The Big Gun (Dusty Fog's Civil War Book 3) (7 page)

Dusty believed that, in the absence of
sounds of conflict from alongside the river, the top of the hill
would offer him the best opportunity of satisfying his
curiosity.

‘
Loan
me a horse and I’ll come along,’ Staunce requested, glancing at the
crater in passing. He had reached similar conclusions to Dusty’s
and felt that he was more capable of solving the
mystery.

‘
Sure,’ Dusty agreed, without looking back. He was
approaching his gelding and addressed the next words to the guidon
bearer. ‘Let Captain Staunce borrow your horse, Sandy.’

Grabbing the rein from the
soldier
’s
hand as he finished speaking, Dusty went astride the big bay with a
flying bound. While his spurs’ signal sent the animal bounding
forward, with a powerful thrust of muscular energy that would have
unseated a less able rider, he released the second strand of the
reins and guided it in the required direction.

‘
Here,
cap’n,’ Sandy said, passing his dun gelding’s rein to Staunce. ‘I
hope you can manage him.’

‘
I’ll
try,’ the Englishman promised, gripping the low horn of the
double-girthed
^xi
Texas range saddle. ‘With all this
leather weighing on his back, it shouldn’t be too hard.’

Swinging agilely abroad the
dun, Staunce encouraged it to start moving. Sandy watched,
expecting his spirited mount to display reluctance as it felt a
stranger on its back. However, the horse could sense that it
carried a rider capable of mastering it. So it responded to the
instructions from Staunce
’s hands and heels, striding out after Dusty’s
fast-moving bay.

There was another hissing scream, followed
by an explosion.

Twisting
on their saddles without
reducing the horses’ speed, the two young captains saw that a
second crater had appeared about ten yards closer to the
courthouse. The shell had fallen amongst the officers who were
rushing from the building. Several of them were sprawling on the
ground around the smoking hole. Some were starting to rise, but
others lay writhing in agony and three remained motionless in
growing pools of their blood.

As far as Dusty Fog could make out, none of
his kinsmen, or anybody else belonging to the Texas Light Cavalry
had been caught by the exploding shell. Relieved by that discovery,
he turned to the front and urged his bay gelding to go even
faster.

Although Staunce considered
himself an expert horseman and had frequently ridden with some of
Britain
’s
best packs of foxhounds, he soon found that he had met his match in
the small Texan. Lighter than the Englishman, sitting a larger,
more powerful horse, Dusty continued to draw ahead and nothing
Staunce could do served to lessen the distance between them. What
was more, Staunce conceded that the same would most probably have
happened even if they had been equal in size, weight and the
quality of their mounts.

While for Staunce riding had
only been a source of sport, or on occasion a way of getting from
one place to another, a horse had always meant far more than that
to Dusty and most other Texans. On the vast open ranges of the Lone
Star State, a horse was a prime necessity of life. Without one, a
man could not travel, work, or even survive for very long.
So
Texans
tended to attain a greater proficiency in equestrian matters than
anything men in more civilized areas needed to acquire.

There were three more
explosions
—at about one minute intervals—during the time taken by
Dusty and Staunce to climb the hill, warning them that the
bombardment was continuing. While they did not look back, the lack
of noise informed them that no exchange of fire had commenced
between the batteries facing each other across the
river.

At the top of the hill, watched
by half-a-dozen enlisted men in Infantry uniforms, a
worried-looking young second lieutenant of the
1st Arkansas Rifles Regiment
was peering through a large telescope mounted on a tripod. Not far
away stood three wedge tents. The center tent’s front was open,
showing a civilian telegraphist seated at a table which held his
equipment. From it, a wire extended down into the town.

Hearing the horses, the lieutenant raised
his head. A flicker of relief and recognition showed on his
face.

‘
What’s happening down there—Captain Fog?’ the officer
asked, remembering just in time that the small Texan had been
promoted for his part in the Battle of Martin’s Mill and being
aware that recently appointed captains were apt to be insistent on
proper formalities when being addressed by their juniors in rank.
‘We keep hearing explosions.’

‘
The
Yankees are shelling the town,’ Dusty explained, springing from the
bay’s back without waiting for it to stop. He allowed it to go free
and walked forward. ‘Can’t you see the gun that’s doing
it?’

‘
No,’
declared the lieutenant. ‘I’ve had a man watching them all the
time. Not one of their guns’s manned, much less being fired. All
we’ve seen and heard are the explosions.’

Another roar rang out from the town.
Spinning around, Dusty stared at the square. He could detect no
sign of where the shell had landed, but the figures outside the
courthouse were staring towards another building.

‘
Where’d that one hit?’ Dusty wanted to know.

‘
I’m
not sure,’ the lieutenant admitted, having started to use the
telescope once more. He swung it in an arc before continuing, ‘I
don’t think they hit the courthouse this time.’

Staunce arrived, bringing his
borrowed mount to a rump-scraping halt near Dusty. Dismounting, the
Englishman left the horse to fend for itself. Like the small
Texan
’s bay,
Sandy McGraw’s dun did not stray far. After walking only a short
distance, it came to a halt. Dusty’s bay had already stopped and
both animals stood ground-hitched by their trailing reins, as they
had been trained to do.

‘
They’ve been hitting the courthouse, huh?’ Dusty
asked.

‘
They
got it with their third and fourth shells,’ the lieutenant replied.
‘But they were too late. I saw General Hardin and most of the
colonels leave by the side door before the shells started to hit.
None of them’d been hurt’s I could make out.’

‘
Where
the hell’s that cannon?’ Staunce growled, glaring across the
river.

‘
I
can’t see it anywhere,’ admitted the lieutenant, stepping aside and
indicating the telescope. ‘Take a look for yourselves.’

Striding forward fast, so as to
beat Staunce and take the lieutenant
’s place, Dusty found that he could
manipulate the instrument without needing to make adjustments to
the tripod’s height. Closing his left eye, he peered through the
tube. First he looked at the square and courthouse. There were
signs that some of the shells had penetrated the building. Windows
which had escaped destruction in the first blasts had been
shattered by detonations on the inside. Ole Devil, Colonel Mannen
Blaze and other senior officers were gathered on the side of the
courthouse farthest from the river. They were talking and staring
towards the west side of the square.

Turning the telescope, Dusty
lined it in the direction that his uncles were looking. A small
knot of civilians had gathered about a crater outside a house.
Nobody appeared to have been hurt. So Dusty swept his gaze over the
Confederate
defenses. The batteries had been manned before the start of
the meeting. Even as Dusty aimed at them, he saw his father—who
looked like a taller, heavier and older version of himself—Major
Hondo Fog, arrive and address the first lieutenant who was in
temporary command of the positions.

Directing his attention across
the river, Dusty studied the Yankees. They had set up camp beyond
the range of the Confederate cannons and were preparing their
positions. However, the guns
’ crews were not around their pieces. Instead,
they stood in small groups near their quarters. Some of them were
gazing at Arkadelphia, talking excitedly and pointing. Others had
turned and were scanning the terrain behind them.

Dusty could see no suggestion
of hostile activity being carried out, or even in preparation,
among the Yankees. In fact, the impression he formed was that the
shelling had been just as much of a surprise to them as it had been
to its recipients. Satisfied that none of the
‘Napoleons’ were in use, he
searched for a hidden weapon in their vicinity. Yet, from the
crews’ reactions, he suspected that he would be wasting his
time.

‘
Like
you said,’ Dusty confirmed, at the conclusion of his scrutiny. ‘The
shells aren’t coming from the batteries across the
Ouachita.’

‘
That
doesn’t surprise me,’ Staunce declared. ‘They’re being fired from
something a damned sight heavier than any twelve-pounder
“Napoleon”. So the gun could be anywhere up to just over two miles
from Arkadelphia. It’s pretty far off, or we’d have heard it
firing.’

Accepting a more experienced
man
’s
assessment, particularly as it ran along similar lines to his own
summation, Dusty decided to extend the area of his search. Before
he could do so, another shell arrived in Arkadelphia. Altering the
angle at which he had been looking, he found that it had plunged
into a small house on the extreme eastern edge of the town. People
were appearing from neighboring buildings, converging rapidly on
the stricken premises.

Cursing under his breath at
such lousy shooting, Dusty elevated the telescope and gave greater
attention to locating the mysterious weapon. He directed his search
on either side
of the trail that led from Arkadelphia—the river crossing
having been made by ferry in times of peace—to Malvern, seat of Hot
Spring County. The terrain was rolling, but open and offering few
places suitable for concealing a large cannon. At last, however,
about two miles beyond the river, the trail disappeared into a belt
of woodland.

‘
I’m
damned if I can see
the son-of-a-bitching thing—’ Dusty began, after a few seconds of
searching along the horizon in response to a thought that had
struck him.

‘
Then
move over and let an expert find it,’ Staunce suggested, before the
small Texan could continue with his explanation.

‘
Why
sure,’ Dusty drawled, straightening up. ‘There’s only the one, I’d
say, or the shells’d be dropping a heap more
frequently.’

‘
Just
the one,’ Staunce agreed, barely concealing his impatience to lay
hands on the telescope. ‘But, if the craters and explosions were
anything to go by, it’s a big bastard.’

‘
I
started thinking it was real accurate, too,’ Dusty remarked,
allowing his companion to have access to the instrument. ‘It only
took three shots to hit the courthouse. I’d say that’s tolerably
good shooting.’

‘
You
don’t know just
how
good,’ Staunce warned, duplicating Dusty’s search if the
river’s edge; but for a different reason. ‘They must have somebody
directing their fire for them.’

‘
Likely,’ Dusty grunted noncommittally.

‘
What
I don’t understand is why their “Napoleons” aren’t helping it out,’
the lieutenant put in. ‘They’d have been more likely to wipe out
the meeting if they’d all cut loose at the same time.’

‘
It’s
what I’d have expected to happen,’ Staunce admitted, without taking
his eye from the telescope. ‘But the men at the batteries are
acting as if they weren’t expecting the shelling.’

‘
I’d
say that means the fellers with the big gun don’t have their
look-out with the Yankees on the river,’ Dusty remarked, watching
the Englishman. ‘They couldn’t’ve hid him and all the gear he’d
need so’s their own men wouldn’t know he was there, even if there
was any reason for them to do it.’

‘
That’s true enough,’ Staunce conceded, wondering if his
companion was thinking on the right lines regarding the rest of the
problem.

‘
So
they’ve got him a whole heap closer to them,’ Dusty
suggested.

‘
Where
do you think he might be?’ Staunce challenged.

‘
Somewhere high enough to see where the shells are
falling—’

‘
Which
narrows the field of search a little. He’ll have to be on top of a
piece of high ground—’

‘
Or
well
above
it,’ Dusty interrupted quietly.

‘
Above
it?’ the Englishman repeated.

‘
Well
above it,’ Dusty corrected, delighted to discover that his
companion had failed to duplicate his findings.

‘
A
balloon!’ Staunce breathed. Although he had considered the
possibility, he had discarded it as being most unlikely. Returning
his attention to the telescope, he scanned above the skyline and
soon detected a small round blob hanging almost motionless above
the trees. ‘You tricky blighter, Dusty! You’d already figured out
what was happening and why.’