Fort misery, p.1
Fort Misery, page 1
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FORT MISERY
A Fort Misery Western
WILLIAM W. JOHNSTONE AND J.A. JOHNSTONE
PINNACLE BOOKS
Kensington Publishing Corp.
www.kensingtonbooks.com
All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.
Table of Contents
Also by
Title Page
Copyright Page
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER 46
CHAPTER 47
CHAPTER 48
CHAPTER 49
CHAPTER 50
CHAPTER 51
CHAPTER 52
CHAPTER 53
CHAPTER 54
CHAPTER 55
CHAPTER 56
CHAPTER 57
CHAPTER 58
CHAPTER 59
CHAPTER 60
CHAPTER 61
HISTORICAL NOTE
MRS. ZIMMERMANN’S PLUM DUFF
Teaser chapter
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Copyright © 2023 by J.A. Johnstone
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.
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PUBLISHER’S NOTE: Following the death of William W. Johnstone, the Johnstone family is working with a carefully selected writer to organize and complete Mr. Johnstone’s outlines and many unfinished manuscripts to create additional novels in all of his series, like The Last Gunfighter, Mountain Man, and Eagles, among others. This novel was inspired by Mr. Johnstone’s superb storytelling.
If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the Publisher and neither the Author nor the Publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”
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ISBN: 978-0-7860-4961-5
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CHAPTER 1
West of the Arizona Territory’s Tinajas Altas Mountains, west of Vopoki Ridge, west of anywhere, Fort Benjamin Grierson, better known to its sweating, suffering garrison as Fort Misery, sprawled like a suppurating sore on the arid edge of the Yuma Desert, a barren, scorching wilderness of sandy plains and dunes relieved here and there by outcroppings of creosote bush, bur oak, and sage . . . and white skeletons of the dead, both animal and human.
The dawning sun came up like a flaming Catherine wheel, adding its heat to the furnace of the morning and to the airless prison cell that masqueraded as Captain Peter Joseph Kellerman’s office. Already half drunk, he glanced at the clock on the wall. Twenty minutes until seven.
Twenty minutes before he’d mount the scaffold and hang a man.
A rap-rap-rap on the door.
“Come in,” Kellerman said.
Sergeant Major Saul Olinger slammed to attention and snapped off the palm forward salute of the old Union cavalry. “The prisoner is ready, Captain.”
Kellerman nodded and said, “Stand easy, Saul, for God’s sake. There’s nobody here but us, and you know where it is.”
Olinger, a burly man with muttonchop whiskers and the florid, broken-veined cheeks of a heavy drinker, opened the top drawer of the captain’s desk and fished out a bottle of whiskey and two glasses. He poured generous shots for himself and his commanding officer.
“How is he taking it?” Kellerman said.
“Not well. He knows he’s dying.”
Kellerman, tall, wide-shouldered, handsome in a rugged way, his features enhanced by a large dragoon mustache, nodded and said, “Dying. I guess he started to die the moment we found him guilty three days ago.”
Olinger downed his drink, poured another. He looked around as though making sure there was no one within earshot and said, “Joe, you don’t have to do this. I can see it done.”
“I’m his commanding officer. It’s my duty to be there.”
The sergeant major’s gaze moved to the window, and he briefly looked through dusty panes into the sunbaked parade ground. His eyes returned to Kellerman. “Private Patrick McCarthy did the crime and now he’s paying for it. That’s how it goes.”
The captain drank his whiskey. “He’s eighteen years old, for God’s sake. Just a boy.”
“When we were with the First Maryland, how many eighteen-year-old boys did we kill at Brandy Station and Gettysburg, Joe? At least they died honorably.”
“Hanging is a dishonorable death.”
“Rape and murder is a dishonorable crime. The Lipan girl was only sixteen.”
Kellerman sighed. “How are the men?”
“Angry. Most of them say murdering an Apache girl is not a hanging offense.”
“That doesn’t surprise me. How many rapists and murderers do we have?”
Olinger’s smile was bitter. “Maybe half the troop.”
“And the rest are deserters, thieves, malingerers, and mutineers, commanded by a drunk.” Kellerman shook his head. “Why don’t you ask for a transfer out of this hellhole, Saul? You have the Medal of Honor. Hell, man, you can choose your posting.”
“Joe, we’ve been together since Bull Run. I’m not quitting you now.” The sergeant major glanced at the clock and slammed to attention. “Almost time, sir.”
“Go ahead. I’ll be right there.”
Olinger saluted and left.
Captain Kellerman donned his campaign hat, buckled on his saber, a weapon useless against Apache but effective enough in a close fight with Comancheros, and returned the whiskey bottle to his desk. His old, forgotten rosary caught his eye. He picked up the beads and stared at them for a long moment and then tossed them back in the drawer. God had stopped listening to his prayers long ago . . . and right now he had a soldier to hang.
CHAPTER 2
No other frontier army post had gallows, but in Fort Misery they were a permanent fixture, lovingly cared for by Tobias Zimmermann, the civilian carpenter, a severe man of high intelligence who also acted as hangman. So far, in the fort’s year of existence, he’d pulled the lever on two soldiers and at night he slept like a baby.
Zimmermann, Sergeant Major Olinger, and a Slavic Catholic priest with a name nobody could pronounce, stood on the platform along with the condemned man, a thin young towhead with vicious green eyes. Fort Misery’s only other officer, Lieutenant James Hall, was thirty years old and some questionable bookkeeping of regimental funds had earned him a one-way ticket from Fort Grant to the wastelands. A beautiful officer with shoulder-length black hair and a full beard that hung halfway down his chest, Hall stood, saber drawn, in front of the dismounted troop: thirty-seven hard-bitten, shabby men standing more or less to attention. The troop had no designation, was not part of a regiment, and did not appear in army rolls. Wages and supplies were the res
A murmur buzzed like a crazed bee through the troop as Captain Kellerman mounted the steps to the gallows platform. Private McCarthy’s arms and legs were bound with rope and Sergeant Major Olinger had to lift him onto the trapdoor. Zimmermann slipped a black hood over the young man’s head, then the hemp noose. He then returned to the lever that would drop the door and plunge the young soldier into eternity.
The army considered their castoffs less than human, and McCarthy lived up to that opinion. He died like a dog, howling for mercy, his cries muffled by the hood. Despite the efforts of Lieutenant Hall, the flat of his saber wielded with force, the soldiers broke ranks and crowded around the scaffold. Horrified upturned faces revealed the strain of the execution, soldiers pushed to the limit of their endurance.
“Let him go!” a man yelled, and the rest took it up as a chant . . . .
Let him go! Let him go!
A few soldiers tried to climb onto the gallows, but Sergeant Major Olinger drew his revolver and stepped forward. “I’ll kill any man who sets foot on these gallows!” he roared. “Get back, you damned scum, or you’ll join McCarthy in the grave.”
That morning Saul Olinger was a fearsome figure, and there wasn’t a man present who doubted he’d shoot to kill. One by one they stepped away, muttering as the condemned man’s spiking shrieks shattered their already shredded nerves.
The priest’s prayer for the dead rose above the din. Sent by his superiors to convert the heathen Comanche, he’d attended six firing squads, but this was his first hanging, and it showed on him, his face the color of wood ash.
Captain Joe Kellerman—he used his middle name because Peter had been the handle of his abusive father—said, loud enough that all could hear, “This man had a fair court-martial, was found guilty of rape and murder, and sentenced to hang. There’s nothing more to be said.”
He turned his head. “Mr. Zimmermann, carry out the sentence.”
The carpenter nodded and yanked on the lever. The trap opened, and Private Patrick McCarthy plunged to his death. His neck broke clean, and his screeches stopped abruptly, like water when a faucet is shut off.
But the ensuing silence was clamorous, as though a thousand phantom alarm bells rang in the still, thick air.
And then Private Dewey Bullard took things a step further.
As Lieutenant Hall ushered the men toward the mess for breakfast, Bullard, thirty years old and a known thief and mutineer, turned and yelled, “Kellerman, you’re a damned murderer!”
“Lieutenant Hall, arrest that man,” the captain said, pointing. “I’ll deal with him later.”
Sergeant Major Olinger stepped closer to Kellerman and said, “His name is Bullard. A troublemaker.”
“I know who he is. He won’t trouble us for much longer.”
“Insubordination, plain and simple,” Olinger said.
“Yes, it was, and I won’t allow him to infect the rest of the men with it,” Captain Kellerman said, his mouth set in a grim line.
CHAPTER 3
After breakfast, the troop was assembled on the western edge of the post that looked out over the harsh wasteland of the Yuma Desert. A few blanket Apache, mostly Lipan, camped nearby, close to a boarded-up sutler’s store that had never opened and a few storage shacks. The parade ground, headquarters building, enlisted men’s barracks, latrines, and stables lay behind Captain Joe Kellerman as he walked in front of his ranked men. Dewey Bullard, under guard, stood a distance away, facing a stark sea of sand and distant dunes ranked among the most brutal deserts on earth.
“You men know why we’re here,” the captain said. “Under any circumstances I will not have insubordination at Fort Benjamin Grierson. I will not tolerate it. Deserters, thieves, malingerers, murderers, and rapists some of you; you’re the soldiers no one wants. Damn your eyes, you’re all condemned men, but the army is stretched thin on the frontier, and you were given a choice: death by firing squad or hanging, or the joys of Fort Misery. Well, you chose this hell on earth and now you’re stuck with it.”
Kellerman needed a drink, the effect of his morning bourbons wearing thin.
“Look around you,” he said. “There were eighty of you when this post opened and now there’s thirty-six, since Private Bullard will not be rejoining us. Forty-four dead. Nine of them were deserters whose bones are no doubt out there bleaching in the desert. I executed three of you by firing squad and two by hanging, as you just witnessed. The other twenty-nine were killed by bronco Comanche and Comancheros. I know because I saw most of them die. And why did they die? I’ll tell you why. It’s because they were poor soldiers, coming to us half-trained and barely able to ride a horse. As a result the Comanche gunned them down like ducks in a shooting gallery. That will now change. By God, I’ll make fighting men of you or kill you all in the process. In the meantime, I will not have an insubordinate piece of dirt like Dewey Bullard undermining my authority, especially now, when this post is under siege.” Kellerman paused for effect and then said, “In an alliance from hell, the Comanche and the Mexican slaver Santiago Lozado and his Comancheros vow to wipe us off the map by executing every man in the garrison. Well I say, let them try!”
To the captain’s surprise, that last drew a ragged cheer, and Lieutenant Hall whispered, “There’s hope for them yet, Captain.”
“Yes, be hopeful, Lieutenant, Just don’t bet the farm on it,” Kellerman said. Then, “Canteen!”
Sergeant Major Olinger formally presented a filled canteen to Kellerman, who hung it around Bullard’s neck and then said, “Youngest soldier, step forward!”
A fresh-faced seventeen-year-old with a penchant for desertion took a step from the ranks, saluted, and said, “Private Reid reporting for duty, sir.”
“You know what you have to do?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Don’t stint, Private Reid.”
“No, sir.”
“Then stand by.” Kellerman directed his attention to Bullard. “Private Dewey Bullard, for the offense of rank insubordination to the detriment of military discipline and other past transgressions, I banish you from this post in perpetuity. If you make any attempt to return, you will be shot on sight. Do you understand?” Bullard said nothing and the captain repeated, “Do you understand?”
Bullard’s black eyes blazed dark fire. “You’re sending me to my death.”
“You have water, make good use of it,” Kellerman said. “Now begone from here and let us never see your face again. Youngest soldier Reid, get ready.” Then to the pair of troopers holding Bullard: “Bend him over. No, right over.” Bullard cursed and struggled but the captain had chosen the two strongest men in the troop to hold him. His arms elevated in vice-like grips, chest parallel to the ground, he ceased to battle his captors, and Kellerman said, “Youngest soldier Reid, carry out your order.”
Private Reid grinned, relishing the task at hand. In the past he’d been bulled by Bullard, and now it was payback time. Reid took a few steps running and slammed the toe of his riding boot into the man’s butt. The kick was so furious, so powerful, that the two soldiers holding Bullard lost their grip, and the man tumbled headfirst into hot sand.
“About . . . face!” Lieutenant Hall immediately ordered, and the troop turned its back on the stunned and hurting Bullard, as did Captain Kellerman and Sergeant Major Olinger.
