Ride Proud-Rebel Read online

  "Drew—!" There was a figure, outlined in part by one of those fires, squatting beside him. "Can you ride?"

  Ride? Where? Why? He had a mule, didn't he? Back in the horse lines. Boyd—he had left the mule with Boyd. Boyd! Now he knew what had to be done!

  He moved away from the outstretched hand of the man beside him, got to his feet, saw the blot of a mount the other was holding. And he caught at reins, dragged them from the other's hand before he could resist.

  "Boyd!" He didn't know whether he called that name aloud, or whether it was one with the beat in his head. Boyd was out on that littered field, and Drew was going to bring him in.

  Towing the half-seen animal by the reins, Drew started for the fires and the boom of the guns.

  "All right!" The words came to him hollowly. "But not that way, you're loco! This way! The Yankees are burnin' up what's left of the town; that ain't the battlefield!"

  Drew was ready to resist, but now his own eyes confirmed that. Fire was raging among the few remaining buildings of the ghost town, and shells were striking at targets pinned in that light, shells from Confederate batteries, taking sullen return payment for that disastrous July day.

  A lantern bobbed by his side, swinging to the tread of the man carrying it. And, as they turned away from the inferno which was consuming Harrisburg, Drew saw other such lights in the night, threading along the slope. This was the heartbreaking search, among the dead, for the living, who might yet be brought back to the agony of the field hospitals. He was not the only one hunting through the human wreckage tonight.

  "I've talked to Johnson," Kirby said. "It'll be like huntin' for a steer in the big brush, but we can only try."

  They could only try ... Drew thought he was hardened to sights, sounds. He had helped bring wounded away from other fields, but somehow this was different. Yet, oddly enough, the thought that Boyd could be—must be—lying somewhere on that slope stiffened Drew, quickened his muscles back into obedience, kept him going at a steady pace as he led Hannibal carefully through the tangle of the dead. Twice they found and freed the still living, saw them carried away by search parties. And they were working their way closer to the breastworks.

  "Ho—there—Johnny!"

  The call came out of the dark, out of the wall hiding the Yankee forces.

  Drew straightened from a sickening closer look at three who had fallen together.

  "Johnny!" The call was louder, rising over the din from the burning town. "One, one of yours—he's been callin' out some ... to your left now."

  Kirby held up the lantern. The circle of light spread, catching on a spurred boot. That tiny glint of metal moved, or was it the booted foot which had twitched?

  Drew strode forward as Kirby swung the lantern in a wider arc. The man on the ground lay on his back, his hands moving feebly to tear at the already rent shirt across his chest. There was a congealed mass of blood on one leg just above the boot top. Drew knew that flushed and swollen face in spite of its distortion; they had found what they had been searching for.

  Kirby pulled those frantic hands away from the strips of calico, the scratched flesh beneath, but there was no wound there. The leg injury Drew learned by quick examination was not too bad a one. And they could discover no other hurt; only the delirium, the flushed face, and the fast breathing suggested worse trouble.

  "Sun, maybe." Kirby transferred his hold to the rolling head, vising it still between his hands while Drew dripped a scanty stream of the unpalatable water from the Texan's canteen onto Boyd's crusted, gaping lips.

  "I'll mount Hannibal. You hold him!" Drew said. "He can't stay in the saddle by himself."

  Somehow they managed. Boyd's head, still rolling back and forth, moved now against Drew's sound shoulder. Kirby steadied his trailing legs, then went ahead with the lantern. Before they moved off, Drew turned his head to the breastworks.

  "Thanks, Yankee!" He called as loudly and clearly as his thirst-dried throat allowed. There was no answer from the hidden picket or sentry—if he were still there. Then Hannibal paced down the slope.

  "The Calhoun place?" Kirby asked.

  Hannibal stumbled, and Boyd cried out, the cry becoming a moan.

  "Yes. Anse ..." Drew added dully, "do you know ... this was his birthday—today. I just remembered."

  Sixteen today.... Maybe somewhere he could find the surgeon to whom last night he had turned over the drugs in his saddlebags. The doctor's gratitude had been incredulous then. But that was before the battle, before a red tide of broken men had flowed into the dressing station at the Calhoun house. The leg wound was not too bad, but the sun had affected the boy who had lain in its full glare most of the day. He must have help.

  The saddlebags of drugs, Boyd needing help—one should balance the other. Those facts seesawed back and forth in Drew's aching head, and he held his muttering burden close as Kirby found them a path away from the rending guns and the blaze of the fires.

  * * *

  9

  One More River To Cross

  "The weather is sure agin this heah war. A man's either frizzled clean outta his saddle by the heat—or else his hoss's belly's deep in the mud an' he gits him a gully-washer down the back of his neck! Me—I'm a West Texas boy, an' down theah we have lizard-fryin' days an' twisters that are regular hell winds, and northers that'll freeze you solid in one little puff-off. But then all us boys was raised on rattlesnakes, wildcats, an' cactus juice—we're kinda hardened to such. Only I ain't seen as how this half of the country is much better. Maybe we shouldn't have switched our range—"

  Drew grinned at Kirby's stream of whispered comment and complaint as they wriggled their way forward through brush to look down on a Union blockhouse and stockade guarding a railroad trestle.

  "Weather don't favor either side. The Yankees have it just as bad, don't they?"

  The Texan made a snake's noiseless progress to come even with his companion's vantage point.

  "Sure, but then they should ... they ought to pay up somehow for huntin' their hosses on somebody else's range. We'd be right peaceable was they to throw their hoofs outta heah. My, my, lookit them millin' round down theah. Jus' like a bunch of ants, ain't they? Had us one of Cap'n Morton's bull pups now, we could throw us a few shells as would make that nest boil right over into the gully!"

  "We'll do something when the General gets here," Drew promised.

  Kirby nodded. "Yes, an' this heah General Forrest, too. He sure can ramrod a top outfit. Jus' prances round the country so that the poor little blue bellies don't know when he's goin' to pop outta some bush, makin' war talk at 'em. You know, the kid's gonna be hoppin' to think he missed this heah show—"

  "At least we know where he is and what he's doin'."

  Kirby propped his chin on his forearm. "Jus' 'bout now he's sittin' down at the table back theah in Meridian with a sight of fancy grub lookin' back at him. How long you think he's gonna take to bein' corraled that way?"

  "General Buford gave him strict orders personally—"

  "Nice to have a general take an interest in you," Kirby commented. "You Kaintuck boys, you're scattered all through this heah army. Want to stay with Boyd 'cause he's ailin', so you jus' find you a general from your home state an' talk yourself into a transfer—"

  "Notice you wanted me to talk you into one, too."

  "Well, Missouri, Mississippi, an' Tennessee are a sight nearer Texas an' home than Virginia. Anyway, theah warn't much left of our old outfit, an' this heah Forrest is headin' up a sassy bunch. So I'm glad you did find you a general to sling some weight an' git us into his scouts jus' 'cause he knew your grandpappy. Kaintucks stick together...."

  There was a second of silence through which they could both hear the faint sounds of life from the stockade.

  "M' father was a Texan," Drew said suddenly.

  "Now that's a right interestin' observation," Kirby remarked. "Heah I was all the time thinkin' you was one of these heah fast-ridin', fine-livin' gentlemen what was gi
vin' some tone to the army. Not jus' 'nother range drifter from the big spaces. What part of Texas you from—Brazos?"

  "Oh, I wasn't born there. You had a war down that way, remember?"

  "You mean when Santa Anna came trottin' in with his tail high, thinkin' as how he could talk harsh to some of us Tejanos?"

  "No, later than that—when some of us went down to talk harsh in Mexico."

  "Sure. Only I don't recollect that theah powder-burnin' contest, m'self. M'pa went ... got him these heah fancy hoss ticklers theah." Kirby moved his hand toward the spurs he had taken off and tucked into his shirt for safekeeping to muffle the jingle while they were on scout. "Took 'em away from a Mex officer, personal. Me, I was too young to draw fightin' wages in that theah dust-up."

  "My father wasn't too young, and he drew his wages permanent. My grandfather went down to Texas and brought my mother back to Kentucky just in time for me to appear. My grandfather didn't like Texans."

  "An' maybe not your father, special?"

  Drew smiled, this time mirthlessly. "Just so. You see, m' father came up from Texas to get his schoolin' in Kentucky. He was studyin' to be a doctor at Lexington. And he was pretty young and kind of wild. He had one meetin'—"

  "You mean one of them pistol duels?"

  "Yes. So my grandfather warned him off seein' his daughter. I never heard the rights of it, but it seems m' father didn't take kindly to bein' ordered around."

  Kirby chuckled. "That theah feelin' is borned right into a Texas boy. He probably took the gal an' ran off with her—"

  "You're guessing right. At least that's the story as I've put it together. Mostly nobody would tell me anything. I was the blacksheep from the day I was born—"

  "But your ma, she'd give you the right of it."

  "She died when I was born. That's another thing my grandfather had against me. I was Hunt Rennie's son, and I killed my mother; that's the way he saw it."

  Kirby rolled his head on his arm so that his hazel eyes were on Drew's thin, too controlled features.

  "Sounds like your grandpappy had a burr under his tail an' bucked it out on you."

  "You might see it that way. You know, Anse, I'd like to see Texas—"

  "After we finish up this heah war, compadre, we can jus' mosey down theah an' look it over good. Happen you don't take to Texas, why, theah's New Mexico, the Arizona territory ... clean out to California, wheah they dip up that theah gold dust so free. Ain't nothin' sayin' a man has to stay on one range all his born days—"

  "Looks like the war ain't doin' too well." Drew was watching the activity in the stockade.

  "Well, we lost us Atlanta, sure enough. An' every time we close up ranks, theah's empty saddles showin'. But General Forrest, he's still toughenin' it out. Me, I'll trail along with him any day in the week."

  "Hey!" Kirby was drawing a bead on a shaking bush. But the man edging through was Hew Wilkins, General Buford's Sergeant of Scouts. He crawled up beside them to peer at the blockhouse.

  "They're pullin' out!" The men in blue coats were lining up about a small wagon train.

  Wilkins used binoculars for a closer look. "Your report was right; those are Negro troops!"

  "No wonder they're clearin' out—fast."

  "Cheatin' us outta a fight," Kirby observed with mock seriousness.

  "All the better. Kirby, you cut back and tell the General they're givin' us free passage. We can get the work done here, quick."

  "Back to axes, eh, an' some nice dry firewood—an' see what we can do to mess up the railroads for the Yankees. Only, seems like we're messin' up a sight of railroads, all down in our own part of the country. I'd like to be doin' this up in one of them theah Yankee states like New York, say, or Indiana. Saw me some mighty fine railroads to cut up, that time General Morgan took us on a sashay through Indiana."

  Kirby got to his feet and stretched. Drew unwound his own lanky length to join the other.

  "Maybe the old man will be leadin' us up there, too—" Wilkins put away the binoculars. "Rennie, we'll move on down there and see if we can pick up any information."

  Two months or a little more since Harrisburg. The brazen heat had given way to torrents in mid-August, and the rain had made quagmire traps of roads, forming rapids of every creek and river—bogging down horses, men, and guns. But it had not bogged down Bedford Forrest. And one section of his small force, under the command of General Buford leading the Kentuckians, had held the Union forces in check, while the other, under Forrest's personal leadership had swung past Smith and his blue coats in a lightning raid on Memphis.

  Now in September the rain was still falling in the mountains, keeping the streams up to bank level. And Forrest was also on the move. After the Memphis raid there had been a second honing of his army into razor sharpness, a razor to be brought down with its cutting edge across those railroads which carried the lifeblood of supplies to the Union army around Atlanta.

  Blockhouses fell to dogged attack or surrendered to bluff, the bluff of Forrest's name. The Kentucky General Buford was leading his division of the command up the railroad toward the Elk River Bridge and that was below the scouts now, being abandoned by the Union troopers.

  Two factors had brought Drew into Buford's Scouts. If Dr. Cowan, Forrest's own chief surgeon, had not been the medical officer to whom Drew had by chance delivered those saddlebags of drugs, and if Abram Buford had not been a division commander, Drew might not have been able to push through his transfer. But Cowan had spoken to Forrest, and General Buford had known both the Barretts and the Mattocks all his life.

  Boyd had recovered speedily from the leg wound, but his convalescence from heat exhaustion and the ensuing complications was still in progress, though he had reached the point that only General Buford's strict orders had kept him from this second raid into enemy territory. Now he was safe in a private home in Meridian, where he was being treated as a son of the house, and Drew had even managed to send a letter to Cousin Merry with that information. He only hoped that she had received it.

  As for the change in commands, Drew was content. Perhaps the more so since the news had come less than two weeks earlier that John Morgan was dead. He had gone down fighting, shooting it out with Yankee troopers in a rain-wet garden in Tennessee on a Sunday morning. Men were dying, dead ... and maybe a cause was dying, too. Drew's thought flinched away from that line now, trying to keep to the job before them. There was the abandoned stockade to destroy, the trestle and bridge to knock to pieces, and if they had time, the tracks to tear up, heat, and twist out of shape.

  Wilkins stood behind a pile of wood cut for engine fuel. "They are on the run, all right. Headin' toward Pulaski."

  "Think they'll make a stand there?"

  "One guess is as good as another. If they do, we'll smoke them out. Keep 'em busy and chase 'em clean out of their hats and back to camp."

  The destruction of the blockhouse and the trestle could be left to the army behind; the scouts moved on again.

  "The boys are havin' themselves a time." Kirby returned to his post with the advance. "Tyin' bowknots in rails gits easier all the time. When this heah campaign is over, we'll know more 'bout takin' railroads apart then the fellas who make 'em know 'bout puttin' 'em together."

  "Trouble!" Drew reined in Hannibal and waved to Wilkins. "There's a picket up there...."

  Kirby's gaze followed the other's pointing finger. "Kinda green at the business," he commented critically. "Sorta makin' a sittin' target of hisself. Like to tickle him up with a shot. We don't git much action outta this."

  "I'd say we're plannin' to go in now."

  A squad of Buford's advance filtered up through the trees, and an officer, his insignia of rank two-inch strips of yellowish ribbon sewed to the collar of a mud-brown coat, was conferring with Wilkins. Then the clear notes of the bugle charge rang out.

  Forrest's men were as adept as Morgan's raiders in making a show of force seem twice the number of men actually in the field. They now whirled in an
d out of a wild pattern which should impress the Yankee picket with the fact that at least a full regiment was advancing.

  Three miles from Pulaski the Yankees made a stand, slamming back with all they had, but Buford was pushing just as hard and determinedly. Gray-brown boiled out of cover and charged, yelling. That electric spark of reckless determination which had taken the Kentucky columns up the slope at Harrisburg flashed again from man to man. Drew tasted the old headiness which could sweep a man out of sanity, send him plunging ahead, aware only of the waiting enemy.

  The Union lines broke under those shock waves; men ran for the town behind them. But there was no taking that town. By early afternoon they had them fenced in, held by a show of force. Only in the night, leaving their fires burning, the Confederates slipped away.

  Rains hit again; guns and wagons bogged. But they kept on into rough-and-rocky country. They had taken enough horses from the Union corrals at the blockhouses to mount the men who had tramped patiently along the ruts in just that hope. Better still, sugar and coffee from the rich Yankee supply depot at the Brown farm was now filling Rebel stomachs.

  Drew sat on his heels by a palm-sized fire, watching with weary content the tin pail boiling there. The aroma rising from it was one he had almost forgotten existed in this world of constant riding and poor forage.

  "Hope it kicks in the middle an' packs double." Kirby rested a tin cup on one knee, ready and waiting. "Me, I like mine strong enough to rest a horseshoe on ... gentlelike."

  "Yankees are obligin', one way or another." Drew licked his fingers appreciatively. He had been exploring the sugar supply. "I've missed sweetenin'."

  "Drink up, boys, and get ready to ride," Wilkins said, coming out of the dark. "We've marchin' orders."

  Kirby reached for the pot and poured its contents, with careful measurement, into each waiting cup. "Wheah to now, Sarge? Seems like we've covered most of this heah range already."

  "Huntsville. We have to locate a river crossin'."