The Andre Norton Megapack - 15 Classic Novels and Short Stories

the lantern in a wider arc. The man on the ground lay on his back, his hands moving feebly to tear at the already rent shirt across his chest. There was a congealed mass of blood on one leg just above the boot top. Drew knew that flushed and swollen face in spite of its distortion; they had found what they had been searching for.
    Kirby pulled those frantic hands away from the strips of calico, the scratched flesh beneath, but there was no wound there. The leg injury Drew learned by quick examination was not too bad a one. And they could discover no other hurt; only the delirium, the flushed face, and the fast breathing suggested worse trouble.
    “Sun, maybe.” Kirby transferred his hold to the rolling head, vising it still between his hands while Drew dripped a scanty stream of the unpalatable water from the Texan’s canteen onto Boyd’s crusted, gaping lips.
    “I’ll mount Hannibal. You hold him!” Drew said. “He can’t stay in the saddle by himself.”
    Somehow they managed. Boyd’s head, still rolling back and forth, moved now against Drew’s sound shoulder. Kirby steadied his trailing legs, then went ahead with the lantern. Before they moved off, Drew turned his head to the breastworks.
    “Thanks, Yankee!” He called as loudly and clearly as his thirst-dried throat allowed. There was no answer from the hidden picket or sentry—if he were still there. Then Hannibal paced down the slope.
    “The Calhoun place?” Kirby asked.
    Hannibal stumbled, and Boyd cried out, the cry becoming a moan.
    “Yes. Anse…” Drew added dully, “do you know…this was his birthday—today. I just remembered.”
    Sixteen today.… Maybe somewhere he could find the surgeon to whom last night he had turned over the drugs in his saddlebags. The doctor’s gratitude had been incredulous then. But that was before the battle, before a red tide of broken men had flowed into the dressing station at the Calhoun house. The leg wound was not too bad, but the sun had affected the boy who had lain in its full glare most of the day. He must have help.
    The saddlebags of drugs, Boyd needing help—one should balance the other. Those facts seesawed back and forth in Drew’s aching head, and he held his muttering burden close as Kirby found them a path away from the rending guns and the blaze of the fires.
    CHAPTER 9
    One More River To Cross
    “The weather is sure agin this heah war. A man’s either frizzled clean outta his saddle by the heat—or else his hoss’s belly’s deep in the mud an’ he gits him a gully-washer down the back of his neck! Me—I’m a West Texas boy, an’ down theah we have lizard-fryin’ days an’ twisters that are regular hell winds, and northers that’ll freeze you solid in one little puff-off. But then all us boys was raised on rattlesnakes, wildcats, an’ cactus juice—we’re kinda hardened to such. Only I ain’t seen as how this half of the country is much better. Maybe we shouldn’t have switched our range—”
    Drew grinned at Kirby’s stream of whispered comment and complaint as they wriggled their way forward through brush to look down on a Union blockhouse and stockade guarding a railroad trestle.
    “Weather don’t favor either side. The Yankees have it just as bad, don’t they?”
    The Texan made a snake’s noiseless progress to come even with his companion’s vantage point.
    “Sure, but then they should…they ought to pay up somehow for huntin’ their hosses on somebody else’s range. We’d be right peaceable was they to throw their hoofs outta heah. My, my, lookit them millin’ round down theah. Jus’ like a bunch of ants, ain’t they? Had us one of Cap’n Morton’s bull pups now, we could throw us a few shells as would make that nest boil right over into the gully!”
    “We’ll do something when the General gets here,” Drew promised.
    Kirby nodded. “Yes, an’ this heah General Forrest, too. He sure can ramrod a top outfit. Jus’ prances round the country so that the poor little blue bellies don’t know when he’s goin’ to pop outta some bush, makin’ war talk at ’em. You know, the kid’s gonna be hoppin’ to think he missed this heah show—”
    “At least we know where he is and what he’s doin’.”
    Kirby propped his chin on his forearm. “Jus’ ’bout now he’s sittin’ down at the table back theah in Meridian with a sight of fancy grub lookin’ back at him. How long you think he’s gonna take to bein’ corraled that