The Big Gun (Dusty Fog's Civil War Book 3) (15 page)

‘
Can’t
come out truthful and say we have, Cap’n Dusty,’ Hassle confessed.
‘Met up with this young lady, though, ’n’ concluded you’d like to
see ’em.’

‘
Howdy, ma’am,’ Dusty greeted Harry. ‘Get down,
please.’

Before the girl could follow
the small Texan
’s instructions, she heard the sound of fast-running
hooves. A rider was galloping recklessly through the trees from the
opposite direction to which the girl’s party had arrived. He was a
tall, well-built red-haired young first lieutenant, Harry observed
and looked excited or considerably agitated.

‘
We’re
headed in the wrong direction, Cousin Dusty!’ Red Blaze announced,
bringing his big brown gelding to a sliding halt and quitting its
saddle almost in the same motion. ‘That damned balloon’s just going
up back across the river from Camden.’

‘
The
hell it is!’ Dusty ejaculated, exchanging a startled glance with
Sergeant Major Billy Jack. ‘How can it be? No team of horses could
have hauled it from Arkadelphia that quickly.’

‘
They’d’ve left a string of dead ’n’s behind for the turkey
buzzards, even had they worked them in relays,’ Billy Jack went on,
but without any of his usual gloomy predictions. He only employed
them when things were going right.

The news brought by Red suggested that
things had gone badly wrong.

In some way, Dusty appeared to
have fallen into the trap of having underestimated the enemy.
Working on the assumption that the big gun
’s weight and general unwieldiness
would have caused it to be travelling very slowly, he had brought
his men over Ouachita River about three miles upstream from Stilton
Crossing. They had left the vicinity of the bank immediately and,
by the time dawn had broken, they had covered four more miles in a
north-westerly direction. Daylight had found them concealed in the
woodland and resting. Dusty had taken that precaution in case the
Yankees should have had their balloon in the air. For miles around,
the nature of the terrain was too open for him to chance moving
such a large body of men, horses and the four little mountain
howitzers across it. Instead, he had dispatched his two best
scouts, dressed as Yankees—there had not been sufficient uniforms
to supply all his Company and Staunce’s battery—to try to locate
the big gun. Having seen that his men were all right, the
Englishman had joined Red with the small rear guard. They had been
watching in case the Yankees had discovered that enemies were north
of the Ouachita and had come looking for them.

Despite all the precautions and the hard
work entailed in transporting the howitzers over the river, using
four rowing boats held by the guard at Stilton Crossing, it seemed
that Dusty had miscalculated. The men with the big gun had
contrived to pass through the territory which his scouts were
searching and, in a remarkably short time, had already reached
their destination.

‘
After
the raid you pulled on their remount depot at Searcy, I’d’ve sworn
that the Yankees didn’t have enough spare horses to kill them off
reckless-like,’ Red told his cousin sympathetically, watching
Harry, Hassle and Eric dismounting. Although consumed with
curiosity regarding the girl, he kept his mind on the serious
development at hand.

‘
And,
like Billy Jack said, they’d’ve had to kill off plenty to get the
gun up Camden way so quickly.’

Sucking in a deep breath, the
girl prepared to face the moment
she had been dreading ever since learning
Hassle’s real identity and hearing of Company C’s
mission.

‘
They
aren’t using horses to pull it,’ Harry said.

‘
They
have to be!’ Red protested. ‘There’s no railroad hereabouts and
we’d have heard if they were using a steamboat along the river. And
they sure’s hell aren’t hauling it with men on the
ropes.’

‘
How
are they moving it, ma’am?’ Dusty asked and, quietly as he spoke,
the girl suddenly became aware of the full strength of his
personality.

In some strange fashion, the small Texan
seemed to Harry to have taken on stature until he towered above his
companions. She knew that it was only an illusion, but she would
never again think of Dusty Fog as being small.

‘
With
a traction engine,’ Harry replied.

‘
A
what
?’
Red yelped.

‘
A
steam-powered traction engine,’ Harry elaborated and stiffened
defensively as she continued, ‘I know what I’m talking about. My
father’s driving it.’

‘
Massa
Eli had to do it, mister!’ Eric put in, determined to set the
record straight from the start. He moved protectively to the girl’s
side and glared at the
big
blond Texan. ‘The Yankees was holding Miss Harry
here so’s he’d work ole Pulling Sue for ’em.’

‘
Huh
huh!’ Dusty grunted, understanding why the girl and the Negro were
behaving in such a manner. Many Southrons might regard her
statement as treasonable. As always, he was prepared to keep an
open mind on the subject. ‘Maybe you’d best tell me all about it,
Miss—’

‘
Cable,’ the girl introduced. ‘Harriet Cable—my friends
mostly call me “Harry”.’

‘
Yes’m. I’m Dusty Fog, these are my cousins, First
Lieutenant Red Blaze and Sergeant Major Billy Jack. If you’ll let
me tend to a couple of things, I’ll hear what you have to
say.’

‘
Go
ahead,’ Harry authorized.

‘
Vern,
take Miss Cable’s man and tend to the horses,’ Dusty
ordered.

‘
Eric’s a free man—’ Harry put in.

‘
That’s how he’ll be treated, ma’am,’ Dusty promised. ‘Did
you see anything of the gun, Cousin Red?’

‘
Nope,’ the lieutenant replied, as Hassle guided Eric away
with the horses. ‘Doug figures they’d only put the balloon up to
make sure there was none of us around before setting up the
gun.’

‘
It’s
likely,’ Dusty admitted. ‘The notices weren’t to go up until
tonight, so they’re not likely to open fire before our folks’ve had
time to read them and decide on whether to set General Culver
free.’

‘
It
ain’t like
me
to think miserable,’ Billy Jack lied. ‘But they might’ve
heard we’ve done catched their spy and are aiming to cut loose
straight away.’

‘
Hell,
yes!’ Red spat out. ‘What’ll we do if that happens, Cousin
Dusty?’

‘
Get
back as fast as we can, balloon or no balloon,’ the small Texan
replied; but, even as he spoke, he knew that they would arrive far
too late to save Camden from being shelled. ‘Go and ask Doug to
come in for a spell and come back with him, Red. Billy Jack, wake
Sergeant Major Smalley and get the men ready in case we have to
pull out fast.’

‘
Yo!’
Red affirmed and Billy Jack echoed with the traditional Cavalry
assent to an order.

‘
There’s a log over by my blankets, Miss Cable,’ Dusty went
on, as soon as his subordinates had taken their departure ‘It’s the
best I can offer by way of a seat and we don’t have any
coffee—’

‘
I ate
and had some before we broke camp this morning,’ the girl assured
him and sensed that he was deeply perturbed by his cousin’s news.
She walked towards the fallen tree and sat on its trunk. ‘What do
you want to know?’

‘
Everything that might help me,’ Dusty requested, squatting
on his heels before her.

‘
Where
shall I begin?’

‘
At
the beginning’s usually a good place.’

‘
That
would be in England, in ’Fifty-Eight,’ Harry decided. ‘Poppa had
taken me over there on a combined vacation and business trip. It
was just after Momma had died—we met most of the men connected with
building steam engines of various kinds. Poppa had done some work
on that line and believed they had a great future in America.
Anyway, we met James Boydell and Charles Burrell, who’d designed a
steam traction engine that used what they called “endless railway
shoes” on the wheels. Poppa saw that it wasn’t a practical idea—do
you want me to tell you why?’

‘
Likely I wouldn’t know what it was all about,’ Dusty
smiled. ‘But I’ll leave that to you, ma’am.’

‘
I
could accept “Harriet” at a pinch,’ the girl remarked, finding
herself growing to like the
big
young captain. ‘But I’d prefer
“Harry”.’

‘
Tell
me what you like, Harry,’ Dusty offered.

‘
Well,
without getting too technical, Poppa saw that the Burrell-Boydell
idea wouldn’t work. Then he got to know William Bray, the chief
engineer on what the British call a cross-Channel paddle steamer.
It’s like a big riverboat that runs between England and France. Mr.
Bray had a really good idea for the kind of wheel to use on a
traction engine—that’s one meant to travel on land, without rails
and—’

‘
I’d
an idea it might be,’ Dusty told her.

‘
The
wheels were based on the paddles of his steamer, except that the
blades moved in and out through the rims and gave a firm grip as
they turned. Anyway, Poppa felt that it was a real good idea. So
when he brought me home, he decided to use the Bray wheels on his
own design of machine. You see, he knew that, especially out West,
there wouldn’t be a regular supply of coal or coke for fuel. So he
worked up a system that gave better combustion with wood than any
other steam engine offered.’

‘
And
he made up this engine that’s hauling the big gun
around?’

‘
It
wasn’t meant for
that,
’
Harry protested. ‘Poppa had heard about the trials held by
the military in England. In May, we’d seen a Bray Patent Traction
Engine haul
three
68-pounder cannons from Woolwich Arsenal to Plumpstead
Common, up and down some pretty steep slopes. That was
around
twenty
tons. Pulling Sue, our first successful machine, can equal
that with wood for fuel and Big Minnie, the second, is even more
powerful. Pulling Sue can average a speed of three miles per hour,
Dusty. And keep it up for hour after hour, day after
day.’

‘
And
that’s what the Yankees are using,’ Dusty said quietly.

‘
Poppa
didn’t intend his machines to be used for war!’ Harry insisted. ‘If
he had, he could easily have made them back East, where he’d’ve had
better facilities and could probably have got financial backing.
Especially when it became certain that there must be the war. So he
came home to Cable Grange and built them there. He tried to keep
their existence a secret, so neither side would benefit from them
but they would be ready to help with the rebuilding once there was
peace.’

‘
It
didn’t work out that way,’ Dusty drawled, seeing the distress and
anguish on the girl’s pretty face. It was replaced by a flicker of
anger at his comment.

‘
It
didn’t!’ Harry conceded bitterly. ‘Just before the War, while we
were in New York buying some equipment, Poppa met Monica Freer.
He’d been lonely since Momma’s death and—well, Monica’s a beautiful
woman and, when she’s a mind, she can charm a bird down from a
tree. They got married and we all went back home. Monica never
liked the idea of living out in what she regarded as the frontier
and was always wanting Poppa to move back East. Then the War came.
Poppa was determined not to let his machines be used for military
purposes, which is why we never entertained members of the
Confederate States’ Army. Then when you started to pull back, Major
Lyle and his men arrived. Don’t ask me how they knew about Pulling
Sue and Big Minnie, but they did. No, damn it, why should I lie. I
believe Monica had got word to them. Anyway, Lyle arrived. He had
brought two companies of soldiers, all armed with Spencer repeating
rifles, and four heavy guns. The thirty-pounder Parrot rifle you’re
hunting and three Vandenburgs. Do you know what they
are?’

‘
Sure.
Multi-barreled pieces, not long ranged, but real dangerous at close
quarters.’

‘
He’s
using two of the Vandenburgs to cover the bridge from the island
and has the other mounted to cover the boats’ landing beach,
although his men don’t guard it too carefully; which’s how we
escaped. Lyle said that Poppa was to use Pulling Sue to take the
Parrot after the Rebels. When Poppa tried to refuse, Lyle said that
he would turn us over to his men. What else could Poppa do but
obey?’

‘
Not a
whole heap,’ Dusty admitted. ‘So Lyle’s with the big gun
now?’

‘
No,’
Harry corrected. ‘He put the gun and one Company in the hands of
his officers and sent them off. He stayed at the Grange, making
sure the work he’d demanded was done on Big Minnie.’