A Rocky Mountain Christmas

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With his epic novels of the Jensen family, William W. Johnstone has captured the pioneer spirit of America. Now he reveals the untold story of Luke Jensen, a haunted gunman who survived the fiercest war in our nation’s history to become the greatest bounty hunter who ever lived . . .

THE JENSEN FAMILY SAGA CONTINUES

During the last days of the Civil War, with Richmond under siege, Confederate soldier Luke Jensen is assigned the task of smuggling gold out of the city before the Yankees get their hands on it—when he is ambushed and robbed by four deserters, shot in the back, and left for dead. Taken in by a Georgia farmer and his beautiful daughter, Luke is nursed back to health. Though crippled, he hopes to reunite with his father and brother, but a growing romance keeps him on the farm until then fate takes a tragic turn. Ruthless carpetbaggers arrive and—in a storm of bullets and bloodshed—Luke is forced to strike out on his own. Searching for a new life. Hunting down his enemies. Gunning for revenge.

This is the making of a bounty hunter: the sprawling saga of one fearless man who would stop at nothing to bring outlaws to justice—and freedom to America.

LUKE JENSEN, BOUNTY HUNTER

PROLOGUE

A rifle bullet smacked off the top of the log and sprayed splinters toward Luke Smith’s face. He dropped his head quickly so the brim of his battered black hat protected his eyes. A splinter stung his cheek close to his neatly trimmed black mustache.

Luke looked into the sightless, staring eyes of the dead man who lay next to him. “Those amigos of yours are getting closer with their shots, José. Too bad for you that you’re not alive to watch them kill me. Reckon you probably would’ve enjoyed that.”

José Cardona didn’t say anything. A bullet hole from one of Luke’s Remingtons lay in the middle of his forehead, surrounded by powder burns. Most of the back of his head was gone where the slug had exploded out.

More shots rang out from the cabin about a hundred yards away, next to the little creek at the bottom of the slope. The sturdy log structure had been built for defense, with thick walls and numerous loopholes where rifle barrels could be stuck out and fired.

Luke had no idea who had built the cabin. Probably some old fur trapper or prospector. Those mountains in New Mexico Territory had seen their fair share of both.

Currently, it was being used as a hideout for the Solomon Burke gang. Luke had been on the trail of Burke and his bunch for several weeks. There was a $1,500 bounty on Burke’s head and lesser amounts posted on the half-dozen owlhoots who rode with him. If Luke was able to bring in all of them, it would be a mighty nice payoff for him.

Unfortunately, it didn’t look like things were going to work out that way. Luke had tracked the gang to the cabin and had been crouched in the timber up on the hill overlooking the creek, trying to figure out his next move, when someone tackled him from behind, knocking him out into the open. They rolled down the hill together, locked in a desperate struggle, even as the man screeched a warning to the others at the top of his lungs.

The big log, which had also rolled about twenty feet down the hill when it toppled sometime in the past, brought the two men to an abrupt halt as they slammed into it. Luke barely had time to recognize the bandido as Cardona from drawings he had seen on wanted posters when he realized the man was about to bring a knife almost as big as a machete down on his head and split his skull wide open.

Without having to think about what he was doing, Luke palmed out one of his Remingtons, eared back the hammer as he jammed the muzzle against Cardona’s forehead, and pulled the trigger.

The point-blank shot blew Cardona away from him, and the dead outlaw flopped onto the ground behind the log. Luke had rolled over and started to get up when a bullet had whipped past his ear. Instinct made him drop belly down behind the log. A second later, more rifles opened up from the cabin and a volley of high-powered slugs smashed into the fallen tree. If it hadn’t been there to give him cover, Luke would have been shot to pieces.

As it was, he was pinned down on the slope. The trees above him were too far away. If he stood up and made a dash for them, Burke and the others in the cabin would riddle him with rifle fire. Trying to crawl up there would make him an even easier target. The grass was too short to conceal him.

He was stuck with a dead man for company, and it was only a matter of time until some of those varmints slipped out of the cabin and circled around to catch him in a crossfire. Luke’s craggy face was grim, in spite of the ghost of a smile lurking around his mouth.

In plenty of tight spots during the years he’d spent as a bounty hunter, he had always pulled through somehow. But he had known his luck was bound to run out someday.

After all, he had already cheated certain death once. A man didn’t get too many breaks like that.

From time to time, he rose up long enough to throw a couple shots at the cabin, but not really expecting to do any damage—too long range for a handgun. His nature wouldn’t let him die without a fight, though. He could put up a better one, if his Winchester wasn’t still in the saddle boot strapped to his horse, a good hundred feet upslope. Might as well have been a hundred miles.

“Blast it, José, I must be getting old, to let a clumsy galoot like you sneak up on me,” Luke said, keeping his eyes on the cabin.

Cardona had been a big, burly man, built along the lines of a black bear. Like all the other men in Solomon Burke’s gang, he’d had a reputation for ruthlessness and cruelty. He had killed seven men that Luke knew of during various bank and train robberies, and was probably responsible for more deaths in addition to those. But he wouldn’t be killing anybody else.

Luke took some small comfort from that. He tracked down outlaws mostly for the bounties posted on them, and he wasn’t going to lie about it to himself or anybody else. It pleased him to know, because of him, men such as Cardona were no longer around to spread suffering and death across the frontier.

More bullets pounded into the log. One tore all the way through it and struck a rock lying on the slope, causing the bullet to whine off in a ricochet and bringing a thoughtful frown to Luke’s face. He realized the log had been lying there long enough to be half-rotten in places. He holstered the Remington he was still holding and drew a heavy-bladed knife from its sheath on his left hip. Attacking the log with the blade, he hacked and dug at the soft wood.

It didn’t take him long to break through and see what he’d been hoping to see. The log was partially hollow. Luke began enlarging the opening he had made and soon realized the hollow part ran all the way to one end of the log. He could see sunlight shining through it.

It took fifteen minutes of hard work to carve out a big enough hole for him to fit his head and shoulders through. By the time he was finished, sweat was dripping down his face.

He sheathed his knife and looked over at Cardona. “Adiós, José. If I see you again, I reckon it’ll probably be in hell.”

Luke wormed his way through the opening into the hollow log. Down below in the cabin, the outlaws hadn’t been able to see what he was doing. He could only hope none of them had snuck around to where they could observe him. If they had, he was as good as dead.

He began shifting his weight back and forth as much as he could in those close confines. He felt insects crawling on him. His nerves twanged, taut as bowstrings. The log began to rock back and forth slightly. Bunching his muscles, he threw himself hard against the wood surrounding him. Over the pounding of his heart, he heard a faint grating sound as the log shifted.

Suddenly, it was rolling.

He let out a startled yell, even though rolling the log down the hill was exactly what he’d been trying to do. Up and down switched places rapidly.

With nothing between the log and the cabin to stop it, the crazy, bouncing, spinning, dizzying ride lasted only a few seconds.

The log crashed into the side of the cabin with a loud cracking sound just as he had counted on. Luke bulled his way out of the broken trunk, pulling both Remingtons from their cross-draw holsters as he did so.

He was on his feet when one of the outlaws appeared in the doorway, unwisely rushing out to see what had happened.

Luke shot him in the chest with the left-hand Remington. The slug drove the owlhoot back, making him fall. His body tangled with the feet of the man behind him. Luke blasted that hombre with the right-hand gun, then pressed himself against the cabin wall and waited. The men inside couldn’t bring their guns to bear on him from those loopholes, and the log walls were too thick to shoot through. If anybody tried to rush out through the door, he was in position to gun them down. And, if the door was the only way out, he had them bottled up.

Of course, he couldn’t go anywhere, either. But a stalemate was better than being stuck behind that log and his enemies having all the advantage.

As the echoes of the shots rolled away through the mountain valleys, a charged silence settled over the area. Luke thought he heard harsh breathing coming from inside the cabin.

After a few tense minutes, a man called out. “Who are you, mister?”

“Name’s Luke Smith.” He wasn’t giving anything away by replying. They already knew where he was.

“I’ve heard of you. You’re a bounty hunter!”

“Am I talking to Solomon Burke?”

“That’s right.”

“Who are the two boys I killed in there?”

Burke didn’t answer for a moment. “How do you know they’re dead?” he finally asked.

“Wasn’t time for anything fancy. They’re dead, all right.”

Again Burke hesitated before saying, “Phil Gaylord and Oscar Montrose.”

“José Cardona’s dead up on the hillside. I blew his brains out. That’s nearly half your bunch gone over the divide, Burke. Why don’t you throw your guns out and surrender before I have to kill the rest of you?”

That brought a hoot of derisive laughter from inside.

“Mighty big talk, Smith. You step away from that wall and you’ll be full of lead in a hurry. How in blazes are you gonna kill anybody else?”

“I’ve got my ways.” Luke looked along the wall next to him. One of the loopholes, empty now, was within reach.

“We’ve got food, water, and plenty of ammunition. What do you have?”

“Got a cigar.”

“Well, go ahead and smoke it, then,” Burke told him. “It’ll be the last one you ever do.”

Luke kept his left-hand gun trained on the doorway. He pouched the right-hand iron and reached under his coat, bringing out a thin, black cigar. He bit off the end, spit it out, and clamped the cylinder of tobacco between his teeth. Fishing a lucifer from his pocket, he snapped it to life with his thumbnail. He held the flame to the end of the cigar and puffed until it was burning good. “Smell that?”

“Whoo-eee!” Burke mocked. “Smells like you set a wet dog on fire.”

“It tastes good, though,” Luke said. “I’ve got something else.”

“What might that be?” Burke asked.

Luke took another cylinder from under his coat. Longer and thicker than the cigar, it was wrapped tightly in dark red paper. A short length of fuse dangled from one end. Luke puffed on the cigar until the end was glowing bright red, then held the fuse to it.

“This,” he said around the cigar as the fuse began to sputter and spit sparks. He leaned over and shoved the cylinder through the empty loophole. It clattered on the puncheon floor inside the cabin.

One of the other men howled a curse and yelled, “Look out! That’s dynamite!”

Luke drew his second gun and swung away from the wall as he extended the revolvers and squared himself up. As the outlaws tumbled through the door, trying to get away before the dynamite exploded, he started firing.

They shot back, of course, even as Luke’s lead tore through them and knocked them off their feet. He felt the impact as a bullet struck him, then another. But he stayed upright and the Remingtons in his hands continued to roar.

Solomon Burke, a fox-faced, red-haired man, went down with his guts shot to pieces. Dour, sallow Lane Hutton stumbled and fell as blood from his bullet-torn throat cascaded down the front of his shirt. Young Billy Wells died with half his jaw shot away. Paco Hernandez stayed on his feet the longest and got a final shot off even as he collapsed with blood welling from two holes in his chest.

That last bullet rocked Luke. He swayed and spit out the cigar, but didn’t fall. His vision was foggy, because he’d been shot three times or because clouds of powder smoke were swirling around him, he couldn’t tell. The Remingtons seemed to weigh a thousand pounds apiece, but he didn’t let them droop until he was certain all the outlaws were dead.

Then he couldn’t hold the guns up anymore. They slipped from his blood-slick fingers and thudded to the ground at his feet.

I might not live to collect the bounty on these men, but at least they won’t hurt anybody else, he thought as he stumbled through the cabin door. The single room inside was dim and shadowy.

The cylinder he had shoved through the loophole lay on the floor near a table. The fuse had burned out harmlessly. The blasting cap on the end was just clay and the “dynamite” was nothing more than a piece of wood with red paper wrapped around it. Luke had used it a number of times before. Outlaws tended to panic when they thought they were about to be blown to kingdom come.

Ignoring the fake dynamite, he stumbled across the room. Sitting on the table was the thing he had hoped to find inside.

It took him a couple tries before he was able to snag the neck of the whiskey bottle and lift it to his mouth. Some of the liquor spilled over his chin and throat, but he got enough of the fiery stuff down his throat to brace himself.

He leaned on the rough-hewn table and tried to take stock of his injuries. He’d been hit low on his left side. There was a lot of blood. A bullet had torn a furrow along his left forearm, too, and blood ran down and dripped from his fingers. The bullet hole high on his chest was starting to make his right arm and shoulder go numb.

He needed to stop the bleeding before he did anything else. With little time before his hands quit working, he pulled the bandanna from around his neck and used his teeth to start a rip in it. He tore it in half and managed to pour some whiskey on the pieces. He pulled up his shirt, felt around until he found the hole in his side, and shoved one wadded-up piece of the whiskey-soaked bandanna into the hole.

But that was just where the bullet had gone in. Wincing in pain, he located the exit wound and pushed the other piece of bandanna into it.

That left the hole in his chest. All the gun thunder had deafened him for a few moments, but his hearing was starting to come back. He listened intently as he breathed, but didn’t hear any whistling or sucking sounds. The slug hadn’t pierced his lung, he decided. That was good.

The bullet hadn’t come out, either. It was still in there somewhere. Not good, he thought. Fumbling, he pulled his knife from its sheath and used the blade to cut a piece from his shirttail. Lucky he didn’t slice off a finger or two in the process. He upended the bottle and poured whiskey right over the wound, then bit back a scream as he crammed the piece of cloth into the hole.

That was all he could do. His muscles refused to work the way he wanted them to. He had to lie down. He took an unsteady step toward one of the bunks built against the side walls. The world suddenly spun crazily around him. The floor seemed to tilt under his feet. His balance deserted him, and he crashed down on the puncheons, sending fresh jolts of pain stabbing through him.

He felt consciousness slipping away from him and knew if he passed out, he probably wouldn’t wake up again. He tried to hold on, but a black tide swept over him.

That black surge didn’t just wash him away from his primitive surroundings. To his already fevered mind, it seemed to lift him and carry him back, back, a bit of human flotsam swept along by a raging torrent, to an earlier time and a different place. The darkness surrounding him was shot through with red flashes, like artillery shells bursting in the night.

CHAPTER ONE

The bombardment sounded like the worst thunderstorm in the history of the world, but unlike a thunderstorm, it went on and on and on. For long days, that devil Ulysses S. Grant and his Yankee army had squatted outside Richmond, pounding away at the capital city of the Confederacy with their big guns. Half the buildings in town had been reduced to rubble, and untold numbers of Richmond’s citizens were dead, killed in the endless barrages.

And still the guns continued to roar.

Rangy, rawboned Luke Jensen felt the floor shake under his feet as shells fell not far from the building where he stood. It had been one of Richmond’s genteel mansions, not far from the capital itself, but recently it had been taken over by the government. One particular part of the government, in fact: the Confederate treasury.

Luke was one of eight men summoned tonight for reasons unknown to them. They were waiting in what had been the parlor before the comfortable, overstuffed furniture was shoved aside and replaced by desks and tables.

In the light of a couple smoky lamps, he glanced around at the other men. Some of them he knew, and some he didn’t. The faces of all bore the same weary, haggard look, the expression of men who had been at war for too long and suffered too many defeats despite their best efforts.

Luke knew that look all too well. He saw it in the mirror every time he got a chance to shave, which wasn’t very often these days.

For nearly four long years, he had worn Confederate gray—ever since the day he had walked away from the hardscrabble farm tucked into the Ozark Mountains of southwestern Missouri and enlisted. Behind him he’d left his father Emmett and his little brother Kirby, along with his mother and sister.

It had been hard for Luke to leave his family, but he felt it was the right thing to do. Fighting for the Confederacy didn’t mean a man held with slavery, although he figured that was what all those ignorant Yankees believed. Luke didn’t believe at all in the notion of one man owning another.

At the same time he didn’t think it was right for a bunch of Northern politicians in By-God Washington City to be telling Southern folks what they could and couldn’t do, especially when it came to secession. The states had joined together voluntarily, back when they’d won their freedom from England. If some of them wanted to say “thanks, but so long” and go their own way, it seemed to Luke they had every right to do so.

Even so, if they’d just kept on wrangling about it in the halls of Congress, Luke, like a lot of other Southerners, would have pretty much ignored it and gone on about his business. But Abraham Lincoln had to go and send the army marching into Virginia, and the battle along the creek called Bull Run was the last straw as far as Luke was concerned. He’d been raised to avoid trouble if he could, but when a Jensen saw something wrong going on, he couldn’t just sit back and do nothing.

So he’d been a soldier for four years, fighting against the Northern aggressors, slogging along as an infantryman for a while before his natural talents for tracking, shooting, and fighting got noticed and he was made a scout and a sharpshooter.

He knew three of the men waiting in the parlor with him were the same sort. Remy Duquesne, Dale Cardwell, and Edgar Millgard were good men, and if he was being sent on some sort of mission with them, Luke was fine with that.

The other four had introduced themselves as Keith Stratton, Wiley Potter, Josh Richards, and Ted Casey. Luke hadn’t formed an opinion about them based only on their names. He didn’t blame them for being close-mouthed, though. He was the same way himself.

Remy fired up a cigar and said in his soft Cajun accent, “Anybody got an idea why they brought us here tonight?”

“Not a clue,” Wiley Potter said.

“The treasury department has its office here now,” Dale Cardwell pointed out. He smiled. “Maybe they’re finally going to pay us all those back wages we haven’t seen in months.”

That comment drew grim chuckles from several of the men.

Remy said, “I wouldn’t count on that, my frien’.”

Luke didn’t think it was very likely, either. The Confederacy was in bad shape. Financially, militarily, morale-wise . . . everything was cratering, and there didn’t seem to be anything anybody could do to stop it. They would fight to the end, of course—there was no question about that—but that end seemed to be getting more and more inevitable.

The front door opened, and footsteps sounded in the foyer. Several gray-clad troopers appeared in the arched entrance to the former parlor. They carried rifles with bayonets fixed to the barrels.

A pair of officers followed the soldiers into the room. Luke and the other men snapped to attention. He recognized one of the officers as a high-ranking general. The other man was the colonel who commanded the regiment in which Luke, Remy, Dale, and Edgar served.

The two men in civilian clothes who came into the room behind the general and the colonel were the real surprise. Luke caught his breath as he recognized the President of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, and the Secretary of the Treasury, George Trenholm.

“At ease,” the general said.

Luke and the others relaxed, but not much. It was hard to be at ease with the president in the room.

Jefferson Davis gave them a sad, tired smile and said, “Thank you for coming here tonight, gentlemen,” as if they’d had a choice in the matter. “I know you’d probably rather be with your comrades in arms, facing the enemy.”

Stratton and Potter grimaced slightly and exchanged a quick glance, as if that was the last thing they wanted to be doing.

“I’ve summoned you because I have a special job for you,” Davis went on. “Secretary Trenholm will tell you about it.”

Luke had wondered if they were going to be given a special assignment, but he hadn’t expected it would come from the president himself. It had to be something of extreme importance. He waited eagerly to hear what the treasury secretary was going to say.

“As you know, Richmond is under siege by the Yankees,” the man began rather pompously as he clasped his hands behind his back.

Luke preferred Confederate politicians to Yankees, but they all had a tendency to be windbags, as far as he was concerned.

“Although I hate to say it, it appears that our efforts to defend the city ultimately will prove to be unsuccessful,” the secretary continued.

“Are you saying that Richmond’s going to fall, sir?” Potter asked.

Trenholm nodded. “I’m afraid so.”

“But that doesn’t necessarily mean the Confederacy is about to fall as well,” Davis put in. “Our glorious nation will persevere. The Yankees may overrun Richmond, but we will establish a new capital elsewhere.” He smiled at the treasury secretary. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“That’s quite all right, Mr. President. No one in this room has more right to speak than you.” Trenholm cleared his throat and went on. “Of course, no government can continue to function without funds, so to that end, acting on the orders of President Davis, I have assembled a shipment of gold bullion that is to be spirited out of the city and taken to Georgia to await the arrival of our government. This is most of what we have left in our coffers, gentlemen. I’m not exaggerating when I say the very survival of the Confederacy itself depends on the secure transport of this gold.”

Luke wasn’t surprised by what he had just heard. For the past few days, rumors had been going around the city that the treasury was going to be cleaned out and the money taken elsewhere so the Yankees wouldn’t get their grubby paws on it.

The secretary nodded toward Luke’s commanding officer. “Colonel Lancaster will be in charge of the gold’s safety.”

“You’re taking the whole regiment to Georgia, sir?” Dale asked.

The colonel shook his head. “Not at all, Corporal. That would only draw the Yankees’ attention to what we’re doing.” Lancaster paused. “We’re entrusting the safety of the bullion—and the future of the Confederacy—to a smaller detail. Eight men, to be exact.” He looked around the room. “The eight of you who are gathered here.”

CHAPTER TWO

Luke had figured that out even before Lancaster said it. The idea seemed obvious. Getting the gold out of Richmond would require speed and stealth, and no one was better at moving fast and quiet than he and his fellow scouts.

It seemed like a mighty big risk, though, turning over a fortune in gold to only eight men. Of course, as long as they were loyal to the Confederacy, it didn’t really matter.

“I’ll be going along as well,” Colonel Lancaster pointed out. “I’ve been relieved of my command of the regiment and given this task.”

“I know you’d rather be with the men you’ve led in such sterling fashion, Colonel,” Jefferson Davis said. “However, we all must make sacrifices for our noble cause.”

“Of course, Mr. President,” Lancaster said stiffly.

Davis turned back to Luke and the other scouts. “No one is going to order you enlisted men to accept this assignment. If there are any of you who don’t want to go along, speak up now, and it won’t be held against you. You’ll be allowed to return to your units. All we ask is that you say nothing about this. Secrecy is the watchword until the bullion is safely on its way to Georgia.”

Luke looked at his friends. Remy shrugged and told Davis, “Mr. President, I don’t think any of us are gonna say no to this job.”

“That’s right,” Edgar said. “If this is something that will help the Confederacy, you can count on us, sir.”

“I knew that.” Davis smiled. “I knew you valiant lads wouldn’t let me down, but I felt it was only right to ask. Thank you for justifying my faith in you.”

“You can thank us when we get that gold where it’s goin’, Mr. President,” Stratton said.

Luke had been quiet so far, but he asked, “When are we leaving?”

“Tonight,” Colonel Lancaster said.

“That soon?” Potter was surprised.

“Do you have a problem with that, Sergeant? Something you need to do here in Richmond before you leave?”

Potter grunted and shook his head. “Permission to speak freely, sir?”

“Go ahead,” Lancaster told him.

“Richmond’s turned into a hellhole ever since the Yankees showed up on our doorstep, and as far as I’m concerned, the sooner we get out of here, the better.”

As if to punctuate his comment, another shell fell somewhere nearby, and the blast shook the house enough that little bits of plaster sifted down from the ceiling.

The general said to Davis, “You should get back to somewhere safer, sir. The colonel and I can handle this.”

“Very well, General.” Davis turned to the treasury secretary. “Come on, George.”

The troopers escorted the two politicians from the room. Once they were gone, Colonel Lancaster said, “The gold is being stored in a warehouse not far from here. It’s packed in crates in a couple wagons and covered with canvas so they’ll look like supplies.”

“No offense, Colonel,” Luke said, “but are you sure that’s a good idea? With the city cut off like it is, people are starting to get pretty hungry. They’re liable to come after food quicker than they would gold.”

“How else would you suggest we transport it, Jensen?” the colonel snapped.

Luke shrugged. “I don’t know, sir,” he admitted. “As scarce as everything is these days, folks are going to be interested no matter what it looks like.”

“That’s why it’s up to us to get the wagons out of the city quickly, and with as little fuss as possible. We have civilian clothes at the warehouse for all of you, as well. Hopefully that’ll keep you from drawing too much attention.”

Luke didn’t know about that, but the idea of getting some fresh duds appealed to him. His gray uniform was worn and ragged and covered with stains from too many nights spent sleeping in the mud. The black bill of his forage cap was crooked and broken. His shoes were more hole than shoe leather.

His only possessions still in good shape were his Fayetteville rifle and his Griswold and Gunnison revolver, both of which he kept in excellent condition. His life often depended on them.

The general shook hands with all eight of the scouts and wished them luck, then Colonel Lancaster said gruffly, “Let’s go. We’ll dispense with military formality since we’re supposed to be civilians, but don’t forget who’s in charge here.”

Luke didn’t think Lancaster was likely to let that happen.

“I don’t know about you boys,” Ted Casey said with a wide grin, “but I feel like a whole new man in this getup!”

The civilian clothes they had donned when they reached the warehouse weren’t new—some of them even had patches here and there—but they were clean and in much better shape than the uniforms the eight men had been wearing.

Colonel Lancaster, as befitted his rank, was dressed in the only real suit, including a flat-crowned planter’s hat. Other than his ramrod-stiff backbone, in those clothes and with his florid face and thick side-whiskers, he might have been mistaken for a plantation owner.

The other men were dressed more like overseers on that hypothetical plantation, in boots, whipcord trousers, linsey-woolsey shirts, and leather vests. They wore an assortment of headgear ranging from broad-brimmed hats to tweed caps.

Luke had snagged one of the hats he thought made him look like a plainsman. Such men rode through the Ozarks from time to time, on their way to or from the vast western frontier, and Luke had always admired them.

His revolver was tucked in the waistband of the trousers. Most enlisted men didn’t carry handguns, but since scouts often had to do some close-quarters fighting, they had been issued revolvers along with their rifles. Luke considered himself pretty handy with either weapon, and with a knife, too, for that matter.

He didn’t think about it very often, but he had killed quite a few men during his time in the army. It was war, of course. That was what soldiers did. He had killed more than his share up close, though, sneaking up on Yankee pickets and slitting their throats or driving his knife into their backs so the blade penetrated the heart. He had felt the hot gush of enemy blood on his hand, heard the death rattle, and borne the weight of a suddenly limp body that had to be lowered to the ground quietly. He had seen the terrible damage gunshots did to human flesh, especially at close range.

Those memories didn’t haunt his sleep, but they were part of him and always would be.

Wiley Potter, Keith Stratton, Ted Casey, and Josh Richards clustered together near one of the wagons. Luke saw them casting furtive glances at the canvas-covered cargo in the back of the vehicle.

“Like dogs lickin’ their chops over a big ol’ soup bone, eh?” Remy said quietly as he came up beside Luke.

“You can’t blame them. I sent some mighty hard looks at those wagons myself. I’ve never been this close to so much gold.” Luke snorted. “Hell, back home I might go as long as a year without seeing as much as a double eagle.”

“I suppose I’m more accustomed to it, seeing as I spent a lot of time in the gambling halls in New Orleans. The money always flowed freely there.”

“Maybe so,” Luke said. “Where I come from, money flows more like quicksand.”

Dale asked Lancaster, “Are we going to be riding on the wagons, Colonel?”

“We’ll have a driver and a guard on each wagon,” Lancaster explained. “The other four of you, plus myself, will be on horseback and serve as outriders.”

“Horses sound good,” Casey said. “I always hankered to ride something better than an old mule. They turned me down for the cavalry because that was all I had.”

“You’ll take turns at the jobs, at least starting out. I don’t care who does what, though. You can settle that among yourselves.”

Dale commented, “I wouldn’t mind handling one of the teams. I used to drive a freight wagon before the war.”

“So did I,” Edgar offered. “I reckon I’ll take the other driver’s job starting out.”

None of the other men volunteered to ride on the wagons as guards. Luke and Remy looked at each other. Luke shrugged, and Remy said, “We’ll take the wagons, too, Colonel.”

Lancaster nodded. “Fine.” He looked to Potter, Stratton, Casey, and Richards. “You men will find your horses in the alley behind the warehouse. Bring them around front and mount up. You can fetch my mount as well.” He motioned to the uniformed soldiers who had been waiting in the warehouse, guarding the gold shipment. “Open the doors.”

The troopers swung the big double doors back while Luke and his friends climbed onto the wagons. Luke settled down on the seat of the first wagon beside Dale. “Sure you can handle this?”

“Oh, yeah. To tell you the truth, I’ve never been that comfortable in a saddle.”

“I was riding almost before I could walk, at least according to my pa,” Luke told him.

The mention of Emmett Jensen put a pensive look on Luke’s face. Luke had joined up first, back in ’61, but he had suspected his pa wouldn’t be able to stay out of the fight for long. Sure enough, Emmett had enlisted, too.

Proving that the world really was a small place, the two of them had run into each other at Chancellorsville, even though they were in different regiments. Hundreds of thousands of troops rampaging around those Virginia woods, and yet father and son had practically bumped heads.

That wasn’t the last time, either. Anytime their units were anywhere near each other, one of them would seek out the other so they could visit in the lull between battles. Neither of them got much news from home, but Emmett was confident his youngest son Kirby was keeping things going on the farm.

“Kirby may be just a boy,” Emmett had said during one visit, “but he’s got something special inside him. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a boy willing to work harder or more determined to do the right thing.”

“He’ll have the farm waiting for us when we come back,” Luke had said.

“Shoot, he may not even need our help!” Emmett had replied with a grin.

It had been a while since Luke had seen his pa. He hoped Emmett was all right. Both were soldiers, so who knew what might happen. It was a dangerous line of work.

When the wagons rolled out of the warehouse into the darkness, Colonel Lancaster and the other four outriders were waiting on horseback.

“I’ll lead the way,” Lancaster declared. “I want a rider on each side of the wagons. Keep an eye out behind you as well. We don’t want anybody sneaking up on us.”

“Did the colonel tell any of us exactly where we’re going?” Luke asked Dale as the party set out over the rough, cobblestoned streets.

“Not that I know of,” Dale replied.

“I might say something to him about that the first time we stop. He’s bound to have a map or something, but if anything happened to him, we wouldn’t know where we were supposed to take this”—Luke stopped himself before he said the word “gold”—“cargo.”

“Yeah, that’s true,” Dale agreed. “All we know is that we’re headed for Georgia, but Georgia’s a pretty big place.”

It was pretty far away, too, Luke thought, and almost anything could happen between here and there. He felt the unaccustomed burden of responsibility weighing on his shoulders. He wasn’t used to taking care of anybody but himself or maybe two or three of his comrades. He’d never had anything like the fate of the Confederacy riding on his back before.

The city was dark except for the few fires started by exploding artillery shells. The Yankee bombardment continued. It went on almost around the clock. Luke didn’t see how the city could hold out much longer.

A shell screamed overhead and landed maybe half a mile behind them, blowing up with a huge explosion. Dale looked back over his shoulder at the pillar of flame rising into the black sky. “What do you think it’d be like if one of those things landed right on top of us?”

“We’ll never know,” Luke said.

“Because it won’t happen?”

“Because if it does, we’ll be blown to smithereens before we know what happened.”

“You really know how to make a fella feel encouraged, Luke—” Dale stopped short and hauled back on the reins. Colonel Lancaster had come to an abrupt halt in front of the wagon team. Garish, flickering light spilled over the cobblestones as a large number of men, many of them carrying torches, surged around a corner up ahead.

“That looks like trouble,” Dale muttered.

Luke was thinking the same thing. He knew mobs made of desperate civilians and deserters had taken to roaming the streets of Richmond. The army was trying to keep things under control, but it was getting more difficult with every passing day as the Yankee siege continued. Already there had been several riots.

And it looked like the two wagons were in the path of another one, as one of the men in the forefront of the mob yelled, “There are some wagons! There might be food in them!”

It was an easy conclusion to jump to. A starving man saw food everywhere.

The man waved his torch forward, and with a full-throated cry sounding like the howl of a wounded animal, the mob surged toward the wagons and riders.