The Road to Garrison

By Robert O' Hanlin

Jimmy Pike was a favorite with the people of Burnt Corner but mainly with Sheriff Chet Lomax who left him in charge that day. Jimmy’s dying words sealed the fate for both Chet and Blue Bob Cameron who did the shooting. A vague tip from one of the captured gang was all he had to go on and the further he went into the rough country controlled by the renegade Apache Nana and his followers the more he doubted that it would pan out.
There were not many white men who came face to face with Nana and lived to tell about it but he was one of them. His encounter was accidental and he got to see firsthand how the renegades actually lived.
When he finally reached the town of Garrison he found a small unfriendly town, a town that was controlled by Amos Garrison and what they called Garrison Law. Chet was soon to find out that Amos Garrison and his law were hard to beat. The only friendly face he found in the whole town was that of the prettiest girl in town.
He was soon to find that capturing his quarry and getting him out of the town of Garrison was not an easy thing, but he was not a man to give up easily. He had vowed to himself that he would bring Blue Bob back to Burnt Corner for trial and despite Amos Garrison and all his riders that was what he intended on doing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Robert O' Hanlin
• Release date: Dec 23, 2020
• ISBN: 9781999234270

Robert O' Hanlin

I was born in Canada but spend much of my time roaming the Sonora Desert of Arizona, which is truly a place to inspire a writer.I write in the Western genre inspired by the great Western writer Louis L'Amour. My stories are fiction with a mixture of real history and I hope you enjoy reading them.

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The Road to Garrison

By Robert O'Hanlin

SMASHWORDS EDITION

PUBLISHED BY

Robert O'Hanlin on Smashwords

The Road to Garrison

Copyright 2020 by Robert O'Hanlin

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. Please share it with your friends and family through the source you downloaded it. Please remember that all rights are reserved, and no part of this eBook may be copied or reproduced by any means electronic or mechanical or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in

Critic’s articles or reviews. Your respect for the author is appreciated.

This is a fictional book and any resemblance of the characters to any persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

Books by Robert O’Hanlin

The Outlaw Series

The Montana Outlaws

The Alberta Outlaw

Last of the Outlaws

Others

Windfall

O'Bannions Return

Justice in Lonesome Valley

The Cougar Man

Branded a Coward

Once a Gambler

Put the Gun Down

Bucking the Odds

The Talking Stick

White Lion of the Mountains

McCracken’s Land

Back from the Grave

The Long Way Home

Brotherly Love

Revenge

Digger McGilvery

Man of the West

Bounty Man

Ride for the Brand

The Rodeo Clown

Westward the Brothers

For Want of a Winter Home

Ride a Hard Road

Halfbreed

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

The Road to Garrison

Chapter 1

The quiet town of Burnt Corner was easy for him to handle and as sheriff it was up to him to make sure it stayed that way. Chet Lomax was watching out the window as the buckboard came down the street. It was his job to know who was travelling through the town of Burnt Corner and why. He hadn’t really planned to be sheriff but for him it was a means to an end and since his friend Jackson Troop had given him the job he was taking it seriously.

As the wagon drew nearer he saw that it was his sister Harriet who was holding the reins. He knew she would stop at his office before she left town, as she always did, but this time she drove the wagon directly to the front of the jail and climbed down.

As he waited by the door he had the feeling by the way she was moving that this was not just the usual trip for supplies, and he was soon to find out he was right.

Howdy sister, what’s going on?

She walked past him and stood by his desk.

Paul took a bad fall…

Chet started to ask what happened, but she continued.

Oh, he’s alright, but the doctor thinks he may have broken a bone in his foot. He should be okay and able to get around in a couple of weeks. Brother Matt said he would be able to help some…but I was wondering of you could take a week off and come and lend a hand.

He pulled a chair out for her and she sat down.

I suppose I could, Burnt Corner is a quiet town and I’m sure Jimmy could look after things for me.

It had been five years since the Lomax family arrived at Burnt Corner. It was a lot smaller then, just a mercantile store that was supplying a few small mines in the area and a saloon that was servicing the miners, but as the population grew so did the town.

Like most families from the hills of Tennessee the Lomax family were close. It was a part of the country where the rest of the world seemed to pass by unnoticed. Life in the hills was simple and dwelled on the important things, raising enough food and killing enough game to provide meat on the table for their families.

Derek Lomax was a man driven by the clan. He left his home in the Glen Shiel, deep in the Scottish Highlands, to escape the persecution of the British and the hills of Tennessee were as close to home as he could find. The land was not suited well for the type of farming he was used to but it always managed to produce enough to feed his family…and most important of all it was his with no interference from outsiders.

He was a man beholden to no other and when it was his time he gave his land to his sons keeping the Scottish tradition alive. His boys, Tobias and Nathan, continued working their bordering farms the way their father did with little regard for the rest of the world.

The ground was rocky and poor for farming but they managed to grow potatoes and other root vegetables that would get them thought the hard winters. Half of the potatoes they picked were rocks and Chet and Matt being the youngest were the ones to carry those rocks to be piled at the side of the field. No matter how many they carried just like the potato crop there was a new crop of rocks each year.

When the threat of war loomed and the saber rattling began they had little time for it and when the war started Tennessee was one of the hot spots, and it continued to be for the duration of the war. For the first two years the Lomax brothers lived their life as usual high up in the hills with little interest to was going on down below. They especially had no interest in the war or the reasons for the war…that was until some Union soldiers caught two of Nathan’s boys in the woods with rifles.

The boys were only fourteen and fifteen years old and when they were surrounded in the woods by some Union soldiers, who took them for southern guerrillas, they tried to explain that they were simply hunting for food for their family, a family that had no use for the war and did not take sides. The Union soldiers did not heed their pleas and executed them on the spot.

They were the only family Nathan had, his wife had passed away the year before and the loss of his two boys was devastating to him as well as Tobias and his family. Having grown up in the hills they lived by a creed…when someone did something bad to you or your family you did something worse to them. Two days later Tobias and Nathan set out to join the Confederate army with the aim of killing as many Union soldiers as they could.

Tobias left his Kentucky rifle with Chet giving him his blessings and knowing he would be up to the task of keeping food on the table. Chet had learned how to shoot when he was barely old enough to hold the rifle and now he took on the job in earnest.

When the brothers reached the Confederate lines they were greeted by a burly sergeant who saw the potential of two men from the hills. It was a known fact that most of the hill folks from Tennessee were excellent shots. It was a time when they were recruiting for a team of sharpshooters so he took them aside and gave them each a new rifle.

As they examined the rifles that were unfamiliar to them the sergeant showed them how they worked. They were Whitworth rifles that the Confederacy had purchased from the British and the two, who were excellent shots with their old Kentucky rifles, looked at the new rifles with dismay as the sergeant lifted a breach at the back of the gun and placed a paper bullet in place.

Before he closed the breach he pointed out a small sharp protrusion that cut the paper exposing the powder when the breach was closed. He then put a percussion cap in place and handed it to Tobias who hefted it a couple of times and then stepped up and placed the bullet in the middle of the target at one hundred yards. On the second shot he handed Tobias the paper wrapped bullet and the percussion cap and watched him load the gun and then place the second bullet in almost the same spot.

Both Tobias and Nathan fired ten rounds into the bullseye and then the sergeant had the target moved back another hundred yards and Tobias scored nine hits and Nathan scored eight hits with their misses just slightly off the mark.

The sergeant went on to explain to them what would be expected of them as part of the sharpshooter corps. As they listened the part they liked best was that they could get a chance to kill Union soldiers and the part about working ahead of their front line was overshadowed by that fact.

They were taken to meet the company commander and each was given a greenish color uniform that would help conceal them better in the woods. They were instructed that their primary targets would first be Union officers, then cannon crews and finally, on the lack of either of those targets, soldiers on the line.

A few days later they were sent out on their first mission, they had a runner with them who was to carry messages back to headquarters about the enemy troop placement and bring them ammunition, food and water. They both made kills on that mission and when the battle started they continued keeping fire on any officers they could see.

It was a lonely job that sometimes entailed waiting for hours to get one well-placed shot, and neither of them could imagine doing it alone. They were paid twenty dollars a month which was more than the average soldier and while most of the soldiers took their pay in paper money, because it was easier to carry, they chose to take theirs in gold coins.

It was common practice that when soldiers fell someone would relieve them of their money, and if it did not happen on the battlefield it usually happened as the body moved somewhere along the line. Very little of that money ever made it to the families who needed it.

Aside from the chance to kill Union soldiers the money was more than they had ever seen and Tobias began to see it as a chance for them to get out of the hills and into the low country where the soil was more agreeable.

The Lomax brothers fought for two years and had no idea how many of the Union soldiers they killed. The sergeant had told them to only count the first one and not get involved with keeping a score…and that first one was the first man either of them had killed.

Their last mission was a particularly bloody one, they were fighting close to their home country along the Tennessee River in a battle at Pittsburg Landing that was later referred to as Shiloh. The Union soldiers had come down the river from the north and were camped along the river’s edge when the brothers stationed themselves. Their first shots were true and accurate each taking out an officer and it was not long before cannon fire opened up on both sides.

They both switched their fire to the four cannon crews which they continued to decimate, as each man stood up to man the guns they fell under their deadly fire. The sharpshooters were the most hated of all the troops and everyone on the opposing side was anxious to be the one to finish one of them off.

Tobias had developed a habit of rolling to his right or left immediately