Spanish Posse: Episode 3: The Hunters and the Hunted

By Purple Hazel

This is the third installment in the thrilling Spanish Posse Wild West erotic romance serial, by author Purple Hazel.

In The Hunters and the Hunted, Caroline and Rex travel to Austin, Texas to hide out with Rex’s wealthy younger brother, Daniel, who’s been living there since right after the end of the Civil War.

Rex finally proposes to lovely Caroline; and though initially rebuffed by the hesitant young woman, she eventually agrees to marry him, pledging her undying love and affection. They are married in a beautiful, private ceremony on the front steps of Daniel’s massive Texas mansion.

Meanwhile, the despicable Carl Sunday is hot on their trail. He departs Dallas in headlong pursuit of them. Closing in, as the happy couple take their wedding vows and then pose for a family wedding photo, Carl manages to track them all the way to Daniel’s enormous cattle ranch… 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Torrid Books
• Release date: Jun 21, 2017
• ISBN: 9781682992388

Purple Hazel

Purple Hazel is... King and Caroline Medlin from Denver, Colorado. Purple is Caroline's favorite color. Hazel is the color of her eyes. We fell in love and King started writing short stories to Caroline while we were dating. Eventually the stories got better and better, so we started writing full length novels. Starting with Star Kitten in the fall of 2015, we have written five books that will be launched over the next year or so including Wild Fields (launched November 21, 2015), Morgana's Handmaid (Valentine's Day 2016), Spanish Posse (spring 2016), and Free Company (summer 2016). These are all historical romances using fictional characters in real-life situations amidst the backdrop of actual events that shaped world history. People and places may very well color our notion of history and the moral principles that people follow or ignore; yet we feel only true love truly endures all things. It's all that really matters in the grand scheme of things. Therefore LOVE is all that we write about. Love, true devotion, and the desire to find a companion to accompany us through life's many trials, tribulation, and best of all those moments of profound joy that give life real meaning; that's what it's all about.

Book preview

Chapter 1

She Caught the Katy

Austin Texas 1872

Two days after Caroline’s escape

Caroline and Rex rode the train to Austin and when they finally arrived, Rex sent a message to his brother, who lived just outside of town. The grueling eleven-hour journey had put them in Austin station at about 9pm; and having to spend that interminable amount of time in a train car, sitting on wooden benches with perhaps only an occasional stroll down the aisle to use the privy at the end of the car, was both exhausting and monotonous.

Yet the feeling of separating them so far away from Fort Worth and Caroline’s cruel, vengeful, former boss was indeed one of increasing relief to Rex. As the hours ticked away, Caroline mostly just dozed on his shoulder, waking up occasionally—impatient with how long the trip was taking. Not Rex though. With every hour that passed, he felt safer and calmer as they chugged along through a litany of farming towns and rolling countryside, then finally into Austin itself. It also gave him time to plan some things during his stay in the state capital and dream of their new life together whenever he eventually got them back to New Orleans…

* * * *

Rex’s kid brother Daniel, having married into a wealthy Texas rancher’s family after the Civil War, now resided in a big ranch house outside the Austin city limits with his wife and children. His in-laws, the Reudigers, had come to Texas thirty years earlier, during the Mexican War of the 1840’s, when the elder Reudiger—Joachim—was an artilleryman serving in the U.S. Military. Joachim was originally from Germany and had immigrated to the United States as a soldier of fortune when he was in his late twenties, joining up with American Army units sent to Texas to fight the armies of Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna from Mexico, and sending for his wife and family later.

After hostilities ceased, Daniel’s future father-in-law, along with many veterans of the Mexican conflict, was given the rather lucrative opportunity to purchase cheap land outside the recently established state capital. There he soon set to raising cattle to sell in northern markets, which were already developing a voracious appetite for Texas beef.

Going by his Americanized name Joe Reudiger, the hard-working German and U.S. Army veteran built up a successful cattle-herding business in just a decade, raising up three strapping boys, and one darling little girl, in the meantime. One boy, named Hans, went off to serve with Texas units only fifteen years later during the Red River Campaign in Louisiana. Meanwhile his other two sons worked on the ranch along with a few slaves and several ranch hands who were good with a horse or had other special skills in the ranching business.

It was actually his eldest son Hans who fought for the Confederacy; and thus continued the family’s military legacy. The young rancher’s son rode with General John Magruder in the District of Texas military group. He saw action in support of two Louisiana infantry divisions, and two cavalry brigades under the command of Confederate General E. Kirby Smith, during a successful defense of the South’s Red River network. This was a system of forts and garrisons including the fortified city of Shreveport. That’s what first brought him to Louisiana, where he eventually befriended Rex’s younger brother.

Daniel Middlefield, by way of comparison, served with a Confederate Army unit made up at least in part by cadets who’d resigned from The Louisiana State Seminary of Learning & Military Academy, today simply called LSU. When Louisiana seceded from the Union to join the Confederacy in 1861, Daniel and his seventy-three fellow cadets enlisted in units of the new Confederate Army. At the time, Daniel was only sixteen years old.

Fighting alongside brigades from Arkansas, Oklahoma Indian Territory, and Texas, Daniel served as an infantry officer; and during the consecutive battles of Mansfield and Pleasant Hill in March 1864, he distinguished himself repeatedly on the field of battle. One day in fact, after a particularly bloody engagement, he made the acquaintance of that very same Hans Reudiger from Austin who by then just went by the name Hank and was serving as a cavalry officer. After a successful charge that overran Yankee defenses leading to the capture of their wagon supply train, which Confederate troops halted to plunder for food and ammunition, the two men met and became friends, combining their leadership efforts to reestablish control of their unruly men and continue their victorious army’s pursuit of the retreating Federals.

Their friendship continued until well after the end of the war in 1865, and when hostilities ceased, Hank Reudiger eventually introduced Daniel to his pretty younger sister Liesel. The two courted for only a few months before Hank tragically passed away later that year. That’s when Daniel made the snap decision to propose marriage to Liesel and move right into the Reudiger family home in Austin to settle down and start a family. That had been seven long years ago, when Daniel packed up and relocated to Austin to help manage the Reudiger family business.

By 1872, with the recent construction of a new railway line into the city, Austin was booming; and the Reudigers by then owned a massive spread of land with hundreds of head of cattle—having bought up neighboring landholdings from struggling farmers or simply pushing out Negro cotton sharecroppers who abandoned their farms to head north after Reconstruction. Their daughter Liesel had by now been married to Daniel for seven wonderful years, and they had two children together. Liesel, it seemed, was just a chip off the old block. Stubborn and resolute like her father, she was just the kind of stabilizing influence young Daniel truly needed after experiencing the horrors of war.

Liesel, for her own part, had lost practically all patience with Daniel’s older and seemingly more free-spirited brother Meriwether, having tried several times to fix him up with women she knew in Austin. Rex had always politely accommodated her but the relationships inevitably fizzled due to Rex’s constant traveling. Of course, by then, Rex was pretty much done trying to court any normal women. They’d be a disappointment he knew, and if he married one, the woman would likely never understand him sexually—after all the prostitutes he’d been with and things he’d experienced.

Over the years, Rex just figured that Liesel had likely found out all about his frequenting of brothels from his younger brother who simply could not keep a secret once his indefatigable wife pressed him for details. She was like the strong-willed mother he’d once had back home in Louisiana and perhaps even more like the drill instructors he’d known during his days at the military academy. What’s more, being a very devout Christian, such knowledge of his older brother’s exploits would have offended Liesel greatly. But Rex was family nevertheless, so she remained vaguely cordial to him despite her moral disdain…

* * * *

Rex’s message to his brother from the train station this time, however, was that he was now engaged to be married, and that he was bringing with him his lovely new fiancée to meet them. This, he hoped, would inspire Daniel to host them there for a few days while Rex and Caroline dropped out of sight; and if accomplished, he sincerely hoped Carl Sunday would have no idea where they were. This might throw him off their trail just long enough to frustrate Carl into giving up. Rex could propose marriage to her that very night, during the carriage ride to the ranch, and when he arrived, Daniel and Liesel could help him plan a big wedding for them at their mansion. That’s basically how he thought it all up during the train ride to Austin.

It was a long shot, he knew, even if Caroline agreed to marry him—which he assumed she would. But if it panned out, he hoped Liesel would see the same value and character in his new lover that Dora Lynne and others had also seen. The way she spoke to people. The way she was so honest and innocent, despite her past which she had yet to reveal to anyone—preferring instead to converse with people about themselves and give vague answers about her previous life when queried.

Best of all, considering the types of ladies Liesel seemed to prefer fixing him up with in the past—younger gals, mostly in their twenties, who Liesel knew were looking to start and raise families—Caroline might indeed fit the part! She looked lovely, she was dressed wonderfully, and her hair was exquisitely done. She had on lipstick and eye makeup like she was some high society woman going to a ball. She looked late-twenties at least—until she spoke, of course, and then immediately gave away her young age—yet as a couple they appeared age-compatible and that might be all he needed to sway Liesel into accepting them.

Indeed, this might work out perfectly—if Liesel bought into it, that is. Carl would then frustrate himself to no end trying to find them all over Texas; and by the time they made it to New Orleans, they’d be out of his reach completely. Meanwhile he and Caroline could be married and safe from that evil man once and for all. That was the plan at least…

* * * *

Earlier that day back in Dallas, Carl had found it quite hard to suppress his outrage and frustration over missing his chance to nab Rex and Caroline at the train station. He and the policeman, who up until then only thought they were pursuing a suspect named Meriwether Middlefield, initially couldn’t figure out just how they’d missed them.

Tickets for a train ride back in those days weren’t purchased under a specific name like on a modern jet airliner. People just walked up and bought a ticket then boarded the train. And it did no good interviewing the clerk at the ticket office either. He’d processed hundreds of tickets for the Houston train and many others already that morning. It was no use quizzing the poor man whether he’d seen Rex and Caroline—no matter how vividly and impatiently Carl tried describing them.

Thus, the only thing Carl really knew for sure anymore and the only thing he still had to go on was that crate loaded onto the train at Fort Worth—the one which had likely been used to transport Caroline. It had been found opened the day before and its contents were all gone except for a drying apple core and some tiny crumbs from a biscuit. That could only lead him to the conclusion that Caroline and Rex had certainly been in Dallas yesterday.

Well then, as he put it to the vaguely disinterested police officer assigned to the case, Where in Tarnation could they have gone? The poor fellow could only shrug his shoulders.

Perplexed and annoyed with this latest setback, Carl and the Dallas Policeman finally called off their stakeout and decided to go to the bar next to the police station to have a whiskey. Carl said he’d buy if the man would come along with him to talk things over; and the still slightly hung-over police officer not surprisingly agreed. "Hair of the dog that bit me as he rationalized it to himself, and since he was on the case anyway, he figured he might as well indulge his generous but now rather deflated host to go join him for a drink. Hell…I can put up with just about anybody for an hour ‘r two…if they’re a’ buyin’ the drinks that is!"

At first put off by the fat man’s glowering disposition and lack of patience during their search of the train, the officer was now starting to feel at least a little bit sorry for him. However, once they stepped inside the place and found a seat at the bar, which was located near the station and frequented mostly by travelers and railroad workers, Carl ordered them a full bottle of strong whiskey. Suddenly the officer was really, really starting to like Carl!

As locals and transients ambled in and out, imbibing a pint or two of ale from the bar, and making light conversation with each other before heading back home to their wives or heading back to catch the next train out of town, Carl and the policeman mostly kept to themselves. It felt good to be out of the smoky train depot and out of the Dallas mid-morning heat; but perhaps even more than that they both seemed to have a lot on their minds regarding their earlier disappointment. In fact, they didn’t end up leaving the place for several hours, it turned out.

As they got slowly drunker on glass after glass of whiskey the two dejected men sat and talked about how they’d both been duped or maybe somehow they’d made a mistake in their surveillance of the station. Going over it repeatedly however they ultimately concluded their position on the platform and their thorough search of the passenger cars should have been more than sufficient if the suspect and Caroline had actually been on the train in the first place.

But Carl had even deeper frustrations to express that day, and the more whiskey he drank, the more it flowed bitterly from him. He detailed how that dandy from Louisiana had fooled him and taken his best girl from him back in Fort Worth. Moreover, as he told the surprised policeman—who up to now had just assumed Carl was the owner of the livery stable that had burned down—he in fact ran a saloon over in Fort Worth! What’s more, the loss of his lovely Caroline from his staff was going to be particularly devastating to both his business and his clientele who would miss her terribly—not to mention how much he would miss her personally.

Then after three or four more shots of whiskey, big Carl felt compelled to confide even more to the policeman. Indeed, he confessed fervidly, he actually had deep feelings for the girl. And though in a soberer state he might have more carefully concealed his intimate emotions, he suddenly heard himself saying to this man he hardly knew—and for the first time in his life actually—that he was absolutely and sincerely in love with her. It happened after a long pause when he’d just described how happy she made him and his customers feel every day with her sparkling personality and amazing abilities.

She just has these ways about her, you see? he said to the police officer as he held his whiskey glass to his lips and stared off into oblivion. Ain’t gonna lie. I’m in love with her, to tell ya’ the truth. However, to Carl’s relief this didn’t seem to bother the tipsy police officer one bit. Quite the contrary, it seemed to impress the man. Moreover, the policeman admitted that he himself was a regular at all the local brothels in Dallas and could now fully appreciate Carl’s plight. Yes, the policeman agreed, their suspect was in all likelihood just a low-life who had lured that naïve girl with him to travel as a mere intimate playmate for a few weeks. He’d keep her just while he travelled. Then he would dump her on the doorstep of a seedy brothel in some big city somewhere far from Fort Worth whenever he finally tired of her.

Or maybe…then again, slurred the policeman after