“Glory hallelujah,” yelled Billy. “Another fucking miracle. My beloved sergeant has been cured. Now we can go and win the war.”
Melcher glared at Grimes. “Sergeant, you are a disgusting piece of shit. You have two choices. You can be court-martialed and shot for desertion in the face of the enemy, or you can be broken to the rank of private and never again command men. What's your choice? Now!”
Grimes looked around him. There wasn't a single sympathetic face there. “Private,” he muttered.
Melcher walked over and ripped the stripes off Grimes's shirt. “Now you're Private Grimes, you rotten son of a bitch.”
Melcher looked at his depleted company. A third of them had fallen in the day's fighting. “Harwell!”
“Yessir.”
“Private Harwell, you're a big-mouth smartass and probably worthless to boot. But you're Corporal Harwell from now on and you've got the squad, You treat Private Grimes well now,”
Nathan had become separated from Lieutenant Winton, which was a relief to him and probably to Winton, He wasn't concerned about getting lost, The army was a vast migration, All he had to do was follow its lead. The army was an enormous herd of human cattle, all heading north.
Like the rest of the army, Nathan had been headed in that direction for a couple of days. The front lines and the Confederate army were well to his south and rear. Now: however, the scent of smoke filled the air and soon eye-stinging clouds of the stuff played hell with his vision, Curious, Nathan urged his horse in the direction from which it came,
After a few minutes he rode into a large clearing along a railroad siding. The ground around the tracks was piled high with small mountains of crates and bags, many of which were burning. Where they could, soldiers were strewing the contents about like trash, Scores of other Union soldiers ran about, setting fires and smashing into crates, while still others loaded goods onto flatcars.
Nathan found an officer and asked the obvious: What was going on?
The officer, a short, stout lieutenant with glasses, spat angrily on the ground, “Our orders are to leave nothing to the damned rebs, What we can't take back, we destroy,”
With that, the lieutenant turned and stalked away. He had better things to do than talk with nosy civilians.
Nathan tethered his horse and walked around the activity for a few minutes. The wastage of material was incredible. Clothing was being burned and food containers, particularly bags of flour and coffee, were being ripped open, their contents strewn about or mixed with dirt, Some imaginative soldiers had even made a point of urinating and defecating where they could to spoil some of the rest. It was organized vandalism by a group of angry adult delinquents.
Nathan had just decided he had better things to do when there was the sound of shots, followed by hollers and shrieks. He turned to see a small group of horsemen charging towards him. Some of Jeb Stuart's rebel cavalry didn't want the supplies burned.
Nathan's immediate response was to flee, but he had wandered too far from his horse. Several cavalrymen were bearing down on where he stood, but, with his bad leg, he didn't think he had a ghost of a chance of escaping on foot. Most of the Union soldiers had laid down their rifles to better destroy the supplies, and were running about in confusion looking for them. Nathan found a rifle laying alongside a crate and grabbed it.
Quickly: he checked that it was loaded and cocked it. A rider was almost on him: howling and waving a sabre.
Nathan raised it to his shoulder and fired. The recoil knocked him back a step: but when the smoke cleared both horse and rider were on the ground. He had shot the horse through the skull.
The rebel cavalryman was dazed but conscious, and was trying to get a pistol out of his belt. Nathan ran up and smashed the rifle butt against his skull and then hit him a second time to make sure he was dead. He picked up the fallen man's revolver, cursing the fact that he wasn't carrying his own. It was in his saddlebag.
Again, he checked his weapon and saw that it was loaded. He heard another howl and a second horseman bore down on him. Nathan gripped the pistol with both hands, and fired at close range. There was a scream of animal pain and anger and, as before, both horse and man fell to the ground. They were so close that Nathan had to jump aside to avoid getting crushed.
This time, however, it was the man who didn't get up. One of his legs was smashed, and there was a gaping hole in his chest. His eyes were open and he glared at Nathan. Then they glazed over and rolled back in his head.
Rifle fire erupted around him as the fat little lieutenant got his men organized. More horses and men tumbled to the ground. It was too much for the remaining rebel cavalry. With a few parting pistol shots that hit nothing, they rode off.
“That was damn fine shooting for a civilian,” the lieutenant said. “You sure you ain't in our army?”
“Maybe I just enlisted,” Nathan said. His hands were trembling and he had difficulty walking over to his own horse and mounting it. He noted thankfully that a soldier had put the wounded horse out of its misery.
He rode a few yards away and stopped. He had spent years in the army and had served on the frontier fighting the Indians, but this was the first time he'd ever known that he'd actually killed anyone. Shooting at movement in the night or at a tree that didn't seem quite right was one thing. Blowing a man's chest out or beating him over the skull was another. Nathan leaned over and vomited into the grass. He hoped no one was looking. Then he decided he didn't much care.
Chapter Nine
The Union retreat from the Culpeper-Fredericksburg area had been long and slow. The army withdrew in good order, first caring for the wounded, and then tending to the mountains of supplies. That which could be moved was sent back to Washington by train and wagon: while the excess was destroyed. As the army sullenly moved back north: the sky was darkened by the smoke of scores of fires devouring the many tons of supplies that had just been brought southward at great effort and expense.
The rebels would get some rewards, but not that much. Some foodstuffs, for instance, did not lend themselves to burning. The rebels would eat their fill, but only for a while. Southern papers had published accounts that the Union soldiers had poisoned some of the food. It wasn't quite true. As Nathan had seen, Union soldiers had urinated and defecated on piles of food or ripped open sacks so vermin could get at them. Then they had left signs saying the food was spoiled and why. They hadn't counted on so many of the rebels being illiterate. A number had eaten the bad stuff and gotten sick. Nathan felt no sympathy for them. It beat getting shot.
The gloom of the defeat and retreat had been somewhat mitigated by the news of a bloody federal victory by General Ulysses Grant at a place called Shiloh.
The only good thing to come from the travesty was Rebecca's response to his safe return. She had greeted him with a warm hug and a kiss on the cheek that had lingered a second longer than he'd hoped for.
He had found her at the Washington office of the American Anti-Slavery Society. She had grabbed a shawl and taken him outside. While they walked down the street, she grasped his arm tightly and he could feel the warmth of her breast against it.
“Everything,” she said, “you must tell me everything.”
With some surprise, he found himself unburdening himself totally. He told her of watching the battle and of nearly getting killed by rebel cavalrymen. Then he told her how sick he had been after killing the two enemy soldiers.
In the course of talking, Rebecca picked up the hint that something terrible had happened to him in earlier years. Skillfully, she pried out the story of the Apaches and the terrible destruction of his small command. He even wound up telling her about his recurring nightmares and felt relieved that he had shared them with someone. He felt lighter and better for having done so. Had Amy been alive, she would have been the one he confided in. Now it was the dark-haired and equally troubled Rebecca Devon.
“Do you still think it was your fault?”
“No,” he said, still conscious of the delicious feel of her body through God only knew how many layers of
