Colt had just walked up the street and begun to hitch Blue outside a freshly whitewashed mercantile when the boy emerged from between the alley that ran between the mercantile and a saloon. From the evident bulge of one cheek, he’d wasted no time in the matter of the penny candy.
He took his hat off and pretended to mop sweat off his brow. “It’s going to take you a while to check all that freight,” he said. “I could see to your horse. Water and a shady spot to graze. Watch him all day if you want.”
“How much?”
The boy seemed to consider. “Tell you what.” He patted Blue’s neck. “Normally I’d want at least a dime. But I like this horse. I’ll do it for a nickel.”
“Where’s this shade you’re talking about?”
The boy scowled. “I ain’t gonna steal your horse, mister.” He waved a hand downriver. “See that big ole chestnut tree right there along the river? You’ll be able to see him the whole time. But it’s better’n bein’ tied up to a hitchin’ post for hours and hours.”
“What’s your mama gonna say about you being gone all day?”
“She dead,” the boy said. “But she’d be glad to see me earnin’ my way.”
Dead. The word was shocking, coming so quickly, spoken so matter-of-factly. Colt wanted to know more, but just when he’d opened his mouth to ask another question, the wagons Captain Quinn had requisitioned rattled into view and, just behind them, the squadron he’d sent from the brigade.
“Tell you what,” Colt said. “I’ll pay you the dime, just not until I’m ready to ride out.”
The boy smiled. Nodded. “Right smart of you, Sergeant.” He took Blue’s reins and, with a practiced cluck of his tongue, trotted away.
Maggie had intended to spend the first night camping with the Irish Brigade wrapped in the blanket she’d brought with her and leaning against a wagon wheel, but when Fish realized what she was doing, he produced an extra blanket and insisted she take shelter beneath his wagon. She didn’t know how far they’d marched, but it didn’t seem all that much farther than she might have walked on an overnight hunting excursion.
The next day—Friday—passed without incident. Reveille sounded before dawn. Maggie smiled to herself when she recognized the call that meant “fall in.” She was learning. Other than Seamus and Jack and Fish, the men gave Maggie a wide berth, except for Private Ashby, who trotted up in the middle of the afternoon and offered to pay her a nickel if she’d mend a new tear in his shirt.
“Encounter another minié ball?” Maggie teased.
A blush climbed from beneath the collar on the private’s sack coat jacket and up his neck, eventually spreading across his cheeks. “I didn’t mean anything by that. I was just…” He didn’t finish the sentence.
Maggie smiled. “Bring it to me after we’ve made camp. I’ll see what I can do.”
“I’ll expect to pay you,” Ashby said. “Wouldn’t want your brothers to think I’m taking advantage.”
Maggie considered for a moment. Nodded. “All right. The next time you’re scavenging about, bring me a cup full of gooseberries, and I’ll mark your account paid in full. Does that suit?”
“Yes, ma’am, it sure does.” Ashby touched two fingers to the brim of his forage cap by way of salute and then trotted off.
As the day wore on, Maggie began to suspect that no one gave a man grief if he stepped away from the column for a moment or two. When Maggie asked Fish about it later, he didn’t seem to know what to say. Finally, he used Hero as an example and Maggie understood. Bugle calls told the men when to march, when to halt, and when to rest. Apparently there was no specific bugle call for “take to the woods and do what’s necessary.” The thought made her chuckle.
Hero spent most of the day curled up on a makeshift bed Fish had created by stuffing three empty burlap bags inside a fourth. He barely whimpered when Maggie took him to “do the necessary.” Still, knowing the dog was in pain and seeing him limp tore at Maggie’s heart. Her feelings of fondness appeared to be mutual, for when Maggie gathered Hero up at the end of the second day and carried him with her to settle beside Fish’s campfire, the dog thanked her with a pink tongue applied to the back of her hand. Heating a chunk of pork fat over the campfire, she dropped two squares of hardtack into the resulting grease. Once the hardtack had soaked up the grease, she took it off the fire. It had cooled down and she was hand feeding bits of it to Hero when Jack and Seamus joined her.
“You’re spoiling him,” Jack said.
Seamus joined in, peering over at Jack and whining, “She never treated us like that when we were sick.”
Maggie gave it right back. “I don’t know what to tell you boys. There’s just something irresistible about a man who obeys me and then wags his tail as if I’ve done him a favor.”
Just as she said it, Hero’s ears came up. He struggled to sit up, trembling from the effort of supporting the weight of his front quarters on his uninjured front leg. Maggie swept him into her arms and stood up just in time to see Sergeant Coulter and two wagons escorted by a squadron of men come into view.
News of the discovery on board the August McDowell had made its way throughout the company, but while Jack and Seamus hurried to join the gathering group of soldiers, Maggie held back. Something about seeing Sergeant Coulter made her feel awkward. Why just seeing him would evoke such a response made no sense. He’d been nothing but kind. Maybe she was nervous for him. He wasn’t wearing the sling, and he’d said the surgeons wanted him to keep it on for at least another week. That was probably it.
Seamus returned with confirmation of the story that had spread through the men. A deckhand had upset a pile of crates and one broke open, leading to the discovery of smuggled Henry rifles. “Captain Quinn say’s they’ll be distributed to those of us using older muskets from home.”
“One thing we hadn’t heard,” Jack added, “is where the shipment was headed.” He paused. “Wildwood Grove.”
At mention of smuggled arms and the plantation, Maggie told the boys about the Clara stopping at the Wildwood Grove levee. She told them about the amount of freight that had been offloaded there, and how surprised she’d been to see the uniformed Wildwood Guard there to receive it.
Jack glared at her. “And you didn’t think to mention it until now?”
“And when would I have done that,” Maggie snapped. “Before or after your fine captain ordered me out of camp? And if you’ll recall, I had other things on my mind—like a brother who, for all I knew, lay dying in the military hospital in St. Louis.”
They all just stood there looking at each other for half a beat, and then Jack said, “All right. I’m sorry. But—Blair’s mansion overlooks the river. It’s a perfect vantage point. Why, a man could stand up on that second-floor balcony and see what’s coming from a long way off.”
Seamus chimed in. “Maybe Blair is bringing in weapons to defend the plantation.”
Jack nodded. “To arm his own private militia, so they can keep the county for the Confederacy. With Wildwood Grove as the headquarters for the entire operation, and a private levee for receiving supplies.”
“We should talk to Sergeant Coulter,” Seamus said. “If we’re right, it could completely change our orders.”
Maggie spoke up. “Could what happened at the farm be connected to such a plan in some way?”
“I don’t see how,” Jack said, frowning.
“Could it have been some kind of… experiment… to see if there’d be any kind of unified response to an attack on a place owned by Union sympathizers?”
“I’d hate to think it was anything like that.”
“I don’t want to think it, either,” Maggie said. “But Sheriff Green never did a thing about it. He made promises, and then he resigned. He’s Major Isham Green now, and when I left home, Littleton still didn’t have a sheriff.” She told the boys about meeting Blair and his overseer and the newly outfitted Major Green on the road to the farm. “I’ve never been able to shake the notion that
he knew what had happened and why. That all three of them did.” The notion was enough to make her wish for more than a pocket pistol the next time she encountered a rebel.
“It doesn’t sound all that far-fetched,” Jack said. “Especially with a militia organizing at Wildwood Grove.” He glanced at Seamus. “You’re right. We’ve got to talk to—”
A shout went up from the soldiers gathered around the newly arrived wagons, just as a ragged mulatto boy scrambled across the cargo while a red-faced Fish gestured and shouted at the driver. Maggie recognized the boy from the Boonville levee. Together she, Jack, and Seamus inched closer to hear what was happening.
“I didn’t know!” the driver insisted. “He must have caught up to us and slipped under the cover when no one was looking.”
As for the boy, he didn’t seem in the least bit cowed by the vitriol directed at him. In fact, he hardly paid attention. He was, instead, standing on tiptoe, looking out over the gathering of soldiers. When he caught Maggie’s eye, he grinned, scampered over the wagon seat and onto the tongue, skittered between the two mules hitched to it, and finally stopped next to Maggie.
“Please, ma’am,” he pleaded. “I helped you find the Irish, and I didn’t even charge for it. Please don’t let them send me back.”
Chapter 10
Ever since the officers of the Wildwood Guard had taken up residence at the house, Walker had made it clear that he expected Libbie to reign over meals as if she were already the leading lady of Missouri society. Five course dinners served on the good china had become de rigueur, and so it was on a fine June evening that Libbie was seated at her dressing table when she heard booted feet charge in the front door and clomp into Walker’s private office.
The fact that whoever it was hadn’t waited to be let in was reason enough to know there was trouble—without the shouts and cursing that echoed into the hall and up the stairs and through Libbie’s closed bedroom door. Libbie glanced at Ora Lee’s reflection in the mirror. The girl grimaced.
“Mr. Blair breathin’ fire about somethin’,” she said, and continued putting the final touches on the complex combination of braids and twists that would keep Libbie’s abundant dark hair under control during the supper hour.
Picking up her silver hand mirror, Libbie turned about to survey Ora Lee’s work. “I don’t know how you do that,” she said, touching the strand of pearls the girl had woven into the arrangement. “You’re an artist when it comes to arrangin’ hair.”
Ora Lee, who had stepped back when Libbie took up the mirror, stood quietly, her hands clasped behind her back. “Thank you, Miss Libbie. I enjoys it and I am glad you are pleased.”
Annabelle had said that Ora Lee would be grateful for the chance to escape the quarters, and she’d been right. The girl had done everything Libbie asked with quiet efficiency. She wasn’t Mariah, but it wasn’t hard to imagine that Ora Lee and a young Mariah would probably have had much in common.
More noise from down below made Libbie set the mirror down and cross the carpeted floor to open her bedroom door. Her room opened onto the wide hall that split the house into two equal halves. Exterior doors at each end of the hall opened onto balconies, the front looking out over the river, the back over the kitchen garden and the fields beyond. A small sitting area opposite the stairs provided a place to take refuge on hot, rainy days—and to hopefully capture any breeze that might waft up from the river.
While the four doors opening onto the upstairs hall admitted inhabitants to bedrooms, the downstairs hall separated the formal parlor and family sitting room on the west side of the house from Walker’s office and the dining room on the east. The painted wood floor did nothing to deaden the sound, and Libbie could hear nearly every word spilling from Walker’s office.
She was careful to remain out of sight. She’d learned very early on that Walker saw trouble, no matter how slight, as a personal affront—evidence of failure on his part—and if Libbie personally witnessed her brother’s failure, things did not go well for her. She’d teased him once about that ribbon of masculine pride. Only once. Walker had not one sliver of a sense of humor when it came to his personal failings. The evidence of his turning his rage on her was only bruises, and while he profusely apologized for causing them, Libbie had ever after made it her business not to know Walker’s.
In the case of whatever was going on downstairs right now, had the cause of Walker’s unhappiness been something to do with the running of the plantation, it would be easy enough to stay here in her room and mind her own business. But with officers staying at the house and Walker expecting a nice supper, Libbie couldn’t do that. The question was what she should do—and how.
War had come to Lafayette County. The veneer of gracious living had already cracked, and one only had to look out the back door of the house at the dozens of tents pitched in the field beyond the kitchen garden to know it. Even the servants had sensed the change. Oh, they were as deferential as ever, but there was something new in the way they behaved. The frequency with which they glanced at the horizon. The expression on their faces when they looked at the river—expressions that changed the instant they realized Libbie had taken notice. She didn’t ask the obvious question, because she knew they wouldn’t answer truthfully. Still, she could not help but think it. Federals are camped just down the river at Boonville. Why don’t you run?
At the sound of the front door slamming, Libbie jumped. She glanced at Ora Lee, who was still standing by the dressing table. Libbie held up one finger, signaling. Wait just a minute. Ora Lee nodded understanding, and Libbie stepped out into the hall. As soundlessly as possible, she moved to the head of the stairs. Careful to stand where her hooped skirt would remain out of sight, she listened.
“Discovered?” Walker roared. “That’s the second shipment!” He pounded something—with his fist, Libbie thought from the sound of it. “I want to know the name of every single—”
Walker broke off. Another voice—calmer, quieter—murmured something Libbie couldn’t make out. Walker yelled a response.
“Well, now Major Green—” He emphasized the rank, his tone mocking. “They weren’t reliable, were they? If they’d been reliable, the men camped in my backyard would have brand-new Henrys! There’d be a battery mounted at the top of that rock wall. We’d be talking cavalry instead of trying to figure out how to arm the men camped in my pasture!”
Another voice from below sounded, and Walker interrupted.
“ ‘These things happen’? Don’t tell me ‘these things happen’! Do you have any idea how expensive it is to purchase silence? How much it costs to find pilots willing to take their chances on that river? And what do we have to show for it? Nothing!” Walker laughed—an ugly sound. “The Wildwood Guard, armed with hunting rifles and muskets. Without so much as one cannon. We’ll be the laugh of the county. And God help us if the Federals march on us with the McDowell’s howitzer to back them up. Don’t tell me ‘these things happen’!”
Libbie stepped back, her heart racing. Ora Lee had come to the bedroom door. When Libbie motioned for her to leave by way of the servants’ stairs, Ora Lee hesitated, casting a concerned look Libbie’s way. Libbie forced a smile. Nodded. I’ll be all right. She pressed her hands together, closed her eyes, and pantomimed going to sleep. I won’t need you again until bedtime.
Ora Lee still hesitated, but when Libbie made a shooing motion, the girl finally obeyed. On the one hand, it was wonderful to finally have someone like Mariah—someone who could practically read her mind and who seemed to care about her well-being. On the other, it was a burden. Ora Lee noticed every hidden bruise, and there had been more than the usual number of late.
Walker’s skill at inflicting pain never ceased to amaze Libbie. It was as if he’d made a study of just where and how to hurt someone with the least effort possible. Walker could manage it with Isham Green standing right next to them, and Green never suspected what was happening. Or maybe he did and just pretended not to notice.
/> Tiptoeing toward the door at the opposite end of the hall, Libbie stepped out onto the balcony that afforded a view of the river. The peaceful river, its surface gleaming in the golden light of yet another sunset. Walker had chosen this land because of that river. Every year, it transported thousands of miles of the rope created from the plantation’s hemp to St. Louis and beyond. From imported cigars to fine wool and silk to whale oil for the lamps, the river delivered everything a man needed to create a life of ease. And yet, for all the fine things Walker Blair had had transported upriver to his plantation… he was not satisfied. Would he ever be satisfied?
She didn’t know anything about war, but lately, Libbie had begun to fantasize about Yankees using the river to descend on Wildwood Grove and put an end to Walker’s dreams of greatness. If he’d only let go of his frantic ambition, maybe they could somehow manage a reasonably happy life. Better yet, maybe he’d let her go. The idea of leaving Wildwood Grove hadn’t developed into a plan yet, but it had begun a persistent fluttering along the fringes of her consciousness. Maybe the river could help her flee. Did she have the courage to make it possible? She would need money. How much would it take to buy her own freedom? How much would be enough?
Enough. Walker didn’t seem to know the meaning of the word. Discontent raged through the man like a wildfire. If the hemp crop was good, he wished they’d planted more acres to hemp. If it rained, he was gloomy. If the sun shone, he complained it was too hot. If Annabelle made a good supper, Walker wished he’d invited someone powerful to share it.
Annabelle. Annabelle thanked God for all kinds of things. Simple things, like sunshine and rain. Libbie had heard her and Betty both singing hymns as they went about their work. Praise, sister, praise God, I praise my Lord until I die… Praise, sister, praise God, and reach your heavenly home. Ora Lee was thankful, too. That very first day when Malachi brought her up from the quarters to help clean out the spinning room, Libbie had recognized the tune Ora Lee hummed while she worked. Praise God, I praise my Lord until I die…
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