Post 18 - Dead eye Sam

     During those four days, Slim was busy. Slim had gotten rich during the war. With money, comes power. The Governor of Alabama was now a Northern man, commonly called a Carpetbagger. He was placed in that office by the North, which, during the Reconstruction, was policy. No Southerner was allowed to hold a political office in the South, except for a few Scalawags, a Southerner who had proven beyond any doubt to be loyal to the North.

     Slim had dropped a few hints in just the right places concerning what would happen to the Governor’s family if Sam was hanged. The Governor had no real military power this early in the Reconstruction, having no resources to fight an all-out Clan war. And, everybody well knew Slim always kept his promises.

     The Jury was in. Guilty. Sam was to be hanged the next day. The jury foreman had barely gotten those words out of his mouth when Marshal Gillum, who was, personally, becoming convinced that Sam could not have shot that man, stepped forward to make an announcement. The Governor had passed down the word. Sam was pardoned. The verdict was vacated.

     Now, Taladega was in a royal uproar. While Sam did have friends,  the vast majority of Taladega citizens were livid. It was easy to figure out what had happened, and most were still in an uproar about what Millie did, anyway.

     Marshal Gillum moved Sam to the jail for temporary protection for her, while he decided what to do. There were signs of a lynch mob forming. The whole town was agitated and extremely upset.  Sam’s reputation with the big gun in Taladega was working against her now. “There ain’t no way she woulda gotten that good with that gun if she was not plannin’ on using that skill ta kill innocent people!”

   “Th’ Dudley’s are all killers!

   “ She’s jest another red-haired Dudley Killer!”

    “Somebody get a rope!” That, and many more expressions of outrage were heard in the streets that day. It seemed all of Taladega’s pent-up distrust and anger regarding the Dudley Clan, that had built up over the generations, just burst forth, at long last, that day.

     The Marshal had a real problem on his hands. He finally decided. The only way he could do his job, save that girl, was to get her to the Dudley Clan. Breaking her out of jail and lynching her was one thing; going up into the hills of the Dudley’s, taking her away from the Dudley’s, then lynching her, was quite a different thing entirely. LaFayette knew that once she was under Slim’s protection, the lynch mob would shut up and slink off home with their tail between their legs. And, as it proved out, he was right. All Gillum’s, as history has shown, are very smart. In a few cases, that continues on to this very day.

     Once the Marshal sneaked her out the back door of the jail, (where two horses were waiting,) took her half way up to the Dudley’s, and explained to her the only option she had to stay alive, Sam’s common sense did the rest; she was soon home. With the Dudley’s.

She was not real happy about it. But she was alive.