The corporal flinched, and I could see the lieutenant’s shoulders stiffen. For a moment I was sure one of them would tell Langley to shut up, but then Hodges made a small motion with his hand, and the corporal lowered the hammer on his weapon.
“A deal, McCallister,” Hodges proposed. “If you and your men surrender without incident, I shall allow young Langley to return to his home unharmed.”
“It’s a trick,” Casey said tersely, looking at me. “You can’t trust a damned Yankee, Boone. They’ll say whatever it takes to win, then turn around and shove a knife through your guts the second they’ve got what they want.”
I don’t know, maybe that’s not being fair to Northerners, but it was the way we felt at the time, the way a lot of us still do when it comes to the North. But I couldn’t let Hodges or one of his men just shoot Dick down in cold blood, either. Not if there was something I could do to prevent it.
“Make your offer, Yankee!” I called.
Casey and Roy cursed softly but with venom, and Pablo said: “I will not do it.”
“Hold on, dammit,” I said. “Hearing what he’s got to say doesn’t mean we’ll do it, and it might give us a little time.”
“Time ain’t going to work in our favor here, Boone,” Casey argued.
I guess Hodges didn’t intend to let that happen, either. “I’ve made my offer, McCallister. You have ten seconds to reply.”
“Boone!” Dick shouted, and this time Hodges gave him a sharp look and said something to the skinny corporal I couldn’t hear. The corporal lowered his revolver and reached for Langley’s collar, and Dick said—“Let ’em have it”—and threw himself from the saddle.
Dick’s move caught everyone by surprise. Then all hell broke loose. I drove my spurs into the bay’s ribs even as I drew my Navy, pounding forward with the revolver thrust before me because I didn’t know what else to do. Several of the boys—Casey and Punch and Roy—rode beside me, while Jim and Ardell swung down from their saddles and started firing from the ground.
It was all wildly crazy for maybe forty-five seconds. Dick’s horse bolted with the young cow hunter still lashed firmly to the open pommel of his flat saddle. He was hanging on, though, and trying to get a foot back in the stirrup even as his horse swerved wide to avoid my bay. Meanwhile, minié balls were thumping past our ears, and men yelled in both fury and fear. I heard Roy scream a curse behind me, but didn’t look around to see why. I was firing as fast as I could thumb the hammer back and pull the trigger, although not doing much damage for all my effort. Like I said a minute ago, shooting is a lot different in the heat of battle, and I lacked the experience at that time to keep a cool head. Only two of my shots hit their mark, but that turned out to be enough when it was lumped in with the others. Especially Negro Jim cutting loose with his shotgun.
Rifles and revolvers are nice, but never underestimate the influence of a shotgun in a close-up gunfight. I’m not just talking about the swath of destruction it can cut, either. I was near enough to those Yankees by the time Jim let go of his first round that I could see the way the expressions changed on the faces of those green-as-grass New Yorkers. Jim’s buckshot tore through them like the reaper’s scythe, spilling two men from their seats with the first blast and two more with the second—half of Hodges’s command unhorsed within the space of ten seconds. The others scattered like flushed quail as the smoke from our guns rolled toward them. Those who were still mounted raced their horses back toward the settlement at Fort Pierce, while others fled on foot. I saw the corporal plunging unarmed into the trees west of the trail; running mindlessly in his terror, he was soon swallowed by Florida’s thick, low-growth flora.
Three Union soldiers remained on the trail, the lieutenant among them. Stepping down, I let go of the bay’s reins, and the horse immediately scampered into the pines. It didn’t go far before stopping and staring back over its shoulder, its nostrils flared like velvety trumpets, flanks quivering. With my jaw set like granite in concrete, I walked over to where Hodges lay on his back. His eyes were open, but already glazed in death. I was shocked when I looked into his face. He seemed young, surely no more than twenty or twenty-one. It would be a while before it dawned on me that, as young as he might have been, the lieutenant was still a couple of years older than I was. It was a sobering realization, and it haunted me for some days afterward. I think that was the first time I truly understood that I was no longer just Jeff McCallister’s son. I was Boone McCallister, a man grown—even if I didn’t yet feel that way.
“Marse?”
I turned and holstered my empty revolver. Jim stood a few yards away, his hand on the shoulder of Dick Langley’s marshtackie. Dick looked drawn and pale and was covered in filth, no small amount of it being his own dried blood, but he seemed otherwise intact.
“If I could afford it, I’d buy this darkie from you,” Dick said quietly.
“Shoo,” Jim replied, grinning. “Ol’ Mistah Jeff, he’d never sell Negro Jim.”
“He’d better not,” Dick said emphatically. He slid from his saddle to the ground, where Jim caught him and held him firm until he had his balance. “He likely saved my life back there,” Dick added, tipping his head toward the trail behind him.
“His ’tackie was fair spooked,” Jim agreed. “I seen Mistah Dick’s hands was tied, so I went after him. Don’t know about savin’ his life, though.”
“You did good, Jim. Thanks,” I said, and the older man got a funny, flustered look on his face.
“’Tweren’t nothin’, marse,” he insisted, then abruptly handed me the reins to Dick’s mount and walked away.
Casey and Roy came over, nodding their pleasure at seeing their friend still alive and in one piece. Glancing at Roy, I said: “I heard you holler.”
He held up his hand. It was empty and the forefinger slightly swollen, but otherwise it appeared unharmed.
“One of them damned Yankees shot my pistol outta my hand,” he said. “Like to took my trigger finger off with it. Ruined the gun, too.”
“Take the lieutenant’s,” I said distractedly, already turning away to take stock of our situation.
The first thing I noticed was that Ardell and Pablo were gone. I asked the boys if they knew what had happened, and Punch said: “Pablo went after them soldiers that were running away. Ardell went after him.”
“After Pablo?”
“Looked so,” Punch agreed. “He was shouting for Torres to let ’em go, but ol’ Torres wasn’t payin’ him no attention.”
Although Punch’s words brought a quick scowl to my face, I didn’t say anything. We went back to where the dead Yankees were sprawled across the trail, and I’ll tell you what, that was a solid lesson learned about bunching up when someone is shooting at you. I figured Jim had dropped at least three of them, but I didn’t say anything on account of Jim being black. I figured the others probably knew it as well as I did but felt confident that they wouldn’t bring it up outside of our own circle. Negro Jim had saved our hides that day, no two ways about it. If he hadn’t cut loose with his shotgun when he did and kept his head while doing it, we’d have likely lost a man or two ourselves, if not the whole battle.
All but one of the Yankees’ horses had fled. The one that remained had a wound in its side that looked like it had come from one of its own. Those minié balls punched a deep hole into the toughest hide. Leading the horse off the trail, I used my Sharps to put it out of its misery, while the others hauled the dead Yankees into the trees on the opposite side and laid them out side-by-side. We stood around a while, wondering if we should bury them or at least say some words over their bodies, but I finally said the bluebellies could do their own praying when they came back for the bodies.
“What about that corporal?” Casey asked, jutting his chin toward the deep forest west of the trail.
“Shoo, let the ’gators have him,” Roy said, to which I was inclined to agree.
“He can find his own way out,” I replied. “Time’s wasting, and
Klee’s men are getting farther away.” I turned to Dick Langley, sitting his horse nearby. He’d cleaned up as best he could in a nearby slough, but still looked rough used. “You coming with us?”
Dick hesitated, then shook his head. “No. They burned our cabin, Boone. Emma May got a chance and ducked into the scrub with our boy, but she’s out there unarmed and with no shelter. She’s a tough ol’ gal, but that’s too much to ask of anyone. I’m going back, though I feel bad for doing so.”
“You’ve no reason to feel bad.”
“In case you’re wondering, it was me that told ’em which way y’all were heading. That corporal had Emma May’s arm twisted up behind her back so that it like to snapped.”
“I figured it had to be something like that,” I said, although I’ll confess that until that moment, I hadn’t even considered how they’d found us. Still, I knew I eventually would have started wondering, so I appreciated Dick telling me. And I never did blame him for it. Truthfully I probably would have thought less of him if he hadn’t done everything he could to protect his family. “Go on back to your wife and that little boy,” I said. “When we get this thing with the Klees settled, we’ll come by and help you raise another cabin.”
Dick nodded appreciatively and reined away, the Springfield musket he’d confiscated from the field carried across his saddle. And that was that, as far as Dick Langley is concerned. If you’re interested, he and his family did prosper in the years that followed, and that youngster of his grew up to be a DeSoto County commissioner, a man of some influence, is what I’ve heard, although I can’t say from personal knowledge. By the time Homer Langley won his first election, I’d been a Texas cowboy for better than twenty years.
I walked into the trees to retrieve my bay, and when I came back, the others were already mounted and waiting for me. Roy was wearing the lieutenant’s Army Model Colt revolver at his waist, and Casey had tied a trio of Springfield rifles and their ammunition pouches to the spare mount we’d brought along for Lena. Although Roy had wanted to go through the pockets of the dead soldiers to see if they had anything of value, I’d told him to leave them be. Roy had naturally balked, but Casey and Punch quickly jumped in to back me up, and even Jim had ventured to say he thought it was a bad idea to rob from the dead. Faced with so much opposition, Roy had grudgingly abandoned his search. The guns were a different matter, though. This was war, and even if we decided not to use the Springfields ourselves, we’d either see that they got into proper Southern hands or toss them into the swamps where the Yankees would never find them.
“Which way we going, Boone?” Punch asked.
“We’re going after Lena and our horses.”
“What about Ardell and Pablo?”
“They’ll have to catch up as best they can,” I said, then reined away from the scene of the battle with the others falling in silently behind me.
We continued on through the shady pines until we came to the remains of a campfire at the edge of a grassy vale, several miles south of where we’d fought the Yankees. Dismounting and handing the bay’s reins to Punch, I told the others to stay back, then motioned for Casey to follow me into the abandoned camp. It was Casey who discovered the rope-slick bark of a pine, set back from the fire and tied low, like you’d do for either a dog or a human, instead of a horse. His shout brought everyone over.
“This be the place?” Jim asked bitterly, dropping to one knee to rub the backs of his fingers softly over the crushed grass where the prisoner had lain. “This where them skunks kept her trussed like a hog for market?”
“That’s what it looks like,” I replied gently.
He looked up, a fire burning in his dark eyes like nothing I’d ever seen before. He didn’t say anything, though. He couldn’t, being colored and all, but I recognized the anger that boiled just below the surface and silently nodded my acknowledgement of it.
“We’ll get her back,” I promised.
“Yes’um,” Jim replied icily. “We surely will.”
“Hey, here’s something!” Roy called. He’d moved on past the tree where Lena had been tied and was lifting something hard and brown out of the tall grass. He swung it on his finger as he brought it back, a whiskey jug of the same style, but about twice the size as the one the Fort Pierce bartender had poured our drinks from.
“Looks like they might’ve been here a while,” Casey observed.
Sniffing the uncorked mouth, Roy winced dramatically. “This is the same rotgut we had this mornin’, all right. If they drank this whole jug in one settin’, I’ll bet they was passed out here for a good, long spell.”
Kneeling at the fire, Casey cautiously pushed his fingers into the ashes. “These are still kind of warm,” he announced. “I’d say Roy is right.”
“About time you figured that out,” Roy replied with feigned indignation.
Standing and brushing off his fingers, Casey said: “We’re closing the gap, Boone.”
I nodded solemnly, then walked over to where Punch had left his marshtackie and my long-legged bay ground tied. I swung a tired leg over the cantle, then glanced at Casey, who was staring back up the trail with furrowed brows. “They’ll be along,” I said, knowing he was starting to fret over Ardell and Pablo’s long absence. Hell, I was, too.
“You notice how that Cuban’s been acting funny ever since we left Punta Rassa,” Casey asked, still watching our back trail.
“What do you mean?”
“Think about it. I doubt he’s said a dozen words to any of us since Rassa.”
“Since that night Dave Klee got et by a ’gator, is more like,” Roy amended. “I been noticin’ it, too, although I got to admit I appreciated him stayin’ quiet for a change.”
“He’s seemed real moody to me, too,” Punch added.
“Like he’s got a bad bellyache or something,” said Roy.
“Something’s sure been eating at him,” Casey declared. “That remark he made about Dick not being a Flatiron hand, I nearly dropped my pistol.”
I didn’t reply, but instead let my thoughts drift back over the preceding week. Although normally pretty gregarious, Torres had become strangely silent and withdrawn since . . . when? Was Roy right, claiming his mood had turned dark that night at Chestnut Thumb, when Dave Klee had been pulled under by an alligator?
“He’s probably just . . .” I started, then let my words trail off. The fact is, I’d been so caught up in my own problems ever since the Thumb that I’d barely registered the change in Pablo’s character and hadn’t cared when I did notice it. Shaking my head, as if to clear it of cobwebs, I said: “Let’s mount up. We can worry about Torres later. Right now I want to keep dogging Klee’s men.”
We rode on, pushing our mounts a little harder, but resisting the urge to throw them into a run. You might be wondering why, what with our prey being just a few hours ahead of us by then. Actually there’s a good reason.
Have you ever noticed how those movie cowboys are always riding here and about at a full-out gallop, their horses’ manes and tails flying in the wind, their coats shining like they’ve been recently oiled? Not a speck of dust on horse or tack, and those movie actors just about as clean, unless they’re some scruffy sidekick like Gabby Hayes or Fuzzy St. John.
But that’s not how it was in Florida or anywhere out West that I’ve ever been to. Horseback travel in those days was dirty, and it was hard on both you and your mount. You ride a horse at even a fast lope under those conditions, and more than likely that horse’ll drop out from under you before you’ve covered twenty miles. It just can’t be done, unless you don’t mind killing your mount to do it. That’s why, even in as much of a hurry as we were in, we mostly kept our pace to a walk—maybe three to five miles an hour, depending on the terrain. Oh, we’d jog our marshtackies along from time to time and would even lope them once in a while, when we had solid, open ground under us. But for the most part we walked, knowing they were going to have to carry us all the way to Fort Dallas and, more importan
tly, back out again.
As the miles dropped away and the sun slid down through the pines, I began to notice my own mood starting to dip. Judging from the increasingly somber expressions of the others, I’d guess they were feeling the same. I couldn’t say what was eating at the others, but I know that for me, my anger had started to dull in the days since we’d ridden out of the Flatiron like knights-errant. Our time since then had been filled with travel, with new sights and fresh discoveries. But now, with our encounter with the Yankees still fresh in our minds and the knowledge that we were drawing near the end of our pursuit of the Klees, the reality of what might lie ahead was beginning to sharpen its focus.
I’d said all along that freeing Lena was our primary goal and that recovering our stolen horses or exacting revenge for what Jacob’s boys had done to the ranch would happen only after she was safe. But if the entire Klee clan had taken up residence along the Lower Miami, rescuing anyone was going to be almighty chancy. When you’re two hundred miles away and mad as a ’gator with a toothache, it’s pretty easy to believe that you and your friends are invincible, but the closer we got to tossing the fat into the fire, the more I realized how vulnerable we really were. Those Klees were a hard bunch, every one of them. Rustlers and murderers and highwaymen, and a whole lot more dangerous than a detachment of New York farm boys. As far as us, well, when you got right down to it, except for Jim, we were all just boys ourselves. Maybe a little rougher around the edges than Hodges’s men, but nothing near like what we’d be going up against there on the Miami. We’d be outnumbered and outgunned, and that was a sobering assessment for a young buck like myself. I expect it was for the others, too.
Along about dark we peeled off into the trees and found a little vale with enough grass to satisfy our horses. After seeing to our stock and gathering enough wood for a quick fire, we settled down for a supper of lukewarm grits and salty ham. When Roy started to add more wood to the blaze after we’d eaten, I told him to let it die.
“We’re getting too close to Klee’s men to take any chances,” I said. “I don’t want them catching sight of our fire.”
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