Juliet's Moon

by Ann Rinaldi

  Thinking the same thing, Martha offered, "You can leave Mary if you want. Seth's a good man. He'd agree to it."

  "You want to stay, Mary?" he asked her.

  "I saw two bear cubs," she told him. "Outside. Romping."

  He put his arm around her shoulder. "C'mon now, don't start. It's time for your medicine, anyway."

  "They want to attack me. I'm afraid, Bill."

  He fished a small bottle out of his pocket. "Here," he said to me, "take this into the kitchen and have Maxine give her a whole teaspoonful." It was an order. I looked at Martha. She nodded yes, so I took Mary by the arm and we went to the kitchen.

  There Maxine fussed over her, commented on the head bandage, which was larger than mine had ever been, on the wrapped-up arm in a sling, and the way she limped.

  "You should be in bed, sweetie," she told her.

  "I remember you," Mary said, wondering how she could have.

  "Course you do, darling." In two minutes Maxine knew she wasn't right in the head and made her a cup of tea. "You want some breakfast?" She had bacon frying in the pan in the hearth, coffee bubbling, and was ready to start cracking eggs over the skillet.

  "No thank you," Mary said politely. "We have to go soon. Before either the bears or the Yankees get us."

  Martha and Bill came into the kitchen. He wrapped Mary in a cloak and put a scarf around her head. Martha went about putting some bread and meat slices and cheese in a small sack for them.

  He kissed Martha on the forehead and turned to go. I saw her shudder after that kiss. I saw her hug Mary. Then they went out.

  "He shot a hole in the milk pail and it's all lost," I told Maxine and Martha.

  "The devil doan always wear his green ears and tail" was Maxine's reply.

  Martha just shook her head. "There's another reason you shouldn't be going out to that barn alone," she said. "Well, I expect an answer to my letter to Seth today. Come, let's have breakfast."

  Just as she got those words out of her mouth came the sound of two gunshots, one hard after the other. I jumped. Martha put her hand over her heart and we ran to the dining room windows just as Bill and Mary rode by. Bill saw us and raised his hat in salute with one hand while putting his revolver back in the holster with the other.

  "What was he shooting at?" Martha asked.

  But I knew. Your heart knows such things. And I ran to the front hall and out of the house into the cold to peer into the patch of woods across the path, where the bears liked to play of a morning.

  There they lay. Dead. Blood running down their beautiful winter coats.

  "Noooo," I screamed. And then I went into a fit of coughing and crying. Martha came over to me, and she, who loved those bear cubs so much, held me close and told me that now they were running around in heaven. Where it wasn't cold and where they could find their mother.

  I cried some more. "Dear God," she asked Maxine, who'd just come out the door, "what would Seth do?"

  "I 'spect his bein' here would be enuf," Maxine answered her. "Leave her be, Martha, leave her cry it out. Come on in. Remember your own baby. She'll come in when she's ready. She's a big girl now. She'll come in when she's ready."

  Somebody put a cloak over me, and I lay there on the cold ground.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  "WHAT ARE you doing there on the cold ground, coughing your guts up?" the voice asked.

  I must have dozed off. I recollect Martha begging me to come inside and me being sassy to her, then someone throwing a blanket over me. All I heard now was the far-flung call of birds going about their morning business. I raised my head. It was Sue Mundy, dressed as Sue Mundy. She was scowling down at me. I closed my eyes again.

  "The bears are dead," I managed to say in a voice chilled with cold. "Bill Anderson was here and he shot them."

  "When?"

  "I don't know. Earlier this morning."

  "Is that a reason to lie on the ground and sacrifice yourself to the gods for pneumonia?"

  "I don't care about pneumonia. For all I know I've got it already." I coughed deeply. "Just go away and leave me be."

  "You wouldn't talk that way if your brother were here."

  "Well, he isn't, is he? He's out gallivanting someplace with stupid Quantrill and his men." I coughed again. My head hurt. I squinted my eyes in the brightness of the day. Who was that man a short distance from us, down the drive? He wasn't one of Quantrill's men. He wasn't dressed like it. "What'd you do?" I asked. "Bring home an outrider?"

  "And I thought, when I kissed you way back when, it'd help you grow up. Well, it didn't, did it? Do you know what your trouble is, Juliet Bradshaw? Your brother never laid a hand on you, that's your trouble. He's too darned nice a guy. Go on, get in the house. I'll be along in a minute."

  "I'm not going." I fell back on the ground and covered myself with the blanket.

  Just then I felt a shadow fall over me, blocking the bright sun, darkening my world more than the blanket could. And in the next instant I was lifted off the ground, and a hand pulled the blanket from my face.

  Oh, I wanted the blanket. Give it back to me.

  The familiar face with a day's worth of beard grazed mine in a kiss. "Hello, Juliet."

  "Hello, Seth."

  "Stupid Quantrill, hey? Shall I tell him you said that? Or would you rather tell him yourself?"

  I knew the smell of him, the strong soap he used mixed with whiskey and horse and tobacco. I didn't open my eyes right off because I wanted to throw up, I was so disgusted with myself.

  "Come on, Juliet." He was walking with me to the porch. "Own up."

  I hid my face in his shirtfront.

  "I thought you liked Sue Mundy." In the house he paused in the foyer.

  "I do." My answer was mumbled.

  "You don't treat her that way. And the same goes for me."

  "Oh, Seth, I'm sorry. It's just that things are so mumblefuddled around here."

  "Mumblefuddled, hey?"

  "Yes." I opened my eyes to look into his. He was not angry. He was amused. "And now the two bears are dead. Dead, Seth. That damned Bill Anderson shot them for no reason at all."

  "Don't cuss. I don't like you cussing." Serious. Don't fool around with serious.

  "All right," I said meekly. I am an expert at meekness when his mood calls for it. He set me down. Martha and Maxine almost leaped on him, and there were all sorts of greetings. In the next moment Martha and Seth went into a sunny corner of the dining room and kissed and hugged in front of the lace curtains.

  When they finished she was flushed. I turned away and started coughing. Seth frowned. "That doesn't sound so good. Get my saddlebag, please, Maxine."

  She fetched it and he fished around inside and drew out a small bottle. "Quantrill sent this for you. It'll knock your cough into next week. You gotta eat first, though."

  "Everybody sit down," Maxine ordered. "And eat."

  We sat at the table and everybody talked at once. I ate an egg, some toast, and tea. Then I kissed Martha and, without prompting, told her I was sorry for giving her a difficult time outside before.

  "Oh, sweetheart," she said, "you know we all love you. Now go to sleep for a while. Seth said he's going to make little coffins for the bears."

  Seth nodded and I kissed him. He said nothing. He made me take Quantrill's concoction right there at the table, a teaspoonful of cherry-tasting opiate syrup. Then I left the room with Maxine to go to bed.

  "I know now how you manage her without raising a hand," I heard Sue Mundy say.

  "How's that?" Seth asked.

  "To the naked eye it seems as if you spoil her," Sue told him, "but when you really study on it, you've got her wrapped around your finger, Seth. But the cord isn't rope, it's silver."

  "It's love," Martha said, "the strongest rope there is."

  I looked back. Seth was holding his coffee cup and blushing.

  When I awoke it was dark outside, night. From below I heard voices, ordinary family voices, and I smelled food.
It must be suppertime. I quietly ventured downstairs.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  THE NEXT morning we buried the bears. Seth had made two little coffins and dug a hole in the hard, unforgiving winter ground in a pretty little clearing where the bears had liked to play. Martha said she supposed it was all right if we said a prayer from the Bible over them. I couldn't believe my family was doing all this for me, for it was for me, I know, to heal my spirit.

  My coughing had subsided. Whatever was in that potion from Quantrill had worked. "He gives it out to his men in the winter," Seth told us. "And by the way, Martha, I'd like to invite him for Christmas dinner."

  Seth was to stay all through December and January. Quantrill and his men had made their winter camp at Mineral Creek in Texas, and he agreed to Seth coming home because his wife was expecting a child. And because a lot of his men were going home to Missouri for the winter.

  Seth told us that many of Quantrill's Raiders were breaking away. "Too much dissipation and hooliganism," he said. "Too much time on their hands and whiskey to fill in the hours. There's been a breakdown in discipline. The old-timers, like myself, can't abide it."

  He told us some went back to bushwhacking on their own. Some joined the regular Confederate army.

  "And you?" I asked.

  "Haven't answered that question myself yet," he told me.

  After burying the bears, Seth attacked what he called the "traveler's room," the small room at the west end of the kitchen. He'd once explained to me that he and Pa had built it in a style after Patrick Henry's traveler's room, with brick floors covered with bear rugs, a buffet where food could be laid out, and commodious chairs next to a hearth.

  "Pa's intention wasn't mine," Seth explained to me. He was being helped by Echo. They were moving a double bed into the room. "His was for travelers. Mine is for emergencies."

  "Are you going to sleep in here?" I asked.

  "From here I can make a quick getaway if that Yankee comes 'round in the middle of the night," he explained. "My horse will be at the ready just outside the door."

  "You're not sleeping in here without me," Martha declared. She had an armful of clothing. "Let's get the fire started, Echo. Warm the place up."

  "The mattress isn't as good as the one on our bed," Seth reminded her.

  "Then we'll take the one from our bed," she said simply. She smiled at him. He smiled back, and I saw how much they loved each other, how much it meant to them just to be together.

  For Christmas, Seth set himself the task of making a cradle, thankful to Pa for forcing him to learn woodworking under the tutelage of Harvey, Pa's woodworker, who was still with us. We gathered holly in from the woods, and Seth cut a small tree. Martha and I decorated it with whatever we could find, including sugar cookies I made and popcorn.

  I sewed him a new Quantrill Raider shirt for Christmas, though it was not to be a surprise. There was so much red embroidery on it that I couldn't stay alone in my room that long. Martha fashioned him a new pair of trousers. Seth gave her a new blouse and a skirt to wear over a hoop. He gave me a green and black plaid dress with the darlingest white collar. When we kissed him we didn't ask where he'd gone shopping. We knew he didn't want to be asked. And he'd say it was payment for Pa's house, burned to the ground. And he'd be right.

  Quantrill never came for Christmas. A single outrider arrived a week ahead of time instead with a note that said he didn't dare leave Texas; his men were planning some mischief in the town of Sherman and he had to be there to keep a lid on the shenanigans. The rider also delivered two bottles of whiskey "rescued" from a Yankee supply-train wagon.

  We had a sumptuous Christmas dinner.

  We read a while later in the local paper about the shenanigans. Quantrill's men got drunk on Christmas Eve and rode through Sherman shooting off their guns, knocking off people's hats, making holes in church steeples, and blasting away at doors. They rode their horses into the town's only hotel and smashed into furniture, broke mirrors, and their horses' hooves broke the floors. The people of Sherman were paralyzed with fear. Quantrill had to send some of his other men to round the hooligans up and bring them back to camp. And the next day he sent them back to town to apologize and to pay for all the damages.

  "Funny thing about Quantrill," Seth told us. "He's got his own moral center and it beats the hell out of that of most men."

  Chapter Thirty

  DURING THE days now, Seth kept away from the house. Mostly he stayed around the barn or corral, working with the help. There was a new horse he was breaking in that he'd been given by one of Quantrill's guerrillas who came 'round to visit. Several of them did in the weeks after Christmas. They'd come with news, gossip, whiskey, and maybe a horse they wanted Seth to keep for them until "it was all over." Seth obliged.

  When this happened, when one of his fellow guerillas came 'round, they stayed out in the camp Seth had constructed on the other side of the creek. There were a couple of tents, a rough stone hearth, a firing range, and plenty of food brought down from the house by me. Oft as not, I brought deer meat, ham, casseroles that Martha had made, potatoes he could bake on the hearth, even cake and ground coffee.

  Always, I wanted to stay as they practiced their shooting skills or played a round of cards, but no, Seth wouldn't let me. He'd introduce me politely, then order me back to the house with some message for Martha. Always I'd hear the words pretty and sweet from the visitor about me as I went my way, and I'd know why Seth didn't want me lingering about.

  Most nights when nobody was visiting, Seth would come up to the house and get in bed in the traveler's room with Martha. He'd stay for breakfast, take stock of what was going on, make sure I was doing my schoolwork, and go back to his work or his camp.

  We had it arranged that if Heffinger or any other Yankee came along, I'd run out quickly and put a small quilt on the fence that surrounded the house. If Seth didn't see it, word would get to him and he'd skedaddle out of there.

  Heffinger rode in on a Sunday night at the end of December, alone. He gave his horse over to Echo and knocked on the door, pretty as you please in his federal winter coat, with a gift wrapped in brown paper for Martha. Turned out it was yards of warm fabric to be made into whatever she chose for whomever she chose.

  I escaped briefly to put the small blue and white quilt on the fence. Then realized it couldn't be seen in the early darkness. So I put on my warm woolen cape and my boots and picked up the Sharpe's rifle and made up some lie about going to the barn to see a sick mare. Then I picked up a lantern and, bowing my head against the cold, headed for the barn. As I passed through the kitchen, I picked up a piece of ham and bread and a half bottle of rum and shoved it in a basket.

  I ran into Seth in the barn. "He's here. The Yankee captain. You better skedaddle. At least to your camp for the night."

  Seth cursed. Oh, how I admired the smoothness of the words that had to do with hell being damned as well as purple, and naming God's son and calling him Almighty, words he'd have sent me to my room for saying.

  Then he stopped and looked at me. Or rather the Sharpe's rifle. "Didn't I tell you not to carry that thing around with you?"

  "No."

  "Why do you? You can't shoot it."

  I'd never told him I could. Only a fool would tell him now. "People don't know that. I feel that it protects me."

  "Tell you what. You'll need protection if I see you dragging it around again."

  Oh, he was good, shooting a bull's-eye with every word. I loved it when he went on like that because the words had no meaning. Yet I was expected to take them seriously.

  I played the game. I handed the rifle over. It made him feel better.

  "Better get back to the house. Thanks for the vittles. And tell Martha I'll be fine and to get rid of that son of Satan soon as she can."

  "Yes, Seth." I kissed his cheek. He grunted and we parted.

  On Monday morning Heffinger was still there.

  IT WAS on Monday that Sue Mundy hurt her
self in the barn. She, or he, had gone down there to help Harvey, the woodworker, make a side table for the parlor. In the bright and dry morning air her scream echoed against the bare landscape and blue sky.

  "Oh, hurry," Martha pleaded, as I grabbed my coat. "Oh, thank god Heffinger is still sleeping. Please hurry, Juliet."

  Like a bat I was out of the house and running to the barn. There was Harvey holding some burlap around the forearm of Sue Mundy or Jerome Clark, his eyes big and frightened. "Doan know what happened," Harvey kept saying. "That saw just slipped. Doan know what happened."

  "It's all right," I said, though I knew it wasn't. "Here, I'll get her up to the house and we'll take care of it. It's all right, Harvey, let go."

  "Best fetch your brother."

  "Ssh, remember, the Yankee is here!" I led Sue out of the barn and up to the house. There was blood all over my apron and her dress.

  We walked right past Martha and into Sue's room, which was downstairs. Remember, no one must know that Sue Mundy is a man. Not Martha, not Maxine. And especially not Captain Heffinger.

  Right off, Maxine wanted to take charge.

  "No." I pushed past her and Martha. "I'm taking care of her. She saved my life. Twice. She's mine! Just get me some vinegar for her wound and some water and fabric to bind her up in."

  "Juliet, you can't," Martha started to say. She followed me into Sue's bedroom.

  "Why? I can do as well as anybody. Besides, ask her who she wants to help her. Go ahead, ask."

  Martha asked.

  "Juliet," Sue said. "My little friend, Juliet." She must keep her identity hidden, even at the cost of refusing expert help from Martha.

  Martha shook her head in puzzlement and left the room. Then another figure appeared. Captain Heffinger.

  "What's this? Somebody shoot her?"

  "No," Sue managed. "I cut myself with the saw. Now leave me be, Captain. It's just a little cut. Maud here knows how to take care of it."

  It made me daft, having to be called Maud in front of him.