Free Raiding With Morgan by Jim R. Woolard Page B

exact amount in his tin boxes, and not a penny more. Morgan’s laughing officers showed no mercy. Haggy was hooted out the door.
    A grinning General Morgan was on his feet. The room stilled. “Gentlemen, to horse,” he ordered. “We have miles to ride yet today.”
    The hotel emptied with a rush. The general’s personal groom held the reins of Glencoe, Reb, Shawn Shannon’s black gelding, and Owen Mattson’s blaze-faced chestnut at the foot of the hotel’s front porch. “They been groomed, watered, and fed per Captain Mattson’s orders, General Morgan, sir,” the black youth said with a prideful smile.
    Ty’s respect for his father gained a notch. Amidst the tension of the raiders’ occupation of Corydon and the luxury of a hotel’s hot meal, his father had seen to their horses first. It was a lesson he would take to heart. If he wanted to be a real cavalryman like his father, Reb came first, before his belly and other needs.
    Stepping aboard Glencoe, General Morgan said, “Captain Mattson, since the would-be Ty Mattson is with you and not in handcuffs, I assume you have claimed him for your own. Please bring him to my tent this evening and we’ll discuss his future with my command.”
    Ty was ecstatic. All in the same day, he’d looked the elephant in the eye, found his long-missing father, and been invited to a meeting with General Morgan that might enable him to enlist with the raiders.
    He’d never been happier in his whole life.

CHAPTER 7
    T he raiders rode within sixteen miles of their next objective, Salem, Indiana, by late afternoon and went into camp with two encircling lines of pickets. Cooking fires were soon ablaze for hungry troopers who had gulped whatever food they could scarf up while on the move throughout the day.
    Ty discovered that he was hungry, despite the big hotel meal in Corydon. When E.J. Pursley saw an opportunity to fill bellies, he seized it. Under his direction, his mess had absconded with cakes, candy, and peanuts from a Corydon confectioner; they took bacon, ham, and cheese from a Corydon grocer, and fresh eggs and root cellar potatoes from empty farmsteads. He served his feast from three skillets on two fires, designating Ebb White a temporary cook.
    Their horses watered, fed, curried, and tethered, Ty and his father ate their fill with the others, hedging against the usual lack of vittles that occurred during a lightning-fast cavalry raid. Then they retired to the edge of the firelight, where their horses were picketed. They sat on gum ponchos draped over their grounded saddles.
    â€œBoone Jordan’s gray held under fire, did he?”
    â€œYes, sir. He wouldn’t be left behind. Mr. Jordan didn’t mention Reb was cavalry trained and he caught me by surprise.”
    â€œI’m just glad you weren’t hurt,” Owen Mattson said, patting his son on the knee.
    Aware his presence was so new to his son that Ty might dissolve into a bundle of nerves trying to sustain a conversation, the elder Mattson said, “Ty, maybe it would help us get acquainted faster if I told you my history with your mother and your grandparents. Then you can ask any questions you like. That all right by you?”
    A relieved Ty sighed and said, “Yes, sir.”
    â€œSon, I love your grandfather, always have and always will. He taught me right from wrong with no in between. He provided me the same wonderful book and practical education he did you. He introduced me to horses and taught me how to breed, train, and care for them. We never exchanged a contrary word.
    â€œOn my twenty-fifth birthday, he sent me across the ocean to buy horses of Arabian blood in deserts where horse racing is king. On my journey, I met explorers, sheiks, and soldiers of fortune, who had fought in wars on four continents. I encountered a world where no two days were the same, where life was chancy and dangerous, where the enemy might