Bounty Hunter

CHAPTER 2

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.