steady stream down her pale face. “You have to help me!”
Karlee gently pulled away from the woman, patting her hand as she moved. “Don't worry, I'll get you there. You just sit here and rest a minute.” She looked up. “Hitch the wagon, Wolf. I'll get the twins. We're all going to a funeral.”
SEVEN
DANIEL WATCHED IN DISBELIEF AS WOLF MANEUVERED a wagon around the church and alongside the cemetery. Cold fear pounded through his veins though he stood in the cool morning air of late February. He'd sent Wolf after Jesse's wife, but somehow the hairy giant had managed to pick up Karlee and the twins along the way.
He wanted his daughters as far away from the cemetery as possible. If there was to be a fight this morning, blood would be spilled over the graves.
A sparkle of silver blinked off the barrel of a rifle hidden in the trees. In the clear of dawn, it seemed no more harmful than an imaginary daylight firefly. But to the three men lowering the casket, it was a signal that all was ready. The war might be over, but in Texas, under the Union's Reconstruction, defeated men still had to fight to survive. And somehow, with his sense of right and wrong, he'd gotten involved far deeper than he'd planned.
Daniel watched as Karlee climbed down from the wagon and helped AmyAnn Blair. Wolf swung the twins to the ground and eased his Springfield from beneath the bench seat. The girls followed him like baby ducks as he wove toward Daniel and the open grave. They were too young to know of death and would only see the flowers and grass between the headstones.
When Wolf stood within a few feet of Daniel, he whispered, “Best get the burying over fast, Danny boy. I think the widow is already in labor.”
Daniel nodded. He knew why she had to be present. No one would believe they were burying Jesse Blair if his wife wasn't standing over the grave. He stared at Karlee as she helped the widow maneuver across the uneven ground. AmyAnn Blair reminded Daniel of his wife when she'd been pregnant. She'd probably been a tiny woman until pregnancy had rounded her into a ball.
Karlee glanced up and met his gaze. For a moment, he glared at her, fighting the urge to order her back to the wagon with the girls. She had no idea what she had just walked into. He had his hands full and now he added worrying about her.
“Why'd you bring her?” Daniel mumbled to Wolf without taking his attention from Karlee.
“When she saw the shape the widow was in, she insisted. There wasn't much I could do without telling her more than she needed to know.”
“Let's get started.” Daniel frowned and opened his Bible. The three gravediggers acting as pallbearers lined up with heads bowed. “Dearly beloved, we…”
The pounding of hooves echoed through the cemetery and Daniel raised his voice slightly. “… to bury a husband and a hero of the South.”
Federal troops, outfitted in new blue uniforms, raced down the dusty road to the church and galloped straight for the burial sight with total disregard for the graves they thundered across.
The widow began to cry in fear. Karlee placed her arm around the little woman, holding her upright. The twins ran to Karlee's skirt and wiggled into its folds.
“Hold up, Reverend!” a young lieutenant shouted. “We've got a few questions before you Rebs try to pull your Dixie wool over our eyes.”
Daniel slowly closed his Bible and drew himself to full military stance. All he had to do was speak to prove his side of the Mason-Dixon line, but Daniel let the officer have more rope. He'd heard about Lieutenant Logan for a month now. The man must have missed his ration of fighting during the war and was looking for it in Jefferson.
“Bunch of lying traitors, the lot of you,” the lieutenant mumbled. He dismounted without noticing he'd stepped on newly planted flowers. “You all should have had the sense to run to Mexico in sixty-five like your governor Murrah.”
Daniel waited. The widow's cries were more of pain than sorrow, but the Union officer didn't notice. Karlee pulled both girls against her sides and tried to move the widow backward.
Logan unfolded a paper from his pocket with great ceremony. “I've got orders to arrest Jesse Blair, and this fake funeral isn't going to stop me.” He signaled. His troops lifted their rifles. “No one will stop me. Jesse Blair is no hero but only a common criminal.”
Daniel stepped away from the open grave but didn't lower his gaze.
The lieutenant glared at him for a moment, resenting Daniel's lack of respect but unsure what to do about it. He motioned two of his men to pull up the coffin. “If this box is empty, as I suspect, I swear it will be full before sundown.”
AmyAnn Blair cried out in pain and gripped her middle, but the lieutenant paid no heed. As the coffin reached ground level, he raised his Colt and fired three shots through the center of the pine. “Just in case Blair's playing possum.” Logan laughed.
The officer looked disappointed when no one around the grave reacted except one of the twins, who started crying at the sudden sound.
Karlee lifted the girl to her hip and covered the child's ear with her hand.
Soldiers pried the case open and stepped back quickly, turning their faces away to gulp fresh air.
The Yankee officer moved to see inside the box. But as he leaned close, he gagged and turned away. The smell of death drifted across the morning air. With a handkerchief over his nose and mouth, he moved close again, examining the dead man inside.
“Is this man your husband, Madam?” Logan turned for the first time to the widow.
She cried softly and straightened slightly. “He was wearing that very uniform the last time I saw him.”
The lieutenant turned to Daniel. “Something is not right here. There's more that stinks than the corpse. Why wasn't he buried sooner?”
Wolf moved beside the preacher, his rifle riding unseen along the back of his leg. “We decided to wait as long as we could in case you boys wanted to see the body. Figured you'd never believe Jesse was dead unless you seen it with your own eyes.”
“He's dead. With that smell he could be nothing else. But something's not right here. I can feel it.” The officer stared at Daniel. “I'll be watching you.”
Daniel raised his chin slightly but didn't say a word. If the man were corrupt, Daniel would learn the truth faster by letting him believe there were only Southerners present.
“Fall out!” the Yankee yelled as he climbed on his horse. “There's nothing here. Jesse Blair is nothing but worm meat now.”
No one moved as the troops rode from sight. Daniel knew what he'd just done would amount to treason if he were caught. When he'd first landed in Jefferson, he went to what the Union Army called the stockade. The locals called it Sandtown. Week after week, he watched innocent men die of fever and exposure. Men who served their state well in the Confederacy. Men who fought beside their neighbors and family, not for slavery, but for the right of free choice as they saw it.
Texas entered the Union as an independent country. Texans figured they had the right to leave. Daniel's greatest revelation had been to learn that the war he and his brothers fought over slavery wasn't about that at all, to the Southerners' way of thinking.
Jesse Blair was just into his twenties and far too poor to have owned a slave. He'd turned from a boy to a man in the middle of battle. He came home wanting to forget the war and start a family. But pride in a dead cause branded him as a troublemaker. Wolf told Daniel most of the things that got blamed on Jesse couldn't have been done by the kid and were probably done by an outlaw named Cullen Baker.
The way Wolf figured it, the only crime Jesse committed was refusing to stop wearing a uniform he'd been told to wear with honor.
Daniel glanced at the grave. The uniform would be buried today and, maybe, so would the problem.
