e grin did not fade, but was gone in a
flash, leaving no hint of softness now about his gaunt features, no
light in the intent, measuring depths of his dark gray eyes.

A call at Red Springs was certainly the last thing in the world for him
to consider seriously. His last interview within its walls could still
make him wince when he recalled it, word by scalding word. No, there was
no place for a Rennie--and a Rebel Rennie to make matters blacker--under
the righteous roof of Alexander Mattock!

Hatred could be a red-hot burning to choke a man's throat, leaving him
speechless and hurting inside. Since he had ridden out of Red Springs he
had often been cold, very often hungry--and under orders willingly,
which would have surprised his grandfather--but in another way he had
been free as never before in all his life. In the army, the past did not
matter at all if one did one's job well. And in the army, the civilian
world was as far away as if it were conducted in the cold chasms of the
moon.

Drew leaned back against the tree trunk, wanting to yield to the soft
wind and the swinging privacy of the embowered tree house, wanting to
forget everything and just lie there for a while in the only part of the
past he remembered happily.

But he had his orders--horses for General Morgan, horses and information
to feed back to that long column of men riding or trudging westward on
booted, footsore feet up the trail through the Virginia mountains on the
way home to Kentucky. These were men who carried memories of the Ohio
defeat last year which they were determined to wipe out this season,
just as a lot of them had to flush with gunsmoke the stench of a
Northern prison barracks from their nostrils.

And there were horses at Red Springs. To mount Morgan's men on Alexander
Mattock's best stock was a prospect which had its appeal. Drew tossed
his haversack back to the platform and added his carbine to it. The army
Colts in his belt holsters would not be much hindrance while crawling
through cover, but the larger weapon might be.

He thumped a measure of dust from his hat, settled it over hair as black
as that felt had once been, and crossed the brook with a running leap.
The roan lifted his head to watch Drew go and then settled back to
grazing. This, too, followed a pattern both man and horse had practiced
for a long time.

Drew could almost imagine that he was again hunting Sheldon as a
"Shawnee" on the warpath while he dodged