The shot from the sharpshooter perched high in the elm tree was like a whipcrack, just loud enough to cut across the thud of hooves at the walk and the jingle of harness. But the cry of the wounded man was magnified by the minds of frightened troopers who were thrown into panic by the harsh volley of rifle fire that followed the first shot.
"Charge!"
"Charge!"
"Charge!"
The timber had become sparser as the Union cavalry had climbed and now as the men heeled their mounts into a gallop they broke into open ground and thundered into a murderous barrage of rifle fire from a trench directly in their path. As they came out from cover the troopers rode into an echelon formation, the ranks of which became split by wide gaps as horses and men stumbled under the hail of bullets and ballshot. The screams of the wounded were drowned by the gunfire and the battle-cries of the advancing troopers.
Hedges rode with his body bent forward in the saddle as the headlong rush sent off a wave of pain from the wound in his hip. That bullet had merely creased him, cutting a three inch groove in his side and had seemed to be on the mend but now as he galloped toward the Confederate line he expected each orange plume and grey puff to signal a wound in a vital organ. It never happened, He reached the edge of, the trench unscathed, in the second wave of cavalrymen, and as his mount launched into a jump he kicked free of the stirrups and slid from the saddle.
The first rebel was in a half crouch, ramming powder into the muzzle of his musket as the hind hooves of the horse made contact with his forehead and he was jerked over backwards, pouring blood from a split skull. The second man, just bringing up his loaded musket for a hip shot, folded double as Hedges' boot heels thudded into his stomach. Then Hedges cracked his skull too, with the stock of the Spencer. Hedges hit the ground with a tremendous impact and heard a cry tear from his throat as the jolt wrenched at his wound. A gun exploded close to his right ear and a blue-coated form slumped into the trench beside him. Before a curtain of blood came down from his forehead wound to veil the features, Hedges recognized the sallow face of the sergeant. He turned to see who had fired the lethal shot and saw a young boy—no more than sixteen—struggling to reload an ancient Starr .54 muzzle loader.
"Ain't a healthy time to be young in, kid," he said as he fired the Spencer at point-blank range into the boy's terrified face. The bullet exited from the back of his head amid a great spray of blood and brain tissue.
To both sides of Hedges, along the entire line of the trench, blue, and gray-clad figures were locked in vicious hand-to-hand fighting as they rolled over dead comrades and tried to strike down their opponents with revolver shots or knife blades. He saw Morgan plunge a knife into the throat of a rebel and shouted a warning. But it was too late. Morgan whirled towards a fresh attacker and had his face turned to a pu1p by a charge of buckshot fired from two feet away. Hedges squeezed the trigger of the Spencer and the man with the scattergun pitched across the body of his victim.
"Forward," a voice shouted as Hedges recognized the excited tones of Leaman.
While those still engaged in the trench fighting remained to kill or be killed, the large proportion of the attackers scrambled clear of the blood-soaked ground and started up the mountain again, crouching and moving on a zigzag course as rifle fire erupted from more rebels concealed in the brush and trees ahead. There was no order in the advance now, as the men ran in terror and rage, many of them fighting as individuals with no concern for others. Hedges saw two Union troopers fling their arms high and fall forward in death throes with bullets in their backs, fired wildly by other Union men behind them. Then he saw three more veer away from the advance, tossing aside their rifles and stripping off their tunics as they fled from the fight.
He reached a patch of tall growing grass and flung himself into it, hearing several other bodies thud to the ground about him. Bullets and ballshot whined overhead or rusted through the grass.
A man screamed.
"God, Deveen's caught one," somebody said in horror.
"Figure he's lucky to be out of it," came a reply. "Listen to those guys."
The screams and cries of the wounded sprawled in the trench below acted as a horrifying counterpoint to the ominous crack of gunfire. Somewhere a voice was intoning a prayer and it was impossible to tell whether he was wounded or not. The grass rustled beside Hedges and he turned to see Leaman crawling towards him, favoring his right arm. The sleeve was torn and coated with blood.
"Seen Captain Jordan?" he asked.
Hedges shook his head and both men ducked as three shots whined over them.
"He held back, sir," a voice called from nearby, the speaker hidden by the grass.
"He's as yellow as he's stupid," somebody else said vindictively.
"It ain't stupid to be scared in this war," came an answering call.
"I'm so scared I'm shitting myself, but I didn't stay hiding behind no tree."
"Hold your tongues," Leaman yelled, and attracted a fresh fusillade of shots. "We have to get into the trees," he hissed to Hedges. "Take as many men as you can and make a rush. I'll get the word to as many as I can to cover you. With a bit of luck Jordan might consider it's safe enough to move his troop forward. If he does it will help to distract the rebels from your advance. I want you to keep them occupied so we can get up there. Okay?"
Hedges grinned coldly. "As long as it's understood I'm not volunteering."
Leaman's arm hurt too much for him to force a smile. "You're not. And don't ask for any."
Hedges moved forward, keeping his head down and hauling himself along on his elbows. He chose a diagonal course, away from the center of the rebels' defensive line and tapped on the shoulder of each man he came upon.
"Move," he told each of them. "And if you make a sound I'll kill you before a reb can draw a bead."
He had only seven men by the time the grass began to get too short for adequate cover and he was peering out across a field which had once been ploughed but had been allowed to lie fallow. Weeds grew thickly in the furrows.
"We got to cross that?" a trooper said as he crawled up alongside the lieutenant. His face was pale.
"We haven't got to," Hedges replied, his clear blue eyes studying the trees on the far side of the field, "but if we don't a lot of people ain't going to be happy. Most of them will be dead."
Hedges grinned knowingly at the trooper, who swallowed hard. "Including us?"
"Especially us," Hedges told him. "Because we're going to try to cross the field."
There had been spasmodic firing as Hedges gathered his men together, but suddenly the rate picked up to a continuous chatter, accompanied by frantic shouting. The Lieutenant raised his head for a moment to glance down the slope and saw a barrage of smoke and flashes from the area where he had left Leaman, backed up by cavalrymen shooting at the gallop as they raced up the slope. He recognized the pennant of Jordan's troop but could not see the captain himself. He had time for only I quick glance before he turned and jerked his head to the men in the grass.
"Time to go," he snapped and sprang up out of the grass to break into a run across the uneven ground. He carried his rifle at the hip, finger on the trigger. The men grinding along in his wake did likewise, conserving their ammunition for as long as the rebel guns were concentrating their fire power on the pinned-down troopers and the advancing cavalry. But as they reached the three-quarter point on the run, legs threatening to collapse under the strain and throats throbbing with the effort of sucking in air for overworked lungs, a section of the Confederate riflemen opened up on them. Two of the Union men went down, one killed instantly by a bullet in his heart, the second clawing at his blood-soaked thigh. Hedges pushed the wounded men into a deep furrow as the five uninjured men began to fire, with no targets except imagined forms along the screen of trees. But it was sufficient to hinder the rebels in taking aim and as Hedges broke into a crouching run and dived headlong into cover all five crowded safely in behind him. The hillside became broken amon
g the trees, with thickets of brush providing additional cover to the close-growing columns of trunks and the rises and indentations of the ground. One of the men snapped off a shot and grunted with satisfaction as a gray clad figure tumbled from high in a tree.
"That's what we do," Hedges whispered as the men crowded around him, keeping low as lead whined over their heads. "Spread out and take your time. Only shoot when you have a target, then get your damn heads down. We've got to blast a hole in their line to let Jordan and the rest through."
"Don't think Jordan wants any part of this, sir," a man said in disgust.
Hedges snatched a cautious glance down the slope, over the sprawled and crouched Union soldiers, across the trench and into the trees on the far side of the battlefield. He could see a mounted figure waiting there, stroking the horse's neck as if to calm the beast. There was no other cavalry in sight and Hedges guessed that Jordan's troop had all made it to the trench or fallen as they tried to reach it.
"Probably charge his men with deserting him under fire," a trooper said cynically.
"Maybe he's missing his mother," another suggested and tried to laugh. It was just a hoarse rasping in his throat.
Hedges fixed him with a stee1y-eyed glare. "Guess you'd rather be eating your ma's apple pie right this moment?" he said.
"But I ain't," the man replied.
"And you ain't doing a hell of a lot towards winning this war," Hedges countered. "Let's move." He indicated with hand movements that the five men should spread out in a line facing the end of the Confederate defenses. Gunfire continued to sound across the battlefield from both sides and was punctuated spasmodically by a scream as a soldier was hit. But Hedges' group had been unmolested for several minutes, as if the enemy soldiers thought they had wiped out the infiltrators. Hedges urged caution as he signaled the advance and the men complied, their frightened eyes flicking over every inch of ground before them and then examining the trees, thick with summer leaf.
Hedges saw a rifle muzzle pushed out from a clump of shrubbery and aimed an inch above it as he squeezed the trigger of the Spencer. The man yelled and stood up in full view, showing the surprised Union men a bloody wound in his cheek. Five guns exploded and the wounded man's chest was dissolved in a sea of blood.
"Kill them!" Hedges roared. "You don't have to blow them to bits."
He and the rest flattened themselves into the ground as a hail of answering fire was thrown at them. Hedges spotted a powder flash from halfway up a beech tree and was preparing to loose off a shot when the trooper closest to him fired. The sniper died without a sound and crashed through the tree's branches.
"Like that, sir?"
"You're learning," Hedges answered, and pulled himself along on his elbows, then got to his feet behind a tree trunk, grimacing as a half dozen bullets thudded into the bark on the other side.
There was a renewed barrage of gunfire out in the open ground and he glanced that way and saw Leaman leading an advance up the slope, running, diving to the ground, firing and running again. He moved then, emerging from behind the tree and drawing fire. He and the men returned it and threw themselves to the ground after a half dozen yards.
"We gotta have a guardian angel," one of the troopers hissed, then made a croaking sound.
Hedges looked in his direction and saw the man begin to rise as his hands went to his face. Another bullet hit him in the chest and he dropped his hands. His jaw had been blown away.
"Called tempting providence," Hedges muttered, throwing himself up into a crouch and charging forward, firing the Spencer from the hip as he ran.
He saw a gray uniform in front of him and spotted the swinging butt of a musket. He shot the man in the shoulder and fell down behind his crumpled body as a half dozen rebel bullets tore into the injured man's body. He rolled quickly away, into the more substantial cover of an indentation in the ground. Bullets kicked up earth close to him and he loosed off three shots into the tree tops. A man screamed and fell.
"Get the bastards!" a voice called, followed by an outbreak of screamed obscenities and a fresh fusillade of shots. A man crashed through the undergrowth to dive into the dip beside Hedges and the lieutenant almost blasted him in flight before he saw the soldier was wearing a blue uniform.
"This where the action is?" the man asked, as he loosed off a shot from one of the two Colts he held.
Hedges glanced at him and didn't recognize the cruel lines of the man's face. It wasn't one (If the troopers he had selected for the diversionary raid. The man fired again and a rebel threw his rifle in the air and pitched out from behind a tree, streaming blood from a hole where his right eye had been.
"Damn gun pulls to the left," the man said with disgust. "Aimed for his snout."
"They broken through?" Hedges asked.
"I did," came the response. He grinned. "No disrespect, sir, but I been looking at the yellow streak down Jordan's back for too long since the shooting started. Me and my buddies been itching for some action."
"You found it," Hedges answered, ducking his head as bullets whined across the dip. There were several thudding sounds close to him, accompanied by a series of shots so close together they merged into one sound. He looked up and around and saw five other troopers had successfully made the run into the trees and were blasting into the rebel line at close quarters.
"I'm Frank Forrest, lieutenant," the cruel faced man announced. "My buddies Hal Douglas, Billy Seward, John Scott, Roger Bell and Bob Rhett."
Hedges had time only for a quick glance over the newcomers, noting that Douglas wore corporal's chevrons, before another burst of gunfire forced his attention back to the fight. He and the men returned the fire, Seward laughing uproariously as he loosed off each shot from his Spencer repeater. Hedges glanced to his right and saw that only three of his original seven men were actively engaged in the fight.
"I figure a charge, lieutenant," Forrest said coldly as he surveyed the ground ahead.
"Not me," the man named Rhett disagreed.
"Ignore him," Forrest told Hedges. "He's like Jordan. They're only here for the fear. He'll follow wherever I go."
Hedges fixed Forrest with a cold eye. "You want to give the orders, soldier, you should have stayed down the hill."
Forrest seemed on the point of taking up the challenge to argue, but suddenly dropped his eyes and shrugged. "Just trying to help," he muttered.
"Frank done a lot of fighting down in the Arizona Territory," Seward put in as he continued to fire into the trees. "He knows about fighting."
"This ain't no bar-room brawl," Rhett said. "I heard what Lieutenant Hedges did at Philippi. I reckon we ought to do like he says."
Scott spat. "Bet he didn't take Phillipi by sitting on his ass in a hole in the ground." He ducked low as a bullet whined over his head. "Jesus, this ain't a healthy place to be."
"Charge!"
The call to action came from beyond the screen of trees and was followed by the crackle of snapping twigs.
"Shit, they want to die," Roger Bell yelled as a group of ten rebel soldiers burst from the undergrowth, firing as they came. Scott, Bell and Douglas were reloading their weapons, but Hedges, Forrest, Seward and Rhett took out four of the attackers before the group reached the edge of the dip and leapt into it.
Hedges laid the hot barrel of the Spencer across the skull of one attacker, as he worked the action, and shot into the throat of another. Forrest drew a knife and thrust it into the open mouth of a rebel and then had to struggle to pull it free of the man's clenched teeth. Two attacked Seward, using their expended muskets as clubs. He fired his Colt at point blank range into the lower stomach of one man and reeled away as the other caught him a stunning blow on the temple with the musket stock. Rhett was cowering on the ground, covering his head with his hands and screaming. The man who had dazed Seward turned to the terrified Rhett and began to bring down the musket again.
Hedges turned at the crouch and squeezed the trigger of the Spencer. The bullet drille
d into the attacker's neck and blood from the severed jugular vein poured down on to the cowering Rhett, causing him to scream louder as he saw the spray and thought he had been hit himself. One man of the attacking force remained unscathed and he abruptly dropped his musket and revolver and thrust his hands into the air. He was a good looking youngster of no more than sixteen. Hedges covered him with the Spencer and took a step towards the man.
"I've had enough," he stammered, his teeth clattering his fear.
"Almost," Forrest countered from behind Hedges and released his blood-stained knife. The power of the throw sank the blade deep into the youngster's chest. He fell to his knees and then pitched forward across the writhing body of the man Seward had shot in the stomach. As Hedges spun around, rage turning his face almost purple, Douglas finished reloading his gun and sent a bullet smashing through the forehead of the wounded man.
As gunfire on the hillside rose to a violent crescendo, with warcries mingling among the screams of the wounded, the dip with its litter of bloodstained bodies and panting victors became an oasis of tense silence.
"You fools!" Hedges hissed as he looked from Forrest to Douglas, forcing each to look away from his angry, hard-eyed stare. "You two know something I don't?"
"What's that, lieutenant?" Forrest drawled, trying to match the toughness of the other's tone.
"Like how many rebels are deployed on this mountain, where they are and what they plan to do under attack? One of those guys might have been able to tell us!"
Rhett got up from his defensive position and began to scrub with his sleeve at the blood of the dead rebel. Seward giggled insanely.
"Figure there's a hell of a lot of them all over the slope and I reckon they'll shoot at us," Forrest answered laconically.
Killer's Breed Page 6