The Andre Norton Megapack - 15 Classic Novels and Short Stories

Shannon. We’ll take him.”
    “An’ th’ other one, Colonel, suh?”
    Kitchell—if Kitchell that shadow was—came out into the moonlight. He wore the gray shell jacket of a Confederate cavalryman, and the light glinted on the cords of a field officer’s hat.
    “Who are you, boy?” He faced to the left and Drew looked in the same direction.
    Anse stood there, the barrel of aColt pushed against him just above the belt line.
    “Anson Kirby.”
    Shannon laughed again. “’Nother big man—says he rode with General Forrest!”
    “That true, Kirby, you were one of General Forrest’s command?”
    “It’s true,” Anse drawled. “Mean’s nothin’ now, th’ war’s long gone, hombre.”
    “Maybe it’s over back east—not here! You stayed to the end, boy?”
    “Yankees took me prisoner before that.”
    “Sergeant Wayne!”
    “Yes, suh?” Anse’s captor responded.
    “Put him to sleep!”
    CHAPTER 18
    Drew lunged and then reeled back as Shannon laid the barrel of his Colt alongside the Kentuckian’s head. He was half dazed from the blow but he managed to get out his protest.
    “You murderin’ butcher!”
    “Kirby ain’t dead, he’ll just have a sore head tomorrow,” Kitchell returned, as the man he called Sergeant Wayne straightened up from the Texan’s crumpled form. “And you—you keep a civil tongue in your head when addressing a superior officer. Shannon, no more of that!” The order stayed a second blow.
    “Oughta shot him for real, suh.”
    “No. Not a man who rode with General Forrest.” Kitchell hesitated and then added, “We’ll be long gone before he wakes. Tie this one in the saddle if he can’t hang on by himself. You may be right, Shannon, about him having his uses in the future.”
    “Say, Colonel, this here gray hoss, he’s got hisself all hurted bad. Can’t nohow go ’long with us. Want I should shoot ’im?” That whine came from the meadow where they had left the horses.
    “No, leave him. Won’t do Kirby any good and that’s a fine horse—might just see him again some day. Sergeant, you fill all the canteens; take any supplies you find here. Then we’ll move out.”
    Drew, his wrists corded to the saddle horn, both ankles lashed to the stirrups, swayed in the saddle as Shannon took the reins of his horse and led it along. The pain in his head and the agony in his side resulting from even the most shallow breaths, brought on a kind of red mist which shut off most of the surrounding night. He had no idea how the outlaws had managed to jump the camp. And who was the extra man with them now? Only three had escaped during the horse fight, but four rode in the present party. He could not think straight; it was all he could do to will himself to hold on and ride.
    Drew was thirsty, so thirsty his tongue was a cottony mass in his mouth. The day was light and sunny now, and they were single-filing through a region of bright, colored rock wind-worn into pinnacles, spires, and mesas. There was no water, no green of living things—just rock and sun and the terrible need for a drink.
    Maybe he moaned; Drew could not be sure. He saw the man riding ahead turn in the saddle. Blue eyes, the man had, with no honest life in them. Once before the Kentuckian had seen eyes such as those. It had been in a cabin—a cabin back in Tennessee in the dead of winter. A young bushwhacker wearing Union blue, with a murderer’s eyes in his boyish face, had watched Drew with the same incurious glance which held nothing of humankind. Shannon; the bushwhacker—two of the same killer breed. But to recognize that no longer mattered. Nothing mattered save water.…
    His mount stopped. Drew looked dully at the ground. Then his attention shifted to the man standing beside his horse.
    “Down with you, fella.”
    Gray jacket, torn and threadbare—yet gray. Drew frowned.
    “Sergeant Rennie, Buford’s Scouts.…” He tried to identify himself to this strange Confederate, but the words that got out were a thick mumble. Then, somehow he was on the ground and the man was holding a canteen to his mouth, dribbling blessed liquid over that choking cotton. Drew drank.
    “Sergeant Rennie…must report…General Buford.…” He was able to talk better now.
    “Wot’s that he’s sayin’?”
    “Somethin’ ’bout some General Buford. Don’t know who he is.”
    “Buford? Buford rode with Forrest.” Those words were spoken by a different voice, sharper, better educated.
    Drew opened his eyes,