Talons of Eagles by William W. Johnstone

Author:William W. Johnstone [Johnstone, William W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2016-06-14T04:00:00+00:00

24

During the grim year of 1863, the war had taken a heavy toll. Among the dead was Stonewall Jackson, killed at Chancellorville; a death that was mourned throughout the entire Confederacy.

For the first few months of the new year, the Confederate army was in disarray, with retreats on nearly all fronts. The Army of Virginia was holding, but cracks were appearing even there as the Union army grew stronger. Longstreet had been shifted up to Virginia to reinforce the Rebels there; Robert E. Lee was now recognized as the overall commander of the Confederate army. President Lincoln had called for volunteers to aid in the fight against the Rebels, and more than half a million men had lined up to enlist.

Jamie found himself without orders, and attached to no particular division. In the haste to reorganize, the Marauders had been left out of the planning.

The spring of 1864 brought with it several of the most unusual and least written about events of the bloody struggle. Colonel Aaron Layfield loudly and publicly stated—to anyone who would listen—that once the war in the East was over and the Union was victorious, he was going to take his men out west and stamp out any lingering pockets of Rebels and then turn his attentions to the Indians and wipe them out.

Jamie found the latter highly amusing, for Layfield would last about a day against the Ute or the Cheyenne or the Dakota or any of a dozen other tribes.

Then Layfield specifically mentioned Valley, Colorado, and the MacCallister clan, calling the area a “Hotbed of insurrection, filled with Southern whores, white trash and traitors fit only to be wiped from the face of the earth and the land they squat upon burned bare and the earth salted down so nothing will ever live there again.”

“What the hell is the matter with this lunatic?” Jamie questioned, after reading the article in a Eastern newspaper which thrived on such news.

Jamie and his men were camped in North Georgia, with no orders from the Confederate high command. They had seemingly fallen through the cracks of the military bureaucracy.

Jamie had lost his temper when he rode the train down to Atlanta to try to find out what they were supposed to do—he kept getting the runaround, and when he did get to see a senior officer, the man didn’t have the foggiest idea of what to do. So Jamie decided to send the smooth-talking Pierre Dupree to see if he could find out something. Dupree found out a lot of things, including the reason for Layfield’s wild hatred of Jamie Ian MacCallister.

“He’s being bankrolled by a rich turncoat Louisiana man name of Jubal Olmstead, who’s in cahoots with the Yankees, and they have promised him the governorship of Louisiana once the war is over. This Olmstead fellow is originally from Kentucky, I think, and for whatever reason, he has an almighty deep hatred for you, Colonel.”

“Dear God,” Jamie whispered, shaking his head in disbelief. “Is it ever going

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