Simmy's animallike howling filled the room. Jas', his hand bleeding afresh, sopping through the bandage his captors had twisted about the wound, sprawled forward, clawing with those reddened fingers for the Spencer. While Hatch, eyes and upper portions of his hair-matted cheeks bulging over the gag, kicked out, striving to come at Drew with the frenzy of a man making a last desperate play.
The brand Jas' had hurled was smoldering on Boyd's blankets. Drew sent it flying with the toe of his boot and made a quick movement to stamp out a small spurt of flame. Then he kicked it again, spinning the Spencer back against the wall.
Simmy's cry died to a whimper. A wide stain spread over his nondescript coat just above the belt, and Drew knew that his first shot had found that target. But he was in charge of the situation once again. Both Hatch and Jas' had subsided, the one eyeing the threat of Drew's weapon, the other again nursing his hand, his face drawn into a grin of agony.
The smell of burning cloth was a sour stench. Drew moved to beat out a new blaze in the bedcovers. He coughed in acrid smoke and felt the smart of the burn along his neck and jaw where the brand had hit him. Simmy rolled on the floor, bent double.
"Drew!" Boyd was struggling free of his blankets, up on one elbow, staring about him as one who had wakened into a nightmare rather than having come out of such a dream.
"It's all right...."
But was it? Hatch had subsided. Jas' was quiet; there was nothing to fear from Simmy. Only that same sense which was part of any scout's equipment nagged at Drew, warning him that the crisis was not over.
He went down on one knee beside Simmy, endeavoring to roll him over to examine his wound. The guerrilla's mouth was slackly open, his small, predator's eyes were oddly bewildered, as if he could not comprehend what had happened to him or why. As Drew fumbled with his clothing to lay bare the wound, Simmy twisted, his legs pulling up a little. Then his head rolled, and Drew sat back on his heels. There was no longer any need for aid.
Boyd still rested on his elbow, listening. He could hear Hatch's thick breathing and Jas's, a crack of charred wood breaking on the hearth, a slashing against the broken window ... the storm had begun again. Only those were not the sounds they were listening for.
Drew visited in turn each of the flimsy barricades he had erected after Kirby left. He had no way of telling time. How long had it been since the Texan left? It could not be too far from morning now, yet the sky outside the windows was still as black as night.
"Drew!" Boyd pulled his other hand free, pointing to the ceiling over their heads.
The loft! And the route Weatherby had made use of when he had gone up that ladder, dropped out of a window above, and returned with his prisoner through the front door. But if the Cherokee had come back to the cabin, surely the disturbance in the room below would have brought him down. Unless he was otherwise occupied.... How? And by whom?
Drew went to the foot of the ladder, not looking up to show his suspicion, but only to listen. He was certain he heard a scraping sound. Was it someone making his way through a small window? No one who had been weeks in Weatherby's company could believe that the Indian would betray his movements in that manner.
Drew left the ladder, collected the Spencer, and joined Boyd. The rest of the weapons lay at hand, and Drew sorted them out swiftly, piling them between Boyd and his own post. From here, as he had earlier planned, they had both doors, two windows, and the ladder to the loft under surveillance. The other window was over the level of their heads. As long as they kept below its sill, anyone shooting through it could not touch them.
Boyd hitched his shoulders higher against the wall. He was still flushed, his eyes too bright, but he was certainly more himself than he had been any time since they had brought him here. Now he reached for one of the Colts, resting it on his body at chest level.
"Who are they?" he whispered, glancing at the prisoners.
"Guerrillas," Drew replied.
"More company comin'?"
"Might be. Anse went for the boys."
But Boyd's chin lifted an inch or two, a slight gesture to indicate the ceiling again. He brought his other hand up, and using both, cocked the Colt, that click carrying with almost a shot's sharp twang through the room.
Jas' was again staring at Drew, his lips a silent snarl. But the scout believed that as long as he was alert, weapons in hand, he had nothing more to fear from his prisoners. They had made their reckless gamble and had lost.
The opening at the top of the ladder was a square of dark, hardly touched by the flickering light of the dying fire.
"You theah...." The barking hail came from without, strident, startling. "We have you surrounded."
It was the voice of an educated man with the regional softening of vowels. Simmy's cap'n? What then had happened to Weatherby? Boyd braced the barrel of his Colt on a bent knee, its sights centered on the front door. But Drew still watched the loft opening.
"Last chance ... come out with your hands up!" The voice was very close now. And the unknown apparently knew at least part of the situation in the cabin. Which meant either very clever scouting, or that they had taken Weatherby. But Drew, knowing the habits of the guerrillas, dared not follow that last thought far. He tried to locate the man outside; he was in front all right, but surely not directly in line with the door.
"Cap'n!" Jas' called, his gaze daring Drew to shoot. "There's only two of 'em, and one's sick."
There was a flicker of movement in the trap opening. Drew fired, to be answered by a yelp of pain and surprise. Perhaps he had not entirely removed one of the attackers from the effective list, but the fellow would be more cautious from now on.
There was only a short second between his shot and an answering fusillade from outside. The panes in the other windows shattered and Hatch, gurgling incoherently behind his gag, kicked to roll himself behind the flimsy protection of the bedstead.
"You almost got one of your own men then!" Drew called. Feverishly he tried to think of a way to play for time. Weatherby might be dead, but Kirby could have reached the headquarters camp and already be well on his way back with reinforcements.
Hatch's gurgling was louder. And now Jas' had transferred his attention to the broken windows and what might be beyond them. There was a creaking above. Drew tried to deduce from those sounds whether one man or two moved overhead. The fire was dying fast. Should he try to urge it into new life with the last of the wood, or would the dark be more to his benefit?
Shots again, but not crashing through the windows now; these were outside. A man screamed shrilly. Then a horse cried in pain. Drew heard the pounding of hoofs, and in the loft a quick shuffling. More shots....
Boyd laughed hysterically, and then coughed, until he bent over the Colt he still grasped, gasping. Drew steadied him against his shoulder, trying to picture for himself what was happening outside. It sounded very much as if Kirby's relief force had arrived and that the "cap'n" and his gang were in retreat.
"Drew! Everythin' all right?" There was no mistaking Kirby's voice.
He had brought not only four other scouts from the camp, but also Lieutenant Traggart and the doctor. And as the major portion of that relief force crowded into the room Drew leaned back against the wall, very glad to let other authority take over.
"Guerrilla scum," was the lieutenant's verdict on their prisoners. "They say they're Union ... or ours, whichever works best at the time. There's another one dead out there, and he's wearing one ofourcavalry jackets!"
"Officer's?" Drew wondered if they had picked off the "cap'n."
"No, you thinkin' he was this renegade officer Kirby was talkin' about? I don't think this is the one. He's a pretty nasty-lookin' specimen, though. Four of 'em at least got away. We'll take these two into camp and see what they can tell us. The General will be interested. I'd say this one's a Yankee deserter." He studied Jas'.
The young man in the blue jacket spat, and one of the scouts hooked his fingers in the other's collar, jerking him roughly to his feet.
"Mount and start back with them!" Traggart ordered. "How's the boy, suh?"
Boyd had wilted back into his blankets when the stimulation of the fight was gone. He was still conscious, but his coughing shook his whole body.
"Lung fever, unless he gets the right care." The surgeon was going about his business with dispatch. "I hate to move him, but there's no sense in remaining here as a target for more of this trash." He glanced at Jas' and Hatch impersonally. "Lucky we brought the wagon. Tell Henderson to bring it up. We'll take him to the Letterworth house for now—"
Reeling a little when he tried to walk, Drew found himself sharing the accommodation of the wagon with Boyd, a canvas slung across them to keep off the gusts of rain. He fell asleep as they bumped along, unable to fight off exhaustion any longer.
Twenty-four hours later he was back on duty with the advance. Boyd was housed in such comfort as any could hope to find, and the cavalry was on the move. Buford's men were to picket along the Cumberland River. There was a new feel to the army. Drew sensed it as he rode with the small headquarters detachment. Empty saddles, too many of them, and the growing belief—evidenced in mutters passed from man to man—that they were engaged in a nearly hopeless bid.
Franklin, which for Drew had been a wild gallop across some fields, a strip of cloth seized from the enemy to set beneath a guidon of their own, had been a major disaster for the Army of the Tennessee. Forrest's energy and drive kept the cavalry a sharp-edged weapon, still to be used with telling effect. But they all sensed the clouds gathering over their heads, not those laden with the eternal chill rain, but ones which carried with them a coming night.
It was so cold that men had to use both hands to cock their revolvers. And Drew saw Croff swing from the saddle, draw his belt knife to cut the hoof from a dead horse. The Cherokee glanced up as he looped his grisly trophy to his saddle horn.
"Need the shoe," he explained briefly. "Runner has one worn pretty thin." He patted the drooping neck of his mount.
Hannibal walked around the dead horse carefully. The mule was only a skeleton copy of the sturdy, well-cared-for animal Drew had ridden out of Cadiz. But he would keep going until he dropped, and his rider knew it.
"Any trace of Weatherby?" Drew asked. The disappearance of the other Cherokee scout at the cabin battle had continued as a mystery for their own small company. None of those who had known him could credit the Indian being taken unawares by the guerrilla force. He had vanished somewhere in the dark of the night, and none of their searching a day later, interrupted by orders to move, had turned up a clue.
"Not yet," Croff answered. "He may have made too wide a circle and run into a Yankee picket. Someday, perhaps, we shall know. Look there!"
From their screen of cover they watched a blue cavalry patrol trot along a lane.
"Headin' for th' home corral, an' lookin' twice over each shoulder while they do it," commented Kirby. "Was we to let out a yell now, they'd drag it so fast they'd dig their hoofs in clear down to the stirrup leathers."
Drew shook his head. "Those are General Wilson's men ... can't be sure with them that they wouldn't come poundin' up, sabers out, tryin' to take a prisoner or two. Anyway, we don't stir them up, that's orders."
Kirby sighed. "Too bad. Cold as it is, a little fightin' would warm an hombre up some. You know, for sure, the only way we're gonna git outta this heah war is to fight our way out."
Croff reined his patient mount around. "The big fight is comin'—"
"Nashville?" Drew asked, aware of a somber shadow closing in on them all.
The Cherokee shrugged. "Nashville? Maybe. The signs are not good."
"It's when the signs ain't good," Kirby observed, "that fellas lean on their hardware twice as hard. Heard tell of gunfighters knotchin' their irons for each man they take in a shootout. Me, I'm kinda workin' the same idea for battles. An' I have me a pretty good tally—Shiloh, Lebanon, Chickamauga, Cynthiana twice, Harrisburg, an' a mixed herd o' little ones. Gittin' pretty long, that line o' knotches." His voice trailed away as he watched the disappearing Yankee cavalrymen, but somehow Drew thought he was seeing either more or less than blue-coated men riding under a sullen December sky.
Yes, a long tally of battles, and all those small fights in between which sometimes a man could remember better than the big ones, remember too often and too well.
"The wagons pulled out of the Letterworth place this mornin'," Drew said. "They were gone when I stopped by at noon—"
"Goin' south? Any news of the kid?"
"They took him along." There was a faint ray of comfort in the thought that Boyd had been judged well enough to be moved with the rest of the sick and wounded up from the temporary hospitals and shelters in the neighborhood. The seriously ill certainly could not be moved. But he wished he could have seen the boy; there was no telling when and where they would meet again.
"Well," Kirby pointed out, "if the doc took him, it means they thought he was able to make it. He's young an' tough. Bet he'll be back in line soon."
"They'll travel slow," Croff added. "Drivin' hogs and cattle and all those wagons, they ain't goin' to push."
Forrest, along with his prisoners, wagons, sick and wounded, the barefoot, and dismounted men, was driving four-footed supplies south on his way to the Tennessee River, and he was not likely to risk or relinquish any of the spoil. Buford's Kentuckians lay in wait along the Cumberland, hoping perhaps to echo, if only faintly, their earlier successes against the gunboats and supply transports. And at Nashville a battle was shaping....
Drew had ridden in to report when the first of the new retreat orders came. General Buford, who had invited Drew up to the fire, sat listening as the scout held his stiff hands to the blaze and listed the sum total of the day's comings and goings as far as Yankee patrols were concerned.
"No sign of that missin' scout?" the General asked when Drew's account was finished. "Pour yourself a cup of that, boy! It ain't coffee. In fact, I don't inquire too deeply into what Lish does bring me to drink nowadays. But it's kind of comfortin' to have something warm under your belt in this weather. Blame-coldest, wettest winter I ever did see! No sign of Weatherby?" he repeated as Drew sipped from the tin cup his superior had pushed into his hands, not only grateful for the warmth spreading through his insides, but also for the heat of the container he cupped between his palms.
"No, suh, no sign at all."
"Hmm. That's strange." The General edged his solid bulk forward on his stool, which creaked as his weight shifted. He poured himself a cup of the same brew he had urged upon the scout. "Those were guerrillas right enough. Scum from both sides, just out like buzzards to pick up what they could. Only they were too far into our lines ... and bolder than most. Doesn't fit somehow."
"Might be cover for Union scouts after all, suh?"
Buford shrugged. "Not very likely. If Weatherby does report in, send him to me! Oh, by the way, Rennie, you're promoted to sergeant to take Wilkins' place." The General sat gazing into the cup he held, but it was plain his thoughts were far from the current substitute for coffee.
"Thank you, suh."
Buford glanced up. "Thank—? Oh, the sergeant business. Lieutenant Traggart put you in for the first openin' some time ago. You had your trainin' with Morgan, and you learned well. John Morgan ... hard to think of him dead now. And Pat Cleburne ... and all the rest. We have to close ranks and do double duty for all of them." Again he was speaking his thoughts, Drew was sure. "Well, Sergeant Rennie, we will, we will!"
The courier who stumbled into the room, lurched against the rude wooden table, almost rebounding from it to fall. He was nearly out on his feet, feet where broken boots were mired within inches of their tops. Drew put down his cup and jumped up to steady the man.
"General Forrest's compliments, suh. Will you bring up the division to join General Chalmers? The battle's on at Nashville, and it may be necessary to form a rear guard for a retreat—" He got the message out mechanically in a croak.
So they went to start the first move in a vast job of salvage. Buford's men marched fast to come between a broken army and the full force of enemy pursuit. For Franklin, having bled the Army of the Tennessee of its strength, was only the beginning of chaos. Nashville crushed the remains, and the remnants fled, a crippled despairing flight of the defeated. The big gamble was totally lost.
It was Forrest who commanded that hastily formed rear guard. Its stiff spine was his cavalry, with the addition of two brigades of infantry—Alabama and Georgia troops. Snapping at them was Union cavalry in full force. Not snapping at their heels, for it was fang to fang; the Confederates only gave ground fighting. Day darkened on the field and they were in hand-to-hand assault. A man marked musket or carbine flash to sight on the enemy.
And as time became a nightmare of almost continuous battle, the rain lashed at the struggling men with a whip of icy water. Fighters crouched behind rail fences while the Union cavalry charged across black fields, hoofs drumming on the ground, and the sputtering fire of carbines making an uneven kind of lightning along the improvised wood barricades. Black tree trunks gleamed greasily in the wet; and here and there, out of defiance, the war whoop of the Yell cut eerily through the melee.
After evacuating Columbia, they closed ranks and stiffened again, knowing that they must be the wall between the disorganized rabble of the army and the thrust of the Yankee forces coming confidently to finish them off. Cavalry, volunteers from the infantry, fragments of commands all, but still with enough cohesion behind a commander they trusted to fall back in fighting order ... and fighting—even to countercharge when the need and the occasion offered.
Drew, Kirby, Croff, and Webb circled around a wagon, bringing the driver to a halt, his mule team standing with drooping heads, blowing and puffing so that their ribs showed as bony bars through their wet hides.
"Git!" The driver raised his whip as a weapon of offense until he saw where Croff's carbine was aimed. A little pale, he sank back on the seat. A bush of whiskers hid most of his dirty face, and there was something about him which reminded Drew of the guerrilla Simmy.
"Watta yuh want?" he whined.
"Orders," Drew told him shortly. "Pull over there and dump your load!"
"Whose orders?" The driver bristled, still fingering his whip.
"General Forrest's. Now get to it!" Drew put snap in that. "All right, boys," he called to the patiently waiting line of infantrymen, "here's another one ready to carry you as soon as you empty it."
The ragged half company fanned forward, bearing down upon the wagon as if it were a Yankee stronghold. They swarmed over and in it, pitching the contents out on the ground in spite of the futile protests of the driver.
"Lordy! Lordy!" One of the willing unloaders paused, his arms about a box. He was staring into its interior, bemused. "Lookit what's heah! I ain't seen such a lovely, lovely sight since I had me a chance on the river at that blue-belly supply ship!"
He placed the box with exaggerated care on the ground and dived into it, coming up with a can in each hand. "Boys, we has us a treasure; we sure enough has!" He was immediately the core of a group eager to share in his find. The driver half raised his whip. Kirby brought his horse closer to the wagon, caught at the lash, pulling the stock out of the other's hands with a quick jerk.
"Reckon the boys must have lighted on your own private cache, eh, fella? Don't hump your tail none 'bout it. They ain't in no mood to listen to any palaver on the subject. Better ride it out peaceablelike."
"Much obliged, Sarge." The original finder of the treasure trove broke from the circle and handed Drew some crackers. "The boys want you should have a taste, too."
Drew laughed and began sharing the windfall with the scouts.
"Better break it up, soldiers. The General wants us on the move."
They were already busy throwing the last articles out of the wagon, settling in. Barefoot, cold, hungry, until the last few minutes, they were Forrest's indomitable rear guard, riding between brisk spats with the enemy.
Kirby tested the edge of a cracker between his teeth as they trotted on in search for another wagon to turn over to the infantry.
"This heah army is bound to git mounted, one way or the other," he commented. "Hope we have some more luck like that in the next wagon, too."
"At least we have that river between us now," Drew said. Behind them was Columbia, where Forrest had bought them precious hours of traveling time with his truce to discuss a prisoner exchange. Along the banks of the now turbulent Duck River not a bridge or boat remained to aid their pursuers. Buford's Scouts had had a hand in that precaution.
"Yeah, an' Forrest's waitin' for the Yankees to try an' smoke him out. It's 'bout like puttin' your hand in a rattler's den to git him by the tail, I'd say. But I'd feel a mite safer was theah an ocean between us. Funny, a man is all randy with his tail up when he's doin' the chasin', but you git mighty dry-mouthed an' spooky when the cards is slidin' the other way 'crost the table. Seems like we has been chased back an' forth over these heah rivers so much, they ought to know us by now. An' be a little more obligin' an' do some partin', like in that old Bible story—let us through on dry land. Man, how I could do with somedryland!" Kirby spoke with unusual fervor.
Croff laughed. "No use hopin' for that. Anyways, we have business ahead."
Just as they had rounded up wagons to transport the infantry between skirmishes, so now they were on the hunt for oxen to move the guns. The bogs—miscalled "roads" on their maps—demanded more animal power than the worn-out horses and mules of the army could supply. Oxen had to be impressed from the surrounding farms for use in moving the wagons and fieldpieces relay fashion, with those teams sometimes struggling belly deep. Having pulled one section to a point ahead, they were driven back to bring up the rear of the train.
"Not enough ice on the ground; it's rainin' it now!" Kirby's shoulders were hunched, his head forward between them as if, tortoisewise, he wanted to withdraw into a nonexistent protecting shell.
"Just be glad," Drew answered, "you ain't walkin'. I saw an ox fall back there a ways. Before it was hardly dead the men were at it, rippin' off the hide to cover their feet—bleedin' feet!"
"Oh, I'm not complainin'," the Texan said. "M'boots still cover me, anyway. Me, I'm thankful for what I got—can even sing 'bout it."
His soft, clear baritone caroled out:
"And now I'm headin' southward, my heart is full of woe,I'm goin' back to Georgia to find my Uncle Joe,You may talk about your Beauregard an' sing of General Lee,But the gallant Hood of Texas played Hell in Tennessee."
"And now I'm headin' southward, my heart is full of woe,I'm goin' back to Georgia to find my Uncle Joe,You may talk about your Beauregard an' sing of General Lee,But the gallant Hood of Texas played Hell in Tennessee."
Some sardonic Texan, anonymous in the defeated forces, had first chanted those words to the swinging march of his western command—"The Yellow Rose of Texas"—and they had been passed from company to company, squad to squad, by men who had always been a little distrustful of Hood, men who had looked back to the leadership of General Johnston as a good time when they actually seemed to be getting somewhere with this endless-seeming war.
There was a soft echo from somewhere—"...played Hell in Tennessee-ee-ee."
"Sure did," Webb commented. "But this country comin' up now ain't gonna favor the blue bellies none."
He was right. Both sides of the turnpike over which the broken army dragged its way south were heavily wooded, and the road threaded through a bewildering maze of narrow valleys, gorges, and ravines—just the type of territory made for defensive ambushes to rock reckless Yankees out of their saddles. The turnpike was to be left for the use of the rear guard of fighting men, while the wagon trains and straggling mass of the disorganized Army of the Tennessee split up to follow the dirt roads toward Bainbridge and the Tennessee River.
"Know somethin'?" Webb demanded suddenly, hours later, as they were on their way back with their hard-found quota of oxen and protesting owners and drivers. "This heah's Christmas Eve—tomorrow's Christmas! Ain't had a chance to count up the days till now."
"Sounds like we is gonna have us a present—from the Yankees. Hear that, amigos?" Kirby rose in his stirrups, facing into the wind.
They could hear it right enough, the sharp spatter of rifle and musket fire, the deeper sound of field guns. It was a clamor they had listened to only too often lately, but now it was forceful enough to suggest that this was more than just a skirmish.
Having seen their oxen into the hands of the teamsters, they settled down to the best pace they could get from their mounts. But before they reached the scene of action they caught the worst of the news from the wounded men drifting back.
"... saw him carried off myself," a thin man, with a bandaged arm thrust into the front of his jacket, told them. "Th' Yankees got 'cross Richland Creek and flanked us. General Buford got it then."
Drew leaned from his saddle to demand the most important answer. "How bad?" Abram Buford might not have had the dash of Morgan, the electric personality of Forrest, but no one could serve in his headquarters company without being well aware of the steadfast determination, the regard for his men, the bulldog courage which made him Forrest's dependable, rock-hard supporter in the most dangerous action.
"They said pretty bad. General Chalmers, he took command."
"Christmas present," Kirby repeated bleakly. "Looks like Christmas ain't gonna be so merry this year."
They had lost Buford and they were forced back again, disputing savagely—hand to hand, revolver against saber, carbine against carbine—to Pulaski. Seven miles, and the enemy made to pay dearly for every foot of that distance.
It was Christmas morning, and Drew chewed on a crust of corn pone, old and rock-hard. He wondered dully if his capacity to hold more than a few crumbs had completely vanished. And he allowed himself for one or two long moments to remember Christmas at Oak Hill—where he had managed to spend a more festive day than at Red Springs in the chilly neighborhood of his grandfather. Christmas at Oak Hill ... Sheldon, Boyd, Cousin Merry, Cousin Jeff, too, before he died back in '59.
Drew opened his eyes and saw a fire, not the flames of brandy flickering above a plum pudding, or the quiet, welcoming fire on a hearth, but rather a violent burst of yellow-and-red destruction punctured by bursts of exploding ammunition. These were the stores Forrest had ordered destroyed because the men could transport them no further.
The word was out that they were going to make a firm stand near Anthony's Hill, again to the south. And they had been hard at work there to fashion a stopper which would either suck the venturesome enemy into a bad mauling, as Forrest hoped, or else just hold him to buy more time.
There the turnpike descended sharply with a defile between two ridges, ridges which now housed Morton's battery, ready to blast road and hollow below. Felled timber, rails, stones, anything which could shelter a man from lead and steel long enough for him to shoot his share back, had been woven together, and a mounted reserve waited behind to prevent flanking. A good stout trap—the kind Forrest had used to advantage before and which had enough teeth in it to crush the unwary.
"Dilly, Dilly, come and be killed," Drew repeated to himself that tag from some childhood rhyme or story as he waited at the mouth of the gorge to play his own part in the action to come. A small force of mounted men, scouts, and volunteers from various commands were bait. It was their job to make a short stiff resistance, then fly in headlong retreat, enticing the Union riders into the waiting ambush.
"Who's this heah Dilly?" Kirby wanted to know. "Some Yankee?"
Drew laughed. "Might be." He sagged a little in the saddle. Sleep during the past ten days had come in small snatches. Twice he had caught naps lying in stalled wagons waiting for fresh teams to arrive, and both times he had been awakened out of dreams he did not care to remember, to ride with gummy eyelids and a sense of being so tired that there was a fog between him and most of the world. It was two days now since Buford had been wounded. The news was that the big Kentucky general would recover. And it was a whole twenty-four hours since he watched the Christmas fires Forrest had lit in Pulaski, the fires which had devoured what they no longer had the animal power to save.
Here in the mouth of the gorge the silence was almost oppressive. He heard a smothered cough from one of the waiting men, a horse blow in a kind of wheeze. Then came the call of a bugle from down the road.
Theirs, not ours, Drew thought. Hannibal shook his head vigorously, as if bitten by a sadly out-of-season fly. The captain commanding their company of bait signaled an advance. And they followed the familiar pattern of weaving in and out of cover to enlarge the appearance of their force.
Firing rent the quiet of a few minutes earlier. Drew snapped a shot at the Yankee guidon bearer, certain he saw the man flinch. Then, with the rest, he sent Hannibal on the best run the mule could hold, back into the waiting mouth of the hollow. They pounded on, eager to present such a picture of wholesale rout that the Union men would believe a soft strike, perhaps an important bag of prisoners, lay ahead, needing only to be scooped in.
Perhaps it was the reputation for wiliness Forrest had earned which put the Yankee commander on his guard. There was no headlong chase down the ambush valley as they had hoped and planned to intercept. Instead, dismounted men came at a careful, suspicious pace, cored around a single fieldpiece, a small answer to their trap.
But when that blue stream funneled into the hollow, the jaws snapped away. Canister from Morton's guns laid a scythe along the Union advance, cutting men to ground level. The Yell shrilled along the slopes, and men jumped trees and rail barricades, pouring down in an assault wave not to be turned aside. The Yankee gun, its eight-horse team, men who stood now with their hands high, horses for riders who were no longer to need them. Three hundred of those horses from the lines behind the dismounted skirmishers—far more valuable than any inanimate treasure to men who had lost mounts—one hundred and fifty prisoners.
Kirby rode back from the eddy in the road, his mouth a wide grin splitting his skin-and-bone face. He had a length of heavy blue cloth across the saddle before him and was smoothing it lovingly with one chilblained hand.
"Got me one of them theah overcoats," he announced. "Sure fine, like to thank General Wilson for it personal. If I could git me in ropin' distance of him to do that."
The small success of the venture was not a complete victory. His dismounted cavalry overrun or thrust back, Wilson brought up infantry, and they settled down to a dogged attack on the entrenched Confederates on the ridges.
Union forces bored in steadily, slamming the weight of regiments against the flanks of the defenders. And slowly but inexorably, that turning movement pushed the Confederates in and back. Drew, riding courier, brought up to the ridge where Forrest sat on the big gray King Phillip, statue-still, immovable.
"General, suh, the enemy is in our rear—"
Forrest turned his head abruptly, the statue coming to life. And there was impatience in the answer which was certainly meant for all the doubters at large and not to one sergeant of scouts relaying a message.
"Well, ain't we in theirs?"
General Armstrong, his men out of ammunition, made his own plea to fall back. But the orders were to hold. Hood was at Sugar Creek with the army; he must have time to cross. It was late afternoon when Forrest at last ordered the withdrawal, and they made it in an orderly fashion.
Through the night the rear guard toiled on and a little after midnight they reached the Sugar in their turn. Drew splashed cold water on his face, not only to keep awake, but to rinse off the mud and grime of days of riding and fighting. He could not remember when he had had his clothes off, had bathed or worn a clean shirt. Now he smeared his jacket sleeve across his face in place of a towel and tramped wearily back to the fire where his own small squad had settled in for what rest they could get.
Croff was sniffing the air, hound fashion.
"Ain't gonna do you no good," Webb told him sourly. "Theah ain't nothin' in the pot, nor no pot neither—'less Kirby 'membered to stow it last time. Lordy, m' back an' m' middle are clean growed together, seems like."
"Feast your eyes, man! Jus' feast your eyes!" Kirby unrolled his prized coat. In its folds was a greasy package which did indeed give up a treasure—a good four-inch-thick slab of bacon squeezed in with a block of odd, brownish-yellow stuff.
They crowded around, dazzled by the sight of bacon, real bacon. Then Drew pointed at the accompanying block.
"What's that? New kind of hardtack?"
"Nope. That theah's vegetables." Kirby spoke with authority.
"Vegetables?"
"Yeah. These heah Yankee commissaries bin workin' out new tricks all th' time. They takes a lot of stuff like turnips, carrots, beets, all such truck, an' press it into cakes like this. 'Course you have to be careful. I heard tell as how one blue belly, he chawed the stuff dry an' then drank water; it bloated him up like a cow in green cane. Poor fella, he jus' natchelly suffered from bein' so greedy. But you drop it in water an' give it a boil...."
"Looks like hay," Drew commented without enthusiasm. He picked it up and sniffed dubiously.
"Man," Webb said, "if the Yankees can eat hay, then we can too. An' I'm hungry 'nough to chaw grass, were you to show me a tidy patch an' say go to it! How come you know all 'bout this hay-stuff, Anse?"
"We found some of it on theMazeppa. The lieutenant told us how it worked—"
"TheMazeppa!" Webb breathed reverently, and there was a moment of silence as they all recalled the richness of that capture. "We shore could do with another boat like that one. Too bad this heah crick ain't big 'nough to float a nice bunch of supplies in, right now."
Kirby produced the pail dedicated to the preparation of coffee. But since coffee was so far in the past they could not even remember its smell or taste, no one protested his putting the vegetable block to the test by setting it boiling in the sacred container.
"Don't look like much." Webb fanned away smoke to peer into the pail. Kirby had also produced a skillet, made from half of a Yankee canteen, into which he was slicing the bacon.
"It's fillin'," he retorted sharply. "An' you didn't pay for it, did you? A man who slangs th' cook—an' the grub—now maybe he ain't gonna find his plate waitin' when it's time to eat—"
Webb drew back hurriedly. "I ain't sayin' nothin', nothin' at all!"
Drew grinned. "That's being wise, Will. Times when a man can talk himself right out of a good piece of luck. It's hot and fillin', and you got bacon to give it some taste...."
With hot food under their belts, a fire, and no sign of orders to move, they were content. Kirby and Croff followed the old Plains trick of raking aside the fire, leaving a patch of warmed earth on which all four could curl up together, two men sharing blankets. As the Texan squirmed into place beside him Drew felt the added warmth of the plundered coat Kirby pulled over them. This had not been too bad a day after all, or rather yesterday had not; it was now not too far before dawn. They had made their play at Anthony's Hill and had come out of it with horses, some food, and a few incidental comforts like this coat. Now after eating, they had a chance to sleep. It seemed that Forrest was going to pull it off neatly again. Drowsily Drew watched the rekindled fire. They would make it, after all.
He awoke to find a thick white cotton of fog enfolding the bivouac. The preparations they had made again of rail and tree breastworks to greet the Union advance were no easier to see than the men crouched in their shadows. It would be a blind battle if Wilson's pursuit caught up before this cleared; one would only be able to tell the enemy by his position.
But there was no hanging back on the part of the Yankees that morning. Slowly, maybe blindly, but with determination, they were picking their way ahead, reaching the creek bank. If they could cut through Forrest's present lines, thrust straight ahead, they could smash the demoralized straggle of Hood's main command, and the Army of the Tennessee would cease to exist.
The blue coats were shadows in the fog, the first advance wading the creek now, their rifles held high. And as that line closed up and solidified into a wall of men, a burst of flame met them face-on. It was brutal, almost one-sided. The Yankees were on their feet, pacing into a country they could not clearly distinguish. While their opponents had "picked trees" and were firing from shelter with accuracy to tear huge gaps in that line.
Men stopped, fired, then broke, running back to the creek for the safety which might lie beyond that wash of icy water. And as they went, ranks of the defenders rose and raced after them, hooting and calling as if on some holiday hunt. Now the cavalry moved in in their turn, cutting savagely at the Union flanks, herding the dismounted Yankees back through the lines of their horse holders as the Morgan men had been driven at Cynthiana. Wild with fright, horses lunged, reared, tore free from men, and raced in and out, many to be caught by the gray coats. It was a rout and they pushed the Union troops back, snapping up prisoners, horses, equipment—whipping out like a thrown net to sweep back laden with spoil.
These attackers were the rear guard of a badly beaten army, but they did not act that way. They rode, fought, and out-maneuvered their enemies as if they were the fresh advance of a superior invading force. And the swift, hard blows they aimed bought not only time for those they defended, but also the respect, the irritated concern of the men they turned time and time again to fight against.
Having pushed Wilson's troopers well back, the Confederates withdrew once more to the creek, waiting for what might be a second assault. They ate, if they were lucky enough to have rations, and rested their horses. Corn was long gone, so mounts were fed on withered leaves pulled from field shocks, from any possible forage a man could find.
Drew led the gaunt rack of bones that was Hannibal to the creek, letting the mule lip the water. But it was plain the animal was failing. Drew shifted his saddle from that bony back to one of the horses they had gathered in during the morning. But the Yankee gelding was little improvement. In the mud, constantly cut by ice, too wet most of the time, a horse's hoofs rotted on its feet. And the dead animals, many of them put out of their misery by their riders, marked with patches of black, brown, gray, the path of the army. A man had to harden himself to that suffering, just as he had to harden himself to all the other miseries of war.
War was boredom, and it was also quick, exciting action such as they had had that morning. It was fighting gunboats along the river; it was the heat and horror of that slope at Harrisburg, the cold and horror of Franklin. It was riding with men such as Anson Kirby, being a part of a fluid weapon forged and used well by a commander such as Bedford Forrest. It was a way of life....
The scout's hand paused in his currying of Hannibal as that idea struck him for the first time. Now he thought he could understand why Red Springs and all it stood for was so removed and meaningless, was lost in the dim past. To Drew Rennie now, the squad, his round of duties, the army—these were home, not a brick house set in the midst of green fields and smooth paddocks. The house was empty of what he had found elsewhere—acceptance of Drew Rennie as a person in his own right, friendship, an occupation which answered the restlessness which had ridden him into rebellion. He stood staring at nothing as he thought about all that.
Kirby startled him out of his self-absorption. "Butt your saddle, amigo! We're hittin' the trail again."
As he swung up on the Yankee horse and took Hannibal's lead halter, Drew asked a question:
"Ever seem to you, Anse, like the army's home? Like it's always been, and you've always been a part of it?"
Kirby shot him a quick glance. "Guess we all kinda feel that sometimes. Gits so you can hardly remember how it was 'fore you joined up. Me, I sometimes wonder if I jus' dreamed Texas outta m' head. Only I keep remindin' myself that someday I can go back an' see if it's jus' the way I dreamed it. Kinda nice to think 'bout that."
They cut away from the main line of march, ranging out and ahead. Stragglers from the army must be moved forward, directed. And they came upon one of those, a tall man, limping on feet covered with strips of filthy rag. But he still had his musket, and on its bayonet was stuck a goodly portion of ham. He had been sitting on a tree trunk, but at the approach of the scouts he moved to meet them.
"Howdy, fellas," he spoke in a hoarse voice, and wiped a running nose on his sleeve. "What command you in?"
"Forrest's Cavalry ... Scouts—"
"Forrest's!" He took another eager step forward. "Now theah's a command! Ain't bin for you boys, th' blue bellies woulda gulped us right up! Nairy a one of us'd got out of Tennessee."
"You ain't rightly out yet, amigo," Kirby pointed out. "Kinda lost, ain't you?"
The man shrugged and grinned wryly. "Feet ain't too good. But I'm makin' it, fast as I can."
"Can you fork a mule?" Drew asked. "This one is for ridin'. We'll take you to one of the wagons—"
"Now that's right kind of you boys, right kind." The man hobbled up to Hannibal as if he feared they might withdraw their offer. "Say, you hungry? Git us wheah we can light a spell, an' I'll divide my rations with you." He waved the musket with its impaled ham.
"Maybe we'll do jus' that," Kirby promised.
Drew dismounted to give the straggler a leg up on Hannibal before they headed on toward the Tennessee and the promise of a breathing space.
"What did the doc say?" Kirby, his blue overcoat a splotch of color against the general drabness of the winter scene, came up towing Hannibal and his own mount.
"Doesn't think he should try it." Drew made a lengthy business of pulling on the knitted gloves he had acquired only that morning as a swap for a captured Yankee Colt.
The infantry, back under the solid security of Joe Johnston's leadership, had marched on into North Carolina—to face Sherman's destructive sweep there. In the west, the only effective Confederate force still in the field east of the Mississippi was Forrest's Cavalry. And they had been granted twenty days' furlough to return home if they could get there, and gather clothing and fresh horses. The sun was far down the western horizon of the Confederacy, but to the men who rode with Forrest it had not yet set.
"Th' kid wants to go...."
That was the worst of it. When they listened to Boyd's eager talk, saw him make the effort to get on his feet again, they were almost convinced that the youngster could make the trip back through enemy-held territory to Oak Hill. Kirby, though he had no ties in Kentucky, was willing to chance the journey to help Boyd home. But those miles between, where they must skulk and maybe even fight their way—living out, eating very light—Boyd could not stand that. The surgeon's verdict was that such an idea was utter folly.
"I'll try to get a letter through with one of the boys," Drew said. "Major Forbes ought to be able to furnish Cousin Merry with safe conduct on that side; we could have the General take care of it from this end. Then she could take him home with her when he was able to travel."
"You write the letter fast. The Kaintucks are makin' tracks today—"
Drew swung into the saddle, and they headed back to camp.
"Now that we ain't headin' north, you thinkin' of joinin' Croff an' Webb?"
Men on furlough had been given their orders to collect supplies from home, but also to devil the Yankees when and where they could. They were to fire into transports along the rivers and rout and capture any Union patrols small enough to be attacked when and where they came across them. The Cherokee scout and others who could not return home asked for their own type of furlough, determined to hunt the district below Franklin. Since such men could be of great nuisance value well within the enemy lines, they were granted permission and were even now preparing to move out.
Drew, who had held off from committing himself to the expedition until he had the final verdict on Boyd, knew that Kirby was eager to go. And Drew felt that old restlessness, which gripped him whenever he thought of spending days in camp. He could do nothing for Boyd, but they might be able to accomplish something in Tennessee.
"All right." He saw Kirby grin at his answer. The plan was one after the Texan's heart, and Drew knew what it had meant to him to hold back from it.
"You tell the kid?"
"Dr. Fairfax did." At least he had not had to deliver that blow, a small relief which did not, however, lighten his sense of responsibility.
"How'd he take it?"
"Quiet—on the surface."
The Boyd who once would have fought stubbornly to get his own way, the Boyd who would have pulled himself out of that big rocker and announced fiercely that he was riding home whether the doctor said Yes or No—that Boyd was gone. Perhaps this new acceptance of hard facts was a matter of growing up. Drew clung to that. There was little he could do, except not go home without him.
"The kid's gonna be all right?"
"Doc hopes so, if he takes it easy."
"Ever feel like this heah war's runnin' down?"
"I don't see how we can keep on much longer."
"Some of the boys are talkin' Texas. Git us down theah an' we can go off—be a republic again. Wouldn't be the first time the Tejanos stood up all by themselves. Supposin' this fightin' heah stops ... you ridin' for Texas?"
"I might."
Kirby slapped his hand on the horn of his Mexican saddle. "Now that's what an hombre wants to hear. You change pasture on a good colt, makes him even fatter! Come blue bellies all ovah this heah territory, we jus' shift range. An' nobody gonna take Texas! Even the horny toads would spit straight in a Yankee's eye—"
"How 'bout it, Sarge?" They were at the cluster of rail-walled huts where the scouts had established a temporary headquarters. Webb hailed them from the door of one of those dwellings where he was rolling up the rubber cloth laid over corn husks to form the floor. "You Kaintuck bound?"
"No. Ridin' with you boys. Doc thinks Boyd can't try it."
"Good enough, Sarge. We're pullin' out soon as Injun draws us some travelin' rations. Jus' enough to get us theah. We can eat off the Yankees later."
Since 1861 the clothing of the Confederate Army at large had never matched the colorful sketches hopefully issued by the Quartermaster General's department. Perhaps in Richmond or some state capitol the gold-lace exponents did appear in tasteful and well-tailored gray with the proper insignia of rank. Forrest's men, equipped from the first by the unwilling enemy, wore blue, a blue tempered tactfully and ingeniously by butternut shirts, dyed breeches—when there was time to do any dyeing—and slouch hats. But as Drew rode out with his squad he might have been leading a Union rather than a Rebel patrol, which, of course, was part of the necessary cover for venturing into the jaws of a very alert lion.
Parts of West Tennessee were still Confederate-held and through those they rode openly. But the countryside could offer them nothing in the way of forage. Two armies had stripped it bare during the past few months. Sometimes foraging parties on opposite sides had been known to combine forces under a private truce, or had fought brisk, bitter skirmishes to decide which would collect the spoils. If there remained a hog or chicken still running loose, it certainly possessed the power of invisibility.
They slipped across the river in one of the boats kept by local contacts acting in the scouts' service. Drew questioned the boy who owned their transportation.
"Sure they's bummers-out. Yankees say they's ourn, but they ain't!" he returned indignantly. "They ain't ridin' for nobody but their own selves. Cut off a Yankee an' shoot him for the boots on his feet—do the same if they want a hoss. Git ketched an' they tell as how they's scouts, workin' secret-like. Scouts o' ourn—if we ketch 'em; Yankees—do the blue bellies take 'em. But they ain't nothin' but lowdown trash as nobody wants, for sure!" He dug his pole into the water as if he were impaling a guerrilla on it. "They's mean, plenty mean, suh. Don't go foolin' 'round them!"
"Any special place they hang out?" Drew wanted to know.
The boy shook his head. "Oh, they holes up now an' then somewheahs. But they's a lotta empty houses 'bout nowadays. An' the bummers kin hide out good without no one knowin' they be theah—till they git ready to jump. Cut off a supply wagon or raid a farm or somethin' like that."
"Ridin' the south side of the law." Kirby settled his gun belt in a more comfortable circle about his thin middle. "Bet they know all the tricks of hoppin' back an' forth 'cross the border ahead of the sheriff, too. Time somebody collected bounty on those wolves' scalps."
Ridding the country of such vermin was indeed a worthy occupation. And their private quest for an answer to Weatherby's fate might be a part of that. But their first duty was to the army: The gathering of information, and any discomfort they could deal the Yankees, must be their primary project.
Croff brought them into a camping site he had chosen for just such use. It lay at the head of a small rocky ravine down the center of which ran an ice-sealed thread of stream. It was not quite a cave, but provided shelter for them and their mounts. It was a clear night, and the ground was reasonably hard.
They ate hard salt beef and cold army bread made with corn meal, grease, and water the night before.
"Leave here in the early mornin'." The Cherokee outlined his suggestions. "There's a road leadin' to the turnpike that's three or four miles from here. Last I heard, a bridge had washed out on the pike. Anybody ridin' from Pulaski to Columbia has to turn out and take this other way—"
"Good cover on it?" Drew asked.
"The best."
"I jus' got me one question," Kirby interrupted. "Say we was to gobble us up a bunch of strayin' Yankees along this road, what're we gonna do with 'em after? Four of us don't make no army, an' we ain't gonna be able to detach no prisoner guard. 'Course theah are them what's said from the first that the only good Yankees are them laid peacefullike in their graves. But I don't take natural to shootin' men what are holdin' up the sky with both hands."
"Orders are to spread confusion," Drew observed. "I'd say if we hit quick and often, take a prisoner's boots, maybe, and his horse, and his gun—"
"Also," Webb added, "his rations an' his overcoat, be he wearin' one."
"Then turn him loose, after parolin' him—"
"The Yankees don't honor a parole no more," Kirby objected.
"What if they don't? A lot of men comin' in sayin' they've been paroled will stir up trouble. Remember, from what we've heard, a lot of the Yankees ain't any happier about fightin' on and on than we are. So we take prisoners, get their gear, keep what we can use, destroy the rest, and turn the men loose. If we can move around enough, maybe we can draw some of Wilson's men out of that big army he's supposed to be gatherin' to hit us south. It's the old game Morgan played."
Croff grunted. "It may be old, but I've seen it work. All right, we parole prisoners and light out cross-country after a strike."
"I've been thinkin'—" Kirby was checking the loading of his Colts—"if we start heah, we can sorta work our way in, coyote right up close to Franklin. They'll be expectin' us to light out for the home range, not go jinglin' in to wheah they've forted up. Might raise a sight of smoke that way. Git Wilson's boys on the prod, for sure."
"Franklin—?" Croff repeated.
"Little below, maybe. From what that boy said, those bushwhackers move around pretty free," Drew reminded him, certain the Cherokee was back to the desire to search for Weatherby.
"We'll see what kind of luck we have along this road, Injun-scouted. You take first watch, Injun?"
"Yeah." Drew heard rather than saw the Cherokee leave their camp, bound for a lookout point. The other three bedded down, anxious to snatch as much rest as possible.
Long before dawn they were on the move again, threading through the winter-seared woods. Croff brought them out unerringly behind a sagging rail fence well masked with the skeleton brush of the season. There was equally good cover on the other side of the road. Kirby climbed the fence, investigating a dark splotch on the surface of the lane.
"Fresh droppin's. Been a sight of trailin' 'long heah recent."
The rest was elementary. There was no need for orders. Croff and Webb holed up on one side of the lane well apart; Drew and Kirby did the same on the other. Waiting would be sheer boredom and in this weather the height of discomfort.
The gray of early morning sharpened the land about them. Boyd would have enjoyed this game of tweaking a wildcat's tail. Drew chewed his lower lip, tasting the salt of sweat, the grit of road dust. Just now was no time to think of Boyd; he must concentrate on the business before him.
He heard the sharp chittering of an aroused squirrel, repeated in two shrill bursts. But his own ear close to the ground told him they were to expect company. There was the regular thud of horses' hoofs, the sound of mounts ridden in company and at an even pace. The only remaining question was whether it was a Union patrol and small enough for the four of them to handle.
One, two ... two more ... five of them, topping a small rise. A cavalry patrol ... and the odds were not too impossible.
Drew sighted sergeant's stripes on the leader's jacket. It would depend upon how alert that noncom was. Wilson was drawing in new levies, so these men could be new to the district, even green in the army.
The Yankee sergeant was past Kirby's post now, and after him the first two of his squad. He paid no attention to the bushes.
Webb's carbine and Kirby's Colts cracked in what seemed like a single spat of sound. One of the troopers in the rear shouted, grabbing at a point high on his shoulder, the other one was thrown as his horse reared, its upraised forefeet striking another man from the saddle as he endeavored to turn his mount.
Drew fired, and saw the sergeant's carbine fall as he caught at the saddle horn, his arm hanging limp.
"Surrender!" As Drew shouted that order into the tangle below, he leaped to the right. A single shot clipped through the bushes where he had been, answered by a blast from Webb.
Then hands were up, men stared white-faced and sullen at the fence behind which might be a whole company of the enemy. Drew came into the open, the Spencer he had taken from Jas' covering the sergeant. For the expression on the noncom's face suggested that, wounded as he was, he would like nothing better than to carry on the struggle—with Drew as his principal target.
"Go ahead, get it over with!" He spat at Drew.
For a second Drew was bewildered, and then he suddenly guessed that the Union soldier expected to be shot out of hand.
His anger was hot. "We don't shoot prisoners!"
"No? The evidence is not in favor of that statement," the Yankee spoke dryly, his accent and choice of words that of an educated man.
"What brand you think we're wearin', fella?" Kirby had come out of concealment, his Colt steady on the captives.
"Guerrillas, I'd say," the sergeant returned hardily. Drew realized then that their mixture of clothing must have stamped them as the very outlaws they wanted to hunt down, as far as the Union troopers were concerned.
"Now that's wheah you're sure jumpin' your fences," Kirby's half grin vanished. "We're General Forrest's men, not guerrillas. Or ain't you never heard tell of Forrest's Cavalry? Seems like anyone wearin' blue an' forkin' a hoss ought to know who's been chasin' him to Hell an' gone over most of Tennessee. Lucky I ain't in a sod-pawin' mood, hombre, or I might jus' want to see how a blue-belly sarge looks without an ear on his thick skull, or maybe try a few Comanche tricks of hair trimmin'! Guerrillas—!"
The Union sergeant glanced from Kirby and Drew to his own men. One was sitting on the edge of the road, nursing his head between his hands. Another had his hand to his shoulder, and the sticky red of fresh blood showed between his fingers. The two others, very young, stood nervously, their hands high. If the Yankee noncom was thinking of trying something, his material was not promising. Drew broke the moment of silence with a warning.
"You're surrounded, subject to fire from both sides, Sergeant! I suggest surrender. You will be treated as prisoners of war and given parole. Wearefrom General Forrest's command. We're scouts. Believe me, if we had wished to, we could have shot every one of you out of the saddle before you knew we were here. Guerrillas would have done just that."
The logic of that argument reached the Union sergeant. He still eyed Drew straightly, but there was a ruefulness rather than hostile defiance in his voice as he asked:
"What do you plan to do with us?"
"Nothing." Drew was crisp. "Give us your parole, leave your arms, your horses, your rations—if you are carrying any. Then you are free to go."
"We've been ordered not to take parole," the sergeant objected.
"General Forrest hasn't given any orders not to grant it," Drew countered. "As far as I am concerned, you can take it, we'll accept your word."
"All right." The other dismounted awkwardly, and with one hand unbuckled his saber, dropping his belt and gun.
Kirby went among the men gathering up their weapons. Then he and Drew tended the slight wounds of their enemies.
"You'll both do until you can get to town," Drew told them. "And you've a road and plenty of daylight to help you foot it...."
To Drew's surprise, the sergeant suddenly laughed. "This ain't going to sit well with the captain. He swore all you Rebs were run out of here a couple of weeks ago."
"You can assure him he's wrong." Drew saw a chance to confuse the enemy. "We're very much around. You'll be seem' a lot of us from now on, a lot more."
They watched the squad in blue, now afoot, plod on down the road. When they were out of sight around a bend, Webb and Croff came out of hiding to inspect the spoil. Unfortunately the Yankees had not possessed rations, but their opponents acquired five horses, five Springfields, four sabers, and three Colts, as well as welcome rounds of ammunition—a fine haul.
Croff methodically smashed the stocks of the Springfields against a rock and pitched the ruined weapons back of the fence. They had seen during the retreat just how useless those rifles were for mounted men. The sabers were broken the same way, but the rest of the plunder was shared.
Webb appropriated one of the captured mounts. They stripped the others of their gear, taking what they wanted in the way of blankets and saddle equipment, and were putting the horses on leading ropes when a volley of shots ripping through the early morning froze them. Croff whirled to face the road down which the Yankees had vanished.
"Came from that direction—"
They mounted, taking not the open road but a cross route the Cherokee indicated. Coming out on the crest of a slope, they were above another of those hollows through which the road ran. And in that way lay still blue figures. Drew's carbine swung up as men broke from ambush and headed toward those forms. No Confederate force would have wantonly butchered unarmed and wounded men, nor would the Yankees. Which left the scum they both hated—the bushwhackers!
Just as the crack of the murder guns had earlier torn the quiet, so did the Confederate answer come now. Three of those advancing on their victims dropped. One more cried out, staggering toward the concealing bush. Then more broke from cover beyond, going into flight up the other rise.
"Croff! Webb! After them!" The Cherokee scout was already booting his horse into a run.
Drew and Kirby reached the road together. Slipping from Hannibal, Drew knelt by the Union sergeant, turning the man over as gently as he could. But there was no hope. The Yankee's eyes opened; he stared up with a cold and terrible hate.
"Shot us ... after all ... murder—" he mouthed.
"No!" Drew cried his protest. "Not us—"
But that head rolled on his arm, and Drew was forced to swallow the fact that the other had died believing that treachery. Kirby arose from the examination of the rest of the bodies.
"Got 'em all. Musta bin as easy as shootin' weanlin's. They didn't have a chance! We got three—" He made a circle about one of the dead guerrillas—"but that don't balance none."
Drew lowered the dead sergeant to the surface of the road.
"It sure doesn't!" he said bleakly. "We'll go after them—if we have to ride clear to the Ohio!"