C. C. Phillips
C. C. Phillips
The first shot had young Preston Diamond out of bed and running across the floor of his room before he had fully awakened. Another explosion of gunfire from within the house brought him to a halt. There were sounds of a scuffle and muffled screams. The thirteen-year-old opened his bedroom door a fraction, saw nothing, then stepped quietly into the darkness of the upstairs hallway. He crept to the head of the stair, knelt and peered into the gloom below. Why weren't his father and mother aroused? Fear lent caution and the lad waited for something… anything… to give him direction. A groan followed by a burbling cough chilled the boy's blood. Terror gripped his pounding heart. A cautious footstep creaked upon the lower landing and slowly, deliberately, more steps followed as someone ascended the stairs.
Somewhere outside, not far from the home, another shot broke the stillness.
Preston could not move. The footsteps were far too heavy for his mother, they were too slow and awkward to be his father. An eerie, jagged shadow appeared as flickering light from the fireplace in the parlour cast its glow upward along the stairwell. The source of the shadow materialized in the form of a hatless, dirty, bearded man, his hair unkempt, his clothes in disarray. Preston could smell his unwashed body and there was something else… it reminded the boy of deer hunting… the smell of fresh blood. The man paused as his eyes came level with the top of the stair. The darkness beyond him was impenetrable but the quivering boy, partially concealed behind the balustrades and looking toward the fire's light, could read the intruder's face; it was filled with a mixture of agony and hate. The eyes occasionally squinched as if fighting pain. As the pupils dilated the man cast about the hallway.
He discovered the youth in a nightshirt huddled at the top of the stair.
The weak glint of metal flashed in the firelight and a pistol came to bear upon the fear-frozen lad. Death and triumph flashed in the crazed eyes; a malicious smile crept across the grizzled face as the finger tightened on the trigger. From below, a hushed hiss of silent death whistled on the cusp of hearing as a razor edge of steel sliced through the darkness. The attacker grunted as six inches of heavy cavalry sword magically protruded through his rib-cage. His mouth opened but no words came out. The pistol dropped from dead fingers and he tumbled down the steps.
When the noise of the falling man subsided, Preston heard another rasping cough. Grabbing up the dropped pistol he made his way down the stair. The dead man partially blocked the step, the sabre was entangled in the spindles of the railing. An ember burst into flame and the room illuminated. Cutler Diamond, Preston's father, clad in night attire, lay a short distance from the man on the stairwell. As Preston stared in horror, the elder Diamond gasped a long sigh, the body relaxed and his head turned to one side. He had saved his son with his dying breath.
The foot of the stair opened into the parlour but a doorway to the kitchen, dining area and main entrance was adjacent on the right. Across the silent room, the outer door of the cottage stood open, a shaft of moonlight cut out a slim triangle on the darkened floor. A footfall echoed on the porch. Another stranger, as ratty as the first, appeared. “Come on, Roddy! We gotta git the hell outta here afore someone comes alookin'! We'll come back for the kid another time… That Spanish bitch got hold of Wiley's gun and shot him… he's hit purty good… I had to cut her throat to save my own hide… damn shame, her goin' to waste… Roddy?”
A muzzle flash lit up the room and the deafening roar of a revolver filled the enclosed space. Roddy's companion caught the slug high in his chest and dark blood pumped out in torrents from the hole. The dead man reeled backward, clawed at the door-jamb and slid to the floor. Smoke filled Preston's nostrils; his ears were ringing. He dropped the gun in stunned shock and his body began to quake; icy fingers of cold ran up and down his spine. Preston had killed a man. In a shocked trance he gazed sightlessly about the room.
Out in the yard the sound of hoof beats reverberated, their urgency snapping the youth alert. Preston leaped over the corpse on the stair, dashed to the door, stepped over the second body and looked down the trail that led up to the farm. A man, coat tails flapping in the moonlight, clung awkwardly to the saddle as his horse carried him away at full gallop. Two other mounts tethered in a nearby grove were rearing up, tugging at their halter shanks. On the flat winter-dead grass between the horses and the cottage, something shone white in the flood of moonlight.
It looked like someone sleeping on the ground….
The Civil War still raged and Colonel Cutler Diamond had been fighting on the side of the Union since the conflict broke out. Cutler had moved up through the ranks and was pleased to be reunited with his longtime friend from the Mexican-American war, Ulysses Grant, whom President Lincoln had appointed Lieutenant General in command of all Union armies. The two officers had not lost contact between the wars; they had served together in Fort Humboldt, California ?Grant's first posting after winning a captain's promotion? and though Ulysses had temporarily resigned from the army to dabble (rather unsuccessfully) in civilian life, he and Diamond had remained friends and correspondents.
Cutler Diamond and his beautiful Spanish wife had travelled to outposts in California, Oregon and various forts scattered throughout the west. The couple enjoyed a modest existence, not necessarily constrained by the paltry army wages Cutler earned because Constantina had been well provided for upon her father's death. After a year of marriage, the Diamond's had been blessed with one child, Preston Eduardo: his mother's joy; his father's pride.
The youngster had his mother's dark hair and his father's powder blue eyes. At an early age he demonstrated an aptitude for learning that could not be quenched by the tattered texts in the hot and dusty little rooms which sufficed as schools at the military posts. Under his mother's tutelage, Preston became fluent in her native Spanish; his father, also an educated man, taught the lad proper English, though, out of sheer devilry, Preston would often resort to the rough vernacular and mispronunciations of the frontier. The boy learned to ride exceptionally well and possessed an affinity with horses, dogs and, more often than his mother appreciated, wild animals. Injured birds, orphaned babies including a badger, a whitetail fawn and even a little skunk followed Preston around the garrison at various times. Cutler Diamond taught his son, at a tender age, to shoot and understand the capabilities of firearms. The dark haired boy spent hours practising with a
.44 rim-fire Henry rifle that his father had purchased when the new lever-actions first came on the market. Preston also grew proficient with the Colt Navy revolver.
Indians often lived near the forts. From them, the amicable young Diamond learned the rough and tumble fighting games practised by the bare-footed youths. The red-skinned natives spared no quarter for the soldier's son and the white boy took his knocks and beatings along with the others. Among these rowdy lads, Preston practised the skill of the throwing knife, bow and arrows.
With the onset of the Civil War, the family had transferred east where they established themselves on a small farm near the hamlet of Conception, Virginia, on the south bank of the Patowmack River. Using this base, Colonel Diamond could be with his wife and son when home on leave or addressing military matters near the Capitol. He felt they would be safe here. As fighting grew more intense, opportunities to return became fewer, for General Grant relied heavily on Colonel Diamond's knowledge, intuition, topographical understanding and, most importantly, his rapport among the troops.
During this time, the Capitol saw a massive influx of new inhabitants. The infrastructure could not cope with the burgeoning population. Food, housing and sanitation were in short supply. Crime ran rampant. Many Washington refugees made forays into the countryside in hopes of scavenging a meal or raiding the agrarian neighbourhood. The secluded Diamond farm, across the river from, but in close proximity to, the seething hub, received its share of vagrants, beggars and thieves. Preston's mother always tried to help in some way, though when Colonel Diamond was away, she privately feared for her own and Preston's lives. The starving transients were grateful for what she could give and individuals did not become a repetitive plague. But there were so many lost souls: ruffians, wounded, deserters and homeless.
Nowhere was safe anymore.
Cutler Diamond was home, on his second night of a four day leave, when the murderous attack came.
Grey dawn scotched the sun. During the night, cloud and mist had drifted over the land, erasing moonlight, ushering in a dampened chill. A lone dispatch rider galloped up the long, treed lane to Colonel Cutler Diamond's farm. There was an urgency in the horse's pace that preceded the pair.
No one noticed their approach.
The messenger drew rein as he entered the yard. Two saddled and tethered horses in a copse of maples whickered a greeting across the dull stillness. The door to the house stood ajar, a body lay sprawled on the porch. Nearer, between the home and the horses, a figure knelt on the ground beside a prone body clad in white.
The hard ridden mount snorted as its rider urged the animal nearer to the kneeling person. Dismounting, the messenger held firmly to the reins as he led the horse slowly toward what he now recognized as a boy dressed in a nightshirt. Beside the youth lay a beautiful dark haired lady in satin evening attire. A horrible pool of coagulated blood stained the gown and the hard ground where she lay. The boy's eyes were open but he was focused a long distance ?in time? from the spot where he knelt. The messenger spoke but there was no response. He touched the lad's shoulder and the stiffened form tipped over.
“Chilled!” the rider gasped. “The kid's half frozen!”
Releasing his hold on the reins, the man scooped up the numbed form in his arms and rushed to the house. Ignoring the grizzly scene of two more bodies, he laid the lad on a low couch, covered him with a blanket and frantically fanned the dead embers. Realizing the futility in this, he took his time and soon had a proper blaze roaring in the fireplace. The stranger shifted the sofa nearer the flames, opened the blanket so the heat would funnel toward the frozen boy, then raced out into the yard. His horse had not strayed. The messenger leaped into the saddle and spurred away down the lane even faster than he had arrived.
A company of soldiers raced up the lane to the Diamond residence within two hours. Smoke of the dispatch rider's fire still funnelled from the chimney. The pair of horses stood tied in the maple grove; the lady lay in the yard. A man's twisted and blood soaked body was stretched in an awkward fashion upon the stoop. Two more dead men, one a stranger skewered and wrapped in a ball on the stairwell, the other ?Colonel Cutler Diamond? lay in an encrusted pool of blood on the parlour floor.
The boy was gone.
A thorough search of the house and surroundings did not turn up the missing youth. The soldiers assumed that hypothermia had numbed his brain and he had died of exposure or perhaps fallen in the river. The detail of soldiers ?several of whom had served under Colonel Diamond? hardened to the ravages of war, wept openly when loading the Diamonds' bodies on a light supply wagon. They wept for the loss of their comrade; they wept for the sickening realization of what their world had become. No one remained immune to the abominations of the conflict; barbarous work such as this further accented war time's degradation of humanity.
Large holes were left unfilled following an abbreviated investigation; there was insufficient time and manpower to pursue the details of the Diamond murders. No one knew the two dead men: there was no indication they were from Confederate or Union forces; deserters was the consensus. Conjecture held that they had come to the farm intending to rob. Cutler Diamond had defended his family and died from wounds suffered. Apparently nothing had been stolen so the inquiry concluded there had been no survivors on either front.
In civil war, justice and civilians suffer.
Two people did not accept the findings of the abortive investigation: one, a close friend of Cutler Diamond; the other, Colonel Diamond's thirteen year old son.
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