A WEEK LATER EARL returned to Denver. As he stepped down from the stagecoach, he looked like a man in need of a stiff drink. His features were set in a troubled expression.
Following the shooting, his luck had turned sour. There was no problem with the law, for he’d killed to protect himself. The miner had drawn first, and the Central City marshal wrote it off as justifiable homicide. But Earl’s fortunes at the poker table were another matter entirely. He began drawing second-best cards, so bad that even a decent bluffing hand rarely worked. He contained his losses by playing conservatively and folding often. For the week, he was down almost three hundred dollars.
Earl was not a superstitious man. Most gamblers religiously stuck to certain quirks or idiosyncrasies. Some believed that it was bad luck to count their winnings during a game. Others thought the way to change a losing streak was to walk three times around one’s chair. An even hoarier notion was that it inevitably brought bad luck to sit in a game with a one-eyed gambler. Earl subscribed to none of the bugaboos commonly associated with misfortune. Yet, despite himself, he felt somewhat snakebit by the shooting. Killing the miner had done nothing to improve his bankroll.
The only high point of the trip was Monte. A week spent in her company was like an elixir, often intoxicating and always pleasurable. While she’d been unable to change his luck, she had done much to restore his spirits. Her lovemaking had, if anything, been more ardent and uninhibited than usual. She had assuaged his losses with kittenish sensuality and long nights of physical pleasure. But her revitalizing effect had worn off long before the stage reached Denver. He now felt down at the mouth and just a little frazzled. For the first time in a long time, he’d returned a loser.
Entering the hotel, he proceeded across the lobby. Several acquaintances, fellow members of the gambling fraternity, were seated on the horsehair sofa and a collection of easy chairs. He nodded to them, rushing on, reluctant to be drawn into a conversation about his trip. As he approached the stairs, the desk clerk called out. “Mr. Brannock!”
Earl paused, turning. “Yes.”
“I wanted to let you know, Mr. Brannock. Your brother is upstairs.”
“Brother!” Earl repeated, stunned.
“Yes, sir,” the clerk replied. “He arrived yesterday and I . . . Well, I hope you don’t mind, Mr. Brannock. I put him in your room.”
“Which one?” Earl demanded.
“Pardon me?”
“Which brother—Virgil or Clint?”
“I’m not exactly sure. I don’t recall asking, just offhand.”
Earl spun away, bounding up the stairs. On the second floor he hurried down the hall and burst through the door of his room. A large man, tall and wide through the shoulders, rose from a chair beside the window. Framed in a shaft of sunlight, his chestnut hair and full mustaches gave him a ruddy look. Earl moved forward, hand outstretched.
“Virge! By God, it’s really you.”
Virgil Brannock clasped his hand, then pulled him into a tight bear hug. At thirty, Virgil was the eldest of the three brothers, a year older than Earl. Since they’d last met, he appeared to have aged, flecks of gray streaking his sideburns. He released Earl, stepping back with a warm smile.
“Well, you’re looking fit and then some. The mountains must agree with you.”
“No complaints,” Earl said, tossing his hat on the bed.
“How about yourself? Where the hell did you spring from? How’d you get here?”
“One question at a time,” Virgil said genially. “I got here by stage, pulled in yesterday. As to the where, my last stop was Missouri.”
“You’ve been home, then?”
Virgil nodded. “Went there when I was mustered out. Took close to three weeks’ travel from Appomattox.”
Earl stared at him. “You were with Lee . . . at the end?”
“Gordon’s Second Corps,” Virgil acknowledged. “Got myself a souvenir the last day of fighting.”
He extended his left hand. The ring finger and the little finger were scarred and bent, drawn inward like talons. To all appearances, the crippled fingers were locked rigid in place.
“Jesus,” Earl muttered. “Can you move them?”
“A wiggle here and there. But the truth is, I got off luckier than most. Lots of men were killed right up to the ceasefire.”
“Sounds like it was pretty rough.”
“I doubt I’ll ever see worse.”
Virgil went on to explain that Union forces had trapped Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia. Heavy fighting raged during the early days of April, with the ring drawing ever tighter around the Confederates. On April 9, when General John Gordon sought to halt the advance of Phil Sheridan’s corps, Virgil had been wounded in an artillery exchange. An hour later Lee formally surrendered to Grant at Appomattox.
At the field hospital, an army doctor had ordered Virgil’s fingers amputated. Having seen too many amputations, Virgil refused and went away with his hand swathed in bandages. Under the terms of the surrender, officers were allowed to keep their horses and personal belongings. Virgil, who was then a captain, rode out three days after the cease-fire. He’d arrived at the family farm outside Harrisonville, Missouri, on April 27.
When he finished, Earl nodded stolidly. “How are Uncle Ezra and Aunt Angeline?”
“All things considered, they came through it fairly good.”
“Any word of Clint?”
“Last we heard, he’d been shipped to a Yankee prison. Somewheres in Ohio.”
Their younger brother was two years Earl’s junior. At the outbreak of the war, both Virgil and Clint had volunteered. Earl, who had denounced the war as madness, refused to join them. While Virgil accepted his decision, Clint angrily branded him a traitor to the cause. The division alienated Earl and the youngest brother, and Clint had departed for the war without attempting to heal the split. Not quite two years later the family had been notified of Clint’s capture during the battle of Vicksburg.
“I wonder—” Earl mused aloud. “You think he’s been released . . . or what?”
Virgil shook his head. “Hard to say. I figured we would’ve heard something before I left. The Yankees are pretty good about that sort of thing.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you know, notifying the next of kin.”
“Are you saying you think he’s dead?”
“I don’t know, Earl. I wish I did.”
Virgil grew silent, staring at a spot of sunlight on the floor. His expression was abstracted, a long pause of inner deliberation. Finally he glanced up, his face stern as a deacon’s. “Guess you heard about the folks?”
“Yeah,” Earl answered, his eyes grave. “Uncle Ezra wrote me when it happened.”
“I visited the cemetery while I was there. The family chipped in and gave them real nice headstones.”
Their parents had been among the first civilian casualties of the war. The Missouri-Kansas border region was bitterly divided between Confederate and Union sympathizers. Savage guerrilla warfare was a natural outgrowth, and hot-blooded men of both states rallied around self-appointed leaders.
William Quantrill, who was active in the proslavery movement, organized a band of Missouri guerrillas. With such recruits as Jesse and Frank James, he spent the balance of the war terrorizing abolitionist strongholds in Kansas.
Quantrill’s counterpart in Kansas was Charles “Doc” Jennison. A sinister and unusually gifted leader, Jennison rose to prominence on the eve of the Civil War. Under a banner of antislavery, he formed a guerrilla outfit known as the Jay-hawkers. Operating as the Seventh Kansas Regiment, they began a campaign of murder and looting throughout western Missouri. Their first major blow was struck during the summer of 1861, when they pillaged Harrisonville and the surrounding countryside. James and Sarah Brannock, their farm burned to the ground, were killed in the course of the raid.
However unrealistic, Earl blamed himself in large part for his parents’ death. He had departed Missouri for the Colorado gold fields in early May, only two months before the Jay-hawker raid. He’d often thought that had he stayed, he might have somehow prevented the tragedy. It relieved his conscience none at all to realize that he, too, would have been killed by the guerrillas. He was still ridden with guilt.
“I never went back,” he said after a prolonged silence. “Maybe I should’ve, just to visit their graves. It’s hard to know what’s right.”
“What’s past is past,” Virgil said gently. “You made a life for yourself here and it does no good to look back. Besides, it wouldn’t have changed anything anyhow.”
Earl sat down on the edge of the bed. He scrubbed his face with his palms, seemed to collect himself. “Well, like you say, it’s water under the bridge now. So tell me, Brother Virge. What brings you to Denver?”
“A fresh start,” Virgil said, suddenly smiling. “By all accounts, you seem to have prospered out here. I thought I’d give it a try.”
“You”—Earl looked amazed—“a gambler?”
“God A’mighty, no! I’m not cut out for the sporting life. Figured I’d try my hand at business.”
“What kind of business?”
“Good question,” Virgil said, chuckling softly. “To be honest about it, I haven’t got the least idea. Guess I’ll have to scout around and see what strikes me.”
“How about money?” Earl inquired. “Have you got the wherewithal to get started?”
“Yes and no,” Virgil said. “I sold the farmland back home, even though it didn’t bring much. And of course, that’s to be split three ways—including Clint.”
Earl brushed the offer aside. “Keep my share and welcome to it. Matter of fact, I’d be willing to stake you to anything reasonable. I’m pretty well fixed.”
“Well, we’ll see how it goes. They say Colorado’s the land of opportunity, and plenty to go around. I’ll have a look for myself.”
“I could show you the ropes. There’s not much I don’t know about Denver and the gold camps.”
Virgil turned. “Wouldn’t it be something if Clint popped up all of a sudden? The three of us back together again!”
Earl’s voice lowered, his eyes downcast. “I’d give a heap for that, Virge. All I own.”
“So would I.”
Virgil turned to the window. His gaze went past the streamer of sunlight and he seemed to stare off into the middle distance. His features set in a look of somber introspection. “So would I.”