North by night, by Peter Burchard—A Project Gutenberg eBook

Author’s Note

This story opens on St. Helena Island in July 1863. It is fiction but the battle and prison experiences of Lieutenant Timothy Bradford are based on those of Captain V. B. Chamberlain of the Seventh Connecticut Volunteer Infantry.

The Seventh Connecticut was part of an expeditionary force which was sent to South Carolina in October 1861 to occupy the islands along the coast and establish a base for military operations against the city of Charleston.

Union troops occupied the town of Beaufort on Port Royal Island and made their headquarters and their main base of supplies on the Island of Hilton Head.

The first charge on Fort Wagner (called Battery Wagner by the Confederates) is described in this book. Wagner was probably the strongest earthwork in the history of modern warfare.

A second charge on Wagner was mounted just one week after the first. This second attack was repulsed. Wagner was finally reduced by siege and occupied by Union troops in September 1863.

A big Negro was cleaning fish at the end of a spindly pier. He looked up as the two Yankee soldiers came toward him. He watched steadily as they approached but he showed no fear. The hot air shimmered as it rose from the sandy soil and the marsh grass whispered in a light breeze. The midday sun flashed on the water, making the white men draw their eyes into thin horizontal slits.

The taller soldier raised his hand in a casual greeting and stopped before his boots touched the gray, weathered boards of the pier. “Good catch?” he asked.

The Negro stood up slowly and hunched his massive shoulders and looked down at a half-cleaned fish. “Good enough,” he said. Then he raised his head. “I hear talk that most of you are leaving soon.”

The shorter soldier pulled at his red beard. “Soldiers are always on the move,” he said.

“Why must you sail away from here? You buy our vegetables and fish; you rent our boats. It’s good to have you here.”

The fisherman lowered his head again. “If you must[12] fight, you need a swim before you go.” He pointed down the creek. “Take my boat and row across the inlet to the beach.”

The taller soldier reached into the pocket of his blouse, but the big man put up his hand. “No money today. Jus’ take the boat.”

The soldier stepped onto the pier, as if to shake the colored man’s hand. “Thank you,” he said. “My name is Lieutenant Bradford and this is my friend Lieutenant Kelly.”

The fisherman didn’t take the hand, but his mouth formed the hint of a smile. “Thank you,” he said. “My name is Sam.”

Red Kelly took the oars of the little boat and Tim Bradford sat on the sagging seat in the stern as they moved along the creek and into the inlet that separated St. Helena from the complex of smaller outer islands. These islands laced the coast of South Carolina from Georgetown to Hilton Head. The Atlantic Ocean washed their beaches, and their backs were honeycombed with deep creeks and rivers where shallow-draft Confederate blockade runners had once found it easy to move and hide.

Shortly after the start of the War the first expedition to these islands had been mapped by President Lincoln and his military planners. There had been good reasons for taking the War to South Carolina without delay. The state had been the first to secede, the first to fire on the flag, and there was need of a base of supplies for the ships of the North.

Now Federal forces held most of the outer islands from Savannah to Charleston. A base of supplies had been set up on Hilton Head, and the town of Beaufort on Port Royal Island was occupied by Yankee troops.

Sixty miles northeast was the proud port of Charleston,[13] heavily fortified, Fort Sumter at the mouth of its beautiful harbor, the place where the War had begun. Fast Confederate packets still ran into Charleston under cover of night, taking supplies to the Southern forces, but the Federal Navy had made it a dangerous game. Nowadays most of the packets headed for Cape Fear, about a hundred and thirty miles northeast of Charleston.

As Tim’s thoughts went back over the past two years, he was troubled by a familiar restlessness. He looked into the fish-smelling bottom of the little boat and across the inlet to the palmettos and scrub oaks that lined the shore of the outer island, and he flexed his hands.

Red Kelly, watching him with piercing blue eyes, read his thoughts. “We move tomorrow,” he said. “Be patient. God made this land and the sky above it. Live at peace this lazy day.”

“We have many more men under arms than the Rebs and we’re backed by the might of our industry. But this is a big, far-ranging war. The good Lord knows how long it will last.”

Tim pushed back his cap and ran his hand through his stiff sandy hair. “The boys in the West are fighting a war that moves. We’re fighting a sitting war.”

“They’ve done their share of sitting in the West and in Virginia. Before this week is finished you’ll have your chance to fight again and a chance to die.”

Red’s face was flushed as he pulled at the oars. They moved across the inlet and glided into a tidal pool. They beached the boat, dragging it into the marsh grass. They moved through the heavy undergrowth, shielded from the sun by tall mop-headed palmetto trees. As they left the shadow of the trees the sun flashed pain into their eyes.

[14]The beach stretched away to the northeast, ending in a point of land where palmetto trees hung over the sand on great shelves, their roots stripped bare by stormy seas. The ocean was flat and vast, and on the horizon the masts of a sailing ship barely moved in a distant, ghostly mist. To the southwest a big steam frigate moved slowly into Port Royal Sound. When its ensign had disappeared behind the trees they stripped off their clothes and splashed into the water.

Red had never learned to swim, so he stuck close to the shallow places. Tim swam into deeper water and paddled just out of his depth, letting the current take him along the shore. Suddenly Red shouted, “Sharks!”

Tim saw two putty-colored fins sliding obliquely toward him. Terror struck at his chest and he wheeled and swam for shore. As he reached shallow water he leapt and dashed, the water dragging at his legs, pulling him back. At last his ankles broke free.

Red was white as plaster in the sun, his arms crooked tensely. “Saints preserve us,” he said, “that was a close one, indeed.”

Tim stood on the sand, his chest heaving, and scanned the water for signs of the sharks but the fins were gone.

The men pulled on their pants and sat on the sand. Red was quiet for a while and then he said, “I’m thinking of Nancy and Tommy back in New Haven, waiting for me to finish with the War. Tommy would be a little boy now, not a baby any more. I’ve never even seen his picture. I keep begging Nancy to send me a photograph of both of[15] them, but I suppose she doesn’t have the money to have one made.” He smiled. “You single men are a happy lot. No family worries. Devil may care, that’s what you are.”

Tim smiled. Then his face grew serious. “I have a girl,” he said. “We have an understanding, but I haven’t spoken to her father yet.”

“A girl is it? Well, you’re a fox, Timmy boy. I’ve lived and fought with you since we left the North and you’ve never so much as mentioned a girl.”

Red’s face took on a faraway look. “Nancy and I were thinking of moving away from New Haven after the war. Tell me, how is life in a country town?”

Tim squinted his eyes. The distant sailing ship had scarcely moved, but the mist had burned away. “The town is clean,” he said. “The yards of the houses are neat, and the village green is really green. The Connecticut River flows wide and deep below the houses. My girl’s name is Kate. She lives three miles down river. Her eyes are blue and her hair is dark. She’s full of life. Sometimes I worry that she’ll bust loose and go to New York or Boston and marry some tall, dark handsome man.”

“Then put away your fears of tall, dark city men.” Red smiled. “Tell me more about the town. What do the men do for a living?”

“My father is the only doctor in town. I guess I told you that before. Then there’s the owner of the general store and the parson and the blacksmith. Most of the other men are farmers. It’s just like any country town.”

Tim reached for a handful of sand and let it trickle through his fingers. “My father worked so hard he never[16] had time for me or the twins. That grieved him sorely, I’m afraid.”

The two men finished dressing and turned away from the stretch of peaceful beach and the limitless ocean.

They walked to the boat and dragged it through the slime. Red stepped in and sat in the stern. Tim took the oars.

Not a breath of air was stirring the trees. One of Tim’s oars smacked the water, and a white egret flapped suddenly into the air from a saffron-colored tidal pool, flickering white against the bluish Spanish moss that clung to the trees along the shore.

The moon came up above the cooking fires and shimmered behind the heat that was still held by the sands of St. Helena Island. Mosquitoes rose from the swamps and pools and sluggish rivers to the west.

The soldiers unstacked their rifles and cleaned them. They packed their gear and settled down by the cooking fires and boiled what might be their last hot meal for quite a while.

Tim and Red shared a tent with Captain Kautz and Dawson but tonight they sat at the table alone. Tim had set out a candle in a bright brass holder. A faint breeze stirred the tent flaps, and the light flickered on the tin cups and plates. Red’s beard glinted in the yellow light.

Most of the boys had already struck their tents, but Kautz liked to keep things set up until the very last so he could spread out maps and do his work. He was short and fierce and powerfully built. He would sit for hours before the company went into action, his blouse open and his head bent, studying the map. He would pull his beard and fuss and fidget and suddenly get to his feet with his[18] bristling chin thrust forward. “And that’s how it will go,” he would say and then smile frostily to himself. “If the Confederates will cooperate.”

Tonight Kautz was having supper with the colonel. Tim hadn’t seen Dawson since early morning. Everyone knew the regiment was to sail at dawn, and the camp hummed with talk of the fighting that lay ahead. The boys knew they were moving against Charleston, and most of them were eager to go.

The candle guttered as the two men finished their meal. Red cupped his hand around the flame and blew it out. In a nearby tent they heard a clatter of plates, and a shout went up. Tim leaned back so that he could see past the tent flap. A man was running wildly around a cooking fire, stripped to the waist. “It’s Corporal Steele,” Tim said. “Every company has a clown.”

Now Sergeant Fitch and some of the other boys joined the fun. They whooped and hollered and jigged. The firelight struck their bodies like a patchwork quilt. Tim smiled to himself.

A voice was suddenly raised above the din. A blond-haired man of middle height came into the light, with both fists clenched. “You men have work to do,” he screamed. “Clean your rifles and assemble your gear. Tomorrow we move up the coast.”

Tim said, “Dawson’s drunk as a lord.” He stood up and stepped outside the tent, moving toward the fire.

Dawson looked up, his chin trembling. “Lieutenant,” he said in a shaking voice, “are these your men?”

“Yes, Captain, they’re my men,” Tim said. “Their rifles are clean and they’re ready to go. They were just letting off a little steam.”

Tim looked down at the captain’s sweat-streaked shirt.[19] He turned to Sergeant Fitch. “Sergeant,” he said, controlling the anger in his voice, “you men look over your gear and report back to me.”

Dawson put his hands on his hips and swayed a little, focusing his watery eyes on Tim. “Mind your manners, Lieutenant,” he said and turned and walked unsteadily away.

As soon as he’d gone Red staggered out of the tent. He put his hands on his hips, swayed back and forth and crossed his eyes. “Were you bein’ inshulent wi’ me?”

Tim grinned, reached out a long arm and pushed Red so hard that he staggered back and fell on the grass.

It wasn’t long before Sergeant Fitch came back with his boys. “Our rifles are clean and our gear is packed,” he said.

Tim stood up and kicked some sand into the fire. “Are your buttons nice and shiny so the Rebs can see them in the dark?”

Corporal Steele was hanging back, but Tim could see that he was smiling. “Why don’t you boys sit down for a while?”

Steele sat on an empty hardtack box and the others sprawled on the grass. Sergeant Fitch cleared his throat. “Lieutenant Kelly, I wonder would you sing us that Irish lullaby?”

As other soldiers gathered around, Tim stood up and left the group. He walked back to the tent. A warm breeze blew in from the ocean. He reached for his poncho and[20] spread it on the ground not far from the tent. He lay on his back with his hands behind his head.

Red’s voice came clear in the silence of the starlit night. Tim thought of Kate. The last time he’d written her he’d known in his heart he was writing the thoughts of a boy who had left home two long years before. If only he and Kate could meet and talk for a while.

He remembered the first time he’d danced with her, the light from the chandeliers striking the whirling figures in the white-painted room of the new Town Hall. As he drifted into sleep Tim thought about the dresses, pink and salmon and powder blue against the men’s black suits.

When reveille sounded Tim woke up and rolled over. Red lay on the sand a few feet away, groaning as he opened his eyes in the predawn light. “Last night when I curled up here,” he said in a rasping whisper, “I thought you had a good idea, sleeping on the ground.”

Captain Kautz was already up, sitting on a keg outside the tent, straining his eyes to take in every detail of the waking camp, already thinking about the day that lay ahead. “We break camp now. The transport moves with the morning tide.” He stood up. “I suppose we have to set off a charge of powder by Dawson’s head to get him up.”

Dawson came out of the tent and stared, silent and hostile, at Kautz’s back. “Very funny, Captain,” he said, putting his hand to his head.

The four men ate their rations of salt pork and hardtack and bitter coffee. The companies formed in columns to march to the pier and board a ferry that would take them across to Hilton Head.

[21]As they crossed Port Royal Sound the sky in the east was touched by the light of dawn. A mist hung over the sea. The ferry coasted into the landing and the soldiers were silent, watching the shore or staring moodily at the deck, showing none of the spirit of the night before. The troops waited by the big, gray sheds, built when the islands had first been occupied. The men talked quietly and some of them realizing that there would be a wait, took off their cartridge boxes and canteens and stacked their rifles.

The pier crossed a narrow strip of beach and jutted more than a hundred yards into the water. A narrow-gauge railroad track ran out to the end of the pier where a T-shaped float broadened the docking space. Two large transports waited at the end of the pier, smoke trailing away from their single funnels. Just ahead of them a smaller vessel was being unloaded by half-a-dozen stevedores. Beyond the pier were the masts and funnels of a score of other ships, the farthest ones dim in the morning mist.

Tim went forward to speak to Kautz. The captain turned. “The colonel says dispense with roll call. No one will want to desert us here.” He motioned toward the waiting transports and gestured toward a column of men that waited on the pier. “We board the ship on the left,” he said. “Company K will occupy the forward deck. We will occupy the stern.”

Tim made his way back along the wall of one of the sheds. He found Red no more cheerful than anyone else. Tim said, “At least we’re heading north.”

Dawson stood close by. “North or south, it’s all the same to me,” he said. “I want to see the last of these flea-ridden islands. I’d like to be defending Beaufort. That’s the job for me. The boys in Beaufort sit on verandas and rock all day.”

The branches of a spindly oak showed above the roof of the nearest shed. The place was colorless and barren in the early morning light.

A couple of Navy men dashed past on their way to their ship, holding their little pie-shaped hats, their bell-bottomed trousers flopping foolishly around their ankles. A soldier raised a little cheer and the whole column took it up. One of the sailors blushed and quickened his pace.

Kautz and Dawson were waiting at the end of the pier. They motioned the soldiers forward and directed them to climb the gangplank.

As the men reached the deck they passed a solemn old sailor with a full white beard. He watched them closely as one by one they stepped to the deck, nodding to each in a silent gesture of mournfulness.

The transport moved through the anchored fleet and into the channel. She steamed east until she was well away from shore. When she was two miles out she swung northeast, and some of the soldiers sought shelter from the heat on the deck below or in the shadows of the boats.

Tim leaned against the rail with Red, watching the distant shore. Close by, the air seemed clear and the sun reflected on the water, but the distance was shrouded in haze.

Shortly after noon one of the lookouts gave a yell. A big, black-bearded gunner shouted to his men, and they struggled up from where they lounged with the soldiers on the deck.

Two thirty-pound cannon were mounted near the stern, one on either side. The gunner leaned on the starboard[23] cannon and shielded his eyes, looking into the mist that veiled the horizon.

Tim strained his eyes, then clutched Red’s arm and pointed across the crowded deck. “There she is!”

A small, gray packet ghosted through the mist, about two miles off their starboard bow. The transport swung to port and the soldiers were ordered to stand clear. The gun crew went to work. They sponged and rammed. The gunner grabbed a big pinch bar and crouched and moved the gun around its track. He adjusted the screw to suit his judgment. When the gun seemed ready the gunner sighted again along the barrel and gave another wrench with the bar. Then he stepped aside and shouted, “Fire!”

One of his gun crew jerked the lanyard, and the wooden deck trembled as the cannon thundered and recoiled, straining against the breeching tackle. The ball arched out of sight, and Tim imagined that he saw a fleck of white where it hit the water short of its mark.

Before the gunner could fire a second shot the packet had shown them her stern and was lost in the mist.

Red squinted into the distance. “She must have been a phantom surely. She could hardly expect to run into Charleston in the afternoon. It must be risky enough at night.”

“She was probably due to arrive last night. She must have been delayed somehow. She’s killing time until sundown.”

The gunner heard Tim and nodded his head. “And now we’ll be on the lookout for her.” He smiled. “But they’re slippery devils, sure enough.”

[26]As the transport approached Folly Island, Captain Kautz spread a map on the deck. It showed the coast from Savannah to Charleston. Tim’s eyes traced their course from Hilton Head past St. Helena, Edisto and Kiawa to Folly Island, Lighthouse Inlet and Morris Island, which lay at the entrance to Charleston Harbor.

“We bivouac at the southwest end of Folly tonight,” Kautz said, drawing a stubby finger across the map, “and tomorrow at dusk we march the length of the island to the shore of Lighthouse Inlet. We will launch our attack in small boats. Morris Island is a sparsely covered place.”

The captain had things figured one, two, three. He straightened up with his hands on his hips and looked toward Morris Island, as if he were going to take a bite out of it with his even white teeth. “It shouldn’t be more than one day’s work to clear the rifle pits and capture the batteries along the shore. By Saturday night we’ll be cleaning our rifles inside the fort.”

Tim studied the map. Morris Island was shaped like a big pork chop, the thin part curving north toward Fort Sumter. At the end of the thin part, on Cummings Point, stood Battery Gregg. Guarding this narrow neck of sand from land assault, Fort Wagner stretched from the ocean on the east to a tidal creek on the west.

As he and Red turned away from the map Tim said under his breath, “That fort is in a strong position. I wish I shared the captain’s confidence.”

Folly was a thin, sandy island stretching northeast like a crooked finger. It was already garrisoned by Union forces.

As the transport ran up Folly River the men could see the tops of Yankee tents above the undergrowth.

The troops disembarked at Pawnee Landing. They cut through a little wood on a well-worn path and made their bivouac in a barren place not far from the beach, close to another Yankee camp.

[27]They built no fires that night. Tim and Red, Dawson and Kautz sat together breaking out their rations, glad for a chance to rest. Captain Dawson turned to Kautz. “I wonder if the Rebels know what’s up?”

“We can boil up our rations and clean our rifles,” Dawson said. “We can make good use of the extra time.”

Red laughed. “If the boys clean their rifles a couple more times they’ll wear the bores down smooth.”

Kautz gave no sign of having heard. “We’ll have plenty of support for our initial attack. We have a hidden battery on the shore of Lighthouse Inlet. As soon as the enemy sees our boats our mortars will open fire.”

Just before sundown of the following day a corporal from General Strong’s brigade came around and handed out squares of white cotton cloth. The men were to sew them to the left sleeves of their blouses to prevent mistakes if they should be attacked while they marched.

At midnight came the sounds of quiet commands, the tinkle of buckles and the creak of leather as the men made ready for the march.

Tim’s men grouped around. Sergeant Fitch and Steele and the others leaned on their rifles.

“We don’t expect trouble tonight but we have to go quiet. General Strong’s brigade is on our left. We’ll travel close to the beach, with the Sixth Connecticut just behind.”

Tim found marching a pleasant relief from the heat and boredom of the day. The moon rose and traced its path across the sky. The breeze from the ocean riffled the marsh grass and cooled the sand. They reached the inlet well before dawn.

Tim turned to Sergeant Fitch. “Fall out and be silent,” he whispered. The boys sat around on the sand.

[29]Captain Kautz moved along the line. “Ten minutes to rest and then we embark,” he said. “We cross the inlet and wait near shore for a signal from Colonel Rodman’s boat. When we finally start for the beach, row fast.”

In the ghostly light the silhouetted figures fussed with the boats, setting the oarlocks and putting in the oars. The boatloads departed one by one.

The boats were made of rough milled pine primed over with lead and oil. Tim cautioned his men to step with care. “The bottom’s eggshell thin,” he said.

They waited in the shelter of the grass-covered dunes, dipping their oars so that the boats wouldn’t drift. Aside from the occasional plop of a clumsy oar, there was barely a sound. Corporal Steele sat just across from Tim, rowing and watching the rippling grass. “There must be Rebels behind those dunes,” he whispered. “We’ll be sitting ducks if they catch us here.” As he spoke the flat of his right oar smacked the water.

The oarsmen rocked and dozed, dipping an occasional oar. Tim started to worry. Suppose they’d been seen by a random picket as they’d crossed the inlet, and suppose the picket had held his fire and reported the presence of Yankee boats? If that had happened, every boat in the inlet would be blown to bits in the first light of dawn.

Tim combed the shore for signs of life, but there were none. The lapping of the water against the boats and the distant whisper of the sea were broken just once in that early morning vigil when a lone gull rose with an urgent flapping, circled and rested again.

As the rising sun blazed fire across the sky, flooding the[30] sea with an orange light, the silhouettes of the boats took form and shape.

The silence was shattered by the opening shot. An eight-inch shell from the Federal battery arched overhead and dropped into the Rebel camp. The Confederates shouted and ran to their guns. The smoke from the discharged gun twisted lazily in the morning air. Tim gripped the side of his boat and watched through the haze for a sign from the colonel.

Now the water was churned by shot and shell. A near miss doused Tim’s boat, and the boys went pale. “Why the devil must we wait to move?” Tim said out loud.

A trickle of water ran down his cheek and into his mouth. He wanted to shout the command himself.

The Yankee battery fired again. The shell burst just behind a nearby sand hill. A mass of gulls rose against the sun in a speckled cloud and flew, squawking, toward the open sea.

Now one of the boats was hit. The man in the stern rose from his seat, swayed and toppled to the water in a trail of blood. Another was wounded, and his screaming echoed across the water above the sound of rifle fire and the yells of the Rebels on the shore. There was a throbbing in Tim’s head. He could feel his temper rise. Now at last the signal was given, the oarsmen bent to their work and the boats moved toward shore.

Kautz’s boat was one of the first to scrape the sand. He jumped out, ranging up and down the beach like a fighting cock, urging the men to move in fast.

Tim’s boat landed just behind Kautz’s, with other boats following closely. He jumped over the side and into the water and waded ashore in a hail of bullets.

Kautz said, “Hit the beach and start firing.” He knelt near Tim. “Half a minute to get your breath, then move[31] inland with your men and clear the rifle pits. If you keep moving, the rest of the company will follow right behind.”

The other boats swarmed in to shore and the soldiers started jumping out, holding their rifles high and dry.

Sergeant Fitch and the other boys lay close to Tim, their faces streaming and their chests heaving. Tim fingered his pistol. “A couple more seconds, then we go.” He raised his hand. “Three yards apart. Keep me in sight. Move in low and give them a lively target.”

He moved fast to the crest of the nearest dune. The first line of rifle pits had been deserted. The enemy camp was deserted too. It was strewn with boots, canteens and other odds and ends. A cooking fire smoldered on the sand. Tim and his boys moved past the tents. The Rebel garrison must have been small.

A cannon on the right was standing alone. Red and a squad of his men moved in to swing it around. Tim ran forward to the second dune and crouched to see what lay beyond. There was a line of rifle pits a hundred yards or so away. Men peered anxiously over the sides. Tim signaled to his men. Rising up in full view of the pits, he gave a yell and ran a zigzag course, with Sergeant Fitch and Steele by his side. The other men yelled and followed close on their heels. Neither Yankees nor Rebels stopped to fire. The Rebels, outnumbered as they were, just jumped the pits and scurried for the rear.

One of the Rebels was very young. With youthful awkwardness he was trying all at once to put on his shirt, hold his blouse and rifle, and run for his life. As he ran his shirt streamed out behind. He dropped his rifle and when he stopped to pick it up he dropped his blouse. When the boy’s face turned toward his pursuers Tim raised his pistol as if to shoot. The boy deliberately picked up his[32] blouse and his rifle and turned his back; he moved a few steps closer to the shelter of a dune.

Tim signaled for his men to hold their fire. He lowered his pistol. They watched the lad as he cut loose and sprinted like a rabbit for the safety of the dune, his shirt still clinging to one of his arms and streaming out behind.

Tim looked back. The Federal force was moving forward in a solid line. He scrambled up a knob of sand. Beyond him, over a waste of dunes, a Rebel battery was just about to be deserted. Behind the cannon the ground was dotted with soldiers in full retreat.

The attackers paused to catch their breaths. Off to the right Red had taken prisoners. He was giving orders to three of his men who were acting as guards. He gestured and pointed toward the rear, then turned his back on his prisoners, looking over the ground ahead.

Tim and his boys moved forward again, this time so fast that they caught a gun crew off its guard. Tim dropped behind a crescent-shaped drift of sand, and edging forward, found himself staring straight into the muzzle of a cannon—a parrot rifle not fifty yards beyond. Five of the gun crew made themselves scarce, but two of the braver ones started to empty their powder barrels. One of the men saw Tim and grabbed for a rifle, but Tim brought up his pistol and fired. The Rebel winced and grabbed his shoulder, dropping to the sand as the other man scurried away.

The fleeing man paused in the cover of a little valley and brought up his rifle. Corporal Steele lay close to Tim, his rifle cradled easily in his hands. He squeezed the trigger and the man pitched forward and lay still on the sand. Then one of Steele’s hands left his rifle. He reached into a hollow in the sand and brought out a speckled sea-gull egg. Steele slipped the egg into his cartridge box and both men stood up and moved toward the gun.

Blood had soaked through the man’s gray blouse. There were patience and sadness in his face. “The war is finished for me now,” he said.

The sun traveled across the hard blue sky as the Yankees moved along the shore, taking gun after gun and turning them on men who had manned them minutes before.

About midday Tim paused with his men to drink from his canteen and eat some hardtack and a ration of pork.

As the Yankees closed on Wagner there was token resistance, but it was clear that the Rebels would make their stand inside the fort. By late afternoon the attackers had traversed the ridge and the last of the coastal guns was theirs. Tim watched Kautz as Red and his men swung a big seacoast howitzer around and discharged a shell that burst above the heads of the retreating cannoneers.

The advance was halted and Tim settled down for a rest. Captain Kautz sat down close by. From where they rested, part of the fort could be seen—a great sculptured mound of earth and sand.

Kautz pointed to a bastion close to the sea, then motioned to the left. “The other salient is just out of sight behind those little trees. We’re told the fort holds three hundred men. The parapets are bristling with artillery.”

As if to accent what he had said, a shell from the fort arched high across the sky and exploded short of its mark. The fire from the fort was fitful now. The enemy was saving its fury for the Yankee assault.

Kautz spoke again. “We’ll launch our attack at low tide. Just now the tide is high. The strip of sand between the tidal creek and the sea wouldn’t hold a company, much less a regiment.”

[34]Ships of the Federal Navy lay in a flat calm, just out of range of the Confederate shore batteries. The masts of the ships of the coastal blockade could be seen in the distance.

“We’ll need support. As we sit here we’re well within range of the guns at Sumter and the batteries across the channel on Sullivan’s Island.” Kautz gestured toward the narrow neck of sand, the pathway to the fort. “That beach will be a hell on earth when all the batteries open fire.”

Sergeant Fitch came by. He smiled dryly and motioned toward the fort. “That place is bulging with angry men.” He put a hand on his hip. “But there’s one Rebel soldier who comes to my mind who might not find the heart to shoot at all.”

Blue uniforms covered the sand as far as the eye could see. Tim said, “If numbers counted, we could take the place without a fight.”

“That’s a pretty big ‘if,’ Lieutenant,” Fitch said. “Schoolboys with slingshots could hold that fort.”

He found Red by a little stream on the westerly side of the neck of land. Red was stripped to the waist, dousing his hair and scrubbing his beard with a piece of soap.

A row of wounded lay on the sandy bank of the stream, waiting to be taken to the rear. Tim noticed three gray blouses at the end of the line. Two mounted officers rode along the crest of the hill above the stream. A ferry service must have been set up to bring the horses and wagons across from Folly.

[35]Red finished his washing and the two men moved up the hill. To their left the tower of Charleston’s St. Michael’s Church was a knife of fire in the light of the setting sun.

When his boys had cleaned their rifles and settled for the night Tim found a place close to the ocean, where he could be alone. A waning moon climbed the dark blue sky, and the phosphor-lighted waves that edged the mass of the open sea lapped gently against the shore below. The black outlines of the ships of the Navy—the monitors and gunboats—were etched against the hazy distance. He thought of a springtime more than two years ago when he and Kate had sat on Lookout Rock high above the river in the warmth and freshness of the sun, letting their eyes wander over the morning haze, finding patches of pine and green-gold willow trees. He remembered the sun striking the river and the trailing smoke from a distant train. When he had seen the train he had touched Kate’s hand. “Do you ever feel you’d like to bust loose and sprout wings and fly to the ends of the earth?”

It was dark when Tim opened his eyes, and for a moment he couldn’t remember where he was. Then a passing horseman, giving orders, reminded him of their position. Tim was conscious of the silent lines of men stretching away to the rear, and he knew that sentries in the unseen fort waited quietly in the darkness, straining their eyes toward the Yankee pickets, wondering when the attack would come. Fear came to him, then ebbed away. He knew that the hours ahead must be lived a minute at a time. He got to his feet.

Muffled voices sounded on the left and Sergeant Fitch came out of the gloom. “General Strong and Colonel Rodman are up and about.”

“Fit enough, I guess. But that new lad Greene, he worries me. He’s so confounded young.”

The colonel came along the line. “Turn the boys out.[37] We have a job on hand. We must have silence as we move to our picket line.”

In the ghostly light the voices of the sergeants brought the boys to life. Fitch’s voice came in a pleasant rumble. “Here, Steele, time to get up. Up now, Bailey. Come along, Campana. That’s it, Greene. Time to rise, lad, we have a job to do.”

And from farther away came other voices. “On your feet, grab your rifles, put on your boots.”

The colonel’s aide ordered quiet, and the sounds died down to a restless hum as the men clasped their belts around their waists, grabbed their cartridge boxes and fixed their bayonets.

Tim walked among his boys. Most of the faces were chestnut brown from two years in the southern sun, but one face stood out white as chalk. Tim stopped to talk to Private Greene. As he faced the boy he thought, He’s just as I probably was two years ago.

“Just keep moving,” Tim said in a quiet voice. “It’s dangerous to falter.”

They moved forward, keeping their line as straight as they could in the dark. Just as Tim fancied he could pick out the shape of the fort against the sky a Yankee picket stood in their path, raising his hand in silent greeting. The order came to halt and rest.

In the still, gray hours General Strong, with a yellow bandanna fluttering at his neck, mounted on a big, stamping horse, moved along the line. He paused near Sergeant Fitch and looked down at the men. “Don’t stop to fire. Trust in God and give them the bayonet.” Then he spurred his horse, and the man and the massive haunches of his charger and the beast’s switching, whipping tail were swallowed by the gloom.

[38]“We move with caution till the enemy pickets open fire,” Tim said. “Then we go in double quick. The Maine and Pennsylvania boys will come in right behind.”

The sand gave way with every step, and a lump of impatience grew in Tim’s chest.

As the soldiers advanced the ones on the right flank fell back so that they wouldn’t be forced to walk in the ocean.

A Rebel picket sent up an earsplitting yell, there was a warning rifle shot, and the order came for the Yankees to charge. As Wagner’s batteries opened fire the ground in front of the advancing soldiers was churned by a stream of shot and shell.

Tim drew his sword and raced forward, motioning for his men to follow. The ground was covered with dead and dying, great shell holes loomed suddenly in their path, and some of the men pitched headlong into the yawning cavities.

The figures of the charging men were punched in black against the brilliance of enemy fire. As Tim moved into the choking, blinding haze a shell hit close. The familiar bulk of Sergeant Fitch spun around, suspended for a moment, then crumpled in a gesture of death. Fear cut into Tim like a knife of ice. His knees were numb but he moved in a crescendo of speed for the outer work, a soundless screaming tearing at his throat.

In the light of the exploding shells he caught sight of Captain Dawson just to the left. Dawson was rocking a man in his arms, rocking and sobbing in a ghastly burlesque. Tim scrambled over to Dawson’s side. The light of a following shell showed him that the man Dawson was holding was dead. Tim wrenched the dead man free,[39] grasped the front of Dawson’s blouse and hit him full force in the face with the flat of his hand. “Move on,” he shouted.

With the shriek of shells splitting his ears Tim grasped his sword and dashed across the trembling sand toward the water of the moat where it reflected the flashes of cannon fire.

A wounded soldier lay at the water’s edge, struggling to rise. Tim grabbed the man’s blouse and dragged him clear so that he wouldn’t drown.

Together he and Greene dashed into the moat. Tim heard a splash. Greene lay in the water, face down. Tim reached for the boy to pull him out but Greene jumped up. “I’m alive. I only tripped,” he screamed. “Alive, alive!”

Tim choked down a desperate laugh as he rushed for the massive, sloping bank of earth. Scrambling up the rutted parapet, he felt something sharp prick the seat of his pants. He swung around and looked into the dogged face of Private Greene.

Daybreak was streaking the sky in the east. In the gathering light a scattering of Yankees had dug in just below the crest of the parapet, firing rapidly into the fort. The ground below the fort was peppered with rifle and cannon fire.

It was clear to Tim that the Federal ranks were threadbare. The supporting regiments had dropped to the ground behind the outer work. A shell hit a portion of[40] the work, spraying sand into the air, picking up men like jackstraws in a gale and sending them sprawling back to earth.

Tim whipped the air with his sword and shouted through the smoke and noise, rallying his men. He slipped and scrambled to the crest where the sandbags were stacked. He kept moving as he reached the crest, half sliding, half jumping into the fort. He was blinded for a moment by a thick cloud of acrid smoke that made him cough and choke. As the smoke blew away he saw a Rebel sergeant straight in front of him and cannoneers at either side. He lowered his sword.

Off to the right a big voice commanded the sergeant, “Hold your fire.” A Confederate lieutenant moved toward Tim, his pistol ready, a broken-toothed smile cracking his leathery face. “A prisoner, sir.”

Tim unbuckled his belt, slid off his bolstered pistol and held it toward the man. “I’ll surrender my sword to the officer who commands this battery,” he said.

The lieutenant nodded. “As you wish it, sir,” he said, raising his voice above the rattle of musket fire and pointing to a man who was stripped to the waist and covered with grime and sweat. “There’s Captain Chichester. Surrender your sword to him.”

The Confederate captain turned as Tim walked toward him. The Captain nodded respectfully. He reached for his pistol and handed it to a boy not more than twelve years old who stood by his side. “Guard this prisoner,” he said, “and mind you don’t shoot him by mistake.”

Tim walked with the boy to a place near a bombproof shelter where empty powder barrels were thrown helter-skelter on the sand. “I’ll sit on one of these,” he said to the boy. “I’m tired.”

The boy stood nearby, serious and manly, but frightened[42] too. He pointed the revolver at the ground and looked at it to be sure he knew how it worked. With his chin down he looked back at Tim.

Tim sat on the barrel, looking off through the smoke, the racket of battle in his ears, the screaming of soldiers, the thunder of cannon and the chatter of rifle fire. His spirit was chilled. Fitch was dead. He wondered whether Red and Kautz were lying lifeless in the moat, or were they prisoners too? He thought of the Rebel soldier he had wounded, was it yesterday? The man had said, “The war is finished for me now.” And now, Tim thought, the war is finished for me too.

A huge siege gun was fired close by, shaking the earth and sending a puff of acrid smoke rolling along the sandbags at the top of the parapet, making the gunners cough and choke. All at once the firing stopped, the last musket cracked. The smoke of the battle rose above the fort and thinned as it was blown away. The sun filtered through the gloom and there were voices in the silence, loud at first, then soft, like the voices of schoolboys when the teacher comes into the room.

Captain Chichester, his shirt draped loosely around his shoulders, walked toward Tim through the thinning smoke.

Tim stood up, reached for his sword and handed it to the captain. The man’s sand-colored hair and eyebrows were dusted with powder that ran in streaks down his tanned face. His blue eyes reflected a sleepless night and a morning of battle. “No cause for Yankee shame today,” he said.

The powder monkey stood by his captain now, handing him his pistol, looking up at his face.

Tim looked toward the big guns. “Captain,” he said,[43] “I wonder if I could see the field beyond the parapet?”

The captain lowered his eyes. “It’s a heartbreaking sight,” he said, and he raised his eyes and held Tim’s gaze, as if he wished he could say more.

The two men walked toward the parapet, the boy tagging along behind. The Rebel soldiers gawked, and one big sergeant spat hard on the blackened sand.

“Save your spit for the next assault,” the captain said with a look of towering disgust. As they reached the gun he turned to Tim. “There’s an armistice in effect,” he said, “to give your men a chance to carry off the wounded and bury the dead. The boy and I will stay back here. I’ve seen enough today.”

Tim moved up beside a gun and looked across the plain. The dusky, shadowy world of early morning had given way to a sunlit day. There were no shellbursts or knifelike tongues of flame—just silence and the litter of death, scattered in terrible profusion on the sand.

Under a flag of truce ambulances moved along the beach, hurrying to gather up the wounded before they were claimed by the incoming tide. A surgeon who was working at the edge of the moat signaled to a driver. “Here’s one alive,” he called. An ambulance creaked and rattled to where the man lay. The surgeon and the driver lifted the wounded man gently into the canvas-covered vehicle.

With sickening dread Tim’s eyes moved across the distance, studying the men who lay on the sand. He fancied he saw a red-haired officer lying in the distance with his feet to the sun, but he couldn’t be sure. Men lay at the base of the parapet, almost covered by the waters of the moat which was fed by the ocean tides. Tim suddenly wondered what had happened to Private Greene.

[44]He looked once more across the plain at the dead and broken and dying. Then he turned to the captain and the boy who stood by his side.

“There are other prisoners waiting by the sally port,” Chichester said. He looked down at the boy. “Billy Moore will show you the way.”

“Maybe we’ll meet again on a happier day,” the captain said. He turned and walked away with two swords swinging and rattling at his side.

As Tim followed the boy past the bombproof the boy spoke. “All Yankees aren’t bad,” he grinned, “but most are devils, sure enough.”

“I come from Beaufort, sir,” he said with a sudden frown. “It was the Yankees chased us away.”

They left the shadow of the bombproof and walked through the sally port, and there, guarded by half-a-dozen men, were forty or fifty Yankee captives. There was Dawson, hatless, with his corn-colored hair shining in the sun, his face like death. An ugly welt ran across his cheek.

One guard laughed when he saw the unarmed boy with the tall Yankee. “Big fish this time, little Billy,” he rasped. “Give him over to me.”

Tim nodded to the boy and went to Dawson. “Glad to see you still alive,” he said.

Dawson looked sullenly at Tim. “I’m tired,” he said with bitterness. “I’m glad to be out of it, if you want to know the truth.”

[45]A big Rebel sergeant moved close to them with studied ease and snapped, “That’s enough talking. You’ll have plenty of time to talk in jail.”

Tim thought, If Red is dead I’ll visit his wife and child when I get home. But I pray to God he lives.

A rusty steamer came puffing and wallowing across the choppy waters and made fast to the pier just to the west of the Confederate battery at Cummings Point.

As the prisoners clattered along the pier Tim wondered if the flimsy structure would hold them all. It creaked and groaned as one by one the men jumped to the heaving deck.

As Tim stood by the rail he caught sight of a familiar face. “Private Greene,” he said.

Greene turned a happy face and worked his way behind the crowd of men along the rail. Tim clasped the boy’s hand. “Glad to see you, lad.”

As the steamer moved away from the shelter of land it was lifted by swells that swept in from the open sea. The little ship rolled and tossed and smacked the waves, sending up sheets of spray and wetting the men who were wedged along the rails. It seemed to Tim she was carrying too many men.

Greene smiled shyly. “Let’s mutiny,” he said, “and sail to Boston on the afternoon tide.”

Suddenly there was a commotion near them at the rail and one of the prisoners jumped over the side. Tim saw[46] the flash of a shirt then he saw a boy swimming and drifting swiftly astern. He said, “What chance does he think he has?”

A guard dashed out of the wheelhouse onto the shuddering deck. He raised his rifle and fired. Greene gritted his teeth and clenched his fists in a helpless fury as he watched the head of the struggling boy. “For the love of mercy, why don’t they give him a chance?”

Two shots followed the first, but the boy’s head still bobbed above the water. The fourth shot hit its mark. One of the swimmer’s hands thrashed weakly for a moment and he dipped below the surface, leaving a slick of blood to mark the place where he had disappeared.

Greene’s face was pale. He quivered with rage and fear. He stared transfixed and then, with a convulsive shudder, leaned over the rail and was sick. Tim put his hand on the boy’s shoulder and looked across the water at the stretch of beach that led to the mouth of the creek and the freedom of the Yankee lines.

The steamer made straight for Sumter. The fort stood like a block of granite in the harbor’s mouth, the sea dashing against the outer walls.

Now the sky was solid lead, washed across with moving clouds. The steamer nudged Fort Sumter’s wharf. The sailors looped the hawsers around the pilings, the sergeant of the guard leaped to the dock and was admitted to the fort. The steamer creaked and groaned against the pilings and Tim leaned on the rail with Greene beside him, looking up at the silent gray walls.

The sergeant walked back along the pier with his head down and his arms swinging at his sides.

As the steamer moved toward Charleston, leaving the silent gun ports in its wake, Tim noticed a flag at the top of the pole inside the fort. It snapped in the stiffening[47] breeze, its colors sharp against the flat, gray sky. I wonder, he thought, how long that flag will fly?

The harbor was dotted with the sails of fishing boats seeking shelter from the coming storm. The city of Charleston was strung across the horizon, her rose-brick and white-walled buildings like spots of color in a child’s painting, her church towers standing high above the piers and parks and the houses that lined the waterfront. Off to the right, masts and spars and a complex of shrouds marked the wharves on the eastern shore of the peninsula.

Greene’s voice barely rose above the thump of the paddle wheels. “Where are they taking us, do you suppose?”

“There’s a jail in Charleston,” Tim said, “and others scattered throughout the South.”

“I’ve never been in a Rebel jail,” Tim said. “There’s always hope of being exchanged. The Confederacy can’t afford to have her soldiers wasting away in Northern prisons.”

“Promise me if you try to escape you’ll pick a time when you have a fair chance.”

Greene spoke earnestly. “I wasn’t thinking of escape just yet. I’ll have to see the prison first. I’ll have to think on it a while.”

The little steamer swung slowly around as it maneuvered to move toward one of Charleston’s piers. Now in the moment before the storm Tim saw a little island at the mouth of the river. Part of the island was struck by sunlight. On the sandy shore three men struggled to beach a boat, their figures distinct in the slice of light.

[48]There was a sudden gust of wind and the rain sluiced down, blotting out the little scene. It streaked down the faces of the prisoners and ran down their collars. At first it seemed a blessed thing, but as it drenched the men on the deck Tim stared across the flat, gray water whipped by rain, and a cold apprehension took root in his heart.

As the little steamer docked the rain stopped and the clouds blew away. The prisoners marched with their guards along the wharf, across a glistening cobbled street to a shedlike building that faced the waterfront. A short, sunny-faced woman came out and spoke to the sergeant of the guard. “We didn’t have much warning,” she said. “You’ll have to give us a minute or two.”

The sergeant frowned and mumbled something. Then the woman raised her chin and looked down the line of men, wet and disconsolate in their dirty uniforms. “Well, you’ll have to wait,” she said. Without pausing for an answer she went inside.

Tim stood on the cobbles and studied the row of fine brick houses that faced the river. This was the first time in months that he had stood on a street and looked at houses where people dined and slept, where children were born and raised.

The sunny-faced woman came out again, followed by others carrying trays of coffee and slices of buttered bread on squares of white paper. As the women moved among the men Greene straightened up and lowered his chin and brushed his cheek with the back of his hand.

“They’re just like the ladies of Philadelphia,” Tim said, “who served us goodies two years ago.”

One of the women, dark haired and young, turned to him. “Need is need, wherever it may be,” she said with a sweet, sad smile.

Tim noticed how graceful she was in her starched white[49] dress and pale blue shawl. She was so much like Kate that he felt his knees go weak. As she turned away he was filled with a yearning for home, a longing to sit on his horse and ride along the river road underneath the sunlit leaves until Kate’s house came into view.

When the women had disappeared into the building again the Rebel sergeant slapped the stock of his rifle. “Quiet,” he said. “Now we march to the railroad depot.”

They marched through the streets and alleys lined by houses, sometimes neat and tidy, sometimes deserted and forlorn. There were gardens filled with summer flowers still in bloom, palmetto trees along the sidewalk, dark green painted doors with knobs and knockers of polished brass. People leaned on their windowsills to watch the passing prisoners. Some of them hissed or spat. Others watched with expressions of compassion or concern. A scattering of ragged children ran ahead of the prisoners, spreading the word that they were on the way. They rounded a corner and walked along a wide cobbled street where most of the houses were of the “single style,” narrow at the front, with piazzas facing lawns and gardens at the sides.

People were gathering on the sidewalks, and as the prisoners approached St. Michael’s church the crowd grew thick, surged from under the portico and broke into catcalls and jeers. The soldiers of the Rebel guard flashed their bayonets and drove the people back. Most of the prisoners walked straight and proud. Tim set his jaw and stiffened his back but he couldn’t stop the trembling in his knees.

A gang of little boys dodged around the pillars of the church and one of them skittered through the crowd, made a face and flapped his hands like donkey ears. He reached into his pocket and brought out a tomato. Tim saw the[50] boy’s arm arch back as he took deliberate aim. The love apple caught the Rebel sergeant just over his ear. The sergeant moved to catch the boy.

“I was aiming at a Yank,” the little fellow screamed as he dashed behind the skirts and capes that lined the street.

People in the crowd began to laugh, the women first, and then the men. The sergeant’s face turned red, and even Yankee snickers turned to laughs. Then there was silence. The laughter of the Yanks had made the joke go sour.

As they moved along the middle of the street, carriages and wagons pulled aside to let them pass. The drivers turned hostile faces on the men in blue.

Tim brushed past the bright red wheels of a gleaming carriage and for a moment he looked into the face of a woman in the back seat. She was about his mother’s age and dressed in black. Her face was beautiful and filled with sadness.

Now the urchins who followed the prisoners were joined by others led by a dark-haired older boy. They screamed and taunted. They threw pebbles as they surged along the sidewalks and into the street ahead of the prisoners’ line of march. The sergeant of the guard was flushed with anger. When the leader of the gang began to taunt the prisoners the sergeant grasped the boy’s collar, tearing the shirt right off his back. “Next time I’ll give you the bayonet,” the sergeant said.

The boy grabbed his shredded shirt from the dirty stones and ran ahead with his gang behind him to the shelter of a narrow street. The sergeant and the other guards watched as they passed the street. All at once the boys appeared again and pelted the column with stones. A mean-faced Rebel corporal was hit in the leg, and he[51] and the sergeant, with another guard, dashed after the boys as they scattered like quicksilver into the alleys and doorways of the dingy street.

Greene’s face showed his excitement as the column was left with just one guard. Tim grabbed Greene’s arm. “This is no time to think of escape. Charleston is a cul-de-sac. They could seal off this peninsula easier than closing a cracker box.”

The prisoners were shouted to a halt beside a two-story depot with a turreted top and moss-covered walls. An old man poked his head out of one of the upper windows and glared at the sergeant through steel-rimmed spectacles. “Sit them down,” he squawked. “The train won’t be here for quite a spell. Just got it over the telegraph.”

“Where’s the Home Guard, granddaddy? We want to get back to the barracks for dinner.”

In front of the building three Negro women had set up shop. They sat on the steps, their bright cotton dresses, straw hats and shawls gleaming in the sun, oranges and yams and figs and shrimp in baskets and wooden bowls ranged around their feet. “Gentlemen, buy here!” one of them called. “Fruits and vegetables, molasses cakes. We still have tobacco and a few cigars.”

The Rebel sergeant loosened his collar and slung his rifle over his shoulder. “Buy if you have money,” he said to the prisoners, “but stay on the platform. We’ll shoot[53] the first man who wanders. We’ve had enough running for today.”

The sergeant walked past the colored women, up the steps and through the depot door.

“We’d better buy what we can and save what we can,” Tim said. “We may have to make it last a while.”

The prisoners clustered around the women. Tim noticed Dawson eating and stuffing his pockets with food. The woman in the center was big and fat. She was wreathed in smiles. “We give you good exchange,” she said, “five Confederate dollars to one greenback for Yankee gentlemen.”

Tim bought some yams and molasses cakes, and Greene cradled five big oranges in the crook of his arm.

The mean-faced Confederate corporal yelled, “Fall in at the center of the platform where I can keep my eyes on you.”

The prisoners drifted away from the bright little island of smiling, brown-skinned women and did as they were told.

Greene fumbled for his money and paid for his oranges. As he slipped his wallet into his pocket one of the oranges fell to the platform and rolled toward the track. He chased the orange, clutching the others against his blouse. Tim had pocketed his food and he started toward the orange as it rolled to the edge of the platform. The Confederate corporal watched the orange with cold indifference as it bumped onto the track. Greene scrambled after it. Suddenly the corporal swung his rifle around and caught Greene in the side with the point of his bayonet.

The wounded boy cried out in pain, the other oranges[54] dropped from his grasp and bumped and rolled onto the roadbed, bright spots against the stones.

Greene crumpled to the ground, holding his side, gasping and sucking for breath.

Tim’s eyes blazed fury. “Why, you damned fool,” he said. He turned his back to the corporal and knelt beside Greene.

The sergeant appeared from the shadow of the doorway. “Corporal,” he rasped, “we’ve had enough trouble today without you doing a thing like that.”

The color drained from the corporal’s face. “Just doing what you told us,” he choked, “getting the Yankees back in line.”

The fat woman dropped to her knees and wailed, “Lord have mercy on us all. That boy didn’t mean no harm.”

The sergeant turned on the woman. “Shut your face. You better do your selling some place else.”

Tim loosened the boy’s clothing, exposing the white flesh and the ugly mouth-shaped wound.

The sergeant squatted. “That’s nothing to worry about.” He reached into his haversack. “We’ll bandage it and they’ll dress it proper when you get to your jail.”

“The train be damned, Sergeant. Stabbing this boy was an act of cruelty. If you send him to a prison in the shape[55] he’s in, I’ll find a way to let your commanding general know.”

Greene was breathing heavily. He had lost a lot of blood. It had soaked his trousers and formed a little pool on the ground. “Don’t bother, Lieutenant,” he whispered. “I can make the trip.”

The sergeant turned to the corporal. “Leave your rifle with me,” he said. “Bring a baggage wagon around from the back. You can drive the Yankee to the hospital. If he dies, it’s on your head.”

“You can’t do that. You’ll be better off in a hospital. If your wound had been higher, you might have been killed, but it’s just in the flesh of the hip. If it’s properly dressed, you’ll be well in a week or two.”

The colored women were gathering up their bowls and baskets and getting ready to move away. The prisoners watched in silent anger as the corporal brought the wagon around and reined the horse to a stop.

Tim and the sergeant lifted Greene gently to the wagon floor, and Tim touched the boy’s sleeve. “You’re a brave lad, Greene,” he said quietly. Greene smiled and turned his face away.

As the wagon squeaked and rattled off, the sergeant turned to Tim. “Gather up the boy’s oranges, if you’re a mind to,” he said.

Tim stepped off the platform and leaned down to pick up the oranges. The other prisoners sat along the wall of the building. Tim stuffed the oranges into the bulging[56] pockets of his blouse and settled himself on the heavy, splintering planks of the baggage platform. He watched the wagon disappear into the dusty distance and then stared down at the backs of his hands, tanned and moist and heavily veined.

He thought of Greene and his other men. With a flash of fear he thought of Red. He studied the row of prisoners, looking for a familiar face, and there—turning toward him as if at a signal—was Dawson’s. The eyes of the two men met and Dawson turned away.

Tim looked along the length of track. The ribbons of steel reflected the blinding sun as they converged in the shimmering distance. He nodded sleepily but his ear caught a sound. A column of men moved along the street, thinly veiled by a cloud of dust. As they came closer Tim could see that their clothes were in tatters and they were pitifully thin. Some of them wore slouch hats and some of them straws. On poles that rested on their shoulders they carried their belongings: rusty pots and pans and bits of clothing, a three-legged chair and a couple of homemade tables. When the column halted Tim looked closely. He was shocked to see that two of the scarecrows wore dark blue forage caps and that a barefooted man had a tattered Federal blouse tucked into his belt at the back. They must be Yankee soldiers captured many months ago.

Their faces were sunken and vacant. They put down their rattling, tinkling poles and settled against the wall near the far corner of the building.

Tim felt a little sick. He turned his eyes away and rested his head in the flats of his hands and went to sleep.

The shriek of a whistle brought Tim to his senses. He was steeped in sweat and he shook his head and blinked at the train as it backed slowly toward him, its bell clanging, its wheels singing and screeching.

Six freight cars and a caboose made up the train. Up forward the stack of the engine stood high above the cars, belching smoke and sparks. Along the tops of the cars the ragged men and boys of the Home Guard stood with their muskets held loosely in their hands. On the platform at the back of the caboose stood a grisled old man with a pistol thrust into his belt. Beside him was a man, apparently young, in a soiled Confederate uniform, a slouch hat shading his face. As the train stopped, Tim could see that the young Confederate’s face was nothing but an expressionless scar.

It wasn’t long before another column of men came into sight. They were all in Yankee uniform, and as they marched out of the shadow Tim’s heart skipped a beat. At the head of the column, hatless and with his blouse thrown open, marched Red. There was life in his stride. His hair[58] blazed in the sun and he held his bearded chin at a jaunty angle. Alongside Red walked Kautz with a snappy military air.

Tim could feel the thumping of his heart. He got to his feet, dizzy with sleep and fatigue. He jumped off the platform and waved to Red. Red broke ranks as the column halted. “Timmy,” he said, “I knew you were alive but I didn’t know when we’d meet again.”

Captain Kautz smiled and held out his hand. “Good to see you, Lieutenant,” he said.

The platform was crowded with prisoners. The guards began to shout, “Form ranks, get back in line” but the men just stood and talked.

A shout like the bellow of a bull broke through the talk. There was sudden quiet, and with a broken-toothed smile showing through his snow-white beard the old man on the back platform of the caboose said, “Bluebellies, you’re in my charge now.” He took off his gray slouch hat and bowed his white head in mock respect. “When a prisoner steps out of line my men will shoot to kill. My sergeant here will stand by one car at a time and count thirty men into each. Now get to your feet.”

The old man jumped to the platform and strode down the line until he saw the derelict prisoners with their pots and pans and furniture. Some of them were leaning against the wall and others were lying on the platform in the sun. He bellowed again and the derelicts stared like sick rats at a ravening dog. Slowly they got to their feet. “Proud Yankee bucks,” the old man sneered.

“What the hell is this?” the old man screamed, frightening one of his charges so that he dropped the end of a pole,[59] letting his belongings clatter to the stones. “You can’t take your junk on the train.”

The men stood silent and timid in the sun. In a treacly voice that could barely be heard the old man said, “Just leave your stuff here and bring up the rear.”

Then his anger waned and he turned to Red. “I thought I’d never see you alive again.”

Red kept his voice low as the old man passed close to them. “A Confederate captain told us you were still alive.”

Red moved closer to Tim. “Captain Kautz has a plan of escape,” he whispered. “It was just to be the two of us. I imagine you’ll want to be coming too.”

Tim raised his brows. “That’s why you marched in here happy as a raw recruit.”

The old man stood on the platform, his pistol in his hand. “No talking in the ranks,” he ordered. “Move forward and be counted in.”

“Stick together from now on,” said Kautz in a tight-lipped whisper. He looked sharply at Tim. “We jump from the train. I give the sign.”

They were the last to be counted into the car ahead of the caboose. As they approached the door Tim held his breath as the scar-faced sergeant counted, “Twenty-six, twenty-seven....” And Red was twenty-eight.

The guards kept their places on the tops of the cars. All the doors on the opposite side of the train were shut and probably locked.

As the prisoners climbed into the car the smell of cow dung and urine struck them full in the face. The last ones in sat near the open door.

Tim’s head ached and he was stiff in every joint, but as he leaned against the boards of the cattle car with Kautz[60] on his right and Red on his left he smiled to himself. Friends, that’s what a man needs, he thought. It’s going it alone that makes it tough.

Kautz turned to Tim. “I’ve studied maps,” he whispered, slapping a slight bulge in the lower part of his blouse. “I thought about capture before we attacked the fort.”

Tim glanced at Kautz and for a moment he couldn’t believe his ears. Kautz had never shown the slightest doubt that they would take the fort.

“On this train,” he heard Kautz say, “we will probably head for Columbia. If so, we jump south of the city. We might branch west toward central Georgia. If we do that, I’m for jumping as soon as we see our chance. In either case, our objective would be Eastern Tennessee. If we should head south along the coast, we jump near Beaufort.”

Kautz looked around the car and leaned close to Tim. “The giving of the signal will depend on the position of the guards, the degree of darkness and other things.” His whisper became a hiss. “We will be taking great risks, in any case. I will go first, then Kelly, then you.”

The sergeant looked into the car. His skin was mottled purple and pink and white, scarred so badly that his face could express no emotion. When he talked the glistening skin crinkled dryly around his mouth. His voice came soft and deep. “We have to put three more men in here,” he said with something that sounded like regret, “but I’ll keep the door open if you behave yourselves. In this country,” he said, “escape is foolish. Don’t forget that.” He clamped his jaw shut and moved along to inspect the other cars.

Three of the derelicts crawled into the car and collapsed like half-empty sacks of meal.

[61]While Kautz had been talking Red had sagged and fallen asleep. “I’ve had a little sleep,” Tim said to Kautz, “you sleep now and I’ll stand watch for an hour or so.”

Tim smiled to himself. He even sleeps efficiently, he thought. As he smiled his eye was caught by the gaze of one of the derelicts. The man stared into Tim’s face with vacant, luminous eyes. Tim took three of Greene’s oranges out of the pocket of his blouse and held them toward the man. “You’re hungry,” he said. “One of these for each of you might help.”

The man’s emaciated hands shot out, grasped two of the oranges and clutched them to his body. He reached for the other with something in his pitiful face that made Tim draw the third orange back. “One to each,” he said.

The man’s lower lip quivered. He grasped the oranges and turned his back and started to claw at one of them. Another derelict saw his chance, plucked the other orange from the man and tore at the skin with his teeth. He sucked and bit as the juice ran down his tattered shirt.

The train whistle gave a sudden, piercing shriek and the cars bumped together with violent jerks. The third Yankee derelict, a boy still in his teens, opened his eyes. Tim leaned over and handed him the third orange. He took it silently, turned it around and around as if it were a ball of gold—as if spending the wealth would take some thought. He put up his knees to make a shield, and with his thumb and forefinger gently peeled off the first strip of skin ... and the second ... and the third. When the orange was peeled he quartered it and ate deliberately, gasps of pleasure punctuating every gulp.

Now the shouts of the guards and the roaring, cracking[62] voice of the captain rang along the platform, and the train moved slowly forward. The door on the right was left half open.

Tim watched the shadow of the train as it moved along beside the tracks. It must be past noon. Was it this morning they’d attacked the fort?

The train jerked and stopped. With a squeaking and clanking of tortured couplings it started again and gathered speed. Warehouses and sheds flicked by in a blur, like bits of faded glass in a kaleidoscope.

As the train left the city by the sea the landscape was flat, dotted with brown-leaved little trees and tall pines with trunks which reached high and bare before they branched into thickly needled clusters. Once when the train slowed down for a moment the face of one of the guards hung upside down from the roof of the car, then disappeared again.

As they rattled through the countryside Tim was the only one in the car who stayed awake. The train swayed and rocked across huge swamps filled with trees with swollen roots, their branches dripping with Spanish moss. The pungent odor of stagnant water and rotting wood mixed with the smell in the cattle cars.

Tim’s senses dimmed. His head dipped and came up again. He pinched himself, stood up and steadied himself against the door frame of the car.

Tim sat down. “No,” he said. “I judge by the sun that we’re still going roughly northwest.”

“No chance for Beaufort now,” Kautz said. “They’re taking us to Georgia or Columbia. There’s a place called[63] Branchville just ahead. If we fork right, it will be Columbia. I hope that’s what we do. My maps don’t cover much of Georgia. Then there’s the matter of getting help. We can’t get to our lines without some help. They say there are Unionists in North Carolina and Tennessee.”

“It looks that way,” Kautz said. “Get some rest, Lieutenant. I’ve had enough sleep.”

The train jerked to a stop, and after a spasm or two was still. Tim groaned and opened his eyes, got up, and stretched and poked his head into the blinding light outside the car. The crack of a pistol sounded in his ears. A bullet sang past his head and dug into the side of the wooden car. He ducked back into the car, feeling the blood drain away from his face. Slowly he sat down again on the floor of the car.

The old man’s voice sounded just outside the car. “Another word like that and I’ll shoot every bluebelly on this train.” He pointed his pistol at Kautz’s head. “And I’ll start with you, Yankee Captain.”

They stared out at the settlement beside the tracks. A skinny horse was tethered to a lone pine tree. There were one or two white wooden houses and a chicken shed. A pig ran into view, going in circles, pursued by a boy of nine[65] or ten. The animal moved with great speed. He and the boy dropped from sight and appeared again, this time farther away. The boy dove at the pig and they tumbled in a cloud of dust. He got up, holding the animal, and took him, wiggling and squirming, to his pen.

When the train left Branchville it was clear that they were heading for Columbia. They were going north. The countryside was hilly now. The swamps gave way to meadows and copses, small farmhouses and cotton fields. They passed through a stand of trees, and in the blur of foliage Tim thought, If a man jumped here, he’d be sliced to ribbons by the trees.

As evening came on and the light grew dim Tim noticed that Kautz was edging toward the door. Kautz’s face was tense as he watched the blackening landscape and deep blue sky. Now the wheels beat a slower tattoo and the whistle shrieked. There was a different sound as the train rumbled onto a rickety trestle. Kautz reached out and touched Tim’s arm. “Soon,” he whispered.

Tim shook Red’s shoulder to be sure he was awake. “Captain Kautz says soon.”

Red lifted his head. “Any time,” he said, crawling past Tim so he could follow Kautz.

Kautz crouched tensely by the door. The train droned across the trestle. Tim thought, Kautz must plan to jump when we get to the other side.

Suddenly Kautz reared back and sprang from the train, and Red crouched to follow him.

Tim reached out, grabbed Red’s blouse and pulled him back. “We’re over water and you can’t swim,” he yelled.

Above the rumble of the train they heard a shot from the caboose and a yell, and then another shot that echoed against the surface of the Congaree. Tim looked wildly toward the door. Our chance is gone for now, he thought.[66] The rumble stopped as the train reached solid ground again and passed into a wooded area.

There was a buzz of talk as the train creaked to a stop and the guards climbed down from the cars. The old man was furious. “Did someone escape from this car?” he screamed, his figure silhouetted menacingly in the open doorway. There was silence.

The old man spoke to the guards who stood in the twilight along the tracks, “Guards ride inside the cars,” he called in a fury of frustration. “Fix your bayonets and use them at will. No guard sleeps until we reach Columbia. If another prisoner gets away, you all better start to say your prayers.”

The feet of the guards scraped along the gravel. They moved to the doors and hoisted themselves into the cars. A skinny boy and a middle-aged, heavy-set man climbed into Tim’s car and settled themselves against the left-hand door.

The old man went down the line and slid all the doors shut. He shouted to the guards, “If you see a crack of light, strike out with your bayonet. If any guard sleeps I’ll have him shot.”

As the train moved forward it seemed to Tim that the heat in the car had already risen ten degrees. He leaned toward Red. “Do you think Kautz got away?”

“Sure he did. The water was high,” Red said, “and you’d be with him if it wasn’t for me.”

As the train moved through the night the air in the car became unbearable. The middle-aged guard stumbled forward and slid the door half open. “We have to get some air,” he said, “but you all stay clear of the door.”

[67]Tim breathed more easily now. The sky was soft and deep, and the stars touched the crests of the rolling hills with a faint, unearthly light. Tall pines were etched against the blue, and occasionally the light of a lamp marked a beckoning square in the dark outline of a house.

The train moved through the night, its headlamp sending a feeble light along the rails, its firebox glowing orange, the smoke from the engine streaming behind.

In the caboose the old captain laid his pistol on the table and fanned out his playing cards. He frowned at the scar-faced sergeant who sat across from him.

When Tim woke, the train had stopped but he could hear the engine’s slow, metallic puffing sounds and the guards talking outside the cars. He couldn’t remember where he was and in a sudden panic he reached out in the dark and put his hand on someone’s arm.

Tim reached into the pocket of his blouse and brought out a couple of blackstrap molasses cakes. “Eat one of these.”

The prisoners climbed stiffly from the cars and formed loose ranks along the platform. “This place smells like an orchard in early spring,” Tim said.

“Quiet,” the scar-faced sergeant said. “The captain is mean as the devil tonight. Your welcoming committee isn’t here.”

The old man was bullying up and down the ranks. “Stay in line, you devils,” he shouted. “Keep them in line, you lazy trash.” He stood in a circle of gaslight at the end of the platform with his hands on his hips and greeted a detachment of men in Confederate uniform. “Where in hell have you been?” he howled to the lieutenant in command of the guard. “You were supposed to be here when the train came in.”

The lieutenant was an even-tempered man. “I’ll take the gentlemen now,” he said.

The old captain made a vulgar sound. “Gentlemen!” he exploded. “These men are the lowest of Yankee scum.”

“One escape from the long bridge trestle on the Congaree. I got him with my second shot.”

The old man’s voice was rising again. “Now how the devil would I know his name?”

The lieutenant gave a command to his men and they came down the line, ordering the prisoners to march.

The column moved along the platform, past the silent cars into the pool of gaslight, out of the stationyard and along a lamplit street lined with white wooden houses, cool and dark under the cover of stately trees.

The guards spoke to the prisoners now and then, and the prisoners talked quietly among themselves. “How did you get through the battle alive?”

“Kautz and I and some of the others survived the retreat. Did you hear the order to retreat?”

Tim stuffed his hands into the pockets of his blouse. “But if you lived through the retreat, how did they take you prisoner?”

“After the battle, under a flag of truce. Kautz and I followed the doctors out to the field to help the wounded and identify our dead.” Red lowered his head and clenched his fists. “They took us prisoners while we were out there on an errand of mercy. They broke their word. An officer from Charleston wanted to let us go back to our lines. It was a renegade Yankee who put up the fuss. He said the commanding general would have to approve our release, but of course we heard no more of that.”

The column passed a lamplit printing office. “We need news of our troops,” Tim said, “if we’re going to head for Union lines.”

The men’s boots sounded on the pavement; a bell in a nearby tower tolled the hour. When its echo had died away the voice of the town crier sounded in the street. “Ten o’clock and all’s well!”

The Confederate lieutenant called a halt in front of a three-story building that appeared to be a jail. It was built of brick, and the windows were heavily barred. Four steps led up to a door in the middle of the building, and beside[70] the steps, just under a lamp, stood a prison guard. The man’s features, lit from above, were ghoulish in the yellow light.

The lieutenant spoke to the guard. “Captain Senn is nowhere about, I suppose?”

“Then we’ll set up camp in the vacant lot at the corner of Gadsden and Taylor Streets.”

The lieutenant turned to the prisoners. “Will the officers step forward, please?”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to wait till morning for a ration of food,” the lieutenant said. “Did they feed you before you boarded the train?”

Tim looked toward Dawson, the ranking officer, but Dawson didn’t speak. “Most of us have had very little food today, but we’re so tired that if we have some place to sleep we can manage until morning,” Tim said.

“I’ll see that you get rations at the crack of dawn,” the lieutenant said. “The officers will probably be billeted here, but I don’t know what plans we have for the enlisted men.”

The prisoners were marched around the corner and settled in an empty lot, under the watchful eyes of the guards.

Tim and Red rolled up their blouses for pillows and lay down under a spindly tree. Red lay on his side. “Why is Captain Dawson avoiding us?” he asked.

“Poor devil went to pieces in this morning’s assault.[71] I had to pry a dead boy loose from him and slap his face to bring him to his senses.”

Tim lay on his back and looked into the sky. The stars cast a faint light on the shapes of the prisoners and the sentries standing around the lot. Tim couldn’t wait to escape. In his mind he raced like a phantom through the pine forests of North Carolina and across the mountains into Eastern Tennessee.

In the morning a warm, westerly breeze was blowing across the river where it flowed past the city just to the west. Tim noticed that a railroad ran close by. As he looked to the north he noticed that it followed the river’s course. In the east the sun was rising, round and red above the Statehouse roof. The war seemed far away from this peaceful Southern city. There was a fine green park nearby, and just across the street, in the side yard of one of a row of neat clapboard houses, a line of white sheets flapped in the breeze.

Red was still asleep as Tim got up. He pulled off his boots and shook out his socks, then put his socks and boots back on again. He walked to a well near the corner of the lot. A guard standing nearby nodded to him, and Tim pumped some water and doused his head. “Is the water good for drinking?” he asked.

Tim cupped his left hand and pumped and drank the clear, cool water. When he straightened up he saw the Confederate lieutenant walking toward him. “Good morning,” the man said. “The rations will be along shortly.”

“My name is Davis,” the lieutenant said suddenly. “My home’s in Georgia. How about you?”

The lieutenant raised his hand in a kind of salute and moved off, walking easily among the prisoners, talking to Dawson first and then to some of the other men.

A wagon rattled into the lot, driven by a big young Negro boy perched high on the wooden seat, smiling proudly and nodding to the Confederate lieutenant. Some of the early risers helped build a fire. They heated water for coffee, and the colored boy passed out rations to the men who were awake. The other prisoners opened their eyes, stretched and shambled over to stand in line.

Red was one of the last to stir. When he saw Tim sitting near him with a corncake in his hand he sat up straight. “Why didn’t you wake me?” he asked accusingly.

When they had finished breakfast and settled themselves with tin cups filled with steaming bitter coffee Red leaned forward. “You and I are going to get away,” he said. “From this point forward we’ll bend ourselves to that one end.”

“This country is good,” Tim said. “I should think a man could live off the land.”

“We can’t depend on doing that. The more supplies we can take, the better off we’ll be.” Red laughed. “But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.”

“By tonight we’ll probably be in that jail,” Tim said, waving toward the gray roof that stood above the trees “We’ll have to make our break from there.”

[74]Red looked along the tracks. “It would help if I could swim,” he said with a touch of bitterness.

“And then in three or four months, when I’m good and ready, we can beg their leave,” Red said with a grin.

About midmorning a man, who must be Captain Senn, and a fat, dull-eyed corporal walked with Lieutenant Davis to the middle of the lot. Senn was a humorless man who wore his immaculate uniform awkwardly. He sported a blue forage cap and white gloves tucked into the crimson-edged belt that was looped around his slightly oversized blouse. He carried no pistol, but a long sword bumped against his side. His stiffness contrasted with the easy manner of Lieutenant Davis.

The lieutenant asked the Yankee officers to step forward. “This is Captain Senn,” he said, “Commandant of the Post Guard.”

Senn cleared his throat and faced the five. “You will be in my charge,” he said, looking at Dawson. “You will be imprisoned on the second floor of the jail. If you try to escape—and you don’t get shot—I’ll give you a spell of solitary confinement.” He tapped his foot, fingered the tassel that hung from the handle of his sword, and smiled frostily. “And where would you go?”

Senn nodded to the fat corporal, who had a large ring of keys dangling from his belt. “This is Corporal Addison. He will show you to your quarters.”

Addison’s heavy-lidded eyes moved dully from one Yankee face to the next. He stuck out his lower lip, motioned with his head, and shouldered his rifle. The five Yankee officers understood that they were to march at the corporal’s side.

[76]They crossed the street, walked through a grove of trees and approached the back of the jail. There was a stout wooden enclosure around the jailyard. Addison pounded on a solid wooden gate at the back of the yard. “Addison with prisoners,” he shouted.

After a sliding of wooden bars the gate was opened. The courtyard had an earthen floor. Close to the jail building and against the right-hand fence stood a small one-story brick building with two doorways facing the courtyard. At the near end of the small building was a rudely built woodshed, its back wall formed by the courtyard fence, its far side adjoining the small building. The other two walls were of thin, weathered planks that bulged outward near the bottom.

Besides the guard who had admitted the prisoners, there was one other man who paced off a vigil along the fence. He stared with sharp hostility as the little column passed his station. The prisoners were taken through the door at the back of the jailhouse.

Tim’s spirit was chilled as they passed along a dank corridor to the stair well at the front of the building. The door to the stairs was made of heavy wood. It had a small barred window near the top.

The corporal unclipped the key ring from his belt, and after some deliberation picked out a key. He inserted it in the lock, turned it and pulled the door open. The five prisoners waited as the corporal replaced the key ring and fumbled with his rifle, signaling them to precede him up the stairs. They waited again in the dusky hallway on the second floor as the corporal lumbered up. Tim thought how easily they could overpower this lubberly man, get his keys, and let themselves out the front door to the street, but he remembered the guard who had stood under the[77] lamp. He gritted his teeth and clasped his hands behind his back.

Corporal Addison pushed a heavy unlocked door on the other side of the corridor. It swung open, revealing a room about ten feet by twelve, at the far end of which was a small fireplace flanked by barred windows facing north. The floor was made up of splintering planks. The room was without furniture. The corporal pointed to a small doorway in the right-hand wall. “There are two pails in there, one for water, one for waste.” He turned on his heel, stepped into the hall and slammed and locked the door.

As the sound of the corporal’s footfalls died away Dawson moved to the window and stared through the bars. For the first time Tim looked closely at the two strange officers. They appeared to be members of the derelict group who had joined them at the Charleston depot. They looked half-starved. Their tattered uniforms hung loosely on their bony frames. The shorter of the two was already settling on the floor, but the other smiled faintly. Tim held out his hand and introduced Red, Dawson and himself. Dawson turned briefly from the window and nodded.

“I’m Lieutenant Peter Mills of the Eighth Michigan,” the stranger said, looking mournfully at the little man who had stretched himself out on the floor. “I was captured more than a year ago at James Island. I’ve been in Charleston jail all year, treated as a common criminal.”

For just a moment a flame of anger lit the man’s sunken eyes. “I ran out of money long ago,” he said, “and I’ve got none from home. The rations in that jail weren’t good enough to feed a pig. The place was filled with criminals and slatternly women. I saw hundreds of them come and go. Once when I was sick they put me in a hospital just[78] behind the prison yard, but as soon as I was better they put me back in jail again. Now I’ve lost the will to escape and almost lost the will to live.”

The effort of speaking had exhausted the man. He sank down beside the smaller fellow, who was already lost in sleep. “This man was taken from a Charleston hospital,” Mills breathed. “He must be sick. He hasn’t said a word.”

Tim reached into his pocket and pulled out a molasses cake and the one remaining orange that had belonged to Private Greene. He handed them to Lieutenant Mills. “Thank you,” Mills said with an expression of gratitude. “Do you mind if I eat the orange later?”

Dawson turned from the window and clasped his hands behind his back. He glanced at Red with mild hostility.

Red scratched his beard and looked at Dawson. “We’re in this together,” he said. “We have to live together in this room and make whatever plans might benefit us all.”

Dawson nodded almost gratefully. “But you can leave me out of your plans,” he said, looking down at Mills who had fallen asleep with the orange in his hand, “and these poor wretches couldn’t walk as far as the city limits.” Dawson stared out the window again. “You’d have to have wings to get away from here,” he said with a bitter laugh.

Red turned away impatiently and sat down on the floor. Tim moved to the other window, and reached through the bars and raised the creaking sash, propping it up with a stick he found on the sill.

Just across the way Tim saw a white building that seemed to be a school. It was closed now, but a scattering[79] of children romped in the yard. Four little girls were playing tag on a patch of grass, and two boys laughed and wrestled under a tree.

Beside the school was a one-story house, neat and clean, with a garden in front. A woman with a basket over her arm was just coming out of the house.

In the vacant lot the guards were ordering the prisoners into ranks. Tim watched as they moved along the street toward the east.

The river glistened like a sheet of polished steel in the citron light of the summer sun. Tim could see the shapes of islands where the Congaree joined the Saluda and the Broad. Columbia Canal followed the near shore of the Congaree and disappeared behind trees near the edge of town. The city was laid out in squares, their pattern broken by a handsome park just across the way.

He heard a train whistle, and an engine and a line of cars—much like the ones that had brought them to Columbia—came into view. The train was heading north. Tim watched until it disappeared among the trees at the edge of the city and the last bit of smoke blew away. As he turned from the window the whistle sounded again, this time far away.

He sat on the floor below the window, reached into the inside pocket of his blouse and pulled out his billfold and a couple of dog-eared pieces of paper. He fumbled in a pocket and brought out the stub of a pencil. The other men were all asleep. Red was slumped in a corner of the room, sleeping peacefully with a ghost of a smile across his face. Tim smoothed out a piece of paper against the surface of his billfold. Red must be dreaming of home, he thought. He sharpened his pencil against a brick, licked the point and began to write:

Richland Jail
Columbia, S. C.
July 12, 1863

Dear Mother and Father,

Yesterday I was taken prisoner and today I find myself in jail. It seems I will be here for a spell.

Surely through no fault of yours, I have had no word from home since May. It might be worth a try to write me at the old address at Hilton Head, hoping that when the Colonel learns our whereabouts our mail will be forwarded here. I have heard of mail being taken to prisons by way of Port Royal Ferry. The Rebels are often kind in such matters, as we have some of their boys too.

My health is good and I am cheered by the presence of my friend Lieutenant Kelly. I have mentioned him in other letters. Of course I am hoping we may be exchanged, but we have no word of the chances for that.

If you can send a box, I know that books will be a special want, and paper and pencils and a change of underclothes. I have some money but more would be useful, if it can be spared. I don’t know if a sutler comes to this jail, but I imagine that things can be bought somehow.

I long to see your faces more than ever now. Love to the twins, and when you see Kate in church ask her to send that long-awaited photograph.

Your loving son,
Timothy Bradford
Lieut. 7th Ct.

He folded the letter and put it, with the billfold and remaining sheet of writing paper, back into his pocket. He measured the pencil stub between his thumb and forefinger, and shook his head. He slipped it into his pocket.

He got up from the floor and looked out the window again, this time with unseeing eyes. He turned from the[81] window and paced along the wall and back again. Now that the letter was finished he was tortured by a feeling of suffocation. He wanted to send it on its way right now, or better still, deliver it himself.

As Tim finished his game with Red they heard the familiar rattle of keys and the sound of the lower door. “There’s Bull Head,” said Red, “coming to take us to the yard.” Tim swept the chessmen off the board and set them on the mantle.

They had been in the jail for nearly five months now. After a week or so they had been joined by the officers captured in the second attempt to take Fort Wagner. This room where they had first been imprisoned wasn’t used for sleeping now. The Army prisoners had been given the run of the second floor, and this had been kept as a sort of common room.

They had thought of escape almost constantly, but they hadn’t found a plan that was good enough. If they worked together they might overpower the guards, but the hue and cry would come too soon. Some might escape but some would surely lose their lives. Prisoners went outside under guard every day, but they were carefully watched. An open wagon came into the yard several times a week bringing[83] food, but it went out empty. There was no place to hide on the wagon.

Shortly after the arrival of his prisoners Captain Senn had realized that their stay was to be an extended one, and he’d had double-decker bunk beds installed in the cells along the corridor. The beds were furnished with straw mattresses and one rough woolen blanket each, supplied by some kindhearted women of Columbia.

For a time the floor above the Army officers had been occupied by Army privates, but these men had been sent to Belle Island prison to suffer through the winter in the open air. Now the second floor was occupied by Navy men captured in Admiral Dahlgren’s unsuccessful attempt to land an assaulting force at Sumter.

Corporal Addison appeared at the top of the stairs, his holstered pistol bumping foolishly against the curve of his stomach. Another guard stood behind Addison, his bayonet glistening in the gloom. “Fall in,” Addison said. “Time to take you to the yard.”

He might have saved himself the trouble of giving the command. Most of the men already waited in line and now they filed along the corridor, talking to each other in quiet tones.

The day was warm for late fall, but Tim shivered as he moved down the stairs and walked through the lower corridor, buttoning his ragged uniform.

There was sunlight in the yard. Tim’s spirits rose a little as he and Red began their walk. Some of the prisoners took out playing cards and settled against the wall, or marked out games of tick-tack-toe on the ground, but Tim and Red had discovered they could endure prison life better if they took regular exercise. They passed the one-story brick cookshack with its two doors, each leading to a separate kitchen.

[84]Red kicked at a little mound of dust. “You seem downhearted this afternoon.”

There were six guards in the courtyard. Two were standing near them by the wooden gate at the end of the yard. Tim spoke softly. “It’s been a week since we’ve talked about escape. Prospects of exchange have grown dim. There’s been no mail from Kate or your folks or mine for more than a month. Our money has given out and our rations are poor.”

While the money had lasted, the Army prisoners had pooled their funds and paid the colored woman who brought in their rations to bring in extra food and do the cooking, but when their money was gone Senn, in his methodical way, had taken seven volunteers, telling each to cook two meals one day a week. The midday meal was cold. Tim cooked on Mondays.

He was glad to do it, to break up the routine, but Red had said he had no love for stirring pots. The meals were served in a long room on the first floor of the jail.

The Navy had a separate mess. Two sailors had volunteered for permanent duty in the kitchen. One cooked and the other was a kind of handyman who helped the cook and did the laundry for the Navy boys.

As Tim and Red swung around the yard they saw the two sailors lounging by the door. One of them was large and ugly. He had a jolly nature and a great mop of black hair. The other was slight with bright blue eyes and light brown hair. Both sailors expected to be exchanged.

The big man cheerfully bore the name of “Devil” given him by shipmates of a happier time. When he saw Tim and Red he raised his hand in greeting, and the little sailor smiled.

[85]The smaller sailor, whose name was Bell, said, “Chicken cooked in wine.”

“Indeed,” said Red. “I’ll dine with the Navy tonight.” He smiled at Devil. “You boys are privileged characters. How does it happen Senn lets two Navy men work in the cookshack at once?”

Devil screwed his face into a grin. “It’s because we’re such capital fellows and they trust us,” he said. “Nobody can trust an Army man.”

Devil leaned forward and fixed Tim with a roguish stare. “I plan to poison him,” he whispered.

There was a pounding at the gate before their time was up, and the prisoners were ordered into the building again. Tim was on kitchen duty tonight. He stood with Devil and Bell and watched as the guards opened the gate and the wagon came through. The colored boy, Tom Jackson, whom Tim had first seen in the vacant lot months before, was holding the reins. His mother, whom the prisoners called “Aunty,” sat beside him. As the wagon pulled up to the cookshack the woman’s thin face wrinkled into a smile.

Aunty waited while her son and the white men unloaded the wagon and stored the food on the shelves in the kitchens. When they had nearly finished she beckoned to Tim. “Under the canvas just behind the seat you’ll find a barrel of salt pork. Share it all around.”

[86]“Never mind,” the woman cackled, “but if anyone asks you, tell them you paid me fair and square.”

Tim kept his face as straight as he could. “You didn’t steal it did you, Aunty?”

Aunty went into gales of laughter, and a guard who watched from a little distance looked toward her uneasily.

She screeched, “You shouldn’t talk like that to poor old Aunty. You unload the wagon now!”

When they had finished unloading, Tom whipped the horse around, the guards opened the gate, and the wagon moved toward the end of the yard. Tim watched as the gate swung wide.

The guards made Tom rein in when the wagon was halfway through. One of them hopped to the hub of a front wheel and stabbed the ragged canvas with the point of his bayonet.

Addison came through the jailhouse door, and the guard who had been watching them mumbled something in the corporal’s ear.

Addison stuck out his lower lip and motioned with his head toward the other guard. “This fellow thinks I should inspect the stores.”

Addison, with a sour expression on his face, waddled after Tim to the Army kitchen. He poked his way through sacks of com meal and rice and boxes of crackers as Devil and Bell looked on from the yard. He shook a keg of vinegar and kicked the barrel that held the pork. “What’s in this?”

[87]“Dried meat or sorghum molasses, I think,” Tim said. “If you want me to pry off the top we can look.”

“Never mind,” Addison said, dipping his grubby hand into a tin of salt and licking his fingers one by one. “I reckon nothing was smuggled in.”

Devil stood in the doorway, fingering his pie-shaped Navy cap. “What did you expect to find?”

Addison frowned darkly and rocked a little from side to side. “Knives or guns.”

The following Monday Addison’s shout rang down the hall and the prisoners began to stir. Tim slept in a second-tier bunk. He opened his eyes and pulled up his blanket to shield himself from the chilly air. This left his feet sticking out. He stared, as he had stared a hundred times before, at the rough-hewn rafters and the boards that formed the floor above. He threw off his blanket and sat on the edge of his bunk. One of his boots was lying on the end of the mattress. He reached for it and turned it over in his hands. As he looked he began to frown. If he had some money, he could send out his boots to have the soles and heels repaired. He’d noticed they leaked the last time he walked in the jailyard after a rain.

Addison finished checking the beds and poked his head through the door. “Ready to go to the kitchen, Lieutenant?”

Tim slid to the floor, found his other boot and pulled it on, balancing himself against the bunk. “Combed and manicured. Ready for another day.”

“You seem right cheerful this morning, Lieutenant,” Addison said accusingly.

[89]Red pulled his blanket away from his face and looked sleepily down from his bunk. Then he pulled the blanket up again.

When Tim stepped into the yard he could hear Devil singing chanteys in the Navy kitchen.

Devil poked his head through the kitchen door and rubbed the bristles on his chin. “Good morning, Lieutenant.”

Tim went into the Army kitchen and started a fire in the stove. He pulled his toothbrush out of his pocket and held it between his teeth while he drew a cup of water from the big tank. He moistened the toothbrush, sprinkled it lightly with salt and brushed his teeth. He drew his thumb across the bristles before putting the brush back into his pocket.

He cooked up a mush with cornmeal and sorghum molasses and heated a pail of coffee. When he finished cooking he took the breakfast to the Army mess with the help of a guard.

They carried out pails of tin plates and cups that had been soiled the night before and set them between the kitchen doors. At ten o’clock a couple of prisoners would go under guard to the pump at the corner of the vacant lot to rinse the dishes, while other men, also under guard, would carry the waste pails to a stream that ran to the river through a culvert under the canal.

Tim ate a bowl of mush and drank his coffee. He scraped the stove and tossed a couple of wooden spoons into one of the pails outside the door. He had finished his work. He stood in the doorway for a moment, then wandered into the Navy kitchen.

Bell was stirring a potful of clothes with the broken handle of a broom. “Good morning, Lieutenant,” he said.

During warmer weather the prisoners had had a weekly swim in the river and the Army men had done their laundry in wooden buckets while they were at liberty in the yard. Now it was too cold for swimming, and most of the men—finding it unpleasant to do their laundry in the open air—had given it up. Tim had been waiting for a chance to talk to Senn, to see if the Army prisoners could have an extra kitchen hand, as the Navy had, to do the wash and help carry the food. If they couldn’t have baths, at least they should have a way to wash their clothes.

Tim passed the time of day with Devil and Bell until it was time to go back upstairs.

At ten thirty the prisoners were taken out for their morning airing. Tim and Red were among the first to enter the yard. They found the Navy prisoners still there.

Everyone in the yard was watching Addison and the guards who had escorted the dishwashers to the pump and the pail carriers to the stream. Members of the detail were standing by the fence, their faces white as chalk.

One of the guards stood close to Addison. His body was racked by sobs. His hands hung forlornly at his sides and he drew in his breath in shuddering gasps. “God help me,” he wailed, “I just meant to stop him. I never meant to kill.”

The stricken boy was suddenly aware that Army prisoners were filing into the yard. He shrank back in fear. The guards brought up their muskets, and the Army men found themselves held at the end of the yard. An uneasy silence was broken by the intermittent sobbing and wailing of the guard. Addison finally mumbled something to the sentries, and he and the boy left the yard by the wagon gate.

When the Navy prisoners had been taken back into the building a tall Confederate private sauntered toward the[91] soldiers, his gray overcoat swinging at his knees. “Take your exercise,” he said gruffly. “Spread out and take your exercise.”

The sentries stood along the fences and by the buildings. The guard was almost double now. The early morning shift was staying on duty in the yard.

The prisoners who had witnessed the shooting mingled with the others. Now one of them, a man named Frazer, began to explain. “Remember Jones? Well, he’s dead. Shot by the boy who went out with Addison. We’re washing the waste pails in the creek, and the guards are joking with us, and I notice that Jones is working his way downstream to a place near a thick grove of trees, making a big job of rinsing his pails....”

The tall Rebel private shouted from his place by the gate, “Break up that group. Spread out, or I’ll send you back inside.”

Tim pretended to drift away but he and Red stayed close enough to Frazer so that they could hear how Jones had been killed.

Frazer went on. “Suddenly Jones gets up and looks around, smiling at the guard in what he means to be a casual way, and points to a place in the creek. Then he says, ‘There’s a pretty stone.’ Well, the guards kind of notice, because Jones’s voice shakes and his face is pale. Suddenly Jones wheels and dashes among the trees toward the bridge that crosses the canal. Two of the guards are older men, but this young one dashes after Jones, quick as a rabbit, and drops him with one shot. Then he lets his rifle fall and runs and bends over Jones, quiet, while we all stand there like mutes. Then the boy starts to shake Jones and cry and carry on....”

[92]Frazer kept talking, but Tim and Red had heard enough and they started their walk around the yard. “Did you know Jones?” asked Tim.

“There would be sentries on the bridge that crosses Columbia Canal. I can only think he must have gone mad.”

“If he went that way he wasn’t heading north. He must have been thinking of Beaufort, if he was thinking at all.”

Captain Senn came out of the jail. A soldier was with him, carrying a pasteboard box.

The men gathered around. “You have heard by now,” Senn said, “that one of your number tried to escape. He was shot. He should have been shot. It will serve as a lesson to you not to be foolish when you leave the prison under guard. The soldier who shot this man said he wasn’t shooting to kill. I told him it is the duty of a prison guard to shoot an escaping man. I told him I would have shot the man myself. I would not hesitate to shoot one of you. Not at all.” He fingered the pistol that hung at his side and smiled his frostbitten smile. “And now there are better things to talk about. In this box we have some mail.”

The soldier reached for the letters one at a time and called out names. There was a letter for Jones. Senn snatched the letter. Red’s name was called. Red took his letter and turned away. Tim heard his own name called.

He reached for the letter and saw that it was addressed in Kate’s fine hand. His hands trembled as he turned it over several times, then tucked it into his inside pocket.

When the mail had been distributed Senn cleared his throat. “Three of you are lucky. Bradford, Brown and Frazer received money in the mail. We have a system now.”[93] He frowned. “To prevent illegal exchange. I give you printed slips. You fill them out. These authorize our quartermaster to convert your money to Confederate currency at Government rates. The quartermaster keeps the money in his care....”

As Senn droned on, Tim lost the hope of ever seeing his cash. He heard Senn’s words again, “... but the sutler won’t come to the jail as he did before. You will give your requests for goods to Corporal Addison or me, and the wagon will deliver your things to the jail. A list of goods and prices has been posted by the door at the end of your corridor.”

Tim reached for his slip. His family had sent him a hundred dollars. He filled out the slip and gave it back to Senn, who nodded with a show of friendliness. “Your goods will be brought in on Thursday, if the quartermaster has what you want.”

Red’s face was like a happy child’s. “Nancy’s fine, and she says the little fellow’s well. Looks just like his dad, she says.”

Tim grinned. “I’m glad she’s well and the little fellow too. I’m glad he has good health to make up for his looks.”

Stone’s Brook, Connecticut
October 27, 1863

Dear Tim,

Your letters give great pleasure to us all. We thank God your health is fine and that you have a friend like Lieutenant Kelly to lighten your days in that dark jail. I am sure it must work the other way as well. How fondly I remember the many times when I was blue until you made me laugh!

Perhaps I shouldn’t say it in a letter that might be read by[94] your captors, but it seems the war has taken a turning now. The defeat of Lee at Gettysburg was a blow to the Confederacy. Now we have news that General Grant is Supreme Commander in the west. Maybe he will be paying a call on you soon. Or perhaps your next letter will come from the comparative freedom of one of our Army camps. How fervently you must hope for exchange!

Kate had written the letter on small, thin paper, and Tim was surprised to see that the second page was blank. But when he looked more closely he saw that it was double. It was covered with spidery lines and printed all over with the faintest legends. As he looked Tim heard footsteps on the stony earth and was startled by a voice close by.

“Time to go back inside,” Red said. When he saw Tim’s face he laughed. “Did I frighten you, lad?”

My prayers will be with you wherever you are. God give you strength to take whatever course you may deem wise. Your folks have written and we will post our letters at the same time. We have sent a surprise in a separate packet. There’s something there from me. Can you guess what? I hope it will reach you in good time.

Your loving,
Kate

At four o’clock as the prisoners moved into the yard Captain Senn hailed Tim. “Lieutenant,” he said solemnly, holding out an envelope, “there was a letter with the money your family sent. I’m sorry I had to open it.”

“Here is another,” said Senn, making a ceremony of giving up the second letter. “Since it came from a soldier, we opened this one too.”

It hadn’t appeared that Kate’s letter had been opened[95] but suppose it had? Then Senn would watch him like a hawk. Tim looked sharply at Senn’s face and saw nothing there but that patient, meaningless smile.

When they were out of earshot Red said, “That stuffed shirt doesn’t need to apologize for opening our mail. After all, we’re prisoners of war. But don’t let me keep you from your mail.”

They stood in the middle of the yard while Tim read the letter from his family. He finished reading and said, “Things are fine at home.”

Tim looked at the irregular, unfamiliar writing. “Don’t know,” he said. He unfolded the letter and read the first line. “Here, Red, it’s from Greene. Did you know Greene?”

Hilton Head, S. C.
November 14, 1863

Dear Lieutenant,

Did you think that bayonet had done me in? Well, thanks to you it didn’t. That Rebel maniac took me to the hospital and the surgeon there was a fine gentleman and took care of me as a father would.

The thing that frightened me was getting well. I could see into the jailyard from the hospital. I pray to God your jail is not like that. A gallows stands in the middle of the yard and there were puddles all around and people lived out there in ragged tents, whether by choice or order I couldn’t say. There were many colored soldiers of the 54th Massachusetts who were captured in the second assault on the fort where you were wounded by a private in the seat of the pants. They were brave fellows, as perhaps you have heard.

[96]Before they had a chance to throw me in that jail I was lucky enough to be exchanged. When will you suffer that happy fate? I hope it will be soon so I can follow you into Charleston and twist that Rebel corporal’s nose.

I never told you how I got into the fort. When you went over the crest I paused for a moment to fuss with my rifle. Well, I owe my life to that pesky thing. If I’d gone in firing they would have shot me down. When it wouldn’t work I scrambled up the parapet anyway. I stumbled on a sandbag on the top and fell into the place headfirst. They took my useless gun and sat me down by a cannon to wait the battle out.

It seems too bad that you are in that jail when you are almost as brave a man as I.

Your faithful servant,
Thomas Greene, Private

Red smiled. “I wish I’d known the boy. Did he really stick you in the seat of the pants?”

That evening when Tim had finished working over the big, black woodburning stove he went to the Navy kitchen to have some food with Devil and Bell. He looked down mournfully at his greasy pants.

When Devil finished eating he turned to Tim. “You’re downcast tonight, Lieutenant,” he said, pulling at his long nose.

Tim knew by now that he could trust the Navy men. “I have to get away from here,” he whispered. “Red and I are dying to get away.”

Devil was sitting on a barrel and Bell squatted on an empty wooden box. Bell doused his empty plate in a pail of water and put it on the table. He held his hands over his knees and cracked his knuckles. “Are you more anxious than the rest?”

Bell got up from the box. He reached into a corner and brought out a copy of a Charleston paper only two weeks old.

He unfolded the paper and pointed to a column that[98] was headlined Present Position of Union Troops. “Sherman’s in Memphis now, and Burnside’s been in Knoxville since early September.”

Tim said, “Knoxville’s closer by some three hundred miles. But granting that we’d have a chance to get to Burnside’s lines, how will we get away from here?”

Devil stood up and walked to the door. When he was satisfied that none of the guards was near he crossed the little room and pulled aside a couple of ragged towels that hung across a corner on a piece of string. A big rusty boiler was there. “Look here,” he said, pointing at the wall behind the boiler.

There was a small, sashless window halfway up the wall. “That leads to the woodshed, doesn’t it?”

“It does,” said Devil, “and the fence at the back of the woodshed happens to be in sorry shape. If a man could find a time to do a little work he could loosen a board in the fence.”

Bell was keeping watch in the doorway. He turned around to speak to Tim. “The boards of the fence are wide, and the nails were hammered in from outside.”

Tim’s heart thumped as thoughts of escape whirled through his mind. Forgetting himself, he spoke with excitement, “One of us could loosen a board while we were fetching wood. A couple of blows with a decent sized log....”

Bell turned around again, this time with his forefinger pressed against his mouth. Then he sauntered to the center of the room. “They’ll hear you, if you aren’t careful.”

A guard put his head in the door. “The corporal says, finish your chores,” he drawled. “He wants to take you back inside.”

Tim grinned foolishly at the guard, stood up and went[99] around to the Army kitchen. His hands shook as he lit the lantern and scraped the stove.

He signaled a sentry who was lighting the lamp that hung in a bracket on the jailhouse wall. “Finished for today,” he said.

Addison’s room was on the first floor at the back of the jail, and when the guard knocked the corporal’s keys began to rattle. He opened the door. “’Bout time,” he said, holding his lantern so it would light Tim’s face.

As they moved along the first-floor corridor Addison mumbled, “I’m going up too.”

It was the custom of Senn or the guard on duty to check the prisoners’ beds after the men came up from their mess. Senn had decreed that they stay on their beds until he’d finished counting them in.

Red lay on the top bunk, across from Tim. He stirred against the dingy wall. “Sure, that was a capital mush you cooked tonight.”

Tim slapped his thigh. “We have it,” he whispered. “We have a route at last.”

Addison’s boots scuffed out of the adjoining cell and he appeared in the doorway with his lantern held high. He looked at Tim with something like a smile. “We meet again,” he said.

[100]Addison squinted at the bunk under Tim’s. “Is Lieutenant Mills in that pile of straw?”

Mill’s voice came from the corridor. “Sorry I’m not on my bunk,” he said, “but I had duties at the end of the hall.”

“Now what duties ...” Addison began then stammered, “Try not to let it happen again.” He moved past Mills and along the hall.

Red doubled up with glee. “Never again,” he said as he rolled over and shook his bunk with silent laughter.

Tim smiled to himself. “They say if you stay in jail too long you go back to your childhood ways. We’ll have to get you out of here.”

When Addison had left the floor Tim and Red went to the end of the corridor away from the common room and stood by a window that overlooked the yard. The light from a flickering lamp outside painted swift black ghosts against the wall.

Tim told Red about the window in the Navy kitchen and the condition of the fence at the back of the woodshed. “We can enter the kitchen when we’re in the yard and crawl through the window while Devil and Bell kick up a noise. Then we’ll wait in the woodshed till after dark.”

“They’ll discover our absence when they check the beds, and the hounds will be after us in no time at all.”

Red looked through the bars at the dark blue sky. “If Senn’s not on duty, dummies might work.”

[101]By Wednesday night it seemed to Tim that nothing could go wrong. Yesterday afternoon Devil had loosened the boards in the fence.

Tim had watched and listened from the corridor window when the wagon had come in. Aunty had cackled and slapped her thighs. She had prodded Bell to laughter with a set of faces that would have made a dying man laugh.

There had been a bad moment when one of the guards, not satisfied with watching from his usual distance, had moved up to the woodshed door. “Don’t fetch wood now,” he’d said. “Wait until the wagon leaves.”

“Need wood now,” Devil had said, staggering through the door with a teetering load. Then he’d tripped on the sill and the wood had gone flying, one piece hitting the guard on the shin, making him shout out a stream of oaths. Devil had kicked the shed door shut before he got off the ground. Tim hoped that no one passing through the alley would notice the loosened board and report it to Senn.

Tim stood by the window in the common room. He watched Red bending over his game of chess with Peter Mills and marveled at his outward calm. A little fire sputtered on the hearth and Dawson and Frazer were reading by candlelight. Brown stood in the door, staring into the fire and dreaming his private dreams. The air outside was clear as crystal, and the lights twinkled yellow in the neat white houses. A soldier and a girl passed under a lamp at the corner of the park.

Kate’s map had shown him the rail line running north along the east bank of the Broad, sticking pretty close to the river for a number of miles. That was their route, straight up the Broad. God give them the nighttime to move without pursuit.

[102]Now the sound of music reached his ears. Tim had heard it before. It was said that the people of Columbia held great balls from time to time to raise money for the Armies of the Confederacy.

For a moment Tim forgot the meager rations in the jail, the smells, the dirty clothes, the bedbugs that plagued them at night, the eternal boredom that made the men short of temper. He thought of the people he would miss. There were Devil and Bell and Peter Mills.

Tim’s thoughts went back to a late afternoon shortly after the arrival of the officers captured in the second assault. Someone had started to sing “The Star-Spangled Banner,” others had joined the singer, and before a minute had passed the whole second floor had rocked with the song. The prisoners had pressed against the bars and shouted across the town.

Suddenly, caught by the sun, a white handkerchief had fluttered from a window of the little white house across the street. Then the owner of the handkerchief had appeared, a happy-faced young woman who waved as if she could never grow tired. Senn and Bull Head and another guard had come up the stairs to spoil the fun. Senn didn’t want singing or shouting in his jail. But from that time on the young woman whose heart beat for the Union had been the sweetheart of every Yankee in the jail.

Tim thought again of the coming day. Two haversacks and some other supplies were hidden in the Navy kitchen.

Tim put his hand over his breast pocket to be sure that his pictures were there. They had come in a shining black book with the word ALBUM stamped in gold on its spine. The covers were sky blue inside, neatly patterned with white stars. The pages were made of heavy pasteboard covered with paper frames to hold the pictures. The frames were arched at the top and lined around with gold.

[103]Kate’s picture was there with the ones of Mother and Father and the twins. It was the only one that wasn’t stiff. It was posed, of course, but somehow Kate’s natural poise made it seem more alive. Her waist was slim and her figure had filled out where it should be full. She was more of a woman now. The photographer had put a touch too much pink on the cheeks, but her face was the same. Before the picture had come, her face had faded a little from Tim’s mind. Now he could see her clear as yesterday.

She had cut out a little piece from the hem of the dress she wore in the picture and had pasted it on the blank page opposite her photograph. The material was golden brown—some kind of silk he supposed it was.

The fire flickered low. Tim heard the men stirring behind him and felt a hand on his shoulder. “No sleep tomorrow night,” Red said quietly. “We better get sleep while we can.”

Tim turned from the window. “We’ve rested for five months now. We don’t need sleep. We need a beefsteak dinner and a couple of greatcoats.”

Dawson looked up from his book, quiet and inscrutable. “Do you really mean to try to escape?”

By now their secret was known to everyone on the second floor. There had been the chance that someone would notice their absence from the mess. Then, too, they would need a little help along the way.

Mill’s chess partner had left the room and Mills was studying the board. He turned to Dawson. “Sure they’re going,” he said. “Say, Dawson, do you play chess?”

Dawson didn’t answer, and Mills stood up and followed Red and Tim out the door and along the corridor. When they were back in their room Mills said, “That man’s behavior is downright unsettling.”

[104]They lay down on their bunks, and after a while Dawson came in and stretched out on his bunk, without taking off his blouse. Soon he breathed steadily in a seesaw chorus with Mills.

Tim thought again about Kate’s map. She must have searched her soul before she mailed it. That map, drawn with such painstaking care, might show him the way to his death. But she must have known he would never rest until he’d tried to get away.

Until now Kate had been waiting at the end of the trail—warm and lovely but far away. All at once it seemed she was very close, her faith and understanding sending him on his way, making him impatient to be free, no matter what hardships freedom might bring.

Red’s calm began to disappear. As soon as Addison left the floor Red pulled a list from his side pocket. He and Tim went over it one last time. Six quarts of corn, parched and ground, were waiting in the Navy kitchen. Extra woolen underclothes and socks, a paper of salt for each of them, a piece of soap, some lucifer matches and tin cups; these things were packed into the haversacks concealed behind the boiler in the kitchen.

“Toothbrushes, family photographs and such can go in our pockets,” Tim said. “That just leaves blankets.”

Red gave the paper one last look, then tore it up and threw the scraps on the ashes from the night before, turning them under with the toe of his boot.

Red said, “It can’t be now, or two of us will be in our stocking feet all day.”

A man named Allen leaned against the wall by the door. “I have an extra pair of boots,” he said. “They’re no good for wearing but you’re welcome to them if they’ll be of use.”

Mill’s good blanket, his boots and an extra blouse[106] would be used to make the dummy on Tim’s bunk. There was one spare blanket, ragged and full of holes. They would tear it in two. Mills would cover himself with half and they would use the other half for Red’s bunk, with Allen’s boots and an extra pair of pants stuffed with dirty clothes.

Mills leaned against the chimney, his thin wrists and long hands sticking out from his tattered blouse. His face was pale but not so thin as it had been when Tim had first seen him slump to the floor in this same room. His spirit had mended somehow.

Mills looked at Tim with a faint familiar humor in his face. “I could never make a trip like that, you know.” He measured the thickness of his thigh with his bony hands. “I have nothing in reserve.”

Mills gave no sign of having heard. “I’ll miss you boys.” Dawson’s figure appeared in the doorway and he managed a thin, one-sided smile. He looked toward Mills. “You promised to teach me chess. Remember, Mills?”

Red had a gold-plated watch. Until a week or so ago he had lost the habit of winding it. Keeping track of time had only made the hours drag. Now he kept it wound and fussed if it was slow or fast. He set it by a watch that Devil carried.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out the watch and twiddled with the chain. “I wish we had something to do. Curse all our early preparations.”

Red looked at his watch and put it back again. “I just remembered I’m to be on slop duty today. I never thought I’d look forward to washing out those pails.”

At ten o’clock Addison came up with three other guards. He asked for a couple of extra men to go down to the yard for wood. Tim almost leaped to his feet but he restrained himself. “I’ll go, Corporal,” he said in what he hoped would pass for a casual tone. “Do you want to come, Allen? Do you feel like toting some wood?”

At the midday meal Addison stood by the messroom door. Tim tried to see the room through the eyes of a guard. Two men might not be missed tonight. He took a sip of water from his tin cup and bent low over his corncakes and sorghum molasses.

Mills was just behind Dawson as the column moved upstairs. When they reached the landing Dawson leaned toward Addison and said a few words. Addison mumbled a reply.

When Addison started back downstairs Tim averted his eyes until he heard the clang of the lower door.

When he looked up again Mills had grasped the front of Dawson’s blouse. He swung the man around and knocked him against the wall with a sickening sound. Mills had always been a gentle man. This action took everyone by surprise. The other men gaped while Mills slapped a hand over Dawson’s mouth. “Why did you ask to see Senn?”

Mills signaled with his head for Tim and Red to move in close, and dragged the man through the common-room door. Dawson let out a little scream as Mill’s hand slipped away from his mouth for a second. Mills shoved him into a corner.

Tim and Frazer moved with Red and Allen to the center of the room. The others stood outside the door.

Frazer brought out a knife that no one had ever known he had—a wicked thing with a gleaming, pointed blade.[108] Dawson twitched like a headless chicken on a chopping block.

Mills held one hand behind Dawson’s neck and the other firmly over his mouth. Red looked quietly down at Dawson and shook his head sadly.

Tim kneeled. Dawson’s breath came in violent gasps. “Dawson,” Tim said, “Peter will take his hand away now and you won’t cry out. Do you understand?”

Dawson’s eyes lost their deathlike stare. He slumped. Mills supported him almost gently now. Dawson nodded and Mills took his hand away.

Dawson gave a quick little sigh and stared down at the splintering floor. The room was silent. Tim heard footsteps in the hall downstairs.

Dawson raised his head as if to speak, but Tim signaled for quiet, and Dawson looked down like a feverish child.

Addison’s voice came up the stairs. “What’s all that knocking about up there?”

Mills took a fresh grip on Dawson’s blouse. “I heard you clear,” he said. “You’ll get the knife if you don’t tell us straight what was in your mind.”

Dawson collapsed, his body shaken by shuddering, racking sobs. Mills eased him to the floor, and Frazer struck out with his hand and tore off one of Dawson’s shoulder straps with its Captain’s bars outlined in threadbare, greenish gold. “You’re not fit to carry a private’s slop,” he said.

Tim looked into Dawson’s eyes. “If you give me your word you won’t tell anyone about our plan, now or any other time, I promise not to leave this jail till every prisoner has sworn that you’ll come to no harm.”

“I’m not bargaining,” Tim said evenly. “I’m giving you a chance to save your skin.”

Dawson lowered his eyes. His lower lip quivered and he looked up at Tim, then down again. “You have my word.”

Mills and Tim got to their feet and left the room. The others followed, leaving Dawson alone on the floor. Halfway down the corridor Mills turned to Tim. “I better watch Dawson from now until tomorrow morning.”

Tim’s hands trembled as he hacked the old blanket in half with Frazer’s knife. That business with Dawson had shaken him up.

Senn had said that an extra hand could go to the kitchen to do the wash and help with the chores. It seemed that all they’d had to do was ask. Now it should be easy to smuggle the blankets into the yard.

Tim fetched the wooden laundry buckets. He and Red stripped their bunks and folded their blankets, squashing them into the bottoms of the buckets and covering them with a scattering of dirty underclothes they had rounded up from the men along the corridor.

At four o’clock Addison and another guard trudged up the stairs. Red took one bucket and Allen the other. Tim[110] looked over the room for the last time. A few deft motions of Mills’s skillful hands and the blankets and boots and scraps of clothing would convince the unsuspecting Addison.

For the hundredth time Tim slapped the pocket where he kept Kate’s map, and heard the reassuring crinkle. At the end of the corridor Peter Mills stood close to Dawson.

When Addison saw the buckets he ordered the men to halt. “You can’t do your washing now,” he said.

Devil lounged in the Navy kitchen door, picking his teeth with a splinter of wood. Allen and Red set the buckets by the door.

As they started their walk Tim studied the guards. Except for the tall young private, they certainly were a sorry lot.

Mills and Dawson stood with a knot of men watching a game of dice the prisoners had started near the cookhouse wall.

It seemed to Tim that familiar things weren’t familiar any more. The barred windows in the jailhouse wall, the lamp, the sentries with their guns and glistening bayonets, the color of the earth, the skeletal branches of the spindly trees that rose above the cookhouse roof, seemed like things in a distant dream.

At last Devil stopped them with a wave of the hand. “Stop your walking now,” he said, “and watch the game.”

One of the players took out his watch, looked at it and put it away again. He spat on the dice and threw them[111] once more, then gathered them up. “Well, that’s it,” he said in mock disgust.

Red lowered himself to the doorsill and swung into the Navy kitchen. Allen handed the buckets to Devil, who handed them to Bell with a bow and flourish.

Allen started a good-natured scuffle with Frazer, who was stupidly facing the kitchen door.

Tim dropped behind the screen of men and scrambled into the kitchen, cracking his shin against the sill.

Red was already out of sight. Tim lost no time in rounding the boiler and kneeling with Red behind a stack of wood which was topped by towels and rags that hung from the line. Devil had built up the woodpile high and solid so that the men would have a place to hide.

Tim tried to look out between the towels but Bell had hung them so that they overlapped.

Bell’s hand came around the boiler, and one blanket and then another tumbled over Tim’s head. He drew them away, smiling in spite of himself, and shoved one toward Red.

Tim thought about the dummies. He hoped that Addison’s eyes were as dull as they looked.

Now Devil’s voice came deep and quiet. “Don’t worry. Bull Head’s gone inside again. You have nothing to fear from that thickheaded lout.”

Bell said, “The wagon came at half past three. Aunty left some things for you. We put them in the packs.”

Tim could hear the shuffling of the prisoners’ feet and their mumbled talk. He heard the slam of the jailhouse[112] door. Then he heard a most unwelcome sound. Senn’s voice came loud and clear from somewhere in the yard. The guard was changing, and Senn was giving his sentries instructions. Tim glanced at Red’s face, dimly lit behind the towels and rags. Red whispered disgustedly, “The man has no business here.”

“No talk,” rumbled Devil. “Senn will leave soon. There. He’s starting for the jailhouse now.”

Tim heard Senn’s footsteps passing close. His boots scraped the earth by the jailhouse. The door creaked open, then clanged shut.

Devil went about his work. He clanked the pots and dropped firewood and sang Navy ditties, as he always did.

Bell was watching at the door, and after what seemed an eternity he turned back into the room. “Nothing to worry about in the yard. The guards are as usual. It’s getting dark.”

When Devil and Bell had finished their work they hailed a guard to take them to the Navy mess. The guard came into the shack and offered to help.

“Well, sure you can help,” said Devil hastily. “Here, Bell, grab one handle of the tub of mush and let the guard help on the other side.”

Tim heard a scraping of feet as the men left the kitchen and he heard Devil whisper, “You boys hold tight!”

Tim and Red sat quiet. They had no way of knowing whether a guard was near. Tim could hear someone working in the Army kitchen. He couldn’t remember who was cooking tonight.

Devil and Bell came back to the kitchen, Devil talking all the way so that the hidden men would know who they were.

Tim began to feel cramped. His legs ached and he[113] wished he could shift his position a little, but he was afraid he might bring down the pile of wood.

Devil said, “It’s dark enough for you to go right now, but Senn is still in there, prowling about.”

A few minutes later Bell said, “We’ll have to go back inside right soon, I’m afraid, and there’ll be no noise to cover your passage through the window and the shed. Let us know when you want to take the risk.”

Devil finished his work and he and Bell sat around, talking as naturally as they could.

The rickety floor creaked and bent. Senn kicked lightly at the pile of wood. “Why in the name of common sense do you keep that much wood in here?”

Devil gave a hollow laugh. “I like to have a lot on hand. Saves us going to the shed over and over again and bothering the guards and that. Say, Captain Senn,” he said getting to his feet, making the floor rock still more, “did my money ever come from home?”

“No.” Senn cleared his throat. “That wood should be taken back first thing tomorrow. You’ll set this place on fire.”

Through a chink in the pile of logs Tim saw something move. It was one of Senn’s boots. Tim stared at the polished toe as if it were the head of a rattlesnake. Then he saw it move again. Senn was going toward the door. “Corporal,[114] now you can take them up. Boys, don’t forget that wood.”

As he stepped on the sill the floor boards groaned and a piece of wood tumbled off the top of the stack.

Tim heard one of the sailors raising the lantern glass and blowing out the flame. Now the kitchen was dark. The sailors left.

The Army cook was ordered into the yard and Addison summoned another guard to go with him when he took the cooks back to their quarters.

It was customary for at least two guards to pace the courtyard all night long. The guard changed at nine in the evening and again at one and five. They usually hung a lantern by the wagon gate and one from the corner of the woodshed roof. There was also the lamp on the wall by the jailhouse door.

Now in the silence Tim could hear the settling of the stove as it cooled. Red shifted his weight and the floor creaked. There was no sound from the courtyard.

Tim’s knees began to hurt where they pressed against the wooden floor. He twisted his shoulders to relieve the numbness in his arms. He felt for his haversack and ran his fingers over its bulging sides. He turned to Red and[116] whispered softly, “I hope the packs will go through the window.”

Then, like a pistol cocking and firing, the jailhouse door opened and slammed. Footsteps crossed the yard, and Senn spoke to one of the guards. “Let me out the wagon gate and mind you fasten it well behind.”

When Senn had gone one of the guards said, “The old boy’s a worrier, sure enough.”

During the past few days Tim and Red had observed from their cell as the guards stood evening watch. When Addison and Senn had left, the guards usually stood together and talked by the wagon gate, or sometimes—if they thought they weren’t being watched—they played a game of cards.

Now that Senn had gone the guards would probably be slack in performing their duties. But if they stayed close by, it would be much worse than if they paced the yard. Tim wondered if the chance to escape might not be lost. If only they had been able to get through the window while Devil was kicking up noise.

Now one of the guards was walking around the yard. He stopped not far from the cookshack and talked to the other, who must be near the woodshed door. “Does that fatheaded corporal watch the yard?”

“We’d better stay by the gate in case the captain comes back that way. He wants a guard by the gate right through the night.”

Tim’s eyes were accustomed to the dark and he could[117] see the shape of Red waiting patiently beside him. A slight yellow light behind the towels must be filtering in from the lamp by the jailhouse door.

Tim stood up slowly, listening for a sound in the yard. He faced the window and put both hands on the bricks at the bottom of the opening. The frame had been so loose that Devil had taken it out and set it in the corner beside the stove. Red straightened up and stood beside Tim, ready to help him if he could.

Tim drew his elbows in to his sides so that he could wiggle through the narrow space. He pulled himself off the floor, and as he did so a brick came away and went tumbling and crashing to the floor.

Both men ducked. Tim could feel the thumping of his heart as he listened for the guards.

Lanternlight flashed in the door of the Navy kitchen. Tim could hear the hissing of the dying embers in the stove. A voice sounded loud. “No sign of anyone in here. Must have been outside.”

Tim felt again and found that the wall was rotten all around the window. The mortar had dried and crumbled. One by one he loosened the bricks and handed them to Red, who set them in a pile on the floor. He hoped Devil could put them back, or at least conceal the work so that other prisoners could use this route at a later time.

[118]By the time Tim reached firm brick there was a gaping, ragged hole in the wall. Tim tried again, this time with a boost from Red. He scrambled up and perched in the opening. All he could see was the light of a lantern burning slits of yellow through the cracks in the boards of the shed wall.

The other guard laughed. “Cheat you? Hell, Randy, you know I’m not a cheatin’ man.”

Tim scrambled across and stepped blindly onto the pile of wood. There was a rumble as the pieces settled but his foot held firm. He waited again, listening.

The guards kept chattering about their game, and Tim felt around with his other foot. He looked back through the opening. Red’s face was white and still, then it disappeared and appeared again. He handed the blankets through, then the packs. Tim reached for them one at a time and threw them gently so they came to rest by the missing board. Then Red came through. He was bigger around than Tim, and somehow his blouse got caught on the edge of the ragged opening. He tried to move forward but the brass buttons on the front of his blouse were caught fast.

Tim grasped Red’s shoulders and felt a kind of rhythmic pulsing motion. Red was shaking with uncontrollable mirth. “You madman,” Tim whispered in Red’s ear. “You’ll give the show away.”

Tim kept his hands on Red’s shoulders until the shaking stopped. Red wriggled free and eased himself to the pile of wood.

Tim felt for the fence. His hand ran swiftly across the boards, but they all seemed firm. He gave the middle one[119] a smack with the flat of his hand, and it hinged outward with a sudden creak.

A guard said, “Someone’s stirring in the alley yonder. Maybe we should take a look.”

“You’re as bad as Captain Senn. What happens outside is none of our worry. What’s got into you tonight?” There was a mumbled answer.

Tim worked himself around and stuck his head out into the alley. He looked along the jailhouse wall toward the front of the jail. A feeble light from one of the windows struck the worn cobbles and dry grass. There was no one in sight.

Slowly he worked his way around and looked the other way, not daring to pry the board up farther. A row of houses faced the back of the jail, lamplight showing in some of their windows. No one was in the street at the back, as far as Tim could tell. He pried the board upward, crawled into the alley, and reached back for the blankets and haversacks. Then he held the board up so that Red could come through.

For a moment both men crouched in the alley beside the fence. Then they slipped their haversacks over their shoulders and folded their blankets over their arms. Tim grabbed the end of the board, and ever so slowly put it back, setting the points of the nails in the holes and shoving them in as best he could.

The two men straightened up at last. Tim could feel the blood working into the numbness of his legs and arms.

They headed toward the back of the jailyard, going quietly so that they could pass the card players without being heard.

When they reached the corner of the fence Tim looked[120] cautiously south, then north. He gave a sign that the street was clear and crossed with Red at his side. The railroad ran a block or so east, just beyond the gardens at the back of the houses that faced the jail.

The men dodged into an alley between two of the houses and found their path blocked by a shaft of lamplight coming from the first-floor window of the house on their right. The light marked a yellow rectangle on the clapboard wall of the other house. Tim was about to duck the window and move into the garden at the back when a dog started barking behind the house.

They waited quietly against the wall until the barking stopped, then retraced their steps. The street was still deserted, so they walked north at a moderate pace, turning to the left at the end of the block, rounding the corner of a darkened house and heading for the railroad track. The dog started barking again, and their impatience got the better of them. They ran along the side street, scrambled across the track and down the embankment and headed north.

The track passed through a thinly settled part of town, and as they moved Tim felt a sudden exhilaration. Now it seemed unlikely that they would be seen before they had gained the shelter of the woods.

Now the embankment had disappeared and the ties lay on the ground, not sunken as they sometimes were. The men walked beside the rails, through a grove of trees, and—without the slightest warning—came on a tumble-down shack.

A good-sized dog was chained to a tree close by the shack and he barked and growled as if the devil was clawing at his throat.

[122]Tim and Red moved right along, but the door of the shack swung wide and a man stood, big and silent, silhouetted in the light. Tim stopped and raised his hand. “Good evening,” he said. “Sorry to pass so close.”

The man didn’t answer and Tim turned to go. A voice boomed out above the snarling of the dog. “Come here, Yankees.”

They turned and faced the door. Tim hesitated, then moved toward the light. The fellow was a Negro. His skin was dark as ebony. He looked as if he could break a man in two with a flick of his wrist. He half turned toward the menacing dog. “Hush,” he rasped. Then he cocked his head. “I see I was right.”

Now the colored man rumbled, “I should turn you back. But I don’t care a damn for this War.” He lowered his head like an angry bull. “I don’t trust any man, white or black. Get out.”

Tim started to speak, but the big man moved his hand through the air in front of his eyes as if he were pushing aside a rock. He raised his voice. “Get out!”

As they moved away Tim shivered. His spirits sank. The encounter had seemed an ill omen.

Off to the left the river glistened in the starlight. As they walked beside the track they crossed a highway at the edge of town and finally gained the shelter of the woods.

Now the river ran close to the track and they could hear the sound of water against the rocks. As their eyes grew accustomed to the starlight they saw dashes of white where the river flowed by little islands and around the rocks.

They passed through thickets of dark undergrowth and crossed little streams that trickled and bubbled on the way to the river’s edge. The air seemed incredibly clear and the landscape fresh and sweet. They mounted a hill and[123] stood for a moment at the top, looking back. The lights of the city winked in the distance, but there was no sign of pursuit.

They rolled their blankets and tied them around the tops of their haversacks. As they turned to go forward again the sound of a church bell came to their ears—a sound they had heard through the silent, sultry nights of summer, the cool nights of fall. It carried with it the memory of months of imprisonment.

Tim drew in his breath, and Red spun around and led the way down the hill as if his house was in view, his wife and son waiting in the doorway.

They walked on level ground beside the track for an hour or so, then down a gentle slope. At a point where the river cut close to the track the ground grew soft, and they stepped across the rails and walked from tie to tie. The ties were spaced so that walking was difficult, and they were thinking of trying the ground again when they found themselves on a rickety trestle that shook as they walked.

Red went more slowly now. He stumbled and caught himself. “Watch that one, it’s rotten,” he said in an unsteady voice.

“Take it slow. This trestle can’t be long. There’s no sound of water. There’s nothing but swamp down there.”

Ahead of them the track disappeared into the gloom. The trestle stretched on and on, and they walked until they lost all sense of time. Red stopped from time to time to test a tie that he imagined might be weaker than the rest. It was clear he didn’t like the work.

Once he tried to look at his watch, but he couldn’t see the hands and the matches were in one of the haversacks.[124] They must have broken out of jail at six thirty or seven. Tim couldn’t imagine what time it might be now. It seemed they had walked this trestle since the dawn of creation.

Tim noticed the signs of exhaustion in himself. He felt inclined to stagger, and he knew he might fall headlong into the gulf below. “Stop a moment,” he said. “Let’s rest.”

Red’s shoulders slumped. He turned slowly and sat on one of the rails, with one boot on a tie and the other dangling. “How soft we are.”

Tim ached in every joint and muscle. He wanted to stretch out on a tie and go to sleep. “We’d better move on soon,” he said. “We have to find cover by dawn.”

Red laughed dryly. “It all seemed such a lark when we sat in the jail and made the plans.”

Tim stood up and edged around to take the lead. He tried the next tie with his foot, and they moved on again, stepping as before, each time with an awkward little hop.

They hadn’t gone five hundred feet when the trestle ended and the track reached firm ground again. They moved into another wood, jogged down a slope and jumped across a rushing stream. They traveled through the night, moving from lowland to higher ground and back to lowland again, crossing half-a-dozen trestles shorter than the first.

They stopped just short of another wood and faced each other and realized that now there was light.

Red swayed, his back to the rosy glow in the eastern sky. His face was haggard, his eyes were sunken. He blinked and shook his head and turned to look back.

Tim grinned. “There’s one thing certain. No hound in heaven or hell could follow that route.” They left the[125] track and struggled up a heavily wooded hill looking for a likely bivouac.

Finally they saw an upturned oak. Its roots formed a sheltered niche shielded on one side by a little pine. They took off their haversacks and opened them. They saw at once that Devil had outdone himself. On top of Red’s pack was a folded poncho, thin and patched but good to sleep on, nevertheless. Red spread it out. “No wonder I’m tired,” he said. “I was carrying a heavier load than you.”

Tim found a dozen hard-boiled eggs, a small flask of brandy and a good-sized canteen. “It seems I was carrying an extra load too.”

Red flicked the canteen with his finger. It made a hollow sound. “This thing is empty. The poncho weighs more than the canteen, the brandy and the eggs combined,” he said. “Let’s eat an egg. I wonder if they’re stuffed with caviar.”

Tim finished off his egg and together they studied the map. It showed the rail lines leading away from Columbia. The trestles weren’t shown, and the route of the previous night was marked as an innocent curve. Considering the quality of Kate’s work, the map she had copied must have been less than complete.

At a town named Alston the railroad would fork, the northern branch ending at Spartanburg.

“I hope we’re close to Alston now,” said Red, “but I doubt that we’ve covered twenty miles.”

Red settled down and Tim put away the remaining eggs. “We owe Devil a vote of thanks.”

The sun shone through the trees. Tim was chilled to the bone. He wished he had an overcoat.

Red gave no sign of waking. Tim thought, Today is Friday. He unbuttoned his blouse and pulled out a little black book marked DIARY 1863. It was closed with a tab that slipped through a loop. He pulled out the tab and riffled through the pages. The first half of the book was filled with entries, but the period of imprisonment was almost blank. On some of the pages he had penciled “Letter from Kate” or “News of home,” but he’d long since neglected the daily entries. It had made him unhappy to count the endless chain of wasted days.

He found the page and the date, Friday, December 11, and he took out his pencil and wrote:

“First day of freedom since last July. How long will it last?” He flicked through the pages ahead and came across Friday, December 25. He thought, with a smile, just three more weeks to buy a present for Kate.

Tim heard a crackling of twigs and a rustling of leaves behind the trees at a little distance. He lay perfectly still.[127] At first there was no sound, then the crackling resumed, a little nearer. It seemed as though someone, knowing they were there, was approaching with caution.

Tim shook Red’s shoulder gently. Red turned, sighed sleepily and opened one eye. Tim pressed his finger to his lips, and Red jerked his head off the ground and listened. Again there was no sound. Then the crackling came again, this time slightly farther off.

Red’s eyes had a haunted look, as if he were dreaming a very bad dream. He whispered, “I can’t go back to jail again. Let’s make a run for it.”

Tim shook his head. They lay still for what must have been a quarter of an hour.

Tim pointed out a gray-clad soldier behind some undergrowth, but as they looked the soldier seemed to dissolve. “We’re having hallucinations,” he said. “The noise I heard could have been any one of a thousand things.”

Tim set about repacking his haversack. He picked it up, pulled out his extra underclothes and socks and turned the pack upside down. A bright little object fell to the ground and Tim leaned over and picked it up. “Devil put in a compass,” he said.

“The man’s been good to us.” Red took a deep breath. “Let’s take a chance and move by day, at least till we see some signs of life.”

There was no water, so they took their cornmeal dry. Tim ran his tongue around his teeth. “My mother used to call this stuff ‘rokeeg.’ I remember we didn’t like it much.”

They came to a stream and knelt to drink. Tim filled the empty canteen. They moved on, crossing streams and small swamps and skirting a couple of little farms.

[128]About noon they came to a cultivated field with some cornstalks still standing around the edges. They found five ears and kept them for cooking when they found a chance to build a fire.

They walked along the edge of the field until they saw a house, then moved to the shelter of a thinly wooded plain.

They had to go slowly so that they wouldn’t be seen. By now Captain Senn would have spread the alarm.

Tim noticed that Red walked with spirit again. Rest and food had made the difference.

Shortly after noon they reached another stretch of open land. They faced a field of tall grass.

At a distance of half a mile or so, against a forest of dark pines, stood the white frame houses of a little town. Tim hooked his thumbs over his belt. “Unless we make a wide circuit we can’t get through here at this time of day. There must be farms all around the town.”

They studied the town. A rider moved across the field at quite a distance, his figure showing above the tips of the grass. They heard the barking of distant dogs. Tim said, “I’m thinking we better travel at night till we get to North Carolina.”

Off to the right, with the trees at its back, was a pile of wood, probably left there years before when the land had been cleared. The men took off their haversacks and settled in the grass, leaning against the stack of wood. Mud wasps had made their home in one of the logs and they circled overhead.

Red looked at his watch. “Three thirty.” He wound the watch and put it into his pocket again, his chin dropped to his chest and he slept. Tim tried to sleep but found he couldn’t, so he looked at the sky and consoled himself with[129] the thought that one of them should act as a sentry, anyway.

He was reminded of the summer before he had joined the Army when he’d worked at Quigley’s farm. He remembered clearing the north pasture, hauling off stones on the old stone boat and shouting to the shaggy-hoofed horses as they reached the wall at the edge of the wood lot.

When he said good-bye to Mr. Quigley the old man had shown a streak of sentiment that Tim had never known he had. “You’ve been a good worker,” he’d said. “I’ll miss you like the mischief, but I know you’ll do your country proud.”

Tim watched a pair of crows settle in the field close by. They set up a terrible squawking, probably over a bit of corn or a dead field mouse.

He turned his hands palms up and laced his fingers together. He made a church steeple with his forefingers, as his father had taught him to do when he was a boy. He remembered the poem that went with the action of his hands:

The squawking and jabbering of the crows grew dim in his ears. The shadow of the woodpile wove a pattern in the trees.

Tim’s head snapped up. He must have been sleeping for several hours. The sky was quite dark. He was sure he had been wakened by a noise, but now he couldn’t hear a[130] sound. Red was very still, but Tim noticed that his eyes were wide open. Tim looked to see what had caught Red’s eye. Not more than fifty feet from them a man sat, rigid as stone, on a good-sized horse. He appeared to be a farmer and he carried a musket across his saddle.

Red’s arm was resting by his side. Tim stealthily gripped his wrist to let him know he was awake and wouldn’t make a noise. The horseman scanned the field; the horse dipped his head and jingled his bridle. The man kicked the horse’s flank and rode away, keeping close to the edge of the field, looking both ways, as if he were on a tour of inspection.

They gathered up their packs and walked west toward the railroad. The lights of the town were squares of yellow among the trees. The track ran toward the edge of town, and they decided they would follow it until they were close to the houses, then cut into the woods to avoid the town. If this was Alston, they would cross the west branch of the railroad soon.

Shortly after they left the track they faced a bog and saw what appeared to be a tremendous fire flickering behind a thin screen of trees. They edged toward the light. Now they heard voices raised above the sound of the blaze. They watched for a moment. Tim said, “Appears to be a tar kiln or a coalpit of some kind.”

They cut deeper into the woods at the left, going close to the river to make a circuit of the kiln. Every step on the dead-dry forest floor sounded like a pistol shot to their uneasy ears.

[131]They lived a nightmare of lost direction and doubt and phantom houses loomed suddenly in their path. They were afraid to light a match, and they couldn’t read the compass in the dark. They stumbled over jagged rock and fallen trees and came to a swiftly running stream that cut across their path. They tried to find a place to cross where they could stay dry, but there was no such place and they waded in, stepping as best they could from stone to stone. Tim’s right foot slipped in the deepest part and his leg went in, wetting his trousers to the knee.

By the time they gained the other side their boots were filled with chilly water. They emptied them and stood on the other side, numbness creeping up their legs.

Tim had moved the matches to a trousers pocket. He drew them out. “Let’s chance a look at the compass.” He held the little instrument close to his chest, and the glow of the match showed the needle dancing back and forth. “I wonder if it works at all.”

They crossed the west branch of the railroad and found the track that would take them closest to the North Carolina line.

Tim struck another match and they looked at the map. There were very few towns along their route between Alston and a place called Unionville forty miles or so to the north.

They walked along the track for two or three miles, and as the land began to rise Tim said, “Let’s take a chance and roast a couple of ears of corn.”

[132]Their fire kindled well. Red gazed into the flames. “At least we aren’t in jail.”

“The people in the country we have to cross must all know about us by now. And most of them are hunters. They’d just as soon track a man as a coon.”

They took off their boots and rested their feet on a dry log. They held the boots near the fire as they waited for the flames to flicker low.

They talked for a while, looking into the fire, and when the flames had died they put the corn in the embers.

When the corn was roasted Red kicked aside the embers and picked out the ears. They shucked them, working fast so as not to be burned. The kernels were orange gold and charred in places. Red said, “What a feast.”

“Maybe if we’re lucky we’ll find some more along the way. There was nothing like this in jail.”

Red held his watch to the glow of the fire. “It’s quarter to eleven. Let’s push on.”

They spent their fourth morning in shelter from the rain. They had circled farms, forded dozens of streams. More than once they had ducked off country roads to avoid teams of oxen and country wagons, but as far as they knew they hadn’t been seen.

The rain had started an hour ago. Now it was coming down in torrents, swelling the streams and turning the rivers to turbid floods.

They had found a sheltered place at the edge of a deep ravine. They had bent four closely grouped saplings, tying the top of each to the base of another and covering them with the poncho Devil had given them. They had made a mush of rokeeg and water and eaten the stuff. It was tasteless now.

They had stretched their blankets on logs laid side by side, and Red was so tired that he slept like a baby on this bed that was something akin to a corduroy road.

The rain beat against the poncho and dripped through leaks, soaking Tim’s blanket and wetting his clothes.

He didn’t want to look at Kate’s map in the rain. The[134] paper was thin and he was afraid if it got wet it might come apart. They were just east of the railroad line. He hoped they were close to Unionville.

They hadn’t traveled as fast as they had hoped they would, but if they could keep moving they might reach North Carolina in two or three days. They had thought about hopping a freight as one went by, but the risk was too great and they couldn’t ride the railroad very far. It ended at Spartanburg.

Tim looked across the ravine through a curtain of rain. Their prospects couldn’t seem worse. They had eaten the last two eggs and roasted and divided the last ear of corn. The rokeeg wouldn’t last long.

They couldn’t hope to find friends until they had crossed the state line, and even then they couldn’t tell a Unionist by the cut of his clothes. North Carolina might not be the promised land. They would have to travel a hundred and thirty or forty miles, crossing the Great Smokies before they would see a Yankee uniform.

Tim slept until noon and when he woke the rain had stopped and the leaden clouds were blowing away, leaving patches of clear blue sky.

Tim touched Red’s shoulder, and Red opened his eyes. He stared at the poncho above his head. His face showed no emotion. He was silent for a minute before he spoke. “Well, we bargained for this. We knew we had no more than a fifty-fifty chance.”

They walked north northwest for an hour or so on a narrow, overgrown road. They saw a house, then cut to the right and into a thicket where they stumbled and kicked through the thorny undergrowth and hopped over winding freshets that had come with the rain. When they broke clear at last their hands were bleeding and their[135] clothes were torn, but they had left the house a mile behind. Tim saw a little stream that hadn’t been muddied by the rain.

They stood for a moment and looked around. There was no sign of life as far as Tim could see. “Let’s take a bath,” he said.

“Why don’t we go into town and have ourselves fitted for new uniforms? Why do the job halfway?”

They took out clean socks and left their haversacks at the foot of a tree. At the edge of the stream they sat on a huge flat rock and washed their feet, then sat still for a while until their feet were dry.

They put on the clean socks, tied the wet ones to the flaps of their haversacks and started walking again.

They soon found a rutted wagon road that looked as if it were seldom used. They were fit for travel again, but the open land and the lack of cover along the sides of the road made Tim wonder if they should go on in the light of day.

Here they walked side by side. For the first time the ground grew stiff with frost.

In three or four minutes they heard the engine, faintly at first. The whistle sounded again, and they saw a freight train on high ground half a mile west, chugging and rocking toward the north, leaving a trail of smoke behind.

They watched the smoke until it disappeared, and when they turned there was a herd of cows ahead of them, lumbering across the road. Tim was about to look for cover[136] when he noticed a boy of six or seven in the middle of the herd. He stared at the fugitives, openmouthed.

The cows kept moving across the road but the lad stood still until the last of the cows had passed. Then, finding himself alone in the road, still facing the men in tattered blue, he wheeled and ran.

To their right the land rose gently. It offered little cover. It would be folly to retreat along the road. Tim motioned left toward the railroad track. “That’s as good a way as any. At least there’s a little cover there.”

They ran across a field and into a grove of scrub oak and pine. They dashed pell-mell down a steep little hill and across a brook and up toward the ridge where the railroad ran. They heard the sound of horses’ hoofs crashing through the undergrowth across the stream. They ducked behind a clump of weeds. The riders came into view and jumped the stream. They reined in and looked along the little valley and up the hill.

Tim and Red watched unmoving as the men talked in low tones. One was well past middle age, thin and handsome. He was hatless, his face was tan and his head was covered with a thick mat of snow-white hair. The other man was big and burly, a giant of a man. A gray slouch hat sheltered his eyes. Both were armed.

The big man shouted, “You better show yourselves. We know you’re in this place. We saw you high-tailin’ it across the fields.”

They stood with their hands in the air and the rifles came up. The horses moved close.

The white-haired man spoke with a hint of a burr. “Are you the soldiers who escaped from the jail in Columbia?”

The big man spoke. “I’ll search them.” He dismounted, and leaving his rifle with the older man, moved forward with caution. “Step out from behind those weeds.”

They held their hands in the air, and the giant ordered, “Take off your haversacks and blanket rolls.” He watched them closely. “Throw them behind me on the ground.”

The soldiers did as they were told and the man slapped their pockets with the flats of his hamlike hands. Tim heard the crinkle of the map but their captor took no interest in this. He felt the diary and the book of photographs. “Unbutton your blouse.”

The man’s expression didn’t change. He fumbled for the things but couldn’t find the top of the pocket and finally he said, “Bring them out yourself, but mind, if you try any funny stuff Mr. MacNeil will shoot you down.”

Tim brought out the album and the diary and held them in the palm of his hand. The man reached roughly for the leather-bound books and slipped them into his overcoat pocket.

Red lowered his hands but he held them away from his sides. “Those things are personal property.”

The big man flushed. “You dirty Yankee muck. You’d better raise your hands.”

Now the older man’s voice came sharp. “Don’t talk to the prisoners that way, Kane. These men are Union officers, prisoners of war. Give the books to me.”

The big man was sullen. “As soon as I tie the prisoners’ hands. We can carry the monkeys across our saddles.”

The white-haired man smiled, then his face grew stern. He spoke to the captives. “If we leave you unbound so you can ride behind, will you give me your word you’ll behave?”

[138]Tim smiled. “This wouldn’t be the best time to make a break. You have our word.”

The giant’s eyes glistened like polished flint under his shaggy brows, reflecting his hate of Yankees in general and resentment of the older man.

He grumbled as the prisoners mounted freely, and was silent and brooding as they slanted up the hill and jogged through the wood and across the open fields. Tim rode behind the older man.

When they had traveled half a mile or so they approached the gate of a rambling, white two-story house with lanterns hanging at either side of the big front door. A large barn stood behind the house and other outbuildings beside the barn.

The big man spoke. “I’ll lock the Yankees in my shed and station a guard around.”

“These men are in sorry shape. They need some food and rest and a chance to dry their clothes. I’ll put them up here.” MacNeil nodded to Red. “You are free to dismount. Kane, set the bundles by the gate and find two men to act as guards and two to relieve them at suppertime and shift with them through the night. Let them stand at opposite sides of the house for now.”

“If you’ll pardon me, sir, I think you’re making a great mistake. Surely you don’t want to keep them here.”

The giant rode off at a fast clip, looking back as he went. The others dismounted and the Scotsman said, “Kane’s a good worker or I wouldn’t keep him on.”

Two young dogs came racing around the house, wagging their tails and barking happily. They sniffed around the prisoners’ legs. One was a hound with beautiful reddish-brown eyes, and the other—whose coat was golden—looked like a cross between a sheep dog and a shaggy bear. They[139] wagged their tails and Tim patted them in turn. Red scratched the chin of the shaggy one and the dogs dashed off to play again.

“I think I should warn you,” the Scotsman said, “I’m the best pistol shot in Chester County. I wouldn’t like to have to try my skill on you.”

Tim said, “Thank you for your courtesy, sir. We have no mind to escape just now. By the way,” he motioned toward Red, “this is Lieutenant Kelly. My name is Bradford.”

A middle-aged colored man opened the door, as if at a prearranged sign. His voice shook as he greeted his master, and MacNeil said, “These men are prisoners but you have nothing to fear. Build fires in the west rooms so they can dry their clothes. See that the beds are made up.” MacNeil called after the retreating man, “And ask Jenny to fetch their bundles from beside the gate. Be sure they carry no pistols or knives before you take them up to the rooms.”

They entered a long, low living room with a ceiling of raw brown beams, plaster between them. The prisoners seated themselves at one side of a crackling fire. Their host tossed his coat across a chair and sat with his pistol in his lap. “How long have you been on the countryside?”

MacNeil stared at the hearth rug. “I was in a Scottish regiment years ago. Soldiering seemed quite a lark when I was young, but a war like this is a filthy thing.” He was silent a minute and then he said, “This country has been good to me, and now this war is tearing it apart. Our farms were prosperous and our people proud. I settled in Charleston when I first came out here, and when I had a bit of money I bought this land.”

The colored man stood in the door. “Jenny says the gentlemen’s sacks hold nothing much but dirty clothes. There’s a bit of brandy and a sack of ground corn.”

“Thank you, Luke.” MacNeil fingered his pistol and talked as before. “It’s no good mincing words. The War is going against us now. We’re being crushed by the industrial might of the North.” He smiled with a trace of bitterness. “My sons would never admit it, I’m sure. One of them went to medical college in the North but he’s a Southerner to the core. They are both with General Lee just now.”

Their host looked into the fire, then studied the faces of the prisoners. “You boys have had a trying time. It would grieve me sorely if I saw you come to an unhappy end. The people hereabouts hate Yankee uniforms. Twenty-two Confederate dead sleep in the churchyard down the road.”

A thumping came at a door at the back of the house. “That must be Kane,” MacNeil said.

The colored man came in again. “Mr. Kane has four guards outside. He asks would you like a word with him?”

“Tell Mr. Kane to send one of the guards to the second floor hall. I’ll see him shortly.”

[141]MacNeil stood up, keeping his pistol in his hand. “I’ll take you to your rooms.”

MacNeil kept his prisoners ahead of him as he showed them the way. He directed Red to a door in the middle of the hall and Tim to a room that faced the front as well as the side. “Make yourselves comfortable. Would you like some tea and a bit of bread to tide you over till suppertime?”

A fresh-lit fire crackled on the hearth. Tim spread his blanket on the floor, stripped off his clothes and hung them over the fire screen to dry. He drew a ladder-back chair close to the hearth and turned out the contents of his haversack and arranged the clothes on the chair.

A pitcher and a tumbler stood on a table by the bed and a china basin steamed on a wooden stand. Tim reached for a sponge that hung with a towel at the side of the stand and washed and dried. He helped himself to a drink of water, raised a window a crack and slipped between the clean white sheets.

One window of his room faced west and he judged by the angle of the sun that it must be past midafternoon. He lay for a moment, staring at the white ceiling overhead and wishing he could find pleasure in lying between sweet-smelling sheets, but the thought of going back to the damp, cheerless walls of the jail, the petty tyranny of the guards and the boredom, was enough to make him sick.

Tim woke to the sound of knocking on his door and the voice of MacNeil. “Will you join me at supper in twenty minutes?”

The room was dark except for the flickering light on the hearth. Outside, the gaudy sky above the nearby hills was laced across with thin gray clouds.

Tim struck a match and lit a lamp on the bedside table. He turned down the wick so that it wouldn’t smoke the glass. When he had finished dressing he looked into a mirror that hung near the lamp. His eyes were sunken and he had a light beard.

He buttoned his blouse and straightened the tattered sleeves, smoothed the front. He sat on a chair to put on his boots. The boots were still damp. His stomach was painfully hollow but after a meal he would be fit as a fiddle.

Tim puzzled about MacNeil. The man seemed moderate in his views. He had a fine sense of justice and it was plain he had a core of steel.

[143]Tim heard voices outside and realized he hadn’t lowered the window. He caught the sound of Kane’s voice. “It’s folly to keep them here. They should be shut in a shed with guards all around.”

Tim heard the whine of a dog. MacNeil’s voice had an edge of impatience. “They shall have a meal and a good night’s sleep. They’ll have a spell of bread and water back in Richland Jail.”

Kane mumbled sourly. There was still enough light so that Tim could see the dark shapes of the man and his dogs as they moved into the gathering dusk.

Tim heard the slam of MacNeil’s front door. He lowered the window and turned down the lamp and opened the door a crack.

The light in the hall was dim, but he could see the guard lean forward in his chair, his pistol pointed at the crack. “You can come out now, hands in the air.”

Red was stirring about inside his room. His voice came loud. “I’m coming out.”

Red winked at Tim. The prisoners walked down the staircase ahead of the guard. Their host waited for them in the hall.

Red’s manner showed a change of spirit, and MacNeil eyed him sharply before he asked his captives to sit for a moment by the fire. “Would you like a glass of sherry, gentlemen?”

Red said, “Begging your pardon, sir, but our stomachs are so empty that it might not set too well.”

[144]Tim chuckled to himself and the Scotsman smiled. “Then we’ll go right in. Luke will serve wine with the meal.”

The table was set with a white cloth and cut glass. Silverware gleamed in the candlelight. The vegetables were served by a middle-aged colored woman who wore a crisp white apron and a little starched cap with frills on top.

“I noticed a rosewood piano at the end of your sitting room,” Tim said. “Do you play, sir?”

“Not a note,” their host said. “My daughter plays. I took her to Greenville to visit a cousin. I’ll be happy to fetch her back again. It was her son who saw you and gave the alarm.” MacNeil smiled faintly. “He’s dying to see you again. We’ll put you on exhibition after dinner, if you don’t mind.”

Their host was generous with helpings of chicken, and the colored woman passed the gravy boat and vegetables several times.

“I’m from a small town on the Connecticut River, a place called Stone’s Brook. My father is the only doctor in town. Lieutenant Kelly is a New Haven man. He left a wife and child at home.” Tim knew he was telling more than he’d been asked. “But as for me, I’m an unmarried man.”

“You’ve been serving with the Department of the South, I presume. Where were you captured, may I ask?”

MacNeil fingered the stem of his glass and smiled dryly. “I guess it earned that designation.”

After dinner they retired to the living room and their host spoke to a guard who sat in the hall.

When MacNeil joined them again he said, “Some of my neighbors want to have a look at you. I’ve decided to let them come. I want them to know that you aren’t wild beasts.” He fingered the butt of his pistol and said, as if to himself, “They’ll have to leave their firearms outside the door.”

MacNeil made small talk until the first knock sounded at the door. A man with gray hair came into the room with his wife.

MacNeil introduced them as Dr. and Mrs. Sellers. “Dr. Sellers is our family doctor.”

Soon five more people filed into the room, two women and three men, all well past middle age. They sat stiffly at first until the manner of their host made them feel at home.

The doctor turned his bright blue eyes on Tim and asked in a gentle drawl, “Do you know much about the progress of the war?”

“Very little, sir, I’m afraid,” Tim said. “We were in jail more than five months before we escaped.”

Their host nodded toward the man who had asked the question and turned to Tim. “Doctor Sellers is our only doctor—your father’s Southern counterpart.”

The doctor spoke softly. “In wartime we think of our enemies as unrelenting scoundrels. Of course we know in our hearts it isn’t so. But I can’t for the life of me see why the North must bring our long-established institutions down.” He shook his head. “Now I’m talking like a child. Slavery is already doomed.”

A hard-faced woman rose from her chair. “I never thought to hear such talk. I think I’ll be moving along.”

A heavy knock came at the door and Kane was let in, followed by three men, one of them with a bad limp, unmistakably Kane’s son. MacNeil greeted the men and in the silence that followed Tim heard the yelping and scratching of hounds.

Kane stood, his head nearly touching one of the heavy beams, the firelight making his face an ugly mask. He spoke in his rasping drawl. “In the presence of your neighbors, Mr. MacNeil, I want to say it one more time. These men should be treated as prisoners.”

Kane mumbled “Good night” and moved toward the door with his son and friends trailing behind. They were followed shortly by the hard-faced woman and one of the men who must be her husband.

The doctor, speaking for the people who remained, said, “I bid you gentlemen good night.” He smiled sadly. “This village was a happy place before the War. I wish you could have known us then.”

When his neighbors had left, MacNeil gave orders to the guard. “Station yourself in the upstairs hall. I’ll show the prisoners to their rooms a little later on. The night is cold. There’ll be no need of guards outside. Two can sleep while two stand watch outside the bedroom doors. You can set the shifts as suits you best.”

The Scotsman set fresh logs on the fire, sat down and pressed the tips of his fingers together. He spoke without a sign of hesitation. “Of course I know well what’s in your[147] minds. I can’t lift a finger to send you on your way. If the guards are alert they can hear the slightest sound through the bedroom doors. But suppose for a moment that you reach the ground. Kane defers to me because he has no choice, but there’s nothing to stop him from setting up a guard along the road and I suspect he may have done just that. Such men will shoot to kill. Kane has a pack of ugly hounds. Even if you had a decent start, the alarm would soon be raised. Kane would like a chase like that. I’d give you very little chance.”

MacNeil tapped the butt of his pistol, then put his fingers together again and spoke above the crackling of the fire. “Suppose you cleared the county and the state?” Tim had the strong impression that MacNeil was speaking exactly as he would to his own sons. “You have no overcoats, no food to speak of.” He massaged his temples with the thumb and fingers of his right hand. “And the last I heard, Knoxville was under siege.”

Red pulled at his beard. “You’ve done as much as you possibly could to make us feel at home. You’ve restored our spirit.”

The Scotsman looked at Red with a trace of fun on his handsome face. Then he grew serious again. “I hope I have no reason to regret the restoration of your spirit.” He stood abruptly. “I retire early. I’m afraid you gentlemen must do the same.”

Two guards stood together by a lamp that hung on the wall at the back of the hall. They nodded their heads when they saw MacNeil.

MacNeil said, “Lieutenant Bradford, I hope you’ll forgive me. I forgot to get your diary and photographs from Kane.”

There was a stir at the back of the hall and one of the guards said, “Ho, Mr. MacNeil, here’s your grandson prowling about.”

The boy stood in the lamplight, his nightgown nearly reaching the floor. His face was tough for a boy so young. “You look better now,” he said. “You frightened me most to death outside.”

The boy said, “You’re most as good-lookin’ as people down here.” He lowered his eyes and frowned again. “Do you have any news of my father? Lieutenant Curtis is his name. A friend saw him wounded at the battle of Malvern Hill.”

Tim looked down at the boy’s unruly hair and questioning eyes. He spoke softly. “This is a mighty big war, lad. We didn’t fight at Malvern Hill.”

MacNeil spoke up. “Now off to bed, Michael. Sorry I forgot to keep my promise.”

The boy looked up, speaking man to man. “I know you’re busy with the Yankees and such.”

The lamp burned low in Tim’s room. He stood still for a moment, studying the place. The door at the back must be a closet. He took off his boots and put them on the hearth and padded over to take a look. The floor boards creaked but he didn’t care. Sounds in the room would go unnoticed for a little while.

He opened the door without a sound. The closet was empty and there was a door at the back. Tim tried the knob but the door was locked. Boots sounded on the floor beyond and he heard a tapping on the other side. He answered the tapping and heard the stealthy turn of a key. The knob moved and the door opened and Red whispered, “You game for a try?”

Red shut the door on his side of the closet but Tim left his ajar. He walked without stealth, as he might if he were preparing to go to bed, and set to work packing his haversack with the things that by now were warm and dry. There was a big tin of matches on the bedside table. He put it into his haversack and rolled his blanket and laced[150] it across the top of the sack. He cleaned his teeth with a bit of salt, regretting the loss of the taste of the dinner, and packed the brush. He raised the lamp chimney and blew out the flame, opened both windows a crack and hung his blouse on the polished bedpost.

He lay on the bed with his feet toward the pillows, his chin cupped in his hand, and looked into the cold December night. In the hall there was a scraping of chairs and mumbled talk. Tim heard MacNeil bidding the guards good night, and then there was quiet.

He thought, If we don’t act now we’ll be back in jail by tomorrow night. He felt his heart thumping against his ribs. If Kane had no sentries outside the house, they would make an attempt. They could jump to the ground.

The scene was lit by a crescent moon. The leaves on the ground were stirred by gusts of chilly wind, and deep shadows lay across the grass.

Lamplight winking beyond the trees showed Tim that the center of the village must be a half mile or so northwest.

As he traced the wagon road to the edge of the trees he heard the sound of hoofs on the frozen ground and a rider came around the bend, big in the saddle and turning his head to left and right. The rider was Kane, there was no doubt of that.

As Kane came close Tim thought he saw an unlit lantern in the man’s left hand, ready to be used as a signal perhaps. Kane was apparently doing the job himself. He passed the house, then shortly appeared again, riding back the way he had come. Before he reached the bend in the road he turned to the right and rode into a field to the west of the house. He paused in the middle, then cut back to the road again and disappeared behind the trees.

[151]Tim felt suddenly cold and began to shiver. He moved quietly back to the bed, put on his blouse and lay down to wait.

In less than an hour Red tapped at the door again. Tim had watched Kane make another tour much like the first. But now he was gone and everything was still.

Red nodded. “But I think my sentry has gone to sleep, and there’s a door from this room to a storeroom at the back. If we drop to the ground behind the house, we can retrace our route for a mile or so to confuse the dogs.”

“Then go for the railroad as we did before. They’d hardly expect that we’d do that.”

As Tim grasped his boots and his haversack a floor board creaked. He stood stock still for half a minute, then moved through the door.

“Put on your haversack,” Red whispered. “We may have some running to do.”

They watched while Kane made another circuit of the farm, waited awhile and passed into the storeroom through a very small door. The window of the storeroom faced the back but it was smaller than the other windows of the house. Below it was a small shed roof. “That’s a bit of luck,” Red whispered.

They struggled through the window and dropped to the roof and then to the ground with what seemed like a terrible chorus of noises. They stood for a moment, then moved along the back of the house. As they rounded the corner and started across the side yard MacNeil’s dogs set up a racket in an outbuilding beside the barn. The fugitives broke into a run, keeping the house between them and the place where they had last seen Kane.

They gained the shelter of a stand of pines and paused[152] to look back. Kane soon rounded a corner of the house, clearly confused as to which way to look. He reined in at the back of the house and looked toward the north, then dismounted, ran up the steps and rapped on the door.

Tim and Red retreated into the trees. When they topped a little rise they ran along the road heading south.

Just past a curve they found the place where the cows had crossed. Here they left the road and cut to the west across the field and through the grove of scrub oak and pine.

As they ran down the hill they could hear the hounds. They reached the little brook and ran in the water for a hundred yards or so until the sound of the dogs was disturbingly close. Then they dashed up the ridge toward the railroad track.

They approached the track. They were gasping for breath and the baying of the hounds was sharp in their ears. Lanterns bobbed at the bottom of the hill. The hopelessness of flight struck Tim with sickening force.

When they reached the track a new sound broke the air. The fugitives listened and the sound came again, the shriek of a whistle off to the south. Without a word to each other they jumped the track and ran like madmen along the embankment. Now the hounds were close, their baying rose above the roar of the approaching engine. A shot rang out.

The train moved toward them, lumbering along at what seemed a snail’s pace. The engineers must have seen the hunters. The whistle shrieked repeatedly.

Tim looked over his shoulder and before he knew it the towering funnel stood above them, belching smoke and flame. The light of the headlamp flooded the rails.

Now the hounds were just across the track, and Kane’s figure rose in his stirrups as his horse shrieked and reared[153] in fright. Tim ran at top speed, leapt to a flatcar and hung on for his life. He worked himself onto the car, sank to the planks and rested a moment before he looked back.

The car behind was a flatcar, too, and Red was clinging to a stanchion in the middle of the car. Tim jumped to his feet, and above the thunder of the rolling cars the whine of a bullet split the air. He jumped the coupling, stumbled over some loose timber and grasped Red’s arm, pulling upward with all his might. The ground slid past his vision like a crazy quilt. Something gave way and he lost his footing. He fell backward and hit the flatcar with sickening force.

At first his eyes were sightless and there was terrible thunder in his ears. Someone was shaking him and slapping his cheeks. He opened his eyes and saw Red bending over him. Tim said, “I thought I’d lost you.”

Tim lay still for a while. His head was splitting. When he raised it the light of the moon touched Red’s face. Red’s hair was wild and his cheek was cut and streaked with blood.

As they rounded a curve Tim sat up and took in their situation. Ahead of the car he had boarded was one boxcar, shielding them from the fireman and the engineer. Behind, there were three more boxcars. A red lantern marked the end of the train but apparently nobody rode the last car. All the cars must be empty. They bounced and jerked until it seemed they would jump the track. A good horseman might keep up with the train for a while in open country, but he would find it hard in country like this.

They had not traveled far when they entered a wood where the trees pressed close on either side.

The train thundered onto a wooden trestle. The trestle groaned and the fish joints set up a chorus of screams. A milky mist rose from the dark, still waters surrounding the roots of the swollen trees. It drifted thinly through the moss and vines that hung unmoving in the chill night air.

Red reached under his blouse and pulled out his watch. The cracked crystal glinted in the dim light. He stopped up one ear and pressed the watch against the other, grinned and nodded. “Better ride less than an hour, I should think.”

The train jumped so much and the light was so bad that they couldn’t read the hands through the cracks in the glass. Tim faced the rear of the car and lit a match. It was just past ten. He blew out the match. “Let’s jump at ten to eleven.”

As the train left the trestle it slowed to pass through a sleeping village, then gathered speed again. Red asked, “You want to sleep?”

Tim shook his head and lay on his back and watched the moon and the stars standing in the heavens as the train barreled through the night. When they next lit a match it was quarter to eleven. Tim was uneasy. It seemed to him the train was slowing down. He said, “Let’s jump.”

Red got to his feet. “I’ll go first. Jump wide.” He gripped a stanchion and watched the ground below them, blurred by the speed of the train. The land was flat and grassy with a thicket here and there. Red reared back and jumped into the wind and Tim followed, flexing his knees against the shock of the ground. At the moment of jumping, the air sucked him back while the train roared on. He hit the ground and rolled clear of a patch of undergrowth. He felt as if one knee was twisted but when he got to his feet it seemed all right.

[155]Red came out of a bramblebush, cursing and laughing. Tim stood up. The strap of his haversack had broken and some of his clothes were scattered on the ground. He fumbled for them while Red fixed the strap by tying the ends together with a clumsy square knot.

As the thunder of the train became a distant rumble Tim pointed north across the dark landscape to the shapes of the hills beyond. “If we walk fast, we’ll be at the border by dawn.”

Red hooked his hands around the straps that held his haversack. “And what does it look like, Timmy boy? Is it a bright green ribbon twenty feet across?”

As the sky grew light in the east they came to the edge of a rolling pasture. They climbed a knob of land but couldn’t see a farmhouse or a barn or any other signs of life, so they walked in the pasture at the edge of a wood. They topped another rise and there was a tethered cow. It seemed she had been there all night. Her udder was bulging and her teats touched the tips of the winter grass. Red’s eyes sparkled. “The poor thing is suffering something terrible, carrying such a load of milk.”

Tim moved up to the cow, clucking and talking in a soothing voice. He took the tin cups and kneeled in the grass and milked. They drank and milked, and mixed milk with rokeeg and ate a ration of mush. Tim filled their canteen and then, in a spirit of fun, he milked straight into his mouth.

He got to his feet and patted the cow and she turned her head and gave him a gentle bovine stare. Tim said, “I wish we could take her along.”

A shout broke the air and they saw a man about two[157] hundred yards to the east, running with a shotgun in one hand and a milk pail in the other.

As they crashed into the cover of the nearby trees they heard a bang and Red was seized by a frenzy of high-spirited mirth. “The man’s ungrateful, that’s what he is.”

They walked for an hour or so and sat on a patch of grass to rest. The day had dawned clear and warmer. Tim reached for the map and spread it out against his knee. They had made good time the night before, heading straight north over level, lightly wooded country, following a road for a while and crossing a deep-cut river on a stout wooden bridge. The night had been just right for walking; just nippy enough to give them spirit. They must be close to the border now.

Tim marked an X where he thought they were and read the compass. They had kept the Broad River on their left to a point a few miles south of MacNeil’s farm. There the river had parted from the northwesterly direction of the track, flowing straight down from the north. They had crossed it on a high bridge. Now as they moved due north they would strike the river again just after they crossed into North Carolina. They made up their minds to follow the Broad until they reached the foothills of the Blue Ridge.

In the mountain country Kate’s map seemed less than complete, but on the far side of the mountains, in the upper left-hand corner of the map, KNOXVILLE was neatly lettered. The railroads and roads that converged on the city were clearly shown.

As Tim put the map away he slapped at his pocket and remembered that Kane still had his diary and album of photographs.

Tim didn’t mention his loss to Red. He lay back on the grass and closed his eyes and tried to bring Kate’s face to[158] mind. He started by remembering her photograph but that didn’t work. He thought of how she walked and danced and the way she turned her head. That brought her alive but try as he would he couldn’t make her face come clear.

“I wouldn’t have you carry a burden of debt.” Tim opened his eyes, sat up on the grass and watched a little gray bird fluttering and chirping in the underbrush. “I was trying to remember Kate’s face but it wouldn’t come clear.”

“Nancy’s face doesn’t often come clear any more.” Red stood up. “We better find cover and sleep a while.”

They walked until they found a grove of pines and laid out the poncho and blankets and slept until just after noon. Then they found a little stream and drank and doused their heads and moved on without eating. They were keeping the milk to mix with rokeeg at suppertime.

That evening the sky began to cloud. During the day they had circled some cabins but they hadn’t seen a road or a town. Now, as it began to grow dark, they came to a road that ran northwest and decided to follow it.

When they had traveled a mile or two they rounded a bend and a young colored man and his girl appeared before them in the middle of the road. The girl shrank back, and the man stood rooted to the ground, staring at the strangers.

[159]The young man lowered his head and strained his eyes. “Lordy, you wearin’ uniforms.”

The girl trembled so hard she could barely speak. “What would Yankees be doin’ here?”

Tim said quietly, “We’re making our way north. We haven’t had an easy time.”

The man studied their tattered uniforms. “Well, I guess not,” he said. “Wish we could help you, but all the colored folks hereabouts mus’ be inside by sundown.”

Red said, “You can help us most by forgetting you saw us. Have we crossed into North Carolina yet?”

“No, Massa. Old North State is one mile more.” The man looked down at his bare feet. “I thought to go north to fight for Massa Linkum, but I got no shoes.”

Red’s face was serious. “You better not try it without any shoes.” He looked into the shadows. “Will we be safe if we travel this road?”

The young man turned and motioned with his arm. “Go lef’ when you come to the fork. Hide in the trees if you hear a soun’.”

As the white men started down the road the girl called after them, “God keep you safe.”

On the morning of the third day after they had crossed into North Carolina they slept at the bottom of a broad cleft in a massive rock. At the top of the rock the rift was narrow so that the crack formed a sheltered cave. The floor of the cave was dry and the men were tired. They slept much later than usual.

Tim was awakened by a violent cramp. They had eaten the last of their food two days before. He lay on his back[160] and stared at the walls of rock. It was bitter cold. If they hoped to go on they would have to find food by nightfall.

Tim studied Red’s face, thin and sunken under his bristling beard. Red stirred in his sleep and moaned and settled down again. Tim bent his knees and sat up, stretched, and crawled to the mouth of the cave. The ground outside was in the grip of a heavy frost.

Tim faced a long, steep hill dotted with poplar and spruce. At the bottom of the hill, in a winding valley, a river glistened in the afternoon sun and the sound of running water came to his ears. Beyond the valley, above the delicate fringes of purple and gold, a mighty ridge stood proud against the sky.

Last night and in the early hours of this morning they had traveled fifteen miles or so without a halt, pushing onward to forget their hunger and bring themselves nearer to people who might help. Behind them was their first high ridge. They had crossed it in the blackness of a cloudy night, hardly aware of the dizzying heights until they reached the top. Then, looking back, they saw the shapes of the cliffs and rocks tumbling downward into the darkness, giving them sudden vertigo.

The country ahead was wild and rugged. If they had a rifle they could live on game, but as it was they could only hope for a chance to beg.

As Tim idly studied the valley below he thought he heard a voice. He listened closely. It must be his imagination. There was nothing now but the sound of water, the squawk of a crow on the wing. It came again, louder at first, then carried away on the wind.

In a minute or two Tim heard horses breaking the underbrush across the river. Through the trees he could see a column of cavalry wading in, pausing in the middle to water their horses.

[161]With the sun in his eyes and from this distance it was hard to see their uniforms, but they were gray, not blue, that much was certain.

Tim slipped back into the cave and shook Red’s arm. Red pulled back and turned away. Tim shook his shoulder and Red sat up suddenly, wild-eyed, as if he’d been having a nightmarish dream.

Tim pressed his hand to his lips and motioned to Red to come with him to the mouth of the cave. Red shook his head and blinked, then crawled up and perched beside Tim. The cavalrymen had begun to ride up the hill, moving now at a pretty good clip, away from the cave. Red squinted dazedly into the sun. “Those are Federal uniforms!”

There was something wild in his voice. He gave a shout and jostled Tim as he burst free of the cleft in the rock and stood in full view. He was raising his hands to his mouth, to shout again, when Tim gave him a shove and knocked him to the ground. As Red rolled over, angry and surprised, Tim pinned him to the ground. “Those riders are Rebs.”

Red glared and tried to roll free, then suddenly relaxed. “Are you positive?”

Tim peered around the rock to see if the riders had heard Red’s shout but the last one was just disappearing behind a little rise, going the same way as before.

Red sat up with a haunted expression on his face. He spoke softly without turning around. “Did they hear me shout?”

Tim sat down nearby, quiet for a minute or two before he spoke. “I shouldn’t have wakened you suddenly.”

[162]Red’s eyes rested on the valley, watching for signs of other horsemen following the first.

“But it wasn’t. You’re just as hungry, but not so hungry that you made yourself see ghosts.”

“But think of a man like Kautz for instance. Can you imagine him doing what I did just now?”

“He might have made the same mistake.” Tim smiled. “Kautz would have convinced me I was wrong.”

“Kautz was a professional soldier. When you and I were fighting men we made ourselves think as soldiers think, but Kautz thought that way every minute of his life.”

“We’re the hunted, not the hunters, now. It changes a man. It frightens me sometimes when I lie awake in the gray light of dawn.”

“We should take a chance, if we see a cabin,” Tim said. “Another day without food will finish us.”

“We better not knock on any cabin doors after dark. Someone’s liable to shoot first and ask questions later.”

The cavalry detachment had made them wary. They kept a careful watch as they approached the crossing and waded in. They followed the trail the horsemen had used until it branched east. There was plenty of water and they drank as often as they found a spring or a mountain stream.

[163]As the shadows of night crept up the ridge the men were so tired they could barely move. They were thinking of resting when Red noticed a pinpoint of light in the gloom several hundred yards beyond them in the direction of the ridge. “Our fate lies there,” he said. “Before we’re tempted to knock on the door we better bed down for the night.”

They woke before dawn. There wasn’t a sign of the light in the trees, so they waited until the sky turned pink in the east. As they gathered up their things and made themselves ready it seemed to Tim that he felt even worse than he had last night. The cold sliced into his bones and the landscape swam before his eyes. He noted that Red must feel the same. He swayed as he struggled with his haversack. Tim felt the beat of his heart as they started walking through the trees.

They hadn’t traveled three hundred yards when they found themselves at the edge of a clearing. There were stumps all around. The trees had been cut, maybe two or three years before, and some of the land had been farmed. In the middle of the clearing was a cabin. A curl of wood smoke twisted away from the chimney, carried off on the morning breeze. Behind the house was an outhouse and a shed, both rudely built.

The soldiers moved up slowly with their hands held away from their sides. When they were halfway up the slope a woman came around a corner of the cabin. At first Tim thought she was unarmed. Then he saw a pistol in her hand. Her voice came strong. “Straighten up and come along.” When they were closer she said, in the purest mountain accent, “I saw men play at bein’ tired before.” Then she cocked her head and strained forward. “No, by gum, yer not play-actin’ at all.”

The men stood on the frozen ground, swaying slightly,[164] waiting for the woman to make the next move. She was of medium height and probably no more than twenty. She wore a Mother Hubbard of rough homespun cloth drawn tight across her breasts, cinched in at the waist with a man’s wide leather belt. Her raven hair hung loose to her shoulders and her skin was tanned. She looked at them hard with piercing black eyes.

Tim looked down at the gun in her hand. It was a Colt revolver, cocked, well oiled and in good condition. The hand that held it was muscular but a woman’s hand nevertheless. Neither man lowered his eyes before her gaze.

At last she spoke again in her husky twang, more quietly than before. “You are the saddest, mos’ miserable pair of hounds I ever saw. Surely those cain’t be soldiers’ uniforms.”

“Well at least you got one.” She turned to Tim. “You Slim, you got a tongue? Tell me what yer doin’ here.”

“Now don’t you s’pose that’s plain? What I mean, are you Yankees or Rebels? That’s what I have to know.”

“Now you don’t know which one I am or why I should give a hang at all.” She tossed her head. “Tell you what I’ll do. Without my help you’ll never cross the Smokies alive. If you answer wrong, I’ll send you on yer way.” She squinted and smiled a humorless smile. “I’d like the truth.”

Red stood straight and looked right into the woman’s eyes. “We’re Yankee soldiers, ma’am.”

The woman’s expression barely changed. “I thought as[165] much, though I never did see a Yankee uniform. Old Buck helped other Yankees cross the mountains back last summer.”

The woman’s face was still hard but she said, “Lordy, you boys are shiverin’ somethin’ awful. Come along inside.”

The men slept fully clothed on a wide bunk bed on a big straw mattress. Tim stirred in his sleep, opened his eyes and propped up on one elbow. The big, brown room was warm. The woman still sat in her high-backed rocker, her sewing in her lap and her revolver glinting in her hand. She was looking straight at Tim.

She had nursed them like a mother since yesterday morning, cooking for them and mending their clothes, and making them rest to get back their strength.

She had spent most of the time making overcoats from blankets. She had cut and sewn as if the devil were after her, working with unbelievable speed.

Tim swung his feet to the floor and pulled his boots on. He stood on the rough plank floor. Red still slept. Tim walked to the hearth, put on a couple of logs and stirred up the embers. He stood with his back to the fire. His eyes rested on the revolver in her hand. “You won’t be needing the pistol to keep us in line.”

The woman raised her eyes. “Are all Yankee soldiers like you and Redbeard, good mannered and kind?”

[167]“I guess not, ma’am. You told me your husband and some other men from these parts had joined with the Yankees in the West. We aren’t the only Yanks you’ve seen.”

She almost spat. “Why they’re not Yankees like you at all. They’re mountainmen.” She threw back her head and laughed. “You and Redbeard are men, don’t get me wrong. Just a different breed, that’s all.”

She put her revolver deliberately on the table by her chair. “All right,” she said. She looked into the fire, seeming softer and more womanly now.

Late that afternoon she brought in some rabbits to butcher for stew. Red went out with Tim to cut and carry firewood. They went to a tree that had fallen close to the little privy. Tim took the first turn with the ax. The blade bit the bark and Red said, “Funny how she settled on our names right away, Redbeard and Slim. That’s pretty close. But she’s not much of a one for names. Just Missus Flint. We were lucky to find out what name she went by at all.”

“What did you talk about this morning, Mr. Slim? She’s been like sunshine today.”

“What a life the woman has,” Tim said, looking at the empty shed. “No husband, no horse; cow died last spring and her hound died just a week ago, she said.”

“Nancy’s a sturdy little thing, but I can’t imagine her living like this.”

They swung through the door and stumped across the sagging floor to watch the woman work. There were two pots swinging over the blazing fire and she was cutting[168] chunks of rabbit and potato into one. The other held corn mush. Tim could tell by the smell.

The woman finished cutting and threw the last of the bones and waste into a cracked china bowl on the hearth. She wiped her hands on her apron and sat in her rocker. “That’s foolish talk. I can shoot a rabbit as good as any man, with a pistol even. This summer I grew enough corn to feed a regiment and vegetables too. Then there’s Old Buck in the village in the valley. He heads up a bunch o’ Union men, part of a band they call True Heroes of America. They hide men out so they won’t have to fight with the Rebel Army. Well, Old Buck has a store, and if I need a thing, Old Buck gives it to me. ‘Nate Flint’ll pay when he comes home,’ he says. I look at him straight last time an’ says, ‘Maybe Nate Flint will never get home.’ And Old Buck purrs jus’ like a hooty owl and says, ‘Mebbie I’ll fall outa bed tonight and break my neck.’”

The men settled on a bench across from the rocker and all three were quiet, just sniffing the strong aroma of stew.

The woman stirred the pots with a hand-cut wooden spoon. She tasted the stew and sat down, leaning forward toward the men. “Tonight I will finish the coats,” she said. “By morning it will be two nights of sleep and plenty of food to give you strength. You better go.”

Tim said, “We have to go, ma’am, much as we might like to stay. About the coats, have you used all your blankets to make them?”

The woman’s brows went up. “I never did see such men as you. I got two left, and one’s aplenty. I mean to cut the other one into strips and roll them for carrying. You[169] can wrap your feet and legs when the snow gets deep enough that the cloth won’t wear right through.”

“It’s windy hell you boys are lookin’ for. Take my word. Don’t be soft in your heart toward me.”

After supper the woman leaned over the rough plank table that stood at the side of the room, near a pallet she had made herself to sleep on. She pulled the lamp close and blew out the flame. “I’ll have to be beggin’ some oil from Buck the next time I go down. I can pay him with animal skins.”

Red scratched his beard. “Why don’t you spend the winters in the village, ma’am? Slim and I are worried about you being alone up here.”

The wind whistled at the corner of the cabin and the fire blazed up, filling the room with pumpkin light and jagged shadows. “I spent last winter in the village,” she said, “but I figured to spend this winter here. Nate and I, we made this place with our own two hands and a few odd tools. We lived in the village once and Nate used to hunt. But everyone else was a hunter, too, so we couldn’t make out that way. One day he says, ‘We’re cuttin’ loose from this village, little girl. We’ll build a cabin in the mountains where no man can tie a string on me.’” She faltered. “But you may be right.”

Her eyes grew fierce in the flickering light and her hand went pale where it gripped the table. “Jus’ last fall I was out by the shed when two wild men came hoopin’ and hollerin’ out of the mountain, Rebel guerillas they was. They wanted more than food and drink, it didn’t take much to see. I had my musket and I yelled loud and clear for them to turn away but they jus’ kep comin’, laughin’ and hollerin’, so I picked them off, the one behind and[170] then the other. I buried them in the ravine over yonder.”

The woman gave Red and Tim a desperate look. “Did I do right? I never told another soul.”

“I didn’t want to keep their horses, and I buried their rifles with them. I slapped the horses off down the trail toward the village.” She turned to the fire. “I’m a one-man woman. There’s no changin’ that.”

Tim said quietly, “Spend the winter in the village. Don’t be too proud for that.”

Next morning all three woke just after dawn. They went about their chores as if they might have lived together in the cabin for a month or two. Tim fetched wood and built a fire. Red pumped up water and set a kettle on the hearth, hung the covered pot of mush on the crane, put on logs and stirred the fire to life. The woman put on her doeskin jacket and went outside. When she came back she said, “Laws, it’s nippy outside.”

Tim went to the window in the front of the cabin. The frame had been made to hold a sash that must have been used before. A few flakes of paint still clung to the wood. Tim studied the frost that had formed inside the glass at the bottom. The crystals had made an intricate pattern, like ghostly seaweed frozen in place. The morning light made the crystals sparkle like crushed diamonds. Tim turned away and fetched his toothbrush. He and Red took a cup of water and a pinch of salt and went outside.

After breakfast, when Tim looked at the window, the pattern of frost had disappeared, dissolved by the heat of the fire. The woman had mended their haversacks and finished the overcoats. They were great, heavy garments,[171] the color of natural wool. “They’ll blend with the snow,” the woman said.

She packed the haversacks with meat and cornmeal. They could make corncakes. She tied a long coil of blanket wool to each sack. After breakfast she got up from the table and went to a corner and brought out a can. “I almost forgot the cookin’ pot,” she said. “Can’t cook without a pot.”

The men got up and put on the coats, admiring the woman’s handiwork while she helped them on with the haversacks. “I reckon the coats make the straps set different than before,” she said.

She rolled the blankets and the poncho and secured them over the packs with lengths of thong.

She looked them over and turned away. She put on her jacket and boots, took some mittens and a couple of mufflers from a backless old chair in a corner by the fire. “Take the mufflers,” she said. “Nate went larkin’ off when it was warm. He said the Yanks would fix him up with clothes.”

She hung a pair of stoppered gourds around her shoulder and a pouch and a little sack of meal. She picked up her musket and took the pistol from the table. “Redbeard, you take first turn with the pistol.”

“I got the musket. It’s notched already and I’ll notch it agin if I must. Take the pistol. It’s loaded and there’s a flask of powder and some extra balls at the top of Slim’s pack.”

“I decided to spend the winter in town.” She looked[172] up at Tim. “It was what you said about bein’ too proud that changed my mind. Nate used to say I was foolish proud sometimes.”

All three went outside, the woman carrying the musket. When the men turned to say good-bye she said, “I’m goin’ too.”

It was the first time they had seen her smile. “Don’t worry. I won’t foller you to camp. I jus’ want to set your feet in the right direction.”

The ground rose slowly, dipped to a shallow valley, then climbed again to the ridge that stood against the sky like a shoulder of God.

Her tanned cheeks had a ruddy glow. She ran her hand through her hair and tossed her head. She looked up at the ridge, then down at the frozen ground. “I was goin’ huntin’, anyway. I’ll walk with you a while. I don’t know Knoxville, never been there, but I know which way it is, all right.”

They were toughened by the walking of the past few weeks and rested now and well fed, so that the climbing wasn’t bad at all. The slopes abounded in mountain laurel and ginseng. Tim thought how the place must look in spring with the shrubs and nut trees in bloom.

They stopped at the top and rested a minute. Red grabbed at a sapling for support and the woman said, “Don’t trust yourself to little trees. If the roots give way they take you with them down the mountain.” She sniffed the air. “Snow soon.”

The woman looked back. Her bright eyes swept the valley once and she picked up her musket and moved forward.

There was snow lying in patches on the northwest side of the mountain. The shoulders of rock were scarred and barren except where earth had clung to sheltered places, nourishing moss and scraggly pines.

To the west the rugged land lay under their hands, pounded out by the dizzy height, going on across the miles until it met the sky. The branches of the distant trees, stripped bare by cold and wind, wove a feathery texture of browns and reds, deep violets interrupted by the dusky green of spruce and pine, tall enough, no doubt, to dwarf a man, but in the distance seeming no bigger than scraps of moss.

Red stood with his hands on his hips, his beard pointing toward the distant land, his face showing wonder and fear, as if God had taken him by the hand.

The woman was first to turn away. There was love in her face. “It was here I saw the last of Nate.”

[175]Tim’s thought was so strong it almost said itself out loud. She knows he won’t come back.

The woman pointed in the direction they’d come. Just to the left of a slate-colored shadow on a hill far below they saw a curl of smoke. “Smoke from our cabin,” she said. “I left a fire on the hearth, remember?”

As they watched the smoke, snow began to fall. The flakes were small. They could almost be counted at first, little pinpoints of white. Then they filled the distance, and the hills and ridges all around were washed across with a milky haze. The flakes came faster. They were larger now, and one by one the landmarks were engulfed in a sea of white, leaving just the swirl of snow and silence everywhere.

They found a sheltered place in an angle of rock and the men gathered bits of dead pine for a fire. The woman took off her mittens and worked with her swift, brown hands, slicing meat from a skin pouch that hung at her side and stirring cornmeal into the can.

When they finished eating, the woman scraped the can clean, rinsed it and heated more water. She sprinkled in tan-colored crystals of sugar to make a kind of cambric tea. “I’d lace it with liquor from your little flask but you’d best keep that for future needs.”

The snow was falling more slowly now. The woman motioned toward the west. “The hills we saw a while ago,” she said. “Nate told me some are jus’ as high as this one, though they don’t look so big from here. I reckon they’re jus’ as windy and jus’ as cold.”

As they packed up their things the snow stopped falling and the air was like crystal again. The sun burst free from the clouds and made the ground a burning white blanket.

[176]The woman pointed west. “You see that distant pass? Knoxville’s through that way. Old Buck told Nate. Old Buck went there many a time. If I’d asked him, Buck would have showed you the way. That’s jus’ the trouble. Buck is old and kinda tired. He should keep himself warm in wintertime.”

The smoldering fire sent a thin signal into the air. The woman kicked at the sticks and smoke twisted lightly against the sky. The woman looked at the men with steady eyes, and when she saw that Red was about to speak she turned without a word, and walking slowly the way they had come, slanted down the hill with the sure step of a mountain creature. She turned back once and stood a few seconds against the whiteness. A gust of wind riffled her hair like the mane of a coal-black mare. She raised her hand and turned away and disappeared.

Tim was just about to reach for the compass to find the direction in case the snow closed in again when he heard the sound of horses’ hoofs against the shoulder of rock and voices raised.

Red brought out the Colt revolver and held it at his side. The jingle came clear, and grunting and talking—rough as grit—somewhere beyond the rock. One voice broke clear. “I think they’re jus’ behind that rock.”

A shot sang out from the other side of the ridge. Red moved fast and quiet around the rock, with Tim just behind. They heard a man say “God amighty!” An answering shot split the air.

Tim and Red rose slowly, so that they could see beyond the rock. Two men had dismounted. They were bending over a fallen third. A short grisled man, built like a gorilla, held a rifle at the ready, and the other—a young, dark-haired man—clutched a shotgun in his hand. Red took aim and caught the short man square in the head. The man’s[177] body slumped to the ground and two of the horses rose on their hind legs, whinnied and bolted in terror. As the third man grabbed at the bridle of his horse Red straightened up, holding the revolver. Suddenly he lost his footing on a slick of snow and sprawled on his face, the pistol spurting out from under him.

Tim reached the third man at a bound and knocked him flat with a blow that sent his shotgun spinning into the snow. Red gained his feet as the man rolled over. He leveled the pistol at the man’s head. The man went pale and raised his hands.

Tim followed her footprints across the snow. She lay face down, a still, dark shape against the glare. As he walked a numbness moved along his legs and the pumping of his heart beat like thunder in his ears.

She was quiet as night and her pulse was still. He turned her over. Blood had soaked her doeskin jacket and stained the snow. With his thumb and middle finger he felt for her eyelids and gently closed her unseeing eyes.

He rose to his feet, a fist of anger burning in his chest, and walked slowly toward Red and the other man.

When the man saw Tim’s face he started to shake. Tim reached out his hand and took the revolver. He pointed it straight at the man’s heart. “Who killed the woman?”

The man sank to the ground, his knees skidding foolishly in the snow. “Oh no. Great God,” he screamed, swaying and gesturing toward the stocky man. “It was Billy, there. Sure enough it was. And even so, the woman shot first.”

The man stopped swaying. “I tolt the truth. They[178] teased me cruel about my shootin’.” He jerked his head in the direction of the shotgun. “Else why would they have given me that crooked piece?” The man pointed to one of his eyes. “Look here at my wanderin’ eye....”

Red slept, but Tim was too cold to sleep. He looked up at the boughs of the sheltering tree. He gazed into the cold night sky. A full moon was shining somewhere behind the pines. The wind moaned softly in the boughs, filling the valley with mournful music. The brighter stars winked clear in the crystal air. Tim rolled out of his blanket and moved away from their camp, swinging his arms and working his knees to restore circulation.

He sat in the open on a jagged rock and picked out fragments of constellations. There was Pegasus to the west, and if he turned his head he could see Orion’s Belt above a hill in the east.

Tim had kept his mind on things that lay ahead. He had dreamed of home, of sleigh rides and skating on the pond behind the schoolhouse and thawing out in the blacksmith shop.

Now he remembered a winter so cold that the river had frozen clear across. He and Peter Gleason had skated all[180] the way to the other side. Cold was fine, as long as you could thaw out, sitting by a fire with a cup of chocolate in your hand.

For the first time he let himself think back to the thing that had happened on the ridge.

They had stripped the cartridges off the dead men and taken their firearms. They had left the bodies where they had fallen. They had ordered the third man to mount his horse and had sent him on his way, burbling off a stream of thanks for sparing his life.

The ground had been frozen solid and they’d had no tools for digging, anyway, so they had buried Missus Flint under a cairn and set her musket, muzzle down, in the top of the pile of rocks.

When they had turned to go Tim had looked back again the way they had come. Smoke had still curled above the cabin.

Tim studied the stars again, trying to remember the pictures they made and which way was right side up. Then he gave it up and went back to his blanket. As he lay there he remembered a far-off day in spring when he had walked with Kate. All at once she had picked up her skirts and started to run.

He remembered having been in a solemn frame of mind. Somehow he hadn’t caught her spirit. She had stood in the path and waited for him, suddenly serious, trying to share his solemnity.

Now he closed his eyes and her face came clear. He drew his blanket close around him and went to sleep.

Tim woke up before the sun had cleared the hills. Snow had fallen during the night and their blankets and coats were sifted over with flakes. Tim looked down at his feet, wrapped now in the strips of blanket wool. The cold had[181] numbed his feet and hands, and when he felt his face it seemed like ice.

He woke Red and they made breakfast. When they finished eating they pushed on into the wilderness of white. When they had walked for an hour or so they came to a stream that tumbled through a gorge, into a valley below. Their route lay across the stream and they were scouting along it to find a crossing when Tim caught sight of something moving in the trees in the valley below. He grabbed Red’s sleeve and together they watched as three horsemen made their way south along the valley. The horsemen were several hundred yards below, but the air was clear and the sun struck their uniforms. This time there was no room for doubt. They were Yankee soldiers.

Red cupped his hands and shouted. The horsemen stopped, turning their faces up. Tim waved his arms above his head and he and Red jumped carelessly into the water. They ran down the hill, slipping and skidding on the snow-covered rock, their firearms knocking against the coats Missus Flint had made them. The ends of their mufflers flapped behind them.

As they approached the horsemen they looked into the muzzles of Yankee firearms.

One held a pistol. He wore no visible insignia. He had a black pointed beard and bright eyes. The visor of his cap stuck out from under a blue knitted scarf that was tied around his head. He carried a sword in a brightly polished sheath. “Stop there,” he said, “and raise your hands. Who are you and where have you come from?”

Red gave their names. “We escaped from a jail in Columbia, South Carolina. We came across the mountains.”

The man smiled faintly, studying their overcoats.[182] “Looks as if you might have had some help along the way.”

One of the men was a sergeant. He sported a big sand-colored mustache. Beside him, sitting his horse a little stiffly, was a very young man who reminded Tim of Private Greene. They both held rifles.

The man with the pistol, who must be an officer, turned to the young man. “Corporal, relieve the gentlemen of their arms.”

As the corporal dismounted the officer looked sharply at the rifle and the shotgun. Red said, “Both of us carry revolvers in the right-hand pockets of our coats.”

As the corporal took their arms the man with the pistol looked straight at Tim. “Where did you get the rifle and shotgun and the pistols?”

“We had a fight with some guerillas back in the mountains. Our guide shot one and Lieutenant Kelly here shot another. The third was a poor excuse for a man. We took his shotgun and let him go.”

The officer questioned them closely about their capture and asked to see their identifications. They showed him their papers and opened their coats and showed him their tattered uniforms. When the officer was satisfied that they were neither deserters nor spies he holstered his pistol and motioned toward the man with the sandy mustache. “This is Sergeant Scully, and the man who searched you is Corporal Simms. I’m Captain Platt. I’m thankful we found you alive. My detachment is quartered in the farmhouse of a loyal Unionist, just north of here. The man has gone to war. We’ve been resting a while with his wife and children. We start for Knoxville tomorrow. We’ll take you along.”

“Three girls and two boys. Attractive little devils.” The captain looked down at the feet of the men who stood in the snow. “You must be perishing from cold. Sergeant Scully and I will take you back and set you by the fire. Corporal Simms can find us a tree.”

The corporal touched his cap. When he smiled he was even more like Greene. “You can trust me, sir. The other boys would have my hide if I came back with a scraggly [184]tree.”

[185]

Post Script:

Captain Chamberlain, on whose story this book is based, was not as fortunate as Lieutenants Bradford and Kelly. He was recaptured and returned in chains to Richland Jail, where he was imprisoned until late in 1864.

There is a sequel to his story.

Captain Chichester, the Confederate officer to whom Chamberlain had surrendered his sword, survived the war and lived until 1900. One of his last wishes was that Captain Chamberlain’s sword, which Chichester had prized during his lifetime, be returned to its original owner. Captain Chamberlain had died seven years before but the sword was returned to his widow. It is still a proud possession of the Chamberlain family.

At the time of the return of the sword there were articles in the Charleston and Hartford papers telling of the gallantry of both men, their experiences in battle and the fate of the sword.

By almost mystical coincidence, Captain Chichester’s father had been born in Connecticut and his mother’s maiden name had been Chamberlain. The two captains had been born in the same year, within two months of each other.

[186]

Acknowledgments

Mrs. Ruth C. North and Rodman W. Chamberlain, two of Captain Chamberlain’s ten children, were especially helpful in gathering material for this book. Most of the volumes listed in the bibliography were found in the New York Public Library, and I owe a vote of thanks to Mr. Gilbert A. Cam for putting the facilities of the Frederick Lewis Allen Room at my disposal so that I would have a place to study and work from these volumes.

Thanks to my brother Duncan Burchard for information about small arms of the Civil War period, and to my friend Victor Darnell for checking my descriptions of Naval vessels.

For their cordial help, thanks to Kate Swift and James Pickering of the American Museum—Hayden Planetarium.

A special vote of thanks goes to my friends in South Carolina: Jack Snow of St. Helena Island and Howard Danner of the Beaufort Historical Society, Robert Ochs, Chairman of the Department of History at the University of South Carolina, Lester Inabinett of the South Caroliniana Library and Virginia Rugheimer of the Charleston Library Society.

[187]

Bibliography:

Black, Robert C., The Railroads of the Confederacy. The University of North Carolina Press, 1952.

Carse, Robert, Blockade. Rinehart and Co., 1958.

Cochran, Hamilton C., Blockade Runners of the Confederacy. Bobbs Merrill, 1958.

The Columbia City Directory, Columbia, South Carolina, 1860.

Drake, J. Madison, Fast and Loose in Dixie. The Author’s Publishing Company, 1880.

Emilio, Luis F., A Brave Black Regiment, History of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. The Boston Book Company, 1891.

History of the Seventh Connecticut Volunteer Infantry, compiled by Stephen Walkley, 1905.

Isham, Davidson and Furness, Prisoners of War and Military Prisons. Lyman and Cushing, 1890.

Knox, Dudley W., A History of the United States Navy. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1948.

Manucy, Albert, Artillery Through the Ages. U. S. Government Printing office.

Sabre, G. E., Nineteen Months a Prisoner of War. The American News Company, 1865.

Swanberg, W. A., First Blood. Charles Scribners Sons, 1957.

Tourtellotte, Jerome, Windham County Boys in the Seventh Connecticut, A History of Company K. 1910.

Trumbull, H. Clay, The Knightly Soldier. John D. Wattles, 1892.

Other

In addition to the books listed on p. 187, use was made of the letters of Captain V. B. Chamberlain, written during his imprisonment in Richland Jail. Transcripts of these letters were lent me by Captain Chamberlain’s son, Rodman W. Chamberlain. Microfilm copies of these transcripts are now on file at the South Caroliniana Library in Columbia, South Carolina.

Rodman W. Chamberlain’s unpublished paper, entitled “The Return of the Sword,” furnished the information used in the epilogue.

The circumstances of Captain Chamberlain’s capture and escape have been reconstructed as accurately as possible, but the character of Lieutenant Timothy Bradford, Chamberlain’s counterpart, is entirely fictional, as are most of the characters in this book.

The Confederate Captain Chichester lived and fought at Fort Wagner. The Union officers, General Strong and Colonel Rodman, lived and fought on Morris Island.

Captain Senn, Commandant of the Post Guard at Richland Jail, and Corporal “Bull Head” Addison were real people. They have been represented as they were described by men who were imprisoned in Richland Jail in Columbia, S. C. The original Richland Jail no longer stands, but the author has constructed it from descriptions of prisoners and the drawings of Major Henry Ward Camp, Captain Chamberlain’s companion in escape. Major Camp was killed in action in 1864.

Many of the incidents in the story are taken from history. The ladies of Charleston served coffee and food to Union prisoners, wanton stabbings of Union prisoners are matters of record, and the young woman in Columbia who[189] lived across from Richland Jail and “whose heart beat for the Union” really lived and waved her handkerchief when the prisoners sang patriotic songs.

The extent of Unionist sentiment in North Carolina and eastern Tennessee has not been exaggerated and there were plenty of women like “Missus” Flint.

The descriptions of the map that Kate sent to Richland Jail were based on a map she might have copied, one published in 1861 by J. H. Colton, 172 William St., New York. This map was also used in verifying the spelling of the names of counties, towns, rivers etc. In most cases the spelling of the period has been used.

Peter Burchard is a professional writer and illustrator.

During World War II he served in the U. S. Army Signal Corps as a radio operator on a troop transport in the North Atlantic. His first published drawings appeared in YANK Magazine.

He graduated from the Philadelphia Museum School of Art in 1947.

His active interest in the Civil War began when his grandfather’s diaries came into his hands. His grandfather, William Brokaw, joined the 96th New York Regiment at the age of sixteen, served first as a drummer boy, fought in sixteen engagements and was a Brevet Major when he was mustered out in 1865.

Mr. Burchard lives with his wife and three children in a converted barn in Rockland County, N. Y. The war experiences of his wife’s grandfather provided the basis for North by Night.

NORTH BY NIGHT

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Also by Peter Burchard
	JED: The Story of a Yankee Soldier and a Southern Boy.

	NORTH BY NIGHT

BY PETER BURCHARD

COWARD-McCANN, INC. NEW YORK