Johnny Rebel by Martyn C. Marais

In my novel "Gunman’s Legacy", one of the characters, Peter Dexter, says the following about the town of Red Sands, “It isn’t there anymore. There used to be five, six hundred folk living there, but towards the end of the war, the war eventually caught up with us. As you can imagine, by that period in the war things had got pretty dirty. There were bands of renegades riding up and down the country meting out mob justice as they saw fit. The generals had lost control of them.
“I guess it was true for both sides, but the rabble that rode into our town were Yankees, led by a young captain called Moss. He must have suffered some personal slight from the Rebels, because he was a rancorous bastard. He had all the men in town, most of us were nothing but boys, rounded up and put in stockades like we were prisoners of war. Moss was bad, but some of his men were worse, beating and whipping us to get any information they could about where the Rebels were hiding out. Saying we were spies and the like. Of course, we knew nothing, but that didn’t stop them from whipping us.
“There was one officer in particular, no more than a kid himself, who was a murderous son of a bitch. Farrell was his name. His eyes were pale as the sun-bleached sky and cold as ice. When he looked at you his pupils would shrink to pin pricks and his stare seemed to bore into you. He seemed to take an especial pleasure in his job.”

This is the story of what happened.