William Johnstone - Bounty Hunter

Crouching behind the lead wagon, he tried to make his shots count, waiting for a glimpse of blue before he pulled the trigger. Fortunately, the Yankees cooperated. There was no telling where those Union troops were from, but they didn’t seem to have much experience at the sort of hill fighting the Southerners did. Nobody grew up in the Ozarks without learning about the dangers of bushwhackers.

Three more men fell to Luke’s shots, and the heavy fire from his companions was taking a toll, too. The wagons with their cargo of bullion provided good cover. No bullets could penetrate those crates full of gold bars.

Luke glanced at the other men. They were all on their feet. He couldn’t tell if any were wounded, but they were all still in the fight, something that couldn’t be said for the Yankees.

The officer in charge of the ambush realized the same thing. He shouted over the sound of gunfire, “We’ll overrun them! Charge!”

That was just about the worst thing those Yankees could have done. As they burst out of the woods, yelling and shooting, they were met by a hail of bullets from the wagons.

The first rank went down as lead tore into them, then the second, and the charge disintegrated into a chaotic milling around, turning the soldiers into sitting ducks. A few tried to flee back into the trees, but they were gunned down.

An eerie silence fell as clouds of powder smoke drifted over the trail and around the wagons. Luke risked a look. It appeared all the Yankees were on the ground. A few were writhing around and groaning in pain, but most of them lay in the limp sprawl that signified death.

If there had been enough of them, maybe they could have overrun the wagons and finished off the Confederates with their bayonets. But the attack had fallen short

“Check those men,” Lancaster ordered.

Stratton tucked away his pistol and drew a knife. He looked over at Richards and grinned. “Josh and me will take care of it, Colonel.”

Richards grinned, too, and pulled out his own knife.

Luke knew they intended to cut the throats of the Yankees who were only wounded. He didn’t like the idea of killing defenseless men, but this was war, after all.

A sob made him turn around. The boy who’d been on the porch had come onto the trail, falling to his knees beside the body of his grandfather. He was leaning forward over the corpse, crying.

Luke reloaded his pistol and his rifle, then walked over to the boy and rested a hand on his shoulder. “Come on, son. That won’t do any good. Your gramps is gone. I’m sorry.”

“The . . . the Yankees came marchin’ up a while ago,” the youngster managed to say. “They told Grampa that . . . that there would be some wagons comin’ along . . . They said they’d been chasin’ you for days . . . and wanted him to stop y’all somehow. Grampa didn’t want to do it . . . but they said they’d kill us both and burn down our place if he didn’t . . . He had to do it, mister. He had to.”

“I reckon he did.” Luke had already figured out something like that must have happened. “There’s no shame in a man doing whatever he has to in order to protect his family. You remember that, son.”

“But then they ... they shot him anyway!”

“I think that was an accident. They were trying to shoot one of us.”

“He’s dead, though, either way.”

There was no denying that. Luke didn’t even try to. He couldn’t do anything for the boy except squeeze his shoulder again and leave him there to mourn his grandfather.

When he went back over to the wagons, he asked Remy, “Anybody hurt in our bunch?”

“Edgar got nicked on the arm, but Dale’s patching it up. The colonel’s hat’s got a hole in it, so he came mighty close to shakin’ hands with the devil. But that’s all.”

“We were lucky.”

Remy nodded. “Very lucky. Maybe the fates, they are smilin’ on us for a change.”

Luke thought they had been pretty fortunate the whole trip, but he didn’t point that out.

Colonel Lancaster said, “I don’t know if there are any more Yankees in this area, but if there are, they’re bound to have heard this battle. We need to get moving again quickly. Somebody move that old man’s body out of the way.”

“We could bury him, Colonel,” Luke suggested.

Lancaster shook his head. “There’s no time for that. Let’s go. We’ll all ride on the wagons until we catch up to our horses.”

Luke thought it was likely the saddle mounts had stopped to graze somewhere along the trail. Once they were away from the sound of shots and the smell of powder smoke, they would have calmed down fairly quickly.

The boy had gone back to the shack and disappeared inside. Luke and Remy picked up the old man’s body and carried it carefully off the trail. They had just returned to the wagons and climbed on when the youngster emerged from the cabin carrying an old squirrel rifle.

“You and your damned war!” he cried shrilly. “I hate all of you!” He started to lift the rifle.

Potter’s revolver streaked out and blasted. The slug smashed into the boy’s frail chest and lifted him off his feet as it drove him backward. Dust puffed up around him as he landed on the ground.

There hadn’t been time for the other men to do anything. Lancaster turned to Potter and said in a horrified tone, “You shot that boy!”

“He was about to point a rifle at me,” Potter said coolly as he reloaded the expended chamber. “Damned if I was gonna sit here and let him shoot me.”

Luke hopped down from the wagon and walked over to pick up the rifle the boy had dropped. The youngster lay a couple feet away, staring sightlessly at the sky. Luke tried not to look at those open, empty eyes.

He checked the rifle and said in disgust, “I don’t think this old relic would have even fired! You killed him for nothing, Potter.”

Potter’s shoulders rose and fell. “I didn’t have any way of knowin’ that, now did I?”

That was true, Luke supposed. He threw the squirrel rifle aside. The boy and his grandfather lay dead on one side of the road, more than a dozen Yankees on the other. Once again Luke and his companions were surrounded by senseless death.

After all the things he had seen . . . all the things he had done . . . he wondered if by the time the war was finally over, he would have any soul left at all.

CHAPTER 9

The gold escort continued south, hoping the Yankees who’d ambushed them were the only ones on their trail. Luke thought it likely the women they’d encountered beside that creek had sent the soldiers after them.

Each day without an ambush or confrontation the Confederates became more aware the Yankees had other things to deal with, like the collapse of the Confederacy. The atmosphere of gloom and despair hung over the landscape like actual clouds. The air smelled of smoke, rotting flesh, and defeat.

It seemed to Luke like a month had passed since they left Richmond, but he knew it hadn’t quite been two weeks. “We’re getting close to Georgia now,” he commented to Dale one day. “Have to be.”

“I think you’re right,” Dale said. “What are you gonna do once we get where we’re goin’, Luke?”

“I guess that’ll be up to the colonel. Maybe he has orders for what we’re supposed to do next. If not, I guess I’ll stay wherever the new capital is and try to do what I can to help.” Luke shook his head. “No point in trying to go back to Richmond, even if we could get there.”

“I got a feelin’ you’re right about that.”

The trail entered a long, straight stretch between two mostly bald knobs. Luke frowned at the hills, thinking it would be another good spot for an ambush.

But when the trouble came, it popped up right in front of them through sheer bad luck. A Union cavalry patrol came trotting around a bend in the trail just beyond the knobs.