"When do the others pull in?" Laban asked as he tossed his empty popcorn bag on the ground.
"William and Patricia and their families are already here," George said. "They'll be joining us at the German restaurant. The next group should arrive this evening. Orry's cousin Charles, all the way from Texas."
At that same hour, a train from New York carried Colonel Charles Main, his wife, Willa, and their twelve-year-old son, Augustus, toward Philadelphia. "Colonel" was an honorary title given Charles by his neighbors when they perceived that he was growing rich and therefore becoming important.
Charles still wore his hair long, and he dressed like what he was, a prosperous rancher, in tooled boots, a creamy white hat with broad brim, and a flowing neckerchief instead of a cravat. He owned fifty-five thousand acres a half-day's ride west of Fort Worth and was negotiating to double that. His cowboys drove a huge herd to Kansas every summer. His ranch was named Main Chance; his horse Satan was enjoying a comfortable retirement there. He also owned several large blocks of Fort Worth real estate, and the opulent Parker Opera House, which was less than a year old.
As the train chugged through the farmlands of New Jersey, Charles read a book with the aid of a pair of spectacles. His son, who still bore a long, thin scar on his right cheek, was a solemn, dark-eyed boy, already growing tall and muscular, like his father. Willa loved him like her own, something of a necessity since she'd never been able to conceive a child, much as they wanted that.
Charles laughed without humor. The book was My Life on the Plains, published two years ago. He hadn't had time to read it until now.
"I didn't know it was a humorous book," Willa said. Gus gazed out the sooty window at some rusty-colored cattle in a dairy shed.
"No, it isn't," Charles said. "But it's damn cleverly done. I mean, the bones are there. What's missing is the meat. The bloody meat. For instance, Custer calls one of the Cheyenne children we killed at the Washita a 'dusky little chieftain,' and 'a plucky spirit.'" He put in his leather marker and closed the book. "He's poured on flowing phrases like disinfectant. It was a massacre."
"Which doesn't seem to have harmed the book's popularity."
"Nor the General's reputation, either," Charles said with disgust.
George's son William III and his son's wife, Polly, walked up the steps of Lauber's Restaurant a moment ahead of George and Stanley. William wore good Methodist black. He was twenty-seven now, in the third year of his pastorate at a small church in the town of Xenia, Ohio. Although Constance had raised him a Roman Catholic, he'd met Polly Wharton, whose father was a Methodist bishop, when he was twenty-one, and she had single-handedly won him as a husband and a member of her denomination. She had taught school to support them while he attended a seminary.
They had no children, but Patricia and her husband and their three, all under six years old, more than made up for the lack with noise and chatter at the round restaurant table. Patricia lived in Titusville. Her husband, Fremont Nevin, edited and published the Titusville Independent. George liked the tall, thoughtful émigré from Texas, even though he was a Democrat. The couple's children were Constance Anne, who was the youngest, Fremont Junior, and George Hazard Nevin. Growing up among the Titusville derricks, little George Hazard was already saying he wanted to be an oil man.
"Be sure you keep track of how many times you pay fifty cents at the gate, so I can reimburse you," George said to the adults after they were seated.
"What about Grandfather Flynn, Papa?" Patricia asked him.
"I had a very gracious message from him after Filly transmitted the invitation. He's quite old now, and he didn't feel up to making the long trip from Los Angeles. He said he would be with us in spirit. I gather he still handles a few cases that interest him. A remarkable person — like his daughter," he finished with an odd little catch in his throat.
Nevin, whose nickname was Champ, lit a cigarette and said to Stanley: "We're going to whip Hayes in November, you know. Governor Tilden is a strong candidate."
"I came here to eat, not to discuss politics, if you don't mind," Stanley said with ruffled dignity. George signaled the waiter. Laban rearranged his napkin in his lap for the third time. He didn't enter into the conversation. He didn't like any of the others in the family.
"We have a one-bedroom suite reserved," said the clerk at the luxurious Continental Hotel at Chestnut and Ninth Streets. The lobby was bedlam, the noise level heightened by two gentlemen shouting about their nonexistent reservations.
The clerk raised his voice too. "Shall we put a cot in the sitting room for your servant?"
Standing behind Madeline, Jane looked aggrieved, but she was too tired to fight. It had been a long journey from Mont Royal. Madeline was dusty and cross and not inclined to show a similar restraint. "She isn't my servant, she's my friend and traveling companion. She needs a bed like mine."
"We have no other accommodations," the clerk said. Another clerk, to his left, leaped back as one of the men with no reservation took a swing at him. The second clerk yelled for help from the office.
"Then we'll sleep together," Madeline said, almost shouting to make herself heard. "Have our luggage taken upstairs."
"Bellman," the clerk said, snapping his fingers. He looked outraged.
Patricia said, "Fremont, don't play with your knackwurst." Fremont Junior speared it with his fork and flung it on the floor. Patricia smacked his knuckles.
Her husband said to George: "How many of the Mains from South Carolina will be joining us?"
George put down his stein of Centennial Bock Bier and shook his head.
"Only Orry's widow, I regret to say. Orry's niece Marie-Louise is having her second child in August. Her doctor advised her not to travel. As for her father, Orry's brother —" he drew a breath, his face grave. "After a good deal of thought, and despite the slight to his wife, who's a lovely person, I declined to send an invitation to Cooper. He made it clear long ago that he was a Main in name only. Like Ashton. I never had any intention of trying to locate her."
Judge Cork Bledsoe, three years retired from the state circuit, kept a small farm near the seacoast, ten miles south of Charleston. On a hot July morning, seven men riding single file turned into his lane to pay a call. They were not Klansmen; nothing concealed their faces. The only garments they wore in common were heavy red flannel shirts.
No one knew exactly why red had been adopted by loyal Democrats for their mounted rifle clubs; the custom had gotten started a few months ago, up around Aiken and Edgefield and Hamburg, along the Savannah River, where resistance to Republicans and blacks was perhaps the most savage in the state.
Cooper rode third in line. He'd tied a large white kerchief around his scrawny neck to sop up sweat, but it didn't help much. From his saddle scabbard jutted the polished stock of the very latest Winchester big-bore, Model 1876 — the "Centennial." It fired a 350-grain bullet heavy enough to stop a stampeding buffalo. Lately Cooper had acquired a taste for firearms, something he'd never had before.
Judith objected to her husband's keeping such a weapon at Tradd Street. She also disliked his new friends, and their activities. It made no difference to him; he no longer cared what she thought. They shared the same house but he displayed little affection toward her; their communication was minimal.
He considered the work of this group and similar ones throughout the state to be crucial. Only a government of dedicated white men could redeem South Carolina and put the social order right.
A dowdy woman with gray hair and bowed shoulders watched the horsemen ride into the dooryard and arrange themselves in a semicircle in front of the house. The woman had been pruning some of her roses; there were dozens of them, pink, dusty red, peach, fuming the air with their sweetness.