If Father wanted to believe that it was the Lord’s will we were enacting, fine. I had no argument with him on that, not anymore: out here, living our lives in public, what Father called the will of God I now called history. And if history, like the will of God, ruled us, then whatever moral dimension it possessed came not from itself or from above, but from our very acts, and that it would show us our true fates, for good or for evil.
That is why we killed those men.
I remember we drew the wagon into a narrow cleft in the steep, rutted ridge on the north side of the trail, with the rain-filled creek below us on the left, the land claim and cabin of James Doyle of Tennessee a quarter-mile or so dead ahead, and the others, Sherman’s and Wilkinson’s, a short ways beyond. It was pitch dark, but we lit no torches. I instructed the boys and Father to hitch our horses here and place our rifles in the wagon and leave them, explaining that, as the three cabins we meant to strike were all within a half-mile of one another, we could not risk a gunshot. Then I handed out the heavy, razor-sharp broadswords, one to each. No one else spoke a word, not even Father.
By the time we reached Doyle’s cabin, it was close to midnight, and the clouds had broken open, floating across the satiny sky like soldered rags. There was now a quarter-moon in the southeast quadrant, casting a shifting, eerie light, glazing gray the low trees and scrub alongside the trail. We could see the rough, pale wooden shingles of the roof of the cabin below, when suddenly we heard a low growl, and out of the shadows a pair of huge mastiff dogs came charging towards us, all fangs and ferocious, yellow eyes. With a single swipe of my sword I sliced the first animal across its neck and shoulder, and it fell dead at my feet, nearly decapitated. Fred struck at the other, injuring it in the haunch, sending it howling into the woods behind us, away from the cabin.
Father, who had been next to me in the lead, stopped in his tracks. “Ah, we’re done for! The Doyles’ll be up and armed now.”
“No,” I said. “Just keep moving fast; don’t hesitate. They’ll likely think the dogs are chasing deer. Come on!” and I stepped in front of him and jogged down the scumbly trail to the front door of the cabin. The shutters were bolted, with no light visible inside and no sign of life, except for a thick rope of silver smoke rising from the fireplace chimney. When the others, panting more from excitement and fear than from exertion, had arrived at the stoop with me, I reached forward and banged roughly on the door with the handle of my sword.
A man’s voice inside drawled, “Who’s there? What d’ yer want?”
I looked to Father, whose leathery face had gone white. His cheek twitched, and his lips were dry and trembling. I was afraid he would not speak to the man; and I could not. Finally, after a few seconds, the Old Man cleared his throat and asked in a thin voice the way to Mr. Wilkinson’s cabin. Friend Wilkinson, he called him. Words were Father’s saving grace. I would not have thought to say that.
I heard someone push back a chair and walk across to the door and lift the bolt away, and when he had opened the door a crack, I kicked it and swiftly put my shoulder into it, throwing the door open and tossing the man, James Doyle, for that is who it was, back across the tiny room, and we all burst into the cabin, filling it completely, sending the Doyles, a family of six people, back against the further wall, where they cowered in fright. They were a dry little old bald-headed man, his plump wife, and four children, two of them bearded men in their twenties, the others, a girl and a boy, very small, under fifteen.
They were frightened and astonished by our sudden, huge presence, and when Father shouted to Mr. Doyle that we were the Northern Army and had come to capture him and his sons, Mrs. Doyle at once commenced to weep, and she cried to her husband, “I told you what you were going to get! I told you!”
“Hush, Mother!” Mr. Doyle said. “Hush, for God’s sake! This here’s Mister Brown, ain’t it? From over to Osawatomie. We can reason with him.”
She wept profusely and for a moment dominated the scene, mainly by begging Father not to take her son John, who was only fourteen, she said, a mere boy with no notion of these things.
Father said to her, “The others, your elder sons, are they members of the Law and Order Party?”
“Never mind that!” bellowed Old Doyle. “What do you want with us? We ain’t but farmers like you, Brown!”
“Thou art the enemies of the Lord,” Father pronounced, and he ordered the two grown sons, named Drury and William, and Old Doyle, the father, to come out of the house with us, which they did, leaving wife and mother, son and daughter, and sister and brother weeping and wailing behind in the doorway, for they knew what was about to happen.
Quickly, we marched the three men, coatless and hatless, back up the narrow, curving pathway to the moonlit road. The two younger men were barefoot and walked gingerly over the stony trail. Oliver, Fred, and Henry were in front of the prisoners, Father, Salmon, and I coming along behind, and when we reached the level plain above the creek, a hundred yards or so from the cabin, where the dead dog lay, Father said to stop now.
One of the Doyles, William, saw the dog and cried, “Oh, Bonny!”
Father said, “The Law of Moses states that the fathers shall not be killed for the crimes of the sons, nor the sons for the crimes of the fathers. But here father and sons both are guilty.”
“It’s not necessary that they understand what’s happening to them,” I said. “Let’s just get it done.” I was suddenly afraid that we had come this far and now the Old Man would once again end it too soon with palaver and prayer. I remember raising the blade of my sword over my head with my good right hand, the moonlight glinting off its edge like cold fire, and then I brought it down and buried it in the skull of James Doyle, splashing the son next to him, Drury, with his father’s blood. Fred and then Henry Thompson and Salmon joined in and began hacking away at the brothers, chopping them apart at the arms and slashing them in their chests and bellies, and even Oliver got in some blows with his sword. I heard several of us shriek during the slaughter, but I do not know which of us did that, except that it was not I who shrieked, and I remember that the Doyles themselves never uttered a single sound, not one cry, but fell silently to the ground like beeves being butchered in a stockyard. Sinew, muscle, bone, and blood flew before our eyes; the bodies of our enemies were slashed, cracked, and broken. Human beings were sliced open by our swords, and there the darkness entered in.
And Father? Where was Father? All the while, he stood away from us, and he alone did not use his sword. He watched. And when we were done with our murderous work, when the three Doyles were stilled at last and lying at our feet in bloody chunks and pieces, making huge puddles of blood on the ground, Father stepped forward and drew out his pistol. He leaned down and placed the barrel against the cloven head of Old Doyle and fired a bullet straight into the man’s brain, as if into a rotted stump.
“The others will hear that,” I said to him. Oliver was weeping, and Henry, who suddenly, in the midst of the killing, had commenced to vomit, was now hiccoughing violently. The two of them staggered in small circles in the darkness, pounding their feet against the hard ground in a slow, furious dance, whilst Salmon and Fred stared down at the bodies of the slain men in silence, as if they had come upon them unexpectedly and did not know how they had died.
“Let them hear it,” Father said. “It will make no difference. Come, boys,” he said, and led us away from the place where we had slain the Doyles, down the trail towards the Wilkinson cabin, which was located on the claim adjacent to Doyle’s, in a grove of old oak and cottonwood trees closer to the creek.