The Andre Norton Megapack - 15 Classic Novels and Short Stories

none.”
    He was right. Both sides of the turnpike over which the broken army dragged its way south were heavily wooded, and the road threaded through a bewildering maze of narrow valleys, gorges, and ravines—just the type of territory made for defensive ambushes to rock reckless Yankees out of their saddles. The turnpike was to be left for the use of the rear guard of fighting men, while the wagon trains and straggling mass of the disorganized Army of the Tennessee split up to follow the dirt roads toward Bainbridge and the Tennessee River.
    “Know somethin’?” Webb demanded suddenly, hours later, as they were on their way back with their hard-found quota of oxen and protesting owners and drivers. “This heah’s Christmas Eve—tomorrow’s Christmas! Ain’t had a chance to count up the days till now.”
    “Sounds like we is gonna have us a present—from the Yankees. Hear that, amigos?” Kirby rose in his stirrups, facing into the wind.
    They could hear it right enough, the sharp spatter of rifle and musket fire, the deeper sound of field guns. It was a clamor they had listened to only too often lately, but now it was forceful enough to suggest that this was more than just a skirmish.
    Having seen their oxen into the hands of the teamsters, they settled down to the best pace they could get from their mounts. But before they reached the scene of action they caught the worst of the news from the wounded men drifting back.
    “…saw him carried off myself,” a thin man, with a bandaged arm thrust into the front of his jacket, told them. “Th’ Yankees got ’cross Richland Creek and flanked us. General Buford got it then.”
    Drew leaned from his saddle to demand the most important answer. “How bad?” Abram Buford might not have had the dash of Morgan, the electric personality of Forrest, but no one could serve in his headquarters company without being well aware of the steadfast determination, the regard for his men, the bulldog courage which made him Forrest’s dependable, rock-hard supporter in the most dangerous action.
    “They said pretty bad. General Chalmers, he took command.”
    “Christmas present,” Kirby repeated bleakly. “Looks like Christmas ain’t gonna be so merry this year.”
    They had lost Buford and they were forced back again, disputing savagely—hand to hand, revolver against saber, carbine against carbine—to Pulaski. Seven miles, and the enemy made to pay dearly for every foot of that distance.
    It was Christmas morning, and Drew chewed on a crust of corn pone, old and rock-hard. He wondered dully if his capacity to hold more than a few crumbs had completely vanished. And he allowed himself for one or two long moments to remember Christmas at Oak Hill—where he had managed to spend a more festive day than at Red Springs in the chilly neighborhood of his grandfather. Christmas at Oak Hill…Sheldon, Boyd, Cousin Merry, Cousin Jeff, too, before he died back in ’59.
    Drew opened his eyes and saw a fire, not the flames of brandy flickering above a plum pudding, or the quiet, welcoming fire on a hearth, but rather a violent burst of yellow-and-red destruction punctured by bursts of exploding ammunition. These were the stores Forrest had ordered destroyed because the men could transport them no further.
    The word was out that they were going to make a firm stand near Anthony’s Hill, again to the south. And they had been hard at work there to fashion a stopper which would either suck the venturesome enemy into a bad mauling, as Forrest hoped, or else just hold him to buy more time.
    There the turnpike descended sharply with a defile between two ridges, ridges which now housed Morton’s battery, ready to blast road and hollow below. Felled timber, rails, stones, anything which could shelter a man from lead and steel long enough for him to shoot his share back, had been woven together, and a mounted reserve waited behind to prevent flanking. A good stout trap—the kind Forrest had used to advantage before and which had enough teeth in it to crush the unwary.
    “Dilly, Dilly, come and be killed,” Drew repeated to himself that tag from some childhood rhyme or story as he waited at the mouth of the gorge to play his own part in the action to come. A small force of mounted men, scouts, and volunteers from various commands were bait. It was their job to make a short stiff resistance, then fly in headlong retreat, enticing the Union riders into the waiting