umbling
with rumor. The Union's General Wilson had assembled a massive hammer of
a force, veterans who had clashed over and over with Forrest in the
field, who had learned that master's tricks. Seventeen thousand mounted
cavalrymen, ready to aim straight down through Alabama where the war had
not yet touched. Another ten thousand without horses, who formed a
backlog of reserves.

In the Carolinas, Johnston, with the last stubborn regiments of the Army
of the Tennessee, was playing his old delaying game, trying to stop
Sherman from ripping up along the coast. And in Virginia the news was
all bad. The world was not spring, but drab winter, the dying winter of
the Confederacy.

Wilson's target was Selma and the Confederate arsenal; every man in the
army knew that. Somehow Bedford Forrest was going to have to interpose
between all the weight of that Yankee hammer and Selma. And he had done
the impossible so often, there was still a chance that he _could_ bring
it off. The General had a free hand and his own particular brand of
genius to back it.

Drew's fingers were on the front of his short cavalry jacket, pressing
against the coil of gold cord in his shirt pocket. No, the old man
wasn't licked yet; he'd give Wilson and every one of those twenty-seven
thousand Yankees a good stiff fight when they came poking their long
noses over the Alabama border!

"He gave you what?" Boyd sat up straighter. His face was thin and no
longer weather-beaten, and he'd lost all of that childish arrogance
which had so often irritated his elders. In its place was a certain
quiet soberness in which the scout sometimes saw flashes of Sheldon.

Now Drew pulled the cord from his pocket, holding it out for Boyd's
inspection. The younger boy ran it through his fingers wonderingly.

"General Forrest's!" From it he looked to the faded weatherworn hat Drew
had left on a chair by the door. Boyd caught it up and pulled off the
leather string banding its dented crown. Carefully he fitted on
Forrest's gift and studied the result critically. Drew laughed.

"Like puttin' a new saddle on Croaker; it doesn't fit."

"Yes, it does," Boyd protested. "That's right where it belongs."

Drew, standing by the window, felt a pinch of concern. He found it
difficult nowadays to deny Boyd anything, let alone such a harmless
request.

"The first lieutenant comin' along will call me for sportin' a general's
feathers on a sergeant's head," he protested. "Nothin' f