused.
Two hours later, the train pulled into the Tupelo station, and Zane angrily folded the copy of the Jackson Weekly Clarion that he’d picked up to read after Riggins finished with it. He stuffed the small, fat square into the inside pocket of his coat. He would burn it if he could. The last paragraph would remain imprinted on his brain for the rest of his life, one of the drawbacks of having a memory with total recall.
Men have been dragged from their homes without knowledge of the cause of their arrest, at the suggestion of malicious and procured perjurers. Many a farm is uncultivated, many a wretched wife is in rags, and many a helpless child has suffered intolerable pangs of hunger because those remorseless villains and adventurers sent down by Grant to ravage and destroy would secure rewards for convictions to be effected by Negro perjury.
Remorseless villain. Adventurer. Indicated the sort of welcome he could expect.
He glanced at Riggins, who was already gathering his belongings. The fellow actually looked eager to be arriving in this hornet’s nest of rebel extremism. Well, no wonder—he’d married a Southern belle and planned to stay. On the day Zane brought the judge’s killer to justice, he would shake the dust from his boots and return to the tranquility and isolation of the Western prairie. Nothing but horses, cattle, and grass, with maybe a few Indians to add interest to the landscape.
Getting up to check the prisoners’ manacles, he smiled at Jefcoat’s grunt of discomfort. “You did this to yourself, partner,” he reminded the hulking, bearded young man. The son of a Mississippi dirt farmer, Jefcoat had once caroused all over Oxford and Memphis with the son of the man he was charged with killing. According to Riggins, the influence of older members of the Ku Klux Klan had sent Jefcoat down the road to destruction. By his own admission, in the middle of a riot Jefcoat had been aiming his gun at a successful Negro politician. He’d shot white rail baron Ezekiel Beaumont by accident.
Manslaughter? Zane doubted it. There was arrogance and bitterness in the small eyes regarding Zane so resentfully.
“Where we gon’ stay?” asked the fourth member of their little travel group. Harold Moore had the distinction of being Jefcoat’s accomplice, although there was clearly no love lost between the two. A light-skinned black man a few years older than Jefcoat, Moore had grown up in slavery to the Jefcoat family, and rumor had it the two were half brothers.
Riggins paused in the act of checking his revolver. “Jail,” he said laconically before sliding the gun into the holster under his armpit.
Moore’s dark eyes widened. “They gon’ be after me, sir.” His gaze cut to Jefcoat. “Him too. They don’t tolerate nobody talking against ’em.”
“‘They’ who?” Zane spoke over the squeal of brakes and huff of steam as the train ground to a halt.
“You know who.” Lurching to his feet, Jefcoat scowled at Moore. “We’re not saying anything else until we’re under oath. And protected by a judge.”
“Thanks to your friends, even a judge isn’t safe in these parts,” Zane said. “Come on, Moore, you’ll have a bed and three squares a day. That’s a pretty good deal for an accused murderer.” He took the Negro by the arm and walked him toward the car’s open door, leaving Riggins to deal with Jefcoat.
Leaving the train station, they walked down Front Street along the railroad tracks, passing a couple of saloons, a hotel, and a boardinghouse. As they filed through an alleyway into the town square, the prisoners’ chains jangling with every step, the four of them received quite a few stares from curious Tupelo citizens. The courthouse, a two-story clapboard building with a small cupola and adjacent jail, seemed to be in the center of a business district. Across the street to the west, Zane noted a bank and a boot maker’s shop, with a row of other small shops behind him to the south. Levi had told him the town had only recently incorporated as the new seat of Lee County, though it had existed as a community since before the war and already had a slightly tired look created by flaking paint and warped boards.
During the first four years after the war, Zane had gotten used to the relative bustle of Montgomery, Alabama, where he’d assisted Judge Teague in his role as a deputy marshal. Serving warrants, escorting prisoners and witnesses, keeping track of court expenses, and a host of other daily minutiae of the federal court system had kept him engaged in the life of a Southern capital—and simultaneously given him little time to dwell upon his personal isolation. With some misgiving, he’d made the move to Memphis in February, subjecting himself to the exacting supervision of US Marshal Eaton. Even so, Zane had to admit that the intellectual stimulation and greater physical demands of the new Justice Department had been good for him.
Now, for an unspecified length of time, he must adjust once more to the status of an outsider in a small town. Still, he supposed he had endured worse.
“You hungry?” Riggins asked as they passed the Gum Pond Hotel. “Once we get these fellows situated at the jail, we could eat before we head out to Daughtry House.”
Zane shrugged. “I can wait.”
“Good.” Riggins grinned. “I confess I’m anxious to see my wife.”
Zane couldn’t help a pang of envy. It had been so long since anybody missed him when he was gone, he couldn’t even remember who that would have been. “How long have you been away?” He wasn’t good at making conversation, but Riggins was easy to talk to. Undemanding, friendly, considerate—probably why he was a successful agent.
“Nearly a week. Selah wasn’t feeling well when I left.”
“You been married long?”
“Since April 22nd—just long enough to really miss her when we’re apart. We met in late February.” Riggins glanced his way. “Remember that train wreck outside Oxford that was in the papers?”
Zane whistled through his teeth. “A lot of people died in that wreck.”
“Yes. I believe God protected us and brought us together. I was on a case related to this one. Selah’s father—” Riggins shook his head. “He blew up the trestle of that bridge. I’m pretty sure he was working for somebody else, but he died before I could get to the bottom of it.”
Zane jerked to a stop, causing Moore to stumble against him. “Your wife’s own father nearly killed her?”
Riggins paused, eyes somber. “Jonathan Daughtry wasn’t right. Had some kind of brain injury, and he’d been held in Douglas Prison for a couple of years for war crimes. And in his defense, he didn’t know Selah was on the train.”
Zane slowly started walking again. “I know something about being a prisoner of war. What makes you think he had a partner?”
Riggins glanced at Jefcoat, who was walking along in stolid silence. “This is all common knowledge, so there’s no harm in talking about it. A man named Scully—wartime friend of Daughtry—followed him here and got caught in the trap we’d laid. He’s in Oxford, awaiting trial there.”
“You said Daughtry’s and Scully’s crimes connect to the murders and burnings here. How so?”
“Scully came all the way from Oxford to warn Daughtry he had been traced, and to talk him out of continuing to hunt down Union sympathizers who pillaged their commanding officer’s plantation during the Chattanooga campaign. I dug around for information about that inciting incident, and it turns out Scully and Daughtry were under the command of General Alonzo Maney.”
“Maney? The man had a finger in everything!”
“Seems so.” Riggins spread his hands. “But unfortunately, Daughtry didn’t live long enough to tell me much about him—and his testimony would have been unreliable anyway. He was about as close to madness as a man can get without falling over the edge.” He released a long, sad breath. “That was a bad business, Sager. Daughtry literally hunted me, thinking he was back in a battle zone, tracking a Union spy. Well, I was Union, but you know what I mean. The old man was living in a terrible past. He’d hidden in the Daughtry House attic, there was a scuffle over my gun, and he—” Riggins’s deep voice broke—“he fell from the cupola window. My wife saw it happen. Nearly ended our relationship, as you can imagine. But God . . .” His steps slowed as he shook his head in a wondering fashion. “I have to believe God intervened. There’s no logical reason that woman would have forgiven me, let alone married me.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” Zane said dryly. He believed in God. But figuring out which events the sovereign Lord of the universe chose to get himself involved in seemed far above his ability to comprehend. “I’m looking forward to meeting Mrs. Riggins.”
“You’ll like her.” Looking more cheerful, Riggins picked up his pace and they soon arrived at the jail.
Inside, a constable with a mustache bigger than his face sat behind a desk, gnawing a chicken bone. “Riggins,” the constable said, wiping his mouth on his shirtsleeve, “you’re back.”
“I see your powers of observation are as keen as ever, Pickett.” Riggins tipped his head toward Zane. “This is US Deputy Marshal Sager. We brought two witnesses from Memphis who need to be supervised for the next few days.”
Pickett reluctantly put down the chicken leg. “We’re mighty short-staffed right now. The sheriff’s out on a family emergency.”
Zane noted the three empty cells behind the desk. “Do you feel these two are beyond your ability to control?”
“’Course not,” the constable blustered. “What’re they in for?”
“I’m not at liberty to say.” Zane led Moore to the far right cell. “Where’s the key?”
“Over there.” Pickett abandoned his supper with a sigh and got up to retrieve a set of keys hanging on a wall hook. While he locked Moore’s cell, Riggins installed Jefcoat at the opposite end of the row.
Zane rattled both doors to check the locks, then turned to study Pickett. Muddy eyes. Lazy. Probably incompetent. He turned to Riggins. “I’m staying here tonight.”
Riggins didn’t answer for a moment, then nodded reluctantly. “I was going to put you up at Daughtry House, but if you want to stay, you should at least go to the hotel for a meal first. I’ll sit with them—”
“I’m not hungry,” Zane said. “But if you could go back to the train station and have somebody send my gear here, I’d appreciate it.”
Riggins eyed him. “Certainly. I’ll have to go to the livery for my horse anyway.”
As Riggins left and Pickett returned to his meal, Zane spotted a ladderback chair over near the cells. He sat down and tipped the back against the wall. Composing himself for one of the long stretches of boredom that had checkered his life, he dug in his coat pocket for his Pony Express Bible. Back in his days as a rider, when he’d been an adventurous young kid, he’d mainly used the Bible as a code book for leaving his sister messages they didn’t want their drunken father to read.
Now he took it in daily as the bread of life.
“I told you I could handle these fellows,” Pickett said.
Zane didn’t even look up. “I got nothing better to do.” Nothing but sleep on a bed in a luxury hotel. Eat a meal that wasn’t canned beans and salt pork. Engage in conversation with the pretty Daughtry women.
He focused on the fat little Bible open in the palm of his hand. Reading was a struggle, but this was worth the trouble. One of the many valuable things Judge Teague had taught him.
His gaze drifted to his prisoners. There might be a little fear behind Jefcoat’s angry, discontented expression.
Zane hardened himself. Jefcoat was going to testify, if it was the last thing either of them did.