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 spoke with unusual fervor.
Croff laughed. "No use hopin' for that. Anyways, we have business
ahead."
Just as they had rounded up wagons to transport the infantry between
skirmishes, so now they were on the hunt for oxen to move the guns. The
bogs--miscalled "roads" on their maps--demanded more animal power than
the worn-out horses and mules of the army could supply. Oxen had to be
impressed from the surrounding farms for use in moving the wagons and
fieldpieces relay fashion, with those teams sometimes struggling belly
deep. Having pulled one section to a point ahead, they were driven back
to bring up the rear of the train.
"Not enough ice on the ground; it's rainin' it now!" Kirby's shoulders
were hunched, his head forward between them as if, tortoisewise, he
wanted to withdraw into a nonexistent protecting shell.
"Just be glad," Drew answered, "you ain't walkin'. I saw an ox fall back
there a ways. Before it was hardly dead the men were at it, rippin' off
the hide to cover their feet--bleedin' feet!"
"Oh, I'm not complainin'," the Texan said. "M'boots still cover me,
anyway. Me, I'm thankful for what I got--can even sing 'bout it."
His soft, clear baritone caroled out:
"And now I'm headin' southward, my heart is full of woe,
I'm goin' back to Georgia to find my Uncle Joe,
You may talk about your Beauregard an' sing of General Lee,
But the gallant Hood of Texas played Hell in Tennessee."
Some sardonic Texan, anonymous in the defeated forces, had first chanted
those words to the swinging march of his western command--"The Yellow
Rose of Texas"--and they had been passed from company to company, squad
to squad, by men who had always been a little distrustful of Hood, men
who had looked back to the leadership of General Johnston as a good time
when they actually seemed to be getting somewhere with this
endless-seeming war.
There was a soft echo from somewhere--"...played Hell in
Tennessee-ee-ee."
"Sure did," Webb commented. "But this country comin' up now ain't gonna
favor the blue bellies none."
He was right. Both sides of the turnpike over which the broken army
dragged its way south were heavily wooded, and the road threaded through
a bewildering maze of narrow valleys, gorges, and ravines--just the type
of territory made for defensive ambushes to rock reckless Yankees out of
their saddles. The turnpike was to be left for the use of the rear guard
of fighting men, while the wagon trains and straggling mass of the
disorganized Army of the Tennessee split up to follow the dirt roads
toward Bainbridge and the Tennessee River.
"Know somethin'?" Webb demanded suddenly, hours later, as they were on
their way back with their hard-found quota of oxen and protesting owners
and drivers. "This heah's Christmas Eve--tomorrow's Christmas! Ain't had
a chance to count up the days till now."
"Sounds like we is gonna have us a present--from the Yankees. Hear that,
amigos?" Kirby rose in his stirrups, facing into the wind.
They could hear it right enough, the sharp spatter of rifle and musket
fire, the deeper sound of field guns. It was a clamor they had listened
to only too often lately, but now it was forceful enough to suggest that
this was more than just a skirmish.
Having seen their oxen into the hands of the teamsters, they settled
down to the best pace they could get from their mounts. But before they
reached the scene of action they caught the worst of the news from the
wounded men drifting back.
"... saw him carried off myself," a thin man, with a bandaged arm thrust
into the front of his jacket, told them. "Th' Yankees got 'cross
Richland Creek and flanked us. General Buford got it then."
Drew leaned from his saddle to demand the most important answer. "How
bad?" Abram Buford might not have had the dash of Morgan, the electric
personality of Forrest, but no one could serve in his headquarters
company without being well aware of the steadfast determination, the
regard for his men, the bulldog courage which made him Forrest's
dependable, rock-hard supporter in the most dangerous action.
"They said pretty bad. General Chalmers, he took command."
"Christmas present," Kirby repeated bleakly. "Looks like Christmas ain't
gonna be so merry this year."
They had lost Buford and they were forced back again, disputing
savagely--hand to hand, revolver against saber, carbine against
carbine--to Pulaski. Seven miles, and the enemy made to pay dearly for
every foot of that distance.
It was Christmas morning, and Drew chewed on a crust of corn pone, old
and rock-hard. He wondered dully if his capacity to hold more than a few
crumbs had completely vanished. And he allowed himself for one or two
long moments to remember Christmas at Oak Hill--where he had managed to
spend a more festive day than at Red Springs in the chilly neighborhood
of his grandfather. Christmas at Oak Hill ... Sheldon, Boyd, Cousin
Merry, Cousin Jeff, too, before he died back in '59.
Drew opened his eyes and saw a fire, not the flames of brandy flickering
above a plum pudding, or the quiet, welcoming fire on a hearth, but
rather a violent burst of yellow-and-red destruction punctured by bursts
of exploding ammunition. These were the stores Forrest had ordered
destroyed because the men could transport them no further.
The word was out that they were going to make a firm stand near
Anthony's Hill, again to the south. And they had been hard at work there
to fashion a stopper which would either suck the venturesome enemy into
a bad mauling, as Forrest hoped, or else just hold him to buy more time.
There the turnpike descended sharply with a defile between two ridges,
ridges which now housed Morton's battery, ready to blast road and hollow
below. Felled timber, rails, stones, anything which could shelter a man
from lead and steel long enough for him to shoot his share back, had
been woven together, and a mounted reserve waited behind to prevent
flanking. A good stout trap--the kind Forrest had used to advantage
before and which had enough teeth in it to crush the unwary.
"Dilly, Dilly, come and be killed," Drew repeated to himself that tag
from some childhood rhyme or story as he waited at the mouth of the
gorge to play his own part in the action to come. A small force of
mounted men, scouts, and volunteers from various commands were bait. It
was their job to make a short stiff resistance, then fly in headlong
retreat, enticing the Union riders into the waiting ambush.
"Who's this heah Dilly?" Kirby wanted to know. "Some Yankee?"
Drew laughed. "Might be." He sagged a little in the saddle. Sleep during
the past ten days had come in small snatches. Twice he had caught naps
lying in stalled wagons waiting for fresh teams to arrive, and both
times he had been awakened out of dreams he did not care to remember, to
ride with gummy eyelids and a sense of being so tired that there was a
fog between him and most of the world. It was two days now since Buford
had been wounded. The news was that the big Kentucky general would
recover. And it was a whole twenty-four hours since he watched the
Christmas fires Forrest had lit in Pulaski, the fires which had devoured
what they no longer had the animal power to save.
Here in the mouth of the gorge the silence was almost oppressive. He
heard a smothered cough from one of the waiting men, a horse blow in a
kind of wheeze. Then came the call of a bugle from down the road.
Theirs, not ours, Drew thought. Hannibal shook his head vigorously, as
if bitten by a sadly out-of-season fly. The captain commanding their
company of bait signaled an advance. And they followed the familiar
pattern of weaving in and out of cover to enlarge the appearance of
their force.
Firing rent the quiet of a few minutes earlier. Drew snapped a shot at
the Yankee guidon bearer, certain he saw the man flinch. Then, with the
rest, he sent Hannibal on the best run the mule could hold, back into
the waiting mouth of the hollow. They pounded on, eager to present such
a picture of wholesale rout that the Union men would believe a soft
strike, perhaps an important bag of prisoners, lay ahead, needing only
to be scooped in.
Perhaps it was the reputation for wiliness Forrest had earned which put
the Yankee commander on his guard. There was no headlong chase down the
ambush valley as they had hoped and planned to intercept. Instead,
dismounted men came at a careful, suspicious pace, cored around a single
fieldpiece, a small answer to their trap.
But when that blue stream funneled into the hollow, the jaws snapped
away. Canister from Morton's guns laid a scythe along the Union advance,
cutting men to ground level. The Yell shrilled along the slopes, and men
jumped trees and rail barricades, pouring down in an assault wave not to
be turned aside. The Yankee gun, its eight-horse team, men who stood now
with their hands high, horses for riders who were no longer to need
them. Three hundred of those horses from the lines behind the dismounted
skirmishers--far more valuable than any inanimate treasure to men who
had lost mounts--one hundred and fifty prisoners.
Kirby rode back from the eddy in the road, his mouth a wide grin
splitting his skin-and-bone face. He had a length of heavy blue cloth
across the saddle before him and was smoothing it lovingly with one
chilblained hand.
"Got me one of them theah overcoats," he announced. "Sure fine, like to
thank General Wilson for it personal. If I could git me in ropin'
distance of him to do that."
The small success of the venture was not a complete victory. His
dismounted cavalry overrun or thrust back, Wilson brought up infantry,
and they settled down to a dogged attack on the entrenched Confederates
on the ridges.
Union forces bored in steadily, slamming the weight of regiments against
the flanks of the defenders. And slowly but inexorably, that turning
movement pushed the Confederates in and back. Drew, riding courier,
brought up to the ridge where Forrest sat on the big gray King Phillip,
statue-still, immovable.
"General, suh, the enemy is in our rear--"
Forrest turned his head abruptly, the statue coming to life. And there
was impatience in the answer which was certainly meant for all the
doubters at large and not to one sergeant of scouts relaying a message.
"Well, ain't we in theirs?"
General Armstrong, his men out of ammunition, made his own plea to fall
back. But the orders were to hold. Hood was at Sugar Creek with the
army; he must have time to cross. It was late afternoon when Forrest at
last ordered the withdrawal, and they made it in an orderly fashion.
Through the night the rear guard toiled on and a little after midnight
they reached the Sugar in their turn. Drew splashed cold water on his
face, not only to keep awake, but to rinse off the mud and grime of days
of riding and fighting. He could not remember when he had had his
clothes off, had bathed or worn a clean shirt. Now he smeared his jacket
sleeve across his face in place of a towel and tramped wearily back to
the fire where his own small squad had settled in for what rest they
could get.
Croff was sniffing the air, hound fashion.
"Ain't gonna do you no good," Webb told him sourly. "Theah ain't nothin'
in the pot, nor no pot neither--'less Kirby 'membered to stow it last
time. Lordy, m' back an' m' middle are clean growed together, seems
like."
"Feast your eyes, man! Jus' feast your eyes!" Kirby unrolled his prized
coat. In its folds was a greasy package which did indeed give up a
treasure--a good four-inch-thick slab of bacon squeezed in with a block
of odd, brownish-yellow stuff.
They crowded around, dazzled by the sight of bacon, real bacon. Then
Drew pointed at the accompanying block.
"What's that? New kind of hardtack?"
"Nope. That theah's vegetables." Kirby spoke with authority.
"Vegetables?"
"Yeah. These heah Yankee commissaries bin workin' out new tricks all th'
time. They takes a lot of stuff like turnips, carrots, beets, all such
truck, an' press it into cakes like this. 'Course you have to be
careful. I heard tell as how one blue belly, he chawed the stuff dry an'
then drank water; it bloated him up like a cow in green cane. Poor
fella, he jus' natchelly suffered from bein' so greedy. But you drop it
in water an' give it a boil...."
"Looks like hay," Drew commented without enthusiasm. He picked it up and
sniffed dubiously.
"Man," Webb said, "if the Yankees can eat hay, then we can too. An' I'm
hungry 'nough to chaw grass, were you to show me a tidy patch an' say go
to it! How come you know all 'bout this hay-stuff, Anse?"
"We found some of it on the _Mazeppa_. The lieutenant told us how it
worked--"
"The _Mazeppa_!" Webb breathed reverently, and there was a moment of
silence as they all recalled the richness of that capture. "We shore
could do with another boat like that one. Too bad this heah crick ain't
big 'nough to float a nice bunch of supplies in, right now."
Kirby produced the pail dedicated to the preparation of coffee. But
since coffee was so far in the past they could not even remember its
smell or taste, no one protested his putting the vegetable block to the
test by setting it boiling in the sacred container.
"Don't look like much." Webb fanned away smoke to peer into the pail.
Kirby had also produced a skillet, made from half of a Yankee canteen,
into which he was slicing the bacon.
"It's fillin'," he retorted sharply. "An' you didn't pay for it, did
you? A man who slangs th' cook--an' the grub--now maybe he ain't gonna
find his plate waitin' when it's time to eat--"
Webb drew back hurriedly. "I ain't sayin' nothin', nothin' at all!"
Drew grinned. "That's being wise, Will. Times when a man can talk
himself right out of a good piece of luck. It's hot and fillin', and you
got bacon to give it some taste...."
With hot food under their belts, a fire, and no sign of orders to move,
they were content. Kirby and Croff followed the old Plains trick of
raking aside the fire, leaving a patch of warmed earth on which all four
could curl up together, two men sharing blankets. As the Texan squirmed
into place beside him Drew felt the added warmth of the plundered coat
Kirby pulled over them. This had not been too bad a day after all, or
rather yesterday had not; it was now not too far before dawn. They had
made their play at Anthony's Hill and had come out of it with horses,
some food, and a few incidental comforts like this coat. Now after
eating, they had a chance to sleep. It seemed that Forrest was going to
pull it off neatly again. Drowsily Drew watched the rekindled fire. They
would make it, after all.
He awoke to find a thick white cotton of fog enfolding the bivouac. The
preparations they had made again of rail and tree breastworks to greet
the Union advance were no easier to see than the men crouched in their
shadows. It would be a blind battle if Wilson's pursuit caught up before
this cleared; one would only be able to tell the enemy by his position.
But there was no hanging back on the part of the Yankees that morning.
Slowly, maybe blindly, but with determination, they were picking their
way ahead, reaching the creek bank. If they could cut through Forrest's
present lines, thrust straight ahead, they could smash the demoralized
straggle of Hood's main command, and the Army of the Tennessee would
cease to exist.
The blue coats were shadows in the fog, the first advance wading the
creek now, their rifles held high. And as that line closed up and
solidified into a wall of men, a burst of flame met them face-on. It was
brutal, almost one-sided. The Yankees were on their feet, pacing into a
country they could not clearly distinguish. While their opponents had
"picked trees" and were firing from shelter with accuracy to tear huge
gaps in that line.
Men stopped, fired, then broke, running back to the creek for the safety
which might lie beyond that wash of icy water. And as they went, ranks
of the defenders rose and raced after them, hooting and calling as if on
some holiday hunt. Now the cavalry moved in in their turn, cutting
savagely at the Union flanks, herding the dismounted Yankees back
through the lines of their horse holders as the Morgan men had been
driven at Cynthiana. Wild with fright, horses lunged, reared, tore free
from men, and raced in and out, many to be caught by the gray coats. It
was a rout and they pushed the Union troops back, snapping up
prisoners, horses, equipment--whipping out like a thrown net to sweep
back laden with spoil.
These attackers were the rear guard of a badly beaten army, but they did
not act that way. They rode, fought, and out-maneuvered their enemies as
if they were the fresh advance of a superior invading force. And the
swift, hard blows they aimed bought not only time for those they
defended, but also the respect, the irritated concern of the men they
turned time and time again to fight against.
Having pushed Wilson's troopers well back, the Confederates withdrew
once more to the creek, waiting for what might be a second assault. They
ate, if they were lucky enough to have rations, and rested their horses.
Corn was long gone, so mounts were fed on withered leaves pulled from
field shocks, from any possible forage a man could find.