And One Wore Gray (23 page)

But the major wasn’t there when the soldiers came to load Daniel into the wagon. These soldiers weren’t interested in respecting their enemy in any way, shape, or form.

The driver who had prodded him shouted out an order.

“Move it, Colonel!”

Hands grasped hard upon his shoulders, wrenching him up to his feet. He was shoved hard from the open back of the wagon.

There was no way to gain his balance, not with both arms and legs shackled as they were.

He sprawled down into the dirt road, striking hard. Gritting his teeth, he stumbled up to his feet.

There was a handsomely uniformed Union lieutenant colonel hurrying toward him. The uniform didn’t bear a single speck of dust, and the officer didn’t look as if he was many months past his twenty-first birthday.

“That will be enough, soldier!” he said. The soldier snickered beneath his breath, but saluted. “Yes sir, whatever you say, sir!”

“Colonel Daniel Cameron, you are now a prisoner of war, here at Old Capitol. Be a model prisoner, sir, and we will strive to see that your stay isn’t too painful.”

“He means he’ll try to keep you alive, Colonel!” someone shouted from one of the barred windows.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” the soldier who had brought him said. He caught Daniel’s shoulder. “Let’s move him in, sir. He’s a dangerous one.”

It was obvious that a number of the guards considered him to be a “dangerous one.” There was little chance of his harming any of them, what with the numbers they had on their side. Guards encircled the walled structure, and guards seemed to be in abundance within it. But though his hands were freed, they shoved him roughly into the large room with its heavy doors, trying to keep a distance from him.

And there he met a ragged band of Confederates.

They stood, gaunt and disheveled, some with bone-thin faces, some with fraying blankets around their
Shoulders. They wore all manner of uniform, a few
with
the colorful remnants of Louisiana Zouave baggy trousers, some in plain old washed-out breeches; some in proper militia uniform, and some in the butternut and gray of the regular army.

They watched as he was thrust in among them. Thrust so hard that he stumbled again, and fell to his knees. Squaring his shoulders, he rose painfully. His bare feet were bruised and bleeding. He’d been given a shirt, but it was torn and tattered now too His hair was matted, his face was covered with the dust from the street where he had fallen before.

He might have been dressed in scarlet robes.

All around him, cheers rose up. Then a Rebel yell sounded, nearly shattering the prison walls.

“Colonel Cameron, sir!” his name rang out; he was saluted again and again, one by one.

The Yankee guard at the door swore softly. “I’m getting the hell out of this one!” he muttered.

The heavy door clanked shut. Daniel looked around him, greeting his countrymen as they greeted him.

“Your feet look bad, sir, cut up and swollen,” said one young private with snow-blond hair and cornflower-blue eyes. He came up, setting down a pair of boots. “I’ve got kinfolk in D.C., and I got an extra pair of shoes, sir. I’d be beholden if’n you’d wear these.”

“Thank you, son,” Daniel said.

Another soldier stood before him. “My wife just knitted me a pair of socks, and the pair she sent before ain’t hardly got a hole in them, sir.”

Daniel smiled. Someone else brought him a blanket, and then someone brought him a thin little cigarillo, the likes of which he hadn’t tasted in a long time. He thanked them all. He told them what he knew about the battle of Sharpsburg, and he laughed when they told him tales about his own exploits in the saddle.

“Well, are they true, sir?”

“It’s like anything, Billy Boudain,” he told the young man who had given him the boots. “Some is true, and some is the storyteller’s relish for the story.” He winced. Sitting against the cold stone wall had aggravated a crick in his neck.

“Colonel, there’s a nice thick thatch of hay over yonder for you. Wish we could do more. Some of us have money and kinfolk near, and we can bribe a tiny bit of luxury, but not much.”

Daniel stood, stretching. He inhaled on the cigarillo, enjoying the fine taste of the tobacco. He grinned at the young soldier again, unaware that the bitter curl of his mouth was extremely chilling.

“Don’t worry about it, soldier. Don’t worry on it a bit. I don’t intend to stay long. Not long at all.” He crushed out the cigarillo. “I’ve got business elsewhere,” he said softly.

The ice-blue fury in his eyes belied the very softness of his words.

“You—you sound determined, sir,” Billy said.

“Oh, I am. Nothing will stop me from getting out of here.” He realized that his words had brought about a hush in the room, that the men were all staring at him, with maybe just a little bit of fear themselves.

“I thank you all,” he said more softly, and he offered them a rueful grin. “I thank you very much. I am weary, though. Good night, men.”

The pile of hay wasn’t much. It didn’t matter. He was surrounded by his own again.

He fell into it, and curiously enough, slept like a babe.

Fall was coming to the Maryland countryside. The leaves on the trees were just beginning to show the beauty of wild red and yellow and flaming orange.

Dusks were cool, with a cleansing breeze.

Callie sat out on her porch after a long day, anxious
to feel that breeze. No matter how fresh or gentle it came to be, no matter how cooling, or how cleansing, it never seemed to blow away the feelings that had settled over her. She tried to tell herself again and again that she had done the only thing possible. It didn’t help her. Daniel’s voice still came to her in the night. His promise, spoken so bitterly, so hatefully.

“I’ll be back….”

But he would not be for a long while. They had taken him over to Old Capitol Prison in Washington, and he was a prisoner that the guards would watch well and warily. Eric had assured her so.

She shivered, remembering the end of the night once Daniel had been knocked out.

They had shackled his ankles just as they had shackled his hands. One of the officers had stolen his boots.

Eric’s men had carried him off, and Eric had stayed behind.

She would never forget that night. The anguish of what had happened to Daniel and what had come after.

Eric had cornered her against the wall. She remembered him caging her in, his palms flat on the wall on either side of her face. She remembered the bitterness in his voice when he told her that all that he wanted was what she so blithely gave the enemy.

She remembered the awful choking horror of wondering if he would go through with the violence that he threatened.

She never knew what gave her strength. She smiled sweetly at him and slipped his revolver from his pocket as he moved in closer. When he would have pressed his lips to hers, she aimed the revolver right at his gut.

She warned him that she knew how to pull a trigger, and that she would do it without blinking.

He believed her. He’d stepped back so quickly it was comical. He’d scowled and sworn. Callie had told him
to get out of the house or she’d be out riding hard to find his superior officer to let him know just what his cavalry captains were doing in the field.

Eric had left, swearing his own form of vengeance against her.

She had then sunk down in her corner against the wall, and cried. Eventually, she’d fallen asleep.

In the morning she’d realized that she had to go on. Daniel had not been in her life so very long.

But the time before he had stepped into it no longer seemed to matter.

The day after Daniel’s capture, a different soldier had come by. Callie had kept Eric’s fine revolver. She had six shots to use if she needed them.

But the man hadn’t come by to threaten her. She was amazed to discover he had come to replenish some of the livestock that had been taken from her. There were now two pigs in back, two horses, two cows, the goat, and scores of chickens. The animals gave her plenty to do, as did the effort to restore her garden, although with winter coming on there was not much she could do.

There was definitely going to be a shortage of corn in the area.

She was glad of work, any work, for it helped to keep her mind off Daniel, and both the anguish and the splendor that had so briefly been hers.

She tried to tell herself that it was all for the best. Daniel was too daring, too talented, too able. If he fought on, he was sure to get himself killed. He was an expert with his sword, he was probably an amazing sharpshooter, and he could fight bare-handed with a vengeance. But no man alive was immune to bullets, and with his determination to lead his men straight into every fray, it seemed only a matter of time.

He was safe in prison.

But as she sat on the porch that dusk, watching the
swing wave gently in the breeze, she knew that he would never see it that way. He dreaded prisons. Callie couldn’t believe that Old Capitol Prison could be as bad as they said. It was right in Washington, D.C. There were any number of good citizens in Washington who despised the war, and who would demand fair treatment for the prisoners. After all, weren’t the northerners fighting this war to prove that they were all one Union?

It didn’t matter. Just remembering the look in Daniel’s eyes made her shiver.

She closed her eyes, determined to forget. She had to get over everything that had happened, and get on with her life.

She still had a little unfinished business, she reminded herself sadly, and she stood, and walked back into the house. On one of the big plush parlor chairs lay the bedroll belonging to the young Union soldier who had crawled into her barn to die. She had to get those belongings back to his family.

She turned the bedroll, trying to compose in her mind a message to send to his family. “Your son died instantly, painlessly. He died a hero’s death….”

The truth. He died in terror and agony, lingering away in my barn.

No, she didn’t have to write the truth. No one knew the truth about the soldier’s death except for herself.

And Daniel.

Swearing softly, she started to untie the bedroll. If there were tobacco or pipes or playing cards within it, she would get rid of them. She was convinced that if a boy was big enough to go into battle and die, no one should care if he wanted a bit of tobacco or had taken to a fun game of cards on a quiet night. But mothers still looked for honor in their sons, and boys, she knew, still longed to please their mothers. So if this boy’s mother had to receive the sad news of her son’s death,
Callie was going to see to it that she was spared all possible extra pain.

The minute she undid the bedroll the first thing to flutter out was the boy’s letter. It had obviously been signed in quite a rush, and he had never had a chance to find an envelope for it, or a way to post it back home. He’d probably just finished up before he heard the bugle’s blare calling him to battle.

Callie bit her lip and absently set her free hand against the small of her back. She stretched and wandered back out to the porch, sinking down on the steps to feel the night breeze while she read the letter.