The Dark Confederacy has never been particularly fussy about the men who answer its call. Courage is useful, loyalty even more so, while a clean conscience is probably a positive disadvantage. Among the latest veterans to drift into the company are three men whose reputations were made during the Civil War, when each performed deeds that earned him the title of hero. Time, defeat and several years spent in the company of things that should have remained buried have done little to improve any of them.
Captain Silas “Six Shot” Mercer — Pistol
Silas Mercer earned his reputation during the last desperate months of the war, when the Confederate cavalry was increasingly expected to accomplish miracles with tired horses, empty stomachs and ammunition that seemed to exist largely in quartermasters’ reports. During a confused Union attack on a supply column, Mercer found himself cut off with half a dozen wounded men and a single revolver. Rather than abandon them, he held a narrow bridge long enough for the wounded to be dragged clear, dropping several attackers before calmly walking away after firing his final round. By the following morning the story had already improved considerably, and within a month Mercer had supposedly held the bridge against an entire Union regiment.
Captain Silas “Six Shot” Mercer
Defeat did not sit comfortably with him. Mercer returned home to discover the family farm ruined, his brothers dead and the world remarkably uninterested in the sacrifices of Captain Silas Mercer. He became a gambler, occasional gunfighter and professional teller of increasingly magnificent stories about the war, although enough witnesses survived to confirm that beneath the boasting there really had been a remarkably brave cavalry officer. When the Dark Confederacy began gathering old soldiers to its cause, Mercer joined without hesitation. He still wears the remains of his officer’s coat and carries a revolver polished with almost religious devotion, claiming that the South has merely been waiting for men with sufficient patience to resume the argument.
Corporal Elijah “Long Eye” Ransom — Rifle
Elijah Ransom was never an officer and never wanted to be one. A Tennessee mountain boy who had been hunting since he was large enough to hold a rifle, Ransom became one of those soldiers whom officers remembered whenever something unpleasant needed doing at considerable distance. His reputation was secured during a retreat when he remained concealed on a wooded ridge overlooking a ford while the remnants of his regiment escaped across the river. For nearly an hour his carefully placed shots convinced the advancing Federals that a sizeable Confederate force still occupied the ridge, buying precious time before Ransom finally slipped away through country he understood considerably better than his pursuers.
Corporal Elijah “Long Eye” Ransom
Ransom returned from the war quieter than he had entered it, which was impressive because he had never been particularly talkative to begin with. He became a hunter and trapper, living increasingly far from settlements and appearing in town only when powder, lead or whiskey became necessary. Somewhere in those wilderness years he began claiming that dead soldiers sometimes followed him through the trees. Nobody paid much attention until he started describing men who had been buried hundreds of miles away and repeating conversations known only to their surviving comrades.
The Necromancer Reverend Malachi Graves recognised something useful in Ransom immediately. The rifleman now walks ahead of the Dark Confederacy, scouting roads, ridges and lonely farmsteads while speaking quietly to companions nobody else can see. His old rifle remains beautifully maintained, his shooting remains disturbingly accurate, and when asked how he finds enemies hidden behind cover he simply replies that somebody usually tells him where they are.
Sergeant Gideon “Gatepost” Harlan — Shotgun
Gideon Harlan became a Confederate hero almost entirely by refusing to move. During a vicious little engagement largely forgotten by everyone except the men unfortunate enough to have participated in it, Harlan and the survivors of his company were ordered to hold a crossroads while the regiment withdrew. Ammunition disappeared rapidly, officers disappeared even faster, and eventually Harlan found himself commanding a handful of frightened men behind a shattered fence. When the final Federal attack came, he waited until the enemy was almost on top of them before rising with a captured double barrelled shotgun and leading a counterattack that drove them back long enough for his men to escape.
Sergeant Gideon “Gatepost” Harlan
Someone later asked why he had stayed when retreat would probably have saved him a great deal of trouble. Harlan answered that nobody had told him he was allowed to leave. The story followed him for the remainder of the war, earning him the nickname “Gatepost,” because once Gideon Harlan had been planted somewhere it apparently required artillery to shift him.
Harlan survived the war, although civilisation proved considerably more dangerous. He worked as a railway guard, deputy sheriff, bounty hunter and occasional strikebreaker before discovering that his particular talents were welcomed by the Dark Confederacy. He asks remarkably few questions about Reverend Malachi Graves, the zombies or the other unnatural things accompanying the posse. After four years of war Harlan concluded that officers were capable of ordering almost anything, so a preacher raising dead soldiers merely represents a slight extension of established military practice. He carries a battered double barrelled shotgun, rarely speaks and remains exactly where he is told until somebody gives him a convincing reason to move.
Together Mercer, Ransom and Harlan represent three different remnants of the old Confederate Army. Mercer remembers its glory rather better than it deserves, Ransom remembers the dead rather better than he would like, and Harlan simply remembers his orders. Alongside Quantrill, Bloody Bill, Reverend Malachi Graves and the other Ragged Veterans, they make the Dark Confederacy look less like a military unit and increasingly like the sort of reunion sensible people would cross several states to avoid.
The Posse thus far.
Tomorrow the final recruits for the Dark Confederacy are another pair of hard bitten veterans, one armed with an old musket and the other carrying a pistol.
