“That’s right.”
“I suppose I could let you take a look around, since you went to that much trouble. I’m Stephen Krakowski, by the way.”
“Gabriel Hunt.” Gabriel shook hands with the man.
“Come on inside.” Krakowski led Gabriel into the visitors center, which had the usual exhibit cases, gift shop, and snack bar that most such tourist attractions sported. “Are you interested in the Battle of Olustee in particular, or the Civil War in general?”
“I’m interested in this battle,” Gabriel said as he headed for the glass display cases. In one, he saw there were flags spread out. “One cavalry regiment in particular.” He studied the flags, looking for a match to the one Mariella Montez had brought to New York. He didn’t see one.
“Which regiment?”
“The Fifth Georgia.”
“Ah. General Fargo’s regiment.”
Gabriel tried to keep from looking too eager. “You’re familiar with it?”
“Of course. I even played General Fargo in a reenactment one time.” Krakowski leaned the rifle he’d been carrying against the display case, then went into the gift shop and came back with an oversized leatherbound book. “This isn’t for sale, but we keep it on hand for reference. The local historical society had it printed up around the turn of the century.”
“You mean the turn of the twentieth.”
“Of course.” Krakowski set the volume on one of the display cases and opened it. “This is a history of the battle put together from the accounts of several officers who participated in it. It lists all the units and officers who took part and includes biographical sketches of most of them.” He flipped through the book, found the page he was looking for, and rested a finger on it. “There’s General Fargo. You can see that I don’t look much like him.”
That was true, Gabriel saw as he studied the old, sepia-toned photograph reproduced in the book. Krakowski was rather moon-faced and balding under his campaign cap. General Granville Fordham Fargo had been a lean, intense-looking man with deep-set eyes, a lantern jaw, a mane of salt-and-pepper hair, and a close-cropped beard. Even in the photograph, he had an air of command about him, which wasn’t surprising considering that he had led a cavalry regiment.
Gabriel scanned the biographical sketch of Fargo that accompanied the photograph, but nothing unusual jumped out of it. Fargo had been born and raised on a Georgia plantation and had been a planter, surveyor, and college professor before the war. Seemed to have spent his entire life happily within the confines of the state—until the war, at least. He had helped form the Fifth Georgia when the war began and had risen to command it by the time of the battle at Olustee in 1864.
There was nothing in the brief account to explain the events of the past day. Gabriel felt a twinge of frustration.
“Did Fargo contribute one of the accounts of the battle that are in this book?” he asked.
Krakowski shook his head. “No, that wouldn’t have been possible.”
“Why not? Was he killed in the fighting?” Gabriel glanced at the biographical sketch again and saw that it listed no date of death.
“Oh, no, General Fargo survived the battle and the war itself. But then…he disappeared.”
Gabriel frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Most people think that the war was completely over once General Lee signed the surrender terms at Appomattox,” Krakowski said. “But that’s not actually the case. There were Confederate army forces spread out all over the South, and some of them refused to concede defeat. That’s what happened with General Fargo and some of his men. Most of the regiment went home once they got word of Lee’s surrender, but General Fargo wasn’t ready to give up. Instead of going back to Georgia, he and the other holdouts went west instead, across Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. The last anyone knows for sure, they were in Texas, heading south to the Rio Grande.”
“They were going to Mexico,” Gabriel guessed.
“Probably. A number of Confederate officers believed that if they fled to Mexico or even further, to South America, they could keep the dream of the Confederacy alive down there. General Fargo was one of that group.” Krakowski shrugged. “Most of them eventually gave up and came home, but not General Fargo. He was never heard from again.”
If the man had ended up in Mexico or South America, that might at least be a tenuous link between the Fifth Georgia Cavalry and Mariella Montez, Gabriel thought. If she was from that area, her family could have wound up somehow with the general’s battle flag and passed it on down through the generations. Fargo might well have had that bottle of Old Pinebark whiskey with him, too, and the empty bottle could have become another family keepsake.
This theory didn’t answer a hell of a lot—it didn’t explain why she’d thought Michael would be interested in these relics, or why anyone else would be willing to kill over them—but it was a start.
“Would you happen to know anything about the Fifth Georgia’s battle flag?” he asked Krakowski.
“Which one?”
“They had more than one?”
Krakowski nodded. “They had two. They had the standard regimental battle flag, the one I’m sure you’ve seen, the flag known as the Stars and Bars.” The man made a face, as if a bad taste had suddenly filled his mouth. “You know, the one that everyone hates because all the skinheads and white supremacist groups like it so much.”
“Of course.”
“They’ve got the Fifth Georgia’s regimental in a museum in Mexico City. That’s one of the reasons people are fairly sure General Fargo made it at least that far. We’ve been in contact with the museum to see if perhaps they might be willing to return it to us, but so far that arrangement hasn’t been worked out.”
“Got it,” Gabriel said. “And the other flag?”
“That’s one I’m pretty sure you haven’t seen,” Krakowski said, and Gabriel restrained himself from saying, Don’t be so sure. “That one was General Fargo’s personal standard. I’ve seen a drawing of it made during the war, but the actual flag itself has never been found.”
“What did it look like?”
“I wish I could draw it for you,” Krakowski said, “it was really quite impressive. But I’m no good at all with a pencil. It had a red background with crossed sabers in the corners, and a circular painting in the middle with a cavalryman on a rearing horse in the foreground. Very striking. It must have been something to see, flying at the front of the regiment as they went into battle. You can hardly imagine.”
“I think I can,” Gabriel said. “Do you know how the museum in Mexico got hold of the flag they have?”
Krakowski shook his head. “I’m afraid you’d have to ask the director down there. It’s not unusual for American artifacts to turn up in Mexico, however. The two countries are side by side, after all, and there’s always been a lot of traffic both ways across the border.” He paused. “I must say, it’s unusual for anyone to be so interested in a figure as obscure as General Fargo. Hereally doesn’t have much historical significance. And to be asked about him twice in the course of one month—”
Gabriel looked up sharply from the book containing the general’s portrait and biography. “Twice?” he said.
“That’s right. A couple of men were here late last month doing research on him. They claimed to be distant relatives…descendants, I mean. But they didn’t really look like genealogists.”
“Let me guess,” Gabriel said. “One of them was a big guy, short blond hair, nose that’s been broken a couple of times, scars on his cheeks and around the eyes?”