The Andre Norton Megapack - 15 Classic Novels and Short Stories

know. Look there!”
    From their screen of cover they watched a blue cavalry patrol trot along a lane.
    “Headin’ for th’ home corral, an’ lookin’ twice over each shoulder while they do it,” commented Kirby. “Was we to let out a yell now, they’d drag it so fast they’d dig their hoofs in clear down to the stirrup leathers.”
    Drew shook his head. “Those are General Wilson’s men…can’t be sure with them that they wouldn’t come poundin’ up, sabers out, tryin’ to take a prisoner or two. Anyway, we don’t stir them up, that’s orders.”
    Kirby sighed. “Too bad. Cold as it is, a little fightin’ would warm an hombre up some. You know, for sure, the only way we’re gonna git outta this heah war is to fight our way out.”
    Croff reined his patient mount around. “The big fight is comin’—”
    “Nashville?” Drew asked, aware of a somber shadow closing in on them all.
    The Cherokee shrugged. “Nashville? Maybe. The signs are not good.”
    “It’s when the signs ain’t good,” Kirby observed, “that fellas lean on their hardware twice as hard. Heard tell of gunfighters knotchin’ their irons for each man they take in a shootout. Me, I’m kinda workin’ the same idea for battles. An’ I have me a pretty good tally—Shiloh, Lebanon, Chickamauga, Cynthiana twice, Harrisburg, an’ a mixed herd o’ little ones. Gittin’ pretty long, that line o’ knotches.” His voice trailed away as he watched the disappearing Yankee cavalrymen, but somehow Drew thought he was seeing either more or less than blue-coated men riding under a sullen December sky.
    Yes, a long tally of battles, and all those small fights in between which sometimes a man could remember better than the big ones, remember too often and too well.
    “The wagons pulled out of the Letterworth place this mornin’,” Drew said. “They were gone when I stopped by at noon—”
    “Goin’ south? Any news of the kid?”
    “They took him along.” There was a faint ray of comfort in the thought that Boyd had been judged well enough to be moved with the rest of the sick and wounded up from the temporary hospitals and shelters in the neighborhood. The seriously ill certainly could not be moved. But he wished he could have seen the boy; there was no telling when and where they would meet again.
    “Well,” Kirby pointed out, “if the doc took him, it means they thought he was able to make it. He’s young an’ tough. Bet he’ll be back in line soon.”
    “They’ll travel slow,” Croff added. “Drivin’ hogs and cattle and all those wagons, they ain’t goin’ to push.”
    Forrest, along with his prisoners, wagons, sick and wounded, the barefoot, and dismounted men, was driving four-footed supplies south on his way to the Tennessee River, and he was not likely to risk or relinquish any of the spoil. Buford’s Kentuckians lay in wait along the Cumberland, hoping perhaps to echo, if only faintly, their earlier successes against the gunboats and supply transports. And at Nashville a battle was shaping.…
    Drew had ridden in to report when the first of the new retreat orders came. General Buford, who had invited Drew up to the fire, sat listening as the scout held his stiff hands to the blaze and listed the sum total of the day’s comings and goings as far as Yankee patrols were concerned.
    “No sign of that missin’ scout?” the General asked when Drew’s account was finished. “Pour yourself a cup of that, boy! It ain’t coffee. In fact, I don’t inquire too deeply into what Lish does bring me to drink nowadays. But it’s kind of comfortin’ to have something warm under your belt in this weather. Blame-coldest, wettest winter I ever did see! No sign of Weatherby?” he repeated as Drew sipped from the tin cup his superior had pushed into his hands, not only grateful for the warmth spreading through his insides, but also for the heat of the container he cupped between his palms.
    “No, suh, no sign at all.”
    “Hmm. That’s strange.” The General edged his solid bulk forward on his stool, which creaked as his weight shifted. He poured himself a cup of the same brew he had urged upon the scout. “Those were guerrillas right enough. Scum from both sides, just out like buzzards to pick up what they could. Only they were too far into our lines…and bolder than most. Doesn’t fit somehow.”
    “Might be cover for Union scouts after all, suh?”
    Buford shrugged. “Not very likely. If Weatherby