Sabers West (A Long-Knives Western Book 2) Read online

  At war’s end, Guy Dubose -- owning no skill except soldiering -- joined up with the U.S. Army, donning the same Yankee blue he'd been lining up in his rifle sights for the last five bloody years. Quartered with society's lowliest at Fort Linden, the unreconstructed Rebel found himself in a whole other kind of shooting match, this time on the wild Texas frontier. But fighting was fighting, be his opponent Bluebelly or Redskin, and where the gunsmoke was the thickest was where Guy DuBose aimed to be.

  For Fort Linden’s commander, Captain Gordon Blackburn, however, the lives of a few insignificant Johnny Rebs was a small price to pay for a seat behind a Washington desk. Either Sergeant DuBose and his misfits would earn their Captain a hero's reputation -- or they'd end up watering down the Texas dust with their blood!

  SABERS WEST

  THE LONG-KNIVES 2

  By Patrick E. Andrews

  First Published by Zebra Books in 1988

  Copyright © 2016 by the Andrews Family Revocable Trust

  First Smashwords Edition: May 2016

  Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information or storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

  Our cover features a detail from The Courageous Ride of Sgt Thomas, painted by Andy Thomas, and used by permission.

  Andy Thomas Artist, Carthage Missouri

  Andy is known for his action westerns and storytelling paintings and documenting historical events through history.

  This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book

  Series Editor: Ben Bridges

  Text © Piccadilly Publishing

  Published by Arrangement with the Author’s Agent.

  This Book is Dedicated to Army Blue

  Historical Note

  Regiments and squadrons of the old horse cavalry and modern armored cavalry are made up of “troops.” However, in this novel the term “company” is used to keep the story within the proper historical perspective. This was the official term used for these sub-units until 1883.

  Chapter One

  Breezes gusted across the Red River and over the dark prairie before wafting through Fort Alexander’s cantonment area. The spring sky stretched widely from far horizon to far horizon. Its inky blackness and glittering stars were unobstructed by even the slightest rise of ground from the table-flat terrain.

  The dull glow of dozens of lanterns shone from the windows of the buildings around the post. This quartermaster-issued illumination lighted up the activities of the bored soldiery quartered in this small tract of civilization set down in the trackless wilderness. Most of the goings-on would be card games or masculine conversations filled with the lying boasts of young males. Most of these braggadocios were far from the homes they’d left after signing up for five-year hitches in the regular army.

  But no matter what the men did to pass the empty hours of evening, alcohol would play a big part in fighting the grinding boredom. From the barracks to the sutler’s store and even in the officers’ quarters, soldiers whose brains had been dulled by monotonous and repetitious drill schedules were now comforted in clouds of quiet drunkenness.

  On the north side of the garrison, the duty bugler stepped out of the guardhouse. He marched across the regimental parade ground to the flag pole standing tall in the center of the fort. He was a young Italian immigrant who found the flat plains country a stark contrast to the Alps of his native land. Trumpeter Benito Pullini might still be with his uncle in New York City if the old man hadn’t insisted the youth stick with the long hours in his dark, dismal cobbler shop. Benito hadn’t come all the way to America for that sort of life. Unable to speak much English at the time, Benito’s only avenue of escape had been the army.

  Benito put the bugle to his lips and blew Call to Quarters, the signal for all members of the garrison not on official duty to retire to their billets. The notes of the short air caused a flurry of activity around the fort. Non-commissioned officers, as drunk as their charges, who had been detailed to bedding down the lower-ranking enlisted men, began the task with expletive-sprinkled shouts. Those sergeants and corporals, with all the impatience of harried mothers putting their restless children to bed for the night, wanted to finish the job as quickly as possible.

  The bugler sounded the call twice, each time to opposite sides of the garrison in the time-honored tradition. When the last note sounded, he marched back to the guardhouse with the same precision he’d demonstrated in going out to tend to the martial chore. He went inside the guardroom and announced to the non-commissioned officer in charge, “Sergeant, I sound the Call to Quarters.”

  Sergeant Guy DuBose, reading a newspaper, looked up from where he sat with his booted feet propped up on the scarred table used by the N.C.O.s of the guard. “Yeah, Pullini,” he remarked in a soft southern accent. “I heard you.”

  DuBose, with coal-black hair and moustache was a tall man whose slimness was that of hard muscularity. His natural handsomeness, made more rugged by the hard outdoor life he led, gave him an appearance that was much admired by the lower-ranking, younger soldiers. Many of them imitated him as best they could, sporting rather poorly nourished moustaches of their own while affecting the sergeant’s preference for a red bandanna around the neck and a wide-brimmed hat for field duty.

  The bugler, speaking more to practice English than out of necessity, nodded. “In fifteen minutes I got to sound the Taps.”

  “Right, Pullini,” Guy DuBose, who had returned his full attention back to the periodical, answered without really hearing. He was deeply engrossed in a copy of the New York Herald, fresh after only five months of being passed from army post to army post starting at Jefferson Barracks, Missouri. It had wended its way via dispatches, transferred officers, and military transport, until finally arriving at headquarters of Fort Alexander, Texas. DuBose was reading about the reelection of U.S. Grant to the presidency despite the spate of scandals associated with his administration when a plaintive call sounded from the garrison yard.

  “Corp’ral of the Guard, Post Number Two!”

  DuBose looked across his newspaper at the corporal, a big middle-aged Dane with a crooked nose. The Dane, named Hansen, stared back dully.

  “Corp’ral of the Guard! Post Number Two!” the call was repeated. This time there was a note of urgency in the sentry’s voice.

  DuBose carefully folded the newspaper. “That’ll be the sutler’s store.”

  “Ja, and we know what that means,” Hansen said. “Donovan.”

  “It wouldn’t be anyone else,” DuBose said. “You’ll need help.”

  Hansen took his kepi and set it on his head in the regulation manner. “I would appreciate it, Sergeant.”

  DuBose got his own headgear and motioned the other N.C.O. to follow him. They walked out into the garrison and strode rapidly past Guard Post One. The soldier standing there grinned at them. “Sounds like Donovan’s on a tear.”

  “Make a joke out of it,” DuBose warned coldly, “and I’ll drag you over there with us.”

  The youngster’s expression faded to one of concern. “Right, Sergeant.”

  When the duo arrived at the sutler’s store, they found the sentry at the bottom of the steps leading up to the frame building’s porch. “Donovan’s in there, Sergeant,” the soldier reported. “He won’t come out.” He swallowed nervously. “I went in there like
I was supposed to, and I said, ‘Ever’body report to their barracks ’cause Call to Quarters is sounded.’ I said that to ’em, Sergeant. Them’s the exact words in the daily orders, ain’t they?”

  DuBose nodded. “What’s your name, Trooper?”

  “Horn,” the youngster, all of eighteen, answered.

  “Private Horn from C Comp’ny, Sergeant.”

  “Very well, Private Horn. Is there anybody else in there with Donovan?” DuBose asked.

  “Yes, Sergeant,” Horn answered. “The sutler.”

  “Fine. Now you and the corporal follow me inside,” DuBose said. “If we’re lucky, Donovan will decide to leave peacefully.”

  Hansen spat. “Like hell he will!”

  DuBose went up the steps with his two subordinates closely following. He went inside the store and made a quick survey of the situation.

  A large balding Irishman, sporting a crooked nose that had been repeatedly broken in countless barracks room brawls, stood swaying at the bar. He held a tin cup in his hands. From all appearances, he had been about to take a drink from it when DuBose stepped into the room.

  “Well, now,” Donovan said. “If it ain’t me own darlin’ sargint come to see me.” He quickly downed the whiskey and shoved the container at the sutler on the other side of the bar. “Another, Mr. Dawkins!” The Irishman looked at DuBose. “Have ye come to down a few wit’ me then, Sargint DuBose?”

  “I have not,” DuBose said sternly.

  Donovan smiled and waved a finger at the sutler. “I’ll be the only one to serve, Mr. Dawkins.”

  The civilian sutler, holding a clay bottle, dutifully poured the liquor as ordered. But he spoke to DuBose. “I tried to get him to leave, Sergeant DuBose. But he wouldn’t go.”

  “Aw, ye’re a bluddy cry baby!” Donovan said grabbing the bottle. He took a few swigs directly from it. “Ah! Sure and that’s the sweetest taste in God’s world—whiskey.”

  DuBose retained a passive expression. “Did you hear Call to Quarters, Donovan?”

  “I did.”

  “Then I’m ordering you to obey it now,” DuBose said.

  “Y’know, Sargint, I have a lotta trouble with the daily service,” Donovan said thickly. “Particular Reveille and Call to Quarters, I don’t hear nothin’ in the right ear, and only what I want in the left.” He wiped his mouth with one huge mitt of a hand. “Now we’re wasting time, bucko!” He swung the clay bottle around his head once, then threw it with all his strength straight at DuBose.

  DuBose ducked, charging under the projectile, as he launched himself at Donovan. He could hear the bottle break against the far wall as he swung a roundhouse punch at Donovan’s jaw.

  The Irishman, despite his intoxication, nimbly ducked the blow, and punched straight out with his left, catching DuBose in the side of the head. DuBose staggered sideways, giving Corporal Hansen room to spring his own attack. Donovan was also ready for this, but Hansen was more the wrestler than the boxer and he grabbed the drunk around the waist, picking him up and slamming him hard against the bar. They bounced off, both losing their balance and crashing to the floor.

  DuBose recovered enough from the hard jab to join in the pulling and rolling around on the floor. Donovan was enjoying himself to the hilt, laughing and hollering while freely bashing both his assailants.

  “God damn it!” DuBose bellowed at the young sentry who stood petrified watching the brawl. “Give us a hand!”

  Horn hesitated before reluctantly walking over to the struggling trio. He wet his lips and waited for the right opportunity. When it came, he raised his Springfield rifle in the proper butt-stroke position.

  Then he struck.

  The rifle butt slammed down hard onto Donovan’s skull, making a sound like a sledge hammer hitting a rock. The Irishman’s eyes rolled around twice, then he relaxed.

  DuBose and Hansen struggled to their feet and looked down at the now peaceful man who had gone into a deep snooze. A large knot grew perceptively on his forehead.

  The young soldier again licked his lips. “You won’t tell him I was the one that done it, will you?”

  “Give us a hand,” DuBose ordered ignoring the fearful request.

  Dawkins the sutler came around the bar. “Is he all right?”

  Corporal Hansen smirked. “What’s the matter, Dawkins? Afraid you’ll lose your best customer?”

  “Say now,” Dawkins protested, “he’s a friend o’ mine.”

  “Shut up, Dawkins,” DuBose said. “Come on, you two. Let’s take him over to sleep it off.”

  The three dragged and pulled the unconscious drunk out of the store and down the steps. It took them a full fifteen minutes to get him across the garrison and back to the guardhouse. When they arrived, a couple of the off-duty sentries waiting to go on post lent a hand. Donovan, now a garrison prisoner, was dumped into one of the two empty cells used for the fort’s malefactors.

  DuBose, winded by all the effort, stood by and watched as the new corporal of the guard relieved Hansen. The fresh duty N.C.O. marched out to post his sentries. After a quarter of an hour, all of Hansen’s men were back in the guardhouse and settled down in their blankets spread along the floor to sleep away the next four hours before they again had to go out on post.

  DuBose went back to his table and chair, picking up the newspaper he’d been taken from. He tried to read but couldn’t maintain any interest in the news. After several attempts to read an article about the Three Emperors’ League being established between Germany, Russia, and Austria-Hungary, he gave it up and stepped outside to enjoy a cigar in the cool night air.

  Guy DuBose smoked languidly, enjoying the semi-solitude of standing in the dark. He gazed at this military post, an isolated part of an army where he had decided to spend the rest of his life.

  It was called the United States Army, but it was more of a foreign legion. An overwhelming number of its soldiers were foreign-born. The majority used soldiering skills picked up as conscripts in Europe while they learned English—the first step in reaping the good life they sought in the New World. Others, mostly the native-born, were ne’er-do-wells, criminals, or naive young lads looking for adventure. They were ill-fed, poorly paid, badly used, brutally disciplined, unappreciated, and looked down on by the society they served.

  To his former friends, the army would have seemed the last place they would find Guy DuBose. What would have shocked them more would be to know that he was serving as an enlisted man. Well-bred and educated, he seemed to possess all the qualities lacking in his barracks mates.

  It would have seemed more appropriate for him to spend that particular evening in an elegant drawing room enjoying expensive cigars and brandy in the company of other gentlemen.

  But the circumstances of his life had driven DuBose to enlist. He didn’t go into the army seeking military glory. Instead, he pursued the anonymity and isolation such service offered.

  DuBose continued to smoke, looking out past the buildings on the edge of the post. The country out there, still and serene under the prairie moon, eased from spring toward summer, but the warmer weather meant more than blooming flowers, abundant wildlife, and the sweet smell of buffalo grass. It was also the time of rolling violence, when the Indian warriors left their lodges to pursue their primary vocation: war.

  Chapter Two

  Guy Eduard DuBose had been born thirty-two years before in the year 1840. His entry into the mortal world, with the proverbial silver spoon firmly planted in his mouth, occurred in the city of Charleston, South Carolina. There, in that southern port city, his family ran a most prosperous export and import trade business.

  His mother and father, although from diverse backgrounds, were a devoted couple who loved each other deeply. Their family origins, however, were widely separated in politics, philosophy and geographical location. The sire, Pierre Philippe DuBose, was descended from Huguenot settlers who had come to the colonies from France. He inherited the highly profitable commercial enterprise that operated i
n the port of Charleston and met his future wife, Prunella Platte, during a business trip to Boston. The young woman’s people were staunch abolitionists, and their attitude toward this rather brash young southerner from a slave state could only be described as remote and reserved.

  Pierre’s saving grace, however, was the fact that neither he nor any of his relatives actually participated in that “peculiar institution”—as slavery was referred to in those days—due to the fact that they were all city businessmen without need of field hands or laborers. The DuBose house servants, as luck would have it for young Pierre, were either white or free black people.

  When he was first introduced to Miss Platte at a Sunday outing with business acquaintances in Boston, the South Carolinian was not favorably impressed with the young woman despite her natural prettiness. To this dashing and flamboyant French-American, Prunella Platte seemed as cold as the cod pulled from her native Massachusetts waters. Unemotional and aloof, she seemed an undesirable opposite of the sassy, flirtatious belles of his home state.

  But during other business trips and exposure to her company, he found a lighter side to the young woman, and he began an earnest courtship that eventually culminated in their marriage. The new Mrs. DuBose moved easily into southern society, keeping her opinions on slavery to herself, and only the closest and dearest of women friends knew of her Yankee attitudes.

  Their only child, Guy Eduard, was born a year after the nuptials. The boy was pampered and catered to as was the custom of the times, until it was decided his training for manhood was to begin at about the age of twelve.

  From that point on, the manly arts of riding, hunting, shooting, fencing and other pastimes of a young southern gentlemen were made a serious part of his upbringing. This was all done on the country estates of friends and relatives, where he learned to love the outdoor world and the adventures to be found there.

  When Guy reached his late teens, his schooling was dedicated to business. This was not the hardheaded, frugal style of his mother’s New England clan, but rather the honor system of handshakes and gentlemen’s agreements preferred by the aristocrats of the South.