The Andre Norton Megapack - 15 Classic Novels and Short Stories

uninhibited snarl. “You one of Quirk’s rough-string scout boys, ain’t you? We sure raised hell an’ put a chunk under it back theah. Them Yankees are gonna be as techy as teased rattlers. An’ I don’t see as how we can belly through the brush with this heah hombre. He’s got him a middle full of guts to stick it this far. Long ’bout now he must have him a horse-size headache.…”
    Croxton swayed and only Drew’s crowding their horses together kept the now unconscious scout from falling into the road dust. Kirby steadied the limp body from the other side.
    “Keep pullin’ him ’round this way, amigo, an’ he’ll be planted permanent, all neat an’ pretty with a board up at his head.”
    “There’s a house—back there.” Boyd pointed to the right, where a narrow lane angled away from their road, a small house to be seen at its end.
    Drew, Croxton’s weight resting against his shoulder, studied the house. The distant crackle of carbine fire rippled across the fields and came as a rumble of warning. It was plain that Croxton could not ride on, not at the pace they would have to maintain in order to outdistance pursuit; nor could he be left to shift for himself. To visit the house might be putting them straight into some Yankee’s pocket, but it was the only solution open now.
    “Hey, those mules!” Boyd had already ventured several horse lengths down the lane. Now he jerked a forefinger at two animals, heads up, ears pointed suspiciously forward, that were approaching the fence at a rocking canter. “Those are Jim Dandy’s! You remember Jim Dandy, Drew?”
    “Jim Dandy—?” the other echoed. And then he did recall the little Englishman who had been a part of the Lexington horse country since long before the war. Jim Dandy had been one of the most skillful jockeys ever seen in the blue grass, until he took a bad spill back in ’59 and thereafter set himself up as a consultant trainer-vet to the comfort of any stable with a hankering to win racing glory.
    To a man like Jim Dandy politics or war might not be all-important. And the fact that he had known the households of both Oak Hill and Red Springs could count for a better reception now. At least they could try.
    “No use you gettin’ into anything,” Drew told the Texan. “You and Boyd go on! I’ll take Croxton in and see if they’ll take care of him.”
    Kirby looked back down the road. “Don’t see no hostile sign heah ’bouts,” he drawled. “Guess we can spare us some time to bed him down proper on th’ right range. Maybeso you’ll find them in theah as leery of strangers as a rustler of the sheriff—”
    The Texan’s references might be obscure, but he helped Drew transfer Croxton from the precarious balance in the wounded man’s own saddle to Drew’s hold, and then rode at a walking pace beside the scout while Boyd trailed with the led horse.
    There was a pounding of hoofs on the road behind. A half dozen riders went by the mouth of the land at a distance-eating gallop. In spite of the dust which layered them Drew saw they were not Union.
    “Them boys keep that gait up,” Kirby remarked, “an’ they ain’t gonna make it far ’fore their tongues hang out ’bout three feet an’ forty inches. That ain’t no way to waste good hoss flesh.”
    “Got a good hold on him?” he asked Drew a moment later. At the other’s nod he rode forward into the yard at the end of the lane.
    “Hullo, the house!” he called.
    A man came out of the stable, walking with a kind of hop-skip step. His blond head was bare, silver fair in contrast to Boyd’s corn yellow, and his features were thin and sharp. It was Jim Dandy, himself.
    “What’s all this now?” he asked in that high voice Drew had last heard discussing the virtues of rival horse liniments at Red Springs. And he did not look particularly welcoming.
    “Mr. Dandy—” Drew walked his horse on, Croxton sagging in his hold, his weight a heavy pull on his bearer’s tired arms—“do you remember me? Drew Rennie, of Red Springs.” He added that quickly for what small guarantee of respectability the identification might give. Certainly in his present guise he did not look Alexander Mattock’s grandson.
    Dandy rested his weight on his good leg and swung his shorter one a little ahead. And his hand went to the loose front of his white shirt.
    “Now that’s a right unfriendly move, suh. I take it right unfriendly to show hardware ’fore you know the paint on our