Redemption's Blood Read online

  Redemption’s Blood

  Between revenge and redemption, there’s living.

  Chris Webb

  Copyright © 2018 by Chris Webb

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  To my readers.

  Thanks.

  Contents

  Preface

  Prologue

  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

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Also by Chris Webb

  You see, a man only thinks he's changed, yet deep down inside, he's still that nasty son-of-a-bitch that gets a kick from all the blood and guts he gets to spill.

  Jensen Hills.

  Prologue

  Born of the Raven

  Cherokee Outlet - Arkansas River – 1848 – 31 years ago.

  AYVITA, sat by the creek, with her tribes’ teepees cradled in the rolling plains behind her. The seventeen-year-old squaw had known more sorrow than most. When but a child, she had lost family on the “Trial of Tears," with little time to mourn their parting. That blade of hurt that haunts her dreams could not compare to the pain she feels now. Her arms embrace a still lifeless baby, barely moments old. The medicine man had promised the Chief, his wife, Ayvita, would bear them a brave, a brave that would change the destiny of the afflicted Cherokee nation. All she has is this mass of flesh, like stone to the touch.

  She touches a tear saddled on her cheek; it rides over the crest of her fingertip, and traces it around the arrow-wound birthmark, on the child’s chest. She glances to the bubbling, cascading water of the creek.

  She baptizes the lifeless body and plunges it in the cold wash. It’s what the Cherokee do, every day till a child can ride; it strengthens the spirit and young bones. As the lifeless child's head remains under the lapping, Ayivta feels she's being watched. She glances up. On the opposite bank is a raven, who’s head is held in noble bearing, its sable feathers drink in the day’s shine.

  Disturbingly, the raven's beady blacks, eyeball Ayvita. With a look that demands a response.

  “Well, do something.” She spits in anger.

  The Raven stares into Ayvita, she has to look away. As she does, the child's body nearly slips from her hands; the current is trying to carry it.

  No…

  The child in her hands starts to kick his legs and flail his bunched up fists, twist and flex his torso.

  He’s alive…

  Ayvita snatches the boy into the air, out of the cold, she's met with bawling indignation. Wrapping the warming body in the skin of a young buck, she starts to coo to the child, and notices that the young one’s birthmark has a pearl of crimson emission.

  She dabs at it and washes it into the river.

  She looks for the Raven, who has gone. Tears still fill her face, they ride her cheeks to smiling lips. Her son, Marujo, would make her proud.

  1

  1879 – Colorado State.

  EBONY…

  Crimson…

  Amber…

  …Yellow, the rousing dawn stokes the land to life. This morning is no different to any other, nature celebrates and embraces its own. Butterflies unfurl, grassland birds warble, the black-tailed jack rabbit furrows in the clusters of brown sprouted grass. The ocean blue sky floods from the circumference of the world’s lip. Each life and death has its purpose it is part of the whole.

  On the edge of the untamed, like a solitary blister on God’s finger, a shack. A shack, cobbled from misshapen, unfitting stones and twist lumber. A shack, that is eroding back to the substance of its surroundings. Bottles of half empty liquor sit proudly on any surface that will hold them. Flies maraud a few empty cans of long forgotten food.

  Adjacent to this forsaken single roomed shelter is a basic animal pen, uneven, ram-shackled as if built on the Chinese whispers of hearsay, a rumor of what a shelter should be. It would seem abandoned except for the pigs, chickens, and goats that are clustered together.

  As the noon day sun breaches the gaping grin of the shacks' wooden slats, there's stirring from inside/ A throaty awakening from a thumping liquor slumber. A crash is accompanied by a mumbling curse, not in anger, mores the way to greet a morning.

  The door on the shack rattles as if being tested for strength… till - Crash- it bursts open with a forceful shunt. Out stumbles a man, large of girth, half awake, half dressed.

  He holds his arm up to the sunlight to dissuade the stabbing in his sockets. He runs his slab of a hand through his greying beard, scratches, snorts, and yawns. He’s greeted by a chorus of grunts, bleats, and clucks.

  A hand snatches up a bottle, with a wash of liquor remnants remaining, and pours a dose into the animal drink, before turning the bottle on himself and disarming it in one fluid action.

  A shoveling palm scoops animal feed and flings it across the pen, it bounces indigently off the heads of his livestock. They don’t pay no mind as they bury their muzzles into the earth in search of the bounty.

  Two pails, tilt and sway, spilling their cool contents to the ground, dancing translucent globes glide over the dust, till they are drunk up by the parch. The burly figure waddles with the two buckets, to a disheveled vegetable patch. Slosh - spewed contents cascades, slapping into the vegetables. The next pail is taken to the animals' trough, it's swung with an expectant crash of colliding bodies of water, all that remains is a drizzle.

  The pail is held aloft for inspection and a burrowing finger, worms through a guilty hole.

  He flips the bucket's maws to dirt, and the figure sits his ample behind on his new stool, the shack creaks as he leans against it, he darts the shack a suspicious glance, then nestles into place. With his chores done for the day, he aspires for a well-deserved rest. He looks around his land, at the bottles, cans, overgrown plants, patches of dry dirt and decides; he'll tidy one day.

  …Maybe.

  Coarse callused fingers gently knead tobacco from a pouch, to cluster the tinder together on a paper and rolling to completion. The newly formed smoke finds lips to nestle on, but before it can be fired up, the man slips into a slumber.

  Breathing itself seems a burden as if each throaty exhalation will be the last, till a
sawing inhalation continues the cycle.

  In…

  Out…

  In…

  Out…

  As the smoke hangs from his lip, another pair of lips attempt to pucker it for themselves. These lips are bristled, underscoring a soft wet patchy-nose of a curious goat. The man wakes at that point when lips collide, to a moment of indignation and curiosity. The man’s jade green eyes are locked in a traction with the goat’s elongated pupils. He splutters in protest, then pushes the goat away spurning the nuzzle of friendship.

  The goat’s cohorts are roaming free, feasting on vegetables and meandering around. It is peaceful until the man thrusts to standing and wails in protest, then the animals make a break for freedom.

  He pursues the pigs and goats, who have the whole Savannah to passage, yet decide to simply cannon around the hut and pen. Some one way, the remainder the other, in near perfect circles.

  The game is afoot; his brawny frame rampages after his beasts, he is torn one way then the next. His large hand swings to grab, control or at least touch the evading prey.

  "Com' h're."

  With a twist and turn that belies his size, the man dives for a passing pig, a miss, a plummet into freshly laid pig’s shit. Splat - sullied in shit, the man is partly angry yet mostly embarrassed. The animals break formation again, as the man, with renewed vigor, charges into his shack. Before the door can creak to a close, his booted foot kicks it open. Bash - out he charges; he means a special kind of business.

  He wields a shotgun.

  He aims to the clouds and thunder rolls - BOOM…

  Out of dismay, anger, or blindly galloping in joy, a pig collides into the man’s mass, sending him into a slow-motion, lumbering pirouette: a perennial descending whirl, as he stumbles, bodily striking the soil - Thud. Another crack of thunder - BOOM…

  The man looks up, from the dirt to the billows of smoke from the barrel’s report, the wisps fade.

  "Sshhit."

  2

  THE GRACE FAMILY, are on the trail again: Father, Mother and their son, ten-year-old William Grace. They had all their belongings in that traveling wagon, as they set to Dunston Town. The railway had declared its interest in carving through Dunston, and with the steel beasts of burden came prospects. Prospects that young families always have to go searching for.

  William sits in the back of the wagon the sun strokes his face; a light breeze tussles his brown hair. He stares off, daydreaming. William’s father looks back to his son, who’s vacantly gazing into nothing.

  “Bill, are we keeping you from something?”

  "Eh, Papa, I was just meditating on the word.”

  William holds a worn leather-bound Bible aloft. Father, approves.

  "Good lad."

  William prods his glasses back into place and continues to delve into the pages of a tattered dime novel, nestled within the sleeves of the Bible. A read that William had found months previous, and had read innumerable times.

  An Adventure of Kit Carson: A Tale of the Sacramento.

  A real hero, frontiers man, and slayer of many Indian folk. William never really understood the need for man to slaughter other men, because they spoke different and wore differing garments, yet he accepted it because… Well, that just seems the way it is. William turns to the page where Kit Carson rescues a mother and daughter, kidnapped by Apache and to be used in an ungodly fashion. Kit with two pistols blazing slaughters many Apache and saves the mother and daughter.

  William remembers hearing in his old school yard two teachers talking about that story and how the Woman and Daughter were slaughtered and abused by "Those savages," only for Kit Carson, and his men, to arrive late, the Apache had departed, with no-one saved. This made sense to him, as he couldn’t see how one man could kill a whole tribe of Apache with only two Colts, though it didn’t remove the joy of reading of such heroics.

  William meandered back to rubbernecking, the wind feathered and yarned the cotton clouds. He could make out a white buffalo, he thumbed through the dime novel and found a picture of Kit Carson, shooting a buffalo. William closes the book, to gaze at the buffalo clouds wisping.

  On the boundary of his vision, slowly moving, a grey-pink and bloody pig carcass comes into view. The Grace’s wagon slowly moves past a pig, with stippled flesh. William can see a horse is dragging the pig. As they edge further, the horses’ rider comes into view: gruff, half dressed, half asleep as he precariously bobbles with the horse’s gait.

  The rider glances up, eyes glazed.

  William and the rider spot each other.

  William's hand decides by itself to slowly raise up and wave.

  The man stares.

  William waves.

  The man stares.

  William stops waving, and William and the man hold a mutually weighted gaze of no consequence.

  Behind William’s blank gaze, comes a festival of thoughts. Is he a frontiers man? Is he an adventurer, like Kit Carson? Maybe a panner, or miner, as there was a coal mine outside of Dunston.

  All his thoughts stop spiraling, when he notices, this Man doesn't have any side-irons.

  What’s a cowboy without a gun? William had no answer.

  William pulls further from view, he looks to the splendor of Kit Carson, on the ragged front cover and traces his finger over his blazing rifle.

  If anything, this last five years has proved, it is Jensen Hills is no farmer. Jensen, a brutish veteran, with leathery skin, and worn torn grimace, tumbling through his fifties, rides his horse and drags the dead pig behind him. He's left to ponder what else is left for him. He decides - Not much.

  He glances to the pig in tow, its mass sweeping against the dirt road. A wagon slowly passes. Jensen checks the pig is secure.

  “stupid pig” he musters.

  The wagon, now in front of him, has a small boy with a ponderous wave staring at him. Jensen is caught with the prospect of waving back, then having to wave to every darn drifter, cutting a trail through these parts.

  "Strange kid," tumbles from his lips.

  The boy now stares as he slowly pulls away.

  Jensen is slowly being rocked back to a state of absence and while between perceptions recollects that he has worked hard to achieve ‘Not much'… So…

  …So far, so good.

  3

  Dunston is a bustling township, etching a new face on an old land, the larger it gets, the more people flock to discover new opportunities. It wasn't always like this; it didn't always have a church, stores, a school, two saloons, with third on the way and a main street. It started with The Fifty Niners, gold seekers who streamed to Pike’s Peak country, in the Western Kansas territory in 1859. Many took the Smokey Hill Trail, not too far from Dunston. A heap of seekers ended up settling, establishing the Colorado Territory. As hardrock mining exhausted the shallow-veined free-gold, only the big mining companies could extract the deeper sulfide ores, leaving simple-living-people having to find a new way.

  Gold fever had stirred the sediment of the population, shifting territories, causing conflict, displacing a native people and as it settled, places that were once barren became a purchase for life to blossom.

  Beau Dunston had seen the opportunity; he understood that people needed a haven. In '59, in the Kansas carve up, he acquisitions land of Red Plains in the shadow of the Smokey Hill Trail, a bottle neck for the teeming prospectors heading West. He set up a trading post, and saloon; the basis for any civilization, and from that hub grew the new town of Dunston.

  As the conflict between the ‘Free staters’ and ‘Southern Yankees’ escalated, Dunston was sent word from his father; Arlington, to return to their plantation in Monroe County, Alabama. Beau did, and as the States war enflamed from the kindling, Arlington coerced his son to join Jo Shelby and his Iron Brigade, to fight for the Confederates.

  “It was time his son pone up” Arlington would say; he would then go on to tell tales of how his hands delved in blood, carving the history of the land by forci
bly removing the Muscogee Natives, from what would become his estate.

  Beau was not Union inclined, the negro and native were just crow-bait to him. Yet, the bile that he felt for his father drove him to ride hard, back into Colorado, where he took part in establishing the Colorado volunteers. Who in March of ’62 defeated the Confederates at the battle of Glorieta Pass, forcing them back to Santa Fe.

  In the same month, Abe Lincoln appointed John Evans governor of the Colorado territory. Evans held a hard line against Indians. In 1864 he appointed the Reverend Chivington as Colonel of the Colorado Volunteers, and without a declaration of war, Chivington led men to destroy Cheyenne Camps. Lieutenant Beau Dunston partook in the Sand Creek Massacre and personally scalped dozens of Natives, as Chivington barked,

  “kill Indians. ... Kill and scalp all, big and little; nits make lice.”