A Telegram to Texas

Posted on Fri Nov 21st, 2025 @ 7:09pm by Colonel Augustus "Gus" Brennan

1,493 words; about a 7 minute read

Mission: Assembling the Troubleshooters
Location: Memphis, Tennessee
Timeline: Date 1876-10-27 at 2000

[Memphis, Tennessee]
[Early October, In The Year Of Our Lord 1876]

The reports started arriving in early October.
Colonel Augustus Brennan sat in his office on the second floor of his Memphis mansion, the Mississippi visible through tall windows behind him. His mechanical hand rested on the mahogany desk, fingers slightly curled, as he reviewed the latest dispatch from Kansas.

Another convoy, three wagons, four drivers. Vanished between Dodge City and the railhead. No signs of Apache activity. No witnesses. Just gone.

He set the telegram aside with his living hand and reached for another. This one from his refinery manager in Fort Smith: two workers dead, throats torn out by something the local doctor couldn't identify. Not animal. Not human. Not... natural.

Gus poured himself two fingers of whiskey and watched the October sun set over the river. The mechanical hand clicked softly as articulated fingers drummed against the desk—a habit he'd developed, letting the prosthetic move while his mind worked.

Coincidence? Perhaps. The Weird West was full of dangers. But Colonel Brennan hadn't built an empire by believing in coincidence.

The second week brought more reports.
A rail crew on Black River's western extension, fifteen men, found their camp torn apart. Seven dead, eight missing. The survivors—those who hadn't deserted—spoke of things in the darkness that walked like men but weren't. Marshal Deger in Dodge City had filed a terse report noting the incident and suggesting the railroad hire more guards. As if guards could stop whatever did that.

Then came the sabotage. Switches thrown on the Black River line outside Little Rock. A steamboat's boiler mysteriously damaged in Vicksburg, costing him three days of shipping and nearly sinking the vessel. A warehouse fire in Memphis itself—his own city—consuming two months' worth of processed ghost rock.

Each incident, taken alone, could be explained. Accidents happened. Outlaws raided. The supernatural was real but manageable.
All of them together? That was a pattern. And patterns meant intent.

Someone—or something—was targeting him specifically.

Sunday morning, First Methodist Church
Gus sat in the Brennan family pew, Martha beside him in her best dress, going through the familiar motions of worship. The hymns, the prayers, the pastor's sermon about perseverance through tribulation. He wondered if God appreciated the irony.

After the service, during the usual socializing on the church steps, Mina Devlin appeared at his elbow. The owner of Black River Railroad was a formidable woman, steel-grey hair pinned beneath an elegant hat, eyes that missed nothing.

"Colonel Brennan." Her voice was pitched for his ears only. "A word, if you please."

They stepped aside from the crowd, maintaining the appearance of polite conversation between business associates.

"My western lines are hemorrhaging," Mina said quietly, her smile never wavering for the benefit of observers. "Dodge City especially. In the past month I've lost more men, materiel, and money than I did in the previous six combined. Whatever is happening out there, Augustus, it's accelerating."

Gus nodded slightly, mechanical hand adjusting his hat brim. "I've noticed similar... difficulties."

"Then we have a mutual problem." She glanced around, ensuring no one was within earshot. "I'm pulling back some operations. Consolidating. But Dodge City is too valuable to abandon entirely. If you have any solutions, Colonel, I suggest you implement them quickly. Before there's nothing left to salvage."

She squeezed his arm gently—a gesture that could be friendly concern to any observer—and rejoined the crowd.

Gus stood there for a long moment, watching the good citizens of Memphis discuss weather and politics and the war's latest stalemate, none of them realizing the ground was shifting beneath them all.

Three days later...
Another telegram. This one from his factor in Dodge City, a man named Morrison who'd served under him during the war and now managed his Kansas interests.

SITUATION CRITICAL STOP CANNOT PROTECT CURRENT OPERATIONS WITH AVAILABLE RESOURCES STOP LOCAL LAW UNWILLING OR UNABLE TO ASSIST STOP REQUEST INSTRUCTIONS STOP

Gus read it twice, then set it with the growing stack of similar dispatches. Seventeen reports in three weeks. Seventeen problems that lawyers couldn't solve and money couldn't buy off.

He needed a different kind of solution.

Late that night, Gus sat alone in his office. The house was quiet, Martha long asleep, the servants retired except for those few who remained on call for their employer's nocturnal habits.

A fire crackled in the hearth despite the mild October evening. Gus found himself appreciating fire more since the war—its honest, straightforward nature. Fire didn't pretend to be something else. It consumed or it didn't.

He'd poured himself another whiskey—the good Kentucky bourbon he saved for serious thinking—and lit one of his Cuban cigars. The mechanical hand rested on the desk beside a blank sheet of paper, firelight gleaming off brass and steel.

The numbers were clear. Black River Railroad needed Dodge City—it was the critical junction between Confederate west and east, the gateway to ghost rock shipments from the Great Maze. Without it, his entire western operation collapsed. With it secured, he could expand while competitors retreated.

But he couldn't secure it with conventional means. Morrison was right—local law was overwhelmed or compromised. The Texas Rangers had bigger problems. Agency operatives were more interested in sabotaging Confederate interests than protecting them. And whatever was causing the disappearances and deaths wasn't something normal guards could handle.

He needed specialists. Fixers. People who could handle problems that existed in the grey spaces between law and outlaw, natural and supernatural, acceptable and unthinkable.

He needed troubleshooters.

Not soldiers—too rigid. Not lawmen—too bound by rules. Not simple hired guns—too inflexible. He needed people desperate or skilled or crazy enough to work in Dodge City knowing what they'd face. People who'd ask few questions about methods and fewer about morality, so long as the pay was good.

People like the ones he'd commanded during the war, before Shiloh taught him that loyalty and courage meant nothing against properly calculated artillery fire.

Gus stood, walked to the window, looked out over Memphis. His city. His empire. Built from nothing after losing everything. He'd be damned—more damned than he already was—if he'd let some unknown enemy take it from him.

The decision crystallized with the clarity of old battlefield certainty.

He needed a man he could trust to build and run this operation. Someone who knew violence and the Weird West both. Someone who owed him enough to be loyal but was smart enough to be effective. Someone from the old days, before he became Colonel Brennan the industrialist and was just Gus, the captain trying to keep his battery alive through one more day.

J.R. McEntyre. Former captain, current Texas Ranger. They'd served together early in the war, before Gus's promotion and J.R.'s transfer. A good man, as much as the war had left any of them good. More importantly, a capable man who understood that survival sometimes required flexibility.

Gus returned to his desk and reached for the small bell that sat beside the whiskey decanter. One ring, clear and sharp in the quiet office.

Less than a minute later, his secretary appeared—Jameson, a thin man in his forties who'd learned to be available whenever the Colonel required him, regardless of hour. "Sir?"

"Take this down." Gus's voice was steady, the decision made. "Telegram to be sent by fastest means to J.R. McEntyre, Texas Rangers, Austin."

Jameson produced paper and pencil with practiced efficiency.

Gus spoke carefully, each word chosen for economy and impact: "Need your services urgently. Situation in Disputed Lands requires immediate attention. Come to Memphis by fastest means available. Will explain in person. Your old comrade needs help. Brennan."

"Send it tonight," Gus added. "Mark it priority. Cost is irrelevant."

"Yes, sir." Jameson finished writing. "Will there be anything else?"

Gus looked at the stack of reports on his desk, the mounting evidence of someone—or something—actively working to destroy what he'd built. Then he looked at his mechanical hand, gleaming in the firelight, reminder of the last time he'd underestimated an enemy.

"No. That will be all."

Jameson departed silently. Gus returned to the window with his whiskey and cigar.

By this time next month, if J.R. accepted, there would be a new operation in Dodge City. Troubleshooters—his troubleshooters—handling the problems that couldn't be handled any other way. Protecting his interests. Eliminating threats. Doing what needed doing.

He raised his glass in a silent toast to himself, to J.R., to whatever poor desperate souls would end up working this job.

"The pay will be generous," he murmured to the empty room. "Survival, gentlemen, is not guaranteed."

Outside, the Mississippi rolled on toward the Gulf, dark and eternal. Inside, Colonel Augustus Brennan began planning an empire's defense, one calculated risk at a time.

 

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