and as the sergeant was moving away, Cramm hawked and spat loudly. Charles ordered him bucked and gagged for the night. Sometimes he wished Cramm were a Yankee, so he could shoot him.
Cramm sat on the dirt floor of the guardhouse, a single bare room feebly lit by a lamp. Above the stick tied in his mouth, sullen eyes watched Charles. Cramm's wrists were roped together behind his drawnup knees; a thick length of pine pole had been slipped between knees and forearms.
'You don't deserve it, Cramm, but I'm going to release you because it's Christmas Eve.' While Charles said this, the guard knelt and unfastened the gag. 'Escort him to his tent, Corporal. Stay there until reveille, Cramm. Understand?'
'Yes, sir.' Cramm made a great show of grimacing and twisting his head as if badly hurt. No gratitude was visible on his face; just his eternal contempt. Feeling his temper start to rise, Charles quickly left.
The snow fell like pillow down. The most important call of the night was yet to be paid. He would go right now. The thought relieved the anger Cramm always caused.
Passing the winterized tents again, he stopped. Inside a tent whose sign announced it was the home of The Fighting Cocks, a name chosen in honor of Sumter, the hero of the Revolution, Charles heard a young voice: 'Lord God. Oh, Lord God. Oh, oh.'
He recognized the speaker; it was Reuven Sapp, nineteen-year-old nephew of the doctor who had drugged Madeline LaMotte with laudanum for so long. The boy had the makings of a good cavalryman if he could get over letting his louder but less competent comrades intimidate him.
'Oh, Lord — oh.' Charles tapped on the door and pulled it open without waiting for permission. Seated on one of the four bunks, the straw-haired boy jerked his head up. A letter dropped from his lap. 'Captain! I didn't know anyone was close by —'
'I wouldn't have come in, but I heard a voice that sounded pretty low.' Charles removed his hat, shook snow from it, walked down three plank steps to the dirt floor, which was excavated to a depth of three feet below ground level for added warmth. The hearth was dark, the tent freezing. 'Where are your messmates?' 'Went out to see if they could club some rabbits.' Sapp struggled to sound normal, but his eyes betrayed him. 'That was pretty scrummy food tonight.' 'Rotten. May I sit down?'
'Oh, certainly, Captain. I'm sorry —' He jumped up as Charles took a chair. He waved Sapp back to the bunk and waited, suspecting the boy would eventually tell him why he felt bad. He was right. Sapp picked up the letter. He spoke haltingly.
'Last August, I worked up the nerve to write a girl I like real well. I asked her whether she could ever look favorably on me as a suitor. She sent me a Christmas greeting.' He indicated the fallen letter. 'Said she's sorry but I can't be a suitor because I'm not respectable. I don't go to church.'
'That makes two of us who aren't respectable then. It's a damn shame you got the news at Christmas. I wish there was something I could —'
Bursting tears interrupted him. 'Oh, Captain, I'm so homesick. I'm ashamed of feeling so bad, but I can't help it. I hate this damn war.' He bent forward from the waist, hiding his face in his hands, down near his knees. Charles twisted his hat brim, drew a breath, walked to the bunk, and squeezed the shoulder of the crying boy.
'Listen, I feel the same way myself, and often. You're no different from any other soldier in that respect, Reuven. So don't get after yourself so hard.' The boy raised his wet red face, gulping. 'I suggest we forget this and forget the rules about enlisted men drinking with officers, too. Stop by my hut after a while, and I'll pour you something to brace you up.'
'I don't touch spirits, but — thank you anyway, sir. Thank you.' Charles nodded and left, hoping he had done some good. He resumed his walk toward the shelters, built with sloping roofs and walls on one side to protect the horses from the worst of the weather. He heard the animals before he saw them. They were upset. His belly tightened as he spied someone crouching next to Sport, where he didn't belong. The man reached for something. Three long strides, and Charles was on him. He caught the man by the collar, recognizing him; he was an aide to Calbraith Butler.
'That's my property you're trying to steal, Sergeant. I foraged those boards so my horse wouldn't stand on wet ground all winter. Go find some firewood for Major Butler somewhere else — and thank your stars I don't report you to him.'
Taking a two-handed grip on the collar, Charles flung the thief away from the nervous horses, then booted him in the butt for good measure. The noncom fled through the falling snow without a backward look.
Sport recognized him. Charles peeled off his gauntlets, straightened the heavy gray blanket, and knelt in the mud to be sure the gelding's feet were squarely on the boards. He stepped to the trough holding the evening fodder. Almost all of it was gone. No surprise there; a cavalry horse would eat another horse's tail if he was hungry enough.
Charles fingered a bit of fodder left in the trough: coarse, dry straw; poor stuff. Winter pasturage was already scarce; thousands of cavalry and artillery horses were rapidly chewing away all the grasslands of Virginia. At least there would be another review tomorrow. Calbraith Butler ordered them frequently to keep the animals fit and the men busy.
Charles rubbed Sport affectionately. Taking a lantern from a nail, he lit it and walked along slowly behind the horses. They were growing quiet now that the forager was gone. Holding the lantern high, he checked for signs of disease. He saw nothing alarming. A minor miracle.
What an assortment of nags the troop rode these days. The fine notion of color matching had broken down before the summer ended. Most of the bays in that first springtime skirmish were gone, lost to disease, poor care, and, in four cases, to enemy fire. They had been replaced by browns, roans, Charles's gray, even a couple of conjugates, including one piebald with the ugly lines of a draft horse. But the Yanks still lived in fear of the satanic and largely nonexistent Black Horse Cavalry. Funny.
Thinking about the horses kept drawing him back to the spring, so distant and different. It might have been part of another year, another life, so rapidly had changes come. He hadn't heard Ambrose sing 'Young Lochinvar' for a month. Men no longer read Scott for lessons in chivalry, only for entertainment. The behavior of the Yankee officer who had led the search for the quinine smuggler seemed quaint and foolish. He wished Ambrose would return early so they could get to drinking.
He inspected the rest of the troop's shelters; empty spaces here and there belonged to the men patrolling with Ambrose. The color situation was the same in every shelter, proving what was said so often lately: in Virginia a cavalry horse was good for six months.
'We'll prove them wrong, won't we?' he asked Sport when he went back to say good night. He stroked the gelding's head. 'By God we will. I'd throw away my fine sword and everything else I own before I'd let you go, my friend.'
A passing picket halted. 'Who goes there?'
'Captain Main.' Embarrassed, Charles kept his head averted, in shadow.
'Very good, sir. Sorry.' The footsteps faded. The snow fell, silent and beautiful against the lights of camp.
Charles trudged back to his hut and set out the bottle of busthead. Eleven o'clock. Still in his clothes, he wrapped up in blankets, sure that Ambrose would bound in before long. He slid into his bunk for a short nap, and dreamed of Gus. He woke with a start, rubbed his eyes, and pulled out his watch.
Quarter past three.
'Ambrose?'
Silence.
He rolled out, stiff from the cold. He knew the other bunk was empty before he looked. The busthead stood where he had put it.
He couldn't go back to sleep. He bundled up, finishing by wrapping a scarf round and round his neck, and made a tour of the picket posts. He found one youngster asleep, an offense punishable by execution. But it was Christmas morning. He nudged the boy, reprimanded him, and walked on. Worry infected him like a disease.
At the sapling arch, he asked a guard if there had been any sign of Lieutenant Pell's detachment.
'None, sir. They're late, aren't they?'
'I'm sure they'll be here soon.' Some bone-deep instinct said it was a lie.
He rechecked the horse shelters, did a second tour of the picket posts. The snow had stopped while he slept and lay thickly everywhere. He waited and watched till he saw the first glimmer of icy orange daybreak. The
