a horsey panic. Down to the south, beyond a long meadow, the timber was thick.
“Get to timber,” Holt said, saucer-eyed. “Get to timber.”
Hell, we took off that way, but the Jayhawkers hung tough and little Riley had his hands full. We couldn’t pull ahead of them. At the timberline Turner and Holt and me faced them and displayed enough good aim to send them down the meadow, where they could enter the timber and hunt us.
“I can’t ride,” Riley said. Wrong parts of him hung over his belt. He wasn’t even sixteen and he was ruined. “Put me down, please. Please. Please, put me down.”
Dark wasn’t coming on fast enough to help us. We had to keep running. That is one thing bushwhackers know. The thick green leaves shielded us for the moment, but right away we could hear the Jayhawkers trotting into the timber a short distance away.
“Please, please,” went Riley.
I stepped down and pulled the ripped-wide boy off his mount and set him against a tree. He held his hands where he was spilling, and that pale thing that happens to the mortally wounded was happening to him.
“Leave me my guns,” he said. “Don’t take ’em. Leave ’em.” Riley was a kid like no kid I ever knew. “I might get one.”
I cocked a pistol and laid it near him. Turner was grunting some fierce riddle and Holt was prancing about. We had to go.
“Riley,” I said. I put my palm to his face and squeezed his cheek. “You got to fire at them, Riley. Bring them down on you.”
“I will, Jake. Boys, I will.” He was crying, and rippling with pain. “I was a good boy, wasn’t I?”
“As good as they come,” I said, and remounted.
We took off. I looked back once and saw Riley hunched to the tree, his face to the sky.
A sneak through the woods was our plan. It is a hard trick to bring off on horseback. Noise was made. The Jayhawkers were shouting commands to fan out and flush us. Pretty quick after that Riley’s shots sounded. That was our notice to lay on the spurs and we did it.
In a minute there were more shots, then silence.
“Tough boy,” Holt said. “But he didn’t hold them long.”
Even as he spoke I heard hooves beating the earth, branches cracking and dangerous voices. We were in a low spot, thick with bramble, that ran between two rises. A gully twisted down toward the south.
“Follow this gully,” I said. “If we got to, we’ll break their line.”
Turner led. Flinches had come to roost on his face, and the whole gamut of his features bobbled. Holt took up the rear, and in the undertones of his breath I believe I caught a snatch of a hymn.
Before we’d gone two hundred feet I saw two men on the rise to the east. I hoped to kill them before they saw us, and then they did see us, and I think they had had the same idea in store for us, so both opinions were disappointed.
Everybody looked for a tree to hide behind.
“Oh, Lor’!” Turner cried. “Dey’s god us.”
“We’ll break through,” I said. All the horses were jittery and jerking around, but fighting on foot was for morons. “Let’s do it now. Attack those two now, it’s our only chance.”
Fright may have been our regular pastime, but hesitancy was not a bushwhacker trait. We tore right into them, and they plowed downhill to meet us. Clean shots were hard because of the trees, and bark flew hither and yon, and we trilled rebel yells for all we were worth, and you had better believe that we could raise a cry that would have you filling your boots.
When we closed on them, between two spacious, fat oaks, the shots were so rapid as to be mesmerizing. One of the Jayhawkers had a red feather in his hat and a rotten face. He aimed on Holt but I got him. I busted him open at the neck and the teat and he fell a corpse.
His comrade lost heart on seeing this and retreated, calling wildly for help.
We then did a tactical move that consisted entirely of running away.
After a quarter mile of panicked scrambling, we came to a clearing and just about flew across it. I looked over my shoulders and, oh, shit, yes, there they were, coming on after us.
The horses we rode were as fine a breed of beasts as there has ever been. They had bottom and