Mississippi Raider

She came out of the Louisiana bayou, a
hard-riding young beauty who had seen her parents killed in cold
blood by agents from the North. Driven by her desire for revenge,
Belle joined the Great Cause. That took her into the heart of a
nation cleaved in two, and closer to her parents’ killers. Joining
the Secret Service of the Confederacy, she pitted her courage, wits
and fighting skills against the Union’s best agents. But while she
spawned a legend with her daring escapades and undercover work, her
greatest challenge still lay ahead, on a mission deep behind enemy
lines – to stop a deadly new weapon from entering the war!

MISSISSIPPI
RAIDER

DUSTY FOG’S
CIVIL WAR 1

By J. T.
Edson

First published
by Bantam Doubleday Dell in 1996

Copyright
©
1996, 2015 by J. T. Edson

First
Smashwords Edition: March 2015

Names,
characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any
resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons
living or dead is purely coincidental.

All rights
reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
photocopying, recording or by any information or storage and
retrieval system, without the written permission of the author,
except where permitted by law.

This is a
Piccadilly Publishing Book

Series Editor:
Ben Bridges ~ Text © Piccadilly Publishing

Published by
Arrangement with the Author’s Agent.

For Joy, Marlene and Celia,

the
“Three Wise Monkeys” of my
“spiritual” home, the Half Moon In Melton Mowbray,

even though they
don
’t care
for Matilda the Hun

For the benefit of new readers,
but to save our
“old hands” from repetition, we have given a “potted
biography” of Belle “the Rebel Spy” Boyd in the form of an
Appendix.

When supplying us with the
information from which we produce our books, one of the strictest
rules imposed upon us by the present-day members of what we call
the
“Hardin,
Fog and Blaze” clan and the “Counter” family is that we never under
any circumstances disclose their true identities or their current
whereabouts. Furthermore, we are instructed to
always
include sufficient inconsistencies to
ensure neither can happen, even inadvertently.

We would like to emphasize that the names of
people who appear in this volume are those supplied to us by our
informants in Texas and any resemblance to those of other people,
living or dead, is purely coincidental.

We realize that, in our present
permissive society, we could use the actual profanities employed by
various people in the narrative. However, unlike various other
authors, we do not concede that a spurious desire to create
“realism” is any
excuse for doing so.

As we refuse to pander to the current trendy
usage of the metric system, except when referring to the caliber of
various firearms that had always been measured in millimeters—i.e.,
Walther P-38, 9mm—we will continue to employ miles, yards, feet,
inches, pounds, and ounces when quoting distances and weights.

Lastly, and of the greatest importance, we
must stress that the attitudes and speech of the characters is put
down as would have been the case at the period of the
narrative.

J.T. EDSON,

MELTON MOWBRAY,

Leics.,

England

R
ising slowly from behind a grove of royal
and cabbage palms that grew on all sides of the fair-size clearing,
the full moon caused their trunks to shine dim and ghostlike in its
early rays. Overhead, almost at meridian, strange patterns of
fluffy clouds billowed and the Seven Sisters (Pleiades) played
hide-and-seek among swiftly moving, ever-changing thunderheads.
From deep within the swampland to the right, the resounding voice
of a great horned owl could be heard above the multitudinous
croaking of bullfrogs. Every now and again, the deep belly grunt of
a bull alligator echoed from the edge of a marshy watercourse
nearby. Perhaps disturbed by the predator, a night heron glided
above the treetops and its golden eyes flashed briefly in the glow
of the small campfire in the center of the open ground before it
vanished into the surrounding blackness. Insect noises in
uncountable variety and locations floated on the gentle breeze. In
the course of their nocturnal hunting, nighthawks banked and zoomed
on silent wings. Also questing for food, an occasional
leather-winged bat darted through a crazy pattern of flight in its
efforts to catch black gnats or other of the tiny flying creatures
drifting in swarms.

However, while conscious of the
sounds, the half a dozen human beings gathered around the fire in
the center of the open ground appeared to be paying little or no
attention to them. Of different heights, builds, and ages, with one
exception—whose headgear was black, broader-brimmed, and had a
higher crown—the group wore white straw
“planter’s” hats, loose-fitting
jackets over white shirts and silk cravats of various colors, and
riding breeches tucked into the calf-high legs of their boots.
Their attire and voices indicated they were well educated and
wealthy Southrons, which was not surprising since they were in the
woodland fringing the Mississippi River at Baton Bayou Parish,
Louisiana.

Despite the situation between
politicians from both sides of
the Mason-Dixon line being grave, with
much talk of the Southern states seceding from the Union because of
what were clearly irreconcilable differences upon many issues—as
was allowed in the Constitution—their main subject of discussion
was the possibility of a good night’s sport. In fact, the only
reference to Yankees was when one of the group commented how little
common sense or decent behavior could be expected from men
who—instead of running their quarry for sport by night and allowing
it to escape when cornered more times than otherwise, as was done
in the South—set the hounds on its trail and selected places to lie
in wait for it to pass, then, as so often happened due to the habit
of both the red and gray species of fox when pursued to move in a
circle around its normal domain, shot it.

Regardless of the comments upon the time of
day selected by Yankees for hunting, because sport rather than
acquiring a trophy and making an easy kill were the main
incentives, throughout much of the South—especially from the late
spring and summer months through to early fall—even early-morning
hunting for a fox was rarely successful. This was because, as soon
as the sun came up and caused the temperature to rise, conditions
became too hot for the quarry, hounds, and horses to last long
enough to make for a worthwhile chase.

At night, however, it was not
unusual for a mature dog fox to run for three and a half to four
hours before being caught and
“treed.” The term was particularly apt where the
Southern gray fox was concerned. When hard-pressed and finding it
was about to be caught, it would either climb into a leaning tree
or go down a gopher hole. Although one was only rarely caught on
the ground, unless it had developed the habit of feeding upon
chickens and other small domesticated creatures, once treed the
majority of them were left unharmed.

Suddenly, disturbing the man
sprawled on the ground by its head, an unprepossessing-looking bay
stallion
“muck pony” tethered a short distance from the other mounts
of the same strain gave a snort and gazed southward into the
night.
ⁱ
At the same
instant, the big bluetick coonhound acknowledged as “strike dog”
and leader of the pack by the other eight members of various breeds
uncoiled from his sleeping position on the short grass. Rising
swiftly to his feet, with his sensitive nose sniffing the night
breeze, he stood tense and alert. Soundless though they were except
for the inhaling of breath, his movements had the effect of
bringing the rest of the hounds from their somnolent
postures.
ⁱⁱ

“
My
ole Quincy hoss smells him a fox, or maybe a bobcat,” commented the
only member of the party not gathered around the fire, coming to
his feet from where he had been sitting near the now-alert muck
pony stallion and motioning with his head in its direction. Though
tall, lean, and leathery faced, the way he was dressed and his
voice suggested he came from a lower class of society than the
others. His name was Joe Lassiter and he was the owner of the pack
of hounds. Therefore, his words and actions brought silence, and
turning his gaze to the bluetick, he continued just as quietly,
“That ole Speed dog’s got him the scent!”

Even as the words were being spoken, the
sharp bark of a fox rang out from downwind. Instantly, Speed
bounded forward with a bugle-voiced bawl that set the rest of the
pack to duplicating his actions. Such was the speed of his actions,
he hit the end of the leash that secured him to a bush and turned a
complete flip. However, he came up immediately, baying furiously
and trying to get free. Hurrying over while the hunters at the fire
were rising, Lassiter started to liberate the hounds, commencing
with Speed. The moment each was freed, it tore away with the speed
of a frightened pronghorn antelope. By the time the last of the
human beings was by his mount, which—like all the rest—had often
been used for such hunting and showed agitation over the prospects
suggested by the commotion, the wild and excited baying of the
hounds was already a good half-mile away.

Having liberated the last of the pack,
Lassiter strode swiftly to where his stallion was behaving in just
as restive a fashion as the other horses. Bounding astride the
blanket that served him as all the saddle he needed, he scooped up
the reins of his Indian-style hackamore and, apparently all in one
motion, set off. While far from a graceful-looking animal, the muck
pony showed a surprising turn of speed. However, swiftly as it and
its rider moved, the exception in the matter of attire was almost
as rapid. Showing a deft ease that bespoke considerable experience
in matters equestrian, the hunter in the black hat swung astride a
dun gelding with lines indicative of a preponderance of American
Five-Gaited Saddle-Horse blood and was away across the switch grass
while the rest were still mounting. However, once they were on
their horses, the others followed with alacrity and also displayed
the skill at riding that almost every Southron of their class
acquired.

Past the woodland fringing the river, much
of the terrain over which the hunt showed signs of taking place was
over hard-sand prairie covered with short switch grass, which would
have offered a close-to-ideal footing for any type of riding horse.
However, interspersed in various sizes and patterns across fair
amounts of it were clumps of scrub palmetto, shallow lakes and
ponds, hammocks—as the local population called hammocks of
trees—sloughs and muck pockets making the surface quite treacherous
to ride over at even a canter, although the muck ponies could
handle it better than the other purebred breeds most wealthy
Southrons rode at other times.

Guided by experience handed
down from their predecessors in the sport of hunting at night as
practiced in the Southern states, while following Lassiter at a
fast trot, wherever possible the rest of the party rode more or
less abreast instead of keeping to a single file. It had been found
that doing so presented less chance of injury being sustained
should there be a mishap. In case somebody
’s horse lost its footing and went
down, there would not be an animal following that might step upon
the rider or become entangled with the one lying on the ground.
Therefore, at least in the early stages of the hunt before the
quarry was set moving, the members of the party would try to allow
each horse plenty of running room.