From his mount’s uneven gait, Koebel knew the man spoke the truth. Yet he refused to give up the attempt when the chance of promotion and acclaim rode less than a quarter of a mile ahead.
‘Keep after him!’ Koebel croaked, slamming his spurs brutally against the heaving flanks of his horse. We’ll get him ye—’
The stabbing of the spurs proved Koebel’s undoing. Gamely trying to respond, the horse missed its footing, staggered and fell. Pitching over its head, the officer landed hard and skidded along the ground.
Taking warning from Koebel’s fate, the sergeant brought his mount to a stop. Without a backwards glance, he dropped to the ground and snatched the Springfield carbine from the saddle-boot. Breathing hard, he sank on to his right knee. With his left elbow supported on the raised knee, he still found the exertions of the gruelling ride prevented him from taking aim. Try as he might, he could not stop the barrel wavering in tune with the expansion and contraction of his struggling lungs. More in hope than expectancy, he squeezed the trigger at a moment when the sights lined on Dusty. It was a gesture of desperation. Clearly the bullet had no effect. Giving a resigned shrug, the sergeant stood up. Before he could reload, the small Texan would be out of range.
Other members of the patrol came up and reined in their lathered, leg-weary horses, watching Dusty continue to ride away. Booting his carbine, the sergeant went to Koebel’s side. Bending, he examined the officer and decided that Koebel could count himself a lucky man. While his shoulder and arm had been broken by the fall, its result might easily have been fatal.
‘Are we going after him, serge?’ a soldier gasped.
‘The hell we are!’ the non-com replied; but did not mention that he now believed they should never have started the chase. ‘We’ll rest the hosses, do what we can for the luff, then head back and see what’s on the other side of that ridge. Only,’ he finished to himself, ‘by now we’ll likely be way too late.’
A point with which Dusty was in complete agreement as he twisted his torso and looked back, Satisfied that the patrol would not trouble him again, he allowed the black to slow down. Rose ought to be safe by now, so Dusty dismounted and gave thought to making good his own escape.
At about the same time that Dusty found himself free to make for the Ouachita River, Lieutenant Frost tiptoed nervously into his commanding general’s presence. Seated at his desk, Trunipeter raised a haggard face and stared at his aide.
‘The search of the town’s finished, sir,’ Frost reported. ‘Nothing’s been found. No word from the patrol we sent out towards the Arkadelphia section of the Ouachita.’
‘They won’t do any good!’ Trumpeter spat out. ‘You should have sent out more than one patrol.’
While organizing the pursuit of Rose Greenhow and her rescuers had not been Frost’s responsibility, he knew better than to raise the point, Brought back to the general’s residence by the clamour of the alarm bell, Frost had found considerable reluctance amongst the rest of the staff to report Rosa’s escape to Trumpeter. It had fallen on Frost to break the news that the general’s prize captive — whose arrest would divert attention from the unfortunate incidents of the lost remounts and Snake Ford — had been set free.
Frost had thought that Trumpeter would suffer a heart-seizure on reading Dusty Fog’s entry in the Guard Report Book. Hurling the book at the wall, Trumpeter had cursed and raged like a madman, but had done nothing to take control of and correlate the hunt for the woman. Stripped of men for the assault on the Snake Ford, the garrison could not do a thorough job and hold the town against possible Rebel attack.
‘I’d never have suspected Hoffinger—’ Frost began, then realized that the comment had not been the most tactful he could have made.
‘He’s to be shot on sight!’ Trumpeter snarled, ‘All of them are!’
‘Yes, sir,’ Frost replied in a flat, neutral tone that still implied his doubt that the chance would arise.
Sinking his head on to his hands, Trumpeter ignored his aide. Thoughts churned and tumbled across the general’s mind. All too clearly he could see the diabolical plot worked by the Rebels to discredit him. They were afraid to have a man of his superlative brilliance in a position of importance. While he had been tied to a desk in Washington, he was innocuous to their hated cause. Put in command of the Union’s Army of Arkansas — last area of Confederate supremacy — his guiding genius would mean a turning point for the North. So the Rebel scum had conspired to bring about his removal.
Of course nobody had suspected Hoffinger. Getting him into Trumpeter’s confidence had been almost clever. Thinking back, the general recalled that it was Hoffinger’s idea to collect the remounts in that unorthodox manner. He could also have learned of the forged orders and been prepared to give the information to his companion-in-evil Captain Dusty Fog. If the two incidents did not prove sufficient to remove Trumpeter, they had arranged for the ‘denouncing’ of the woman as Rose Greenhow. Then, after the general had reported her capture to Washington, conspired with members of the garrison to set her free.
They thought that they were smart, but they underestimated the man against whom they pitted their feeble wits. Soon, very soon, they would learn their mistake. Maybe not so soon in the case of Hoffinger and the woman. The Rebel Secret Service would move them to a place temporarily beyond his reach. Not so the other participant in the vile plot. Dusty Fog would remain in Arkansas; a living reminder pointing the finger of scorn at Trumpeter. Something must be done about that and Trumpeter knew what it was to be.
Who can get in contact with the guerillas, Mr. Frost?’ the general asked, raising his head.
‘A few of the officers know members of different bands, sir,’ Frost answered.
‘Get as many who can reach guerilla leaders as you can,’ Trumpeter ordered, picking up his pen and drawing a sheet of official paper towards him. ‘And do it quickly!’
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
‘BELIEVE me, Betty, Georgina, being a spy is a terrible life,’ Rose Greenhow told the two girls as they approached the big house which served as the combined headquarters of Ole Devil Hardin’s staff and the Texas Light Cavalry. ‘Oh, I know it sounds romantic, gay and noble, but it isn’t. You have to do things which sicken you; let men you despise paw and maul you to win their confidences, lie, cheat, steal — even kill. I’ve done all that and hated every minute of it.’
Seven days had gone by since Rose’s release from captivity. Her escape, after passing the 3rd Cavalry patrol, had been uneventful. Guided by the corporals and Kiowa, she had crossed the Ouachita and spent a worrying twenty-four hours until Dusty joined them. Changing into her own clothes, she had delivered her information to Ole Devil and now waited to return to the East. She had been made welcome and treated as a honoured guest by everybody, although there had been a certain hostility on the part of Company ‘C’ until Dusty had returned unharmed.
Since their arrival, small, petite, black haired and beautiful Betty Hardin and slightly taller, buxom, blonde and pretty Georgina Blaze had devoted much of their time to trying to enlist, with Rose’s aid, as spies. From the first, she had attempted to dissuade them from the idea and, with her departure imminent, increased her efforts. Looking at the eager young faces, she wondered if they took her words to heart. Betty appeared to be partially convinced, but Georgina seemed as determined as ever to join the Confederate States’ Secret Service.
Situated on the edge of Prescott, the house had been built with its front away from the town. From its porch, one could look across the gardens to the rolling, wood-covered hills. The nearest slope rose about half a mile away, covered with bushes and trees that still offered feeding terrain for an occasional Kansas whitetail deer.
A black horse stood saddled and ground-hitched in front of the main entrance and Ole Devil Hardin strode from the house with Dusty Fog at his side. Seeing the woman and girls coming towards them, the general threw a frosty grin at his nephew.
‘Good afternoon, General,’ Rose greeted.
‘Mrs. Greenhow,’ Ole Devil answered, directing a cold stare at the girls without it having any visible effect. ‘I hope these two young misses haven’t been bothering you.’
‘On the contrary,’ Rose smiled. ‘I find them most refreshing and delightful. They remind me of when I was young.’
‘That’s strange,’ Ole Devil growled. ‘They have just the opposite effect on
me
. May we expect you at the ball tonight, Mrs. Greenhow?’
‘You must come,’ Betty insisted, black eyes twinkling. Why grand-papa gets quite lively when he throws away his walking-cane and takes the shawl from his tired old shoulders.’
An explosive snort broke from Ole Devil, but a smile played on the corners of his lips. Possibly no other person would have dared make such a comment.
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,’ Dusty 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.’