The Dark Land

by Jory Sherman

  “That’s a tall order, Phil.”

  “I know it is. Do you have any men you can attach to your outfit to help you carry out this thankless task?”

  “I don’t know. Two, three, maybe.”

  “Well, then that’s all you’ll have. I expect the Texas Rangers will be re-formed one day. Not right away, of course, but I’ll do all I can to see that happen. And what you do for me will certainly play into the bargaining when I sit down with the Texas government.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “You will draw a cash advance, separate from your back pay, from the paymaster at my post and henceforth, any funds you need will be provided by General Granger. Is that acceptable?”

  “This advance. Is it army pay?”

  “No, special pay for a special job. You’ll still get army pay beyond that. It will be more than adequate. You can draw any arms and ammunition you need and you can also draw expense money from Gordon when you need it. Do you know him?”

  “I’ve met him.”

  “I’ll send you a letter of introduction, but show it only to him and no other.”

  “I understand, Phil.”

  “By the way, don’t you want to know who heads up this bunch of scoundrels?”

  “I do.”

  “Can you guess?”

  “No, afraid not, Phil.”

  “He’s an old friend of yours. An old adversary, really.”

  Brad’s face drained of color.

  “Not . . . ?”

  “Abel Thorne.”

  Abel Thorne, Brad knew, had acquired a great deal of land by cheating Mexicans and Texans on a wholesale basis. He also knew that Abel’s father had been a slave runner with Jim Bowie and his brothers before the war, then became a slaveholder himself. Brad knew the man well, for it was he whom Brad suspected of using Comanches to further his own interests, giving them whiskey and guns to wipe out families whose land he then got illegally.

  “You know what happened to my family,” Brad said.

  “Yes. Comanches. Your wife and children. I’m sorry.”

  “I think Thorne was behind it.”

  “Then you have good reason to hunt him down, Brad.”

  Sheridan stuck out his hand. Brad took it.

  “Bring Thorne in,” Sheridan said.

  “Alive?”

  “Dead or alive. Clear?”

  “Clear, sir.”

  Brad started to salute, then turned away. He knew Phil was not going to offer him a drink and he didn’t want one anyway. He needed to get away by himself and think about what lay ahead. Thorne would not be easy to catch. He was as wild as any Comanche, and twice as ruthless.

  Brad left the room and walked out of the building, onto the street. He stood there for a long moment, musing over his conversation with General Sheridan.

  It was funny, he thought, how life had a way of chasing you in a circle. He had thought the war was over, but it was not. It had only taken a different turn. Maybe, he thought, this war would never end. To warriors like Sheridan and Ford, that was good news. But, to Brad, it meant that someday he might see a face on that shadow that kept following him.

  3

  * * *

  BRAD STOOD THERE, outside Sheridan’s Headquarters, listening to the sounds of Brownsville, wondering if he should put up for the night or ride out of town and spread his bedroll under the stars, away from people.

  “Major Chambers?”

  Brad turned at the sound of his name and saw a smartly dressed Union corporal standing next to him, holding a packet under his left arm.

  “I’m Chambers.”

  “Begging your pardon, sir, but the general forgot to give you this packet. He apologizes for his forgetfulness. Here are your orders, a letter to General Granger, some cash, and a voucher for a night’s billet in town, sir.”

  Brad took the packet. “I doubt if General Sheridan forgets anything, Corporal.” The corporal saluted and turned on his heel without waiting for Brad to return the courtesy.

  Brad walked over to stand under a lamp as he opened the packet. He read the orders quickly, pocketed the paper money, and turned to one of the sentries. At least he knew now why Phil hadn’t given him the packet in his office. Phil was ordering him to report to Granger immediately and come under his command. Sheridan must have known that Brad didn’t like Granger. He wondered now if he could have turned Phil down and decided, in light of the assignment, that this would have been stupid of him. He badly wanted to find the man responsible for the murder of his wife and daughter, and this afforded him the opportunity to hunt down Thorne legally and get paid for it. He was still owed back pay from the Confederacy, pay that he knew he would never receive.

  “Where’s the Rio Grande Hotel?” he asked.

  “Down the street and around the corner,” the sentry replied. Brad folded the voucher, then walked to his horse and untied it from the hitch ring. He walked to the hotel and saw that there was a stable nearby. He put up his horse and told the stable boy to grain and groom him. That, too, had been paid for by the U.S. Army.

  He checked into the hotel, threw his bedroll on the bed, and read his orders again, more carefully this time.

  “Granger,” he said to himself. “At least I won’t have to see him but this one time.”

  In the morning, he was on his way to Galveston to meet General Granger. He left before dawn to avoid the heat, and he tasted the tangy Gulf breezes, watched the seagulls wheel in the cloudless sky of morning after the fog had lifted.

  He thought of Sheridan’s letter to General Granger and got a bad taste in his mouth. He had met Granger, once, and had not liked the man. Now, he would be under his direct command. He wondered how Granger would take to that idea. Brad sensed that the general would not be a benign conqueror, that he would shoot any man he suspected of wrongdoing without benefit of a court-martial. But Brad would do anything to track down Abel Thorne, if he was the man responsible for sending the Comanches down on his family.

  Smoke in the air, its shadow on the ground like some ominous stain. The smell of burning wood. The wind making whispers in the grasses like lost voices trying to make him hear. Clear blue sky, not a cloud in sight.

  The knot in his gut kept tightening as he rode closer to the ruins of what had once been his home, and he rode into the shadow of the smoke and became part of it and the wind low along the ground, the smoke hanging there like some warning flag over the remains of the house, which stood like a scarred skeleton, roofless, only the chimney and the four pillars at its corners, like tall grave markers.

  The black loam of the earth muffled his horse’s hoofbeats, loam laced with sand, and the ground around the house scorched, the huisache grass singed and dying, the blades bent and twisted into grotesque shapes.

  Mary had the yellowest hair, like straw spun from gold and drenched in sunshot honey, and his gut tightened even more as he rode toward the barn, still standing, as if it had been spared to act as a landmark to the tragedy that had occurred here. Little Lucy, too, with that same kind of soft hair, and he could see his daughter’s eyes in that blue of the sky and around the fringes of the smoke shadow, the hazel tones of Mary’s eyes, and he felt his throat constrict as if it had been rubbed with sand and lye.

  He saw the furrows on the ground where they had dragged his wife and daughter. The tracks led to the barn and the big doors were gaping open like some obscene maw. Inside, he saw them both, their bodies torn and mutilated, almost beyond recognition. The plow horse and the two cows were gone. Lucy’s corpse lay before an open stall and Mary’s remains had been thrown over a sawhorse like a blanket. Both bodies were bristling with arrows as if they had been used for target practice by the young bucks.

  The arrows bore the markings of the Comanche tribe. Each had a drawing of a turtle to show they were owned by that warrior clan. The smell of death was thick. The Comanches had cut away the private parts of the two women and Mary’s breasts were carved from her chest, sliced off neatly so that
he knew she must have been dead when they did that to her. Lucy’s chest was smashed in and her ribs broken and splayed back. Her little heart was gone, cut out of the dark cavity as if plundered by some insane demon, bent on robbing her of her very soul.

  General Gordon Granger had arrived in Galveston on June 19, 1865, and announced, in the name of President Andrew Johnson, that Texas was now under the authority of the United States government and that all black slaves were thereby freed from their white masters.

  The Negroes proclaimed that day Emancipation Day and celebrated it thereafter as “Juneteenth,” in honor of their freedom.

  Granger further proclaimed that all acts and laws of the Confederacy were now null and void and he would brook no resistance from any quarter.

  Brad Chambers waited outside Granger’s office in Galveston, annoyed that he had to report to a man he thoroughly disliked. He did not then know that the feeling was mutual.

  If he could have heard what Granger was saying to his adjutant at that moment, Brad might have left without seeing the general, no matter what the consequences might be.

  “Farley, I don’t know what Phil was thinking about when he put together this mission.”

  Captain Ned Farley coughed, but said nothing. Granger was reading the orders for the fifth or sixth time that afternoon.

  “I hate Texas Rangers and Brad Chambers even more. Chambers is a disloyal lout who deserted the Union Army to join that renegade Rip Ford. I wouldn’t trust the man to hunt bunny rabbits at Easter.”

  “Yes, sir. Major Chambers is still waiting outside.”

  “I know, Farley, I know. Let him cool his heels out there. I met Chambers once and didn’t like him on the spot. He’s not military by any stretch of the imagination. He’s a damned cowboy, an arrogant Texian, and was probably a damned slaveholder before the war.”

  “I wouldn’t know, sir.”

  “If I had my say, Chambers would be charged and brought before a court-martial. And Ford would be shot on sight.”

  “Yes, sir. I understand, sir.”

  “Farley, you don’t understand a damned thing. You don’t know how deep my feelings go regarding the war and those damned rebels. President Johnson wants these scoundrels treated with courtesy and respect. But he wasn’t fighting in the war and he doesn’t know what we went through. Chambers represents everything about the South that I abhor. He’s disobedient, disloyal, and an opportunist.”

  “Sir,” Farley said, leaving off the affirmative.

  “Well, send Chambers in, and then I want you to tell Coy to come here after I’ve finished.”

  “Yes, sir, I’ll attend to it.”

  Farley opened the door and beckoned to Brad, who got up and walked toward him, carrying the packet in his left hand. Farley looked at the pistol hanging from Brad’s belt in a tooled leather holster, and then looked up at the man as he passed, startled at how tall Chambers was. “General Granger will see you now, Major.”

  Brad didn’t reply, but entered the room.

  “General Granger, I have a letter for you from General Sheridan.”

  “Let me have it, Chambers. Then you stand at attention while I look it over.”

  The general stood in front of his desk. He took the letter and scanned it quickly, then threw it behind him on the desk.

  “You’re not going to take up a lot of my time, Chambers, so I’ll get to the point. You are authorized to draw money from the paymaster, and supplies from the quartermaster. You have your orders. You are to act on behalf of the U.S. Army and bring in any prisoners you succeed in taking. You are to send regular reports to me and you are to report only to me, is that understood?”

  “Understood, sir.”

  “Frankly, I don’t expect much of you. These renegades who are raiding farms and ranches in the Rio Grande Valley are smart and they move fast. The only reason General Sheridan picked you is because you know the country and you apparently are acquainted with the leader of this band of scoundrels, Abel Thorne. I believe he is a friend of yours.”

  “No, sir, Thorne is not a friend of mine.”

  “But you know him.”

  “I know him as a horse thief and a Comanchero.”

  “What in hell’s a Comanchero?”

  “Sir, he’s a white who took up with the Comanches.”

  “Well, from what I’ve seen of this godforsaken state of Texas, we ought to give it back to the redskins.”

  Brad did not reply, but stood at attention. His nose itched, but he wasn’t going to give Granger the satisfaction of seeing him scratch it.

  “Well, you’d best get to your duties, Chambers. Let me give you fair warning, though.”

  “Sir?”

  “If you fail in your obligation to this command, or if you decide to desert and join the renegades, I’ll have you hunted down and shot on sight, without benefit of a court-martial. Understood?”

  “Perfectly, sir.”

  “Very well, then. Dismissed.”

  Brad saluted smartly. He waited for Granger to return the courtesy, but the general turned his back on Brad and walked to the window, gazing out at the small parade ground behind his office. Some men were marching, while others were performing close order drills. Brad left the room and asked the corporal on guard to direct him to the paymaster’s office.

  “First things first,” he said.

  “Beg your pardon?” the corporal asked.

  “Never mind. I’ll find it.”

  Brad left and saw two men leave the shadows of a barracks awning and walk briskly toward headquarters. He made note of both their faces, but knew he had never seen either before. One was a corporal, the other a lieutenant. The lieutenant was the one who made eye contact with Brad and his gaze never wavered until they had passed several yards apart.

  Brad made note of that brief exchange, too.

  A few moments later, he stopped and scratched his head. That lieutenant, he thought. There was something familiar about him. But, try as he might, he could not place the man’s face just then. Yet Brad knew he had seen him somewhere before, under different circumstances.

  “It’ll come to me,” he said to himself, and continued walking toward the paymaster’s office in one of the clapboard buildings that made up Granger’s post.

  Just before he walked inside, he stopped again, struck with a sudden thought and a nagging premonition.

  “And I’ll bet I see that shavetail again,” he said, half aloud. “Damn Granger anyway.”

  4

  * * *

  GENERAL GRANGER LIT his pipe as the door opened.

  Lieutenant Jared Coy entered alone.

  “Did you see Chambers?” Granger asked.

  “Yes, sir, I saw him.”

  “Did he recognize you?”

  “No, sir, I do not think he did.”

  “Good. Then he doesn’t know you fought against Ford and Slaughter at Palmito Hill.”

  “He wasn’t one of those I chased across the Rio Grande, General.”

  “No, I don’t believe Chambers was chased anywhere by anyone.”

  “Sir, the captain didn’t tell me why you wanted to see me. Was it regarding Major Chambers?”

  “Sit down, Jared. Do you smoke?”

  “No, sir, not regular.”

  Coy sat in one of the chairs. Granger took another and moved it close to the lieutenant.

  “Nothing like a good pipe to calm a man down when his blood’s running hot.” Granger leaned forward in his chair. “Jared, I consider Major Chambers nothing more than an outlaw, a bounty hunter serving temporary duty in the United States Army. What are your feelings about him?”

  “Sir, I know he can ride a horse right well.”

  “Well, Phil Sheridan thinks Chambers is the man to stop those depredations by a man named Abel Thorne. I’m not so sure. I have an assignment for you, but first I want to know if you have any feelings about Chambers. I want to know if you still consider him your enemy, or if you think he has learned his lesson.�
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  “Sir,” Coy said, “I know Chambers to be a rebel and if we were at war, he would be my enemy.”

  “The Civil War may be over, Jared, but the fighting’s not done. Those rebels you chased into Mexico want to continue it by making either the French or the Mexicans into allies. I think Chambers bears no loyalty to the Union. I consider him a threat to the peace. How about you?”

  “Sir, if I could have chased him across the Rio, I would have. And if I had gotten him in my sights, I would have shot him dead.”

  “Well, that’s good enough. I don’t trust Chambers. I want you to track him. I want you to go where he goes, is that clear?”

  “Yes, sir. But . . .”

  “If Chambers steps out of line just once, you are to put a bullet in him. Understood?”

  “Consider it done,” Coy said, unable to mask his delight at the assignment.

  “Take along a squad of your best men, supply yourself for a month in the field.”

  “Yes, sir. I know just the men to take with me.”

  “I know you will do your duty, Jared. These are verbal orders only, so you must be discreet. I don’t want Phil Sheridan down on my back.”

  “I understand, General.”

  “You’d best get going, then. I have no idea where Chambers will go first, but my guess is he will probably go back to his ranch and recruit some of his rebel friends to help him go after Thorne.”

  “Yes, sir, I expect that’s what he’ll do. I have a good tracker who can follow a snail’s tracks on wet grass.”

  Granger smiled.

  “You’ll do, Jared. I’m counting on you to be my eyes and ears, and, perhaps, Chambers’s judge and jury.”

  Coy rose from his chair and nodded to the general.

  After Jared Coy left the room, Granger sat in his chair for several moments, puffing on his pipe.

  He hoped Chambers would slip up. And if Coy did what he was expected to do, he’d be wearing captain’s bars shortly after his return to the post.