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Croff and Webb were starting action, which meant that the Yankees would be drawn on to see what was up. Kirby's horse was running beside Hannibal. The Texan's eyes were closed, his left shoulder and upper sleeve bloody. Riding neck and neck, they burst out of the gorge as rifle bullets propelled from a barrel. The impetus of that charge carried them across an open strip.
"Sergeant, what's all this about bushwhackers?" Drew repeated the story of their adventure in Tennessee, paring it down to the bald facts. "That nest was wiped out by the Yankee patrol, suh. Afterward Private Croff found a saddlebag with some papers in it, which was in the remains of their camp. It looks like they'd been picking off couriers from both sides.
"One man missin', suh." "You were unable to hear any news of him?" "No, suh." The old weariness settled back on him. They had hunted first Croff and Webb and then he, too, as soon as he was able to sit a saddle. It was Weatherby's fate all over again; the ground might have opened and gulped Kirby down. "How old are you, Sergeant?"
But they all sensed the clouds gathering over their heads, not those laden with the eternal chill rain, but ones which carried with them a coming night. It was so cold that men had to use both hands to cock their revolvers. And Drew saw Croff swing from the saddle, draw his belt knife to cut the hoof from a dead horse. The Cherokee glanced up as he looped his grisly trophy to his saddle horn.
Then they must ride fast to put a bigger gap between them and the enemy so they could go to cover before they struck the valley of the guerrilla camp. They must depend upon Croff and Webb having successfully taken over the sentry posts. But Drew faced those heights with some apprehension. Kirby, on one of his cross runs, pulled near.
The disappearance of the other Cherokee scout at the cabin battle had continued as a mystery for their own small company. None of those who had known him could credit the Indian being taken unawares by the guerrilla force. He had vanished somewhere in the dark of the night, and none of their searching a day later, interrupted by orders to move, had turned up a clue. "Not yet," Croff answered.
Neither one of them would meet his eyes now, and Drew set his teeth, clamping down on a wild rush of words he wanted to spill, knowing that both men would have been as quick and willing to search for the Texan as they had to bring Drew, himself, in. No one answered him. But Croff stood up and said quietly: "This is a pretty well-hidden cave.
Drew heard rather than saw the Cherokee leave their camp, bound for a lookout point. The other three bedded down, anxious to snatch as much rest as possible. Long before dawn they were on the move again, threading through the winter-seared woods. Croff brought them out unerringly behind a sagging rail fence well masked with the skeleton brush of the season.
Drew, Kirby, Croff, and Webb circled around a wagon, bringing the driver to a halt, his mule team standing with drooping heads, blowing and puffing so that their ribs showed as bony bars through their wet hides. "Git!" The driver raised his whip as a weapon of offense until he saw where Croff's carbine was aimed. A little pale, he sank back on the seat.
There was equally good cover on the other side of the road. Kirby climbed the fence, investigating a dark splotch on the surface of the lane. "Fresh droppin's. Been a sight of trailin' 'long heah recent." The rest was elementary. There was no need for orders. Croff and Webb holed up on one side of the lane well apart; Drew and Kirby did the same on the other.
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