The Andre Norton Megapack - 15 Classic Novels and Short Stories

outside. A man screamed shrilly. Then a horse cried in pain. Drew heard the pounding of hoofs, and in the loft a quick shuffling. More shots.…
    Boyd laughed hysterically, and then coughed, until he bent over the Colt he still grasped, gasping. Drew steadied him against his shoulder, trying to picture for himself what was happening outside. It sounded very much as if Kirby’s relief force had arrived and that the “cap’n” and his gang were in retreat.
    “Drew! Everythin’ all right?” There was no mistaking Kirby’s voice.
    He had brought not only four other scouts from the camp, but also Lieutenant Traggart and the doctor. And as the major portion of that relief force crowded into the room Drew leaned back against the wall, very glad to let other authority take over.
    “Guerrilla scum,” was the lieutenant’s verdict on their prisoners. “They say they’re Union…or ours, whichever works best at the time. There’s another one dead out there, and he’s wearing one of our cavalry jackets!”
    “Officer’s?” Drew wondered if they had picked off the “cap’n.”
    “No, you thinkin’ he was this renegade officer Kirby was talkin’ about? I don’t think this is the one. He’s a pretty nasty-lookin’ specimen, though. Four of ’em at least got away. We’ll take these two into camp and see what they can tell us. The General will be interested. I’d say this one’s a Yankee deserter.” He studied Jas’.
    The young man in the blue jacket spat, and one of the scouts hooked his fingers in the other’s collar, jerking him roughly to his feet.
    “Mount and start back with them!” Traggart ordered. “How’s the boy, suh?”
    Boyd had wilted back into his blankets when the stimulation of the fight was gone. He was still conscious, but his coughing shook his whole body.
    “Lung fever, unless he gets the right care.” The surgeon was going about his business with dispatch. “I hate to move him, but there’s no sense in remaining here as a target for more of this trash.” He glanced at Jas’ and Hatch impersonally. “Lucky we brought the wagon. Tell Henderson to bring it up. We’ll take him to the Letterworth house for now—”
    Reeling a little when he tried to walk, Drew found himself sharing the accommodation of the wagon with Boyd, a canvas slung across them to keep off the gusts of rain. He fell asleep as they bumped along, unable to fight off exhaustion any longer.
    Twenty-four hours later he was back on duty with the advance. Boyd was housed in such comfort as any could hope to find, and the cavalry was on the move. Buford’s men were to picket along the Cumberland River. There was a new feel to the army. Drew sensed it as he rode with the small headquarters detachment. Empty saddles, too many of them, and the growing belief—evidenced in mutters passed from man to man—that they were engaged in a nearly hopeless bid.
    Franklin, which for Drew had been a wild gallop across some fields, a strip of cloth seized from the enemy to set beneath a guidon of their own, had been a major disaster for the Army of the Tennessee. Forrest’s energy and drive kept the cavalry a sharp-edged weapon, still to be used with telling effect. But they all sensed the clouds gathering over their heads, not those laden with the eternal chill rain, but ones which carried with them a coming night.
    It was so cold that men had to use both hands to cock their revolvers. And Drew saw Croff swing from the saddle, draw his belt knife to cut the hoof from a dead horse. The Cherokee glanced up as he looped his grisly trophy to his saddle horn.
    “Need the shoe,” he explained briefly. “Runner has one worn pretty thin.” He patted the drooping neck of his mount.
    Hannibal walked around the dead horse carefully. The mule was only a skeleton copy of the sturdy, well-cared-for animal Drew had ridden out of Cadiz. But he would keep going until he dropped, and his rider knew it.
    “Any trace of Weatherby?” Drew asked. The disappearance of the other Cherokee scout at the cabin battle had continued as a mystery for their own small company. None of those who had known him could credit the Indian being taken unawares by the guerrilla force. He had vanished somewhere in the dark of the night, and none of their searching a day later, interrupted by orders to move, had turned up a clue.
    “Not yet,” Croff answered. “He may have made too wide a circle and run into a Yankee picket. Someday, perhaps, we shall