For a horrified second, Knight worried he had killed the man. A quick check of the artery in his neck showed a strong pulse. Relieved, he rolled the man over a couple times and got him to the shackles. The work of an instant fastened the iron manacles around his wrists. For good measure, Knight fastened another set to his ankles, stretching him out between two trees. Then he gagged the man.
He plucked his six-shooter from the soldier’s belt—he thought of the stolen gun as his. Having the corporal take it felt as if he had lost his personal property. It felt right weighing down his hip. With the soldier’s rifle in hand, he set out to find his horse, then realized he had no way of finding it in the encampment. Going on foot made no sense. He would be caught quickly.
Then the solution to his problem rode slowly by. A horse soldier nodded off. Whether he returned from scouting or had been instructed to make a circuit of the camp to watch for intruders hardly mattered. Knight walked quickly until he paced the horse, then jumped, grabbed, and pulled the man from his saddle.
The attack should have been easy. It went wrong immediately. The soldier turned slightly as he tumbled down and tangled his foot in the stirrup, spooking the horse. It took off at a trot, dragging the soldier behind. The bluecoat let out a yelp and began thrashing around, unable to kick free of the stirrup as he was bounced along.
Knight put his head down and sprinted for all he was worth. As exhausted and starved as he was, that wasn’t much. But it was enough. The horse burst into the woods, making a straight run impossible. As it swerved to avoid an elm, Knight got his arms around its neck. The horse fought and almost kicked free. Knight clung for dear life, his own as well as that of the soldier still trapped in the stirrup.
He finally calmed the horse enough to let it stand. Front hooves pawed at the ground, and it tried to rear. He found the reins and kept its head down to prevent that. A full minute of fighting brought Knight out as victor.
“Let me get you free.” He worked on the soldier’s leg. A cursory examination showed nothing broken. “Don’t walk on it for a day or two, and you’ll be all right.”
“Can’t stand,” the soldier said, trying and falling.
“Don’t put any weight on it, or you’ll hurt yourself. You might even give yourself a permanent limp.”
The soldier looked up at him and rubbed his leg. “You’re mighty helpful for an escaping prisoner.”
“How’d you know that?”
“You’re not in uniform. Ain’t never seen you before with the scouts.”
“I just hired on. The lieutenant wanted me to go . . . scout.” Knight remembered how he had talked himself into a corner by his nervous babbling. He needed to control that.
“You sure my leg’s going to be all right? It feels like it’s on fire and is throbbing like a drummer’s banging on it.”
“I checked it. You’ll be fine.”
“You a doctor?”
“I’ll go fetch some help from the camp.” Knight swung into the saddle, ducked under a limb, and headed into the forest. “You stay here all quiet and don’t move until they come to get you.”
He angled away from the Union encampment until he found the road. Taking it might be dangerous if he passed other sentries. He had no other course of action. He knew where Pine Knob lay and was less inclined to go out of his way now that he had stolen a second horse, this one from the US Cavalry. He brought the horse to a canter and rode into the night, jumping at every sound around him, sure that the lieutenant’s entire company rode after him.
CHAPTER 4
He fell out of the saddle and crashed hard enough to the ground to stun him. Knight shook his head. Nothing rattled loose, but the shooting pains in his neck told him he might have seriously hurt himself. Common sense dictated that he move slowly, examine himself the best he could, and then—only then—get to his feet.
The horse galloped away, taking with it his chance of reaching Pine Knob and staying ahead of any possible pursuit.
He twisted about, winced at the fiery jab down his spine, then sat upright. He turned his head from side to side and didn’t pass out. That was the best examination he could afford at the moment. Knight levered himself to his feet and stumbled along. The horse was long gone, vanished in the pale dawn light. He had ridden all night long, risking Yankee patrols and the possibility the horse would die from exhaustion under him. Instead, he had nodded off and landed hard enough to jar himself.
Carefully stretching as he walked told him all he had done was strain some muscles. That any remained after his near starvation and deprivation on his way back home counted as a minor miracle. He tried to remember the taste of the food he had stolen in the restaurant. That theft had become a distant echo in his memory and belly. He plodded along, wondering if the Yankees would have fed him. That fanciful notion evaporated. Better to starve to death than be chained up again as he had been too many times in the Union’s prison camp.
He had tried to erase the bitterness he felt by replacing it with hope of returning home to Victoria. It had come as a dispiriting surprise that he entertained both at the same time. He touched the six-shooter at his hip and half drew the weapon. During his entire enlistment in the C.S.A. never once had he strapped on a pistol or carried a rifle. The need for his surgical skills had been too great. He also suspected the number of rifles and ammunition had been so limited only soldiers on the front lines had been armed, but he wished he’d had something more than a scalpel when the Federals had swarmed over his surgical tent after the Battle of the Wilderness and taken him prisoner.
They had pulled him away from an operation. He never knew his patient’s fate, but considering his condition, the extent of cutting where Knight had been in the operation, and the chances for recovery on his own, the Yankees had pretty much signed the man’s death certificate. Knight turned even more morose as that thought crossed his mind. There wouldn’t have been a proper burial. The Union troopers had been piling bodies high and burning them. No attempt at identification had been made.
Knight realized his pace had slackened. His legs throbbed and sleep tried to turn him into a walking corpse. He felt the sun already hot on his back. The heat sapped his strength further, forcing him to stop to get his breath. The break from hiking saved him. Over the thumping of his pulse in his ears came a distant pounding. Hoofbeats. More than one horse galloped down the road from behind.
Knowing that only trouble came from that direction, he got off the road and flung himself into a ditch in time for the squad of Union cavalry to thunder past. Knight’s usual caution failed him. He stood too soon.
A straggler caught sight of him, pulled to a halt, and shouted at him. “You, drop that gun!” The young soldier fumbled to pull his carbine from its saddle scabbard. “Don’t you go nowhere!”
Knight drew the Colt Navy, cocked it, and thought pointing it at the Yankee would end the affair. He underestimated the youth’s fervor, or perhaps he simply didn’t understand that anyone would shoot at him. The troopers in the cavalry command seemed split between battle-hardened veterans weary of the war and greenhorns who had missed service and yearned for what they thought was adventure.
“Ride on,” Knight called. When he saw the soldier would do no such thing, he fired. The .36 caliber six-shooter bucked in his hand.
Growing up, he had been a decent shot with both shotgun and rifle, but the opportunity to fire a handgun had never presented itself. The report didn’t unsettle him. The puff of white smoke meant nothing after all the battles he had been through during the war where choking smoke draped the fields for hours after the last shot. But the feel of the butt in his grip was unusual. His bullet went wide.
He had no intention of killing the soldier, but he had not thought through what he did want from the shot. The horse reared as the slug tore through its shoulder, then bolted. The rider’s finger slipped, and he triggered a round from his carbine that added to the horse’s panic. Knight watched the chaos for a moment, then realized both shots
and the frantic neighing attracted attention from the patrol that had galloped by only a minute earlier.
Running for the woods, he tried to come up with a plan that ended with his escape. When tiny plumes of dirt rose around him as the patrol opened fire, he found new energy to speed himself along. A single round came close enough to make him duck involuntarily. It unbalanced him, and Knight crashed facedown to the ground, stunned. By the time he recovered enough to get back to his feet, the patrol had covered the distance between the road and the woods. The soldiers fanned out fast and he found himself in the center of a half circle of riders, all with their carbines out.
“Surrender or die!”
Knight swung around to face the officer giving the command and stumbled backwards. The air filled with lead as the soldiers opened fire on him. He hit the ground and avoided the hail of bullets. More out of reaction than intent, he started firing the Colt. His slugs tore along at knee level for the horses. He hit one and caused two others to rear. One rider was thrown. Confusion spread rapidly, giving him the chance to scuttle like a crab into the woods. He let the thick undergrowth swallow him up.
From the sound of bullets ripping through the bushes around him, the soldiers had no idea where he had gone. Without giving any thought to an escape plan, he plowed on deeper into the forest, getting his feet under him and dodging around the trees. In seconds he passed the sparse perimeter and plunged into denser vegetation and more numerous trees. Behind he heard the officer bellowing commands. Some troopers tried to enter the copse on horseback. They didn’t get far.
He put his head down and pumped his legs harder when the soldiers dismounted and came after him on foot. They had to advance cautiously, fearing an ambush. All he had to do was get the hell away.
That proved harder than he hoped. His physical condition betrayed him. Less than a mile into the woods, he couldn’t take another step. Knight looked up and considered climbing a tree, lying along a limb and praying that the soldiers missed him. Few horse troopers had any woodsman’s skills, unless they had been recruited from the backwoods. If they were mostly Yankees, chances were that they knew Herald Square better than a sweet gum tree.
Scrambling up into the limbs proved beyond his strength. Knight collapsed, then rolled between the broad roots holding a large oak tree upright. He pulled what detritus as he could over him in a camouflaging blanket. He sagged back when he heard two soldiers calling to each other.
“Over here, Zeke. I got the trail.”
“What do you know?” came the immediate reply. “You thought that rabbit was him, too.”
“It coulda been. The rustlin’ in the bush coulda fooled anybody.”
“Not me.”
Knight held his breath as the voices passed on either side of where he hid. He closed his eyes, thinking this might help. He had noticed how staring at someone across a room caused them to become uneasy and finally look around to see what was wrong. A faint smile came to his lips. He had stared so hard at Victoria at the barn dance that she had batted her fan faster and faster and finally, aware someone watched her but not sure who, had studied the others in at the dance. When their eyes had locked, both knew they were destined to be together. Like a lodestone drew iron, they had become an inseparable couple that night, then married a month later.
“You move a muscle and I’ll plug you, I swear I will.”
Knight opened his eyes to a bore the size of a fire hose. The carbine shook slightly as the boy poked at him with it, as if it were a pitchfork and not a rifle.
“Got him, Zeke. I got him. Over here!”
“There’s no call to shoot,” Knight said. “I’m out of ammo.” That wasn’t true. He had two loaded cylinders. All he had to do was pop out the one with its spent chambers and click in another. He wanted to calm the obviously anxious soldier.
“You just don’t move a muscle. No, sir, not a twitch.” The soldier poked at him again with the carbine.
Knight surged upward when the second soldier came crashing through the woods and startled his captor. The young soldier spooked. A round ripped through the spot where Knight had lain only a second before. More from luck than intent, Knight threw his arms around the soldier and drove him back. The youth hit the ground hard. The rifle sprang from his hands. As if by magic, it ended up in Knight’s.
He worked the lever, got a new round chambered and swung to meet the second soldier. Not even realizing he did so, he fired. The slug went high and tore off the second soldier’s cap. Surprised, the soldier threw up his hands to his head. His rifle crashed to the ground.
“Both of you, give up.” Knight stepped away and covered the pair of them.
The one whose rifle he held sat on the ground and thrust his hands high in the air. The second soldier was slower to respond, but he, too, put his hands up.
“You ain’t got no call to murder us,” the one named Zeke said.
Knight motioned for him to get on the ground next to his partner. He snared the fallen rifle and began backing away.
“You boys count to one hundred. Then you can do all the shouting you want. Try anything before that and I might just shoot you with your own rifle.”
“They’ll be counting to one hundred in the stockade, if they can count that high. If they don’t know now, they’ll be locked up long enough to learn.” The voice behind Knight came with a mocking superiority he had learned to associate with officers, mostly those who had never been in combat.
He feinted right, spun left and froze. The officer wasn’t alone. Flanking him were a half dozen soldiers. Without being told, he dropped both rifles and lifted his hands. He was caught good and proper.
“Now that’s a real shame, you giving up so easy, you damned Johnny Reb. I wanted you to keep shooting so I could ventilate you myself.” The officer lifted the pistol he had leveled on Knight. “I haven’t had a chance to try it out yet, except for shooting at airtights and bottles put on fence posts.”
“This is all a big mistake. Your soldier tried to shoot me. I—”
“You shot Private Rendell in the foot.”
“Check the wound. He likely shot himself with his own rifle.”
Two soldiers behind the officer snickered.
“Shut up or you’ll be walking punishment duty for a year!” The officer stepped up so a single ray of sunlight angled down through the canopy of leaves above and highlighted him as if he were an actor at center stage. Captain’s bars shone like sunlight on train track rails. The sharp creases in his uniform, the immaculate scarf and polished brass testified he had an overworked servant and valued doing everything by the book.
Knight cursed his bad luck facing an officer like this, much less a Union officer. “It’s all a misunderstanding, sir.”
He gasped when a soldier punched him in the kidney. He fell to his knees and tried to suck in his breath.
“You’ll speak to Captain Norwood only when he tells you.”
Knight wasn’t able to speak, even if he wanted. The liquid feel inside his body told him things had been bruised, if not ruptured. He kept the blood in his mouth from choking him, in spite of wanting to spit it out on Norwood’s mirror-polished boots. He bent over and let the blood ooze onto the ground.
“Get him back to camp. I need to move my company out immediately to my new command. Tend to him, Lieutenant, then return to your patrol along the road.”
Knight saw boots moving about but hardly focused. Strong hands pulled him to his feet. His toes cut furrows in the forest floor as they dragged him along. By the time they reached the road, he had regained his feet and walked without support.
“All yours, Private.” The declaration was given along with Knight’s gun belt, six-shooter, and spare cylinders. The soldier sagged a little as he slung the belt around his shoulder and juggled his rifle to keep it ready for action.
Knight was shoved forward. He kept from falling only through dint of will. When he looked up, he realized his new captor was the soldier whose horse he had st
olen. “How’s your leg? Not too sore, I hope.”
“Reckoned they would run you down. The lieutenant gets angry when he loses a horse, no matter the cause. And the captain?” He shook his head sadly. “That man’s a fanatic when it comes to discipline. He’s got me on extra sentry duty for the next month.”
“Sorry to hear that. It wasn’t your fault your foot got tangled and you were dragged along.”
The soldier sighed. “I wish your word carried weight with them, but it don’t.”
“What are you taking me back to?” Knight held his breath. He still feared that the town marshal and a posse had followed him this far, though stealing a cavalry horse was likely enough to get him put in front of a firing squad.
“Not for me to say.”
“But you know, don’t you?”
The soldier nodded, then motioned for Knight to start walking. Neither of them were given mounts. The rest of the squad had already mounted and left on patrol.
“Are you going to make it on your leg? You shouldn’t put any weight on it, not after it got all twisted up like it did.”
The soldier frowned as he studied Knight. “I don’t know if you’re a snake-oil salesman or if you really do give a damn about me.”
“Does it matter? You know how your leg feels. Even a tinkerer can be respectful of your injury.”
“I’m ordered to get you on back to camp, and that’s what I’ll do. It’s my duty.”
“I respect that.”
“Are you giving me your parole?”
“That’s only good for soldiers, and I’m not a soldier. No uniform.” Knight looked at his rags. Even when he had been in uniform, the cloth hadn’t been much better. For all the cotton plantations and textile mills in the South, the uniforms had been poor. Most of the better quality cloth had been smuggled to Europe in trade for arms and manufactured goods otherwise unavailable.
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