Death's Bounty Read online

  He viewed the huddle of buildings ahead with distaste, staring out from under the peak of his forage cap, pulled low for an ineffective defense against the lashing rain. Rhett fingered the sopping wet pad of dressing covering a wound on the side of his head.

  “I reckon it’s right, what they say about niggers being the missing link in the chain of man,” the tall, thin fag said sourly. “I’ve never seen a man with so much body hair as the head boy of this bunch.”

  He was safe in voicing the word Hedges had banned, for the captain was blazing the trail out ahead, while Rhett, Seward, and Hal Douglas rode in drag positions.

  “You been peeking again, Bob!” Douglas chided with a guffaw. The corporal was probably the most incompetent noncom in the Union army. “Are they really black all over?”

  Rhett scowled.

  A rider loomed through the billowing curtain of wind-driven rain as the wagons and escort rumbled and clattered onto the muddy morass of Hartford Gap’s main street. The fag swallowed hard as he recognized Manfred, the massive Negro who was only an enlisted man but was looked upon by the other ex-slaves as their leader. Two other black troopers angled their mounts into a jog alongside Manfred. The expressions of all three were set in hard lines, their eyes wide and large, as if impervious to the slanting rain.

  Seward and Douglas slid their hands under their water-run slickers and gripped the revolver butts protruding from unfastened holsters. The Negroes rode with both hands holding the reins.

  “What a queer like you know about mankind?” the big black demanded.

  Douglas attempted to pull his slight rank. “Get back to your positions, soldiers!” he snapped.

  The blacks ignored him.

  “You ain’t no kinda man!”

  “Billy!” Rhett cried. “Get him off my back.”

  Seward was about to jerk the Colt from the holster. Then he became aware of many pairs of eyes fixed upon him. He looked to left and right, finally over his shoulder. Since the wagons had moved out of open country into the confines of the street, the troopers covering the flanks and far rear had closed in. An arc of ten rain-bubbled, black faces urged Seward to push the half-drawn gun back into the leather. He knew Hedges was far ahead, with Frank Forrest close by. And Bell and Scott were riding at point, equally unaware of what was happening.

  “Hell, Bob, that ain’t like you,” the nervous youngster called, forcing lightness into his tone. “A man on your back is what makes you happy.”

  His laughter was strained. Nobody joined in.

  “You stay away from my men,” Manfred warned the quaking Rhett. “And you be careful what you call us.” His thick Ups folded back to show his very white teeth in a broad grin. “You say wrong thing again, I cut off your tongue. You try other thing, cut off something else.” Now the Negro troopers laughed harsh and loud as Manfred made the first move, which led them all to fade back into the teeming rain.

  “That guy’s cracked!” Rhett spat out—not too loud, in case the Negroes were within earshot.

  “Sure, Bob,” Douglas agreed with a snigger. “But I don’t reckon you’ll ever get to fill it in.”

  At the head of the short wagon train, Hedges heard the laughter through the hiss of rain and detected the mocking note in it. Someone was the butt of the sardonic humor, and he guessed it was either himself or Rhett. He let it pass, seeing the courthouse a hundred yards down the street on the right, with the sodden Stars and Stripes fluttering valiantly from a pole over the porch to mark the building as the local command post. Two sentries flanking the doorway in the meager cover of the porch confirmed that the military had taken over the building.

  A small sigh of relief escaped his thin, compressed lips as he drew a hand across his narrowed eye. The wind drove fresh drops into his face, as if anxious to launch one more attack before the man found dry shelter.

  The rain had been the least of the young officer’s worries on the long haul north from Chattanooga, and he had viewed it merely as a natural last straw attempting to break the back of his tenuous hold on command. The friction between the white men and the Negroes was of greater concern, but he thought he had that situation as well under control as possible by gaining the respect of Manfred and Frank Forrest. The former gave it from gratitude and admiration; the latter out of grudging knowledge that Hedges was more capable of command and probably a faster, meaner, and more savage killer than he was himself.

  Time and again, as war transformed him from an educated farm boy into a cool professional killer, Hedges had proved himself the best man to give the orders when the shooting started. Forrest had shown his appreciation of this fact by backing the officer. This was an accolade indeed from a man who in peacetime had been acknowledged as the toughest bounty-hunter in the southwest. Without exception the other white troopers—who, like Hedges, had to learn the art of killing—gave their allegiance to Forrest, the man whose trade it was. So only through the sergeant’s grudging respect, was the officer able to keep the men in line and thus utilize their taste for violence and slaughter.

  As Hedges raised an arm and the civilian drivers hauled on the reins of their teams to halt the wagons, Forrest moved up beside the captain, his mean face cracked to show his crooked, tobacco-stained teeth in a grin. “Like I said at the start, Captain,” he reminded, “this freight’s too heavy for me.”

  Hedges quickly wiped the relief from his expression, but knew it was too late. The tall, broad-shouldered non-com had seen it and was enjoying the officer’s discomfiture. The freight aboard the wagons and what might possibly happen to it had been the greatest cause of Hedges’ anxiety on the grueling trek across storm-lashed Tennessee. For it was composed of two million dollars worth of gold confiscated from the Rebels. Such a rich reward might well have caused Forrest to turn his back on the army life he hated and with the willing and joyful help of his five allies, attempt to steal the shipment.

  The captain had set little store by the sergeant’s remark at the start of the escort duty that such a crime was out of his league. For Forrest was not the kind of man it was easy to trust. Now, as Hedges swung from the saddle and sank to his boottops in the mud of the street, he eyed Forrest quizzically. “One day, you’ll have to tell me why, Sergeant,” he muttered.

  Forrest remained in the saddle and gave a shudder as the wind rose, gusting between the looming facades of the buildings. “If we live long enough,” he said wryly and spat into the mud. “Rebs don’t get us, the pneumonia will.”

  Hedges cracked a cold smile. “You drop hints like they were thunderclaps, Forrest,” he said and trudged through the mud and up the steps of the courthouse, throwing up a salute in response to the present arms of the sentries.

  “Hey, Frank!” Roger Bell yelled from back down the street. “My horse just crapped!”

  “Only natural, Rog,” John Scott shouted before Forrest could reply.

  “It’s what worries me,” Bell retorted sourly. “We stand out here much longer in horse-droppings and mud with this rain, he’s goin’ to start sprouting roses from his ears and asshole!”

  The laughter was short-lived. The men were tired, hungry, and cold to their bones. The rain was turning the trails into quagmires, slowing their progress to a crawl for most of the trip. They needed hot food, dry clothes, and a leakproof roof over their heads. Humor didn’t relieve their discomfort.

  “Hotel across the street, Sergeant!” Hedges called from the porch of the courthouse. “There’s food and beds for

  the drivers as well. Assign six men to guard the wagons. They’ll be relieved in thirty minutes.”

  The sound of rain and wind made the rifle shot seem far off. The scream of the sentry on Hedges’ right was much louder. He staggered back against the doorframe and looked down at the red hole over his right breast Then his head snapped up and his scream became a cough. 'A great spray of bright crimson blood erupted from his gaping mouth and splashed across the courthouse steps.

  “Suddenly I ain’t hungry!” Forrest
yelled, springing down into the mud and jerking the Henry rifle from its boot as he came clear of the saddle.

  Hedges snatched the rifle from the limp hands of the collapsing sentry and leaped forward, going into a dive which splashed him into the mud under the lead wagon.

  “Jesus, he’s dead!” the second sentry gasped as he stooped over the crumpled form.

  “It could happen to you, stupid—!” Forrest yelled as he wriggled under the wagon to join Hedges and the terrified driver.

  A fusillade of rifle shots cut across the words. Two bullets exploded chunks of blood-dripping flesh from the face of the shocked man on the porch, and he was flung through the doorway, dying without a sound.

  “No one’s got time to listen these days,” Forrest growled.

  Other men had died in the teeming rain, which had suddenly been pierced by a lethal crossfire of rifle bullets sent into the street by a twenty-strong unit of Rebel infantrymen positioned on the rooftops. A driver was caught in midair as he leaped from his wagon. The bullet merely glanced off his skull, erupting a lot of blood but not causing a fatal wound. He suffocated while unconscious, lying face down in the street and breathing thick mud into his windpipe. Two Negroes were blasted from their saddles, one dying instantly with a bullet in his brain as the other clutched at his stomach and died watching the blood ooze up between his tightly clasped fingers.

  By the time the second crackle of massed gunfire exploded from the rooftops, - the Union soldiers and three surviving drivers were behind cover of some form or another. Scott, Bell, and three ex-slaves crouched under the second wagon in the line, listening to the struggling, liquid breathing of the dying driver. Manfred had used his enormous bulk to crash down the doorway of a store. Rhett had charged in after him followed by a half-dozen Negroes. Another freed slave, hit in the hand and more terrified than pained, had dived headfirst through the window of a pharmacy on the other side of the street. A piece of glass had ripped open his throat. He had collapsed on the floor, not quite dead. Seward went through the window after him, feet first. His heel had smashed down on to the pulped, blood-pulsing flesh, squeezing the final breath of life from the man.

  “Watch where you’re stepping!” Douglas yelled as he followed Seward through the window.

  “How am I supposed to see a nigger in the frigging dark?” the youngster snarled swinging around to crouch by the window, rifle aimed through it.

  The ex-slaves—raw recruits and lacking battle experience—began firing wildly. The white troopers bided their time. More rifle fire exploded against the hiss of rain. Pale, ephemeral splashes of light showed along the uneven rooflines on each side of the street. Even as the mud spurted, wood splinters flew and window glass shattered from the Rebel gunfire. The white troopers aimed, and their Henry repeaters spat lead toward invisible targets. Two men screamed. One pitched forward from the roof and folded his body over the hitching rail outside the hotel across from the courthouse. Blood dripped from his forehead wound and turned the puddle of water from black to red. Then he slid off the rail and crumpled headfirst into the colored pool.

  “He sure went out with a splash,” Forrest muttered, levering a fresh shell into the breech.

  “You still not hungry, Sergeant?” Hedges asked as a renewed burst of gunfire sounded, opened from the roofs, and answered from the street.

  A Negro standing beside Manfred in the store doorway slumped to the ground. Manfred growled and fired his Henry at the maximum rate, sending three bullets through the rain. Two gray-uniformed men fell from the roof of the pharmacy. One of them, wearing sergeant’s chevrons, tried to crawl into cover. Seward and Douglas fired in unison. The Rebel’s head exploded blood, flesh, and bone chippings.

  “Two whites for one black—that’s almost a bargain,” Manfred told the cowering Rhett with a grin.

  Apart from being a fag, the New Englander was also a coward. “Billy and Hal had to finish off what you started!” he flung at the grinning Negro.

  “Hush your mouth, man,” the massive Manfred warned, still grinning as a hail of bullets tore wood splinters from the doorframe. “You’re found dead, who’ll know whether you was hit by a Johnnie Reb or one of us boys?”

  Two men at the window looked at Rhett with eagerness in their eyes. The tall white man gulped and pressed himself hard against a heap of burst sacks which had spilled putrid grain.

  “You wouldn’t?” he gasped.

  Manfred sighed. “I guess not.”

  Rhett sniggered his relief.

  “But I’m a lousy guesser,” Manfred added quickly, then whirled to blast another burst through the doorway.

  “Well, what about it?” Hedges asked.

  The officer and the noncom looked at each other. Their teeth and the whites of their eyes seemed brighter against the covering of mud clinging to their grizzled faces. The petrified wagon-driver swung his gaze back and forth between the two men. All three flattened themselves into the mud as gunfire crackled and bullets ploughed into the ground, the wagon, and one of the horses hitched to the wagon. The animal collapsed with a snort. Its partner struggled to get free, splashing great spumes of mud and water.

  “You know a quiet little place around here, Captain?” Forrest asked wryly.

  Hedges raised his head and spat his mouth clean. “It ain’t ever goin to be quiet until they’ve wiped us out,” he replied. “Unless we do something better than lie here shooting at gun flashes.”

  A bullet whined down from a roof, glanced off a wheel rim, and burrowed into the heart of the driver. His expression changed from terror to surprise. Then he hid his face in the mud. Hedges’ cold eyes viewed the death with utter detachment.

  “It’s bad to die on an empty stomach,” the captain said.

  “You got something in mind?” Forrest asked.

  *Yeah,” Hedges replied. “A beef steak in a gallon of gravy.”

  “You set the juices running, Captain,” Forrest muttered. “But my appetite’d be even better if I knew what you knew. Like, if I was sure old Robert E. Lee ain’t got half the frigging Rebel army perched up on those roofs?”

  “What the hell for?” Hedges snarled, and suddenly his eyes went from cold to hot, brighter than ever with the light of anger.

  A laugh ripped from Forrest’s cruel mouth. It was loud enough to sound above the roar of guns. “So the guys in the courthouse told you we been had?” he rasped.

  Hedges looked away from the contemptuous grin on the blackened face and held his breath, tensing his body as he waited for the gunfire to subside. When it did, he launched himself forward, snaking out from under the wagon and throwing himself up into a crouch. Mud sucked at his boots, seeking to root him to the spot. But rage and the determination to survive powered the strength that took him in a fast, weaving run up onto the sidewalk and crashing into the hotel doors. They were flung open under his driving weight. He hurled himself to the side, hitting the floor and rolling. Bullets had reached for him every inch of the way. They whined in through the open doors and peppered the floorboards.

  Sure the guys in the courthouse had told him—a shavetail lieutenant with pimples and a simpering smile and a paunchy Pinkerton agent who talked about the food and beds at the hotel as if they represented heaven on earth. They’d told him that the wagon train he and his men had taken from under the blazing guns of QuantrilTs Raiders, then dragged hundreds of miles through knee-deep mud, was a decoy. The gold had been shipped along another route while Hedges and his troopers escorted wagons pressed down into the moist, sucking earth by crates of lead bars.

  It had been an excellent plan—made perfect because it had worked. The gold ingots had reached Washington in safety. The shavetail was pleased about the military success. The Pinkerton man was pleased that his agency had been involved in the tactic. As a soldier and officer, Hedges had appreciated the soundness of the plan. The enemy had been fooled, and that was all a part of war. That he and the men he commanded had borne the brunt of misdirected enemy attacks was
also in the pattern of war. Even that he had not been told the real reason for his mission did not rankle him. Officers of higher rank than captain were often required to carry out orders without being given reasons.

  There was another pause in the firing. Then a renewed burst. Feet crashed on the sidewalk, and Forrest dived through the doorway, hit the floor, and rolled. He finished up on the opposite side of the narrow lobby from Hedges. More chips of wood spat up from the floorboards. A lamp flickered on a low wick above the reception desk. Its light reflected on the sergeant’s discolored teeth.

  “They told me,” Hedges grunted, getting to his feet and flattening himself against the wall, his narrowed eyes moving from the rain-curtained doorway to the desk, the stairway angling up the rear wall, and the restaurant entrance on Forrest’s side of the lobby. “You already knew, right? You took a look in one of the crates. That’s why you played the good soldier.”

  Forrest was making his own examination of the lobby, the Henry’s barrel swinging ahead of his eyes, finger curled around the trigger. He spoke above the crackle of gunfire out on the street. “More than one, Captain,” he replied. “What would I do with all that lead?”

  This was what rankled with Hedges. That his sergeant had known about the freight for most of the trip and had undoubtedly derived a great deal of enjoyment in the knowledge that his commanding officer was in the dark and experiencing a heavy weight of anxiety that was completely groundless.

  “You and the boys have fun?” the captain asked, moving along the wall toward the desk.

  Forrest peered into the restaurant and saw that a number of tables had been pushed together and were spread with food—cold cuts, tureens of soup still giving of whisps of steam, plates of crackers, and pots of coffee. “Just me,” he answered, and swung around to lock his gaze with that of the officer.

  “Am I supposed to be grateful?” Hedges snarled.

  Forrest matched the tone. “Just learn, kid,” he countered from his age seniority of ten years—thirty-eight to twenty-eight. “When you take a job, cover all the angles.”