War Valley

Book 1: Hank Gannon Western

by Lancaster Hill

Genres: Westerns

Synopsis

In this powerful series, a Confederate veteran heads west to start a new life—and gets caught in the middle of a new kind of war . . .

Hank Gannon grew up on a Florida plantation. He fought alongside his brothers-in-arms in the Civil War. Then he joined the Texas Special Police to help build a more peaceful union—and a future for his beloved Constance. That was the plan. But when a prisoner dies in his custody, Gannon is forced to leave Austin and head into Comanche territory. Alone but undaunted, he meets up with Roving Wolf— who has just slain a former soldier from his unit. Gannon can't let the killing go unpunished. Even here, in this Godforsaken valley, the law must be upheld . . .

On the one side is a bloodthirsty war party of Indians, heading for the white man's capital. On the other side is a makeshift army of Texas Special Police and the Texas State Guard, ready to meet the threat head-on. In the middle are Hank Gannon and Roving Wolf, waging their own blood feud. Two men trapped in a war. Fighting to survive their mutual hate. Killing to get out alive . . .

Release date: February 26, 2019

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 352

Sample

September 17, 1871

“But the governor! The law!”

The bony black man who had invoked His Excellency Edward J. Davis—who was a Southern-born Union officer, a Reconstructionist, and a traitor without honor as far as the officer on horseback was concerned—the bony man, in a crawling position on the ground, was sweating hard and hot into the dry dirt. Each panted breath shook his thin, filmy cheeks and heaved more perspiration to the ground. Unimpressed with the man’s discomfort, the noon sun sizzled it away as fast as it fell.

The long-fingered, almost delicate black hands pushed from the dirt. The bony man was now on his thirty-five-year-old knees facing the ground, one of those knees bloody and still resting on the stone that had ripped the flesh. The sting was bad, but not as bad as the throbbing in his left temple where it had struck the ground, hard, when the black mustang ran him down. His lengthy, cracked fingernails were caked with dirt, having been dug into the earth like a buzzard on a mule rib. His oversized ears listened for the restless clop of a hoof or an impatient whinny—or, more important, the hammer of the. 44 Remington being lowered. His brown eyes dashed left and right in search of a shadow, a man, some part of the Texas Special Police officer he could personally turn toward and implore to let him go. He didn’t even know which lawman it was, though it was certainly not a black man. Even a black man in a uniform would not have the iron in his voice that this man had.

“Get up, dammit.”

“But the governor!” the bony man said again, desperately, his voice a little softer now. There was only so much speech he could force across his dry, limp tongue.

“The governor,” said the flat voice from somewhere behind him. It was a voice that fell hard from a granite jaw covered with overnight stubble. It was the voice of a man who had suffered loss, lacked both the spunk and compassion of a greenhorn, did not impress easily. “Mr. Davis says that you freed slaves got the same rights as a white man. I no longer got a quarrel with that. But those rights do not include murder.”

“Wasn’t murder!” the man screamed, though it was more of a rasp. He had not had any water since the day before, and the autumn sun was still baking-hot. “The man . . . he . . . I asked him. I gave him a chance to surrender!”

“To you,” the other said. “Not to the police.”

“There was no police there,” the black man replied. “Alls I wanted was him to admit that he was Jack Summerlee.”

“To you,” the rider repeated. “Surrender to you like he was some slob in a barroom dispute because he had a limp like the man who sold your wife and baby son before the war—which I remind you was legal, then, in Louisiana. And when he didn’t do that, you stabbed him.”

“He was leavin’ and he was that man,” the other replied, sobbing now. “He was. I was makin’ a citizen’s arrest.”

“Where’d you hear o’ that?”

“We was told by agents of the United States government that such is our right,” the man replied. “We got schooled on our new rights.”

“I’d say you carried them too far,” the rider said. “I’d also say you got mighty amazin’ eyes. It was dusk. Dark enough so you’d already put away your chalk, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“All right. Now let’s—”

“I seen him well enough,” the black man continued to protest without moving. “I felt his evil.”

The black man flinched as the horse stomped the ground impatiently. It hadn’t had any water either.

“Widow says you were wrong,” the voice replied calmly. He would give reason a little more time. Just a little.

“She wasn’t there back then,” the black man said. “She was inside with the house slaves. She don’t know.”

The rider said, “Fact is, no one knows anything except that you killed an unarmed man. Now I been plenty patient with you, but that’s at an end. Get up.”

The man on the ground was Sketch Lively, a name he was given because he had an art for caricature with chalk or charcoal. The voice of the rider belonged to Henry Wilson “Hank” Gannon, and he had no patience for debate, political or otherwise. He was one of the few white men paid to track alongside the Tonkawa and Tejanos who were also members of the Texas Special Police. He was not paid to trade street-corner law with a street-corner artist. This had already taken longer than he had expected and he was not especially sympathetic. During the War, where he had refined his natural skill for tracking, Gannon’s Confederate unit, the Pensacola Guards of the 1st Infantry Unit, had encountered many runaway blacks. They were arrested and sent back with Collection men whose job it was to fill their wagons with escaped slaves. During that time, Gannon had heard every story and every variation of every story, including this one. “I’m looking for my family.”—“I want to join the Union army.” Even, “I’m lookin’ for my missin’ master.” He was willing to bet that Sketch Lively, having heard about Mr. Lincoln’s proclamation, simply decided to take off. Perhaps Sketch had gotten close to the Summerlee children, drawing pictures for them, which enabled him to gain the master’s trust and flee. Or maybe he was mad with grief, losing his family. That was common, too.

Regardless, at some point, for some reason, he had escaped from Jack Summerlee. Sketch knew how to stay upwind, how to run on his toes to reduce his footprint, how to leave shreds of clothing stuck to tumbleweeds that would blow here, there, and every which way but right. Gannon had seen it all during this pursuit. Gannon was also willing to bet that Sketch had even risked planting his foot near a coiled rattler just so his pursuer would come and investigate the footprint and possibly get bit. Gannon didn’t blame him. He actually admired the man’s fevered thinking. But the flight was over now and he was going back.

The black man had remained on his knees, as if in prayer. “Legal, sir,” he said, thinking back to the rider’s earlier comment. “Legal don’t make somethin’ right.”

“You can say that at your trial,” Gannon pointed out with a kind of monotone finality, like a dropped rock. “Get up.”

The black man seemed to be wrestling with too many things at once. His seemingly hopeless situation, his fate, his anger,

Since Gannon had joined the new Texas Special Police ten months before, he had seen the man work, drawing for pennies on an Austin street corner, for stagecoach passengers. He drew on scavenged planks of wood, of which there were many as old shacks were torn down to make way for a new Austin, and railroad construction got underway in earnest. Gannon had also seen Sketch earn money for races with other freed blacks. He usually won. At night, he helped drunks home from the saloon—for a fee. There was no end to the man’s inventiveness when it came to separating visitors from their money. He slept, with other blacks, at the hotel Governor Davis had established for them with state funds. It rankled some that poor whites, mostly veterans, did not have such a place, nor could they stay at the Negro facility. Reconstruction was angering to many that way.

Gannon had not been there the night before when the man from Louisiana and his wife, coming from supper, paused on their way back to the hotel and asked Sketch to create a portrait of the missus. What the gentleman got was a dispute that ended with a knife in his throat, his blood pouring onto unvarnished wood, painting a portrait of death. At the time, Gannon had finished with a late-afternoon poker game at the saloon and was walking with his fiancée, Constance Breen. Constance was the nineteen-year-old schoolteacher who had just gotten home from tutoring a young pupil about the geology of his home state. The boy seemed to be reading his words backward. She and Gannon were puzzling over that, discussing it as a way of awkwardly avoiding their future plans as husband and wife, on which Gannon lacked clarity—though not conviction. They had talked more about where they wanted to be, San Francisco, than about the nuptials that must necessarily come before then. They had seen pictures in one of the school’s new books, and it excited the imaginations of them both.

That was when Sgt. Richard Calvin found them. The big man was on foot, having known just where the officer would be. A Union marksman during the Civil War, Calvin got directly to the point in everything he did. There was a cursory “Pardon, miss” and a tip of the hat to Constance, and then the sergeant addressed Gannon. He briefed him on what had happened and what needed to be done. Because Gannon had been a nighttime tracker during that conflagration, Captain Keel wanted him to go find Sketch Lively.

“Why not Whitestraw?” Gannon had asked, referring to the unit’s Tonkawa scout. “He likes an adventure, especially if he can use his gun. Or Hernando Garcia? He’ll do anything to be on horseback—”

“The dead man had status, Reb,” Calvin had said, needling him about his wartime status. The sergeant would not have done that if he hadn’t respected the man.

“Dead man?” Constance had said, Calvin having been talking to Gannon privately, quietly, until then.

“No one local, miss,” Calvin had assured her. “Old slave feud.”

Gannon immediately understood the politics of it. One did not send an Indian in a matter that had political or economic weight. A great many influential whites already felt disenfranchised by Reconstruction. The police had to give the appearance of sending an advocate for the race.

Gannon had turned to Constance, but she hushed him.

“You will call on me after church tomorrow?” she asked.

“Before your mother’s first apple pie is cold,” Gannon had vowed over his shoulder as he fell in beside Calvin.

Gannon was already going to be late. The pies that she sold from a table outside the Breen home, after church, would already be coming from the oven. He shouldn’t have wasted time arguing with Sketch; he should’ve just roped him and rode him back. If he refused to go, there was a rigid canvas sled, modified from the two-horse litter used during the War, that would be angled down from a harness and dragged behind. It was modeled after the native travois, which was typically pulled by horses or dogs.

“Y’know, Sketch, I am not a heartless soul,” the rider said, trying a different tack, the way Captain Keel had taught in one of his manhunting talks. “But answer me—how many months did I watch you out there, playin’ around when you could’ve been searchin’ for this family? You hurt so much, why weren’t you lookin’?”

“I was savin’ money,” the exasperated man replied. “Checkin’ slave registries—that costs. Bein’ free don’t mean anythin’ else is free.”

“I’m sorry,” Gannon said sincerely.

The black man’s shoulders heaved up and down. “I didn’t get free to hang! I had a right to do what I did! Law says all ’bout res’tution. I heard others say it.”

“You heard wrong, or it was said wrong,” the man told him. “Restitution does not mean an eye for an eye. It means things get fixed over time, without stabbing, shooting, burning, or lynching.”

“This wouldn’ta been ‘fixed.’ He was still wealthy and white.”

“I was, too, once. Wealthy. Lost it in Lincoln’s war,” the voice said. “Guilt is not for an assassin to say. It’s for a jury.”

“A jury.” The black man exhaled a bitter laugh. “A white jury. White men to avenge a white Southern gentleman. In Texas. Justice ain’t never fixed. You can’t understand. I’m just wastin’ breath.”

“And wastin’ time,” the rider pointed out, having exhausted his talent for conversation. “Look, if you get up now you can come back with dignity. No ropes. If I have to come down, you’ll be comin’ back in a sled, either unconscious and hogtied or dead.”

The black man stayed very still, despite the sun burning on his bare neck and arms, which is from where the torn fabric had come.

“Don’t let’s make this grow ugly,” Gannon said. “Get up, come back with me, and tell your story in a court of law.”

The man shook his head vigorously, perspiration flying. “I am free, ya hear?”

“Best get on your feet,” Gannon said sternly. “That’s about all you’re free to do right now. That and sweat.”

Without lowering his gun, Gannon turned to his left and reached for his coiled lariat. He hadn’t wanted this to get ugly but Sketch was not keen to cooperate.

“Last time I’m askin’,” the police officer warned him. “Don’t make me treat you like a runaway. That profanes us both, and on God’s holy day.”

The man on the ground had continued to shake his head. He did that defiantly right up until the moment he pulled his fingernails from the dirt, pushed off from that dirt with his palms, and bolted. He ran with his arms pumping so hard, harder than Gannon had ever seen, that he nearly stumbled forward on the level ground, saving himself with long-legged strides as the ragged sleeves of his once-white shirt fluttered like wings providing lift.

Gannon swore and spurred the mustang forward at a slow gallop. He quickly came alongside Sketch Lively, who suddenly screamed a sound that rose from somewhere down around his knees. The black man simultaneously stopped hard and turned on the horse, still crying to the heavens. Grabbing the reins, he tried to clamber up the side of the animal. The mustang reared and Gannon held his seat but Sketch jerked up and down, shook and pulled at the leather as though he were trying to drag horse and rider to the ground.

It was right after Gannon holstered the Remington, freeing both hands to try and steady the horse, that Sketch lost his footing. The bony black man dropped on his back with an audible blast of breath, and the horse came down on his chest with both forelegs. The pop of his sternum and ribs was like a thunder crack. The black man seemed to fold in half above the waist, and his dying breath fanned blood a foot in the air. The spray caused the horse to whirl, Gannon working hard to steady him so he could dismount. It took the better part of a half-minute for the officer to regain control.

His lips pressed tightly together, the broad-shouldered six-footer managed to get his polished boots on the ground. Holding the reins in his strong right hand, he coaxed the horse forward just enough so that he could drop to a knee beside Sketch Lively.

The black man’s chest was caved in and he had drowned in his own blood; a professional gambler wouldn’t bet on which killed him. Sketch lay staring, unblinking, into the overhead sun. Gannon searched for the knife but did not find it. The fingertips of the man’s right hand were an incongruous, layered mix of chalk, dried blood from his victim, and dusty earth. The reflected light from Gannon’s badge played across the dead man’s chest. The white shirt briefly bore the marks of the horse’s hoofs, but a growing bloodstain swiftly covered them.

Flies wasted no time gathering. Gannon, removing his white hat and positioning himself so the skittish horse couldn’t see the sudden movement, shooed them away.

“Dammit, you!” he said to the corpse. His voice was still flat, emotionless, but the tension in his mouth was anger. Sketch Lively was going to die, a jury would have seen to that. The trial would have been used to bring out past injustices and free up money to reunite families. But he had killed in cold blood, and he would have died. Nonetheless, this accident was going to take some explaining. And the two active participants, the corpse and the mustang, couldn’t talk. Gannon could not begin to consider how Captain Keel would react. It was not entirely possible to be a good leader, a fair man, and a political adept—but there were times the officer managed all three.

Gannon didn’t have a blanket or anything else to wrap the body in. He didn’t think the horse would be too happy having the bony man slapped on his back, still dripping blood and smelling like carrion. The officer looked around. He was on a scrubby plain, but there were a few struggling ash trees here and there. Nothing out here grew like it did in his native Florida, the land that had given him his perpetual ruddy complexion and light, sun-bleached brown hair. There were times, like now, when he missed the land of his birth. He used to ride for days in the lush hills between the Apalachicola and Suwannee Rivers. He would stop, for fun and relaxation, in the capital city of Tallahassee within this farming belt. He would also talk to the planters, who spoke with one voice for the Deep South—farmers who were unified by common trade and also by marriage, plantation to plantation, trade to related trade such as farmers to merchants, merchants to seamen or railroaders. He would see the slaves at work as he rode, most of them in either the cotton or tobacco fields of Middle Florida. It was a state where Mr. Lincoln wasn’t even on the ballot in 1860. Southern Democrat John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky carried the state by a significant margin.

Gannon was not a political man then, and he was not a political man now. He cared little for those who governed; no land in which he had ever lived or worked or fought bore more than just temporary scars from its leaders. His grandfather Peter used to say that when it is time for institutions to fall, they fall on their own. Gannon was not convinced that the end of slavery required the ghastly spilling of blood he had seen. It would have been replaced soon enough by the age of machines that was coming. He had already seen pictures of horse-drawn reaping devices in magazines. Unlike slaves, they did not require food, clothing, shelter, or doctoring.

And how can one spot on a map, on the border between North and South, know what is best for the growing nation? he thought. Tallahassee and Austin know better than Washington what is right for Florida and Texas.

But Gannon was not the President or a member of Congress, nor did he want to be. And Texas was not Florida. Not worse, not better, but with very different needs and benefits. Defoliating any of these trees would set the state back in terms of soil erosion, wildlife, and just looking like something other than future desert. There were even rules about that in the Texas Special Police handbook. But he had no choice.

Walking the horse to a twelve-footer and tying him to the trunk, Gannon used strong fingers to wrench off three low limbs that he used to fashion a hurdle. With rope for a towline, he attached it to the saddle, placed Sketch Lively on top of it, and rode the eleven or so miles back to town.

Austin was preparing for church on this bright and serene Sunday morning. The citizenry had not been happy about the murder in their streets the night before. Austin was civilized, now. Threats from Mexico, from Comanche, and even from the venerated Sam Houston—the capital being his namesake city—were largely in the past. Not just cowboys and ranchers were out at night but, increasingly, families. They mingled with an increasing population of freed blacks and workers from Mexico. The growing city had gone from its pre-war adolescence of wooden wagon sheds, saloons, and makeshift everything else to a city of masonry and brick. The capital was solid and manicured and pointing the way not just for the state but for the restored Union.

But Austin was even more unhappy, on the Sabbath, to see the makeshift cortege come darkly into town, a somber horse and rider with a litter pulled behind. To the few Irish residents, who crossed themselves at the sight, it was like the arrival of the Cóiste Bower, the death coach, of the home land. If it had been the local undertaker approaching, that might have had an appropriately funereal, religious feel. This was just the dead.

There were others who were unhappier still to see a dead black man being dragged behind a horse. Only the young, eastern-educated editor of the Daily State Journal did not seem disturbed. It was not the kind of newspaper front page coveted by either Governor Davis or his agents, which was just the kind Vance Vale liked to run. It guaranteed him access to men in power, and that assured a report that would be sold throughout the nation.

But most unhappy of all was the commander of the Texas Special Police, whose function was to augment local law enforcement throughout the state. The police served at the pleasure of Governor Davis, who mandated that they pay particular and very careful attention to racially based crime. There were pamphlets in the commander’s office that the men were compelled to read, and seminars he personally conducted, instructing the men how to deal with violent or indigent former slaves, desperate and bitter orphans, and those who were slow of speech or unable to read. Many blacks were physically disabled by their years in bondage: backs crooked, leg muscles damaged or cut to prevent escape, broken limbs improperly healed.

Captain Amos Keel was a one-eyed Civil War legend who had shifted from fighting the North to fighting Comanche. He was the one and only choice of Governor Davis to head this outpost, one of the few who had the temperament to run an outfit consisting of men like Sgt. Calvin who were former enemies. He was wise enough to have a suggestion box for anonymous ideas pertaining to the smoother running of his operation. His men liked and respected him. Citizens admired him. Children cried when he showed them his glaring glass eye. They cried harder when he took it out. He had his own pew at church, which he visited most Sundays when duty did not take precedence. His spinster sister Carol, with whom he lived, was very close with the wife of the governor. Keel was widely read, especially in the area of geology—which, he said, being in a vast state like Texas was useful knowledge to possess. Only a handful of Texas Special Police were stationed in the capital; when men were moved between outposts, or summoned to this one, it was good to know just what crossing a plain, desert, or foothills actually required in terms of supplies and time.

Keel was a big round man, a head taller than most, with a woolly moustache and a hand-rolled cigarette usually poking beneath it. He did not walk so much as orbit, like the moon, moving slowly and with stoic purpose, shedding light and guidance on dark circumstances. That was how he appeared now, . . .