Chapter 5: Map Making

The rebel soldier led Seth's horse a few hundred yards along the all-weather road toward Washington, past the place where two wagons had overturned and burned the previous summer while the others tried to escape Jeb Stuart's whooping horse soldiers. At the top of a rise they crossed the dirt track beside the macadamized road and stopped in the shade of a small stand of locust trees.

The boy sat on his horse, saying nothing but watching his captor carefully and considering his situation. The man has a gun. He's bigger and stronger than I am. I might be faster, maybe. But I've got my knife, and I know the country. I have friends I can depend on, and they're not far away. But the man must had local friends, too, unless he stole this fat, little horse. How did he find out about Robert?

"Awful hot day." The soldier uncapped his canteen. "Don't it ever rain 'round here?" He drank deeply, and water ran down his chin and onto his shirt. He held the canteen out to Seth while he wiped his mouth. The boy looked away and shook his head as a fine spray of dust fluttered down the road trying to twist itself together.

"Now, Seth," the soldier said, tying his canteen back onto his saddle and drawing his carbine with an easy motion. "I'd surely like your promise, your word, that you'll behave yourself and not try to run away or do anything foolish like that. I wouldn't want to go back to your house again and devil your sister and momma some more or take you back there with a hole in you." He showed Seth his teeth in what was intended as a smile.

The boy looked at the cavalryman but kept his peace. He tried to think, but his head hurt and his stomach ached. His mind churned with a mix of excitement and fear. Here he was, serving with the Rebels just like he had dreamed, with a soldier, a real soldier, one who might have shot at his brother. What was the "Cause" now? What was this man fighting for? Was it to own other people, people like his friend Jefferson, the blacksmith? Was his foolish brother right and the noble South wrong?

Seth thought about the times in school, back when school was meeting pretty regularly, and he was called "Silent Seth." Afraid to make a mistake. Afraid to be laughed at, to be thought ignorant. He'd spoken up today, and look where it got him. He gritted his teeth, felt the swelling above his eyebrow and wondered what he should do.

"I want you to understand this, if'n you try to run away or tell someone about me and why I'm here, I might just have to shoot you or whap you upside the head agin." The trooper waved his carbine at the boy. "Y're pretty smart, so I'm told. If you do like I say, I'll not only send you home in one piece but twenty dollars richer."

"What good's twenty dollars Confederate?" Seth asked, looking out over the dry countryside.

Wainder flicked open the hinged plate in the rifle's butt and held up a gold double eagle for the boy's admiration. The big coin gleamed in the broken sunlight.

"Ain't that a purty thing? Be nice to pay off your ma's bill with one day's work, now wouldn't it?" Wainder smiled at the boy.

Seth looked from the coin that flashed in the shifting sunlight to the soldier's sweating face. He shook his head. How'd he know about that, Seth wondered and did not like the answer he received. "What bill?" he said.

"Now don't you fret, boy. Y're not the onlyest friend I got in this neck of the woods. No sir. Where'd you think I got that there horse? How about it, you gonna behave yourself and hep me?" He flipped the gold piece into the air.

"Depends." Seth was thinking hard, his brow wrinkled, and trying to avoid what seemed the obvious conclusion.

"Depends hell, boy. It's too damn hot for games. We gotta get moving. Folks are depending on me. That's what depends."

"How about your horse. Did you find some feed for old Mac there?" Seth asked.

"Tha's not your lookout, boy. I took care of the horses includin' that animal under you, and there's more feed in them bags behind your saddle." The cavalryman dismounted and stood facing Seth, spraddle-legged with his short rifle pointed toward the ground.

Seth looked up the still-empty road toward his not-so-distant home. "Did my uncle sell you some feed, like I said he would?"

"Nope, he give me some." The soldier's mouth became a thin line, and he wiped his face and spat in the dust. "That's none of your blamed business. You jes' fergit all about that, y' hear!"

Seth swallowed and looked into the muzzle of the carbine as it swung up toward him. It looked like the mouth of a well. "Was it Uncle Luke that gave you the idea? Did he tell you to come back to the house and get me?"

The soldier reached up and grabbed Seth by the belt, pulled him from the horse and threw him to the ground. The boy rolled over to his hands and knees. "I tole you to fergit that," the man yelled, his face red and his jaw muscles working. "I got a job to do. Reckon I kin do it faster an' easier with yer help. I'm willin' to pay. Problems in yer family don't mean nothin' to me. Not nothin' This whole, damn crazy state don't mean nothin' t'me. Git up, boy. You ain't hurt."

The man leaned back against a tree with the butt of the carbine between his feet. He wiped the sweat from his eyes with his forearm as Seth stood up and waited, dusting his pants.

"Did you know, Seth, that one a'our genrils, feller name of Johnson, he's a Marylander, from up around Frederick way. He's out raiding over 'round Baltimore right this minute. Your state's plum crazy. Down where I come from, there might be some folks that don't cotton to the war, but there ain't none of them out fighting agin' their own kind. 'Tain't natural."

"I can't explain it," Seth said. "That's how it is."

"What I want, boy, is your word. Tha's good enough for me. What do you say?"

Seth brushed himself off, thinking about his "word." Nobody had ever asked him to give his word before. He knew it was important. More than 'cross your heart and hope to die.' He had heard Mr. Bouve and other men say that a man was only as good as his word. They cursed and talked mean about men that went back on their word.

"If you keep your word to my Ma and get me back home around dark, I'll help you and promise not to run away." Seth spoke with his head down. He didn't see that he had any choice, but he knew he had to do something. This man had knocked his mother down, had eaten at his table and then dragged him away. I guess I'm not a Union man like my brother, but I'm sure no rebel like Corporal Wainder of Imboden's Brigade.

"All right. It's a deal." The soldier stuck out his hand and Seth shook it, briefly. "Now have some water." The man's hand was as hard as a board.

Seth took the canteen down and drank some of the tepid water. Then he squatted near the soldier in the dappled shade.

"Here Seth, take this stick and make me a map. No tricks." Dust was turning the sweat on the soldier's face into patterns of crusty mud.

"What do you want the map to show?" It was like a geography lesson with Annie. Since the school had been closed for most of the war, his mother had been teaching him, and he had been passing along versions of her lessons to his sister. "Playing school," they called it.