Under the Stars and Bars (4 page)

‘Now what?’ inquired the scout, having finished his shave and rinsed his face at the river’s edge.

‘Come and get dressed,’ Dusty answered. ‘Then you can saddle both horses.’

‘
Both?
’

‘Sure. I’ll use one and you’ll come with me. Then when I’m safe with my own folks, you can come back with both of them.’

‘That’s sure white of you,’ commented the scout, certain that the other would keep his word.

‘More smart than white,’ Dusty corrected with a grin. ‘It’s that way, or leave you dead. I don’t want a Yankee Injun scout coming hunting for me because I took his favourite horses and guns.’

Also grinning, the scout rolled his razor, shaving brush and soap into a canvas hold-all. When he walked towards the fire, he noticed that his captor backed away to a safe distance. Although the Army Colt dangled with its muzzle directed at the ground, the scout figured it could be swiftly brought into line if he made a wrong move. Clearly the moment to reverse their positions had not yet arrived.

Picking up his shirt, the scout drew it on. He discovered, on his head emerging through the neck-hole, that the Texan had taken advantage of his actions to go and collect the horn-handled, clip-pointed fighting knife. For a moment the scout felt uneasy, knowing that the Sheffield, England, firm of W. & H. Whitehead had engraved the message ‘DEATH TO TRAITORS’ along the eight-inch blade, to appeal to purchasers of Unionist persuasions.

‘Nice sentiment,’ drawled Dusty and tossed the knife to the scout’s feet. ‘Put it back in its sheath and leave it there.’

Obeying, the scout next knotted the bandana about his throat. He tilted the Stetson into place on his head and gathered up the sash. For the first time, Dusty realised that the sash was made of two sections of the silk, one stitched on top of the other. No, not stitched all the way round. On either side, above the hips when the sash was in place, the sections were not connected.

‘How do you find it is to draw from that sash, friend?’ Dusty inquired, guessing at the purpose of the unstitched areas.

‘Easy—and fast,’ answered the scout. ‘Once you get the hang of it.’

‘I’d sooner have holsters myself,’ Dusty commented.

‘Every man to his own taste, Cap’n,’ the scout said. ‘I find I can fetch ‘em out a whole heap faster this way.’

‘Like you say,’ Dusty drawled. ‘Every man to his own taste. Now you’re dressed, you can saddle up the horses and we’ll pull out.’

‘You’re giving the orders,’ answered the scout.

Still keeping his distance, Dusty allowed the man to fold and pack the bed-roll. Then he watched while the other took the necessary items for saddling-up to the waiting horses. Selecting the dun to start work on, the scout laid the carefully folded blanket on its back. With a practised swing, he elevated the McClellan saddle into position.

‘Tighten the girth and breast collar real good, friend,’ Dusty commanded. ‘I won’t be getting on until I’m sure you have.’

‘With a sneaky, suspicious nature like you’ve got,’ grinned the scout as he obeyed, ‘you’d make a mighty good lawman, Cap’n.’

Without knowing it, the long-haired Yankee had just made a mighty prophetic statement. In the years following the end of the War, Dusty would serve with distinction as marshal in three tough, wild, wide-open towns and leave them tamer, better places at the end of his terms of office.
¹⁰

‘A half-smart lil Texas boy like me has to be sneaky and suspicious,’ Dusty replied, moving closer to make sure the work was completed to his satisfaction. ‘Happen he wants to stay alive this side of the Ouach—’

Even as he spoke, Dusty happened to glance across the Saline River. A tall man dressed in a hybrid mixture of Union Army and civilian clothes sat a horse among the trees on the other bank. Big, surly-featured, he had a revolver hanging low in his right thigh. The Burnside hat and the blue tunic he wore bore no insignia. Hanging open, the latter exposed a dirty white shirt.

Becoming aware of the small Texan’s preoccupation, the scout figured his chance had come. Silently, he stepped away from the dun. His moccasins made no sound as he took two long strides towards the unsuspecting Rebel.

Finding himself observed, the man at the other side of the river swung his horse around and trotted it back out of sight. Just a moment too late, Dusty realised the chance he had presented to his prisoner. Turning his head, he saw the scout springing towards him. Dusty had not looked away from the other for long, but it had proved to be long enough.

Hurling himself forward with the speed of a cougar plunging from a branch at a whitetail deer, the scout knotted and drove his right fist ahead of him. Rock-hard knuckles impacted against the side of Dusty’s jaw. For a moment, as he went crashing to the ground, everything seemed to burst before Dusty’s eyes into flashing, brilliant lights. Darkness welled in on him an instant before he sprawled face down on the springy grama grass of the clearing. He did not feel the scout turn him over and unbuckle his gunbelt.

* * *

At first, Dusty’s eye-lids refused to function when he tried to open them. Under him, the earth felt hard, the grass rough and his neck seemed to be twisted badly. A throbbing pain beat through his head, stemming from his jaw. Slowly his eyes trembled open, blinking at the sudden influx of light. Then the spinning in his skull started to ebb away. Strength oozed back, along with coherent thought. Slowly he moved his neck, turning his aching head until he could see a pair of calf-long Indian moccasins. Then the light hurt Dusty’s eyes and he rolled on to his stomach.

The scout stood several feet away, Navy Colts thrust butts forward in his silk sash. Lounging on spread apart feet, the long-haired Yankee had his hands thumb-hooked into the sash and Dusty’s gunbelt dangling over his broad left shoulder. Hearing the Texan stirring, the man glanced his way. Then he returned his gaze to the ford. A splashing sound reached the recumbent youngster’s ears. Starting to ease himself on to hands and knees, he looked at the four men who were riding through the water in his direction. They were not a comforting sight to a man in Dusty’s present situation.

‘Don’t try anything, Cap’n,’ said the scout, speaking from the corner of his mouth and with the minimum of lip movement. ‘That feller you saw’s coming back with his kinfolk.’

Two of the riders might easily have been related to the man who had brought Dusty into serious difficulties. All had un-trimmed black hair, unshaven, sullen, almost brutish faces with a strong family resemblance and were dressed in a similar manner. None were small and they went down in one-inch steps, the first of them being of the middle height.

Swinging his gaze to the fourth member of the party, Dusty felt an uneasy sense of recognition. From his round-topped, wide-brimmed hat, through his frock coat, string tie, trousers and boots, he wore all black. His grubby shirt might have once been white, but now looked a dirty shade of grey. Gaunt of build, with a bearded, hollow-cheeked face, he had an expression of piety that failed to reach, or match, the savage glow in his sunken, dark eyes. Nor did it go well with the ivory-handled Navy Colt carried in an open-topped cross-draw holster high on his left side. Maybe he would have passed for a circuit-riding preacher of the more severe kind to some people, but Dusty felt certain that he was nothing so innocuous.

All of the men darted glances about them, studying the clearing and its occupants with interest. To Dusty, it seemed that the four were adding up the value of everything before them; horses, saddles, firearms, even himself. He noticed the gaunt man staring at something near where he knelt. Following the direction of the other’s gaze, Dusty looked at his Jefferson Davis campaign hat. Sent flying from his head by the force of the blow, or through his collision with the ground, the hat lay with its star-in-the-circle insignia facing the ford.

‘Greetings, brother,’ the gaunt man intoned, swinging from his saddle and allowing his reins to dangle free.

‘Howdy,’ replied the scout, watching the other three dismount, leave their horses ground-hitched and follow their leader on foot towards him.

‘Brother Aaron here saw you in dire trouble and need, brother,’ the gaunt man continued, indicating the middle-sized of the trio. ‘And, like the Good Samaritan, we’ve come to give you succour.’

‘Now that’s right neighbourly of you,’ the scout answered, ‘whatever that there “sucker” might be. Only I’m not needing any, thanks.’

‘Brother Aaron told us that this transgressor had you prisoner,’ the spokesman for the quartet declared as they came to a halt. ‘It was our duty as God-fearful men to come to your rescue.’

‘Why I’m tolerable obliged to you, reverend,’ the scout exclaimed in respect-filled tones. ‘And I sure hope you’re around happen I ever come to need rescuing.’

‘I tell you the peckerwood had him took prisoner, Parson!’ Aaron snarled.

‘Looks that way,’ said the scout, ‘don’t it?’

Fooled by the long-haired scout’s appearance of youth and confident that the odds were all in his favour, Aaron pushed by the gaunt man. Scowling belligerently, in a manner which had caused more than one victim to show alarm and fright, the man continued with his accusations and stepped closer to the scout.

‘That Reb bastard had your guns and was making you do what he wanted. Which’s why I fetched the Par—’

‘Meaning I’m a liar?’ asked the scout mildly.

‘You might say that!’ agreed Aaron, right hand moving suggestively in the direction of his holstered Remington Army revolver.

Instantly all the mildness left the scout and he once again demonstrated that he could move with considerable speed despite his size. Gliding forward a long step, he swung his left hand almost faster than the eye could follow. With a crack like the pop of a freight-driver’s whip, the hard palm of his hand caught Aaron at the side of the head. Having received a blow from the scout, Dusty could almost feel sympathy for Aaron. Coming as a surprise, and with considerable force, the attack spun the hard-case around in a circle to blunder into the smallest of his companions as the others started to move forward.

Spitting out a vicious curse, the biggest of the party grabbed for his Starr Navy revolver. Going by his response to the threat, the scout had been in other such situations. He responded with the same alacrity which had characterised all of his movements since taking advantage of Dusty’s distraction. Although his left hand had been put to excellent use, the right had remained by his side. Turning palm out the fingers wrapped about the hand-fitting white curves of the off-side Colt’s butt, while the thumb curled over the hammer spur. Twisting the gun from its silk retainer, the scout turned its seven-and-a-half inch barrel to the left, then outwards. Doing so caused the weapon’s thirty-eight ounce weight to cock back with hammer without any effort on the scout’s part. From waist level, the .36 muzzle lined itself with unerring precision at the hard-case’s favourite navel.

From first to very rapidly-following last, the whole move had been made with smooth, lightning fast, precision. Bringing his down-dropping hand to a quivering halt, a good three inches from the butt of the Starr, the burly hard-case stared as if fascinated at the octagonal-barrelled revolver pointing so unerringly at him.

Dull red crept on to ‘Parson’s’ gaunt face and his eyes glowed with cold, savage rage; but he stopped his hand in its cross-the-body motion, well clear of his revolver. On separating, the remainder of the new arrivals glowered hate. The only movement made by their hands was the middle-sized man’s involuntary raising of his fingers to gently massage his stinging cheek.

Even Dusty, no slouch in matters
pistolero
himself, could not fault the speed and general competence with which the scout had extracted the Colt. Like the other had said earlier, drawing from the folds of a silk sash was fast—providing one took the trouble to learn. Nor was his talent confined to the right hand.

Ejecting the blood that had collected in his mouth, Aaron removed his fingers from the cheek, intending to transfer them to the butt of his gun. Back curved the scout’s left hand. It slipped free and cocked the near hip’s Colt with almost an equal facility to that displayed when producing the gun’s mate. Again the production of a revolver, in a remarkably short space of time, brought a potentially threatening gesture to an abrupt and definite halt.

‘As the Good Book says,’ boomed the man called ‘Parson’. ‘Raise not thy hand against thy brother, lest the might of the Lord shall smite thee and bring thy pride to dust.’

‘He ain’t my brother,’ the scout pointed out, accepting the quotation as being genuinely from the Bible, but keeping both Colts levelled. ‘Which I don’t take easy to getting called a liar.’

‘Aaron meant no harm by the words, brother,’ Parson insisted.

‘Men’ve got killed saying ‘em,’ warned the scout coldly, ‘harmless or not.’

‘He spoke hastily, perhaps, brother, but with good and righteous cause,’ the gaunt man stated and waved a hand in Dusty’s direction. ‘These Secessionist scum killed his parents, good God-fearing folks that they were, and I wouldn’t soil your ears with the vileness they did to his sweet, unspoiled sister. Yes, brother, just as dead flies cause the ointment of the apothecary to send forth a stinking savour, so does the sight of that hated uniform bring anger to Aaron’s poor and ill-tried soul.’

With each word, the angular man’s voice raised a pitch until he was thundering the speech as if from a pulpit. He hoped that he would hold the scout’s attention for long enough to allow his companions to wrest the advantage from the tanned, tawny-haired Westerner. The hope did not reach fulfilment.

‘Likely,’ was all the scout said, without relaxing his vigilance to a noticeable degree. ‘So how’s it affect me?’

‘If you just leave us have that short-growed son-of-a-bitch,’ Aaron put in with a hint of sarcasm. ‘We’ll hand him his needings.’

‘I’d surely admire to do it, brother, for your poor lil sister’s sake,’ the scout declared, sounding as if every word came straight from his heart. ‘Only I don’t reckon ole Colonel Verncombe’d be right pleased was I to show at Little Rock without his prisoner.’

Still on his hands and knees, Dusty saw a slight, but definite change come over the quartet. Going by their mutual flashing exchange of glances and general loss of aggressive attitudes, they were aware of Colonel Verncombe’s sentiments on the subject of guerillas or other irregular organisations. Senior colonel in the Union’s Army of Arkansas, commanding officer of Buller’s most efficient regiment, Verncombe was a man whose opinions and desires must be reckoned with by any guerrilla band if it hoped to stay in operation around the Toothpick State.

That the men were guerillas, Dusty no longer doubted. Their appearance had suggested that such might be the case, as did their behaviour. However, the mention of the name ‘Parson’ had clinched the matter beyond any shadow of a doubt. Falling into the hands of Northern irregulars, especially members of that particular band, was a situation on which no supporter of the Confederate States cared to contemplate. Dusty realised that the scout might very soon have the opportunity to repay him for killing the boar. From what he had said so far, the long-haired Yankee aimed to do just that. In which case, the scout was placing himself in a position of danger. Parson Wightman had the reputation of being a real bad man to cross; and Dusty felt sure that he had guessed the gaunt man’s identity correctly.

In the years before the start of the War Between The States, Augustus Wightman had been a hell-fire-and-damnation preacher with his eyes on advancement to a wealthy bishopric. He had selected on the Slavery Issue as offering him the best chance of attaining his ambition. By thundering searing condemnations of all who opposed the abolition of slavery, he had built up a sizeable following in his home city—but the bishopric went to another priest.

From that day on, Wightman had been a changed man. Laying the blame for his failure on slave-owning interests, he had continued his campaign against them. However, what had once been the utterances of a self-seeking, if occasionally devout, man soon developed into the ravings of a religious fanatic of the worst kind.

Soon after the commencement of hostilities, he had enlisted in the Union Army as a chaplain. Eighteen months later, he had been compelled to resign and was unfrocked by his denomination. There had been tales of outrages committed against Confederate prisoners, and uglier stories of Southern women being raped by Negroes at Wightman’s instigation. Far too many, in fact, for them all to be lies by the heathen Secessionist trash to discredit a man of the cloth; as he had tried to claim.

Disregarding his protests, the Union Army’s top brass had issued orders that Wightman be given the choice of quitting or facing a court-martial. No less quickly, the leaders of his church had removed him from their midst. Too wise to resist, for he had known just how much truth there had been in the rumours, he had taken the easy way out. Wishing to avoid a scandal, Army and Church had let him go.

By that time, Wightman had gained a taste for power and a delight in the type of activities which had caused his downfall. So he had formed a band of irregulars, gathering together criminal elements and the worst kind of draft-dodgers who evaded service in the Army. It said much for the strength of his personality and acquired dexterity in the use of weapons that he had welded such an evil, motley crowd into a single unit.

Backed by such men, Wightman had commenced a career of murderous atrocity combined with theft. At last, learning that stories of his activities were being published in foreign, pro-Confederate, newspapers, the Federal Congress had ordered that Wightman’s outfit be disbanded. When he had refused to do so, Brevet-Colonel Frederick W. Benteen, Jnr.,
¹¹
a man of forcible personality and prompt action, had been assigned to bring Wightman in. Moving swiftly, Benteen’s battalion had located and attacked the Parson’s band. Although Wightman and some of the leading members had escaped, the rest of the evil crew were killed, captured or sent flying for safety towards the Canadian border.

Left with a mere ten out of over fifty followers, Parson Wightman had drifted from the danger area. His attempts to re-establish himself had been unsuccessful, and he had found no respite in the East. So he had pushed to the west with his dwindling band.

Although rumours had reached the Texas Light Cavalry that Wightman’s band were in Arkansas and hid-out somewhere along the Saline River, there had been no confirmation. Dusty now found himself in a position to supply proof of their presence—if, of course, he lived long enough and could escape to return and give it.

Standing behind his cocked, lined Colts, the scout kept a careful watch on the quartet. At the same time, he hoped that the small Texan would act in a sensible manner. With luck, the weight of Colonel Verncombe’s name would pull them out of their peril; unless the Rebel captain made some move that would trigger off a shooting fracas.

‘Be peaceable, brothers,’ commanded Wightman, darting a coldly-warning glare at Aaron Maxim and his brothers Abel and Job. ‘This young man shares with us in serving the blessed cause of defeating the traitorous Secessionists.’ He looked about him quickly and went on, ‘Are you alone, brother?’