The nervous guard kept his rifle at the ready in both hands, his finger tapping on the trigger. The driver slid his hand down on the grip of his Colt Peacemaker.
William unbuttoned his jacket, revealing his holstered Colt. The small boy, Evan, poked his head out the open window to see what was happening. His mother, Mrs. Alice Rutherford, immediately pulled him back into the coach.
“What did I tell you, Evan? Don’t you dare move.”
The boy sobbed, his face buried into his mother’s side. The elderly couple lowered their heads and prayed.
William placed a comforting hand on Mrs. Rutherford’s arm. “Please. Don’t be troubled. Evan and you will be home soon. I promise.”
Mrs. Rutherford nodded through her tears. “And don’t worry your family, Mr. McGowan. I’ll do as you’ve asked.”
The sudden sound of scrambling feet on the stagecoach roof made everyone stare up at the ceiling. A single gunshot echoed from a still distance. A moment later, the guard fell past the open window and thudded to the ground. Mrs. Rutherford hugged Evan closer. The passengers stared in silent, frozen terror at the dead man on the ground.
As William withdrew his weapon, two shotgun muzzles poked around the sides of the open window. “Your choice, Mr. McGowan,” one of the unseen men said. “But you raise that gun and these fine, innocent folks will be joining you in hell faster than you can cock the devil’s hammer.”
CHAPTER 2
Lorena cowered in the attic, listening to the men stomping up and down the hallway, punctuated by mumbled cursing and banging on the ceiling. Surely they would tire of trying to figure a way past the barred entryway and leave. Burn the barn, kill the livestock, but leave me and my son in peace.
She prayed for just some of the strength and the determination she had always taken for granted in her husband. Lord, how she wished William was with them now.
The scraping of boots stopped directly beneath the attic door. “Make things easy on yourself, ma’am,” Captain Boland yelled. “’Less you want something awful to happen to your boy. Don’t matter much to some men during these damnable times of tribulation.”
Lorena backed away from the door, stumbled over the ladder and fell back on the joists.
Bret put out his hand. “Mother. Are you hurt?”
“No, darling. Thank you, but . . . ” She stepped onto the timbers where her son was crouching. “Maybe I could have convinced them to leave. Now we’ve only made them angrier.”
“But the man . . . he wanted to hurt you.”
She could feel his body heave as he fought back sobs.
“They came for Tommy Jenkins’ father, and Mrs. Jenkins was there and—” Bret lost control and gushed with tears. “They made him stand there. Tommy saw every—”
Lorena put her hand over his mouth. “Hush now. I’ll not hear anymore. Do you understand me?”
Bret sniffed and nodded his head.
“Mrs. McGowan? Please ma’am. We can forget about this.” The young man, Gus, spoke again. His pleasant, reassuring voice made her stomach contract in a tight ball. “Just open the door and climb back down.”
“We have good horses in the stable and there’s money in the brown crockery pot in the kitchen. Take everything and leave us alone.” Lorena prayed that would satisfy them and bit her tongue to stop from screaming at them from the anger raging in her heart. You’ll never touch my son. I’ll die before I let you or the rest of you lickfinger cowards touch us.
Gus’s tone became even more amiable. “No ma’am. Captain Boland didn’t mean anything by that, and your boy didn’t hurt me. I’m fine. We’re just trying to make you see sense.”
Lorena cried softly and pulled Bret to her breast. “Go away. You’re the traitors. Attacking innocent women and children. You call yourself the home guard? Whose home are you protecting?”
“Come now, Lorena,” Captain Boland said. “If your husband had been loyal to the Confederacy, we’d all be sitting down to turkey dinner on Sunday.”
The men’s hushed laughter rose through the attic.
“But to show you I’m still a gentleman. I’m going to give you a minute to think about your predicament again and decide what’s best for your family.”
Boot heels and furniture screeched against the floor.
“And I will still honor my original promise to you and do my best to spare your husband.”
Lorena wasn’t listening to anything Captain Boland said. She pulled an old blue pea jacket from a trunk and told Bret to put it on while she searched for boots.
“Lorena? Lorena McGowan. Damn it! Answer me, woman!”
She had nothing more to say to any of them. The noise below was the desperation of the damned, for she would never forget this day. Pray as she did, Lorena knew God wasn’t going to save her. But there was still a chance she could save her son and husband.
She pulled Bret close and whispered, “Reverend Vaughan believes in our cause. Tell him you need to spend the night until your father arrives on the eleven o’clock coach tomorrow.”
Lorena led him to the dormer window and silently pushed open the shutters. It was just wide enough to allow Bret’s slender body to pass through. “Once you’re on the sill, darling, you’ll have to edge yourself around until you can reach a branch of the old oak.” She hugged him and felt him tremble in her arms. “Don’t be frightened, Bret. I’ve seen you jump to that branch many times.”
“I’m—I’m not afraid.” He wrapped his thin arms around her neck.
“Promise me you’ll meet your father at the station tomorrow for the eleven o’clock coach.”
Bret wiped back his tears and looked up at her. “I promise, Mother. I know a shortcut to the Reverend’s home. No one will see me.”
Lorena peered through the window. In the front yard, the vigilantes’ unattended horses stood tethered to the posts by the water trough. Thank God there were no more of them waiting outside.
She helped her son on to the sill just as the first axe head cracked through the attic hatch, then another, and another. With strength brought on by fear and supreme determination to live she held onto her only son as long as she could.
Bret took another step and Lorena’s hands no longer touched him. He edged his way along the ledge and in another few moments he was gone from her sight around the cornice as the axe splintered the attic door.
Captain Hugh Boland watched Travis Haines check the knot on the noose before throwing the first rope over the gibbet. Cordage this thick could snap a steer’s neck. Better to have it too strong than have it fray and tear before the day was done, because the Lord knew there would be more than enough chances of that today.
The captain took off his hat and wiped the sweat of his hangover from his forehead. At eleven o’clock in the morning, the sun felt too hot for late October.
After the busy night at the McGowan ranch, the air seemed to cling to his skin and not even the faintest breeze stirred to cool his brow. But it had been worth it. Napoleon brandy started the fire down below, and that traitor’s whore kept the flames burnin’ all night.
Haines whistled through his teeth and threw another rope over the long gibbet. A small crowd interested in the proceedings had assembled.
Many of the women turned their eyes this way and that while they fanned themselves. The men checked their timepieces—growing more hot and impatient by the moment—occasionally heckling Haines and the other men on the platform to let them know it.
The captain put his hat on and cocked the brim. Folks got to realize. It takes time to make everything just right. He was proud the others had cottoned to his idea of using a butcher’s hoist with a box and plank being rigged for a drop. They all agreed it would speed things up especially when they used ten nooses on the regular gallows.
Haines flung the final rope into place and the captain stepped back, satisfied all preparations were completed.
Armed, vigilante guards ordered the first group of bound men and women out of the hay w
agon and marched them at gunpoint to the steps of the gallows as more wagons arrived behind the first.
Captain Boland had gone over the list several times. Two hundred men and women from five northern Texas counties would walk up these stairs before sundown. He cut off a fresh plug of tobacco and popped it in his mouth. After he read out each name, Haines slipped a flour sack over the traitor’s head.
The captain knew many of them only by reputation and a few by name and face. He’d never sat down to dinner with any of the men or shared a drink, and even if he did, that wouldn’t have changed a goddamn thing. All slave-lovin’ traitors to the Confederacy and even worse, traitors to Texas.
Captain Boland spat over the edge of the platform. He scratched his sweaty scalp at the back of his neck as he looked down the row of faceless, drooping sacks. Before last month, each one of these fine gentlemen would just as soon have walked in the mud to cross the street than have to say good morning to a half-breed like him. ’Specially the likes of Mr. William McGowan there.
But the loyal home guard changed all that.
Scraped and bruised, Bret climbed up the rocky river bank. At the top of the bank he spotted the gibbets in the distance behind a few hundred feet of bush and trees. He looked over his shoulder hoping beyond hope that somehow his mother had managed to follow him.
He prayed to hear her comforting voice draw near, instead, heard only the quiet hush of the slow-moving water. Though the sun beat hot against his face, he shook from a deathly cold that had taken hold of his thin body and bones. He coughed and cried, cursing himself for being a terrified boy. “But what would father say if he saw me like this?” he thought.
Bret wiped his sweat and tears on his jacket sleeve. Reverend Vaughan’s homestead lay on the other side of the gallows, but if he went around them through town it would take too long. He gulped and wet his parched lips with his tongue. No one would notice a small boy in a big crowd. Bret scrambled over the edge and ran through the bush and trees toward the gallows.
The captain yelled out the name of the final man on the platform. “William Kelby McGowan.”
When Haines tried to pull the sack over McGowan’s head, the conspirator shook his neck so quickly Haines dropped the sack onto the platform.
Someone hollered from the back of the crowd. “Try it the same way you bag a chicken when you steal it from a coop, boy. Wring its neck first.”
Captain Boland laughed with the others, taking pleasure in watching Haines flush redder than a robin with each roar of laughter from the crowd.
When Haines bent down to pick up the bag, McGowan asked Captain Boland if he could say something to the people. “It’s the last Christian and civil thing you can let me do.”
The captain strode across the creaking, freshly cut timbers of the platform and punched the Union boot-licking bastard square in the guts.
Captain Boland paused for a few moments and allowed the gentleman to recover his breath, then stepped up and secured the noose around the man’s neck. “Anything else?”
“Yes.” The traitor wet his dry, cracked lips with his tongue. “A drink of water, please.”
The captain nodded. “Why, of course, sir.” He spat a wad of chewing tobacco juice on the man’s cheek. “And don’t be shy to ask for seconds.”
People standing nearest the front of the platform pointed and guffawed.
William closed his eyes for a few moments. “What did my family or I ever do to you, Hugh Boland . . .” He opened his eyes again. “. . . that would make you forsake your soul under the eyes of God?”
For the life of him, the captain couldn’t answer. Flushed and wet with sweat, he turned away from the prisoner. He peered into the crowd. The stare of an old woman met his and she would not let it pass. She pulled her torn, blue shawl over her head and pushed her way back through the crowd.
The captain cursed her and turned back to face the condemned man. “All right! Speak your piece and be done with it, but watch yourself. Things are bad enough around here already thanks to lying traitors like you.” He turned his back on the prisoner and lowered his voice. “Or I’ll have to pay another social call on your wife.”
William McGowan jerked his head toward Boland. “What? What was that?”
The captain strolled to the opposite corner of the platform. “Ain’t nothing you can do anything about anyways, Mr. William … Kelby . . . McGowan.” Boland enjoyed the tension-filled pause after each word in the traitor’s name.
William cleared his throat. How he would have preferred tasting the sweat he felt in his palms instead of the dry, dusty roof of his mouth. He looked around the crowd. Fellow farmers and churchgoers, people he had known since childhood, stared up at him with solemn expressions. The war had changed everything and these people couldn’t risk displaying their sympathies in public.
William breathed in deeply then let the air out in a slow, constant exhalation. He was grateful his wife and young son had obeyed his wishes and not come to the station to meet him today. His man, Philip, had promised he would keep an eye on them to make sure they were safe.
He was thankful to the Lord too, that his family had been spared the wrath of the vigilantes and the martial law of their so-called “Citizen’s Court.” His family would still be left most of his cotton farm and livestock, which was a world more than the families of the other men standing at the gallows.
The bound man on one side of William began wetting his trousers, his legs trembling beneath the light fabric as the stain spread down the length of his pants.
“Hurry up!” a man hollered from the back of the crowd. “They’re startin’ to piss and shit themselves like babies!”
The crowd roared like the drunken audience at a traveling circus. William wet his lips with his tongue. “I find it ironic,” he said, measuring his words, “that all of us want law and order, yet many have chosen to break the law in the false hope of saving our way of life. Can’t you see everything you are doing will play into the hands of our enemies and end up destroying all we hold right and sacred?”
Someone threw a rotten tomato that hit William in the chest.
A young woman stepped forward from the crowd. “Speak plain or don’t speak at all.” The people around her clapped their hands and shouted approval. The young, freckle-faced woman pulled back her black kerchief letting her red hair fall around her shoulders. “After climbin’ into bed with those Yankee sons of bitches, how can you stand there preachin’ to us?” She wiped tears from her eyes. “You ’n’ your ‘Peace Plot!’ Why? So we can let the slaves take over our farms while our husbands, sons, and fathers are dyin’ every day like pigs in the dirt?”
She threw another rotten tomato , this time hitting William in the temple. The crowd clapped even louder this time. “You forget Nat Turner, mister? Let them niggers kill your children, but they ain’t gettin’ any more of mine.”
William shook his head, trying to steady the tremors building in his body. “My prayers are with you, ma’am, but I ... we all want the same thing.” He spat the words out, feeling the tightening of the noose around his neck. “But only a strong federal government has the means of suppressing slave insurrections and hostile Indian attacks. I beg you, all of you, to listen to reason. There’s still time to stop and end this madness. There are many in the North who—”
Captain Boland punched him in the jaw. “Copperheads ain’t worth a damn. You could have voted for secession when you had the chance or kept your trap shut afterwards.”
Bret stumbled breathlessly up toward the back of the noisy crowd. Everyone kept staring ahead and no one noticed him peer around a tall pine.
He shielded his eyes from the sun and squinted up at the platform. So many people, so many . . . Bret gasped. No . . . was that— His eyes went wide with horror. He opened his mouth to scream when two strong, black arms reached around his mouth and waist, yanking him off the ground.
Bret struggled to break free as the black man carried him back swiftly into th
e concealing shelter of the trees. Still looking at the platform, tears filled Bret’s eyes as he saw the man open another sack.
Arley Caldwell and his new eighteen-year-old bride, Melissa, turned to see what the commotion was about. Only the trees stood towering in mute witness to the unfortunate proceedings before them.
He tapped his pipe. You should have listened to me, William, and you would have been standing here with your friends instead. He smiled at his radiant, auburn-haired wife who had insisted they be present so that everyone would know they were respectable, decent folk who didn’t want any trouble. Arley slid his arm around her slender waist and gently turned back to face the gallows.
Haines pulled the sack tight over the traitor’s head, muffling his voice. “Captain’s right. Once we whoop those Yankee Nancy-boys, we’ll dig out every other nigger in the woodpile down here ’n’ string ’em up with yer Union flag. Just like you.”
William heard the crowd yell and clap its approval through the burlap of the flour sack. Fear and lack of oxygen made his knees wobble and buckle as his head became lighter. I love you Lorena. Thank you for the best years, darling. Take care of our son. When Bret’s older, remember what you—
The roar died away, and the creaking of the trap door lever was the last sound William McGowan heard on Earth.
CHAPTER 3
Friday, August 24, 1900
Bret shot bolt upright in bed, gasping, drenched in the sweat of his fever dream, his eyes searching frantically around his luxurious bedroom as though he expected the home guard to leap out of the cherry wood linen closets at any moment.
Still trembling, he wiped his forehead with the blue silk bed sheet. A sudden fit of sharp coughing made him reach for the small, dark brown medicine bottle on the polished walnut bedside table.
He unscrewed the cap with fumbling fingers and drank until the bottle was empty. As the soothing warmth spread through his body and mind he leaned back on the embroidered Persian pillows and stared up at a small plaster crack in the high ceiling.
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