Raiding with Morgan

by Jim R. Woolard

Genres: Alien Contact

Synopsis

RAIDING WITH MORGAN is an historical Civil War novel set in 1863; it focused of the invasion of Indiana and Ohio by Confederate cavalrymen commanded by General John Hunt Morgan a.k.a. the infamous Morgan' s Raiders. Ty Mattson never knew his father who went off to fight I the Mexican War and never returned; and Ty' s mother died giving birth to Ty. For 17 years, Ty wonders why his father never acknowledges his existence. Ty learns that his father joined Morgan' s Raiders, so Ty decides to follow suit in the hope of meeting his father, which he does. Ty' s father is murdered and Ty is wounded during Morgan' s defeat at Buffington Island; and Ty is carted off the battlefield. He meets and falls in love with Dana Bainbridge, who nurses him back to health. Once he recovers, he is dispatched to Camp Douglas, a Union prison on Lake Michigan. Ty is disheartened in prison from the poor treatment he receives, and his failure to convince Dana to marry him. He summons the courage to carry on and confront his father' s killer. He' s surprised when an unexpected savior frees him from prison and makes it possible for him to pursue his true love, Dana.

Release date: June 1, 2015

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 320

Sample

Ty came fully alert as he approached the Yankee commissary wagons flanking the north road. In broad daylight, the Union detail had paid him scant attention, treating him as just another unarmed young lad driving a farm wagon to town for supplies. Ty worried that they would have pickets out ready to challenge anybody traveling by horseback after dark; and if they stopped him and insisted on searching his feed sacks, he was a goner for certain.

He advanced Reb a few steps at a time and watched for shadows around the flickering campfire visible through the trees lining the road and the openings between the parked wagons. When he thought he’d gone as far as he dared, without being seen, he halted Reb and considered what to do next.

There were no sentries in sight. Music from a fiddle floated on the night air, interrupted by laughter at the end of each verse of whatever ribald song the Yankees were singing. The commissary soldiers were apparently comfortable that they need not fear attack, as the fighting had moved well to the north of their position. Ty suspected the blue bellies had found a source for corn liquor, for their singing was stunningly loud, boisterous, and off-key, best characterized as a rambunctious jamboree.

He tapped Reb’s side with his toes. The big gray moved out at a steady walk. Ty counted on the noise at the fire to muffle the soft pad of his shoed hoofs. The trees bordering the road thinned out and Ty gained a clear view of the open meadow and the four wagons resting there.

The seated revelers surrounding the fire didn’t interest him. What did was the circular stack of rifles in front of the middle wagon, well out of their reach, and the absence of saddled horses. With no sentries in sight to challenge him, Ty made his decision. He couldn’t risk being searched.

He touched Reb with his spurs and scrunched down in the saddle, his cheek touching the gelding’s mane. They shot past the Yankee encampment, a gray blur against the trees on the opposite of the road from the wagon yard. He and Reb were into the night before any Yankee who spotted them could gain the attention of his fellow songsters. Ty was still finding it hard to believe that the officer in charge had posted no sentries.

Ty galloped Reb for a half mile and then reined him into a ground-eating trot; a pace the gelding could sustain for miles, if asked. By roughly nine o’clock, the heart-wrenching sight, which he wasn’t sure he could handle without breaking down, loomed at the roadside: the archway and gate of the Mattson estate. He went past the padlocked gate without slackening Reb’s pace. He’d made his decision and there was no turning back. Nonetheless, though he avoided tears, his heart was burdened with the knowledge he’d willingly closed the door on the past he’d known since birth for a future that could put him in great danger with the prospect he might be felled by a blue-belly bullet.

Around midnight, he halted Reb long enough to don the balance of his new Texas clothes and strap the Remington about his waist. The change made him more confident of facing whatever might pop up the balance of the night and beyond. He wasn’t a trained soldier, but flight was no longer his only means of defense.

A ravenous hunger laid hold of him. He rummaged inside one of Boone Jordan’s feed sacks and found cloth-wrapped cold fried chicken and soft bread. He ate a large portion of each on the move. After his meal, he and Reb paused at a small stream and enjoyed a drink of water. Come morning, he must locate an isolated spot, where the big gray could rest and graze.

A bright moon painted the roadway silver-gray and Ty had no trouble choosing his course when it forked twice in the next hour. In the middle of night, he slowed Reb to a walk and began thinking about the coming dawn. Odds were that the quiet black cocoon he was riding through would be dispelled by other travelers, not just all kinds of nature. He was fully aware that his revolver, horse, boots, and spurs were possessions his enemies would prize and gladly kill to obtain.

With the first peek of daylight over the eastern horizon, the deep woods fell away and Ty made out farmhouses, barns, outbuildings, most back from the road a piece, and the shadowy contours of planted fields and pastures. A rooster crowed and Ty heard the lowing of cows waiting to be milked.

Hounds began braying and Ty clucked Reb into a trot again. Soon lamps shone in upstairs and kitchen windows and smoke drifted from chimneys. The Kentucky countryside was awakening at a rapid clip.

Ty was fast approaching Buck Grove, a hamlet consisting of four houses, a gristmill, crossroads store, small wayside tavern, blacksmith shop, and two tobacco warehouses. Ty knew from his observations when traveling with Grandfather Mattson that tobacco was grown and harvested in the area. It was cured in the Buck Grove warehouses, and transported by wagon to Brandenburg Station, the L and N Siding and Depot south of Brandenburg, for shipment to the Louisville tobacco auctions. He was glad he would bear northeast from Buck Grove to Garnettsville, bypassing the siding and depot, for that was where he was most likely to find Yankee forces.

A pack of barking dogs rushed forth just short of Buck Grove. Reb ignored the spineless hounds without a single hitch in his gait. A hammer was banging on an anvil at the smithy, and the only person Ty saw on Buck Grove’s single street was a small boy playing with a hoop in a side yard. It had worked with the blue bellies outside Elizabethtown, so before the hounds roused the curious and sparked a general alarm, Ty had Reb gallop full tilt again. He was through the small hamlet and beyond before a single adult citizen realized he and his mount had come and gone other than the drum of hoofbeats.

A while later, he was beginning to feel drowsy after a solid night in the saddle and started casting about for a daytime hideaway, if one could be found. He kept shaking his head to ward off his sleepiness. To keep his mind and hands occupied, he ate more chicken and bread.

The road dropped into a small valley before climbing a sizable hill. The rat-a-tat of hoofbeats on the far rise of the hill snapped Ty’s head up. One horse did not present a substantial threat; a large number was to be avoided until he’d identified who rode them, and maybe even then.

By sheer chance, unfenced woodland, which had escaped the axes of many generations, dominated Ty’s right flank. With open fields to his left, he spurred Reb amongst trees with butts bigger round than flour barrels. An open glade filled with tall saplings loomed. Ty halted Reb in the towering trunks just beyond the glade.

He couldn’t see the Garnettsville Road from the saddle. Satisfied the gelding was hidden well, he dismounted, drew his Remington, and angled back toward the dusty thoroughfare afoot.

The hoofbeats grew louder as the riders crested the hill to the north. Ty scrambled forward in a crouch, counting on the intervening trees to shield him until proper cover presented itself. Spying an open section of the Garnettsville Road, he plucked his hat from his head and went to ground behind the leafy brush that plugged the gaps between the tree butts. He carefully parted branches with his hand and, sure enough, the oncoming horsemen would pass in plain sight without being aware of his presence.

That was, unless Ty moved and exposed himself. He mouthed a silent prayer of thanks that his grandfather had insisted he master the art of staying absolutely still in a game blind during long stretches of their deer-and-turkey hunts. Just a scratch of the nose was forbidden there.

The armed horsemen were nothing like the organized cavalry Ty had read about in history books. He couldn’t imagine a more motley bunch of combatants. Not a single piece of their apparel, hat, or weapon matched. Ragged beards and untrimmed hair proliferated. Other than a creek bath by accident, none appeared to have washed clothes or body in a coon’s age. Ty couldn’t tell bare skin from filth.

The bunch of them were riding nonchalantly, slugging liquor from clay-fired jugs and laughing and ribbing each other. Ty assumed that the two fine-limbed bay horses without riders at their rear, with better bloodlines than their current mounts, had been freshly stolen.

These ragamuffins were classic examples of the irregulars—misfits and miscreants who bore no allegiance to either the Yankee or Confederate flag and preyed on the weak and defenseless. They had no purpose other than feathering their own nests at the expense of the innocent. Grandfather Mattson swore such men pursued nothing except their own drunken, lecherous pleasures. They were the riffraff whom loyal soldiers detested.

Ty counted eleven riders. A clipped order halted the irregulars smack in front of him. Two of the ragamuffins stood in their stirrups and stared into the woods.

Had they spotted him?

The same chilling fear that he’d felt the night the panther had screamed within an arm’s reach of him birthed an ice-cold trickle of sweat in the small of his back; the urge to flee tightened his leg muscles.

Gripping the butt of his Remington with all his might, Ty clamped his jaw so tight that his teeth hurt. He hadn’t run that night, despite the threat of a clawed mauling. He’d wet his drawers, but he hadn’t panicked. He hadn’t run, for fear the panther would hear him and determine his precise location and attack. Ty willed himself to follow that same strategy now. If he fled, the irregulars would spot him and make quick work of him. To them, taking a life was as easy as spitting downwind.

Relief nearly keeled him over when another clipped order drew the staring riders’ attention to the point of their column. The irregulars lifted their assorted weapons in unison, yelled, “On to Buck Grove,” and trotted south, stirring a thin veil of dust behind them.

Ty wormed his backside against a rough-barked tree and relaxed before he started choking, for lack of air. Since he had left Elizabethtown, his luck defied belief, especially for a soul who frequently dozed off in church and earned a stiff elbow to the ribs from a certain grandfather. The careless Yankees had let him slip by without a challenge; Buck Grove had been asleep; he’d heard approaching horses, not yet in sight, soon enough to take cover in a most convenient stand of timber, with sufficient cover, in the midst of plowed fields. Could that kind of good fortune continue until he rendezvoused with General Morgan and his raiders?

Despite the slight breeze that rustled tree leaves, he heard what he’d missed before in all the excitement: water purling, deeper in the forest. Pleased his pants were dry, despite his fright, he hitched his feet under him, hiked to where he’d hidden Reb, and sought the source of that mouthwatering sound.

The three-foot-wide stream, spring fed to be running full in the middle of the summer, passed over a solid limestone bottom, making for clear drinking water year-round, except for winter freezes. Such streams wet the whistles of serious game hunters throughout Kentucky.

Reb needed no invitation. A sharp tug of the head freed his reins and the big gray dropped his muzzle to drink. With a quick, cursory look upstream and down, a dry-tongued Ty laid his hat on the bank and flopped on his belly to follow suit. The coldness of the water numbed his lips and throat with the first swallow.

A crunching of leaves preceded startling words from a high-pitched voice. “You son of a bitch, you’re one of the bastards who stole Paw’s mares.”

Ty lifted his head and looked straight into the barrel of a cocked flintlock rifle that was held firm and steady by a buckskin-clad female. She had brown bangs and purple eyes brimming with anger and hate. Jesus Jump, taken by surprise by a sprig of a girl with pimpled cheeks, not more than thirteen or fourteen years old at most! The barrel of the flintlock trained on him seemed longer than she was tall. He fought back a disgusted snort and waited for his accuser to speak again.

“Get up. We’ll march back to our farm and ask Paw what he wants done with you. Don’t matter whether he chooses a noose or a bullet. Horse thieves are no more account than hog shit on a boot heel. You scrape it off, however you please.”

Ty rose slowly to his feet, raising his hands to prevent his captor from thinking he had any intention of bringing his holstered Remington into play. Much to his chagrin, her short arms showed no sign of tiring from holding the heavy flintlock on him. He needed to talk his way out of this predicament, or else.

“Girl, I didn’t steal those mares. A bunch of free-ranging marauders took them. They went past on the road out there not fifteen minutes ago. They let out a wild yell, ‘On to Buck Grove,’ and hightailed it south. I’m traveling north, not south. They outnumbered me and I hid in the woods until they were out of sight.”

“That’s a mighty lame tale, if you ask me. How do I know you didn’t stop to water your horse and mean to catch up with them later?” Her purple eyes narrowed. “On second thought, you being so big and all, I believe I’ll shoot you in the leg, take that horse, and let you lie right here while I fetch Paw.”

Ty suspected what he said next would be the most important thing he ever uttered and might be his sole chance to prod this steely, outraged, purple-eyed female into freeing him. He had no way of determining if she and her pa favored the cause of the Confederacy. His Texas clothes clearly indicated which side he rode for. If her father supported the blue bellies, his fate was sealed, no matter which fence he jumped. He prayed the biblical axiom “The truth shall set you free” resonated somewhere in the heavens.

“I’m no marauder. I’m Private Ty Mattson, of General John Hunt Morgan’s Confederate Cavalry. I’m to report to General Morgan at Garnettsville as soon as possible.”

Skepticism replaced anger in the purple eyes watching Ty. “Do you have written orders? My paw was a soldier in the Mexican War. He says a soldier on duty doesn’t do anything without written orders.”

She was smart and not easily fooled. Ty didn’t doubt that if so inclined, she would shoot him. He decided to throw all his cards on the table. He needed to be convincing, and then make his move and risk being killed far from the battlefield, the sorriest excuse imaginable for a yet-to-be Morgan raider.

“Miss, I am what I claim to be. I didn’t steal your horses, and I’m not a marauder. I don’t have written orders. My destination is General Morgan’s camp at Garnettsville and I don’t dare disobey him. I’m going to mount up and ride out of here. You may shoot me, if you wish. I’ll not be cast aside like hog shit for no man . . . or woman.”

The purple eyes softened. Was that a twinkle Ty saw?

“Why, you’re the most brazen man I’ve ever met,” the sprig of a female said, lowering the hammer of her flintlock. “Damned if you ain’t.”

The smile she flashed Ty was genuine. “You don’t look like those turds that took Paw’s horses. You’re too prettied up and clean. And, for certain, you aren’t a blue belly. Paw and I don’t favor any of those shooting each other—and with him missing a leg, he ain’t about to join in.”

Butting her flintlock, the sprig laughed deep in her scrawny chest and said, “Off with you, Private Ty Mattson. Just make sure you ride straight past the next place with a white barn. No reason for Paw to learn I had my sights on a possible horse thief and didn’t fetch him home. Paw’s judgments are less lenient and a heap harsher than mine. He might hang you just so he’d feel better about losing his prize mares.”

Ty lowered his hands, scooped up his hat and Reb’s reins, looped the reins over the gelding’s head, then mounted. Without saying a word, he turned the gray, pointed him toward the Garnettsville Road, and rode into the shielding trees. Keeping his eyes straight ahead, he was thankful he’d never had to share a table with her unnamed family.

Hadn’t Boone Jordan, reflecting on his Texas years, warned that a man fast and loose with a rope was to be respected and avoided?

Be best to add his children, too, Ty thought, for he sensed the young female’s decisions matched her father’s more often than not.

Once clear of the woods, he urged Reb into a trot. He took time, then and there, to thank the Lord for allowing lady luck to share his saddle.

He surely owed her a big kiss for not deserting him.

“Halt or be shot from the saddle!”

Ty brought Reb to a standstill with a light squeeze of the reins. The Texas drawl, reminiscent of Boone Jordan’s, soothed nerves strung to the breaking point after hours of hiding from irate locals pursuing the marauding irregulars, a mail carrier, a doctor in a buggy, a Yankee patrol, a peddler with pots and pans clanging together on the canvas walls of his cart, and two Union Army freight wagons. But all that lonely, stealthy riding was behind him. He’d found General Morgan’s raiders!

“What’s the password?”

At close range, the road was darker than the back side of a fastened belt. Ty could not spot the sentry stationed in a copse of oak trees. Ahead, a mile up the road, he made out what seemed a thousand flickering campfires. It was the smell of wood smoke on the evening breeze that had kept him riding after sunset.

“Whoever you are, you best speak up. I’m short on patience.”

What to say?

Ty tried a few responses in his head before he remembered Boone Jordan’s instructions. “My name is Ty Mattson. I’m Owen Mattson’s son. He’s assigned to General Morgan’s staff. I’m here to join him and fight the Yankees.”

The hidden sentry snorted and laughed deep in the belly. “By damned, that’s a new one, huh, Frank? What do you think we should do with him?”

Frank stepped from the trees. “Forget that he don’t know the password, Harvey. He isn’t dressed like no Yankee spy. He’s outfitted like you and those hotheaded Texas braggarts in Gano’s Brigade. Any which ways, we don’t want to chance upsetting Captain Mattson. Let’s escort him to Lieutenant Shannon.”

“I’ll take that pistol, Mr. Ty Mattson,” Harvey said.

Ty chanced angering the sentries. “I’d prefer to keep it. Father trained me never to hand over my weapon, no matter the circumstance,” he lied. “He’d have my hide.”

“Brassy young sprout, isn’t he?” Harvey said.

“Yep, but that clinches it for me,” Frank said. “That’s what Captain Mattson preaches when he drills us. Step down, Mr. Ty Mattson. You can bring your horse. You don’t mind, we’ll amble along behind you. Walsh and Parsons, you stay put. Harvey and I will risk a tongue-lashing for not disarming him. If you’ve lied to us, sprout, this-here rifle barrel of mine is going to raise a tall knot behind your ear. You’ll hear bells for a coon’s age. You first, Mr. Ty Mattson.”

When they reached the fringe of Morgan’s camp, the sentry named Frank took the lead. They wound through countless fires, their passage attracting little attention.

Ty studied each mess as they went by. Unlike the spanking blue-belly uniforms with shiny brass buttons he had observed in Elizabethtown, the most common uniform for General Morgan’s troopers was a nondescript grimy gray. Here and there, an occasional mess was outfitted in spotless white linen, showing much wear, or blue homespun.

He saw troopers in ankle-length dusters, frock coats favored by gentlemen, and short jackets. A greater number had no coat whatsoever. Wide-brimmed hats, like his own, slouch hats worn by farmers and field hands, a few derbies, even a stovepipe hat, like that worn by President Lincoln in a newspaper picture, comprised the headgear of the dining companies. Weaponry of different calibers and loads ranged from pistols and rifled muskets to shotguns. Though they were mounted cavalry, few troopers possessed swords.

Whatever similarities these troopers shared with the motley irregulars he’d encountered were negated by the cohesion of the messes and their adherence to a higher authority. He was in the midst of an organized army with a shared allegiance to a particular flag, not an undisciplined cadre of thieves and murderers.

Beautifully proportioned Thoroughbreds and saddle horses of different breeds grazed in the Garnettsville meadows, with a few grass-fed work animals wide as barn doors. Ty grinned. Obviously, Morgan’s fast-moving riders couldn’t always be choosy. If you could saddle it, you best ride it or risk being left behind.

The ages of the supposedly seasoned cavalrymen fascinated Ty the most. While officers tended to be older, into their late twenties and thirties, the bulk of the troopers weren’t much older than he was. A few actually appeared younger. Learning that, he felt a little less out of place. He’d been afraid he would be the youngest pup in a pack of old wolves.

The smell of roasting meat and pole bread had Ty’s stomach growling. He’d polished off the cold chicken and hardtack biscuits provided by Boone Jordan that morning, devouring a four-day supply in two. It was a mistake he wouldn’t repeat, for he was in no position to beg for food and didn’t know when he would eat next.

Ty’s destination was the largest house on Garnettsville’s single main street. Troopers jammed the porch and front yard of the Rainer home, a white-painted, two-story frame dwelling. Moving bodies passed each other behind parlor windows. Mounted messengers came and went in rapid succession. Ty figured he was approaching General Morgan’s temporary headquarters. Nothing else would account for such frenzied activity.

Five Morgan troopers were seated around the fire in the woodlot on the right side of the house. Sentry Frank announced himself and a trooper on the near side of the crackling fire stood in response. “State your business, Sergeant Lockhart.”

“Lieutenant Shannon, I’m fetching a squirt we captured on the south road, sir.”

At first, Lieutenant Shannon was a shadow against the light of the flames. When he came forward, Ty made him out by moonlight and the yellow glow spilling from the windows of General Morgan’s temporary headquarters. The bareheaded lieutenant was broad-shouldered, with wavy black hair and midnight eyes. His Texas garb and scorched face bespoke a horseman who had spent considerable years where the blazing sun threatened to burn holes in the ground. Huge LeMat revolvers adorned both his hips. Those pistols, the intense midnight eyes, and the slight swagger in the lieutenant’s stride convinced Ty that he was about to be confronted by a dangerous, no-nonsense soldier capable of swift, forceful action.

Without so much as a nod in Ty’s direction, Lieutenant Shannon said, “Sergeant Lockhart, this captive is a stranger in our camp and he’s armed. Please explain your violation of brigade regulations.”

Questioning his own wisdom, Sergeant Lockhart shuffled his feet. “Sir, he’s no Yankee. He’s dressed like you. He says he’s Ty Mattson, Captain Mattson’s son. He told us Captain Mattson trained him not to surrender his weapon or he’d be punished. That’s the same thing the captain pounds into us at drill. Sorry, sir, but I believed him.”

“We’ll discuss this matter at length later this evening, Sergeant, and determine if punishment is warranted. You may return to your post.”

Lieutenant Shannon finally acknowledged Ty’s presence. He minced no words. “Sprout, the question is what to do with you. Maybe you’re Captain Mattson’s son and maybe you’re not. He’s never mentioned a son, which seems mighty strange, if you ask me. The captain is not in camp to vouch for you. He’s at Brandenburg with Tenth Kentucky, securing boats for our. . .