Gwyneth Atlee Page 5

  “I figured he’d be home shivering in his bed now, being as how our Gabe’s so quick on his feet. Leastways when the shootin’ gets too close.”

  At first, Gabe didn’t recognize Reuben Mueller. As boys, the two had sneaked away to a nearby swimming hole when they should have been in school. When their parents put a stop to their truancy, they’d created enough mischief in the classroom to bend many a hickory stick. But they’d never been mean-spirited in their antics. Most had been directed at the bullies who gave the younger boys such hell.

  But like all of the prisoners, Reuben had changed. Though he’d once been renowned for an ability to thrive on camp cooking and even nearly inedible army rations, his persistent fleshiness had been whittled away by the hardships of Cahaba. So, apparently, had the last traces of his long friendship with Gabe. Seeing Reuben allied with a petty criminal like Deming was far more painful than the fingerprints that still throbbed at Gabe’s neck.

  “You’re lookin’ mighty scrawny. Figured you bein’ a namesake of ol’ Jeff Davis and all, he mighta fed you better while you was his guest.” Deming moved in on him again, so close that their noses were just inches apart.

  Gabe withstood the impulse to strike out. Silas Deming knew damned well he was no kin to the Confederate president. There was no need to rise to that bait or any other.

  “Yeah, you’re lookin’ awful thin. But maybe those Rebels don’t give feasts for Yankee runners like we imagine.” Though the light was dim, Gabe saw his old friend’s sneer move closer. “Maybe they hate cowards and deserters every bit as much as we do.”

  The bitterness in Reuben’s words finally unlocked Gabe’s jaw.

  “I did not desert.” He straightened his back and stared into Reuben’s face. “I came back to camp and turned myself in for discipline. But I never deserted.”

  “Even worse,” Reuben insisted. “You were drummed out.”

  Gabe shook his head. “Maybe I should have been, but I wasn’t drummed out, either. I was sacrificed, and you were a party to it, Reuben. I always thought that you, at least, might have wondered why I ran off the field of battle. Weren’t you my friend long enough to at least wait for an explanation?”

  “That day, I forgot I was your friend, Gabe. That day, I was ashamed I ever had been.”

  When Reuben looked him in the eye, his gaze was both sad and hostile. Gabe thought he spotted remorse in the set of Reuben’s square jaw. He thought he saw the potential to mend fences. But he might have imagined the moment out of hopefulness or even desperation. And even if he hadn’t, Silas Deming’s next act destroyed the opportunity to resolve their differences.

  Deming spat in Gabe’s face. Deming, a bastard so low he stole from his own messmates and cheated anyone green enough to try his luck at a game of chance. Deming, who thought the war a license to loot every farmhouse their unit marched past, to rip the stuffing from tots’ rag dolls just to make the frightened children cry.

  Deming’s spittle sliding down his cheek was more than Gabe could bear. With a howl of fury, he brought his fists up and jammed them toward the bastard’s belly.

  But no man spat in another man’s face without foreseeing an attack. Deming stepped sideways and grabbed Gabe’s wrist, then slung him forward, headfirst into a cabin wall.

  The impact sent showers of light sparking across Gabe’s vision and waves of pain cascading through his skull. In addition to the sharp crack of his head against wood—a sound very much like a bat striking a baseball—Gabe heard an even more unlikely sound. The scream of a woman on this steamboat packed with men.

  He had no time to wonder at the source, however, for as he struggled to rise with the intent of pounding Deming, the brilliant light inside his head exploded into blackness. His knees buckled, and awareness slid away.

  Four

  Away down South in the land of traitors,

  Rattlesnakes and alligators,

  Right away, come away, right away, come away.

  Where cotton’s king and men are chattels,

  Union boys will win the battles, Right away, come away, right away, come away.

  —anonymous,

  from “Union Dixie”

  The last thing Yvette meant to do was speak up for some Yankee. She was heading toward the safety of her stateroom when she heard loud voices. She barely recognized the young man who had earlier introduced himself as Gabriel Davis when a wild-eyed scalawag spat into his face. Yvette hadn’t heard their confrontation, but she saw in a trice that her Mr. Davis was both outnumbered and a far better sort than this ruffian. When Gabriel understandably swung at the man, his attacker grabbed his wrist and slung him headlong into a cabin wall.

  As Mr. Davis’s skull struck wood with a sickeningly solid bang, Yvette shrieked angrily, “You leave that man alone!”

  No one paid her any heed. Gabriel struggled to rise before collapsing, but two men quickly hauled him to his feet. In the warm light of the lantern, she saw dark rivulets of blood dripping through his blond hair.

  Just when she thought the two men had decided to redeem themselves by helping their unconscious victim, the one who’d started the incident hauled Gabriel closer to the rail. Her stomach clenched in horror as she realized the man meant to throw him overboard.

  An image flashed through Yvette’s mind: Marie, black hair waving in the water, where she’d been discarded as if her life meant nothing. She couldn’t let this happen to this man, wouldn’t let this happen to another family.

  The other fellow, a bit shorter and fuller in the face, grasped Gabriel by the shoulder and hesitated.

  “Much as he deserves it, you can’t just pitch him over. A man can’t swim in his condition—”

  “You think I give a damn?” The man’s dark gaze slid to lock with Yvette’s and then back, as if she weren’t worthy of consideration.

  “It’s murder, and I won’t be a party to it. I-I know his people. They’ve already lost one son.”

  The black-haired devil shoved his friend aside. “He shoulda died already. God knows he’s got it comin’. And there ain’t a fellow here who’ll say a damn thing if our runner-friend happens to slip off the side, all accidental-like.”

  Yvette scanned the men crowded around and realized with horrifying certainty that the man was right. None would meet her eye. Several turned their backs, perhaps pretending that if they didn’t see this abomination, it would not exist. Did this bully so frighten them that they meant to allow him to commit murder?

  Outrage forced her to step forward. They might all be Yankees, the same that she had wished dead, but she refused to stand by idly and witness the death of a young man who’d treated her kindly.

  “I told you once, unhand him.” She said the words loudly, hoping that a guard would hear and come to investigate. She might be a Southerner, but she was also both a lady and a paying passenger. Those two distinctions earned her the right to expect protection.

  She could hear her blood rush in her ears, and though she had to struggle to control her shaking, she did not turn away. Wisely or not, she was involved now, and she could not force herself to run.

  “Only the basest of cowards would kill a helpless man. If you try to do him further harm, I shall scream. I shall scream, and then I’ll tell everyone who’ll listen just what mischief you intend.”

  Several faces stared at her with expressions colored by a mixture of wariness and disbelief.

  The black-haired ruffian pinned her with a fierce glare, apparently expecting her to burst into hysterical tears or, better yet, collapse into a swoon. Yvette rolled her eyes and sighed in feigned impatience, praying all the while that he could not hear her pounding heart.

  She held her ground, her stubbornness honed by years spent battling older brothers. Several men shifted uncomfortably, and the fellow who’d been holding Mr. Davis’s shoulder spoke up once again.

  “You heard the lady, Deming. Let him go—at least for now.”

  By supplying her with the name, the shorter man
ended the standoff. She could now use it to report this incident, and she could tell that Deming knew it, too. So instead of tossing Gabriel’s limp form overboard, Deming dumped him at her feet and spat on him again.

  “You want the runner so bad, you can have him,” he told her as he turned on his heel. Trailing a stream of curses against both Gabriel’s cowardice and her lack of womanly virtues, he shoved and swore his way through the crowd.

  Yvette gazed down at the heap of bleeding Yankee lying at her feet. She had him now, all right.

  But what in heaven’s name was she going to do with him?

  * * *

  “Major Fidler, might I have a word with you about the conduct of your men?” Captain Mason asked.

  Fidler, the officer in charge of the prisoners, looked distinctly annoyed. A paroled prisoner himself, the major had been one of several men who’d complained about the overcrowding before the Sultana left Vicksburg. The hollow-cheeked man had proclaimed himself “quite unimpressed” with Mason’s reassurances. This evening, his uniform hung wrinkled on his gaunt frame, and exhausted shadows formed dark smudges beneath his eyes.

  Nevertheless, Fidler followed Mason into the pilothouse.

  “I’m very concerned about the way the men are moving from one side to the other every time another steamboat passes or we near a town,” Captain Mason began. “With this sort of weight on top, sudden shifting could capsize us or cause a boiler failure. This behavior must be stopped immediately.”

  Major Fidler pursed his lips, and his eyes grew as cold as chips of flint. To his credit, however, he did not remind Mason of his earlier objections. Nor did he mention the conditions, which Mason understood were less than desirable.

  “I’ll speak to them,” Fidler agreed, his voice sounding as tired as he appeared. “All we want is to get home safely. God knows, we deserve it after what we’ve suffered.”

  Fidler left the pilothouse, and Captain Mason gazed out over the dark mass of prisoners blanketing the hurricane deck. Prisoners who, with their sheer weight, could destroy the steamboat and everyone inside it.

  “All we want is to get home safely,” Fidler had said.

  “Amen to that, Major,” whispered Mason. But his true desire was more modest still. Not home, but the prisoners’ river destination, Cairo, Illinois, beckoned like a lodestone pulling at a compass needle. It was that town and not his home or his wife, Mary, that J. Cass Mason thought of when he finally whispered, “It’s all that I want, too.”

  * * *

  Gabe felt as if someone had dropped a cannonball onto his head. Experimentally, he moved it, only to find that his neck, too, throbbed ferociously from the jarring impact. He tried to force his eyes to focus, his mind to put together the jumbled images that skipped along its surface like an artfully tossed stone. One after another, he saw Matthew’s face, the mangled bodies of dead soldiers, the rows of shallow graves he’d helped to dig, and then a steamboat, the Sultana, almost as radiant a vision as the dark-haired beauty he’d met while waiting to come aboard.

  In stark contrast, the ugly memory of Silas Deming rushed at him, followed by the recollection of the man’s harsh words and the solid impact that had quickly followed. Shortest fight he’d ever been in, Gabe thought, somewhat abashed.

  He was fortunate he hadn’t been killed, he realized, before deciding that the same fickle luck had caused him to encounter one man among hundreds who’d be hell-bent on hurting him. But where was Deming now? For that matter, where was he?

  As his vision cleared, a solid shelf of wood appeared about two and a half feet above him. Gingerly, he turned his head until he could take in the narrow confines of the small room he found himself in— the two doors of the stateroom, the lamp above the table. Apparently, he was lying in a lower berth. Across from him, a young woman sat in the room’s lone chair, her fingers absently fluffing the fur near a tiny kitten’s ear.

  A woman? He groaned, frustrated in his attempts to comprehend all that had happened. Only then did he realize she was the same woman he’d seen on the wharf boat earlier.

  “What . . . ?” he began, scarcely guessing which question was attempting to emerge from his confusion. “How . . . ? How did I get here?”

  She frowned, as if his appearance were an unpleasant surprise to her. “My own foolishness, I’m afraid. Do you remember what that horrible, wild man did?”

  “Something to my head, if I’m thinking straight.”

  She nodded, and the lamplight gleamed off her black hair, now uncovered. A few wavy strands had escaped a bun to frame her face. “You’re lucky that you can think after that crack on the skull. Good thing you Yankees are so intractably hardheaded.”

  “That explains the way I feel, but it still doesn’t tell me why I’m here.” He attempted a smile despite a swirl of nausea. “I’m not complaining, mind you. I figured I’d end up in a box instead.”

  “Or as bait for catfish. That man meant to throw you overboard!” Her voice rose on a tide of indignation. “And if I hadn’t come along, those others would have let him. I’d thought you Yankees always stuck together.”

  “I hear a Michigan judge gave him two choices: join the army or serve time. You Rebels saved us housing on that Deming fellow, throwing him in prison.”

  “But surely someone should have stood up for you against that criminal, someone besides me.”

  Of course, no one else had helped him. Gabriel closed his eyes tightly and wondered if he’d ever live down a simple act of—what? Kindness? Cowardice? Even after six months, he still felt uncertain of the answer.

  When he looked at her again, her name rippled across his mind. Eve Alexander, she had said in that Southern accent he’d come to hate so much. Her words sounded silken, the same way those dark tendrils that framed her face looked.

  “So why did you, Miss Alexander? What was one less Yankee to you?”

  “It seemed a shame to drop the only half-decent Northerner I’ve met headfirst into the Mississippi.”

  “How’d I get in here, alone with you?”

  The black-and-white kitten curled into a fluffy ball on Eve’s lap.

  She lifted her chin defiantly, as if she’d detected censure in his words. “I was not about to waste my grand gesture by letting those ruffians toss you in the river the moment my back was turned, so I shamed two of them into bringing you in here. However, if you’re concerned about the propriety of such an action, I’m certain we can call Mr. Deming back.”

  He laughed, though his throbbing skull made him instantly regret it. “You misunderstand me. I’m very grateful, but I’m also confused. I’ve never had a lady save my life before, especially not a Southern one. I’m not too clear on the etiquette.”

  She tried to pinion him with an indignant glare, but the amusement in her hazel eyes dashed it all to pieces. “I believe I read an essay on the very subject in Miss Edith Willington’s new book, The Right Way to Live.”

  “Was it tucked between the chapters on ‘Maintaining One’s Complexion’ and ‘Evil Thoughts Toward Others,’ chapter twentyseven, ‘Awkward and Unseemly Rescues?’ “ Gabe asked.

  The bow of her mouth trembled until finally she gave way to laughter.

  “I have two sisters who live by Miss Willington’s edicts,” Gabe confessed. “I’m afraid I spent a lot of happy moments mocking them for what they called ‘developing their standards.’ “

  “I must confess, I’ve never put a great store by what the lady had to say,” Eve told him, “much to my sister and mother’s chagrin. I brought you here because . . . it seemed best at the time.”

  “Did you send for an officer or guard?”

  “I-I didn’t feel that, ah, under the circumstances, that action would be safe for you, either.”

  Something in the way her gaze slid away from his convinced Gabe she’d heard at least some of the conversation on the cabin deck. With the realization, he felt a rush of shame so painful that he almost wished Deming had tossed him overboard. Surely, drowning
couldn’t be worse than bearing this Southern woman’s pity.

  “I was no deserter,” he insisted.

  She said nothing in response, but her eyes looked expectant, as if she guessed there must be more. And in that expectation, Gabe dared to hope for something. Atonement? No, she could not offer such a thing. But perhaps the throbbing pressure in his skull was his long-silent explanation seeking its release.

  Why not tell her? To her, he was just another Yankee, one she imagined a great coward, from what he guessed she’d heard. What could possibly make her think worse of him now?

  “I did run once, in a battle,” he began, seeking only to ease the pain by giving the true tale a voice. He searched her face, looking for some sign that she would stop him. But she leaned forward ever so slightly, as children do when an old uncle tells a frightening story by the hearth.

  At least she had not recoiled. For that he felt more gratitude than for what she’d done to save his life. Before she could change her mind and leave or cry for help, he continued. “It happened in Tennessee, about six months ago. By then, the Confederates must have known the end was coming. But I’ll give them this. They kept on fighting, fielding every soldier they could find. They must have been running low on fit men, though. After a while, we were fighting graybeards. We were fighting boys as well. Kids young enough to cry when they felt homesick for their mamas.”

  A dim shade rose before his eyes, his brother, Matthew. Matthew laughing, the sounds of it mingling with the thin splintering of the ice beneath his feet. Unconsciously, Gabe reached out as if this time he could grab him. As if he hadn’t been too far away.

  “We gave the war our all, Mr. Davis,” Eve told him, her voice colored by a pride undiminished by defeat. “We’ll always have the knowledge that our beliefs, however wrong you people think them, have been paid for with our blood.”