"You're a Southern woman!" Terry bellowed, slamming his fist against the table and knocking over a bottle. "And you were dancing with Yankee crud. What do you say, men?"
"Guilty!" they chorused.
"Please," the girl pleaded in a whisper, her eyes and those of Matt locked on a stare that seemed to set them apart from everybody else in the room.
Matt felt a stirring in his loins, as he tore his gaze away from the girl's face and drank in her naked paleness.
"Slip it to her good Matthew!" one of the raiders urged. "But save a piece for me."
"Yeah," agreed another. "Can't afford to let the young stuff go to waste."
"Please," the girl whispered again, unclasping her hands and reaching up to grip the hem of Matt's tunic. He looked into her face again and suddenly his own features clouded, the lust dying. Hope rose within the girl, but it was fleeting. Matt saw the familiar face of his brother superimposed upon the girl's youthful prettiness and his mind was abruptly blazing with fury that he was now without kin in the world: for he knew that Theo had to be dead. Hatred turned his face to stone as he drew the .44 Remington from its holster.
"What a goddam waste," one of the men said bitterly, raising a bottle to console himself with whiskey.
Terry snarled, levered himself up out of his chair and slashed out with the saber. The edge of the blade smashed into the bottle, shattering the glass. Spilled liquor cascaded down the man's front. "I gave the woman to him!" Terry thundered. "He does as he chooses,"
The man seemed on the point of snapping a retort, but one look into Terry's eyes, glinting along the blade of the sword, drove him into mumbling subservience. "Sure, Bill," he muttered.
The girl suddenly screamed and staggered to her feet, turning her back upon her executioner as she made a run for the door. Matt crooked his arm and rested the barrel of the revolver across 'it, sighting carefully along the length of black metal. The girl screamed again as she pitched forward, gushing blood from the back of her left knee. As she writhed in agony, she rolled over on to her back. Matt carefully altered his aim and sent his second bullet into the front of the girl's right leg. More blood, mixed with splinters of her kneecap, sprayed across the wooden floor.
"Yankees whore!" Terry bellowed in recrimination.
The girl's agony and terror were now voiced as a continuous wail. Two quick shots smashed her elbows and her own blood greased the boards as she swung over on to her stomach and endeavored to snake her body towards the bat-swing doors. With infinite, slowness, Matt moved forward, and just as the girl's head began to push under one of the doors, he lifted a foot and brought it down hard, grinding the heel of his boot into her back. Her wail was choked off by a gasping sob. Only able to move her head, she screwed it round and looked up at him with eyes made dull by agony.
"What's your name, girl?" he asked, splitting the pregnant silence that had descended upon the room as the raiders waited expectantly for her death.
"Peggy Sue," she rasped. "Why?"
He shrugged and then aimed the Remington. "No reason. I guess it really doesn't matter anymore." He squeezed the trigger and the bullet tore a ragged hole in the side of her head. He turned to face the men around the tables, some of whom were sneering at him for the pleasure they had been denied by his action in killing the girl.
''You made it easy for her," Terry accused. It was he who had strung up the woman from the beam and used the glowing end of a cigar to bum target marks on her stomach before spinning her and sending two fast bullets to obliterate the signs of his torture. "Dave, the Captain's whore is yours." As the trembling Jeannie was prodded out towards the center of the saloon, a barrel-chested man with a harelip moved towards her, his mouth drooling in anticipation of what was to come.
"Careful you don't split your pants," a raider yelled to a gust of laughter as the thick-set man gave visible sign of his arousal.
Matt, his thirst for revenge satisfied, glanced regretfully down at the blood-soaked, still form of the girl named Peggy Sue, then fastened his attention on Jeannie's slim nakedness, trembling before Dave's powerful figure. Another expectant silence fell like an invisible blanket over the saloon as Dave reached out a dirt-ingrained, enormous hand towards one of the soft, tremulous mounds of the girl's breasts.
The two shots sounded in unison, drowning out the smash of glass. The bullet from Forrest's Henry took Matt in the back of the head and flipped him forward into a death roll. Hedges' shot, fired through a window, drilled a neat hole through the center of Dave's sweating palm and buried itself into the unresponsive flesh of the hanging woman. There was no blood. She had been dead too long. The sound of breaking glass was abruptly loud as other windows were smashed and a dozen rifle muzzles bristled into the room.
"All good things have got to end!" Rhett called.
Most of the rebel raiders were too drunk from hard liquor, blood and lust to consider the wisdom of discretion in the situation. And as they snatched for their weapons and dived to the floor in search of cover, the more circumspect could do nothing but follow the lead set.
"Move it, Jeannie!" Hedges shouted as the rebels got off their first shots and the Union troopers answered with a volley.
The girl seemed rooted to the spot, but as the head of Dave suddenly exploded under the impact of three heavy caliber bullets, she leapt towards the bar and over it, feeling the warm blood of the dead man running down her face. As the bullets crisscrossed the saloon, it was like the meeting house at Murfreesboro again, but with the roles of the Union and Confederate soldiers reversed. This time it was the men in blue who had the solid cover of stout walls while the rebels were forced to flatten themselves against the floor or scamper behind overturned tables and chairs in an effort to seek refuge from the hail of angry bullets.
A rebel crouching behind a chair died with a scream as a bullet tore into his back. He pitched forward, knocking aside a table shielding another rebel. Exposed, the second man tried to run to the bar, but suddenly began to stagger about blindly as a bullet smashed into a bottle and sprayed splinters of glass into his face, blinding him and splitting open one cheek. He crashed headfirst out through a window, where Billy Seward was waiting having just reloaded his rifle.
"Nice of you to drop by," Seward said with a snigger as he ground the muzzle of the Henry into the man's lacerated cheek and squeezed the trigger.
Another of Terry's Raiders successfully worked his way around to the door of the saloon, snaking along in the angle of the wall and the floor. As he poked his head under the bat-swings and looked wide-eyed along the street, Forrest brought a boot down hard on the man's neck. He rested the rifle muzzle against the rebel's ear. "If you gotta go, you gotta go," the Union sergeant intoned in mocking regret. "So long, reb." He squeezed the trigger and the man's brains spattered on the sidewalk.
Alternately peering through the window and ducking back out of sight, Hedges kept up a regular rate of fire into the saloon. Most of the troopers adopted the, same tactic and few rebels survived the initial assault. But those who did were able to use the heavy pall of acrid gunsmoke as a screen to scuttle into more substantial cover. The smoke was like a swirling mist within the saloon and the troopers' firing became sporadic, then trailed off.
"I think we killed all the bastards;" Roger Bell yelled after long seconds during which no sound was heard. But then a dozen pair of ears picked up a faint scratching on one side of the saloon and as a whimper spilled from a dry throat, six rifles cracked. The two naked girls, who had curled themselves into quivering balls during the height of the gunfight, screamed and splashed their blood across the wall and floor. Two rebels fired at the same gun flash and a Union trooper leaped, back from a window, crimson fountains spurting from the pulp of his eye sockets. Ten troopers sent a volley of shots towards the rebels, positioned behind an upright piano with no front. The bullets jangled among the strings and crashed through the wood at the back. One man died at once, his chest peppered with blossoming holes. The second man r
an into the open, pouring blood from a wound in his groin. A trooper saw his target as a mere flitting shadow and leaned in through the window for a better shot. Terry, who was crouching down behind the solid cover of the end of the bar raised his saber and lashed out with it. The trapper folded his body over the window ledge, his head hanging awkwardly, attached to his shoulders by a few slimy red tendons. A half-dozen bullets from other guns ended the screaming, ungainly run of the rebel who had been wounded.
Terry heard a sound at the far end of the bar and moved into a shadowed area, leaving behind him an untidy pile of dead raiders, hopeful of finding some survivors.
"May God have mercy on your soul," a woman's voice said weakly.
Terry threw himself back against the storage cupboards behind the bar and looked up, his bearded face becoming a mask of shock and fear. But then he forced a cold grin. Incredibly, the preacher's wife was untouched by the barrage of bullets that had whined across the saloon and now she was looking down at the leader of the raiders, her head inverted between her outstretched arms.
"I thank you for the thought, ma'am," Terry said, raising himself slightly, then thrusting upwards with a powerful jerk of his arm.
The woman's body arched under the force of the stabbing blow and then became limp against the pull of the ropes. The saber had entered between her shoulder blades at an acute angle, the point finding her heart. Her blood gushed on to Terry's hand as he withdrew the weapon and continued on down the bar in a half-crouch, his boots crunching on glass shards from broken bottles.
The troopers heard the sounds of his progress and a hail of bullets were showered towards him, burying themselves in the stout wood of the bar or shattering more bottles to rain glass and liquor down upon him.
"Why, you're better than my best man," Terry murmured when he reached the end of the bar and found who had made the noise that had attracted him.
Instead of one of his raiders, he saw the pale, naked form of Jeannie Fisher. The girl was hunched into a knee-hugging posture behind the metal sink used for washing glasses. Fear had drained her of color and the only relief against the whiteness of her flesh was the drying splashes of Dave's blood. Terror had also exhausted her will to resist and she could emit only a meek gasp as the raider's aim encircled her, the hand fastening on her breast. And then a choked sob when the sticky blade of the saber was rested against her throat, forcing up the chin.
"Hey, Yankees!" Terry bellowed.
Two more shots rang out and the bullets thudded into a wooden barrel.
"Hold it!" Hedges yelled.
"Who's the boss out there?" Terry wanted to know.
"I am," Hedges answered, beginning to reload the Henry.
"We need to make a deal."
Hedges worked the action to pump a shell into the breech. All around the saloon the slap of metal against metal told of more reloading.
"Keep talking," Hedges called. He was crouched down, below and to the side of the window, suspicious of a trap.
"You come for us or the women?"
There was a sound behind Hedges and he whirled, the rifle muzzle lifting.
"Jumpy," Forrest whispered, grinning through the silvered night.
Hedges' eyes glinted. "Stupid," he hissed, and turned to direct his voice through the window. "How many left?"
"Tell him, ma'am," Terry demanded of the girl, loud enough for the troopers to hear. When she didn't comply at once, Terry dug his filthy nails into the flesh of her breast. Her voice was pained. "Just me, Joe!"
"Sure a lucky war for you, Captain," Forrest muttered.
Terry laughed. "That your captain out there, ma'am?" he asked rhetorically. "Captain, we really do need to deal."
"Say your piece," Hedges answered, his voice brittle with impotent anger.
"Your girl and me," Terry called. "We're all that's left in here."
"Bill!" a weak voice called from one side of a small dais. "It's Frank. I'm losing blood from my guts."
"Tough," Terry replied. ''You can have him, Captain,"
"I've already got a man with no guts," Hedges said coldly.
"Sue him, Rhett," Hal Douglas exploded with a snigger.
"I'm leaving with your girl, Captain," Terry snarled, suddenly dropping all pretenses at lightness. "I've got a blade holding up her chin and she hasn't got anything on except her birthday suit. And you haven't got a chance of dropping me before I slit her pretty throat."
Terry showed his confidence by straightening up, forcing Jeannie to stand in front of him, shielding him. Although the smell of detonated powder was still thick in the air, mingling with the unmistakable odor of sudden death, the grey smoke was clearing, wafted out of the saloon through the smashed windows.
"Bill!" the wounded man pleaded.
"Just die quietly, Frank," Terry snarled, his evil eyes roving around the windows, seeing the faces of the troopers peering in at him and, the girl through the jagged surrounds of smashed glass.
"Any man gets trigger-happy, he'll answer to me." Hedges' warning was a rasp across the silence as Terry forced the girl out from behind the bar.
"Joe," Jeannie murmured. Her eyes rolled and her body, fragilely slim and defenseless in its nakedness against the determined stance of her captor, seemed about to go limp. But the nails dug deeper into her flesh and the saber blade pressed harder against her chin. The pain and the threat revived her.
"I need a horse," Terry said.
"Get him one, Scott," Hedges ordered.
Despite the sprawled bodies and drying blood that formed the background, the central image of the girl in the grip of her tormentor presented an erotic, dreamlike quality and Hedges was perhaps the only Union trooper unaffected by the sight. The Captain had to bark the command again before Scott was able to tear himself away from the window.
"I'm riding out of Brookerville," Terry said evenly as he took slow steps, urging Jeannie ahead of him to the door. "With the girl for two miles. If I don't hear you guys trailing me, I'll turn her loose. If I do hear anything I don't like, I'll cut her loose. You know what I mean?"
"You believe him, sir?" Seward called from the far side of the saloon.
"You want to try a shot at him?" Hedges snarled as Terry and his human shield reached the swing doors.
"Don't do me any favors," Seward called, impersonating the voice of the Jewish fiddler.
As the raider emerged out on to the sidewalk the troopers left their positions and gathered on the street, flanking the saloon entrance. Scott hurried forward with a horse.
"All of you back off," Terry ordered. "And leave your guns where you're standing."
Hedges was the first to comply, dropping his rifle to the rutted ground and sidestepping away several yards. He avoided looking into the imploring eyes of Jeannie, concentrating upon the face of the bearded man. The other troopers followed his example with their guns, but their attention was riveted upon the curves and shaded areas of the girl's body.
"Don't leave me, Bill," the wounded man called from within the saloon, his voice weakening, the fear inside him pitching his tone high.
"Frank always did talk a lot," Terry said and suddenly lifted the girl and cartwheeled her across the neck of the horse, pinning her there with a hand in the small of her back as he switched the position of the saber so that the point was touching the side of her neck. It took little effort for him to swing from the high sidewalk into the saddle of the horse.
For several moments, his back was towards Hedges, and the cavalry captain began to move a hand towards his holstered Colt. But then he stayed it, the decision made in the last fragment of his mind that had not given way to the dehumanizing demands of the war. His orders had come from Rosecrans himself—bring back the women if possible, but wipe out the guerillas at all costs. Now, as he watched the raider heel the horse into a gentle walk, Hedges knew he was making a mistake: that the chances of Jeannie surviving were so long they were incalculable. But he had to disobey the general's orders and give Jeannie her chan
ce and not from any altruistic motive. For while the girl lived, Hedges could still consider himself a complete man because it was his feeling for her that fed the tiny flame of idealism in his mind. If she died, so would the last shred of human emotion be extinguished and the instincts of the animal would triumph. One day, perhaps, Jamie, and the familiar surroundings of the Iowa farm could rekindle the ashes of dead responses, but here in this village of the dead, memories of the past and hope's for the future were so remote they were in another world.
Terry didn't look back as he urged his mount into a faster pace, at first cantering and then galloping, clear of the cluster of buildings and into a small wood through which the trait disappeared.
"Bill" the wounded man wailed into the silence that descended after the sound of hoofbeats had diminished into the nothingness of distance.
"We goin' after him, sir?" a trooper asked nervously, apprehensive of the impassiveness spread across Hedges' moonlit face.
"Bill!"
"That reb's beginning to bother me, Sergeant," Hedges muttered. "Keep it quiet. We don't want to panic anybody."
A harsh grin of anticipation wreathed Forrest's dirt-streaked face as he went forward and picked up his rifle.
"Get your arms and mount up," Hedges told the troopers as Forrest pushed open the saloon doors and stepped across the bodies of the raider he had killed and the naked girl who had died at Matt's hand.
The wounded raider near the dais was on his side, his splayed hands drenched with blood as he tried to staunch the flow from two bullet holes in his stomach. His eyes were wide, an odd mixture of resignation and fear visible behind the pain.
"Bill went, huh?" he croaked.
Forrest checked there was no gun within reach of the raider, and rested his own rifle against the inverted, bullet-riddled body of the hanging woman, wedging the muzzle between her breasts. He nodded as he approached the man, a hand delving beneath his tunic and coming out with a knife. "Some guys have all the luck, don't they?" he said easily.
Frank's grizzled throat moved in a dry swallow as Forrest crouched beside him.
The Blue, the Grey and the Red Page 7
