Ride Proud, Rebel! by Andre Norton (ebook reader with highlighter txt) 📗

palm-sized fire, watching with weary content the tin pail boiling there. The aroma rising from it was one he had almost forgotten existed in this world of constant riding and poor forage.

"Hope it kicks in the middle an' packs double." Kirby rested a tin cup on one knee, ready and waiting. "Me, I like mine strong enough to rest a horseshoe on ... gentlelike."

"Yankees are obligin', one way or another." Drew licked his fingers appreciatively. He had been exploring the sugar supply. "I've missed sweetenin'."

"Drink up, boys, and get ready to ride," Wilkins said, coming out of the dark. "We've marchin' orders."

Kirby reached for the pot and poured its contents, with careful measurement, into each waiting cup. "Wheah to now, Sarge? Seems like we've covered most of this heah range already."

"Huntsville. We have to locate a river crossin'."

Drew looked up. "Startin' back, Sarge?"

"Heard talk," Wilkins admitted. "Most of the blue bellies in these parts are turnin' lines to aim square at us. We can't take on all of Sherman's bully boys—"

"Got him riled, though, ain't we? All right." Kirby was energetically fanning the top of his steaming cup with his free hand. "Git this down to warm m' toes, Sarge, an' I'll stick them same toes in the stirrups an' jingle off. Come on, Drew, no man never joined up with the army to git hisself a comfortable life...."

Certainly that last statement of the Texan's was proven correct during the next six days. A feint toward the Yankee garrison at Huntsville occupied the enemy until the wagon train and artillery moved on to the Tennessee River. And along its northern banks, Buford's Scouts ranged. Already high for the season the waters were still rising. And all the transportation they could collect were three ferry boats at Florence and a few skiffs, not enough to serve all the Confederate force pushing for that escape route.

Athens, which Forrest had occupied on the upswing of the raid, was already back in Union hands, and the blue forces were closing in, in a countrywide sweep, backing the gray cavalry against the river.

By the third of October Buford had the boats in action, ferrying across men, equipment, and artillery in a steady stream of night-and-day oar labor. The stout General, mounted on a big mule, a large animal to carry a large man, gave the scouts new orders.

"Try downriver, boys. We're in a pinchers here, and they may be goin' to nip us—hard!" He rolled a big cheroot from a Yankee commissary store between his teeth, watching the wind whip the surface of the river into good-sized waves about the laboring boats. "Anything usable below Florence ... we want to know about it, and quick!"

Wilkins led them out at a steady trot. "We'll take a look around Newport. Rough going, but I think I remember a place."

However, the possibilities of Wilkins' "place" did not seem too promising to Drew when they came out on a steep bluff some miles down the Tennessee.

"This is a heller of a river," Kirby expressed his opinion forcibly. "Always spittin' back in an hombre's face. We've had plenty of trouble with it before."

They were on a bank above a slough which was not more than two hundred feet wide. And beyond that was an island thickly overgrown with cane, oak, and hickory. The upper end of that was sandy, matted with driftwood, some of it partially afloat again.

"Use that for a steppin' stone?" Drew asked.

"Best we're goin' to find. And if time's runnin' out, we'll be glad to have it. Rennie, report in. We'll do some more scoutin', just to make sure there'll be no surprises later."

For more than thirty-six hours Buford had been ferrying. Artillery, wagons, and a large portion of his division were safely across. When Drew returned to the uproar along the river he found that the second half of the retreating forces, commanded by Forrest, were in town. And it was to Forrest that Drew was ordered to deliver his report.

He would never forget the first glimpse he'd had of Bedford Forrest—the officer sitting his big gray charger in the midst of a battle, whirling his standard to attract a broken rabble of men, knitting out of them, by sheer force of personality, a refreshed, striking force. Now Drew found himself facing quite a different person—a big, quiet, soft-spoken man who eyed the scout with gray-blue eyes.

"You're Rennie, one of that Morgan company who joined at Harrisburg."

"Yes, suh."

"Morgan's men fought at Chickamauga ... good men, good fighters. Said so then, never had any reason to change that. Now what's this about an island downriver?"

Drew explained tersely, for he had a good idea that General Forrest wanted no wasting of time. Then at request he drew a rough sketch of the island and its approaches. Forrest studied it.

"Something to keep in mind. But I want to know that it's clear. You boys picket it. If there's any Union movement about, report it at once!"

"Yes, suh."

If Yankee scouts had sighted the island, either they had not reported it or their superiors had not calculated what its value might be for hunted men—and to a leader who was used to improvising and carrying through more improbable projects than the one the island suggested.

At Shoal Creek a rear guard was holding off the Union advance which had started from Athens, the two pronged pinchers General Buford had foreseen. And now the island came into use.

Saddles and equipment were stripped from horses and piled into the boats brought down from Florence. Then the mounts were driven to the top of the bluff and over into the water some twenty feet below. Leaders of that leap were caught by their halters and towed behind the boats, the others swimming after.

Men and mounts burrowed back into the concealment of those thick canebrakes and were hidden along the southern shore of the overgrown strip of water-enclosed land. The Union pursuers came up on the bluff, but they did not see the ferrying from the south bank of the island, ferrying which kept up night and day for some forty-eight hours.

"Cold!" Kirby and Drew crouched together behind a screen of cane on the north side of the island, watching the bank above for any hostile move on the part of the enemy.

"General Forrest says no fires."

"Yeah. You know, I jus' don't like this heah spread of water. This is the second time I've had to git across it with Old Man Death-an'-Disaster raisin' dust from my rump with a double of his encouragin' rope. Seems like the Tennessee ain't partial to raidin' parties."

"Makes a good barrier when we're on the other side," Drew pointed out reasonably.

"So—"

Drew's Colt was already out, Kirby's carbine at ready. But the man who had cat-footed it through the cane was General Forrest himself.

"I thought"—the General eyed them both—"I would catch some of you young fools loafin' back heah as if nothin' was goin' on. If you don't want to roost heah all winter, you'd better come along. Last boats are leavin' now."

As they scrambled after their commander Drew realized that the General had made it his personal business to make sure none of the north side pickets were left behind in the last-minute withdrawal.

They piled into one of the waiting boats, catching up poles. Forrest took another. Then he balanced where he stood, glaring toward the bow of the boat. A lieutenant was there, his hands empty.

"You ... Mistuh—" Forrest's voice took on the ring Drew had heard at Harrisburg. "Wheah's your oar, Mistuh?"

The man was startled. "As an officer, suh—"

Still gripping his pole with one hand, the General swung out a long arm, catching the lieutenant hard on one cheek with enough force to send him over the gunwale into the river. The lieutenant splashed, flailing out his arms, until he caught at the pole Drew extended to him. As they hauled him aboard again, the General snorted.

"Now you, Mistuh officer, take that oar theah and git to work! If I have to knock you over again, you can just stay in. We shall all pull out of this together!"

The lieutenant bent to the oar hastily as they moved out into the full current of the river.

10 "Dismount! Prepare To Fight Gunboats!"

"Drew!"

He turned his head on the saddle which served him as a temporary pillow and was aware of the smell of mule, strong, and the smell of a wood fire, less strong, and last of all, of corn bread baked in the husk, and, not so familiar, bacon frying—all the aromas of camp—with the addition of food which could be, and had been on occasion, very temporary. Squinting his smarting eyes against the sun's glare, Drew sat up. With four days of hard riding by night and scouting by day only a few hours behind him, he was still extremely weary.

Boyd squatted by his side, a folded sheet of paper in his hand.

"... letter ..."

Drew must have missed part during his awakening. Now he turned away from the sun and tried to pay better attention.

"From who?" he asked rustily.

"Mother. She got the one you sent from Meridian, Drew! And when Crosely went home for a horse she gave him these to bring back through the lines. Drew, your grandfather's dead...."

Odd, he did not feel anything at all at that news. When he was little he had been afraid of Alexander Mattock. Then he had faced out his fear and all the other emotions bred in him during those years of being Hunt Rennie's son in a house where Hunt Rennie was a symbol of black hatred; he had faced up to his grandfather on the night he left Red Springs to join the army in '62. And then Drew had discovered that he was free. He had seen his grandfather as he would always remember him now, an old man eaten up by his hatred, soured by acts Drew knew would never be explained. And from that moment, grandfather and grandson were strangers. Now, well, now he wished—for just a fleeting second or two—that he did know what lay behind all that rage and waste and blackness in the past. Alexander Mattock had been a respected man. As hardly more than a boy he had followed Andy Jackson down to New Orleans and helped break the last vestige of British power in the Gulf. He had bred fine horses, loved the land, and his word was better than most men's sworn oaths. He had had a liking for books, and had served his country in Congress, and could even have been governor had he not declined the nomination. He was a big man, in many ways a great and honorable man. Drew could admit that, now that he had made a life for himself beyond Alexander Mattock's shadow. A great man ... who had hated his own grandson.

"This is yours...." Boyd pulled a second sheet from the folds of the first. Drew smoothed it out to read: