The Big Gun (Dusty Fog's Civil War Book 3) Page 6

  ‘I’d hate like hell to think that even a Yankee soft-shell xii would do that,’ Dusty answered. ‘What kind of gun do you reckon it is, Doug?’

  ‘A twenty-four-, or maybe even a thirty-pounder “rifle”,’ Staunce replied.

  ‘As big’s that, huh?’ Dusty breathed, knowing the word “rifle” used in such a fashion meant a cannon with a rifled barrel.

  ‘At least that big,’ Staunce confirmed. ‘A twelve-, or even an eighteen-pounder couldn’t be throwing from anywhere near that balloon and wouldn’t have made such big craters. And a smooth-bore couldn’t pitch its balls accurately.’

  Once again, Dusty followed his companion’s meaning without the need for further explanation. In the period of his training at Judge Blaze’s small military academy—in Polveroso City, Rio Hondo County, Texas—Dusty’s education had covered many aspects of Army life. Although he had been intended to join the Texas Light Cavalry, he was encouraged to study training manuals devoted to Infantry and Artillery matters. From his reading, he knew that the spin imparted to a shell by the grooves of a ‘rifle’s’ barrel enabled it to fly more accurately than a round shot from a smoothbore cannon. He also had a fair idea of a thirty-pounder’s dimensions.

  ‘Happen you’re right,’ Dusty said, trying to sound as if he doubted that such an unlikely thing could happen. ‘It’ll be a fair-sized hunk of iron to haul around.’

  ‘If it’s a Parrot thirty-pounder rifle, which I’m inclined to believe it is, it will have a tube over eleven feet long. With the carriage and limber, it weighs almost nine thousand pounds.’

  ‘You’d need ten, maybe even a dozen big horses to pull it,’ Dusty said, after Staunce’s description, speaking half to himself. ‘And they won’t be moving anywhere near as fast as a flying artillery battery.’ xiii

  ‘They’re not meant to,’ Staunce pointed out. ‘They’re siege, or even garrison pieces, not field guns. What’s on your mind, Dusty?’

  ‘Somebody’s going to have to do something about that blasted big gun,’ the small Texan replied.

  Chapter Five – Somebody’s Come Across the River

  ‘Let’s hope there’s a cup of coffee, even if we can’t get a meal at Stilton Crossing,’ Captain Dusty Fog remarked to Captain Douglas St. John Staunce as they rode slowly through the darkness. ‘It’ll be way too late for any by the time we reach Camden.’

  Holding their horses to a steady walk—Staunce having retrieved his from the party of 2nd Texas Infantry who had been catching the animals that had bolted when the first shell exploded—the two young officers were traversing the trail that ran parallel with the southern bank of the Ouachita River. They were going to Camden, seat of Ouachita County, to rejoin their commands after the conclusion of the meeting in Arkadelphia. Dusty’s guidon bearer, Sandy McGraw, had been sent ahead with dispatches from Colonel Mannen Blaze to the headquarters of the Texas Light Cavalry. All the other officers would be following the next day.

  As the pair did not expect to reach their destination much before midnight, they were hoping to obtain refreshment at the part of the river known as Stilton Crossing. Several civilian workers had been hired to establish positions from which two batteries of ‘Napoleons’—the Model of 1857 gun-howitzer was the workhorse of both armies’ Artillery—could help to prevent the Yankees from making attempts at utilizing the easy crossing at that point. A small detachment of the Texas Light Cavalry had been assigned to guard the workers. Their officer would be willing to trade cups of coffee and, possibly, food for news of the gathering attended by his visitors.

  ‘I wonder if the patrol’s managed to get at that big gun?’ Dusty went on after a few seconds’ silence, repeating a subject that had cropped up on two previous occasions.

  ‘They ought to be getting close to it, even if it pulled out after the crew stopped shelling Arkadelphia,’ Staunce replied, looking at the small figure by his side. ‘You would have liked to go after it yourself, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Sure I would,’ Dusty replied, grimly and bitterly, thinking of the scenes he had witnessed during the return from the observation post on the hill. There had been dead and wounded civilians among the burning, shell-damaged buildings of what had been a peaceable, pleasant little town. ‘The bastards must have been shooting deliberately, meaning to kill civilians.’

  ‘It seemed that way,’ the Englishman conceded, in tones which matched his companions. ‘What a lousy way to make war.’

  ‘Lousy is too mild a word for it,’ Dusty declared. ‘Whoever ordered it done deserves to be hanged.’

  ‘Did you ask if you could go after the gun?’

  ‘I didn’t need to. Uncle Devil and Uncle Mannen knew what was on my mind as soon as they saw me.’

  ‘And gave you good reasons why you couldn’t handle it,’ Staunce pointed out, knowing his young companion wished to talk as a means of getting the anger and disgust he had been feeling out of his system.

  ‘Sure,’ Dusty agreed. ‘Arkadelphia’s part of the Texas Mounted Infantry’s bailiwick. So it was up to them to take on the chore.’

  ‘That was true enough,’ Staunce stated. ‘You wouldn’t have liked it if another cavalry regiment had been assigned to work in your area.’

  ‘Likely,’ Dusty sighed. ‘They were the nearest outfit of horse soldiers, even if they’ve only just taken on the name “Mounted”.’

  ‘And it would have taken two days at the least to fetch Company C up the Camden.’

  ‘I’m not gainsaying that.’

  ‘Don’t you think the Mounted Infantry can handle it?’ Staunce challenged.

  ‘There’s no reason why they can’t,’ Dusty admitted. ‘Most of them hail from North Texas, but they’ve all done plenty of riding and know how to fight on the back of a horse. It’s just—Well. I saw what that damned big gun had done to the town and I was madder than a boiled owl.’

  ‘We all were,’ Staunce said. ‘But we couldn’t all go. If we had, it would have meant a full-scale confrontation with the Yankees. And that’s one thing we can’t chance right now.’

  ‘Are you trying to convince me, or yourself?’ Dusty inquired.

  ‘I wish I knew,’ Staunce answered, then partially changed the subject to something which had been puzzling him. ‘Why do you think they stopped the bombardment soon after that lieutenant reached them?’

  ‘Could be that’s what he’d been sent to tell them to do,’ Dusty guessed. ‘There aren’t many Yankee officers who’d condone, or allow, the indiscriminate shelling of civilian property.’

  ‘You could be right—’ the Englishman began.

  Any further comment Staunce may have considered making was forgotten. The trail passed through fairly thick woodland, with a heavy coating of bushes on either side. There was little light filtering down from the stars and half moon, but the two captains’ eyes had grown accustomed to the gloom. They could make out the shapes of their horses and see a short way ahead.

  Suddenly Dusty’s big bay gelding snorted, threw up its head, pricked its ears and stared towards the bushes on the right side of the trail.

  There was a rustling commotion amongst the undergrowth. Something fairly large lunged into view, bounding in front of the riders. Controlling their startled mounts with deft ease, the officers reached rapidly towards their weapons. While Staunce’s right hand was still trying to free the flap of his close-topped official issue holster—and he had trained himself to be far from slow at this—Dusty’s left fist had stabbed across, drawn and cocked the off side white-handled Army Colt. Despite having aligned the barrel on the swiftly moving shape and holding back the trigger with his forefinger, Dusty did not complete the draw by releasing the hammer.

  Sailing back into the air, with the kind of leap for which its species was famous, a large buck whitetail deer passed across the trail in front of Dusty and Staunce. It disappeared, to alight in the bushes on the river’s side of the path and continued its flight. When it landed the second time, there was a hollow, wooden thu
mping noise far different from how its previous return to the ground had sounded.

  ‘If you’d have been faster, we could have had venison for dinner tomorrow,’ the Englishman complained, closing the holster’s flap. ‘What’s wrong?’

  Having returned the Colt to leather, with a spinning twirl on his trigger-finger as a preliminary, Dusty was swinging from his saddle.

  ‘I’m going to see what he landed on the second time,’ the small Texan replied, dropping his reins.

  ‘It did sound a trifle odd,’ Staunce conceded, also dismounting. I’ll come with you.’

  Advancing cautiously into the undergrowth, they spread out and moved in the direction which had been taken by the fleeing buck. A startled, or chased, whitetail deer could cover up to twenty feet in a single leap. So Dusty and Staunce were approaching the bank of the river before the mysterious sound was explained. A small boat had been turned upside down and was concealed amongst the bushes. Dusty found it and, placing his left hand on the keel, felt at the wood.

  It’s still wet, Doug,’ the small Texan said, having called his companion over and announced his discovery. ‘Somebody’s come across the river.’

  ‘It could have been a family, or a man, who wanted to get away from the Yankees,’ Staunce suggested.

  ‘Why sure,’ Dusty drawled, bending to grip the side of the boat and turn it the right way up. ‘Only, if it had been, I don’t reckon they’d’ve bothered to hide it like this.’

  ‘There’s something under it,’ Staunce remarked, feeling into his trouser pocket. He produced a box of Phosphorus ‘Strike-Anywhere’ matches and lit one.

  In the sudden glow of light, ignoring the anything but pleasant smell that always accompanied the ignition of a phosphorus match, the captains looked at a small, oblong, tarpaulin-wrapped bundle. Dusty drew the Russell-Barlow folding knife which his Cousin, Red Blaze had given to him as a replacement for one lost during the Battle of Martin’s Mill, and used it to open the wrappings. Any lingering notions either of them might have harbored about the boat having carried refugees to safety were brought to an end in no uncertain way.

  Setting off another match, before the first had burned itself out, Staunce joined Dusty in staring at the printed words on the top sheet of the papers that had been exposed by the removal of the tarpaulin.

  ‘PEOPLE OF THE OUACHITA RIVER TAKE WARNING

  General A. G. Culver was abducted by members of the Rebel Army. Unless he is released, we will be compelled to destroy your homes. This is no idle threat. We have already bombarded the town of Arkadelphia and will continue with our attacks until General Culver is liberated.’

  Staunce had become so engrossed that he allowed the match to burn down to his fingers. With a startled curse, he shook it out and flung it aside.

  ‘It was a deliberate bombardment!’ the Englishman ejaculated.

  ‘Yes,’ Dusty replied quietly. ‘I didn’t think Culver’s men thought so highly of him.’’

  ‘Or me,’ Staunce admitted, then his anger got the better of him. ‘Damn it all, Dusty. This is barbaric’

  ‘There’s no nice way of fighting a war,’ Dusty pointed out.

  ‘I know that. But there are certain things one doesn’t do.’

  ‘Likely. What shall we do about this, Doug?’

  ‘Burn it and the boat,’ Staunce declared, tapping the bundle of paper. ‘We don’t want any civilians to see what’s printed here.’

  ‘That’s for sure,’ Dusty drawled. ‘But there’s the feller who fetched them from across the river for us to think about. We’ll need to nail his hide to the wall, if it can be done.’

  ‘It can be, I’d say,’ Staunce answered. ‘He’ll have to come back for his bundle. So all we have to do is wait in hiding and grab him.’

  ‘Tonight?’

  ‘Don’t you think he’ll come back?’

  ‘Not tonight,’ Dusty guessed. ‘If he’d wanted them for tonight, he’d’ve taken them with him.’

  ‘Possibly,’ Staunce admitted. ‘Do you think he came from Camden?’

  ‘Maybe. Or he could’ve come up from Vaden, except we should’ve met him on the trail.’

  ‘Unless he hid when he saw or heard us coming.’

  ‘It’s possible,’ Dusty drawled. ‘You’re the senior of us, Doug, but—was it me—I’d say take the papers with us to Stilton Crossing. The feller might’ve come from there. It’d be a damned sight more handy for one of the workers than a jasper out of Camden, or Vaden.’

  ‘That’s what I was going to suggest, not being one for pulling rank,’ the Englishman smiled. ‘We might be able to arrange for the guard at the crossing to have somebody keep watch over the boat.’

  Returning to the horses, after Dusty had rewrapped the parcel, they mounted and continued with their interrupted journey. As they rode, they talked about their find; but without reaching any definite conclusions.

  About another mile fell behind them before they saw the lights of the construction camp. There was little activity among the small cluster of buildings of the hamlet, or around the tents in which the workers and guards were housed. A Texas Light Cavalry sentry challenged them, from a place of concealment amongst a clump of bushes. On identifying themselves, he allowed them to pass through.

  ‘Who’s the guard’s officer?’ Dusty inquired.

  ‘Mr. Clements,’ replied the sentry, pointing. ‘You’ll find him in the wall-tent down by the houses.’

  ‘I thought all you Texas Light Cavalry officers were called “Hardin”, “Blaze”, or “Fog”,’ Staunce remarked, as he and Dusty turned their horses in the direction indicated by the soldier.

  ‘It’s all lies, started by folks who aren’t called “Hardin”, “Blaze”, or “Fog”,’ the small Texan explained. ‘We’ve got a Major Smith.’

  ‘Smith?’ the Englishman repeated. ‘I don’t believe it.’

  ‘It’s true,’ Dusty insisted, straight-faced. ‘He married my Aunt Cecilia Blaze and we couldn’t get him to take her name.’

  ‘That figures,’ Staunce sighed, then gave an exasperated cluck. ‘Damn it, I’m starting to talk like you foreigners now.’

  ‘Why thank you, ’most to death.’ Dusty drawled. ‘It’s good of you to say so.’

  ‘At least Lieutenant Clements isn’t a Hardin, Fog or Blaze,’ Staunce said, in tones of relief. ‘That’s something.’

  By that time, they had reached the wall-tent. Its door flaps were open and the interior was illuminated by a lamp. As the two captains rode up, a tall, wide-shouldered first lieutenant in his middle-twenties emerged.

  ‘Howdy, Cousin Dusty,’ the lieutenant greeted.

  ‘I might have known!’ Staunce groaned.

  ‘Howdy, Cousin Shad,’ Dusty acknowledged, ignoring his companion’s comment. ‘Do you know Captain Staunce?’

  ‘I’ve heard tell of you, captain,’ Shadrack Clements declared. ‘Coffee’s hot, happen you feel like stopping a spell and taking a cup.’

  ‘That’s one of the reasons we dropped by, Shad,’ Dusty informed his cousin, swinging from his saddle and looking at the wedge tents which housed the guard and workers. ‘Kind of quiet tonight.’

  ‘That’s the way I like it,’ Clements replied. ‘I hope your meeting went the same way.’

  ‘There’s some might’ve called it that,’ Dusty said quietly and his cousin shot a glance his way. ‘I’ll tell you about it inside, Shad.’

  Having dismounted, the two captains left their horses ground hitched and followed Clements into the officer of the guard’s quarters. Although the structure had a triangular top like the two-men pup tents and four-men wedge tents, its twenty-four inches high perpendicular walls—from which its name derived, gave it a greater height and size. In spite of the short time that the camp had been erected, the officer’s wall tent offered a fair standard of comfort. It had a small stove at the rear, on which a pot of coffee was bubbling. A collapsible table, two chairs, a small chest-of-drawers, a bed and a washstand completed the
furnishings.

  ‘Some of the good ladies back to Camden asked if they could fix it up a mite,’ Clements explained, seeing Staunce was studying the interior. ‘Rest your feet a spell, while I fetch on the coffee.’

  Taking the chairs, Dusty and the Englishman waited for their host to produce and fill cups with coffee. When that was done, Dusty told his cousin what had happened in Arkadelphia. Clements growled out a curse as he heard of the shelling, then cast another glance at the tarpaulin-covered package which Staunce had brought in and placed on the table,

  ‘How’re you getting on with the civilian workers, Shad?’ Dusty inquired, at the completion of his story.

  ‘Most of them’re all right,’ Clements replied. ‘Fact being, apart from the one called Fletcher, they’re all decent enough fellers for goober-grabbers.’ xiv

  ‘You know them pretty well then?’ Dusty went on.

  ‘Not socially, or anything like that, but I figured it’d be best to at least get to know their names and something about them.’

  ‘Where’re they at now?’ Staunce wanted to know.

  ‘Gone into town, like every night,’ the lieutenant replied, alternating puzzled looks between his visitors. ‘None of them live in Camden, but they go to the Tavern. It’s a heap more fun than staying out here. Comes midnight, most of them’ll be rolling back—and do I mean rolling, some of them, anyways. Maybe you’d best tell me what’s on your minds.’

  ‘I reckon that would be best,’ Dusty agreed, knowing Clements to be a shrewd man, and did as requested.

  ‘You figure the horned toad who fetched these over the river’s come from here?’ Clements demanded, after Dusty had finished speaking, looking at a notice that Staunce had taken from the package.

  ‘He could be,’ Dusty answered. ‘It’s more likely to be from here than out of Camden, or Vaden.’

  ‘I’ll float my stick with you on that,’ Clements conceded. ‘Just one, or more of them?’

  ‘One man could have handled the boat, even to hauling it out, turning it over and hiding it,’ Dusty replied. ‘Comes morning, happen you’ve got somebody who can read sign, you could have him go and see what he thinks; although we’ve probably walked where we shouldn’t have.’