Ride the Panther

By Kerry Newcomb

To stop a savage war from spreading west, two brothers stare down an army

The year is 1863. Even as the Union Army verges on total victory over the rebellious south, there are those in the North who clamor for a negotiated truce. Along a creek in the Indian Territories, North and South collide, and conflict simmers between slaveholding plantation owners and the settlers who would keep the West free. As this tension threatens to boil over into open war, hardened settler Ben McQueen goes east to plead for help from Washington. But when an assassin in Kansas City ambushes and nearly kills McQueen, his sons must try to fulfill the mission themselves.
 
Though brothers, Jesse and Pacer Wolf McQueen have grown up in different worlds. But when a conspiracy threatens to destroy their family and tear apart the country they love so dearly, they will put aside their differences and fight. As long as these brothers stand together, the Union has a chance.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Media
• Release date: Apr 29, 2014
• ISBN: 9781480478831

Kerry Newcomb

Kerry Newcomb was born in Milford, Connecticut, but had the good fortune to be raised in Texas. He has served in the Jesuit Volunteer Corps and taught at the St. Labre Mission School on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in Montana. Mr. Newcomb has written plays, film scripts, commercials, liturgical dramas, and over thirty novels under both his own name and a variety of pseudonyms. He lives with his family in Ft. Worth, Texas.

Book preview

PART ONE

Gather the Children

Chapter One

BEN MCQUEEN CROUCHED LOW behind a barrel of nails, tore a strip from his shirt, and wadded the piece of cloth into the bullet hole in his tricep. His wounded left arm hurt like hell. It had left a trail of blood leading directly to his hiding place in this corner of the warehouse. Gritting his teeth, Ben probed the wound. The pistol ball had almost passed through the underside of his arm. He could feel the slug beneath his skin. He fished in his coat and found a pocketknife, then slit the skin with the blade’s keen edge and flipped the bloody slug out into the palm of his hand. Ben wrapped his upper arm in the torn sleeve of his shirt. He had to hurry his doctoring. After all, two men were trying to kill him. It was the night of August sixteenth, 1863. Ben wondered if he’d live to see the seventeenth dawn.

At six feet two inches, Ben McQueen had offered a big target for his would-be assassins. It was a testament to their poor marksmanship and his surprisingly quick reflexes that he was still alive. His hat was gone; his red hair trimmed close to his skull was matted with sweat. Salt stung his pain-filled green eyes. He hurt. But he was alive and wanted to stay that way.

Who was trying to kill him? The message to come alone and at night to the warehouse had been a ruse to trap him. He’d expected as much, but he had come anyway, risking his life on the slim chance the note had been for real.

Well now, Ben McQueen, he thought, you’ve joined the game and must play the cards you’re dealt.

Ben slipped a hand inside his coat and drew a .36 caliber Navy Colt from his waistband. An extra cylinder, fully loaded, was a reassuring weight in his side pocket. Slow as molasses in winter, he eased up and to the side, keeping to the shadow cast by another couple of nail barrels stacked one atop the other. From this vantage point he could study the entire warehouse.

It was a dark, spacious building with its back to the Missouri River and front door opening onto River Street, bold and brash and sinful; home to some of Kansas City’s more notorious denizens. The warehouse was nearly filled with neatly arranged stacks of barrels and crates and fifty-pound sacks of grain that formed islands of merchandise between intersecting aisles wide enough to accommodate loading carts.

Ben was hunkered near the back wall. He’d been caught in the middle of the building and had run a gauntlet of gunfire to reach the nail kegs where he’d gained a few moments of respite. The wounded man searched the gloomy interior for some sign of his attackers. He inhaled slowly, measuring every breath. And he listened for the telltale creak of timber, the misplaced step, anything, no matter how subtle. He glanced toward the back door and figured it opened onto a pier. While calculating his chances of reaching the door without being shot, Ben caught a glimpse of a stoop-shouldered, bearded man in a wool cap. He darted through a patch of moonlight that streamed through an unshuttered window just beyond the back door.

That’s one, Ben silently counted. A gunshot sounded to his left and a bullet fanned his cheek before exploding a fist-sized chunk out of a nail keg. He caught a faceful of woody debris and dropped to the floor. That’s two.

I got him, Seth! a voice bellowed. Heavy steps thudded on the wooden floor. Fabric ripped as this second attacker tore his shirt on the splintery corner of a crate.

Be careful, Justin, Seth, the stoop-shouldered man nearest the pier door, shouted out.

Careful, sheet-it. You just want first claim on his boots. Well, you’re too late. I shot him plumb dead. Right through the brisket. I seen him fall.

It’s too damn dark to see, Seth replied, unwilling to leave the safety of the shadows he had found. He lacked the confidence of his associate. And he’d heard stories of Ben McQueen.

C’mon, Yankee, you’re dead, ain’t cha? This assassin was not a patient man. Despite his companion’s words of warning, Justin hurried down the dusty aisle between the stored goods until he reached the rear wall of the warehouse.

Ben crouched like a big cat and edged soundlessly past the kegs. His cheek bore a pattern of crimson streaks where wood splinters had stung his flesh like so many angry bees. Working his way in the dark, he brushed his crudely bandaged left arm against the corner of a workbench and had to bite his lip to keep from crying out as pain seared the length of his left side from his toes to his neck. His knees trembled, his stomach did flipflops, and he would have doubled over right then except it might have cost him his life. So Ben resisted the temptation and inhaled slowly and rode the waves of nausea and hurt. Pinpricks of light exploded on the periphery of his vision like fireworks, but he remained conscious and in control of his faculties.

Ben studied the tabletop he’d brushed against. Some worker had abandoned an assortment of wooden pulleys and other hoisting equipment, even a couple of coils of rope. Ben chose a heavy metal pulley with an iron hook at one end and two free-spinning wheels encased by a worn wooden frame. He knelt and laid his Navy Colt on the floor, hefted the pulley in his strong right hand, and hurled it toward the center of the warehouse. The man called Seth was a cool one and not about to fire blind. Justin was another story entirely. A pair of guns opened fire. The twin muzzle flashes revealed a grizzled-looking individual with stringy brown hair and close-set eyes. He was dressed in a ragged frock coat a size or two too big for him and drab blue dungarees. Unarmed, he would have presented no threat, but his booming Colts were the measure of this man.

The assassin fired four quick shots in the direction of the pulley, then, as if suspecting a ruse, charged the nail kegs. He filled them full of holes, and when he reached the back wall, he shifted his aim yet a third time and squeezed off several rounds at an array of farm implements. One slug shattered a broom handle, another a hoe, and he shot a pick axe to slivers. The noise of his guns was deafening in the confines of the rear passageway. Black smoke clouded the confines and blinded him further. He sensed motion to his right and tried to shift his stance, but Ben fired as the man turned. The gunman dropped one gun and clutched at his throat. He staggered off toward the center of the warehouse, tripped over a whiskey bottle, and bounced off a stack of fifty-pound bags of oats—and all the while he made the most horrid sound, a kind of strangled scream like a man drowning, a man come face to face with death and wholly unprepared, a man in agony and desperate for one… precious… minute… more… of… life.

Justin toppled back against the bags of oats. Dying, he fired a final round that blew a hole in a burlap bag. Dried oats cascaded over the man’s head and shoulders as he slid to the hardwood floor. His upper torso was soon buried in the dusty white grain.

Silence. The gunshots would alert no one. Along Kansas City’s riverfront at night, trouble was a way of life. Flesh was bought and sold. Raw whiskey flowed like sweat. Men minded their own business here. And women minded the men.

Fortunately Ben McQueen was not the kind to wait around for help. He intended to walk out of this warehouse alive and kicking, and if that meant through a haze of powder smoke, so be it. Someone had set him up. He intended to find out who. He figured he already knew why. Ben McQueen had been an ardent and vocal supporter of the Northern cause since Fort Sumter, a stand that had placed him in the gunsights of Confederate sympathizers. He winced and adjusted the makeshift bandage on his arm. But for uncommon swiftness and pure dumb luck, he would have been worm food.

Justin? The voice sounded near the rear door. Ben continued to crouch near the worktable. Barrels of salt pork and wooden crates whose contents were unknown separated him from the bearded assailant called Seth.

Justin? Damn it.

Ben shifted his stance, eased underneath the worktable, and positioned himself behind a long row of pork barrels stacked three high. Ben wrinkled his nose at the strong smell.

Is the bastard dead?

Not hardly, Ben said. A shot rang out. He ducked instinctively. The bullet thudded into an empty coffin set upright in a far corner at the end of the rear aisle. Two more gunshots followed the first. Ben heard the rasp of a wooden bolt sliding back. The sound galvanized him into action. He stepped out from hiding. Seth stood by the rear door. The bearded man was outlined against a shaft of moonlight filling the window behind him.

Ben fired. Seth answered. Gun blasts illuminated the darkness. The stoop-shouldered man shoved the door open and vanished outside. A bullet from McQueen chased him through the doorway. Ben trotted down the aisle and peered past the doorsill and saw his attacker stumble out onto the pier stretching out from the dock that ran the length of the warehouse.

Ben wasted no time in following the man into the night, then stood motionless while the warm evening air washed over him. Smoke trailed from the barrel of his Navy Colt, but the breeze bore only a faint trace of the gunpowder’s acrid residue. He heard the distant tinny melody of a piano drifting on the wings of the wind. The river seemed ablaze, reflecting the glare from brightly lit saloons, brothels, and gambling dens lining the waterfront. Ben abandoned the safety of the doorway and started after the man who had tried to kill him. There was no place to run. A pier ran straight out from the doorway into the black expanse of the Missouri River.

Up ahead, the bearded man stumbled the remaining twenty yards, then dropped to his knees a few feet from pier’s end.

Ben took his time, his left arm cradled stiff against his side. The wooden planking creaked and groaned beneath his weight.

Seth heard the big man approach, and extended his right arm, dropping the Dragoon Colt in plain sight. The heavy weapon clattered onto the weathered planks.

Enough. You’ve done me, the bearded man groaned. With his left hand clamped to his gut he bowed forward, his breath coming in ragged gasps. I’m all…cut up inside. Your last bullet caught me in the…

Ben slowed but continued to warily close in on the man who had tried to kill him. He lowered his Navy Colt, but was ready to bring the weapon to bear at the first threatening move from Seth. Across the river, twinkling lantern lights dotted the opposite shore where buffalo hunters had made a camp and were awaiting a ferry to take them across come morning. Ben stood alongside his attacker and nudged the Dragoon Colt out of its owner’s reach.

A pool of blood had begun to form beneath the kneeling man. The left side of his shirt was soaked. Suddenly, gunfire erupted on the opposite bank as two quarrelers settled their differences in the court of Judge Colt. Seth grimly chuckled as he watched those distant guns blossom flame. Looks like I’ll have company with the devil.

Ben McQueen shook his head in disgust. He took no pleasure in this. I don’t even know you.

Don’t matter. I ain’t nobody. Just tryin’ to earn a few dollars. From downriver came a menacing hiss as someone bled the steam pressure from the boiler of a riverboat, the Missouri Queen. Ben glanced around at the sound and then down at the gun in his hand. He’d thumbed the hammer back and was ready to shoot. The attack in the warehouse had left him as skittish as a yearling. He returned his attention to the man at his feet.

Who sent you? Ben asked.

The wounded man, kneeling at the end of the pier, eased over on his backside to better face McQueen. Never seen a big man move so quick. Indeed, Ben towered over him as Seth lay with his legs splayed out and struggled to stay alive. Seth gasped and his bearded features drew tight against the bones of his face. See that I’m laid out proper. And I want a coach with six black horses to carry me to the buryin’ ground. And someone to read words over me. You promise and I’ll tell you.

I promise. It will be as you say. Ben took a step closer. Now, who paid you to kill me?

A lurid grin split the assassin’s ugly features as he raised a hand and pointed past McQueen. Him, said Seth.

Ben heard the groan of weathered wood behind him. He stiffened. A gunshot rang in his ears. Something kicked him in the back and he stumbled forward, arms outstretched, reaching into space. He felt pain, numbness, a curious mixture of both and a loss of breath and black waters rushed to engulf him as he toppled from the pier and broke the cold black surface of the river.

Got him. Got him dead to rights, Seth called out, then coughed and clenched his fist at the pain. That damn mixed-blood sure put me in a bad way. But if you can get me to a sawbones… Seth’s voice trailed off. Oh no. Please. We had a deal—

A second shot took the top of his head off and slammed him backward, left him dangling over the end of the pier. The weight of Seth’s upper torso gradually dragged him over the edge and into the Missouri where, like Ben McQueen, he disappeared without a trace.

Chapter Two

ORDINARILY, CAPTAIN JESSE REDBOW McQueen would have cut his losses and folded his hand. But he had glimpsed something in the gambler seated across the table from him. The game had lasted most of the night and run the sun up without a break. It had begun with five men seated round the table. Now two of them were enjoying a delayed breakfast of country ham, biscuits and gravy, black coffee, and corn dodgers dipped in wild honey.

The men were gathered in the saloon on the hurricane deck of the Westward Belle; it was a cheerfully appointed, wood-paneled room that sported oil-lamp chandeliers hung from the generously high ceiling. A gleaming walnut bar offered just about any libation known to man. Often drinks were concocted on the spot. The Belle’s captain, Nicodemus Stockwood, was famous for his ability to imbibe copious quantities of spirits and maintain a level head. Jesse had expressed concern to the riverboat captain and suggested the man might curtail his proclivity for drink, to which Stockwood promptly responded with accounts of his only two accidents, both of which occurred when he was stone-cold sober.

The Belle was three days out from St. Louis and loaded with blue-clad troops camped amid crates and barrels on the lower deck. Rooms on the hurricane deck were reserved for merchants bound for points west and Union officers posted to the border states. Jesse wore the garb of a cavalry officer, a dark blue coat with yellow shoulder bars adorned with the two gold bars that indicated his rank and pale blue pants tucked into knee-high black boots. His coat was unbuttoned to reveal a loose-fitting white cotton shirt and the shiny brass buckle of his gunbelt.

The raise is fifty dollars to you, Enos Clem announced for the second time. And again he licked his lips. It was an almost imperceptible gesture, just a tiny pink flick of tongue. But Jesse had noticed. Clem was beginning to tire. Clem had been a shrewd player, taking his winnings a little at a time, riding his luck, increasing his wagers the more he came to know the other men in the game. But he had become overconfident, and he’d begun to take risks.

Throughout the night Jesse had played cautiously and conservatively, only staying in the game when he had a chance at winning the pot. Now Enos Clem figured he had the officer pegged. As the other men folded and Jesse remained, Clem had thrown caution to the wind. Now suddenly the stakes had gotten out of hand and there were six hundred and thirty dollars in gold and greenbacks on the table.

Jesse examined the cards he held: the deuce and four of diamonds, a jack of clubs, the seven and ten of hearts. It was a bust hand in any book, as bad a hand as he’d been dealt since sitting down at the table. Jesse glanced at the man on his left, a stocky good-natured lawyer who could not seem to stop yawning.

Let’s make this interesting. According to Stockwood, we’ll be in Kansas City within the hour. I need a shave before we dock, Jesse said, and promptly took the assortment of coins and currency in front of him and added them to the pot.

I’ll see your fifty and bump it up another two hundred and fifty. Jesse placed his five cards facedown on the table in front of him, like a gauntlet hurled down in invitation to a duel. The raise took the gambler by surprise. He wiped a hand across his mouth, then rubbed his eyes, and studied his opponent.

The eldest son of Ben McQueen was a handsome young officer who at the age of twenty-two had earned his captain’s rank. His eyes were dark, the color of old leaves become black with decay. His black hair was an unruly forest of curls. In his boots he stood no taller than five foot ten, but size had little to do with his presence. Even in repose, he possessed a catlike grace, relaxed in his chair yet ready to spring. He’d grown a black mustache since the Vicksburg campaign, throughout which he’d played an integral part as both Union spy and officer assigned to General Sherman’s staff. But those months of danger and bloodshed lay behind him. As for what lay ahead, only time and a certain Major Peter Abbot awaiting him in Kansas City would tell. Jesse glanced at the two men who remained in the game. His features were as flat and expressionless as an unmarked grave. The ability to disguise his intentions had saved his life on more than one occasion.

A man would be a damn fool to cross that bridge, the lawyer said, and tucked what remained of his cash inside his coat pocket. He rose from the table, nodded to the dozen or so spectators circling the table at a respectful distance. Clem had taken a healthy share of their money over the past three days. More than one man wanted to see the gambler get his comeuppance.

Enos Clem ran his long fingers through his brown hair and rubbed the back of his neck. He studied the officer across the table from him and then lowered his gaze to the money on the table. Sweat ran a trail along the side of his pasty white features. Tiny veins, like spiderwebs across his cheeks, reddened.

You’re running a bluff, Captain McQueen, the gambler muttered, sliding his thumb over the three eights he held. He had tried to draw to a full house and failed. He had expected the lawyer to fold, but the Yankee captain was proving far more stubborn. For the past hour, Clem had sensed lady luck was turning her back on him. He should have quit hours ago but, damn it, the lure of easy money had bound him to the table as if he had been chained to his chair. As for McQueen’s cards, Clem wasn’t nearly as confident as he sounded. The more he considered it, the less likely it seemed the officer was bluffing. No, the Yankee’s hand would just about clean the gambler out. And if he lost, then he was down to stake money, the few bills he kept tucked away inside his boot. He had figured to buy the last pot, but the tables had turned and he didn’t like it. The snickering among the spectators didn’t help matters. Sure, they’d like to see him lose it all, to throw away every last dollar. Well, Enos Clem knew when to fold, and he was not about to give his fellow passengers the satisfaction of watching him leave with empty pockets.

The steam whistle sounded three blasts to alert the passengers that Kansas City was in sight. Belowdecks the reassuring rumble of the steam engines and the throbbing revolution of the paddle wheel at the stern of the boat plunged the Western Belle upriver to its destination.

The hell with it, Clem said, and tossed his cards onto the money in the center of the table.

A cheer rose up from the merchants and McQueen’s fellow officers that filled the shipboard saloon. Enos Clem glowered and a twitch developed around his left eye. Had he been bluffed? Pride demanded he learn the truth. He slid his chair back, stood, and, leaning across the table, attempted to flip over the five cards Jesse had placed facedown. Jesse caught the gambler’s wrist.

I’ll see those cards, Clem said.

You didn’t pay for the privilege, the officer reminded him. Tension suddenly filled the room and men, despite their curiosity, began to give ground and find excuses to put themselves out of harm’s way.

Enos Clem, wearing a black frock coat, string tie, and baleful expression, could have passed for an undertaker appraising a prospective client. Jesse knew little of the gambler’s history, other than the fact he was an Easterner headed for the gold fields of California and traveling on the winnings he acquired along the way. But Jesse McQueen was no stranger to violence and he could see trouble coming like a thunderhead on the horizon of the gambler’s eyes.

Clem dropped a hand toward the gun butt protruding from the waistband of his trousers. It was a Starr revolver, caliber .44, with a sawed-off barrel to enable the weapon to ride comfortably against the gambler’s belly. He’d kept the Starr concealed beneath his vest, until now.

Enos Clem was no slouch. He moved fast, fueled by his pride and his anger. But Jesse McQueen was faster. Survival spurred him. He overturned the table and stepped forward. His right hand was a blur as he caught Clem’s gun hand in middraw and shoved the Starr .44 back in the gambler’s waistband. Clem grunted and winced in pain as the muzzle of the revolver dug into his groin.

Jesse held the gambler’s hand in an iron grip, thumbing the hammer back on the Starr and forcing his finger through the trigger guard. An ounce more of pressure and Clem would shoot himself in the testicles.

You’ve finished one game. Better not start another, Jesse said in a quietly ominous tone of voice. He glanced down at the revolver bulging the front of the man’s pants. You’re not in Boston now, pilgrim. And this is one game I don’t think you’ll have the balls to finish.

A silver dollar rolled off a nearby table, landed on the wood, rolled a few feet, then spun and settled flat against the floor. A dropped pin would have been heard just as clearly. Jesse never took his eyes from the gambler. The fire cooled in Enos Clem’s veins. It was time to cut his losses before they became—he glanced down at his crotch—unacceptable. Jesse read the surrender in the man’s lowered gaze.

The steam whistle sounded again and the boat shuddered and slowed as it approached the river town. Jesse removed his hand from the gambler’s belly gun. Clem took care to pat the wrinkles from his coat, then sniffed indignantly and, mustering the last of his pride, walked stiffly from the saloon.

The crowd of Union officers and merchants collectively sighed, relieved there hadn’t been gunplay. The quarters were too close and no one in his right mind wanted to risk a stray bullet. Jesse knelt to pick up his winnings off the floor. He was more than six hundred dollars to the good.

Welcome to Kansas City, someone said dryly, breaking the tension.

It would do.

Chapter Three

"Captain Jesse McQueen. Your presence in Kansas City is urgently required. Come with all due haste. I will be staying at the home of Doctor Milburn Curtis.

Major Peter Abbot"

JESSE ABSENTLY REREAD THE dispatch that had found him in Vicksburg, then folded the missive and tucked it away in his pocket. He glanced around the dock. The waterfront was crowded with townspeople and soldiers, buckskinners, rivermen, and freed slaves who had escaped bondage in the South and found work as common laborers in this Union-controlled town. Glistening black muscles unloaded goods from the Westward Belle and carried crates and barrels aboard. A couple of young lads in faded canvas pants and loose-fitting shirts drove a herd of goats up the pier and into a makeshift pen on the lower deck of the Belle, toward the bow.

Jesse noticed Enos Clem disembarking from the riverboat. The frock-coated gambler paused just a step off the gangplank and lit a cigar. Smoke curled beneath the broad white brim of his flat-crowned hat. He gestured to a young mulatto, a lad of eleven or twelve, who clambered down off a barrel and for the promise of a few cents took up the gambler’s carpetbag and followed the man down the pier and along the dock. No doubt Clem intended to visit the saloons along the waterfront and restore to health the contents of his much-depleted purse.

Jesse shrugged, and slung his own saddlebags over his shoulder and headed out onto River Street. No doubt the town marshal would help him locate Doc Curtis. Jesse wasn’t worried.

Peter Abbot was like a member of the family. He had served with Jesse’s father in the Mexican War and had become an unofficial uncle to the children of Ben McQueen. At the outbreak of war, it was to Peter Abbot that Jesse had come with a request to serve under the major’s command. Abbot had been only too happy to oblige. The major’s dispatches, however, were always cut and dried—Report here and Go there and Wait until contacted. Jesse never knew what to expect. However, one thing was certain: no matter where the major’s orders sent Jesse McQueen, the captain could always count on finding trouble at the end of the line.

The marshal of Kansas City was home tending his wife and helping as best he could in the birth of his second child, but his deputy, a laconic young man by the name of Hiram Hays, managed to bestir himself from the marshal’s chair long enough to refill a blue tin cup with coffee from the stove back near the jail cells at the rear of the building. Hiram took his time, enjoying his authority and posturing with all the gravity of a man wise beyond his years.

Jesse waited patiently, allowing the deputy his moment of glory. Come tomorrow with the marshal’s arrival, Hiram would return with broom in hand to a more humble status.

Doc Curtis, Hiram repeated. Sure I know where he lives. Been patchin’ me up since I was sloppin’ hogs on my granpap’s farm. And who might you be?

Captain Jesse McQueen.

McQueen, huh? Hiram scratched a yellow thumbnail along his stubbled jaw and appeared to recognize the name. What with all you soldier boys in town, hell, I can’t tell y’all apart. Don’t get me wrong, me and most others are glad for the troops, what with them Confederate devils about.

"I came in on the Westward Belle not an hour ago. But news about the Lawrence raid was all the talk in St. Louis."

On the twenty-first, Confederate guerrillas led by the infamous William C. Quantrill, Bloody Bill Anderson, and the Choctaw Kid had looted

Reviews for Ride the Panther

[Anthony Capomacchia · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Outstanding tale encompassing the Civil War family strife with the Indian Territory conflict. Well done and mesmerizing.