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RIDE PROUD, REBEL!
ANDRE NORTON
[Transcriber Note: This is a rule 6 clearance. Extensive research did
not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was
renewed.]
THE WORLD PUBLISHING COMPANY
CLEVELAND AND NEW YORK
_Published by_ The World Publishing Company
2231 West 110th Street, Cleveland 2, Ohio
_Published simultaneously in Canada by_
Nelson, Foster & Scott Ltd.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 61-6657
_First Edition_
HC361
Copyright (C) 1961 by Andre Norton
Printed in the United States of America.
* * * * *
To those Reconstructed Rebels ERNESTINE and WILLIAM DONALDY _with no
apologies from a damnyankee_
* * * * *
The author wishes to express appreciation to Mrs. Gertrude Morton
Parsley, Reference Librarian, Tennessee State Library and Archives, for
her aid in obtaining use of the unpublished memoirs of trooper John
Johnson, concerning the escape of the Morgan company after Cynthiana.
Contents
1. Ride with Morgan
2. Guns in the Night
3. On the Run--
4. The Eleventh Ohio Cavalry
5. Bardstown Surrenders
6. Horse Trade
7. A Mule for a River
8. Happy Birthday, Soldier!
9. One More River To Cross
10. "Dismount! Prepare To Fight Gunboats!"
11. The Road to Nashville
12. Guerrillas
13. Disaster
14. Hell in Tennessee
15. Independent Scout
16. Missing in Action
17. Poor Rebel Soldier....
18. Texas Spurs
* * * * *
FROM GENERAL N. BEDFORD FORREST'S FAREWELL TO HIS COMMAND, MAY 9, 1865,
GAINESVILLE, ALABAMA.
_The cause for which you have so long and so manfully struggled, and for
which you have braved dangers, endured privations and sufferings, and
made so many sacrifices, is today hopeless...._
_Civil war, such as you have passed through naturally engenders feelings
of animosity, hatred and revenge. It is our duty to divest ourselves of
all such feelings; and, as far as in our power to do so, to cultivate
friendly feelings toward those with whom we have so long contended, and
heretofore so widely, but honestly, differed...._
_... In bidding you farewell, rest assured that you carry with you my
best wishes for your future welfare and happiness. Without, in any way,
referring to the merits of the cause in which we have been engaged, your
courage and determination, as exhibited on many hard-fought fields, have
elicited the respect and admiration of friend and foe. And I now
cheerfully and gratefully acknowledge my indebtedness to the officers
and men of my command, whose zeal, fidelity and unflinching bravery have
been the great source of my success in arms._
_I have never, on the field of battle, sent you where I was unwilling to
go myself; nor would I now advise you to a course which I felt myself
unwilling to pursue. You have been good soldiers; you can be good
citizens. Obey the laws, preserve your honor, and the Government to
which you have surrendered can afford to be, and will be, magnanimous._
N. B. FORREST, _Lieutenant General_
* * * * *
1
_Ride with Morgan_
The stocky roan switched tail angrily against a persistent fly and
lipped water, dripping big drops back to the surface of the brook. His
rider moved swiftly, with an economy of action, to unsaddle, wipe the
besweated back with a wisp of last year's dried grass, and wash down
each mud-spattered leg with stream water. Always care for the mount
first--when a man's life, as well as the safety of his mission, depended
on four subordinate legs more than on his own two.
Though he had little claim to a thoroughbred's points, the roan was as
much a veteran of the forces as his groom, with all a veteran's ability
to accept and enjoy small favors of the immediate present without
speculating too much concerning the future. He blew gustily in pleasure
under the attention and began to sample a convenient stand of spring
green.
His mount cared for, Drew Rennie swung up saddle, blanket, and the
meager possessions which he had brought out of Virginia two weeks ago,
to the platform in a crooked tree overhanging the brook. He settled
beside them on the well-seasoned timbers of the old tree house to
rummage through his saddlebags.
The platform had been there a long time--before Chickamauga and the Ohio
Raid, before the first roll of drums in '61. Drew pulled a creased shirt
out of the bags and sat with it draped over one knee, remembering....
Sheldon Barrett and he--they had built it together one hot week in
summer--had named it Boone's Fort. And it was the only thing at Red
Springs Drew had really ever owned. His dark eyes were fixed now on
something more than the branches about him, and his mouth tightened
until his face was not quite sullen, only shuttered.
Five years ago--only five years? Yes, five years next month! But the
past two years of his own personal freedom--and war--those seemed to
equal ten. Now there was no one left to remember the fort's existence,
which made it perfect for his present purpose.
The warmth of the sun, beating down through yet young leaves, made Drew
brush his battered slouch hat to the flooring and luxuriate in the heat.
Sometimes he didn't think he'd ever get the bite of last winter's cold
out of his bones. The light pointed up every angle of jaw and cheekbone,
making it clear that experience--hard experience--and not years had
melted away boyish roundness of chin line, narrowed the watchful eyes
ever alert to his surroundings. A cavalry scout was wary, or he ceased
to be a scout, or maybe even alive.
Shirt in hand, Drew dropped lightly to the ground and with the same
dispatch as he had cared for his horse, made his own toilet, scrubbing
his too-thin body with a sigh of content as heartfelt as that the roan
had earlier voiced.
The fresh shirt was a dark brown-gray, but the patched breeches were
Yankee blue, and the boots he pulled on when he had bathed were also
the enemy's gift, good stout leather he'd been lucky enough to find in a
supply wagon they had captured a month ago. Butternut shirt, Union pants
and boots--the unofficial standard uniform of most any trooper of the
Army of the Tennessee in this month of May, 1864. And he had garments
which were practically intact. What was one patch on the seat nowadays?
For the first time Drew grinned at his reflection in the small mirror he
had been using, when he scraped a half week's accumulation of soft beard
from his face. Sure, he was all spruced up now, ready to make a polite
courtesy call at the big house. The grin did not fade, but was gone in a
flash, leaving no hint of softness now about his gaunt features, no
light in the intent, measuring depths of his dark gray eyes.
A call at Red Springs was certainly the last thing in the world for him
to consider seriously. His last interview within its walls could still
make him wince when he recalled it, word by scalding word. No, there was
no place for a Rennie--and a Rebel Rennie to make matters blacker--under
the righteous roof of Alexander Mattock!
Hatred could be a red-hot burning to choke a man's throat, leaving him
speechless and hurting inside. Since he had ridden out of Red Springs he
had often been cold, very often hungry--and under orders willingly,
which would have surprised his grandfather--but in another way he had
been free as never before in all his life. In the army, the past did not
matter at all if one did one's job well. And in the army, the civilian
world was as far away as if it were conducted in the cold chasms of the
moon.
Drew leaned back against the tree trunk, wanting to yield to the soft
wind and the swinging privacy of the embowered tree house, wanting to
forget everything and just lie there for a while in the only part of the
past he remembered happily.
But he had his orders--horses for General Morgan, horses and information
to feed back to that long column of men riding or trudging westward on
booted, footsore feet up the trail through the Virginia mountains on the
way home to Kentucky. These were men who carried memories of the Ohio
defeat last year which they were determined to wipe out this season,
just as a lot of them had to flush with gunsmoke the stench of a
Northern prison barracks from their nostrils.
And there were horses at Red Springs. To mount Morgan's men on Alexander
Mattock's best stock was a prospect which had its appeal. Drew tossed
his haversack back to the platform and added his carbine to it. The army
Colts in his belt holsters would not be much hindrance while crawling
through cover, but the larger weapon might be.
He thumped a measure of dust from his hat, settled it over hair as black
as that felt had once been, and crossed the brook with a running leap.
The roan lifted his head to watch Drew go and then settled back to
grazing. This, too, followed a pattern both man and horse had practiced
for a long time.
Drew could almost imagine that he was again hunting Sheldon as a
"Shawnee" on the warpath while he dodged from one bush to the next. Only
Chickamauga stood between the past and now--and Sheldon Barrett would
never again range ahead, in play or earnest.
The scout came out on a small rise where the rails of the fence were
cloaked on his side by brush. Drew lay flat, his chin propped upon his
crooked arm to look down the gradual incline of the pasture to the
training paddock. Beyond that stood the big house, its native brick
settling back slowly into the same earth from which it had been molded
in 1795.
In the pasture were the brood mares, five of them, each with an
attendant foal, all long legs and broom tail, still young enough to be
bewildered by so large and new a world. In the paddock.... Drew's head
raised an inch or so, and he pressed forward until his hat was pushed
back by the rail. The two-year-old being schooled in the paddock was
enough to excite any horseman.
Red Springs' stock right enough, of the Gray Eagle-Ariel breed, which
was Alexander Mattock's pride. Born almost black, this colt had shed his
baby fur two seasons ago for a dark iron-gray hide which would grow
lighter with the years. He had Eclipse's heritage, but he was more than
a racing machine. He was--Drew's forehead rasped against the weathered
wood of the rail--he was the kind of horse a man could dream about all
his days and perhaps find once in a lifetime, if he were lucky! Give
that colt three or four more years and there wouldn't be any horse that
could touch him. Not in Kentucky, or anywhere else!
He was circling on a leading strap now, throwing his feet in a steady,
rhythmic pattern around the hub of a Negro groom who was holding the
strap and admiring the action. Mounted on another gray--a mare with a
dainty, high-held head--was a woman, her figure trim in a habit almost
the same shade of green as the fields.
Drew pulled back. Then he smiled wryly at his instinctive retreat. His
aunt, Marianna Forbes, had abilities to be respected, but he very much
doubted if she could either sense his presence or see through the leafy
wall of his present spy hole. Yet caution dictated that he get about his
real business and inspect the fields where the horses he sought should
be grazing.
He halted several times during his perimeter march to survey the
countryside. And the bits of activity he spied upon began to puzzle him.
Aunt Marianna's supervision of the colt's schooling had been the
beginning. And he had seen her later, riding out with Rafe, the
overseer, to make the daily rounds, a duty which had never been
undertaken at Red Springs by any one other than his grandfather.
Aunt Marianna had every right to be at Red Springs. She had been born
under its roof, having left it only as a bride to live in Lexington. The
war had brought her back when her husband became an officer in the
Second Kentucky Cavalry--Union. But now--riding with Rafe, watching in
the paddock--where was Alexander Mattock?
Red Springs was his grandfather. Drew found it impossible to think of
the house and the estate without the man, though in the past two years
he had discovered very few things could be dismissed as impossible.
Curiosity made him want to investigate the present mystery. But the
memory of his last exit from that house curbed such a desire.
Drew had never been welcome there from the day of his birth within those
walls. And the motive for his final flight from there had only provided
an added aggravation for his grandfather. A staunch Union supporter
wanted no part of a stubborn-willed and defiant grandson who rode with
John Hunt Morgan. Drew clung to his somewhat black thoughts as he made
his way to the pasture. The escape he had found in the army was no
longer so complete when he skulked through these familiar fields.
But there were only two horses grazing peacefully in the field dedicated
by custom to the four- and five-year-olds, and neither was of the best
stock. One could imagine that Red Springs had already contributed to the
service.
Of course, Morgan's men were not the only riders aiming to sweep good
horseflesh out of Kentucky blue grass this season, and here the Union
cavalry would be favored.
There was a slim chance that a few horses might be in the stables. He
debated the chance of that against the risk of discovery and continued
debating it as he started back to the tree house.
Drew had known short rations and slim foraging for a long time, but the
present pinch in his middle sharpened when he sighted the big house,
with its attendant summer kitchen showing a trail of chimney smoke.
Alexander Mattock might have considered his grandson an interloper at
Red Springs; certainly the old man never concealed the state of his
feelings on that subject. But neither had he, in any way, slighted what
he deemed to be his duty toward Drew.
There had been plenty of good clothing--the right sort for a Mattock
grandson--and the usual bounteous table set by hospitable Kentucky
standards. Just as there had been education, sometimes enforced by the
use of a switch when the tutor--imported from Lexington--thought it
necessary to impress learning on a rebellious young mind by a painful
application in another portion of the body. Education, as well as a
blooded horse in the stables, and all the other prerequisites of a young
blue-grass grandee. But never any understanding, affection, or sympathy.
That cold behavior--the cutting, weighing, and judgment of every act of
childish mischief and boyish recklessness--might have crushed some into
a colorless obedience. But it had made of Drew a rebel long before he
tugged on the short gray shell jacket of a Confederate cavalryman.
Drew had forgotten the feel of linen next to his now seldom clean skin,
the set of broadcloth across the shoulders. And he depended upon the
roan's services with appreciation which had nothing to do with boasted
bloodlines, having discovered in the army that a cold-blooded horse
could keep going on rough forage when a finer bred hunter broke down.
But today the famed dinner table at Red Springs was a painful memory to
one facing only cold hoecake and stone-hard dried beef.
He had circled back to the brush screening the brook and the tree house.
Now he stood very still, his hand sliding one of the heavy Colts out of
its holster. The roan was still grazing, paying no attention to a figure
who was kneeling on the limb-supported platform and turning over the
gear Drew had left piled there.
The scout flitted about a bush, choosing a path which would bring him
out at the stranger's back. That same warm sun, now striking from a
different angle into the tree house, was bright on a thick tangle of
yellow hair, curly enough to provide its owner with a combing problem.
Drew straightened to his full height. The sense of the past which had
dogged him all day now struck like a blow. He couldn't help calling
aloud that name, even though the soberer part of his brain knew there
could be no answer.
"Shelly!"
The blond head turned, and blue eyes looked at him, startled, across a
bowed shoulder. Drew's puzzlement was complete. Not Sheldon, of course,
but who? The other's open surprise changed to wide-eyed recognition
first.
"Drew!" The hail came in the cracked voice of an adolescent as the other
jumped down to face the scout. They stood at almost eye-to-eye level,
but the stranger was still all boy, awkwardly unsure of strength or
muscle control.
"You must be Boyd--" Drew blinked, something in him still clinging to
the memory of Sheldon, Sheldon who had helped to build the tree house.
Why, Boyd was only a small boy, usually tagging his impatient elders,
not this tall, almost exact copy of his dead brother.
"Sure, I'm Boyd. And it's true then, ain't it, Drew? General Morgan's
coming back here? Where?" He glanced over his shoulder once more as if
expecting to see a troop prance up through the bushes along the stream.
Drew holstered the revolver. "Rumors of that around?" he asked casually.
"Some," Boyd answered. "The Yankee-lovers called out the Home Guard
yesterday. What sort of a chance do they think they'll have against
_General Morgan_?"
Drew moved toward the roan's picket rope. As his fingers closed on that
he thought fast. Just as the Mattocks and the Forbeses were Union, the
Barretts were, or had been, Southern in sympathy. Most of Kentucky was
divided that way now. But what might have been true two years ago was
not necessarily a fact today. One took no chances.
"You come back to see your grandfather, Drew?"
"Any reason why I should?" The whole countryside must know very well
the state of affairs between Alexander Mattock and Drew Rennie.
"Well, he's been sick for so long.... Didn't you know about that?" Boyd
must have read Drew's answer in his face, for he spilled out the news
quickly. "He had some kind of a fit when he heard Murray was killed----"
Drew dropped the picket rope. "Uncle Murray ... dead?"
Boyd nodded. "Killed at Murfreesboro in sixty-two, but the news didn't
come till about a week after the battle. Mr. Mattock was in town when
Judge Hagerstorm told him ... just turned red in the face and fell down
in the middle of the street. They brought him home, and sometimes he
sits outdoors. But he can't walk too good and he talks thick; you can
hardly understand him."
"So that's why Aunt Marianna's in charge." Drew thought of Uncle Murray
swept away by time and the chances of war as so many others--and no
emotion stirred within him. Murray Mattock had firmly agreed with his
father concerning the child who was the result of a runaway match
between his sister Melanie and a despised Texan. But Uncle Murray's
death must indeed have been a paralyzing blow for the old man at Red
Springs, with all his pride and his plans for his only son.
"Yes, Cousin Marianna runs Red Springs," Boyd assented, "she and Rafe.
They sell horses to the army--the blue bellies." He used the term with
the concentration of one determined to say the right thing at the right
time.
Drew laughed. And with that spontaneous outburst, years fell away from
his somber face. "I take it that you do not approve of blue bellies,
Boyd?"
"'Course not! Me, I'm goin' to join General Morgan now. Ain't nobody
goin' to keep me from doin' that!" Again his voice scaled up out of
control, and he flushed.
"You're rather young----" Drew began, when the other interrupted him
with something close to desperation in his voice.
"No, I ain't too young! That's all I ever hear--too young to do this,
too young to be thinkin' about things like that! Well, I ain't much
younger than you were, Drew Rennie, when you joined up with Captain
Castleman and rode south to join General Morgan--you and Shelly. And you
know that, too! I'll be sixteen on the fifteenth of this July. And this
time I'm goin'! Where's the General now, Drew?"
The scout shrugged. "Movin' fast. Your rumors probably know as much as I
do. They plant him half a dozen places at once. He might be in any one
of them or fifty miles away; that's how Morgan rides."
"But you're goin' to join him, and you'll take me with you, won't you,
Drew?"
The lightness was gone from the older boy's eyes, his mouth set in
controlled anger. "I am not goin' to do anything of the kind, Boyd
Barrett." He spoke the words slowly, in an even tone, with a fraction of
pause between each. Men of the command had once or twice heard young
Rennie speak that way. Although difficult to know well, he had the
general reputation of being easy to get along with. But a few times he
had erupted into action as might a spring uncoiling from tight pressure,
and that action was usually preceded by just such quiet statements as
the one he had just made to Boyd.
Boyd, however, was never one to be defeated in a first skirmish of
wills. "Why not?" he demanded now.
"Because," Drew offered the first argument he could think of which might
be acceptable to the other, "I'm on scout in enemy-held territory. If
I'm taken, it's not good. I have to ride light and fast, and this is
duty I've been trained to do. So I can't afford to be hampered by a
green kid----"
"I can ride just as fast and hard as you can, Drew Rennie, and I have
Whirlaway for my own now. He's certainly better than that nag!" With an
arrogant lift of the chin, Boyd indicated the roan, who had raised his
head and was chewing rather noisily, regarding the two by the tree house
with mild interest.
"Don't underrate Shawnee." For an instant Drew rose to the roan's
defense and then found himself irritated at being so drawn from the main
argument. "And I wouldn't care if you had Gray Eagle, himself, under
you, boy--I'm not taking you with me. Let us be snapped up by the
Yankees, and you'd be in bigger trouble than I would." He gestured to
his shirt and breeches. "I'm in uniform; you ain't."
"No blue bellies could drop on us," Boyd pushed. "I know where all the
garrisons are round here--all about their patrols. I could get us
through quicker'n you can, yourself. I ain't no green kid!"
Drew slapped the blanket down on Shawnee's back, smoothed it flat with a
palm stroke, and jerked his saddle from the platform. He could not stay
right here now that Boyd had smoked him out--maybe nowhere in the
neighborhood with this excitable boy dogging him.
The scout was driven to his second line of defense. "What about Cousin
Merry?" he asked as he tightened the cinch. "Have you talked this over
with her--enlistin', I mean?"
Boyd's lower lip protruded in a child's pout. His eyes shifted away from
Drew's direct gaze.
"She never said No----"
"Did you ask her?" Drew challenged.
"Did you ask your grandfather when you left?" Boyd tried a
counterattack.
This time Drew's laughter was harsh, without humor. "You know I didn't,
and you also know why. But I didn't leave a mother!"
He was being purposefully brutal now, for a good reason. Sheldon had
ridden away before; Boyd must not go now. In Drew's childhood, his
father's cousin, Meredith Barrett, had been the only one who had really
cared about him. His only escape from the cold bleakness of Red Springs
had been Barrett's Oak Hill. There was a big debt he owed Cousin Merry;
he could not add to it the burden of taking away her second son.
Sure, he had been only a few months older than this boy when he had run
away to war, but he had not left anyone behind who would worry about
him. And Alexander Mattock's cold discipline had tempered his grandson
into someone far more able to take hard knocks than Boyd Barrett might
be for years to come. Drew had met those knocks, thick and fast,
enduring them as the price of his freedom.
"You were mad at your grandfather, and you ran away. Well, I ain't mad
at Mother, but I ain't goin' to sit at home with General Morgan comin'!
He needs men. They've been recruitin' for him on the quiet; you know
they have. And I've got to make up for Sheldon----"
Drew swung around and caught Boyd's wrist in a grip tight enough to
bring a reflex backward jerk from the boy. "That's no way to make up for
Sheldon's death-runnin' away from home to fight. Don't give me any
nonsense about goin' to kill Yankees because they killed him! When a man
goes to war ... well, he takes his chances. Shelly did at Chickamauga.
War ain't a private fight, just one man up against another--"
But he was making no impression; he couldn't. At Boyd's age you could
not imagine death as coming to you; nor were you able to visualize the
horrors of an ill-equipped field hospital. Any more than you could
picture all the rest of it--the filth, hunger, cold, and boredom with
now and then a flash of whirling horses and men clashing on some road or
field, or the crazy stampede of other men, yelling their throats raw as
they charged into a hell of Minie balls and canister shot.
"I'm goin' to ride with General Morgan, like Shelly did," Boyd repeated
doggedly, with that stubbornness which seasons ago had kept him
eternally tagging his impatient elders.
"That's up to you." Suddenly Drew was tired, tired of trying to find
words to pierce to Boyd's thinking brain--if one had a thinking brain at
his age. Slinging his carbine, Drew mounted Shawnee. "But I do know one
thing--you're not goin' with me."
"Drew-Drew, just listen once...."
Shawnee answered to the pressure of his rider's knees and leaped the
brook. Drew bowed his head to escape the lash of a low branch. There was
no going back ever, he thought bitterly, shutting his ears to Boyd's
cry. He'd been a fool to ride this way at all.
2
_Guns in the Night_
There were sounds enough in the middle of the night to tell the
initiated that a troop was on the march--creak of saddle leather, click
of shod hoof, now and then the smothered exclamation of a man shaken out
of a cavalryman's mounted doze. To Drew's trained ears all this was loud
enough to send any Union picket calling out the guard. Yet there was no
indication that the enemy ahead was alert.
Near two o'clock he made it, and the advance were walking their horses
into the fringe of Lexington--this was home-coming for a good many of
the men sagging in the saddles. Morgan's old magic was working again.
Escaping from the Ohio prison, he had managed to gather up the remnants
of a badly shattered command, weld them together, and lead them up from
Georgia to their old fighting fields--the country which they considered
rightfully theirs and in which during other years they had piled one
humiliating defeat for the blue coats on another. General Morgan could
_not_ lose in Kentucky!
And they already had one minor victory to taste sweet: Mount Sterling
had fallen into their hold as easily as it had before. Now
Lexington--with the horses they needed--friends and families waiting to
greet them.
Captain Tom Quirk's Irish brogue, unmistakable even in a half whisper,
came out of the dark: "Pull up, boys!"
Drew came to a halt with his flanking scout. There was a faint drum of
hoofs from behind as three horsemen caught up with the first wave of
Quirk's Scouts.
"Taking the flag in ..." Drew caught a snatch of sentence passed between
the leader of the newcomers and his own officer. He recognized the voice
of John Castleman, his former company commander.
"... worth a try ..." that was Quirk.
But when the three had cantered on into the mouth of the street the
scout captain turned his head to the waiting shadows. "Rennie, Bruce,
Croxton ... give them cover!"
Drew sent Shawnee on, his carbine resting ready across his saddle. The
streets were quiet enough, too quiet. These dark houses showed no signs
of life, but surely the Yankees were not so confident that they would
not have any pickets posted. And Fort Clay had its garrison....
Then that ominous silence was broken by Castleman's call: "Bearer of
flag of truce!"
"... Morgan's men?" A woman called from a window up ahead, her voice so
low pitched Drew heard only a word or two. Castleman answered her before
he gave the warning:
"Battery down the street, boys. Take to the sidewalks!"
A lantern bobbed along in their direction. Drew had a glimpse of a
blue-uniformed arm above it. A moment later Castleman rode back. One of
his companions swerved close-by, and Drew recognized Key Morgan, the
General's brother.
"They say, 'No surrender.'"
Perhaps that was what they said. But the skirmishers were now drifting
into town. Orders snapped from man to man through the dark. The crackle
of small-arms fire came sporadically, to be followed by the heavier
_boom-boom_ as cannon balls from Fort Clay ricocheted through the
streets, the Yankees being forced back into the protection of that
stronghold. Riders threaded through alleys and cross streets; lamps
flared up in house windows. There was a pounding on doors, and shouted
greetings. Fire made a splash of angry color at the depot, to be
answered with similar blazes at the warehouses.
"Spur up those crowbaits of yours, boys!" Quirk rounded up the scouts.
"We're out for horses--only the best, remember that!"
Out of the now aroused Lexington just as daylight was gray overhead,
they were on the road to Ashland. If Red Springs might have proved poor
picking, John Clay's stables did not. One sleek thoroughbred after
another was led from the stalls while Quirk fairly purred.
"Skedaddle! Would you believe it? Here's Skedaddle, himself, just aching
to show heels to the blue bellies, ain't you?" He greeted the great
racer. "Now that's the sort of stuff we need! Give us another chase
across the Ohio clean up to Canada with a few like him under us. Sweep
'em clean and get going! The General wants to see the catch before
noon."
Drew watched the mounts being led down the lane. Beautiful, yes, but to
his mind not one of them was the equal of the gray colt he had seen at
Red Springs. Now that was a horse! And he was not tempted now to strip
his saddle off Shawnee and transfer to any one of the princes of equine
blood passing him by. He knew the roan, and Shawnee knew his job. Knows
more about the work than I do sometimes, Drew thought.
"You, Rennie!"
Drew swung Shawnee to the left as Quirk hailed him.
"Take point out on the road. Just like some stubborn Yankee to try and
cut away a nice little catch like this."
"Yes, sir." Drew merely sketched a salute; discipline was always free
and easy in the Scouts.
The day was warm. He was glad he had managed to find a lightweight shirt
back at the warehouse in town. If they didn't win Lexington to keep, at
least all of the raiders were going to ride out well-mounted, with boots
on their feet and whole clothing on their backs. The Union
quartermasters did just fine by Morgan's boys, as always.
Shawnee's ears went forward alertly, but Drew did not need that signal
of someone's approaching. He backed into the shadow-shade of a tree and
sat tense, with Colt in hand.
A horse nickered. There was the whirr of wheels. Drew edged Shawnee out
of cover and then quickly holstered his weapon, riding out to bring to a
halt the carriage horse between the shafts of an English dogcart.
He pulled off his dust-grayed hat. "Good mornin', Aunt Marianna."
Such a polite greeting--the same words he would have used three years
ago had they met in the hall of Red Springs on their way to breakfast.
He wanted to laugh, or was it really laughter which lumped in his
throat?
Her momentary expression of outrage faded as she leaned forward to study
his face, and she relaxed her first half-threatening grip on her whip.
Though Aunt Marianna had never been a beauty, her present air of
assurance and authority became her, just as the smart riding habit was
better suited to her somewhat angular frame than the ruffles and bows of
the drawing room.
"Drew!" Her recognition of his identity had come more slowly than
Boyd's, and it sounded almost wary.
"At your service, ma'am." He found himself again using the graces of
another way of life, far removed from his sweat-stained shirt and
patched breeches. He shot a glance over his shoulder, making sure they
were safely alone on that stretch of highway. After all, one horse among
so many would be no great loss to his commander. "You'd better turn
around. The boys'll have Lady Jane out of the shaft before you get into
Lexington if you keep on. And the Yankees are still pepperin' the place
with round shot." He wondered why she was driving without a groom, but
did not quite dare to ask.
"Drew, is Boyd here with you?"
"Boyd?"
"Don't be evasive with me, boy!" She rapped that out with an officer's
snap. "He left a note for Merry--two words misspelled and a big
blot--all foolishness about joining Morgan. Said you had been to Red
Springs, and he was going along. Why did you do it, Drew? Cousin
Merry ... after Sheldon, she can't lose Boyd, too! To put such a wild
idea into that child's head!"
Drew's lips thinned into a half grimace. He was still cast in the role
of culprit, it seemed. "I didn't influence Boyd to do anything, Aunt
Marianna. I told him I wouldn't take him with me, and I meant it. If he
ran away, it was his own doin'."
She was still measuring him with that intent look as if he were a
slightly unsatisfactory colt being put through his paces in the training
paddock.
"Then you'll help me get him back home?" That was more a statement than
a question, delivered in a voice which was all Mattock, enough to awaken
by the mere sound all the old resistance in him.
He nodded at the Lexington road. "There are several thousand men ahead
there, ma'am. Hunting Boyd out if he wants to hide from me--and he
will--is impossible. He's big enough to pass a recruiter; they ain't too
particular about age these days. And he'll stay just as far from me as
he can until he is sworn in. He already knows how I feel about his
enlistin'."
Her gloved hands tightened on the reins. "If I could see John Morgan
himself--"
"_If_ you could get to Lexington and find him--"
"But Boyd's just a child. He hasn't the slightest idea of war except the
stories he hears ... no idea of what could happen to him, or what this
means to Merry. All this criminal nonsense about being a soldier--sabers
and spurs, and dashing around behind a flag, the wrong flag, too--" She
caught her breath in an unusual betrayal of emotion. And now she studied
Drew with some deliberation, noting his thinness, itemizing his
shabbiness.
He smiled tiredly. "No, I ain't Boyd's idea of a returnin' hero, am I?"
he agreed with her unspoken comment. "Also, we Rebs don't use sabers;
they ain't worth much in a real skirmish."
She flushed. "Drew, why did you go? Was it all because of Father? I know
he made it hard for you."
"You know--" Drew regarded a circling bird in the section of sky above
her head--"some day I hope I'll discover just what kind of a no-account
Hunt Rennie was, to make his son so unacceptable. Most of the Texans
I've ridden with in the army haven't been so bad; some of them are
downright respectable."
"I don't know." Again she flushed. "It was a long time ago when it all
happened. I was just a little girl. And Father, well, he has very strong
prejudices. But, Drew, for you to go against everything you'd been
taught, to turn Rebel--that added to his bitterness. And now Boyd is
trying to go the same way. Isn't there something you can do? I can't
stand to see that look in Merry's eyes. If we can just get Boyd home
again----"
"Don't hope too much." Drew was certain that nothing Marianna Forbes
could do was going to lead Boyd Barrett back home again. On the other
hand, if the boy had not formally enlisted, perhaps the rigors of one of
the General's usual cross-country scrambles might be disillusioning.
But, having tasted the quality of Boyd's stubbornness in the past, Drew
doubted that. For long months he had been able to cut right out of his
life Red Springs and all it stood for; now it was trying to put reins on
him again. He shifted his weight in the saddle.
"He's been restless all spring," his aunt continued. "We might have
known that, given an opportunity like this, the boy would do something
wild. Only the waste, the sinful waste! I can't go back and face Merry
without trying something--anything! Can't you ... Drew?"
"I don't know." He couldn't harden himself to tell her the truth. "I'll
try," he promised vaguely.
"Drew--" A change in tone brought his attention back to her. She looked
disturbed, almost embarrassed. "Have you had a hard time? You look
so ... so thin and tired. Is there anything you need?"
He flinched from any such attack on the shell he had built against the
intrusion of Red Springs, for a second or two feeling once more the rasp
across raw nerves. "We don't get much time for sleep when the General's
on the prod. Horse stealin' and such keeps us a mite busy, accordin' to
your Yankee friends. And we have to pay our respects to them, just to
keep them reminded that this is Morgan country. I'll warn you again,
Aunt Marianna, keep Lady Jane out of Lexington today--if you want to
keep _her_." He gathered up his reins. "Boyd told me about Grandfather,"
he added in a rush. "I'm sorry." And he was, he told himself, sorry for
Aunt Marianna, who had to stay at Red Springs now, and even a little in
an impersonal way for the old man, who must find inactivity a worse
prison than any stone-walled room. But it was being polite about a
stranger. "Major Forbes ... he's all right?"
"Yes. Only, Drew--" Again the urgency in her voice held him against his
will, "Boyd...."
He was saved further evasion by a carrying whistle from down the road,
the signal to pull in pickets. Pursing his own lips, he answered.
"I have to go. I'll do what I can." He set Shawnee pounding along the
pike, and he did not look back.
If he were ever to fulfill his promise to locate Boyd, that would have
to come later. Quirk's horse catch delivered, the scouts were on the
move again, on the Georgetown road, riding at a pace which suggested
they must keep ahead of a boiling wasp's nest of Yankees. There was an
embarrassment of blue-coat prisoners on the march between two lines of
gray uniforms, and pockets of the enemy such as that at Fort Clay were
left behind. The strike northward took on a feverish drive.
Georgetown with its streets full of women and cheering males, too old or
too young to be riding with the columns. Mid-afternoon, Friday, and the
heat rising from the pavement as only June heat could. Then they reached
the Frankfort road, and the main command halted. The scouts ate in the
saddle as they fanned out along the Frankfort pike, pushing toward
Cynthiana. Sam Croxton strode back from filling his canteen at a
farmyard well and scowled at Drew, who had dismounted and loosened cinch
to cool Shawnee's back.
"Cynthiana, now. I'm beginnin' to wonder, Rennie, if we know just which
way we are goin'."
Drew shrugged. "Might be a warm reception waitin' us there. Drake
figures about five hundred Yankees on the spot, and trains comin' in
with more all the time."
Sighing, Croxton rubbed his hand across his freckled face, smearing road
dust and sweat into a gritty mask. "Me--I could do with four or five
hours' sleep, right down here in the road. Always providin' no blue
belly'd trot along to stir me up. Seems like I ain't had a ten minutes'
straight nap since we joined up with the main column. Scoutin' ahead a
couple weeks ago you could at least fill your belly and rest up at some
farm. Them boys pushin' the prisoners back there sure has it tough. Bet
some of 'em been eatin' dust most all day--"
"Be glad you're not ridin' in one of the wagons nursin' a hole in your
middle." Drew wet his handkerchief, or the sad gray rag which served
that purpose, and carefully washed out Shawnee's nostrils, rubbing the
horse gently down the nose and around his pricked ears.
Croxton spat and a splotch of brown tobacco juice pocked the roadside
gravel. "Now ain't you cheerful!" he observed. "No, I've no hole in my
middle, or my top, or my bottom--and I don't want none, neither. All I
want is about an hour's sleep without Quirk or Drake breathin' down my
back wantin' to know why I'm playin' wagon dog. The which I ain't gonna
have very soon by the looks of it. So...." He mounted, spat again with
accuracy enough to stun a grasshopper off a nodding weed top, which feat
seemed to restore a measure of his usual good nature. "Got him! You
comin', Rennie?"
The hours of Friday afternoon, evening, night, crawled by--leadenly, as
far as the men in the straggling column were concerned. That dash which
had carried them through from the Virginia border, through the old-time
whirling attack on Mount Sterling only days earlier, and which had
brought them into and beyond Lexington, was seeping from tired men who
slept in the saddle or fell out, too drugged with fatigue to know that
they slumped down along country fences, unconscious gifts for the enemy
doggedly drawing in from three sides. There was the core of veterans who
had seen this before, been a part of such punishing riding in Illinois,
Ohio, and Kentucky. The signs could be read, and as Drew spurred along
that faltering line of march late that night, carrying a message, he
felt a creeping chill which was not born of the night wind nor a warning
of swamp fever.
Before daylight there was another halt. He had to let Shawnee pick his
own careful path around and through groups of dismounted men sleeping
with their weapons still belted on, their mounts, heads drooping,
standing sentinel.
Saturday's dawn, and the advance had plowed ahead to the forks of the
road some three miles out of Cynthiana. One brigade moved directly
toward the town; the second--with a detachment of scouts--headed down
the right-hand road to cross the Licking River and move in upon the
enemies' rear. From the hill they could sight a stone-fence barricade
glistening with the metal of waiting musket barrels. Then, suddenly, the
old miracle came. Men who had clung through the hours to their saddles
by sheer will power alone, tightened their lines and were alertly alive.
The ear-stinging, throat-scratching Yell screeched high over the pound
of the artillery, the vicious spat of Minie balls. A whip length of
dusty gray-brown lashed forward, flanking the stone barrier. Blue-coated
men wavered, broke, ran for the bridge, heading into the streets of the
town. The gray lash curled around a handful of laggards and swept them
into captivity.
Then the brigade thundered on, driving the enemy back before they could
reform, until the Yankees holed up in the courthouse, the depot, a
handful of houses. Before eight o'clock it was all over, and the
confidence of the weary raiders was back. They had showed 'em!
Drew had the usual mixture of sharp scenes to remember as his small
portion of the engagement while he spurred Shawnee on past the blaze
which was spreading through the center of the town, licking out for more
buildings no one seemed to have the organization nor the will to save.
He was riding with the advance of Giltner's brigade, double-quicking it
downriver to Keller's Bridge. In town the Yankees were prisoners, but
here a long line, with heavy reserves in wedges of blue behind, strung
out across open fields.
Once more the Yell arose in sharp ululating wails, and the ragged line
swept from the road, tightening into a semblance of the saber blades
Morgan's men disdained to use ... clashed.... Then, after what seemed
like only a moment's jarring pause, it was on the move once more while
before it crumpled motes of blue were carried down the slope to the
riverbank, there to steady and stand fast.
Drew's throat was aching and dry, but he was still croaking hoarsely,
hardly feeling the slam of his Colts' recoils. They were up to that blue
line, firing at deadly point-blank range. And part of him wondered how
any men could still keep their feet and face back to such an assault
with ready muskets. By his side a man skipped as might a marcher trying
to catch step, then folded up, sliding limply to the trampled grass.
Men were flinging up hands holding empty cartridge boxes along the
attacking line--too many of them. Others reversed the empty carbines, to
use them in clubbing duels back and forth. The Union troops fell back,
firing still, making their way into the railroad cut. Now the river was
a part defense for them. Bayonets caught the sunlight in angry flashing,
and they bristled.
"You ... Rennie...."
Drew lurched back under the clutch of a frantic hand belonging to an
officer he knew.
"Get back to the horse lines! Bring up the holders' ammunition, on the
double!"
Drew ran, panting, his boots slipping and scraping on the grass as he
dodged around prone men who still moved, or others who lay only too
still. A horse reared, snorted, and was pulled down to four feet again.
"Ammunition!" Drew got the word out as a squawk, grabbing at the boxes
the waiting men were already tossing to him. Then, through the haze
which had been riding his mind since the battle began, he caught a clear
sight of the fifth man there.... And there was no disguising the blond
hair of the boy so eagerly watching the struggle below. Drew had found
Boyd--at a time he could do nothing about it. With his arms full, the
scout turned to race down the slope again, only to sight the white flag
waving from the railroad cut.
More prisoners to be marched along, joining the other dispirited ranks.
Drew heard one worried comment from an officer: they would soon have
more prisoners than guards.
He went back, trying to locate Boyd, but to no purpose. And the rest of
the day was more confusion, heat, never-ending weariness, and always the
sense of there being so little time. Rumors raced along the lines, five
thousand, ten thousand blue bellies on the march, drawing in from every
garrison in the blue grass. And those who had been hunted along the Ohio
roads a year before were haunted by that old memory of disaster.
Once more they made their way through the streets of Cynthiana, where
the acrid smoke of burning caught at throats, adding to the torturous
thirst which dried a man's mouth when he tore cartridge paper with his
teeth. Drew and Croxton took sketchy orders from Captain Quirk, their
eyes red-rimmed with fatigue above their powder-blackened lips and
chins. Fan out, be eyes and ears for the column moving into the Paris
pike.
Croxton's grin had no humor in it as they turned aside into a field to
make better time away from the cluttered highway.
"Looks like the butter's spread a mite thin on the bread this time," he
commented. "But the General's sure playin' it like he has all the aces
in hand. Which way to sniff out a Yankee?"
"I'd say any point of the compass now----"
"Listen!" Sam's hand went up. "Those ain't any guns of ours."
The rumble was distant, but Drew believed Croxton was right. Through the
dark, guns were moving up. The wasps were closing in on the disturbers
of their nest, and every one of them carried a healthy stinger. He
thought of what he had seen today: too many empty cartridge boxes,
Enfield rifles still carried by men who would not, in spite of orders,
discard them for the Yankee guns with ammunition to spare. Empty guns,
worn-out men, weary horses ... and Yankee guns moving confidently up
through the night.
3
_On the Run----_
"They're comin'! Looks like the whole country's sproutin' Yankees outta
the ground."
They were, a dull dark mass at first and then an arc of one ominous
color advancing in a fast, purposeful drive, already overrunning the
pickets with only a lone shot here and there in defiance. They rode up
confidently, dismounted, and charged--to be thrown back once. But there
were too many of them, and they moved with the precision of men who knew
what was to be done and that they could do it. Confederates were trapped
before they could reach their horses; there was a wild whirling scramble
of a fight flowing backward toward the river.
Men with empty guns turned those guns into clubs, fighting to hold the
center. But the enemy had already cut them off from the Augusta road and
the bridge, and the river was at their backs. Water boiled under a lead
rain. Drew saw an opening between two Union troopers. Flattening himself
as best he could on Shawnee's back, he gave the roan the spur. What good
could be accomplished by the message he carried now--to bring up half
the horse holders as reinforcements--was a question.
However, he was never to deliver that message, for the horse lines had
been stampeded by the first wave of flying men. Here and there a holder
or two still tried to control at least one wild horse of the four he was
responsible for, but there were no reserves for the fighting line.
And--Drew glanced back--no battle to lead them into if there were.