by Andre Norton
The Kentuckian could hear the scrape of horses' hoofs on stone. They must be bringing out a mount, keeping Hunt's part of the bargain. Only, Drew suddenly knew, Johnny was going to keep him. He saw the gun hand shift against the rock--Johnny was taking aim into the pocket. Why? By trusting to Rennie's word he would have a slim chance, so why spoil it by some treachery?
"All right, Johnny, it's ready for you."
"Now you git them hands up, Rennie. Sorta guessed you'd come yourself. I'm gittin' out, all right. Do I take you along there ain't goin' to be no trailin', none 'tall--do they want _Don_ Cazar to keep on breathing regular. Git them hands up, high!"
With all the force he could summon Drew kicked at Johnny's crouching body. Shannon cried out--there was a shot. Then Johnny cried again, this time with a choke cutting off the word as he arched convulsively against the boulder. In the half light the arrow projecting from between his shoulder blades stood out with unnatural clarity.
Arrow? Drew's wits worked slowly. The arrow must have come from one of the Pimas--Rennie had been covered, after all. So he had not believed too much in Johnny's promises....
"You there, kid?" Someone came through the rock gap. "Hey--he's here all right, but he's hurt!" Nye's grasp on him brought the pain in Drew's side to an agony he could no longer stand. He was crushed down into darkness.
"Ribs are cracked, not broken--that's something to be thankful for. All right, you can let him down now. Give me that pad and some water; I want to see how much damage there is here."
Drew tried to turn his head away from the touch on his swollen cheek and jaw, but he was held steady to endure it.
"Best we can do for the present. You can leave the rest to me, Nye."
Drew opened his eyes. There was a fire near-by, but the flickering of the flames concealed more than they revealed of the face above him. He found the words to say rather than ask:
"You knew ... before Johnny told ... you knew...."
"Teodoro told me--yesterday."
"I didn't lie. Johnny took the papers."
"He admitted it at the last. But why, why didn't you come to me?"
Put muddled feelings into words, attempt to explain what he did not fully understand himself? It was hard even to try, but you always faced up to the hard things.
"Wanted to know ... if it was right ... for both of us ... had to know that."
"If you'd be welcome--that it? Well, what did you decide?"
What had he decided hours, days ago?
"Too late...." But somehow that came out differently than he intended, as a question rather than a statement.
"No." The answer was uttered flatly, in a voice you did not argue with. "Suppose we begin all over again. You willing to try?"
"Better say--are _you_, suh?" Drew had whirling memories of all that had gone wrong since he had tried things his way. Then he saw a smile on his father's face, bringing him in--in where? To what? Suddenly he was eager to find out.
"Took the long way around to get home, didn't you?" Hunt Rennie asked softly. "I think we can make it worth the effort. Now, suppose you try some sleep--you've a pair of cracked ribs which'll have to be favored for a while. I think you've been too knocked about lately to make good sense. There'll be plenty of time."
Plenty of time.... Drew blinked. "Yes, suh." Obediently he shut his eyes. A blanket was pulled up, tucked in about him. For a moment a warm hand rested protectingly on his shoulder. And that reassuring pressure carried over with him into sleep, as if what he had long sought without recognizing was his, never to be lost again.
SCIENCE FICTION BY ANDRE NORTON
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THE TIME TRADERS
"Effectively utilizing the concept of time travel, the author ... has written another imaginative, action-filled science fiction story for teenage boys. Young Ross Murdock ... is sent back into the Bronze Age, discovers a derelict galactic ship, and finds himself fighting ... to gain control of the secrets of space flight."--_ALA Booklist_
THE STARS ARE OURS!
To escape the tyranny on Terra in the year 2500, a group of scientists make a last-minute getaway under fire and take off for another planet in another solar system. Their adventures make top-flight entertainment for all science-fiction fans.
STAR BORN
Young Dalgard Nordis of the planet Astra and his merman companion Sssuri join forces with a space man from Terra to outwit resurgent nonhuman Aliens. A sequel to _The Stars Are Ours!_
GALACTIC DERELICT
Full of action and suspense, this is a gripping story of modern scientists engaged in a daring experiment in time transfer, who find themselves catapulted from the age of prehistoric man into outer space.
STORM OVER WARLOCK
"Shann's victory over the beetle-like Throgs and his civilized alliance with [an eerie world of beautiful witches] is told with that sweeping imagination and brilliance of detail which render Andre Norton a primary talent among writers of science fiction."--Virginia Kirkus' _Bulletin_
THE DEFIANT AGENTS
"In this companion to _Galactic Derelict_ a group of well-educated Apache Indians is space-shipped to another planet [where] they discover that the Russians have sent a group of Mongols ... Aficionados will like it."--_Library Journal_
RIDE PROUD, REBEL!
ANDRE NORTON
Contents
1. Ride with Morgan
2. Guns in the Night
3. On the Run--
4. The Eleventh Ohio Cavalry
5. Bardstown Surrenders
6. Horse Trade
7. A Mule for a River
8. Happy Birthday, Soldier!
9. One More River To Cross
10. "Dismount! Prepare To Fight Gunboats!"
11. The Road to Nashville
12. Guerrillas
13. Disaster
14. Hell in Tennessee
15. Independent Scout
16. Missing in Action
17. Poor Rebel Soldier....
18. Texas Spurs
* * * * *
FROM GENERAL N. BEDFORD FORREST'S FAREWELL TO HIS COMMAND, MAY 9, 1865, GAINESVILLE, ALABAMA.
_The cause for which you have so long and so manfully struggled, and for which you have braved dangers, endured privations and sufferings, and made so many sacrifices, is today hopeless...._
_Civil war, such as you have passed through naturally engenders feelings of animosity, hatred and revenge. It is our duty to divest ourselves of all such feelings; and, as far as in our power to do so, to cultivate friendly feelings toward those with whom we have so long contended, and heretofore so widely, but honestly, differed...._
_... In bidding you farewell, rest assured that you carry with you my best wishes for your future welfare and happiness. Without, in any way, referring to the merits of the cause in which we have been engaged, your courage and determination, as exhibited on many hard-fought fields, have elicited the respect and admiration of friend and foe. And I now cheerfully and gratefully acknowledge my indebtedness to the officers and men of my command, whose zeal, fidelity and unflinching bravery have been the great source of my success in arms._
_I have never, on the field of battle, sent you where I was unwilling to go myself; nor would I now advise you to a course which I felt myself unwilling to pursue. You have been good soldiers; you can be good citizens. Obey the laws, preserve your honor, and the Government to which you have surrendered can afford to be, and will be, magnanimous._
N. B. FORREST, _Lieutenant General_
* * * * *
1
_Ride with Morgan_
The stocky roan switched tail angrily against a persistent fly and lipped water, dripping big drops back to the surface of the brook. His rider moved swiftly, with an economy of action, to unsaddle, wipe the besweated back with a wisp of last year's dried grass, and wash down each mud-spattered leg with stream water. Always care for the mount first--when a man's life, as well as t
he safety of his mission, depended on four subordinate legs more than on his own two.
Though he had little claim to a thoroughbred's points, the roan was as much a veteran of the forces as his groom, with all a veteran's ability to accept and enjoy small favors of the immediate present without speculating too much concerning the future. He blew gustily in pleasure under the attention and began to sample a convenient stand of spring green.
His mount cared for, Drew Rennie swung up saddle, blanket, and the meager possessions which he had brought out of Virginia two weeks ago, to the platform in a crooked tree overhanging the brook. He settled beside them on the well-seasoned timbers of the old tree house to rummage through his saddlebags.
The platform had been there a long time--before Chickamauga and the Ohio Raid, before the first roll of drums in '61. Drew pulled a creased shirt out of the bags and sat with it draped over one knee, remembering....
Sheldon Barrett and he--they had built it together one hot week in summer--had named it Boone's Fort. And it was the only thing at Red Springs Drew had really ever owned. His dark eyes were fixed now on something more than the branches about him, and his mouth tightened until his face was not quite sullen, only shuttered.
Five years ago--only five years? Yes, five years next month! But the past two years of his own personal freedom--and war--those seemed to equal ten. Now there was no one left to remember the fort's existence, which made it perfect for his present purpose.
The warmth of the sun, beating down through yet young leaves, made Drew brush his battered slouch hat to the flooring and luxuriate in the heat. Sometimes he didn't think he'd ever get the bite of last winter's cold out of his bones. The light pointed up every angle of jaw and cheekbone, making it clear that experience--hard experience--and not years had melted away boyish roundness of chin line, narrowed the watchful eyes ever alert to his surroundings. A cavalry scout was wary, or he ceased to be a scout, or maybe even alive.
Shirt in hand, Drew dropped lightly to the ground and with the same dispatch as he had cared for his horse, made his own toilet, scrubbing his too-thin body with a sigh of content as heartfelt as that the roan had earlier voiced.
The fresh shirt was a dark brown-gray, but the patched breeches were Yankee blue, and the boots he pulled on when he had bathed were also the enemy's gift, good stout leather he'd been lucky enough to find in a supply wagon they had captured a month ago. Butternut shirt, Union pants and boots--the unofficial standard uniform of most any trooper of the Army of the Tennessee in this month of May, 1864. And he had garments which were practically intact. What was one patch on the seat nowadays?
For the first time Drew grinned at his reflection in the small mirror he had been using, when he scraped a half week's accumulation of soft beard from his face. Sure, he was all spruced up now, ready to make a polite courtesy call at the big house. The grin did not fade, but was gone in a flash, leaving no hint of softness now about his gaunt features, no light in the intent, measuring depths of his dark gray eyes.
A call at Red Springs was certainly the last thing in the world for him to consider seriously. His last interview within its walls could still make him wince when he recalled it, word by scalding word. No, there was no place for a Rennie--and a Rebel Rennie to make matters blacker--under the righteous roof of Alexander Mattock!
Hatred could be a red-hot burning to choke a man's throat, leaving him speechless and hurting inside. Since he had ridden out of Red Springs he had often been cold, very often hungry--and under orders willingly, which would have surprised his grandfather--but in another way he had been free as never before in all his life. In the army, the past did not matter at all if one did one's job well. And in the army, the civilian world was as far away as if it were conducted in the cold chasms of the moon.
Drew leaned back against the tree trunk, wanting to yield to the soft wind and the swinging privacy of the embowered tree house, wanting to forget everything and just lie there for a while in the only part of the past he remembered happily.
But he had his orders--horses for General Morgan, horses and information to feed back to that long column of men riding or trudging westward on booted, footsore feet up the trail through the Virginia mountains on the way home to Kentucky. These were men who carried memories of the Ohio defeat last year which they were determined to wipe out this season, just as a lot of them had to flush with gunsmoke the stench of a Northern prison barracks from their nostrils.
And there were horses at Red Springs. To mount Morgan's men on Alexander Mattock's best stock was a prospect which had its appeal. Drew tossed his haversack back to the platform and added his carbine to it. The army Colts in his belt holsters would not be much hindrance while crawling through cover, but the larger weapon might be.
He thumped a measure of dust from his hat, settled it over hair as black as that felt had once been, and crossed the brook with a running leap. The roan lifted his head to watch Drew go and then settled back to grazing. This, too, followed a pattern both man and horse had practiced for a long time.
Drew could almost imagine that he was again hunting Sheldon as a "Shawnee" on the warpath while he dodged from one bush to the next. Only Chickamauga stood between the past and now--and Sheldon Barrett would never again range ahead, in play or earnest.
The scout came out on a small rise where the rails of the fence were cloaked on his side by brush. Drew lay flat, his chin propped upon his crooked arm to look down the gradual incline of the pasture to the training paddock. Beyond that stood the big house, its native brick settling back slowly into the same earth from which it had been molded in 1795.
In the pasture were the brood mares, five of them, each with an attendant foal, all long legs and broom tail, still young enough to be bewildered by so large and new a world. In the paddock.... Drew's head raised an inch or so, and he pressed forward until his hat was pushed back by the rail. The two-year-old being schooled in the paddock was enough to excite any horseman.
Red Springs' stock right enough, of the Gray Eagle-Ariel breed, which was Alexander Mattock's pride. Born almost black, this colt had shed his baby fur two seasons ago for a dark iron-gray hide which would grow lighter with the years. He had Eclipse's heritage, but he was more than a racing machine. He was--Drew's forehead rasped against the weathered wood of the rail--he was the kind of horse a man could dream about all his days and perhaps find once in a lifetime, if he were lucky! Give that colt three or four more years and there wouldn't be any horse that could touch him. Not in Kentucky, or anywhere else!
He was circling on a leading strap now, throwing his feet in a steady, rhythmic pattern around the hub of a Negro groom who was holding the strap and admiring the action. Mounted on another gray--a mare with a dainty, high-held head--was a woman, her figure trim in a habit almost the same shade of green as the fields.
Drew pulled back. Then he smiled wryly at his instinctive retreat. His aunt, Marianna Forbes, had abilities to be respected, but he very much doubted if she could either sense his presence or see through the leafy wall of his present spy hole. Yet caution dictated that he get about his real business and inspect the fields where the horses he sought should be grazing.
He halted several times during his perimeter march to survey the countryside. And the bits of activity he spied upon began to puzzle him. Aunt Marianna's supervision of the colt's schooling had been the beginning. And he had seen her later, riding out with Rafe, the overseer, to make the daily rounds, a duty which had never been undertaken at Red Springs by any one other than his grandfather.
