Chapter 1: A Rebel Scout

A shadow moved across the hard-packed red clay in which the large jackknife quivered.

"Very nice," said a soft voice, and Seth looked up into the bearded face of a lean man who was leading a dusty horse. He had not heard him approach.

"Spare some water f'me and my critter?" the man asked, and Seth, for reasons he could not name, decided that the stranger was a soldier.

Maybe, the boy thought, he's a deserter from one army or the other. The man was not armed as far as Seth could see, and he wasn't wearing anything like a uniform, blue or gray or butternut either. The clothes that hung loosely on him were worn and sweat-stained, but his boots looked almost new. He stands like a soldier, like the men who took down our fence, Seth thought, like the ones who stole our horse and our mule, like the men who took my uncle away. Those soldiers in blue, who wore the same uniform as my brother, the ones that made my mother cry in anger and frustration, who made my uncle and aunt howl in fear; that's what he looks like, a soldier. He shivered.

"Come on, boy," the man said a bit louder and a shade harder. He licked at the corner of his thin mouth and wiped his cracked lips with the back of his thumb. "We're more'n a little thirsty. Damn dry 'round here."

Seth jumped, realizing that he had been standing and staring. He reached down, retrieved his knife and wiped it against his pants. He carefully folded the blade into the handle and then gestured with the closed knife.

"Our well's back there, mister, and you're welcome to the water. It's good water, too, deep and cool."

"Thanks." The dusty stranger smiled, yanked on the reins and led his tired mount past the place where a fence had stood and across the shaded side yard with its border of yellowing iris. Seth followed and saw the brand on the horse's rump. A nice looking little chestnut, thought the boy, but he sure hasn't had much care lately. Grit rose from the horse's hide when Seth patted him, and his tail was matted and tangled. Maybe he's a horse thief or a cavalryman running away from the war and taking his mount with him.

At the well the man spat out a glob of yellow-brown and asked the boy to pump for him. Seth worked the noisy handle up and down steadily with short, even strokes wishing he had oiled it as his mother had asked. The iron links creaked and complained. The horse bobbed his head and drank from the leaky trough, and the man slurped from his cupped hands until Seth handed him the battered tin cup that hung there on a piece of twine.

"Obliged," said the hard-eyed man with a bigger smile as the water scribed tracks on his dusty face. He drank a half-dozen cups of water and let it overflow his mouth and run through his brown beard until it glistened in the morning sun and stained the front of his colorless shirt. He poured a cup of water over his head and shook like a dog before he filled his blanket-covered canteen while Seth steadily manned the pump. Creak-clank, creak-clank. Another clue, decided Seth, that wooden canteen. Finally the man ducked his head under the iron pump's gushing flow and rubbed his hands through his rough-cropped hair. He wiped his face with a faded kerchief.

"Feels a lot better. Sure is good water. I'm s'prised y'all have any, dry as it is 'round here. Whole blamed country's burnin' up. Now, my friend," he said while he retied his wet handkerchief around his corded neck, "would you have any oats 'bout the place? Old Mac here's a mite on the famished side as you can see by his ribs, and I'm clean out'a feed. Your sun-dried Maryland grass jes' don't seem to suit him."

"Nope, sorry," said the boy. "Haven't kept any since them New York fellers took our horse back before Sharpsburg, couple of years now."

"Y'all Secesh?" the man asked, raising an eyebrow and spitting again, more like a ball of cotton this time. Seth didn't answer. He looked down at his bare feet and squished some mud near the horse trough. It rose between his splayed toes like gritty lava. Seth wanted to tell the stranger that he dreamed of wearing the gray and serving in Lije White's Maryland cavalry or with Mosby's fabled rangers, but he was not sure who or what this fellow was or which side he favored. You have to be awful careful these days, as his uncle often warned him. "Guard yer tongue, boy," that was his uncle's motto.

The man went right on as if he had not expected an answer. "Here," he said, "hol' my horse a minute while I go see a man about a dog." He handed the boy the cracked reins and went off toward the privy that stood at the end of a row of roughly whitewashed outbuildings behind Seth's home. The horse nibbled at the wet weeds and coarse grass, flicked his ears, swished his tail and eyed the boy.

Seth thought about the question the man had asked. What am I? An out-and-out rebel, a Confederate sympathizer like most of my friends and much of my family, maybe a copperhead which some thought worse, a lot worse? Or a Unionist like my brother, a Lincoln man, a Federal? The question seemed so simple. Choose a side. Rebel or Union, us and them. But which was us?

Seth remembered the day his brother had marched away, down the Pike toward the city, in his new blue uniform with the flashing brass buttons. Seth had screamed at his brother and called him a fool. He had refused his brother's hand and his hug, yanking himself free and running, arms pumping, down toward the red barn. He hid in the corncrib and, through his tears, watched as Robert went off to fight in the wrong army, to become a stupid Yankee, a blue-belly.

That had been more than three years ago. Shoot, I was only nine or ten back then, thought the boy, fingering the reins. Maybe I didn't understand. He took a deep breath. Things seemed simpler, a lot simpler when I was ten. Now Robert is a prisoner, their prisoner. Our prisoner? What am I now? I'm not just a child, not anymore. He felt his beardless chin as dreams of plumed hats and flashing sabers flickered through his mind, of flapping flags and thundering hooves, bugle calls and cannon fire.

The sun was halfway up the cloudless eastern sky and about to top the old elms that sheltered the story-and-a-half farm house from the sometimes-busy tollroad, what some still called the Great Road. The day was already blistering hot. Hasn't rained all month, Seth thought, more than a month. What a dumb, dull summer. Even the Fourth of July, now almost a week past, had been deathly quiet what with all of Grant's and Sherman's casualty lists filling the papers along with political blather. Last year some folks were cheering the news from Gettysburg after claiming they felt the ground tremble during that three-day battle. Then came the word from Vicksburg, way out on the Mississippi. Many of his friends could not believe it, refused to believe it, but Mr. French insisted that the war was about over. Seth's storekeeper uncle had gotten falling-down drunk and slept in his own puke under the counter by the cracker barrel. Seth remembered how pleased his mother had been and how she had talked about Robert coming home soon. But that had been a long year ago.

Seth patted the horse's neck and looked into its large, brown eye. I bet he is a soldier, the boy thought. He stepped back, still holding the reins loosely, and examined the saddle. It sure looks military, like a McClellan saddle, hard and spare, not much to it. He watched the privy door and felt the dirty green blanket neatly rolled and tied behind the saddle. His fingers touched something hard and smooth beneath it. Seth felt his heart thumping and tried to slow his breathing. He looked again toward the outhouse with its tangled covering of orange trumpet-vine blossoms, swallowed, took a quick breath and then lifted the faded blanket. There lay the steel-shod butt of a carefully concealed rifle.

The boy was almost thirteen and had grown up with the war. He knew the names of the generals' favorite horses and the meaning of most bugle calls, and he knew the weapons of war almost as well as he did the tools of his farm chores. Soldiers had camped in the vicinity for years. Most of the farm fences and a lot of the chickens had disappeared into their campfires and some of the local slaves into their service; contraband they called them. Uniformed men traveled the turnpike almost every day, shopped at the store, and flirted with the girls. He had seen the lurid woodcuts in the weeklies his uncle bought and had watched artillery pieces and their cassions bouncing up the Pike's worn macadam surface. Seth was sure, as his fingers explored down toward the breech, that this was a Sharps carbine, a cavalry weapon, maybe a Spencer or a Henry but he didn't think so. Unlike the man and the horse, the weapon was cared for, clean and well-oiled. He touched a small ringbolt. As Seth looked to confirm his guess, he heard the outhouse door creak open. He turned quickly, smiling, put his hand behind him and watched the man hike up his worn trousers and tuck in his sweat-stained shirt, his belt hanging loose.