Lords of an Empty Land Read Online Free

morning.”
    The colonel stared at the two men. “That’s it, gentlemen. Get on with it. I’ll be in New Orleans, hopefully by the end of the week, if you need anything.”

3
    Mid-morning the next day, Douglas mounted his fifteen-hand roan mare. He had packed and dressed lightly, donning brown cotton pants tucked into his knee-high leather riding boots and a white cotton shirt under a thin blue cotton coat, impersonating the army-issue version. Atop his head sat his blue, wide-brimmed campaign hat with his silver captain’s rank pinned to its front. Douglas had long ago learned that the wool army field uniforms were completely unfit for the brutal Louisiana heat; the blazing sun and thick, muggy air as deadly as Confederate minié balls.
    As he swung his boot over the mare and settled into the saddle, sweat beads were already forming on his face. Even after almost five years, he had not gotten used to the Louisiana weather. Cooked by the merciless summer sun, the temperature might stay above ninety until almost midnight. Even late into the night, just the simple exercise of walking drenched one’s body with sweat. A breeze of any sort was rare. There never seemed to be a break from the steamy, insect-infested air that instantly turned the skin clammy and hovered over the land like an endless opaque fog. He hated the chronic rains and endless maze of green. He missed winter, and the changing seasons of his home in Ohio.
    Douglas gently pressed his spurs against his mount’s ribs and started down Commerce Street. The muddy road cut through the immense cotton warehouses and gins abutting the Red River, its banks currently occupied with a half-dozen steamers, some three hundred feet long with smokestacks towering forty feet into the sky. The streets held a mangled myriad of horses, buggies, stagecoaches, and hundreds of bales of freshly picked cotton stacked astride the road or rail line.
    Half of Shreveport’s five thousand residents were Negro, and its citizens ranged from humble ex-slaves working the docks or rail in sweat-stained shirts to well-dressed Southern ladies or eastern cotton brokers, all mixed together with the ambient smell of manure and sewage. The residents all seemed to mimic the tumultuous, scorching climate. That they carried on with their lives in this malaria- and yellow fever–infested oven often amazed Douglas.
    Shreveport was another world, as rough and tough as any western outpost—a haven for all types of outlaws and bandits. But it also had a sophisticated side. Douglas rode on, past the streets all named for Texas heroes: Crockett, Milam, and Travis. He looked down Texas Street at the department stores, banks, ladies’ societies, lawyers’ offices, and government buildings. The grand Planters Hotel and the Gaiety Theatre stood out, fit for any street in Boston. In the distance and above a canopy of tall trees stood the imposing Protestant churches, all constructed of thick stone. Farther afield sat the rows of shotgun houses for the middle-class whites. The poor whites and Negroes lived in shanties on the periphery of town.
    Tension always charged the air here, even more than during the war. All the Southerners abhorred Negro equality and the carpetbaggers, wicked strangers as they called the latter, but most of all, they detested the scalawags. The impoverished whites struggled with the freed slaves for work, and most of the rich plantation class now found themselves downtrodden, willing to do almost anything to reclaim their social stature. Everyone in this land had a score to settle. Enmity and revenge permeated almost every breath, the kind of deep loathing that drives men, and even women, to commit treacherous acts without the slightest guilt. The illicit conduct seemed, if anything, to give the poor souls gratification. It all made for a desperate cauldron, a volcano ripe to erupt. In this environment, the army was charged with the almost