Rough Justice Read Free Page B

people, liberated from their bondage at war’s end, should have a say in government and how they led their lives.
    In Dixie, talk like that could get you ostracized, boycotted if you ran a business, murdered if you didn’t see the light and knuckle under on command. The Hubbards had come down to Texas from St. Louis, with a plan in mind to help the freedmen gain equality, and they’d been butting heads with local whites since they arrived.
    That wasn’t Ryder’s problem. He was not a do-gooder in any normal sense, although he tried to do the
right
thing when he could. His mission, delegated to him by Secret Service chief William Patrick Wood in Washington, was to find out whether members of the KRS were bent on stirring up a new rebellion from the ashes of the old one, or if they were just another gang of crackers persecuting people they regarded as a servant class ordained by God.
    If they
were
Rebels, Ryder had been told to use his own best judgment in discouraging their treason. That sounded familiar to him, after being left to deal with Galveston’s smugglers and pirates alone, on his first assignment. Plenty of excitement, working that way, but the tough part could be getting out alive.
    The Hubbards beat his deadline by the best part of a minute. They had given up on salvaging whatever dreams inhabited their rented home, dressed warmly for the night, and packed sufficient clothes to get them by, with ammunition for the husband’s guns. Josey Hubbard, he observed, had also packed the cleaver and the knife, wanting to do her part if there was trouble.
    â€œReady, then?” he asked them, when they stood beforehim, bags in hand, Tom Hubbard with his big Sharps shotgun.
    â€œAs we’ll ever be,” Hubbard replied.
    â€œSo, where’s your safe house?”
    â€œI can guide you there,” said Hubbard. “Emma Johnson’s place, a half mile west of here, or so.”
    â€œAmong the Negroes,” Josey added, as if she expected Ryder to object.
    â€œYou think she’ll take you in?” he asked.
    â€œI’m sure of it,” Thomas replied. “She’s offered more than once, but I was leery of directing trouble toward her family.”
    â€œThat still applies,” said Ryder.
    â€œBut we seem to have no choice. And the police aren’t likely to go looking for us there.”
    â€œHow dumb are they?” Ryder inquired.
    â€œNot dumb, so much, as raised to think a certain way. The thought of whites and Negroes sharing quarters likely won’t occur to them.”
    â€œOkay, let’s go,” said Ryder. Thinking to himself,
I hope you’re right.
    If the police or vigilantes did go looking for the Hubbards among black folk, it could spark a massacre, and Ryder didn’t want to have that on his conscience. The alternative, however, was abandoning them to their fate, and he wasn’t prepared to live with that, either.
    â€œShall I lock up?” Tom Hubbard asked.
    â€œYour choice,” Ryder replied.
    They both knew that if the police arrived, or members of the scattered mob returned, they’d simply force the doors, ransack the house, and burn it if they had a mind to. Still, the simple act of locking doors felt civilized and might dissuade some random thief from entering.
    â€œI’ll lock it,” Hubbard said and plied his key, while Ryder and the lady stood by, waiting. When he’d finished, he directed Ryder westward, following an alley littered with rubbish. Rats ran squeaking from their path, together with a couple of the cats that preyed on them. They did not speak until they’d crossed a line that Ryder couldn’t see, and Hubbard said, “We’re in the Negro quarter now.”
    It didn’t look much different in the dark, the homes seen from behind, but Ryder saw that some of them were smaller and in need of more repair than those they’d walked past earlier. The former slaves of