Child of the River Read online

  CHILD OF THE RIVER

  Civil War – Texas Frontier

  By

  Wanda T. Snodgrass

  Copyright 2005 by Wanda T. Snodgrass

  All rights reserved to the author

  Printed and bound by BookMasters, Inc., Mansfield, Ohio

  Library of Congress Catalog Number: Txul-237-404

  ISBN Number: 09778146-0-2

  CHILD OF THE RIVER

  Is dedicated to:

  My late husband, Elisha, my lover and my friend, constantly encouraged me with his good humor and patience over the years of composing this novel. He kept me laughing for 56 years.

  Our son, David M. Spenser, constantly encouraged me and frequently fixed small computer problems. He once said, “Mom, if you never get it published, at least you finished your great American novel. Many would-be authors plan on writing one someday but never do. I’m proud of you for that.”

  Our daughter, Sherry D. Snodgrass’ computer knowledge and encouragement helped me to finally complete the novel. Her numbering and renumbering (after revisions) became to be a family joke. She justified lines, etc. and got the manuscript ready for digital printing. What would I have done without her?

  My late parents, Jim and Leona Thigpen, Mother couldn’t wait for the next chapter of the first draft. Dad instilled in me a love for history. He once grinned and told me, “Talented people are a little skittish…all thoroughbreds are.”

  And to all the dear hearts who ever tasted San Saba River water.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  SPECIAL THANKS

  TO:

  Alice Greenwood

  She has a BA degree in English and a minor in music from Mary Hardin-Baylor College. She received her MA degree in counseling from the University of Texas of the Permian Basin.

  Alice taught English for 23 years in secondary schools. A contest winning author, she is a published poet and writer who edited Child of the River pro bono. She and her husband, Morris, also a retired educator and coach, reside in Odessa, Texas.

  Fritzi Heron

  A noted Odessa artist, she painted the cover picture for Child of The River. The daughter of the late Clyde Heron, widely known for his art, Fritzi is an award-winning educator and artist. She taught high school art for 23 years before becoming a full-time studio freelance artist.

  Billy Clay Hodges

  A former photographer, Billy is an avid fisherman. A native of Menard, Texas, he knows every crook and turn of the San Saba River in that area. He took pictures of the river for the artist.

  CHILD OF THE RIVER FORWARD

  The Civil War brought heartache to America as literally thousands died in the battles. Thousands more were maimed…brother against brother and friend against friend as men chose sides. It lasted four long years from 1861 to 1865. Yet it was a necessary evil to bring freedom to the Negro slaves who were brought to this country against their will for involuntary servitude. 140,414 Union soldiers died in the struggle. Confederate losses were not recorded in history but the number of the dead and wounded must have been tremendous. Contrary to popular belief that slavery was just a southern wrongdoing the practice of selling human beings on the auction block began north of the Mason-Dixon line. It was first introduced in America at Jamestown in 1619.

  Beginning with the battle of Vicksburg, this warm, human historical fiction novel is about people struggling to rebuild their lives from the ashes of the devastating Civil War that crushed the South. It’s about both white and black people…their lives, loves, heartaches, hopes and dreams. The second half of the novel is set in Menard County, Texas on the extreme edge of the Texas frontier. Old Fort McKavett and area ghost towns come to life in this novel.

  Child of the River is generously sprinkled with historical facts about the Civil War era, as well as colorful little known facts blended with of fiction about a small town in Texas. The entire story is pure conjecture, a concoction of the author’s vivid imagination. A bit of left-handed humor is sprinkled here and there throughout the book. The characters are all fictitious. Any similarity to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Most authors at least use an outline. Not Wanda. She winged this one all the way, chapter by chapter. She had never been to Vicksburg until after the first draft of this book was written. She didn’t change a word after her visit years later. It was all written from research. As a youngster, she roamed the hills and valleys and walked Spanish and Indian trails with odd markings in her hometown, Menard, Texas. Child of the River took more than twenty years in the writing, re-writing and re-writing. Enjoy it.

  CHILD OF THE RIVER

  CHAPTER 1

  LATE JUNE… 1863

  The blasts of constant shelling of Vicksburg from Union ships in the Mississippi River were confronted by the big Confederate guns on the bluff. Frightened women, old men and children cowered in dugout caves, covering their ears trying to shut out the deafening sound of the canons, screaming as they watched their men folk die in hand-to-hand fighting. Gunfire was constant in the thick forest around the outskirts of the city where Gen. Grant’s invading army challenged Rebel forces, both fighting valiantly in the vicious battle for Vicksburg. Troops from both sides fell like dry leaves in a windstorm. The overwhelming horde of Union troops was getting closer to downtown. It was only a matter of time until the surrender of this most important port city. It was a turning point in the Civil War.

  “Papa!” Dayme’s piercing scream was lost amid other cries of despair, anguish and pain. The bucket brigade braved exploding cannonballs in an attempt to squelch some of the roaring flames of burning buildings but ran for cover when kegs of gunpowder began exploding in the basement of Barnes Mercantile Store. Wiley O’Malley, store manager, and his daughter, Dayme lived in a flat above the store.

  “Come back, girl,” an old man shouted. “Don’t try to go back in there! You’ll die!”

  “Papa’s still in there,” she cried. She was trembling. Her knees jumped from fright and the cold wetness of the rain. “He’s passed out. Couldn’t wake….”

  “Nothin’ you can do, child,” a kind feminine voice told the weeping barefoot girl in nightclothes as she led her to a cellar.

  The not quite fifteen-year old girl stayed with the Murray family for over a week. The widow had six children to feed and little food. “Go to some of your own kin,” the woman finally told the urchin. “I’m sorry. It’s all I can do to tend my own younguns. Ain’t takin’ in another’n.”

  “I don’t have anybody. Papa’s gone. My brothers died in the war. Mama’s been dead since I was nine. Ain’t got no kin in Vicksburg. Uncle John and Aunt Florence left to pioneer in Texas about the time the war started.”

  “I can’t hep it. Got six o’ my own,” Mrs. Murray muttered. “Go on now, I ain’t takin’ you t’ raise. Hepped you all I intend to.”

  The rain came down in torrents as if God had opened the flood gates of heaven to wash away the blood of thousands of men and young boys gathered there in hand-to- hand combat. Dayme, petrified with fear, huddled against the vines in a garden gazebo. Her long, auburn, naturally curly hair was dripping wet. The dirty nightgown she wore clung to her developing body. Her emerald green eyes were opened wide with fear. Not knowing which way to turn as people scattered for shelter, she sobbed uncontrollably. She grieved for her Papa and wished for Morgan. Morgan would know what to do. He was the best friend she ever had but he was fighting. Somewhere. Maybe he is dead, too, she worried. She cried even harder.

  Startled, the girl jumped when a hand from out of the night clutched her slender shoulders. She looked up into the kind, painted face of one of the party girls from Macy’s Tavern and Brothel. At that moment, Dayme was certain the girl must be the angel
she prayed to God for in her time of trouble.

  “Ain’t you Wiley O’Malley’s girl?”

  Unable to speak from the horrors she had witnessed, Dayme nodded, wordless.

  “I’m Blanche. You poor little thing, your Papa burnt up in the fire didn’t he. Come, honey. I’ll take you to our cellar,” she yelled over the gunfire. Together the two made their way over the broken glass and rubble to the safety of the saloon cellar.

  “Who’s this little stray Coleen with eyes as big as saucers?” Proprietor Tom Macy queried as he wrapped a warm blanket around the shivering girl.

  “Wiley’s girl,” Blanche told him. “She don’t have anybody.”

  “How long since you ate, girl?” Tom Macy asked.

  “Yesterday. Handful o’ raw green beans outta somebody’s garden.”

  “Your foot. It’s bleeding.”

  “Stepped on a piece of glass,” she muttered. “It don’t hurt much.”

  Tom thought the girl should get her wet nightgown off but Dayme wasn’t about to strip with him in the room. She clutched the blanket tightly around her. “Don’t get no ideas, Mister. I ain’t no chippy.”

  The plump proprietor with thin, graying red hair grinned in amusement. “Oh? Got any other talents…like say, washin’ dishes? Cleaning off tables?”

  Dayme managed a weak smile. “Uh- huh. I can cook and I sing pretty good, too. I need a job, Mister, but I ain’t no chippy.”

  “Can you now?” The Scotch-Irish proprietor chewed on an unlit cigar.

  Watching the girl wolf down the warm food, he smiled.

  AUGUST… 1865

  The excruciating heat and humidity following an early morning shower was almost unbearable. At the crossroads outside of Vicksburg, a bedraggled group of nine Confederate soldiers saluted their captain. After a long trek from a Union Army prison in Georgia, the men were haggard. Filthy, stinking, ragged uniforms ringed with months of sweat. Shoes tied on with rags. Several wore dirty bandages. Some limped.

  Captain Benjamin Farrington returned their salute before they went one way, he another. He met a cotton-haired youth’s troubled gaze with fondness. Corporal Billy John Fry had been his aide throughout the war. “The South is badly wounded,” Benjamin told the men, “but she damn sure is not dead! Resist the Yankees, men. Be subtle about it. Work under cover of darkness. Sabotage their supply depots. Blow up tracks and trains. Steal ammunition. By day, go about your business as if we’ve accepted defeat. We must go underground to fight now. White men must regain the upper hand or the slaves will trample us underfoot. We must reclaim the Southland! We must restore our heritage.”

  “I just wanta go home, Suh,” one of the privates from another outfit said,

  “I’m sick o’ fightin’.”

  Captain Farrington glared at the man with disgust and snorted. “Carry On,” he finally said, then turned on his heel and started walking toward the city of Vicksburg.

  Utter destruction of home turf added to his despair. Gaping holes in burned-out hulls of familiar landmarks, broken, lifeless limbs hanging from magnolia trees, sticky sap oozing from wounds in the bark. Yet the queen of the evergreens had survived. A lump appeared in his throat when he came upon the ashes of the Allison home. Tears came to his eyes as fearful thoughts pervaded his mind. He uttered an almost silent prayer.

  At the edge of Vicksburg, the scent of wet sawdust, overripe melons, tomatoes and peaches saturated the air. Reconstruction was well underway and the hum of wind-powered saws sounded like some kind of weird tune. A wire-haired terrier barked a shrill monotone at the trunk of a huge mulberry tree where a terrified, spewing white cat crouched on the safety of a limb, its fur standing on end.

  Carpetbaggers with accents similar to his dominated the boardwalk. Benjamin’s diction reflected a northern environment because he had been schooled in the east. Little Mississippi idiom remained.

  Disgusted with the poverty and humiliation of defeat, some of the proud people had already left the city to pioneer the west. Two families with possessions piled high in oxcarts pushed the horseless vehicles toward the Mississippi River. Their solemn faces stared straight ahead almost unseeing, but their heads were held high. Many of the residents worked at cleaning up debris and patching damaged homes, determined to begin again amid the chaos of Union occupation. New housing for occupation forces’ families and carpetbaggers was under construction.

  The throng of Negroes lined up at the Freedmen’s Bureau caught the captain’s eye. A look of fury crossed his face. “A bunch of damned politics,” he muttered to himself. “Look at this mess.”

  “Gub-ment’s gonna take care o’ us coloreds,” a grinning former slave bragged. “Gonna give us fawty acres an’ a mule.”

  “They’ll play hell caring for you like we did,” he snapped. “The damn ‘gub-ment’ is tearing down what it took the South two hundred years to build. Know how much land is in forty acres?”

  “Naw, suh.”

  “You’ll starve to death on it. I can tell you that much. How are you planning to compete in the market place? Where’s the money for a shanty? A windmill? Food, clothing and gold teeth, huh? The ‘gub-ment’ supplying that?”

  The black man shook his head. “Don’t know. Maybe. Ain’t heard tell. But we’s free to try t’ make it.”

  Hurrying onward, Benjamin’s foremost concern was his mother and his sweetheart, Molly Allison. He saw nobody that he recognized on the street that morning until he ran into Bertha, a slave from a neighboring plantation.

  Hatred blazed in the black woman’s luminous, dark brown eyes. She deliberately ignored his questions. “Parson said ‘the first shall be last an’ the last shall be first’,” she taunted. “Us colored’s been last way too long. Gonna be first from now on.” She snickered cruelly in a sneering tone. “Ole Whitey ain’t gonna be sellin’ off our younguns or beatin’ us with no whip no mo’.” She gestured with a finger sliding across her jugular vein. “Least ole Masta Stroud ain’t. Somebody done cut his wicked ole throat. Found him dead out b’hind the hen house. Red ants a-crawlin’ in his eyeballs.” She chuckled heartily. “That ole devil’s walkin’ ‘round barefooted on red-hot coals in hell!”

  Benjamin was well aware of Stroud’s violent temper and cruelty to slaves on neighboring Curlew Plantation. The majority of Stroud’s peers, including Benjamin, shunned him at civic functions. He didn’t blame the black woman for how she felt about her former master. Bertha bore scars visible on her arms and legs inflicted by his merciless whip. He gelded some of the male children and didn’t hesitate to break up families when there was a dollar to be made at the auction block. He bragged of raping young black virgins still in puberty. Benjamin had absolutely no respect for the man.

  “My mother, Bertha,” Benjamin insisted impatiently. “Did Mother survive the war?”

  Venom still poured from the freed slave’s mouth. Her work-roughened hands were on her wide hips and her mouth twisted wryly into a smirk. “Them lazy white women’s gonna be cleanin’ ‘nigga’ houses an’ diggin’ in ‘nigga’ dirt before this is over. They already plowin’ fields an’ they dainty little hands got blisters on ‘em. Does my ole black heart good just t’ watch ‘em. I’s pulled my last boll o’ cotton and cleaned my last nasty chamber full o’ white people’s leavin’s. Them puny, little feisty white belles…they kin do it.”

  Infuriated by her impudence and refusal to answer him about his mother, Benjamin snapped. “No white Southern lady would smell you long enough to clean your house, Bertha! Get out of my way!”

  The hefty woman held her ground, refusing to move and let him pass. When he attempted to step around her, she deliberately moved in front of him. She wasn’t finished with her speech.

  “Jest you wait an’ see,” she yelled. “Good Bein’ done seen fit t’ turn this ole world around. Don’t know what you come home for, Ben Farrington. Your damned ole mama, she’s dead! Coloreds done took over Lawkspur. So git in line. You’s gonna haft t’ git out an’ do ‘nigga’
work yo’self!”

  Benjamin’s bearded face grew ashen. He opened and closed his fist, suppressing a wild desire to strike the woman. “You lying wench!”

  “Well, she is. Been dead a long time. Old bitch is six foot under. Worms an’ ground squirrels done got her et up by now.”

  Observing the commotion, a Yankee lieutenant stepped forward, an amused expression on his face. “What’s your name, Reb?” The officer appeared to be no older than twenty.

  “Capt. Benjamin Atwood Farrington.”

  “Been processed?”

  “Yes.” Benjamin fumbled in his shirt pocket for prison release papers while the ecstatic black woman grinned.

  “As a Union officer, you can call me ‘Sir’.” The lieutenant’s eyes twinkled as he reveled in the Rebel captain’s discomfort. He took his time examining the papers while forcing the Confederate to stand at attention. “Let the lady pass, Reb. Move out of her way. Have you no manners?”

  There was a new shingle hung over Dr. Allison’s old office where he had hoped to find Molly. It read: “Peter Caldwell, M. D.” The northern physician was coolly polite but brusque. “A few patients mentioned Allison,” he told Benjamin. “I believe he died some time back.” He turned abruptly to go into the adjoining room.

  Benjamin’s breath sucked in for a minute. His lips were dry and parched, and at that moment he felt like vomiting from the sickly scent of alcohol and ether on an empty stomach. Fear gripped him that perhaps old Bertha was right. Maybe she wasn’t just torturing me with her cutting words, he thought. Oh, God, perhaps Mums is dead. “Wait. Please wait. My Mother, Mrs. John Farrington from Larkspur Plantation was Dr. Allison’s patient. Is she your patient now? She has a heart con….”

  The doctor’s eyes were cold and unfeeling. His voice was irritable and short. He spoke in a condescending manner as though talking to a fool. “I have…in the next room…a woman who is desperately ill. I don’t have time, nor do I care to keep tally on all the local Rebels. I don’t know the woman. Please go.”