William Johnstone: Bounty Hunter

The Cajun laughed. “Come out of there, you old water rat!”

With river water streaming from his clothes, Luke clambered onto the bank and collapsed. Remy dismounted and went down to help him.

“What happened?” Luke asked as he made it to his feet with Remy’s assistance.

“Lancaster and the others heard the shooting and came to see what was going on. You and I had already done enough damage to the Yankees that they were able to wipe out the rest of the patrol.”

“Anybody hurt?”

“No, we were lucky. How about you?”

“I reckon I’m all right. Just wet and tired. My ammunition’s probably ruined, too.”

“Don’t worry about that. We’ll be able to scavenge plenty of powder and shot from those dead Yankees, not to mention their guns.”

“And their horses,” Luke suggested. “It won’t hurt for us to have some extra mounts.”

“Most of the horses have bolted, but we might be able to catch a few.”

By the time Luke and Remy reached the road, the wagons had crossed the bridge. They had to steer around the gaping hole in the ground where the keg of blasting powder had gone off, but there was room enough at the side of the road for them to manage that.

Colonel Lancaster said, “From what Corporal Duquesne tells me, if we’d come along a little later this bridge would already be gone. The same would be true if not for your swift action, Jensen. Good job.”

“Thank you, sir. And thank you for coming along and taking a hand in the fight.”

“When we heard the shots, I should have ordered the drivers to turn the wagons around. We should have gone back and looked for another way out of the city. It really wasn’t wise of me to risk our cargo just to see what was happening to the two of you.” The colonel shrugged. “But everything seems to have worked out all right. Just don’t expect me to keep on pulling your fat out of the fire, Jensen.”

“No, sir, I won’t.” Luke managed to keep the irritation he felt out of his voice. He’d just been following orders when all hell broke loose.

“We’d better move quickly now,” Lancaster went on. “There are probably more Yankee patrols in the area. They would have been expecting to hear an explosion, but when their men don’t come back, they’ll start to wonder what happened. We don’t want to be here when they come to find out.”

Luke knew that was true. He started looking for his horse and found the animal grazing peacefully on the grass at the side of the road.

He couldn’t do anything about his wet clothes except wait for them to dry. That would be miserable, but he could put up with it. He found his hat on the bridge where it had fallen off when he tackled the Yankee.

The Confederates hastily helped themselves to guns and ammunition from their fallen foes. They were trying to catch some of the Yankee cavalry horses when Lancaster said, “No, leave them here.”

“It never hurts to have extra mounts, Colonel,” Stratton suggested, unknowingly echoing what Luke had said earlier to Remy.

“Those horses have U.S. army brands on them,” Lancaster pointed out. “If we’re captured, it’s unlikely we’ll be able to talk ourselves out of a firing squad, but it would be even more difficult if we were in possession of Yankee cavalry mounts.”

“The colonel’s got a point there,” Luke said. “It might be better if we just make do without them.”

Nobody put up an argument. A short time later, the group was on the move, following the road into the rugged, wooded countryside of northern Virginia.

Riding on the wagon with Dale again Luke looked over at Wiley Potter, who rode alongside the vehicle. “Thanks for coming to help me back there.”

“Well, sure, Jensen,” Potter said. “What else could we do? We’re all on the same side, ain’t we?”

CHAPTER 5

After the fight at the bridge, the scouts didn’t run into any more trouble. A couple times they heard hoofbeats coming along the road and quickly found places where they could pull the wagons off into the trees. Yankee cavalrymen galloped past without even slowing down, never realizing how close the Confederates were.

The riders could only be Yankees. Nobody else would be out and about at night. The people who lived in the area were huddled in their houses and cabins, hoping and praying they wouldn’t be slaughtered before morning by the northern invaders.

Luke thought about his ma and Kirby and Janey back on the farm. There had been fighting in Missouri, although not as much as in the east, and widespread bloody raids by guerrilla forces on both sides. He hoped none of the violence had come near the Jensen family farm.

By morning the Confederates were several miles north of Richmond. As the sun came up, Potter and Casey found a cave-like opening under a rugged bluff topped with trees, and Dale and Edgar drove the wagons into it at Colonel Lancaster’s command. There was room for the horses under the bluff, too.

“We’ll stay here today,” the colonel said. “Traveling in daylight is too risky while we’re still this close to Richmond. When we swing west and then south we’ll be less likely to run into the Yankees, so we can stay on the road more and make better time then.”

Based on what he had seen so far, Luke had doubts of Lancaster’s ability to be in charge of the mission, but he agreed with the colonel’s decision. They were all tired and needed some rest, and it would be better for them to lie low for a while.

They made an unappetizing breakfast of hardtack and salt jowl. No coffee. Luke wasn’t sure how long it had been since he’d had real coffee, but it hadn’t been anytime recently, that was for sure. They took turns sleeping while two men stood guard at all times.

When it was Luke’s turn to watch, he was paired with Ted Casey. They hunkered in some brush near the wagons, and the first thing Casey did was reach for a tobacco pouch and papers in his shirt pocket.

Like stopped him with a hand on his arm. “You can’t roll a quirly.”

“Why not?” Casey asked with a frown.

“Because the smell of tobacco smoke can travel a pretty good distance. The road’s only about a quarter mile away. You don’t want some smart Yankee coming along, smelling your smoke, and getting curious enough to come over here and take a look around.”

Casey let out a disgusted snort, but he shrugged and put away the pouch. “If they was smart, they wouldn’t be Yankees.”

“They probably think the same thing about us Confederates,” Luke pointed out.

“Don’t start talkin’ about how they just think they’re doin’ the right thing and how we shouldn’t hate ’em because of that.”

“They’re not doing the right thing,” Luke said with conviction. “They invaded our homes. Of course we have to fight them. But the ones I really hate are the politicians from both sides who kept prodding and poking at each other until they felt like they had to start a war over something that could have been settled without one.”

“What are you talkin’ about?” Casey asked.

“Did you know that more than twenty years ago, some congressmen from the South were already talking about ending slavery? Their plan was to get rid of it in stages, so the southern economy wouldn’t be ruined in the process. If the northern politicians had just gone along with that idea, by now a lot of the slaves would be free, maybe even all of them, and there wouldn’t have been any need for this war. But the Northerners turned it down flat. They’d already started making speeches about how all the slaves had to be freed at once, or they wouldn’t go along with it.”

Casey gave him a dubious squint. “I never heard nothin’ about anything like that. You’re makin’ it up.”