Page 12 of Head Room (Caught Dead in Wyoming #15)

Dale, the news aide on duty, greeted me as I entered the KWMT-TV newsroom.

Don’t envision what you see on TV for network news or big-city affiliates. Think more of an aging strip mall building divorced from any other structures and plunked down in a dust and tumbleweed landscape. Inside wasn’t much better.

Since buying the station late last year, Mike wisely focused on improving personnel and newsgathering equipment, rather than sprucing up the dingy bullpen.

Although he had turned what had been the relatively spacious office of our now-former anchor into a breakroom — a popular move.

I carried the bag with me to Audrey’s assignment editor desk, which also doubled as the news director’s desk for now, to let her know I was back and she said, “That stinks.”

She meant the bag, not that I was back.

Pretty sure.

Dale followed me to my desk.

“Jennifer called. Told me exactly what you need done and to absolutely not use the copier.”

Jennifer worked fast. It didn’t hurt that Dale had a crush on Jennifer that showed no signs of abating with her absence. If she’d told him to chisel a copy on stone, he’d do his best.

“Great. It does need to be finished for Mike to take back to Chicago tomorrow — not sure of the time yet.”

“I’ll stay as long as it takes tonight. I need to finish something for Audrey first,” he apologized, even though that was his primary job.

“No worries. I want to take another look anyway.”

Good thing no one else was in the bullpen, because the smoke scent spread again when I pulled out the manuscript.

I carefully lined up my phone’s camera to get all of the first page in the frame and clicked a photo.

Then I started reading the manuscript.

* * * *

PROLOGUE

Dec. 1864

Camp Douglas,

Chicago, Illinois

Death had a thousand sounds.

The roars and screams and prayers of battle. The moans and wails and raving of delirium.

But it had only one smell.

A sick, almost sweet stench that seemed to rise from the ground. Maybe it did. God knew the ground had absorbed enough of the dead already — along with the foul byproducts of the illnesses that wasted them before the finality of death.

Joseph Kent raised his handkerchief to his face, covering his mouth and nose.

One or two of the Confederate prisoners sniggered at him, but most simply continued to stare.

Some at him, some at nothing. They sat on the filthy ground where the guards had herded them to listen to their visitor, their eyes already dead as they waited for the rest of their bodies to follow.

He’d killed his share in battle on behalf of the Union, had watched the bodies fall, and known that his gun caused it.

Had seen the light go from the face at the end of his saber.

Enemies like these men. Perhaps he’d tried to kill that balding fellow with the scar across his jaw at Chickamauga.

Or exchanged shots earlier at Stones River with that tall fellow at the edge of the group dressed in the tattered remnants of an officer’s uniform.

He’d have killed them then, no regrets. As he’d killed the man who slashed his leg so deep it left a limp that pushed him into this duty.

Yeah, he’d have killed any one of them, every one of them, if he could have. But this . . .

God Almighty, he didn’t see how a single one could turn aside what he was about to say.

He cleared his throat and spoke, offering these captured rebel soldiers the clemency of the United States of America.

Galvanized Yankees was what some called the former Confederate soldiers who’d taken up this offer elsewhere. Whatever you called them, it was a way out of this hellhole.

“And all we have to do is turn traitor on our country!” jeered a voice from the back when he’d finished.

“Your country is willing to forgive your treason and your rebellion. If you will sign the pledge and agree to fight in the United States Army.” Mutters rumbled across the gathering.

Kent limped a step forward, favoring the right leg he’d been lucky to keep.

He raised his voice, addressing what he’d learned right off would stop them all.

“You won’t be sent to fight in your homelands.

You won’t bear arms against your former comrades.

You would go West, to the Indian territories. ”

“And get scalped courtesy of the Yankees!”

“Ain’t that just like a Yankee bargain — shoot us in our homes, starve us in their prisons, then send us west for the Injuns to carve up.”

Before he considered, he snapped, “Heard about Andersonville?”

Their silence said they had.

He pulled back his temper.

“I can’t say it won’t be dangerous. You’re all fighting men, so you’d know I was lying if I said different. But it wouldn’t be battles like you’ve seen. And it wouldn’t be like this.”

He’d made an impression with that final statement. He could see it by the way the men carefully didn’t look at each other, each holding his thoughts private.

All except that tall fellow in the officer’s tatters.

His eyes were trained on two young soldiers—one a boy, the other not much older—who sat not far from him.

Their features cast the two of them as brothers, though the older was obviously not as strong.

Other men in the compound were thin, but this one, who should have been stepping into the vigor of full manhood, was more than thin.

His skin was pale and he held his thin shirt across his chest against the cold.

“Mostly, it would be guarding the telegraph, protecting settlers when need be.”

The tall man turned to him.

“And the Union soldiers who are doing that duty now?”

His voice had the languor of the Carolinas poured over the iron of command.

“I don’t understand.” Kent had to stop himself from adding “sir.”

“With Confederates out there in Indian territory, those Union soldiers could be brought East to fight against the South.”

Muttering rose among the seated men like a flock of birds driven out of cover.

Damn it. He didn’t need all these men, but he needed some to fill in the Volunteer Infantry regiment they wanted to authorize out of Rock Island.

“I can’t say to that.” He looked at the tall man. “This offer applies only to enlisted men. No officers. The men who agree will be commanded by Union officers specially chosen for this duty.”

He turned back to the men he’d come to win over. A company of prisoners from Camp Douglas would be a feather in his cap.

“Companies of your fellow prisoners have already been raised to head west soon.”

Soon by Army standards, anyway.

The muttering quieted. Prisoners, just like them, had made the choice.

Soldiers maybe from their own regiments, boys from their own towns.

Sitting in another prison, freezing now and waiting to swelter come summer.

If they lasted that long. And even if they did, watching friends die in the meantime.

Confederates just like them, once pledged to the cause.

Now they’d taken the oath of allegiance, signing on with the Union as the price of their freedom.

“So,” said the tall officer, “you’re offering these men a pardon and Union army pay in exchange for their honor.”

One last time he faced the soldier, he would have tried with all his might to kill on the battlefield.

“I’m offering these men a chance to stay alive. And that’s more than their honor or their cause can give them.”

CHAPTER ONE

March 1865

Nebraska Territory

“I’m cold to the core.”

“This ain’t weather, it’s hell’s punishment.”

“My chilblains got chilblains.”

Ransom Fletcher paid no attention.

The grumbling had become as much a part of his surroundings as the endless stretch of dun colored earth meeting a ceaseless, mercilessly blue sky.

As unnoticed as the necessity of putting one foot before the other.

As constant as the sting of wind burrowing into his nostrils, though not deep enough to blanket the smell of poorly washed men in unwashed wool.

As familiar as Peter’s gait, stronger now, it seemed to Ransom.

But the smudge of smoke on the western sky wasn’t unnoticed, constant, or familiar.

It was something new. He didn’t like it.

He squinted toward the officer astride the rangy horse alongside the company.

This Major Brand wasn’t part of the regiment. Just rode up sudden a day before they reached Fort Leavenworth. Caught Ransom Fletcher’s attention right off.

He’d heard blue belly soldiers saying this Yankee major knew this godforsaken country better than most. Had spent time out here before the war. Had requested a transfer back here.

Had to wonder about a man’s judgment who’d come back to this country, having seen it once.

It didn’t make Ransom any easier that the Yankee major’s eyes were intent on that smoky spot on the horizon.

“Aw, c’mon, it’s better’n stayin’ in that prison camp. And it ain’t any colder.”

Peter’s cheerful response to the others’ complaints drew half-hearted razzing from the grumblers marching to either side of him, which faded when Peter’s cough cut across their words.

From the row behind the rawboned youth, Ransom Fletcher gauged his nephew’s cough.

It hadn’t come as often these past two weeks.

And not as harsh or as long as it had been back at Camp Douglas.

Surely it had improved from that racking sound that seemed to pull at his own insides as hard as it had Peter’s. As Thomas’ once had.

“Company, halt!”

Though the order came from their captain, Ransom’s attention snapped back to Major Brand.

That officer exchanged a few words with the captain, then pivoted his ugly horse and cantered him toward the rear.

When the sergeant instructed them to maintain march order, but at-ease, Ransom turned from a consideration of the smoke barely visible on the horizon — it was smoke, wasn’t it?

— to follow the major’s progress back along the train.