Black Clouds and Epitaphs

By Pete Peterson

Based on actual events, this gripping tale unfolds as young Trace Savage follows a trail of blood and plunder across the rugged frontier of the late 1860's in dogged pursuit of the brutal band of border bandits who murdered his parents. One by one, he overtakes and faces the killers, branding the corpses he leaves behind with the mark of the serpent.

Savage becomes partners with Stalkin' Sam Irons, an aging mountain man, and together they travel the rugged backbone of the Rockies. When Sam is killed in a pitched battle with warring Blackfeet, Trace continues to Idaho Territory.

An exciting horse race, a life and death struggle with a marauding grizzly and a tender love affair move this fast-paced adventure toward an exciting, powerful climax, pitting Trace Savage against the leader of the murderous raiders.

This title was previously released in print as MARK OF THE SERPENT.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Untreed Reads
• Release date: Jan 14, 2011
• ISBN: 9781611870534

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Black Clouds and Epitaphs

By Pete Peterson

Copyright 2011 by Pete Peterson

Cover Copyright 2011 by Dara England and Untreed Reads Publishing

The author is hereby established as the sole holder of the copyright. Either the publisher (Untreed Reads) or author may enforce copyrights to the fullest extent.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold, reproduced or transmitted by any means in any form or given away to other people without specific permission from the author and/or publisher. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to the living or dead is entirely coincidental.

Also by Pete Peterson and Untreed Reads Publishing

Catch a Killer by the Toe

http://www.untreedreads.com

Black Clouds and Epitaphs

by Pete Peterson

Dedicated to my young British friend,

Jackson Street

Contents

August, 1865—Corsicana, Texas

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

Author’s Note

AUGUST, 1865

CORSICANA, TEXAS

He heard only the sounds of a fisted cough from a sentry, the soft whickers and stamping of horses from the rope corral, the rise and fall of snoring from darkened tents as false dawn crept into camp.

Lieutenant William Tracy Garrett had not slept. He had tossed in his blankets, the remembered thunder of cannon and charging hoofbeats, the crack of rifle and pistol shot, the screams of the dying, all ringing in his head. He had smelled anew the gunsmoke, the stench of gangrenous wound, of blood and of fear and of the decaying dead.

Trace, as he was called by his comrades-in-arms, pushed to his feet, smoothed at his rumpled uniform, then stumbled out the flapped opening of the tent into a thickening fog. Squinting against the dimness, he surveyed the encampment. The angular shapes of white canvas tents squatted like ranks of slope-shouldered specters in the morning haze.

Shuddering from a graveyard chill in the air, Garrett fished out the makin’s and rolled a smoke, lighting it in cupped palms. He inhaled deeply and started to walk. As he strolled among the rows of canvas shelters, he considered the past four bloody years spent with these men—the troopers of the Missouri Cavalry Division, the Iron Brigade of Brigadier General Jo Shelby. Elite raiders of the Confederacy. No command on either side of the conflict had seen more action, or had been more successful at the deadly business of war.

Garrett stopped and looked about him, pride stiffening his spine and straightening his posture. Why, on the Great Raid into Missouri, in ’63, he and these brave soldiers had thundered fifteen hundred miles in thirty-four days, fought a dozen battles in a hostile area filled with fifty thousand of the enemy, capturing or destroying two million dollars worth of property and supplies, killing, wounding or capturing well over a thousand Federals.

The raider was a new knight on the military chessboard; a skilled and crafty gladiator on horseback who dazzled by speed, riding fifty to one hundred miles a twenty-four hour day, fighting eight of those hours and sleeping in the saddle, fasting and battling fatigue.

Shelby’s men had been the finest of such warriors, fighting valiantly but unheralded in a theater of war orphaned by their own high command. They possessed a dashing élan and esprit de corps unexcelled by any force in the war, volunteers and recruits to a man, not a draftee or a conscript in the lot.

The Iron Brigade had known lonesome bivouacs in thickets and patches of timber, when the demons of hunger and cold of winter hovered over the sleeping camp, when the fates were the choosers of who would die on the morrow for the cause, a vague purpose of which most of their number were ignorant. They were common men in a politician’s war, but they fought for home and loved ones, and for the right to self-determination. These were his comrades, like family, closer than brothers. He had, on many occasions, been willing to lay down his life for them. But now?

General-in-Chief of the armies, General Robert E. Lee, surrendered his Army of Virginia at Appomattox on April 9th sending waves of shock and disbelief throughout the Trans-Mississippi Confederacy. Generals Johnston, Beauregard and Maury soon followed Lee. President Jefferson Davis and his cabinet had fled Richmond. A demented, misguided actor named Booth had put all hopes of a negotiated peace or gentle re-admittance to the Union to rout when he fired a bullet into the brain of Abraham Lincoln on April 14th. Bands of dispossessed Negroes, ragged soldiers without armies and starving civilians were running amok throughout the South, pillaging warehouses and supply depots. There was no authority in place to stay the tide of panic.

Now, word had come by courier that, on May 26th in New Orleans, General Simon Bolivar Buckner had surrendered all the Confederate forces west of the Mississippi, subject to the approval of commanding general Kirby Smith, and that on June 2nd General Smith went onboard the United States steamer Fort Jackson, lying off Galveston harbor, to sign the articles of surrender. The War Between The States had officially ended. That same courier carried orders from Kirby Smith to Jo Shelby, instructing him to march at once to Shreveport and surrender his command to Union General John Pope.

The news threw Shelby into a purple rage. He gathered his command and, in a stirring oration that spawned waves of tumultuous cheers from the assembled troops, fit and infirm alike, he vowed never to surrender his sword or his command. He offered the men these alternatives:

"We can stay and continue to fight until we are overwhelmed for a cause that is now irretrievably lost. We can disband and go home, our tails between our legs like cur dogs bent to the will of Yankee masters. Or, we can march proudly as a unit into exile, to Mexico and a new Confederacy! Undefeated! Uncowed! I say Mexico! Who is with me?"

When the cheering and the applause had died, Shelby dispatched his troops to their company fires, to spend the night in talk and consideration of what each man was to do. The volatile general expected, of course, that some of his men would wish to return home. But the rest had never heard his voice but to obey.

The following day, Shelby sent out a call for volunteers from the ranks of the defeated armies of the South to join him in his defiant march under the Banner of the Bars to a Mexican Promised Land. The call was heard and answered as hundreds of disgruntled and angry soldiers from all corners of the Confederacy poured into a camp at Corsicana that still kept its routine: guards and pickets and advanced posts, sabre drills, pistol practice, formation movements. In Brigadier General Shelby’s command the South still lived, fearless and forever.

The night before, Trace Garrett had been confronted by his best friend, Captain Cliff Holtsclaw. Holtsclaw felt it was the duty of every manjack of the Iron Brigade to follow Shelby to Mexico. Trace had said only, I’m going home, and Cliff had stomped off to his tent, dropping the flap behind his back.

Trace paused at that tent now, a lump the size of cannon shot aching in his breast. His jaw steeled and he walked on, headed toward Shelby’s tent.

As an officer, Garrett felt he must inform Jo Shelby in person of what he intended. He owed the man that much. Seeing a lamp’s glow inside the command tent, Trace rapped lightly on the wooden support pole. Knowing the flamboyant Shelby’s unpredictable moods, he was unsure of how he would be received.

Come in. Ah, Mister Garrett. What may I do for you, son?

"General, sir, this is a hard thing for me to say to you. I won’t be going on to Mexico. I’m heading home. I have responsibilities to folks I love, and who will be depending on me to be there. I’ve had my fill of war, enough of killing.

It has been an honor to serve you, sir, and I’m hoping you’ll wish me well.

Shelby sat on the edge of his cot, dabbling the tip of his sabre onto the dirt floor of the tent. He eased to his feet and took a step toward the young lieutenant.

"Mister Garrett, I have seen for four years that you are not a coward. I think I know you well enough not to brand you a traitor. You have served nobly and well in a cause I realize you were never fully devoted to.

"I am surprised, of course, and disappointed. I felt I could rely upon you and all my officers to stand beside me, to help me in forging this new army. But, if you have made your decision, I will not try to hold you.

"I regret that we will not be able to spare you a horse for your journey. Most of the new recruits have come afoot. I will ask you for your sabre and your long gun. Keep your sidearm, as you may well have need to defend yourself on your way from the rabble now roaming the countryside.

"I would suggest you trade your cavalry uniform to one of the foot soldiers who has joined our ranks. Yankee patrols will know well the red sumac of the Iron Brigade, and would probably shoot you down on sight.

You have been as fine an officer as any in my ranks, the general said, offering his hand, and if things do not turn out as you expect them to, there will always be a spot for you in Shelby’s Iron Brigade.

***

Trace Garrett stood watching from atop a prairie swell as the Iron Brigade disappeared into the dust raised by the hooves of a thousand chargers, far out on the southwest horizon, toward Mexico and a dream of last resort. He leaned forward, as if to rush after them, as a part of him wanted to do.

Trace had been shocked and hurt when he told his closest comrades of his decision to stay behind, for they reacted as if he were an unwelcome stranger. They were men who had followed blindly the waving black plume in the hat of their charismatic commander. They viewed Garrett’s leave-taking as treachery, disloyalty. Trace had tried to explain his reasons, but he had been shunned, even spat upon. He had stormed from camp under a black cloud of anger, not looking back.

Now a wave of loneliness and regret flowed over him, and he agonized whether he had made the right decision when he shed the mantle of an unquestioning, loyal-to-the-death warrior, reclaiming his free will to turn his thoughts and his heart toward home. Sadly, Trace shook his head. The war was ended, the divisive mentality of war was not.

The call of a meadowlark bought the soldier’s attention, the flash of its golden breast conjuring up memories of green pastures on the family farm in Missouri. Trace Garrett turned, heading home, and toward whatever the future might hold.

1

A solitary figure in butternut and gray trudged the narrow rural lane, exhaustion evident in his faltering gait. The rumpled Confederate uniform, once so crisp and proud, was now tattered and soiled with the stains and secretions of the killing fields, the sweat and dirt of a long, long trail.

The ground ahead of his shuffling feet lay dappled by the dying rays of an evening sun shining faintly through the canopy of trees that lined both sides of his path. The thick foliage arched above him and touched to close off the sky, creating a dark and leafy, lonely tunnel.

It was early September of 1865, and Trace Garrett was almost home. A bitter and tragic war was ended—a war in which every wound had been self-inflicted, brother against brother, neighbor fighting neighbor. The young soldier was returning empty-handed, footsore and mean. No glory, no spoils. Not the horse he had ridden into battle or the rifle he had carried with him.

Even so, Trace Garrett figured himself lucky. He still had his sidearm and he had escaped the war with both arms and two legs. He would make do. He tramped on into the gloom of an approaching night, picking up his step now, for the farm was less than a mile away.

He was tall, six feet, with broad shoulders and slender frame. Before he had gone off to war, he had been a handsome young man of seventeen, strong and strapping with a gentle nature and a quick humor. His tousled mane of ebony hair had glistened almost blue in the Ozark Mountain sunshine. But four years serving with Shelby’s Iron Brigade had added a decade to his appearance. His frame was gaunt, his cheeks sunken. He had lost forty of his one hundred ninety pounds. The lively sparkle had gone from his steel gray eyes, replaced now by the hard glint of quiet confidence. Trace Garrett had passed from boyhood to manhood on the battlefields of war, and within him there ran a tide of fierceness, a touch of the primitive. Tempered and hardened by the stench of death and the haunting screams of battle, he was a man grown strong because of his time and place.

The thunder of hooves advancing out of the twilight sent him scrambling into the brush at the roadside. The soldier crouched, pistol drawn and ready, as the commotion neared.

Yelling, laughing and firing into the air, the horsemen rushed by, raising a choking cloud of dust that infiltrated the bushes where he knelt. Garrett could not make them out in the murky shadows under the thick cover of trees, but as they rumbled past he was aware of the red leggings each was wearing and of seven uniforms of Union Blue. Regulators.

Good thing he had taken to the brush. Trace knew that the regulators were groups of Union soldiers commissioned by their army to track down and capture, by any means necessary, those rebel soldiers that, for any reason, had not taken an oath of allegiance to the United States government. He had heard of many abuses of that blanket authority by certain of those groups, many behaving no better than raiders and outlaws, thieving, killing, using their commission to justify their criminal conduct.

When the hoofbeats had faded, Trace pushed to his feet and stepped back into the road, spitting grit and slapping the dust from his ragged gray blouse. He stood peering after the riders.

Now what the dickens you suppose that was all about? Nothing up that direction except the home place.

A hollow hole of apprehension opened in his gut, and his racing heart fell through it. With fear and foreboding ringing in his ears, Trace started to run. Slowly at first, then increasingly faster as the feeling of impending doom intensified. A growing wail of torment escaped his lips as his legs churned beneath him.

His exhaustion was lost in dread as he ran headlong down the rutted road, stumbling, almost falling, his ears abuzz with anxiety. He rolled under a white board fence and cut across the freshly plowed south pasture toward the house. The gathering dusk made it difficult to see the uneven earth beneath his pounding feet. But he did not falter, for these were the fields of home, and his feet and his heart knew the way.

A long, unsteady, disjointed form beneath the big elm, barely discernible in the fading light, caught his eye. He hopped the pasture fence and burst into the front yard. Trace drew and cocked his pistol as he bolted toward the indistinct figure.

Hurry, hurry, the strange, wavering silhouette urged.

An old Negro man stood beneath the tree, holding a boy aloft by the legs to slacken the rope around the youngster’s neck. His feet shuffled in place as he struggled to balance the too-heavy load. Great tears glistened on coarse black cheeks.

Jason!

Trace fumbled in his pockets for his jackknife. As he pulled the knife free, it fell to the ground.

Hurry. Cut him loose, the old man pleaded.

Trace picked up the knife and ran to the broad trunk of the tree. He sawed at the tautening rope anchor. It snapped free with an audible twang.

As Jason crumpled to the ground, the limp form of the boy fell atop his frail body. Trace rushed over, removing the noose from his younger brother’s neck, cradling his head. He felt the boy’s neck for a pulsing sign of life.

Charlie…Charlie. Can you hear me?

The boy’s eyelids fluttered. He gasped for breath.

The old colored man, Jason, knelt on trembling knees, his arm on Trace Garrett’s shoulder.

Mister Tracy, thank the Lord. I’ll look after the boy. Hurry…the house. Your momma and daddy is in there.

Mind reeling, Trace leapt to his feet and ran stumbling toward the ominous dark outline of the farmhouse standing mute against a moonless, dusky sky.

He hurdled the steps to the porch, threw open the screen and burst through the door. He tripped, falling over and