$1.99
Pick Garver grew up in the South. His only friends were the children of slaves owned by his tyrannical uncle. After fighting on the Union side in the War Between the States, he returns home only to find his mother is dead and the world he once knew has been turned upside down.
Murderous gangs of night riders are forming to terrorize the freed slaves. The war is far from over in the minds of many, and Pick is counted a traitor by his former neighbors. Soon bullets are flying again, and Pick Garver is surrounded by enemies at nearly every turn.
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Pick went from shocked, to scared, to furious as the scene unfolded. His single-action Colt had five cylinders loaded, the hammer resting on an empty chamber, but none of his compatriots seemed to be armed at all. Slaves were forbidden to bear arms, so few freed men even owned weapons yet, much less were in the habit of traveling with one. “Rush them!” Pick cried, unholstering his gun. “There’s only a few of them; we’ve got them outnumbered.” They could have overpowered the murderous visitors with minimal casualties, but the crowd was sluggish to act. “Who said that?” Demanded one of the intruders. Another fired toward the sound of Pick’s voice, hitting someone in between them. Pick, unable to get a clear shot through the crowd, ran to the aisle. With a hooded target now in unobstructed sight, Pick took aim and fired. The man was slammed to the floor. Men scrambled to get farther out of the line of fire. The hooded intruders poured hasty shots in Pick’s direction. Pick dropped to his belly and fired again, winging one masked man in the arm. A hundred voices shouted all at once. The masked men grabbed the leaders—two of them carried Randy Shealy—and backed toward the door. As the last one backed out with his captive, pistol still waving at the occupants of the church, Simon Lutrell tore free and dove to the ground. The masked man cursed and fired into the room, then the door was slammed shut. Amidst all the yelling and cursing, there were noises outside now: thudding, scuffing, scraping, even hammering. Then there was a crash. A flaming bale of cotton came crashing through one of the only two windows, landing on one of the church pews and blossoming into a powerful blaze. Panicked men charged for the door, trampling friends and neighbors in the process. But the door was solidly barricaded, and smoke seeped in around it. Pick tried to assess the situation without getting trampled himself. Pick decided the windows were the best way to escape, but they were rather high…and now they were being boarded up from outside with preassembled planking. Smoke thickened rapidly in the building from all sides. The whole structure had been set afire from outside.
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