by J. T. Edson
The ball was to celebrate the successful conclusion of the Snake Ford affair. While strengthening the defences on the rim, Colonel Barnett had also been preparing for the inevitable time when the Union Army assembled such force that they would sweep the Confederate soldiers back by sheer weight of numbers. He had held on, defeating lesser attacks while cavalry patrols harassed the Yankees’ flanks and rear, until receiving Wexler’s warning of the massive reinforcements approaching. Then, in accordance with Ole Devil’s orders, had made ready to withdraw.
After a night’s artillery bombardment, Colonel Verncombe had launched an attack at strength in the grey light of dawn. Leading his men forward under heavy cannon fire from across the river, he had been puzzled by the lack of response from the Confederate positions ahead. Neither the captured Napoleons in their protective earthworks nor the figures in the trenches responded to the sight of the advancing enemy. Verncombe had soon learned why this was.
During the night, the Confederate defenders had fallen back to their own side of the river. They left behind dummies armed with useless, rusted rifles and wooden models of Napoleons for the Yankees to capture. Made at Barnett’s instigation, the decoys had been moved in under the cover of darkness over four nights and were substituted without any report of it reaching Verncombe. Furious at having been tricked, the assault force continued its advance; only to be halted after heavy losses at the river’s eastern edge. Seeing the impossibility of crossing the ford in the face of such heavy, concentrated and determined opposition, Verncombe wisely refrained from making the attempt.
So the Union’s Army of Arkansas felt no pleasure at retaking the strip of territory. Maybe the Northern newspapers would enthuse over the success and probably regard it as the prelude to Trumpeter’s promised advance into Texas, but the men concerned knew better. Once more they held the east side of the Snake Ford, but could go no farther; and taking it had cost many lives without the consolation of a corresponding number of Rebel dead. They were even denied the weak pleasure of retaking the captured Napoleon battery.
Ole Devil considered that there was cause for celebration. Making Barnett the guest-of-honour would be a public demonstration that the general did not blame him for accepting the forged order.
‘I’ll be honoured to attend, General,’ Rose said. ‘If you will promise me a dan—’
Two shots cracked from the slope in the background, one deep followed almost immediately by another lighter in pitch. Breaking off her request, Rose joined the others in looking for signs of who had fired.
‘They came from up near the top, sir,’ Dusty said, pointing. ‘I can’t see anything for the bushes.’
‘It could be somebody from the regiment out hunting,’ Georgina suggested.
‘Could be,’ Dusty admitted dubiously. ‘The first sounded like a heavy rifle, but the other was a Henry.’
‘I loaned Kiowa your Henry, Dusty,’ Betty put in. ‘He’s promised to fetch a couple of tom-turkeys in. That could have been him.’
‘It could,’ Dusty agreed. ‘I reckon I’ll ride up there and take a look.’
‘Do that, Dustine,’ Ole Devil confirmed. ‘Its probably nothing, but we may as well be sure.’
Suspicious by nature and upbringing, Kiowa Cotton never entirely relaxed his vigilance. Even while returning from a successful turkey hunt, so close to his regiment’s camp, he remained alert for any unusual sounds or sights. Coming across the fresh tracks of a single horse, he gave them a close scrutiny. Made about an hour before, they followed a route which struck him as curious and significant. Whoever rode the horse had taken pains to select an inconspicuous route. While a clear trail lay close by and could be seen from different points, the rider had kept clear of it.
Of course he might be one of Wexler’s men delivering a report and wishing to keep his identity a secret. Or he could be a Yankee soldier on a scouting mission. Whatever his motive, Kiowa figured that the man rated investigation.
Dropping the bodies of two turkeys to the ground, the sergeant rode forward. Indian-bred, the horse he sat moved with an almost wild-animal silence. Kiowa knew the country around Prescott well enough to pin-point his exact location. If the mysterious rider continued in a straight line, he would arrive on the slope over-looking the headquarters building.
A slight movement from ahead brought Kiowa to an immediate halt. For a moment he could see nothing Out of the ordinary. Then another movement drew his attention to it. Slowly the shape of a horse, standing amongst the bushes some distance away, came into focus. Only a flicker of an ear had betrayed it, for its dun coat merged well with the shadows. Without its involuntary movement, Kiowa might have ridden closer and alarmed it.
Dropping from his saddle, Kiowa slipped the Henry from its boot. He left his horse ground-hitched and darted forward on foot. Making use of every bit of cover, he moved in an arc that ought to keep him from disturbing the dun. Silently he climbed up the ridge, slipping through the head-high clumps of buffalo-berry bushes until he passed over the top. Then he caught his first glimpse of the horse’s owner.
One glance told Kiowa that, whatever he might be, the man had no innocent purpose. Big, gaunt, with a wide-brimmed hat, clad in fringed buckskins with pants tucked into unpolished riding boots, he lowered a small telescope through which he had been studying the front of the distant house. Coming to his feet, a powder-horn suspended from his left shoulder, he thrust the telescope into his waist-band. Then he picked up the long Sharps 1859 rifle and advanced like a hunter stalking his prey.
Unless Kiowa missed his guess, the prey stood outside the big house. Even at that distance, the sergeant could make out the shapes on the porch. With the aid of his telescope, the man would have identified them.
Working with Dusty Fog had taught Kiowa to think before acting. If the man intended to kill somebody at the house, discovering who and why was mighty important. So Kiowa neither spoke nor fired at the intruder. Instead he moved forward, meaning to take a living, talking prisoner if he could. Before he had taken three steps, he felt the breeze, up to then blowing directly into his face, veer to the left. It would be carrying his scent to the man’s waiting horse. An animal so well trained would have learned other lessons than merely standing like a statue. Sure enough, even as Kiowa realized the danger, the horse cut loose with a loud snort.
Instantly the man whirled around. Seeing Kiowa, he continued raising the rifle which was already swinging towards his shoulder. He moved fast. Far too swiftly for the sergeant to dare take chances. With the Sharps lifting to point at him, Kiowa flung himself sideways. Accurate as it might be at long ranges, the Sharp’s length and weight made it clumsy and awkward to manoeuvre at speed. Going down in a rolling dive, Kiowa snapped the Henry into line and fired. His shot came as an echo of the Sharp’s deep boom. Lead screamed over the sergeant’s head in testimony to the nearness of his escape. His own bullet tore into the man’s chest, ploughing up to burst out at the back.
Throwing the Henry’s lever down and up, Kiowa saw the man turn, hunch forward, drop the Sharps and fall. The sergeant rose, advancing cautiously with the repeater ready to speak at the first hostile move. Extending his left foot, he rolled the man over. For a moment the other’s eyes glowed hate, then they glazed and the gaunt body went limp.
‘Now who the hell are you?’ Kiowa mused. ‘And what’d you come to do?’
A question which Dusty repeated almost word for word on his arrival.
‘What do you reckon, Kiowa?’ he went on, looking at the body.
‘He was watching the house through that telescope, then started to move in for a shot at one of you who was outside.’
‘Nobody would want Cousin Betty or Cousin Georgie dead,’ Dusty said. ‘Which means he was after Uncle Devil or Mrs. Rose.’
‘You was there, ‘long with the others,’ Kiowa pointed out, ‘And Trunipeter’d admire to see you dead.’
‘Hell, I’m not that important so’s he’d send a sharp-shooter special to get me,’ Du
sty protested. ‘Mrs. Rose, maybe. Or even Uncle Devil, but not me.’
‘He was after one of you, that’s all I know,’ Kiowa drawled. ‘I’ve been through his pockets, ain’t nothing in ‘em to say who he is.’
‘Back-track him, see where he’s come from,’ Dusty ordered. ‘I’ll have him and his horse taken in. Maybe Mrs. Rose can help out when she sees him.’
On learning of the reason for the shooting, Rose expressed her interest and suggested that she should supervise the search. Waving aside her apologies for interfering, Dusty admitted that it had been his intention to ask her do so. Accompanying the small Texan to the barn farthest from the house, she set to work. Drawing aside the blanket which covered the man, she looked at his face.
‘I don’t know him, but I don’t pretend to know every member of the Yankee Secret Service,’ she said. ‘You’ve had him stripped, that’s good. While I start on his clothes, check under his arms, between his legs, in the cheeks of his arse and among his hair. You can discount him having anything in his ears or mouth, or up his nose, he wouldn’t carry documents concealed there for any length of time.’ She made a wry face and went on, ‘Maybe I should have had Betty and Georgie come help me. Then they’d really know what a spy has to do.’
‘If you’d rather, I’ll do the searching,’ Dusty offered.
‘No,’ Rose answered. ‘This’s work I’ve been trained to do.’
From what Dusty saw, after following her instructions about searching the corpse, Rose had learned her lessons well. No detail was too small for her to examine. First she crushed every article of clothing between her fingers, held close to her ear so that any faint crackle of concealed paper could be detected, then checked the thickness of the cloth in case another piece of material bearing identification was stitched between the layers. The hat was studied inside and out, the sole, heel and upper of each boot ripped apart, the waist and gunbelt torn to pieces. Brought along at Rose’s request, the armourer stripped the man’s weapons to bare essentials and the saddler gave the horse’s leatherwork an equally thorough going over. Even the telescope was dismantled to be scrutinized. The dun horse received as careful a search as had been given to its master.
‘Nothing,’ Rose announced, after the powder horn had been emptied and split open to expose its interior. ‘I’ll stake my life that ‘he’s carrying nothing to identify him— And yet I’ve never known a Yankee agent not to.’
‘If he’d’ve had anything, you’d’ve found it,’ Dusty praised, coming over from where he had been washing his hands and arms after the messy business of examining the horse. ‘Could he be a U.S. Army sharp-shooter sent to kill you?’
‘It’s possible,’ Rose admitted, showing her pleasure at the compliment. ‘From what Kiowa told you, the man had been watching the house for some time.’
‘That’s what he said and he can read tracks real good. The feller watched the house until you met us outside, then moved forward to start shooting. Which means he was after one of us. If he’d just wanted to kill at random, he wouldn’t’ve waited. There were fellers moving about all the time, I figure he was after you, or Uncle Devil.’
‘Some of the Yankee Secret Service would like to see me dead, I admit. But it’s not likely they’d go at it that way. Killing Devil would throw your Army into confusion, perhaps. Not for long, but long enough to let the Yankees launch an offensive before he could be replaced. Except that “Oakland” would have warned us if a move of that magnitude was planned. It couldn’t be kept a secret.’
‘Not from Wex — Oakland, anyways,’ Dusty agreed.
‘There’s another alternative, Dusty,’ Rose said. ‘Trumpeter could have sent the man after you.’
‘Kiowa reckoned that,’ the small Texan replied. ‘Hell, he couldn’t want revenge bad enough to risk a sharp-shooter* just to get it. Even if the feller was a sharp-shooter that is.’
‘He wasn’t on that slope just to admire the scenery,’ Rose objected.
‘Do you reckon he’s Army?’
‘There you’ve got me, Dusty. That buckskin shirt, his trousers and gunbelt could have been bought anywhere west of the Mississippi. The boots are cavalry issue, so is his undershirt, which doesn’t mean much as they can be bought easily enough. The hat could have been picked up north or south of the Mason-Dixon line and is old enough to have been bought before the War. It doesn’t help us.’
‘That’s a Rocky Mountain saddle and the horse’s range-bred,’ Dusty went on. ‘It’s not carrying a brand of any kind.’
‘Neither his rifle nor revolver have U.S. Army proof-marks,’ Rose told him.
‘Sharp-shooters mostly buy their own rifles,’ Dusty replied. ‘And a whole mess of fellers, especially from out West, fetched their revolvers along when they joined the army.’
‘It’s puzzling,’ Rose sighed, thinking of one solution to the mystery but dismissing it as unworthy of serious consideration. ‘So we can only wait and see if Kiowa learns anything.’
‘That’s about all,’ Dusty agreed, reaching much the same conclusion as Rose had and not mentioning it for similar reasons. ‘Anyways, I don’t reckon there’ll be another try until whoever sent him learns he didn’t make it. Sharp-shooters aren’t so plentiful or easy come-by that they’d chance losing more than one at a go.’
‘Talking of going,’ Rose gasped as she glanced through the open doors of the barn. ‘It’s long gone time we went and dressed for the ball.’
Turning, Dusty let out a low whistle of surprise. He had not realized how long the search had taken. Night had fallen and already the big house was glowing with lights, while the activity about the place warned that the festivities would soon commence. So he told their assistants to clear up the barn, allowing Rose and himself to go to change their clothing. Rose had been fitted out with dresses on her arrival and had even managed to find a gown suitable for the occasion.
For Dusty’s part, he knew that the casual, comfortable uniform worn on patrol would not meet with official approval that night. Reluctantly he made his way to the quarters he shared with Red, meaning to don the correct full dress. On his arrival, he found his striker waiting. Dick Cody had spent most of his adult life attending to Army officers’ welfare. While proud of his current charge, he did not approve of the way Dusty ignored the Manual of Dress Regulations. Nothing pleased Cody more than to watch his officer going forth in a double-breasted, skirted tunic, embellished with a black silk cravat, white gloves, trousers instead of riding breeches, correct accoutrements and sabre.
‘I’m sure pleasured that you changed your mind, sir,’ Cody greeted.
‘How’s that?’ Dusty asked.
‘About attending the ball in your dress uniform.’
‘What else would I wear tonight?’
‘But Miss Georgina came and said you’d decided to go in your skirtless tunic and riding breeches, sir,’ the old striker explained, looking bewildered.
‘She must’ve been joshing you,’ Dusty replied. His cousin knew of Cody’s feelings about the matter of uniform and was riot averse to a joke,
‘Joshing or not, sir,’ Cody answered indignantly, ‘she took them with her. And your hat, boots and gunbelt.’
‘Gunbelt!’ Dusty snapped. ‘Damn it, Cousin Georgie’s gone way too far this time. I’ll pound some sense into her fool hide, see if I don’t.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Cody agreed enthusiastically. ‘She sounded so sincere that I didn’t doubt that you had sent her.’
‘I hope she sounds that way when I get through with her,’ Dusty growled. ‘What damned fool game is she playing?’
Before Cody could express an opinion, they heard a disturbance from the town. Somebody shouted a warning which mingled with a revolver shot. Then another shot cracked, followed by more shouting; this time from several places.
‘It coming from Main Street, sir!’ Cody stated.
‘Sounds like it,’ Dusty agreed. ‘I’d best go and see what’s happening.’
oooOooo
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br /> * Sharp-shooter: Civil war name for a sniper.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I’LL KILL HIM WHERE HE STANDS
‘IT’S working, Cousin Betty!’ Georgina Blaze enthused as she strode along the centre of Main Street dressed in Dusty’s uniform, hat, boots and gunbelt. ‘We’re taking them all in.’
‘Out here in the street, maybe,’ Betty answered. ‘It won’t be so easy in good light. You know, Cousin Dusty’s not going to like you walking around in his uniform.’
Smaller than Georgina, Betty had borrowed clothes from one of the drummer-boys. In the hope of making her disguise more acceptable, she carried his drum on her back. Gripping its V-shaped sling in her left hand, she looked along the almost deserted street. Lights showed in a number of buildings, from many of which came the sounds of people enjoying themselves. Ahead was the Shenandoah Hotel, its porch and hitching rail deserted despite the noisy evidence of revelry from within.
‘Why he won’t mind me borrowing his old uniform,’ Georgina protested, trying to sound more confident than she felt. ‘Will he?’
‘He’ll not be pleased,’ Betty guessed. ‘I surely hope Tommy hasn’t shown him that yoko-gururna throw he taught me.’
‘That—?’
‘Yoko-guruma,’ Betty repeated. ‘It means lateral wheel or something and it’s a dilly.’
‘It sure sounds that way,’ Georgina smiled. ‘And if we can walk the length of Main Street, then get by the guards to the ball dressed like this, it will show Rose we’re smart enough to be spies.’
‘Or convince her more than ever that we’re not,’ Betty replied. ‘It’s a loco trick — and before you get into a tizz, I agreed to try it.’
A man came from an alley opposite to the hotel, slouching towards the girls. Medium-sized, stocky, he wore civilian clothes of sober colours and kept his right hand behind his back. At the same moment, the door of the Shenandoah’s barroom opened and Hoffinger stepped on to the porch. Halting, the chubby dude looked in each direction along the street. Seeing the man approaching the two uniformed figures, he stiffened slightly. For a moment he studied the girls, then his eyes went to something about the man which could not be visible to them.