There was nothing to do now but wait for his pursuers.
He was too close to town for them not to check the barn. It was just a matter of time before they came looking for him. Through the thinly planked walls he could hear the slow and steady trot of horse hooves, circling the barn, looking for any sign of him.
A small glint of light passed by the other side of the barn; a torch and murmured voices.
The loss of blood had weakened Josiah to the point of fearing for his next breath.
Not only did his leg hurt, but the pain had traveled all the way to his chest, even reigniting the tender pain of the old knife wound.
Chills began to travel across every inch of his skin. He was sweating profusely. The inside of his mouth tasted like old dirt, metallic and unhealthy. It was the taste of death, and Josiah knew it.
But he held his breath and tried his best not to move, as the barn door creaked open. Odd thing was, this all seemed very familiar to Josiah, reminded him of fighting the Northern Aggressors in Antietam a lifetime ago. As it was, this was not the first time he had thought his shallow breath might be the last one he’d ever take.
The war never left him—or any man who saw battle, for that matter. Most days he could push away the ghostly battle screams, disassociate himself with suitable tasks of some kind to make the memory vanish.
But today was not most days.
The only comfort that came to his mind now was the pure and true fact that he had lived to see another day—then, and hopefully now.
Survival of the battle in Georgia came mostly at luck’s hand. Most men didn’t have such good fortune—his mother prayed for him, he knew that, but he couldn’t credit her holy actions as the cause of his survival.
Antietam was a bloody day, the casualties so deep it was said that nearly eighty percent of the Texas Brigade had been killed on that single day. It was a larger loss than any other brigade suffered in the whole war, on either side, from beginning to end. And Josiah had been there in the thick of it. He still bore his own scars from the battle, though he tried to ignore them. Now it was impossible not to consider his own mortality, just like he had in the last moment of retreat to the West Woods at the end of the battle, broken, bleeding, running for his life, stumbling over more dead men than he had ever seen in his life, or hoped to ever see again.
There were streams of blood running in every direction, moans and groans filling the air.
If the Grim Reaper was actually working the field, then he must have been sweating at the brow—working hard carting off the dead to whatever realm the wraith came from in the first place.
The surgery tents were in full bloom, the surrounding ground red and muddy with blood, crates overflowing with amputated legs and arms. Screams mixed in the air, too, and as night fell, the cries of pain did not stop. The owls remained silent. Gone. Or watching, from atop the trees, the madness of men.
Josiah had been certain it would be impossible to survive another day after that. But he had.
The win at Antietam was a fragile but certain victory for the Union. In the days that followed, the blood that was left behind on the fields of Sharpsburg and Antietam gave Lincoln a window to fight back with his words and ideas. He released an early version of the Emancipation Proclamation, further isolating the rest of the world, particularly England and France, against the Confederacy— at least to the point of ceasing to offer any financial aid to the cause.
It was a blow from which the South would never fully recover.
There had been no way for Josiah to know, of course, that he was fighting a losing battle on that bloody day—just as there was no way now to know the outcome of his current, dire circumstance in an unknown barn in Comanche, Texas, nearly twenty years later.
This day, and Antietam, all felt familiar. Too familiar, and that was the troubling part. Coupled with his own physical weakness, he felt like he had given every ounce of his being to win a futile war, and it still was not enough.
Josiah held his breath, tried not to move, steadied the barrel of the Spencer the best he could.
A mouse ran over his right hand, flittering across his skin in fear, fleeing as quickly as it could.
The rodent didn’t startle him. He was aware of its presence, as well as the village of them that lived in the hay mound, so he was not surprised when they decided to run. He just hoped they would go one at a time, scurry from the light deeper into the hay instead of outward, drawing attention to his position.
He remained still, unfazed, as the light inside the barn grew brighter.
The smell of coal oil filled interior, the threat of fire a concern to animal and man alike, but more so to Josiah. He had seen the aftermath of a fire in a barn, seen the charred human bones of someone left behind, and now that fate could very well be his.
Odd thing was, he was certain he heard the horses outside fade into the distance. They had not stopped scouting, searching for him, so he was a little confused—but nonetheless aware of the threat coming his way.
Silence filled the barn.
Sweat dripped from the tip of Josiah’s nose to the top of his lip. He tasted his own salt, feared for his own life, and pressed his finger tighter on the trigger—just as the light pulled back and disappeared.
The barn went black.
Sometime in the middle of the night, Josiah slowly stirred then started awake, suddenly aware of the passage of time.
The riders had gone on, and the torch had vanished. Though Josiah was not sure if he had lost consciousness before or after the torch had come and gone.
It didn’t matter; at the moment, he seemed to be safe. Not to mention alive and armed, still equipped with the Spencer and five cartridges to protect himself with. That was more currency than he had had since first catching the trail of Big Shirt—which now seemed as much a trick as the attack on Lost Valley by Lone Wolf in July. Still, he didn’t know for sure that he, Scrap, and Red had been lured to the cropping of rocks by Big Shirt and Little Shirt. Or if the Indians’ true cause all along had been to take Josiah hostage.
It was the first time that he’d had the strength and clarity of thought to question the events of the day.
Not that he was healed. But the bleeding in his leg had stopped, congealed as he slept. It was apparently just a flesh wound, though at the time the bullet hit him, it had felt like a full-on shot. He couldn’t be sure that he was right now, and he would have to wait until daylight to make sure, but he thought he knew the difference between a graze and a direct hit, and he was almost certain that he didn’t have lead lodged in the muscle or next to the bone.
He was hungry, thirsty, and weak, but the fear of death—at least impending death and doom—seemed to have passed.
Josiah was reasonably certain at that moment that he was going to live to see another day. Then the questions crept back into his mind as he lay there, still afraid to move in the solid darkness, unsure of where he was or what was next.
If it had been Big and Little Shirt’s intention, or mission, to capture him because he had a reward on his head—most likely posted and sworn out by Liam O’Reilly—then why did the Comanche shoot Red Overmeyer? Kill him like a trapped animal, tied to the tree . . . and leave Scrap there alive?
At least that was the way it had appeared.
The last time Josiah had seen Scrap, the boy’s eyes were filled with fright, and he was tied to the tree, struggling to escape with Red behind him, his head half blown off.
Not much of it made any sense at the moment to Josiah.
Suddenly he was an outlaw being pursued by an outlaw—for what cause? A price on his head for what crime? He was a Texas Ranger, damn it, not some low-life gunslinger who killed for the pleasure or power of it.