at the others to do the same.
âWhat we doglegging for?â Earl wanted to know. âYou got a bet on how itâll come out?â
I ignored the sneer in his tone. âWe wonât get there any faster on dead horses.â
âHeâs right. Shut up,â said Yardlinger.
We alternated between cantering and walking while the animalsâ sides heaved and their spent breath enveloped us in a shroud of moist warmth. Meanwhile, the distant crackling continued in fits and starts, now pausing, now erupting again in flurries so rapid it was impossible to count the individual reports. It sounded unreal, like fake gunfire onstage.
The horses smelled it first and passed it along to us in exhausted snorts and the dozen other noises they make when approaching a place of rest after a hard
ride. It reached us a moment later. I stood in the stirrups and drew in a double lungful of the familiar, faintly pleasant odor redolent of hundreds of nights spent around stoves and campfires. Woodsmoke. I was about to call it to the othersâ attention when Yardlinger grunted and I looked ahead to see a red glow fanning out across the western sky.
Iâd seen something like it once before, riding with Rosecransâ cavalry on the way to hell at Murfreesboro. Coming out of a patch of woods, we had spotted the fires of a Confederate encampment reflected in the low-hanging clouds six miles away. It looked like the sun getting ready to rise, and it only happened when there was a lot of flame â¦
We pushed our mounts the rest of the way. Even so, we were a long time getting there, too long. We heard men shouting and horses screaming and more shots raggedly spaced, and then we heard nothing but the splitting and popping of wood being consumed by fire. Too late , said the hoofbeats beneath us. Too late, too late. Then we thundered over a rise and were there.
The blaze had passed its peak, but coming straight from darkness I had to shield my eyes against the glare. Flames were slurping at the charred framework of what had been a large barn, clinging to the corner beams, and crouching along the rafters like hordes of magpies stuffing their swollen bellies long after the carcass had been reduced to gristle and bone. An occasional horseman flashed past and was swallowed up in darkness. There was galloping around us, two or three shots fired at nothing in
particular, and then there was nothing at all, just the noise of the fire sating itself. I spurred the roan in that direction, fighting it all the way.
âMurdock! Stay back!â Yardlingerâs voice was strident. âThe barnâs coming down!â
The heat on my face was blistering. My mount fought the bit and reared. I threw all my weight onto its neck, and when its forefeet touched ground I swung out of the saddle, landing flat on my heels with a jar that sent sharp pains splintering up my legs. The roan nearly knocked me down with its shoulder as it spun to get clear of the flames and smoke.
Yellow tongues lapped and stuttered at the doomed wood, flicking illumination this way and that. I was alerted to a chilling sound nearby, half snort and half whistling whimper, and saw a horse kicking and thrashing on its side in the barnâs blazing doorway, a mass of charred, flaming flesh still fighting for life. Its eyes were gone and its lips had burned away to expose grotesquely leering teeth. I put a bullet in its head from the Deane-Adams. It arched its neck and flopped to the ground like a trout landing, emptying its lungs with a sigh and thrusting its legs in four directions.
The air next to my right ear split with a sharp crack, simultaneous with the deep report. On the edge of the firelight leaned a wagon with a broken wheel; in the right triangle of darkness beneath I spotted a blue phosphorescence on the fade and fired at it, darting for shadow even as I loosed the shot. I waited, but no bullets answered. Instead I heard a voice.
âDonât
âWhat we doglegging for?â Earl wanted to know. âYou got a bet on how itâll come out?â
I ignored the sneer in his tone. âWe wonât get there any faster on dead horses.â
âHeâs right. Shut up,â said Yardlinger.
We alternated between cantering and walking while the animalsâ sides heaved and their spent breath enveloped us in a shroud of moist warmth. Meanwhile, the distant crackling continued in fits and starts, now pausing, now erupting again in flurries so rapid it was impossible to count the individual reports. It sounded unreal, like fake gunfire onstage.
The horses smelled it first and passed it along to us in exhausted snorts and the dozen other noises they make when approaching a place of rest after a hard
ride. It reached us a moment later. I stood in the stirrups and drew in a double lungful of the familiar, faintly pleasant odor redolent of hundreds of nights spent around stoves and campfires. Woodsmoke. I was about to call it to the othersâ attention when Yardlinger grunted and I looked ahead to see a red glow fanning out across the western sky.
Iâd seen something like it once before, riding with Rosecransâ cavalry on the way to hell at Murfreesboro. Coming out of a patch of woods, we had spotted the fires of a Confederate encampment reflected in the low-hanging clouds six miles away. It looked like the sun getting ready to rise, and it only happened when there was a lot of flame â¦
We pushed our mounts the rest of the way. Even so, we were a long time getting there, too long. We heard men shouting and horses screaming and more shots raggedly spaced, and then we heard nothing but the splitting and popping of wood being consumed by fire. Too late , said the hoofbeats beneath us. Too late, too late. Then we thundered over a rise and were there.
The blaze had passed its peak, but coming straight from darkness I had to shield my eyes against the glare. Flames were slurping at the charred framework of what had been a large barn, clinging to the corner beams, and crouching along the rafters like hordes of magpies stuffing their swollen bellies long after the carcass had been reduced to gristle and bone. An occasional horseman flashed past and was swallowed up in darkness. There was galloping around us, two or three shots fired at nothing in
particular, and then there was nothing at all, just the noise of the fire sating itself. I spurred the roan in that direction, fighting it all the way.
âMurdock! Stay back!â Yardlingerâs voice was strident. âThe barnâs coming down!â
The heat on my face was blistering. My mount fought the bit and reared. I threw all my weight onto its neck, and when its forefeet touched ground I swung out of the saddle, landing flat on my heels with a jar that sent sharp pains splintering up my legs. The roan nearly knocked me down with its shoulder as it spun to get clear of the flames and smoke.
Yellow tongues lapped and stuttered at the doomed wood, flicking illumination this way and that. I was alerted to a chilling sound nearby, half snort and half whistling whimper, and saw a horse kicking and thrashing on its side in the barnâs blazing doorway, a mass of charred, flaming flesh still fighting for life. Its eyes were gone and its lips had burned away to expose grotesquely leering teeth. I put a bullet in its head from the Deane-Adams. It arched its neck and flopped to the ground like a trout landing, emptying its lungs with a sigh and thrusting its legs in four directions.
The air next to my right ear split with a sharp crack, simultaneous with the deep report. On the edge of the firelight leaned a wagon with a broken wheel; in the right triangle of darkness beneath I spotted a blue phosphorescence on the fade and fired at it, darting for shadow even as I loosed the shot. I waited, but no bullets answered. Instead I heard a voice.
âDonât
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