The smooth-faced, round-bellied civilian was not a man to beat around the bush, and his opening statement, as he sprang energetically to his feet, was as bald as his domelike head: “We want you guys to go to the Confederate capital and put a few bullets into the Reb president.” Forrest was the only trooper to utter his reaction in words. Scott and Douglas gasped. Bell blinked, Seward sniggered, and Rhett belched. Hedges smoked a cigarette as calmly as before. At the courthouse immediately after his arrival in Hartford Gap the lieutenant with the acne-scarred face had intimated the kind of assignment the army had in mind for Hedges and his men. But Hedges had interrupted the junior ofiicer almost before he was started in order to ensure that his men were fed and sheltered. The Rebel ambushers had extended the interruption.
“Naturally,” the Pinkerton man went on. “For this kind of mission we’d only consider using volunteers.” “Then you got the wrong outfit,” Douglas growled. Forrest glanced at Hedges, sitting across the table from him, and saw the attitude of easy listening the captain had adopted. “Maybe he ain’t, Hal,” the sergeant said grimly. “Hear the man out,” Hedges muttered.
The Pinkerton detective nodded his appreciation of the attentive silence the captain’s remark brought about. “It wasn’t by sticking a pin in a map that we chose this town as the end of the line for the decoy wagon train.” “Decoy!” Seward snorted.
Forrest swung around in his chair to grimace at the youngster. “Billy?” Pleasantly.
“Yeah, Frank?”
“You remember when the wagons kept getting bogged down in the mud, and me and the captain yelled at you guys to get the lead out?”
Seward was puzzled. “Sure, Frank.”
Forrest’s tone hardened. “We meant it. Now shut your goddamn mouth and listen.”
Questions sprang to the lips of all five troopers who had learned the truth for the first time. But the mean eyes of the sergeant raking across their faces drove the queries back down their throats.
“Carry on, mister,” Forrest invited.
“Thanks,” the detective said, his impatience beginning to show. He began to speak more rapidly, as if anxious to get as much said as possible before the next interruption. “No, it was chosen by General Grant himself as the ideal jumping-off point for a secret mission such as this. There were other Union-held towns closer than this, but the Rebs are on the lookout for penetrations from them. From here, Richmond’s better than three hundred miles away, most all of it’s Rebel-held. We figure they wouldn’t expect trouble from this direction.” He cleared his throat. “At least until you got real close to the city.”
“Easy on the you, feller,” Hedges said, grinding out the cigarette under his heel. “How many other outfits have you asked to volunteer?”
The Pinkerton man colored, and his collar seemed to shrink around his throat. His eyes transmitted a plea to the lieutenant, and the officer got to his feet.
“You and your men have had a great deal of experience in moving about behind enemy lines,” the shavetail explained. “It was thought such experience would prove invaluable in—”
“No other outfit,” Hedges growled.
The lieutenant looked as if he was about to deny this, but then realized the futility of such a statement. “That’s right, sir.”
Forrest had been raking his teeth with a dirty fingernail. He found a piece of trapped meat and spat it out. “Nice to feel wanted,” he muttered.
Something the detective had said was nagging at the back of Hedges’ mind, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. Everybody was waiting for him to make a more constructive comment than Forrest’s. “Last time there was a difference,” he said. “We didn’t go sneaking through the Reb lines by choice. We got took.” Then the telling phrase spoken by the Pinkerton man was flipped into the forefront of his mind. The lines of his lean face hardened, and his eyes turned to ice. “And we got took again!” he hissed, his lips hardly moving.
The lieutenant was suddenly as jittery as the detective. “Sir, I’d remind you that General Grant himself recommended you for this mission,” he said hoarsely.
“You know something I don’t!” Forrest said tersely, his mean eyes boring into the captain’s rigid profile.
“Only what I heard, Sergeant,” Hedges said softly, his cold-eyed stare moving from the lieutenant to the detective, to the hotel clerk, and back again. “I told you to listen. A while back, the eye that never sleeps said there were other Union-held towns closer than this. Were is past tense.”
“Christ!” Bob Rhett exclaimed.
The grammatical reference meant nothing to the others, who were without the benefit of the kind of education enjoyed by Hedges and Rhett. But they all knew the practical difference between was and were. The anger seemed to hover in the flickering lamplight above the troopers, then to move forward and press against the two civilians and the lieutenant.
“We’re only doing what we been told!” the shavetail blurted. “We’re in the same kind of spot as you guys. The army took this town and was supposed to hold it until you got here. You were going to be given the choice of moving out with them or heading for Richmond. But you were late getting here. The Rebs were coming. The army had to leave. What do you think it was like for us? Sitting here in the middle of country crawling with Johnnie Rebs?”
“Sympathy, he wants!” John Scott growled.
“Even worse for me,” the hotel clerk put in, his voice high-pitched and quivering. “You wear a uniform; they get you, and you’re a prisoner of war. Me they’d shoot as a spy.”
“Me too,” the detective added.
“My heart bleeds for you,” Roger Bell grunted.
“Don’t tempt providence, soldier,” Hedges retorted as he got to his feet.
Forrest got up. “Wondered how long we were goin’ on with this little dinner party,” he muttered. “Considerin’.”
“What are you goin’ to do?” the Pinkerton man asked anxiously.
“Check on some missing men,” Hedges answered, picking up his rifle from where it rested against the table. “How long’s it take to dig a few holes in ground as soft as this?”
“Hell, I forgot about the nig—the blacks,” Douglas said softly as he and the others hoisted their rifles.
“That’s why you’re only a corporal and not a captain,” Scott told him.
“Kinda wish Hal was the top hand,” Rhett put in as he got unsteadily to his feet. “He’d tell those guys what to do with their mission.”
Seward grinned. “Don’t you think of anything else but—”
A bullet smashed through the window and shattered one of the two lamps hanging from a ceiling beam. Glass showered down over the hotel clerk. Blood sprang from a dozen small cuts on his face. He remained standing, screaming his shock as every other man in the room dived for the floor. A second shot sounded, and more window glass tinkled. The hotel clerk stopped screaming and fell backwards. The small cuts on his face were obliterated by the tide of blood which sprang from a hole in the center of his forehead and cascaded over his dead flesh.
The silence was leaden. It made the men aware for the first time that the rain had ceased to fall. When they began to breathe again, the rasping sound was amplified out of proportion for the first few moments.
“Rhett, the window!” Hedges whispered. “Scott and Douglas upstairs. Back and front. Bell, try to make the roof. Douglas and Forrest, first floor back.” "
The troopers moved off to take up their positions, first on their bellies and then raising onto all fours. As always, they were at their best under fire with specific orders to follow—except for Rhett. He reached the window and flattened himself against the floor, his hands clasped over his head as protection should more glass shower under the impact of a bullet.
“What about me and Mr. Marlowe?” the lieutenant aked hoarsely.
Hedges prodded his rifle in the direction of the cowering New Englander. “Hold his hand,” he rasped. “But be careful—it could be the start of so
mething big.”
He ignored the quizzical stares of the two men and snaked out into the lobby. The main doors were closed now, and the light above the desk had been extinguished. He got to his feet and ran lightly to the front. The windows flanking the doors were of opaque glass. He crouched and slid the rifle to the far side. Then he sprang forward, gripped the handles, flung wide the doors, and leaped out of the opening as three rifles cracked and bullets thudded against the frame. He snatched up the Henry and crouched. His narrow-angled view of the street showed him nothing but mud and rain-sodden building fronts.
“Hey, you, Captain feller!”
Hedges was momentarily surprised, for he recognized the voice. It belonged to the Negro who had announced the intention to bury his dead comrades.
“That’s you in the doorway. I know it.”
“We can smell you!” another voice called, and his accent was also deep and as dark brown as his skin. “You got the stink of a murderer on you, Captain feller.” Hedges remained silent, his ears straining to pinpoint the positions of the men by the sounds of their voices. He thought they were in the telegraph office next to the courthouse. That part of the street was beyond his range of vision.
“We held a meeting,” the first black trooper called. “We don’t like what happened to Manfred. He was good man. Helped us a lot when slaves. Helped you a lot when free. You didn’t oughta killed him, Captain feller. Okay in war if enemy kill. Lousy if own officer do it. You come out. We hang you. Others go free.”
“You already blasted one of the others!” This from Rhett, his voice a terrified whine. It was muffled, as if he were still pressing his head hard against the floor.
“Unlucky shot!” came the reply. “Only mean to get attention. You come out here, Captain feller. Then we not attack. You not be blamed for killing more own men.”
Hedges was no longer crouching by the open doorway. He had retreated back into the depths of the darkened lobby, crossed in front of the desk, and then gone down onto his belly to snake into the lighted restaurant. Not until he began to drag the dead hotel clerk across the floor did he make any sound, which drew the startled attention of the three men at the window. He interrupted his chore only long enough to crook a finger at them. They crawled among the tables and chairs and followed him out into the lobby.
Rhett was praying, his lips moving to form the words but not uttering them aloud. His eyes were screwed tight shut. The lieutenant and Marlowe looked on- in amazement as the captain began to unfasten his tunic buttons.
“You cornin’ out, Captain feller? Or do we come in and get you?” .
He punctuated the demand with a shot. Rhett groaned and pressed himself full length to the floor as the bullet thudded harmlessly into the wall. The lieutenant concentrated hard on Hedges’ thin lips. Like Rhett’s a moment before, they moved to transmit silent words. But they were calling for help from a closer and far less divine source. The shavetail bobbed his head in acknowledgement and moved off in a crouch, going through the doorway leading to the rear of the hotel. When he reappeared, he was followed by Forrest and Douglas, who glanced quizzically at the men gathered around the inert form of die bloody corpse. Then Hedges’ cold eyes seemed to hasten their silent ascent of the stairway. The lieutenant went with them.
“Answer me!”
The demand, harsh with impatience, cut into the silence just as the Pinkerton man gave a nod that he understood the captain’s mouthed instructions.
Upstairs, the lieutenant and the troopers crowded into a front bedroom and flitted across to the window. Forrest moved to the front of the group and eased it up. Cold, damp air flowed into the room. The soldiers moved out, stepping silently onto the railed balcony and spreading along its length. Their eyes raked the street and saw the wagons with their dead teams still harnessed, the blank windows of the buildings, and three, gray-clad, rigid corpses. The flour mill was now a heap of blackened timber, every trace of the fire extinguished by the rain before it had stopped. The light level was low, supplied by the pale disc of a full moon just visible through thick clouds. Nothing moved beneath it. The troopers were too intent upon watching for a sign of the mutineers to concern themselves with the implications of what the lieutenant had instructed: “The captain says to come with me and do what comes naturally.”
“I got him, Sergeant!”
Already tense in expectancy of a hail of bullets whistling through the night, the troopers became rigid at the sudden, excited shout from Marlowe.
“I ain’t goin’ out to get hung!” This from Hedges, in a tone nobody had heard from him before—naked fear.
“Halt!”
“You wouldn’t dare!”
Footfalls thudded against floorboards.
“Jesus, I’ll kill you.”
A rifle shot and a scream.
The troopers swung their eyes toward the lieutenant. He shrugged.
“Hey, you out there!” Marlowe’s voice was still pitched high with excitement.
“What’s happened?” The newly appointed leader of the freed slaves sounded suspicious.
Every trooper on the balcony swung his attention to the open doorway of the telegraph office from which the question had been shouted.
“It was him or us!” Marlowe called in reply. “Hedges is dead.”
There was a pause. A murmur of conversation scratched it faintly. Then:
“Bring him out. All of you.”
Another pause. Every rifle on the balcony was trained on the doorway of the telegraph office. Six fingers were curled around triggers.
“Two of us,” Marlowe yelled.
More whispered conversation.
“Okay. But any tricks, we’ll shoot men who bring him. Men carry no weapons.”
“It’s a deal,” came the reply without a hesitation. “We’re cornin’.”
A rifle barrel was pushed out through the doorway across the street. It had an evil sheen in the pale light. Feet shuffled over the bare boards in the lobby. The sound was louder against the sidewalk.
“Center of the street,” the deep voice demanded.
Marlowe and Rhett splashed down into the mud, stepping around the puddle in which the dead Rebel soldier hid his face. The hotel clerk, attired in Hedges’ uniform, was slung limply between them. Rhett was holding the dead legs, and his trembling was transmitted to the lower half of the burden. He stumbled twice, to curses from Marlowe, and was covered from head to toe in fresh mud before the middle of the street was reached.
“What now, for Christ’s sake?” he shrieked after several tense seconds had slid silently by.
“Dumb bastards,” Forrest rasped to himself as the six Negroes stepped from cover, three from the telegraph office and three moving onto the steps of the courthouse beside the slumped bodies of the sentries. All their rifles were leveled at Marlowe and Rhett.
But it was the Henry of the captain which exploded. Hedges was stretched out full-length on the floor of the lobby, aiming just over the trembling left shoulder of Rhett. The terrified New Englander felt the slip-stream of. the bullet waft across his neck. He screamed and released his half of the burden as he flung himself into the mud. The bullet smashed through the broad nose of the mutineers’ leader, and the force of the impact sent him sprawling backward through the doorway of the telegraph office.
All except one of his men wasted a fatal split second in swinging their heads to see the effect of the surprise shot. The man on the far right fired. Marlowe looked down at the blood spouting from his chest. He released his grip on the body and tried to reach up at his wound. Death beat him and he crumpled. Unlike Rhett, he was unable to claw at the oozing mud to try to dig a hole for himself. A fusillade of shots sounded from the balcony. Black faces spurted blood, and blue uniforms were suddenly stained by red blotches. Even as the Negroes screamed and started to fall, the white men pumped the lever actions of their repeaters and sent another hail of lead across the street. Pieces of flesh and splinters of bone spun away amid sprays of
blood. For a moment, as metal scraped against metal, the slumped forms were inert. A third burst of concentrated fire caused dead flesh to flinch.
Grins of triumph were pasted upon the faces of the troopers as they pumped fresh shells into the breeches of the Henry rifles. The lieutenant looked to his left and right and saw the hatred blazing in the eyes above the bared teeth. As the final fusillade rang out, and Forrest barked an order to halt further futile shooting, the young officer realized that the men were in Union blue by an accident of geography, that not even a Southern slave-master could have poured bullets into the blacks with as much venomous enjoyment as these soldiers.
“You can only kill a man once,” he said, his voice strident with shock.
Forrest spat over the balcony rail. “With some men, we like to be sure,” he growled. „
“You sure yet, Forrest?” Hedges called from below.
The sergeant glanced across at the sprawled and crumpled bodies, which were the sources of many rivers of blood running to the edge of the steps and sidewalk to drip into the mud. “Ain’t not one of ’em goin’ to get up, I reckon, Captain,” he said.
Hedges stepped into view, clothed only in his gray underwear. Seward started a snigger, but silenced it under the hard-eyed stare. He confined his amusement to the same style of silent grin as the other troopers, when the captain turned his back to look out into the street.
“Rhett!”
The New Englander raised his head from out of his hastily dug hole. “I did like you said, sir,” he whined. “You want me to get your uniform off him?”
“A live one’d be more fun. Bob,” Scott called.
It provided all the troopers with an opportunity to vent their amusement at the scantily-clad captain, while pretending that Rhett was the butt.
Death's Bounty Page 6
