Sudden Country by Loren D. Estleman Read Free Book Online Page A

said Mr. Knox.
    "Sir, you do an old campaigner's heart proud."
    The interior of the establishment was cool and dark after the hot glare of the street. It was nearly full at that early hour and an umbrella of smoke hung under the rafters. The air smelled of liquor and damp sawdust and the sour proximity of unwashed men. Behind the bar, over a mirror bearing a lumber firm's advertisement, hung a tattered Confederate swallowtail and a rusty print of Robert E. Lee in an oval frame, the only decorations in the room. Wedlock directed a lean sallow bartender dressed like himself to draw three beers and a ginger beer and carried them to a corner table in back, two mugs to each hand. We sat.
    "I was privileged to serve General Jackson at Second Manassas," Wedlock said. "We fit from midafternoon until well past dark and I lost a good horse. McClellan and Banks was in retreat at midnight. The mount I drew to replace old Deuteronomy was skittish and backed up from this here bluebelly–beg pardon, Mr. Knox, Federal–corpse, and I was busy with the reins when that corpse stood up and emptied its Springfield at my face. Wasn't quite through dying, it seems. Well, I was lucky. In the heat of fighting he'd recharged that gun but forgot the ball and all I got was this here powder bum and a hole in my head where the eye was. I wore a bandanna over it through Appomattox and after the war I bought me this eye you see from a china merchant named Melander in St. Louis. It was made in Dresden."
    "It is a fine thing," said Judge Blod, who for once seemed at a loss for a prettier phrase.
    "What became of the man who shot you?" asked Mr. Knox.
    "I had my saber. He wasn't the first man to lose his head in battle." He swallowed half his beer.
    "Are you sometimes called Black Ben?" I asked.
    "Master Grayle!"
    Wedlock gazed at the ceiling with his working eye. The other remained on me. "Not to my face, for certain, or in my hearing. There's them that call a man all manner of things when his back is to them, so I cannot say no and swear to it. Why?"
    "I was told by a man who had ridden with Quantrill to watch out for a man with a black mark on the left side of his face and a Judas eye. The name Black Ben frightened him."
    "Quantrill, you say? The butcher. You keep interesting company, lad."
    "I saw the man who told me that killed. One of the men who did it rode a big blaze-face and had a glass eye."
    Judge Blod said, "The boy has an imagination. Pay him no heed."
    "I steer clear of horses that ain't all one color," said Wedlock. "They're sore luck."
    "You are not an admirer of Captain Quantrill?" Mr. Knox was studying him closely.
    "Captain by whose authority but William Clarke Quantrill's? I did not join the War for Southern Independence for his like."
    The strength of his feelings was evident in his tone. I was perplexed. "Are there many men who lost eyes during the war?"
    "Eyes, ears, limbs–I know of one who gave half his skull to a mortar round and walked about for two years afterwards with his brains showing. Until I left Virginia for good in '66 a whole man was looked upon with suspicion." He lifted his mug. "To the maimed and dead–and them that might as well be." He drank.
    "Virginia, you say." Mr. Knox set down his beer. "Judge Blod said Missouri. I hear it in your speech."
    "You've sharp ears. My mother took me from Independence at a young age to live with her mother in Roanoke. My father was addicted to strong liquor and answered most questions with his good right hand. I was reared by women from the time I was seven until I turned sixteen and left home. Mind that never happens to children of yours."
    I knew his meaning. In spite of myself I had begun to warm to the big frontiersman.
    Mr. Knox said, "You told Judge Blod you speak Sioux. Where did you learn it?"
    "After the war I took work hauling freight in Nebraska. One day the train was set upon by a band of Red Cloud's warriors. I am the only survivor. An arrow through my short