The Seekers

by F. M. Parker

  THE SEEKERS

  F. M. PARKER

  The time - Spring, 1862 and the deadly American Civil War raging.

  Levi Coffin, a Union sharpshooter in the Battle of Boatswain Swamp in Virginia, kills scores of Southern soldiers with his deadly Spencer rifle. Sickened with the death he had brought to other men, he ran from the killing fields, ran from the dark world of the war-torn eastern states to the broad open horizons of the West, and a place called California.

  Errin Scanlan, an English highwayman, escapes from the hellish prison on Van Diemens Land in Australia and arrives in San Francisco on the whaling ship Huntress. He plans to celebrate the freedom he had not known for years, celebrate the promise of a better life in a city where his dreams of vast wealth could be fulfilled.

  Celeste Beremendes, owner of a vast land holding in California, prepares for a chance to come face to face with the man who had killed her brother and plots to steal her land, a man she is determined to shoot down with her own hand.

  Brol Mattoon, the powerful ruler of the San Francisco waterfront where murder and robbery and extortion run rampant and violence and guns decided who wins, plots to destroy the dreams of all three.

  Levi, Errin and Celeste, three people so different and yet so much alike with their dreams of love and hopes for a new beginning, joined together. On the violent San Francisco waterfront and back alleys, their lives explode with passion and violence in a battle for revenge and survival.

  About the Author

  F. M. PARKER has worked as a sheepherder, lumberman, sailor, geologist, and as a manager of wild horses, buffalo, and livestock grazing. For several years he was the manager of five million acres of public domain land in eastern Oregon.

  His highly acclaimed novels include Skinner, Coldiron, The Searcher, Shadow of the Wolf, The Shanghaiers, The Highbinders, The Far Battleground, The Shadow Man, and The Slavers.

  Visit www.fearlparker.com for more details.

  “SUPERBLY WRITTEN AND DETAILED... PARKER BRINGS THE WEST TO LIFE.”

  Publishers Weekly

  “ABSORBING...SWIFTLY PACED, FILLED WITH ACTION!”

  Library Journal

  “PARKER ALWAYS PRESENTS A LIVELY, CLOSELY PLOTTED STORY.”

  Bookmarks

  “REFRESHING, COMBINES A GOOD STORY WITH FIRST-HAND KNOWLEDGE.”

  University of Arizona Library

  “RICH, REWARDING... DESERVES A WIDE GENERAL READERSHIP.”

  Booklist

  Also by F.M. Parker

  Novels

  The Highwayman

  Wife Stealer

  Winter Woman

  The Assassins

  Girl in Falling Snow

  ThePredators

  The Far Battleground

  Coldiron – Judge and Executioner

  Coldiron - Shadow of the Wolf

  Coldiron - The Shanghaiers

  Coldiron – Thunder of Cannon

  The Searcher

  The Seeker

  The Highbinders

  The Shadow Man

  The Slavers

  Nighthawk

  Skinner

  Soldiers of Conquest

  Screenplays

  Women for Zion

  Firefly Catcher

  Prologue

  The Making Of The Land

  One colossal continent, Pangaea, held all the land of the great planet that was Earth. A mighty, restless sea miles deep covered the remainder of the world.

  Composed of granite-like slag, Pangaea existed for many millions of years. This huge crustal plate was sixty miles thick and rested upon the basalt of the deeper mantle of the globe.

  The Earth was already immensely old, more than four billion years, when the one huge continent existed. It was not the first super continent to have coalesced upon the surface of the Earth, only the last.

  Two hundred million years ago the hot flows of the softened rock in the Earth’s mantle, fueled and stirred by the planet’s own internal heat, boiled upward with irresistible currents. Pangaea fractured and shattered into seven giant blocks and several smaller ones. The blocks drifted apart an inch or two each year upon the dense basalt of the ocean floor.

  The island continent of Australia moved south. The North American Plate that included half of the Atlantic Ocean, moved westward to collide with a section of the Pacific floor—a mass of the planet that extended to Japan and was rafting north. At the crushing contact of these two gigantic plates, the leading edge of the North American Plate was crumpled, broken, and thrust up in mighty mountain ranges. Broad, down-faulted block valleys were formed in between these ranges.

  From the hot center of the globe, mineral-rich fluids and gases were pumped into the passageways of the fractures and ruptures of the mountain rocks. As the emanations migrated upward away from the source, they found regions that were cooler and had less pressure. The minerals that could not remain in solution in the new environs differentiated and precipitated out into the fissures of the mountains. The atoms of metals began to settle out of the mineral solutions to rest along the crevices within the mountain.

  Time passed and billions more atoms of metal rose up from below to add their mass to the growing mineral deposit.

  Finally the passageways through the rocks closed and the mineral-rich fluids ceased to flow. Left resting within the mountain were stringers and pods of a glorious yellow metal.

  The mountains of the North American Plate cut crosswise the path of the prevailing storms that drove in from the west, forcing the moisture-laden winds to rise abruptly. The sky-brushing crown of the mountains, one day to be called the Sierra Nevada Mountains by a race of men, milked the clouds, wringing stupendous quantities of water from them to fall upon the land.

  The water rushed down from the rocky crags of the mountains and collected into rivulets, which grew into creeks that merged to form mighty rivers. The rivers hurried west carving wide channels across the broad valley bottoms. Near their mouth, the two streams joined their prodigious currents and charged off through a deep gorge to the ocean. For countless millennia, the ancient ancestor rivers of the Sacramento and San Juan cut and eroded the mountains. The common rocks were flushed away and the yellow metal they contained was concentrated into rich deposits in the gravels of the headwaters of the two rivers.

  As the Pacific Plate continued to drive north, the land near the ocean lowered. The salty brine of the sea flooded in to fill the valleys of the Sacramento and San Juan rivers for many miles up their courses. Several hills near the river were inundated until only their topmost crests poked above the water to form islands in the newly created bay.

  That is the way man found the land.

  He named the sunken, flooded river channels the San Francisco Bay. The deeply carved gorge leading to the sea between the peninsula headlands became the Golden Gate. The yellow metal he found in the gravels of the mountain streams, he called gold.

  Chapter 1

  Spring 1862

  Boatswains Swamp near Gaines Mill, Eastern Virginia.

  “The Goddamn Rebs are comin’,” Jimmy Hathaway said, his voice tight and shaky.

  “And a hell’uv a lot of them,” replied Levi Coffin. He heard the rattle of metal and the muttered voices of the Confederate soldiers making their way down the steep slope on the opposite side of Boatswains Swamp. He caught the glint of sunlight from a rifle barrel, or maybe it was a bayonet, in the trees and bushes growing densely on the far shore.

  Between the Rebels and the Union soldiers, the swamp was full of water from the recent rains. A few huge trees were scattered about, their black trunks rearing up out of the dead, unmoving water. The air held a thin, hazy mist stagnant and heavy with the odor of mud and rotting vegetation.

  Levi Coffin’s blue eyes narrowed as
he measured the distance to the far shore. One hundred and fifty yards at the most. An easy range to hit something as large as a man with a rifle bullet. He looked down to check the extra cartridge tubes loaded and placed ready to his hand. He would need them very soon. He gripped his rifle and waited. The muffled voices of other members of his platoon of soldiers reached him from a little distance away in the trees both to the left and right. The company of Union First U.S. Sharpshooters had arrived at Boatswains Swamp only minutes before. They barely had had time enough to throw up low barricades of fallen logs to shield themselves from the guns of the advancing Confederates.

  “Any minute now,” Jimmy said, lifting his rifle.

  Levi was watching a small brown bird that had sailed down through the limbs of the trees near the center of the swamp. The bird was skimming along a foot or so above the flat water and the floating leaves. Then abruptly the bird veered steeply upward, its wings pumping strongly, almost frantically. It darted swiftly away as if sensing the imminent beginning of the battle.

  “That’s what that bird must think,” Levi said.

  “Levi, do you think we can hold the Rebs this time?”

  “Yeah,” Levi said, looking at his comrade. “This time we can. This old swamp is like one of those water-filled moats they had in olden times around their castles. It’ll slow the Rebs down. And there’re not many trees out there for them to hide behind once they break out of the brush. They’ll be easy targets.”

  Levi thought they might indeed stop the counterattack of the Rebels at the swamp. But he sensed that General McClellan’s plan to capture Richmond, the capitol city of the Confederates, had failed. This was the afternoon of the fourth day of the battle. The general had landed his Union Army on the coast and had taken Yorktown. Then the army had marched to the west up the muddy peninsula to conquer Richmond. General Lee with his Rebels met them at Mechanicsville and threw them back. Again at Gaines Mill, Lee sent the Union Army reeling. Levi and Jimmy had been on the fringe of the fighting at Gaines Mill, and had fired only a few times at Rebel soldiers moving through woods at a distance. He didn’t know whether or not they had hit any of the men.

  McClellan had rushed General Porter’s troops, including Colonel Berdan’s Fourth Ohio Infantry and First U.S. Sharpshooters across the flooding Chickahominy River to support General Morell’s infantry division at Boatswains Swamp. The Confederate General A. H. Hill was positioning his fighting Rebels on the opposite bank.

  Levi rubbed the stock of his new Spencer rifle. At eighteen years, the same age as Jimmy, he was proud to be part of Berdan’s Sharpshooters. The colonel had selected five hundred of the most accurate riflemen from the Fourth Ohio, clothed them in green jackets, and named them the First U.S. Sharpshooters. They had been armed with the single shot, 52-caliber Sharps rifle. Then from the five hundred, Berdan had selected a platoon of sixty-four of the very best marksmen. These men he had armed, at his own expense, with the new lever-action Spencer .52-caliber, a seven-shot repeater. The new Spencer increased the firepower of a man from ten shots per minute to more than twenty. Levi and Jimmy had made the elite platoon of sixty-four.

  KRUMPH! A great explosion broke the stillness as a battery of Parrot 30-pounders fired. Immediately hundreds of other cannons joined in, 12-pound Napoleons and Whitworths, and 3-inch Ordnance rifles. The ground under Levi’s feet shook with the mighty, jarring barrage of the big guns. General Hill’s artillery had opened its bombardment from the west. The uproar increased as the Union’s Ninth Corp on the plateau, two and one-half miles east of the swamp, began to return the fire.

  “The Rebs’ll be coming now,” Levi shouted through the din to Jimmy.

  A wave of gray-clad men, thirty strong and screaming a shrill, wild call, erupted from the woods on the far side of the swamp. They sprang into the water and charged forward. The water splashed up in muddy geysers from under the driving legs.

  Levi raised his rifle. He looked down the sights at the Rebel soldiers rushing at him. He selected a large man gripping his bayoneted rifle and leaping in long bounds through the knee-deep water. Levi squeezed the trigger. The man fell as if tripped, plowing the water with his head and shoulders.

  Levi chose a second target. Fired. The soldier crashed down.

  He shot his fine new Spencer repeating rifle across the swamp at the Rebels again and again. The rifle snapped empty. He jerked the empty cartridge tube out of the butt of the gunstock and rammed in a fully loaded one. Took aim.

  The Confederate soldiers began to shoot back. Halting for a few seconds, they threw their guns to their shoulders and fire. Then they charged on with bayonets thrust forward.

  Levi felt the pounding of his heart fade away, and time seemed to slow to a crawl. He fired, levered another cartridge into the breech of the gun, and fired again. The yelling, running Rebs, now in water to their belts, went down one after another before the blazing barrel of his Spencer.

  Another tube of fresh cartridges was shoved up through the stock of the rifle to the firing chamber. Shoot! Shoot! The Rebs are halfway across the swamp. Why wasn’t Jimmy shooting? Levi couldn’t stop them all by himself. No time to see what was wrong with Jimmy.

  The wave of soldiers melted away into the swamp in front of Levi. Now there were only three left. Two. One. Then that last one fell and vanished. Only the muddy, trampled swamp water and a dense layer of gunsmoke remained to show that a battle had been fought and men had died.

  Levi’s breath came in huge, convulsive gulps of air. He felt the great exhilaration of the battle being won and he was still alive.

  “Jimmy, we’ve stopped them,” Levi cried. He began to laugh and pivot to look at his comrade.

  Jimmy hung face down across the log barricade. His rifle was clutched in his hand. The back of his head was a mass of shattered skull bone, of gray brain matter and blood where a bullet had torn free.

  Levi stared, unable to believe what his eyes saw. Then his stomach heaved and foul bile came into his mouth. He struggled to breathe. Don’t look at Jimmy. It’s too awful. He pried his eyes loose from Jimmy’s corpse.

  He swallowed at the bile burning his throat and forced himself to take a breath. He focused on the layer of gunsmoke and watched it rise slowly up through the limbs of the trees. He lowered his sight to the swamp water that lay so very quietly.

  The Rebels were down there someplace under the surface with their unseeing eyes washed by the bloodstained water. You got what you deserved, you bastards.

  Levi raised his head and listened to the explosions of cannon fire, the Confederate batteries firing from in front of him, and the Union batteries at his rear. They sounded like the crash of distant thunderbolts. He heard the whistling flight of the big cannonballs passing overhead in both directions.

  But he mustn’t delay. He began to swiftly reload the cartridge tubes for his rifle. Jimmy’s rifle, tubes, and full pouch of extra bullets were moved close to him. The Rebels would not be back after such a loss of men, but still it was best that he be ready.

  A wild cannonball careened out of the sky behind him. It ripped down through the top of the tree above Levi’s head. Fragments of broken limbs fell upon him. The iron cannonball hit the water at a low angle and burrowed onward, throwing mud and water up in a long, narrow fountain. The cannonball hit a tree, shaking it as if a giant had taken it in his hands and was thrashing it about.

  Shrill, piercing yells erupted from the opposite side of the swamp. Scores of Confederate soldiers in a long line, left and right as far as Levi could see along the swamp, broke out of the woods and rushed into the water. They charged shoulder-to-shoulder toward the Union side of the swamp. Other Confederate soldiers opened up with covering fire from the top of the bank.

  Levi knelt behind his small barricade of logs and lifted his rifle. He must stop those Rebels coming directly at him. Bullets whizzed past and struck with angry thuds in the trunks of the trees near him. In the woods on both sides of him, men of his platoon began to fire.

/>   Levi’s rifle bucked against his shoulder. A Rebel running hard in the lead, fell face down in the swamp. Those men behind charged directly over him as if he had been no more than a piece of wood in the water.

  Levi levered in a bullet and aimed and fired; levered, aimed, fired. His accuracy with the rifle was not tested, only the swiftness with which he could kill. And he killed and killed. If he did not stop every foe from crossing the swamp, he would surely die.

  He fired until the metal breech and barrel of the Spencer grew so hot that he could feel the heat in the wooden stock. He feared a shell would explode from the heat before he could completely close the breech. He dropped his gun and grabbed up Jimmy’s cold one.

  He flinched to the side as a bullet stung the side of his face. Damn! That was close.

  The last two Rebels were close now. He could plainly see their expressions, eyes hard and determined and mouths sucking air. He shot directly into the center of the nearer man. The fellow shuddered under the impact of the lead projectile. His body suddenly became a jumble of legs and arms that splashed down to disappear under the water.

  Levi quickly shot the last soldier. The man dropped his rifle, but ran blindly on. In four steps he smashed headfirst into a tree. He clung to the tree with both arms, hugging it to him, trying to stay on his feet. He moaned a sobbing moan. His arms did not have enough strength to hold him and he slid down the trunk to sit in the water.

  He started to cry in a gurgling, garbled voice. One arm rose out of the water and clutched at the wound in his chest. The crying and the gurgling sound grew louder. The Rebel began to lean to the side, and the angle increased. He moaned one last time as he slid below the surface of the bloody water. Bubbles rose and burst for a few seconds, then ceased.

  Levi started to shake. His hands trembled uncontrollably. Oh, God! He hadn’t joined the army to kill like this. The war was just supposed to be a pleasant romp through the fields and woods of the Rebel States, and a few minor skirmishes fought. There was not supposed to be all this shooting and dying.