Gallant Boys of Gettysburg (13 page)

There was a long silence, and Tom said gruffly, “I’m all right.”

Sarah heard the hurt and doubt in his voice, and as she turned back to peer down the moonlit road she prayed, “O God, teach me how to help Tom be the man You want him to be.”

A
n owl uttered an eerie call somewhere deep in the woods. The yellow light of the campfire made a dot in the darkness.

Jeff watched Tom descend from the wagon after their fourth night’s journey, which had begun at twilight. Using the rough-hewn crutch that Jeff had whittled with his bowie knife and hatchet, he came up to the fire and lowered himself carefully, gritting his teeth to keep back a cry of pain.

Tom leaned back on an elbow. He was obviously feeling better now, though his leg still hurt considerably. The Poteets had included some pain-killing medicine along with the food that they had sent along, but it had been only a small amount, and he had taken the last dose yesterday.

“How are you feeling, Tom?”

Tom looked across the fire to where Sarah was putting a piece of ham in the frying pan. She had left her bonnet off, and the firelight illuminated her dark hair. She was smiling at him.

“All right,” Tom said. His tone was flat, and he did not return her smile.

Sarah set the pan on some rocks over the glowing coals, and the ham began to sizzle almost at once. “We’ll all feel better when we have breakfast,” she said. She went over to the wagon and came back with her hands full of eggs. Stooping down, she began to break them into another skillet balanced
on the rocks. “It was nice of the Poteets to give us all these groceries,” she remarked.

When the eggs began to bubble up, she used a broad-bladed knife to free them from the pan. Skillfully she flipped them over and smiled again at Tom. “You want yours with the yolks runny, right?”

“That sounds all right,” Tom said.

Jeff dumped a load of dry wood close by and stood beside the fire. Sniffing, he said eagerly, “That smells good. I hope we’ve got enough grub left to last us to Kentucky.”

Sarah turned over the last egg and studied them. Picking up salt and pepper, she applied both liberally. “How far do you think we are from Kentucky, Jeff?”

Jeff pulled his hat off and scratched his head. “Can’t really say, being as we don’t have a map—but I figure another day or two we ought to be in shooting distance of it.”

“I’ll be glad to get there.” Sarah carefully placed two eggs on a tin plate. Then she hewed off a piece of ham with a sharp knife. Rising, she said, “Here, Tom. Eat all you can.”

Tom took the plate and the fork and began cutting the eggs. After chewing thoughtfully on a bite, he said quietly, “That’s real good, Sarah.”

Sarah gazed at him for a moment and then returned to distribute the rest of the eggs. “Coffee’ll be done in a minute.” She sat down and ate slowly, listening as Jeff described a deer he had seen while out gathering wood.

“I wish I’d had a rifle,” he said. “I could have hit him easy. Then we’d have had meat all the way home.”

After that, conversation began to lag around the campfire. Tom rarely had anything to say.

They had been traveling at night and getting off the road into the woods during the daytime. Two days ago they had heard—several times—what they thought was cavalry. Now, as they were farther and farther away from the road that led to Virginia, Jeff felt safer and more confident.

“Do you think it would be safe to travel in the daytime now?” Sarah asked. “We could make a lot better time that way.”

Jeff chewed on his piece of ham. “You know, I’ve been thinking about that. There’s not likely to be any Federal troopers here. I don’t see why we couldn’t start traveling during the day. What do you think, Tom?”

“Be all right, I guess.” Tom’s tone was noncommittal. He sipped at the coffee in his tin cup and leaned back on his elbow, staring into the flickering yellow flames.

He had lost weight since he had been wounded, and now the planes of his face showed clearly as the fire reflected its light on him. There was a different quality in him somehow that disturbed Jeff. Tom had always been lively, but now all of the excitement and dynamic life seemed drained out of him. The shell that had taken away his leg had taken away some of his spirit too.

“Well, then,” Jeff said with finality, “we’ll do it. We’ve been traveling pretty hard tonight, so let’s sleep three or four hours. Then we’ll get a fresh start.”

They finished their meal, and Jeff went down to the creek to scour the dishes in the sandy soil. When he came back, he saw that Tom had stretched
out with his head braced on his rolled-up coat. He was not asleep, however, but was staring straight up into the sky. Sarah was rolled up in her blanket, and Jeff wondered if she were asleep.

He put more wood on the fire and sat watching as the blaze consumed it and it crumbled into glowing ashes. Then he too rolled up in his blanket and went to sleep.

They rose at dawn, ate the remains of the ham, and washed it down with creek water. Tom crawled back into the wagon, and they resumed their journey.

The sun was almost exactly overhead when Jeff heard the sound of horses approaching.

“Listen!” He pulled back on the lines, stopping the chestnuts. “You hear that?”

Sarah cocked her head to one side and listened intently. “I think so. A lot of horses coming, isn’t it?”

“Sure is!” A worried look came over Jeff’s face. “When that many horses come, it’s likely to be cavalry.” He looked to both sides of the road desperately. “No place to get off the road here. We’ll have to hope they don’t stop. Get up, hosses!”

They had traveled not more than a hundred yards when a line of blue-clad troopers appeared over the crest of a hill. There were possibly twenty of them.

A youthful lieutenant led the troop, and as they drew near the wagon, he threw up his hand and cried out a command. The column halted, and the lieutenant advanced with a grizzled sergeant close behind him.

“Hello, Lieutenant,” Jeff said immediately. “Nice-looking troop you got there.”

The lieutenant nodded briefly. His sharp, black eyes fell on Sarah, and he considered her for a moment. She was wearing a plain gray dress and a bonnet, but her good looks were obvious even in such garb.

“Where you headed for?” the lieutenant demanded.

“Going home,” Jeff said. “My brother took sick, and we’re trying to get there so he can get better.”

“Sergeant, have a look!”

The heavyset sergeant got off his horse, groaning as he did so, and stalked to the rear of the wagon. He lifted up the canvas that served as an apron and stared inside. “One man back here, lieutenant,” he called out.

“I’ll have a look myself.” The lieutenant expertly moved his horse around, leaned out of the saddle, and peered into the wagon.

Jeff glanced back. Tom had closed his eyes and was pretending to be asleep or unconscious.

For what seemed a long time the lieutenant stared at Tom, then straightened up. He brought his horse about and faced Jeff and Sarah. “Where’s your home?” he demanded.

Jeff decided that the truth, as close as possible, would be the best. “Pineville, Kentucky,” he said.

“Where you coming from?”

Desperately Jeff took a chance. “Near Jessieville,” he said.

Actually this was not made up. There was a very small village called Jessieville not far from Gettysburg. It probably had no more than four or five families and one store, but he had seen the name on a handmade sign. “It’s a few miles back—way back in the woods,” he added glibly. “But my
brother, he took sick. Not doing well, either, as you can see …”

The lieutenant stared at him unblinkingly, then his eyes went to Sarah. “What’s your name, miss?”

“Sarah.”

“These men your brothers?”

“No, sir. We’re neighbors. Our families are neighbors. I was visiting, and when Tom got sick I decided I’d better get along home with them.”

Jeff knew that the lieutenant was in a precarious position. Kentucky was a border state, almost equally divided between supporters of the Union and supporters of the Confederacy. It was almost impossible to tell who anybody was. Jeff and Sarah sounded Southern, but then so did everybody else in Kentucky. If the lieutenant was assigned to be on the alert for any movement of Confederate troops, he was probably bored out of his skull because there were no Confederate troops in this area.

“You run across any Confederates back down the road?”

“No, sir, we didn’t see none,” Jeff said, which was true enough since they had been traveling by night. “Some of the Rebels in this part of the world?”

The lieutenant shook his head. He appeared somehow dissatisfied with the trio but unable to put his finger on anything wrong. “Well,” he said finally, “you’d better get on your way.” He raised his voice and said, “Come along, sergeant.”

The two of them took their place at the head of the column, and the lieutenant cried out, “Forward!”

The troop advanced at a slow trot, stirring the dust, and when they were gone Jeff said shakily,
“Wow! I thought he was gonna get us for a minute there.”

“So did I,” Sarah said. She turned around. “Are you all right, Tom?”

“I’m all right.” There was a pause, and he said, “That was a close one. Maybe we better get off the road.”

Jeff shook his head. “No, I think we can keep on. If they were gonna get us, they would have taken us right now.” He spoke to the horses, and they leaned into their collars and once again pulled the wagon along at a moderate gait.

They paused to camp at a small creek, where Sarah cooked supper under the shelter of the trees. The wind was rising, and she said, “It looks like it might rain.”

“I wouldn’t mind a little rain,” Jeff said. “It’s been mighty dusty.” Tom had not yet joined them, and he lowered his voice, looking at the wagon cautiously. “Sarah?”

“Yes? What is it, Jeff?”

“I’m worried about Tom.” Jeff rubbed his chin thoughtfully, his eyes troubled. “He’s just not himself since he got hurt.”

“No, he’s not,” Sarah agreed. She was busily putting the meal together, but now she straightened up and followed Jeff’s gaze toward the wagon. “He’s always been so easygoing and cheerful. I haven’t seen him smile since that night I came to you.”

“It’s just like he’s had all the life drained out of him,” Jeff murmured. “I kept thinking he’d get over it. And he
is
doing better. He’s not likely to die of fever. His leg’s clean—no infection.” He shook his
head sadly. “I hope he don’t stay like this all the time.”

Sarah bent over the frying pan and began slicing bacon into it. As it hit the pan, smoke began to curl up in tiny tendrils. “We’ve got to understand how it is with Tom,” she said quietly. “He’s always been proud of his strength. You know that. Think of all the races he ran. I don’t think he ever lost a race, did he?”

“I don’t remember it if he did. He was always the fastest one around.”

“Well, that’s all gone now, Jeff. He’ll never be able to do that again.” Her face was troubled and her eyes cloudy with concern. “There’s a lot of things he can do—but right now he’s not thinking of that. He’s only thinking of the things he’s lost that he’ll never be able to do again. He’ll be able to hunt after a fashion, but it won’t be the same. He won’t be able to run fast, even if he gets an artificial leg. He’ll always be less than other men.”

“But he’s alive!” Jeff argued.

“I know that—and someday soon I hope he’ll realize that God’s really taken care of him. But right now all he can think of is that he’s not the man he used to be.”

Jeff started to say something, then paused. He watched as she turned the bacon over and finally blurted out, “What about you, Sarah?”

She looked up at him quickly. “What do you mean by that, Jeff?”

“Well, I mean, do you feel the same about him now that he’s—hurt?”

Sarah’s eyes flashed. “What kind of woman would I be that thought less of a man because he
had been hurt? I’m ashamed of you, Jeff, thinking a thing like that of me!”

“Wait a minute, Sarah,” Jeff protested. “I didn’t mean anything wrong.”

“Well, I take it wrong,” Sarah snapped. “Would you think less of me if I lost a leg or an arm?”

“Why, of course I wouldn’t,” Jeff protested, “but it ain’t the same.”

“What do you mean it’s not the same?” Sarah demanded. “It’s
exactly
the same.”

“Well, I know what Tom’s thinking, I guess,” Jeff mumbled. He cleared his throat and tried to think of how to say what was on his mind. “You’re right—between friends, we should never change. But—I don’t know—when a man and a woman are courting, a man wants to be the best with his girl. And now he won’t be what he was.” He kicked at a stick and burst out, “I don’t know what I’m talking about. I must be losing my mind.” He managed a smile. “I’m sorry, Sarah. I guess I’m just pretty confused.”

She came and gave him a hug. “It’s all right, Jeff. I think we all are confused. But we have to remember one thing—Tom’s got a long life ahead of him, and he’s got people who love him.” She gave him a small smile. “And I’m one of them. So what we have to do is be very patient and be sure that we show him all the love we can—and show him that he’s no different to us.”

Jeff felt better. He grinned. “You’re some pumpkin, Sarah, sure if you ain’t!”

“Well, we’re here. There’s the house,” Jeff said.

Tom had insisted on riding on the wagon seat, saying, “I’m sick and tired of lying down,” and for
the last half of the day he had sat between Jeff and Sarah. Now as they rumbled around a long curve in the road and the Carter house swung into view, he said only, “It looks good.”

Sarah exclaimed, “Look! There’s Ma out in the backyard hanging out clothes. Hurry up, Jeff!”

Jeff clucked to the team, which broke into a run, and when they were a hundred yards from the house, Jeff let out a screech that was as close as he could come to what was called the Rebel yell. Then he laughed. “That woke your ma up. She thinks the Rebels are here!”

He pulled the wagon to a stop, wrapped the lines tightly around the seat, and jumped out. Tom stayed in the wagon. Sarah stepped to the ground and stood beside him.