Render Unto God... Read online

  Render Unto God...

  by S.F. Wood

  © 2017 Steve Wood. All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 9781521318997

  For my parents, Forbes and Betty Wood.

  (After all, without them, none of this would have been possible.)

  And with special thanks to Matthew, Lydia and Karen for their help and support.

  Prologue

  The homesteader continued to draw water from the well while keeping his eyes fixed on the rider approaching from the south. Despite the shimmering heat haze typical for the time of year, the horseman had been in view for about an hour, following the twisted trail, just a silhouette most of the time. The approach was slow, but steady, purposeful. The stranger passed on taking the track that headed west to Jefferson City, so the homesteader knew there was no place he could be a-heading, other than the farm. That’s one thing with having a place out on the prairie: plenty of time to go get a shotgun.

  “What can I do for you stranger?” he yelled when the rider was maybe 70 yards away. The shotgun was propped against the well, hidden from view. But it was within easy reach. Freshly cleaned and oiled. Loaded.

  The rider continued his silent, deliberate approach, only stopping when he was finally in the yard. He remained on his horse, black hat pulled down over his eyes, black frock coat, dusty with riding. He turned his animal sideways, left flank on to the homesteader, who could see now that his visitor held an old, battered Bible in his hand. “I got no time for preachers. You’re welcome to water, fer yourself and your horse. Then I’ll thank ye to ride on. I got work to do. Bills to pay.”

  “That’s what I am here for, Dexter. You have a bill that is long overdue. Three years overdue. Time to settle.”

  “You ain’t getting a single penny an’ my name ain’t Dexter! It’s Sherman! D’yer hear? Sherman! I don’t know no Dexter!” And with that he grabbed his shotgun and levelled it at the Preacher. “Now I offered you the use of my well, outa Christian kindness. If you want to abuse that I can offer you lead ‘nstead.”

  Being still on his horse the Preacher towered over the homesteader. But he would have done anyway - the farmer was as short in stature as he was in moral fiber. The rider looked down disdainfully and said, “You can’t pay this partic’lar debt with coin, Dexter. I’m here for to collect your soul.” He opened his Bible and read aloud, as if to an invisible congregation: “Then saith he unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God...” here the Preacher paused and looked down at the rancher, “...the things that are God’s.”

  “An’ just what the hell’s that s’posed to mean?”

  The Preacher closed the Bible and put it safely in his saddlebag. “It means that the Law passed judgement on you and your compadres for your crimes. But that sentence has yet to be... how shall I put it? Executed. You’ve evaded payment these past three years. And as long as you continue to do so, you are denying the Lord the opportunity to pass final sanction upon you.”

  From one of the deep pockets of his coat the Preacher produced an oilskin wrap, from which he took a carefully folded old newspaper. This he tossed down at the rancher’s feet. “You ain’t changed one bit from that picture of you, Dexter. Maybe a little grayer. Maybe.”

  The homesteader bent at the knee and, keeping his shotgun levelled at his visitor, picked up the journal. While he was doing that, the Preacher slowly drew his revolver, a Beaumont Adams, and let it hang loose in his right hand, out of sight. “Read it,” said the Preacher.

  “Why should I?”

  “Do you want me to tell you what it says? Tells how three renegade blue-belly troopers, cut off from their command while a-marching through Georgia, came upon a plantation. Found a young man. He was standing by a well. Rather as you are now. I’d say he offered them Yankees water, for that’s the kind of young man he was. But for his Christian kindness they ran a bayonet through his guts.”

  “I ain’t this Dexter you hear me?”

  “Two women were in the house. Wife and her newly-wed daughter. I ain’t gonna tell you what happened to them before they were butchered, because you already know that, don’t you Dexter. The young man was the son-in-law.”

  “What’s to stop me shooting you dead? Right now?”

  “Because you want to know who I am. How I know about you.”

  “Seems like these three men in the ‘paper are dead. Headline says they got sentenced to hang. So I can’t be Dexter can I! Dexter must be dead!”

  “Dexter should be dead. Beauregard and Franklin should be dead too. All three of you were due to be hanged by the neck until you were dead. But before sentence could be carried out, before Justice could be delivered, the town fell to Sherman - ah, I see now how you picked your new name - and you were freed. Avoided your sentence. Denied Caesar his due. And we must render unto Caesar, like the Good Book tells us, mustn’t we Dexter. See what it says at the end of the article?”

  The homesteader momentarily looked down at the page. That’s all the time it took for the Preacher to level his gun and blow a hole in Dexter’s shoulder, shattering the joint, knocking the rancher back against the well, shotgun falling from his grasp. The Preacher was off his horse and had the man by the throat before the sound of the gunshot had faded.

  He took hold of Dexter’s head by the hair and smashed his face against the edge of the well, teeth flying and gums cracking and the blood... Throwing the broken body to the ground, the Preacher picked up the shotgun by the barrel and smashed it down on Dexter as if he were nothing but a feral dog. The wretch raised his good arm to fend off the blow, which served to preserve his skull at the expense of his elbow, which was duly shattered by the ferocity of the strike.

  When the stunned rancher regained some of his senses he found himself kneeling in the dirt outside the entrance to his barn, his body wracked with pain, soaked in sweat, blood, dirt and piss. But notwithstanding the agony, the tears cascading down his face were of fear. For no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t raise his two broken arms, so he couldn’t remove the noose that the Preacher had placed around his neck.

  The rope went up to a beam and through a pulley and then down to the Preacher who was sitting on his horse out in the yard. The end was looped around the pommel of his saddle. He had his Bible in his right hand, and was looking Dexter straight in the eye. The Preacher then began to quote Matthew, chapter 22 verse 20 again: “Then saith he unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.” He added, “When they had heard these words, they marveled, and left him, and went their way.”

  With that, the Preacher backed his horse two or three paces. The rope went taut.

  He backed the horse some more, which had the effect of hauling the struggling Dexter to his feet by his neck.

  Then back five, six, seven, 10 lengths more, pulling Dexter up, up, up to the beam and up to his final reckoning. The Preacher steadied his horse and stared at Dexter as he dangled and kicked fully twelve feet above the ground. The horse took the strain and the Preacher did too, sitting still, silent, watching. He watched Dexter’s face turn red and then watched as it turned purple. Watched Dexter’s eyes bulge and his cheeks swell and finally, he watched as Dexter’s tongue was forced out of his mouth by the pressure of the halter pulled tight around his throat.

  Eventually the kicking stopped. After a pause, the Preacher drew his revolver. He fired six shots into the corpse. And if it wasn’t a corpse when the first ball hit, it was by the sixth. Producing a blade, he cut the rope from the saddle and Dexter’s broken body thudded to the ground. Nothing more now other than vulture food.

  The Preacher placed the Bible in his saddlebag and looked at the newspaper he’d recov
ered. He took a crayon from a pocket and marked a cross over the photograph of Frank Dexter, sentence duly carried out. Yet the faces of Patrice Bascourt-Beauregard and Aaron Franklin stared up still from beneath the headline: “Renegade Yankees to hang for killing of Confederate Colonel’s Family.”

  Then the Preacher, following the Words of The Lord, left him, and went on his way.

  Chapter 1

  Abilene. It stands at the northern end of the Chisholm Trail, in Dickinson County, Kansas. And in the summer of 1870 it was full of Texans. This was because the Kansas Pacific had established a railhead there that would take cattle driven up from Texas on to the eastern markets. And at the end of their drive those Texans wanted to spend their hard-earned cash on liquor and women. In Abilene they could find both.

  And it wasn’t just the Texans. That also went for the gamblers and speculators, the commission men and buyers, the whores and the horse thieves... It was what happened in towns like Abilene that made Beadle’s Dime Novels, with its tales of the ‘Wild’ west, of Cowboys and Indians, such a big success with the folks back east.

  It was in trying to satisfy the insatiable curiosity of those easterners that Jackson Beauregard was in Abilene, looking for stories, looking for adventure, trying to make an honest dollar.

  Jackson sat at a small table in the Alamo Saloon. It was, by popular consent, the meanest, baddest place in Abilene. But on a hot July afternoon there was, by the self-same consent, no better place in which to slay that thirst. Jackson was drinking a beer and was pretending to read the newspaper he’d brought with him from New York. He was using it as a ploy while he observed the Alamo’s customers. So Jackson watched the gaming tables, the bar, the girls... There were a number of games going on, mainly Faro, which was at the peak of its popularity around that time. But not everyone was busy Bucking the Tiger. Poker was almost as common.

  The town was booming. Cattle money had helped Abilene thrive so that it could boast of its many banks, churches, and several large stores. There were some decent sized hotels too: Drovers’ Cottage had fully three floors! But there were some things that the Mayor and the good townsfolk did not wish to trumpet, no sir! So it was left to a newspaper in a rival town to proclaim that Abilene was also home to over a dozen saloons, any number of prostitutes, and a brothel directly opposite the schoolhouse.

  Abilene: although named after a passage in St Luke’s Gospel, there was nothing Holy about this Queen of the Kansas cow towns.

  By now the northern side of town was becoming residential and ever so slightly respectable. To the south of the railroad was Texas Street, so called because that was where the cowboys congregated when in town and well, most cowboys came from Texas. (And them that didn’t were called Texan anyways, purely as a matter of convenience.) A long, east-west thoroughfare, Texas Street lay about a block from the railroad and ran parallel to it. This was where most of Abilene’s notoriety was centered. Buildings stood on either side, but most looked grander than they were, being false-fronted so as to entice the customer. Cedar Street intersected Texas Street, running south from the railroad. It was on Cedar Street that the Alamo Saloon was to be found.

  It was perhaps the grandest of the saloons in Abilene, was the Alamo. Timber built of course, it was one long room, with an entrance at either end. The western entrance on Cedar had three sets of glass doors - double, so that even the biggest, broadest Stetson could get in. And with a frontage of fully forty feet, the thirsty, the bored, and the easily tempted found it hard to walk straight on by. So they might manage to get past the first door with indifference, and the second with resistance. But the third? Well where else would a man be headed?

  A bar ran the length of the wall on the south side, all polished wood and brass fittings. On this particular day the afternoon sun was streaming in from Cedar Street. Card and gaming tables abounded. Some of the saloon girls were draped over sofas and chaises longues set against the wall opposite the bar. They sat beneath large, but to be frank poor, paintings of renaissance ladies (nudes mostly) some of which were reflected in the huge mirror behind the bar. A couple of the ladies adopted poses similar to those in the paintings under which they sat, lounging, languid, with an air of boredom that was not necessarily affected. Of course, for reasons of decorum, the saloon girls kept their clothes on. The orchestra was playing. Six piece it was, and it was adding a touch of class to the proceedings, playing the latest waltzes from Europe.

  “Sir?” A stranger introducing himself broke Jackson’s concentration. He looked up. “Sir, do I take it that you are from back East? And from New York perhaps?” With a nod to the journal the man made it clear it was the newspaper’s title that had caught his attention.

  Jackson found himself looking up at an older man, and one who was somewhat well-to-do at that. Or rather, it seemed like he was sometimes well-to-do. For sure, his suit looked like it had cost maybe as much as $30. But a man of constant means would have replaced it by now, it being a tad worn at the elbows and everything. Possibly in his early forties, so maybe twenty or more years Jackson’s senior, he said he was a salesman. “Forgive me, my name is Banks. Nathan Emerson Banks. I work in commerce. Been and spent the last few years in California and I am now headed back east. Some family matters need attending to,” he said by way of unnecessary explanation.

  Banks continued: “I pride myself, Sir, on having had the good fortune to have been born in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Boston, to be exact. But it has been many a year since I was last in that great city, and almost as long since I read a ‘paper from the ‘Atlantic’ States, if I may call them that. A worthy journal I take it?”

  “The New York Herald is sometimes disparaged by those who seek to denigrate the Penny Press,” replied the younger man, folding the paper, rising to his feet, “But I certainly consider it worthy,” he broke into a smile, “for it keeps me in bed and board. Beauregard, Jackson Beauregard, at your service.” He offered his hand.

  And the hand was warmly received. “Does that mean you are a newspaper correspondent? For the Herald?” Banks seemed genuinely interested.

  Jackson nodded, “Yes indeed. And this is my first assignment. My editor has sent me out here to report on the adventures of what we back East call The Wild West.”

  Fully six feet tall with an open countenance, thick black hair, Jackson was a good head taller than the Bostonian. Handsome, personable, fresh-faced, keen to impress. He added, “It seems I am headed in the opposite direction to you sir. I left New York City three weeks ago. Here, take my copy, with my compliments.” And with that, Jackson proffered the journal, which was duly accepted by his newfound acquaintance, but only after Banks had insisted on returning the favor by buying a half bottle of rye to share.

  “Why don’t we sit over by the far door?” said Banks, gesturing to a section where there were a few empty tables. “We can watch what’s going on better back there. Be some good players in this afternoon.”

  As Banks led the way he remarked over his shoulder, “You’re turning a few of the ladies’ heads young man,” nodding as he said so to a couple of the saloon girls sitting on a bench paying less attention to a Texan than perhaps his dollars warranted. “An absence of whiskers is hardly the norm this side of the Missouri. Maybe I should shave off my mutton chops eh? What d’you say? Not sure Mrs. Banks would approve of my motives though.” He laughed and Jackson thought it polite to follow suit.

  “Not sure I’m rich enough for those, er... Ladies,” said Jackson, although Banks could not help noticing that he was smiling at a young blonde who sported a flower in the center of her low-cut décolletage.

  “Please don’t misunderstand me, Mr. er, Jackson. May I call you Jackson? No, these women are not what some refer to as ‘soiled doves’ or ‘Nymphs du Prairie’. No sir! You will find these ladies altogether much more respectable.” Jackson nodded as if he already knew. “No, the whores will be in this evening and provided they don’t trespass on the saloon girls’ territory, they’re likely
to be tolerated some. Let’s sit here.” Banks stopped at an empty table with four chairs. Putting down the glasses and pulling up a seat, he said, “You play cards Jackson? You look every inch the sophisticated Mississippi gambler, with your black frock coat, silver waistcoat an’ your bootlace tie. You’re a fellow who takes pride in his appearance, that I can see.”

  “Well I...”

  “Sit down, sit down.” Banks was already seated and gesturing to a chair on his left. Withdrawing the cork from the bottle he poured a liberal amount into Jackson’s glass, although slightly less went into his own. “You do play then don’t you Jackson?”

  Jackson took a chair, turned it around then sat with his legs either side as if he were on a saddle. He folded his arms and casually rested them on the back of the seat. He pushed his broad-brimmed black hat back so that it sat on his head, and attempted to act in the nonchalant manner he’d seen in drawings and sketches of Mississippi gamblers. A shiny wave of jet black hair dropped over his forehead. This only added to his appeal to the watching ladies. Bright eyed, wide eyed, he replied, “Win some, lose some, Mr. Banks, but I know my way ‘round the tables.”

  “I have a feeling you are somewhat self-effacing,” said Banks. “But that is to your credit. I should imagine many a pleasant evening has been spent in the family drawing room playing cards after a dinner party. Poker?”

  Jackson was feeling relaxed. The rye was helping, as was the fact that he had finally found someone to talk to. “I confess to disembarking at St Louis with more than I started with in New Orleans,” he said, ensuring that he didn’t come across as being boastful. He was of course, telling the truth; Jackson was brought up always to tell the truth. He had indeed come away with more money: a whole dollar more. “Like I said, I know my way around the tables.”

  Banks pulled a pack from the inside pocket of his jacket. “We will need more than the two of us if we’re gonna play. At least four if not more.” Banks nodded over at a nearby table. “He looks in need of some amusement to pass the time.” Then, holding up the pack of cards, “Sir! Excuse me!”