Prologue

Bandera, Texas – March 3rd, 1866

“Nothin’ but red dust out there…”

For the longest time, Samuel had been lost in a daydream. The road had been smooth for hours. Now, the steady rumble of the wagon across rough terrain and the heat radiating through the window had told him one thing: He was back in Texas again.

He opened his eyes. Indeed, as one of the many other passengers crammed in the small wagon had said, there was nothing but blood-red dirt as far as the eye could see. The old man who’d said it had not been addressing Samuel; in fact, he hadn’t been speaking to anyone.

Still, Samuel turned to the weather-beaten traveler and smiled for the first time in what felt like years. “Yessir,” he said. “Just red dust. Looks like home to me.”

The old man said nothing, but Samuel didn’t mind.

He’d had his fill of old men. He’d given the better half of four years to them. He’d given his youth, his body—and all he’d gotten in return was scars.

He glanced down at his right hand, which trembled on the tip of his knee as the wagon rolled onward. A thick purple wound rolled over the top of it, a reminder of the first bullet he’d caught. It wasn’t the last either; the Yanks had left him with more than a few “souvenirs.”

Outside, Samuel watched his destination come into view. It had been a long time since he left, but even so, he knew this land deep in his soul. The scrub, the canyons, and the clusters of birds sweeping the clear blue sky. He couldn’t believe he was alive to see it. By God’s mercy alone.

Samuel was a far different man than he’d been when he’d left. He chuckled under his breath. Whether Simone would still recognize him was the question.

The passengers began packing their wares, wrestling for space. Samuel didn’t have to bother; all he owned was stashed in a small rucksack by his knees. Everything was waiting for him there, at home.

At the ranch, Simone awaited him—his wife to be. Things would be right again. Samuel’s younger sister and parents had been keeping the business going, but Samuel knew well that the world was about to turn.

The war is over. The thought was situated deep in his soul. He looked out the window at the red dirt. They’d lost, but the bloodshed was over. Things were finally going to change.

Samuel had long held the prospect of returning home close to his heart. Every night, he lay, imagining a perfect future for him and Simone. To finally marry. To make a home. To do business—Longhorns. He had it all planned.

The carriage came to a stop, its arrested momentum seizing the passengers. Samuel remained fixed in place, watching as a pair of spectacles flew across the cab, thrown from an open suitcase, and landed by his feet.

A weed of a man side scrambled for them, but Samuel held up a hand, stopping him.

“Don’t you move a muscle—we all packed in here somethin’ awful.”

He leaned down and retrieved the spectacles. In their reflection, he saw an unfamiliar face. The same dark hair, the same emerald-green eyes shining behind his thick eyebrows… yet there was something different, an unfamiliar dullness in his eyes. They were the eyes of a man that had killed—and witnessed killings.

The passengers shuffled out of the carriage, and Samuel’s boots made contact with the dusty road. He looked up to the canyons, his gaze tracking over to the place where the hills rolled to a flat, open land.

Home. He needed it. He was itching for it.

On foot, Samuel’s journey stretched on for an eternity. He brushed away flies, taking a careful sip of water from his canteen. It was not an easy trek, but he didn’t bother with a horse. He couldn’t afford to waste any more time; he needed to see Simone’s face, to greet his family again. He kept a steady pace, being careful not to tire himself out.

He only quickened when he neared the first cluster of wooden buildings by the fringe of town. That’s when he saw something that made his blood run cold. That was when he moved with an urgency that no battle had ever produced in him.

The ranch. It was gone. Where it had stood, only charred and blackened wood remained.

Reaching the door with his pistol drawn, Samuel’s body burned like flame. The ranch was no more—just a blackened frame, scorched earth, and buzzards picking at faint shapes in the grass. Hell had touched this place.

Samuel thought only of Simone. His family. Hoping with all his heart that when he pushed through the soot-black door, dangling from what remained of the house, that he was not too late.

His boot met the wood, a torrent of splinters exploding beneath his feet. Holding his weapon, Samuel charged in.

A figure awaited him. A man, crouched in the debris.

“Stand up!” Samuel barked. This was not his father.

The man cleared his throat. “Hold on a second, mister—”

“You give me one damn reason I ain’t shoot you where you stand!”

“Samuel, is that you?”

Samuel squinted; then, his eyes widened, and he made out the man’s face; it was his neighbor, Bob McGill. But this was no time for pleasantries. The old man’s eyes told Samuel the man had more bad news.

Samuel felt a cold wave down his spine.

“Why your hands all dirty, Bob?” Samuel asked quietly.

Bob sucked his teeth, removing his hat.

“You didn’t get my letter then, I take it.” Bob shook his head. “It were them Douglas Boys, Samuel. They came in quick, nothin’ anyone could do. I’m sorry, son.”

He put a gentle hand on Samuel’s shoulder. “Take a second. Breathe. Lower that weapon, son.”

Samuel felt his hands shake, the Kerr Revolver growing heavy in his hands. He had to get a grip on himself. Just like in the war—men that lost themselves didn’t last.

“Wh-why are your hands all dirty, Bob?” Samuel asked again.

Bob didn’t answer, but Samuel already knew the answer. Behind the ashes of his home, he saw four fresh graves, laid out with ramshackle wooden crosses.

Four graves that told him that home was further from him than ever before.

Chapter One

Outside Pipe Creek, Texas – April 20th, 1866

Pain.

Samuel awoke. Light bled through the degraded tin sheet of the roof above him. He couldn’t remember how he’d gotten to this bed, but he knew just where he was. Bob’s back house—a glorified shed, really. He’d become accustomed to waking up here.

He ran his hand over his cheek. Better here than the gutter.

Rolling over, Samuel felt white hot pain in his shoulder and a blistering headache. He tasted blood, and the faint, smokey evidence of whiskey on his breath.

He seethed. “God dang!”

He felt for the locket around his neck. Finding it, relief washed over him. It was the last picture he had of Simone. A miniature portrait his mother had sketched. She’d one for each member of the family, leaving little portraits around the house as practice. Samuel’s father had made a habit of collecting them up.

Though his mother always said it was a silly habit, Samuel blessed her for it now. This sketch was all he had left; he’d found it in the wreckage of the ranch house, preserved in Simone’s burned locket. Bob had told him to keep it around his neck, that he should look at it to remind him of his family.

So far, Samuel hadn’t had the strength. It seemed like every time he pressed it between his fingers, all the love would drain from his body, leaving only rage.

A twinge in his leg. Pulling down his bloodstained trousers, Samuel saw a freshly-stitched wound crossing over his right thigh. Another evening, another wound.

“Where on earth did I get you?” Samuel muttered, carefully pulling his pants back up and buckling his belt.

“You’re lucky that’s all you got.” The voice came from the doorway of his ramshackle lodging. Bob stood by the entrance, frowning as he wiped red stains from his fingers with a rag.

“What happened?” Samuel asked. “Who got me? How’d I get here?”

“I got no earthly idea. I woke up and found you here, covered in blood. But I got a good idea how it happened.” Bob shook his head. “You should quit the drinkin’ son—you’re no good at it.”

Samuel smiled weakly, pulling himself to his feet. He tested his weight on the wounded leg, and lightning shot through it.

“Who shot me, Bob?”

Bob threw down the rag and came in, offering his hand. “Can’t rightly say. Must be over fifty of them Douglas Boys by now—hard to pick one out.”

Anger burned in Samuel’s gut. He swatted at Bob’s hand. “I gotta walk it off.”

Bob let him go, picking up the blood-stained bandage. “Can’t walk off everything, son.”

Stepping into the sizzling spring sun, Samuel had one thing on his mind: revenge. It was all he thought of, all the time. He was well aware that going up against a gang that large was suicide. That was why the townsfolk of Pipe Creek had let the Douglas Boys run wild over the past years.

Since the day he’d returned home, Samuel had tried to muster up a posse. The law was too far, too overworked, to bother with small towns like Pipe Creek; if justice was to be had, it would have to be in their hands—but Samuel had found no willing allies among the fighting men the town had left. They were all too tired of bloodshed.

All these folk wanted was to try and find peace. Lucky for them, they still had homes to worry about; Samuel was the only one who’d lost everything—which meant he had nothing left to lose.

It had made him wild. He’d never been a drinking man—even in war, he’d kept himself in control—but now, hate had hardened his heart. This was not the first morning he’d woken with a foggy memory and a fresh wound.

He couldn’t remember going after the gang, couldn’t make out a single face in his memory. Not a single detail. All he remembered were the feelings of rage and emptiness, pistols flashing, and the thunder of gunshots—that, and laughter.

Samuel trembled. Without the booze, it was clear that it had been another bad plan. He was no lone wolf, and he posed no threat to these men. He was a joke.

Of course, to the Douglas Boys, all men were a joke.

The gang had taken all he had, and for no reason. They’d made a raid on the Reynolds family’s ranch, and it had gone sour. The Douglas Boys had killed them all without a second’s thought, and they’d walked free.

Samuel couldn’t abide that, couldn’t just let them get away with it.

Samuel stumbled toward a pile of hay, finding his jacket. It was stained with liquor and splashed with blood. Whoever had dragged him home must have tied it around his leg as a makeshift bandage. Beside it lay his Kerr Revolver, which he slipped into his hand.

“What on earth you thinking, son?” Bob remained in the doorway of the shed, packing his pipe.

“What it look like?” Samuel retorted, holstering his weapon. “Fixin’ to get some revenge.”

Bob didn’t flinch. “There’s work to be done. I could use your help.”

Scowling, Samuel shook his head.

“You ain’t the only one ’round here those boys have taken from,” Bob urged. “Don’t forget, they took my Loretta’s life too.”

Bob’s eyes remained fixed on Samuel as he stuck a match and touched it to his tobacco-filled pipe.

Samuel chewed his lip. His neighbor was not an emotional man, but a great sadness resided in the old man’s eyes.

“I know that, Bob,” he said, “but I ain’t resting till all them boys know it, too. They can’t just walk free.”

Releasing a plume of white smoke through his lips, Bob replied, “You go out there, you’re gonna get yourself killed, too. Hell, you could shoot twenty of them boys dead today, and they’d find twenty more to join tommora morning. Can’t kill ’em all, and you know it. I know it. I told you then, and I’ll tell you now: Some things, you gotta let go. Just the way of the world.”

Samuel wanted to brush the old man’s words off, even though he knew Bob was right. He glanced down to the canyons; somewhere in those rocks, the men who killed his fiancée—the men who massacred his family, who slaughtered his little sister—were hunkered down, laughing at him. They were within his grip.

“Well then, the world ain’t right.”

“No, it ain’t,” Bob said. “What’s left of your home is reminder enough of that.” He left the doorway and approached Samuel. “Only thing we can do, son, is start building something new.”

He held up a hammer and closed the other around Samuel’s weapon. “Give me that revolver, and come help me instead. We can clean up the place together, and after that, there’s always work for a man of your size. I could get you a spot on Joe McCall’s ranch over yonder. It ain’t the family business, but it’ll tide you over.”

Samuel’s hands shook with rage. He couldn’t let it go.

“I can’t do that Bob,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

Bob’s face remained impassive, but he released the revolver. “I’ll be praying for you.”

A rush of rage came over Samuel, and before he could catch himself, he had his mind set on the Douglas Boys again. It was like he was in an endless cycle. As he left Bob’s property and started down the route to town, that same rage as before seemed to be driving him.

It was a simple journey, but none too easy on foot. Up the hill, the road became rough, and with his wound, Samuel had trouble keeping his balance as he made his way back to the saloon. Most of the Pipe Creek township was arranged on a single dusty road. One tavern, a stable, a few stores and a church—that was about it.

Once there had been a sheriff, back when it was a bustling market town. Now, however, Texas was expanding. Business was moving. As Samuel made his way down the empty streets, he made out only a few wagons rolling by, their passengers’ eyes avoiding him.

He smirked. He must look like some sloppy drunk, headed back to the saloon with a drunken injury. Once upon a time, he’d been considered quite a catch. Before the war, many businessmen had come through town, pretty daughters in tow; often Samuel had caught word that some young lady had asked after the statuesque rancher’s son with skin like bronze.

He had politely declined all their offers. Ever since he could remember, he’d only had eyes for one woman—Simone. They’d been destined for one another; once they’d grown old enough to love, they had loved only each other, and with their entire souls. It was no surprise when the two announced that they were to be married. It had been clear from the moment they’d first locked eyes.

It was Samuel who had promised that, the day he returned home from the war, he would scoop her up and walk her right to the church to make it official. “After the war,” he’d said. “When I’m back.”

He cursed himself. He’d been worried he wouldn’t make it home at all. He’d prayed every night on the battle lines—not for his own life, but for that of Simone’s husband. That she would lay eyes on him again.

God can be cruel.

He shook off the thought, feeling the pain shoot through his leg again.

The baking sun stole the last of his daydreams. Simone’s face evaporated, once again, into dust. Here he was, in the skeleton of his old hometown, his weapon tugging on his bleeding leg.

“What on earth you doing back on your feet?”

Leaning on the back wall of stable, Lee fixed his eyes on Samuel’s limping leg, rolling a cigar between his gangly fingers. He wasn’t exactly a friend, but not quite a stranger, either—the kind of guy that seemed to blow through forgotten towns like Pipe Creek. Since the day Samuel had started drinking, he’d had no choice but to talk with the man, and talking always seemed to lead Samuel to one thing: revenge.

“Too stubborn to lay down,” Samuel said, joining Lee at the barrel he’d been using as a makeshift table.

The discordant tones of an out-of-tune harpsichord drifted out the saloon doors, its disjointed notes a painful reminder of Samuel’s hangover. He never seemed to actually make it into the saloon; there was no need if Lee was buying. Samuel reached for Lee’s bottle of whiskey, which was sitting on the overturned barrel, half empty. He blew red dust from a glass on the ground beside him and pulled off the lid of the bottle.

Lee snatched it back, shaking his head. “Too dumb to lay down,” he corrected with a sneer, “and you still owe me a drink from last night.”

Samuel met the man’s glassy eyes. “Come on, friend,” he implored.

Lee spat at the dirt. “I ain’t no one’s ‘friend.’”

Chuckling, Samuel playfully wrested the bottle from Lee and poured himself a drink.

“Well, if I ain’t your friend,” Samuel replied, “I guess you won’t be too worried about clueing me in on where them Douglas Boys are hiding out. They can’t have gone too far since last night.”

A frustrated expression melted Lee’s sneer, and Samuel met his eye, matching his dour expression.

“No way, Sam.”

Samuel knocked back the drink. “I’m not joking. This time, I’m sober enough to get the drop on—”

Flicking his cigar, Lee put a none-too-gentle hand on Samuel’s collar. “I said no. Every time you go chasing those boys, you bring more trouble back with ya!”

“Then I’ll just have to kill ’em all this time.”

Lee released him, rolling his tongue across his dry lips. The others lingering outside the saloon looked toward the pair. By now, Samuel knew their faces—tired old men, drunks, a scrappy kid or two. However, over by the side of the building, Samuel spotted one he didn’t recognize: a freckle-faced kid with red hair, leaning up against the wall, who watched him intently.

“Even if you got yourself over to Cliff’s Hill, you wouldn’t be coming back,” Lee muttered.

“Cliff’s Hill, huh?” Samuel raised a brow. “Sell me a horse, Lee. I’ll get out your hair.”

“You can’t afford it.” Lee shook his head again, turning away to spit in the dirt again. “You lost the last one I sold you. Only God knows if he’s dead, or those boys scooped him up.” Straightening his back, he pushed off the wall of the stable.

“I’m done helping you. You keep your money.” Lee slid inside the door, disappearing into the murky black.

Samuel felt a burst of rage. He shoved his empty glass away, slamming his hand on the barrel. “You ain’t the only one ’round here who got horses for sale!”

He got no response, nothing but the faint sound of the harpsichord. There was something Samuel didn’t recognize in his own voice. His body was trembling.

Eyes on the faint outline of the hills ahead, Samuel moved out into the swirling dust of the packed-dirt street. Not a single wagon passed, not a stray dog or bird in the sky. There was nothing in this town.

Nothing but cowards and drunks. He felt the fire in his belly roaring dangerously. It scorched his heart, and he wasn’t about to give up.

“Hey, mister!”

Samuel turned. The red-haired kid was standing not too far back at the mouth of the alley, a rolled cigarette between his lips.

“You mad at me too, kid?” Samuel asked, scowling. “I ain’t never met you, but the rest of this town seems sick to hell of me.”

The kid shook his head. “Nothin’ like that. I got an old mule hitched up down this alley. She ain’t much, but five dollars, and she’s yours.”

Samuel smiled. “That’s a steal.”

“She ain’t much of a mule,” the kid repeated.

Digging through his pockets, Samuel drew closer. “Well hell, if she gets me to Cliff’s Hill, I’m all ears.”

He approached the boy, and as he did, the kid edged closer to the shadows of the alley. There was something off—a darkness in his eyes, something about the way he stood. Still, Samuel came closer, drunk on the prospect of revenge.

Suddenly, the kid darted around the corner. Samuel took off after him, tearing down the alley. “Where on earth are you—”

Click.

He came face to face with a small pistol, aimed right between his eyes.

“Whoa, there!” Samuel sputtered, a hand moving to his own weapon.

“The money—drop it,” hissed the kid. “The gun, too!”

The money fell from Samuel’s fingers, and he raised one hand, the other slowly drawing his revolver from its holster and tossing it to the dirt.

“Listen, you ain’t gotta do thi—”

With a dull thud, the kid’s dirty boot came down hard on Samuel’s wound. Pain exploded in his leg, and he fell with a groan.

“Thanks for the gift. The Douglas Gang welcomes you back anytime!” The kid giggled, shoveling the dirty coins in his pocket.

White dots littered Samuel’s vision. He went limp on the ground, gasping as he sought to find his breath. The kid’s footsteps faded, and even long after the pain had subsided, Samuel could not find the strength to move.

What have I become?

He was weak. Desperate. The anger had taken him completely. Samuel felt like a fool. He felt like a stranger.

As evening bloomed, Samuel found his feet. He edged into the street, limping through the dust. The mountains and their men loomed behind him, but Samuel looked to them no more. He turned, instead, the other direction.

Bob’s house might never be home, but it was the closest thing Samuel had left.