Under the Stars and Bars Read Free Page A

entered his head. He guessed that the Texan had called the play correctly. Certainly the rocket battery’s most profitable targets would be the destruction of the ‘tin-clads’. Their exposed engines and boilers made them particularly susceptible to an incendiary bombardment. With them out of action, a crossing of the Ouachita River would be much easier and safer than while they remained afloat.
    On top of that, Huntspill knew there was no faster means of spreading the warning about the battery. Even if the boats should be on patrol when the Texans arrived, a message could be left for their captains. Each of the riverside towns had a telegraph station, permitting the news to be spread along its wires.
    ‘We’d best get going,’ the spy suggested. ‘I’ll see if I can learn where the battery’s headed and get word there. Good luck to you, Captain Fog.’
    ‘And to you,’ Dusty replied. ‘If I get caught, I’ll be sent to a prison camp. If they get you, you’ll be shot.’
    ‘It’s a chance I have to take,’ Huntspill said and led the way back through the bushes. Behind them, the battery’s personnel were packing up their gear at the end of the demonstration.

    * * *
    Between Dusty’s thighs, the large, spirited black stallion moved easily in a diagonal two-beat gait. First its off fore and near hind feet struck the ground, then the near fore and off hind, carrying its rider in a fast, mile-consuming, but energy-preserving trot. Highly-skilled in all matters equine, Dusty held several views which were almost tantamount to heresy in that day and age. His demands on the shoeing of horses had led to considerable heated controversy in the Texas Light Cavalry, 4 but not as much as had his insistence that every member of Company ‘C’ learned how to ‘post’ when travelling at a trot. Little used at that period in Texas, regarded with suspicion or as cissified almost, it said much for the strength of Dusty’s control over them that the hard-bitten, hard-riding, harder-fighting men of Company ‘C’ had acceded to his point of view. They had discovered that they and their mounts benefited from ‘posting’ and ignored the comments of the unenlightened; or answered the more opprobrious criticism with two-fisted arguments.
    Supporting himself with the balls of his feet in the stirrup-irons and by the bony structure rather than the fleshy pads of his buttocks, Dusty inclined his shoulders a few inches before his hips. He sat far enough forward on the lowhorned, double-girthed 5 range saddle so that his weight was directly over the vertical stirrup leathers. Keeping his hip joints straight, he used his knees as the pivotal points. Automatically he rose and sank from the saddle in time with the stallion’s movements. The long-gaited black moved with plenty of spring and action, causing Dusty to rise high but without conscious effort or suffering inconvenience from the motion.
    When it was carried out correctly, the combination of an alert, expert rider and a well-trained, healthy horse could post at a fast trot for many miles without undue fatigue to man or mount. Dusty had mastered the art and, being light of weight, gained the best out of the seventeen-hand stallion; one of a trio he had selected, broken and trained for his own use.
    How effective posting the trot could be showed in the fact that, leaving the spy shortly before mid-day, he had dispatched his two men and had already completed around twenty-five miles of his journey. With the sun sinking in the west, he rode along the bottom of a valley. About two miles ahead, he could see the start of the woodland which fringed that section of the Saline River he must cross to take the most direct line to Vaden.
    A bullet, coming from the rear and to the right, made its eerie ‘splat!’ sound as it split the air a few inches from Dusty’s head. Although startled by the unexpected—and never pleasant—noise, he did not panic. Like all Texans, he held his