o Grande. It's close to the end now--"

"No, it ain't!" Boyd flared, more than a shade of the old stubbornness
back in his voice. "It ain't goin' to be the end as long as one of us
can ride and hold a carbine! They can have horses and new boots, their
supplies, and all their men. We ain't scared of any Yankee who ever rode
down the pike! If you yell at 'em now, they'd beat it back the way they
came."

Drew smiled tiredly. "Guess we're on our way now to do some of that
yellin'." The end was almost in sight; every trooper in or out of the
saddle knew it. Only some, like Boyd, would not admit it. "Remember what
I say, Boyd. Take it slow and ride easy!"

Boyd picked up Drew's hat again, holding it in the sunlight coming
through the window. The cord was a band of raw gold, gleaming brighter,
perhaps, because of the shabbiness of the hat it now graced.

"You don't ride easy with the General," he said softly. "You ride tall
and you ride proud!"

Drew took the hat from him. Out of the direct sunbeam, the band still
seemed to hold a bit of fire.

"Maybe you do," he agreed soberly.

Now Boyd was smiling in turn. "You carry the General's hatband right up
so those blue bellies can get the shine in their eyes! We'll lam 'em
straight back to the Tennessee again--see if we don't!"

But almost three weeks later the Yankees were not back at the Tennessee;
they were dressing their lines before the horseshoe bend of the
defending breastworks of Selma. Everything which could have gone wrong
with Forrest's plans had done just that. A captured courier had given
his enemies the whole framework of his strategy. Then the cavalry had
tried to hold the blue flood at Bogler's Creek by a tearing frantic
battle, whirling Union sabers against Confederate revolvers in the hands
of veterans. It had been a battle from which Forrest himself broke free
through a lane opened by the action of his own weapons and the
concentrated fury of his escort.

Out of the city had steamed the last train while a stream of civilian
refugees had struggled away on foot, the river patrolled by pickets of
cavalry ordered to extricate every able-bodied man from the throng and
press him into the struggle. Forrest's orders were plain: Every male
able to fight goes into the works, or into the river!

Now Drew and Boyd were with the Kentuckians, forming with Forrest's
escort a small reserve force behind the center of that horseshoe of
ramparts. Veterans on either flan