The Andre Norton Megapack - 15 Classic Novels and Short Stories

They routed out pockets of blue infantry, sending some pelting back toward the Harpeth.
    A wave of retreating Yankees crossed the shallow river. Forrest’s men dismounted to fight and took the stream on foot, the icy water splashing high. It was wild and tough, the slam of man meeting man. Drew wrested a guidon from the hold of a blue-coated trooper as Hannibal smashed into the other’s mount with bared teeth and pawing hoofs. Waving the trophy over his head and yelling, he pounded on at a knot of determined infantry, aware that he was leading others from Buford’s still-mounted headquarter’s company, and that they were going to ride right over the Yankee soldiers. Men threw away muskets and rifles, raised empty hands, scattered in frantic leaps from that charge.
    Then they were rounding up their blue-coated prisoners and Drew, the pole of the captured guidon braced in the crook of his elbow as he reloaded his revolver, realized that the shadows were thickening, that the day was almost gone.
    “Rennie!” Still holding the guidon, Drew obeyed the beckoning hand of one of the General’s aides. He put Hannibal to a rocking gallop to come up with the officer.
    “Withdrawin’—behind the river. Pass the word to gather in!”
    Drew cantered back to wave in Kirby, Boyd, and the others who had made that charge with him. It was retreat again, but they did not know then that Franklin had cost them Hood’s big gamble. Forty-five hundred men swept out of the gray forces—killed, wounded, missing, prisoners. Five irreplaceable generals were dead; six more, wounded or captured. The Army of the Tennessee was slashed, badly torn…but it was not yet destroyed.
    That night the cavalry was on the march, driven by Forrest’s tireless energy. They hit skirmishers at a garrisoned crossroads, using Morton’s field batteries to cut them a free path. And through the bitter days of early December they continued to show their teeth to some purpose.
    Blockhouses along the railroads and along the Cumberland were taken, with Murfreesboro their goal. Life was a constant alert, a plugging away of weary men, worn-out horses, bogged-down wagons, relieved now and then from the morass of exhaustion by sharp spurts of fighting, the satisfaction of rounding up a Yankee patrol or blockhouse squad, the taking of some supply train and finding in its wagons enough to give them all mouthfuls of food.
    Murfreesboro was strongly garrisoned by the enemy, too strong to be stormed. But on the morning of the seventh a Yankee detachment came out of that fort and Forrest’s men deployed to entice them farther afield. Buford’s command was lying in wait—let the blue bellies get far enough from the town and they could cut in between, perhaps even overrun the remaining garrison and accomplish what Forrest himself had believed impossible, the taking of Murfreesboro.
    They made part of that…fought their way into the town. Drew pounded along in a compact squad led by Wilkins. He saw the sergeant sway in the saddle, dropping reins, his face a clay-gray which Drew recognized of old. Snatching at the now trailing rein, Drew jerked the other’s mount out of the main push.
    The sergeant’s head turned slowly; his mouth looked almost square as he fought to say something. Then he slumped, tumbling from the saddle into the embrace of an ornamental bush as his horse clattered along the sidewalk. Drew knew he was already dead.
    Buford’s men went into Murfreesboro right enough, well into its heart. But they could not hold the town. Only that thrust was deep and well timed; it saved the whole command. For, though they did not know it yet, on the pike the infantry had broken. For the first time Forrest had seen men under his orders run from the enemy in panic-stricken terror. Only the cavalry had saved them from a wholesale rout.
    Drew trudged over the stubble of a field, leading Hannibal and Wilkins’ mount. There had been no way of bringing the sergeant’s body out of town, and Drew had reported the death to Lieutenant Traggart, who officered the scouts. He felt numb as he headed for the spark of fire which marked their temporary camp, numb not only with cold and hunger, but with all the days of cold, hunger, fighting, and marching which lay behind. It seemed to him that this war had gone on forever, and he found it very hard to remember when he had slept soundly enough not to arouse to a quick call, when he had dared to ride across a field or down a road