James Lee Burke - Lay Down My Sword and Shield

JAMES LEE BURKE
can touch you in ways few writers can.
The Washington Post

National acclaim for his New York Times
bestselling fiction

Burke remains a master of the crime novel. Entertainment Weekly
Nearly every scene builds to a fine crescendo of tension. Kirkus Reviews
The violence is gruesome the energy is bright-hearted. The Oregonian (Portland)
A meaty, thoughtful exploration of why men do the evil that they do A hell of a ride. The Miami Herald
I dont think theres a more lyrical writer of crime fiction than James Lee Burke working today. The Philadelphia Inquirer
Burkes characterizations and whip-sharp dialogue are incomparable. Rocky Mountain News (Denver)
Powerful. The New York Times
Violent, harrowing. The Times-Picayune (New Orleans)
Extraordinarily satisfying. Los Angeles Times

Lay Down My Sword and Shield is also
available as an eBook.

Also by James Lee Burke

DAVE ROBICHEAUX NOVELS

Swan Peak

The Tin Roof Blowdown

Pegasus Descending

Crusaders Cross

Last Car to Elysian Fields

Jolie Blons Bounce

Purple Cane Road

Sunset Limited

Cadillac Jukebox

Burning Angel

Dixie City Jam

In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead

A Stained White Radiance

A Morning for Flamingos

Black Cherry Blues

Heavens Prisoners

The Neon Rain

BILLY BOB HOLLAND NOVELS

In the Moon of Red Ponies

Bitterroot

Heartwood

Cimarron Rose

HACKBERRY HOLLAND NOVELS

Rain Gods

OTHER FICTION

Jesus Out to Sea

White Doves at Morning

The Lost Get-Back Boogie

The Convict and Other Stories

Two for Texas

To the Bright and Shining Sun

Half of Paradise

Lay Down My
SWORD
and
SHIELD

JAMES LEE BURKE

Gallery Books A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. 1230 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10020 www.SimonandSchuster.com

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are
products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to
actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright 1971 by James Lee Burke
Copyright renewed 1999 by James Lee Burke
Originally published by The Countryman Press, Inc.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof
in any form whatsoever. For information, address Gallery Books Subsidiary Rights
Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
First Gallery Books trade paperback edition February 2010
GALLERY BOOKS and colophon are trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
For information about special discounts for bulk purchases,
please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at
1-866-506-1949 or business@simonandschuster.com.
The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors
to your live event. For more information or to book an event,
contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at
1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com .
Designed by Renata Di Biase
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
The Library of Congress has cataloged the original edition as follows:
Burke, James Lee.
Lay down my sword and shield / James Lee Burke.
p. cm.
1. PoliticiansFiction. 2. TexasFiction. I. Title.
PS3552.U723
813/.54 20 94033421
ISBN 978-1-4391-6545-4
ISBN 978-1-4391-6766-3 (ebook)

This book is for my father, James L. Burke, Sr.,
who taught me most of the good things I know about

Lay Down My
SWORD
and
SHIELD

CHAPTER 1

A LMOST NINETY YEARS ago during the Sutton-Taylor feud, John Wesley Hardin drilled a half-dozen .44 pistol balls into one of the wood columns on my front porch. My grandfather, Old Hack, lived in the house then, and he used to describe how Wes Hardin had ridden drunk all night from San Antonio when he had heard that Hack had promised to lock him in jail if he ever came back into DeWitt County again. The sun had just risen, and it was raining slightly when Hardin rode into the yard, his black suit streaked with mud, horse sweat, and whiskey; he had a shotgun tied across his saddle horn with a strip of leather and his navy Colt was already cocked in his hand.

You, Hack! Get out here. And dont bring none of your Lincoln niggers with you or Ill kill them, too.

(My grandfather was sheriff and justice of the peace, and the Reconstruction government had forced him to take on two Negro federal soldiers as deputies. Of the forty-two men that Hardin eventually killed, many were Negroes, whom he hated as much as he did carpetbaggers and law officers.)

Hardin began shooting at the front porch, cocking and firing while the horse reared and pitched sideways with each explosion in its ears. Wess face was red with whiskey, his eyes were dilated, and when the horse whirled in a circle he whipped the pistol down between its ears. He emptied the rest of the chambers, the fire and black powder smoke roaring from the barrel, and all six shots hit the wood column in a neat vertical line.

Hack had been up early that morning with one of his mares that was in foal, and when he saw Wes Hardin through the barn window he took the Winchester from the leather saddle scabbard nailed against the wall and waited for Wes to empty his pistol. Then he stepped out into the lot, his cotton nightshirt tucked inside his trousers, blood and membrane on his hands and forearms, and pumped a shell into the chamber. Wes jerked around backward in the saddle when he heard the action work behind him.

You goddamn sonofabitch, Hack said. Start to untie that shotgun and Ill put a new asshole in the middle of your face.

Hardin laid his pistol against his thigh and turned his horse in a half circle.

You come up behind me, do you? he said. Get your pistol and let me reload and Ill pay them nigger deputies for burying you.

I told you not to come back to DeWitt. Now you shot up my house and probably run off half my Mexicans. Im going to put you in jail and wrap chains all over you, then Im taking you into my court for attempted assault on a law officer. Move off that horse.

Wes looked steadily at Hack, his killers eyes intent and frozen as though he were staring into a flame. Then he brought his boots out of the stirrups, slashed his spurs into the horses sides, and bent low over the neck with his fingers in the mane as the horse charged toward the front gate. But Hack leaped forward at the same time and swung the Winchester barrel down with both hands on Hardins head and knocked him sideways out of the saddle into the mud. There was a three-inch split in his scalp at the base of the hairline, and when he tried to raise himself to his feet, Hack kicked him squarely in the face twice with his boot heel. Then he put him in the back of a vegetable wagon, locked his wrists in manacles, tied trace chains around his body, and nailed the end links to the floorboards.

And thats how John Wesley Hardin went to jail in DeWitt County, Texas. He never came back to fight Hack again, and no other law officer ever got the better of him, except John Selman, who drove a pistol ball through his eye in an El Paso saloon in 1895.

As I stood there on my front porch that hot, breathless July day, leaning against the column with the six bullet holes, now worn and smooth, I could see Hacks whitewashed marker under the pin oaks in the Holland family cemetery. The trees were still in the heat, the leaves filmed with dust, and the shade was dappled on the headstones. Four generations of my family were buried there: Son Holland, a Tennessee mountain man from the Cumberlands who came to Texas in 1835 and fought at the battle of San Jacinto for Texass independence, was a friend of Sam Houston, later received twelve hundred acres from the Texas Republic, and died of old age while impressing horses for the Confederacy; Hacks two older brothers, who rode with the Texas cavalry under General Hood at the battle of Atlanta; Great Uncle Tip, who made the first drive up the Chisholm Trail and married an Indian squaw; Sidney, a Baptist preacher and alcoholic, who always carried two revolvers and a derringer and killed six men; Winfro, murdered in a brothel during the Sutton-Taylor feud, his body dragged on a rope back and forth in front of the house by drunken cowboys; Jefferson, who had two years business college in Austin and decided to compete with the King and XIT ranches in the cattle market and lost six hundred acres of Holland land as a result; and Sam, my fatherHackberrys sona genteel man with a rheumatic heart, a onetime southern historian at the University of Texas and later a United States congressman during the New Deal, and finally a suicide.

Next page