Read Under the Stars and Bars for Free Online

long used to taking rapid decisions, the scout flung one quick glance towards the bushes then made as if to spin around and leap to his armament. At which point, his luck ran out. In turning, his right foot struck the top of one of the tree’s roots. Slipping from the moss-encrusted surface, it threw him off balance. Discarding his razor as he went down, he fell into deadly danger.
    Snuffling, grunting and grinding its tusks against each other with a spine-chilling, blood-curdling sound, an enormous pig lurched into the clearing. What had appeared to be black skin proved to have the deep reddish tint that hinted of Duroc breeding. However, the hog showed none of the Duroc’s normally docile nature nor much of its broad-backed, thick bodied build. Tall, standing much higher at the shoulders than the hips, body fined down until it looked all sinew and hard muscles, it had a long nose and a big, powerful-jawed mouth from which showed tusks almost six inches in length. A raw-looking, bloody furrow on its rump explained its bad temper. Maybe its grandparents had been pure, or part, Duroc, but that hog was closer to a wild boar in its appearance than it was to a domesticated pig.
    At the sight of the bristling, squealing horror charging towards their master, the two horses let out startled squeals. They backed away as fast as their hobbles would allow them, not yet in a panic, but close to it. Dusty wanted one, or both, of the geldings—although, to give him credit, he would have intervened even if he had not. So he sprang from the bushes, ready to save the scout from a terrible mauling if he could.
    Coming to a halt on spread-apart, slightly bent legs, he inclined his torso to the rear. Doing so rested his weight on the pelvic region and utilised the body’s bone structure as added support. At the same time, he swung the Colt forward and up. His left hand rose to cup under the bottom of its mate. Holding the revolver at arms length and shoulder-high, he set the low-blade, white brass tip of the foresight in the centre of the V-shaped notch cut as a rearsight in the hammer’s lip.
    There was only one hope of stopping the hog in time and doing it called for a very careful aim. Aligning the sights, Dusty squeezed the trigger. The gas from thirty grains of black powder detonating spun a 219-grain conical bullet through the rifling grooves of the seven-and-a-half inch long ‘Civilian’ pattern barrel. 9 Propelled through the air, the lead made a sharp crack as it ploughed through the hard bones of the hog’s skull. Hitting right where Dusty had intended it should, a couple of inches above the eyes and in the exact centre of the head, the .44 bullet tore into the beast’s brain pan. Killed instantly, the hog’s fore legs buckled under it and the great body turned a forward somersault from its momentum.
    Twisting himself over in a violent, desperate roll, the scout barely avoided being struck by the hog’s fast-moving carcass. It crashed to the ground on its back and, with a final, frantic thrashing of its legs, went limp. Raising himself on to his hands, the scout looked at the dead hog. Then he turned his face towards his rescuer. Surprise flickered across the scout’s bronzed features as he realised that he owed his life to a Confederate States’ Army captain.
    ‘Thanks, frie—’ the scout had begun to say, but the words trailed off and, after staring for a few seconds, he continued, ‘Well I’ll be damned!’
    ‘Maybe you’ll have time to repent from your sinful ways, hombre,’ Dusty answered, having deftly cocked his Colt on its recoil and turned it to line with disconcerting inflexibility in the man’s direction. ‘Happen you stay put for a spell, that is.’
    Drawing one leg up under him ready to make a dive towards his weapons, the scout remained at the foot of the tree. His eyes flickered to the hole in the hog’s skull, then swung to estimate the distance from which the big Texan had cut loose. That had