Preacher's Purge by William W. Johnstone

Author:William W. Johnstone
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pinnacle Books
Published: 2022-09-26T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 19

Major General Albion Shaw, once of Her Majesty the Queen’s Royal Army, a man who had seen war and soldiers dying around him for more than two decades on battlefields around Europe, calmly reloaded his rifle and watched the young Indian brave disappear into the forest on the northern edge of the creek he and his men had been exploring.

A familiar black rage seethed inside the general. He and his men had been spied on. His lookouts had been lax. He cursed them. His operation in this misbegotten wilderness had been discovered by the Indians. Again.

Now his enemy wouldn’t stand and fight.

Those were the same ignoble tactics the American revolutionaries had used in both wars against the sovereign nation of Great Britain. Those Americans, labeling themselves so proud and fierce, had learned those tactics from the natives and employed them ruthlessly.

Those cowardly tactics had gotten Shaw’s father, Willard Shaw, captain in the 41st Regiment of the Foot, killed in 1813 during the Battle of the Thames. Captain Shaw had served under Major General Henry Procter, but the battle had turned unexpectedly against the British troops. Captain Shaw and Tecumseh, the leader of the Shawnee tribe fighting with the British against the so-called Americans, had died in that engagement. Afterward, even though dead, Major General Procter had been court-martialed for his poor leadership.

Private Albion Shaw, then only fourteen years old, had been fighting the French during the Peninsular War. When news of his father’s death had reached him, Shaw had been stationed in Spain and served under the Marquess of Wellington.

Though he was part of the army that broke Napoleon’s hold on Spain and threw Joseph Bonaparte off the Spanish throne, Shaw discovered he was a pauper by the time he reached London. His father had overextended his credit to buy his elevated commission in the Queen’s Army and had the ill misfortune to die in battle. As a result, creditors had stripped the family home of its assets.

That old anger at the wicked whims of fate stirred in Shaw now. The war against the United States had been lost. Twice. The upstart country had doubled in size thanks to the land Napoleon sold them to finance his own efforts to hold onto France.

If his father had fought against the French, the Shaw name and title would have remained venerated instead of being dragged through the gutter as it had been. That loss had spurred Albion Shaw to leave England, where he had no future, and seek his fortune elsewhere.

Shaw banked those embers and concentrated on the skirmish ahead of him. He didn’t know how long the Indians had been spying on him. He didn’t know what the Indians knew or suspected. That vexed him. He didn’t want them underfoot. He thought he was closing in on his objective, a means to strike back at the United States’ westward expansion.

“What is the status, Mr. Rapp?” Shaw demanded.

Lieutenant Oscar Rapp stood at Shaw’s side and peered at the countryside through a spyglass.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.