It didn’t happen, though. By the time they camped that night, they hadn’t encountered anyone else.
The next day passed without incident as well, and Luke began to hope if the whores had told somebody about what had happened, the Yankees were too busy to worry about some strange-acting Confederate soldiers dressed in civilian clothing.
They were somewhere in eastern Tennessee, Luke figured, maybe in the Smoky Mountains, and the terrain grew more rugged. The wagons followed narrow, twisting trails running between steep, heavily wooded slopes. Luke watched those mountainsides intently, knowing the dark valleys were perfect for an ambush.
The travelers avoided settlements, but every now and then they passed isolated cabins with small garden patches nearby. The people living there barely subsisted on what little food they could grow, along with any small game they could trap. Obviously, it wasn’t much. The people who came out of those rickety cabins to watch them pass were gaunt and hollow-eyed. They looked like it had been months since their bellies were even half full.
The children were the worst, Luke thought. His heart went out to them as they stared up at the wagons and riders with dull, defeated eyes. He wanted to give them something to eat, but he and his companions were already on short rations. His own belly spent a lot of time growling in hunger. The soldiers couldn’t do any hunting because of the attention the shots might attract.
They were approaching one such cabin when an old man with a long white beard limped onto the trail to stop them.
Lancaster called, “Get out of the way, old-timer,” but the man didn’t budge. Dale hauled back on the reins to bring the lead team to a halt before they ran over the old man. Lancaster cast an irritated look over his shoulder, and Luke knew it was because Dale had stopped the wagon without waiting for the colonel’s order.
“What do you want, old man?” Lancaster asked.
The man raked gnarled fingers through his long white beard before answering. “I don’t know who ye are or where ye be goin’, but I want you to take my grandson wi’ ye.” He turned his head and nodded toward the shack, where a skinny boy about twelve years old stood on the leaning porch. He was barefoot and wore only a pair of ragged overalls.
“I’m sorry, we can’t do that,” Lancaster said.
“If he stays here, he’ll starve, sure as shootin’,” the old man insisted. “The only chance he’s got to live is goin’ somewheres else, somewheres they have more food.”
A harsh laugh came from Potter. “Then he’s out of luck, old-timer, because it’s like this all over the South. The Yankees have burned and looted and torn down until there’s nothing left. The boy might as well stay here and starve instead of starvin’ somewhere else.”
The old man lifted a trembling hand. “Ye can’t mean that. There’s got to be someplace better. There’s got to be a place where folks still have some hope.”
“If there is, we haven’t seen it,” Lancaster said. “I’m sorry, sir, but we have to be moving on. Now, if you’ll get out of our way ...”
In desperation, the old man reached for the halter on the colonel’s horse. “Please . . . you got supplies . . .”
“Not enough to share,” Lancaster snapped. “Not even enough to last us until we get where we’re going.” He pulled his horse to the side, out of the old man’s reach. “Get out of—”
He didn’t say any more. At that moment, a shot boomed and the old man’s head jerked as a sizable chunk of it was blown away by a rifle ball. Blood sprayed in the air, turning his white hair pink.
The shot came from just behind them and to the right, Luke judged. While he was turning on the wagon seat to locate the threat, the thought crossed his mind that the shot had been aimed at Lancaster. When the colonel moved his horse suddenly, it sealed the old man’s fate.
More shots roared. Tongues of flame spurted in the trees almost at the edge of the trail. Luke whipped his rifle to his shoulder and fired at one of the muzzle flashes. A man in a dirty blue uniform and black forage cap staggered out from behind a tree, clutching his chest where Luke’s bullet had gone. The Yankee soldier collapsed.
The rifle was good for only one shot, and Luke didn’t have time to reload. He dropped it at his feet and yanked the revolver from his waistband as he used his other hand to shove Dale off the seat. He followed, diving after his friend.
The bushwhackers seemed to be on the right side of the road. As the Confederates returned the fire, they hurriedly took cover behind the wagons. The saddle mounts bolted down the trail, but that was a problem to worry about later, Luke thought . . . if any of them survived.
Crouching behind the lead wagon, he tried to make his shots count, waiting for a glimpse of blue before he pulled the trigger. Fortunately, the Yankees cooperated. There was no telling where those Union troops were from, but they didn’t seem to have much experience at the sort of hill fighting the Southerners did. Nobody grew up in the Ozarks without learning about the dangers of bushwhackers.
Three more men fell to Luke’s shots, and the heavy fire from his companions was taking a toll, too. The wagons with their cargo of bullion provided good cover. No bullets could penetrate those crates full of gold bars.
Luke glanced at the other men. They were all on their feet. He couldn’t tell if any were wounded, but they were all still in the fight, something that couldn’t be said for the Yankees.
The officer in charge of the ambush realized the same thing. He shouted over the sound of gunfire, “We’ll overrun them! Charge!”
That was just about the worst thing those Yankees could have done. As they burst out of the woods, yelling and shooting, they were met by a hail of bullets from the wagons.
The first rank went down as lead tore into them, then the second, and the charge disintegrated into a chaotic milling around, turning the soldiers into sitting ducks. A few tried to flee back into the trees, but they were gunned down.
An eerie silence fell as clouds of powder smoke drifted over the trail and around the wagons. Luke risked a look. It appeared all the Yankees were on the ground. A few were writhing around and groaning in pain, but most of them lay in the limp sprawl that signified death.
If there had been enough of them, maybe they could have overrun the wagons and finished off the Confederates with their bayonets. But the attack had fallen short
“Check those men,” Lancaster ordered.
Stratton tucked away his pistol and drew a knife. He looked over at Richards and grinned. “Josh and me will take care of it, Colonel.”
Richards grinned, too, and pulled out his own knife.
Luke knew they intended to cut the throats of the Yankees who were only wounded. He didn’t like the idea of killing defenseless men, but this was war, after all.
A sob made him turn around. The boy who’d been on the porch had come onto the trail, falling to his knees beside the body of his grandfather. He was leaning forward over the corpse, crying.
Luke reloaded his pistol and his rifle, then walked over to the boy and rested a hand on his shoulder. “Come on, son. That won’t do any good. Your gramps is gone. I’m sorry.”
“The . . . the Yankees came marchin’ up a while ago,” the youngster managed to say. “They told Grampa that . . . that there would be some wagons comin’ along . . . They said they’d been chasin’ you for days . . . and wanted him to stop y’all somehow. Grampa didn’t want to do it . . . but they said they’d kill us both and burn down our place if he didn’t . . . He had to do it, mister. He had to.”
“I reckon he did.” Luke had already figured out something like that must have happened. “There’s no shame in a man doing whatever he has to in order to protect his family. You remember that, son.”
“But then they ... they shot him anyway!”
“I think that was an accident. They were trying to shoot one of us.”
“He’s dead, though, either way.”
There was no denying that. Luke didn’t even try to. He couldn’t do anything for the boy except squeeze his shoulder again and leave him there to mourn his grandfather.
When he went back over to the wagons, he asked Remy, “Anybody hurt in our bunch?”
“Edgar got nicked on the arm, but Dale’s patching it up. The colonel’s hat’s got a hole in it, so he came mighty close to shakin’ hands with the devil. But that’s all.”
