Winter's Touch Read Free

been, those Georgia boys, Carson among them. They’d been assigned to the Army of Northern Virginia, commanded by General Lee himself. They’d fought at Rich Mountain that first summer, then Cheat Mount that fall. In the spring of ‘62, when Edmond had been on his way east to join up, the 12 th Georgia had joined General Jackson, ol’ Stonewall, on his triumphant campaign through the Shenandoah.
    We were good, Carson thought of the 12 th Georgia. Too damn good, and too damn cocky, as it turned out. At McDowell they were the only out-of-state unit with the Army of Northern Virginia, yet were given the most vulnerable part of the line to hold. The onslaught of Yankee fire had been terrible. When ordered to pull back to a more defensible position, the 12 th Georgia’s reply, to a man, had been, “We did not come all this way to Virginia to run before Yankees.”
    They should have run, Carson had admitted later, but they’d held steady in the face of wave after wave of Union blue.
    Yes, they should have run. Of all the Confederate casualties that day, a full third had been from the 12 th Georgia. There hadn’t been much left of those cocky boys by the end of that day.
    Jesus, but Carson had been glad his father had not been there. Surely, he’d thought, nothing could ever be that bad again.
    How naive he’d been. It was incredible how naive a twenty-three year old man could be, even after that month back in ‘62.
    More men—including Edmond Dulaney—had poured in to fill the ranks decimated at McDowell. Side by side, father and son, along with neighbors, friends, and strangers who had come to rebuild the ranks of the 12 th Georgia, followed General Jackson to hell and back. Trouble was, far too many hadn’t made it back.
    In the rare quiet times between the bloody battles at Sharpsburg, Chancellorsville, and the Wilderness, Edmond had talked of his ranch. Colorado was a splendid place, he’d said. Wild and free, with land for the taking. A huge land, with room for a man to spread out without worrying about neighbors. Air so crisp and clean you almost expect it to snap in the breeze.
    He wanted Carson to join him. Wanted him to bring the rest of the family after the war. Wanted to build the ranch into a real showplace.
    “Hey, Son!”
    Standing shoulder to shoulder with his father, Carson barely heard the shout. Day after day of unrelenting, continual cannon and rifle fire had nearly deafened them all. “Yeah, Dad?”
    “Did I tell you it was quiet in Colorado?”
    Despite the hip-deep blood and gore and the threat of imminent death—or perhaps because of them—Carson chuckled. “What’s that? I can’t hear you! It’s too noisy!”
    “I said—” Edmond Dulaney turned his head just enough to see his son’s grin, and laughed.
    A volley of fire from the advancing Yankees had them ducking down into their trench.
    “So,” Edmond called out, “you comin’ back to Colorado with me, or not?”
    Carson, using the time to reload, glanced at the overcast sky, then at his father. “I suspect I’ll give it a try.”
    “Good. That’s good, son.”
    Reloaded, they stood and fired.
    A minute later Edmond Dulaney had slumped against Carson’s shoulder, one more dead Reb out of the ten thousand who had died that May of ‘64 at that Godforsaken crossroads before the courthouse at Spotsylvania.
    As soon as possible after Lee’s surrender, Carson had kept his promise and come west to see this ranch of his father’s. He’d found it abandoned, the house in desperate need of repairs, cattle scattered to hell and back.
    But the possibilities…the possibilities, along with his father’s dreams, had infected him. After the devastation of so much of the South, this land was like heaven.
    And it was quiet.
    Not so much here, in Pueblo, but the valley where the ranch lay. A healing quiet he had desperately needed. Still needed.
    Carson had spent the better part of a year fixing the place, rounding up stray cattle.