XXV

The Melungeon and Crab Orchard Boys were playing a screwy game in Limestone County where they settled into business. Something about Strangetown had frightened the Melungeon and his efforts to cut in on its juice had came to nothing. So he settled in on hunting down bounties for Klan fugitives from Pulaski, Tennessee, where the Klan had been founded. Parson Brownlow, Tennessee's tetchy Republican governor, wanted them chased into Alabama where they had taken refuge with the Limestone County Chapter of the Exalted Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. The highest bounty went to a one Luther Lang for $120, dead or alive.

 
The Klan at that time was associated with a derelict cotton warehouse in the place known as Dogwood Flats near Piney Creek. Inside they ran gambling tables and wagered on the cocks. It was popular among bereft and disillusioned veterans who had bought into what Barry Hogan called The Big Lie, which was that they while they had lost the war and everything they knew had been cast adrift, at least they were still white. They wouldn't be caught dead in the unnatural pleasures of Strangetown where there was miscegenation of the races.

 
As it were, three of the fugitives from the Tennessee had hunkered down at Dogwood Flats after seeing their bills posted at the Athens Depot. Luther Lang could be among them. So the Melungeon and the Crab Orchard Boys took up positions in the burnt corn around the warehouse and fired a parleying shot. When the Klan refused to give them up, a firefight erupted. A-head and Ling Ling moved in under the cover of the smoke which hung in the hot, stagnant air. When they had reached the door, A-head kicked it in and shot down two Klansman, blowing them into the bails. A third was dispatched by a tomahawk thrown by Ling Ling, which had wedged itself into the man's skull. Picking up his tomahawk and the fallen man's Remington, he put two slugs into the chest of a fourth.

 
Dogwood Flats emptied out. Klansmen scattered in all directions into the brush. The Melungeon walked into Dogwood Flats and looked decidedly pleased. There were four dead Klansmen, two of whom were posted bounties. But if $80's worth of bounty money was all they'd get paid, they had won much more than that. Dogwood Flats now belonged to the Crab Orchard Boys.