Kindle Edition Audiobook Amazon Category:  Western Publisher: Self-published through CreateSpace ISBN-10:  1539805271 Type: Fiction Pages: 321 Copyright: Oct. 13, 2016 ISBN-13: 9731539805274 Price: $3.99 (eBook) A pair of weary Marines come home from the Pacific. They yearn for Texas and cattle ranching. But Texas has changed. It's 1946. World War II is over. Ennis Middlebrooks and Harry Byerly want life to get back to normal. But Texas has changed. The end of war brings with it a mindset of wildness, excess, and profiteering. The Middlebrooks Ranch has changed. Ennis's baby sister has grown wild as a colt. Oilmen have come in search of riches. No peace will they find. The Sheriff is murdered. Becky Middlebrooks is kidnapped. A failed bank robbery doesn't go as planned. A killer is on the loose. Crooks are in charge. But Marines are stubborn and know how to take care of themselves.           Excerpt Chapter 1 ‘They’re Just Like Comanches’ They were trapped without leadership: three Marine privates cut off from the rest because they had been digging a trench and it took too long, so long that, with a flanking movement, the Japanese had attacked the rest of the Fifth Marines just inside the perimeter where three others were. Now Philip Sandusky, Ennis Middlebrooks and Harry Byerly were all alone, backs against the rapidly hardening mud, out of the Japs’ sights by about two and a half feet. To their left, it was fairly quiet. The Japanese had swept past them. The ground between them and the rest of the regiment was open, but it was just a lull. More Japs would be pouring in at any moment, and they were already poised to strike. “We got no choice but to make a run for it,” said Sandusky, who was from somewhere in Ohio. “Damned Japs probably shoot us in the head, throw us in a ditch, if we surrendered.” “Slit our throats,” said Byerly, who was from Stephenville, Texas. “Japs just like Comanches. Wouldn’t surprise me none if’n they started takin’ scalps.” “We gotta move,” said Middlebrooks, also a Texan, from Janus. “That’s all they is to it. Get mowed down, well, shoot, might as well take a shot at it. If we dead, well, we dead either way.” “Sandusky,” said Byerly, who barely knew him. “You make a run for it. We’ll cover you. You make it, don’t worry about us. Ennis can make a run to where it drops off over yonder, and if he makes it, he can cover me from the other side.” “Okay,” said Sandusky. “Okay.” “You gotta go now,” Middlebrooks said. “All right. On three, I take off, y’all scramble up and start firing away. … Ah, shoot. Okay, on three. One … two … three!” Byerly and Middlebrooks fired away, spraying left and right at the Japanese bracing to attack. Sandusky didn’t make it. Got about two thirds there, but a bullet caught him in the neck. While he staggered, already mortally wounded, he got hit three or four more times. Byerly peeked up over the edge of the unfinished trench that had been their unfortunately timed project. “They got him good,” he said. Now they were leaning next to each other in the same place, sweating in a hundred-and-fifteen degree heat. Time was still a-wasting, and the Japanese knew they were there. “All right, Harry. Sandusky made it almost across. We gotta come up with a little something that’ll get us the rest of the way. Here’s what we’re gonna do. You crouch down like a dadgum jackrabbit. I’m gon’ try to draw their fire more. Just hope upon hope that there ain’t no Japs tensed up, machine guns trained on this little knob. We got a chance if they’re just lulled a little, guns down, having a smoke, something. I’m gonna stand straight up. Straight up, by gosh. Come up firing. Soon as I get stood up, I’m gon’ jump backwards, and then I’m gonna try to catch myself, churn my boots in the soil, and keep on firing, only from just on the edge. I think I can do it, and if I can, that ought to give you a few other seconds ‘cause twenty of ‘em are gonna have their eyes light right up and try to kill the hell out of me.” Ennis Middlebrooks took a deep breath. “Soon as you get over yonder, well, it’s just about like this on the nother side. Plop yo’ butt down right yonder – it’s, what, thirty-five yards, maybe? – and find a place where you can do the same thing for me. Durn. How can you signal?” Harry Byerly didn’t have much time to think. “See them fruits up there?” He pointed above and to the left. “I’m a right good shot, Ennis. Them fruits – God knows what they are – they somewhere between the size of a big tomato or a small cantaloupe but they look like … big old persimmons.” Ennis looked at Harry. His eyes looked almost dreamy. Mind wandering. Getting ready to die. “What’s a persimmon?” he asked. “You seen ‘em when he was at LeJeune; you jes’ didn’t know what they was.” Harry snapped out of his trance. “But, shoot, it ain’t important. You get ready to scramble, but look up and wait and see me bust one of them fruits. When it busts, or something busts, hightail it my way. It ain’t easy, but it’s the only idea I got right now.” “Gotta do something,” Ennis said. “Let me figure out how I’m gonna pop straight up and fall back down, and hope I ain’t fallin’ back down ‘cause I’m dead.” Ennis dug his feet in a little and pushed down. He’d have just one hand to paw and dig, and not much of one at that, because he’d have to fire that M1 pronto. “You gonna just stay low and run like heck, or you gonna run and fire at the same time?” “I reckon I’ll find out in a minute,” Harry said. Harry got ready to take off. Ennis wished he had longer for the short prayer he sent in the general direction of heaven. I ain’t never prayed for victory, but I don’t reckon there’s nothing wrong in praying to Jesus for life. “All right,” Ennis said. “What? On three?” “Gosh, no,” Harry said. “Sure as heck didn’t bring Sandusky no luck. I’ll just say ‘ready,’ then you get ready to move and say ‘set,’ and scramble up hollerin’ ‘go!” and, by God, I’ll do it.” Ennis scrambled and dug and sort of hopped, firing away as he stood up straight as the Statue of Liberty for about a second and a half, then he kept squeezing the trigger as he hopped backwards. A Jap bullet plunked off the top of his helmet, glancing blow, as he fell, and if he hadn’t been falling, it would have hit him right in the chest. He could’ve shot himself if he hadn’t been careful, juggling the M1 almost, but he kept the fire going even though, briefly, he was shooting straight up. Then he honed in, peering above the line of sight, and started spraying those bloodthirsty savages till he knew Harry was either dead or getting ready to cover for him over on the other side of the U-shaped clearing, and he laid back against the trench, and got his breath, and started figuring out just what he was going to do about the shakes. He looked up at the plump things growing on that tree, and waited, ready to take off up the little accidental, nature-made ramp that had sent at least Philip Sandusky and possibly Harry Byerly to their deaths. If the fruits started exploding, it was time to go, like, now. Ennis could see as how his chief obstacle was the impossibility of a ‘ready, set, go!” If some Jap busted one of those fruits right now, he was either real smart or Ennis was real unlucky. Harry made it. He hit a bright, red one. Ennis took off with the fruit’s flesh splattering on him like watermelon rind. How fast can I run and shoot at those slant-eyed heathens? Answer: pretty doggone fast. Harry was still firing when Ennis sailed right over the top of him … and slid darn near into a creek, that is, if it hadn’t been for that gnarly tree that stopped him shy with a thud. Ennis was glad he still had that helmet on when he butted the tree. Harry helped him up. Fifty other Marines had seen most of what just happened. It took a lot of guts and skill, but mostly what Harry Byerly and Ennis Middlebrooks were was lucky. Bravery couldn’t get a man but so far in the hellhole called Peleliu. Now the Fifth Marines went on the offensive, driving the remaining Japanese forces back into the chasm from which they had advanced and trapping those who had already pushed forward into a much larger version of the trap from which Ennis and Harry had emerged. Ennis Middlebrooks came home to Janus with a Navy Cross around his neck. Harry Byerly got only a Silver Star, and Ennis thought it wasn’t fair, that it was all politics, that Ennis had been granted the more exclusive prize because he was the more dutiful soldier, had the better record, and had managed to keep himself free of the scrapes that seemed to seek Harry out. It all evened out, though. Harry got a Bronze Star the next spring at Okinawa, which made them both considerable heroes in Texas. They shipped home together, landed in San Francisco together, and rode the same train as far as Fort Worth together. Ennis had a welcoming committee from Janus awaiting his arrival. Harry hitch-hiked home to Stephenville. Two weeks later, they rode through city streets – Friday in Fort Worth and Saturday in Dallas – in the same open-topped Ford, waving at the crowds and chitchatting every mile of the courses. “What you aim to do now, Harry?” “I kind of got a hankering to get back to cowboying,” he said. “It’s all I know, that and killing, and I reckon that last ’uns something I’d best not dip into no more.” “I ain’t heard tell about no Comanche uprising,” Ennis said. “Pity. You?” “Ah, I’m ‘bout like you. Ain’t never done much but run cattle. We got a cattle farm east of town. Things has got run down during the war. My daddy, he ain’t doing so well, and soon’s all this celebrating gets done, I gotta get to work fixing stuff. Need to build the herd back up again. What about y’all?” “Ain’t no y’all to it,” Harry said. “My mama died having me. Ain’t never known my daddy, but I was raised by my mama’s folks till I was fourteen. First my grandpa passed, then Mama Phipps died ‘bout six months later. Then on, I lived in bunkhouses till the war come along. Shoot. I couldn’t wait to sign up. “I’ve sort of rethought that a few times in the past couple years.” When the Town of Stephenville honored Harry Byerly in city square, Ennis Middlebrooks drove down in the little Chevy pickup they used around the ranch. He almost didn’t make it because of a flat tire in Decatur. Harry returned the favor a week later, but he rode all the way to Janus, took him three days, on a quarter horse he bought first thing when he got home, this in spite of the fact he didn’t have anywhere to stay at the time. If Ennis had known his friend didn’t have any other way, he’d have brought him back to Janus with him. As it was, Harry never left Janus again once he got there.

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