We caught up with them around 10:00 that night. There were three of them, like Mama said, by which I mean, like she told Uncle John, because I wasn't allowed in the house at the time. One of the soldiers was young and skinny, one was big, with red hair and a red beard, and one was tall and bald-headed. It was them, all right.

We had hobbled the horses and gone the last half-mile on foot, to the spot where Uncle John said we would probably find them. Now we were lying on our bellies behind a fallen pecan tree, 30 paces or so from their fire. They were passing around a jug, laughing and joking and having a good old time. There was a full moon, and I hoped they couldn't see us as well as I could see them.

"That's Daddy's jug," I said.

"Yes, it is," Uncle John replied.

"What do we do now?"

Uncle John rolled over on his back, cradled the human rifle across his chest, and gazed up at the stars. "Let's rest a while."

Uncle John brought the human rifle with him when he came home from the war and moved in with us. Now, by that I don't mean to say that he stole a government rifle, like a lot of fellas did. The human rifle was Uncle John's own private property.

Everybody thinks of Kentucky as a southern state, which it sort of is, but Kentucky didn't secede from the Union, at least, not whole-hog like the others did. Kentucky was kind of complicated. There were lots of folks that wanted to secede, but just as many that didn't, so some Kentucky men went with the Union, and some went with the rebellion. Sixty-some-odd counties eventually seceded, including ours.

When they talk about brother fighting brother, I guess Kentucky was the place to look if you wanted to see it firsthand. In fact, you might have seen it in our family, except in our case it would have been brother-in-law fighting brother-in-law. My daddy was a solid states' rights man, but he had a wife and two children to take care of, so he didn't intend to go off and fight for either bunch. After Pike County seceded, he got letters from the Union and the Confederacy about a week apart telling him he needed to report for duty. What he did is he sent the Confederate letter to the Union, and the Union letter to the Confederacy, and said, "You're too late. The other bastards already got me. I report on the 1st."

Uncle John didn't have any family besides us, but he had a good horse and he was strong for the Union. He said he didn't rightly give a damn if Pike County went rebel, and he rode over to Midland in Wiley County and signed on with the 46th Kentucky Volunteer Cavalry to fight for the federals. He was assigned to Company F, and once all the other volunteers got to know him, it wasn't long before Uncle John was elected captain. That's how he got the human rifle; the rest of the men chipped in and bought it for him. The brass part is engraved in fancy writing that says, "Capt. John Henry. Company F. 46th Kentucky Vol. Cavalry." Uncle John said cavalrymen normally used shorter guns, because they were easier to handle on horseback, but they didn't usually shoot their rifles until they were dismounted anyway, so it didn't matter that the human rifle had a 24 inch barrel.

One time I asked Uncle John what kind of rifle it was, and he thought about it for a minute, and said, "Well, Pat, it's a human rifle." I accepted that, without wondering why. I guess I figured it was just a funny name for a rifle company. I was 14 at the time, and it took a while before it sank in that it was a human rifle in the same way that a buffalo gun is a buffalo gun, or a squirrel rifle is a squirrel rifle. But of course killing humans wasn't the only thing you could do with it. I know of at least two deer, a bear, and some wild hogs that Uncle John killed with it, so it worked on them, for sure.

I pestered him about shooting it, and one day he let me. Along with the rifle, his men gave him two hundred bullets—cartridges, he called them, and he came home from the war with eighty-four. He let me shoot up five of them. Mama, Sis, me and Uncle John walked around behind the tobacco barn. He showed me how to raise the follower, he called it, up toward the end of the long barrel and turn it to the side so it would stay there. Then he let me put the short little bullets in the tube and lower the follower back down on top of them. There was room in the tube for a lot more, but I knew bullets cost a lot of money, so I was happy to be able to shoot five. He put an empty lard bucket in the pasture, and drew a picture in the dirt of how the sights and bucket were supposed to look before I pulled the trigger. It was one heavy gun, so I knelt down and rested the barrel of the human rifle on the top rail of the split rail fence.

Uncle John levered in the first bullet, so I could see how it worked, and then turned me loose. I missed with the first one, but after that I had that bucket bouncing around pretty good. It made a whole lot of white smoke, and it kicked some, but not too bad. When I looked up to see what Mama and Sis thought about my shooting, they were already on the way back to the house. There's things women don't understand, I guess.

That same day I got to shoot his pistol—revolver, he called it. I didn't do near as much damage to the bucket, but I got it a couple of times out of six. It was heavy, too, smoked like the devil, and kicked a lot. He showed me how to load the pistol after I shot it. He said they made paper cartridges, but he didn't have any, so he showed me how to measure and pour in the gun powder, and push the bullet down on top of the powder with the loading lever. "This is a bullet," he said, holding one of the round lead balls between his thumb and index finger. Then I put the caps on the nipples on the back end of the cylinder, and Uncle John pronounced it ready to go.

I didn't bother asking what kind of pistol it was, but I later found out it was a .44 caliber Dance Brothers Army Model. He told me he didn't buy it, either, and it wasn't given to him by his men. He picked it up off the ground. It was lying next to a Texican rebel who had tried to kill him with it, so he said he figured he had a right to keep it.

"You know how William's shotgun works. So you're qualified on all of the family firearms now, Pat," he said, "just in case it ever comes up." I eventually figured out that the human rifle was a Henry, which was kind of funny since that made it John Henry's Henry, but it'll always be Uncle John's human rifle to me.

I should back up and talk about Daddy. I guess there might be unluckier ways to get killed than getting kicked by a horse, but I think it has to be right up there close to the top. Anyways, one day Daddy finished up his business in town and was getting ready to head home when he stepped off of the boardwalk and into the street. I was already on the wagon seat, ready to go. I turned around to look just as Daddy was walking behind two saddle horses that were tied to the hitching rail, and for some stupid reason one of those horses decided to kick him, and that was pretty much that. His right leg was snapped nearly in two between the knee and ankle, with bones sticking out through the torn up meat. Dr. Johnson said he couldn't fix it, and it needed to be cut off, but Daddy wouldn't let him.

By this time Uncle John was back from his year in the war. "I've seen a lot of shattered bones, William," he said. He was sitting on a stool next to Daddy's cot in Dr. Johnson's little infirmary. He had just got done looking at the leg and covered it back up. "This will never heal. Listen to the doc. It has to come off." By the time Daddy agreed it had turned to gangrene, and the doc took his leg just below the knee. Three days later he took the rest of his leg, right up near the hip, and that night, Daddy died. You don't have to go to war to die young.

Losing Daddy was real hard on Mama and Sis, like you'd expect. Uncle John and I kept growing tobacco, which was no small trick with the war still going on, and Uncle John took care of Mama as best he could, but he was her brother, not her husband. As for Sis, she was 9 at the time, and was a Daddy's girl to the bone, and she didn't want no other Daddy, although she loved Uncle John a lot. I guess I had it easier than them. I loved Daddy too, and missed him, but Uncle John took his place pretty easy in my case. Daddy never had a lot of confidence in me, and didn't give me anything very important to do. When I did something good, he didn't make much of it, like it was just something I was supposed to do in the first place, now go wash up for supper. Uncle John was different. He gave me man's work to do, and trusted me to do it right. When I did, he'd say, "Nice work," or, "Looks good." He made me feel like I was as important around the place as he was—a man, just like him. Don't get me wrong; I knew I wasn't the equal of Uncle John, and most likely never would be. But that's how he made me feel.

You know how some things, like dates, stick in your mind? Anyways, I've got one: 21st May, 1864. Like just about every Saturday, we went into town for supplies and to take care of business, get the mail, and such. Supplies of all kinds were hard to come by because of the war, but we went and looked and did the best we could. Mama used to sometimes make the three-mile trip with Daddy, but she hardly ever went with Uncle John. Usually Sis and I took turns going with him, but on this day he said we could both go. "Take your time," Mama said. "I think I'll have a bath."

"That's a good idea," Uncle John said. "You'll never get a man smelling like you do." He ducked the hunk of lye soap Mama threw at him and ran out the door. Sis and I ran behind him and we were all laughing as we climbed into the wagon.

Mama came out onto the porch and she was laughing, too. "Don't want no man," she said. "Most of them are too much like you, John Henry."

Uncle John made a show of running the team out of the yard, then slowed to our normal walk. It was all in fun, but it got me wondering if Mama would get married again. Daddy had been dead for six months. I wasn't worldly, for dang sure, but I knew Mama was a pretty woman and made a nice home, she had property, and she was handy with all the woman's work around a farm. She could have had another man if she wanted one. So I figured what she said was true—she didn't want one.

The Yankees had pretty much run the rebels out of Kentucky by that time, but we still saw soldiers from both sides. The rebels were mostly ragged, hungry-looking men who had got their fill of rebelling and were trying to make their way home and hide out until the war was over. Uncle John said that after the big fight in Pennsylvania, everybody with any sense knew the rebels couldn't possibly win. He said all that remained to be seen was how many more boys needed to die before the big shots called it off.

The Yankees that we saw were mostly interested in stealing stuff and lording it over everybody, seeing as how this was a rebel county and we had it coming. It aggravated Uncle John no end to be treated like a rebel by every Yankee patrol that wandered by until he proved different. He had to show his discharge papers twice that I know of, and one time he brought out the human rifle and let the sergeant in charge of a cavalry squad read the engraved words to convince him they shouldn't take our horses and all the tobacco we had hanging in the barn.

But, back to our trip into town. I was past expecting a treat when I went to town, but Sis had just turned 10, and she still looked forward to getting one. On the twenty-first of May, 1864, she wanted griddle cakes at Barkley's Restaurant. We ate breakfast maybe three hours before, so she couldn't have been very hungry. But that was what she wanted, and Uncle John knew Daddy always got her what she wanted, so he did, too, if he could possibly afford it.

We didn't get an early start, and we took our sweet time about everything, so it was around 4:00 when we got back. We were still a good ways from the house when all of a sudden Uncle John reined in the horses and set the brake on the wagon. He just sat there for a little bit, looking at the yard in front of the house. At first it just looked like the yard to me, but then it dawned on me that the dirt was kind of tore up and there was more horse manure than when we left. "You two get in the back and lie down," he said.

I thought it was a joke, and said, "Ah, Mama ain't gonna throw any more soap." Sis laughed, but Uncle John looked me in the eye with a look I hadn't ever seen before.

"Do as I say!" he said. I didn't want any more of that look, so I helped Sis into the back of the wagon and followed her. "Hand me the rifle." The human rifle was wrapped in a blanket in the bed of the wagon, right behind the seat. When he had the rifle, Uncle John got down out of the wagon. He reached into the bed and patted Sis on the butt, then squeezed my shoulder. It felt like his hand was shaking a little bit. "Stay here and keep your heads down."

Needless to say, we both raised up and watched as he walked the rest of the way to the house, kind of off to the side. He mounted the porch from that side. He had taken his boots off, and shinnied on his belly under the window, then stood up by the door. Very slowly and quietly he levered a bullet into the human rifle. Then he took a deep breath, kicked the door in, and ran inside.

It seemed like forever and a day, but it probably wasn't any more than five minutes before he came out and motioned for us to come in. He let Sis run past him and into the house, but he stopped me. "Pat," he said, "un-hitch the horses and saddle them. Get two picks and two shovels and tie them on."

I didn't know what to think. "Shovels? Is Mama…"

Uncle John hugged me. "No, Pat," he said. "No, no. I'm sorry." That look in his eyes was gone, and he was regular old Uncle John again. "Your mother's all right. You just can't go in the house right now. It's women's business. You and I, we've got men's work to do."

I wanted to say Sis ain't no woman, she's a damn kid, but instead I went to saddle the horses and look for shovels and picks. Pretty soon Uncle John came out to the barn. He had a knapsack with some bacon and biscuits in it. He fixed me up with the revolver in a pommel holster on Molly, and tied the human rifle to Jack in a saddle scabbard. We were mounted and on the road before you knew it. As we left the yard, Uncle John said, "We're after three men. They're about four hours ahead."

My head was pretty much swimming around. "What did they do?"

Uncle John looked over at me, but didn't say anything. And the hell of it is, he didn't have to, because I had already figured it out. What I knew about women wouldn't fill a thimble, but I knew some men would take what they wanted and didn't care what the woman thought. It made me sick to my stomach thinking about it. "What are we going to do?" I asked.

"Pat," he said, "you and I both promised William we'd take care of Rosie and Sis. We can't let this go and still keep that promise." He looked back down the road.

"That's not what I meant. I meant, how are we going to do it?"

He looked back at me, and reached over and put his hand on my shoulder again. This time, his hand was steady as a rock "We'll figure it out when we catch up to them. They won't figure on anybody coming after them. They're used to doing whatever they want and getting away with it around here."

I shook my head. "Not this time," I said.

"No," Uncle John agreed. "Not this time."

I looked over at Uncle John from time to time as we laid there behind that tree to see if he had gone to sleep, but he never did. He was just kind of looking up at the stars. At some point we both heard footsteps coming in our direction. Uncle John turned to me and put a finger on his lips, then he cocked the hammer on the human rifle. That didn't make a lot of noise, but when I cocked the revolver the three clicks were pretty loud.

"Who's there?" The man who had walked away from the fire was about ten feet from us. He was in the process of unbuttoning his pants to pee, but he didn't get that far. Uncle John and I both stood up and shot him. That was pretty much it for the young skinny one. He stumbled backwards and fell on his left side.

Uncle John then fired five shots from the human rifle so fast it sounded like five men firing all at once. The big red-haired man was hit in the belly and the shoulder, and fell on his back next to the fire. The tall bald man, who was sitting on his saddle, stood up and was hit in the left thigh as he dove behind a fir tree for cover. Their horses jerked at their tethers, but none got loose, and pretty soon they settled down.

It was quiet for a bit, then the man behind the tree called out, "Tommy! Are you all right, boy?"

Uncle John responded. "There's no point in asking after Tommy."

"You lousy BASTARD," said the man behind the tree. "He was just a kid!"

"Well," Uncle John replied, "there's lots of dead kids around, these days." The human rifle was cocked and on his shoulder, and he swung it slowly between the tree and the man on the ground a couple of times.

"Who are you?" It was the man with the red hair and the red beard, lying next to the fire. He had both hands clasped on his belly. "Why are you doing this? If you're johnny rebs, just go on your way. There's no need for us to kill each other."

"Yankees," said Uncle John. "Yankees that still respect women."

"God DAMN IT!" yelled the man behind the tree. "I told you we should kill the rebel whore!"

Uncle John tilted his head to the left. Speaking softly to me, he said, "I'm going to go over there and circle around so I can get a shot at the man behind the tree. You have five shots left. I want you to count to ten and shoot, and do it again, until I'm over there."

"Shoot at what?" I asked.

"Shoot at the tree. It doesn't matter."

He took off running, and I counted to ten, fired a shot, cocked the hammer, and started counting again. On the count of ten I fired again, and I kept doing it until the gun was empty. I couldn't see Uncle John, and was waiting for him to fire, but he didn't. I guess the man behind the tree figured he had learned the game, because all of a sudden he came around the tree, holding his hurt leg with one hand and firing his revolver with the other as he limped toward me. I ducked down behind the tree, and it wasn't long before I heard the human rifle go to work. It didn't sound anything like a revolver, and after two shots, the revolver went quiet.

"Come on, Pat."

I got up and walked past the dead bodies of the young, skinny one, and the tall, bald one, and pretty soon I was standing next to Uncle John over the big redhead with the red beard. "God damn you, Carson," said Uncle John. "I prayed it wasn't you. I didn't know you'd gone regular army."

The red-haired man's eyes widened. "Captain Henry," he said.

"Shut up," said Uncle John. "The fella that used to call me that was a good soldier and a decent man. That's not you."

The red-haired man was in a lot of pain, but he seemed to want to explain things to Uncle John. "We were told at Regimental that her man was Secesh. We had orders to bring him in for questioning."

"Her man's dead," said Uncle John. "I expect she told you that."

"Yeah, she did, then she sassed us, got our blood up. And truth be told, John, she didn't put up much of a fight. We thought she wanted it."

Uncle John kicked Carson in the side of the face, hard, and when he regained his senses, Carson had blood and snot running out of his nose, and he was spitting out blood. "John, please," he said. "I don't know why I said that. I'm sorry, truly sorry, for what we did."

"I guess you're mostly sorry Pat and I caught up with you."

Carson gagged and spit some more, then took a couple of big breaths. "Not long ago you saved me, John—ran through bullets buzzin' like bees to do it—and you know I would have done the same for you. I'm asking for mercy, John."

Uncle John cradled the barrel of the human rifle in the crook of his left arm. "You're gut-shot. There's nothing I can do for you but end it quick."

Carson recognized the rifle. "Well," he said, "I guess I got my four bits worth."

"Not quite yet," said Uncle John. "If all this talking makes it easier for you, go ahead. But it won't change anything."

I guess Carson decided he was done talking, but I had something to say. "Carson." I moved closer so he could see my face. "Thank you for not letting him kill my mother."

He didn't say anything; he just closed his eyes. There were tears running down his cheeks and into his red side burns as Uncle John stood the human rifle in the middle of his chest and pulled the trigger. Carson's tunic caught fire, and Uncle John tapped it out with the same boot he's used to kick Carson in the face. "Go get the horses, Pat."

By the time I got back he had put out the fire and moved everything away from the road and into a blackberry thicket. He had started digging with their little camp shovel, but was glad to see real shovels and picks and some help. It wasn't long before we had a big enough grave for the men, their gear and their guns, and had them covered up.

Wearing "US" brands like they were, we couldn't just turn the horses loose. They would be found, and that would mean something bad had likely happened to the soldiers, and the army would then move heaven and earth to find someone to blame and punish. But if nothing was ever found, it would just mean the soldiers had probably deserted. So we had to kill the horses, too.

That called for some big holes, but we got them dug. I reloaded the revolver, and we stood the horses next to their graves. I shot them in the ear and Uncle John pushed them in. After they were buried we covered up everything with brush, and headed home just as the sun was coming up.

Around noon it started raining, which wasn't all bad. We were covered with blood and dirt, and the rinsing had to make us look a little better. But even as I was becoming cleaner on the surface, I was feeling pretty dirty inside. "Uncle John," I said. "Are we going to hell?"

He looked over at me and shook his head. "You know, Pat," he said, "I've thought about that a lot. God sent the Israelites to war against their enemies. Do you think He would punish a soldier for doing his duty?"

I wiped the rain off my face. "I hope not."

"I don't think He would. And a man has a duty to more than just country. He has a duty to family. "

We were less than a mile from home when we rounded a bend and came face to face with Pike County Sheriff E. R. Belvin. The rain had stopped, and we had been hiding beside the road to avoid traffic when we could, but E.R. took us by surprise, and we all stopped in the middle of the road.

"Mornin', John," said the sheriff.

"E.R.," said Uncle John.

"You know, John," said the sheriff, "I was just by your place, lookin' to talk to you. But the first thing I had to do was get a 10 gauge long tom out of my face. Rosie was damned upset about somethin', and Sis was shakin' like a cat shittin' peach seeds. Your sister wouldn't tell me what was wrong, but I kind of got the impression they were worried about you two."

"Well," said Uncle John, "we're fine, and we'll be home before you know it."

I wasn't sure what we looked like, but I knew it wasn't fine, with our bloodshot eyes, filthy clothes, and armed for war, not to mention our collection of digging tools. E.R. looked us over and I believe he formed the same opinion.

"John Henry," he said, "you and me go way back, to when we were younger than Sis, let alone Pat, here. I guess I'd put more stock in your say-so than just about any man I know."

"That means a lot to me, Eulys."

Their horses were nose to nose, and the two men were looking each other smack dab in the eye. "That bein' the case," said the sheriff, "I'm not goin' to ask you what you've been doin'. But I do need for you to tell me that whatever it was, it needed doin', and it was the right thing to do."

Uncle John nodded his head. "That's the God's truth of it."

E.R. nodded, too. "I expect if the Provost Marshal got wind of your trip, he might be more inclined to ask questions."

"I expect you're right."

"Well, I guess I'll go home and put on some dry clothes."

"Us, too," said Uncle John. "What was it you wanted to talk to me about?"

"It'll keep." The sheriff turned his horse around and spurred it into a splashing, mud-slinging lope. We walked our horses the rest of the way home.

Before we even put away the horses or cleaned ourselves up, Uncle John sat us all down at the table and said more soldiers would come looking for those fellas, and when they did, we should say we never saw them, period. And they did come, three or four times. We stuck to our story, and after a while they quit looking. If there was ever any other discussion about that day in our house, I wasn't in on it. We just all kind of went on from there. It happened, Uncle John and I made it right, and that was that.

It turned out the reason E.R. came out to see Uncle John that day was to try to hire him on as a deputy, which he eventually did. When E.R. married Mama and decided to try his hand at tobacco farming, Uncle John ran for sheriff in November of '64 and won in the biggest landslide in the history of Pike County, which was funny, because in the same election, Honest Abe didn't win a single Kentucky county. And Uncle John, the Yankee cavalryman, made sheriff of a rebel county. During his second four-year term he hired me as a deputy.

In the Spring of '71 Will and Sarah Barkley were killed in a wagon accident, and shortly after that Sis married Willie Barkley and between the two of them, they kept Barkley's Restaurant up and running, and are doing OK, as far as I know. At the very least I bet Sis gets all the griddle cakes she wants.

After eight years, Uncle John had had enough of police work, and I was never all that crazy about it, so we decided to hand in our badges and head out west to make our fortunes. And that, as they say, is a whole 'nother story.