Midnight Secrets Read online

  After ten minutes and two rounds of cartridges, Ginny hit the largest target twice. “Two out of twelve is a bad score,” she murmured.

  “You have to learn to control a pistol’s power and offset its weight. A weapon isn’t much good to you if you don’t know how to use it. Make it your friend, as comfortable in your hand as your palm is. You can’t protect yourself if you can’t hit your target, and a live one moves.”

  She glanced at him. “I could never kill anyone.”

  “When and if the time comes, you will,” Steve reasoned, “and you’ll be glad you’re alive instead of your enemy. Think of it as gaining revenge or justice. Some people believe you can do anything for those reasons.”

  Ginny assumed he was referring to the recent war and lingering troubles resulting from it. “They’re wrong. The war is over; we’ve made peace, and we’re heading for new starts. The past can’t be changed. Revenge only breeds more problems for innocents to get entangled with and be hurt worse.”

  Steve saw an opening to draw out possible clues. “The KKK doesn’t think the same way you do. Of course, it’s turning sour fast, forgetting why it was formed. It soon might be as bad as those Yank bands who attack Southerners.”

  “I don’t know much about the Ku Klux Klan, only what I’ve been told or read. But I think it’s wrong to go after black men. Most are good, kind, and honest men who only want freedom and peace. You can’t blame them for the actions of those who’ve been deceived and provoked by the Yankees into terrorizing and punishing their ex-masters. I realize some of those gangs have gone wild and they’re killing or robbing any white person, but that doesn’t justify what the Klan does to innocent ex-slaves.”

  “You’re right, and smart, too, Miss Avery. Let’s get back to our task. Maybe your trouble is bad aiming. With powerful eyes like yours, you should be able to see how to do anything. Give it another try.”

  Ginny warmed at the almost-concealed compliment. She loaded and fired another round, and did better—three out of six. She grinned in pleasure as she looked at the scout and he commented that she was improving each time.

  Steve leaned against a tree while she continued to practice. She seemed determined to become accurate and was thrilled with her success. After telling him she wasn’t learning so she could kill anyone, he concluded she was trying hard only to please him. That was just what he needed…

  When she emptied the box of shells and was hitting the target four times out of six, he said, “That’s enough for today. Let’s go on our stroll. I’m sure you’re ready to get finished and on to relaxing or doing chores.”

  “Does that mean I pass the test, teacher?” she asked with a grin.

  “Yep. Let’s move out; we have two miles to cover.”

  They headed for the path he had marked earlier. Steve set the pace to match that of a moving wagon and stayed a few steps ahead of her. He didn’t make small talk, as he’d been familiar enough with her for today. He was too cognizant of their solitude, the peaceful surroundings, and her appeal. If he wasn’t careful, he might seize her and kiss her then and there. He would try that soon, but it was too early to get that friendly to win her favor. He had to keep telling himself that during the entire two miles.

  Ginny stayed within a few steps of the tall man strolling before her. Since he didn’t speak, she didn’t, either. Obviously he wanted the silence and distance, so she let him have both. Besides, it wasn’t wise to make an overture in this dangerously romantic setting, and she wasn’t sure how he would take one from her. It was best to spend quiet and pleasant time with him rather than creating more friction between them. He was being nice and leaning her way, she realized, so she would leave it be for a while.

  They returned to camp, dismissed each other, then parted.

  Ginny gathered her things and went to the river for a bath. She discovered her monthly flow had ended, and she was glad. Soon, scrubbed and refreshed, she joined Ellie Davis to help finish cooking the fish the boys had caught and cleaned. She noticed that Steve had been invited to eat with the Jacksons tonight and wondered how he would tolerate the overbearing Louise and her quiet husband during the meal.

  She had intended to give Steve the food Charles Avery had brought, but he didn’t need it now. Two of Ellie’s children didn’t like fish, so Ginny gave the fried chicken to them. She saw the youngsters’ eyes glow when she produced the dried apple pie from Miss Avery in town. “Eat all your dinner and you can have a slice,” she advised the enthusiastic children.

  Virginia Marston was relaxed and content following her successes today and Steve’s easygoing manner with her. She didn’t realize she was in for an enlightening and stunning lesson later that night.

  CHAPTER 5

  Almost every one of the men and a few women gathered around a colorful fire to talk about the evils plaguing the South. To keep from disturbing the children, the gathering was held away from the other wagons but was still close enough to hers for Ginny to overhear the chilling conversation. The barely waxing moon with its sliver of pale yellow did nothing to help lighten the setting. Only those near the blaze had their faces illuminated for recognition when they spoke.

  When the talk became serious, Ginny put aside her book and doused her lantern to listen without being noticed at the side of the wagon where the canvas was slid up a few inches for fresh air.

  “Some folks think strong actions should be taken to halt it, but I can’t imagine what most people can do to change things. Not if they want to stay out of jail. Those Radicals are in power and they want everything done their way; they even have Secretary of War Stanton as their leader. You can’t provoke a man in his position to come after you. I guess our hands are tied.”

  Ginny recognized Steve Carr’s voice; she hadn’t taken him for a man interested in or concerned with politics and reforms. Hadn’t he implied he only needed and took care of himself? Odd.…

  “Ain’t much an honest man can do until the South is free of Yankee control and we get our own governments back in power,” Stuart Davis said.

  Daniels disagreed. “What we need is stronger ‘Black Codes’ like ever’body voted in ‘cept Tennessee. Like them Mississippi boys said, we live under the threat of Yankee bayonets and crazy words from misguided foreigners. We done did away with slavery, so why can’t ever’body be happy and leave us be? Ex-slaves can’t be citizens of this great country; they can’t socialize with us or rule us from political offices handed to them by crazy Yanks. We’ll do as we’re ordered, let ‘em be safe, but we don’t have to like it or be friends with them or have ‘em crammed down our throats.”

  “Us Georgia boys don’t cower to Negroes. If they’re caught lazing around, we arrest ‘em and jail ‘em or fine ‘em. It’s all legal, too.”

  Ginny couldn’t see who had made those remarks. She wished she could, as a Georgian might know—Harry Brown’s explosion halted her thoughts.

  “Hellfire, our own President can’t help us! The Army Act won’t allow him to give it orders; they have to come through General Grant. I say, a President, no matter how I hate him, should be in control of the country, not them contrary and greedy Radicals. Hellfire, the South’s been chopped up into five military districts with a general over each, all because we wouldn’t accept that Fourteenth Amendment. They expect us to agree that Africans are citizens and can vote? They can hold office and we can’t ‘cause we fought against the Union? We can’t file claims for slaves they took away or for property they burned and looted just for the meanness of it. We can’t even get loans to see us through bad times; they let carpetbaggers steal our land and homes on unpaid taxes they levy on us to pay for a war we lost. We’re all dead broke. Why should we vote in and then obey laws that go against us? Hellfire, we ain’t even part of the Union again! Africans have more rights than we do! If we even pass air the wrong way, they punish us.”

  “They do the same to businesses,” Ed King added, “They keep us disfranchised and rule every manner of transportation and
sales. With those carpetbaggers running over us with the help of scalawags, we don’t have a chance of recovering. They stole my dairy business, but I’ll build a new one in Texas. They won’t get that one without a bloody fight.”

  “You think those Yanks will ever pull out of the South?” Ellie asked.

  “No conqueror ever retreats or gives back what he’s won. They think they did us a favor with that Amnesty Act, but it only helped the rurals.”

  “I know what you mean, Ed,” James Wiggins said. “Any man who was a high officer or had money before the war has to personally beg the President for one. I refused to bend my knee to him or any Yank.”

  “We could have won the war if Ole Jeff Davis and most of us hadn’t been so genteel,” Jeff said. “If we’d done forays into the North before Abe hired such good generals to fight us, they would have been too weak and scared to strike.”

  “The Yanks ain’t got no room or right to be high and mighty!” Daniels fumed. “They’re forgetting they had slavery, too, nigh unto 1805. When they leaned toward industry, they didn’t need slaves no more; but we did for our plantations. They asked us to abolish it, that whole institution of slavery, but we couldn’t. They ruffled lots of feathers when they demanded it in ‘30. I never knowed any southern gentleman who abused his property; they was too valuable to beat and cripple, like they near crippled my leg from no treatment in that prison. The Yanks had no right to take our property away and attack us. They just used slavery as an excuse to destroy us, to come down here and take over. They ain’t nothing like us, so they don’t understand us. They think we’re stupid and backward ‘cause we talk slow and easy and different.”

  “Hellfire,” Brown spat. “They don’t care about Africans! They’re already abandoning and ignoring their rights. We’ll make it back in spite of them.”

  “It all started with that Missouri Compromise in ‘50,” Ed King said. “We should never have agreed. Then, the way they acted over that Dred Scott case was stupid; it didn’t matter if his master moved to a free state; that didn’t give him a right to sue for his freedom or become a citizen. But when they blockaded our ports and captured southern territory, they challenged us beyond restraint, even those of us who didn’t have slaves and never would. We had to join our friends and families to battle them.”

  “Weren’t much of a country anyway,” Daniels said. “We had one constitution and a President and congress, but not much unity beyond them. States and towns handled their own affairs. What did the government do for us? Very little, so why should we be more loyal to the Union than the South?”

  “It was the railroads’ and telegraphs’ fault. Progress be damned! Made everybody get too close and cozy, too easy to reach and control.”

  “You’re right, Ed,” James said. “Every section was being threatened or exploited by another. We were being pulled apart at the seams, which weren’t strong to begin with. The Englanders hated the westerners because too many folks were moving that way and could raise and sell crops cheaper than them. The westerners knew the easterners were using them and considered them trash. The South was rich and genteel and powerful so those Yanks couldn’t stand it. Yes, sir, they used slavery as an excuse to attack. They even praised that vicious John Brown when he made that bloody attack at Harper’s Ferry on whites to free his own kind.”

  The quiet Samuel Jackson spoke up. “I’ve seen the papers, so I know the real figures: less than three hundred fifty thousand out of six million Southerners owned slaves; fewer than two thousand had one hundred or more; most only owned four or less.”

  Again, Ginny couldn’t recognize the voice of the speaker in the shadows who said, “It didn’t help Georgia none that she was the power of the Confederacy. Her rails, port, and three arsenals kept our side alive until Sherman destroyed them. He even captured Jeff Davis at Irwinville.”

  “The Yankee bastard should have been shot!” Daniels shot out. “He ordered and allowed his men to do things beyond cruelty, even for wartime.”

  “I bet the KKK would love to get their hands on him for a few hours,” George said. “They’re big in Alabama where we’ll be passing soon. Right in the heart of the Confederacy’s birth, our first capital at Montgomery.”

  “If you men got rid of Radicals, carpetbaggers, scalawags, and that Loyal League,” Cathy scoffed, “we wouldn’t have to pull up roots and move; we wouldn’t have to tuck our tails between our legs like beaten dogs and flee. This is our land, so why hand it over to greedy Yanks? We can all join the Klan and fight back. The Invisible Empire is strong and fearless. The soldiers have to catch you before you can be jailed or punished. If we’re clever, we won’t get caught. It’s worth a try. Surely somebody here knows how to reach members.”

  Ed King changed the subject after scowling at his beautiful wife and scolding, “Don’t be foolish, Cathy. Those are dangerous words to speak aloud. You never know when spies are around. Besides, you don’t know what you’re talking about; the Klan is as dangerous as it is helpful. I heard that Sherman and other Union officers have been assigned out west to whip the Indians like they whipped the Rebs. Word is, everybody’s demanding Indian control by placing them on reservations or by destroying them. With so many citizens moving west, the government will have to respond.”

  “Yeah,” Daniels scoffed, “Sherman is commander of the Military Division of the Missouri. I hope them redskins lick him and his troops worse than they did us. Serve ‘em all right to get killed and scalped after what they done to us. Maybe those redskins will do a job on them we couldn’t.”

  “Mrs. King is right to a point; if we could fight back, we wouldn’t have to leave. But we can’t; it’s too dangerous. That Klan is going crazy.”

  “How is that?” Steve questioned Mattie Epps’s husband.

  “Yeah, Joel. I hear they’re doing a good job of protecting Southerners and running out bad Yanks and Africans. Hellfire, they done got the vote and got themselves schools. Next, they’ll be taking over,” Brown sneered in disgust.

  “Schooling might help them,” Ellie reasoned. “Learning helps anybody. Even if you don’t believe that, it’s wrong to burn their schools and churches and homes. It’ll only provoke more of them to attack whites.”

  “I hear only educated and rich men are Klan members,” Louise remarked. “That’s why they wear hoods, so they can’t be recognized and caught. They only raid troublemakers and Yankees, and those traitorous scalawags. Half the things they’re accused of doing are actually done by those Loyal Leaguers in disguise. I think they deserve praise for their courage and cunning. I wouldn’t mind being a Klanswoman. If I were, I’d lead my group to great victories. Our name would be known the country over.”

  “So would news of your captures and hangings.”

  “We wouldn’t get caught, Ellie, we’d be too clever. We’d scare the pants off those Yankee thieves and killers.”

  Again, Ginny struggled to pierce the darkness to see who spoke next. “Those Yankee courts don’t help us; they only help their kind and Negroes. If it wasn’t for the Klan, we’d be in sorry shape. Most say General Dudley DuBose is the leader in Georgia, but the law can’t prove it. I say they’re patriots, good men being forced to fight evil any way they have to.”

  Steve marked Carl Murphy off his mental list of suspects, even though he hadn’t been included on it earlier. No culprit, he surmised, was fool enough to say an important leader’s name aloud. He listened as Louise Jackson began spouting her knowledge of matters.

  “I saw their creed published in a newspaper. Some journalist got his hands on a copy and exposed it. It didn’t help the Yankees’ claims against them because it said it was to ‘protect the weak, the innocent, and the defenseless, from indignities, wrongs and outrages of the lawless, the violent, and the brutal,’ and so forth, ‘especially the widows and orphans of Confederate soldiers.’ It even said it was to ‘protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, and all laws.’ It sounds good to me.”

  “Me,
too,” Daniels said. “You don’t see the ‘so-called’ law capturing and punishing those Loyal Leaguers or gangs of ‘so-called’ soldiers. But catch a Klansman and he’s strung up high on the spot or tossed into the worst hellhole of a prison they can find. You’re in deeper trouble if you’re a high officer, say a Grand Dragon. Or á Den member of the Red Magnolias.”

  Steve wondered why John Daniels would mention the very unit the law was trying to expose. Most feared to even whisper the name of that secret society. A trick, he pondered, to throw off suspicion?

  “Who are the Magnolias?” Cathy inquired.

  “A small but powerful Den. Their symbol is a white magnolia blossom dipped in blood or one painted with red dripping from it. Their costumes are scarlet, a fearsome sight to behold. If you ever find one of their signs on your porch, you best run for your life.”

  “It’s the war.” Ellie ventured, “That’s what did it to them. Made them cold and hard. Made them willing to do anything for revenge.”

  Jeff Eaves asked Steve if he was in the war.

  “Yes, like most men.”

  “For which side?” Harry Brown asked.

  Steve had to reply, “Wasn’t but one right side, the Confederacy.”

  James Wiggins asked him where he had fought.

  “Here and there, mostly in Mississippi, Tennessee, and Kentucky.”

  “Let’s not talk about the war anymore tonight,” Ellie suggested. “It’s late and everybody’s unnerved. George, why not play us a relaxing song?”

  “Sure, ma’am, be happy to.” Ruby’s husband lifted his fiddle from his lap and began a merry tune to calm everyone before bedtime.

  As he listened, Steve knew why he hadn’t told them he had been captured at Shiloh in April of ‘63 while trying to save a man’s life. Nor would he mention how he had been imprisoned and harrowed, and most of all how he had been released to become a Galvanized Yankee. He knew how most Southerners hated and viewed such soldiers as traitors and cowards.