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 were the same shelters ingeniously constructed of brush and logs and a picket line for horses and mules. This hole must harbor a high percentage of deserters from both armies. "Only four of us," Kirby remarked. "'Course I know we're the tall men of the army, but ain't this runnin' the odds a mite high?" Croff chuckled. "He's got a point there, Sarge." "Seein' as how what happened back there on the road could be pinned on us, we have to do something," Drew returned. This whole section of country would boil over when those bodies were discovered. "And we ain't the only ones. Any of our boys comin' through here on furlough are like to be jumped for it if the Yankees catch them." "That's the truth if you ever spoke it, Sarge. I can see some hangin's comin' out of that ambush." "Theah's still twenty hombres down theah, an' four of us. We can pick off a few from up heah, but they ain't gonna wait around to git sniped. So, how we gonna spread ourselves--?"