Galveston: Between Wind And Water (A Historical Literary Fiction Novel Filled with Romance and Drama) Read Free Page B

themselves. The men checked their timepieces—growing more hot and impatient by the moment—occasionally heckling Haines and the other men on the platform to let them know it.
    The captain put his hat on and cocked the brim. Folks got to realize. It takes time to make everything just right. He was proud the others had cottoned to his idea of using a butcher’s hoist with a box and plank being rigged for a drop. They all agreed it would speed things up especially when they used ten nooses on the regular gallows.
    Haines flung the final rope into place and the captain stepped back, satisfied all preparations were completed.
    Armed, vigilante guards ordered the first group of bound men and women out of the hay wagon and marched them at gunpoint to the steps of the gallows as more wagons arrived behind the first.
    Captain Boland had gone over the list several times. Two hundred men and women from five northern Texas counties would walk up these stairs before sundown. He cut off a fresh plug of tobacco and popped it in his mouth. After he read out each name, Haines slipped a flour sack over the traitor’s head.
    The captain knew many of them only by reputation and a few by name and face. He’d never sat down to dinner with any of the men or shared a drink, and even if he did, that wouldn’t have changed a goddamn thing. All slave-lovin’ traitors to the Confederacy and even worse, traitors to Texas.
    Captain Boland spat over the edge of the platform. He scratched his sweaty scalp at the back of his neck as he looked down the row of faceless, drooping sacks. Before last month, each one of these fine gentlemen would just as soon have walked in the mud to cross the street than have to say good morning to a half-breed like him. ’Specially the likes of Mr. William McGowan there.
    But the loyal home guard changed all that .
    Scraped and bruised, Bret climbed up the rocky river bank. At the top of the bank he spotted the gibbets in the distance behind a few hundred feet of bush and trees. He looked over his shoulder hoping beyond hope that somehow his mother had managed to follow him.
    He prayed to hear her comforting voice draw near, instead, heard only the quiet hush of the slow-moving water. Though the sun beat hot against his face, he shook from a deathly cold that had taken hold of his thin body and bones. He coughed and cried, cursing himself for being a terrified boy. “But what would father say if he saw me like this?” he thought.
    Bret wiped his sweat and tears on his jacket sleeve. Reverend Vaughan’s homestead lay on the other side of the gallows, but if he went around them through town it would take too long. He gulped and wet his parched lips with his tongue. No one would notice a small boy in a big crowd. Bret scrambled over the edge and ran through the bush and trees toward the gallows.
    The captain yelled out the name of the final man on the platform. “William Kelby McGowan.”
    When Haines tried to pull the sack over McGowan’s head, the conspirator shook his neck so quickly Haines dropped the sack onto the platform.
    Someone hollered from the back of the crowd. “Try it the same way you bag a chicken when you steal it from a coop, boy. Wring its neck first.”
    Captain Boland laughed with the others, taking pleasure in watching Haines flush redder than a robin with each roar of laughter from the crowd.
    When Haines bent down to pick up the bag, McGowan asked Captain Boland if he could say something to the people. “It’s the last Christian and civil thing you can let me do.”
    The captain strode across the creaking, freshly cut timbers of the platform and punched the Union boot-licking bastard square in the guts.
    Captain Boland paused for a few moments and allowed the gentleman to recover his breath, then stepped up and secured the noose around the man’s neck. “Anything else?”
    “Yes.” The traitor wet his dry, cracked lips with his tongue. “A drink of water, please.”
    The captain nodded.