Turned out to be none other than John Wesley, the Reverend’s second boy. I didn’t recognize him till he got up close enough to halloo me. I’d see the elder boy, Joe, fairly often because he was the schoolteacher in Logallis Prairie and lived just a few miles the other side of the big hollow from us, but I hadn’t seen John Wesley in a couple of years, and he’d growed some in that time. He looked to be getting close to six feet high now, and though he was still a rangy thing he’d put on some thickness through the shoulders and had him a good-sized pair of hands. Biggest change, though, was in his face. It wasn’t no boy’s face anymore. One look in his eyes and I knew he was bringing hard news.
He said he had a letter for me from his daddy, but he didn’t hand it over till he’d taken his paint around back to the stable and got it out of sight, which he seemed mighty eager to do. I was raised up to believe it ain’t polite to ask a man his business right out, but if a feller’s putting his horse in your stable and has got a double-barreled shotgun at the ready and keeps taking looks over his shoulder, well, I reckon that gives you some right to be a little forward. So I say to him, “Is it somebody else likely to be coming this way, John Wesley?” And he says, “Could be, Mr. Morgan. I reckon you best read my daddy’s letter now.” And he hands it over.
It was some letter, all right, full of the bad news I’d felt coming on from the minute I got a close-up look at John Wesley’s face. Turns out he’d shot some Nigra dead in Polk County and now the Yankees were after him. The Reverend said he believed it was a clear case of self-defense, just as John Wesley had told him, but he could not believe his boy would get a fair trial, not with the Union army setting the law in Texas. He had no doubt that if the Yankees didn’t shoot John Wesley on sight, the trial they’d give him would be a mockery. He’d likely be hanged, or at the very least packed off to prison for a lot of years. “Not until the courts of Texas are again halls of true and impartial justice,” the Reverend wrote, “will I encourage my son to stand himself before their judgment.”
I knew John Wesley’s trouble must of been paining Reverend Hardin a good deal. From the time John Wesley was born, the Reverend had hoped he would grow up to be a preacher like himself. I heard him say so more than once. He thought the world of his eldest boy, but it was John Wesley who he saw spreading the Gospel. It’s why he named him after the Great Methodist. Now here the boy was, on the run from the law for killing a man.
What the Reverend wanted of me was to put the boy up for a time, till he could arrange for him to live with kin in Navarro County. As out of the way as my place was, he thought there wasn’t much chance the soldiers would come looking for him there. He said Joe would come over every few days to keep us up on things and let us know if any Yankee soldiers had been spotted in our neck of the woods. I got my two boys, Will and Harold, who weren’t but eleven and nine then, to clear out the lean-to I’d added to the back of our dog-run cabin and help John Wesley get himself settled in there. When they heard the Yankees were after him, they looked at him like he was Jeb Stuart himself.
The next day Joe Hardin showed up and said there was a line of families between Sumpter and Logallis Prairie keeping a lookout for Yankee patrols. He stayed to supper with us that night, and afterward my boy Will took down the fiddle his granddaddy had passed on to him, and Harold joined in with his mouth organ, and we had us a time. I mean, we shook the walls with our foot-stomping—we really made the lantern lights jump! My old woman was always kind of shy about dancing in front of people she didn’t know too good, but pretty soon she let her hair down and couldn’t stop smiling and blushing with all the swinging around we gave her. My three girls were youngsters yet, but we took turns dancing with them too, even little Sarah, who wasn’t but six years old. Brenda and Lorrie—the one ten and the other eight—were laughing and bright in the face and just couldn’t get enough of the dancing. Joe and John Wesley would bow to them when asking for a dance and kiss their hand afterward. Those two girls weren’t much use at all for the next two days, they were so moony from all the gentlemanly attention they got that night.
After Joe told us about all those folks keeping an eye out for Yankees and being ready to warn us if any were to head our way, John Wesley took to riding out every day to look for cows. There was wild cattle around there in those days and you didn’t need to be no cowboy to lasso one and tug it on home. You just had to have the time to do it and be willing to get yourself and your pony all scratched up rassling a longhorn through the rough brush on the end of a rope. I’d take the animal to town and trade it for goods. John Wesley helped us out plenty that way. And every evening after supper my children couldn’t hear their fill of his stories about hunts he’d been on with his brother or his cousin Barnett. Those who have anything bad to say about him best never say it around me or my children—and I mean my girls too—if they don’t want a fight on their hands.
* * *
One afternoon, Jules Halas, who had a small spread east of Logallis Prairie, came by in his buckboard with a message from Joe. A half-dozen Yankee soldiers had shown up on the other side of the hollow during the night. Two were keeping watch on Joe’s house, one was watching the schoolhouse, and three were riding around asking folks questions about John W. Hardin. They had to know he wasn’t at Joe’s or they likely would of busted in on the place, but it sure looked like they knew he was somewhere around. Jules had seen the two bluebellies watching the schoolhouse when he went to retrieve his young ones. Joe had asked him to bring the news to John Wesley but to be careful about not being followed. “Joe says you best keep a sharp eye out,” Jules told us. “He says it’s some people around here not above giving the Yanks information in exchange for a piece of silver.”
The morning after we got word of the soldiers closing in, John Wesley stayed in the house rather than go out to hunt cows and run the risk of being spotted. And then, sometime around midmorning, here they came. I was out in the hog pen and caught sight of them as they came in from the far end of the meadow, about a half mile off, three of them. From the careless way they was coming—riding all abreast and slow and easy, right out in the open instead of staying close to the trees on either side—it was clear they wasn’t expecting to find him here. Likely they were just nosing around, trying to find out if anybody had seen him.
I looked over to the window where John Wesley had been sitting and keeping watch, but he wasn’t there anymore. I heard a low whinny from the stable and then his horse hoofing off into the woods behind the house, and I reckoned he was heading for the main trace to make his getaway.