The horse was plunging and whinnying, but Lanark clutched its reins and got his foot into the stirrup. The bonfire seemed to be growing strangely brighter, and the mounted guerrillas were plainly discernible, raging and trampling among his disorganized men. Corporal Gray went down, dying almost under Lanark’s feet. Amid the deafening drum-roll of shots, Sergeant Jager’s bull-like voice could be heard: “Stop, thieves and horsemen, in the name of God!” It sounded like an exorcism, as though the Confederate raiders were devils.
Lanark had managed to climb into the saddle of his captured mount. He dropped the bridle upon his pommel, reached across his belly with his left hand, and dragged free his revolver. At a little distance, beyond the tossing heads of several horses, he thought he saw the visage of Quantrill, clean-shaven and fierce. He fired at it, but he had no faith in his own left-handed snap-shooting. He felt the horse frantic and unguided, shoving and striving against another horse. Quarters were too close for a saber-stroke, and he fired again with his revolver. The guerrilla spun out of the saddle. Lanark had a glimpse he would never forget, of great bulging eyes and a sharp-pointed mustache.
Again the rebel yell, flying from mouth to bearded mouth, and then an answering shout, deeper and more sustained; some troopers had run out of the house and, standing on the porch, were firing with their carbines. It was growing lighter, with a blue light. Lanark did not understand that.
Quantrill did not understand it, either. He and Lanark had come almost within striking distance of each other, but the guerrilla chief was gazing past his enemy, in the direction of the house. His mouth was open, with strain-lines around it. His eyes glowed. He feared what he saw.
“Remember me, you thieving swine!” yelled Lanark, and tried to thrust with his saber. But Quantrill had reined back and away, not from the sword but from the light that was growing stronger and bluer. He thundered an order, something that Lanark could not catch but which the guerrillas understood and obeyed. Then Quantrill was fleeing. Some guerrillas dashed between him and Lanark. They, too, were in flight. All the guerrillas were in flight. Somebody roared in triumph and fired with a carbine—it sounded like Sergeant Jager. The battle was over, within moments of its beginning.
Lanark managed to catch his reins, in the tips of the fingers that held his revolver, and brought the horse to a standstill before it followed Quantrill’s men into the dark. One of his own party caught and held the bits, and Lanark dismounted. At last he had time to look at the house.
It was afire, every wall and sill and timber of it, burning all at once, and completely. And it burnt deep blue, as though seen through the glass of an old-fashioned bitters-bottle. It was falling to pieces with the consuming heat, and they had to draw back from it. Lanark stared around to reckon his losses.
Nearest the piazza lay three bodies, trampled and broken-looking. Some men ran in and dragged them out of danger; they were Persil Mandifer, badly battered by horses’ feet, and the two who had held him, Josserand and Lanark’s orderly, Suggs. Both the troopers had been shot through the head, probably at the first volley from the guerrillas.
Corporal Gray was stone-dead, with five or six bullets in him, and three more troopers had been killed, while four were wounded, but not critically. Jager, examining them, pronounced that they could all ride if the lieutenant wished it.
“I wish it, all right,” said Lanark ruefully. “We leave first thing in the morning. Hmm, six dead and four hurt, not counting poor Newton, who’s there in the fire. Half my command—and, the way I forgot the first principles of military vigilance, I don’t deserve as much luck as that. I think the burning house is what frightened the guerrillas. What began it?”
Nobody knew. They had all been fighting too desperately to have any idea. The three men who had been picketing the gulley, and who had dashed back to assault the guerrillas on the flank, had seen the blue flames burst out, as it were from a hundred places; that was the best view anybody had.
“All the killing wasn’t done by Quantrill,” Jager comforted his lieutenant. “Five dead guerrillas, sir—no, six. One was picked up a little way off, where he’d been dragged by his foot in the stirrup. Others got wounded, I’ll be bound. Pretty even thing, all in all.”
“And we still have one prisoner,” supplemented Corporal Googan.
He jerked his head toward Enid Mandifer, who stood unhurt, unruffled almost, gazing raptly at the great geyser of blue flame that had been the house and temple of her stepfather’s nameless deity.
It was a gray morning, and from the first streaks of it Sergeant Jager had kept the unwounded troopers busy, making a trench-like grave halfway between the spot where the house had stood and the gulley to the east. When the bodies were counted again, there were only twelve; Persil Mandifer’s was missing, and the only explanation was that it had been caught somehow in the flames. The ruins of the house, that still smoked with a choking vapor as of sulfur gas, gave up a few crisped bones that apparently had been
