Luke barely noticed it, but it made him wonder. A little later, while they were saddling the horses, he pretended not to see Stratton until he bumped into the man.
When Stratton turned with a scowl and said, “Hey, be careful,” he was close enough that Luke caught a faint whiff of whiskey on his breath.
“Sorry, Stratton, that was my fault. I wasn’t watching what I was doing.”
Stratton shrugged. “Well, no harm done. So don’t worry about it.”
Luke was going to worry about it, though. He was going to worry that either Stratton or Richards—or one of the other two, he supposed—had managed to sneak a bottle or a flask into their gear.
Drinking itself didn’t bother Luke. From time to time he liked to have a beer or a shot of corn liquor. But he’d never had the thirst for the stuff some men did, and he agreed with Colonel Lancaster. They didn’t need anything to distract them from their mission. They had been given the job of taking the bullion to Georgia, and as soldiers, it was their duty to carry out those orders.
It was just one more reason to keep an eye on the four men, he told himself.
Before they left the camp, Luke went over to Lancaster. “I’ve been thinking about something, Colonel.”
“What’s that, Jensen?”
“You seem to be the only one of us who knows exactly where we’re going.”
Lancaster frowned. “What’s your point? I’m the only officer with this detail. The rest of you are just enlisted men. I’m the only one who needs to know.”
Luke ignored the man’s annoying arrogance. “Begging your pardon, sir, but if anything were to happen to you, we wouldn’t know where to deliver the gold. I was thinking that if you had a map or something—”
“So you’d know exactly where to avoid if you tried to abscond with these wagons?” Lancaster broke in.
Luke couldn’t stop himself from responding angrily. “Colonel, I never said such a thing. I never even thought it!”
“Well, I can’t take any chances. President Davis himself picked me for this mission, and I don’t intend to let him, or the Confederacy, down. So you just concern yourself with your own responsibilities, Corporal, and let me worry about everything else.”
There was nothing Luke could do except grit his teeth for a second. “Yes, sir, Colonel.” He turned and went back to the wagons.
Remy was helping Dale hitch up the team to the lead wagon. He inclined his head toward Lancaster and asked, “What was that about,
“Remember we talked about how the colonel is the only one who knows where we’re going?” Luke asked.
“Sure.”
“Well, I said something to him about it . . . and he wasn’t inclined to share the information . . . which he told me in no uncertain terms.”
Dale chuckled. “I never minded serving under the colonel in the field. Thought he did a pretty good job, in fact. But put him out here in command of a small group like this and he’s sort of a jackass, ain’t he?”
“So far,” Luke agreed.
“You think he can manage to get all the way to Georgia without getting himself killed?”
“It’s not him I’m worried about,” Luke said. “I’d just as soon get the rest of us there without us getting killed.”
CHAPTER 7
They traveled through the night without encountering any trouble, and after resting the next day Colonel Lancaster announced they would turn and head west for a night before starting south again. “We’ll be well clear of Richmond, so we shouldn’t run into any trouble.”
“We’ll be behind Yankee lines,” Potter said.
“Yes, but all their attention is focused on Richmond now. As long as we avoid their supply trains and relief columns, we should be fine. I’m relying on you men for that.”
Several more days passed without incident. They traveled by day, since they were off the main roads and needed light to see where they were going. Also, they were moving through country where none of them had been before, so they didn’t know the terrain. Sometimes they found their way blocked by a ravine or a ridge the wagons couldn’t handle, and were forced to backtrack until they found another route.
They were making progress southward, and that was encouraging to Luke. He didn’t know how long it would take them to reach Georgia—a couple weeks, more than likely, he thought—but at least they were heading in the right direction finally. He just hoped the Confederacy hadn’t collapsed by the time they got there.
In a way, that would be simpler, he mused as he rode ahead of the wagons, scouting with Remy. If the damned war was over, they could just surrender and be done with it. Admitting defeat to the Yankees would be a bitter pill to swallow, but at least they would all be alive.
Of course, in that case the Union would seize the gold. Off it would go to Washington. That bothered Luke, too, but the final fate of the gold was really none of his business.
He suspected Potter, Stratton, Richards, and Casey were all sneaking drinks now and then, but none of them got drunk so he didn’t say anything about it. Lancaster seemed oblivious to what was going on, but that was nothing unusual. The colonel was oblivious about a lot of things.
Several times they had to take to the woods and find hiding places when Yankees were in the vicinity. Once they watched from the concealment of trees while a lone supply wagon rolled slowly past, accompanied by a handful of tired-looking blue-clad troopers. In whispers, Stratton and Potter urged Lancaster to let them attack the wagon.
“There’s bound to be provisions in there we could use,” Potter said.
“And we can kill all them blue bellies before they know what’s goin’ on,” Stratton added.
Lancaster shook his head stubbornly. “We can’t risk the shots drawing attention. We’ll stay here until they’re gone.”
Stratton and Potter didn’t argue, but Luke saw them looking at the colonel with a mixture of scorn and hatred. He didn’t have a very high opinion of Lancaster himself, but those two looked like they wanted to murder him.
The bad feelings he had about the mission grew stronger as they continued heading south. More than a week had passed since they left Richmond when they paused to rest the horses one afternoon and suddenly heard something they hadn’t heard in quite a while.
Female voices.
Casey’s head came up like a bloodhound catching a scent. “Hear that, fellas? There’s womenfolks somewhere close by!”
Luke heard it, all right. Several women, by the sound of it, and they were laughing. The voices were coming from the other side of a thick stand of trees.
“We’d better check that out, Colonel,” Stratton said to Lancaster.
“Yeah, there’s no tellin’ but what they might be spyin’ on us,” Richards said.
It didn’t sound to Luke like the women were spying on them. He thought it would be better to move on as quickly as possible.
But Lancaster nodded. “All right. Three of you go find out who they are and what they’re doing here. Jensen, Casey, and Potter, you go.”
Luke would have rather gone with a couple of his friends, but he nodded and got his rifle from the wagon. He and Casey and Potter slipped into the woods, moving quickly but quietly.
The stand of trees wasn’t very thick. A couple minutes later, the three men came to a creek. A covered wagon was parked on the other side of the stream. A woman perched on the seat with a shotgun across her knees.
“Holy Moses,” Casey breathed.
He was looking at six women standing knee-deep in the creek, stripped down to their underthings. They were taking advantage of the creek and the warm afternoon to bathe. The flimsy garments were soaked and clung to their bodies.
