Ride Proud-Rebel Page 15

  "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 of our cavalry 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 Tennes
see 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."

  * * *

  14

  Hell in Tennessee

  "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 some dry land!" Kirby spo
ke 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."

  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.