The Andre Norton Megapack - 15 Classic Novels and Short Stories

and around his head so that its scarlet length, crossed with the starred blue bands, made a tossing splotch of color, to hold and draw men’s eyes. And now he was shouting, too, somehow his words carrying through the uproar in the woods.
    “Rally! Rally on colors!”
    “Forrest!” A man beside Drew whooped, threw his hat into the air. “The old man’s here! Forrest!”
    They were pulled together about that rider and his waving standard. Lines tightened, death-made gaps closed. They steadied, again a fighting command and not a crowd of men facing defeat. And having welded that force, Forrest did not demand a second charge. He was furiously angry—not with them, Drew sensed—but with someone or something beyond the men crowding about him. It was not until afterward that rumor seeped out through the ranks; it had not been Forrest’s kind of battle, not his plan. And he now had five hundred empty saddles to weight the scales after a battle which was not his.
    Drew leaned against a bullet-clipped tree. Men were at work with some of the same will as had taken them to attack, building a barricade of their own, expecting a counterthrust from the enemy. He wiped his sweaty face with the back of his hand. His throat was one long dry ache; nowhere had he seen a familiar face.
    Somewhere among this collection of broken units and scrambled companies of survivors he must find his own. He stood away from the tree, fighting thirst, weariness, and the shaking reaction from the past few hours, to move through the badly mauled force, afraid to allow himself to think what—or who—might still lie out on the ridge under the white heat of the sun.
    “Rennie!”
    Drew rounded a fieldpiece which had been manhandled off the firing line, one wheel shattered. He steadied himself against its caisson and turned his head with caution, fearing to be downed by the vertigo which seemed to strike in waves ever since he had retreated to the cover of the woods. He wanted to find the horse lines, to make sure that he had not seen Boyd on the field just before the bugle had lifted them all into that abortive charge.
    It was Driscoll who hailed him. He had a red-stained rag tied about his forearm and carried his hand tucked into the half-open front of his shirt. Drew walked toward him slowly, feeling oddly detached. He noted that the trooper’s weathered face had a greenish shade, that his mouth was working as if he were trying to shape soundless words.
    “Where’re the rest?” Drew asked.
    Driscoll’s good hand motioned to the left. “Four…five…some there. Standish—he got it with a shell—no head…not any more—” He gave a sound like a giggle, and then his hand went hastily to his mouth as he retched dryly.
    Drew caught the other’s shoulder, shaking him.
    “The others!” he demanded more loudly, trying to pierce the curtain of shock to Driscoll’s thinking mind.
    “Four…five…some—” Driscoll repeated. “Standish, he’s dead. Did I tell you about Standish? A shell came along and—”
    “Yes, you told me about Standish. Now show me where the others are!” Still keeping his shoulder grip, Drew edged Driscoll about until the trooper was pointed in the general direction to which he had gestured. Now Drew gave the man a push and followed.
    “Rennie!” That was Captain Campbell. He was kneeling by a man on the ground, a canteen in his hand.
    Drew lurched forward. He was so sure that that inert casualty was Boyd, and that Boyd was dead.
    “Boyd—” he murmured stupidly, refusing to believe his eyes. The man lying there had a brush of grayish beard on his chin, a mat of hair which moved up and down as he breathed in heavy, panting gasps.
    “Boyd?” This time the scout made a question of it.
    One of the men in that little group moved. “He got it—out there.”
    Drew shifted his weight. He felt as if he were striving to move a body as heavy and as inert as that of an unconscious man. It took so long even to raise his hand. Before he could question the trooper further, another was before him.
    Kirby, his powder-blackened face only inches away from that of the man he had seized by a handful of shirt front, demanded: “How do you know?”
    The man pulled back but not out of Kirby’s clutch. “He was right beside me. Went down on the slope before we fell back—”
    So—Drew’s thinking process was as slow as his weary body—he had been right back there on the field! Boyd had been in the first line, and he