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Pre-word: The individual tales in Encounter in Shadows are not continuous chapters forming one long story. They tell of encounters with a particular individual during one incident in the Civil War from the different points of view of those involved. Each story stands by itself, although the time-frame and action overlap to a certain extent.
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Encounter in Shadows
Jantallian
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'A friend loveth at all times and a brother is born for adversity.' Proverbs 17:17
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The First Encounter
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The cloud of battle roiled and seethed across the valley. Sporadic bursts of gun-fire and Rebel yells and answering Yankee battle cries burst upon the ear. Hooves thundered across the dry earth, raising more dust to confound vision, just as hearing was drummed into submission by the onslaught. Then, at last, things began to fade and fold and fall back into the normal patterns of military discipline. An efficient re-grouping, a determined pursuit of the enemy by the fastest scouts, an orderly withdrawal of the rest of the troops, the establishment of a secure base – all these were accomplished.
At this point, Sergeant Danny Guerra heaved a sigh which might have been relief and made his way through long evening shadows of the camp to report to his captain. Perimeter guards had been posted. The horse lines were secure and the animals fed. The munitions wagons were set under guard and fresh ammunition issued, ready for action. Fires twinkled here and there in the gathering dusk. The cloying smell of over-ripe meat being stewed or fried wafted through the camp as if daring anyone to eat the resultant meal. Lucky they were all hungry and not too discriminating about how their hunger was satisfied. But not as hungry as those Rebs, that was for sure. Danny's face hardened as he thought of the haggard faces of the men they had fought – the bodies honed to the leanness of drawn blades – and the feral light burning in all their eyes. They needed supplies desperately – and Danny was not sure how he could supply their need!
He pulled off his cap and rubbed his hand wearily over the stubble which passed for hair on his head. How had it come to this? How was he betraying men he knew and lived with and respected? How was he fighting against the ones he should be riding alongside?
He shrugged off the black thoughts threatening to smother him. Duty called. He had a job to do here, a job which he must do as well as he could so that no-one would ever guess what else he was doing.
His first and hardest task was to visit the hospital tent. He moved slowly along the row of improvised beds, sharing a few quiet words, a gentle touch, with the men whose suffering was due, at least partly, to his own divided loyalty.
Leaving the hospital, Danny moved steadily along the double row of tents, like a little street of civilisation in the middle of the wilderness of war. He checked quietly but authoritatively that the men had serviced their weapons and equipment before they sprawled in weary inaction or set about concocting their evening meal. They had to be ready for the next assault – and Danny knew all too well how swiftly it could come.
"I swear those confounded Rebs are ghosts!" a voice muttered in the depths of one tent.
"Yeah, come outta nowhere and then vanish," another agreed.
"Like a twister, sneaking up on your back. You're torn all ways when it hits you and it's gone before you realise it was there." Someone else obviously had a poetic turn of mind.
"Like a pack of damn' wolves!" The second voice was definitely not poetic about it.
Danny ducked under the flap of the tent. "That's enough, boys. They ain't super-human and you'll do yourselves no good thinking it."
"They're super-fast, though, Sarg," someone reminded him.
"Yeah, maybe we should find out what they feed their horses?" Danny joked, raising a few chuckles from the men. Bet their horses get more to eat than those raiders do, he was thinking. And suddenly memory struck hard and sharp – the lamp-lit table, the smell of warm bread and venison, the way his ma served the working men first and most, the impatience of the kid brother who never seemed to get that, however big his appetite, he was not yet a man, the laughter of the little uns …
Ruthlessly ignoring the anguish which memory was stabbing into him, Danny continued his patrol, checking particularly the tent allocated to the advance guard of the new contingent on secondment from a Wyoming battalion. They had arrived just that very morning and been flung into battle without even time to don their uniforms. An unknown quantity as yet, these men, but they had fought well today.
As he drew near, a man ducked out of the tent and straightened up, spreading his arms and stretching mightily. He was older than Danny, certainly in his late thirties, perhaps even as much as twice Danny's age, and every year of that age was one of hard, practical experience. It spoke from the lines on his craggy face, from the shrewdness of his bright eyes, from every muscle in his tough, wiry body. This was not a man whom it would be easy to fool or intimidate. Nor was he a man who would remain in the ranks long – from his command of the men following him and his assured actions in battle, it was obvious he was accustomed to lead, rather than to follow. But since this advance group, passing through enemy territory, had not travelled in uniform, there was no clue to his rank.
As he turned to meet Danny's approach, a slight smile lightened his face. Not a man who resented the authority of others, then. "Evening, Sergeant Guerra." At least he could pronounce it correctly, although Spanish was not so common in the North.
"Cory," Danny acknowledged. "Your men settling in?"
Cory's smile became a grin. "Guess they didn't expect a battle quite so soon – but that's what we're here for, isn't it?"
The man probably equalled or outranked him; there had been no time between their arrival and the battle to find out. But for now, Danny was still responsible. He nodded and moved past him to look inside the tent. He was impressed that the six men inside stood to attention at once. His own men knew him well enough to know he did not expect formality after such a fight, but these men were still on the alert, despite all they had been through that day.
"At ease!" His eyes travelled over the new recruits. Not because they were new and raw, but because they had come from a well-seasoned company as part of a contingent to make up the strength of his own. He needed to assess their experience and discipline in order to make his report.
He saw two older men and four about his own age. Ranchers and hunters, all of them, by their independent bearing and sturdy physique. The older men were much in the mould of their leader. They looked him over closely before resuming their seats. Of the younger four, the two brown-haired ones looked like twins and slumped back onto their bedrolls with almost identical movements. The third, rough and hairy and built like a mountain, gave him a curt nod, before squatting down to attend to the gun he was cleaning. They were all too experienced to let an opportunity for relaxation pass. The fourth man, a tall blonde with a direct, piercing gaze, remained standing as he looked past Danny and said quietly: "I know you've been with them, but can I request leave to now, sir?"
The leader nodded and the young man addressed Danny directly: "Three of our men were wounded. Permission to visit them, Sergeant G-er-ra?" He stumbled a little over the name, but Danny could forgive that: it wasn't deliberate.
"Granted. You know where the hospital tent is?"
The blonde nodded, gave a brief "Thanks, Sergeant!" and was gone in one swift, confident movement. Danny had no doubt that the leader had already ascertained the condition of his own men, just as he himself had, but he obviously encouraged mutual responsibility amongst them. Now Cory looked after the young man, dashing off supperless and unrested, to support his comrades, and shook his head in wry affection: "He never did put his own needs first."
"Sometimes that's a good thing." Danny was not sure why he was moved to comment on the young man's principles, unless it was because they were one of the most obvious things about him. He also had no idea why he was lingering here, unless it was to put off his next dutiful encounter. But Danny had not been raised to put off problems.
Finally, striding firmly through the shadowy camp, he arrived at the pool of light emanating from the captain's tent. As usual, it was buzzing with activity: reports pouring in as the scouts arrived back, orderlies moving briskly with messages, orders from HQ, reconnaissance, supply reports … Danny just stood to attention in the shadow cast by the tent, waiting.
"Ah, Sergeant Gerrer," He did it deliberately of course. Danny was an excellent sergeant, but he was a Southerner and, by definition, could not to be allowed to rank alongside a true-blooded Yankee. Captain Blake never let him forget it, using his name as a constant reminder, even though he treated Danny with scrupulous equality in every other way, and indeed relied on him completely.
If only he knew! Danny's mind went black and cold again as he remembered how he had changed his name. How, standing over the slaughtered bodies of his wife and baby son, he had sworn to carry this bloody war to the heart of the enemy. So he had adopted his mother's maiden name – the war-like name his pa always teased was so apt to her feisty nature. He had become Danny Guerra and left the past behind, vanishing into the ranks of his enemy.
Now his concern must be focused on the present and the immediate struggle.
"I can't understand it," Blake was saying to his lieutenants. "This is the third time they've come at us out of nowhere." He bent over the map, tracing the route of their supposedly secret foray into enemy territory, with an angry finger. "Every time, they seem to have known the best place for an ambush, yet we had no warning, no sight of them. What the hell were those scouts doing?"
"I've had my best men out there, sir," Stevens, the chief scout, asserted equally angrily. "There was no sign. They might just as well be damned Apache!"
"How can there be no sign of a whole battalion of men, Stevens?" the captain demanded.
"With respect, sir, I think there's less than a battalion," Danny ventured, looking hard at Stevens, who nodded in agreement. "If they have forty men, I'd be surprised."
"Yeah, they move too swiftly, too secretly, for a big troop," Stevens agreed. "It's hard to tell numbers from the battle tracks, but we chased fewer men than that from the field and they left no dead behind."
"But you didn't capture any of them," Blake pointed out. "Are you telling me they just disappeared?"
Stevens reddened under his deep tan. "Yes, sir. Vanished into the terrain as if they were born in it."
"So you're telling me we're facing a bunch of Apache or Comanche or something like that?" his superior sneered.
"You're facing men with skills equal to any tribe," his chief scout told him. "And their intelligence is excellent."
Danny kept his face impassive. Since he'd received the instructions about how to keep the raiding band informed, he was not surprised that the scout was unable to detect their means of communication. Inwardly, he sighed again. This cursed war ate the heart and soul out of a man!
Meanwhile, Blake had turned back into the tent and picked up a dispatch from his table. He glanced swiftly through it, folded it and sealed it in an envelope.
"Lieutenant Tate!"
"Sir!" The lieutenant stepped forward. To Danny's eyes he looked wary and not without reason.
"Take this and return to headquarters. Go straight to Colonel Nelson. Hand it to him. To no-one else, under any circumstances! Is that clear?"
"Yes, sir!" Lieutenant Tate took the envelope, saluted smartly and made off briskly to the horse-lines.
There was consternation in the air. Not just Danny's own concern for what the possible content of that very secret dispatch might be, but on the part of his fellow officers. It was highly unusual to send out a messenger this late in the day, still less with such very specific instructions about secrecy.
But there was no time to worry about it now. Blake was asking for his report on the condition of the men and, in particular, the performance of their new recruits. Danny tried to do justice to the undoubted skill and experience he knew Cory had, and to the discipline and demeanour of his men, but Blake was in no mood to hear praise of others. He was not sure if he had won this battle, but he had a sneaking feeling that the ghost raiders, the wolf band, had the better of him.
Blake was about to dismiss them both when there was a disturbance at the edge of the camp. Despite the deepening darkness, two of the scouts came in at a steady trot, their ponies side by side and a body dangling and dragging between them. They skidded to a halt in front of the captain's tent, letting the man they had captured fall to the ground.
"Prisoner for you, sir!" One of them jumped down and hauled the man to his feet.
The uncertain lamplight and flickering firelight revealed a nightmare vision to Danny. A vision from the grave. For silhouetted against the dim light was his father. His dead father. There was no mistaking the braced stance, ready for action like a mountain cat waiting to strike and kill - the angle of the lean jaw, lifted defiantly against all odds – the broad shoulders flung back – the line of the sinewy body, vibrating with a power which belied its lack of inches – even the shape of the rough, dark hair outlined against the saffron glow of the lamp – it was all the same. He expected at any moment to hear his pa's low, dangerous growl as he challenged the surrounding enemy.
But his father was dead. Danny had stood by the laboriously piled stones which marked his grave in the middle of nowhere. Nowhere now the blackened beams of the house, the barn, the stores and the smithy, of all the outbuildings, had crumbled and fallen into dust, blown away on the hot wind. The grave which held also his mother and all that could be recovered of his younger siblings – every one of them, or so he had thought …
From where he stood, a little to the right and behind the prisoner, all Danny could see was the black outline of that familiar silhouette. Yet this man, this dark lean shadow, could not possibly be his father.
Man? It was obvious when Blake yelled for more lights, that the captured Rebel, for all his courage and defiance, was little more than a boy. The increased illumination revealed he was very young, despite the hard-honed planes of his profile and the latent power and endurance characterising his physique. His eyes gleamed bright, just the same as … but Dany could not see the colour. His body, lean and tough, showed the cruel paring of habitual starvation. Like most Confederate soldiers, his uniform, if he ever had one, had long ago worn out: he was wearing dark blue pants, no doubt plundered from some dead Yankee, and a rough hessian butternut shirt, too big for him, which was clasped around his slim waist by an empty gun-belt. If he once had a hat or a cap, it had been lost in the struggle, revealing that familiar hair, thick, dark and curly, tumbling over his forehead and clustering in waves around his neck, for it was badly in need of a cut. The same Danny would have seen every time he looked in the mirror, if he had not taken the precaution of shaving his off with a razor.
Captain Blake looked as if he would like to cut the young man's throat, never mind his hair. After such fierce fighting and an extensive pursuit, all there was to show for it was one miserable boy! And Blake intended that this boy would bear the brunt of the losses and humiliation his troop had suffered at the hands of the raiders.
"What happened?" he demanded of the scouts.
"Just ran 'im down, sir, like you –"
"That's a damn lie!" the prisoner snarled in contradiction, his hair-trigger temper unmistakable. "Y' only caught up with me 'cause a rattler struck my horse!"
The voice froze Danny where he stood. Tone and attitude alike, it was as if Zak Harper had spoken from the grave.
"Matched the snake ridin' it, then, didn't it?" the scout jeered.
The next moment, he was knocked flat and the boy's hands were round his throat. The lightning move stunned everyone momentarily, until all hell broke loose as several other men flung themselves into the melee. The young captive was set fair to get beaten to pulp by sheer weight of numbers, although, judging by numerous howls of pain, it would not be without his extracting a cost from his assailants.
Danny pulled his cap well down over his eyes, so that they and his face were in shadow. He gave brief thanks for the hours he'd spent erasing his Texan accent, drew in a deep breath, and let it out in his most stentorian parade ground bellow.
"Stand down, all of you!"
The bundle of tangled limbs split apart and resolved itself into separate bodies. Danny made a lightning survey and identified the least volatile of them. "Thompson, Craig, secure the prisoner! The rest of you, fall in – ranks – now!"
There was a flurry of movement, as discipline was restored amongst the gaping spectators. It ceased to be a free-for-all fight and resolved into more of a military trial. Danny waved the scouts forward to continue their report and himself stepped back into the shadow of the tent.
"Thank you, Sergeant Gerrer." Damn the man, even in the middle of this, he couldn't resist getting in that dig!
Blake stared at the young man before him in a manner guaranteed to intimidate. The prisoner lifted his head defiantly again and stared right back. Danny could see his eyes now, but he knew even without seeing that they were a deep, turquoise blue, almost exactly matching his own. And the eyes blazed with all the passionate and indomitable integrity which their father had lived by.
"You will make it much easier on yourself," Blake told his prisoner softly, "if you just tell us what we want to know right now."
The prisoner regarded him with a small, mocking grin. "Ask all y' like!" His voice was a low growl, surprisingly deep for one so young; it sounded as if he was trying hard not to laugh.
Blake looked surprised, but barked off a rapid fusillade of questions. They were met with silence. The prisoner just smiled that mocking little smile. Blake could indeed ask all he liked, but he was not going to get any answers!
The captain had evidently worked this out for himself. His own eyes gleamed with a certain harsh satisfaction. If the damn' Reb wanted to give his evidence the hard way, he was only too willing to oblige him. Blake was not naturally a cruel man, but he was hard pressed to provide results for his superiors and he had just suffered an ignominious trouncing at the hands of some fly-by-night bunch of renegade Rebels, who didn't even know the rules of military engagement.
"Very well! I will have answers from you," he assured his prisoner.
"Ask all y' like!" was the only response he got – and this time there was a definite chuckle after the statement.
Blake ground his teeth and rapped out an order: "Sergeant, prepare the prisoner for a lashing."
A murmur of approval ran through the watching ranks. They'd all suffered a blow to their pride and the best of them were thinking as well of wounded comrades in the hospital tent, maybe crippled or dying. Revenge had a sweet taste, even if it was only on one of their enemy. And anyway, no matter how much the boy was about to suffer, the captain would stop short of killing him while there was a hope of getting the information they so badly needed.
Danny raised his hand in salute and used the opportunity to pull his cap so far down that it pinched his eyebrows. He strode smartly forward, but positioned himself between the prisoner and the captain. No way did he want to stand side by side with this Rebel. He could only hope that the almost identical planes of their faces would go unnoticed. In height and build he was the bigger and much more muscular of the two of them, but if the boy had been better fed and Danny had not been clad in a concealing uniform, the resemblance would have been all too obvious. As it was, if no-one saw their profiles together or matched the colour of their eyes …
The boy looked up, his eyes still blazing with defiance and that half-grin, which used to cause such affectionate exasperation in everyone on the ranch, twitching his lips. Danny looked at the ground, avoiding all eye contact, as he grabbed the prisoner's tunic by the shoulders and ripped it from top to bottom. He flung away the pieces, yanking them savagely out of the gun-belt. The boy probably didn't even feel the slash of the rough material across his bare skin: he had been well trained.
"Spread his arms and brace him!" Danny ordered the two guards. This at least would keep that betraying face downwards and concealed by his tumbling hair.
When they had done so, he walked slowly round the prisoner, as if surveying his stance and making sure he was ready for the punishment. He knew what he would find when he looked at the boy's back. God knows, he'd seen his father use the belt on him often enough in the face of his middle son's stubborn independence and defiance of authority, for they were two spirits and two wills that were too alike to live in the same space. But he feigned surprise.
"Turn him!" he ordered abruptly. The command was carried out at once. When Blake was looking at the boy's bare back and the marks on his skin, some of them pretty recent, Danny spoke, with both knowledge and hope, to his commander.
"With respect, sir, I'm not sure that a lashing is going to make much difference to this one!"
Blake laughed. "Looks as if his own captain has had some trouble disciplining him!" He thought for a moment. "Do it anyway. It'll pass the time while we heat some irons."
"Is that absolutely necessary, sir?" a voice asked from the crowd. A firm, mature voice – one swayed by reason, rather than revenge or frustration. The new man, Cory, moved forward a little from where he and his men had been watching at the back of the crowd, obviously unafraid and making it clear who had spoken.
Everyone held their breath. Questioning Blake's orders was something they had all learned not to do. Ten to one, such a challenge to his authority would only make things even worse.
"Just – do – it!" Blake ordered his sergeant between gritted teeth.
Someone thrust the bull-whip into Danny's hands. It wasn't the first time he'd administered such punishment and it wouldn't be the last – but it was the time which would hurt the most. God forgive me, little brother. I tried so often to shield you from this.
There was not much time to think and very little he could do. But a whip, skilfully used, could create varying degrees of pain and damage. Danny was probably as expert as anyone else who had such an onerous duty. And there was an advantage because he had turned the prisoner away from the watching ranks. No-one but Blake would see exactly where the blows fell – and Blake probably just want to see a lot of blood flowing. Very well …
At the first fall of the lash, he knew that his brother would take the pain, recognising it and accepting it, then allowing it to trigger responses which were so deeply ingrained that they were automatic. They had all learned, in the face of what should be overwhelming agony, to step aside from the needs and demands of the body and remain in the quiet centre at the heart of the storm until it was over. It conquered the physical, but not always the emotional suffering – it could not touch the grief of coming too late to the ranch and finding his parents and family slaughtered by outlaws and buried by kindly neighbours – and it could never blot from his mind the sight of his ravaged wife and the baby dead in her arms. But now it was the only defence, the only strength, they both had. He must rely on it as never before to deaden the anguish he felt about the torture he had to administer, double traitor as he was.
Danny put considerable force into that first blow, the lash cutting into the flesh across the shoulders to release a stream of bright blood which ran down the lean muscles of the boy's back like a silken cloak. The following strikes sounded more forceful than they were and he did his best to keep them from overlaying each other too much, while avoiding opening up the whole back raw either.
"Enough!" After five lashes Blake stopped the punishment and ordered Thompson and Craig to make the prisoner face him again. "Are you ready to answer my questions now?"
"Ask all y' like!" The growl was, if anything, even more challenging and amused than before.
Blake glowered. This was becoming futile. He was tired and so were his men. He needed a quick result, not just to assuage his pride but because then they could all get some sleep. Well, all of them except the prisoner, who would be in considerable pain for a long time. Serve the little bastard right!
"Bind his hands behind him!"
The two guards were quick to obey. They were decent enough men, when not provoked, and holding another man – and one so much younger than them – for a flogging was not their preferred evening recreation.
"Sergeant Gerrer, you will hold the prisoner facing the ranks."
Silently Danny moved behind his brother, sliding his hands through the bound arms and pulling the slim body taut against his own. He could feel the resistance in every muscle and was surprised when the boy actually turned as ordered. Perhaps it didn't matter to him which way he was looking – his obdurate defiance and its result would be the same. Not for nothing had the family called him 'Little Stubborn'! If Blake thought he could force him to co-operate, he was seriously mistaken, but that did not stop the captain threatening.
"If a cold lash won't make you speak, let's see what hot iron will do!"
A ripple went through the crowd. Looking out over his brother's shoulder, the kid brother who was dead and now alive again, Danny saw nothing of the mass of well-known faces in the ranks facing them. His eye was drawn instead to the little band of newcomers, who had grouped themselves about Cory and were standing drawn back and separate from the rest of the men. He hoped they weren't going to try anything. It would only end in more trouble, especially as there were only five of them. No, six - the tall blonde had emerged between two tents, at the very back of the crowd nearest the hospital. There was nothing at all Danny or the prisoner or any of them could do about what would happen next.
What actually happened next was violence of a totally unexpected kind. From all around the edges of the camp, the shadows were suddenly alive with Rebel yells. A bugle shrilled, splitting the night, and was cut off in mid-note. There was a roar of flame as several tents caught fire. The unexpected rumble of wheels suggested that at least one wagon was being driven off in haste.
After a split second of stunned immobility, the ranks broke and scattered to the defence of the security of their base. Blake yelled for his horse and started for the lines, his orderly running ahead of him. But he was too late. The grinding of wagon-wheels was overwhelmed by the pounding of hooves, as loose horses thundered like a storm-cloud through the camp.
Danny and the prisoner were left standing, bound together, before the captain's tent, as chaos erupted all around them. But it was not chaos for the raiders. No sooner had the horse-herd swept by than two mounted men bore down on them out of the night. They were obviously intent on retrieving their captured comrade and would stop at nothing to do so.
Not only was their intent clear, but the gleaming copper-coloured hair of one of the riders was achingly familiar. Trust Callum Harper to be in the middle of this! Danny thought without surprise. He'd been fishing his little cousin out of trouble since the kid was three – and tonight was no exception. Who the hell the other man was, Danny had no idea. He caught only a brief glimpse of a calm, austere, inscrutable face framed by flying black hair which would not have been out of place on the Apache to whom he had been compared.
It was all happening much too quickly.
Danny wrenched his arms free from his brother's and pulled out his belt-knife. He slashed the rope which bound the prisoner and gave him an encouraging shove. "Run, Pequeño terco, run!"
The boy turned, arrested in his escape by the familiarity of the voice that used his nick-name. His bright blue eyes widened in utter shock as they locked with a pair exactly the same.
"Dan?"
"Yes!"
They stood staring at each other. Then the boy flung his arms round the man in a desperate hug.
Dan had to break the embrace, hold him off at arms' length. "No time! Now hit me hard and get the hell out of here – and God go with you!"
The horsemen were bearing down on them at a frightening speed.
"Run, Wolf-cub, run!"
A fist thudded into Dan's jaw with unexpected force and his head rang - and so did his ears, with the single word: "Thanks!"
The boy began to run furiously through the camp, running, against all reason, away his rescuers who were bearing swiftly down on him. He raced down the street of tents, now deserted and partly on fire. But he could not outrun the horses, if that was his aim, as their riders urged them even faster, riding knee to knee as if they were one unit. At the very last moment, the two horses turned slightly apart, flanking the boy. His arms were seized from either side just as he took a running jump into the air. By some miracle of co-ordination, his feet found purchase on their stirrups and he was standing between the two horses, his own hands fiercely gripping the shoulders of the riders. The two horses continued at a full gallop, with perfect precision, bearing their prize out of the camp.
Dan struggled dazedly up off the ground and stood staring into the smoke and flames as they swallowed up his brother and his cousin. He was not the only witness. A slight movement in the shadows between the tents drew his attention. Someone had been cut off in their dash to defend the perimeter by the furious charge of the two rescuers. Now Dan was being watched with quiet speculation. The watcher walked slowly towards him, ignoring for the moment the fighting going on in the distance. When he came up to Dan, he halted and looked long at him with that piercing pale blue gaze. The cut rope lay on the trampled, blood-stained grass between them.
Another sigh, his last one, heaved Dan's chest. The young blonde was a man of principle, you could see it in every inch of him. There was nothing that could be said in his own defence. He had freed a prisoner of war and the evidence was right there at their feet in front of the captain's tent. For doing this, he would be executed.
Sure enough, from somewhere not far off in the surrounding darkness, Blake's angry voice was already bellowing: "Sergeant Gerrer, keep a tight guard on that prisoner!"
The young man gave Dan another long look. He said gently: "A brother born for adversity?"
Dan looked down at his bloody hands and soaking shirt. His voice was a choked whisper: "A brother born of the same blood."
There was so little time left now.
"That's why he couldn't hit you hard enough, even to save you." The blonde seemed to be coming to a decision.
Dan barely saw the swift, sledge-hammer punch which plunged him finally into blackness. Even while he was falling, the young man stooped and picked up the cut rope and thrust it into his pocket. A moment later, he too had vanished into the smoky shadows of the night.
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Notes:
This story of the first encounter was originally written as a 'standalone', but then other voices wanted to tell their version, so there are more 'chapters' being added as quickly as they are written. While they could be posted as separate stories, it seems more appropriate to keep them together.
Pronunciation of 'Guerra': g - EH - r r - ah
I thought I had invented the rescue stunt carried out by Cal and Vin, but it can actually be seen on film in 'Red River', although there it takes place in a stampeding herd. (Must have seen that film as a kid and forgotten everything except the stunt!).
By 1863 Confederate generals such as Robert E. Lee often spent as much time and effort searching for food for their men as they did in planning strategy and tactics. Individual commanders often had to "beg, borrow or steal" food and ammunition from whatever sources were available, including captured Union depots and encampments, and private citizens regardless of their loyalties.
