“What do you want, old man?” Lancaster asked.
The man raked gnarled fingers through his long white beard before answering. “I don’t know who ye are or where ye be goin’, but I want you to take my grandson wi’ ye.” He turned his head and nodded toward the shack, where a skinny boy about twelve years old stood on the leaning porch. He was barefoot and wore only a pair of ragged overalls.
“I’m sorry, we can’t do that,” Lancaster said.
“If he stays here, he’ll starve, sure as shootin’,” the old man insisted. “The only chance he’s got to live is goin’ somewheres else, somewheres they have more food.”
A harsh laugh came from Potter. “Then he’s out of luck, old-timer, because it’s like this all over the South. The Yankees have burned and looted and torn down until there’s nothing left. The boy might as well stay here and starve instead of starvin’ somewhere else.”
The old man lifted a trembling hand. “Ye can’t mean that. There’s got to be someplace better. There’s got to be a place where folks still have some hope.”
“If there is, we haven’t seen it,” Lancaster said. “I’m sorry, sir, but we have to be moving on. Now, if you’ll get out of our way ...”
In desperation, the old man reached for the halter on the colonel’s horse. “Please . . . you got supplies . . .”
“Not enough to share,” Lancaster snapped. “Not even enough to last us until we get where we’re going.” He pulled his horse to the side, out of the old man’s reach. “Get out of—”
He didn’t say any more. At that moment, a shot boomed and the old man’s head jerked as a sizable chunk of it was blown away by a rifle ball. Blood sprayed in the air, turning his white hair pink.
The shot came from just behind them and to the right, Luke judged. While he was turning on the wagon seat to locate the threat, the thought crossed his mind that the shot had been aimed at Lancaster. When the colonel moved his horse suddenly, it sealed the old man’s fate.
More shots roared. Tongues of flame spurted in the trees almost at the edge of the trail. Luke whipped his rifle to his shoulder and fired at one of the muzzle flashes. A man in a dirty blue uniform and black forage cap staggered out from behind a tree, clutching his chest where Luke’s bullet had gone. The Yankee soldier collapsed.
The rifle was good for only one shot, and Luke didn’t have time to reload. He dropped it at his feet and yanked the revolver from his waistband as he used his other hand to shove Dale off the seat. He followed, diving after his friend.
The bushwhackers seemed to be on the right side of the road. As the Confederates returned the fire, they hurriedly took cover behind the wagons. The saddle mounts bolted down the trail, but that was a problem to worry about later, Luke thought . . . if any of them survived.
Crouching behind the lead wagon, he tried to make his shots count, waiting for a glimpse of blue before he pulled the trigger. Fortunately, the Yankees cooperated. There was no telling where those Union troops were from, but they didn’t seem to have much experience at the sort of hill fighting the Southerners did. Nobody grew up in the Ozarks without learning about the dangers of bushwhackers.
Three more men fell to Luke’s shots, and the heavy fire from his companions was taking a toll, too. The wagons with their cargo of bullion provided good cover. No bullets could penetrate those crates full of gold bars.
Luke glanced at the other men. They were all on their feet. He couldn’t tell if any were wounded, but they were all still in the fight, something that couldn’t be said for the Yankees.
The officer in charge of the ambush realized the same thing. He shouted over the sound of gunfire, “We’ll overrun them! Charge!”
That was just about the worst thing those Yankees could have done. As they burst out of the woods, yelling and shooting, they were met by a hail of bullets from the wagons.
The first rank went down as lead tore into them, then the second, and the charge disintegrated into a chaotic milling around, turning the soldiers into sitting ducks. A few tried to flee back into the trees, but they were gunned down.
An eerie silence fell as clouds of powder smoke drifted over the trail and around the wagons. Luke risked a look. It appeared all the Yankees were on the ground. A few were writhing around and groaning in pain, but most of them lay in the limp sprawl that signified death.
If there had been enough of them, maybe they could have overrun the wagons and finished off the Confederates with their bayonets. But the attack had fallen short
“Check those men,” Lancaster ordered.
Stratton tucked away his pistol and drew a knife. He looked over at Richards and grinned. “Josh and me will take care of it, Colonel.”
Richards grinned, too, and pulled out his own knife.
Luke knew they intended to cut the throats of the Yankees who were only wounded. He didn’t like the idea of killing defenseless men, but this was war, after all.
A sob made him turn around. The boy who’d been on the porch had come onto the trail, falling to his knees beside the body of his grandfather. He was leaning forward over the corpse, crying.
Luke reloaded his pistol and his rifle, then walked over to the boy and rested a hand on his shoulder. “Come on, son. That won’t do any good. Your gramps is gone. I’m sorry.”
“The . . . the Yankees came marchin’ up a while ago,” the youngster managed to say. “They told Grampa that . . . that there would be some wagons comin’ along . . . They said they’d been chasin’ you for days . . . and wanted him to stop y’all somehow. Grampa didn’t want to do it . . . but they said they’d kill us both and burn down our place if he didn’t . . . He had to do it, mister. He had to.”
“I reckon he did.” Luke had already figured out something like that must have happened. “There’s no shame in a man doing whatever he has to in order to protect his family. You remember that, son.”
“But then they ... they shot him anyway!”
“I think that was an accident. They were trying to shoot one of us.”
“He’s dead, though, either way.”
There was no denying that. Luke didn’t even try to. He couldn’t do anything for the boy except squeeze his shoulder again and leave him there to mourn his grandfather.
When he went back over to the wagons, he asked Remy, “Anybody hurt in our bunch?”
“Edgar got nicked on the arm, but Dale’s patching it up. The colonel’s hat’s got a hole in it, so he came mighty close to shakin’ hands with the devil. But that’s all.”
“We were lucky.”
Remy nodded. “Very lucky. Maybe the fates, they are smilin’ on us for a change.”
Luke thought they had been pretty fortunate the whole trip, but he didn’t point that out.
Colonel Lancaster said, “I don’t know if there are any more Yankees in this area, but if there are, they’re bound to have heard this battle. We need to get moving again quickly. Somebody move that old man’s body out of the way.”
“We could bury him, Colonel,” Luke suggested.
Lancaster shook his head. “There’s no time for that. Let’s go. We’ll all ride on the wagons until we catch up to our horses.”
Luke thought it was likely the saddle mounts had stopped to graze somewhere along the trail. Once they were away from the sound of shots and the smell of powder smoke, they would have calmed down fairly quickly.
The boy had gone back to the shack and disappeared inside. Luke and Remy picked up the old man’s body and carried it carefully off the trail. They had just returned to the wagons and climbed on when the youngster emerged from the cabin carrying an old squirrel rifle.
“You and your damned war!” he cried shrilly. “I hate all of you!” He started to lift the rifle.
Potter’s revolver streaked out and blasted. The slug smashed into the boy’s frail chest and lifted him off his feet as it drove him backward. Dust puffed up around him as he landed on the ground.
There hadn’t been time for the
other men to do anything. Lancaster turned to Potter and said in a horrified tone, “You shot that boy!”
“He was about to point a rifle at me,” Potter said coolly as he reloaded the expended chamber. “Damned if I was gonna sit here and let him shoot me.”
Luke hopped down from the wagon and walked over to pick up the rifle the boy had dropped. The youngster lay a couple feet away, staring sightlessly at the sky. Luke tried not to look at those open, empty eyes.
He checked the rifle and said in disgust, “I don’t think this old relic would have even fired! You killed him for nothing, Potter.”
Potter’s shoulders rose and fell. “I didn’t have any way of knowin’ that, now did I?”
That was true, Luke supposed. He threw the squirrel rifle aside. The boy and his grandfather lay dead on one side of the road, more than a dozen Yankees on the other. Once again Luke and his companions were surrounded by senseless death.
After all the things he had seen . . . all the things he had done . . . he wondered if by the time the war was finally over, he would have any soul left at all.
CHAPTER 9
The gold escort continued south, hoping the Yankees who’d ambushed them were the only ones on their trail. Luke thought it likely the women they’d encountered beside that creek had sent the soldiers after them.
Each day without an ambush or confrontation the Confederates became more aware the Yankees had other things to deal with, like the collapse of the Confederacy. The atmosphere of gloom and despair hung over the landscape like actual clouds. The air smelled of smoke, rotting flesh, and defeat.
It seemed to Luke like a month had passed since they left Richmond, but he knew it hadn’t quite been two weeks. “We’re getting close to Georgia now,” he commented to Dale one day. “Have to be.”
“I think you’re right,” Dale said. “What are you gonna do once we get where we’re goin’, Luke?”
“I guess that’ll be up to the colonel. Maybe he has orders for what we’re supposed to do next. If not, I guess I’ll stay wherever the new capital is and try to do what I can to help.” Luke shook his head. “No point in trying to go back to Richmond, even if we could get there.”
“I got a feelin’ you’re right about that.”
The trail entered a long, straight stretch between two mostly bald knobs. Luke frowned at the hills, thinking it would be another good spot for an ambush.
But when the trouble came, it popped up right in front of them through sheer bad luck. A Union cavalry patrol came trotting around a bend in the trail just beyond the knobs.
The Yankees regarded anybody who wasn’t wearing the blue as an enemy. Sunlight winked on steel as the officer in charge of the patrol whipped his saber from its scabbard and shouted, “Charge!”
Just like that, the Confederates were in another fight, and there wasn’t any good cover on either side of the road.
All they could do was shoot it out.
Luke brought his rifle to his shoulder, drew a bead on the officer leading the charge, and pressed the trigger. The rifle roared and bucked against his shoulder. Through the powder smoke stinging his eyes, he saw the Yankee topple off the galloping horse.
Their commanding officer’s death didn’t slow down the other cavalrymen. They kept moving forward, blazing away with pistols as they raced toward the wagons and the outriders.
Colonel Lancaster tried to wheel his horse around and gallop back to the cover of the wagons, but he jerked in the saddle as at least one bullet found him. A crimson stain bloomed on the colonel’s shirt as he galloped past the lead wagon.
Dale grunted in pain beside Luke, but he didn’t have time to glance over and see how badly his friend was hurt. He had his revolver leveled at the charging Yankees. As he squeezed off his last two rounds, another cavalryman fell, taking his mount down with him. Another horse ran into the fallen animal and upended as well. The trail suddenly became a welter of flailing hooves and swirling dust.
The back of the charge was broken. Only three Yankees remained mounted. They whirled their horses and fled. A few final shots from the Confederates followed to speed them on their way.
Luke turned to Dale and found his friend clutching a bloody left shoulder. “How bad is it?”
“Don’t know, but it hurts like hell,” Dale replied through clenched teeth. “I’ll be all right. See about Remy and Edgar.”
Luke twisted on the seat to look back at the other wagon. Remy was reloading and seemed to be all right. He glanced up and gave Luke a brief nod to signify as much. Edgar waved to indicate he was unharmed, too.
Lancaster had galloped past both wagons before coming to a stop. Luke had a feeling the horse had been running blindly, that the colonel was no longer in control. He glanced back to where the horse had stopped. Lancaster was still mounted, sitting hunched over in the saddle.
Casey trotted his horse back to check on the officer. He put a hand on Lancaster’s shoulder and leaned over to take a closer look at him. Then he turned and called to the others, “Hey, the colonel’s shot to pieces!”
“Get him down from his horse,” Luke said, “but be careful with him.”
Casey frowned as if he didn’t like the idea of Luke giving him orders, but he dismounted and reached up to take hold of Lancaster. Stratton got to them in time to swing down from his saddle and give Casey a hand.
They lowered Lancaster onto his back in the grass at the side of the trail. All the men gathered around him, even the wounded Dale Cardwell.
Lancaster was still alive. His eyes were open, and his mouth moved like he was trying to say something. He couldn’t get the words out, though. Nothing came from his mouth except trickles of blood at each corner.
The colonel’s shirt was so bloody it was hard to tell for sure, but it looked like the man had been hit at least three times. Clearly, the wounds were bad ones.
Luke figured Lancaster had only minutes to live, if that long. He dropped to a knee beside him. “Colonel, can you hear me? Colonel!”
Lancaster managed to make a sound, but it was just a choked, incoherent moan. From the look in his eyes, he wasn’t aware of anything except the pain that filled him.
“Colonel, listen to me!” Luke urged. “We need to know where we’re going. Colonel, do you have a map? Can you tell me—”
“He can’t tell you nothin’, Jensen,” Potter said. “He’s next thing to dead, can’t you see that? We’re on our own now.”
“Don’t say that just yet,” Luke snapped. “We can’t give up—”
A grotesque rattle came from Lancaster’s throat. When Luke looked at the colonel again, he saw that Lancaster’s eyes were starting to glaze over.
“Well, he’s sure enough dead now,” Potter drawled, “and like I said, we’re on our own. Question is, what are we gonna do?”
“Go check those Yankees and make sure they’re all dead,” Luke said as he reached over to close Lancaster’s eyes. “Remy, patch up Dale’s shoulder.”
“Oui.”
“Then we’ll get moving,” Luke went on. “We can’t afford to wait around. Three of those troopers got away. They’ll go tell other Yankees what happened. We need to get off the trail and find a place to hole up for a while.”
He glanced up. No one except Remy, who was tearing pieces off his shirt to bind up the wound in Dale’s shoulder, had moved to do what he said. “Blast it, get moving.”
“Hold on just a minute, Jensen,” Potter said. “I don’t recall anybody puttin’ you in charge.”
“Somebody’s got to take over,” Luke said. “Or would you rather stand around and argue about it until a whole company of Yankee cavalry shows up?”
Potter thought it over for a couple seconds, then shrugged.
“All right, we’ll do what you say . . . for now. But this ain’t settled.”
Luke didn’t expect it to be, but for the moment he would take what he could get. He said to Edgar, “Let’s put the colonel’s body in one of the wagons.”
/> “Why not leave him where he lays?” Stratton suggested.
“Because I want to search him later and see if he’s got any written orders or a map on him.”
That answer satisfied the others, and they went about their business. All the fallen Yankees were dead except for a couple, and Casey didn’t waste any time slitting their throats. Luke and Edgar carried Lancaster’s body over to the second wagon and placed it alongside the crates containing the gold bullion. By that time, the crude job Remy had done of bandaging Dale’s wound had stopped the bleeding.
“Somebody tie the colonel’s horse behind the second wagon,” Luke said. “We’ll take it with us.”
That done, they followed the trail for another half mile until Luke spotted a narrow path leading off into a thick stretch of woods. He was driving the lead wagon since Dale couldn’t handle the team with a wounded arm and drove between the trees, calling back to Remy, “Once we’re all off the trail, get a branch and wipe away our tracks as far back as you can.”
Remy waved a hand in acknowledgment of the order.
The path was little more than a game trail. Trees and brush crowded in on the wagons from both sides. Branches clawed at the men. Several times the wagons’ sideboards scraped against tree trunks, and Luke worried they would get stuck. Finally, they broke out into a small clearing. It was big enough to turn the wagons around and go back out the way they had come in, but it would be a challenge.
When Remy rode in a few minutes later, he said, “Not only did I wipe away our tracks, but I pulled some brush in front of the opening as well. If any Yankees ride by, they may not even notice a gap big enough for the wagons.”
Luke nodded his approval. “That was good thinking. Let’s get the colonel out of the wagon so I can check his pockets.”
“Robbin’ the dead?” Potter asked mockingly.
“Checking for a map or orders, like I said before.”
“You go right ahead. I ain’t fond of handlin’ dead men.”
Neither was Luke, but he made himself do it. He searched all Lancaster’s pockets but didn’t find anything except a couple bloodstained letters from the colonel’s wife. He didn’t read them, tucking them back into Lancaster’s pocket. He didn’t have any right to intrude on the colonel’s private life.
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