The Gila Wars

Praise for

THE COYOTE TRACKER

“A masterful page-turner full of suspense and surprises. It demonstrates the skill that has won Sweazy an appreciative following and numerous awards and recognition.”

—Buddies in the Saddle

“A great entry in what has become one of the more solid Westerns still coming out. This harkens back to the old writers of the Old West . . . It's the Western that Erle Stanley Gardner never wrote.”

—
Bookgasm

THE COUGAR'S PREY

“[A] gem among gems. Sweazy is a superb storyteller. He breathes life into the frontier, and readers are immersed in the sights, sounds, and ever-present threat of death lurking.”

—Phil Dunlap, author of
Cotton's Devil

“Larry D. Sweazy spins a fine historical adventure full of compelling characters and gritty action.”

—James Reasoner, Spur Award nominee

and author of
Redemption: Hunters

THE BADGER'S REVENGE

“A richly layered story . . . twists and turns that dare the reader to speculate who is guilty and why.”

—Matthew P. Mayo, author of
Haunted Old West

THE SCORPION TRAIL

“Larry D. Sweazy's Josiah Wolfe books promise to stand among the great Western series.”

—Loren D. Estleman, Spur Award
–
winning author of
Burning Midnight

Titles by Larry D. Sweazy

Josiah Wolfe, Texas Ranger Series

THE RATTLESNAKE SEASON

THE SCORPION TRAIL

THE BADGER'S REVENGE

THE COUGAR'S PREY

THE COYOTE TRACKER

THE GILA WARS

THE

G
ILA

W
ARS

A Josiah Wolfe, Texas Ranger Novel

LARRY D. SWEAZY

THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

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THE GILA WARS

A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with the author

Copyright © 2013 by Larry D. Sweazy.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author's rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

Berkley Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group.

BERKLEY
^®
is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

The “B” design is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

ISBN: 978-0-425-25068-6

PUBLISHING HISTORY

Berkley mass-market edition / May 2013

eBook ISBN: 978-1-101-62225-4

Cover illustration by Bruce Emmett.

Cover design by Lesley Worrell.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

To Loren D. Estleman

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I first met Rita Kohn at a book fair. An author and a reviewer, her kindness and enthusiasm toward the Josiah Wolfe series is, and has been, greatly appreciated. Rita edited the book
Full Steam Ahead: Reflections on the Impact of the First Steamboat on the Ohio River, 1811–2011
(Indiana Historical Society Press, 2011), which was helpful when it came to researching steamboats used to transport rustled cattle from Texas to Cuba in 1875. It was more of a happy coincidence than a planned occurrence when a valued source for research turned out to be much closer than I'd anticipated. Thanks again, Rita.

The Indiana Historical Society hosts an author fair every winter, and it has been a great privilege for me to be a participant every year since the Josiah Wolfe series debuted. The Historical Society's support of local authors, and of my books, is greatly appreciated. Becke Bolinger does a fine job organizing this event, and Phil Janes manages the book sales. Thank you to both of you, and to your dedicated staff, for hosting such a fine event. I'm lucky to live in a state with such a vibrant historical society.

I am equally lucky to have the continuing support I do as a writer of this series. My thanks go to the Berkley production team; my editor, Faith Black; my agent, Cherry Weiner; and, of course, to my wife, Rose, whose continued effort and enthusiasm for this series, and my writing aspirations, is unmatched. Thank you all.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

The Red Raid, as it was called, was a violent confrontation to put an end, once and for all, to Juan Cortina's cattle rustling operation. Liberty has been taken with the timeline and the actual events for the purpose of storytelling. For an accurate account of the Texas Rangers' involvement in the raid, I would suggest to readers these two books as good resources:
The Texas Rangers: A Century of Frontier Defense
by Walter Prescott Webb (University of Texas Press, 2008) and
Lone Star Justice: The First Century of the Texas Rangers
by Robert M. Utley (Berkley, 2002).

The following books as good resources may also be of further interest to readers seeking more information about the Texas Rangers and Texas history in general:
The Texas Rangers: Wearing the Cinco Peso, 1821–1900
by Mike Cox (Forge, 2008);
Six Years with the Texas Rangers, 1875–1881
by James B. Gillett (Bison Books, 1976);
Lone Star: A History of Texas and The Texans
by T. R. Fehrenbach (Da Capo Press, 2000); and
Frontier Texas: A History of a Borderland to 1880
by Robert F. Pace and Dr. Donald S. Frazier (State House Press, 2004).

PROLOGUE

September 1869

The distant echo of a gunshot stirred Josiah out of a nap.
He wasn't sure if the gunshot was real or a remnant of the dream he'd been submerged in. A blink of his eyes told him that he was back in reality, his feet firmly planted on the wood desk in the marshal's office and single cell jail that was his daily domain.

Midday light filtered in through the western-facing window, and the sole street that served the town of Seerville was silent. Weather was of no concern, as far as Josiah could tell. Rain, or the chance of it, had yet to show itself. And any criminal threat that he knew of was miles away the last he'd heard. The sky was calm and as blue as a bird, not skittish at all. There wasn't a cloud to be seen through the dusty window.

There were no prisoners in the jail, at the moment, and no pets, deputies, or mice milling about in the daylight, scavenging for a crumb or two or just lurking about. Rodents, like most prisoners, usually showed up in the night. For the most part, being marshal of Seerville, Texas, was quiet and uneventful. It was as if Josiah were the only person in the world, just sitting around waiting for something to happen.

Josiah sat up in his chair, exhaled, and cleared his eyes. There was nothing of any importance lying in front of him on the desk.

Now he was almost certain the gunshot he'd heard was in his dream, not anywhere outside.

Images flittered in and out of his mind, nothing that he could grab hold of, but he was sure the dream was just a touch of the days and nights from the war coming back to haunt him, or cause him to second-guess his sanity, even four years after the last good man had fallen on Yankee ground.

Josiah had been lucky. He'd come back from the war with all of his limbs and his mind reasonably intact. Most every man he knew who had served the Confederacy, and survived the war, crippled and four-limbed men alike, was burdened with unpleasant dreams and memories. But no one dared speak of them aloud. Conversations with, and about, ghosts held no currency in the daily lives of old soldiers. No use bringing up bad business and defeat, even though the resentment of those feelings lived just beneath the skin of them all, ready to escape in a moment of anger and rage that might just as quickly turn to madness.

Blood, bombs, slow death, and other nightmares rocked the gentlest of souls. Some men were lost, still hankering for morphine, or for the opportunity to kill without consequences. While other men wanted nothing more than a normal, boring life. Josiah Wolfe was one of those men. Boring suited him just fine.

He stood up from the desk then and made his way to the door, just to make sure he was right, that the gunshot he'd heard hadn't been real.

He ignored the three wanted posters on the wall and thought nothing of his own duties as the marshal. The rifles were locked up, and his Colt Army was stuffed in the drawer. His gun belt was empty.

The marshal's job fit Josiah like a well-made set of boots. It offered the security of a place to go every day and a happy alternative to being a farmer, which he had never been any good at, much to his father's disappointment. Josiah had no desire to stock his land with more cows than he needed, or to plant any larger of a garden than it took to feed his growing family. Lily, his wife, was much better at growing things than he was.

As he had assumed, the street was silent, empty.

Seerville was a small town. It was hardly a town at all, really. It was a place on the way to somewhere else for most folks, and so small that it wasn't on any viable maps that Josiah had ever seen. Moscoso's Trail was a good ways off, and it was a half day's ride to Tyler and a little longer to Camp Ford, stuffed right in the heart of the piney woods of East Texas. Most of the locals had cleared some tracts and farmed around the town. There were about twenty frame houses scattered beyond the street in front of the office.

Fall had yet to wrangle away summer, and the air was still hot, thick, and humid. The street was dry, and the hot season had pushed up against being a drought, but relented frequently enough, with storms from the southwest, not to be too much trouble. Still, there had been no rain in the last twenty days, and the stress of no water was starting to show on everything green.

A cloud of dust was pushing its way into town. Somebody was coming, and they were in a big hurry. The dream was gone, and now Josiah had to reconsider what he'd initially thought.

Another gunshot echoed, cracking through the air like thunder, as foreign and unexpected on this clear late-summer day as a snowflake gliding to the dry ground.

Josiah flinched so deeply he felt it all the way to his bones. His hand slipped to his empty holster, instinctively reaching for equality, for the courage to face whatever was coming his way. He took a deep breath, knowing full well that he didn't have time to rush into the office to grab his gun.

The horse and rider came quickly into view, rushing past the few buildings that made up Seerville: the mercantile that shared a back room, offering the only saloon in a fifteen-mile radius; the bank which had been on its last legs for as long as Josiah could remember; a four-room hotel that was empty most of the time; and Landus Moore's livery and smithy shop, the only viable business in town. Once Josiah recognized the rider, he relaxed a little, but not completely.

There would be no need for a gun, since the horse bore Josiah's deputy, Charlie Langdon.

Charlie was a tall, beefy man, with facial features that always looked like nightfall was right around the corner. He brought his big Palomino mare to a grinding stop right in front of Josiah. The horse kicked up a thick cloud of dust in the process.

An angry look pierced Charlie's almost black eyes, and he held a piece of paper opposite his tight grip of the horse's reins.

Josiah and Charlie had both left Seerville as young men in '61, serving in the First Texas together for the entirety of the war, and like Josiah, Charlie came back whole, at least physically—but more changed, more enraged, and more unsettled, mentally.

Charlie Langdon had learned how to kill in the war. As far as Josiah was concerned, he'd learned to like it, too. Which was one of the reasons why Josiah had hired him as his deputy—so he could keep an eye on him.

“They done went and kilt us, Wolfe. Just done went and cut us off at the gall-durned knees.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The train. Nearest curve is planned eight miles out, past the Bullitches' place. Gonna give that old crazy fool a pretty penny to cut his spread in half, while the rest of the town just up and dies. We might as well pack it up and move to Tyler.”

“I'm not leaving,” Josiah said.

Charlie jumped off the Palomino and stopped a few inches from Josiah. There was a hint of alcohol on his breath, and a week's worth of dirt crusted on his skin. He smelled like the south end of a skunk. “I'm done, Wolfe. I ain't gonna wait for the inevitable.” He tore the silver star off his chest and stuck it out, waiting for Josiah to take it with gritted teeth.

“Let me see the paper.”

“You don't believe me?”

“Of course I believe you. I just want to read the words for myself.”

Josiah knew as much as anyone else what was at stake, what the railroad coming through Seerville would mean to everyone in the town. And more to the point, what it meant if the railroad
didn't
come through town.

A team of surveyors had come through nine months prior, remaining tight-lipped, mumbling to one another, saying only what needed saying to anyone else but themselves. The entire population of townsfolk, including Josiah, watched every move the men made as they went about their business, measuring this and that, eyeing the land like it was a woman who could whisper secrets to them. And there was no doubt, no question, that if the railroad did come through Seerville, like everyone hoped, the Langdons were the ones who would benefit the most. They owned a horseshoe claim of land around the north side of town, the most likely spot for a watering stop. Prosperity, though, would not be the Langdons' alone; everyone who owned a square inch of dirt in Seerville would see their life changed.

Charlie handed the paper to Josiah, still holding out his badge in his other hand. It only took a second for Josiah to see that Charlie was right. The railroad would be too far from Seerville to make a difference. He nodded silently, in agreement.

“Take the badge, Wolfe.”

“What're you going to do?”

Charlie dropped the badge, glaring at Josiah. It tumbled to the ground, landing with a thud, disappearing in a poof of dust.

Josiah stared at the ground, at the badge lodged in the dust of the street. “You're really quitting? You're just done? This doesn't mean anything. We're not done. There's still time.”

“You always were a slow believer, Wolfe. I thought maybe Chickamauga would have set your head right, but it didn't happen then, and it ain't gonna happen now. The town's dead. You're out of a job; you just don't know it yet. I'm not waitin' around for it to be final. I got time to make up for.” Charlie stared at Josiah, the darkness fully set in his face. “I mean what I say, Wolfe. If anybody knows that, it's you.”

“What're you going to do?” Josiah repeated, his mouth dry, his own fears about the future creeping up the back up his neck.

“Anything I want to,” Charlie said. “Any gall-durned thing I want.” He jumped up on the horse, spit into the street, then whipped the reins like he was about to run a race, and sped away from the marshal's office, covering Josiah with a healthy layer of dust and worry.

He knew what Charlie Langdon was capable of. The First Texas was the first regiment into a battle, and the last one out. Josiah had seen Charlie covered in blood from head to toe on more than one occasion, all the while smiling like he was a boy at play. Death didn't scare Charlie Langdon like it did most people. He held no regrets.

Josiah held the paper tight in his hand, not wanting to be the bearer of bad news to anyone he came into contact with. But the town would know soon enough of the decisions they'd have to make, once they knew what he did, and Josiah was betting they'd follow Charlie's lead.

Every man, woman, and child would run out of town as quickly as possible, angry, in search of a new way of life, a new way of looking at the world, rather than staying and building something out of the ruin, turning bad luck into good.

With his shoulders slumped and Charlie's badge in hand, Josiah walked into his office, sat down at the desk, propped his feet back up, and wished he could get the dream back that had slipped away when Charlie fired off the first round into the air, but he knew that was impossible. The past was gone. And now all he could do was wait for the future to catch up to him.