by William Gear
“That’s the dilemma, isn’t it?” Hindman admitted, his blue eyes hardening. “It takes tyranny to preserve freedom.”
“What about when it’s over? Assume we win this thing. Tomorrow, Lincoln and Davis declare peace and a cease to all hostilities. Do you just let loose of the reins?” He gestured around at the city. “Little Rock … Hell, all of Arkansas is a mess. If you just hold on to power, use the troops, you can order people back to work. Order prison details to rebuild the destroyed bridges and railroads. Supervise investment in new steamboats and rail lines.”
Hindman’s expression was lined in thought as they pulled up before the Anthony House. “It will all be different. New.”
“And Tom, it’s going to take an iron hand to deal with slavery. The Negroes are going to know how close they came to freedom. That’s going to fester. Like it or not, if we win, you’re going to have to put them on a path to freedom. That may well be the ultimate price of secession. You willing to pay it?”
Hindman’s expression soured. “I don’t know.”
The doorman emerged, arms behind him as he awaited instructions.
“That’s the perpetual trap, isn’t it?” Hindman almost mumbled, still seeing things in his head.
“Call it the irony of revolution. Your policies have split the state. Even alienated some of your generals. Palmer predicted it correctly when he said a lot of folks would slip away into the swamps and forest to avoid conscription. Pro-Union sentiment has never been higher.”
“At its roots, Butler, Arkansas is a Southern state. It wouldn’t be happy in the Union. You know that.”
“Tom, my guess is that maybe one in ten people here have any idea of how much sacrifice, blood, and treasure it will take to win independence. I fear the explosion when they finally find out.”
“I will pay any price. Even if I have to drag the people by their ears to get them into the fight. I know that many of the prominent ones have been complaining to Beauregard. Some have even traveled to Richmond to air their grievances to Jefferson Davis in person.” He shrugged, looked back at the Texans sitting on their horses like centaurs. “Whatever it takes. I’ve crossed the Rubicon.”
Butler lowered his voice to a whisper. “Negro regiments?”
“As an absolute, last means to stave off defeat, yes.”
Butler swung down from his horse, handing the reins to the doorman. “I’m with you. But Tom, remember something else. The reason we had a republic in the first place was because George Washington didn’t declare himself a king. And yes, Caesar was able to seize the reins of power in Rome … but it didn’t work out well for him in the end.”
Hindman chuckled softly. “Something I’ll keep in mind, Butler. Now, may I wish you a pleasant—”
“General!” Robert Newton called as he burst from the door, a piece of paper in hand. “Good to see you back, sir. This came by courier today.”
Newton handed the missive up. Hindman broke the seal and squinted in the dying summer light. His face had the look of stone when he lowered the paper. Stared up at the evening sky where a couple of bats fluttered against the purpling heavens. Then he met Newton’s curious gaze before raising an eyebrow.
“Perhaps, Butler, you’re not the only one worried about my dictatorship. President Davis has just appointed Major General Theophilus Holmes as commander of the Trans-Mississippi. I am to offer him every courtesy.”
“So … the complainers and traitors have won?” Newton asked.
“That, my friends, depends on Theophilus Holmes. Meanwhile, we have some time before he arrives. A couple of weeks, a month at most. Let’s make the best of it, shall we?”
He knocked off a salute, turning his mare and trotting off toward his home where Mollie and the children were waiting.
“Never seen a man with such faith in himself,” Newton muttered.
Butler nodded, clamping his eyes shut, seeing the nine deserters as muskets and shotgun blasts blew them apart. Exhausted and depressed, he swallowed hard, as if to choke off the horror.
Dear God, are they going to fill my dreams like the dying and maimed wretches from Shiloh?
“Oh, it will be all right, Hancock,” Newton assured him, clapping him on the back. “Sometimes I think you care too much. Join me. I’ll stand you for a whiskey in the bar.”
“No, I’m tired, Robert. I’ll see you in the morning.”
He turned, heading for his room. As his boots trod the carpet, the execution of the nine deserters kept running over and over in his head. This would be another night of twisting and turning, of nightmares filled with blood and terror.
Nine more helpless human beings. Add them to the growing tally of ghosts and demons.
“Dear God, Paw! I don’t want to die!” The boy’s scream—clear as a bell—was deafening in Butler’s head.
“Not my responsibility,” Butler whispered to himself.
But what happens when it finally is?
The voice seemed to whisper out of the very air.
A sob caught in his throat.
28
October 1, 1862
The problem with a field of corn, beans, and squash was that it couldn’t be moved. Sarah pondered that change of perspective. All of her life, she’d preferred farming because the field was right there, next to the house. You always knew exactly where to find it. Convenient and close at hand.
Unlike cattle, horses, or sheep that had to be followed around from one patch of grass to the next—or chickens or hogs that could wander off and get into trouble—plants just sat there, waiting to be watered and weeded, to have pests like hornworms picked off, and the raccoons kept at bay.
She had always thought planting safe and tidy.
War changed everything.
Fields, and their ripening crops, were impossible to hide. They sat naked and vulnerable to anyone passing on the road. And a lot of people had been passing since General Rains had ordered a Confederate cavalry regiment to be camped over at Cross Hollow, just south of Pea Ridge. Not only that, but new recruits were being brought in from Missouri and were being trained up at Elkhorn Tavern. Those were a lot of mouths to be fed.
Fed what?
And by whom?
The first ears of corn were ripening, the squash full, and pods of beans at the edge of maturation. Sarah had no illusions about how her field would look to half-famished soldiers.
If only she could figure out how to keep her harvest from being “requisitioned” by desperate Confederates with empty commissary wagons.
Her few chickens, one cow, and two horses at least had been shinnied up into the mountains where Billy shuttled them back and forth out of sight. A skill at which her brother was becoming most adept.
The fields, ripening in the new October sun, were now lush from the efforts of her hard work—and Billy’s, whenever he was around. It would be enough to keep her and Maw in high style through the winter, as well as provide enough of a surplus she could trade down in Fayetteville.
Assuming she could get her harvest safely past the soldiers and all the way to market. That meant driving a wagon full of food down the Telegraph Wire Road and right past the soldiers’ noses. Even if she could get her crop to Fayetteville and the staples back, the army would know she had two horses hidden somewhere, and that the wagon—now propped up and “broken”—was actually sound and worth taking.
“I hate this damn war,” she whispered, surprised that the profanity not only came with such ease, but that God didn’t strike her down with a lightning bolt for blasphemy. But then, after what she’d seen in the aftermath of the fight up on Pea Ridge, maybe everything she’d ever been told about God was a lie.
Word was that General Curtis and his Federals had marched clear over to Helena on the far side of the state. In the Union Army’s wake, General Hindman had taken cavalry up into Missouri, establishing a headquarters just across the border at Pineville. As a result, trickles of flour, molasses, salt, and sugar had been making their way up th
e line from Fort Smith and Van Buren, traded all the way across Texas. Clear from Mexico, of all places.
Sarah, more than anything, wanted a winter’s supply—especially the flour, sugar, salt, and molasses. Little Rock and its magical future had faded like a winter mist.
She wiped her sweaty face, glancing out at the road where a lone horseman appeared from the trees, apparently on his way north from the ruins of Van Winkle’s mill. The Federals had destroyed the mill just before they pulled out, thinking it to be a meeting place for Confederate bushwhackers. A lot of mills—unless they’d declared themselves Union—had been destroyed. Almost a third of them. And now the tannery was gone, too.
She glanced speculatively at her corn, then back at the rider who had stopped short where the Hancock farm lane turned off the Huntsville Road.
She murmured, “Just keep going, mister. We ain’t got nothing here for you.”
From his gray outfit and slouch hat, he was a Confederate officer. Following in his wake came the sound of more horses. Moments later a small band of cavalry appeared out of the trees, the distant clatter of their approach barely audible over the White River’s soft hush.
Sarah took a deep breath. It wasn’t that unusual to see, but most Confederate cavalry used the Telegraph Road, heading up to raid Missouri.
Now the officer turned his horse, walking it up the farm lane in an almost leisurely way; he slouched in the saddle as he stared at the fallow field where the tobacco and cotton had once grown.
“Damn it!” Sarah dropped her hoe, running full tilt to the house, calling, “Maw! Riders coming! Reb cavalry!”
She dashed up onto the porch, hurrying to remove the warning bucket from the corner where Billy couldn’t help but notice.
Not that he’d come stumbling into the house with a couple dozen strange horses tethered in the yard.
Sarah turned as Maw stepped out the door, wiping her hands in her apron. They were thick with acorn dough, made after leaching the nuts and then mashing them. What little flour and meal they had been able to find was now augmented by the natural produce of the forest: acorns, hickory nuts, walnuts, and hazelnuts. On racks out back wild plums were drying along with persimmon, mulberries, and chinquapins.
Again, that had been Billy’s work, wild foods he’d learned from John Gritts.
The officer dallied until his small command caught up, then stepped up his approach. He seemed unusually interested in the buildings, glanced curiously at the wagon where it was propped on a timber, the splintered wheel weathering next to it.
He wouldn’t see any sign of the horses, of course. They stayed hidden up in the hills. And the real wheel—good and true—was stashed back in the wild rosebushes. The broken one had been picked up on the battlefield and was prominently displayed as a ruse that the wagon was immobile, and therefore not worth requisitioning.
Then the officer turned his eyes on Sarah and Maw. A slow smile spread beneath a ragged dark-blond beard. A glittering in the eyes where they squinted out from either side of a straight and patrician nose. Something about him …
Maw gasped. “Dear God!”
“Butler!” Sarah cried, dashing down off the porch.
He stepped down from the saddle, ground-reining his sorrell mare. Throwing his arms wide, he gathered her into a great hug, drawing her to his breast.
“Sarah! Sarah!” he cried. “By the sun, moon, and stars, I’ve missed you.” He pushed her back, his gray eyes intense as he studied her. Reaching out, he pushed a couple of sun-bleached blond locks from her tanned forehead, saying, “I don’t think any man alive has such a beautiful sister. Helen herself would slink from the halls of Troy at the mere mention of your name.”
“You look thin,” she told him. Then wrinkled her nose. “And you smell like—”
“Don’t.” He put fingers to her lips. “Such words should never cross a lady’s lips.”
Then he pushed her aside and grabbed Maw up in his bear hug, crying, “And how are you, most lovely of fine ladies?”
“I’m happy!” Maw was crying. “So happy to see you.”
She held him at arm’s length, looking him up and down. “You’ve been traveling far?”
“From Fort Smith. I have a dispatch from General Hindman for General Rains. My men and I need to rest the horses and be off in the morning.”
He turned, ordering, “Corporal. Bivouac the men in the field down by the river and see to my horse, please.”
“Yes, Lieutenant,” the corporal, a dust-covered and weary-looking young man with a Texas drawl, replied. Stepping his horse forward, he gave Sarah a dashing and devil-may-care grin, doffing his ill-shaped felt hat in the process and bowing deeply from the saddle.
She demurely responded with a slight curtsy, and lowered her eyes. Blessed be, he was a charmer with his wild honeyed locks, full-lipped smile, and dancing brown eyes.
Butler chuckled, whispering under his breath, “Don’t even think it, sis. Corporal Baldy Taylor may draw women like stink draws flies, but the last thing on his mind is a fancy brick house in the city.”
As the corporal led Butler’s mare away, throwing appreciative glances over his shoulder the whole way, Sarah grabbed Butler’s arm, saying, “Just as well. Billy’d beat the tar out of him for just looking.”
Butler lifted an eyebrow. “If he’s going to take on Baldy, he’d better wear his working clothes and pack a lunch.”
“Working clothes is all we’ve got left,” Maw said sourly. “And they’re starting to get threadbare. But enough of this, how have you been, son? We got the one letter.”
“Then you know about Paw?” he asked, as they walked inside.
“Yes. You’ve heard nothing more?” Maw pulled a chair out for him.
“Not a word.” Butler stood, hat in hand, as he eyed the chair. “My rear is sore enough, Mother. Let me get my land legs back. Got anything to drink?”
“Horsemint tea or spring water. What we call coffee is made from chicory root and dark-roasted corn. Can’t get real coffee anymore.”
Butler was staring around the house. A slow look of confusion supplanted his apparent delight at being home. “Water’s fine. Where are the rugs? The divan? And half the books are missing.”
“Burned after being blood-soaked,” Sarah told him, walking over to slice acorn bread and dig out the tin of lard Billy had rendered from a black bear he’d killed. With the milk cow dry they had no butter. “We were used as a hospital after the big battle. Took weeks after the last of the wounded was carted off to get the blood out of the floor. Wasn’t till later that Billy figured out we could have staked some of the rugs in the river and left them to clean in the current. By then it was too late.”
“Didn’t want ’em in here after that,” Maw told Butler as she handed him a cup of water. “Just seeing the patterns again would remind me of them poor boys.” Her sharp eyes fixed on Butler. “But you’d know better than we would after Shiloh.”
Sarah saw the paling of Butler’s face, saw his mouth quiver, the slight shake of his right hand. He dropped his gaze to the water, clasping the cup in both hands to steady it. Maw had missed his reaction, hustling back to her kitchen to open the dampers on the woodstove.
“What word of Philip?” Sarah asked quickly. “You just said he’d been taken.”
Butler almost trembled as he grabbed the grease-slathered bread from her hand. Closing his eyes, he savored it as he chewed. “What kind of bread is this?”
“Made of acorns and cattail roots,” Maw called, apparently satisfied with her stove. “Thank your little brother. If he wasn’t half wild Indian, we’d starve.”
Butler wolfed the rest of the bread and washed it down with water; then he noticed Sarah’s still raised eyebrow, and said, “All I know is that Philip stayed with his wounded when Bragg’s corps withdrew. As a regimental surgeon, he’ll no doubt be paroled and exchanged sometime soon. He may already be free. Since he was taken, surgeons have been declared noncombatants.”
&n
bsp; Maw ladled a bowl of stew from the pot on the stove, found a spoon, and set it before Butler, who finally seated himself. “Is he still sore as a nose-twitched bear? Mad at your paw?”
Butler nodded as he spooned soup into his mouth, heedless of the drops that stuck to his mustache. “That hurt of his, it turns out, runs deep. Some wounds…” He paused, eyes lowered. “Well, enough said.”
“What was it?” Sarah demanded. “Did you ever find out? Everything was fine one day, and the next, Philip stormed out and was gone.”
Butler nodded, started to speak. Then he glanced furtively at Maw, jaws clamped tight.
“Oh, tell her,” Maw said, turning tiredly away. “I knew all about it when it happened, so you’re not sparing me any grief. Given what Sarah’s been through, she’s a grown woman now.” Maw pointed her ladle at Sarah. “But don’t you breathe a word to your little brother! Your word on that!”
“Yes, ma’am.” Sarah turned back to Butler. “Why’d he leave?”
“He left because of a woman.” Butler bit off the words.
A woman? But Paw wouldn’t have cared who Philip wanted to court. It wasn’t like they would have been after the same … She stiffened, uncertain gaze going to Maw, who’d turned her back, her attention on the stove.
Oh, Paw, how could you? But it figured. It was always the ones who loved him that he hurt the most.
“On the brighter side,” Butler said with false cheer, “Philip is engaged to a socially prominent Memphis belle named Ann Marie Morton. A surgeon’s daughter of good reputation. They are to be married next spring. Assuming Philip can escape the Yankees, and doesn’t mind the turmoil of Memphis being a Union town.”
“Is she a nice girl?” Maw asked.
“I can’t tell you. The one time I was in Memphis, Tom Hindman had me running from dawn till half past midnight. Otherwise I would have called and paid my compliments. Philip, however, is besotted with love. Which, given his normally dour persuasion, is really something of a miracle in and of itself.”
