Chasing Shadows

By K. F. Mingus

Arizona Territory seemed like a good place to disappear and start over. No one on the Rocking B Cross Ranch knew of her reputation in Texas. Hired on as a wrangler, Enyo Harper spends her days on the backs of broncy colts, letting the candle burn slowly... Isaac Adams served the Confederacy in Arkansas, Missouri, and Louisiana to protect his home, his state, and his way of life. After years of hard-learned mistakes and cattle drives, Isaac now prides himself on capturing the lawless. When Enyo Harper's wanted poster falls into Isaac Adams' hands, the bounty hunter takes on the task of hunting down the ex-slave to atone for nearly forty murders. With 1000 miles between them and Austin, Texas, the duo must brave bushwhackers, opium peddlers, broken love, and each other if either one hopes to reap the rewards of their campaign

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hawes & Jenkins Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jul 24, 2023
• ISBN: 9781637841044

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Chasing Shadows

K. F. Mingus

ISBN 978-1-63784-103-7 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-63784-104-4 (digital)

Copyright © 2023 by K. F. Mingus

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Hawes & Jenkins Publishing

16427 N Scottsdale Road Suite 410

Scottsdale, AZ 85254

www.hawesjenkins.com

Any references to historical events, real people, and real places are used fictitiously. Names, characters, likenesses, and events are the products of the author’s imagination.

Front cover image by K.F. Mingus

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

***

For those written over and forgotten by history.

***

And I will bring the blind by a way that they knew not; I will lead them in paths that they have not known: I will make darkness light before them, and crooked things straight. These things will I do unto them, and not forsake them.

Isaiah 42:16

Summer, 1875

Preparations

Unwound

Pick Up Lines

Four Nickels

Wolves

For The Thrill

Enchantment

Retrospect

Visiting Hours

The Show Must Go On

Twin Arrows

Campfire Stories

Growing Pains

Contigo

Translations

About the Author

***

For those written over and forgotten by history.

***

And I will bring the blind by a way that they knew not; I will lead them in paths that they have not known: I will make darkness light before them, and crooked things straight. These things will I do unto them, and not forsake them.

Isaiah 42:16

Summer, 1875

Preparations

Hey, Mister Adams, how are you this morning?

Isaac could not determine the last time Sheriff Lane had eaten anything with fat: the man was so incredibly thin, he did not seem like he could open a screen door, let alone a steel jail cell. He was clean-shaven and cordial in the face, the everlasting tattoo of a knife fight on his left cheek and jaw. Isaac enjoyed working with Sheriff Lane more than any of the other sheriffs in the area simply because he was affable and easygoing. It never seemed like he got terribly excited about anything.

I'm fine, Roger. How are you?

He rose from his desk and shook Isaac's hand with the grip of an honest man. Doin' well. Here, he said, placing a thin bundle of banknotes atop the desk, is your payment for the O'Hare boy.

'Preciate it, Isaac replied, silently counting the banknotes before pocketing them.

Yes, sir, Sheriff Lane groaned, sitting back in his chair, much appreciated. Judge Parker has him in court as we speak. Did you visit your brothers while you were up there?

I did for a little while. It might smell like money to them, but I've had my fill of wild, raunchy cattle.

Sheriff Lane chuckled, Okay, well, are you up for another one?

Isaac smiled crookedly, Yes, sir, I could use a little more change in my pocket.

He reached into a drawer and handled a thin stack of posters. I got a couple more in, too, this morning, so there's plenty you can pick from, the sheriff said, scattering several wanted sketches and photographs over his rickety desk. These ol' boys here seem to be holed up a few counties over—Erath or Bosque. This boy here, he pointed to a young black man's mug, raped a white woman in Dublin, whereabouts unknown.

His previous capture had been a cowardly young kid of twenty-two who had pulverized an older gentleman in a saloon brawl after a late night of heavy drinking. Isaac had located him easily in Stephenville with an aunt and uncle, but his last real challenge had been ‘Iron' Mike Sweeney last summer. Sweeney was a barber who had taken to robbing trains from Houston to Denison. The pursuit allowed him to see other parts of his great state that he still had not seen as a boy or as a soldier and he earned a pretty penny for doing so. Sweeney had been uncooperative and forced Isaac to put a bullet through his leg to get him to surrender and ride peacefully. He still had to endure his vulgarity and disrespect, but he was delivered alive. Isaac had an itch to hunt someone who would be a challenge again—just short of Jesse James and the Younger boys. He did not feel as if he was qualified for that particular task.

Isaac sifted through the posters: rape, assault, aggravated assault, trespassing, bank robbery, manslaughter, horse theft, cattle rustling—the usual offenses. He read each offense for each man and where he was wanted out of, none of them piquing his interest in the thrill of the chase.

Oh, wait, the sheriff declared, shifting his lamp, here's one more.

Isaac tossed the others back on his desk and took the maverick. The sketched mugshot proved crude, but he knew it was a woman's face.

WANTED: MURDERER MANY TIMES OVER

REWARD: $1,100 ALIVE

Enyo Harper

Ex-slave, wanted in connection with the murders of Sheriff John Roy of Apple Spring, Coryell County, and Sheriff Peter Bell of Double Horn, Burnet County. Has murdered multiple men throughout Texas. Easily provoked and heavily armed. Partial to violent stabbing. Notify authorities!

Isaac flipped the paper over so Sheriff Lane could see it. What's the story on this one?

That one, he heaved, polishing his Winchester with his shirt sleeve, is a Negro woman. She's left a trail of blood that seems to have started in Bell County. Killing men from Belton to Decatur, but the two sheriffs she murdered made that bill, of course.

I heard about these, he reflected, and I remember men being stabbed to death in a couple different places, all the way up to Decatur and a little bit west.

He nodded. It's been a few years now, but that's probably her.

Isaac handled the poster, thoughtful. Anybody know where she might be?

The trail of bodies went west, like you said, so I can only assume she's probably somewhere in the territories. Hell, the bitch could be dead. Someone might've finally gave her what she had comin'.

Isaac winced a bit. Murderer or not, Negro or white, he disliked disrespect towards women. Until he interacted directly with people, be they fugitives or civilians, he had learned to take other people's opinions at face value. He creased the poster and tucked it in his pants' pocket.

I'll take this one. It'll be a good change of pace.

Don't go and get yourself killed, Isaac. Three different bounty hunters tried and all three ended up like everyone else.

Really? I'm surprised that's not on the bill here with these two.

Maybe they didn't have enough ink, he supposed impishly. Oh, and I think it was requested that she be returned, if possible, to Austin. They probably want to make an example of her.

Isaac squinted suspiciously. Why aren't the Texas Rangers tracking her if it's that important?

Sheriff Lane shrugged, I reckon there's a reason, but I dunno, Isaac. I just hand out the posters. Maybe it's a private party thing. She's supposed to be pretty heeled, so like I said: don't go and get yourself killed.

Isaac tipped the brim of his slouch hat, 'Preciate the concern, Roger. Take care.

Take care, Isaac.

Isaac closed the door behind him, moving out onto the boardwalk of Comanche. The morning hustle had already begun with the imminent summer fever of the day. Settlers, cowhands, townsfolk, businessmen, and working women chattered and peddled efficiently like cogs in a clock. Oxen, horses, and mules hauled wagons and people to and from their daily activities. Wood-planked buildings stood tenaciously amongst the surrounding oak trees, lining a dusty, trodden street spotted with hitched horses and kids playing hooky from school that morning. The Fleming Oak stretched its valiant arms toward the brilliant blue sky near the courthouse, an historic landmark for a young man named Mart Fleming who had taken shelter there during a Comanche raid in 1854. Like Isaac, Fleming had served the Confederacy in the cavalry as well, but he returned to become a local businessman with a meat market across from the courthouse, where he could keep watch on his beloved oak.

Isaac had no interest in the business side of things after the war, although he had occasionally helped his brothers near Stephenville when they needed an extra hand. His cattle-herding days were a sealed chapter in his book as far as he was concerned. Hunting the lawless and disorderly was more his speed. He seemed to enjoy pushing his luck against fate; he had survived the war and his thrills now came from bounty hunting as an extension of the law.

He had only physically resided in nearby Hill's Crossing for a grand total of three months. He spent most of his time in the saddle of his buckskin Morgan, Roscoe, traveling Texas for bail jumpers and criminals. His home was five miles east of Comanche, a humble spread he had constructed after the army's disbandment. He rode away from Sheriff Lane's office to check on his abode of logs nestled in a grove of pecan trees. Roscoe covered the terrain with utmost ease at a steady lope, rising and falling with the hills against a humid breeze rustling the leaves and blades of grass.

The house was a single room dwelling in a corner of one of his uncle's spreads, the main entry meeting the rise of the sun every morning with a set of ten-point whitetail antlers above it. A secondary entry opened on the south side to a cluster of three pecan trees and a stump. The walls were sturdy, two feet thick, and packed with mud between the layers of logs to stave off cold and retain heat. A large corral loitered behind the cottage and a haphazard outhouse rested to the north of the corral in another group of oak trees.

Roscoe instinctively halted at the hitching post near the front door. Isaac patted him on his beastly neck before dismounting. He unsaddled him, hobbled him to graze around the shanty, and Isaac entered his home with his tack. Inside, he had his basic necessities: a fair-sized fireplace of stone, a couple of cast-iron skillets dangling from ceiling hooks, a dog-eared table and chair, a narrow cot under a window, and a few wooden pails he used for washing, bathing, or cleaning a mess. It smelled of stale lumber with a definite trace of a resident skunk somewhere nearby. He sighed gratefully, unbothered by the putrid odor, and placed his hat on a coat hook near the doorway above his saddle and bridle. He hung his medium grey shell jacket next to the hat and unbuttoned his vest. Riding the trails, woods, and deserts was alluring and always an adventure, but his one-room sanctuary allowed him to recharge in something he could call his own for a while.

He ambled to his cot, just wide enough for his slender stature at five-foot-nine. He removed his vest, unsnapped the buttons of his shirt, and pulled off his well-worn boots before opening all three of the dwelling's windows. He laid his vest over the back of the chair and unbuckled his Peacemakers from his waist, hanging the gun belt on the corner of the cot. From beneath his pillow, he withdrew a Holy Bible. The binding and cover were pristine and still somewhat stiff from minor usage, completely the opposite of the one he carried in his saddlebags. He caressed the rich leather cover and sat on the edge of the cot.

As obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance: But as he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation, he recalled of the First Epistle of Peter.

Raised on a Hill County, Texas plantation, he and his three brothers were left in charge by the time Isaac was five. Their parents spent more time in the local taverns than home with the boys, so Isaac's eldest brother, Mason, usually kept things in order with the crops and the slaves. Rusty and Tyler were barbaric and Isaac straddled the line between Mason's diplomacy and discretion and his other brothers' carefree, corrupt behavior. Mason would recruit Isaac to assist him in certain affairs when the adults were amiss and Rusty or Tyler's brutish nature was unnecessary. Mason used Rusty or Tyler to deliver discipline, but they would abuse their authority and threaten their victims if they mentioned anything to Mason. Isaac would ultimately, by fifteen, accompany Rusty and Tyler in their crusades against anyone darker than them.

He joined the Nineteenth Texas Cavalry in the spring of '62 with a Colt Army 1860, a Remington carbine, an Arkansas toothpick, one of his brother's cow horses, and the clothes on his back. He served under Colonel Nathaniel Macon Burford and was shoveled off to Arkansas to become a part of the Army of the Trans-Mississippi with a handful of other regiments, including the Twelfth and Twenty-first Cavalry and Tenth Texas Field Battery. His then savage nature suited his inclination to fight for his way of life as they scouted and rallied through Arkansas, Missouri, and Louisiana.

The treacherous conditions and lack of proper equipment had not been what he expected. It proved advantageous to be mounted, but the Nineteenth still suffered. Isaac remembered raiding Federal camps and participating in multiple skirmishes with their cavalry and infantry units along the western bank of the Mississippi. They were sentries for outposts and scouts for the army headquarters in Little Rock and Shreveport, gathering intelligence about Federal operations.

What combat he did see in roughly fifty skirmishes transformed his outlook. Watching comrades gallop into slaughter with him, perish, and then burying them ripped a shockwave of reality through Isaac. The stench of seared, melting flesh and the deafening six-pounder field gun explosions were disorienting in themselves, but dodging minié balls, bayonets, and grisly shreds of turf and limbs remained ingrained in his memory bank.

It was not long—maybe the early fall of '63, just prior to being sent home to Texas—before Isaac's earthly motivation and gusto withered away. He turned inward and began absorbing the Bible, as opposed to scoffing at it as he did in youth. He read it multiple times a day and began to see His grace and hand in his daily life. The suffering, the minor triumphs, and the ability to simply lie down at night with even just a piece of hardtack all proved prime examples of His presence to Isaac. In light of his newfound revelation, in Isaac's opinion, the insane loss of life and miserable military existence was excessive in cost.

He felt slighted afterwards, a grudging disdain when he would lay eyes on the Union flags raised over his state, but continued to find comfort and answers in his Bible.

‘Every way of a man is right in his own eyes: but the Lord pondereth the hearts. He that followeth after righteousness and mercy findeth life, righteousness, and honour,' he recited quietly. He closed his eyes and bowed his head, opening himself with a thankful spirit. Thank you, Lord.

He returned his beloved guidance map beneath the pillow and bedded down on the cot below the window. A confirmed sense of peace settled in with him, his travels and burdens subsiding. The cot's iron frame creaked and whined as he situated himself, throwing an arm over his eyes and drifting into an uneasy slumber.

Unwound

The lonesome lamentation of a homemade guitar resonated from the small porch of a dimly lit bunkhouse, followed by several higher-pitched notes to create a woeful refrain. The guitar picker hummed a wistful arrangement over his weeping instrument, weaving a simple story of despair.

Two neighboring bunkhouses were vacant, the occupants in town drowning a hard day's work in rank whiskey. A gentle breeze swept through the porch and tickled the harsh shrub grass and sagebrush down to the corral of ranch horses feasting in the dusk of a late July evening. A handful were missing, tending to their duties on the night shift on the Rocking B Cross Ranch. The rest were minded by a few lingering ranch hands, chatting and exchanging information before they turned in for the night. The breeze ferried the melody past the corral to serenade two ranch hands perched atop its rails: a man and a woman who spoke minimally while appreciating the evening's blessing of life and limb.

The man, thirty-something with a five o'clock shadow in dusty britches, whittled a chunk of mesquite wood, stripping the cantankerous bark into the corral. Beside him, the woman dipped her fingers in the chest pocket of her hickory-colored coat to retrieve a cigarette. She pressed it between her fingers a bit before resting it daintily between her lips and striking a match on a rough area of her shotgun chaps. The rowels of her black iron spurs clinked as she exhaled and straightened her legs, allowing them to hang to the lower rails of cedar. The guitar still moaned in the flickering lantern light of the bunkhouse, but soon began to fade.

Boy, he don't never forget to play that, does he? the man commented, a sliver of mesquite bark flying off the wood block. Maybe he misses sleepin' on the ground.

The woman smiled through the smoke, There's plenty of opportunities for that. He could take one.

"Ain't that right? I damn sho don't miss them ol' days though—sleepin' on straw. Out here, nah, ain't so bad. Get a little better treatment."

The woman held her cigarette. Shiiit… she huffed. A lot better.

I wonder, the man murmured thoughtfully, why so many white folks don't want us to be ridin', workin', an' livin' with them.

Those are crackers, she corrected. There's enough that don't mind giving us a job. Just got to find them. It'll even out one day—at least, I hope it does.

You know: you one to talk about gettin' along with white folks, Enyo, he snapped.

The woman eyed the man called Jupiter daringly. "You know: not all of