A Western Romance: James Yancey - Taking the High Road (Book 3) (Taking the High Road series) Read online

  Taking the High Road

  Book 3: James Yancey

  Morris Fenris

  Changing Culture Publications

  Taking the High Road

  Book 3: James Yancey

  Copyright 2015 Morris Fenris, Changing Culture Publications

  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 storage and retrieval system without written permission from the author.

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Chapter VI

  Chapter VII

  Chapter VIII

  Chapter IX

  Chapter X

  Thank You

  About the Author

  I

  A panoramic view from the gently curving knoll showed flattened sections of pasture land, pinned here and there by sprawling oaks, punctuated by browsing cattle, ringed by drifts of fog and mountains made in a shade of blue that had no name.

  Beautiful country, offering a profitable and favorable future.

  His chest lifted on a surge of sweet-scented air, and James smiled. He’d returned to California, after an enforced absence encompassing several horrific years, and he felt delighted and deeply satisfied to be back.

  “So, whaddya think?” His brother, Matt, standing beside him, wanted to know.

  In common with all the Yancey brood, James wore his black curly hair overlong, with too much time in between visits to the barber, and his straight thick brows overlay dark, far-seeing eyes. The war years had left their mark, honing his rugged frame of any spare flesh, dusting silver into his beard and sideburns, hardening and toughening his good ol’ boy southern face.

  That face, just now, wore an expression of sunlit lightheartedness his family had thought never to see again. Not after the ordeal he’d undergone. And survived.

  “I think I’m interested.”

  “Huh. Thought y’ might be. You liked the looks of the place last time you were here, when Star and I got married.”

  Hands stuffed into his back pockets, James shifted position to take in the acres of grass and shrubs—several varieties of fuzzy-leafed sagebrush, some elderberry, allspice and rhododendron, Manzanita. No wonder everything smelled and tasted so enticing. Like a general store, with all the stock in the world to offer any browser. James felt he could never again get enough of the outdoors, of freedom, of open spaces that beckoned and far horizons that teased.

  “Anybody else wantin’ this property?”

  Drawing his knife from its sheath, Matthew cut off a short thick branch and began to whittle the wood into something as yet unrecognizable…probably a toy for his son. “It sat empty for a long time after Franklin Bower got himself murdered,” he filled in the background. “Some bank took ownership and paid a manager to run things.”

  “Any idea how that went?”

  Matt shrugged and kept right on whittling. “Far’s I know, not s’ great. As you and I are both aware, Jim, gettin’ an individual human bein’ involved, a hands’-on owner, is always better’n dependin’ on some non-feelin’ entity. Because then the property gets real good care.”

  “Sold t’ somebody from London, so I heard.”

  “Yep. Bower’s butler went high-tailin’ it back t’ his native land, and he convinced some Lord Muckety-Muck or somebody to take over.”

  “Didn’t last very long, then, did it?”

  “Not s’ much. Absentee landlords never do. So now the Condor is up for sale again, back under Republic Mercantile’s control as agent, price reduced. Good chance t’ snap it up, Jimbo.”

  Another long, considering look around, then a satisfied nod. “I think you’re right, Matt. I like the area, and I like the lay of the ranch. Guess I’ll stop in at the bank and make an offer. Wanna go halves on this venture?”

  “Mmmm—maybe. Lemme think about it.” Wood chips flew as Matt dexterously plied the tip of his knife. “Not sure where things are goin’ in the near future.”

  “Job-wise, y’ mean?”

  “Yeah. When Rob and I landed here four years ago, I never figured to find my own partner in life. Star’s been—well, you know. My other half. My soul mate, God bless her. She can be a handful. But she’s always an armful.”

  A hard-won half-smile crossed over James’ face.

  The loss of Matt’s first wife, Elisa, after Rob’s birth some nine years ago, had left him reeling and devastated. The following year, once the Yancey home plantation was sold—and before the South seceded—he had taken his son and housekeeper and headed west. First to Texas, where he joined the Rangers, then later to San Francisco when their brother John Yancey had been married. As a lawman, Matt had struck up acquaintance with the sheriff, who, as their friendship prospered, had invited him to stay on instead of returning home.

  By then he had met and been hopelessly smitten by Goldenstar Mendoza. After her abduction by a local bandito, and her subsequent rescue by Matt, their lightning-fast romance had culminated in marriage. Once again the whole Yancey clan had gathered to celebrate the nuptials. With the Civil War just beginning to rage, and hopes heading high for a final Confederate victory, James had managed to secure a furlough to attend. After that, it was back to reality, and the cause he served.

  “Well, you’ve been Goddard’s deputy for—what, almost four years now, right?”

  “’Bout that,” agreed Matt. He was leaning against the oak tree’s craggy trunk, one leg bent at the knee while he finished off the piece he was working on. A few breaths to blow away dust, and he held up the object for inspection.

  “A fox,” guessed James, squinting.

  “Yep. Rob has quite a collection of animals by now. Anyway, I got it in my head t’ move back to Texas one day. Sorta miss the place, y’ know? But right at the moment Star don’t wanna go too far away from her folks, what with the baby makin’ an appearance soon. However,” Matt looked up with his infectious grin, “maybe we can persuade her family t’ move along with us when we go.”

  James scuffed the toe of one boot into the dirt, dislodging grass and roots and a few earthworms. “Well, then, all we can do is see what your thinkin’ is, in the near future. I’ll go ahead and buy the ranch, and if you decide you’d like t’ be involved, then that’s fine. Come t’ think of it, John might be interested, too.”

  “Might be. Although he’s got things set up pretty well with that detective agency he started. Amazin’ how many people get themselves lost and need t’ be found, and how many spouses start cheatin’ and need t’ be followed and brought to task.”

  “Must be a good business. Got plenty of experience back in Boston, didn’t he?”

  “Yep. Pinkerton man, through and through.” Work completed for the moment, Matt sheathed his knife, stuffing the little carved animal into a breast pocket, and glanced over at his brother in a more serious vein. “You doin’ okay, Jimmy?”

  “Doin’ okay? Yeah, sure, hunky-dory.” A shrug.

  “James.”

  Embittered dark eyes met concerned dark eyes across the yard or so
of space that separated the two men. “You already know the story, Matthew.”

  “Only the bare bones. I haven’t pestered you for details since you came back out here, permanent, a few weeks ago. I’m thinkin’ you might wanna talk.”

  That put his back up in defensive posture. “Talk about what?”

  Smiling indulgently, Matt slung one arm around his brother’s shoulder. “C’mon, Jimmy. Let’s walk a ways.”

  A vaquero’s boots, constructed with pointed toes and a couple inches of heel, are made for riding, not walking. Nevertheless, James yielded the point and they set off together, still admiring the spread of land from horizon to horizon.

  “Mighty sweet country,” murmured James, with another great expansion of chest.

  “I’d have t’ agree. California has done well for both me and John. You have any trouble clearin’ up details, back home, once they let you outa that camp?” A casual question, meant only to ease the way for further revelations. For a man to bare his soul, if need be. And surely James needed just that.

  Several silent minutes went whispering by, along with a big brown jackrabbit startled out of the brush by their footsteps, and one free-wheeling blue heron that went beating heavily away from the creek down below.

  Long ago, a giant tree some fifty feet tall and six feet in circumference had been struck by lightning, suffered a mortal blow, and eventually crashed to the ground. James found a spot on the log partially rotted away into soft deadfall and made himself comfortable.

  “Didja get much war news this far west?”

  Matt propped one foot on a lower branch, then leaned forward with both forearms braced across his thigh. “Some, here and there. At first, we heard what was goin’ on from letters and papers sent through the Pony Express. After that shut down, the Western Union did a fair t’ middlin’ job.”

  “So you know somethin’ about The Battle of the Wilderness.”

  A sympathetic wince. “Enough to figure it was one more hellacious assault, in a whole string of hellacious assaults.”

  Those far-seeing dark eyes had shifted away, gazing off across the distant sloping fields as if a horde of ghostly troops had suddenly appeared there, through a haze of gunfire and bedlam. “We were fulla piss and vinegar that May mornin’,” James said in a low tone, reminiscing for his brother’s benefit. Certainly not for his own; memories like these were better left unrecalled, buried in the recesses of time. “Wantin’ to make up for our defeat at Gettysburg, y’ see.”

  “You were servin’ under General Lee, in the Army of Northern Virginia,” Matt interjected quietly.

  “I was. Fine man, the General. Fine man.” His voice trailed off, into a mire of more unhappy remembrances, until he gave himself a mental shake and went on, “Corps Commander Ewell—not s’ much. Lacked experience, Matt, and his men paid for it. We approached from the west, on the Turnpike, and took our posts near Saunders Field. The 140th New York showed up, we commenced to firin’, and the Battle was off and runnin’.”

  Fighting continued all day, some on the Unionists’ mile-wide front, some in isolated skirmishes between small units. Noise, bedlam, rifle and cannon bombardment, screams and shouts, blazes set off in the tinder wood, heavy smoke, confusion caused by the aptly named Wilderness itself—all combined in a terrifying, horrifying mix. “Bushwhacking,” reported one warrior, “on a grand scale.” Nightfall brought surcease, of a sort, and stalemate.

  “General Longstreet,” James diverged to murmur. “Now there was a man. Had all his good soldiers rollin’ right over the boys in blue, great chance for a victory. Till he took a bullet near Plank Road.”

  While combat blew up and boiled over for days and for miles in every direction of this tortured Spotsylvania terrain, Ewell’s troops reached their position and built entrenchments, in the dark. Daylight showed the salient, named “Mule Shoe,” constructed facing north, toward the Federals. During two full days of attacks, that bulge in the Confederate line held.

  Until May 12th’s wet and weary dawn, a day that would become known as one of the darkest and bloodiest of the war, when Maj. Gen. Winfield Hancock struck. Many of the “Mule Shoe” defenders were killed, wounded, or captured. That number included James Dickinson Yancey, Lt. Colonel, Confederate States of America.

  “The bluecoats patched me up,” said James. Shifting position, he reached for a blade of grass and gently removed the grasshopper crawling so industriously along his pants leg. “I’d gotten hurt some, slipped in the mud and gore and twisted my ankle. Hurt like a son-of-a-bitch. Then they separated me from my men and shipped me off.”

  “To Johnson’s Island.”

  “The very same.” He looked up with the poignant, bittersweet smile that characterized his public persona. “Y’know, Matt, growin’ up, we never traveled from Belle Clare. Stayed pretty much within twenty miles or so of the plantation, b’cause that’s what we wanted. But this here prison camp—well, Lawsey. A far haul, let me tell you. We ended up in Sandusky, on the coast of Lake Erie.”

  “Mistreated there, little brother?”

  Mulling that over, James snapped a small branch off the log to break into a half-dozen shorter pieces. “Mistreated? No. Just treated sorta like a poor, unwanted relation at some family reunion. Plenty of food at first, cut to half-rations later on, but still better’n what most of the South was gettin’.”

  “You’re walkin’ pretty good, so I figure your ankle musta healed up proper.”

  A shrug and a half-embarrassed grin. “Twinges now and then, in wet weather. My war wound, big brother.”

  By now Matthew, tired of standing, had found his own semi-comfortable place to perch on the log and was leaning forward, hands linked loosely together, still attentive to the story. “And that’s the worst of it? Whadja do all day long?”

  “Oh—wrote letters, played baseball or chess. Some of us planted gardens between the rows of prison blocks. Some of the others put on plays, or minstrel shows, or planned how t’ escape. We tried t’ keep busy, but most everybody ended up bein’ bored half-crazy.”

  “Not t’ mention havin’ your freedom stripped away.”

  “There was that, main thing,” agreed James soberly. “Hard t’ take orders from some penny-ante prison guard, when you’re used t’ givin’ orders yourself. And confined. Always confined, and restricted. Still ’n’ all, Matt, I had a pretty soft life for the last year of the war.”

  “Ahuh. Then what is it, Jim? What’s stuck in your craw?”

  The brothers exchanged glances, long, even, steady. “That obvious?”

  “You look like the wrong side of a misspent life.” Matthew was nothing if not frank.

  “Well, then. Can’t say I’ve missed hearin’ things like that.”

  “Just concern, Jimmy. Just concern. So, go on.”

  Again that mile-wide gaze, swerving slowly from nearby fence posts to a line of oak and maple, box elder and birch, to soaring hills and mountains kissed by cloud.

  “They kept me from my men, Matt,” he finally pushed past reticence to say softly but intensely. “Johnson’s was a camp for officers only. I commanded a regiment of a thousand soldiers, and I dunno what happened to ’em. Again and again I begged to be sent wherever they were bein’ interned, but the prison commander just laughed at me.”

  “James—”

  “So there I was,” James plunged on, unheeding, “livin’ almost as good as I had at Belle Clare, and there’s my troops, scattered t’ hell and gone. Some captured and shipped t’ Camp Douglas, in Chicago; others dead or dyin’; some sent back t’ the front.”

  “James—”

  “And nothin’ I could do.” He surged to his feet, overwrought by guilt and regret and all the useless emotions that have no effect on the outcome of any situation, and began to pace through the tangled grass. “Nothin’ I could do! Stuck there for a year, wonderin’, waitin’, prayin’, feelin’ like the most no-good speck of humanity on the face of this earth…”

  “James.” Ma
tt reached out to latch onto his brother’s upper arms with both hands, forcing him to an abrupt halt. “James, stop it. You just spoke the truth, man—there was nothin’ you could do. Nothin’! You were a prisoner, for God’s sake. You were locked up. Didja expect t’ tunnel outa that place with a spoon?”

  For a disquieting moment, something like panic washed over the rugged features. “Shoulda done somethin’. Shoulda done more. My men, Matt. My men…and I deserted ’em.”

  “Goddammit, Jimmy!” A small shake, to restore a sense of reality; then a harder shake. “You did not desert your men. Whatever happened after the fall of Mule Shoe was not your fault. Got it, James? Not. Your. Fault.”

  The shadow of panic gradually faded away, replaced by customary stoic self-reliance. “Sure, Matt. Got it. Not my fault.”

  Feeling flung over a barrel, Matt could only shake his head. “You say that, James, just bein’ a parrot with my words. But until you convince yourself it’s true, you’ll go on bein’ haunted by the impossible.”

  “My choice, ain’t it?”

  “Sure is, Jimbo. Every man makes his own choices in life, and you’re certainly entitled to whatever yours might be. So you’re definitely gonna buy the Condor Ranch, then?”

  Relieved to have the unhappy, unsavory past once more firmly locked behind unbreachable doors, James nodded. “Yeah. I am. I’ll go see the bank manager when we head back into town today.”

  “Any plans after that?” Matthew had turned, ready to retrace the path to their horses waiting so patiently a quarter-mile away.

  “Actually—yes,” said James out of the blue, surprising even himself. “Got a girl back in Charleston. Emma Palmer, remember her?”

  “Ahuh.” Chewing comfortably on a stem of wildrye, Matt reflected on the friends and neighbors he’d known, the relatives and fellow planters, the townsfolk and the country folk—all part and parcel of his former life at Belle Clare. “Some eight years ago, anyway. Only daughter of some well-to-do Charleston businessman, right? Gangly little thing, if I recall correctly; long blonde hair always done up to the nines. Clothes, too.”