by John Jakes
Custer wore gold spurs, slept with a pet raccoon, and dressed his long curls with cinnamon oil. Jeremiah had read occasional newspaper accounts describing him as a man who expressed no great personal animosity toward Southerners; he was just out to whip them.
Like Stuart, he thrived on being called a daredevil. The personal motto he’d brought with him from West Point was “promotion or death”—though from the way he often defied caution in battle, the motto apparently meant his promotion would be earned by the deaths of others. A Democrat, he still managed to remain the darling of the Washington Republicans, the public, and a press that eulogized him as Napoleon’s successor.
At Yellow Tavern one of Custer’s Wolverines had shot Stuart out of the saddle. Another had engaged Gideon—or so his immediate superior wrote Fan the following week. During the combat, horseman against horseman, Gideon had reared back in his saddle to dodge a saber stroke, lost his balance, and tumbled to the ground. In a matter of seconds enemy troopers had swarmed around him, taking him prisoner.
So now Gideon was either dead, or alive and rotting in one of the prison pits of the North. Fort Delaware, or possibly Elmira in New York.
And as if that loss hadn’t been grievous enough, Fan’s letter, also reported that Hunter’s cavalry had swept through the Valley to Lexington. In the surrounding countryside, the Yankee horsemen had burned mills, granaries, farm implements—then buildings in the town, including the Military Institute, Governor Letcher’s residence, and other private homes. Only old Washington College had been spared at the last moment because some of Hunter’s men refused to torch an institution honoring the nation’s first President.
Fan tried to conceal her sadness when she wrote her youngest son. But it came through clearly in the final paragraphs which spoke of the privation sweeping the Confederacy as the enemy blockade bottled up port after port.
Profiteers had driven prices out of the reach of ordinary people. Fan commented that she had no good cotton stockings left, but would make do with old ones since she couldn’t afford eight dollars for a new pair.
She’d forgotten what coffee tasted like, she said. Southerners who had cornered the existing supply demanded up to forty dollars a pound.
And when her doctor had prescribed a dose of calomel, it was unaffordable at twenty dollars the ounce.
Even the physical look of the letter was testimony that the end was coming. There was no more writing paper to be had in Lexington, Fan noted. So an enterprising merchant had devised some from an old roll of wall paper. Inside the envelope, and on the back of each sheet, was a crudely printed floral pattern.
It was almost over.
Rose had been right. His wife and daughter undoubtedly needed Jeremiah’s help more than the army did. With the Rose women, he’d find a place where his presence would make a difference again.
But if he was going to find them, he couldn’t sit in the moonlight. Weary as he was, he had to keep moving.
With effort, he stood up. Reached down for the Enfield. When his fingers were an inch from the weapon, he heard a sound on the road behind him.
He straightened, searching the shifting silver shadows of the landscape.
He couldn’t see them; they were too far away. But he heard them.
Mounted men. Coming fast.
That farmer. That damned, vengeful old man!
He hadn’t been satisfied to locate one horse and ride after Jeremiah alone—he’d had to roust out his neighbors and lead them in pursuit.
Jeremiah shivered, remembering the farmer’s warning.
As punishment for his desertion, he’d hang.
Chapter II
“Sixty Thousand Strong”
i
ALMOST AS SOON AS the appalling thought struck him, Jeremiah began to question whether it made sense. How the devil could an old man muster a party of neighbors in a rural area? There were damn few males left on homesteads anywhere in the South, unless you counted boys and old men. Horses were equally scarce, that much Jeremiah knew for certain.
Still, those were horsemen hammering toward him. Who could they be?
Georgia Home Guards? No, he’d heard they couldn’t find mounts either.
Enemy cavalry, then? Some of the ruffians who rode with the blond-bearded Yank Judson Kilpatrick?
He didn’t know. But he didn’t intend to linger in the middle of the road and find out. The riders were coming faster than he’d anticipated. The moon’s whiteness lit a rolling, phosphorescent cloud of dust at the crest of a hill he judged to be no more than half a mile away. Figures that seemed part man, part horse, appeared and vanished in the swirling dust.
Jeremiah grabbed the Enfield and sprinted for the ditch to the left of the road, where the brook ran. A small boulder hidden in the long grass tripped him. With a curse, he went tumbling down the incline. He splashed into the shallow water, remembering at the last moment to twist his body to keep the oilskin pouch and his cartridge box dry.
The dust cloud rolled toward him, the hammer of hooves growing steadily louder. As he lay with his right side in water that felt incredibly cold, he realized he’d dropped the Enfield when he fell.
He raised himself a little—the movement seemed to create a noise loud as a waterfall—just as the first of the horsemen thundered by. Once more a cloud cleared the edge of the moon. There, plainly visible on the shoulder, his piece shone bright.
Someone saw it. Yelled. The horsemen reined in, the leading riders turning back. As he sank down and lay still, Jeremiah tried to count the looming figures. A dozen, maybe more.
A man dismounted, cocking a pistol. He reached for the Enfield. He wore a forage cap much like Jeremiah’s.
“Enfield, Captain.” The man raised the piece to his chest. “I can feel stamping—C.S.A.”
Another man pointed. “Weeds are matted down right there. Whoever dropped it may be hidin’.”
Two more pistols were cocked. The horses fretted and stamped. A tall man rode through the group to the side of the road nearest the brook. He leaned over his horse’s neck, as if studying the ground. Then he called out, “You down there. You better come out.”
Jeremiah thought the voice had a soft, relaxed sound. A Southern sound.
The tall man drew a carbine from a saddle scabbard. “I said, come out.”
Soaked, Jeremiah staggered to his feet and clambered through the grass to the road, his hands raised above his head.
ii
The barrel of the tall man’s carbine glowed in a spill of moonlight. Water dripped from Jeremiah’s fingers, from the bandage on his thigh, the torn hem of his tunic, the have-lock attached to his cap.
“Captain?” one of the men exclaimed. “He looks like one of ours!”
They were Southerners. The moon showed him dusty cadet gray sleeves and trouser legs that matched his own, except for the yellow trim. This wasn’t as bad as being caught by Yanks—unless the men were as ferocious about desertion as that old farmer.
The captain waggled his carbine. Jeremiah glimpsed a double line of gold braid on his cap as he asked, “Who are you?”
Jeremiah pivoted slightly so the moonlight would show the chevrons on his sleeve. “Corporal Kent, sir.”
“Turn. I can’t see the badge on your cap.”
“I lost it, sir.” He’d learned a lesson from the farmer. He tried to sound calm, as if he had nothing to hide. “I’m from the Sixty-third Virginia, last with Reynolds’s brigade, Stevenson’s division—”
A horseman further back growled, “Didn’t know they was any Virginny boys with the Army of Tennessee, Cap’n.”
“Two or three regiments, I think.” The captain was a heavy man, with jowls. Moonlight on one cheek showed a scattering of pox scars like miniature black craters. “Corporal, give me the name of your corps commander.”
Cautiously, Jeremiah said, “You know we were Hood’s Corps, sir. But General Hood was leading the whole army, so our actual commander was General Lee. General Stephen D. Lee
,” he added for authenticity.
The mutter of a couple of the men said they recognized that he was telling the truth. The captain raised the carbine to quiet them. Then he sharply added, “Were you with Bob Lee in Pennsylvania?”
“No, sir, I mustered in a month afterward.”
Another voice, suspicious: “Didn’t your regiment lose a flag at Gettysburg?”
“Not to my recollection.” He’d heard enough of the history of both Virginia units that had been transferred to the west to recognize the trap. “I think it was the other bunch in the Army of Tennessee. The Fifty-fourth. When I joined up, my regiment belonged to the Second Brigade, Department of Western Virginia. But we were put on the cars along with the Fifty-fourth and—”
“You detached from service?” the captain interrupted.
Jeremiah’s hands grew colder. He struggled to keep his voice level. “Yes, sir. I was invalided out at Palmetto, after General Hood left for Tennessee.”
He lifted his leg to show the bloodied bandage, even though the pain grew ferocious when he bent his knee. But maybe they’d be less suspicious than the farmer. Blood was blood. They couldn’t tell he’d gotten the wound from another of those damned old country boys who didn’t want soldiers, any soldiers, prowling around their property.
The last of the turkey meat had run out when he was near Milledgeville. On the outskirts of Atlanta he’d slipped into a chicken house after dark. In spite of his efforts to keep quiet, he’d roused the flock. Wakened by the squawking, the poultryman had come charging from his house. He hadn’t even issued a challenge or asked a question, just blasted away with a shotgun as Jeremiah dashed off. Once out of danger, he’d cut four buckshot out of his leg with a sheath knife he kept in his right boot. Then he’d cleaned the wound as best he could and bandaged it with his torn-up underdrawers.
The captain wanted to know more about the wound. “In what action were you hit?”
“Jonesboro,” Jeremiah said promptly. “Afternoon of the last day of August.”
The dismounted man holding the Enfield said, “Well, I know Steve Lee was there, all right.”
The captain: “Last day of August, you say. Sure as hell taking a long time for that to heal, isn’t it?”
“Infection set in. For a while the doctors thought I might lose the leg altogether. Got knocked down with dysentery at the same time. Actually I had two wounds. The one in my shoulder’s come along just fine. This one, though—doesn’t seem to want to mend right.”
While the captain digested the information, Jeremiah decided he’d better tell as much as he dared. These men sounded more persuadable than the farmer. He might be able to outwit them. But not if he seemed reluctant to talk.
“My commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Rose, he came out of the Thirty-sixth Georgia in Cummings’ brigade. After Chickamauga he was assigned to division staff for a while. I was picked to be his orderly and courier. He got shot at Jonesboro too. Died the same night. Before he passed on, he ordered me to go to his plantation if I got out. He said only his wife and daughter were left to run it.” He added an invention he thought sounded logical, and might divert their suspicion even more.
“The colonel told me his nigras were getting fractious because of Old Abe’s proclamation—”
“Yep, that’s sure as hell happening,” someone agreed. “All over.”
“Where’s this plantation?” the captain asked him.
Jeremiah began to feel a little less tense; maybe the issue of desertion wouldn’t come up at all if he kept trying to convince them he was doing what he thought to be his duty.
“Near Louisville, across the Ogeechee River in Jefferson County. Seems like I’ve been walking for days to get to it.”
“Well, you have thirty or forty miles still to go,” the captain informed him. “More or less due east.” A hand scratched at the pox scars. “I gather you felt this personal business more important than returning to your unit?”
Jeremiah scowled. To help them see his anger, he yanked off his forage cap. The sudden movement shied a couple of the horses.
The moon struck his dark eyes and matted hair as he straightened to his full height. In the light, the white streak showed plainly, starting at the hairline above his left brow and tapering to a point at the back of his head.
Honesty had failed him with the farmer; he didn’t intend to repeat the mistake. “Sir, I told you—I was invalided out! It was either head home for Virginia—too blasted far away—or stay in Georgia and do what the colonel asked of me while he was dying. My unit had already moved out north again. I felt I owed the colonel’s womenfolk some protection—’specially since the colonel saved my life at Jonesboro.”
“Oh?” The captain cocked his head. “How’d he do that?”
Jeremiah told him the story.
“You have any proof to support what you’re saying?” the captain asked.
Jeremiah almost reached for the oilskin pouch. He held back; the contents of the letter were still unknown to him. What if Rose had written his wife saying he intended to urge his orderly to desert?
“No, sir, I’m sorry. I have nothing.”
“What’s the name of this here plantation?” the dismounted man with the Enfield said.
“It’s called Rosewood. After the colonel’s people.”
“I’ve heard of it,” the captain told him. “I come from near Savannah. My papa was a cotton broker before he died. I believe he did business with the Rose family at one time—” All at once he sounded more tolerant. “If your unit’s gone to Tennessee and you were pronounced unfit to serve, I suppose you made the best choice.”
Jeremiah breathed a bit easier. The captain went on. “And those women you mentioned—they’re liable to need all the protection they can get. All of Georgia’s liable to need it, matter of fact.”
“What do you mean, sir?”
Hunching forward, the captain said, “Corporal, do you have any notion as to who we are?”
Jeremiah tried to smile. “I know you’re on the right side. And those yellow facings say you’re cavalry.”
“My name’s Dilsey. Captain Robert Dilsey. We’re with General Joe Wheeler. Scouting Sherman.”
“Sherman! But he’s back near Atlanta!”
Dilsey shook his head. “Not anymore. Fact is, we’re about all that stands between that son of a bitch and the seacoast. Excepting of course, the Home Guard that Governor Brown’s trying to turn out.” One of Dilsey’s troopers snickered contemptuously. “But old men carrying rakes and hoes aren’t going to be worth a hoot against Billy Sherman.”
Thunderstruck, Jeremiah gasped, “You mean he’s on the move?”
Dilsey sighed and nodded. “Started last Wednesday. Marched out in two columns, sixty thousand strong. Slocum has two infantry corps on the left wing, Howard two more on the right. And that Kilpatrick’s riding along with them.”
“Where’s Sherman going?”
A shrug. “Appears he’s headed straight across the state to the ocean. Looks like he’s just said to hell with maintaining supply lines and is poling off in this direction to do any damage he can.”
Another caustic voice: “Mebbe he’s tired of fightin’ men. Mebbe he wants to fight females and young’uns for a change.”
The captain didn’t take it as a joke. “Certainly possible. He’s got a reputation for being half crazy sometimes. A move in this direction violates every sound principle of strategy. But he’s coming—along with that blasted butcher, Kilpatrick. You know what they call Little Kil’s riders, Corporal? The Kill-cavalry. We’re moving southeast to stay ahead of them. Trying to find out for certain where they’re actually going. Harass them, if we can.”
The announcement of the sudden advance by the general who’d captured and burned Atlanta still sounded unbelievable. Jeremiah groped for words. “But—but I don’t think there are any troops left to fight in this part of the state!”
The man with the Enfield said, “Well, there’s you.�
�
He puzzled over the laughter the remark produced as Dilsey said, “There is plenty of food in Georgia for a change. Finest crop in years, I’m told. And Bob Lee’s army still depends on what comes out of this breadbasket. So if you look at Sherman’s move in that light, if makes more sense. I’d guess he’s after the food, though he may be after Savannah as well.”
“That’s crazy!” Jeremiah cried.
“Any man who burns damn near a whole city doesn’t fight like a gentleman, Corporal—or by the book. You’d better keep on toward Jefferson County and tell the Rose ladies Old Billy’s probably coming their way.”
The man with the Enfield spat. “Goddamn soon.”
iii
Despite the stunning news, Jeremiah felt oddly elated. He’d convinced Dilsey of the authenticity of his story, done it just right, too. The word desertion hadn’t even been uttered.
One of the cavalrymen spoke. “Captain, we ought to be movin’.”
“Agree,” Dilsey said. “Kent, we’d fill your canteen if you had one. We’ve fetched along some goobers to eat. Hand him some, Mullins.”
Jeremiah raised his arm to accept the handful just as Dilsey uttered a hard, peculiar chuckle that chilled him. Again Dilsey scratched his face.
“You’re lucky to be alive, Corporal, you know that? We stopped at a farm a few miles back. Watered our horses from the well. We heard about you.”
Jeremiah closed his fist on the goobers, almost dropped them slipping them into his pocket. What a fool he’d been. What a damn fool. He hadn’t tricked Dilsey for one minute.
The captain pointed at Jeremiah’s leg.
“That injury may hurt. But as the old farmer said, lots of boys shot up worse than you are still with their regiments. So I don’t expect you were invalided out. I expect you up and left. As for the rest—I’m willing to accept it. Strikes me it has too many warts to be an outright lie. I don’t know what persuaded you to tell me the truth—or ninety percent of it, anyway. You didn’t tell the farmer. But as I say—you’re lucky you changed your mind. If you’d just handed me that tale about going home—”