ow useless those rifles were for mounted men. The
sabers were broken the same way, but the rest of the plunder was shared.

Webb appropriated one of the captured mounts. They stripped the others
of their gear, taking what they wanted in the way of blankets and saddle
equipment, and were putting the horses on leading ropes when a volley of
shots ripping through the early morning froze them. Croff whirled to
face the road down which the Yankees had vanished.

"Came from that direction--"

They mounted, taking not the open road but a cross route the Cherokee
indicated. Coming out on the crest of a slope, they were above another
of those hollows through which the road ran. And in that way lay still
blue figures. Drew's carbine swung up as men broke from ambush and
headed toward those forms. No Confederate force would have wantonly
butchered unarmed and wounded men, nor would the Yankees. Which left the
scum they both hated--the bushwhackers!

Just as the crack of the murder guns had earlier torn the quiet, so did
the Confederate answer come now. Three of those advancing on their
victims dropped. One more cried out, staggering toward the concealing
bush. Then more broke from cover beyond, going into flight up the other
rise.

"Croff! Webb! After them!" The Cherokee scout was already booting his
horse into a run.

Drew and Kirby reached the road together. Slipping from Hannibal, Drew
knelt by the Union sergeant, turning the man over as gently as he could.
But there was no hope. The Yankee's eyes opened; he stared up with a
cold and terrible hate.

"Shot us ... after all ... murder--" he mouthed.

"No!" Drew cried his protest. "Not us--"

But that head rolled on his arm, and Drew was forced to swallow the fact
that the other had died believing that treachery. Kirby arose from the
examination of the rest of the bodies.

"Got 'em all. Musta bin as easy as shootin' weanlin's. They didn't have
a chance! We got three--" He made a circle about one of the dead
guerrillas--"but that don't balance none."

Drew lowered the dead sergeant to the surface of the road.

"It sure doesn't!" he said bleakly. "We'll go after them--if we have to
ride clear to the Ohio!"

16

_Missing in Action_

"I've counted twenty at least," Webb said over his shoulder. The scouts
were belly-flat in cover, looking down into a scene of some activity. It
almost resembled the cavalry camp they had left behind them to the
south. There we