Tanner's Law

by Charles G. West

  Fair Fight

  Cora Leach gazed longingly at the joyful dancers. One of the soldiers noticed her and, before Cora had time to retreat, he grabbed her by the hand and pulled her out into the firelight. Seeing no sign of her husband or his brothers, she permitted herself to enjoy the reel before darting back to her place in the shadows, where she found Joe Leach waiting. Cora froze abruptly. Without a word of warning, Joe struck her with his fist, driving the hapless girl out of the shadows to crumple, dazed, to the ground.

  Having seen all the abuse he was going to stand for, Jeb strode over to help Cora.

  “God damn you,” Joe snarled. “Get your hands off my wife!” It was all he had time to say, for Jeb whirled around and planted his fist squarely on Joe’s nose. He put everything he had behind the punch, hoping to drive his fist right through the scoundrel’s skull. Tanner would swear later that he heard Joe’s nose crack from across the circle of wagons. Joe staggered backward before tripping over the wagon tongue and landing hard on his back.

  “You’re pretty damn good at beatin’ on women,” Jeb spat. “Let’s see how you like it with somebody who’ll fight back.”

  TANNER’S LAW

  Charles G. West

  A SIGNET BOOK

  SIGNET

  Published by New American Library, a division of

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.) Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices:

  80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Copyright © Charles G. West, 2008

  All rights reserved

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  ISBN: 978-1-1012-1142-7

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  For Ronda

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 1

  “Corporal Bland,” the sergeant called out. A tall, broad-shouldered man got to his feet and stepped away from the line of weary soldiers resting on the ditch bank. When he approached, the sergeant said, “Lieutenant wants to see you.” The sergeant turned on his heel and walked back toward the temporary command post near the crossroads. Tanner Bland followed without comment or question.

  Lieutenant Richard Pearson looked up when the two men approached. “Thank you, Sergeant,” he said, dismissing him. Turning to Tanner, he said, “Corporal Bland, I need to ask you to take on a mission of high importance.” He cocked his head apologetically. “You notice, I didn’t say I was ordering you. I said I’m asking you to volunteer.” There was no reply from the quiet man, something that the lieutenant had come to expect from the corporal. He felt a considerable measure of guilt in sending for Tanner again. He was requested for dangerous assignments more often than any other man in his company.

  Tanner waited patiently for the lieutenant to continue. Pearson looked into the dark expressionless eyes that never gave any clue to the man’s thoughts. “Well, I’ll get on with it,” he said. He led Tanner over to a makeshift table on which a map had been spread. “Here’s where we are, at this crossroads.” Using his finger, he identified points on the map. “Here’s Waynesboro, and this is where the Union’s main body is camped on the other side. Now our scouts tell us a whole regiment of cavalry left the main body late this afternoon, heading east on the Charlottesville road. We suspect Sheridan is going to launch his offensive tomorrow morning, and General Early needs to know where that cavalry regiment is going. He’s ordering me to send a scout tonight to find out.”

  He paused for Tanner’s reaction. As he suspected, there was hardly any. After a moment, when it was obvious the lieutenant was waiting for an answer, Tanner said, “Yes, sir. I’ll try to find ’em.”

  “Good man,” Pearson said. “I knew I could count on you. How long will it take you to get ready to leave?”

  “I reckon I’m ready now.”

  “Good man,” Pearson repeated. “I can get you a horse if you want.”

  Tanner looked at the map again to fix the Charlottesville road in his mind. “No, sir. I’ll just go on foot.”

  He set out immediately, passing the picket line, and entered the forest beyond the dusty road. Making his way up through the hills with nothing but the moon to light his path, he cut directly across the ridges south of the town. Away from the controlled chaos of the army, he was at home in the forest, having spent a great deal of his young life in the hills of Alleghany County, hunting and trapping.

  In less than two hours’ time, he had crossed the hills east of Waynesboro to arrive at a creek that ran along the Charlottesville Pike. After stopping momentarily to drink from the creek, he started out along the road, heading east. Even in the moonlight, the tracks of the cavalry horses were easily seen. He had not walked a mile when the tracks left the road, crossed the creek, and followed a valley back toward the south. It told him that a flanking maneuver was what the Union cavalry had in mind. That was as much information as the lieutenant expected, but Tanner decided to see how far they had gotten before making camp.

  The Union troops were not difficult to follow. They left a wide trail through the plowed fields of the valley. Tanner could smell the freshly turned soil beneath his feet. No doubt the owner of the field had started his spring plowing recently. After crossing the field, he followed the tracks into a forest of hardwoods. Soon he saw the glow of campfires flickering through the dense growth of trees and vines, and he knew he needed to exercise a little more caution.

&nb
sp; Moving with the quiet ease of a natural-born hunter, he made his way closer to the Union bivouac until he could see the soldiers sitting around their fires. After a moment, he thought, The lieutenant was right. There must be a whole regiment camped here. Our right flank is going to catch hell if we aren’t ready for them in the morning. I best get back and tell Lieutenant Pearson. He quickly turned to leave.

  “Who goes there?” a voice challenged from out of the darkness.

  Damn, Tanner thought. A Union picket. He had inadvertently gotten so close to the camp that he was inside the picket line. There wasn’t much time to think. If he made a run for it, the sentry would alert the whole regiment. If he shot him, the sound would have the same result.

  “Who goes there?” the sentry repeated, this time with considerably more authority.

  “For Pete’s sake,” Tanner replied, “can’t a man have a little privacy to take a dump?”

  The sentry stepped out from behind a large poplar trunk, his rifle held in position to fire quickly. “You must need a helluva lot of privacy,” he said. “Who the hell are you?”

  “Bland. Tanner Bland,” Tanner answered honestly, hoping it was too dark for the guard to see his Confederate uniform.

  The guard thought for a moment, but could not recognize the name. “Well, Bland, get on back to your unit. You ain’t got no business out this far.”

  “I’m done, anyway,” Tanner replied as casually as he could. He took a couple of steps in the direction of the camp before turning away from it again, hoping the picket wasn’t paying close attention.

  “Where the hell are you goin’?” the sentry asked impatiently. “Hey, hold it right there!” he exclaimed when a flicker of firelight through the trees cast a faint light on the gray uniform Tanner wore.

  Tanner acted instantly. Holding his rifle by the barrel, he swung it as hard as he could, catching the sentry beside his ear with the butt. Staggering backward, too stunned to cry out, the sentry tripped over a bramble bush, crashing to the ground with Tanner right on top of him. A desperate struggle ensued as each man fought for his life. The guard tried to yell for help, but Tanner’s grip on his throat rendered him incapable of more than a gasp for air. He clawed at Tanner’s face in a frantic attempt to break the viselike grip, but Tanner would not yield, knowing that to do so would mean his death. It seemed an eternity before the sentry’s struggles ceased and he fell back unconscious.

  Tanner wasted no time extracting himself from the brambles and diving into the darkness of the forest. There was no thought of killing the guard. He didn’t want to take the time. There was no point in it, anyway. Either way, the Union soldiers would find out that he had been there. His only thought now was to be sure he was long gone when they did. He hoped his information would be of value to Pearson—it looked to Tanner like all hell was going to break loose when morning came.

  I’m in a helluva fix now, Tanner Bland thought as he slid along a muddy ditch bank on his belly. A few scant yards beyond the edge of the deep drainage ditch, he could hear the hollow drumming of hooves as a Union cavalry company passed by him, looking for stray survivors from the battle. In reality, it hadn’t been much of a battle. There was little left of General Jubal Early’s Valley Army. No more than fifteen hundred or so could be mustered to repel General Sheridan’s fourteen thousand cavalry troops that fell into line at Waynesboro. Hell, we held them for a little while, Tanner thought, until they rolled up our right flank and scattered us all to hell and gone. It was the regiment he’d scouted the night before that had hit the Confederate flank the hardest.

  It had not been a pretty sight, watching the men he had fought with for the last seven months lay down their weapons in surrender. It was hard to cast blame, however, for to stand and fight was suicide. As he lay still for a few moments, listening, the sounds of a horse’s hooves came dangerously close to the edge of the ditch. The horse stopped right above him, and then there was silence. Had he been discovered, lying as still as a corpse? He held his breath and waited for the shot that would pronounce his decision not to surrender a mistake. The stillness of the moment rang in his ears like a whirlwind. And he thought of Ellie. Why, he wondered, in this moment of peril, would the image of the woman he loved suddenly appear in his mind? He could almost feel the gaze of the Union soldier upon his back. Whatever happened in the next few seconds might determine whether or not he would return to his home and to Eleanor Marshall.

  Lying facedown in the muddy ditch, Tanner considered the odds of rolling over quickly enough to bring his rifle up and get off a shot before the Union soldier fired. He decided they were not in his favor. Maybe he just doesn’t see me, he thought. His damn horse knows I’m here. It’s been blowing and snorting ever since he stopped above me. After several more agonizing seconds, however, the rider moved on, either having not seen him or concluding that he was dead. Tanner exhaled slowly, realizing that his entire body had been so tense that it probably looked like it was in rigor mortis.

  He continued his painfully slow crawl along the muddy ditch, dragging his rifle and haversack in the cold slime as he inched his way toward a bridge about thirty yards away. Several minutes passed without the sound of horses on the bank above his head, so he increased his pace a little. Once he reached the cover of the bridge, he decided it would be safe enough to raise his head above the edge of the ditch to see where he was going. The sight that met his eyes was disheartening, to say the least.

  There on the main street of Waynesboro, milling aimlessly about like so many sheep in a pen, were the remnants of General Early’s Army of the Valley. With an army that numbered only fourteen thousand at its peak, they had tied up Union forces of forty or fifty thousand for seven months, delaying them from attacking Lee’s army at Petersburg and Richmond. Now, shattered and depleted, they stood in pitiful profile, the shadow of a once proud army.

  He supposed that the Valley Army had done its job as well as could have been expected against such superior forces. And now that they were so badly outnumbered, maybe surrender was justifiable. But Tanner didn’t squander a moment contemplating the decision. He had no intention of sitting out the rest of the war in a federal prison. He was at home in the forest and hills and he would take his chances on avoiding the Union patrols.

  Since no one took a shot at him when he raised his head above the ditch bank, he took a few moments more to assess his situation. Behind him, on the other side of the ditch, was a low building that appeared to be a warehouse of some sort. He considered scrambling out of the ditch and taking refuge in the building, but changed his mind when a company of Union cavalry suddenly appeared around the end of it. Searching for strays, he thought. Strays like me. He crouched back down in the ditch and waited until the soldiers completed their search of the abandoned building. They were soon in the saddle again and moving down toward the congregation of prisoners. He could see other units performing the same kind of search missions, too many to risk exposing himself. So he dropped back down to the bottom of the ditch and continued to crawl along through the mud.

  After covering approximately seventy-five yards more, he reached a point where the ditch deepened, allowing him to risk running in a crouch. Taking one last look behind him to make sure he had not been spotted, he checked his weapon. Wiping mud from the breech and barrel of the Enfield rifle he carried, he silently congratulated himself for the forethought to give the barrel a coating of lard the night before to prevent rust.

  He had by now progressed to a point adjacent to the edge of the woods where his company had made their last attempt to hold the Union forces amassed against them. Concerned till then with no thoughts beyond removing himself from harm’s way, he now realized that quite by accident he had chosen the best route of escape. He was retreating in the direction from which the enemy had advanced, and at the moment he liked the idea that he was going one way while the enemy was going the opposite.

  When he was sure there was no one else about, he scrambled out of the ditch and ra
n for the cover of the trees, almost stumbling over the body of a Confederate soldier sitting with its back against a large gum tree.

  “Damn!” he swore after catching himself on the tree trunk to avoid falling. “Sorry,” he then muttered contritely under his breath. Staring with dull sightless eyes was the corpse of a young boy, his chest torn apart by shrapnel, probably K-shot or some other deadly canister round. Tanner speculated that the unfortunate young man had sat patiently waiting for the life to bleed out of him. He hurriedly looked closely to see if the boy had been a member of his company. He decided not.

  Pausing then to look around him, he took in the grim scene of a beaten army. Here and there lay other bodies, a testament to the fierce, though brief, battle that had taken place. In the heat of the fighting, when they were being pushed back into the town, he had been aware of comrades falling on both sides. Seeing the aftermath now, it struck him as a miracle that any had survived to surrender.

  He’d had no time available to think as he crawled through the muddy ditch, but now he knelt on one knee deciding what to do. While he considered his circumstances, he continued to look around him at the carnage left by the battle—the lifeless lumps that were once his brothers in arms, the discarded pieces of equipment. He could smell the rancid odor of gunpowder that still hung over the forest. Glancing up at the trees, he saw the tattered lower leaves and branches shredded by minié balls, evidence of triggers pulled before rifles were aimed properly, the result of a panic to fire quickly and reload in the face of a charging enemy. He shook his head sadly when he thought about the wholesale slaughter about him.