Manassas

by James Reasoner Narrated by Lloyd James

Overview

Manassas is the first book in Reasoner's ten-volume series spanning the Civil War and describing its effects on one Southern family.

Storm clouds are approaching Culpeper County, Virginia, in early January 1861. The troublesome Fogarty brothers have been raising havoc across the countryside, and when the local lawman, Will Brannon, returns from another futile attempt to track them down, he finds the townspeople abuzz. South Carolina has seceded from the Union, and rumor has it more states will follow, perhaps even Virginia. Will enlists, but so, too, do the Fogartys. All know that men die in battle and that these deaths are never investigated.

As the Brannon brothers answer the call to arms, the family finds itself struggling with dilemmas it never had considered.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169634587
Publisher:	Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Publication date:	06/25/2005
Series:	Civil War Battles , #1
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

Easy now," William Shakespeare Brannon breathed as he watched the oncoming riders over the barrel of his rifle. "Just keep coming, boys."

    Beside Will, his deputy, Luther Strawn, shifted a little, making the brush that concealed them rattle loudly. At least the noise sounded loud in Will's ears. He grimaced and shot a look at Luther, who just raised his eyebrows and shook his head. Under the circumstances, that was as much of an apology as the deputy could make.

    Will turned his attention back to the riders. There were six of them coming up the gentle slope of the hill toward the clump of live oaks where Will and Luther were hidden. Beyond the riders a broad, shallow valley fell away into the distance. In the spring the valley would be filled with colorful explosions of wildflowers, and by summer it would be green with thick, lush grass. But now, in late January 1861, it was a mixture of mottled browns and grays.

    The riders wore long gray coats, which made them blend into the background to a certain extent. If it came to shooting, that would make it more difficult, thought Will. Why couldn't bandits all wear nice colorful bandannas and give a man something to aim at? His younger brother Titus might be able to shoot the wings off a butterfly at a thousand yards, but Will had never been that good with a rifle. He was much handier with the .36 caliber Colt Navy revolver holstered on his right hip. Though as sheriff he considered it his job to keep the peace, he didn't use any gun unless he had to.

    Might just come down to that today.

    The riders were still far enough away that he couldn't see their faces very well, shaded as they were underneath the broad-brimmed hats. Will didn't have to see the men to know them: three of them were the Fogarty brothers, George, Ransom, and Joe; two more were cousins of the Fogartys, Marcus and Newberry Paynter; and the sixth and final man was Israel Quinn, whose wife, Margery, was some distant kin of the Fogartys and the Paynters. Will never had been able to figure out exactly how Margery Quinn was related.

    Not that it mattered. Nearly all the men in that bunch, be they Fogarty, Paynter, or Quinn, were no-account. Thieves and layabouts. They were the bane of Will Brannon's existence.

    Early this morning six men had robbed the general store at Burke's Station. One of them had pistol-whipped old man Burke within an inch of his life for no reason; the storekeeper hadn't been putting up a fight. Luckily, someone had found the old man soon afterward and gotten him to a doctor, and word of the robbery had been sent quickly to Will's office in Culpeper, the county seat. Again, luck was on the side of the law, and Will had been there to get the news. Quickly, he had rounded up Luther Strawn, and they had set out on horseback to get ahead of the robbers.

    The Blue Ridge Mountains rose behind the hill where the two lawmen waited. Will knew that the Fogartys and their kin had a hidey-hole somewhere up there in the mountains. He had never gone up there to try to root them out; that would have been out of his jurisdiction as sheriff of Culpeper County. But he could dang sure ride like blazes and get in front of the thieves so that he could stop them before they left his bailiwick. That had been his thinking, anyway. During the long afternoon he and Luther had spent on this hill, Will had begun to fear that they hadn't been in time to head off the robbers after all.

    But now they were coming, and Will was ready for them. Sure, it was three-to-one odds, but he and Luther had the high ground and good cover, and if the Fogartys and their kin decided not to surrender when Will called out to them, Will figured he and Luther could sweep three or four of them out of the saddle right quick-like. Luther could get two with that scattergun of his, maybe three if they were bunched up, and Will was good enough with the rifle to take down one man. Then it would be up to that Colt Navy on Will's hip and Luther's old dragoon.

    Yep, a few more minutes, and things would really start to rip, Will told himself. Nothing a Brannon loved more than a good fight.

    He used the back of his left hand to wipe sweat from his forehead. Funny. It was a cool day. He oughtn't to be sweating so much.

    The men on horseback were almost close enough now.

    Someone let out a shout.

    Will stiffened. He peered through the brush and saw another man riding around the base of the hill. The Fogartys and their companions reined in and turned their horses to greet the newcomer. Will grimaced. Their backs were to him and Luther now. He couldn't shoot somebody in the back, not even a Fogarty. Besides, they were too far away for Luther's shotgun and the handguns to be accurate enough. If any shooting started now, the thieves could just sit back and sieve the hilltop with lead until both Will and Luther were dead.

    Will hadn't gotten a good look at the newcomer. Whoever the man was, he was talking to the thieves, and suddenly the whole bunch started riding back the way they had come, away from the hill where Will and Luther were hidden.

    "Lordy, now what?" Luther asked in a whisper.

    Will thought desperately. The only way he and his deputy would be able to handle the gang was to take them by surprise. That wouldn't be possible now. He and Luther might be able to overtake them, but what then? The Fogartys wouldn't surrender. Will knew that, even though he would have given them a chance to. Going after them now wouldn't accomplish anything except to get him and Luther shot to ribbons.

    "Nothing we can do," said Will, not bothering to keep the bitterness out of his voice. "Next time we'll gather up a posse before we start out after them, make the odds more even."

    "How do you know there'll be a next time?"

    "I know the Fogartys," Will replied heavily. "There'll be a next time."

* * *

His father had named him after William Shakespeare. John Brannon had read every play that old Englishman ever wrote, and he had been able to recite big chunks of each one from memory. Will remembered many an evening when he was a youngster, sitting in front of the fire and listening to his father recite Shakespeare. John Brannon always sat in an old rocking chair when he was holding forth. Even now, years later, if Will happened to hear somebody quote a passage from Shakespeare, he could hear in his mind the creaking of that chair as his father rocked back and forth and waved his arms and hollered out the words like he was actually old King Lear, or Hamlet, or Macbeth.

    Will's next youngest brother was named Macbeth, but everybody called him Mac. The next brother in line was Titus Andronicus Brannon, and Will had always been glad he hadn't been saddled with that name. Then came Coriolanus Troilus Brannon, also a name Will was thankful he hadn't been given. The youngest son was Henry, probably the luckiest of the bunch when it came to names, and finally Cordelia, the only Brannon daughter, whose name had come from John Brannon's favorite among the plays, King Lear. Cordelia had been something of John Brannon's favorite, too, being both the youngest and the only girl in the family. But then John Brannon had died ten years ago when Cordelia was only seven, and now her memories of him were dim. Will knew that, and in a way he felt sorry for her that she had not gotten to know their father for a longer time.

    But in another way Cordelia had been lucky, because she remembered John Brannon more as a colorful character and hadn't been old enough when he died to realize what a failure he had been as a husband and father. Will had been eighteen when John Brannon passed on, and he knew quite well what his father had been like.

    The road that led through the rolling farmland of Virginia's Piedmont region forked. The left-hand fork led on southeast toward Culpeper, while the right-hand fork ran due south and went past the Brannon farm. It was late afternoon, the sun almost touching the peaks of the Blue Ridge behind them, when Will and Luther stopped their homes at the fork.

    "I'm going on home," Will said. "You sure you don't mind seeing to the office?"

    "Naw," replied Luther. "Got nothin' better to do tonight."

    "All right, then. I'll see you in the morning."

    "Sure." Luther hesitated, then added, "Will."

    "What?"

    "I sure am sorry it didn't work out. Us and the Fogarty bunch, I mean. I know you wanted to get those boys."

    "It's not a matter of getting them," Will declared, his voice sharp. "They're criminals, and I was elected to put a stop to such goings-on."

    "Yeah. That's what I mean," said Luther. He gave Will a tired smile and pulled on the reins, guiding his horse onto the Culpeper road.

    Will sat there in his saddle for a moment, then sighed and rubbed a hand over the dark beard stubble on his jaw. He shouldn't have snapped at Luther, he told himself. What he had said was true enough: it was his job as sheriff to apprehend anybody who broke the law. But Luther had been right, too. Will bore a special enmity for the Fogartys and their kin.

    He heeled his horse into motion, sending the rangy lineback dun trotting down the fork of the road that led to the Brannon farm.

    By the time he arrived, the sun was behind the mountains and the shadows of dusk were thick. Will turned off the road onto the lane that ran between the house and the barns and the corrals. On both sides of the lane were fields of winter wheat. The land beyond the house and the barns was used as pastureland for Mac's horses at the moment, but come spring much of it would be plowed and planted with corn, potatoes, snap beans, cucumbers, and sweet potatoes. Will would do as much as he could when it came to be plowing and planting time, but his duties as sheriff kept him off the place more than he liked. He was the only one in the family still at home who worked at anything other than farming, and sometimes he worried that his brothers and sister resented that.

    But he was good at what he did. He could break up a tavern fight without anybody getting hurt too badly, he was a good tracker, and if it ever came down to serious trouble, he could handle that Colt Navy and folks knew it. Will Brannon had killed one man in his life, a tavern owner who rented out rooms above the tavern and had the bad habit of robbing and sometimes chopping up his guests with an ax, especially when they were travelers nobody was likely to miss. He kept hogs, too, in a pen out back, which made it handy for getting rid of the evidence of his crimes. Eventually, though, he'd been found out, and when Will came to arrest him, the man went mad and came at Will with the same ax he'd used on his victims. It had taken four .36 caliber slugs in the chest to put him down, and even at that, the ax blade had gotten stuck in the tavern floor less than a yard away from Will's feet on the downswing. Will hadn't been sheriff at the time, only a deputy, but when the sheriff decided not to run for re-election, everybody urged Will to try for the job. He had been elected easily. Anybody who'd stand up to a madman with an ax sure didn't spook easy, folks said.

    That had been four years earlier, and sometimes Will still woke up in the middle of the night, not scared really, not even sweating, but he could see the twisted face of that man and how the lamplight reflected off the blade of the ax. He was usually awake for a good long spell after that.

    This evening the lights of the house glowed yellow through the windows, and Will thought it was a pretty sight. The house was big and solid and sturdy, built of thick planks that got a good coat of whitewash once a year. Will saw to that. His father had built the house, probably the best job of work John Brannon had ever accomplished, but at the time of his death, it was already run down. Will had stepped in and seen to it that the place was fixed up. Later, as they grew older, his brothers had helped, too. That effort had extended into the fields. Stumps that John Brannon was going to get rid of "one of these days" were uprooted and hauled off. Fences that had been leaning were straightened and braced so that they would never again be in danger of falling down. The holes in the barn roof were patched. It didn't matter to Will that he was only eighteen when his father died. He was a man fully grown, and he was going to put things right.

    He supposed he'd been trying to do that ever since, both on the farm and as the sheriff of Culpeper County.

    He rode into the barn and swung down from the saddle. He didn't need light to get the saddle off the dun, rub the animal down, see that it had plenty of grain and water in its stall. Mac was the horseman in the family, but Will could tend to chores such as these because he'd been doing them all his life.

    The last of the day's light was fading as he walked from the barn to the house. A cold breeze was blowing, and Will tugged down his flat-crowned black hat.

    He stepped into the warmth of the house and took a deep breath. Ham and fresh biscuits and something sweet and spicy ... sweet potato pie, that was it. Will grinned as he took his hat off and hung it just inside the door, on the same hook where he hung his gun belt. His mother didn't allow any firearms at the dinner table. That was one of Abigail Brannon's rules, and you didn't break it even when you were the county sheriff and nearly thirty years old.

    Will brushed a hand over his thick black hair to straighten it, then stepped across the foyer to the dining room. His sister was setting the table. She looked up at him and smiled. "Hello, Will," she said.

    Cordelia was the only one of the children to have inherited John Brannon's fiery red hair. It tumbled in thick masses around her face and past her shoulders. To Will, Cordelia would always be the tomboy with dirt on her face who had followed him and his brothers around all the time, but when he forced himself to step back from being the big brother, he had to admit that she had grown into a beauty. The young fellas hereabouts were certainly aware of that, and if they were, then he had to be, too.

    "Did you make the sweet potato pie?" he asked.

    Cordelia's smile broadened into a grin. "I sure did."

    "I reckon it'll be good, then."

    "Don't let Mama hear you say that," Cordelia teased. "She sets quite a store by her sweet potato pie."

    "Where is she?"

    Cordelia glanced toward the ceiling and the second floor above it. "Up in her room. Resting."

    Will nodded. He wasn't certain what their mother did when she said she was resting, but he was pretty certain she wasn't lying in bed taking life easy. More than likely she was sitting in her rocking chair reading the Bible. That was about as idle as she would ever allow herself to be.

    "What about the boys?"

    "They'll be in directly. I told them supper was almost ready, but Mac just had to take Titus and Henry out to the barn to show them that new foal. He sure is proud of it."

    "It's a pretty little thing," Will said. "Well, if they don't get back soon, there'll just be more food for you and me. You need to eat plenty, you're so skinny."

    "Be careful. I'll throw a biscuit at you. What did you do today?"

    Tried to ambush a gang of thieves and no-goods, thought Will. Came this close to a shooting scrape where I could've got myself killed, and Luther, too.

    But he said, "Not much of anything. Being sheriff's an almighty peaceful job these days."

    "I reckon things won't be peaceful anywhere much longer," Cordelia added. "Not once the War starts." She turned away and took a step toward the door that led to the kitchen.

    "There's not going to be any war," Will declared.

    "That's not what Titus says."

    "Titus is wrong. Just because Lincoln's going to be in office soon doesn't mean—"

    He stopped at the sound of a footstep behind him and turned to see his mother in the entrance to the dining room. Her face wore the same stern expression it usually did, the most common expression Will could remember seeing on her for the past ten years.

    "Lincoln," she snapped with disapproval. "I swear, that man's going to be the death of us all."

    "Now, Mama—" Will began.

    "Don't you now Mama me, Will Brannon," she interrupted. "Once he's inaugurated, that man is going to try to ruin everything folks believe in."

    Will knew better than to get into this argument. When it came to states' rights, his mother could orate just as long and passionately as any of the politicians in Washington. Instead, Will said, "I'll just go out and see what's keeping the boys."

    He stepped past Cordelia and went out through the rear door in the kitchen. As he walked away from the house toward the barns, he heard voices on the night air. The rest of the Brannon brothers, except for one, coming home for the night. Will saw the lantern swinging from the hand of one of them.

    "Didn't I tell you she was the prettiest little thing you'll ever see?" That was Mac, talking about the new foal.

    "I don't know," began Henry, and Will could tell from the tone of voice used by his youngest brother that Henry was up to some sort of devilment. "I don't reckon Titus thinks any ol' horse could be prettier than Polly Ebersole, now do you, Titus?"

    "Hush up," said Titus. "I don't know what you're talking about."

    "I'm talking about Polly Ebersole," Henry persisted. "You know, the gal you're in love with."

    "Damn it, Henry! You take that back."

    "Why should I? It's the truth, ain't it?"

    Will stepped forward to meet them and said, "Better quit your squabbling, boys. Supper's just about on the table."

    He could see them now, the three of them, his brothers, and he wondered, not for the first time in his life, how they could have all turned out so different. They all shared the same sort of tall rawboned build, but that was where the similarities ended.

    Will had the broad shoulders and long arms and knobby fists of a fighter. His hair was dark and already touched with gray in a place or two, despite his not having reached thirty years of age.

    Mac, three years younger at twenty-five, was much more slender, with a shock of brown hair that sometimes fell in his face. His hands with their long fingers and gentle touch could calm down almost any horse when they stroked along its shoulder, and his soft voice could win the trust of any animal, no matter how wild it was. Will couldn't remember all the times Mac had brought some sort of critter home from the woods, talking to the animals as if they understood every word he was saying.

    Titus, who was twenty-three, never wasted time talking to animals, but he was hell on killing them. The stew pot in the Brannon house never went wanting for fresh meat. Titus could bark a squirrel or a coon or a possum without even seeming to aim, like the rifle was just a part of him and he could use it to reach out and touch whatever he aimed at. Slender like Mac, his hair was as dark as midnight, and he wore it longer than any of his brothers.

    Henry was a little shorter and a little stockier than any of the others, and he had grown up practically worshiping his brothers and wanting to do everything they did. He had never been good at any one particular thing, like they were. But he had picked up enough over the years to be able to handle a pistol, like Will, ride pretty good, like Mac, and shoot a rifle, like Titus. Will didn't figure Henry would ever be the equal of any of them at those things, but he was good enough to get along. And he still had that cockiness that went with being nineteen years old and having the world by the tail.

    Only Cory, at twenty-one lodged right smack between Titus and Henry, was missing. He was the only one of the family to have left home and also the only one to have inherited much of John Brannon's dreaminess and love of poetry. Six months earlier Cory had announced he was going west to seek his fortune. Will had expected Abigail to lay down the law and tell him he could do no such thing, but to his surprise she had agreed with Cory's plan. Maybe because he had always reminded her too much of her late husband, Will thought.

    "Howdy, Will," Henry said now. "We were just talkin' about Titus and Polly Ebersole—"

    "I heard what you were talking about," Will cut in before Titus could protest again. "Come on. Let's go eat."

    "And you just shut your mouth about Polly," Titus said, unable to resist putting in the last word on that subject.

    "No talking about Lincoln and war, either," Will warned them quietly. "We don't want to set Mama off again."

    "That's right," Mac agreed. "You know how she can get going on that subject."

    Titus snorted. "Just because you don't want to talk about it don't mean it ain't going to happen. You know what happened in South Carolina last month. It's the Second American Revolution, that's what it is."

    Will shook his head and said, "Just because those delegates to that convention in Charleston voted to secede doesn't mean it'll actually happen."

    "It's already happened. That vote was binding. The Union's dissolved, Will, no two ways about it."

    "We still don't want a lot of Secesh talk at the dinner table," Mac insisted. "Folks need to think mild thoughts while they're eating. It's good for the digestion."

    Again Titus snorted, but that was his only response.

    Hoping for the best, Will led the Brannon brothers into the house for their supper.

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