Rainmaker
When Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Courthouse, the War Between the States effectively came to an end. Although Johnston continued to fight on, the Confederacy was doomed.
Less than a week after that fateful day in April 1865, Horatio Buchanan bade goodbye to his comrades in blue and headed north. When he got off the train in Chesterfield, he wanted only to go home to his wife. He had not heard from her in months, and he was beginning to worry.
Horatio stood on the train platform, staring at his hometown, shocked by its appearance. Most of the buildings along the main street had fallen into ruin, and several were boarded up. Only the blacksmith was open. Horatio walked into the hot, smoke-filled forge, where he saw Meriwether Todd, the old smith, hard at work making horseshoes.
"Hello, Mr. Todd," the returning soldier called.
A panoply of emotions appeared on the smith's face: surprise, joy and, finally, sorrow.
"I wish I could give you a proper welcome home," Meriwether said sadly, "but the truth is I can't. There ain't much of a home for you to come back to."
"The town does look a little worse for wear," Horatio observed. "I suppose most of the men went off to battle."
"Unlike you, though, many of them won't be coming back home."
Horatio did not want to be reminded of the war, of the deaths of so many men. He longed to go home to Eugenia, to become a farmer again, to coax life out of the soil rather than bring death to his fellow man.
"Nice seeing you again, Mr. Todd," Horatio said as he turned to go. "I gotta get home and see Eugenia. She doesn't know I'm back yet."
"Wait."
There was an ominous sound to the smith's voice that made Horatio want to cover his ears and run.
"I guess it's my lot to be the one to tell you what happened."
Horatio was torn between a desire to flee and escape from what surely must be bad news and a need to stay and learn the truth.
"The past winter was a bad one," Meriwether explained. "More than half the people in town took sick. Many died. Most of those who survived lost their sons, husbands, fathers and brothers in the war, so there was no longer anything to hold them here. They packed up and moved away. There are now only a handful of families left in Chesterfield."
It was clear Meriwether was stalling, unwilling to say the words that the young soldier needed to hear.
"Eugenia?" Horatio prompted, choking back tears as he uttered his wife's name.
Meriwether lowered his head.
"It was the grippe. She held on for quite a while. We all thought she'd pull through, but then she took a turn for the worse. She didn't make it. If you want to pay her a visit, she's buried in the graveyard adjacent to the Chesterfield Church."
Horatio was heartbroken, yet he could still see the tragic irony in the situation. He had survived four years of harrowing war, while his wife had died in the safe arms of Chesterfield, far from the battlefields that had claimed so many American lives.
* * *
Horatio Buchanan took one last look around the clapboard farmhouse that had been in his family for three generations. He hated to see it sit vacant or go to strangers, but he no longer had the desire to farm the land—not with Eugenia gone. His heart heavy with sorrow, the former soldier loaded his belongings into an old wagon and said goodbye to Chesterfield.
As he journeyed west, Horatio made friends with many of the Indian tribes he encountered, and his Native American brothers taught him many things that would help him survive in the untamed land.
Eventually, he became a peddler and sold elixirs made from formulas he had gotten from a wise shaman he once encountered in his travels. The pioneers, who no longer had access to doctors in the East, eagerly bought his cures and restoratives. Thus, he made a modest living traveling from settlement to settlement, selling his wares.
It was on a scorching day in late July that Horatio, tired, hot and parched, rode into the town of Liberty where a funeral was being held at the graveyard behind the church.
"Not a very auspicious sign," Horatio commented to his old nag as he tied her to a post in front of the Lucky Lady Saloon.
The peddler then walked into the tavern and asked the bartender for a glass of water.
"That'll be two bits," the man replied.
"You charge money for water?"
The very idea seemed preposterous to Horatio.
"There's a bad drought around here, or haven't you heard?"
"Keep the water then, and give me a shot of whiskey."
Horatio was not one to drink spirits in the early afternoon, but if he had to pay money for a drink, it would not be water.
"So, you've had a bad dry spell, have you?" Horatio asked, trying to make conversation.
"The worst ever seen in these parts."
Horatio sipped his whiskey and pondered the situation.
"Where would I find the mayor of this town?" he asked once he finished his drink.
"The mayor, Wilbur Taggart, owns the general store. It's at the end of the street."
Horatio thanked the bartender and left the Lucky Lady.
* * *
Mayor Taggart banged his gavel on the table, calling the town meeting to order. Once everyone had settled down, he addressed the council.
"Mr. Horatio Buchanan here has a proposition he would like us to consider. He claims he has the ability to make it rain."
A mixture of laughter and angry jeers spread through the room. Despite his poor reception, Horatio stood up and calmly presented his case.
"I lived with the Indians and learned their secrets. I can make it rain and fill your reservoirs before your crops dry up and your cattle die of thirst."
"Even if you could end our drought, what would you hope to get out of it?" one of the councilmen asked.
"Five hundred dollars—cash."
Cries of "crook," "swindler" and "charlatan" echoed through the room.
"Don't your lives depend upon your crops and cattle?" Horatio asked. "And are your lives not worth five hundred dollars? I'm sure you can all ante up and raise the money."
"And how do we know you can actually produce the rain?"
"You may defer payment until I've made good on my word. No rain—no money. So, what have you got to lose?"
* * *
Horatio drove his wagon into the mountains that overlooked the town of Liberty. There he stripped off his clothes and donned the animal skins given to him by the powerful medicine man. For hours upon end, he chanted and danced around a fire, occasionally throwing handfuls of cornmeal into the flames.
When the first drops of rain fell on Liberty the following day, the people were cautiously optimistic. Then, once the dark clouds hovered above the town and the rain came down in a steady downpour, they were overjoyed.
Two days later Mayor Taggert saw that it was still raining and called an emergency meeting of the town council.
"We'll need to raise the funds to pay the rainmaker," he announced.
"I don't see why we have to," declared Orenthal Moody, a prominent landowner and attorney, as well as the richest man in town.
"We had an agreement," the mayor argued. "We would pay him five hundred dollars if he made it rain."
"I'm surprised at you, Wilbur," the lawyer laughed. "You're a good Christian. You should know only God can make it rain. There's no reason to pay good money to some traveling impostor."
"What if we don't pay him? Can't he sue us for breach of promise or something?"
"There was no written contract, and there is only his word that we intended to pay him. You don't remember any such agreement, do you, mayor?"
Taggart did not want to make an enemy of Orenthal Moody, so he shook his head.
"How about you, Jim? Ben? Walter?"
It was apparent that no one in the room would ever dare corroborate Horatio Buchanan's story should Horatio take his case to court.
"That's settled, then," Moody said with finality. "We can all go to services on Sunday and thank the Good Lord for making it rain. And if this peddler shows up taking credit for what was nothing more than an act of God, we'll run him out of town."
* * *
Meanwhile, the rain continued to fall. For ten straight days, the town of Liberty was subjected to a steady downpour. The reservoir, which even in the wettest years had never exceeded sixty-seven percent capacity, was filled to the top and in danger of overflowing. On the eleventh day, the dark clouds passed over, and the sun shone brightly.
Horatio Buchanan, smiling with self-satisfaction at a job well done, drove his wagon into the town and stopped in front of Wilbur Taggart's general store. The mayor saw the peddler approaching and snuck out the back. Ten minutes later, Orenthal Moody heard a knock on his door. He opened it to find the mayor standing nervously on his doorstep.
"He's come for his money," Wilbur announced.
"What did you tell him?"
"Nothing. I ducked out the back door and came directly here."
The lawyer sighed. It was obvious to him that Taggart was not up to the job of running a town like Liberty.
"I guess I'll have to handle this myself," Moody said as he grabbed his jacket and hat from a nearby coat rack.
The two men rode back to the general store where Horatio was waiting to speak to the mayor.
"I kept my end of the bargain," the peddler declared. "The reservoir is full, and now I'd like to get paid."
The mayor sheepishly cast his eyes down. It was the lawyer who stepped forward to deal with the situation.
"If we had asked for snow, would you have given us that, too?" he asked sarcastically in the loud, booming courtroom voice that had often intimidated witnesses. "What about a plague of locusts? Tell me, Mr. Buchanan, what other miracles can you perform? Heal the sick? Raise the dead? Maybe you can walk on water. Why don't you give us a demonstration? If you can create rain like a god, surely you can walk across the reservoir."
"I never claimed to work miracles," Horatio protested. "All I did was make it rain."
"And you don't consider making it rain for ten days a miracle?"
"Look, Mr. Moody, I know how you lawyers like to twist the truth around and ...."
"I'd be careful what I said if I were you, young man," Moody threatened. "Libel is a crime."
"I don't want to argue with you. All I want is my money."
"You're not getting a dime. We need that money to repair washed-out roads and flooded buildings."
Horatio became angry.
"You never had any intentions of honoring our agreement, did you?"
"Can you prove in a court of law that you and not God brought the rain?"
"You know I can't," the peddler admitted.
"Maybe that's for the best. If you could legally prove your claim, I would have to recommend, in all good conscience, that the mayor and council seek reparation for the damages the rain caused."
"What's that you say? 'In all good conscience'? What would you, a lawyer, know about a conscience?"
"Why you ...."
The lawyer, his eyes burning with indignation, advanced ominously toward the peddler. The mayor stepped forward and came between the two men.
"Why don't you climb into your wagon and get out of here?" Wilbur warned the peddler. "It'll be better for everyone if you just went about your business in another town—another state, perhaps."
"I'll leave," Horatio said grudgingly. "The sooner I'm out of this place, the better I'll feel."
When he reached the door, he turned and delivered a final salvo.
"But you haven't heard the last of me. You wanted rain—you'll get it!"
* * *
Horatio again drove his wagon into the mountains that overlooked the town of Liberty. As he did the previous time, he stripped off his clothes and donned his animal skins. Long into the night, he chanted and danced around the fire. When the raindrops started to fall on his face, Horatio fell to the ground, exhausted. After several minutes, he got up and staggered to the small lean-to he had constructed. From that temporary shelter, he could watch the town below. But first, he must sleep.
When the peddler woke, the rain was falling heavily. It had only been several hours since the storm began, but the rainfall was already causing the reservoir to overrun its banks.
For the next several days, Horatio watched the panic spread through the town below him. Most of the citizens—especially those with children—left Liberty, evacuating with as many personal belongings as they could carry. Eventually, even Mayor Taggart, at the urging of his wife, got into his carriage and headed out of town.
"Not all the rats are leaving the sinking ship," Horatio laughed as he watched Orenthal Moody stubbornly pacing up and down his veranda, as though defying Mother Nature to violate his property.
By the end of the week, flood waters covered most of Liberty. Only the tops of the tallest buildings could be seen above the murky brown waters. As he watched all sorts of debris float downstream, Horatio wondered if Moody had managed to make it out of town alive—not that he really cared. He had seen men die before, good men, men of honor and courage. The death of the lawyer would not be any great loss.
Just the same, Horatio was saddened by the tragic sight. For all intents and purposes, Liberty had been destroyed. He sincerely hoped that once the waters receded, the deserted western town would rise again, just as he hoped new blood would flow into Chesterfield and bring it back to life.
After offering a prayer for the innocent people of Liberty, Horatio packed up his remaining supplies and put them on the wagon. Then he headed down the mountain. As he approached the next town on the trail, the rain stopped, the sun came out and a glorious rainbow arched across the sky.
"Now that's an auspicious sign," the peddler said with a smile.
When Horatio came to our town, he wanted to make it rain "cats and dogs," but Salem said "no" to the dogs.
