by J. T. Edson
‘I’m figuring on firing a salute for your new general,’ Dusty drawled. ‘And I don’t want you around trying to spoil it.’
‘You—you mean that you’re go—?’ Savos croaked, staring in disbelief at the two squat mortars. Then he turned his eyes to the caisson, knowing what it held.
‘Just that,’ Dusty confirmed and nodded to where the red-haired lieutenant was approaching. ‘Mr. Blaze here’ll look to you, but don’t try anything loco, mister.’
‘Loco being Spanish for crazy, friend,’ drawled 1st Lieutenant Charles William Henry Blaze cheerfully. ‘Which trying to escape, or make fuss for us’d be.’
First Lieutenant Blaze might have been baptized Charles Wil1iam Henry, but it was doubtful if even he remembered the fact. His thatch of fiery, ever-untidy hair had qualified him for his commonly used name ‘Red’. Dressed in a similar regulation-flouting uniform to his cousin, it carried two collar bars and a single-braid ‘chicken guts’ insignia.
Already Red Blaze had built up a reputation for courage, possessing a hot temper and an almost unequalled ability to become involved in fights. Yet Dusty recognized that he had virtues which more than offset his minor faults, including one which few people noticed. Older senior officers tended to think of Red as irresponsible, but Dusty knew better. Given a job to do, Red became calm and let nothing distract him. Aware of that, Dusty never hesitated to trust Red to carry out any duty he was given.
Leaving his cousin to deal with Savos, Dusty walked over to join his lean sergeant major. As always Billy Jack looked a picture of dejection. The peaked forage cap had never been regarded as a thing of beauty and the one perched on Billy Jack’s head increased his general lugubrious appearance. There was nothing smart about his uniform, the three stripes and arc of silk announcing his rank coming almost as a surprise. Yet he was real good with the two Army Colts hanging in the open-topped holsters low on his thighs. Maybe Billy Jack conveyed the impression of always expecting the worst, but Dusty knew him to be a tough, shrewd fighting man and well deserving of his rank.
‘We done got these-here stove-pipes, Cap’n Dusty,’ Billy Jack announced miserably, nodding towards the mortar-wagons. ‘Now I surely hope you ain’t thinking of trying what I know you’re thinking of trying with ’em.’
‘We are,’ Dusty assured him. ‘Why else did I have you boys learning how to use artillery the last time Uncle Devil took us off patrols to rest up the horses?’
‘Just being your usual ornery self,’ the sergeant major answered sotto voce, then grinned with all the insincerity of a professional politician meeting a rival for office, and went on in a louder tone, ‘I allus figured you’d got a right good reason for doing it.’
‘And I heard you the first time,’ Dusty warned him. ‘Damned if I wouldn’t bust you to private, but the rest of this bunch’re worse than you. Anyways, let’s take a look at what we’ve got. Way that Yankee luff jumped when I said we’re fixing to fire a salute for Trumpeter, he’s toting along everything we’ll need to do it.’
‘That’s what I figured you aimed to do,’ Billy Jack wailed. ‘It’s all your fault he’s here, anyways.’
‘How come?’ Dusty asked, as they walked to the first wagon.
‘If you-all hadn’t downed that nice ole General Buller, in a duel, for shame, they wouldn’t’ve had to replace him. Now they’ve done sent along a regular fire-eating, ring-taller ripper who allows he’ll have all us poor lil Texas boys drove back across the Red River in a month and’ll be eating supper at the Governor’s mansion in Houston comes early fall.’
Knowing just how much the other’s woe-filled tirade meant, Dusty ignored it. For a moment he studied the mortar on the leading wagon, then nodded his head approvingly. Just as he had expected, the weapon was of the same pattern as those used by the Confederate States’ Army. So he and his men could set it up, load and fire it with no great difficulty. Whether they could operate the mortars to the best of their potential was another matter. Dusty hoped that they could.
Sent to meet a Confederate agent and collect his information, Dusty had learned of the grand review in Trumpeter’s honor. At the first there had seemed to be nothing he and his Company could hope to achieve against the large number of troops who had been assembled. He had ridden in the direction of Little Rock with no greater intention than to learn if Trumpeter had brought fresh regiments, or new, improved weapons along. When his forward scout had brought word of the unescorted mortar platoon, Dusty had seen a chance of intervening. So he had arranged and sprung the trap into which Savos marched so blindly. Even if he could not make use of the mortars, destroying them noisily near Little Rock would serve to show how little the C.S.A. in general and the Texas Light Cavalry in particular feared Trumpeter’s threats of driving them back into Texas and capturing the capital city of Houston.
While the capture of the battery had been accomplished easily, using the mortars would still be anything but a sinecure. A month’s training with the artillery had taught him the basic principles involved in firing different weapons. But there was much he did not know, particularly about the correct fusing of the mortar shells.
Yet the temptation to make a more dramatic gesture than merely blowing up the mortars was great. Not for Dusty’s personal aggrandizement, he cared nothing about that, but as a means of lowering the Yankees’ morale. If it could be done— Letting the thought hang in the air, Dusty went by the second wagon. He climbed on to the caisson and raised the lid of the first chest. Inside lay everything he would need: the round shells, powder charges made up in serge bags, boxes of fuses, lanyards, friction primers. The caisson also carried handspikes, rammers loading tongs and sponge-buckets, all of which his men knew how to use. Most important, to Dusty’s way of thinking, was a sheet of paper fastened to the inside of the chest’s lid.
‘Well now,’ the small Texan said, reading the printed instructions listing angles for firing at various ranges and times of the shells’ flight at those distances. ‘This’s real helpful of the Yankees.’
‘It sure is,’ agreed Billy Jack dolefully. ‘Now we’ll know what we’ve done wrong when we get blowed up.’
Which, as Dusty knew, was unqualified support for his scheme. Given that much information, they could use the mortars with reasonable efficiency. Certainly sufficiently well for his purposes. So he grinned at his sergeant major and said, ‘All right, let’s go show our respects to the general.’
Chapter Two – You Sure Ruined His Review
‘The review’s formed up to the north of town and well clear of it,’ Red Blaze reported with satisfaction as he rejoined his cousin on the edge of the woodland in which they had captured the Yankee mortar platoon. ‘There’re none of our folks watching that I could see.’
After securing the prisoners, Dusty had sent Red to join their forward scout, under orders to reconnoiter and learn if the attack could be made without endangering Confederate property or lives. From what the red head had just said, he could continue with the bombardment.
‘Make a map of how the land lies,’ Dusty ordered, for they were about a mile and a quarter from Little Rock and the rolling nature of the ground hid the town from his view. ‘No patrols out?’
‘Nary a one,’ Red snorted and nodded to where the forward scout lay looking cautiously over a rim about three-quarters of a mile ahead. ‘Kiowa’s riled, he allows the Yankees’re selling him and us short not keeping watch.’
With that he dismounted and, clearing a piece of ground, made a rough map of the area they hoped to bombard. Having completed his task, he collected his big brown horse which had been waiting patiently, ground-hitched by its dangling reins, mounted and rode back in the direction from which he had come.
Dusty studied the map for a moment, then looked towards his departing cousin. In his mind’s eye, Dusty pictured the geography of the area. Then he turned and waved the two mortar wagons forward.
‘Line them on Kiowa,’ he told the men leading the horses.
Although considering themselves the elite of the best damned cavalry regiment in the Confederate States’ Army, the men detailed to act as gun crews sprang to their work with a will. The novel means of carrying the war to the enemy, combined with a desire to show the new Yankee general what kind of opposition faced him, gave zest to their movements. However, the two sergeants temporarily appointed chiefs-of-piece watched the men and controlled their high spirits.
Guiding the leading wagon, Sergeant Stormy Weather halted it so that its pole yoke lined directly at Kiowa Cotton on the distant rim. Sergeant Lou Bixby brought his wagon around until it stood alongside the other and also pointed in the required direction.
Normally the mortars would have been operated from a bed of stout timbers, to prevent the continued recoil sinking them into the ground and to facilitate altering the alignment or replacing them on the wagons when the time came to move on. Knowing that there would be time for at most three shots, and intending to destroy the platoon’s equipment before he left, Dusty did not bother with such refinements. Going behind the wagons, he checked on their alignment. Each of the mortars weighed 1,852 pounds, so he wished to save his men from the exertion of using the handspikes to alter the aim as much as he could.
Satisfied, Dusty told the men to make ready the mortars. Weather and Bixby secured the ropes of the windlass at the rear of the wagons to the horns of the mortars, then unfastened the stout pins connecting the limber portions of the wagons to the rear sections which carried the weapons. While the limbers were being removed and the wagons’ slip-ways lowered to the ground, Dusty joined Billy Jack’s party by the caisson.
‘Dang the luck!’ the sergeant major moaned, watching two men lift an eighty-seven-and-a-half pound round shell—raising it between them in the grip of the specially-designed shell-tongs—from the forward of the three ammunition chests. ‘The blasted things’re filled, so we can use them.’
‘Do you know how to?’ Dust inquired.
‘I figured you just stuck the shell in the hole ’n’ hoped for the worst,’ Billy Jack answered languidly, taking a long, tapered wooden fuse from a box and studying the time-graduations marked down its length. ‘Likely they’re all wrong and’ll go off in the barrel.’
‘Don’t you ever look on the bright side?’ Dusty demanded.
‘Sure I do. I ‘member the last time real well. It was eight years, three months, two weeks ’n’ four days back, come sundown. One of our good borrowing neighbors done fell down our well as he was coming calling.’
‘What happened?’
‘It warn’t the drinking well, so we figured it’d be a plumb waste of time to pull him out ’n’ left him there,’ Billy Jack explained, then dropped his pose for a moment. ‘Range’d be around a mile ’n’ a quarter, I reckon.’
‘Near enough,’ Dusty agreed. ‘Forty-five degrees elevation. We’ll give ’em twenty seconds first go and alter it for the next if we’re wrong.’
‘Should have a big enough target, anyways,’ the sergeant major drawled, using the point of his knife to pierce the wall of the fuse at the required graduation. ‘Or was you-all figuring on dropping the shells on top of Trumpeter’s fool lil Yankee head?’
‘I’ll settle happy enough for scattering his review,’ Dusty answered.
With the fuses cut, he and Billy Jack fitted them carefully into the holes at the bottom of the shells. Ignited by the detonation of the main firing charge, the priming compound would burn down the inside of the wooden tube until reaching the opening cut by the sergeant major. There it would set off the five-pound bursting charge and explode the shell. While it did not work every time, the method gave a reasonable chance of success.
Wasting no time, the crews of the mortars had slid the pieces to the ground and removed the carriers. Selected for their strength, burly men wielded the handspikes and made adjustments to the directions in which the barrels pointed. Due to the care in positioning the wagons, they had little to do before Dusty announced his satisfaction. Removing the wooden tampions from the muzzles, the chiefs-of-piece gave the orders to load. First the powder charges went into the twenty-eight inch tubes and were rammed home. Then the men handling the tongs maneuvered the shells into position.
Maybe the Texans did not move with the skilled precision of a trained artillery team, but they still carried out their duties at a good speed. Watching them, Dusty saw his earlier decision to have them trained to use artillery weapons justified. At the time it had been merely a means of keeping them occupied during a period when they were resting between patrols. The training was now paying off in that it allowed him to strike at the Yankees.
While the men completed the loading, Dusty looked about him. Two of his men stood some distance away, ready to cut the telegraph wires between Little Rock and Hot Springs and prevent warning of Company ‘C’s’ presence being sent ahead of them. Half-a-dozen more were headed west with the Yankee platoon’s horses, for the heavy draught animals would not be able to keep up with the Company’s mounts in the event of a hurried departure. The remainder of the Company, less those employed on the mortars, kept watch on the surrounding country.
‘Sure hope them fuses work like they should,’ Billy Jack said in a tone that hinted he doubted if they would. ‘Likely they’ll make the shells bust in the barrel. Being so, I’ll stand away somewheres safe. Like at the end of this-here lanyard.’
Considering that the eight-foot long lanyard connected to the friction-primer in the right-side mortar’s vent-hole, the gloomy prediction failed to worry the men who heard it. In fact Sergeant Stormy Weather hardly looked up from working the lever that tilted the barrel to the required angle of fire.
‘All set, Cap’n Dusty!’ announced the burly, jovial-featured Weather.
‘Ready to go,’ confirmed the tall, dapper Sergeant Bixby by the other mortar.
‘Let ’em go!’ Dusty ordered.
Instantly Billy Jack and Bixby gave sharp tugs at their lanyards, operating the friction-primers. Steel rasped over the highly-combustible priming compound and ignited it, sending a spurt of flame into the powder grains of the main charge which turned rapidly into a terrific volume of gas. Set alight by the burning powder, the fuse began to operate. With a deep roar, the shell vomited from the left side mortar. A moment later, the second ball curved into the air.
Standing on the saluting base, General Trumpeter scowled as he watched the mass of men before him preparing to start the review. He frowned, thinking of the doubt he had seen on the faces of the senior officers under his command when he had spoken to them on the subject of his plans to defeat the Rebels. Maybe the Union Army’s superior numbers, weapons and technology was swinging the War more and more in their favor on the other battle-fronts, but that did not apply in Arkansas. There the C.S.A. held firm and showed no sign of weakening. In fact, if the South had been able to send more men and equipment to Ole Devil Hardin, Trumpeter’s colonels figured they would be hard-pressed to hold on to the land they had already taken.
In accordance with the policy of the Union’s high command, the pick of the troops and weapons were reserved for the Eastern battle-zones. Most of the top brass favored concentrating on striking down the heart of the Confederacy. After that had been accomplished, Texas—possibly the least affected of the Southern States by the major issues of the War—would be more ready to accept offers to surrender. So Arkansas had become garrisoned by green regiments, or those found wanting in the hard tests of combat. Poorly trained, demoralized by continual defeat, the men before Trumpeter were far from being ideal material for his dreams of conquest and fame. In fact he found himself doubting the wisdom of having so publicly stated his intentions when being assigned to take over the deceased General Buller’s command.
Tall, slim, dark-haired, his handsome features were marred by a perpetual expression of arrogant superiority and an air of condescension. He made a fine figure in his smart blue dress uniform. Yet his military service did not extend beyond the start of the War and his b
ackground was not West Point but an Eastern civilian college. More politician than soldier, he had attained his rank with the patronage of powerful friends in the antislavery lobbies of his State’s Legislature and the Federal Congress, aided by a chronic shortage of officers in the Union Army. For many years before the War, the Southern States had supplied the majority of the U.S. Army’s officers, most of whom had returned to their homes on Secession. Few of the non-coms showed the necessary qualities to make officers, so the vacancies had been filled by men who at other times would have scorned to join the Army.
One of that kind, Trumpeter had passed rapidly up the promotion ladder, without any great effort or risk. Aware of the possibilities offered by military acclaim when back in civilian life, Trumpeter had sought for a way by which he might reach the public’s notice. Buller’s death had offered it. There had been some reluctance among the other generals at taking over the unsuccessful Army of Arkansas. So Trumpeter’s appointment met with no objections.
On his arrival, he had soon found that he faced a far more difficult task than he had imagined while riding a desk in far-off Washington. However, he possessed ideas that the routine-dulled brains of the career-soldiers could never have produced; two of which were already being put into effect. When they brought results, he would convince the weak-spined jellyfish before him that the Rebels across the Ouachita were no different from the other scum who formed the Confederate States. After which there would be replacements. Trumpeter meant to bring in men whose agreement with his ‘liberal’ beliefs made them worthy of carrying out his schemes of conquest.
Trumpeter’s scowl deepened as he studied the contingent from the 6th New Jersey Dragoons. On first meeting their colonel, be had mentioned his scheme to obtain remounts of a standard equal to that of the Rebel cavalry. Colonel Verncombe had expressed doubts that they could be delivered without strong escorts and would be subject to constant harassment or loss to the raiding Texans. So Trumpeter had not mentioned the plan he had thought out and already set into motion. He had hoped that the results of his brilliant scheme would make their appearance in time for the review, but they had not arrived. When they came, he could confound the doom-predicting Verncombe and—