Mason Hawke has a dark past that he's trying to forget, but now he must choose between wealth and power or saving a town that's under the rule of a corrupt lawman.
Mason Hawke emerged from war a scarred man, a man unable to return to a life of power and privilege. His only way out is to start his life anew, concealing his past from those he encounters. But things don't always go according to plan, which Mason finds out when he stops in a town where he knows the local sheriff, a man who has the town under his thumb. All he wants to do is settle down and pretend the past never happened. But now Mason has to decide whether to live the easy life, forgetting his past, or to risk sacrificing himself, and help the town break free of the tyrannical lawman, at the risk of exposing something he'd wanted to keep buried.
Hawke
Ride with the DevilBy Vaughan, RobertHarperTorch
ISBN: 006072577XChapter One
September 21, 1863
The constant bombardment of the Union Army's heavy mortars prevented the exhausted men fromgetting any sleep during the night. The noise was continuous,from the solid thump of the mortars being fired to thescream of shells in flight to the crash of bombs bursting justoverhead, bathing the area in a flash of light and sending outwhistling shards of hot, jagged metal to kill and maim.
It was easy to follow the deadly transit of the missiles becauseof the sputtering red sparks that emanated from thefuses. The one-hundred-pound bombs described a high arcthrough the cold black sky before slamming down to explodeamong the weary Confederate soldiers.
The bombardment continued without letup until the easternsky grew gray. Only with the coming of dawn did thebombardment end.
Then, as day broke, a low-lying haze rose over the openfield that separated the Confederate position from the breastworksthe Union soldiers had thrown up two nights earlier.The haze was partly due to a fog that the early morning suncoaxed from the frosted ground, as well as the gun smoke that continued to hover over the field where a two-day battlehad taken place on the Chickamauga.
As the sun grew higher, the ground fog burned away andthe smoke gradually began to dissipate. When the darkness,fog, and smoke had lifted, the horror of the battle wasclearly revealed. The meadow between where Sergeant MasonHawke was standing and the Yankee breastworks at theedge of the woods some half mile distant was covered withbodies. They were the easily identifiable blue uniforms ofthe Union soldiers, the natty gray of the Virginians, theGeorgians' butternut, and finally the mixed bag of clothingworn by the Western Confederate soldiers. In addition to thedead and dying, there were hundreds of vultures, some circlingoverhead, others already on the ground, attending totheir gruesome work.
Though the final numbers weren't in, the casualty estimateswere running as high as six thousand killed and25,000 wounded.
On this, the third morning, many of the wounded werestill on the battlefield, having spent a long, cold night lyingamong the dead. With the dawn, these poor souls could beseen feebly waving their arms -- those who could move -- inan effort to signal their comrades to come for them. The result,when one looked over the battlefield, was an almostrhythmic movement, as wheat in the wind.
There was a sound as well; not the crash and roar of battle,but a low moan, often punctuated with sharp cries ofpain and the plaintive cries for water.
On this day of the autumnal equinox, the sun would riseand set at exactly six o'clock. But it was nearly nine o'clockbefore everyone realized that the Union Army had abandonedthe field, and not until then did full-scale rescue operationsget underway. Hundreds of Confederate soldiers moved through the carnage, conducting triage in the fieldand putting on their stretchers only those they thought mightbenefit from medical attention.
Sergeant Mason Hawke was one of the soldiers recoveringthe wounded, and as he moved through the carnage, hesaw one of his boyhood acquaintances. The young man's abdomenwas red-brown from encrusted blood. At first Masonthought he was dead, but he saw a small movement, stoppedand knelt beside his old friend.
"That one's dead, Sergeant Hawke, we'd best leave himbe for now," one of the stretcher bearers said.
"He's not dead. I saw him move."
"Well if he ain't dead yet, he soon will be. Let's findsomeone in better shape."
"Take this one," Hawke said.
"Sarge, we're supposed to take only those -- "
"I said take this one!" Hawke ordered sternly.
"All right, Sarge, if you say so. But if he's dead by thetime we get him back to the aid station, you're goin' to haveto explain to the cap'n why we got him."
Hawke watched them pick the man up and put him on thestretcher. His friend opened his eyes then and, looking up,saw him.
"I'll be damned," he said. "It would be you, wouldn't it?"
"You're going to be fine," Hawke said, but his words wereunheard because the wounded soldier, having forced himselfto stay awake throughout the long night, was by then unconscious.
Hawke watched as the stretcher bearers carried his boyhoodfriend back to the aid station, then he turned back tolook out over the valley of the dead.
He closed his eyes. Only three years ago he had been inEurope, visiting such glamorous locations as London, Paris, Rome, Vienna, and Berlin. That a man could experiencesuch a contrast between that and this in so short a timeseemed inconceivable.
He didn't know how many more battles he would have toface or how many more men he would have to kill before itall ended. He did know, however, that he could never goback to the genteel life that had taken him on the grand tourof Europe. That Mason Hawke now lay with the dead, notonly here at Chickamauga, but at battlefields such as Antietam,Fredricksburg, and Gettysburg.
The music that he once offered to the world was nowburied deep within his soul ...
Continues...Excerpted from Hawkeby Vaughan, Robert Excerpted by permission.
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