Free Seven Out of Hell by George G. Gilman

bitterness had been sewn deepest. He was a short, compactly built man of forty-one who had served his apprenticeship in the art of cruelty as slave master on a Virginia cotton plantation before becoming a bank robber. Then had come the Civil War and he had elected to evade regular army service in the Confederate cause and chosen to fight a guerilla campaign. The band of stage robbers, rapists, con men and murderers who followed him took his orders not because of his self-appointment to the rank of captain, but because he proved himself to be the meanest and toughest man in the group, particularly in using a saber captured from a Union officer.
    It had been a good war for him, until his raiders hit the Union camp at Murfreesboro in the summer of sixty-two and abducted some women. A troop of Union cavalry had given chase and of the raiders, Terry was the sole survivor, making good his escape after burning an officer’s lady at the stake.
    Since then, his war had turned sour and he could no longer wage a hit-and-run campaign against the North with the support of the Richmond administration. For word of his atrocity had been communicated to the Confederate capital and both the army and civil authorities had issued wanted posters on him. Thus, he was forced to adopt the tactics of his pre-war days as a criminal - stealing, running and hiding in company with the human dregs who comprised his newly formed raiders.
    But now, as the distance between the group and the town narrowed, Terry could almost taste vengeance. Up ahead, sleeping in their innocence of impending slaughter, was a unit of Confederate cavalry. And Terry had no doubt that it was one of many such units scouring Georgia for him following a successful bank raid in Atlanta. It was their ill-luck - and his good fortune - that found them sleeping off their exhaustion trapped in a town which he had claimed as home for the raiders’ wives and families.
    At the top of the rise, where the spur of the trail leveled out to feed the town’s single street, Terry raised a hand, halting the men. Then he motioned with his other hand, which clutched the hilt of his saber, instructing the men to split into two groups. One group, led by Terry, continued on up the street while the second angled towards the rear of the houses.
    “Hey,” Seward whispered as he drew a bead on one of the raiders. “Ain’t that...?”
    “That’s him,” Forrest cut in. “The Captain was right about his luck. Don’t break it for him.”
    “What?”
    “Don’t reckon he’ll take kindly to anybody else killing Terry.”
    From the outside, there was nothing about the houses to arouse the suspicion of the raiders as they crept forward, for sunlight bouncing against the window panes at the front acted as an opaque screen for the men behind them. And at the rear, Scott, Douglas and Rhett stayed low or to the side.
    The raiders first surrounded the house at the end of the street, moving with silent caution. From the church, the women watched with bated breath, aware that the house was empty but knowing a shout of warning could also alert the soldiers.
    As he neared the front door, Terry drew a Colt from his holster and nodded to two men to cover the window with their rifles. Then he gave a low whistle and the men at the rear closed in. Terry, his grizzled face twisted into a mask of hatred, raised a foot and sent his boot crashing into the door. As it slammed wide, he rushed inside, and two windows smashed in the rear.
    “They ain’t here!” he roared and the men ringing the house whirled, fear crawling across their faces.
    For long moments the familiar silence gripped the town and the sole movements were the swiveling of the raiders’ eyes as they sought to explore every hiding place. Then Terry exploded an animalistic bellow of frustration and his boot thudded against floorboards as he ran to the door.
    “Blast ’em!” Hedges yelled.
    Seven rifles cracked with a sound like a single cannon shot.