“This Isn’t Hell, You Bloody Yobs. This Is Only Texas.”
In this exclusive excerpt from Custer’s Brother’s Horse, the new novel by Edwin “Bud” Shrake, honest men are marched to the gallows by red-throated Unionists hungry for revenge.
Illustrations by Kako
Chapter One
The fog coming off Shoal Creek was pouring through the prison yard in pearl-colored puffs that made him think of cannon smoke. Captain Jerod Robin lay on his back in the caliche mud with his head leaning against the south wall of the stockade. The Leatherwoods had smashed his pocket watch, but he thought it would be nearing a wet dawn if he could see the sun.
A chain around his ankle locked him to the steps of the gallows platform. Robin’s ribs ached from the stomping that had been laid on yesterday evening by Santana Leatherwood and his three nephews. Massaging his sore heart with his fingertips, Robin touched the letter the nurse at the hospital in Tennessee had sewn into the lining of his butternut coat. Several buttons had been torn off the double row down the front of his coat, but the letter was safe. If the Leatherwoods had found and read the letter, they would have murdered him yesterday on Pecan Street instead of beating him and throwing him into the bull pen and waiting for the judge to come and hang him to make his death what now passed for legal around here.
As Robin’s fingers rubbed the outline of the letter, he felt comfort in those folded pages of words. His life had been so distorted for the past three years—since Shiloh—that he might have been dreaming his existence. The letter was a real thing that confirmed the one hope that through it all had brought him back from madness and given him reason to return to the world—the hope that he still had a home at Sweetbrush and people there he loved who loved and needed him.
A smell of rotted meat floated through the fog, and then a groan.
“Help me,” a voice cried. “Will someone help me, for God’s sake?”
“That’s a laugh,” yelled another voice.
“Please. For God’s sake, help me.”
“Tell it to your preacher and let him holler up at heaven with your sad story.”
Laughter drifted around through the fog. Then silence settled as prisoners brooded their fates in the dark. The fog grew thick as snow to the touch and turned cool. Robin realized he was feeling rain on his hands and heard drops tapping on his hat. He lifted his head and opened his mouth and licked the moisture off his lips.
“Bastards coming,” shouted a voice in the fog.
More voices shouted, “Bastards coming! Bastards coming!”
“Quiet down, you putridity,” yelled a voice Robin recognized as Santana Leatherwood’s. Robin heard the chink of spurs. He saw a disturbance in the fog, where forms began to appear coming toward him.
“Jerod Robin, where you at?” called out Billy Leatherwood, the youngest and smallest of the three brothers approaching him in the fog. They were dragging a sack that had something heavy in it.
“Over by the heel fly, Billy. He’s chained up over that way,” said Santana, looming out of the mist behind his three nephews. There were gold tassels on the band of his wide-brim campaign hat that he wore tilted forward onto his forehead. His neck scarf and suspenders were yellow against the faded blue of his 7th Cavalry uniform shirt. Six silver conchos, Mexican style, ran down the outside of each of his black leather boots. His spurs were silver with two-inch rowels, mean ones.
“Here he is, Captain,” Billy said. “Laying here like he’s on a holiday with nothing to do. Why, I believe he’s asleep.”
“Give him a kick,” said Santana.
“Don’t touch me, Billy,” Robin said. “I’m keeping score on you.”
“Get up, then. The captain has brought you a new friend.”
Robin pulled his knees up and made it to his feet as the two elder Leatherwood brothers hauled their sack toward him. Robin was tall and pale, with sleepy blue eyes. In the fog he could barely make out the sullen features of the middle Leatherwoods under their round-top felt hats. Vapor floated around their faces. Santana stepped closer to Robin and gestured toward the sack.
“This fool stole General Custer’s brother’s horse,” Santana said.
What Robin had taken in the fog to be a sack he now saw was a man with his chin fallen onto his chest. Blood dripped from a black patch in the man’s gray hair and plopped into the dirt. Luther and Adam Leatherwood were holding him up by the armpits. His legs disappeared behind into the fog.
“This fellow is as big a fool as you are, Robin,” Santana said. “You and him are going to pay the same price for your foolishness. You’ll be jerking in the sky side by side, you and this foreign idiot. Put the horse thief down, boys.”
The Leatherwood brothers let go, and the prisoner hit the ground on his face.
“Chain him up next to young Robin,” Santana said. He bent near enough that Robin could see above Santana’s left ear a bit of silver plate that was a marker from battle in a war previous to the one that was now ending. “Well, Robin, life is uncertain, ain’t it? Full of twists and turns. When they talk about odd twists of fate, they mean you and me, don’t they? Seems like yesterday you was a rebel officer with a history and a future. But today you are a doomed fool chained up with an idiot who thought he could make off with Tom Custer’s famous horse from in front of Dutch John’s Saloon in the middle of the night.”
“This thief has to be real stupid,” said Adam.
“I mean, he’s dumb as a stump,” Luther said.
“The horse he tried to steal is the very same horse Tom Custer rode at Namozine Church and three days later at Sayler’s Creek when we were chasing you rebel cooters through Virginia three months ago. You’ll be glad to know I got back into action in time for the finish of this war. I saw Tom Custer win two Medals of Honor in one week on the back of this very horse. This is a legendary horse. Can you picture the confusion in the mind of a person who thought he could climb on Tom Custer’s horse and ride out of town?” Santana said.
Billy was fastening a chain on one of the horse thief’s ankles.
Billy said, “Robin, you should of heard this thief trying to talk his way out. He was talking an owl out of a tree is what he was doing. It was comical.”
“So you bashed his head,” Robin said.
“Adam bashed his head. Then Luther let go another bash,” said Billy.
“I got him good,” Luther said. “He might be dead.”
“He ain’t dead. Look at him. He’s bleeding,” said Adam.
“Uncle Santana just now done that gash with his spurs,” Luther said.
“Still. You ever seen a dead man bleed?” said Adam.
“Plenty of times,” Luther said.
Round splatters dappled in the dirt as heavy raindrops fell through the fog.
“You never,” said Adam.
“Don’t give me that cockeyed look,” Luther said.
“You boys pay attention here,” Santana said.
Billy wrapped the horse thief’s chain around a post of the gallows platform and locked it with a click. The two older Leatherwood brothers wore red bandannas knotted at their throats to show they belonged to the company of Home Guard, which was cooperating with the federal regiment that had begun arriving in Austin to start imposing law. Outside the prison gate there was disorder and fear. The elected governor of Texas had fled to Mexico. Buildings had been sacked. Returning rebel soldiers were passing through the capital city, often barefoot and injured and penniless, with anger in their hearts and exhaustion on their faces. Citizens and refugees were rushing through the streets carrying bags of coffee, flour, sugar, salt, bacon, cloth, rope, leather, cotton, whatever they could snatch. The public mood was to catch what you could and hold fast to what you got.
The horse thief lifted one hand and spread his fingers and touched them to his hair. His fingers felt blood and froze. The rain shower was passing, but the fog was dark and wet. The Leatherwood brothers stepped back from the prisoner and became half-lost in the mist. Santana looked down at the bleeding head of the fallen horse thief and then raised his eyes to Robin.
“In far-off Tennessee you had thirty mounted men under your command.” Santana’s eyes sparked with humor and intelligence. He grinned and showed a healthy set of white teeth. “Now you come back home to Texas, and what do you find? You find a date with a rope. A cruel ending to your story, but fitting. You and I both know you are without honor. You deserve to die like a rat.”
“What charge could you hang me on?”
“I made a list. Murder is at the top.”
“You know I didn’t kill that old man,” Robin said.
A loud, sharp bang crackled through the fog. It was an explosion from the south part of town, where the river turned toward the southeast and headed for the Gulf of Mexico, two hundred miles away.
Santana said, “We’ve got quite a few guerrillas that need to be subdued. In Texas the war ain’t over no matter if General Lee and Joe Johnston and Jeff Davis and every cracker in the whole rest of the South may have quit. They still love to string up abolitionists here. Appomattox is just a tick on a hog’s back as viewed from Texas. But when the people here do learn they’ve lost the war, they’ll keep fighting anyhow, because fighting is their nature. You’ve known my nephews since they was children down on the bayou. You ever remember a day when they wasn’t spoiling for a fight?”
“I remember a day they showed pure yellow,” said Robin.
“Not in history has there ever been any yellow in any Leatherwood.”
“The day the recruiter came gathering men to fight the war, your nephews ran and hid in the forest,” Robin said.
“Because you’re on the wrong side, Robin. You’re fighting the rich man’s war.”
“You’re a traitor to Texas,” said Robin.
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