The Andre Norton Megapack - 15 Classic Novels and Short Stories

does report in, send him to me! Oh, by the way, Rennie, you’re promoted to sergeant to take Wilkins’ place.” The General sat gazing into the cup he held, but it was plain his thoughts were far from the current substitute for coffee.
    “Thank you, suh.”
    Buford glanced up. “Thank—? Oh, the sergeant business. Lieutenant Traggart put you in for the first openin’ some time ago. You had your trainin’ with Morgan, and you learned well. John Morgan…hard to think of him dead now. And Pat Cleburne…and all the rest. We have to close ranks and do double duty for all of them.” Again he was speaking his thoughts, Drew was sure. “Well, Sergeant Rennie, we will, we will!”
    The courier who stumbled into the room, lurched against the rude wooden table, almost rebounding from it to fall. He was nearly out on his feet, feet where broken boots were mired within inches of their tops. Drew put down his cup and jumped up to steady the man.
    “General Forrest’s compliments, suh. Will you bring up the division to join General Chalmers? The battle’s on at Nashville, and it may be necessary to form a rear guard for a retreat—” He got the message out mechanically in a croak.
    So they went to start the first move in a vast job of salvage. Buford’s men marched fast to come between a broken army and the full force of enemy pursuit. For Franklin, having bled the Army of the Tennessee of its strength, was only the beginning of chaos. Nashville crushed the remains, and the remnants fled, a crippled despairing flight of the defeated. The big gamble was totally lost.
    It was Forrest who commanded that hastily formed rear guard. Its stiff spine was his cavalry, with the addition of two brigades of infantry—Alabama and Georgia troops. Snapping at them was Union cavalry in full force. Not snapping at their heels, for it was fang to fang; the Confederates only gave ground fighting. Day darkened on the field and they were in hand-to-hand assault. A man marked musket or carbine flash to sight on the enemy.
    And as time became a nightmare of almost continuous battle, the rain lashed at the struggling men with a whip of icy water. Fighters crouched behind rail fences while the Union cavalry charged across black fields, hoofs drumming on the ground, and the sputtering fire of carbines making an uneven kind of lightning along the improvised wood barricades. Black tree trunks gleamed greasily in the wet; and here and there, out of defiance, the war whoop of the Yell cut eerily through the melee.
    After evacuating Columbia, they closed ranks and stiffened again, knowing that they must be the wall between the disorganized rabble of the army and the thrust of the Yankee forces coming confidently to finish them off. Cavalry, volunteers from the infantry, fragments of commands all, but still with enough cohesion behind a commander they trusted to fall back in fighting order…and fighting—even to countercharge when the need and the occasion offered.
    Drew, Kirby, Croff, and Webb circled around a wagon, bringing the driver to a halt, his mule team standing with drooping heads, blowing and puffing so that their ribs showed as bony bars through their wet hides.
    “Git!” The driver raised his whip as a weapon of offense until he saw where Croff’s carbine was aimed. A little pale, he sank back on the seat. A bush of whiskers hid most of his dirty face, and there was something about him which reminded Drew of the guerrilla Simmy.
    “Watta yuh want?” he whined.
    “Orders,” Drew told him shortly. “Pull over there and dump your load!”
    “Whose orders?” The driver bristled, still fingering his whip.
    “General Forrest’s. Now get to it!” Drew put snap in that. “All right, boys,” he called to the patiently waiting line of infantrymen, “here’s another one ready to carry you as soon as you empty it.”
    The ragged half company fanned forward, bearing down upon the wagon as if it were a Yankee stronghold. They swarmed over and in it, pitching the contents out on the ground in spite of the futile protests of the driver.
    “Lordy! Lordy!” One of the willing unloaders paused, his arms about a box. He was staring into its interior, bemused. “Lookit what’s heah! I ain’t seen such a lovely, lovely sight since I had me a chance on the river at that blue-belly supply ship!”
    He placed the box with exaggerated care on the ground and dived into it, coming up with a can in each hand. “Boys, we has us a