The Pursued Page 4

  He remembered calling out to his friends. “Glenn! Red! Bubba! Cole! Here to me, boys!” They came crawling toward him until all five crouched down low together out of sight in the tall grass.

  “Where are those Rebs?” Glenn asked. “I ain’t see a single one!”

  “They’re up in those trees,” Andy answered wildly, his eyes as fierce as his red hair. “By God, it’s a sweet ambush, they’ve got us dead to rights. We’re nailed down out here in the open!”

  “We’ve got the long grass,” Cole said quietly. “What say we crawl our way down the hill a spell?”

  “What about the rest of our patrol out there?” asked Bubba. He’d been on point but had come running back after hearing the first shots.

  “To hell with them,” answered Cole. “Punk kids don’t stand a chance anyway. Did you see them all standing up waiting to get their heads blown off? Like stupid birds at a turkey shoot. Damned fools.”

  “But we can’t just leave them here,” complained Bubba.

  “Will you shut up, you dumb hillbilly,” snapped Cole. “We’re going to have enough problems getting out of this ourselves as it is.”

  “Bubba, what’s below us down the hill?” Glenn asked calmly.

  A pained and hurt expression on his face at Cole’s berating, Bubba shrugged, “I didn’t get far enough to see properly but there were a few buildings. Looked like a farm or something. Must be that Cabotsville place the captain showed us on the map back at camp.”

  Glenn had kept one eye on the trees. “Here they come,” he growled. “Check your load, boys.”

  Powers watched again in his mind’s eye as five rifles were raised together and loads obediently checked, the long Springfields looking lethal with their bayoneted barrels pointed in a leveled line toward the enemy. They all heard the cry in front of them and saw the surviving members of their patrol jump up from hiding and with a loud halloo charge uphill to meet the enemy.

  “Are those kids crazy?” Powers remembered himself saying.

  “Too brave to know better,” answered Glenn grimly.

  The Confederates came out to stand at the fringe of the forest now. Exhibiting the confidence of the upper hand and holding the high ground, they took their time lining up on the charging men.

  “It’s hopeless,” whispered Cole. “They’re all dead meat.”

  “Hell!”said Glenn. “Looky here, there’s only four of them rebel dogs!”

  Sure enough, only three men and an officer, all in gray, came out of the wood. Their uniforms were worn and ragged but their weapons were clean and shining. Their volley hid them from view for a moment as the powder smoke blossomed and rolled around them. The Union soldiers dropped, their charge evaporating as the bullets struck, their death cries hidden by the echo of the gunshots.

  Once the charging men had all fallen, the five had a clear view of the enemy to their front.

  “Line up,” Glenn ordered. “Each of you, pick your man from the left.” Obediently, they all took aim on the distant Confederates. “Fire!”

  The five fired as one and were satisfied to see every gray uniform tumble away and fall to the ground. Then, with a collective cheer of success the five got to their feet, waved their rifles above their heads and shook them victoriously.

  Their cries were stilled instantly. They all saw the movement at the edge of the trees as the undergrowth parted and suddenly became alive with a spreading wave of Confederate gray. The ragtag army that had been hidden deep in the wood moved out from cover to stand in plain view and the five gasped to see how many there were.

  “Oh, Lord,” whispered Bubba, “We’re dead men now.”

  The tide of Confederate soldiers advanced slowly downhill toward the five lone Union soldiers. There were scattered cries of abuse from among the Confederate lines, ribald comments and promises of unpleasant death.

  A flag was unfurled and raised, the stars and bars, the standard of the South. The advancing line looked more like dowdy civilians in their mixture of uniforms, some in butternut gray, others in simple homespun with wide slouch hats and blankets looped crosswise around them. Unshaven, bearded and ragged men with rifles held at the ready, they came on in a steady line. Their appearance was mean and vengeful and their vindictiveness seemed to be increased by the slow and menacing manner in which they approached the five.

  “Load up and make ready,” said Glenn. “We’ll take some of them with us before we go.”

  “Let’s make a run for it,” begged Bubba.

  “Stand your ground and give ’em a taste of Hell,” snarled the redheaded Andy, the blood of his Scots ancestors rising up to bring a warrior’s brightness to his eye.

  The tension mounted as the space between the two groups narrowed.

  Then a howitzer shell whistled by overhead and a great eruption burst among the Confederate lines. A flash amidst a dark cloud of ruptured earth, sparks written in red and orange flares of flame. Earth and smoke and body parts flew into the sky as shells rained down. The acrid burnt stink of cordite filled the air as clouds of tainted gunsmoke were swept away by the breeze. Case shot and canister followed, the explosions wreaking havoc among the lines of men in gray.

  With a collective cry of despair, the Confederates began to retreat back up the hill again. There was the distant ringing repetition of a bugle call and the barrage stilled as a swarm of blue-clad Union cavalry burst into sight, riding pell-mell around the hillside as they came to cut off the Confederate retreat.

  The five friends laughed and slapped each other on the back in relief, but only momentarily. Their escape route to the woods cut off by the cavalry, the Confederates turned again and fled back downhill once more. Their charge took them directly toward the five and it looked like, in their desire to escape, the panicked Confederates would overrun them.

  “Steady, steady,” warned Glenn sternly, as the desperate Confederates ran toward them. No longer a grim wave of avengers, the troops looked wide-eyed and terrified. Behind them, saber waving cavalry advanced rapidly, cutting down mercilessly all who came within reach.

  Glenn fired first. The range had been short with the enemy closing and his lead catapulted a young soldier backwards into the long grass. The other four followed in a ragged volley, the charging men dropping as they came on. The rest passed in a wave, too anxious and desperate to escape to linger and do battle with the five. Bounding and jumping, some tumbling over in their haste, the fleeing Confederates ran at full speed through the long grass and down into the valley.

  A hatless cavalry lieutenant dragged his sweating stallion to a standstill before the five men.

  “Well done, boys.” His eyes were wild with excitement, his horse snorting and panting under him. “You brought them out of those woods just fine. Gave us a chance to bring the twelve-pounders to bear. Now we’ll go chase them Rebs down and finish the job.” He waved his bloodied saber in a downhill direction. “Get after them, lads. And no mercy, we’re taking no prisoners today!” He laid in his spurs and the excited stallion bucked and leaped away in pursuit of the running troops.

  The five turned, grinning at each other. From certain death to life, all in a matter of seconds, gave them an electric charge of freedom which was quickly followed by an almost drunken sense of immortality.

  “Let’s do it!” shouted Cole hoarsely. “Come on, let’s go kill us some more Johnny Rebs.”

  With a howl of approval, the four followed Cole down the hill. Whooping and hollering, they jumped and bounded in victory just as the defeated Confederates had done before them.

  The hill ran down to a level plain of farmland. Many years of hard work had created a patchwork of fields and ditches with a zigzag pattern of rough-cut split-rail fencing that separated the crops. In the lee of the hill stood the farm: two houses, a barn and corral. Already the yard and corral were scattered with bodies. It appeared the Confederates, or at least some of them, had made a stand here. The cavalry had cut down the defenders mercilessly then raced on in pursuit
of the rest of the retreating army, leaving behind them a trail of corpses.

  The five followed in their bloody footsteps down the hillside and arrived breathless at the desolate scene.

  Standing in paralyzed shock, a farming family watched from the long, covered porch of their house. Simply clothed, a mother pressed two small boys into to her voluminous dresses while a pretty teenage daughter, half hidden behind, tightly clutched her mother’s upper arm. The farmer, a man in worn dungarees and a floppy brimmed hat looked on in distress at the sudden wave of violence that had invaded their hidden homestead.

  Cole was already racing toward them, a wild look of exuberance on his face. He raised his rifle as he ran and Powers bellowed, “No! Cole, no!”

  The farmer understood his intention and quickly raised defensive hands in front of his family. “It’s in the barn,” he cried. “They left it in the barn.”

  Then with a whoop, Cole shot him dead.

  Powers sat up suddenly in the bed, his hand over his mouth. He felt he might have cried out aloud in the darkened bedroom. “No! Cole, no!” The words rang in his brain. They felt like the empty dream words they were. They had stopped nothing. The things that followed, the things they did. The awful things. What was it that came over them?

  As the farmer fell dead, Powers recalled, there was a sense of blamelessness that overcame him. The sudden unbelievably free and urgent knowledge that they could destroy and kill without reprimand. To murder children, to rape and burn. And to his great shame, he remembered laughing while he did it. It was a madness, a madness begotten of war. Of living so close to the company of death and destruction each day that it became normal to see it and even easier to create it.

  After Cole had killed the farmer, Red and Bubba had thrown the two women down and spent themselves on them. Powers too, had taken his turn, then Cole. It sickened him now to think of it. His own casual indifference as he had watched Bubba take out his sharp blade and with wide-eyed wildness drag the stunned women up by their hair and slash across their stretched throats. Blood fountained in jagged spurts, splashing its way across the porch floor as the women shuddered and twitched in their death throes.

  Cole killed the two little boys. They curled huddled and whimpering together, drawing themselves into protective fetal positions as Cole stood over them. Drawing his pistol, he coldly shot them both through the head.

  They had surged through the house after the rapine slaying of the occupants, stealing and breaking as they went. Feasting in the kitchen and drinking the jugs of home-brewed cider found in the cellar.

  Powers recalled that the farmer’s wife had been making a pie and it still sat uncooked on the kitchen table, flour sprinkled around the pie case on the tabletop. Peel and the cores of apples were piled next to the pie. It had been a simple symbol of home life, something they had all known from their childhood. And outside lay the destroyed remains of the mother who had made it not minutes before. Perhaps it had been at that moment that it all sank in. He did not know, really. Up until then, it had all been as if he were occupying a laudanum drug-induced dream. He could never be sure as there had been so much going on around him at the time, but despite all the pitiful screaming and the roaring of flames, he knew that something had shifted in him at the moment he looked on the simple innocence of that unfinished pie.

  Glenn was the one to call them away. He’d gone to explore. “Here,” he said, pushing aside the barn doors. “Come look at this.”

  Two wagons stood inside, the Confederate CSA emblem stenciled on the wooden side.

  “What is it?” asked Bubba, his hair awry and his shirt half hanging from his trousers while his braces dragged in the dirt behind him. “What you got there?” There were scratches on his hairless cheek where the young daughter had tried to fight him off. Powers remembered, they looked so out of place on that childish face.

  “Go look,” urged Glenn, a smile playing on his lips.

  Red, an open-necked jug in hand, his eyes glazed drunkenly, heaved himself up onto the driver’s seat and tugged aside the tarpaulin cover. Dimly through his drunken haze, Red studied the plain white wooden boxes stacked inside the wagon. “What is it?” he slurred.

  “Agh, dammit!” Glenn cried disgustedly, “here, let me.” He climbed up onto the wagon wheel and delved under the tarpaulin.

  The farmhouse outside was well alight now, the wooden porch already blazing and as Glenn pulled something out and held it up, it was as if the sun had risen again, but this time inside the barn. The shining brick he held in his hand reflected the blaze that shone through the barn door and sent a shattered pattern of orange and yellow lights flickering around the dark interior of the barn.

  “It’s gold, boys!” said Glenn. “Confederate gold. That’s why they had a small army here. To protect it. It’s a gold transport and we found it.”

  They discovered the bill of lading under the driver’s seat, rolled in a leather folder. Gold from the New Orleans mint, plus the last holdings of the Confederate Treasury and other monies from Virginian Banks. The precious metal totaled a fortune of five hundred thousand dollars. There were also leather-reinforced canvas bags full of golden half-dollars and Confederate Seal gold coins. Boxes of paper money, in thousand and hundred dollar bill denominations, but all in Confederate script that would be worthless when the conflict was over. Papers in the folder told them the rest of the story. The gold was on its way from Richmond, going overseas to repay loans to the foreign nations that the South’s President Jefferson Davis had promised would be repaid whatever the outcome of the war. It had all fallen into their laps and nobody now living knew a thing about it.

  They had kept it in the wagons, driven it up into the hills with the dead farmer’s mules and spent a day burying it. Then they had returned to the farm and made sure everything was razed to the ground. No hint or indication was left to show that a wagon train of gold had ever been there. Only then did they return to their regiment.

  After they were mustered out, they all returned together and dug up the gold. It was divided equally among themselves and they had gone their separate ways. Each with a fortune to his name.

  Chapter Four

  The colored girl woke him. “Mistah Brent!” she squeaked, knocking loudly at the door. “You awake, sir?”

  Powers struggled to focus. He still lay on the bed fully clothed. He must have dropped off without realizing. “I’m here,” he said.

  “Miss Letitia says if you want your breakfast you’re to come along right now. She say it’s going to get cold you don’t.”

  “Very well,” sighed Powers, irritated by his hostess’ baronial manner. “Tell the lady I’ll be there directly.”

  The maid hurried off and Powers got up and carried out a rough and ready ablution at the nightstand bowl. He straightened himself up as best he could, ran wet fingers across his cropped head and went down to join Letitia Jones.

  “Good morning, my dear sir,” said Letitia brightly as he entered the morning room. She sat upright on the edge of her seat, like a singing bird on its stand. “Now, do you prefer coffee or tea in the morning?”

  “Morning, ma’am. I’ll take coffee, if you don’t mind.”

  “Of course not. Pray, you take a seat now, Mister Brent. Help yourself to whatever you fancy here.”

  She indicated the spread table with a wave of her hand. As she poured for him, Powers saw the starched linen was set with fine bone china and shining silverware. Covered serving dishes steamed, cold meats lay in layered dishes, with warm biscuits, fruit and bowls of compote and honey that sparkled brightly. It was such an extravagant spread that there was barely enough room for him to set down his cup and saucer.

  Powers was glad of the coffee alone and felt no need for more. “No Bubba?” he asked.

  “Not yet awhile,” she said airily. “I fear my husband is a late riser, sir. He will imbibe until the small hours and it leaves him little energy for much else, I’m only too sorry to say.”

  T
here was the hint of an archly expressed double meaning there that Powers did not miss.

  “You will be staying with us longer, Mister Brent?” she asked. “Most welcome, of course. In fact, it would be a pleasure to have some fresh company. Tell me, sir, are you in business?”

  “I’m afraid I cannot stay longer, Miss Letitia. I must press on about my other concerns today. And, yes ma’am, I have a ranch where we run cattle.”

  “How interesting,” she said in a bored tone. “Cattle. Such smelly beasts, though.”

  “They are money on the hoof, ma’am.”

  “Ah!” Her eyes lit up; it was a subject she understood. “It prospers then, this cattle business?”

  “Sure does. We do very well on it —”

  “You have a wife, Mister Brent?” Letitia interrupted. “Of course you will, a most handsomely featured man like yourself must have a loving wife and family at home.”

  “Afraid not, ma’am. Never seemed to find the time for any sparking while we were cowboying and then the war come along. After that it was the cattle business, and that’s full time work, so any thought of courting kind of got shunted to one side.”

  “How unfortunate,” she said thoughtfully, watching him with her head cocked at an angle. “And if I were to think about investing in this cattle business, my dear Mister Brent … do you mind if I call you Powers? Mister Brent is so formal and as Bubba’s oldest friend you surely must become mine as well.”

  “Of course, please, go right ahead.”

  “Very well, Powers. If I were to invest in this cattle business, do you think you might advise me? I, of course, am most helpless when it comes to such complicated matters.”

  “I think, ma’am, that’s a matter best attended to by your husband.”