The Andre Norton Megapack - 15 Classic Novels and Short Stories

that?” Boyd’s eyes held some of the old blaze as he turned the hat around in his hands. “And what I told you is the truth. The surgeon said it won’t hurt me any to ride with the boys when you pull out. General Buford’s ordered to Selma and Dr. Cowan’s sister lives there. He has a letter from her sayin’ I can rest up at her house if I need to. But I won’t! I haven’t coughed once today, that’s the honest truth, Drew. And when you go, the Yankees are goin’ to move in here. I don’t want to go to a Yankee prison, like Anse—”
    Drew’s shoulders hunched in an involuntary tightening of muscles as he stared straight out of the window at nothing. Boyd had insisted from the first that the Texan must be a prisoner. Drew schooled himself into the old shell, the shell of trying not to let himself care.
    “General Buford said I was to ride in one of the headquarters wagons. He needs an extra driver. That’s doin’ something useful, not just sittin’ around listenin’ to a lot of bad news!” The boy’s tone was almost raw in protest.
    And some of Boyd’s argument made sense. After the command moved out he might be picked up by a roving Yankee patrol, while Selma was still so far behind the Confederate lines that it was safe, especially with Forrest moving between it and Wilson.
    “Mind you, take things easy! Start coughin’ again, and you’ll have to stay behind!” Drew warned.
    “Drew, are things really so bad for us?”
    The scout came away from the window. “Maybe the General can hold off Wilson…this time. But it can’t last. Look at things straight, Boyd. We’re short on horses; more’n half the men are dismounted. And more of them desert every day. Men are afraid they’ll be sent into the Carolinas to fight Sherman, and they don’t want to be so far from home. The women write or get messages through about how hard things are at home. A man can march with an empty belly for himself and somehow stick it out, but when he hears about his children starvin’ he’s apt to forget all the rest. We’re whittled ’way down, and there’s no way under Heaven of gettin’ what we need.”
    “I heard some of the boys talkin’ about drawin’ back to Texas.”
    “Sure, we’ve all heard that big wishin’, but that’s all it is, just wishin’. The Yankees wouldn’t let up even if they crowded us clear back until we’re knee-deep in the Rio Grande. It’s close to the end now—”
    “No, it ain’t!” Boyd flared, more than a shade of the old stubbornness back in his voice. “It ain’t goin’ to be the end as long as one of us can ride and hold a carbine! They can have horses and new boots, their supplies, and all their men. We ain’t scared of any Yankee who ever rode down the pike! If you yell at ’em now, they’d beat it back the way they came.”
    Drew smiled tiredly. “Guess we’re on our way now to do some of that yellin’.” The end was almost in sight; every trooper in or out of the saddle knew it. Only some, like Boyd, would not admit it. “Remember what I say, Boyd. Take it slow and ride easy!”
    Boyd picked up Drew’s hat again, holding it in the sunlight coming through the window. The cord was a band of raw gold, gleaming brighter, perhaps, because of the shabbiness of the hat it now graced.
    “You don’t ride easy with the General,” he said softly. “You ride tall and you ride proud!”
    Drew took the hat from him. Out of the direct sunbeam, the band still seemed to hold a bit of fire.
    “Maybe you do,” he agreed soberly.
    Now Boyd was smiling in turn. “You carry the General’s hatband right up so those blue bellies can get the shine in their eyes! We’ll lam ’em straight back to the Tennessee again—see if we don’t!”
    But almost three weeks later the Yankees were not back at the Tennessee; they were dressing their lines before the horseshoe bend of the defending breastworks of Selma. Everything which could have gone wrong with Forrest’s plans had done just that. A captured courier had given his enemies the whole framework of his strategy. Then the cavalry had tried to hold the blue flood at Bogler’s Creek by a tearing frantic battle, whirling Union sabers against Confederate revolvers in the hands of veterans. It had been a battle from which Forrest himself broke free through a lane opened by the action of his own weapons and the concentrated fury of his escort.
    Out of the city had steamed the last train while a stream of civilian