The Andre Norton Megapack - 15 Classic Novels and Short Stories

the demoralized straggle of Hood’s main command, and the Army of the Tennessee would cease to exist.
    The blue coats were shadows in the fog, the first advance wading the creek now, their rifles held high. And as that line closed up and solidified into a wall of men, a burst of flame met them face-on. It was brutal, almost one-sided. The Yankees were on their feet, pacing into a country they could not clearly distinguish. While their opponents had “picked trees” and were firing from shelter with accuracy to tear huge gaps in that line.
    Men stopped, fired, then broke, running back to the creek for the safety which might lie beyond that wash of icy water. And as they went, ranks of the defenders rose and raced after them, hooting and calling as if on some holiday hunt. Now the cavalry moved in in their turn, cutting savagely at the Union flanks, herding the dismounted Yankees back through the lines of their horse holders as the Morgan men had been driven at Cynthiana. Wild with fright, horses lunged, reared, tore free from men, and raced in and out, many to be caught by the gray coats. It was a rout and they pushed the Union troops back, snapping up prisoners, horses, equipment—whipping out like a thrown net to sweep back laden with spoil.
    These attackers were the rear guard of a badly beaten army, but they did not act that way. They rode, fought, and out-maneuvered their enemies as if they were the fresh advance of a superior invading force. And the swift, hard blows they aimed bought not only time for those they defended, but also the respect, the irritated concern of the men they turned time and time again to fight against.
    Having pushed Wilson’s troopers well back, the Confederates withdrew once more to the creek, waiting for what might be a second assault. They ate, if they were lucky enough to have rations, and rested their horses. Corn was long gone, so mounts were fed on withered leaves pulled from field shocks, from any possible forage a man could find.
    Drew led the gaunt rack of bones that was Hannibal to the creek, letting the mule lip the water. But it was plain the animal was failing. Drew shifted his saddle from that bony back to one of the horses they had gathered in during the morning. But the Yankee gelding was little improvement. In the mud, constantly cut by ice, too wet most of the time, a horse’s hoofs rotted on its feet. And the dead animals, many of them put out of their misery by their riders, marked with patches of black, brown, gray, the path of the army. A man had to harden himself to that suffering, just as he had to harden himself to all the other miseries of war.
    War was boredom, and it was also quick, exciting action such as they had had that morning. It was fighting gunboats along the river; it was the heat and horror of that slope at Harrisburg, the cold and horror of Franklin. It was riding with men such as Anson Kirby, being a part of a fluid weapon forged and used well by a commander such as Bedford Forrest. It was a way of life.…
    The scout’s hand paused in his currying of Hannibal as that idea struck him for the first time. Now he thought he could understand why Red Springs and all it stood for was so removed and meaningless, was lost in the dim past. To Drew Rennie now, the squad, his round of duties, the army—these were home, not a brick house set in the midst of green fields and smooth paddocks. The house was empty of what he had found elsewhere—acceptance of Drew Rennie as a person in his own right, friendship, an occupation which answered the restlessness which had ridden him into rebellion. He stood staring at nothing as he thought about all that.
    Kirby startled him out of his self-absorption. “Butt your saddle, amigo! We’re hittin’ the trail again.”
    As he swung up on the Yankee horse and took Hannibal’s lead halter, Drew asked a question:
    “Ever seem to you, Anse, like the army’s home? Like it’s always been, and you’ve always been a part of it?”
    Kirby shot him a quick glance. “Guess we all kinda feel that sometimes. Gits so you can hardly remember how it was ’fore you joined up. Me, I sometimes wonder if I jus’ dreamed Texas outta m’ head. Only I keep remindin’ myself that someday I can go back an’ see if it’s jus’ the way I dreamed it. Kinda nice to think ’bout that.”
    They cut away from the main line of march, ranging out and ahead. Stragglers from the army must be moved forward, directed. And they came