The Desperado Read Online Free PDF Page B

commanding
officer of the First Texas Cavalry, U.S. Volunteers. But I'd heard him
called other things, standing under the wooden awning of Garner's
Store, listening to old men talk. Old men with angry faces and outraged
eyes, some of them with Minie balls of the war still lodged in their
lank, hungry bodies. “That bastard, Davis,” was the way they usually
put it. “Commanding officer of the First Texas Traitors, Cowards, and
Sons-of-bitches.” Around the time war broke out, Davis rounded up all
the scum in Texas—or that's the way I always heard it, anyway—called
them the First Texas Cavalry, and offered its services to the North.
And, as reward for this thoughtfulness and foresight, Sheridan, in his
fine office in New Orleans, from behind a blue cloud of
fifty-cent-cigar smoke, had decided that E. J. Davis was just the man
for the governor's office in Texas.
    Oh, there was an election. General Philip Sheridan was a man to do
things right. When the people of Texas began to get restless and
complained that their livestock was all dying and the children weren't
getting enough to eat because the Northern army was taking everything,
the General began to give it some thought. By God, if the people of
Texas didn't like the army, then he would give them a governor. There
would be an election and they could choose anybody they wanted.
    The only trouble was, if you wanted to vote, you had to take the
“Ironclad Oath,” and that weeded everybody out except the newly freed
slaves, and some white trash, and maybe the veterans of the First Texas
Cavalry, U.S. Volunteers. Davis won in a walk. “The people's choice!”
the scalawag newspapers said.
    While the war was going on, I wasn't old enough to understand
everything about it. But I understood the bitterness as the ranchers'
big herds dwindled down to a few mangy-looking old mossyhorns, and I
remembered trying to eat meat without salt because ships couldn't get
through the Northern blockade. And, somehow, I knew it was all the
Yankees' fault.
    Hating came as natural as breathing, in those days, in Texas. I
remember overhearing a conversation in front of the hardware store in
John's City, where some men were laughing over the old joke of “You
know what I just heard? A feller back there claims 'damn Yankee' is two
words instead of one!” I laughed, but it wasn't until a couple of years
later that I found out what it was about. Even Professor Bigloe said
“damnyankee” and I figured he ought to know.
    That was Texas, after the war. Broke and hungry, and if it tried to
lift itself to its knees it got a kick in the gut for its trouble. Pa
got off easier than most ranchers, because he had been too old to go to
war and was able to stay on the ranch and look after his herd. Most of
the ranchers weren't so lucky. After they got back, they found that
their cattle had scattered from hell to Georgia —what was left of them
after the Union soldiers took what they wanted. And the Confederate
soldiers too, for that matter. And the calves were unbranded and wild
and belonged legally to anybody who could catch them and burn them with
his own iron. Most of the cattlemen had to start all over again, and if
they got their beef back it was usually with a gun. The best guarantee
of ownership was a fast draw and a sure aim.
    After Davis came the Davis police, or state police, and the governor
was burned in effigy so often that the smell of smoke would
automatically bring out a squad of soldiers with bayoneted rifles. The
police were supposed to take the place of the soldiers who were being
gradually drawn out of the South. But they weren't any better. They
were worse, if anything.
    Thinking of the Davis police brought me back to Ray Novak. Old Martin
Novak was hit hardest of all by the police, because he had to sit back
and watch white trash and hired gunmen take over his marshal's job and
run it to suit themselves. There was no law in