By the time he reached the center of town, the night was alive with a cacophony of sound: music from a tinny piano, a strumming guitar, and an off-key vocalist, augmented by the high-pitched laughter of women and the deep guffaw of men. Somewhere in town, a trumpet was playing.
Duke dismounted in front of the Oasis Saloon, tied his horse to the hitching rail, then went inside. Lanterns hanging from overhead wagon wheels emitted enough light to read by, though drifting clouds of tobacco smoke diffused the golden light. He overheard snatches of a dozen or more conversations, many having to do with the war that was being fought back East.
As he stood for a moment just inside the door, Duke happened to see a “pick and switch” operation lift a man’s wallet. The victim was a middle-aged man who was leaning over the bar, drinking a beer and enjoying his conversation. While he was thus engaged, a nimble-fingered pickpocket deftly slipped the victim’s billfold from his back pocket. Instead of moving away quickly, however, the pickpocket walked slowly and deliberately away from the door, toward the back of the saloon.
Duke watched as the pickpocket passed the pilfered wallet off to an accomplice who was coming in the opposite direction, leaving the saloon. The entire operation was so quick and smooth that the victim never felt a thing. No one else in the saloon saw it happen, and if Duke had not been in the exact spot at the exact time, he wouldn’t have seen it, either.
Duke waited until the second man, the one who had received the stolen wallet, passed by him on the way out of the saloon. Then, just as the man got even with him, Duke knocked him down with a well-placed blow to the point of the chin. The pickpocket’s accomplice didn’t see it coming and he went down and out.
“What the hell!” someone shouted.
“Did you see that?”
The sudden and unexpected incident stopped all conversation as everyone looked toward Duke in disapproval. The barkeep brought a double-barrel shotgun up from under the bar, and though he didn’t point it at Duke, it very presence lent some authority to his question.
“You want to tell us what that was all about, mister?” the barkeep asked.
Duke leaned down and reached into the inside jacket pocket of the man he had just knocked out. He pulled out the wallet, then held the wallet out toward the victim.
“I believe this is yours,” he said.
In a reflexive action, the victim reached for his back pocket and discovered that it was empty.
“What? I’ll be damned!” he said. “That man stole my wallet!” He pointed to the man on the floor who was, at that moment, just beginning to come around.
“No, sir,” Duke replied. Duke pointed to the actual pickpocket who was standing at the far end of the bar, now trying to be as inconspicuous as possible. “He is the man who stole your wallet,” he said. “This man was just his courier.”
The pickpocket tried to run, but two men grabbed him. Two more men took control of the man Duke had knocked down, and the pickpocket and his accomplice were hustled out of the saloon bound for the sheriff’s office.
“Mister, I want to thank you,” the victim said, extending his hand. “The name is Thornton. Michael Thornton.”
“Duke Faglier,” Duke said, shaking Thornton’s hand.
“Could I buy you a drink, Mr. Faglier?”
“Later perhaps, after I’ve had my supper,” Duke replied. “That is, if a fella can get anything to eat in here,” he added to the bartender. “Do you serve food?”
“Steak and potatoes, ham and eggs, your choice,” the bartender replied.
“Yes.”
“Yes, which?”
“Yes, I’ll have steak and potatoes, ham and eggs,” Duke said.
Thornton laughed. “The young man is hungry,” he said. “Bring him what he wants. I’ll pay for it.”
“You don’t need to buy my supper,” Duke said.
“I know I don’t need to, son. It’s just my way of thanking you.”
“If you really want to thank me, you can tell me where a man might find a job in this town.”
“You’re looking for a job?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You aren’t afraid of hard work, are you?” Thornton asked.
“Not if it’s honest.”
“Good enough. I own the livery,” Thornton said. “I need a good man, if you are interested.”
“I’m interested,” Duke said.
“Then the job is yours.” * * *
Over the next few months after Duke began working at the livery stable, the war continued to be the primary topic of conversation for most of the young men of San Antonio and Bexar County. When Duke was in one of the saloons he often listened, but seldom contributed to the conversations.
The most outspoken of all the young men of the county was Abner Murback. Abner was the son of Tyler Murback. Tyler Murback owned the Circle M Ranch. Second in size only to Long Shadow, the Circle M was a powerful presence in the county, and Abner was a natural leader among his peers.
Tyler had a daughter about James Cason’s age. Meg was a beautiful young woman, if a bit spoiled, and Tyler and Garrison Cason entertained hopes that one day their children would marry each other. Everyone expected that marriage to occur some day, and as a result, they were often put together at church socials, picnics, and the like. Even James had accepted the inevitable, but it was not something he dwelled on.
Duke had worked particularly hard this day, and all he wanted was supper and a couple of beers. He had no interest in being drawn into a discussion about the war, but Abner continued to wax poetic and Duke sighed, because he knew there was no way he would be entirely left out.
“Seems to me like we’ve done showed the Yankees we can whip ’em,” Abner Murback was saying, as Duke ordered his supper of pork chops, eggs, fried potatoes, and a beer.
“What I don’t understand is why we don’t just take us an army into Washington and demand that the Yankees get out of the South and let us alone,” Abner continued.
“Yeah,” Johnny Parker said. “What do you think about that, Duke?”
If Johnny’s question had been an inferred invitation for Duke to join them, he let the invitation slide by, remaining, instead, at his own table, halfway across the barroom floor.
“I don’t even think about things like that,” Duke called back. “I’m leaving all that up to folks that are a lot smarter than I am.”
“They can’t be all that damned smart,” Billy Swan said. “If they were, we wouldn’t be fighting this war in the first place.”
“Not fight the war?” Abner replied. “What do you mean, not fight the war? Are you telling me we should just sit back and let the Yankees walk all over us?”
“No Yankee has walked all over me,” Billy replied.
“The way I look at it, if a damn Yankee walks over one Southerner, he walks over every Southerner. Right, Duke?”
Duke held up his hands. “Like I said, Abner, leave me out of it. I don’t have any opinions.”
Duke had shared with no one his experiences at Wilson Creek.
For a while after the battle at Wilson Creek, there was little to suggest that the war would ever amount to anything more than a series of such skirmishes. For the most part, both sides seemed willing to take a “wait and see” attitude. Under such conditions, there was little need to increase the size of the army. The closest any of the young men of Bexar County got to the war, was to read the latest reports in the newspapers.
In answer to the call from the governor of Texas and the President of the Confederate States of America, Bexar County raised a regiment. It was commanded not by Garrison Cason as everyone had predicted, but by Colonel Nelson Culpepper, a career soldier who had resigned from the United States Army shortly after the war began.
At the last moment James almost had a change of heart. Despite his protestations against the war, he was nearly caught up in the sweep and pageantry of the thing. Bands played, and flags and pennants snapped in the breeze as the “Bexar County Fusiliers” formed ranks in the town plaza. Pretty girls and weeping mothers stood along the edge of the street, waving silken handkerchiefs at their brave men, already heroes even though they had yet to hear a shot fired in anger. Beneath the tunics of more than one soldier was the pressed flower given to him at the going away cotillion held the night before. In some cases, more than one soldier carried flowers given to them by the same girl. In other cases, some of the soldiers were carrying the flowers of more than one girl.