(This is a non-interactive story. It’ll be like those serials we all grew up on. If anyone is interested, I’ll keep writing it. Mostly fictitious, but you’ll find a lot of historical fact buried in it. Irish Brigade stuff. The history of the little town I live in – Waverly, Missouri, and the surrounding area If it really drives ya nuts, drop me a line and I’ll tell you what really happened and what I’m lying about.).
Will Dearborn was drunk. Very. The jug lay empty, tossed aside as he raged at the imaginary specters of Cameron Highlanders as they fled from the carnage atop Henry Hill in the hot summer of ’61.
“GO ON! Skedaddle, ye pack of skirts! Faugh an Ballagh!”
He would later fall over it as he followed the memory of Meagher down blood muddied Sunken Road. On cold days, the old wound would still bother him.
Soon, Will Dearborn would curl around the jug as he had curled around the frozen ground at the foot of Marye’s Heights as the reb artillery rained death into their frozen ranks.
Let us leave the old soldier, for now. We will chance upon him later, when he is sober and the ghosts of the past have left him, for a time, in peace.
-(============================================)-
Will Dearborn opened a bloodshot eye and quickly closed it against the mid-morning glare. The pounding on the oak of the door sounded like cannonfire in his tender, aching head. He tried to ignore the noise, pushed the empty jug under his head for a pillow, and sighed.
The frantic knocking continued. Anger flared in Dearborn. What sort of damnfool would arouse a sleeping man so! He lurched to his feet, irritation making his blue eyes flash like sapphires under saloon light. A wave of nausea rippled through him and he steadied himself against the rough wall of his office.
He tried to answer the insistent thumping at his door to be thwarted by a throat drier than the street outside. On the third try he finally managed to bark something commandingly enough to cease the dreadful noise. He raked a trembling hand through his hair, found his hat and forced it onto his throbbing head.
All the movement dislodged the pistol from his holster and it thumped onto the floorboards. He growled at it as he picked it up and shoved it back into the leather. Fool! he harangued himself. If you’d bothered to load the damned thing in the last month, you could have killed yourself just now!
“And wouldn’t THAT be the pity, lad?” he mumbled. He smoothed his mustaches and jerked the door open. “WHAT!?” he barked at the bespeckled man standing there.
The man, J.T. Nelson, looked startled then sighed. “Another ‘late night’, Marshall?”
“Ye have three heartbeats t’ tell me what’s so hanged important to come beatin’ doon mah door, boyo. What I do in th’ privacy of me own office dinna hae shite to do wi’ you.” Marshall Dearborn drew himself up to his full height, pulling his coat back a bit to expose the tarnished star pined to his vest.
The little man before him glanced sadly at it and nodded. “Too right, Sir. Ever since you stopped shooting up the jail every three nights there ain’t been no complaints.”
“Nelson… Yer wastin’ prescious time, boyo…”
The little man swallowed and met the dreadful, red-rimmed eyes of the Marshall.
He swallowed twice. He knew Will Dearborn was a man of quick temper. He’s seen the hair-trigger go off more than a few times. But like all the citizens of Waverly, the owner of the dry goods store had seen how Dearborn handled things and forgave him his little… foibles. The Marshall had been elected after several notable actions. Will Dearborn, former soldier and now only a wounded older man, had happened upon two former rebs on a hill just west of the neighboring town of Dover. The two men in question were literally up in arms over a local Waverly girl.
When Will Dearborn rode upon the scene, the two gentlemen from Shelby’s Company were putting shot down the barrels of their shotgun in preparation of settling their little love triangle in the local Waverly manner. Shotguns and shouted words. The crowd that had gathered to watch, including a battle scarred and blood-stained ambulance from the War, mistook the 69th’s insignia on Dearborn’s hat for some badge of law.
Several weeks after that, Will would reflect that, yes, the wolfhounds supporting a quartered shield, coupled with the sunburst, tower, and stars and striped could be deceptive. Add into it, the eagle and the sigil 69. Sure and the thirteen gold stars atop the whole mess dinna help it any. Even the banner along the bottom: Gentle When Stroked, Fierce When Provoked MIGHT look like law dog’s pennant.
At any rate, when he’d got down from his horse and began to speak, they had listened. When he motioned the tool amorous fools to the side to palaver in private, they had come. J.T. Nelson didn’t know what the Marshall said to them fellas, but they dumped out the shot and went back home.
And then there was… the other thing, not too long after….