boy, that he continued in his attitude toward you to the last,
making no provision for you in his will. However, both Major Forbes
and Marianna believe this to be unfair, and they intend to see that
matters are not left so.
If and when this cruel war is over--and the news we receive each
day can not help but make us believe that the end is not far
off--do, I beg of you, Drew, come home to us. Sheldon spoke once of
some plan of yours to go west, to start a new life in new
surroundings. But, Drew, do not let any bitterness born out of the
past continue to poison the future for you.
Perhaps what I say may be of value since I have always held your
welfare dear to me, and you have a place in my heart. Melanie
Mattock Rennie was my dearest friend for all of her life, your
father, my cousin. And you were Sheldon's playmate and comrade for
his short time on this earth.
Come home to us, I ask you to do this, my dear boy. We shall
welcome you.
I pray for you and for Boyd, that you may both be brought safely
through all the dangers which surround a soldier, that you may come
home to us on a happier day. Your concern for and care of Boyd is
something which makes me most grateful and happy. He had lost a
brother, one of his own blood, but I content myself with the belief
that he has with him now another who will provide him with what
guidance and protection he can give.
Remember--we want you both here with us once more, and let it be
soon.
With affection and love,
Drew could not have told whether her "Meredith Barrett" at the bottom of
the page was as firmly penned as ever. To him it was now wavering from
one misty letter to the next. Slowly he made a business of folding the
sheet into a neat square of paper which he could fit into the safe
pocket under his belt. A crack was forming in the shell he had started
to grow on the night he first rode out of Red Springs, and he now feared
losing its protection. He wanted to be the Drew Rennie who had no ties
anywhere, least of all in Kentucky. Yet not for the world would he have
lost that letter, though he did not want to read it again.
"Rennie! Double-quick it; the General's askin' for you!"
Boyd started up eagerly from his perch on another saddle. He was, Drew
decided, like a hound puppy, so determined to be taken hunting that he
watched each and every one of them all the time. He had been allowed to
ride on this return visit to West Tennessee with the condition that he
would act as one of Drew's scout couriers, a position which kept him
under his elder's control and attached to General Buford's Headquarters
Company.
Kirby reached out a brown hand to catch Boyd by the sleeve and anchor
him.
"Now, kid, jus' because the big chief sends for him, it ain't no sign
he's goin' to take the warpath immediately, if not sooner. Ease off, an'
keep your moccasins greased!"
Drew laughed. Nobody who rode with Forrest could complain of a lack of
action. He had heard that some general in the East had said he would
give a dollar or some such to see a dead cavalryman. Well, there had
been sight of those at Harrisburg and some at the blockhouses. Forrest
stated that Morgan's men could fight; he did not have to say that of his
own.
Now they were heading into another sort of war altogether. Drew hadn't
figured out just how Bedford Forrest intended to fight river gunboats
with horse soldiers, but the scout didn't doubt that his general had a
plan, one which would work, barring any extra bad luck.
They were setting a trap along the Tennessee right now, lying in the
enemies' own back pasture to do it. South, downriver, was Johnsonville,
where Sherman had his largest cache of supplies, from which he was
feeding, clothing, equipping the army now slashing through the center of
the South. They had been able to cripple his rail system partially on
that raid two weeks earlier; now they were aiming to cut the river
ribbon of the Yankee network.
Buford's division occupied Fort Heiman, well above the crucial section.
The Confederates also held Paris Landing. Now they were set to put the
squeeze on any river traffic. Guns were brought into station--Buford's
two Parrots, one section of Morton's incomparable battery with Bell's
Tennesseeans down at the Landing. They had moved fast, covered their
traces, and Drew himself could testify that the Yankees were as yet
unsuspecting of their presence in the neighborhood.
He found General Buford now and reported.
"Rennie, see this bend...." The General's finger stabbed down on the
sketch map the scouts had prepared days earlier. "I've been thinkin'
that a vedette posted right here could give us perhaps a few minutes of
warning ahead when anything started to swim into this fishnet of ours.
General Forrest wants some transports, maybe even a gunboat or two.
We're in a good position to deliver them to him, but before we begin the
game, I want most of the aces right here--" He smacked the map against
the flat of his other palm.
"A signal system, suh. Say one of those--" Drew pointed to the very
large and very red handkerchief trailing from Buford's coat pocket.
"Wave one of those out of the bushes: one wave for a transport, two for
a gunboat."
The General jerked the big square from his pocket, inspected it
critically, and then called over his shoulder.
"Jasper, you get me another one of these--out of the saddlebags!"
When the Negro boy came running with the piece of brilliant cloth,
Buford motioned for him to give it to Drew.
"Mind you, boy," he added with some seriousness, "I want that back in
good condition when you report in. Those don't grow handily on trees. I
have only three left."
"Yes, suh," Drew accepted it with respect. "I'm to stay put until
relieved, suh?"
"Yes. Better take someone to spell you. I don't want any misses."
Back at the scout fire Drew collected Boyd. This was an assignment the
boy could share. And shortly they had hollowed out for themselves a
small circular space in the thicket, with two carefully prepared
windows, one on the river, the other for their signal flag.
It was almost evening, and Drew did not expect any night travel. Morning
would be the best time. He divided the night into watches, however, and
insisted they keep watch faithfully.
"Kinda cold," Boyd said, pulling his blanket about his shoulders.
"No fire here." Drew handed over his companion's share of rations, some
cold corn bread and bacon carefully portioned out of their midday
cooking.
"'Member how Mam Gusta used to make us those dough geese? Coffee-berry
eyes.... I could do with some coffee berries now, but not to make eyes
for geese!"
Dough geese with coffee-berry eyes! The big summer kitchen at Oak Hill
and the small, energetic, and very dark skinned woman who ruled it with
a cooking spoon of wood for her scepter and abject obedience from all
who came into her sphere of influence and control. Dough geese with
coffee-berry eyes; Drew hadn't thought of those for years and years.
"I could do with some of Mam Gusta's peach pie." He was betrayed by
memory into that wistfulness.
"Peach pie all hot in a bowl with cream to top it," Boyd added
reverently. "And turkey with the fixin's--or maybe young pork! Seems to
me you think an awful lot about eatin' when you're in the army. I can
remember the kitchen at home almost better than I can my own room...."
"Anse, he was talkin' last night about some Mexican eatin' he did down
'long the border. Made it sound mighty interestin'. Drew, after this war
is over and we've licked the Yankees good and proper, why don't we go
down that way and see Texas? I'd like to get me one of those wild horses
like those Anse's father was catchin'."
"We still have a war on our hands here," Drew reminded him. But the
thought of Texas could not easily be dug out of mind, not when a man had
carried it with him for most of his life. Texas, where he had almost
been born, Hunt Rennie's Texas. What was it like? A big wild land, an
outlaws' land. Didn't they say a man had "gone to Texas" when the
sheriff closed books on a fugitive? Yes, Drew had to admit he wanted to
see Texas.
"Drew, you have any kinfolk in Texas?"
"Not that I know about." Not for the first time he wondered about that.
There had been no use asking any questions of his grandfather or of
Uncle Murray. And Aunt Marianna had always dismissed his inquiries with
the plea that she herself had only been a child at the time Hunt Rennie
came to Red Springs and knew very little about him. Odd that Cousin
Merry had been so reticent, too. But Drew had pieced out that something
big and ugly must have happened to begin all the painful tangle which
had led from his grandfather's cold hatred for Hunt Rennie, that hatred
which had been transferred to Hunt Rennie's son when the original target
was gone.
When Drew first joined the army and met Texans he had hoped that one of
them might recognize his name and say:
"Rennie? You any kin to the Rennies of-" Of where? The Brazos, the Rio
country, West Texas? He had no idea in which part of that sprawling
republic-become-a-state the Rennies might have been born and bred. But
how he had longed in those first lonely weeks of learning to be a
soldier to find one of his own--not of the Mattock clan!
"Yes, I would like to see Texas!" Boyd pulled the blanket closer about
his shoulders, curling up on his side of their bush-walled hole. "Wish
these fool Yankees would know when they're licked and get back home so
we could do somethin' like that." He closed his eyes with a child's
determination to sleep, and by now a soldier's ability to do so when the
opportunity offered.
Drew watched the river. The dusk was night now with the speed of the
season. And the crisp of autumn hung over the water. This was the
twenty-ninth of October; he counted out the dates. How long they could
hold their trap they didn't know, but at least long enough to wrest from
the enemy some of the supplies they needed far worse than Sherman's men
did.
General Buford had let four transports past their masked batteries today
because they had carried only soldiers. But sooner or later a loaded
ship was going to come up. And when that did--Drew's hand assured him
that the General's red handkerchief was still inside against his ribs
where he had put it for safekeeping.
In the early morning Drew slipped down to the river's edge behind a
screen of willow to dip the cold water over his head and shoulders--an
effective way to clear the head and banish the last trace of sleep.
The sun was up and it must have been shortly before eight when they
sighted her, a Union transport riding low in the water, towing two
barges. A quick inspection through the binoculars he had borrowed from
Wilkins told Drew that this was what the General wanted. He passed the
signal to Boyd.
"_Mazeppa_," he read the name aloud as the ship wallowed by their post.
She was passing the lower battery now, and there was no sign of any
gunboat escort. But when their quarry was well in the stretch between
the two lower batteries, they opened fire on her, accurately enough to
send every shell through the ship. The pilot headed her for the opposite
shore, slammed the prow into the bank, and a stream of crew and men
leaped over at a dead run to hunt shelter in the woods beyond.
Men were already down on the Confederate-held side of the river, trying
to knock together a raft on which to reach their prize. When that broke
apart Drew and Boyd saw one man seize upon a piece of the wreckage and
kick his way vigorously into the current heading for the stern of the
grounded steamer. He came back in the _Mazeppa's_ yawl with a line, and
she was warped back into the hands of the waiting raiders.
There was a wave of gray pouring into the ship, returning with bales,
boxes, bundles. Then Drew, who had snatched peeps at the activity
between searching the upper waters for trouble, saw the gunboats
coming--three of them. Again Boyd signaled, but the naval craft made
better speed than the laden transport and they were already in position
to lob shells among the men unloading the supply ships, though the
batteries on the shore finally drove them off.
In the end they fired the prize, but she was emptied of her rich cargo.
Shoes, blankets, clothing--you didn't care whether breeches and coats
were gray or blue when they replaced rags--food.
Kirby came to their sentry post, his arms full, a beatific smile on his
face.
"What'll you have, amigos--pickles, pears, Yankee crackers, long
sweetenin'--" He spread out a variety of such stores as they had almost
forgotten existed. "You know, seein' some of the prices on this heah
sutlers' stuff, I'm thinkin' somebody's sure gittin' rich on this war.
It ain't nobody I know, though."
They kept their trap as it was through the rest of the day and the
following night without any more luck. When the next fish swam into the
net it approached from the other side and not past the scout post. The
steamer _Anna_ progressed from Johnsonville, ran the gantlet of the
batteries, and in spite of hard shelling, was not hit in any vital spot,
escaping beyond. But when the transport _Venus_, towing two barges and
convoyed by the gunboat _Undine_, tried to duplicate that feat they were
caught by the accurate fire of the masked guns. Trying to turn and steam
back the way they had come, they were pinned down. And while they were
held there, another steamer entered the upper end of the trap and was
disabled. Guns moved by sweat, force, will and hand-power, were wrestled
around the banks to attend to the _Undine_. And after a brisk duel her
officers and crew abandoned her.
"We got us a navy," Kirby announced when he brought their order to
leave the picket post. "The Yankees sure are kind, presentin' us with a
couple of ships jus' outta the goodness of their hearts."
The _Undine_ and the _Venus_, manned by volunteers, did steam with the
caution of novice sailors upriver when on the first of November troops
and artillery started to Johnsonville.
"Hi!" One of the new Horse Marines waved to the small party of scouts,
weaving in and out to gain their position at the head of the column.
"Want to leave them feed sacks for us to carry?"
Kirby put a protecting hand over his saddle burden of extra and choice
rations.
"This heah grub ain't gonna be risked out on no water," he called back.
"Nor blown up by no gunboat neither."
Those fears were realized, if not until two days later, when the scouts
were too far ahead to witness the defeat of Forrest's river flotilla.
The _Undine_, outfought by two Yankee gunboats, was beached and set
afire. The same fate struck the _Venus_ a day afterward. But by that
time the raiders had reached the bank of the river opposite Johnsonville
and were making ready to destroy the supply depot there.
Drew, Kirby, and Wilkins, with Boyd to ride courier, had already
explored the bank and tried to estimate the extent of the wealth lying
in the open, across the river.
"Too bad we jus' can't sorta cut a few head outta that theah herd,"
Kirby said wistfully. "Heah we are so poor our shadows got holes in 'em,
an' lookit all that jus' lyin' theah waitin' for somebody to lay a hot
iron on its hide--"
"More likely to lay a hot iron on your hide!" countered Drew. But he
could not deny that the river landing with its thickly clustered
transports, gunboats and barges, the acres of shoreline covered with
every kind of army store, was a big temptation to try something
reckless.
They had illustrious company during their prowling that afternoon.
Forrest himself and Captain Morton, that very young and very talented
artillery commander, were making a reconnaissance before placing the
batteries in readiness. And during the night those guns were moved into
position. At midafternoon the next day the reduction of Johnsonville
began.
Smoke, then flame, tore holes in those piles of goods. Warehouses
blazed. By nightfall for a mile upriver and down they faced a solid
sheet of fire, and they smelled the tantalizing odor of burning bacon,
coffee, sugar, and saw blue rivers of blazing liquid running free.
"I still say it's a mighty shame, all that goin' to waste," commented
Kirby sadly.
"Well, anyway it ain't goin' into the bellies of Sherman's men," Drew
replied.
The Confederate force was already starting withdrawal, battery by
battery, as the wasteland of the fire lighted them on their way. And now
the Yankee gunboats were burning with explosions of shells, fired by
their own crews lest they fall into Rebel hands. It was a wild scene,
giving the command plenty of light by which to fall back into the
country they still dominated. The reduction of the depot was a complete
success.
Scouts stayed with the rear guard this time, so it was that Drew saw
again those two who had so carefully picked the gun stands only
twenty-four hours before. General Forrest and his battery commander came
down once more to survey the desolation those guns had left as a
smoking, stinking scar.
Drew heard the slow, reflective words the General spoke:
"John, if you were given enough guns, and I had me enough men, we could
whip old Sherm clean off the face of the earth!"
And then the scout caught Kirby's whisper of assent to that. "The old
man ain't foolin'; he could jus' do it!"
"Maybe he could," Drew agreed. He wished fiercely that Morton did have
his guns and Forrest all the men who had been wasted, who had melted
away from his ranks--or were buried. A man had to have tools before he
could build, but their tools were getting mighty few, mighty old,
and.... He tried to close his mind to that line of thought. They were on
the move again, and Forrest had certainly proven here that though
Atlanta might be gone, there was still an effective Confederate Army in
the field, ready and able to twist the tail of any Yankee!
11
_The Road to Nashville_
Sleet drove at the earth with an oblique, knife-edged whip. The
half-ice, half-rain struck under water-logged hat brims, found the neck
opening where the body covering, improvised from a square of
appropriated Yankee oilcloth, lay about the shoulders.
"I'm thinkin' we sure have struck a stream lengthwise." Kirby's Tejano
crowded up beside Hannibal. "Can't otherwise be so many bog holes in any
stretch of country. An' if we ever do come across those dang-blasted
ordnance wagons, we won't know 'em from a side of 'dobe anyway."
They had reined in on the edge of a mud hole in which men sweated--in
spite of the sleet which plastered thin clothing to their gaunt
bodies--swore, and put dogged endurance to the test as they labored with
drag ropes and behind wheels encrusted with pendulous pounds of mud, to
propel a supply wagon out of the bog into which it had sunk when the
frozen crust of the rutted road had broken apart. The Army of the
Tennessee, now fighting storms, winter rains, snow and hail, was also
fighting men as valiantly, engaged in General Hood's great gamble of an
all-out attack on Nashville. They had a hope--and a slim chance--to
sweep through the Union lines back up into Tennessee and Kentucky, and
perhaps to wall off Sherman in the south and repair the loss of Atlanta.
Hannibal brayed, shifting his weary feet in the churned-up muck of the
field edge. The ground, covered with a scum of ice at night, was a trap
for animals as well as vehicles. Breaking through that glassy surface to
the glutinous stuff beneath, they suffered cuts deep enough to draw
blood above hoof level.
Drew called to the men laboring at the stalled wagon.
"Ordnance? Buford's division?"
He didn't really expect any sort of a promising answer. This was worse
than trying to hunt a needle in a stack of hay, this tracing--through
the fast darkening night--the lost ordnance wagons, caught somewhere in
or behind the infantry train. But ahead, where Forrest's cavalry was
thrusting into the Union lines at Spring Hill, men were going into
battle with three rounds or less to feed their carbines and rifles.
Somehow the horse soldiers had pushed into a hot, full-sized fight and
the scouts had to locate those lost wagons and get them up to the front
lines.
A living figure of mud spat out a mouthful of that viscous substance in
order to answer.
"This heah ain't no ordnance--not from Buford's neither! Put your backs
into it now, yo' wagon-dogs! Git to it an' push!"
Under that roar the excavation squad went into straining action. Oxen,
their eyes bulbous in their skulls from effort, set brute energy against
yokes along with the men. The mud eventually gave grip, and the wagon
moved.
Drew rode on, the two half-seen shapes which were Boyd and Kirby in his
wake. A dripping branch flicked bits of ice into his face. The dusk was
a thickening murk, and with the coming of the November dark, their
already pitiful chance of locating the wagons dwindled fast.
There was a distant crackle of carbine and rifle fire. The struggle must
still be in progress back there. At least the stragglers about them were
still moving up. No retreat from Spring Hill, unless the Yankees were
making that. All Drew's party could do was to continue on down the road,
asking their question at each wagon, stalled in the mud or traveling at
a snail's pace.
"D'you see?" Boyd cried out. "Those men were barefoot!" Involuntarily he
swung one of his own booted feet out of the stirrup as if to assure
himself that he still had adequate covering for his cold toes.
"It ain't the first time in this heah war," Kirby remarked. "They'll
ketch 'em a Yankee. The blue bellies, they're mighty obligin' 'bout
wearin' good shoes an' such, an' lettin' themselves be roped with all
their plunder on. Some o' 'em, who I had the pleasure of surveyin'
through Sarge's glasses this mornin', have overcoats--good warm ones.
Now that's what'd pleasure a poor cold Texas boy, makin' him forgit his
troubles. You keep your eyes sighted for one of them theah overcoats,
Boyd. I'll be right beholden to you for it."
Hannibal brayed again and switched his rope tail. His usual stolid
temperament showed signs of wear.
"Airin' th' lungs that way sounds like a critter gittin' set to make war
medicine. A hardtail don't need no hardware but his hoofs to make a man
regret knowin' him familiar-like--"
Drew had reached another wagon.
"Ordnance? Buford's?" He repeated the well-worn question without hope.
"Yeah, what about it?"
For a moment the scout thought he had not heard that right. But Kirby's
crow of delight assured him that he had been answered in the
affirmative.
"What about it?" Boyd echoed indignantly. "We've been huntin' you for
hours. General Buford wants...."
The man who had answered Drew was vague in the dusk, to be seen only in
the limited light of the lantern on the driver's seat. But they did not
miss the pugnacious set of knuckles on hips, nor the truculence which
overrode the weariness in his voice.
"Th' General can want him a lotta things in this heah world, sonny. What
the Good Lord an' this heah mud lets him have is somethin' else again.
We've been pushin' these heah dang-blasted-to-Richmond wagons along,
mostly with our bare hands. Does he want 'em any faster, he can jus'
send us back thirty or forty fresh teams, along with good weather--an'
we'll be right up wheah he wants us in no time--"
"The boys are out of ammunition," Drew said quietly. "And they are
tryin' to dig out the Yankees."
"You ain't tellin' me nothin', soldier, that I don't know or ain't
already heard." The momentary flash of anger had drained out of the
other's voice; there was just pure fatigue weighting the tongue now.
"We're comin', jus' as fast as we can--"
"You pull on about a quarter mile and there's a turnout; that way you'll
make better time," Drew suggested. "We'll show you where."
"All right. We're comin'."
In the end they all pitched to, lending the pulling strength of their
mounts, and the power of their own shoulders when the occasion demanded.
Somehow they got on through the dark and the cold and the mud. And close
to dawn they reached their goal.
But that same dark night had lost the Confederate Army their chance of
victory. The Union command had not been safely bottled up at Spring
Hill. Through the night hours Schofield's army had marched along the
turnpike, within gunshot of the gray troops, close enough for Hood's
pickets to hear the talk of the retreating men. Now they must be pursued
toward Franklin. The Army of the Tennessee was herding the Yankees right
enough, but with a kind of desperation which men in the ranks could
sense.