The Dark Land Read online

  She scrubbed and cleaned and dusted and cried and beat her fists against the walls. When her daddy and Cal came back, there was no trace of the men who had violated her and she managed to smile and stay awake a while longer, for she had not slept through a night since the men had come, but sat with the scattergun on her lap, hoping they would come, hoping they would walk through the door just one more time.

  The only name she could remember was “Abe,” but the other two were there, just beyond her reach, somewhere on the edges of her mind, all jumbled and incomprehensible. But she knew she would remember their names if she ever heard them uttered again.

  “Miss Hollie. Time to go.”

  Gideon’s voice snapped her out of her horrible reverie and she had stopped trembling.

  “Coming,” she called out, and jerked away from the wall and pulled on the reins of her horse. She walked back out into the sunlight and the soldiers were standing there, watching, as Brad and the others mounted up.

  “Ready?” Brad asked her, and she noticed he did not look into her eyes.

  “I’m ready,” she said and climbed up into the saddle.

  She looked at the soldiers one last time as Brad led them out from that place called Little Thicket, and she did not recognize any of their faces. They were all too young and stood too straight.

  No, these were not the men who had come in the night so long ago, but they wore the same uniforms, and the memory returned. Hollie shuddered and gritted her teeth as she clapped her spurs to her horse’s flanks, mercifully feeling the horse roll beneath her and fall into a trotting gait that would carry her away from the soldiers staring at her, she knew, but not the ones she wanted to kill.

  21

  * * *

  BRAD SWORE UNDER his breath when he saw the body. He was the first to see it, as he had ordered the others to stay back while he rode up to the camp. This was a place he knew well, and he was irritated that Thorne knew about it, too.

  He raised his arm and beckoned for the others to come in. The tracks from Hogg’s Wells told some of the story, and here, in this abandoned encampment, he saw where they had kept the horses, where they had slept and cooked and eaten. He saw what was left of a roasted steer, mostly skeleton, but with a few pieces of meat still clinging to the bones.

  When he had ridden up, a dozen turkey buzzards had taken flight, padding away from the spitted carcass with ungainly legs like aged and desecrated eagles, some with strips of meat still dangling from their beaks. And now they filled the sky, seeking the air currents that would allow them to circle their interrupted meal with the least effort.

  Randy was the first to join Brad and his mouth dropped open in surprise.

  “Grimley?” Brad asked.

  “That’s him.”

  “Certain?”

  “No mistake, Major. I’d know that blubber belly anywhere.”

  Brad pointed to the log. “I figure he was sitting there, maybe gobbling down food, when someone came up to him and put a pistol to his forehead. The buzzards have pretty well picked up all his brains, but there’s a chunk lying there from the back of his head.”

  “Looks like a piece of coconut shell.”

  “A .44 will do that to a man,” Brad said.

  “Christ.”

  Gid and Paco rode up, followed by Lou. Finally, Hollie arrived, but Brad waved her back.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Dead man,” Randy said. “The carpetbagger that was riding with Thorne.”

  “I want to see him,” Hollie said.

  “It’s not pretty, ma’am. He’s lyin’ faceup in that shallow creek, his eyes picked out by the buzzards and half his head blown away.”

  “I want to see him,” she said, a stubborn undertone to her words.

  “Let her,” Brad said. “If she gets sick, too damned bad.”

  Hollie wrestled Bessie up to the creek bank and looked at Grimley’s corpse. She gasped and put a fist to her mouth as if to stem the flood of bile that threatened to rise up in her throat.

  “Murdered,” she said.

  “In cold blood,” Brad said.

  “What do you make of it?” Lou asked. “Thorne killin’ him like that.”

  Brad turned his horse away from the creek and started studying the tracks. “Thorne doesn’t need Grimley any more, I reckon. He was just baggage. Look at all these tracks. More than a dozen men were waiting here for him. And they left in a hurry. Heading south.”

  “Where are they going?” Gid asked.

  Brad didn’t answer right away. Instead, he began to mull over in his mind just where Thorne might be headed. The ranches in that region were large, encompassing thousands of acres. Thorne would not be so foolish as to visit, or try to take over, such spreads as the King or Falfurrias, nor any of the other huge estancias to the south and west. And if he headed east, he would run into heavily traveled roads, many patrolled by Union troops and Texas Rangers.

  No, there was only one place Thorne could be headed, and it was so bold and unexpected that Brad began to discern Thorne’s reason for returning to the Rio Grande, and not only to the big river, but to a specific place for a specific purpose.

  But as Brad brought reason and logic to bear, he realized that the only place Thorne could go and be certain that he could make a stand, or accomplish his purposes, would be that place of death that marked the last battle of the Civil War—Palmito Hill. There would be no Union troops there. There would be no army to fight. There would only be desolation and the emptiness of deserted places, a blood-soaked region that held bad memories for Yankees and Confederates alike.

  “Lou, remember when we had that truce with the North?” Brad asked.

  “Yeah. I remember it didn’t last long.”

  “About two months, I think.”

  “Then that damned Barrett let loose his pack of black dogs.”

  “Yep, good old Colonel Theodore H. Barrett of the 62nd Infantry.”

  “That was a Negro outfit,” Gid said. “And we thought they were going to stay put in Brazos de Santiago.”

  “I got the full story from Ford when I last saw him,” Brad said. “After he disbanded the cavalry under his command. Barrett had a full regiment and he was a glory hound, a politically appointed rascal who wanted to make a name for himself on the front lines.”

  “The Union had a lot of those boys,” Randy said.

  “Besides the Negroes in his regiment, Barrett had the 34th Indiana, the Morton Rifles, and some Texas cavalry commanded by Jack Haynes.”

  “He had a passel of artillery, too,” Gid said.

  “What you didn’t know was that Barrett asked General E. B. Brown for permission to rattle some muskets on our flanks just so he could get some notoriety before the war ended. Well, his request was denied and he was told to just hold his position on his own hills.”

  “You mean he disobeyed orders?” Randy asked.

  “Not only that,” Brad said, “but Lieutenant Colonel Branson of the 34th Indiana raised Cain and begged Barrett not to countermand division orders.”

  “Barrett wanted himself some glory,” Lou said. “That about right?”

  “If you remember,” Brad said, “Barrett ordered his Negro regiment to march on Palmito Hill at sunup. I’ll never forget the date.”

  “Me neither,” Gid said. “It was May 12th.”

  Lou and Randy both nodded. Hollie was hanging on every word.

  “We were in Brownsville, I remember,” Randy said. “Not that long ago.”

  “Yeah,” said Brad. “Giddings opened up on the Negroes with rifle fire and held them back, then about dusk of that day, Giddings sent a rider to Brownsville. Colonel Ford sent out a bunch of couriers all over the place to every man jack in the outfit. He was madder’n hell that Barrett broke the truce. Rip had blood in his eye that night.”

  “But didn’t General Slaughter want to turn tail and run?” Randy asked.

  “Slaughter thought it was over,” Brad said. “He figured Gidd
ings would be overrun and Barrett would swarm all over Brownsville and chop us to pieces. He ordered a general retreat. Rip couldn’t believe it until Slaughter confiscated a civilian wagon and started loading it with his personal stuff.”

  “I saw him doing it that night, while you were inside with Rip Ford,” Gid said. “I wondered what was going on.”

  “Rip was breathing fire by then,” Brad said. “He told John Slaughter he’d already sent out couriers to beat the brush to round up all the scattered units of the cavalry and that he wasn’t about to let Giddings down. Slaughter said, ‘I’m ordering you and my army to retreat, Rip, and you are bound to obey that order.’”

  “I’ll bet Rip didn’t like that much,” Lou said.

  “In fact,” Brad said, “Rip told the general, ‘You can go to hell if you wish. These are my men and I’m going to fight.’ ”

  Gid, Randy, and Lou laughed, then Paco and Hollie joined in. “Rip said that?” Gid asked.

  “He damned sure did,” Brad said.

  “And we saddled up at dawn,” Gid said.

  Lou shuddered visibly. “We rode straight for Palmito Hill.”

  “And we thumped the Yankees real good,” Randy said. “Never lost a man.”

  “Barrett’s artillery pieces went south, over the border,” Brad said. “A lot of them, anyway, and my guess is that Thorne knows where those cannon are. I heard talk right after the battle.”

  “Do you think Thorne is going after those artillery pieces?” Lou asked.

  “I sure as hell do,” Brad said.

  “And just what good will that do him?” Hollie asked.

  Brad looked at her as if she had suddenly appeared out of nowhere. Then his face darkened and his eyes narrowed to slits.

  “I think,” he said, “that Thorne will blow everything in his path to kingdom come. I think he means to kill every Negro landowner from the Rio Grande to the Nueces.”

  “Can we stop him?” Hollie asked.

  “We’ll have to ride like hell,” Brad said, “but we damned sure have to stop him or he’s liable to start the war up all over again.”

  Five minutes later, Brad’s small band was riding south to the Rio Grande. Their expressions were grim and the dust spooled up in their wake as they galloped toward a place that had already been drenched in blood, a place where the terrible war had ended; a place of death.

  22

  * * *

  THE FOG HAD rolled in from the Gulf of Mexico during the night, and it thickened just before dawn. Brad breathed a sigh of relief when Gid and Paco, sent ahead to scout Palmito Hill and the Rio Grande, rode up out of the curtain of brume to report.

  “We got here in time, Major,” Gid said. “We couldn’t see nothing, but we could hear men talking, horses splashing across the ford dragging two cannon.”

  “How do you know they have cannon?” Brad asked.

  “They was cussin’ them field pieces, Brad. Paco, he got off his horse and walked up on ’em. He saw two cannon.”

  “That right, Paco?”

  “I hear a man say two cannon were enough. One, he say, too much trouble to get more.”

  “Two probably are enough, with the number of men Thorne has,” Brad said. “We don’t have much time.”

  Gid cleared his throat. “Major, we don’t have no time at all.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I heard someone ride up after they got the cannon across the river and report to Thorne hisself.”

  “Thorne had scouts out,” Brad said. It was not a question.

  “Yeah, I reckon. This scout hollered his report across the river to Thorne, so’s I could hear him real good. He said we were six riders, one a woman, and called you by name.”

  “Did you recognize his voice?” Brad asked.

  “I’d recognize that voice anywhere,” Gid said. “It was Pete Jenkins, sure as shootin’.”

  “Pete was one of those who deserted and joined up with Vidal,” Brad said.

  “That’s him. Damned traitor.”

  “He gave us fits, because he knew so much about the Cavalry of the West.”

  “I remember,” Gid said.

  “So he’s with Thorne. Probably been with him all along.”

  “I reckon.”

  “Well, we’re badly outnumbered,” Brad said. “But we’ve got to stop Thorne from using those cannon.”

  “We were outnumbered that morning when we rode against Barrett’s regiment,” Lou said.

  “Damned right,” Randy agreed. “Beggin’ your pardon, ma’am,” he said to Hollie.

  Brad remembered that day well. Rip Ford had been inspired; he had been superb. Barrett must have thought he had run right into a hornets’ nest when the cavalry swooped down on him out of the fog of gunsmoke that hung in the air and decimated his ranks.

  They rode to the sound of Giddings’s guns, southwest to Palmito Hill on the Palo Alto plain. It took three hours after they left Brownsville to come upon the fighting. Palmito Hill was ringed with white smoke that clung to the ground because of the heavy damp air.

  Giddings was pouring lead into Barrett’s advancing skirmish line. Ford’s scouts reported that the Indiana and Morton Rifles regiments had been sent into the inland brush by Barrett during the night. The men of these regiments were dog tired and Ford knew it. The humidity and the heat sapped the strength of many a foot soldier.

  Ford led his cavalry into a cluster of thick brush that arced the edge of the plain. He dispatched infantry to harass the Union troops on the other flank, while his borrowed French artillery opened up on Palmito Hill.

  Ford’s skittery horse pranced around as the colonel shouted: “Men, we have whipped the enemy in all previous fights. We can do it again.”

  The troops, heartened by this display of heart and determination, loosed a rousing cheer that promptly drew Union fire down on the men in the thicket. Ford yelled “Charge,” then led three hundred men straight into the Yankee flank. All the men in the cavalry yelled at the tops of their lungs. It was a chilling and a thrilling sound that could be heard for miles.

  Screaming and shrieking like Apache warriors, the horsemen smashed into Barrett’s skirmish line and broke it up. Yankees fled right and left, running for their lives. Brad and the others fired until their gun barrels were smoking hot, dropping the enemy until the ground was strewn with dead and wounded bluecoats.

  The Indiana troops and the Morton Rifles from New York were terrified and confused. Barrett ordered a general retreat, but it was too late. And in his own confused state, he apparently forgot to call in his picket line.

  Brad and the other cavalry troopers rode full bore into the Yankee lines and shot them to pieces. No less than three times during the seven-mile retreat toward Brazos de Santiago, Barrett tried to stop and fight, but Ford pressed him with his cavalry and brought along his horse artillery, which lobbed shells into the frightened and demoralized Yankees.

  Every time Barrett halted and tried to fight back, Ford and the cavalry rode around them and chopped them up while the horse artillery fired shells with maddening accuracy into the Union ranks.

  At dusk, Barrett’s rear guard was staggering with exhaustion and firing wildly with no certain targets in sight. The cavalry kept circling and shooting holes in the retreating army’s ranks as they reached the salt waters of Boca Chica.

  The Yankees waded across, splashing water like crippled ducks. The color sergeant of the 34th Indiana wrapped the regimental flag around his body and tried to swim to Brazos Island. Randy leveled his rifle at the man and shot him dead. Then Lou, Gid, and two other men rode out and picked up the sodden flag. The entire Confederate force cheered and Ford knew he had won the battle and defeated Barrett’s regiment without a single man killed.

  To everyone’s surprise, Slaughter, who had stayed behind in Brownsville, rode up and ordered Ford to continue to punish the enemy.

  “The battle’s over with, General. I’m not going to send my men to attack that island in the dark
. They’ll all give up and surrender at first light.”

  “Damn you, Rip,” Slaughter said, and then rode out to within three hundred miles of the island. Cursing and yelling, he drew his pistol and fired at the Yankees until his gun was empty.

  “He’s plumb crazy,” Lou said.

  “Poor bastard,” Randy added.

  Ford shook his head and walked away in disbelief.

  “What a hell of an end to a great battle,” Brad said.

  “What a waste of ammunition,” Ford said.

  Brad made his decision. He knew what to do, but he didn’t know if it would work.

  “Gather ’round and listen real careful,” he said.

  Paco, Hollie, Randy, and Lou crowded close to Brad and Gid.

  “Hollie, can you shoot from a horse?” Brad asked.

  “Some.”

  “When the horse is running?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Any advice?”

  “Aim low, and don’t shoot your horse,” Brad said.

  “Are we going to charge that bunch?” Gid asked.

  “I’m going to charge,” Brad said. “Just to pick off one or two. You’ll all wait for me to get back. Stay about ten yards apart. When they start to shoot back, we’re all going to ride back and forth, in and out, in two sections, shooting in to them.”

  “In this fog, we can’t see much,” Lou said.

  “Which might just give us an edge,” Brad said. “What we’ll do is ride in straight lines, so we don’t shoot each other. Back and forth, until I give the word to fall back. You’ll fire at the sound of their weapons. If you hear a cannon go off, pour lead right straight at the sound.”

  “Might work,” Randy said.

  “Keep your cartridges handy. Load fast, shoot fast.”

  “We’ll do ’er,” Lou said.

  “I am ready,” Paco said.

  “We’re all ready,” Lou said. “This waitin’s gettin’ to me.”

  “Load your rifles up, check your ammunition, and wait for me to get back,” Brad said.

  He jacked a shell into the chamber of his rifle and checked his pistols. Then he turned his horse and rode slowly toward Palmito Hill. The others murmured “good luck” to him and then were silent.