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  WAR VALLEY

  A HANK GANNON WESTERN

  LANCASTER HILL

  PINNACLE BOOKS

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  PART ONE - Blood and Vengeance

  PROLOGUE

  PART TWO - Blood and War

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  PART THREE - Blood and Resurrection

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  EPILOGUE

  Teaser chapter

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PINNACLE BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2019 Jeff Rovin

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  PINNACLE BOOKS and the Pinnacle logo are Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  ISBN: 978-0-7860-4475-7

  Electronic edition: March 2019

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7860-4477-1

  ISBN-10: 0-7860-4477-2

  PART ONE

  Blood and Vengeance

  PROLOGUE

  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.