J.J.R. Ramey

by J.J.R. Ramey

CHAPTER ONE

The crackling, dry sagebrush weaved and rolled across the skin of the dusty soil. The winds swirled along the plains and plateaus of a wild expanse of a land called Texas. The sun shone bright along the rim of the golden horizon. Vultures, their two-toned blackish wings spread six feet or more hovered dangerously across the land. These indiscriminate birds of prey would fill their bellies with the flesh of lesser varmints, and ofttimes man. While blood congealed upon their pointed beaks, their red heads glistened in the late wintertime light.

Two strangers headed west, and since their mission had begun, each day had been long, too long, in fact. But by now the leader and his pal had gotten used to the relentless cycle of hot dry days and slow, uneventful nights.

It was March of 1865, and the War Between the States, had yet to be won by either side. The brother-against-brother war began in 1861, when Confederate regulars fired on Fort Sumter in South Carolina. Since then life had grown harder than either the North or the South had ever expected; it was especially difficult for the Southern gentleman who had built his fortune on the blood and toil of African slaves in the land where cotton was king.

No Southerner ever dreamed God’s good fortune would end. Nevertheless, the men of the industrial North, the Yankees, knew that in a pinch, the South would have no chance to defeat their ranks in battle, and they prided themselves on having drawn the Southern states into a war that was destined to change the status quo in their favor for a long time to come.

The rumble of distant Rebel cannon fire still echoed with the strangers’ minds, yet they were too far west inside Texas to really hear the guns that took their toll on lives nearby in Louisiana. It was easier for an ordinary man who could lay down the burden of thought for a few moments and pick up the load again when he saw fit. However, for the fighting men of the Union and the Confederacy, the war was a never-ending trauma, a once glorious dream become all too bloody and real for men who had been Mamas’ boys not too long before.

The pair of Union fighting men rode slowly toward a place they located on their primitive map, the once lawless town of killers and thieves: the place was Clarksville, Texas. The stranger in charge was one Union soldier scout named Sergeant Jonathan Frederick Shelby. He had accepted a mission to map and peruse the land that lay between New Orleans and Red River Station, Texas. His run from Southern Louisiana should have been a practical, straight shot north and then west, but his orders had taken him off track for a brief stop in Natchitoches.

It that was all part of the job, and he was proud of the Union blue resting upon his back. This man was dark-skinned, a Negro, a black, an African and so was his partner and that made all of the difference in the world. In 1865, men of color were not supposed to command, or read, certainly not wear the white man’s blue, not ever in a world where he was an outcast, thought to be what he had never been, inferior at every given level.

Shelby’s rank was corporal before orders from the army sent him to scout territories west. Brigadier General Hollingsworth Williams had insisted he was the man for the job. The general was a strict man who, believing that “rank and privilege” came first in times of war, gave the rank of sergeant to the young but seasoned Black man.

“It’s better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it, the rank, that is, Shelby.” Williams paused to let his words sink in and then continued.
“You’ve got your orders, soldier. Prepare for your mission. See Lieutenant Bridges for your supplies and that will be all. He paused again before stressing the new title now owned by the Negro soldier. “Sergeant Shelby.”

Of course, some white officers had tried to trouble Jon about his new rank. One man, in particular, Lieutenant Hamilton Bridges, found Jon’s promotion sickening, and he taunted the Black man in front of his peers. Jon had withstood Bridges’ insult for a time, but when the young officer had called him “nigger boy” for the third or fourth time, Jon could not help himself. With one swift motion, he had laid the man low. Sprawled out in the dust, Bridges was the laughingstock of both Black and white soldiers, and from that point on, he had avoided crossing Shelby’s path.

The incident with Bridges happened several weeks ago. That time was long gone. At twenty-two years old, Jon told himself that he had seen change too many times to dwell on what had been. Better to pay attention to what was happening now and be prepared for what might come his way.

John sighed. He knew the War Between the States was really one of the Southern gentleman’s cotton country and until the Southern majority bowed and behaved, the fight would go on. Black folks hailed the Civil War as “God’s way of making rights from wrongs.” Jon knew they failed to see beyond the smoke.

Jonathan Shelby was a soldier who respected both men and nature as long as they respected him in return. His hair was long and thick, combed back to hang over the nape of his muscular neck, and covered as usual, by a bandana, just in case a dust storm cropped up at the most inconvenient of times.

His eyebrows were heavy, the better to sift away the grit and airborne debris of the range from his deep-set eyes. His hands were large and thin, just perfect for swatting mosquitoes at night and dry flies at high noon. The hairline scar that rested laterally above his left eye was the first gash to open and spurt blood whenever he got into a fight.

Jon’s deep, brown, cautious eyes lightened and pleaded for trust whenever the need arose, as it did quite often in the war-torn South. His nose was large, but it fit his face well, his skin was a dark shade of bronze with a tinge of vermillion after days under the hot Texas sun. The color did not wipe off, so it must have been real, concluded the Indians who were awed by his color from the start.

Shelby always shaved close when he could find the time, yet, right now, it did not matter that his beard was two days old. He had a job to do: deliver a secret message to Red River Station, Texas, after scouting the territory for future reference. “Can’t trust that confounded wire machine to secrecy,” Brigadier General Williams had said. “It’s highly sensitive material. That is why you are delivering it by hand soldier, if you decide to take the job, that is.”

to be continued....