The Soldier's Wife

by Cheryl Reavis

  “What are you seeing out there, Sayer?” Rorie asked. “What’s happening?”

  “I need this, too,” Sayer said without answering her questions. She took the revolver off Rorie’s knees before she could protest. “I don’t have time to explain.”

  She moved quickly to the slightly open door and looked out again. She could see Jeremiah now; he was much closer to the barn than he had been before. He was being run aground, she thought, by the two men she’d seen among the trees. He was unarmed and cornered with no place to go.

  She stepped outside, holding the revolver in one hand down by her skirts and one piece of peppermint candy in the other. The remaining piece she had tucked into her apron pocket. She stood well behind the rain barrel at the corner of the cabin, hopefully out of sight, and she gave a soft whistle. Both Jeremiah and the mule looked in her direction.

  “Sayer!” Jeremiah hissed at her. “What are you doing! Get back inside! Sayer!”

  But, she gave another soft whistle and held out the candy. After a moment of wary interest, the mule trotted up. She fed it a chunk of the peppermint stick then caught hold of the bridle and began leading it toward where Jeremiah lay hidden, staying close to the mule’s head and making sure to walk too far out instead of taking the shortest route to the barn. The promise of more candy kept the mule’s attention long enough for her to be able to lead it where she needed to go. As she passed near Jeremiah, she bent low enough to place the revolver on the ground close to him without stopping. She didn’t look in his direction. She intended to appear to the men she thought were certain to be watching that her only concern was catching the mule and getting it into the safety of the barn. As she rounded the water trough, she moved in front of the mule and led it the rest of the way to the barn. When she reached the barn door, she heard Jeremiah say her name.

  “Couldn’t find my big spoon,” she said, still not looking at him. “Benton’s here somewhere.”

  “Stay down. Get behind the feed bins,” she heard him say as she was about to go inside. “And you and I are going to have a talk about this later.”

  Her knees were shaking badly by the time she got the mule into the barn. She cajoled it into the nearest stall with the second peppermint stick, but she made no effort to remove the harness. She closed the stall gate and the barn door, then peered through one of the cracks in the wall toward the cabin. The back door was now firmly closed.

  “Jeremiah, be careful,” she called, but she doubted that he heard. She could tell that he was on his feet and running now, but where, she couldn’t tell.

  She moved close to the large metal feed bins Thomas’s father had bartered with the blacksmith at the crossroads to make for him, and all but collapsed on the dusty barn floor. The bins were perfect for keeping the rats out, and she could only hope that they worked as well for bullets.

  She sat there wedged between them, still trembling. She pulled her knees up after a moment and rested her head on her arms.

  Please. Please keep him safe, Lord. Whether he stays or goes, please don’t let anything happen to him.

  She thought of Thomas Henry suddenly.

  Now, don’t you go and forget me….

  “I won’t,” she whispered. She heard more gunshots then, too many to count, and she closed her eyes tightly.

  Jeremiah!

  Please...

  And then it was quiet again. She waited, looking around the barn, wall to wall, in the hope of seeing some movement outside through the cracks. She saw nothing but the streams of dusty, mote-filled sunlight pouring in. The mule brayed once, causing her to jump violently. She got to her knees, clinging to the lip on the feed bin, listening hard for something that would tell her whether or not Jeremiah was all right.

  She heard a scrape along the barn wall to her left, and she jerked around to see. Someone was moving along it on the outside. She held her breath. After a moment, whoever it was stepped away. She couldn’t tell where he was going and she didn’t dare go to the wall to try to find out.

  After a moment, she heard the back door of the cabin rattle—and Rorie.

  “I’m telling you right now!” Rorie yelled. “Get away from that there door or die where you stand!”

  Sayer had no doubt that she meant it, despite Rorie’s having nothing but a single-shot musket.

  “You hear me!” Rorie yelled. “I done put more than one man in the ground what interfered with me and mine. I ain’t worried about adding to the tally!”

  Sayer could hear movement again. The man came back along the barn wall and around to the front. She could hear the door creak as he slowly opened it. Had he seen her come in here? Or worse, had he seen that she hadn’t come back out?

  She stayed crouched down behind the bins, not daring to breathe. She could tell that he was inside now, walking carefully around and around where she was hiding. He stopped in front of the feed bins.

  The mule brayed suddenly, but this time she didn’t jump. It brayed again.

  “Shut up!” the man said, and he went back outside.

  Sayer waited, her forehead resting against the side of the bin, her heart pounding. She couldn’t get up from her hiding place; he’d left the barn door open.

  Where is he?

  She couldn’t hear him walking; he wasn’t moving along any of the barn walls now. She breathed a quiet sigh of relief, but her relief was short-lived. Another gun fired, this time from the cabin itself. She moved to the barn wall despite her fear. She could see a man writhing on the ground near the front porch. He rolled over and got onto his knees, and after a moment of struggle, he stumbled off into the trees holding his bloody arm.

  Sayer waited for a time then dared to step into the barnyard and run the distance to the cabin, heading for the porch and going inside through the still-open front door. Rorie was standing by the table calmly reloading the musket. She took it and went out onto the porch while Sayer tried to calm the crying girls.

  “Well, look-y here. He’s done dropped his firearm,” Rorie called. “I reckon we got ourselves another revol— Shooting on the ridge!” Rorie cried on the heels of another round of gunfire.

  She hobbled inside as quickly as she could, and Sayer closed the door behind her, then sat down on the floor again with the still-crying girls.

  “Take the revolver,” Rorie said, handing it to her. “I’m better with the musket. I’ll watch the front door. You move over yonder, Sayer, where you can see them without them seeing you— I’m telling you, I thought we’d never get that back door barred after you went out. Good thing we did. I wouldn’t have had as clear a shot if that scamp had tried to come in the back way.”

  Sayer nodded and moved quickly to the other side of the cabin. She had to leave the girls where they sat, because the only small space that might be safer was behind the wood cookstove, and it was still hot. She wished now that she’d learned Rorie’s method of cooking. Rorie preferred using heavy iron pots with lids in the hearth and burying them in the embers rather than using the stove.

  But there was nothing to do now but sit on the floor where Rorie had told her to sit and wait it out.

  “Your ears is keener than mine,” Rorie said to the girls. “You young-uns listen hard and tell me if you hear anything. And don’t be wasting time crying. Jeremiah might be needing us again.”

  Jeremiah.

  Please!

  Sayer realized suddenly that Rorie had asked her a question.

  “What?”

  “I said, do you know how many of them there is?”

  “I only saw two,” Sayer said.

  “Well, maybe there’s only the one left what can try to get into the cabin.”

  The inside of the cabin grew increasingly hot and stuffy with both doors closed. Rorie sat nodding in her rocking chair—which could no longer rock, Sayer suddenly reali
zed. Rorie must have had the girls stick a small piece of firewood under each rocker—she needed steadiness to wield a musket.

  “I’m thirsty, Sayer,” Amity said from the cramped space where she and Beatrice sat.

  “Stay where you are,” Sayer said. “I’ll get the bucket—”

  “Sayer,” Jeremiah said from somewhere outside, and she scrambled to her feet and ran to fling open the door. He was standing near the porch, the revolver she’d dropped on the ground for him in his hand. And she was free to go to him this time; there was no Rorie standing on the hem of her dress and petticoats.

  She rushed toward him and threw her arms around him without hesitation. He held her tightly, and she pressed her face hard into his shoulder.

  “Is it over?” she said, still holding on to him. She didn’t want to let go. He was safe, and that was all that mattered to her.

  Thank You, Lord! Thank You!

  “Yes,” he said. “They’ve gone.”

  She suddenly remembered herself and let go of him and took a step back. He moved toward the porch, and she realized that he was limping.

  “You’re hurt—”

  He gave her one of his quick, half smiles. “Fell over my own two feet dodging bullets,” he said. “Must be out of practice.”

  Amity and Beatrice burst from the cabin and threw themselves on him before he could sit down. He suffered their hugs and listened intently to their excited report that Sayer had given all their candy to the mule.

  “It’s a good thing she did,” he said, glancing up as Rorie came outside. She was using the musket in lieu of her walking stick. “How’s your knee?” he asked her, likely because she was making such slow progress crossing the porch.

  “Better than yourn, from the looks of it. You’re bleeding. You best see to it.”

  “It’s all right,” he said. “Rumor is you shot somebody.”

  “People ought not try to open other people’s doors without they’ve been given leave to,” she said. “Where did Benton get to? Is he all right?”

  “He’s up in the high field. He’s waiting for Willard and some of the other men to get here. He says they’ll likely come in from that way. If they don’t, you can tell them where he is.”

  “Are them men with guns still up there?”

  “No, they took off through the trees.”

  “I can’t reckon what they was after, myself. What are you planning on doing now?” Rorie asked.

  He didn’t answer her. “Are you sure you’re all right?” he said, looking at Sayer.

  “Yes. I’m— We’re fine.”

  “I’m going to catch up with Benton.”

  “Your knee,” Sayer said in the hope of keeping him longer.

  “It’s nothing.”

  But he didn’t walk as if it was nothing. He stopped for a moment to let the girls hug him again, then made his way up the slope to the high field, still limping. He didn’t look back.

  “Well, come on,” Rorie said behind her. “If them scalawags ain’t around no more, we got to get some water from the rain barrel and set it to boiling.”

  “What for?” Amity asked.

  “For Jeremiah. We’re going to fill up the soaking tub out yonder behind the privet hedge. And if we can catch him, we’re going to put him into it. It’s what he’s needing for that cut-up knee of his so he don’t end up half-cripple— Well, come on,” Rorie said when Sayer hesitated.

  “I forgot to tell him about the letter,” Sayer said. She looked around, hoping to still be able to catch sight of him, but he was no longer in view.

  Chapter Nine

  Benton stood waiting for him in the plowed field. Now that the battle was over, the horse stood calmly where it had been left. Everything around them was quiet and as it should be. During the war, Jack had always found it disconcerting—the quiet that followed a battle. Birds sang as if nothing had happened. Clouds moved overhead. Insects buzzed and swarmed—but for once, there were no dead and wounded lying on the field.

  “Everybody all right?” he asked when Jack was close enough. “Everybody besides you, that is,” Benton amended, looking at his face and then at his bloody knee.

  “They’re all right,” Jack said, ignoring his scrutiny.

  “What are you going to do now?”

  The question of the hour.

  “Try to find my revolver,” Jack said, knowing that was not what Benton was asking. But whatever happened next, he’d need the gun. That one, along with the one Sayer had laid on the ground for him, plus the one Rorie had retrieved from one of the bounty hunters should give them adequate protection—he hoped. He was going to trust that bounty hunters were a greedy lot and would by no means want to split the reward more than two ways.

  “They’ll be back. Them or somebody just like them,” Benton said, still pressing for some kind of plan. Jack had no doubt now that the man had suspected from the day the two men came into his store that he was the “Murphy” they’d been looking for.

  Jack nodded, but he didn’t say anything.

  “Is Jack your real name, or not?” Benton asked bluntly, going in a different direction.

  “My real name is Jeremiah.”

  He could feel Benton trying to decide whether or not to believe him.

  “You only got two choices now, son,” he said finally. “Hide in these mountains or go on the run.”

  “I should have left here the day I knew they were looking for me. I have to get away. I can’t bring this kind of trouble down on Sayer.”

  “What kind of trouble would that be, exactly?”

  Jack didn’t answer the question despite Benton’s apparent willingness to participate in the effort to keep him from being put into leg irons and taken back to Lexington—or shot dead.

  “You got a bounty on your head, son. Now I’m asking you outright. What did you do?”

  Benton was armed, and Jack had the distinct impression that whether Benton decided to ignore the regard he claimed to have for Thomas Henry Garth and his family and collect the bounty money himself, hinged a great deal on the explanation Jack gave now regarding his current difficulties.

  He had Benton’s full attention, but Jack wasn’t nearly as guilty as it might seem, and he didn’t look away. Benton would likely hear some distorted version of the situation sooner or later, and he might as well hear the truth from him.

  “I got on the wrong side of a rich man,” Jack said evenly. “And his...wife.”

  Benton was clearly expecting there to be more to the story than that.

  “You kill somebody?” he asked finally.

  “No.”

  “You do something you shouldn’t have?”

  “No, I didn’t do something I shouldn’t have.”

  “Well,” Benton said in the absence of any further elaboration on Jack’s part, “that worked out all right for Joseph when he was in Egypt, I reckon. You, I don’t know about. When the others get here, I’m going to say it was bushwhackers as far as we know. I’d like to say it was Halbert Garth and them scalawags what run with him, but I reckon that’s too big a lie to get away with.”

  “Lies don’t come in sizes—or so I was always told.” He’d also been told that deliberately withholding the truth was as much a sin as lying itself, but that hadn’t stopped him from handing out half-truths ever since he’d come here.

  “Depends on which side of the pulpit you’re on,” Benton said. “You tell Sayer about the rich man’s wife?”

  “No. No need to.”

  “Well, seeing as how the air still smells of gunpowder, I can’t be agreeing with that notion. It ain’t right to let her or the girls maybe get hurt, and her not even know the reason why. You can go on the run again, I reckon, but that ain’t going to keep them from coming back here. If y
ou ain’t here when they do...” He didn’t finish the thought. He didn’t have to.

  “Benton, this is my business.”

  “Maybe it is, maybe it ain’t,” Benton said. “If you decide to make a stand here or if you decide to go—either way—she ought to know what it’s all about. That’s all I’m saying. I reckon you can see for yourself I’m too old to be running up here every time people start shooting at one another. You got out of it today without much damage, but next time might be a different story—I got to go look for my horse. Ain’t no telling where it got to by now. It don’t stand where you put it like that one of yours does.”

  “Mine doesn’t always stand, either,” Jack said, thinking of the ride to Sayer’s cabin with Rorie hanging on for dear life. If he’d had any idea what that ride would lead to, would he have still come looking for Sayer?

  Yes, he thought. He would—which said little for his character. She would be far better off if she’d never seen his face. At least he’d told her the truth about one thing. He had no regrets.

  “Looks like it does when you need it to. I’m going to look down at the cabin first. You see it up here anywhere, you catch it if you can.”

  “Benton,” Jack called when he’d gone a few steps. “I...appreciate your help today. You didn’t have to take that kind of risk, but you did. I won’t forget it.”

  “It ain’t easy to make a life in these hills, son. We have to rely on one another. I reckon it’s enough for us that Thomas Henry sent you here. I meant to tell you—” He looked around suddenly as several men on horseback came riding through the trees. Jack immediately recognized Willard and one or two of the others. They were men he had met at Thomas Henry’s memorial service and at the general store. Incredibly, their small company also included the two bounty hunters.

  “Well, will you look at this,” Benton said, walking in their direction. Jack took a deep breath and followed at a slower pace.

  “Willard!” Benton called when they were close enough. “Where’d you find them?”