geant of Scouts. He crawled
up beside them to peer at the blockhouse.

"They're pullin' out!" The men in blue coats were lining up about a
small wagon train.

Wilkins used binoculars for a closer look. "Your report was right; those
are Negro troops!"

"No wonder they're clearin' out--fast."

"Cheatin' us outta a fight," Kirby observed with mock seriousness.

"All the better. Kirby, you cut back and tell the General they're givin'
us free passage. We can get the work done here, quick."

"Back to axes, eh, an' some nice dry firewood--an' see what we can do to
mess up the railroads for the Yankees. Only, seems like we're messin' up
a sight of railroads, all down in our own part of the country. I'd like
to be doin' this up in one of them theah Yankee states like New York,
say, or Indiana. Saw me some mighty fine railroads to cut up, that time
General Morgan took us on a sashay through Indiana."

Kirby got to his feet and stretched. Drew unwound his own lanky length
to join the other.

"Maybe the old man will be leadin' us up there, too--" Wilkins put away
the binoculars. "Rennie, we'll move on down there and see if we can pick
up any information."

Two months or a little more since Harrisburg. The brazen heat had given
way to torrents in mid-August, and the rain had made quagmire traps of
roads, forming rapids of every creek and river--bogging down horses,
men, and guns. But it had not bogged down Bedford Forrest. And one
section of his small force, under the command of General Buford leading
the Kentuckians, had held the Union forces in check, while the other,
under Forrest's personal leadership had swung past Smith and his blue
coats in a lightning raid on Memphis.

Now in September the rain was still falling in the mountains, keeping
the streams up to bank level. And Forrest was also on the move. After
the Memphis raid there had been a second honing of his army into razor
sharpness, a razor to be brought down with its cutting edge across those
railroads which carried the lifeblood of supplies to the Union army
around Atlanta.

Blockhouses fell to dogged attack or surrendered to bluff, the bluff of
Forrest's name. The Kentucky General Buford was leading his division of
the command up the railroad toward the Elk River Bridge and that was
below the scouts now, being abandoned by the Union troopers.

Two factors had brought Drew into Buford's Scouts. If Dr. Cowan,
Forrest's own chief surgeon, had not been the