Excerpt: Justice Rides In Leather

Chapter One
9 July, 1865

Garrett Amos Gunn spent the morning of his nineteenth birthday trying not to sass his boss, as the older man seared him with the scolding of his life. Garrett licked his teeth and pursed his lips, wriggled his long mustache and let his steel-grey eyes gaze at everything except Sheriff Hillous Samples. He figured if he ever caught eyes with the man, he'd never be able to hold his tongue, and that would do nothing but make the whole thing ten times worse than it already was.

For his part, Hillous Samples grew angrier and angrier at his young deputy's continued silence, and at his fidgeting aversion of his gaze. He thought that amounted to an oversized serving of defiant arrogance, and that was exactly the problem with Garrett. The young man's hot-headed and stubborn ways had brought the wrath of the townfolks down upon Samples' head, more than once, and he simply wasn't going to tolerate it, any more.

He turned to glare directly at Garrett, and he shook his head, looking the fellow over. The deputy just looked like trouble. He was gawky, tall and lean, with a raw-boned, square face that was topped with a dollop of unruly brown hair and slashed almost in two by an unkempt mustache that looked like a hairy, squashed tarantula stretched out over a hard line of thin lips. His nose was straight and narrow, like a blunt-edged hatchet set between deep grey eyes that didn't seem to know how to do anything but glare.

"Why the hell did you kill 'im, Garrett?!" the Sheriff asked, for the third time, expecting he could eventually break the kid's confounded silence and get a halfway straight answer out of him. "You had the sumbitch cornered and unarmed! All you had to do was holler fer me. Why'd you kill the bastard?!"

Garrett's thin lips nearly disappeared as he pursed them a little tighter. He sighed and just vaguely shook his head, still not looking at the Sheriff. Hillous sighed, too, his patience at its end. "Well?!" he yelled. "Answer me, damn you!"

The deputy finally moved his glare to Samples' face, and it was just as he'd figured. The indignant rage boiled up from his guts and blew out his mouth, as fast and as unstoppable as the spew from a volcano. He was so riled up, that he could barely get a whole sentence out.

"That sumbitch!" he growled. "What he done to that girl! Sheriff, he took...he took that poor little gal's honor! Messed her up fer her whole damn life! And now, ain't...ain't nobody gonna want her! He might's well killed her! I didn't give him none but what the sumbitch deserved! In fact, I shoulda strung the monster out a little longer and made him really hurt! He had more'n that comin' to him, and I'm sorrier'n hell I didn't give it to 'im!"

"God damn," Hillous breathed. He took his hat off and rubbed his stubby hand through his thin blonde hair. His round face darkened with disbelief. "Garrett, that ain't fer you to decide. That's what we have juries fer. When you gonna learn that justice ain't your'n to dole out as you see fit? That ain't how the law works. We can't be vigilantes and call ourselves civilized."

"What do a civilized man owe to a dawg of a criminal like him?!" Garrett yelped, his anger still rising. "He weren't civilized, so how come we got to treat him like he is?!"

"Because that's how civilized men is!" Hillous yelled, slapping his palm on the edge of the desk and rattling his ink pot. "It don't matter whuther or not the miscreants is civilized. If we don't treat 'em like human bein's, then we ain't no better'n they is."

The Sheriff could see that he wasn't getting through to the boy, as Garrett had crossed his arms tightly over his chest and had started that vague head shaking, again. Hillous lowered his pale blue eyes and shook his own head, knowing he had no choice, now. "I'm jest gonna have to ask you to resign, Garrett. The citizens ain't gonna stand fer a deputy who can't be controlled, and who takes the judge's right into his own hands."

"What?!" Garrett's eyes burned, at that. "You firin' me?! But I...!"

"I know, son," Hillous interrupted. "I know. You're a good man, Garrett; honest and strong and the best gun in Henry county. Everbody knows it. You're everthing a fine Tennessean oughter be, full of courage and fight and honor and determination. And I feel the same as you towards that filthy dawg of a man, but it ain't right fer a lawman to do what you done.

"The citizens is complainin' at me, full force. They's all sayin' I can't control you. They's gonna punish me on account of you. Then when they done with me, the damn county's a'gonna do it. You got to understand, son, that it's either you or me, and it damn sure ain't gonna be me."

Garrett slumped back in the stiff chair and kept his face as blank as he could, though he felt sick at his stomach. All his life, all he'd ever wanted to do was be a lawman. He hated criminals; hated all the things he considered to be injustices; and more than anything else, he hated the fact that the law had to cotton to murderers and rapists and thieves and other lowlife types. Part of his mind didn't see anything wrong with outraged citizens who got together and lynched a horse thief or a defiler of women, even though the other part of his mind knew and accepted that due process was the only fair way to deal with criminals.

But the fact remained that he was full of anger and hatred, some of which was left over from his brief stint in the Confederate Army. His quick mind had soon become disillusioned about the Cause, and when the war had ended--barely three months ago, now--he had ended up hating both sides with equal force. The things he'd seen had left him with nothing but disgust for military leaders and for politicians; and while he, like most other Southern men, had no love for the black race, he at least didn't actively hate them, as some did. He'd figured that ought to count for something with the occupying Yanks, but apparently, it didn't. He was a native Tennessean, and a white man, a former Confederate soldier; therefore, he could be nothing but a black-hearted racist pig, and he was treated as such. That didn't tender his heart, any, toward the blue-backed mudsills who had all but destroyed the whole of the South.

All of these ugly and hateful feelings had welled up inside him, and they needed some form of release. The release he had chosen was to bring down the Wrath of Righteousness upon the dirty heads of those who snubbed their noses at decency and law. And now, he was no longer going to be allowed to get that anger out through his duties of upholding the law.

Well, that was just fine.

He eased his lanky frame out of Sheriff Samples' chair, pulled the badge off his chest and flipped it onto the desk, where it fell with a dull tinkle and spun right off the edge and onto the wooden floor. He made no move to retrieve it, just turned and walked out, without another word or even a backward glance. Samples didn't try to stop him or give him so much as a farewell, and that ratcheted up his ire even farther. He wanted to slam the door behind him, slam it so hard that all the glass in the windows on the far side of the jailhouse would shatter from the force of it, but he didn't let himself do it. No, better to not let the citizens of Cottage Grove see him, like that. No, sir; the last image those timid, persnickety fools would see of former Henry County Deputy Garrett Amos Gunn would be a confident one, and the same fools would soon come to rue the day they had lost the best servant of justice they'd ever had. Northwestern Tennessee was not the whole world, after all, and there was bound to be somewhere in the great untamed frontiers to the west where a real man of the law would be needed and appreciated, some place that needed a strong man of honor to tame it and rid it of outlaw scum. He made up his mind, right then and there, to find that place and make it his own.