Free Chapter

CHAPTER I: THE DEVIL IS A GENTLEMAN

Montclair County, Virginia
September 11, 1886

There were ten of them, riding hard along Luster's Gate road, all wearing hoods of thick
gray drill. Periodically, as they passed through pools of moonlight, the hoods gave them all an
eerie sameness, as though their individual faces had been erased, while simultaneously serving
to emphasize their common purpose.

From Luster's Gate they turned North, to Norris Run, a mad snake of a dirt lane. While
the difficulty of the road scarcely altered their feverish pace, it did have the effect of
lengthening the space between riders.

Presently, the group's leader brought his horse up short, just at the rise of a razor-back
ridge that bisected the road. Soon, the others, following suit, collected behind and around him,
the stertorous sound of the horses, breathing heavily, and an occasional cough from one of the
men were the only sounds on an otherwise quiet night.

Two of the men conferred briefly in whispers. "There," said one of the riders, pointing to
a small light about half-way up the ridge opposite them.

"Indeed? Are you quite sure," the leader asked.

"That's his place, all right," said the first man in reply. "Why, he's prob'ly eatin' one of the
chickens he stole from me right now for supper, the damned thievin' nigger --"

The leader held up his hand and the first man stopped speaking abruptly, like a child
summoned to silence by his father.

"In that case, gentlemen," the leader said, we know what we came to do. Have your
sidearms at the ready. But remember, this is justice, not revenge. We are a Brotherhood, not a
rabble."

At a signal from the leader they dismounted, leading their horses single-file down, and
then across, a dry creek bed. Tying their mounts off there, they slipped up a well-worn path to a
small clapboard shack with a window of oilpaper. Through it the light of a lantern glowed dully
yellow.

Woodsmoke roiled from the wattled chimney that leaned precariously from one end of
the shack. As the ten men gathered near they could hear a man singing softly to himself and
laughing at his own lyrics:

"Dumbest man that ever be,
Come frum the state of Tenn-a-see.
Put his shirt on over his coat,
Button his pants up 'round his throat!"

"That's him!" the first man whispered in an urgent, excited whisper. The leader only
nodded and held his hand up for quiet again. Drawing his pistol, he motioned to the others to
fan out around the house and as soon as they had done so, he rose from his crouching position
and advanced in a series of virtually silent, cat-like leaps to the shack's door. Cocking the
hammer of his handgun and steadying himself with his left hand, he raised a booted right leg
and kicked, sending the flimsy door crashing to the shack's hard-packed dirt floor in a shower of
individual boards and splinters. Stepping just inside the door frame, he found the object of his
search, an emaciated looking young negro about 20 years of age, cowering against the far wall.

"Oh, Gawd!," the negro cried in terror, "Oh, my Lawd Gawd!"

"There's my chickens," the first man said, as he looked over the leader's right shoulder,
pointing to a brace of birds hanging limply from a nail above the fireplace.

"Get the rope," the leader said.

"Oh, mistah, please!" the young man began in a pleading voice, edged with tears, but
the leader pointed his pistol at him and motioned him outside. Emerging from the shack, the
bewildered man apparently caught sight of the other, hooded figures gathered around a large,
shell-bark hickory tree in the clearing around the house, and he fell to his knees, crying.

"Oh, Lawd, mistah, No!" he cried, his deep, guttural voice resonant on the still night air.
The leader, who by now had holstered his pistol, stood by impassively as two other men tied the
young man's arms behind his back.

"Mistah, I found them birds in a burlap poke in the road, yonder -- I swear -- on the
Bible!"

The leader said nothing in reply, but only made a motion with his right hand. Presently, a
large noose was thrown around the negro's neck and tightened. The other end of it was pitched
over a limb of the hickory and at a sign from the leader, three of the men hauled away at the
rope like seamen raising the sail on a ship.

A high, half-strangled cry escaped from the victim’s lips as his feet left the ground, but
after that, he made no sound, though he struggled, silently, with all his might, his legs kicking
violently several times and his whole body writhing like a lizard's. Soon, however, the movement
of his legs became less violent, drawing up slowly and then relaxing again, like frog legs cooking
in a skillet. In another minute the movement was more abbreviated and erratic, and shortly
after that, his legs hung limp and still.

A few moments later, a trickle of urine streamed down the dead man's pants legs and
splattered one of the men standing beside it, and he cursed loudly as several of the others fell
back quickly, their laughter muffled by their hoods.

"Get the chickens," the leader ordered, and the men again fell silent. One of the men
brought them from the shack and tied them around the dead man's ankles. Standing on a tree
stump, one of the men pulled a knife from his jacket and carved the word “THIEF” into the dead
man’s chest in large letters.

The leader produced a cigar from a leather case, neatly clipped the end off, and lighted
it, the smoke curling and caressing the hood's mouth slit as he slowly exhaled. He cupped the
still burning wooden match in his hands and wordlessly walked the few short steps to the shack
and touched it to the ticking of a cornhusk mattress which lay on the floor. The small flame
danced, then flared, and within an extraordinarily short time, the entire shack was aflame,
illuminating their night's work so brightly that even the worm-like tracks the urine had made
were clearly visible upon the victim’s dust-covered shins.

"That'll teach the black son-of-a-bitch," said the first man again.

"No," said the leader, tapping the developing ash from his cigar, “he is now beyond all
instruction – but that will teach the rest of them."

The others laughed at the remark, but then the leader held up his hand again, signaling
silence. "To Justice and the Brotherhood!," he said.

"Justice and the Brotherhood," came the reply, in husky unison.

The men collected their horses and returned the way they had come, riding together as
far as McCann's barn, then they split up, going their separate ways. It was only then, as they
rode on, for the most part singly, though a few continued in pairs, that they removed their
hoods and slipped them into their saddlebags. They were just private citizens now, not
identifiable in any way as part of a larger group. They disappeared into the darkness, taking on,
once again, their individual and discrete identities, to their own homes and hearths, with
mundane excuses at the ready for inquisitive wives or nosey neighbors.

A day later, when the body was discovered by Sheriff Craddock, ten men read with silent
satisfaction in the Whitethorne Gazette of how The Brotherhood had ridden again, dispensing
justice where the Commonwealth of Virginia had failed -- or feared -- to do what had to be
done. The man who had led the other nine sipped his second cup of breakfast coffee as he read
the article, then he folded the paper and laid it neatly beside his plate. It was another small
success for The Brotherhood, he thought, but a good one, nevertheless. Secrecy was still
essential now, but the movement he had begun would, in the fullness of time, become a source
of public pride and approval. Of that, he had no doubt.