Ride Proud, Rebel! by Andre Norton (best romantic books to read TXT) 📖

of Wilson's men out of that big army he's supposed to be gatherin' to hit us south. It's the old game Morgan played."

Croff grunted. "It may be old, but I've seen it work. All right, we parole prisoners and light out cross-country after a strike."

"I've been thinkin'—" Kirby was checking the loading of his Colts—"if we start heah, we can sorta work our way in, coyote right up close to Franklin. They'll be expectin' us to light out for the home range, not go jinglin' in to wheah they've forted up. Might raise a sight of smoke that way. Git Wilson's boys on the prod, for sure."

"Franklin—?" Croff repeated.

"Little below, maybe. From what that boy said, those bushwhackers move around pretty free," Drew reminded him, certain the Cherokee was back to the desire to search for Weatherby.

"We'll see what kind of luck we have along this road, Injun-scouted. You take first watch, Injun?"

"Yeah." Drew heard rather than saw the Cherokee leave their camp, bound for a lookout point. The other three bedded down, anxious to snatch as much rest as possible.

Long before dawn they were on the move again, threading through the winter-seared woods. Croff brought them out unerringly behind a sagging rail fence well masked with the skeleton brush of the season. There was equally good cover on the other side of the road. Kirby climbed the fence, investigating a dark splotch on the surface of the lane.

"Fresh droppin's. Been a sight of trailin' 'long heah recent."

The rest was elementary. There was no need for orders. Croff and Webb holed up on one side of the lane well apart; Drew and Kirby did the same on the other. Waiting would be sheer boredom and in this weather the height of discomfort.

The gray of early morning sharpened the land about them. Boyd would have enjoyed this game of tweaking a wildcat's tail. Drew chewed his lower lip, tasting the salt of sweat, the grit of road dust. Just now was no time to think of Boyd; he must concentrate on the business before him.

He heard the sharp chittering of an aroused squirrel, repeated in two shrill bursts. But his own ear close to the ground told him they were to expect company. There was the regular thud of horses' hoofs, the sound of mounts ridden in company and at an even pace. The only remaining question was whether it was a Union patrol and small enough for the four of them to handle.

One, two ... two more ... five of them, topping a small rise. A cavalry patrol ... and the odds were not too impossible.

Drew sighted sergeant's stripes on the leader's jacket. It would depend upon how alert that noncom was. Wilson was drawing in new levies, so these men could be new to the district, even green in the army.

The Yankee sergeant was past Kirby's post now, and after him the first two of his squad. He paid no attention to the bushes.

Webb's carbine and Kirby's Colts cracked in what seemed like a single spat of sound. One of the troopers in the rear shouted, grabbing at a point high on his shoulder, the other one was thrown as his horse reared, its upraised forefeet striking another man from the saddle as he endeavored to turn his mount.

Drew fired, and saw the sergeant's carbine fall as he caught at the saddle horn, his arm hanging limp.

"Surrender!" As Drew shouted that order into the tangle below, he leaped to the right. A single shot clipped through the bushes where he had been, answered by a blast from Webb.

Then hands were up, men stared white-faced and sullen at the fence behind which might be a whole company of the enemy. Drew came into the open, the Spencer he had taken from Jas' covering the sergeant. For the expression on the noncom's face suggested that, wounded as he was, he would like nothing better than to carry on the struggle—with Drew as his principal target.

"Go ahead, get it over with!" He spat at Drew.

For a second Drew was bewildered, and then he suddenly guessed that the Union soldier expected to be shot out of hand.

His anger was hot. "We don't shoot prisoners!"

"No? The evidence is not in favor of that statement," the Yankee spoke dryly, his accent and choice of words that of an educated man.

"What brand you think we're wearin', fella?" Kirby had come out of concealment, his Colt steady on the captives.

"Guerrillas, I'd say," the sergeant returned hardily. Drew realized then that their mixture of clothing must have stamped them as the very outlaws they wanted to hunt down, as far as the Union troopers were concerned.

"Now that's wheah you're sure jumpin' your fences," Kirby's half grin vanished. "We're General Forrest's men, not guerrillas. Or ain't you never heard tell of Forrest's Cavalry? Seems like anyone wearin' blue an' forkin' a hoss ought to know who's been chasin' him to Hell an' gone over most of Tennessee. Lucky I ain't in a sod-pawin' mood, hombre, or I might jus' want to see how a blue-belly sarge looks without an ear on his thick skull, or maybe try a few Comanche tricks of hair trimmin'! Guerrillas—!"

The Union sergeant glanced from Kirby and Drew to his own men. One was sitting on the edge of the road, nursing his head between his hands. Another had his hand to his shoulder, and the sticky red of fresh blood showed between his fingers. The two others, very young, stood nervously, their hands high. If the Yankee noncom was thinking of trying something, his material was not promising. Drew broke the moment of silence with a warning.

"You're surrounded, subject to fire from both sides, Sergeant! I suggest surrender. You will be treated as prisoners of war and given parole. We are from General Forrest's command. We're scouts. Believe me, if we had wished to, we could have shot every one of you out of the saddle before you knew we were here. Guerrillas would have done just that."

The logic of that argument reached the Union sergeant. He still eyed Drew straightly, but there was a ruefulness rather than hostile defiance in his voice as he asked:

"What do you plan to do with us?"

"Nothing." Drew was crisp. "Give us your parole, leave your arms, your horses, your rations—if you are carrying any. Then you are free to go."

"We've been ordered not to take parole," the sergeant objected.

"General Forrest hasn't given any orders not to grant it," Drew countered. "As far as I am concerned, you can take it, we'll accept your word."

"All right." The other dismounted awkwardly, and with one hand unbuckled his saber, dropping his belt and gun.

Kirby went among the men gathering up their weapons. Then he and Drew tended the slight wounds of their enemies.

"You'll both do until you can get to town," Drew told them. "And you've a road and plenty of daylight to help you foot it...."

To Drew's surprise, the sergeant suddenly laughed. "This ain't going to sit well with the captain. He swore all you Rebs were run out of here a couple of weeks ago."

"You can assure him he's wrong." Drew saw a chance to confuse the enemy. "We're very much around. You'll be seem' a lot of us from now on, a lot more."

They watched the squad in blue, now afoot, plod on down the road. When they were out of sight around a bend, Webb and Croff came out of hiding to inspect the spoil. Unfortunately the Yankees had not possessed rations, but their opponents acquired five horses, five Springfields, four sabers, and three Colts, as well as welcome rounds of ammunition—a fine haul.

Croff methodically smashed the stocks of the Springfields against a rock and pitched the ruined weapons back of the fence. They had seen during the retreat just how useless those rifles were for mounted men. The sabers were broken the same way, but the rest of the plunder was shared.

Webb appropriated one of the captured mounts. They stripped the others of their gear, taking what they wanted in the way of blankets and saddle equipment, and were putting the horses on leading ropes when a volley of shots ripping through the early morning froze them. Croff whirled to face the road down which the Yankees had vanished.

"Came from that direction—"

They mounted, taking not the open road but a cross route the Cherokee indicated. Coming out on the crest of a slope, they were above another of those hollows through which the road ran. And in that way lay still blue figures. Drew's carbine swung up as men broke from ambush and headed toward those forms. No Confederate force would have wantonly butchered unarmed and wounded men, nor would the Yankees. Which left the scum they both hated—the bushwhackers!

Just as the crack of the murder guns had earlier torn the quiet, so did the Confederate answer come now. Three of those advancing on their victims dropped. One more cried out, staggering toward the concealing bush. Then more broke from cover beyond, going into flight up the other rise.

"Croff! Webb! After them!" The Cherokee scout was already booting his horse into a run.

Drew and Kirby reached the road together. Slipping from Hannibal, Drew knelt by the Union sergeant, turning the man over as gently as he could. But there was no hope. The Yankee's eyes opened; he stared up with a cold and terrible hate.

"Shot us ... after all ... murder—" he mouthed.

"No!" Drew cried his protest. "Not us—"

But that head rolled on his arm, and Drew was forced to swallow the fact that the other had died believing that treachery. Kirby arose from the examination of the rest of the bodies.

"Got 'em all. Musta bin as easy as shootin' weanlin's. They didn't have a chance! We got three—" He made a circle about one of the dead guerrillas—"but that don't balance none."

Drew lowered the dead sergeant to the surface of the road.

"It sure doesn't!" he said bleakly. "We'll go after them—if we have to ride clear to the Ohio!"

16 Missing in Action

"I've counted twenty at least," Webb said over his shoulder. The scouts were belly-flat in cover, looking down into a scene of some activity. It almost resembled the cavalry camp they had left behind them to the south. There were the same shelters ingeniously constructed of brush and logs and a picket line for horses and mules. This hole must harbor a high percentage of deserters from both armies.

"Only four of us," Kirby remarked. "'Course I know we're the tall men of the army, but ain't this runnin' the odds a mite high?"

Croff chuckled. "He's got a point there, Sarge."

"Seein' as how what happened back there on the road could be pinned on us, we have to do something," Drew returned. This whole section of country would boil over when those bodies were discovered. "And we ain't the only ones. Any of our boys comin' through here on furlough are like to be jumped for it if the Yankees catch them."

"That's the truth if you ever spoke it, Sarge. I can see some hangin's comin' out of that ambush."

"Theah's still twenty hombres down theah, an' four of us. We can pick off a few from up heah, but they ain't gonna wait around to git sniped. So, how we gonna spread ourselves—?"

Kirby's was the unanswerable question. They had trailed the fugitives from the ambush back to this tangled wilderness with infinite caution, bypassing two sentries so well posted and concealed they had been forced to judge that the motley collection of guerrillas were as experienced at this trade as the scouts. There was no time to try to round up any other bands of homing Confederates or prowling scouts, even if they knew where they could be located. This was really a Yankee problem partly as well.

Because of that murderous ambush, the local Union commander should be out for blood. But how could they get into enemy hands the information about this rats' nest?

"We can't take 'em ourselves, and we've no time to round up any of the boys who might be passin' through."

"So we jus' leave heah an' forgit it?" Webb demanded.

"There's another way—risky, but it might work. Take the Yankees off our trail and put them to doing something for us...."

"Sic 'em in heah, eh?" Kirby was watching Drew with dancing eyes. "How?"

"Yeah, how? Ride up to their camp an' say, 'We know wheah at theah's some bushwhackers, come'n see'?" Webb asked scornfully. "After this mornin' they won't even listen to a truce flag, I'm thinkin'."

Croff nodded. "That's right."

"Supposin' those sentries we passed back there were knocked out and two of us took their places and the other two then laid a trail leadin' here?"

"Showin' themselves for bait, plainlike?" Kirby asked.

"If we