Ride Proud, Rebel Part 28

"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 fas.h.i.+on 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 ambush.

"Who's this heah Dilly?" Kirby wanted to know. "Some Yankee?"

Drew laughed. "Might be." He sagged a little in the saddle. Sleep during the past ten days had come in small s.n.a.t.c.hes. Twice he had caught naps lying in stalled wagons waiting for fresh teams to arrive, and both times he had been awakened out of dreams he did not care to remember, to ride with gummy eyelids and a sense of being so tired that there was a fog between him and most of the world. It was two days now since Buford had been wounded. The news was that the big Kentucky general would recover. And it was a whole twenty-four hours since he watched the Christmas fires Forrest had lit in Pulaski, the fires which had devoured what they no longer had the animal power to save.

Here in the mouth of the gorge the silence was almost oppressive. He heard a smothered cough from one of the waiting men, a horse blow in a kind of wheeze. Then came the call of a bugle from down the road.

Theirs, not ours, Drew thought. Hannibal shook his head vigorously, as if bitten by a sadly out-of-season fly. The captain commanding their company of bait signaled an advance. And they followed the familiar pattern of weaving in and out of cover to enlarge the appearance of their force.

Firing rent the quiet of a few minutes earlier. Drew snapped a shot at the Yankee guidon bearer, certain he saw the man flinch. Then, with the rest, he sent Hannibal on the best run the mule could hold, back into the waiting mouth of the hollow. They pounded on, eager to present such a picture of wholesale rout that the Union men would believe a soft strike, perhaps an important bag of prisoners, lay ahead, needing only to be scooped in.

Perhaps it was the reputation for wiliness Forrest had earned which put the Yankee commander on his guard. There was no headlong chase down the ambush valley as they had hoped and planned to intercept. Instead, dismounted men came at a careful, suspicious pace, cored around a single fieldpiece, a small answer to their trap.

But when that blue stream funneled into the hollow, the jaws snapped away. Canister from Morton's guns laid a scythe along the Union advance, cutting men to ground level. The Yell shrilled along the slopes, and men jumped trees and rail barricades, pouring down in an a.s.sault wave not to be turned aside. The Yankee gun, its eight-horse team, men who stood now with their hands high, horses for riders who were no longer to need them. Three hundred of those horses from the lines behind the dismounted skirmishers--far more valuable than any inanimate treasure to men who had lost mounts--one hundred and fifty prisoners.

Kirby rode back from the eddy in the road, his mouth a wide grin splitting his skin-and-bone face. He had a length of heavy blue cloth across the saddle before him and was smoothing it lovingly with one chilblained hand.

"Got me one of them theah overcoats," he announced. "Sure fine, like to thank General Wilson for it personal. If I could git me in ropin'

distance of him to do that."

The small success of the venture was not a complete victory. His dismounted cavalry overrun or thrust back, Wilson brought up infantry, and they settled down to a dogged attack on the entrenched Confederates on the ridges.

Union forces bored in steadily, slamming the weight of regiments against the flanks of the defenders. And slowly but inexorably, that turning movement pushed the Confederates in and back. Drew, riding courier, brought up to the ridge where Forrest sat on the big gray King Phillip, statue-still, immovable.

"General, suh, the enemy is in our rear--"

Forrest turned his head abruptly, the statue coming to life. And there was impatience in the answer which was certainly meant for all the doubters at large and not to one sergeant of scouts relaying a message.

"Well, ain't we in theirs?"

General Armstrong, his men out of ammunition, made his own plea to fall back. But the orders were to hold. Hood was at Sugar Creek with the army; he must have time to cross. It was late afternoon when Forrest at last ordered the withdrawal, and they made it in an orderly fas.h.i.+on.

Through the night the rear guard toiled on and a little after midnight they reached the Sugar in their turn. Drew splashed cold water on his face, not only to keep awake, but to rinse off the mud and grime of days of riding and fighting. He could not remember when he had had his clothes off, had bathed or worn a clean s.h.i.+rt. Now he smeared his jacket sleeve across his face in place of a towel and tramped wearily back to the fire where his own small squad had settled in for what rest they could get.

Croff was sniffing the air, hound fas.h.i.+on.

"Ain't gonna do you no good," Webb told him sourly. "Theah ain't nothin'

in the pot, nor no pot neither--'less Kirby 'membered to stow it last time. Lordy, m' back an' m' middle are clean growed together, seems like."

"Feast your eyes, man! Jus' feast your eyes!" Kirby unrolled his prized coat. In its folds was a greasy package which did indeed give up a treasure--a good four-inch-thick slab of bacon squeezed in with a block of odd, brownish-yellow stuff.

They crowded around, dazzled by the sight of bacon, real bacon. Then Drew pointed at the accompanying block.

"What's that? New kind of hardtack?"

"Nope. That theah's vegetables." Kirby spoke with authority.

"Vegetables?"

"Yeah. These heah Yankee commissaries bin workin' out new tricks all th'

time. They takes a lot of stuff like turnips, carrots, beets, all such truck, an' press it into cakes like this. 'Course you have to be careful. I heard tell as how one blue belly, he chawed the stuff dry an'

then drank water; it bloated him up like a cow in green cane. Poor fella, he jus' natch.e.l.ly suffered from bein' so greedy. But you drop it in water an' give it a boil...."

"Looks like hay," Drew commented without enthusiasm. He picked it up and sniffed dubiously.

"Man," Webb said, "if the Yankees can eat hay, then we can too. An' I'm hungry 'nough to chaw gra.s.s, were you to show me a tidy patch an' say go to it! How come you know all 'bout this hay-stuff, Anse?"

"We found some of it on the _Mazeppa_. The lieutenant told us how it worked--"

"The _Mazeppa_!" Webb breathed reverently, and there was a moment of silence as they all recalled the richness of that capture. "We sh.o.r.e could do with another boat like that one. Too bad this heah crick ain't big 'nough to float a nice bunch of supplies in, right now."

Kirby produced the pail dedicated to the preparation of coffee. But since coffee was so far in the past they could not even remember its smell or taste, no one protested his putting the vegetable block to the test by setting it boiling in the sacred container.

"Don't look like much." Webb fanned away smoke to peer into the pail.

Kirby had also produced a skillet, made from half of a Yankee canteen, into which he was slicing the bacon.

"It's fillin'," he retorted sharply. "An' you didn't pay for it, did you? A man who slangs th' cook--an' the grub--now maybe he ain't gonna find his plate waitin' when it's time to eat--"

Webb drew back hurriedly. "I ain't sayin' nothin', nothin' at all!"

Drew grinned. "That's being wise, Will. Times when a man can talk himself right out of a good piece of luck. It's hot and fillin', and you got bacon to give it some taste...."

With hot food under their belts, a fire, and no sign of orders to move, they were content. Kirby and Croff followed the old Plains trick of raking aside the fire, leaving a patch of warmed earth on which all four could curl up together, two men sharing blankets. As the Texan squirmed into place beside him Drew felt the added warmth of the plundered coat Kirby pulled over them. This had not been too bad a day after all, or rather yesterday had not; it was now not too far before dawn. They had made their play at Anthony's Hill and had come out of it with horses, some food, and a few incidental comforts like this coat. Now after eating, they had a chance to sleep. It seemed that Forrest was going to pull it off neatly again. Drowsily Drew watched the rekindled fire. They would make it, after all.

He awoke to find a thick white cotton of fog enfolding the bivouac. The preparations they had made again of rail and tree breastworks to greet the Union advance were no easier to see than the men crouched in their shadows. It would be a blind battle if Wilson's pursuit caught up before this cleared; one would only be able to tell the enemy by his position.