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“Ben!” L.J. shouted. “The sons o’ bitches are here! They’re everywhere!”
From all around the cabin came a clatter of hooves, then an explosion of gunfire.
I lunged for the front door. I was almost there when one of the Raiders came crashing through the roof, landing on my back.
Chapter 87
BULLETS WERE WHIZZING through the air as the confused-looking man picked himself up off the floor, still clutching a scrap of rusted tin he’d brought with him on his fall through the roof.
L.J. ran into the house and aimed a rifle at the fallen Raider. “Get the hell out of here or die. I see you again, you die!”
In the darkness outside I could see eight men wheeling about on horses. They wore no sheets, no hoods. They weren’t bothering to hide themselves. I recognized the redheaded troublemaker I’d encountered at the trough in front of Jenkins’ Mercantile.
One lout, on a big dappled quarter horse, must have weighed in at four hundred pounds. The horse struggled to keep from collapsing.
The fat man was agile, though, hopping down from his saddle like somebody a third his size. The other Raiders were getting down too, yoking their horses together.
One aimed his shotgun at the house. Ka-blam!
“Goddammit,” L.J. grunted. He poked the barrel of his fine hand-carved rifle through the window, squeezed the trigger, and dropped the shooter in his tracks.
This was war, just like I remembered it from Cuba, except the enemy was from my own town.
L.J. called, “Take the back of the house, Ben!” So I ran to the tiny kitchen and onto the stoop.
Behind the trunk of a giant pecan tree stood Ricky, with his shotgun trained across the yard on an oak where a White Raider huddled with his rifle trained on him.
Neither of them had a clear shot, but they were banging away at each other, riddling each other’s tree trunk with bullets and squirrel shot.
As I burst headlong onto that stoop, I presented a clear target for the White Raider.
He swung his gun toward me, and time seemed to slow down while I watched him turn. He squeezed off a shot. I saw the spark of the bullet strike a rock near the stoop.
The man ducked behind the oak, but he was big enough that the trunk didn’t entirely conceal his belly. I braced my pistol hand on my other arm and fired.
I got him, and he hit the dirt with a thud, screaming, holding his abdomen.
His fellow Raiders had circled behind the house in a ragged line, and now attacked, sweeping the ground with gunfire, round after round. These men had come well armed; they were good with their guns. I remembered that Colonel Roosevelt called this kind of fighting “sweep in and sweep up,” a strategy, he said, that was “generally used by butchers and fools.”
These fools were shooting and yelling as they came, catcalling, “We got you now, niggers!” and “Run, boy! Look at him go!”
A shout came from the swamp: “They got Roy! Goddamn niggers done shot Roy!” This news provoked a fresh round of shooting. L.J. glanced at me; we had the same thought at the same instant.
We waited until the last shot, when all their weapons were unloaded at the same time.
Then we charged around the house, weapons leveled at the Raiders. “Drop ’em!” L.J. hollered.
They obliged, and I rushed to pick up the rifles, yelling, “Don’t move-not one of you move!”
Soon two of the black men who’d been concealed along the fence line appeared, lugging a prone, struggling Raider they had lassoed and hog-tied.
“Where y’all want this one?”
“Put him down right here by the rest,” said L.J.
When they came riding in, the Raiders hadn’t realized they were outnumbered, but they were finding it out now. I saw a couple of smart ones leap on their horses and ride off.
But here came the huge fat man, lumbering around the side of the house with a shotgun in one hand, a pistol in the other.
“Drop your guns!” L.J. yelled.
The fat man did not obey. Instead, he pulled the trigger on the pistol. The bullet hit L.J. in the right cheek. I swear I heard the crack of his cheekbone breaking, then he fell to the ground.
I fired at the fat man and he went down hard. Stayed down, didn’t move.
“L.J.! Are you all right?” I knew he was not.
“Oh, hell, yeah,” L.J. said. “The damn thing just grazed me.” I could plainly see that it had taken a sizable chunk of flesh out of his cheek; blood oozed down his chin. That side of his face was black with gunpowder.
I heard more commotion in front of the house, then hoof-beats. The remaining Raiders had taken this opportunity to get the hell out of there.
“Moody!” I called.
There was no answer.
L.J. made a kind of whistling sound as he breathed through the new hole in his cheek.
“Moody, they’re gone! Come on out now, I need you!”
Again all was silent.
“You’d better… go see…,” L.J. mumbled.
I rushed through the back door and stopped short at the threshold of the parlor. Abraham lay on his bed with the long barrel of a pistol pointed at his head. The man holding it had his other arm around Moody in a choke hold.
“You stop right there, Corbett,” said the Raider. “They’s nothin’ would give me more pleasure than to finish off this old troublemaking nigger, and then you.”
I didn’t move.
I didn’t have to.
I watched Moody’s hand gliding into the pocket of her jumper. She pulled out a kitchen knife and in one smooth motion plunged it into the White Raider’s back.
Chapter 88
“BEN CORBETT HERE is a well-known nigger-lover, so I don’t expect him to know any better-but L.J., for the love of God, I never in this world thought I would find you pulling such a stunt.”
It was four in the morning, and we were standing in the dogtrot of the log cabin that belonged to Phineas Eversman and his family. Phineas was the chief of the Eudora police department, which consisted of him, Mort Crowley, and Harry Kelleher, who worked only part-time.
“Just hear us out, Phineas,” L.J. said. When he lifted the bloody rag from his face, his voice had a sickening whistle in it. “Your town is out of control.”
“Look, Phineas, you can call me every name in the book,” I said. “You can hate me and everything I stand for, but we still have five men in the back of our wagon who attacked and murdered i
Eversman looked past me and out the front door. In the back of the wagon he saw five White Raiders tightly bound, hand and foot, by the very ropes they had brought with them for hanging Negroes.
Standing guard over these men were Cousin Ricky and eight of the ten surviving volunteer guards. Luther Cosgrove and a man named Jimmie Cooper had been gu
“Now, wait a minute, Corbett,” said Phineas. “The first thing out of your mouth was that you and these Nigras killed some of the men.”
“They attacked us!” I bellowed. “We had to fight back or we’d all be dead! Are you listening?”
“There’s no need to get ugly,” said Phineas. His voice was mild, but his eyes kept flicking outside to the tied-up men, as if he were weighing the risks on all sides.
L.J. pressed the bloody cloth against his cheek. “Phineas, you listen to me, now,” he said quietly. “It’s time, Phineas. It’s time to put an end to it-the violence, all the hatred against coloreds in this town. These Ku Kluxer gangs are tearing Eudora apart, limb from limb. People are living in fear, black and white. You know me, Phineas. I’ve lived here all my life. I was there tonight. I saw what happened. I demand as a citizen of this town that you arrest these men for murder. Right now.”