After the Glory.
           by Helen Topping Miller
        APPLETON-CENTURY-CROFTS, INC.
                  New York
                      
          Copyright ~ 1958 by
.\PPLETON-CENTURY-CROFTS, INC.
All rights reserved. This book, or parts
thereof, must not be reproduced in any
form without permission of the publisher.
All names, characters, and events, other
than historical personages and situations,
are fictional. Any resemblance which may
seem to exist to real persons is purely co
              incidental.
   PRINTED IN I rlE UNITED STATES OF
AMERICA
                   
  After the Glory ~

  Orate

THEY LAY UNDER ME Trojan SHADE OF Tree
CEDAR TRICOT TnAT SLOPED down to the river. At the
bottom of the rocky slope ran a narrow creek that not long
since had run red with the blood of fighting men. On the
shaly ground that slanted downward to the greener, reedy
bed of the stream the litter of conflict still lay scattered,
bleaching and rusting in the sudden heat of a May afternoon.

  Kingman Markland stretched a foot from his prone position
and kicked at a rusting canteen. It had been trodden by a
horse and was flattened in the middle but from the mouth of
it crawled a little lizard, that skittered away swiftly into the
ragged grass.

  King rolled over on an elbow and laughed loudly' a sudden,
whooping laugh. Beside him his brother Jack jumped.

  "What the devil?" he growled. Then he himself laughed
thinly, grudgingly, as though any mirth he possessed was a
private and secret shame, reluctantly revealed. "Can't get
over the feeling that some Yank is going to take a crack at
us from those bushes," he said.

  King, long, black-haired, lean, sun-weathered and darkened,
so that now he had almost the look of a Latin, sat up and
tossed a pebble after the fleeing lizard. "Look at the little
devil go! Reminds me of General Forrest. Look at that old
scoundrel, first he's there and then he ain't."

  "That was Pa's good bay stud horse that Forrest was riding,"
said Jack, as though resuming an argument. "I'd never have
believed Pa would give up that horse to any cavalry ever
was."

  "To Forrest he would. Maybe didn't have any choice," said
King. "A hundred of 'em ride in all armed and tough, even
if agreeable, and a man gives up what they want and doesn't
voice any objections." He lay back on the ground squinting
his dark eyes as the sun smote them. He was twenty-seven
years old, and four years of war had not dimmed or softened
the steely insolence in him. He was handsome with arrogant
brows and a classic profile, and it was immediately apparent
that

[7]

he was aware of this, that he dramatized his looks and was
always acting a little.

 His brother, two years older, leathery, more taciturn, ran
his hands around his belt irritably. "Can't get used to having
nothing," he said. "Not even a cartridge."

 "You could have kept your saber if you hadn't thrown it
away back there when that Yank knocked you out of the
saddle," King reminded him.

 "My horse fell on it. He was dead and I couldn't move him
so I lay down and the Yank thought he'd killed me and
galloped off. Anyway he was out of ammunition or he
wouldn't have hit me with a rifle butt. Hadn't we better be
pushing on? It's a hundred miles to home yet, and nothing
to eat anywhere on the way."

 "I don't figure it's that far," King said. "If we can make it
to the river by dark I reckon maybe the Larsons would feed
us." He pulled himself to a standing position with one fluid
movement of his long body. Jack Markland studied his
brother meditatively, still sitting in the ragged grass, leaning
back on his big flat palms. That boy, he was thinking, could
have licked Rosecrans and Thomas by himself if he had put
his mind to it. The trouble was that Kingman Markland,
steel wire and lightning as he was, had never been able to
keep his facile mind at anything.

 "Maybe the Larsons won't even be there," Jack objected,
feeling bound, as all his life he had felt bound, to throw cold
water on his brother's unconsidered impulses. "Maybe their
house was burnt when Schofield went through here and the
whole lot of 'em run off. Fool around that river and we
might run into some Union renegades. Anyway we'd have to
cross it twice, and there's likely no boat left anywhere with
a bottom in it."

 "You want to tramp all that way chewing on sassafras?"
grumbled ECing. "My belly's as hollow as an empty drum
right now, and yours rumbles about as loud. All right, if
we've got to go slogging through that rough country let's get
moving. Might find us a still hid somewhere in a bushy
hollow."

 Andrew Jackson Markland got up painfully. His feet were
bare and the fraying fringe of a ragged pair of butternut
breeches dangled over bony ankles scratched and insect
bitten. Jack had been the first Markland to enlist, riding off
after that loud, belligerent Tennessean, Nathan Bedford
Forrest, to his father's indignant disgust.

 "If he had to ride why couldn't he sign up with a
gentleman?" he had growled. "Somebody like Wheeler or
John Morgan. Nate Forrest

[8]

was a slave trailer, didn't even have a command till he raised
it himself, and they say he can hardly write his name."

  But only a few weeks had passed before King had received
a letter from his soldier brother. "If you boys want to win this
war you come along with me," wrote Jack. "This colonel could
win it all by himself if they'd give him enough men and guns."

  So King and Morgan, the youngest Markland son, had set
out for West Tennessee riding two of Boone Markland's fine
horses.

  "Billy wouldn't come," they reported to Jack when they
overtook Forrest's troops. "He claims the war's a mistake and
we ought to preserve the Union. Billy and Pa were glaring
and barking at each other like two mad dogs when we left."

  "Dumb stubborn young fooll" Jack fumed. "Always had to
be on the offside of everything, all his life. Ile'll fool around
and get drafted and have to do all his fighting in
Beauregard's infantry."

  "Could be that Billy'd go into the Yank army if Pa rides
him too hard," remarked King. "He never did have good
common sense."

  "Boy from our county wouldn't ever take up for the Union,"
argued Morgan. "But if anybody's that big a fool it'd be Billy."

  Somehow they had sweated, gloried, starved and struggled
through four years of hard riding and fighting. Johnsonville,
Corinth, Shiloh, the river raids in Mississippi and Alabama,
Chickamauga and the blood bath of that last bitter year at
Franklin and Nashville, fighting always until Forrest's
reluctant surrender at Gainesville. There Jack had found
King, but although they had searched for two days they had
never located Morgan.

  "That boy Morgan must have got himself killed," worried
Jack as they started up the ragged slope, painfully putting one
sore foot in front of the other. "I never even saw him when
we were loading all that plunder on the pontoon bridge at
Eastport."

  "I guess you were too busy herding hogs across that bridge
to look for anybody. Last time I saw Morgan was when we
rode that last charge into Franklin, then coming back
covering Hood my horse got killed and set me afoot. But the
last time I saw him Morgan was mounted and firing back, like
the rest of us," King said, then added savagely, "Never did see
an army go to pieces so quick. When the news came from
Appomattox it was like salt dissolving in a rainstorm."

  "I never did give up till Johnston surrendered." Jack kicked
at a battered saddle that lay belly up, rain-stained and dusty
on the slope. Some grey horse hairs still clung to the ragged
padding under it.

[9]

"That's what lost us the war," he growled. "Rotten leather, no
horseshoes, no nails if we'd had shoes to put on the horses."

  "You'll see stuff Iying around like that for years. Ought to
be plenty up on Stone River where they cut up
Breckinridge's Orphan Brigade. That must have been some
battle, from what I heard. Twenty-three thousand killed
when Rosecrans crashed down on Bragg."

  They fell silent as weariness and hunger took toll of their
young bodies, bodies too long overstrained, underfed. At
dusk they came to a dusty road and crossed it, climbing a
rail fence on the opposite side.

  "No troops came this way, wouldn't be a rail left. Down at
Ringgold we tore down a man's crib to build cooking fires,"
King said. "And not enough to cook to pay for the trouble.
This country is going to be uneasy for a long time. I m for
staying off the roads."

Jack spied an apple tree in bloom. "Must be a house yonder."

  "Better reconnoiter," warned King. "These hill people
might not be friendly. Half of these shinnies up here in the
rocks and cedars sided with the Union."

  "Never owned any Nigras. Had no interest in the war."
Jack took off his faded cap and roughed a hand through his
shaggy hair. "I heard a rooster. Wait till dark and maybe we
could snag him."

"Come dark and we could be ten miles nearer home."

  "Not with my feet, and my insides neither," declared Jack.
"Not unless we find another creek where I can wash the
fever out of my feet. When I left home I left four good pairs
of shoes and some boots. Reckon they're still there if Miss
Annie or Sue didn't give 'em away to the hands."

  King thought unwillingly of the possibility that his mother
and Jack's wife Sue had had no control over the disposing of
his brother's shoes.

  "We've got to remember the house may have been looted.
Thomas was over there. Might even be burned to the
ground."

  Next morning, when they had slept briefly and painfully
under a cedar thicket, Jack resumed his angry worry.

  "You reckon Billy was really crazy enough to join up with
the Union army?"

  "If he did, he's a damn traitor, and if he got wounded I
hope he didn't try to hide out at home," King swore. "It
would be bad for the folks, and Ma would hide him,
renegade or not. I never did understand that boy. He was
raised like the rest of us and he's not much younger than
me, but he's no more like us than a mule colt raised with a
lot of blooded horses. He looks like the rest of us, more like
you and

[ 10]

me than Morgan ever did, but he never did think like
anybody else in the family."

  "He read too many books,' said Jack. "Even when he didn't
have a whisker to shave he'd start arguments, ranting around
that Pa ought to free all the Nigras, that it was a sin to own
another human being."

  "Hell, the Nigras didn't want to be free. Been taken care of
all their lives, nothing to worry about, fed and clothed and
given houses to live in. And you know Pa, his hands never
did wear themselves out working."

  "They've got ham down at that house," sighed Jack. "I can
smell it frying. If this was still war and we were still mounted
infantry with arms, we wouldn't be hungry much longer. Just
long enough to go down there and take it away from 'em.
Look, boy, I've got to sit down a little. My legs won't go any
further and my head feels queer."

  "Lean against that tree and get your mind off ham," advised
his brother. "We've still got a long way to go and they've
likely got dogs down yonder at that house."

  Jack sank obediently on the clean grass of the meadow. His
face, King noted, was drained and gray, his emaciated body
quivering.

  "All this green stuff we've been eating has got my bowels
all torn up," Jack grumbled. "Wish we could find a cow to
milk. I don't reckon there's a cow left in the country now.
What we didn't get the Yanks cleaned out after us. These
folks around here aren't going to like anybody that wears a
uniform. We've got to expect that."

  King squatted on the other side of the tree. "Losers are
never popular, no matter how good an excuse you've got for
being licked. We ought to get home day after f omorrow if
you can hold out to travel. Maybe Miss Annie will have a
chicken left to put in the pot with some big fluffy dumplings."
He leaned his back against the tree and felt the coolness of
the green heart of it through the bark. A beetle ambled over
the ground and scrutinised him with flat, opaque eyes, then
went its stodgy way.

  King let worry gnaw at him, wondering if he'd be able to
get Jack home, if there would be anything left of home when
they finally made it back. The place was set pretty well back
in a hill cove off the beaten track, so both armies might have
missed and ignored it. He didn't like the way Jack looked,
drained green and bloodless by exhaustion, dysentery and
htmger.

  Jack was the oldest of the Marklands, married to Sue now
for eight years and always he had been the toughest, the still,
gritty one who broke the wildest colts, the one most
dangerous in a fight because

~ 11 ]

of some terrible relentlessness in him, a kind of
tight-mouthed deadly thing. His only observable tenderness
had been evidenced toward Sue, the fire-top girl he had
married. Sue could lead Jack around with a silk thread, the
other Marklands grumbled. Now King's only feeling for Jack
was an anxious pity. He knew, uneasily aware of the
trembling in his own legs, he had to get Jack home soon
even if he had to carry him on his own back.

 They had seen them on the road; haggard, ragged men in
gray, lurching along, one stumbling under the burden of
another, wounded, legless perhaps, drained white, half-dead.
Sometimes they tottered along in pairs, clumsily holding up
a third, often an older man or a boy. Men who had marched
off jauntily in time to a drum, or ridden out of sight of home
on a prancing horse, as the Marklands had set forth to war.
How sickly, sadly, was everything lost How sourly stank the
rotting corpse of glory',

 King Markland swore bitterly, beating the uncaring body
of the tree with helpless fists. Behind him Jack did not stir.
He had sunk into limp, sweating slumber, his mouth open
and drooling a little, showing his shrunken gums, his
yellowed teeth. King shuddered with involuntary revulsion.
That flesh Iying there, already wearing the look of
deterioration, a carrion look, was his brother, Andrew
Jackson Markland, who not long since had been one of the
handsomest bucks along the Harpeth River. Deadly as his
own pistol, fierce as a white-eyed stallion, a rich young man
and staunchly proud. King gave a little moan, rolled over on
his own shoulder and dropped off into exhausted sleep.

 The foot that prodded him kicked hard. He jerked up,
glaring, reaching for a weapon that was not there, dragged
himself to his feet, bracing against the tree to scowl at the
old man who stood over him, a shapeless straw hat pushed
back on a head full of rough white hair.

"Who're you, soldier?" demanded the old man.

 King got his breath, slapped sweat from his eyes,
unclenched his fists.

 "Markland, Lieutenant. Seventh Tennessee. Forrest's
brigade. On my way home with a sick brother. Any objection
to our taking a little rest on your land? I reckon it is your
land?"

 "Yeah, it's my land and I got no objection. Where you
headed, soldier?"

 "Up toward Harpeth \'alley. Boone Markland's place. If my
brother holds out. He's tramped and starved all the way
from Alabama. We'll move on as soon as he gets rested.
We're not armed."

[ 12]

  The old man hitched up his shabby pants. "Have you seen
a young feller out of Pope's army on the road
anywheres?About nineteen year old, he was. My grandson.
Maw and me raised him. Seen you draggin' up here, thought
maybe it might be Herbie. Maw run straight out and wrung
the head off a chicken."

  "We've seen a thousand soldiers on the road." King
softened his tone of defensive belligerence. "Old ones, young
ones, sick, wounded, hungry all of 'em. All trying to get home
like my brother and me."

  "That man looks pretty sick." The old man came closer.
"You wait here. I'll fetch the wagon. Still got a piece of a
wagon and one mule. Hid him out in the woods or I wouldn't
have no mule. You wait. Somebody's got to eat that chicken
Maw's stewin' up yonder at the house. Could be Herbie got
killed out yonder in Virginia. Two years now we ain't heard
nary a word."

  "There was mighty little chance to write letters and less
chance to send them home." King tried to be reassuring. "Our
folks don't know if we're still alive either. Or our younger
brother that joined up later. If your boy was with Pope you're
for the Union, Mister. My brother and I are Confederates.
What do you want to bother with us for? There's no bounty
on our heads. We gave our paroles, we're free men." King's
voice rose a little, his face darkened.

  The old man did not bridle or show offence.. "You're men,
ain't yet Fellow humans in trouble. I never took no side in
this war. All wrong, I figures, brothers fightin' each other,
ruinin' the country all for a lot of Nigras, didn't care one way
nor "'other. You wait here, I'll be back." He took a few steps,
turned back. "Boone Markland? He's your daddy? I've heared
of him. Used to own fine stud horses a while back. You ain't
so far from home, boy. Not more'n a matter of thirty miles or
so."

"What county is this?"

  "Lincoln County, Tennessee. Sixty per cent for the Union.
But you're safe, boy. We're decent folks in Lincoln. Don't
hold with whippin' no enemy more'n once."

  "A generous foe, eh? Our thanks, sir. You haven't told me
your name."

"Name's Clark. Proud of it. You set. Set and rest. I'll be
back."

  He trudged down the slope and King tried to rouse his
brother, succeeding at last in getting him into a limp, sitting
posture, collapsed against the tree.

  "You got to come out of it, fellow! We've been rescued."
He slapped Jack gently with an open hand. "An old farmer is
coming for you with a wagon and we're going to he fed, all
because some little Yank in

[ 13 ]

Pope's army hasn't come home yet. And listen, Jack," he
went on seriously as Jack showed signs of comprehension,
"these old folks who want to help us are Union, so you mind
your mouth and your manners."

"Some trick in it," mumbled Jack. "Bound to be."

"I don't believe it. The old fellow sounds decent and honest
to me."

"Trick in it. Let's move on. Help me up."

 With difficulty King got his brother to his feet. But almost
instantly a sick, greenish pallor washed over Jack's face, his
jaw dropped, he retched and his eyes rolled back and he
toppled unconscious into King's arms. When the old man
returned, driving a fat high-headed mule hitched to a light
wagon, King had to lift Jack into the wagon bed.

 "Got a little whisky at the house," said the man, Clark,
clucking to the mule. "Know it's good, made it myself. Might
perk him up some. How long since you boys eta"

 "Gainesville, Alabama," King told him. "Since then only old
acorns and sassafras leaves. Country picked clean and
gardens not up yet. You're very obliging, Mr. Clark. I hope
somebody along the road helps out your boy too."

 They had gone off to war jaunty and insolent, sashed and
plumed, to the thumping of defiant drums and the cheering
of admiring neighbors.

 They resumed in darkness in the rattling little Yankee
wagon, drawn by a snorting Yankee mule. It was three days
before Andrew Jackson Markland roused enough to know
that he had come home.

~ Two.

BooxE Martyr AND WAS SIXTY WARS old AND ras
BOAST wAS TsAT sat hadn't a creak in a joint or a grey
hair in his head.

 "Could have marched and fought as spry as any young
feller, would they have had me," he boomed often. "Likely
outlasted a lot of 'em. Got lost on a bear hunt one fall up
on Cumberland, laid out three days and nights, nothing to
eat but hickory nuts, found me a creek finally and walked
eighteen miles home, totin' forty pounds of bear

[ 14 ]

meat and my gun. Dogs had been home two days when I got
there and my pappy and the hands were out beatin' the brush
looking for my dead body."

 "Nobody," drawled King from the couch where he had lain
for two days, fluttered over by his mother, "was shooting at
you, Pa. You didn't tramp in frozen mud for three days with
no rations but a handful of moldy corn and a sliver of bacon
with skippers in it. No chance to make a fire or lie down or
dry your socks before they froze on your feet. After Franklin
we marched like that. Men just gave up and dropped beside
the road and died where they fell."

 "Well, you got hauled home in a wagon," snorted Boone.
"Reckon Morgan's making it on foot if he's making it at all.
And all three of you left this place riding horses worth three
hundred dollars apiece."

 "Morgan still had a horse the last time I saw him. They shot
Jack's horse and mine fell and broke both front legs."

"Didn't have proper shoes on him."

 "Didn't have any shoes on him. About a hundred thousand
men, I reckon, left home on good horses and there won't be
five thousand ride 'em back. They shot the horses first if they
could, or they hamstrung them with bayonets or sabers. Set
a man in cavalry boots afoot and he's easy to run down and
kill or capture." King rolled over and stuffed a pillow under
one ear. Not that anything would deaden the resonance of
Boone Markland's pontificating, especially when he stalked
up and down a room making expansive gestures to the
imminent peril of his wife's bric-a-brac.

 "You reckon Jack's ever going to feel himself again?" he
demanded now, taking a tall stance, his hands jammed into
the pockets of his worn riding pants. "Big stout feller like he
is, don't look right for him to be Iying there being fed with a
spoon."

 "Of course he's going to be all right again," declared the
boys' mother. She was as small and fleshless as Boone
Markland was big and lusty. She was called Miss Annie by
her husband and all the servants, and of late years her sons
and daughter-in-law too had taken to calling her that. There
had been a ribald joke passed around when Boone Markland
married wispy little Annie Lou Breen. They said he would
have to shake the sheet to find her, and Boone still liked to
repeat that jest to his wife's impatient annoyance.

 Miss Annie's hair was snow white though she was twelve
years younger than her husband. She had a deceptive air of
frailty. Never sick, she always wore the pallor of illness, and
there were deep purple shadows under her great amber eyes.

[ 1 5 ]

 "Miss Annie always reminds me of a doe deer," Morgan
had once said. "Looks rickety on the legs and scared to
death, but she can move like chain lightening and she ain't
scared of nothing."

 She appeared to be always weary and yet was never still.
All her sons teased her unmercifully, lifting her small, light
body in the air, setting her on a high mantel or in the crotch
of a tree, leaving her there screaming furiously, but m
matters of moment they obeyed her with amazing meekness.

 Even Boone Markland. though he might roar protest,
seldom went against a direct order from Miss Annie. His
family knew that Boone never had a mare bred, sold a
bushel of corn or changed his shirt without having her advice
on the project. Pa was the big noise on the Markland place,
but tiny Miss Annie7 darting about like some gossa-
mer-winged insect, was the boss.

 "Jack," she stated now, whisking a bit of dust from a
marble-topped table with her little white apron, "is going to
lie right there in that bed till he feels like getting up. And
any other of my boys that comes home all wore out and sick
from this fool war is going to do the same."

 King Markland looked quickly at his father, saw Boone's
face darken, saw him as quickly look away. Not a word had
been said, but King knew by what was not spoken that Billy,
the third Markland son, had gone for the Union. He had
had no chance to ask questions because somehow Miss
Annie was always on hand to change the subject swiftly and
obviously I'll get Pa or Sue alone, or one of the Nigras, and
find out7 King determined. But for the present, fed and
relaxed, he was content to try to sleep.

 Sleep did not come easily since his mind was so full of
questions that had, so far, no answers. Tile house still stood
although it had a slightly shabby, neglected look. The grass
grew long and ragged in the yards the shrubbery was
overgrown and untended. The stables were there but there
was a deserted air about them. He had been too exhausted
to explores too numbed by weariness to make inquiry, but
he heard no young colts whinny, no stallion scream, and
Ranse, the old horse trainer and stable hand had not
appeared, dusty cap in hand, as of old.

 "They get all our horses, Miss Annie?" he had asked once
and Miss Annie's answer had been a cool cloth laid over his
eyes.

 "You rest now, Kingman, and don't you worry about a
thing. We're going to get along all right now you boys have
come home."

 Things must be bad, they were all so stubborn about being
optimistic, he decided as he burrowed in the pillow. The sun
was hot outside, the heavy fragrance of honeysuckle drifted
in at the open window. His

[ 16 ]

mother had seated herself at his side with a fly whisk of
shredded newspaper tied to a stick.

  "Sue's sitting by Jack," she said. "You sleep now and I'll
keep the bugs off you. They're worse this summer than I've
ever seen them. All kinds of flies, and rats too. Your father
says it's so many dead bodies lying all over the country that
draws them, but I won't let myself think about something so
horrible. It's bad enough to think about boys being killed
without letting your mind go wandering on in such a ghoulish
fashion." The fly brush stopped in mid-air and, turning his
head, King saw his mother's face change and crumple a little,
her eyes dim behind her steel-rimmed glasses. "Kingman, you
reckon Little Brother is dead7"

  She meant Morgan, the last-born, her baby. Spoiled
outrageously, Morgan, who had inherited the reckless
Markland courage, all the arrogance and belligerence of the
clan, had early demonstrated brash young scorn for many of
the principles of honor, trustworthiness, generosity and
forbearance that went with it.

  He said, choosing his words carefully, "I've got no right to
think he's dead, Miss Annie, because I don't know. He was
riding with Forrest when Thomas chased us back to Alabama,
but that was a good while back. We never did know what
month or day it was, all the days ran together, some bad,
some fairly quiet when we got to draw our breath and clean
up our equipment. He could have been killed a hundred yards
from me when we were moving so fast and I'd never know
unless some trooper rode ahead to tell me, and nobody did.
I won't believe he's gone for a good while anyway. It's slow
business getting home. I was scared Jack was going to die on
me before we made it back. He would have died if that old
man from down in Lincoln hadn't helped us out. He was a
good old chap, even if he was Union."

  "There are a lot that are Union around here now, people
who kept mighty quiet when Bragg and Hood and all the rest
were up here in this country."

  "Now they'll be top dog and make it hard on all the rest of
us," King said bitterly. But now, although opportunity offered,
he could not bring himself to ask about Billy. William Breen
Markland, the odd one, named for their Irish grandfather,
and like that taciturn, obdurate old man always a
nonconformist, an objector, full of booklore, aloof and
stiffened with stubborn opinions.

  Miss Annie would still defend this third son of hers, he
knew, just as she had always defended Billy when King and
Jack picked on him. Just as she had always supplied
reasonable motives for actions that the

[ 17 ]

Markland sons, and Boone, their father, had raged at as
unreasonable. When Billy deserted the family table to eat
from a tin pan in the yard with the stable boy, Buzzy, Miss
Annie insisted it was a gentlemanly, charitable gesture.
Hadn't Buzzy and Billy been born the same day, with
Mammy Dory so distracted over two births occurring on the
place at once that she hardly knew which came into the
world first, Miss Annie's child or her own caramel-colored
grandson.

  Buzzy had been born light-skinned, and because of this
Big Bob, young Rinda's coal-black husband, had beaten his
wife half to death and run away. When he was caught trying
to ride a barge down river to Kentucky, Boone Markland
had sold Big Bob south, the only Negro ever sold off the
place. But Buzzy stayed, riding the two-year-old bareback
behind Billy, leaving any task to go off fishing with Billy.

  "Worthless yellow scoundrel!" Boone Markland stemmed.
"I should have sold him too."

  "You leave Buzzy alone. He can churn butter quicker than
anybody," ordered Miss Annie.

  So Buzzy was left alone to grow up, his submissiveness
owned by Billy and by no one else. Now nobody, not even
Billy, could own Buzzy, King, was thinking. Abraham
Lincoln had seen to that.

"What became of Buzzy?" he asked his mother.

  "He ran off," she said, her face changing again like a soft
flower closing, her lips graying and straight. "So did Ranse
and Ivy and Phoebus. Ranse made off with one of your
father's mules and a good Democrat wagon, and Ivy stole
every pot and pan and blanket out of their cabin. Ungrateful
creatures, after all we'd done for them. I hope they starve to
death."

  "The Yanks had some Nigras in their ammy. They
garrisoned places with them after they'd taken them away
from us. George Litchfield saw two of his father's hands
down there at Shiloh. They slipped across the lines at night
and begged George for money and tobacco."

  "I hope he shot both of them," snapped his mother, her
mouth like a trap.

  "You know you don't hope any such thing, Miss Annie. If
Buzzy walked in here right now all dressed up in Union blue
you'd start yelling at Minerva to feed him."

  "Well, I'd give him a good talking to first," declared Miss
Annie, flicking viciously at a meandering fly. She would not,
never, if she died of her own repression, put into words or
even into coherent thought her own instinctive feeling about
Buzzy. But she had never been able to look at the
butter-light, big-eyed little slave without seeing

[ 18 ]

a trick of expression or movement too like her own
children's. Now she said meditatively, fanning more slowly, "I
disciplined my head and my heart when you all went off to
war "

All, thought King. So Billy did go. But she won't talk about
it.

  "I said I was no better than thousands of women," she went
on, "and if it so be that any of you had to be sacrificed I
could bear it. And I have. But it was a glorious day when I
saw that little old wagon rolling in, and I hope that poor old
man's grandson comes back. I wish all the boys could come
back, mistaken and wrongheaded or not. Now" she jumped
up, letting the fly brush fall "I'm going to fix you a good
eggnog and I'll talk your father into letting me put a little
authority in it. We've still got a cow though your poor pa
about wore his legs off hiding her up in the coves. And we've
got a few hens but no rooster. He crowed so much so we had
to eat him. We had them hid in Ivy's house with hay piled
over the windows but nobody bothered us except some
cavalry scouts now and then hunting horses."

  "Pa gave that big bay to Nate Forrest. We saw him riding
him down at Johnsonville."

  "Your father would have given anything he owned to
General Forrest, I reckon, after all you boys went fighting
with him. He might have given me away but the troopers that
came by never gave me a good look, though I fed them every
biscuit and crumb of corn bread on the place. Sue was the
one they made eyes at."

  "The boys were that homesick they'd make eyes at anything
young and good looking," King said. "Most of them had left
girls or young wives at home."

  "Then they should have been thinking that other soldiers
might be making eyes at their women," snapped Miss Annie.

  "Soldiers didn't think. We took it one day at a time, an
hour at a time, or otherwise we couldn't have endured it,"
King sighed. He had always known how to droop his eyelids
and sigh and get around his mother. Boone Markland had
kept a few private reservations about his second son,
suspecting King of being a sly dog and a rascal around
women, but a few lurid memories of his own past had kept
Boone from being vocal about it, although he did remark on
occasion that King was too damn handsome and plausible for
his own good and prophesied dubiously that ultimately King's
career would be ended by a bullet from some aggrieved and
enraged husband or lover.

  They were all handsome, that was the trouble. They wore
their dark masculine beauty, their tall slenderness, their
imperious manner like glittering chain mail. They were
insolent and jaunty and afraid of

[ 19 ]

nothing. Even Jack, who had settled down at last, to his
father's vast relief, had refused to be daunted by
responsibility. Now here was Jack's son, called Boone-boy,
seven years old and growing up as black-eyed, as sardonic
and reckless as his father and his uncles.

  Though he would not have known how to put this thought
into words, there were times when Boone Markland felt like
a rough old lion who had whelped a pride of black panthers.

  He came striding into the room now brandishing a
half-empty bottle like a weapon. "Know what this is?" he
demanded loudly. "It's about the last bit of good liquor on
this placer"

"Not the very last bit, Pa," soothed King. "I'm betting on
that."

  "Well, there's mighty little left, I can tell you. Miss Annie
says she has got to have some so y on boys can get your
strength back and you know your mother. When she sets her
head for anything she gets her way. She set her head she was
going to marry me and by God, she did it! Me, a grown man
thirty years old and her a little flippity bit no bigger'n a
hummingbird and just as hard to catch and hold on to.
There were a lot of surprised people in Dickson County
when I set Annie Lou Breen up on a fine black mare and
rode off with her, but not one of 'em was any more surprised
than I was." Boone grinned, twisting his mouth so that his
black beard swished across his front, went to the door and
shouted, "Here's your poison, Miss Annie. See you be stingy
with it."

  "Stingy," repeated a scornful voice beyond the door. "And
when did you ever stint yourself on whisky, Boone
Markland?" A small brown hand reached for the bottle, and
Boone came back and surprisingly dropped into a chair.

  King sat up attentively. His father sat so rarely, his great
body was so seldom quiet that when it did happen it usually
portended something or other. A silence stretched a little
until King grew restless and moved to break it.

"Sir?" he said, as though Boone had spoken.

  Boone cleared his throat harshly. "I reckon you know what
has happened to the country?" he said.

  King rose and walked to the fireplace, leaning an elbow on
the mantel His legs still felt weak and shaky, his heart
wanted to skitter and thump in his breast, but he kept his
voice steady.

  "We knew that Lincoln was shot before the surrender.
What happens now?"

  "Andy Johnson is now President of the United States.
Before that he was military governor of Tennessee. Put there
by the Washington

[ 20]

radicals and the scurvy tribe who call themselves Union
Democrats. He was a sorry governor and he'll be a sorry
president. He'll try to please everybody and be an honest
man, and there's nobody so helpless among a lot of radical
scalawags and scoundrels like that gang who tried to run
Lincoln as an honest man. They'll throw him out before he's
been up there a year. Some of those black Republican
senators and cabinet members will try personally to throw
poor old Andy out, just because he don't want the South
persecuted. But that's all far away. What's here and now is
this poisonous rattlesnake of a psalmsinging old devil we've
got for governor of Tennessee, William Gannaway
Brownlowl"

"So he's back. I thought they had him in jail some place."

  "Had him in jail, our people did. Found it made a goddam
martyr out of him so they took him out and sent him up
north through the lines. Yanks made a hero out of him, then
they got sick of his virulent raving, so now we've got him
back. Yanks won't have him, and if he died the devil wouldn't
have him, so looks like we've got Brownlow for good."

  "Some fellow got into our outfit told me he saw Brownlow
shoot a wounded boy on the ground, up in East Tennessee.
Said his brother vowed he'd kill Brownlow if he ever got near
enough."

  "He might get near enough but if he's like the rest of us he
won't have any weapon when he gets there," growled Boone.
"Already they're sending snoopers around to seize every pistol
and rifle in the state from our folks that stood for the
Confederacy. Before you got home I wrapped up both my
pistols and my squirrel and bear guns in muslin and tallow
and hollowed out a cotton bale and put 'em inside."

  "What if they take the cottony They could do that. Call it
contraband. They're doing it down m Alabama. Taking it for
taxes or something."

  "Not this bale. It's in the bottom of that old dry cistern out
by the cow barn, old straw and stalks dumped in on top of it.
It's an old bale  haven't raised any cotton in three years. No
hands to pick it. They all wandered off. Glad to get shut of
'em, furnishing Em, keeping up their houses, always wanting
more meal and more meat than what cotton they raised was
worth." Boone took out a brown twist of tobacco, whittled off
a hunk and eased it into his jaw. "What do you figure to do
now, boy?" he asked abruptly.

  "What can I do?" parried King. "Not much left here, or so
I gather from what Miss Annie', let slip. And is she ever a
close-mouthed woman!"

[ 21 ]

 "I trained her. Trained her good. And when you've got a
woman trained to hold her tongue you've done something.7'

"No horses to break and train?"

 "Three colts. Scrubs. Before the war I'd have given 'em
away to the hands," snorted Boone. "Not quite
three-year-olds. No looks and not much brains. You can do
something even with a scrub if he's got brains but these
three ain't got the spirit of a woodchuck between 'em."

"Gelded?" asked King.

 "All but one. His color's fair. Good bay. I had hopes he'd
make something worth keeping. but he won't. Won't fight
anything. Booneboy can ride him. A banty rooster could lick
him. Remember how old Duke used to stand on his hind
legs and fight the air and bugle so you could hear him
halfway to Nashville7 This colt's out of Duke but he's meek
as Miss Annie."

 "And how meek is Miss Annie?" chirped his wife, twisting
through the door, a pitcher in one hand, a mug in the other.
"Not so meek, Mr. Markland, as you'll discover if you spit on
my clean hearth. Take that filthy tobacco out to the barn
where it belongs."

 Boone rose obediently. "Better drink that pap, King, or
she'll hold your nose and pour it down your goozle. And
where is my bottle, Madam Spit-in-the-Fire? From the
sparks in your eyes you've drunk the rest of it."

 "It's in the buttery and there it stays. Jack needs some of
this same treatment, and there's just one good dram left."
She set the mug down and filled it daintily, and as he had
often done, King marveled at the delicacy of his mother's
tiny fleshless hands. They moved like the frail amber sticks
of a lace fan or the fragile antennae of a butterfly, but move
they did and almost too fast for the eye to follow.

 Boone gave a barking laugh as he went toward the door.
"If a man could breed a colt out of Miss Annie, now," he
brayed, "Lord what an animal be ~v~ulI have."

 She made a fist no bigger than a walnut and shook it at
him. "Begone, you low-minded creature you!" she ordered.
"Take your vulgar jokes out to the manure pit. They'll be at
home there."

 Kingman Pryor Markland drank all the creamy eggnog and
felt the warmth of it flow through his dried-out veins and
aching muscles. Miss Annie, he was certain, had put a
doughty nip of brandy into it. Presently he fell asleep.

[ 22]

Three

SUE MAR1(LAND WRAPPED A C1'.ISP BROWN CORN
PONE IN A CLEAN TEA towel, blew out the kitchen lamp
and let herself quietly out the back door. The steps down
from the narrow porch were high and steep, and she sidled
down cautiously, reaching for the cistern at the bottom, pick-
ing her way gingerly over the uneven rock paving around the
pump.

 Then the door behind her opened and she stood dead still,
drawing back into the shadow of the grape arbor, patting a
foot impatiently as a small voice piped in the darkness.

"Ma mat"

 Sue stumbled swiftly back to the steps. "Boone-boy, you go
straight back to bed, you hear?" She gave her small son a
push. "Out here in your nightshirt and your bare feet!"

"Where you going, Mama? What you got in that bundle?"

  "I'm going to see poor old Mammy Dory. She's sick and I'm
taking her some supper. You scoot now! Get straight back
upstairs and don't you wake up Grampa or your papa."

  "Papa don't wake up. He just lies there all the time,"
whined Booneboy.

  "Papa's sick. He's sick from the bad old war. Go along now,
son, before Mama has to slap you."

"I want to see Mammy Dory. I want her to conjure off my
wart."

  "Mammy Dory's too sick to worry with your wart. You
might catch what ails her." Mammy Dory was dying of being
ninety odd years old and worn out and ready for death, but
Sue was desperately indifferent to the truth. "You want to
swell all up and have to lie in bed like Mammy Dory? Hurry
back to bed, now."

  Slowly Boone-boy backed up the steps, opened the door
into the dark kitchen. Then he skittered out again.

"Mama, you come with me. I'm scared."

  "You weren't too scared to come down here. You get gone
this minute or I'll come up there and spank you good."

  "I'll yell and wake up Grampa. He won't let you spank me,"
the child threatened impudently.

[ 23 ]

 "You won't yell because you'll have a dishrag in your
mouth like last time, remember? I'm breaking a switch off
this bush right now. Hear it crack? All right, scamper.
There's a light up in the hall."

 He fled then and she waited for a moment under the
swarming vine till the rear of the house returned to dark
silence. Then she ran, light and fast, down the soft sandy
path under the dark trees, past the smokehouse and the
empty loom house, across the trodden area where the
butchering was always done and where a fetid odor still
lingered. Now the path widened until it was almost a street,
between two facing rows of whitewashed cabins. All but two
were dark. From these, dull, murky light seeped between the
cracks of the wooden shutters.

 Sue tapped at the door of one lighted house, calling, "It's
me, Mammy Dory."

 The food would have to be divided and Mammy Dory
given a share in case Boone-boy tattled and Minerva
contradicted his tale of Mammy Dory being fed late at night.
Sue broke the bread in two, left half on the doorstep,
carefully wrapped, pushed open the rough plank door and
went in.

 The air in the dim room was so thick that she choked
involuntarily, then gave a startled exclamation. The old
Negress was a swollen lump in the disordered bed, her round
black face, sunk in a soiled pillow, so puffed and distorted
that her small, piggish eyes were lost in it, except for tiny
gleams that focused on a man who sat by the hearth. A
yellow man, not tall, who wore the uniform of the Federal
army and who got to his feet and removed his cap as Sue
entered.

"BuzzyI" she gasped. "Buzzy you've come back!"

 Mammy Dory chortled. "Main grandson, he come back.
Big soldier now, got him a gun an' e verything!"

 "I brung Cap'n Billy's horse, Miss Sue," said Buzzy. "I got
it here along with one I stole 'way over the mountain. Old
Reb thought he had it hid but I found it easy. Where-at is
he, Miss Sue?"

 Canny suspicion stiffened Sue's chin. This was Buzzy who
had been born on the place but this also was the enemy. His
uniform was new.

 "He's hid out," she evaded. "You'd better not stay around
here, Buzzy. Pa Markland or one of the boys might shoot
you."

 "Marse Billy in Ranse' ole house," squawked Mammy
Dory. "Ole dog he smell out Marse Billy mighty quick."

 "You stay away from him, Buzzy!" ordered Sue desperately.
"He's not going riding off with you. Not till that knee gets
well."

Buzzy shrugged, and buttoned his coat. I le spoke gently.

[ ~4]

  "You let him say, Miss Sue. You let the Capon what all he
want to do."

  "He can't do anything, I tell you. IIis knee is still sore and
lame from that bullet they took out after the battle of Five
Forks. He ought not to bear his weight on that leg at all7" she
argued.

  "He done rode all the way back from Virginny," insisted
Buzzy. "It ain't till we crossed the mountain over by
Murfreesboro that it got to hurt him so bad he ain't able to
stay in the saddle. I brung him in a wagon from there."

"You brought him?"

  "Yes'm. He made me set him down up yonder by the back
gate and go back after his horse. You let me talk to the
Cap'n, Miss Sue."

"You let me talk to him first. Mammy Dory, here's a piece of
bread."

"Didn't bring no coffees"" the old woman complained.

"There isn't any coffee. You know that."

"Kingdom done come, ought to fetch us a little coffee."

"You wait, Buzzy," Sue ordered. "You wait here till I talk to
him."

  "Yes'm." He sat back on a stool, very erect, put on his cap
again, fingering all the brass on it.

  The varmint, the little yellow mongrel! fumed Sue, as she
hurried out of the house and flew down the path. Everybody
on the place knows that Buzzy's Pa Markland's by-blow,
although none of the proud, uppity Marklands would ever
admit it.

  The cabin at the far end of the line was dark and still, the
door closed. Sue crept close to the door and scratched on the
panel.

"Billy," she whispered. "It's Sue. Let me in."

  There was a fumbling, cautious movement within and the
door opened a little way, letting out an ancient Negroid smell,
mingled with the sweaty, horsy odor of an unwashed white
male.

  "They'll hear you. They'll listen," warned a voice from the
blackness within. "Get inside. I can't make a light."

  "They won't tell. They know you're here, Mammy Dory and
'Nerve too. 'Nerve brought me your message." Sue slipped
inside and the door was shut and barred again. "Billy, Buzzy's
up there at Mammy Dory's house. He wants to talk to you
but I made him let me come first."

  "BuzzyI" she heard the creak as William Markland sank
back on the cot. "Buzzy never fails. From First Manassas to
Appomattox, he never failed me. When I needed Buzzy he
was there. Did he bring my horses"

  "He said he brought it. Billy, he's all dressed up in a new
blue uniform. A Yankee uniform."

[ ~5 ]

  "He signed up back in April. He's been an enlisted man
ever since. Now he's detailed with me to be garrisoned here
in this county."

  She put the bread into his hand. He muttered, "Thanks,
Sue," and she heard his teeth crunch into the crusty pone.
"Good," he said, then, "Good old 'Nerve!"

  Tears sprang into her eyes, stinging there. There was a
hard, cold cramp at her throat. Something so wistful and
undefended about a hungry man. She still could not endure
hearing from Jack or King about those starving times after
the surrender.

  She said7 "Billy, you can't go off with Buzzy. You might
ruin that leg forever. You stay quiet here and let me try to
talk to them up at the house.',

  He laughed low, without mirth. "Don't you know I have no
choice, Sue? I'm an officer in the army. I go where I'm
ordered. I shouldn't have come here at all. It was just an
urge I had, not very sensible, probably. Now I have to go."

  "If your leg gets infected they'll cut it off in some
miserable army hospital. How did you ever get down here,
Billy? Buzzy says he put you out of the wagon way up
yonder at the back gate."

  "Crawled," he said simply. "You wouldn't understand, Sue.
After I heard that Thomas and Hood had been through here
I had to know what had happened at home. I knew I
wouldn't be welcome at the house. I knew Pa would likely
turn me out and that if King came back alive he'd probably
shoot me. He'd believe he was defending the family honor.
You couldn't get me a little whisky, could you? If I had a
dram it might ease this pain a little so I could sleep."

  Sue sat down beside him, the cot sagging and groaning
under the added weight.

  "You know your father, Billy, how he keeps everything
locked up. Miss Annie had to get mighty fussy to get a little
dole for the boys, and he knows they have to get their
strength back. Jack's had dysentery so long he's just a
skeleton, all sores, and King not much better. They say
Forrest fed them as long as he could capture supplies from
the Yankees, but even the Yankees ran out because so many
of their wagons were burned. So they had slim rations most
all the last part of the winter. You let me go to the hou ;e
and tell Miss Annie you're out here, Billy. You know your
mother u ould never turn you out no matter who you fought
for. They're bound to find out now that Buzzy's come back."

  "They'll find out. They'll find out the Union has taken
control. They'll hate my guts the way things will be from now
on," he said.

[ 26 ]

 "Why did you go for the Unjon, Billy?" she asked suddenly.
"I never have understood at all."

 "Because they were right! Because the Confederates, God
help them, even my own family, were deluded by
high-sounding words and explosions of their own touchy
pride. Pride and arrogance never won a war, not without steel
and ships, money and men behind it. Look at Napoleon."

"Who was he?" asked Sue naively.

  "He was the Emperor of France, my dear ignorant little
sister. And he thought he could whip the world. The South
wasted everything  their fine young men, thousands and
thousands of them, and their good horses. They gave their
country over to ruin. This had to be one country, Sue, it had
to be! One and indivisible. I saw it that way. I fought for it
and we won."

  "Why did you say God help your family, Billy7"she inquired
anxiously. "The war's over. Morgan hasn't come back, but he
will. I know he will."

  "I saw the war, what it would be," he said solemnly. "Now
I can see the peace. Except that it won't be a peace, it will be
an ugliness and a vengefulness, especially with Brownlow up
there at Nashville. He'd have every Confederate officer
arrested for treason and hung if he dared. He'd burn every
Confederate house in Tennessee. That's why I had to come
home crawl home. Somehow you've got to warn them, Sue.
Warn the boys and Pa to keep quiet and swallow any
humiliation, any insult, without resentment."

"That's why you came homer" she asked doubtfully.

"That's why I came home," he repeated bitterly.

  "And are you going to cling to this stubborn idea not to let
your family know you're on the placer Personally," she almost
cried, "I think it's wicked and stupid."

  He laid a comforting arm over her shoulder. She pulled
away a little impatiently and let the arm fall.

  "You think that now, Sue," he said, "but later you'll be glad
I didn't antagonize the Marklands by a premature
appearance. That I didn't lean on pity for a poor wounded
boy who foolishly stood for the wrong principles, disgracing
the passionately Southern Markland family in the eyes of
their neighbors. I don't want pity and I don't want forgive-
ness. What I have to have is respect, confidence and
co-operation, not resentment, if the Marklands are to save
anything at all."

  Sue shivered. "You sound so ominous. I suppose you are
reminding me that you are the conquerors," she said acidly.

[ 27 ]

  "I don't need to remind you. You know we won and it's
going to be a bad time for dedicated Confederates who are
still full of poisonous bitterness. It may be a lot worse unless
you can educate those valiant hotheads up there in the
house to be tolerant and to accept things as they are."

  "If you think I can make any of them love the Yankees,
and knuckle under to people like Buzzy, you're wrong! I
couldn't do it, ever."

  "But you can try. I admire you, Sue. You've got more
courage than any male Markland, and good sense too when
you want to use it. You were the only one I dared let know
I'd come back because I knew I could depend on you to use
your head."

  He got to his feet with difficulty, bracing with one hand
against the whitewashed wall. The whitewash scaled off and
drifted down in dusty snow, sifting up his sleeve, and he
shook his arm to be rid of it, tottering a little as the pain in
his knee stabbed at him. Sue jumped to steady him and
cried in a protesting whimper, "You see, Billy. You can't
gol"

  He lurched away toward the door. "I have to go.
Remember what I've told you, Sue. Do your best. I don't
want to see the Marklands having to refugee to Texas any
more than you do." He opened the door then and said, low,
"Come in, Buzzy."

"You can't take him, Buzzy!" cried Sue. "He's not fit to go."

  William Markland's voice snapped with authority.
"Corporal Markland, fetch my horse and report here,
mounted, in three minutes!"

"Yes sub, Cap'n suh." Fuzzy snapped a salute and marched
out.

  "How dare he take that name?" demanded Sue, as Buzzy
closed the door. "How dare he the impudent little
buzzard?"

  "Because it's his name. The only name he owns," said
William. "Ever think how it would be, my girl, not even to
own a name? Buzzy is loyal to me and smart. He'll take care
of me. He'll take care of all the Marklands so far as he is
permitted to do it."

  "We don't need to be taken care of by yellow trashI" she
exploded. "Marklands can take care of themselves."

  He was fumbling into a coat, propped against the wall.
"Maybe I've failed, Sue. I thought I could make you see the
danger, the hopelessness. Don't take that belligerent attitude
if Buzzy should come back here some day with a squad of
Union troops. You could find yourself in that jail up in town
and it's a dreary place to be."

"They wouldn't dare!" She was growing shrill.

  "They would dare. And worse could happen. Oh, God,
can't I make you understand? Maybe I could have talked to
Pa. No, he'd just fly off

[28]

the handle and never understand either. He'd probably try to
horsewhip me and then they'd take him and everything he has
left. I've tried my best but I'm afraid it wasn't any use.
Goodbye, Sue."

 She did not look up nor answer. There was the soft sound
of hoofs outside on the sandy track, she heard the door open
and softly close. She smelled trees and the fresh warm air of
summer, knew that William was riding away, but she did not
stir till the last faint beat of hoof and jingle of stirrup had
died across the fields. Then she rose, carefully closed the
door and went stumbling back along the path. She locked the
kitchen door behind her as she went into the house and then,
as a kind of panic seized her, closed and locked a window
that had been left open. She was making the fastening secure
when a light flickered over her and starting she wheeled to
see King standing there in the doorway, a scrap of candle in
his hand.

 "What goes on?" he drawled, looking her over, his dark
sardonic brows tilted.

Inspiration came swiftly, so ready that it surprised her.

  "Yankees!" she gasped. "Yankee soldiers! I went down to
Mammy Dory's cabin and a soldier came in. There was
another one around too."

  King grinned dryly. "Buzzy, of course? And who was this
other soldier?"

  "It was dark. I couldn't see," she stammered. "You knew
about Buzzy being in the army?"

  "I heard he'd been up in town for days. And where did you
have Brother William hid?" He put the candle down and
perched on the corner of the table. He was still very thin and
his big dark eyes glittered out of caverns under the insolent
Markland brows. "Where did they go? What did they tell
you?" he demanded.

  "They told me," she flung at him, knowing her deception
had failed, "that you and Jack and your father too, could be
hanged if you lay a hand on a Union soldier."

  "After four long years, these pleasant tidings? No 'Give my
love to mother'? No brokenhearted words about the old
home fireside and the vacant chair? Callous, wasn't he?"

  "Shut up!" she cried angrily. "You're all madmen, you
Marklands. You all think you are God."

  He sighed sardonically, and the sigh blew out the wan,
dying flame of the candle.

[ 29 ]

  Four

WILLIAM BREEN MARYLAND WAS TEN YEARS
OLD WrIEN TUE SICKENING bewilderment began to
torment him. The occasion had been an ac" cident, the result
a shock, because nothing in William's brief educe" tion had
prepared his young mind for such a problem.

  Vaguely, like every other boy reared on a farm, he had
known that there were two sexes. He knew about stallions
and roosters although Miss Annie had erected a wall of
protection about her sons as best she could, out of the fabric
of her own modesty and fastidiousness.

  William knew too that Negroes did things that white
people disdained to do. He was continually having to yell at
Buzzy, his devoted shadow, for vulgarities and breaches of
decency that would outrage his mother.

  "Miss Annie have a duck fit, you go in her kitchen with
that hole in your breeches." William always talked like the
field hands when he was with Buzzy and that offended his
mother too, when he lapsed into Negro speech in her
hearing.

  "Speak like a gentleman, act like a gentleman and Buzzy
will learn good manners from you," she scolded.

  "And stay out of Rinda's house," barked Boone Markland.
"Even if the people are our servants they're entitled to some
privacy."

  "He sleeps on her bed," tattled King, who was twelve then
and of all people the most obnoxious to William. "He and
Buzzy, dirty as hogs, both Iying there sound asleep. I sew
'cm."

  William gave his brother a deadly look that King loftily
ignored. He turned the same glare of malevolence upon Jack
when the older brother put in a scornful remark. "He'll be
bringing bedbugs home next."

  "Rinda's house is kept clean and free from vermin, I
assure you," said his mother stiffly. "I see to that. What I'm
trying to teach you all is that we should try to improve and
elevate the standards of our people, not descend to their
level."

  William slid out of the house as soon as he could. All his
brief life he had been an introspective little boy, keeping his
thoughts and his

[ 3  ]

bewilderments to himself except such few as he confided to
Buzzy. His older brothers had early amalgamated themselves
into a team, ignoring and scorning him except when they
heckled and tormented him. Young Morgan, whom his
mother called Little Brother, had been all his six years a
house baby, a "titty baby" as Buzzy disdained the youngest
Markland. Almost as tall as William, Morgan was still in
dresses, the long-waisted, kilt-skirted affairs with which the
masculinity of small boys was offended in those times.

  When Morgan tried to tag after William and Buzzy he was
always yelled at, ordered back, pelted with small sticks and
pebbles till he ran, wailing, to his mother. Morgan wore little
white starched collars and white stockings.

  "You git dirty, Titty Baby," Buzzy would warn shrilly, "and
Miss Annie lick all of us."

  So William went his aloof, secret and indifferent way,
defying parental taboos and injunctions because Buzzy
minded nobody and he had to be as good a man as Buzzy.
The one door of Rinda's house was visible from the kitchen
and Mammy Dory, who bossed the house and kitchen and
every one black and white in it save his mother, was a
blabber and a watcher, with a flat maroon eye that missed
nothing that went on on the place, and a liver-lipped mouth
that instantly reported it. So William and Buzzy escaped
surveillance by sliding in at the back window of Rinda's
house, landing in a giggling heap on Rinda's bed. On this
fateful day Rinda screamed at them and snatched up a green
dress spread out on the fraying quilt.

  "Y'all git your black fools off my bed!" she yelled. "Git on
out o' here. You too, Mist' Billy!"

  "That her silk dress." Buzzy apologized for his mother after
they had scuttered out and reached the second crotch of the
big pear tree. "She bust anybody that touch that dress. It silk."

  "Niggers got no silk dresses," argued William. "They got
linsey stuff like Sheba, she weave down yonder to the loom
house."

"My mammy got a silk dress," insisted Buzzy.

"She steal it, I bet."

  "She never! Boss Boone fetch that dress from Nashville, all
the way from Nashville in a big poke. You ask my mammy.
She tell you true," stormed Buzzy.

  "She tell big a lie as you." William slid down the tree and
ran very fast back to the house.

  It was with difficulty that he got his mother alone. Morgan
was always sidling around listening and Mammy Dory, young
Minerva the

[ 3 1 ]

housemaid, or Katsy who made beds and ironed seemed to
be forever popping in. But after hanging around most of the
afternoon William finally cornered Miss Annie in the linen
press where she was looking over the tablecloths that
needed darning.

 "Mama," he began in a hoarse whisper, "Rinda stole your
good silk dress."

 Miss Annie laid down her thimble. She had a threaded
needle between her teeth and almost she swallowed it.

"How do you know, Billy7 What good silk dress?"

"Your nice green silk dress," he persisted. "I saw it."

  "But I don't have any green silk dress. I never had a green
silk dress, Billy." Her eyes were still wide, but a strange look
had come over her face, a taut, apprehensive, frozen look.
"What were you doing in Rinda's house? Your father
forbade you to go there, just today."

  "I saw it," he persisted. "Buzzy told a lie. He said my pa
fetched that green silk dress from Nashville. He told a lie."
He was vehement, almost in tears.

  As too often happened, Annie Lou Markland's stony
white anger, the anguished fury that she must repress where
Boone Markland was concerned because she was a lady and
superior, turned upon her son.

  "How often have I told you not to carry tales about the
people?" she demanded, shriveling the little boy with the
chill lightning of her eyes. "You are not to tattle and you are
not to listen, you hear? And if I catch you going into that
woman's house again I shall tell your father. Do you want a
good whipping with his riding whip? Well, that's what you'll
get, sir, if I hear any more backyard gossip from you."

  He slunk away then, confused, angry and in torment.
Almost he collided head on with Katsy in the hall.

  "Get out of my way, niggerI" he shouted at her, ducking
around to run very fast out of the house by way of the front
door.

  It was not long after that, crouched high in the china tree,
William heard two black women gossiping over the washtubs
that stood below in the shade. Katsy and the lank woman
called Pudge, who was married to a stable hand, were
sousing clothes up and down in water, scrubbing them with
their bony, purplish knuckles.

  "Miss Annie, she do right she run that Rinda off the
place," Katsy voiced her opinion. "Boss Boone sell Big Bob
south, he'd ought to sold Rinda too."

  "Boss Boone ain't goin' to do that, for sure," stated Pudge.
"He ain't goin' to sell no cow gives good milk, Boss Boone
ain't. Miss Annie,

[ 3Z ]

she know, she don't say nothin'. Miss Annie hold her haid
high. She a lady."

 "She bound to know," argued Katsy. "If she look good at
that Buzzv, she bound to know who his daddy is."

"Look mo' like Boss Boone than Mist' Billy do."

  "Heh!" giggled Katsy. "Look mo' like Mist' Billy than Mist'
Billy do, hisself. If them two ain't blood brothers none was
ever born."

  William stayed, rigid and cramped and miserable in the
tree, till his knobby knees ached and ants crawled all over
him. When the women left at last he eased himself down
silently, avoiding Katsy and Pudge who were hanging clothes
on a line and draping some on the gooseberry bushes, and
ran away like a creature possessed.

  He ran all the way down the lane where yellow dock grew
tall and big furry mulleins lifted their woolly heads of bloom.
At the plank gate he shinnied up and perched on the top
board, then scrambled quickly down again and stood staring
fearfully through the bars. Beyond the gate was a pasture and
there old Baron, the stallion, was turned out alone, the
meanest and handsomest horse on the place. Even his father
approached Baron with wary respect and a stout quirt.

  The moment he spied the boy the stallion came leaping
toward the gate, his head and tail high, his great golden,
glassy eyes flashing. He charged at the gate and William
backed away fearfully, falling and landing painfully on his
skinny rump.

  "You git away!" he shrilled at the horse, who was showing
what looked like a hundred long, yellow teeth and, between
squeals, taking bites out of a gatepost. "You git away, you ole
mean horse you." William's roar was a shaky soprano
imitation of Boone Markland. "You git away before I peel the
hide off you."

  He heard a yelp of laughter behind him then, scrambled up
and whirled angrily, expecting to confront King, the mocker.
But it was Buzzy Iying there in the short grass and sweet
clover, laughing and rolling over, pulling up sorrel and
stuffing it into his mouth. Rage ran hot over William's small
body. He was tall for ten then, but he had little meat on him.
He would be tall all his days but there would never be an
ounce of fat on his slim frame.

  He charged at Buzzy, all the confusion and shame and hate
in him boiling up till his head and chest fairly bubbled with
it.

  "You git gone too!" he shouted. "Git away from here. Git
out of my lane, you hear?"

  Buzzy only laughed louder, spitting out the green leaves,
sitting up and clasping his thin, oaken knobs of knees.

tat]

  "Whyn't you git over that gate and ride ole Baron7 Whyn't
you let him chew a hunk out o' your backside? Li'1 white
boy backside taste good to ole Baron. He hongry," he
taunted.

  William flung himself upon the darker boy, pummeling
him with furious fists.

  "You shut you dirty liver-lip mouth, you!" he sobbed, as
they rolled and tussled, Buzzy deftly squirming away from
the blows, trying to hold William's wrists, cannily and
instinctively refraining from striking a white boy.

  "You Billy, you quit! You let me up!" he panted. "You
gone crazy, you li'l white fool? You want Boss Boone to lick
both of us? You want Miss Annie to sell me clear down to
Alabammy7 Git off me, boy. Quit that blubberin'. Big white
boy blubber like a calf!" Buzzy rolled free, jerked loose and
staggered up, smacking weed seed out of his shom,
almost-straight hair. "You gone plumb crazy, White Boy?" he
finished scornfully. "You gone plumb teetotal crazy!"

  William stumbled up, scrubbing his hot wet face with a
tom sleeve. Tragedy was in his small dark face, in the black
eyes, deep and liquid under proud arched brows. He squared
himself in a dramatic stance.

  "One thing I know," he announced pompously. "You ain't
my brother!"

  "Who say?" demanded Buzzy, dry impishness possessing
him, as he stood, butter-colored anus akimbo, scrawny legs
spread. "Who say I ain't?"

  "I say!" screamed William, wrung and burning with
helpless rage again. "I say so, double and triple and
quadripple and all hell you ain't!"

  "Miss Annie wear you out, cussin' me! Miss Annie bust
the breeches plumb off your backside with a big switch. Li'l
ole white trash what you is' cussin' and fightin' riggers. Li'l
ole white trash Billy!"

  William choked on his ire. His desperate dread of the
things that churned unexplained in his brain tightened his
throat and made him sick. He wanted to puke and fought
down the turbulence in his stoma ach knowing he could not
risk that humiliating degradation. Because his fists were cold
and rigid he stuffed them down inside his pants, feeling the
impotent quiver of his thighs and small, sweaty belly. He
backed away, taking his authoritarian pose again.

  "Ain't any way you could be my brother," he declared
scornfully. "Ain't no way at all. You a Nigra. I'm white. I got
brothers, they all white."

  "I don't want you for no brother," sneered Buzzy. "You
mean and biggity. But if I want to be your brother I will. But
I ain't goin' to

[34]

want to. Not never, White leash Billy. Not double and triple
and quadripple never!"

 William stalked away then. not looking back. He heard the
stallion trumpet angrily and knew that Buzzy was very likely
baiting the animal to rage by tossing little sticks over the gate.

 "All right all rightly he yelled back, when he had attained
a safe distance. "You make him bust down that gate and he
come out and tromple you dead and then my pa'll lick you
good!"

 He was only ten then but a small, dark horror of something
not understood, a darkness, secret and dimly known, stayed
at the back of his mind coloring with its boding shadow
everything that was familiar and safe so that somehow
nothing was as it had been before.

 Mopey, they called him then. Sullen, growled his father.
Sneaky, jeered his older brothers. Always lingering around
somewhere silently, listening, some guarded thing behind the
enigma of his eyes. His mother defended him, "Billy s just a
little boy, growing too fast. You all stop picking on him.''

"Plays with Nigras,'' disdai led King.

"lie's lonely. He has to play with somebody," argued Miss
Annie.

  But there were times when she was uneasy, watching
William, wondering what sinister hurting thing it was that he
hid, halfway suspecting, then incredulously rejecting the
thought that William could have heard sly whispers that he
was mentally developed enough to understand them if he had
Children were supposed to be somehow invisible, to lack
awareness. Servants were blithely careless about gossiping in
their hearing. And there was the green silk dress. Proudly she
had ignored that revelation as before she had ignored other
suspicions and other innuendoes. A woman delicately bred
held herself aloof, masked her outrage with dignity, accepted,
although often with difficulty, the knowledge that men were
what they were, lusty, sometimes gross, more than a little
disappointing.

  For herself, she could be oblivious, forbearing, disdaining
to notice or remark, but for her child she wanted no torturing
confusion, no dread, no loss. But there was no getting
anything out of William. She made many attempts to probe,
always without success. He would listen, give vague answers,
slip away as swiftly as possible and his attachment to small,
impudent Buzzy appeared to grow stronger every year. Miss
Annie even considered appealing to her husband to sell
Buzzy, and when Boone Markland boasted that Buzzy was
going to make a fine rider, a good jocks y, she put away
discretion.

[ 35 ]

 "Sell him them" she cried suddenly. "You don't need a
jockey. He'll soon be twelve years old. Sell him to someone
who needs a jockey."

 BooneMarkland laughed loudly and harshly, and Miss
Annie could feel his eyes boring into her, digging for all
those injuries she had struggled so many years to keep to
herself because to admit them, even to herself, was to admit
an inferiority, a lack.

 "Have to sell Billy too, then, if I sold that yellow boy," he
snorted. "Know what Billy's been doing ever since you sent
him to that woman's schools He's been teaching that little
nigger to read. As if he wasn't biggity enough already.
(taught them up in the mow not long ago. Billy had one of
those little old primers of Morgan's and he was making
Buzzy read a page over and over."

 "Won't be long till Buzzy can read better than Billy,"
volunteered Morgan, eight years old now and, his brothers
thought, insufferable. "I can read every word in my
books every word."

 "When you let go of your mother's petticoat might be we'll
make a man out of you," drawled his father.

 It was that year, when he was twelve years old, that
William got it all straight in his mind about his father, and
although the end of sick confusion and the sharp surgery of
truth was painful, it was also a kind of relief. Buzzy did it.
Out of the turgid pit of knowledge that sly, toowise small
boys accumulate by absorption Buzzy dug up a sort of pity
for Billy's protected ignorance.

 Billy had argued vehemently that the brother business was
bound to be a lie.

 "I know dam well that my father was never married to
your mother. So when you brag you're my brother you say
a big ole lie."

 Buzzy took on a look as old as time, as old as Africa, the
look of some gnarled old medicine man squatting in a
palm-leaf hut.

 "You see that boss there'?" He pointed to the stall where
Duke, the young bay stallion, son of old Baron, laid back his
handsome ears and rolled a savage eye.

"Sure, I see that horse."

"How many colts he got?"

 Farm-wise William knew the answer to that. "Five. Two
fillies, two young ones and that off-color they gelded."

"That Duke been married to any them mares that fetch them
colts?"

 "Horses don't get married. They don't have to get
married," argued William, but illumination was dawning on
him, leaving him frozen, a tall, dark, rigid shape filled with
incredulous abhorrence.

"People neither," stated Buzzy loftily. "They just wants to git
mar

[36]

riedand they dot they don't want to, they ain't got to. Man
just like a stud boss git him a colt any place."

 "It's a lie!" strangled William, bounding out of the mow
with a jolting thud, landing on his skinny knees and oblivious
of the pain.

 But now he knew it was not a lie. He was sent to Nashville
to school along with his older brothers, and swiftly he hated
both the school and his brothers, who ignored him as usual.
Once Jack did take up for him when some older boys jumped
on him, but after Jack had washed him off and brushed his
clothes, he gave William a sound cuff on the ear.

 "I had to keep them from licking you because it would
disgrace the family," he stated, "but you better get some guts
in you, Billy, and do your own fighting or I'll let the next
fellow beat hell out of you. You'd better get your Latin and
arithmetic better too, or Pa will take you home and put you
in the cornfield with the other ignoramuses on the place."

 "I know Latin better than you!" stormed William, and this
was true. Books he loved. He devoured everything that came
to his hand, everything he could borrow. He read the
newspapers avidly too, and by the time he was fifteen the
country was torn by political strife. Tennessee seethed with
internal turmoil and it seemed to William that no man
trusted any other.

 Jack had gone home, refusing to enter a northern
university, and now King packed up and left the school. "Too
many radicals in this town," he announced. "Pa wants me to
go to the University of Virginia, but hell, I know enough
already. There's going to be a war and all a man needs to
know is how to ride fast and shoot straight. Fellow can learn
that at home."

 In 'fifty-seven William went home to attend Jack's wedding
to Sue Wetherby. Boone Markland was in a rage at all the
stubborn northern asses who were trying to grind the South
down under a heel of iron. The house was full of ranting and
angry voices raised in arguments. Sue Wetherby's father
argued that the Union should be kept intact but by God they
had better not meddle with his property. That Henry Clay
and John Calhoun should be hung, whereat Boone Markland
roared louder than ever.

 He was seeing his father very clearly now, William thought,
staying back in a quiet corner with a book. Seeing Boone
Markland for the bombastic, poorly informed person that he
was. Admiring Boone a little for his audacity, halfway
despising him but pitying him too. And Jack and King, in
William's mind, were merely diminished copies of their
father.

[ 37 ]

 Whatever they stood for, William decided, whatever stand
they took in their state of belligerent wrongheadedness, he
would be against them. Couldn't they see LOW utterly
asinine it was to believe that the agricultural South, with
little industry, little steel and practically no ships at all, could
win a war? That loud words and brash bravery were no
match for cannon and overwhelming man powers

 He spent the next years quietly learning to ride well and
shoot well. With Buzzy pounding behind him on a
limber-legged, jugheaded three-year-old, he rode the country,
practicing taking walls and fences, learning to swim his horse
across the swiftest deeps of the rivers. At home he was quiet,
reserved, respectful. That he was an enigma to his family he
was not aware. When his mother tried to draw him out he
smiled a quiet answer.

 "I want to know more before I take any stand or think
anything, Miss Annie."

 Two days after Morgan and King had both gone off to ride
with Nathan Bedford Forrest, William and Buzzy, William's
horse and the pigheaded three-year-old quietly vanished
from the Markland place.

~ Five ~

IT WAS A SMALL, SHABBY HOUSE BUILT OF
PLANKS STRAIGHT UP AND down, with warping slats
battening the cracks. There was a porch like a shelf across
the front, with a plank rail that held a motley assortment of
tin cans filled with blooming plants.

  Two wooden washtubs stood on a bench in the middle of
a bare space at the east of the house, and beyond an iron
kettle hung on a wooden tripod steamed over a slow fire.
The thin mulatto woman who was poking at the stewing
mess of clothes in the pot fumed quickly as the slat gate
creaked open.

  Her body stiffened, her flat eyes turned feral, her Negroid
mouth pushed out. Her voice snickered with sudden hostility.

"What you want, white man?" she demanded.

  King Markland crossed the bare, well-swept space between
them. He had put off the tattered remnants of his uniform
and wore the light fawn-colorcd pants, the riding boots, the
white shirt of a young country

[38]

squire. They hung on his emac iated frame loosely, but they
gave him a jaunty air.

"Hello, Drusy," he said. "Remember me?"

 She gave a stab at a bubbling hump in the kettle, poked the
air out of it. "I 'member you too good, Mister King Markland.
How come you didn't git kilt in the big wart"

 "They didn't have any silvc r bullets, Drusy. Take a silver
bullet to kill a Markland."

 "Hmmmpfl Take a silver bullet to kill the devil too. Ain't
nobody kilt him yet. How come you walkin' here 'cross the
fields, Mister King Markland? Where at all them fine bosses
you had to ride? Where at all them feathers on your haid and
red sash around your belly? Ain't got no sword neither, ain't
got no pistol. Come afoot like a rigger," she snorted.

 "The horses went to war, they didn't come back. Where's
Lutie, Drusy?"

 Her face turned rigid again. She held the stick, worn and
bleached white from many immersions in boiling suds, like a
weapon.

 "How I know?" she snapped. "She ain't here. And if she
here she ain't takin' up with no Rebel soldier neither.
Somebody what fit to unfree us folks."

 "You've been free for years, Drusy. Sam Hilliard set you
free way back yonder before the war started," King reminded
her.

 "Lutie ain't been free. She was property. Mist' Sam done
tote me times a-plenty Lutie his property. Like a cow. Like a
hawg he own. Now she free. Linkum gunboats come up the
river and my Lutie done git free. Now them Yankee soldiers
done tote her off. Ain't seen Lutie in a time," she declared
mournfully. Then she looked around, an avid slyness in her
eyes. "Ain't got no money, is you?"

 He laughed harshly. "Confederate money, Drusy. Haven't
seen anything but Confederate money for years and mighty
little of that."

 "Then what you hangin' round here for? Got some li'l ole
piece of ribbon in your pocket, think you kin coax my Lutie
off to the woods with some raggedy ole fady piece of ribbon?"

 "I'm not hanging around," King shrugged, hands in his
pockets. "Just passing by. Just stopped to pass the time of
day."

 "Pass on then," she grunted. "Git gone and let decent folks
git on with their business." She flourished her wand, then as
he opened the gate again called after him, "Better stick to the
road, Mister Rebel. Yankee soldiers meet you some place
and you might not git home no more."

[39]

  Unheeding, King took the road to the west. It was a
narrow, twisting track about knobby hills, so lost in bushy
undergrowth that it had been little used by either army. He
set his feet down irritably, angered by the indignity of travel
on foot when for so long he had galloped this road, booted
and spurred and arrogant. His legs were still shaky, and he
dropped down to rest under a hickory tree where the short
grass was already turning brown and the dry hulls of last
year's nuts lay about like little abandoned boats with
upturned bows.

  A squirrel came backward down the tree, waving a tail like
a question mark, stopped midway, turned head down and
jibbered squirrel insults at him. King threw a dried-up nut at
him.

"You're safe, fellow," he said wearily. "No gun and no
ammunition."

  There was, his father had told him, a plentiful supply of
game, since nobody had done any hum ing during the war.
Ammunition was scarce, weapons had been confiscated, and
to fire a shot in the woods these past three years could likely
bring a gang of guerrillas charging at you from somewhere.

  "Got a little powder and shot hid," Boone said. "A few
balls and a little lead to run more for the deer rifle. Might
get us a buck some night when you boys get your legs under
you."

  "Some meat surely would taste wonderful," Sue had said.
"When General Wilder's boys took that last sow we had
Minerva just hunkered down under a tree out there and
bawled."

  "Cowpeas go poorly with no fat meat to season them,"
sighed Miss Annie. "When I think of all the sides of bacon
I used to dole out to the hands I get right weak and
squawmy in my stomach."

  King was feeling a trifle gaunt and sweated now from long
hunger, which had been but scantily appeased at his mother's
meager tables but he dragged himself up and tramped on. It
might be that the Olivers would have a ham left and
undoubtedly he would be asked to stay to supper. Also if old
Colonel Oliver had a horse left he might be lucky enough to
be driven home by Miss Winnie Oliver in the yellowwheeled
trap he remembered.

  The Oliver house was up a sloping lane that climbed a
ragged hillside and King had to stop to rest twice before he
reached the top. There, he was thankful to see, the house
still stood, apparently unmolested. All along the road from
Alabama they had passed one blackened fire-gutted
settlement after another, both armies having wrought
destruction, the Federal troops being most savagely vengeful
after they had hounded Hood and Forrest southward. The
Oliver place

[4 ]

looked neglected. Paint was peeling from the clapboards and
one of the posts supporting the narrow front porch leaned a
little.

 A wagon to which two lean mules were hitched stood in
front of the house and as King toiled up the last slope of the
drive he saw an old man and a girl drag a heavy trunk out
through the front door and stand, breathlessly panting, the old
man mopping the sweat from his beard and thinning hair.

The girl gave a little cry as she saw King approaching.

 "Grandpa! It's King! It's King Markland. King, come home
from the war." She ran swiftly down the high wooden steps,
her wide calico skirt billowing, her hair, wheat-gold and fine,
flying out of the pins and falling to her shoulders. "Oh, Kingl"
she exclaimed, "I'm so glad you're still alive, so glad you came
homer"

He took her hands. "I'm alive, Winnie. I came home."

 A bright blush spread over her face, she disengaged her
hands and pushed the hair out of her eyes. They were very
blue with light, goldtipped lashes and her light brown brows
had a tilted, questioning lift.

 "We hadn't heard. Not a word. But no one comes here any
more. It's King, Grandpa." She raised her voice a little, taking
King's elbow and leading him toward the house. "King
Markland's come home."

King said, "Howdy, Colonel Oliver. How are you?"

 "Puny," wheezed the elder. "Mighty puny. Well, now you're
here, young man, you can give me a hand with this trunk.
Winnie here, she hasn't any more muscle than a kitten."

"What goes on?" inquired King. "Who's going traveling?"

"Got to get away," declared Oliver. "Got to get clear away."

 "We're leaving. All of us." said Winnie. "Mother and
Grandpa and I."

 "Get a hold here, young man," ordered the Colonel.
"They've got two more trunks upstairs both heavier than this
one. I dunno what all they got in 'em hefts like tombstones."
He gave a desperate heave at one end of the trunk and the
frayed old leather handle broke in his hand. He lurched back,
almost sobbing. "Now you see," he complained childishly.
"How can I get it loaded7 Damn Abraham Lincoln to helll"

 "You mean all your hands are gone, Colonel?" King was
recovering from his first startled confusion. "There's nobody
here to do this but you?"

 The old man staggered back, took an indignant stance,
glaring out of pale eyes sunk in dry folds of skin under ragged
white brows.

"Would I be doing this digger job if there was a Nigra left to
do it?"

[ 41 ~

he demanded irritably. "Not a hand left on the place. All run
off after this damnable Union League or whatever they call
the foul abomination. Now I'm left alone to get these
women to a safe place all by myself. And I can't do it. I
can't do it." It was a wail.

  "But why are you leaving? And where do you plan to go?"
King persisted. "Those animals don't look as though they'd
hold out to travel far."

  "Cornfield mules. Old and worn out. Ready to die like me.
No, they won't go far. They'll likely drop in their tracks but
they're all I've got left. Eight fine horses all gone. Six stout
Nigras, all gone too. Even Sudie. Been in this kitchen all her
life. Old almost as old as I am. Gone off after the damn
Yankeesl" stormed the old man.

"Reckon we can heave this thing in, end over end? You and
me?"

  Winnie began to cry, small pale tears beading the golden
lashes, her mouth quivering. "We don't know where we're
going, King. Somewhere south, Grandpa says. And he says
we have to leave right away on account of Governor
Brownlow."

  King's legs were about to buckle under him. The long hot
walk, the climb up the hill made him realize how weak he
was still.

  "Could we sit down a minute?" he asked. "You need to
rest too, Colonel. You're mighty red-faced and sweated."

  "Come in the pallor. It's cool there." Winnie got her
grandfather by the arm. "I'll fetch you a cold drink from the
cistern. Grandpa"  she stopped and turned back
apprehensively "you didn't put that stuff in the cistern yet,
did you?"

  "No. No, not yet." He had sunk into a chair in the
stripped, barelooking parlor and sat collapsed and quivering,
mopping his face. "But I'll do it when we leave,' he shouted
after the girl. "Nux comical" he told King with a grin of dry
malice. "I'll fix it so any vile Yankee drinks from my cistern
will get plenty sick."

  King took a chair near the door, looking about at a place
that had been familiar all his life. A room that he
remembered as filled with candlelight and laughter, with the
music of fiddles and banjos, with the silken swirl of girls'
skirts, the perfume of their hair, the starlight in their eyes.
Now faded rectangles on the wall showed where pictures had
been taken down, the windows glared tall and naked, the
floor was uncovered and dusty.

  "Who did this, Colonel?" he asked. "Who stripped your
house like this? Which army came this way?"

  The old man lifted his head. "Why, no armies ever came
through here. We heard of 'em, off to the west and south
too, our troops and

[ 42 ]

the Yankees too but no soldiers ever did show up here. Sort
of out of the way, this place is."

  "Then who this looks like the looted places I saw in
Alabama. Houses had been robbed of everything movable,"
King said.

  "We did it. We stripped this house ourselves. Mary and the
girl and me. After the last Nigra took off in the night, after
I saw that piece in Brownlow's paper, we packed and hid
things. Hid 'em where they won't find 'em, the scalawags."
The Colonel chuckled mirthlessly, beating his knee with his
fist. ' Got a lot of stuff in these trunks. Makes 'em mighty
heavy. Take all we can, Mary said. Reckon it will be a good
long time before we come back."

  Winnie came in then with two tin cups slopping water. "I
washed these cups. Mother packed away all the glasses. This
water is good and cool. Drink all of it, Grandpa, you look so
hot."

  "Winnie" King put the CUp aside after draining it
gratefully "sit down and tell me just what you mean to do.
I'm all confused."

  She spread her hands in a helpless gesture. They were
darkened and rough, he saw, not the frail, lily-white hands
that he remembered.

  "Grandpa says we have to get away," she sighed. "He says
the radicals will kill him, that there'll nobody to protect
Mother and me and that dreadful things will happen to us.
We don't know where we're going, King. At least Grandpa
hasn't made up his mind."

  The old man's hands were twitching, his mouth worked
nervously. He jumped to his feet.

  "Have you seen Brownlow's newspaper, young Markland?"
he cried. "Have you seen that foul, treasonable, radical sheet
printed by a man who calls himself a minister of God and
who is now Governor of Tennessee? God help us alll Show
him the paper, Winnie. Or did you burn it as I ordered you
to do?"

King shook his head. "No, I've never seen Brownlow's paper."

  "It's an old copy. I think Mother wrapped the sugar bowl in
it." Winnie hurried out.

  King sat down opposite the Colonel and sat frowning,
leaning his chin on a closed fist. Once he had thought himself
halfway in love with Winnie Oliver, but that was in the days
when they were all young and carefree, when there were good
horses to ride, smart coats and natty beaver hats, gay
waistcoats and polished boots. When every girl worked at
being a channer in huge fluffs of skirts ruffled to the waist
and adorned with ribbon bows and little roses, with lacy
bodices that revealed white shoulders and just a whisper of a
sweet rounded bosom.

[43]

  Now the world seemed made of flatness, drabness and
weariness. Life was as savorless as the makeshift food his
harassed mother put upon her table, and King was uncertain
if the capacity to care for any good woman again was deft in
him. All he was feeling now was a bewildered anxiety
concerning the old man in the other chair, drained grey and
obviously tormented by some unexplained terror.

  "You read that paper you'll know why I have to leave this
state, young Markland," stated the Colonel. "Andrew Johnson
was bad enough, turncoat Southerner, no real principles, no
character, no education. Then there was Lincoln, no
education either. Andrew Johnson kept this state neither
bond nor free, but he was a decent, wellintentioned
blunderer. You couldn't hate Andrew Johnson, you could
pity him for being the deluded person he is, but you didn't
despise him. But this poison Brownlow you read your
Roman history. You read about Nero and Caligula, young
Markland. But they were gentlemen compared to William
Gannaway Brownlow! A man who works anathema in the
name of God!"

  "How did Brownlow ever get to be Governor of Tennessee,
Colonel?"

  "It was last January, after our boys were run out of
Nashville. Then the Union men decided to set themselves up
a government in Tennessee. They called a convention, about
five hundred of 'em I heard, and most of the meeting they
spent fighting among themselves, but they got together long
enough to declare Secession null and void, vote for abolition
and set up two elections, one to ratify what they'd voted and
the other to elect the state officers they had picked."

  "So they shoved through an election and Brownlow got
elected, but what about Andrew Johnson? Hadn't he been
military governor?"

  "He was anxious to get rid of the job," said the old man.
"He'd been elected Lincoln's vice president in 'sixty-four.
Brownlow hates Johnson called him all kinds of names in
that paper he printed in Knoxville. The election was a farce.
Nobody voted but a lot of Union blue-belly renegades,
mostly from East Tennessee. Decent Union men  sounds
curious to my own ears but there were some thinking men
didn't like Brownlow they thought the election was illegal
but it suited the government up in Washington. Lincoln
wanted Tennessee back in the Union, wanted some kind of
state government. Civil government. Well, we got it but it's
not civil. And it's not military either because what bloodshed
and destruction happen from now on won't be perpetrated
by soldiers, fighting for what they believe. But it will
come you'll see. That's why I'm getting clear away."

[ 44 ]

  Winnie came back then, followed by her mother, a
still-young woman with only a few feathers of grey in her
thick brown hair. Mary Oliver looked harried and spent and
as she passed her father-in-law, sagging in his chair, she gave
him a look of patient exasperation.

  She held out a welcoming hand. "Kingman! Winnie told me
you'd come back. God be praised some of our boys were
saved."

"Young Carter7" he inquired, taking her hand.

"We never heard. Not a word."

  "Not since Shiloh," added Winnie, who had resumed holding
a crumpled sheet of badly printed newspaper. "Here,
Grandpa," she said, spreading it on his knees.

  "Things were pretty bad at Shiloh," said King, offering Mary
Oliver his chair. She dropped into it with a weary sigh.

  "They're still bad," she said. "You knew I lost my husband
at First Manassas? Drew brought him back, walking all the
way with Carter laid limp over the saddle. That was when my
boy went young Carter and Drew together, and they've
never been heard from since."

  "Drew might have been impressed into the Union army,"
King suggested. "They picked up a Iot of Nigras who were
separated from their masters and their outfits. And it takes a
long time to walk home from a war, especially if a man
happened to be wounded or put in prison. I thought Jack
would die on me before we made the last hundred miles."

"So Jack's home too?" asked Mrs. Oliver. "And Morgan?"

  "We've heard nothing of Morgan. He was with us all along
the river but when we fumed east again we lost track of him,"
King said.

  There was in this desolate house, as at home, no mention
of his brother William, he noted. So the Olivers also knew
that a Markland son had turned against his own kindred.
They would never speak of it. No one would ever speak of it,
these people who in the good days had been their friends.
Death brought a kind of nobility but William had not been
noble enough to get himself killed. He was alive and back in
home territory, but his name would not be spoken in the
hearing of any living Markland.

  The Colonel was smoothing the newspaper across his knees
with angry strokes.

  "Listen to this, young Markland!" he almost shouted, his
voice breaking with the senile urge of his fury. "This is
Brownlow's Whig and Rebel Ventilator. 'This war is not ended,'
he writes. 'It must be pursued if it exterminates from God's
green earth every man, woman and child opposed to the
Union south of Mason and Dixon's line."'

[45]

  "That was printed before the surrender, Pa," Mary
reminded him. "You can tell by the date."

  "Yes, but what does Brownlow advocate now?" he shrilled.
"I had that paper but it made me so goddam fighting mad
that I burned it. I'll tell you what he encourages these
radicals to do. I learnt it by heart. Kill their neighbors if they
were rebels, he says. Kill them secretly without noise and
bury them in the woods like brutes."

  "Pa," expostulated his daughter-in-law, "you know that man
is crazy. You know people aren't going to do any such things
now that the war is over, even if he says do them. Not even
Union people. Why a lot of Union people right here in this
county didn't even vote for Brownlow.',

  "I don't know any such thing," he persisted stubbornly, red
patches burning under his hollow e yes. "Anyway, I'm not
waiting around to see you proved right or wrong. Young
Markland, you reckon you've got rested enough to help me
with those trunks7"

  Winnie twisted her hands together in helpless desperation.
"King, can't you persuade him? He doesn't even know where
we're going. We only have a little money and we can only
carry a little food and almost no corn at all to feed the
team."

  "Once we get across the river among Southern people we'll
be taken care of," argued the old man, standing shaking and
wild-eyed as a warlock, his fists clenched.

  King said quietly, "Colonel, the Southern people you're
talking about across the river are in worse straits than you.
They've lost everything. Even their homes, a lot of them.
There's no food. Nobody could make a crop. If they did
make a little, one army or the other took it or trampled it or
dug trenches through it. That Freedmen's Bureau moved in
in some places to feed the Negroes and they found they had
to feed a starving white population too."

  "You see, Grandpa7" begged Winnie. "We entreated you,
we implored you but no, you have to get across that river."

  "And how were you going to cross the river, Colonel7"
King pursued. "There's not a bridge nearer than
Chattanooga that hasn't been destroyed and the Yankees are
there too. All the ferries have been sunk and the railroad
tons up. The Yanks will build it back and the bridges
too but not today and not next week either."

  The old man's body seemed to shudder all over in an
angry convulsion. He ground his teeth audibly, smote his
fists together and lifted them in the air.

"I'm going, I tell you!" he screamed. "They won't bury me in
the

[46]

woods and rape my women. I'm going. If nobody will help me
I'll do it alone."

He scuttled out to the porch and began tugging at the heavy
trunk.

Mary Oliver flew after him and Winnie screamed, "Kingl"

 King ran but he was too late. Moved by some inhuman
power of rage Colonel Oliver had dragged the trunk to the
steps and there it went toppling down thunderously, splitting
open, the lid flying off, carrying the old man with it.

 There was blood on his head and his breast when at last,
panting and struggling, they dragged the wreckage off his
body, freed him and carried him into the house. Winnie flew
for more water and Mary sobbed, "He made me pack all the
blankets."

 "it's no use, Mrs. Oliver," King said, gently laying a limp,
broken hand straight. "He's not breathing."

  ',,l~ ~

HE WAS A STRANGER IN ms OWN COUNTRY.
SUDDENI Y. OUT OF THE shadows into which they had
discreetly retired at intervals, the town seemed full of Union
men. Union Democrats, conservatives, quiet men who had
deplored the war and its divisions, its rancors and outrages,
now walked in security. They could be differentiated from the
Confederate sympathisers, now in tragic eclipse, by their
forthright manner, smacking sometimes of triumph and
arrogance. They had had a time of unease when Bragg and
Hood had been all over the country, but now things were
decisive. They were on the side of the winners. Now power
was theirs and those who had kept their political complexions
cannily obscured wore no more airs of apology.

 There were some, William Markland knew, as he regarded
a crowd around the courthouse door, who were turncoats,
adventuresome opportunists, and a few who were knaves,
shaping their convictions to circumstance. Undoubtedly there
were people, friends of his family, who labeled him with a
disdainful, unsavory brand, but he knew that he could have
taken no other stand. Not believing as he had believed, not
dedicated as he had felt himself to be. But because few here
had shared his faith in the Union he felt himself now a
stranger. Almost

[47]

an interloper it seemed at times, in a town only eighteen
miles from where he had been born.

  After the bullet had been removed from his knee he had
been certified as eligible for discharge by the army surgeon
and advised to go home.

  "I'd rather stay on duty, sir," William had said then. "I
have no home to go to."

  So they had detailed him to this garrison company of
Colored troops posted to protect the western approaches to
the state capital.

  William Brownlow was still dubious of the hotly
Confederate regions out Memphis way and also halfway
suspicious that civil war was again imminent in divided
Tennessee.

  William had two white lieutenants under him and an
illiterate sergeant of Scandinavian .mcestry, and the
opprobrium of such a command was lightened a little by the
awareness that at least he was near home and thus would
have some foreknowledge of what could be expected to
happen if any sudden reprisals were contemplated.

  He was sitting on a bench in the courthouse yard, the cane
he still needed propped beside him, when Buzzy found him.
Buzzy had a complaint.

  "Them white lieutenants don't know how to git along with
Colored folks, Cap'n Billy. Not quality color like some of us
boys. Boss Boone he ain't never cussed me nor called me
bad names. How come that white man got a right to kick me
around like I was a low-down cornfield hand. And he say I
ain't a corp'ral no more. I got to be a private. You make me
a corp'ral, Cap'n Billy, how come he unmake met"

  "It's the army, Buzzy." William's leg was aching, likely it
would go on aching with the slow misery of an abscessed
tooth for the rest of his life. He was resigned to it as he had
resigned himself to a hitching gait, the pain that grew worse
in the saddle, the awkward canes that were always falling or
slipping on mud or wet cobbles. The pain made him a little
irritable. "It's the army," he repeated. "You wanted to get
into the army all the while we were up there in Virginia, so
now you're in and you'd better not run off. You've seen
what happens to deserters."

  "You know sump'n, Cap'n Billy? I saw my mammy. She
livin' out yonder on the edge of town, done took up with a
no-good yellow man name of Caucus. My marnmy say my
grandma mighty poorly and she reckon she 'bout to die. I'd
ought to go home, Cap'n, my grandma think a heap of me."

"You saw Mammy Dory six weeks ago, Buzzy. You know
she's

[48]

mighty old and sick and I gues; she'd be glad to die. But she
wouldn't be glad to see you arrested and shot for deserting
the United States Army so you'd better get back to your post
and make up your mind to be a good private."

 "Cap'n Billy," confessed Buzzy, "I'd done been gone 'fore
now 'cept you know they took my horse. I come all the way
over here to ask you would you give me the loan of your
horse so I could see m poor old grandma on her deathbed."

 William put on a stern face. It had always been difficult to
be grim with Buzzy. It was like giving orders to a squirrel that
might sit up and blink bold eyes at you, then whisk away
about his own affairs without a backward look.

 "Once and for all, Buzzy, the answer is no." He put a flick
of anger into his tone, hoping for the e mphasis of surprise.
"I'm still an officer and you're still a private in this army. You
can't have my horse. You know I need him. How much
attention would those bumble-footed boys pay to me if I tried
to give them orders limping around on two canes?"

 "What they got all them black-trash soldiers for anyhow,
Cap'n Billy?" Buzzy wanted to know. "Don't know which is
their left foot, don't know nothin' at all. That white lieutenant
rip the stripe off my sleeve, he don't know nothin' neither.
Can't none of us boys understand nothin' he say. Talk some
kind of ginny talk."

 "People up east talk like that, Buzzy. You heard those New
York troops, men from Brooklyn. They complain that they
can't understand us either. That sergeant we have is from
Minnesota. They speak an old country language up there, a
lot of older people do."

 Buzzy put on an abject face. "Cap'n Billy," he pleaded, "you
git me out of this ginny soldier outfit. You let me go back
home where I belong. Ain't I always belong to you back
home? Ain't I always tend your horse and keep your loots
shined all over Virginny, all that fightin' and retreatin' what
we done? Ain't I fetched you home when you git wounded,
when the white folks ain't paid you no mind at all? You let
me git back with you."

 "I know, Buzzy. You've been faithful. That's why you'll be
a good soldier now. You didn't have to enlist, remember?
You wanted to wear a uniform and you got it. Now I won't
let you disgrace it." William employed his most pontifical
manner, knowing the same baffled and exasperated feeling he
might at launching a feather against a stone wall.

Buzzy was not to be talked down. He grew solemn. "Cap'n,
you and

[49]

me been back home. We knows Boss Boone ain't got no
more riggers. They all run off. My mammy say ain't anybody
left 'cept 'Nerve and my ole grandma. How Boss Boone
goin' to run that place without no hands? Who goin' to clean
that stable, milk a cowl You reckon Mist' Jack or Mist' King
do that7 You know they ain't. You'd ought to think 'bout
Boss Boone a little bit. He your own pappy."

  William reached for his canes, lifted himself to his feet,
standing very tall.

  "Listen, don't be a fool, Buzzyl" he snapped. "If you run
off from this garrison you know they'll catch you. They might
hang you right here in this courthouse yard to show those
other boys that once they're in the army they have to obey
regulations. I'd hate to see you hanging from one of those
big trees yonder with a rope around your neck."

  Buzzy stood, heavy lips pursed, his brow creased so deeply
that it gave him a simian look. Then he gave a quick shrug.
The squirrel, William was thinking dryly. The swift feral
gesture of withdrawal.

  "I'd hate to see me hangin' yonder, too," he agreed with a
flicking grin. "One thing sho', though. 'Fore they hang me
they got to catch me."

  He was gone then as quickly as a dark drift of cloud
evaporating. He went so quickly that a little of his body odor
lingered on the hot, still air of July to mingle with the scent
of trampled grass, of ordure and the greasy reminiscences of
some cook's frying pan.

  The crowd around the courthouse was in constant flux.
Countrymen and townsmen, Negroes, grave older citizens.
They stood in pairs reading the written paper posted beside
the courthouse door. As fast as two would end their scrutiny
of the long document two more would move up, some
reading the written words silently, one man even following
the lines with a tracing forefinger.

  William limped nearer, keeping apart from the moving
men, aware of the precarious support of his canes. He was
in uniform and more than once a sly kick from a Rebel
sympathiser had sent him tottering. They knew him, that was
the trouble. They knew him, these Southerners, to be Boone
Markland's son, the young sprout who had turned his back
on his own people.

  "What's the broadside this time?" William inquired of
another trooper at the foot of the steps.

  "Property listed for unpaid taxes, I understand, sir," replied
the soldier in a clipped New England accent.

  "A legal form of confiscation," remarked William, but
there was a quick chilly grab of apprehension at his nerves.

[ 5  ]

 He hitched up the steps as rapidly as safety permitted,
waited in line to win his place before the posted notice. On
a long piece of foolscap two parallel lines of names were
written in a bold black hand. William's eyes scanned quickly
the lower lines. The name of Markland was not written there
and he breathed in relief. Somehow Boone Marklandhad
escaped this first attempt at humbling and impoverishing the
vanquished. But a little higher in the alphabetical list was a
name he remembered. Estate of Colonel Carter Oliver, Sr.
Two years delinquent. Total indebtedness to the state three
hundred dollars.

 Once, William recalled, the Olivers had been considered
wealthy. The old Colonel had fought in Mexico with General
Winfield Scott, and young Carter, his son, had been one of
the first to enlist in the Confederate cavalry though he had
been then, so William was certain, more than forty years old.
There had been a grandson, still another Carter Oliver, a
wastrel of a boy, younger than William, who had been sent to
Virginia to be educated and had come home spouting hatred
of Abraham Lincoln and all abolitionists. And there had been
a girl. A pale, precious young thing, jealously chaperoned
everywhere by her old fire-eater of a grandfather.

 Seeking the bench in the shade again William tried to feel
sorry for the Olivers. The Oliver place had been a handsome
estate before the war, a place aloof, as the Olivers were a bit
aloof, but the Marklands had always been welcome there,
especially King. But then King had always been able to make
his own welcome. A handsome devil, and he knew it. William
thought bitterly of his brother. He tried to believe that he had
hated King, but a homesick heaviness within him told him
that this was untrue. It had been only envy that tore at him
when he had compared himself to his jaunty, nonchalant
older brother.

 His nostalgia increased as the day waned, and he began
wondering if Morgan had ever come home, or if he had been
given up for dead. Sorrow pressed on him, knowing how
grieved Miss Annie would be at the loss of her favorite son.
Sue had assured him that his mother was grieving for him,
William, and because desolation was having its way with him,
he took what comfort he could from that assurance small
comfort for a man convinced that he could never go home
again. He struggled to his feet and hobbled out to the street,
back to the old warehouse that had been taken over as
headquarters for the troops he was detailed to train. It was
when he passed the little brown frame

[ 51 ]

house on the corner, where the minister's widow was
reported to live, that he heard the girl scream.

  He saw her then in the widow's backyard where hollyhocks
grew tall. She was struggling with a Negro soldier for
possession of a Dominique rooster and screaming wildly,
while the fowl added raucous squalls to the din.

  William pushed open the gate and limped in, his canes
swinging widely as he hurled his body forward.

"Hands off that chicke l, soldier," he ordered sharply.

  The trooper loosed his hold on the clawing legs of the
rooster, stepped back frowning.

  "It confuscate, Cap'n,' he argued. "It confuscate for the
Newnited States Army, suh."

  "The war is over, soldier," stated William sternly. "Or
didn't they tell you?"

  "Yessuh, Cap'n, but they done tole me to confuscate Rebel
stuff, all what we kin eat," argot. ed the Negro.

  "He's my chicken," blazed the girl. "I raised him. He's a
pet. They took all our hens but they shan't take Cicero."

  "You're dismissed, soldier," snapped William. "Get out of
here and tell yo''~r sergeant Captain Markland gave you
the order. All right, move," he barked. "Get back to your
barracks and stay there."

  "Lieutenant sho'git mad at me if I ain't confuscate nothin',
sub," grumbled the trooper as he shambled away.

  William bowed to the girl, awkwardly. "In the future, Miss,
I'd suggest you keep Cicero overt of sight. A fat chicken is
difficult for a Colored confiscator to It sist."

  She looked him up and down, clutching the nervous fowl
under one elbow. She looked about eighteen years old, a
figure lithe and tall with light-brown hair and eyes that held
sparks.

"You're a Yankee," she said. "You don't talk like a Yankee."

  "I am an officer in the United States Army, Ma'am. A
soldier can also be a gentleman. Better shut that rooster up
somewhere as I advised."

  "But he crows!" she cried desperately. "No matter where
I hide him they'll find him." She came a little nearer.
"Haven't I seen you before, Captain?"

  "That might be," he admitted, "I was born and reared less
than twenty miles from this town. I lowever, I've been away
at war for four years. Long enough for you to have grown
up," he added gallantly.

"Then you're a Southerner. I knew it." She tucked the fowl's
ex

[ 52 ]

ploring beak down, gave him a mildly admonitory cuff. "Be
quiet, Cicero. Your life has just been saved. You should be
grateful. I'm Angela Wood," she went on. "You may have
known my father. He was a minister in the church down the
street for most of my lifetime. He was killed at Stone River."

 "I'm William Markland," he told her. "On detached duty
here, training troops."

 She frowned a little, tossing her head. "Not militia?
Brownlow's hound-dogs people call them"

"No, not militia. These arc regular army troops."

  "The war is over," she said. "Does the hatred have to go
on? You conquered us, so why do you have to hate us too?"

  "We had to hate while the war lasted, because a man has to
hate before he can bring himself to kill his neighbor, or
perhaps his friend, as happened too often in this war. Men
made themselves hate, now perhaps when they've nurtured
the poisonous strangeness for years they find it hard to get
rid of. And the ignorant and bigoted have no wish to be free
of it. What is happening in Tennessee now is more mob
violence than war."

  She stood musing, remembering. "I knew a Markland. His
name was Morgan. He came here to school for a while.
That's why I thought I had known you. Are you Morgan
Markland's brother?"

"An older brother. Morgan was the youngest son."

"He went with the Union too?"

  William shook his head. "I was the only black sheep in our
family. Morgan rode with Forrest. When last I had news of
Morgan he had not yet come back from the south."

  "Morgan was a handsome boy, and did he know it! Very
dashing, and all the girls were mad about him. I do hope he
comes home. I remember that Morgan used to get into fights.
There were people for the Union and he used to taunt them
and there would be brawls."

  "That was Morgan," he said, smiling. "I had one argument
with Morgan before I left to enlist with Sheridan. It happened
in the kitchen at home and he threatened me with an iron
skillet. Our old cook threw cold water on him to calm him
down. May I wish you good day, Miss Wood? And do
something about Cicero, will you? I might not be around the
next time a trooper tries to confiscate him."

  She held the rooster out, studying him, his flaming comb,
his rolling beady eye. "I don't know what to do with him,
Captain. Really I don't. He's so lonely since they stole all our
hens."

[ 53 ]

  "You could eat him." The boyish grin that was rare and
sudden lightened the darkness of his face.

  She sighed. "That's what my mother says. Mother and
Aunt Ella are both disgusted because I won't have him
killed. They wanted to kill the hens when all the troops
came, but I wouldn't let them, so now they remind me every
day that the troops ate chicken and we eat dried codfish
when we get any meat at all. My mother and my aunt sew
for people, but you know how it is, perhaps. Nobody has any
money and Governor Brownlow is inciting people to hate
and persecute everybody who had any one in the
Confederate army."

  "By all means then eat Cicero. With plenty of gravy and
some dumplings."

  "We haven't any flour, but perhaps Mother can make
some out of meal. Captain, I do thank you. I can't invite you
in I'm sorry."

"Naturally," he said, "you not invite me in."

  "I'd love to ask you to dinner when we eat Cicero," she
went on in a rush, flushing a little. ' I know it would be all
right with Mother because you're Southern and a gentleman,
and you did make that horrid man leave me alone, but Aunt
Ella! She still keeps a Confederate flag pinned inside her
bosom and once she wrote a letter to President Jefferson
Davis, inviting him to bring his family here when he was
running away after the surrender. I know he never got it and
Mother worries for fear the Yankees may have got hold of
it. She expects them to come and arrest Aunt Ella any day,
now that Brownlow is stirring up so much animosity."

  "Undoubtedly I'm outraging her Southem sensibilities by
hanging around here in this uniform," William said dryly,
balanced on his canes. "So I'll say good night, Miss Angela."

  "Good night, and thank you again, Captain Markland," she
called after him.

  She hurried to the back door and, opening it, confronted
two stifffaced women who had lucked anxiously behind the
thin window curtains.

  "Don't say a word," she ordered peremptorily. "He was a
Yankee but he was a gentleman and he saved Cicero and
me from being mistreated. He's a Markland from down the
county and I like him."

  "No man in that uniform could possibly be a gentleman,"
her aunt snapped. "No matter who he was or where he was
loom."

[541

Seven

SUE MARKLAND BUMPED THE COOLING IRON
BACK ON THE STOVE AND tried another with a wet,
hissing forefinger. She hated this menial job of ironing, but
Minerva was continually complaining lately of a bad pain in
her back.

  "Minerva's getting old," said Miss Annie, who was always
ready with excuses for everybody in the house, Sue was
convinced. Everybody but me, she thought bitterly. Everybody
but me and Pa Markland. Jack was too weak to Fork yet and
Boone-boy was too little to carry in wood, and now here were
these two women to wait on and a wedding to fix for.

  Not that Mary Oliver and her scared wisp of a daughter
didn't try to be helpful. The trouble was that they had been
waited on all their lives, managed and protected, and their
eager inefficiency made Sue want to bite her knuckles and
scream. She had been irritated for days, it seemed to her, and
nothing mollified her, not Miss Annie's gentle briskness, her
calm acceptance or Boone Markland's ebullient good humor,
his slightly tiresome jokes.

  She whacked the iron down grimly on the back breadth of
a skirt. The cloth was worn frail and she hoped the fragile
thing would hold together till she got it pressed.

  "Why does she have to wear her mother's wedding dress?"
she demanded of her mother-in-law. "She won't dare sit down
in it. This old silk is ready to split in a thousand places."

  "Wouldn't you have wanted to be married in your mother's
wedding dress?" inquired Miss Annie, beating eggs vigorously.
"We were so lucky," she always said when she broke an egg,
"the army foragers didn't come often so we've still got some
hens and the cow."

  "My mother was married in a green bombazine thing, the
skirt so tight she couldn't bend her knees," said Sue. "Ruffles
clear to the waist little old black silk ruffles. I wouldn't be
buried in it, much less married. And there's no sense in King
marrying that girl anyway. You know he's not in love with
her, even though he puts on that affectionate show. She's got
about as much spirit as a pint of buttermilk.

[55]

He's just being gallant amlyou know it, Miss Annie, and
you're letting him spoil his whole life."

  "Well, there is a little expediency about it, I'll agree,"
sighed Miss Annie, sifting a little flour gently into the
foaming eggs. All the flour in the house nearly gone, Sue
was thinking. I heard her scrape the bottom of the barrel,
but she has to bake a wedding cake! "Certainly Mary Oliver
and Winnie couldn't go on living there alone, and while we
are always glad to help a neighbor and do for those in
distress, we are hard put now to do for ourselves. So little
planted and Jack laid up again."

  "He just hurt his back lifting that heavy coffin.. And there
was mighty little neighborly help offered when they buried
that poor old man," snapped Sue.

  "People are so uneasy," said Miss Annie. "No one knows
who their friends are any more."

  "Because all the people who were for the South are scared
to death. That poor old Colonel Oliver was literally
frightened into his gravel Not," she added grimly, "~-hat he
hadn't reason to be."

  Hadn't she talked and talked, trying to warn them all since
William had come back in June? Hadn't she kept her
promise to him? But everything she had said had set med to
go in one Markland ear and out the other. Poor Billy had
crap led back dragging that wounded leg to bring a warning
to his family, and though she dared not speak his name she
had dropped hints enough. And in her eager desperation she
had stirred King's cynical suspicions anew.

  He had faced her alone one day. "Who are you quoting,
Sue, all this doom you are prophesying? It has the smell of
our wandering brother, William. Did he foresee all these
persecutions you are suggesting because he knew damned
well he was part of them, one of old Bluebelly Brownlow's
lick-rump hounds?"

  She had flared at him. "Can you buy Miss Annie one
teaspoonful of baking soda anywhere? Only yesterday that
Marvin at the store wouldn't credit you for a pound of nails.
Ten cents worth of nails. If you can't see for yourself what
things are coming to, there's no way I can open your eyes.
You'll be blinded forever by your stiff, stupid Markland
pride. You'll still believe that the Marklands are better than
anybody when you're running on foot for Texas with
everything you own on your back."

  "I'm marrying me a wife," King had grinned audaciously.
"I'll let her carry what we own on her back like a squaw."

"Marrying a wife, when you're not even able to provide for
yourself,"

[ 56 ]

Sue had flung back angrily. "That girl will carry no burden for
you, my fine strutting rooster. You'll have to carry her."

 But there was no quenching King, and Jack was almost as
indifferent, except that along with his maddening helplessness
he had a passive acceptance of futility. "What can we do?"
was his argument. "We have to get along somehow though
how is a question I can't answer."

 Now Jack was back on the bed, moaning and reeking of his
mother's homemade liniment and as his wife smoothed the
last breadth of Winnie Oliver's wedding dress, she knew with
sick heaviness that that might likely be the way with Jack
from now on. At least so long as his mother was at hand to
run with hot bricks and plasters, with eager sympathy and
passionate defense for her elder son, so grievously injured by
the cruel war.

 I wish Morgan would come back, Sue was thinking as she
shook out the fragile, yellowing silk. If Miss Annie had
Morgan to pet and fuss over maybe I could make Jack stand
on his feet and act the man. Aloud she said, "Well, Miss
Winnie can be elegant for one day in this, even if she has to
live on turnips and sassafras tea from now on. You know
there hasn't been a furrow tun,ed on that Oliver place this
spring, Miss Annie, now it's too late to plant even if those
feeble old mules could pull a prow."

 "They were always thrifty people and counted mighty well
to do." Miss Annie sprinkled a little nutmeg into her batter.
"Mary says old Mr. Oliver spent days before he died hiding
and burying provender." She poured the batter into a greased
pan and Sue promptly raised her voice loudly.

 "You, Boone-boy!" she calls d. "Come here this instant and
bring in some light wood for your grandma to bake with.
Scamper now!" She threatened with the butter paddle as the
little boy whined a protest. "Bring in enough to fill that box
or I'll warm your breeches good!"

"I can fetch it, Sue. He's so little "

  "You will not, Miss Annie! Move, sir! If your grandma
carries in one stick, that's the stick I'll use on you." She faced
the older woman sternly. "Miss Annie, you're spoiling my
family rotten out of the mistaken goodness of your heart My
boy has to face bad times tough, miserable times such as
your children never knew. I've got to put some gimp into his
gizzard, make him face life like a man, and I don't want to
have to fight you and Pa Markland to raise him."

  Miss Annie blinked, tucked in her lips. "Very well, Sue. I'm
sorry I interfered. And if you'd rather I didn't take care of
your sick husband J.

[57]

  "Now look, Miss Annic, don't you get your feelings hurt.
It's just  Oh, my Heaven, can't you see? Somebody in this
family has to face reality. Somebody has to be strong enough
to take what's coming  what's bound to come. Ilard going,
trouble, privation. Why does it have to be me? Jack gets
sulky and King laughs. Pa Markland poohpoohs it all and
you pucker up to weep. It has to be me, all alone. I won't let
it break Boone-boy because he's been made too precious to
face living. I won't let it destroy Jack either if I can help it.
Miss Annie, you know that the best thing we could do, Jack
and I, would be to go clear away somewhere and start all
over."

  "Oh, no! Oh, no, Suel" Miss Annie flung out her hands in
a despairing gesture of protest. "You can't leave us! How
could Mr. Markland run this place with no help at all? And
I think he'd die if you took Boone-boy away from us. He'd
simply die of heartbreak and discouragement. You think
about your father-in-law as a rough, noisy old man who isn't
afraid of anything or anybody, but he's not like that deep
inside. He's sensitive and kind, and though he may not show
it when he's hurt the pain is there. I can see it."

  "Still," argued Sue, "he ought to want what's best for his
sons and be glad to see them standing on their own feet."

  "But we made this place for our sons," insisted Miss Annie.
"Thank you, Sweetie." She stood aside while her grandson
flung down an armful of wood. "Now don't fetch any more
till I get my cake out of the oven. You might make it fall.
Run out now and play."

"Lemme lick the bowl. You promised," reminded Boone-boy.

  "Stand over here then and don't stamp your feet. Sue, I
was saying "

  "I know, Miss Annie. You made the place for the boys,
and Pa Markland cried when they all rode off to war but no
one knew that but you. You've told me. But the place
now what is it, if it's going slowly to ruin."

  "Mr. Markland," stated his wife stiffly, "has done all one
man could do. One man alone and not a young man any
more."

  "He's not old," disputed Boone-boy. "Grampa ain't old. He
gets mad if you say he's old."

  "He's not used to hard work because until the war came
and the people began drifting away, he never had it to do,"
Miss Annie went on. "But he was out there in those
fields with a hoe, and the only thought he had was to make
something and save something for his children. Now if all
he wins for that endeavor and sacrifice is ingrati

[ 58 ]

tude, Sue, I think it will kill him. He will be old. He'll wither
away and die."

  "Nonsense!" snapped Sue. "Pa Markland is a sensible man,
sensible and practical. He'd admire independence in his sons.
I know he would."

  "Just where," inquired her mother-in-law coldly, "would you
go? And how would you got There's so little money left. I
wasn't too happy when Mr. Markland bought S<J many
Confederate bonds but the boys were off fighting, doing their
part. I couldn't oppose him."

  "Uncle Billy was a Yankee," put in Boone-boy, running a
red tongue over a spoon. "Mammy Dory said Uncle Billy was
a Yankee fighting on the Lord's side."

  "Hush, Boone-boyI" warned his mother. "I've told you you
mustn't repeat what you hear out in the quarters. Mammy
Dory is a sick, silly old woman. She doesn't know what she's
saying."

  "She knows all right," persisted the child. "She says she's
free and I asked Grampa and he said he reckoned she was
but he'd have to go on feeding her, free or slave."

  "Boone-boy, you get out of herel You're getting your
grandma all upset. Go and help Winnie cut the flowers."

  "She says she's my aunt." He dabbed sticky hands on his
faded breeches. "Have I got to have her for an aunt,
Grandma?"

  "When she is married to your Uncle King she'll be your
aunt and you must be very nice to her and speak politely."

"Will that old Mrs. Oliver be my aunt too?"

  "No, she won't." His mother lifted a hand. "Did you hear
me tell you to get out of here, Boone-boy? I'm sorry, Miss
Annie," she said hastily, when the boy had scampered out, "we
forgot to warn him not to talk about his Uncle William. I
didn't even know he remembered William. Mammy Dory
stirred that up, the hateful old creature. She should be
thankful you're willing to take care of her now."

  "She nursed all my children. She was Mr. Markland's nurse
too. She'd never leave us and she doesn't realize what she's
saying."

  There it was, the inevitable excuse. Mammy Dory knew
what she was saying, all right. And very likely she had already
let the family know that William had come back and gone
again, and Buzzy with him. Sue draped the long dress
carefully over her arm and went through the house to the big
parlor where Winnie Oliver was handing long sprays of althea
blooms up to King. King stood on a kitchen chair awkwardly
stuffing the flowers into a vase on the mantel.

"Oh, no not that way," Winnie was protesting. "Arrange
them

[59]

loosely, King. Make them look delicate. Oh, I'm so sorry all
the roses are faded. I always wanted bowers of roses at my
wedding."

  "You can have them if you'll wait till next spring," Sue put
in brusquely. "Your dress is finished but you'd better be
gentle with it. This old silk is mighty frail."

  "Oh, thank you so much, Sue. You're so clever. I'd never
have been able to do it right, never in the world." Winnie
pressed her cheek against a fold of the yellowed silk. "It still
smells of the lavender and rose petals," she sighed dreamily,
a soft flush coming and going on her pale face.

  "That dress will be too big for you." Sue studied the small
waist, the almost nonexistent bosom. No more meat on
Winnie than on a pigeon. "You'll have to feed her up, King,"
she said. "Some of these rough winds we get in winter might
blow her away."

  "I'll tie a knot in her hair so she can't go out the keyhole."
King got down to survey his handiwork. "For old Nigra
posies they don't look too bad, but 'Nerve says they'll close
up at night."

  "The buds will open," said Winnie optimistically. "Anyway
there won't be time in the morning to cut fresh ones."

  "There aren't any more. I robbed every bush. Miss Annie
used to have flowers all over the place."

  "Miss Annie used to have Phoebus to take care of them,"
Sue reminded him. "We used to have great fields of comand
wheat too, but we had people to plow and reap and hoe and
now there aren't any."

  Winnie dropped into a chair, the wide folds of silk laid
carefully over her knees. "How can we go on living, Sue?"
she asked plaintively. "On and on no change for years and
years."

  "We have to go on and we will!" Sue was grim. "And you'd
better learn to lift an iron and the rasp of a washboard too,
my girl, if you're going to be Mrs. King Markland."

  "Do you have to be so nasty?" demanded King of Sue
later. "Can't you let the poor child alone? She's had trouble
enough already."

  Sue looked him up and down, green fire glinting in her
eyes. "Knowing you " she had her chin up and her face was
so pale that all the golden freckles sparkled, "knowing you,
Brother-in-law, I'd say that the poor child's troubles were
only just beginning."

  Mary Oliver and Annie Lou Markland wept all through
the brief wedding ceremony. Boone Markland cleared his
throat raucously half a dozen times, and Boone-boy, bullied
into a starched collar by his mother, twisted and tugged at
his flowing tie, snatching off the offend

[ 60 ]

ing piece of unaccustomed elegance the instant the minister
said Amen.

  They ate the wedding cake and drank toasts to the wedded
pair, Boone Markland having spiked the weak punch his wife
had contrived from berry juice sweetened with brown sugar.
Miss Annie, excited and teary now, fluttered about in her old
grey silk dress with a brisk kind of competence, but her
decisions were slightly confused by sentimentality. She wanted
everyone to be comfortable and healthy and happy, but also
she wanted to be the ont to arrange for their comfort and
well being, and with wistful eagerness she wanted credit for
her ministrations, too.

  Jack was always reminding his wife that Miss Annie had
been mighty brave. Hadn't she lost her two younger sons?
Definitely William had to be counted lost and two months
had gone by since the surrender and not a word heard from
Morgan. Sue could respect Miss Annie, even admire her
courage, but certainly she had no wish to find herself in such
circumstance that she would need to lean on her
mother-in-law. Winnie would do enough of that.

  Studying the face of King's bride, paper-white save for two
small, burning patches of crimson, her tremulous mouth and
wistful eyes  eyes that searched every face for
encouragement and commendation  Sue was confident that
Winnie was going to be a family liability. Mrs. Oliver was an
aloof, amiable woman, but a woman born to be mastered,
with no more initiative than a gentle cow. All the Olivers had
been reported to be stout bottle men and it was rumored in
the neighborhood that Mary's husband, the second Carter
Oliver, had gone tearing off to join the Confederate cavalry
roaring drunk and spurring his horse till the blood ran.

  Sue looked at King. He was already red-faced and laughing
too loudly from too many trips to the punch bowl and once,
when Boone Markland brought out a fresh bottle to renew
the concoction, King took the bottle from his father's hands
and downed a huge gulp, wiping his lips with the back of his
hand.

  "If we'd had a few gallons of that at Franklin, Pa," he said,
giving his new wife a pat on the back so vigorously that
Winnie tottered off balance and had to clutch at Jack to
steady herself, "things would have been different."

  "Hold on, fellows" advised Jack. "Don't go beating on the
poor gal already."

  "Just a love pat," insisted King, pulling Winnie against him
and hugging her so hard that she squeaked small mousy
protests. "Get your

[ 61 ]

bandboxes together, light of my life, we have to start on our
honeymoon."

  A look of sick, utter fright made Winnie's blue eyes
darken. Her mother saw it and gathered her daughter up
quickly. "She has to change," Mary Oliver argued hastily, "but
we're all packed. Oh, dear! I do wish it could have bet n
different. I always thought of Winifred as being driven off in
a handsome carriage with a fine pair of black horses and
people throwing rice and roses."

  "We had a carriage, " whimpered Winnie, "but you let
Grandpa burn it. You let him destroy everything."

  "I couldn't have stopped him, daughter, you know that. At
least we have a house left to live in and" she gave King a
motherly smile "a big strong man to take care of us."

  They went upstairs, and Miss Annie began bustling around
gathering up glasses and plates and piling them on the tray
Minerva held ready.

  "I don't know " She seemed to be talking to herself. "I
don't know how it will turn out. You were so impulsive,
King. Oh, I hope I hope "

  Sue cut in sharply. "King, let that bottle alone! Do you
want to be disgracefully drunk on your wedding night?"

  "Might help," drawled Jack, reaching for the bottle himself.
"Did you get drunk on your we dding night, Pa?"

  "Not me," laughed Boone Markland. "I didn't dare. Miss
Annie would have busted my head for me."

  "I hope Winnie has a stout broomstick handy," said Sue
viciously. Then she gathered up her skirts and ran up to her
room. She didn't want to see the bridal party leave in the
Oliver wagon drawn by the woolly old mules. She heard a
trunk being bumped down the stairs, heard her name called
and shut her ears, dragging off her dress, the last decent one
she owned. She put on a limp and shapeless faded calico.

  It was all horrible! King had thrown away his whole life,
and none of the Marklands had made a move or said a word
to halt what to her was merely a sentimental, impulsive
gesture. True, Boone Markland had been very quiet and a
little grim all day. True, Miss Annie's eyes had held anxiety
and speculation. It was all part of the mistaken, passionate
loyalty that had made the stupid war inevitable. The touchy
pride of caste, the sanctity of property and of women. A man
must sacrifice to defend them both no matter if the sacrifice
destroyed him.

[6~ ]

She had heard only one comment from Boone Markland
concerning his son's hasty marriage.

  "The places join down yonder there at the creek. Some day
it will be a handsome property."

  She heard the wagon rumble off, smelled sweet potatoes
baking, and knew that Minerva was putting together some
sort of an evening meal, but Sue flung herself across the bed
and determined not to go down again, no matter how
insistently they called.

  She was half asleep when she heard Boone Markland
shouting and a little scream from Miss Annie. She jumped up
and ran. King was drunk and had let the mules run away, she
was certain, probably they were all killed.

She burst into the pallor and stared.

Union bluer William?

"No!" she gasped. "Nor"

  Miss Annie came rushing up. "He scared me to death too,"
she cried. "It's Morgan! Morgan home from the war!"

Morgan, grinning jauntily, hale and as insolent as ever.

  "Took these clothes off a dead Yank, sis," he explained.
"Didn't think Miss Annie would like it if I came home naked."

~ Eight o

CAPTAIN WILLIAM MARRLAND IJAID DOWN rus
CARDS.

  "Gentlemen," he said, "a man who quits when he's winning
is a cheap scalawag, but it is now three o'clock in the morning
and reveille at my barracks will blow in less than three hours.
I seem to have had a surprising run of luck tonight "

  "Luck?" chortled the jowly elderly man at the end of the
table. "Boy, I'd say you had luck come and sit in your lap!
Goddammit, you've mighty near cleaned me out." He took a
wallet from a greasy inner pocket and thumbed through a
thick pack of limp bills. He was the county assessor, who had
slid into office in the last abortive farce of an election, and
William had heard talk in town of his venality and dirty work
with known Confederates.

"Me too," sighed a corpulent fellow whose every word was a
wheeze.

[63]

"Was you fighting war over there on the Rappahannock,
Billy, or learning to make these picture ladies behave? Never
see a man draw so many queens. Ought to be a fueller with
the ladies. How do I stand, boys? Count 'em up. I figure the
military got into me close to a hundred dollars."

 The county official slammed down four bills, scowling.
"There they lay, Captain! Boy, you remind me of your
pappy. Old Boone could sit us out all night till he up and
married Annie Lou Breen. She turned old Boone mighty
respectable and mighty poor company. How come your
pappy got himself all mixed up with these here Jefl Davis
scoundrels, Billy? You had better sense. Should have talked
old Boone out of taking the wrong side. Sooner or later
them fellers up at Nashville are going to start bearing down
on us boys out this-a-way, and we'll have to go out there and
sell old Boone out."

 William put his winnings securely away in a deep pocket.
He retrieved his canes and stood erect. "You can't sell him
out, Mr. Fletcher, if he keeps his taxes paid," he said.

 "Yeah," said the fat man, who William knew had been
elected to the Tennessee legislature riding on Brownlow's
coat tail, "but how's he going to keep 'em paid? Can't sell
nothing unless he takes the oath, and can't get any credit
any place."

 "Course, there's one way," observed Fletcher, lifting a jug
from the floor, tilting it and taking a deep pull at it. "Old
Boone could deed his property to the captain here, Billy
being his own son, that fought for the Union and come
home crippled. Might be arranged, did we take the right
steps in the right direction."

 "And the right steps would cost money, no doubt?"
suggested William dryly, hating this pair of buzzards who
were waxing fat picking the bones of the defeated. He had
gotten into this game deliberately, taking a chance on losing
what he had saved from his pay. That he had won had been
unexpected good fortune.

 The third man at the table, a lean young doctor named
Carson, lately come west from Nashville, barked a brief
laugh.

 "More money than you will ever see, soldier," he
remarked, "if I know that crowd, and I think I know them."

 "Case like that has got legal aspects can't be overlooked,"
said Fletcher, "and legal aspec ts can get mighty tangled.
Need a good lawyer, a shrewd lawyer to straighten 'em out."

 "And if the lawyer happened to be dishonest and a friend
of a judge with greedy fingers, that would be a help too,"
drawled the doctor. "You've got a lot to learn about things
in this state, son. Well, gents

L64]

I'm taking my leave. I about broke even, I think. Now I
forego the pleasure of your company to attend to all the
dysentery that is sapping the courage of our noble troops at
the garrison. Been living too high off the hog and drinking
too much of this raw, homemade liquor."

 "I ain't in favor of giving those boys weapons, I ain't in
favor of it at all," remarked the legislator "The Secretary of
War up yonder has already had a letter from me to that
effect. You take even a good Colored boy and we've all
known good Colored boys good house boy, always knows
his place, you put a rifle and a bayonet in his hands and he
figures he ought to use it. No sense or experience to learn
him better."

 "Got to get plenty of whisky to keep him in mind that he
don't have to take any sass from white folks." Fletcher
lurched erect, belching loudly. "Had me a good boy. Tended
my horse. When Lincoln signed that proclamation I gave him
his manumission papers, paid him wages too. Slipped off one
night and now he's up yonder strutting stripes on his sleeve
and making white men get off the sidewalk. I dunno. I wasn't
for slavery, not in this part of the country anyhow. But I
dunno. Billy, you keep that cash you got hid. Word gets
around."

 "Yes, sir. I intend to. Good night, gentlemen." William took
his leave.

 As he went out the door he heard Fletcher say, "Good boy.
Took guts for him to stand against his folks. I lad a lady
mother. Now I don't reckon she'll let him darken her door."

 William limped back, keeping to the middle of the shaded
street so that no sullen lurker could spring out of a shadow
and waylay him. There was hostility on both sides now, and
hate was in the air like a poisonous gas. Every man was now
the enemy, anyone the potential victim, and to carry money
vas to take a long risk. He had trained himself to balance and
draw his gun quickly, also he was on familiar ground, which
gave him a little advantage. The trouble was that the county
was filling up with strangers, vultures gathered for the kill,
and when the railroads were repaired there would be more
of them.

 Railroad and bridge repairs, they said, were going ahead
very slowly. The freed Negroes were not to be depended
UpOII. most of them expecting to be fed free by one agency
or another. And most of the returned soldiers were too weak
and emaciated to do a hard dabs work. Money was still
scarce, too much of it in the hands of a few, and there were
men abroad who would kill mtlllessly for a dollar or hvo.

 The sky was very dark, without stars, and the luly heat still
pressed down, no coolness coming with the approach of
dawn. \~7illiam's

[ 6, Z

heavy uniform coat was a weight on his shoulders, sweat ran
down his sides and stung his hands as he bore upon his
canes. Often of late he had found himself wishing he had let
them take his leg off. The men who limped around on
wooden pegs, or the new cork and steel con traptions the
doctors were reported to be obtaining for men able to pay
for them, seemed to get about better than he did. There was
the promise that the shattered knee would eventually stiffen
and bear his weight without the wincing stab of pain, and he
had to be content with that hope and be thankful that he
could still ride a horse.

 He walked by the Wood house where all was dark and
silent, but in there soon the girl, Angela, would be stirring,
combing her brown hair, putting on one of those prim frocks
with all the buttons down the front. He had seen her twice
since the affair of the confiscated chicken. Once he had been
riding the town road toward the river when he had
overtaken her, walking very fast with a basket on her arm.
She had stepped off the road and stood breathing rapidly, a
flush on her cheeks.

 "Oh!" she exclaimed. "I'm glad it's you, Captain. I'm bound
I won't be scared but sometimes I catch myself running."

 "This is a lonesome stretch of road," William had
reminded her. "You shouldn't be walking here alone." He
wanted to swing down gallantly from the saddle but he knew
that without help or a high place from which to mount he
could never get back on again.

 "The Harpers, up the road, send my mother work to do,"
she explained, "and they pay fly bacon and meal and things
we need, so I have to walk out to fetch and carry."

"Give me your basket,' said William. "It looks heavy."

 "It is heavy. Five pounds of wonderful bacon, and Mrs.
Harper put in a cabbage as big as my head and a little poke
of meal. Oh, thank you, Captain. My arm was getting really
numb."

 "Wait a minute." He surveyed the situation. "There's a rail
fence over there. Could you climb up on it? If you could you
could ride behind me. It's a long wall. to town."

 She drew back. "Oh, thank you I couldn't! It's generous
of you to carry my basket."

 "Meaning that you can't afford to be seen riding with a
Union officer?"

 She stiffened a little. She was not a pretty girl, William
was thinking. Her nose was too proud and her eyes had too
much coppery fire in them. She had a judicial mouth and
brows that must have been a legacy from her preacher
father, so facile were they to condemn. She was not pretty.
She was beautiful.

[66]

 "I meant that it would be unfortunate for you to be seen
riding with the daughter of a Confederate soldier," she said
coolly.

 He jerked his mouth sideways, his impatient Markland
brows bent darkly. "To hell with that! I'm sorry, Miss Wood,
but all this niggling factionalism makes me boil. Get up on
that third rail there and don't let your petticoat get caught
and throw you. Come along, do what I tell you!"

 Her lips tilted impishly. "1 see I am to be taught discipline
along with the rest of the Southerners."

 "I'm a Southerner. Any Southerner knows that the first
attribute of a gentleman is courtesy to women. Watch where
you step in that Jimson weed. We used to kill snakes along
this road, a thousand years ago when I was a lad. Now that's
a smart girl," he said as she mounted the fence, not looking
at him. "Now give me your hand. Turn around be careful."
The horse sidled close uneasily, and she flattened herself
against the rotting old rails, nervously. "Don't worry. The
Count won't shy. He's used to me, lurching on and off."

"Is that his name The Conut?"

 "His father was a Duke. They were all nobility on the place
in the old days. Now, put your left foot in the stirrup. Easy!
I won't look at your ankles. Now, can you give a little jump?
Wlloops get both your arms around my waist and hold on,"
he ordered. "You're an impostor, Angela Wood," he
remarked when she was up, light as a bird. "You're not so
helpless. You've done this before."

 "My father served four churches. I rode w ith him often.
Here, let me have the basket only this g.m "

 "Wait, I'll shift it." He took his heavy cavalry pistol out of
his belt and swung it to the front. "I v aguely remember your
father," he went on as The Count ambled down the road. "We
weren't very pious people at home. Miss Annie liked to go to
church, but she'd been raised a Catholic by her devout Irish
parents. They thought she was doomed to perdition when she
married a roaring Presbyterian like my father. Miss Annie is
my mother," he explained. "We call her that."

 "Mother was Episcopalian. Her father was a Bishop down
in Alabama. Aunt Ella still reads l\Iorning Prayer every day
and makes us repeat all the proper psalms. But Eatller was
a Methodist so I had to be baptized Methodist too. Mother
was always reminding him that John Wesley was Church of E
ngland all his life. What will you do if we meet somebody? If
we meet some Union soldier?"

"You," he bantered, "will be assumed to be confiscated."

[67]

 "Not my bacon. I'd fight all the Yankees before they could
take away my bacon."

 "The way you fought that trooper for your rooster? It's a
wonder poor old Cicero wasn't pulled in two."

 "We ate him. Mother stewed him nearly all day and still he
was tough."

 "You gave him the wrong name. You should have called
him Nate Forrest. Thomas and Schofield beat on him for
months and still he was tough," William said.

 "Sam Hood was the worst," retorted Angela. "Over at
Franklin he slaughtered thousands of his men so uselessly.
Everybody around thought he had gone mad. He even had
General Lee bring up his artillery and fire a hundred rounds
into a trench full of dead Yankees  not a single living
soldier in it."

 He felt indignation in the quiver of her arms, heard it
crackle in her voice. "The follies committed in this war'" he
observed, "will be the wonder and bewilderment of
generations of unhappy youth who have to study history. And
one of the most idiotic acts of all is that I'm here and being
paid to try to make soldiers out of a lot of poor ignorant,
good-natured country Negro boys. All they're supposed to
learn is how to threaten and intimidate. For that I'm a poor
teacher."

"You were wounded. They should have let you go home."

 He said it again, "I have no home any more." She was
perceptive enough not to protest or question. "I had three
brothers in the Confederate army," he continued, quite
certain that she knew it already.

 She sighed. "At least, it s over. Perhaps the wounds will
heal. Though my Aunt Ella will never be reconciled,
never if she lives to be a hundred and fifty."

 At the edge of town she insisted on alighting and he sat
still in the saddle and watched her gal off down the dusty
street, a neat little figure in that prim dress, her hoops
swaying over the toes of her shabby little shoes and kicking
up a gentle dust in her wake. He had followed then at a
discreet distance, saw her safely into the parsonage as a
woman tall and iron grey as a cannon came out and took the
basket.

 That night he had drawn five pounds of flour from military
supplies and very late he had carried it to the brown house,
slipping in quietly to lay it on the kitchen doorstep. On a
scrap of paper he had written, "From a friend of the parson."

 He was sitting on his favorite bench before the courthouse
late the next afternoon when she came walking by. She
moved very briskly, a little parasol over her head, and as she
passed him she dropped the

[68]

open parasol low over her face and behind the screen of it
slipped a little packet of white cloth into his hand. It was
warm and fragrant and when he opened the cloth he found
a still-hot fluffy biscuit. So she had guessed the donor of the
flour. He was grateful for the first hot home-cooked food he
had eaten since the beginning of the war. On his brief visit
home in June Sue had been able to smuggle in nothing but
cold corn bread. He ate the biscuit slowly, watched by a
hungry drooling hound, who leaped at every scattered crumb.
William rubbed the dog's ears and gave him the last scrap.

 "Times have been tough all over, hey, fellow?" he said. He
felt suddenly fine. He felt light and buoyant and young again
and his knee forbore for a little to remind him that at
twenty-five he would be forever, undoubtedly, a lurching
cripple.

 He wondered if he was in love, if this floating feeling was
what happened to a man when the right girl came along?
Now, on this sultry night, hitching himself along the dark
street, he tried to call back that happy feeling, to concentrate
upon himself, William Markland, and upon a girl with brown
hair and eyes with a topaz shine. On the realization that the
war was over and that the future could hold a promise, as he
limped toward his shabby quarters, with six hundred dollars
in United States currency in his pocket.

 The trouble was that lonely and deserted as was that
narrow street, a small ghost walked too close, too
hurtinglyclose. It was almost as if he could reach out and
touch another hand, small and brown and quick, with bony
fingers that could be both deft and gentle, the hand of
another courageous woman, Miss Annie, his mother.

 There in that smoky room. with those men who had at the
same time excited his youthful audacity and repelled him, he
had become aware of his mother abruptly. Of Miss Annie,
her clean starched dress that always rustled, her brisk,
affectionate, indomitable way, her tricks of making her men
do what she wanted them to do. All but her son, William.
With him, when it came to matters of principle, she had
failed. Perhaps because she had been too proud to weep. If
she had cried, he wondered, could she have prevailed, would
he have gone off proudly mounted like his brothers, to battle
for her Holy Cause, instead of slipping away with Buzzy in
the night to ride with Sheridan alongside her enemies?

 It was ended now, the last card played for the Confederacy.
But here in her own country, here where she had spent most
of her life, the enemy of Miss Annie still shuffled the deck,
still dealt from the bottom if cheating meant advantage.
William limped into his quarters.

[ 69 ]

let his canes fall and dropped onto the hard cot, his strength
failing him, as he thought with raw of his home.

 The rocking chair that creaked, the old yellow bowl in
which, for as long as he could remember, Mammy Dory and
Minerva after her had beaten up yellow corn bread. The
grape arbor where blue globes fell to be trodden into delight
ful squirtings by small, dirty feet. The wasps and hornets that
lurked there too. Goose grease and lemon toddy for a cold,
and his father's bellowing call to rouse laggards in time for
breakfast.

 And then he remembered the jowly, repulsive,
tobacco-and-whiskypickled man, Fletcher, saying, "Sooner or
later they're going to bear down on us boys and we'll have
to go over there and sell old Boone out."

 He lay wide awake till day came, carried out his morning
routine woodenly and as soon as he was free went as fast as
he could to the courthouse.

 The interior of that building was ugly and odorous now,
full of loafing Negroes and poor white trash. All the officials,
squatting in old armchairs in the dingy offices, were
strangers. To a man, they had hard, suspicious faces, and
even the blue uniform got William no respect.

"What you want, soldier?" demanded the man in the front
office.

 "I'm William Markland." He drew himself up and put on
his drillmaster attitude of impatient grimness. "I want to pay
my father's taxes. The name is Boone Markland."

"Where at? What district?" The man did not stir.

  "You'll find the name there in your book. Find it. If there
are penalties I want to pay those too."

  The collector slouched up, slammed open a heavy book,
grumbling, then another.

  "Ain't no Boone Markland. Only one Markland. Annie
Breen Markland."

"My mother. That's the property. How much does she owe?"

  "Two years delinquent. Ought to be posted for sale. Ain't
got around to it. You'll have to wait till it's posted, boy. Bid
it in at the courthouse door." The man sat down again.

  "And be outbid by some carpetbagger? Figure up the
indebtedness. I have a right to clear it if I pay all the
penalties. That's the law," bluffed William, hoping he was
right.

  "Markland's Secesh. All of 'em Secesh. What are you
doing in that uniform?" demanded the man.

  "I fought in this uniform for four years. I've got a right to
wear it. Get those figures together. I want them now."

[7 ]

  "In a hell of a hurry, ain't you? Maybe you ain't got that
much money. Take that two per cent it gets
compounded devil and all to figure." He chewed a pencil,
scrawled laboriously, scratching out, erasing, adding audibly.
"Four hundred and eighty-seven dollars, I make it and
thirty-eight cents."

  "Here's the money. Count it. And I want an ironclad
receipt. No monkey business," said William grimly.

  "What'd you do? Rob a bank up there in Virginny? Better
rob another and buy you a few good properties. Some mighty
fine places going cheap, if you got cash to lay on the barrel
head."

  William folded the receipt tenderly, patted it into his
pocket. It looked legal enough. Somehow he would send it
home. Buzzy! Buzzy would welcome that mission.

  "I saved your home for you, Miss Annie," he said low to
himself as he limped down the steps. "Maybe that pays back
a little."

~ Nine ~

THE MULES WERE SLOW AND STUBBORN AND
THEIR DELIBERA]E PLODDING moved King Markland
to wrath. With a heavy hickory gad he beat on their bony
haunches but the only result was an irritated jerk of a hard
tail, the toss of a jug head, and small hoofs set deliberately in
the furrow with no acceleration.

  Sweat ran down King's back and dripped from beneath his
hat. He wiped his face angrily with an already damp sleeve.
The sleeve had a button off the cuff and kept flapping down
over his wrist and in a sudden fury of annoyance he tore the
cuff off and half the sleeve with it. Winnie would be tearfully
apologetic if he told her about the missing button. She was
mistily, abjectly sorry about so many things; the burned
biscuit, the fire allowed to go out in the middle of cooking a
meal because she had found an old book of poetry that had
belonged to her Great-grandmother Carter and "Oh, King,
listen to this verse. Isn't it sweet? 1 could read poetry all day
long."

  She was always sorry, but the devil of it was that
repentance for Winnie never took on the aspect of
improvement. She flurried around by candlelight to make the
neglected bed, scolding herself meanwhile for being such a
bad housekeeper.

[ 71 ]

"You ought to leave me, King. Really you ought."

  Of late, through this scorching August, while the sun beat
on the fields making sedge gras; and thistles dry and brittle,
King had let a traitorous thought slip into his mind in
response to this often repeated self-castigation of Winn e's.
Maybe if he were smart he would leave. Maybe he had been
a fool to walk into this marriage in the first place. Jack had
said so, mincing no words. Now Jack was slogging around
behind his father trying to get the Markland place going
again with small help and no encouragem~ nt from Brother
Morgan.

  Morgan, it had been soon apparent, had come back from
the war ready to take up living ex Ictly where he had left it
off when the bugles blew. His only explanation of his delayed
return was that he had taken a notion to see the coml,ry, had
traveled around down south awhile, eventually deciding to
come along home. In the Federal uniform looted from the
dead he had slipped into a detachment of Union troops,
come north in comfort with a wagon train, won most of the
money the other soldiers ilad, and taken quiet leave of the
outfit on a dark night. Now he wore his good clothes, teased
his mother and Sue incessantly, and kept up a childish war
of words with Boone-boy who admired and emulated him.

  "There should," he am~oullced blandly, "be one Markland
gentleman left."

  When Jack stormed that even gentlemen had to eat and
that corn still had to be gathered and wheat ground plowed
and harrowed, Morgan gave a mocking shrug saddled the
three-year-old stallion and disappeared for two or three days.
When he returned he lugged in heavy saddlebags and
dumped their contents on the kitchen table.

  "Coffee!" she exclaimed when he led his mother to survey
his spoils. "And white flour and sugar! And even tea!
Morgan, where in the world?"

  "Money," he grinned insolently, "will buy things, my dear
Miss Annie. L2ven from Yankees. Now the gentlemen in the
family can eat."

  King went home often. There were no work animals left at
the Markland place so the Olin er mules had to be loaned
for the field jobs, Jack and his father coming over in turn to
help King in his attempts at reclaiming the overgrown (
Liver acres. But this morning King was trying to plow alone,
and already the palms of his hands were stinging and his
shoulders aching from the jolting of the plow through the
stubborn socl. He hated it. that was the trouble. He had
hated the breakfast that he had had to help cook, the watery
mush, the bacon

[72]

dug out of the old root cellar where the Colonel had buried
it, so rancid now that even the ados of it frying was
ObllOXiOUS,

 Winnie had cried a little, but that had not softened him this
morning, because there was an uncomfortable, unsatisfactory
night to remember. Winnie would never, King was convinced,
be a real wife to any man. To her, marriage was poetry, kisses
in the moonlight, being together, touching hands, all delicate,
all fastidious. For the rest, it was nasty, it was horrid, it was
terror to her and sobbing, and the contrite pleadings that
followed were c easing to move him any more.

"I will try, King. I promise,' she whimpered.

 Now, dropping down in a shady spot close to the sagging
fence, King knew that he was tired of that too.

 If her mother had stayed--but as soon as the transportation
was available Mary Oliver had gone south to a sister in
Mississippi. The sister was a widow too. They wo' ld comfort
each other, and after all young married folks were better off
by themselves, and it might be that once she got down
Corinth way Mary could find her lost son's grave. King
learned then about the money his mother-in-law had so
craftily kept hidden.

 "She had to hide it, it was all she had, her little hoard she
had saved, dollar by dollar," Winnie wailed. "You don't know
about my father and young Carter after him! Always liquor
and gambling, always every cent spent unless Mother took it
when they were asleep, took it and hid it. She earned it by
her awful patience with her husband and her son. And she
didn't dare let Grandpa know that she had it or he would
have given it to the Confederacy."

 "You don't have to argue with me about it, Winnie," King
protested. "It's her money. Let her spend it. But I wish she'd
stay."

 Mary Oliver might have been able to teach her daughter a
little about duty and responsibility, about being the head of a
household rather than a spoiled and pelted child of that
household with no responsibility. That childish business might
be all right for a girl of fifteen but now Winnie was
twenty-four and as immature in her attitude toward life as
Boone-boy.

 He looked wide at the hostile ground, so much of it, and all
to his mind withdrawn into itself, old and intolerant of him,
defying the prow, offering him a vicious challenge. The
strength of his young muscles, already weakened by war,
against old rocks, old briars, old grass grown matted and grim.
What was he doing here anyway? pie was no dirt-digging
farmer, so eated, callused and stodgy, content with

[ 73 ]

seeing seed emerge into leaf and an ear of corn grow where
none had grown before.

  Jack was adapting himself, not happily, but the ebullient
determination of Boone Markland carried Jack along. And
Sue, King knew, was doing mightily helping Miss Annie keep
the Marklands fed and clean and halfway content with the
meager living offered now to a people who had for so long
known the comforts of plenty and ease, made possible by the
service of black hands.

  Sue had been a belle once, too, even more courted and
popular than fragile little Winnie. There had been a time
when King knew that he could have married Suc Wetherby.
He had been the fickle one then, looking the field over, not
too eager to be tied down, expecting Sue or any other girl to
wait contentedly till King Markland had sowed all his wild
oats.

  That Sue had heard some kind of tale about the bright
girl, Lutie, he knew, but in those wild, free days before the
war white women learned to overlook and ignore the casual
affairs of men and became more or less reconciled to seeing
ivory-skinned babies born in the slave quarters. There had
been Buzzy. Had Miss Annie let her temper fly and thrown
her wedding ring in Boone Markland's face? Miss Annie was
a lady and if she was hurt she never admitted or revealed it,
wise enough to know that there was an outlaw thing in every
man's blood that no wife could ever hope to capture or
tame.

  On a sudden irritated impulse King jumped up from the
shady fence row and strode out to the field where the mules
dozed with drooping heads and sagging hips. He unhooked
the trace chains from the prow, tossed them over the hames
and, mounting the off mule, headed for the barn, leaving the
plow in the furrow. He fed the animals, tossing some old hay
down from the mow, waiting briefly for a clink that often
revealed he had dug into another of the old Colonel's
hidden caches of provender, silver or household ware.

  Hadn't the senile old fool known that if the guerrilla
prowlers did come marauding and looting, the barn would
be the first place searched, unless they began their orgy of
destruction by burning the building? I le wondered how
many times the old man had panted up that ladder
sequestering his possessions with the naive trustfulness of a
pack rat. What he could not hide, the Colonel had
destroyed, including all the saddles and the Oliver carriage.

  In the kitchen Winnic was bending over a washtub dabbing
at a froth of white petticoats. Her face was fiery red, her
hair hanging

[ 74 ]

limply over her ears. She dried her hands on an already damp
apron and faced her husband with a look of harried
desperation.

 "You didn't find any soap, did you?" she questioned. "I
know he hid some somewhere, a whole keg of soft soap.
Mother told him we would need it wherever we went but he
shouted at us that the wagon was already overloaded and we
could get more soap."

 "No soap," said King, pouring water into a basin and
sloshing it over his heated face. "I reckon he buried it. We'll
find a little heap of rocks some place and under it will be the
soap, same way we found the vinegar keg and the rock salt.
It's not in that root cellar. I looked."

 "Please don't waste water," begged Winnie. "I've pumped
and pumped till my arms are killing me. The cistern is low
too. Surely it will rain before long."

 "Why don't you leave off wearing all that white stuff?"
demanded King. "Miss Annie and Sue said they put away all
their ruffled duds long ago. Too much trouble to keep clean."

 "Oh, but I couldn't!" she protested. "How could I be
properly dressed? I only wear three anyway. I used to wear
seven petticoats  always. I can't go around all limp and
horrible, King, I just can't."

 "Who's going to see you? Maybe Miss Annie has some
soap. I'm going over there. I'll ask her.''

"You're going and leave me here all alone?" she cried,
aghast.

"Unless you want to go with me. It's a long walk in this hot
sun."

 "Walk? Oh, I couldn't! But how can I stay here alone?
Suppose some Yankees came or some awful free Negroes or
somebody?"

 "Lock the door. You'll be safe unless they burn the house,"
said King callously. "Anyway, I'm going to borrow a horse
from Pa and go to town," he added. "I've got an errand
there."

 "I'll have to go. I'd never dare stay here alone. You'll have
to wait till I finish this and change my dress."

 "Leave that stuff to soak. I've got to shave and change
clothes. Get your primping done and take along a parasol.
That sun is red-hot today." He stalked off, leaving her
complaining and fluttering. She would be an hour at least,
arranging her hair, choosing a dress and hat and the stuff that
went under the dress. He picked up the iron teakettle from
the stove, felt it for warmth, tramped off with it.

 In their upper room the b' d was unmade, the slop jar had
not been emptied. He carried that down, grumbling
impatiently, demandin

as he passed through the kitchen, "Any soap anywhere at all?
I can't shave without soap."

She handed him a gourd without a word. She was angry too,
he

[75]

knew, but her temper we; a frail thing, like the wrathful
shrilling of a sparrow. He ignored it as he ignored all her
moods of late.

  "Old brown stuff." He scowled at the soap. "Miss Annie
knows how to make soap that's hard and white."

  "Miss Annie! Miss Annie!" she screamed at him then.
"Miss Annie knows everything. Everything except how to
raise sons to be gentlemen."

  He looked at her with his sardonic brows tilted. "And what
would you do with a gentleman, pet? Let him wear unironed
shirts, sleep in an unmade bed and eat half-cooked food off
half-washed dishes?"

"You don't want a wife. You want a slave!"

  He nodded, his mouth quirked, the insolence that always
maddened her a mocking mask on his face.

"Might trade you off for a smart yellow gal. It's an idea," he
taunted.

  Miss Annie exclaimed over them as they walked into the
cool Markland house, hot, flushed, angry and dusty.

  "My word, Winnie, you look ready to drop. Walking over
a mile in this awful heat! Sit here and take this fan and I'll
fetch you a cool drink of my raspberry shrub."

  "I do feel faint." Wimlie's voice was a sick whisper. "I
never have walked that far in all my life."

  "You might as well get used to it, Winnie," Sue said dryly.
"You might as well accept things. We're all poor-white now.
We have to learn to live like them. No wonder you got tired,
walking in those little thin slippers!"

  "But I haven't any other kind of shoes. Oh, thank you,
Mrs. Markland." Winnie took the beaded glass and held it
daintily to her lips.

  "You sit here and cool off," said her mother-in-law. "Sue
and I are putting up pears. Morgan found some sugar in
town and we decided to save what we could for winter."

  "Oh, how clever you are," approved Winnie. "I do wish I
was smart. All our fruit is just Iying on the ground rotting.
Old Sudie always did it, and since she left it has all gone to
waste."

  "It's blisters, not smartness, sis," remarked Sue. "Just
turning to and getting the job done no matter how much you
hate it."

  "But I wouldn't even know how to begin," defended
Winnie. "I don't know how to do anything and King gets so
irked with me."

  She ignored Sue's lifted shoulder, the dry twist of her lips.
"You'll have to excuse Miss Annie and me Winnie." Sue
retied her apron with an irritating gesture of competence.
"rule doggone syrup boils over if we take our eyes off of it."

[ -~6 ]

  Winnie was glad to be left alone to relax in a comfortable
chair. If only she did not have to go back If only she could
stay here where there was order and calm and people to do
the dreadful housekeepy things that baffled her, kind people
who cared what happened to you. The old Oliver house had
become a monstrous nightmare of a place where always some
wretched task needed to be done and things not done
mounted into catastrophe. This, she was thinking, relaxed and
meditative, waving the fan languidly, was King's home as
much as it was Jack's. They had the right to be here. What a
blessing, she nursed the wicked wish, if Grandpa Oliver's
tiresome old house would burn to the ground!

  In the barn King found his father and Jack hammering a
tire back on a wagon wheel. Jack looked at his brother.

  "You look beat." He straightened up and dropped the
hammer. "Can we borrow your team and wagon tomorrows
Miss Annie says she's mighty near out of wood. And we could
use a hand on the saw too."

  "Swap you for the loan of a horse today," King said. "I want
to ride into town."

  "Better stay away from town," advised Boone, straightening
up with a grunt. "Unioners and Nigras have taken over up
there. Man could get in bad trouble."

  "You don't keep Morgan away from town," reminded Jack.
"He went off this morning riding the only good horse we've
got."

  Boone Markland scrubbed sweat from his eyes. His father
was beginning to show his age, King observed. There was a
sag in his wide shoulders that had not been there before. He
was more subdued, less noisy and impatient.

  "I never did get a bridle on Morgan," he said heavily. "He
was his mammy's boy. Got into trouble she took up for him.
Now if he gets into trouble he manages to get himself out of
it. You boys might not be so lucky."

"Meaning we can't hold our liquor like Morgan7" asked Jack.

  "Meaning we don't know all Morgan's tricks," said King.
"He could always talk himself out of anything, duck all the
dirty jobs. Even in the cavalry he was good at it. Got put on
reconnaissance patrol or riding courier when we got set afoot
in the mud to advance against some red-hot Yankee
entrenchment."

  "Got home with shoes on his feet and money in his
pockets." Jack took up the complaint. "Now Miss Annie thinks
he hung the moon. Waits on him hand and foot."

[77]

 "He pets her and fetches her presents," Boone sighed.
"Women like that. Always telling her how smart she is. She
knows she's smart without being told over and over."

"Anything left here that a man can ride?" persisted King.

  "That gelding. He's broke and shod but he's got no speed
and not much wincl. Any time you geld a colt he gets fat and
lazy, so he won't give any trouble though he won't be three
till fall. He'll ride. That saddle up yonder is fixed up," Boone
pointed. "I put new leather on the stirrups and a new pad
under it. Don't heat him up or hitch him where those
buzzards can steal him. Every time Morgan rides that bay
into town I look for him to come home afoot."

  But Morgan did not come home on foot. He came, very
late, when his mother had turned gray-faced and tense-hsted
with worry and Boone Markland had tramped the room,
muttering for three hours.

  "It's the horses you're worrying about, not the boys!" Miss
Annie stormed at him.

  "A horse can't take care of himself. Those boys are grown
men, been through a war," defended Boone.

It was getting on for dawn when Morgan rode in quietly.

  He had brought King home, braced limply behind him.
King was bandaged and bloody and almost unconscious.
Winnie, who had been lying wide awake in the big bed
upstairs, heard voices and came flying down. She gave a little
shriek and fainted away.

But nobody paid any attention to Winnie.

~ Ten.

IT HAD BEEN THE MUSIC THAT DREW AND
MADDENED HIM.

 He had had a little too much to drink. On the outskirts of
town he had met a friend of his youth, a shattered young-old
man who had fought with Johnston and Hood and known
the torment of defeat and the sick, sad death of glory. Now
this spent and embittered veteran lived with a whining
mother and a doggedly industrious father who cut wood for
a scanty living and had no sensitive scruples about peddling
it to the radicals, whether they were black or white.

The friend, whose name was Ransome, had made no effort
at ad

[ 78 ]

justment since the surrender and spent his time loafing on a
sagging porch.

  "Cussing the Union and ready to run and hide if they come
after him," his mother grumbled. "Got ambition enough to tilt
that jug and that's about all."

  Twilight was falling, the days were getting shorter. The
gelding was a jolting mount and King had been glad to slide
out of the saddle and join Ransome in tilting the jug, ignoring
the fact that except for the homemade liquor and the heady
relaxation it produced they had nothing whatever in common.

  For two hours, till the hot summer dusk pressed down, they
refought the war, berating all the colonels, the generals and
the enemy impartially till Ransome grew blurry in his speech,
then drowsy. King was beginning to feel a gnawing within that
reminded him he had not eaten since early morning, also his
smoldering irritation with his lot was beginning to flare again,
breaking out in a burning resentment against Winnie.

  He would, he fumed, show Winnie that she was not the
only woman in the world. Anger made him reckless, with a
lusty male fever for conquest, and the whisky fired this slowly
simmering rage into arrogant rashness.

  The gelding stood dozing under a mulberry tree. The horse
should have been fed and watered but when King took a
dizzy look at the cistern it appeared a long way off to his
wavering sight. Riding with Forrest they had watered their
animals at any handy creek, ridden them long and hard,
sometimes for a day and night without rest. King lifted the
jug and sloshed it around. It was empty. In disgust he hurled
it out into the bare, swept yard, gave a parting grunt at
Ransome who had fallen into a drunken slumber on the dirty
boards of the porch, untied the horse and got himself with
some difficulty into the saddle.

  The tents of the garrison company were pitched on a slope
running raggedly down to the river and King made a wide
detour around them, guiding the gelding to the water's edge
near the still-charred ruin of a bridge. While the horse drank
he dozed in the saddle, dimly aware of the shack settlement
beyond, of the slattern makeshift shelters, the murky fires, the
dim smoky lights. Not aware at all of the prowling, hostile
figures that hung back in the trees or of the yellow boy who
had slipped out of the garrison bivouac and who was
following him, eyeballs big and uneasy in a taut face.

  It was when he turned back from the river that King heard
the music. It was swamp music, primitive as the creeping of
dark, secret

[79]

creatures through tangling vine and sucking morass. It was
a music as old as creation, old as the Nile, the mourning and
keen and arpeggio of a people despised and rejected since
time began. In mud huts in the shadow of the palaces of the
Pharaohs, in the reeking deeps of slave ships, the moan and
timbre and ululation of it would have been the same, the
melodic plaintive heartbreak of a homeless people.

  There was the hollow beat of slapping palms and a liquid
note of sorrow, high and eerie, and lost like water poured
from a failing jug. And over the monotonous percussion, the
occasional high shrilled timbre of lament, rose the clear
soprano of a woman. No word that could be distinguished,
only the flutelike tones rising and falling, poignant with old
sorrow.

  King jerked up the head of his horse sharply. He had
heard that voice before. Bought with some purloined bit of
finery from his mother's bureau that same singing had
soothed the young, wild fevers in his blood as the girl herself
had satisfied his other flaming need.

  "Lutie!" he shouted aloud, digging his heels into the flanks
of his mount. "Lutie!"

  Footsteps pomlded beside him. He heard a voice yelling,
"Mist' King! Mist' King!" That voice too struck a familiar
note but King was too befuddled to ret ognize it. When the
yellow boy who had shouted tried to seize the bridle King
whipped the horse and almost ran him down.

  Then out of the shadows they sprang at him, dark, panting
shapes with white eyeballs rolling and knives flashing.

  "After my woman!" snarled a black man, who hit him with
a rock, numbing his arm. "Let me at him. I cut his those!"

  King laid about him with the whip but more of them
appeared, and by sheer weight of numbers they pulled him
off his horse. Struggling wildly he saw a heavy rock upraised
in a black man's hand. He ducked swiftly, thrusting an elbow
into a throat, a knee into a groin. The same old furious kind
of fighting that had served him so many times against an
entrenched Union line. Almost, he thought he heard old
Nate Forrest shouting, thought he could hear the thud of
gun butts against skulls, the horrid yells, then a knife got to
him. He felt the hot burn of its thrust and went down almost
under the feet of a strange horse.

  Then out of the mist that swam into dull vision, he heard
an officer shout. "Lilt him easy! Lay him over the saddle."

  al here was a familiarity about that voice too but darkness
was closing in on King Markland. When he roused again it
was day and he was

L b  ]

lying, bandaged and weak and nauseated, on a bed in his
father's house.

  In the parlor the three Markland men faced each other,
tight-lipped, eyes wary.

  "All right!" T300ne boomed through the silence. "Where did
you find him?"

  Morgan was not on the deft nsive. l Ie stood, relaxed,
smiling a little while the other two glared at him.

  "I did not find him, sir," he replied in his best military
manner. "It was Buzzy who found him."

"That yellow " Coarse epithets fumed from Jack's lips.

  "Buzzy found him and ran for Billy. Our brother, William,
who happens to be a Union captain, sir. He and two other
officers broke up the fracas but not before those black devils
had cut King up pretty bad. Billy put King over the saddle
and took him to a Yankee doctor. who patched him up. Then
he sent Bunny to find me," explained Morgan.

"And where were you?" demanded his father.

  With a languid gesture ot pure insolence Morgan took a
black cheroot from a pocket, lit it elaborately.

  "I, sir, was sitting in on a little game. And I was spoiling the
despoilers. It happens that our brother William had seen me
before. He knew where to look. So betwt en us we loaded
King on my saddle and I brought him home. Naturally Billy,
out of respect for your prejudice. did not want to bring King
home himself. It was fortunate that I was in town."

  "Prejudice?" barked Jack. "What about you? Slave you
hlrned radical all of a sudclen?"

  "I keep an open mind, Brother dear," drawled Morgan. "We
are indebted to Brother William. But for }liS intervention
King would now be carrion, probably dumped into the river."

"We want no favors from Yankee turncoats," blasted Jack.

  "The favor we received happens to have saved King's life,"
returned Morgan, unperturbed. "If that's worth anything to
you." He walked away, deliberately, turning back at the hall
door. "I'm going to bed. King won't die. But you may as well
know what he was doing in that shack town. He was looking
for a yellow woman named Lutie. Yost may remember the
wench before the war she belonged to Sam Hilliard."

"Where's King's horse?" demanded Boone.

Morgan smiled again and there was a kind of mockery in the
smile.

[81 ~

a gleam of impudent delight. He seemed to be enjoying their
futile fury since now it was not directed at him.

 "Buzzy,"he said, "will bring the horse home. And a word of
advice to you two fire-eaters. Buzzy wears a Union uniform.
Any offence committed against a man in that uniform is
punishable by imprisonment, even by death. I have been thus
carefully instructed. I pass those instructions on to you."

 He had not seen his mother come quietly down the stairs,
so that now she stood just behind him. Obviously she had
been listening. She put up a hand and stopped him as he
started past her.

"You saw Billy." It was a statement, not a question.

 "I saw Billy," he told her gently. "He rescued King from a
gang of angry Negroes who might have killed him."

 She flung her hands over her face. "I won't have it!" she
wailed. "I won't have it. All of you standing here, hating him,
despising himl Your own flesh and blood!"

 Morgan came back into the room. "Look, Miss Annie "
he dug into his pockets, pulled out a thick wad of bills.
"Hold out your apron. Money. Nice, green, good Yankee
money. I took it away from those Yankee scalawags. You
can buy things with it."

 She only looked at him dazedly, flung out her hands in a
pitiful gesture, letting the monk y fall to the floor. Then she
ran out of the room.

 "She'll calm down," said Boone, "but I wish she hadn't
heard about Billy. She broods about him all the time and
there ain't a thing we can do. He picked his path. He's the
one threw his family away, every living thing we stand for."

 "We'll never live him down," grumbled Jack. "For two bits
I'd head out for Texas."

 "You'd find the same thing in Texas," said Morgan. "Black
men top dogs, white Southerners being pushed around. It's
here. It's our defeat. We've got to live with it."

 Jack blazed at his brother. "You fought for the South!
How many times are you going to surrender, for God's
sake?"

 Morgan gave a little shrug. "Any time it appears to be the
profitable, expedient thing to do, Brother Jackson, any time
at all. Good night, all or should I say good morning?"

 "He came home in a Yank uniform." Jack turned to his
father with bitterness riding his face. "Before I'd have worn
a rag of their cursed blue I'd have walked the roads stark
naked."

"He's young," his father r sighed wearily. "He's only
twenty-two years

[82]

old. He'll learn sense. Maybe he'll have to learn it the hard
way, like King yonder."

  "Hard to figure that out. King must have been mighty
drunk. He used to be wild but he was never a teetotal
damfool before. Though that girl upstairs would drive a man
crazy, even if he was in love with her, and you know and I
know, Pa, that King never was. Didn't have to marry
her Lord no! She's got no more fire in her than a dish of
cold mush. You can't explain it, King throwing away all the
common sense he was born with, marrying a limpsy crybaby
like that Winnie. King couldn't explain it himself."

  "All he told me," said Boone, "was that he thought it was
the right thing to do. Those two women nobody to take care
of them."

  "The old lady took herself off fast enough once she got
Winnie off on King's shoulders. Had money hid out too, King
told me. I reckon now we've got that place to see after too,
Pa. Might as well get some sleep."

  Annie Lou Markland did not sleep that night. She sat
beside King's bed sponging his face with cool water, watching
the bandages so that they did not slip, murmuring soothingly
to him when he tossed and muttered. He had been badly
slashed under his right arm and there was a stab wound in his
breast but it had not gone deep, the knife having glanced off
the breastbone. There were great purple bruises on his head
and face and one of his eyes was swelled shut. A heavy boot
had landed on his mouth and his lips were puffed and
fluttered when he breathed. His breath still reeked of the raw
whisky he had drunk.

  Winnie came tiptoeing in once, looking so white and
transparent that Miss Annie's gentle heart was touched for
the girl. She made Winnie sit in a rocking chair and gave her
a cool drink.

  "He'll be all right," she whispered. "He's hurt bad but he's
strong. He'll get over it."

  Winnie's eyes were enormous and in them was a look of
stunned incredulity.

  "I heard them talking," she said in a strangled whisper. "I
couldn't help it. This door was open and they have such loud
voices. I heard about that yellow woman. It isn't true, is it?"

  Miss Annie sighed. "My dear," she said low, "you married
a man. So did I and so does every woman. We can't really
understand them and because understanding can hurt and
destroy us a little in our own eyes, we don't even try. Wc feel
wronged and won't let ourselves

[ 83 ]

believe that they need more than gentlewomen have to give,
even when we give willingly. I'd forget it all if I were you."

  "How can I?" whimpc red Winnie. "Miss Annie" a spot of
color burned in her drained cheek and her eyes glittered in
the wan candlelight "I won't live like my mother. All her
life forgiving. All her married life hoping for a change, for
a little peace, a little happiness. Miss Annie, my mother was
glad when my father went off to war. You hear glad! And
when he was killed she put on black but she did not grieve.
People said she was brave, but she wasn't. She was at peace.
All the dreadful time she had known was ended. When
young Carter went she cried, but after that she was like
another person. She had no more horrid nights ahead,
listening for a horse to come crashing home toward dawn,
for the shouts and oaths of drunken rumblings, the
humiliations. Oh, I know. I was young but I suffered with
her, lying all drawn up in a scared cold knot in bed, too
frightened to stir from my room. Miss Annie, King is your
son and I love him but I won't live like thatl"

  Miss Annie sat, sunk small and desolate in the chair beside
the bed. "Maybe this will end the wildness, Winnie. Maybe
this will be the cure. Now you go and sleep. You can tend
your husband later while I rest."

  Winnie rose and there was a straightness about her as of
a white candle. Her eyes flashed.

  "I don't know if I'll want to touch him again ever)" she
said, grimly, and marched out of the room.

Dawn was blue-grey behind the curtains when Morgan came
in.

"I'm staying now' Miss Annie," he said. "You get some
sleep."

"No no," she protested. "I'm all right. I want to take care of
him."

  Morgan bent without a word and picked her up bodily, a
little dismayed by the lightness of her small frame. She
struggled and cuffed at him affectionately but he only
laughed.

  "Forget I was a sergeant in this here mean old war, Miss
Annie? When I give orders somebody moves." He carried
her into his own room, straightened the pillows and covers
one-handedly, laid her flat on the bed, crossing her hands on
her bosom, pressing her eyelids down with gentle fingers, all
the while grinning boyishly. "Go to sleep now. This merry
little ruckus is over. Pa's snoring already. King will feel
worse than the devil in the morning, mind and body. Let him
suffer. Do him good. He could have been killed tonight.
Next time he might not be so icky. Maybe this will teach him
a little sense." He took off her shoes, dropped them beside
the bed.

[84]

 She opened her eyes and put lip small brown hand,
clutching at his shirt. "Billy you saw him?"

"It was dark, Mama."

"lie's all right?"

"Stiff knee. Clot a ball in it at Five Forks. But he can ride."

  "Will you take me some time. Just you and me, Little
Brother?" There was heartbreak in the question.

  He hesitated. "Things are mean up there, Miss Annie. No
place for a lady."

"I'm his mother."

  "I'll see. We'll talk later. Y on sleep some now. Don't worry.
Just remember you had four boys go to war and all of them
got back. Not many mothers were that lucky."

  "I know. I'm thankful. On my knees." But he had gone and
softly closed the door.

  She could not sleep but obediently she lay still. Day grew
brighter, she heard the morning sounds beginning. The
half-grown chickens squawking to be fed around the back
door, Boone's heavy boots slogging down the stairs and
Boone-boy clattering after, full of shrill questions, Boone's
bumbling answers. She heard Sue come out of her room and
speak to Morgan. Sue had kept discreetly in the background
last night. This had been Parkland trouble, King's affair and
Winnie's, Sue had no part in it.

  Miss Annie slipped out of bed, gave her disordered hair a
pat or two, straightened her apron and put on her shoes.
Quietly she went down the stairs. In the kitchen Sue was
filling the kettle and Minerva, tightmouthed and with evasive
looks, came in with some wood.

  "You set table, Miss Sue," M inerva ordered, with the casual
freedom of an old servant. "I cooks sump'n to eat."

  Sue said, "Make Miss Anme some coffee first thing you do,"
and went into the dining room where she began rattling
knives and forks in a drawer. Minerva laid light wood on the
fire, moved the kettle over it, then she crooked a cautioning
finger.

"You come, Misttiss outside."

  Bewildered, Miss Annie followed the woman out, and under
the grape arbor Minerva made a go eat clatter with a wooden
bucket at the cistern pump. Over the racket her voice was
barely audible.

"bliss Dory's house he the e. You go, Misttiss."

  Annie Lou Markland made herself remember not to run
down the sanely path to \'lammv Dory's cabin. She knocked
at the door, looking about her first with a flare of defiance..
This is mv old servant's house.

[ 85 ~

she's sick. I have a right to be here. Then the door opened
a narrow crack and her throat co ltracted so that what
issued was little more than a squeak.

"BuzzyI''

 He pulled her in gently and shut the door. He was in
uniform. Not clean and not new any snore, one button
missing from the tunic.

 Mammy Dory was jabbering in the bed. "Main boy come
back! Mah boy come back!"

 Buzzy pulled out a chair. "Sit down, Miss Annie. You
lookin' faint. Mist' King? He "

"He'll be all right, Bu7zy. And thank you for helping him."

 "I brung his horse back before day. I rode most all night.
It was so dark and that colt was plumb wore out, Miss
Annie, I ain't able to git him off a walk. I done put him up
and fed him. Ain't nobody heard me," Buzzy assured her.
"I'll sleep here some today and git back to camp tonight. Kin
I sler p in Ranse' ole house, Miss Annie?"

 "Oh, yes yes and I'll bring you some breakfast. But how
are you going to get back, Buzzy? Back to camp? It's so far."

 "They'll come for me. Cap'n fix it up. And Miss Annie, he
tole me to give you this. Not to nobody else, Cap'n say. Give
it to Miss Annie and don't tell nobody." He took a soiled
paper from the inner mysteries of his apparel and laid it in
her hand.

"Buzzy " She stared at him. "Who who ?"

"Cap'n Billy, Miss Annie. Cap'n Billy Markland, that who."

 "Oh, Buzzy!" She bit her lip, tears standing in her eyes.
"It's all wrong. You ought to be beret Both of you. Both of
my boys "

 "Yessum," gulped Buoy. "I don't like that ginny army no
way but Cap'n say if I run away they hang me."

 "You go and get some ileep. But wait for your breakfast.
I'll bring it myself," she announced firmly.

 The loom house door was open and she slipped inside and
sat down weakly on the weaver's stool, spreading the
rumpled paper out over her knees.

 She had to read it through three times before its meaning
came clear. The taxes! Paid in full, the paper said. Billy had
done that and Boone Markland must never know. Jack must
never know.

 "They'd sell everything on the place to pay this money
back," she told herself. "Jack would throw it in Billy's face.
Oh, my dear son. My dear, dear boy!" She pressed the tax
receipt against her cheek, then folded it carefully and hid it
in her bosom.

[86]

Eleven

KING LAY FOR TWO WEEKSIMPATIENTAND FULL OF GLOOMY
ANGERS while his wounds slowly healed. The deep cut under
his arm had been trampled full Of filth and too hastily
treated so that now there was pus and inflammation that
frightened Winnie, although Miss Annie attacked it calmly
enough with hot linseed poultices and swabbings with
turpentine and raw corn whisky.

 "When they were little they were always getting cut and
bruised and once Jack shot himself through the foot. I
thought that hole would never heal. I used to pull a soft rag
through it, all the way through, soaked in oil to keep it clean.
It did close after a while. You might as well get used to it,
Winnie, if you mean to raise a family," she said.

 "I don't know " began Winnie faintly. Then she flushed
and flounced out of the room when King gave a dry, barking
laugh.

 Miss Annie went on talking to cover up an uncomfortable
awkwardness she did not entirely understand. She could
sympathise with Winnie for being hurt and insulted by King's
drunken action but she was more than a little puzzled by the
harshly synical attitude of her son. It was as if he were Iying
there blaming Winnie for everything that had happened, and
being amused by her furies and resentments.

 Sue had complicated the situation too by setting herself up
as King's champion. That Sue was being extra solicitous of
King's comfort, seeing that his food was the best that could
be achieved from their lean supplies, having his sheets fresh
and cool every morning as a kind of backhanded slap at
Winnie's inefficiency, was clear to their mutual mother-in-law.
The puzzling angle was that Winnie seemed not to care very
much, but when Annie Lou thought it through she could
understand that too. There was a transparency about Winnie
that went deeper than physical fragility. It was as though
Winnie's slim white body was a crystal case which enclosed
but did not protect her. Inside you could almost see her
thoughts and emotions turning like the works of a watch,
impelled by the fine hairspring of her own small. stubborn
self-importallcc-.

Winnie had been wound up to spin out her life in only one
way.

[~-1

Somebody would always have to take care of her, keep her
precious, and by a sad succession of disappointments she
had been repeatedly bereft of that demanded support and
protection. Three Carter Olivers had let Winnie down, one
after the other; her furious old warlock of a grandfather, her
drunken father, her worthless brother. Then she had been
abandoned by her mother and now King, her husband, had
defected.

 Winnie came into King's room dutifully when the others
were too busy to sit by him but she pulled her chair as far
from the bed as possible and sat there fanning herself
languidly, answering in grudging monosyllables when King
attempted any conversation.

 Chiefly he slept, the sheet pulled over his ears against the
annoyance of a few flies that slipped into the darkened
room. Then Sue would bustle in briskly, close the blinds
tighter, give Winnie a dismissing look, half pity, half disdain,
switch out the flies while she chattered to King. But Winnie
appeared to be unperturbed, pulling herself into her pale
shell and all the quivering antennae of her vanity in after
her.

 Miss Annie noted these maneuvers quietly, saying nothing,
until it became obvious that Jack was becoming resentful of
his wife's possessive concern for King. When she saw the
simmering anger, thinly concealed on the face of her eldest
son, Miss Annie decided to spend more time in the
sickroom.

 All summer Jack had been drawing in upon himself more
and more, a brooding aloofness in him being broken through
now and then by snappish flares of indignation. There was
so little left, his mother knew, so little to interest or enthuse
a young man. Only a life that was little now but an arid,
demanding treadmill, offering small promise of reward. War
had swept hirr. away in its excitement, then war had turned
ugly and mean, and bugles and flags had not been enough to
keep spirit alive in men who suffered through it. And now
home had been degraded into ugliness and meanness too.

 No longer were there Negro men to carry on the grubby
work in field and pasture, no longer the fine horses, the rich
crops, and she sensed that to Jack's impatient eyes the
future held little that was better. Once he had been full of
plans and excited about working them out, but now nothing
seemed important enough to concern him, and the flickering
of his jealousy was obvious.

 "I wouldn't make so much over King if I were you, Sue,"
Miss Annie launched boldly one moming. "No use to irk
Jack. I know you don't mean a thing by it but a touchy
husband is as unpredictable as a powder keg."

[881

 "Winnie makes me so mad!" fumed Sue, snapping viciously
at the beans she was shelling. "King needs to be encouraged
and she just freezes him."

 "Jack needs encouragement too," suggested his mother. "He
used to be so smart about fixing things. He laid all those
wooden pipes to bring the spring water down lo the stables,
but now there's little to farm with, and it's dismal trying to
work with those poor old crow-bait Oliver mules. When I
think of all those fine fat mules we had once "

 "They wore them out hauling artillery," Sue said. "They
wore out the mules and the horses and the men. And they
came mighty near wearing out the women. Miss Annie" Sue
flung out her hands, scattering beans in a tinkling
shower "do you realize I'm only twentyfive years old? And
Jack's not thirty yet and we're old, old people."

 "You don't look old to me." Miss Annie smiled and tried
for lightness. "That color hair won't turn grey till you're really
old. Now mine  it's been grey since I can remember and it
was black as Jack's once, that shade of black that looks blue
when the sun strikes it."

 "It's pretty now, Miss Annie, with your black eyebrows and
those long lashes."

 "Irish. Irish eyes, rubbed in with a sooty finger, my mother
used to say.',

 It troubled Sue that Jack did not talk to her any more. Only
the desultory, unimportant scraps of commonplace
conversation that might ensue between two people not acutely
interested in each other. When he came in at night he was
always tired and his first act was to kick off the heavy, dusty
shoes that he kept limber by smearing them with axle grease.
The shoes had been cobbled for slaves on the place, and that
idea was in the loathing kick that Jack gave them.

 Every morning he stamped back into the shoes again, gave
his toolong hair a swipe with Sue's rubber comb and frowned
at his whiskered face in the mirror.

 "A hell of a handsome brutel" he snarled at his reflection
on a hot morning when King had been two weeks in bed.

 Sue, scrabbling into her heavy white cotton stockings,
perched on the high edge of the bed, gave him an intent,
examining look.

 "You can be a handsome brute," she said crisply. "You've
done it before."

 "What for?" He gave his sweat-stained suspenders an
irritated hitch. "So I'll look pretty slogging along a corn row?
Those mules don't wear looking glasses under their tails. They
don't even turn an eye to see who's beating on their rumps,
whether I'm black or white. Put me

[89]

some cold bread in a poke, Pa's determined to go over to
the Oliver place today. Says we're duty bound to help out
King and Winnie when they're in trouble."

 "Why don't you take WinIIie along? She could cook up
something for you over there. I should think she'd want to
know what is happening to her house."

 "I've got the key," Jack said. "I know what's happening to
the house. She left it in a mess and nobody has cleaned it up
since they walked out of it."

 "Well, one thing's certain," snapped Sue. "I'm not going
over there to clean up her dirt. Nor Miss Annie either. So
don't you mention it downstairs. Winnie might- flare up
anyway."

 "I've never seen her flare up at getting out of doing
anything," grumbled Jack. "Just so nobody crosses over that
line she draws around her own private vanity and conceit.
No Markland gets inside that line, not even King. King least
of all, I'd say." His face darkened. He prodded a button
through a buttonhole. It fell off and he swore unhappily at
it. "You know, Sue, I don't believe King is any more married
to Winnie than I am. Really married."

 "Hush!" She flushed a little, though there were times when
the rigid prudery of the age irked her more than a little.
"King's got little to say" she let hasty malice scorch away
her inhibitions "running off to a shanty town after a yellow
bitch."

 Jack laughed, short and ugly. "You nice, delicate white
women. You should have got a little taste of the war, of
what some of those women down in Alabama and Gcorgia
got. Something should have happened to you so you could
comprehend the hell life has been for young men these last
years. You stood off and said, Oh, how dreadful! Just like a
schoolteacher seeing a Digger beat a jackass. But there
never was any common denominator and I don't suppose
there ever will be. The women will be the ones hi keep the
war alive. The men who fought in it would like to bury it
deep and stamp on the grave but you women will convince
yourselves in a few years that the whole damn hellish mess
was very sad and romantic."

 "What has all this tirade got to do with your brother
getting himself half-killed, running after a Nigra slut?" she
demanded.

 "Because," he balanced himself on the balls of his feet in
the door, grinning at her one-sidedly, looking impudent and
dangerous and handsome in a Satanic fashion, "because the
thing that sent King helling off to town was the same thing
that has sent a million odd men into wars since time was.
Because men need more than good women

[ Do ]

can give them and though they don't know exactly what it is
they want, they know that they want it enough to fightf it.
What they want out of any kind of fracas is to pros e to
themselves that they are men. Not many do. But the wanting
is there, deep under."

  "You talk like Billy, out of a book," scorned his wife, "and
if you don't shave that beard off pretty soon I won't sleep
with you. I'll move into the company room with WinIlie.''

  "You'd freeze to death." He scrubbed his face with slender,
callused fingers. "What', wrong with r ly whiskers? They keep
the flies off my neck."

"They make you look as old as General Nate Forrest."

  "Poor old Nate's brush was getting mighty grizzly by the
time we got to Alabama."

  He went pounding off down the stairs and Sue heard her
small son's bare feet thudding after his father. The smell of
cooking drifted up. Ham. Abruptly she knew that she was
hungry. She knew that Morgan had money from somewhere,
that he made mysterious contacts in town and that presently
food appeared on the Markland table. Morgan was in the
dining room when ,he went in. He sat at the table sopping
corn muffins in red gravy.

  "Ham!" Sue exclaimed. "You baffle me, Morgan. Where on
earth did you find it?"

  He grinned at her over the edge of his cup. "Money, my
pet, nice Andrew Johnson money. It gales anywhere. It buys
things. It has no party and no politics and no passionate
prejudices. All those stupidities sneak out the door when
money comes in the window."

  "That ham was looted frc,m some poor Confederate family,
I'll wager."

  "Might be. At least I didn't loot it. What we confiscated was
very swiftly devoured. More likely it was stolen from some
officer's mess Those uniformed Union office rs do themselves
very well. But ours did too, when they could. There was one
old colonel in Schofield's outfit who carried along his own
pepper mill and a china slop jar with morning glories on it.
Sit down and have some grub."

"I'll go help. Has Miss Annie had her breakfast?"

  "You know our Mama. She can't be persuaded to eat till
every chick, child, man and woman on the place has been
fed."

  "That's why she's poor and thin as a grasshopper in winter.
I'll make her come and eat with you," Sue said.

  Jack came in and pulled up a chair, looking with interest at
the food on the table. "I don't know how you do it," he said
grudgingly. "It will

[ 91 ]

likely land you in jail if they don't shoot you but it takes a
lot of worry off the old folks."

 "You mean that for shghtly curdled approval, no doubt,"
Morgan said dryly. "E?or that parsimonious bit I say thanks,
and I promise that when they get me in jail I'll give them a
false name and swear I was one of Sherman's bummers.
Sherman and an avenging Jehovah are a holy alliance in
William Brownlow's fermenting mind. Too bad he can't call
Beast Butler his own too. Butler would make an excitingly
evil Holy Ghost."

 "We can use another h;lud at the Oliver place today," Jack
said, with some sternness. "It ain't good for Pa to work too
hard out in this hot sun."

 Morgan finished his coffee, spooning the brown sugar out
of the bottom of the cup. "What makes you think King will
go back there?"

 "But it's their placer" argued Jack. "It was a fine farm
before the weeds and sassafras took it. Once it's cleaned up
and seeded "

"She doesn't want to go. She's satisfied."

 "Satisfied to let Sue and Miss Annie and 'Nerve do for
her," said Jack.

 Sue came in, dropped into a chair. "I heard you," she said.
"Miss Annie says every house ought to have one lady."

 "And I say she goes back where she belongs," persisted
Jack, "and the sooner we can help King get the place in
shape so they can live off of it, the better."

"What can I do? I'm no farmer," argued Morgan.

 "Neither was I. You can swing a scythe. You can learn,
anyway. And you can go out with me right now and help me
get some guns out of that cotton bale in the barn cistern.
Those Nigras in town might come hunting King. We've got
to be ready."

 But when in midmorning they drove the slow mules up the
slope to the Oliver house it was quickly apparent that they
were too late. Morgan, who had ridden the gelding ahead of
the wagon, came charging back.

"My God, there must be twenty of them!" he cried.

 Horses were standing about under the trees and they
could see men running in and out of the house, loaded with
booty.

 "White men. Guerrillas," growled Boone. "Low down white
rascals. Get along, Jack. I want a shot at them."

"No, Pa they're too many," protested Jack, "and they've got
rifles."

 "Stay back here, Morgan, you crazy fool!" Boone shouted,
alarmed abruptly as a gun cracked up near the house.

L 9~ ]

 Morgan circled back, the horse snorting nervously. "We
took that many plenty of times down around Huntsville," he
argued. "Knock down two and the rest will run. Give me your
squirrel gun, Pa. I'll creep around through the brush on this
side. Jack' you go the other way and they'll think they're
surrounded."

 "I say no," said Boone, "and I'm no coward. They'd charge
down here, kill us all and steal the mules. What plunder
they'll take ain't worth it."

 "Damn. I'm going anyway!" stormed Morgan, sliding out of
the saddle. "Give me that rifle." He snatched it out of the
wagon bed, dropped a handful of cartridges into a pocket and
disappeared in the screening brush.

 "They'll kill him," fumed Boone. "Likely they'll burn the
house too." He flogged the mules into a trot and turned the
wagon off the road into a thick clump of cedars. Jack had
jumped out and caught the gelding. He ran up and handed
the reins to his father.

 "Give me the shotgun. Maybe I can pick off one or two."
He snatched the weapon and vanished into the thicket.

 Boone Markland shook angry fists at the air impotently.
"Damn fools! Got to be heroes!"

 There was one gun left, a heavy old bear gun that delivered
a ball less than a hundred yards but with deadly impact when
it landed. Boone looked to the load and prime of it and let
himself down stiffly at the rear of the wagon. Cautiously he
tied the mules and the horse, then moved through the cedars
till the house came into view. He could see a man on the
porch rolling something into a bundle Winnie's white lacy
things, strapping them with a belt.

 The grass was very high and Boone Markland was back
again in his old bear-hunting days when the game was more
wary, less vile. He rolled into a little gully, then hitched out
of it, hating the grass that would wave and rustle as he crept
through it. Ten more yards. A shot to his right cracked
suddenly and by the smoke Boone knew that it was Jack who
had fired. Two ragged, whiskery men leaped off the porch
and started running in that direction and one stopped to aim
and fire a rifle. Boone was certain that lack would be long
gone from that spot, but the attackers' brief pause gave him
his opportunity. The old bear gun roared and the outlaw with
the smoking rifle dropped like a stone. Boone was kicked
backward by the recoil, rolled ten feet into the gully.

 A bullet spat the ground above him, and off to the left
Morgan's rifle cracked. The second rider who had run down
the slope pinwheeled in air and rolled over and over. His gun
flew wide and Boone watched

[93]

where it fell as he rammed another load into his heavy
weapon and cautiously crept up the slope.

  From the house there came a sudden fusillade of yells and
shots, then the strangers rushed out, firing wildly, and went
crashing off through the orchard, urging their mounts away
from the road. The Marklands waited a little, then when it
was obvious that the looters had departed, they ventured out
boldly and surveyed the scene.

  "They thought we had 'em surrounded." Morgan kicked at
one body. "My God, Pa, you mighty near blew this
scoundrel's head off with that old blunderbuss."

  "Told you I'm not dead yet," chortled Boone, slapping the
butt of the old gun affectionately. "Told Nate Forrest when
I gave him old Duke to ride that I could shoot better than
any boy I'd raised."

  "Now I reckon we've got to bury these buzzards,"
grumbled Jack. "Ground's as hard as iron too."

  "Anyway they left two guns. But they rode off all the
horses, led the ones hadn't any riders. Pa, why don't we put
these shinnies in the wagon and clump 'em out at the fork
of the road back yonder' Warning to any more that get
bright ideas."

  "Somebody might see us and we'd end up in trouble,"
objected Boone. "Though I never laid eyes on either of these
hounds before. No, we'd better plow 'em under some place."

  "Smoke!" cried Morgan, breaking into a run up the hill.
"They set the house on fire."

  It was a reluctant and smoldering fire, kindled in the
kitchen, and Jack soon doused it out with Winnie's
abandoned tub of sour suds.

  "Can't tell what they took till she comes over here," said
Boone, as they looked over the rooms where senseless
destruction had run rampant. Mirrors had been shattered,
beds stripped and feathers were everywhere from slashed
licks and pillows.

  "She won't come," Jack said. "She'll never come near this
place again. You'll see."

  She did not come. Noi for years. Much had happened,
much had changed, before ever again Winnie Oliver
Markland entered the old Oliver house.

1'441

Twelve

THERE IIAD NEVER BEEN, so WILLIAM MARKLAND
WAS CERTAIN, A MAN in love so bewildered, baffled and
frustrated as he.

  As the heat of summer waned and a few faded leaves
drifted down on the dusty streets and lawns, William was
more certain each day that he was in love with Angela Wood.
He had had no wish to fall in love and definitely no desire to
let his heart become involved where so many barriers of
political prejudice existed. He had been for so long alone,
severed from every old relationship and not too happy with
the new, that he had come to reconcile himself with a life of
solitary aloofness. There was drama in the idea, and William,
steeped for so long in books, had liked that dramatic aspect
of his situation, the coloring of mystery and romance it gave
to his lonely days.

  He thought of himself as a lone conquistador, riding the
fields of his youth, a detested conqueror, proven right and
resented for that rightness, eventually restoring prosperity and
happiness to those who disdained and rejected him. It made
nice melodrama with which to soothe an often smarting ego,
when people whom he had known all his life looked past and
through him as though he were so much thin air.

  There was ugliness and division and hate seething in
Tennessee and he was part of it, an instrument of it, a tool of
Andrew Johnson and of William Gannaway Brownlow, and
because he commanded a black troop the opprobrium in the
minds of Southern people was worse. Samuel Arnell's bill,
disenfranchising for fifteen years any white man who had in
any manner aided or served the Confederacy either as an
officer or a financial abettor of the Rebellion had been
passed by the hand-picked radical legislature

  The same bill disenfranchised the great mass of returned
Confederate soldiers for five years. There were conservative
Union men in the state who regarded Brownlow s
government as illegal and there had been a demand for an
election in which all white men should vote, but Brownlow
had shouted that any such call would be considered an open
declaration of war.

[95]

 Now in the sultry death of summer a campaign for the
election of Congressmen stirred again the smoldering rages
burning under the hot skins of Southerners. and the mission
of the military was to keep those fires damped down and the
population properly controlled an

intimidated. And to be in power, as William knew sadly, was
to be despised and obnoxious, which was a dreary fate for a
young man who could not put a girl out of his mind.

  He had ridden the river road many times since he had
overtaken Angela there but obviously she was going on no
more errands to the Ilarper farm, and although he made it
a point to ride past the old parsonage several times . ach
week he got only an occasional glimpse of her.

  Once she had been gathering vegetables in the ragged
little garden and she had snatched a big onion out of the
ground and waved it at him as he let his horse amble by.
But almost immediately he had heard the door clap shut and
a woman in black had appeared on the doorstep to stand
glaring after him.

  On Sundays he saw Angela walking primly to church
between the aunt and her mother, faded women who looked
alike with narrow mouths and white, close-set ears. He sat
on the bench in front of the courthouse one Sunday so he
could be near enough to rise and bow and see the flick of
raw c olor over her face but although he made his most
courteous obeisance, sweeping off his black hat, he got only
stony looks from the older women and a nervous twitch of
Angela's eyelids that offered frail apolog! for the rebuff.
They were on guard against him and there was little that he
could do about it. The last gift of food he had left on the
parsonage doorstep had stayed there, ignored, for days.
Later he had seen the parcel Iying in the street, fought over
by two lean dogs and a skinny Negro child.

  Putting his squads through manual drill in camp William
found his mind wandering as he remembered the feel of
Angela's arms around him on the river road, the lavender
and rose-leaf scent of her petticoats as the jolting trot ol the
horse tossed them, the lilt of laughter in her voice. He had
been wondering if she ever thought of him when he found
himself confusing his bumble-footed troops with
contradictory orders and caught the eye s of hits Iieutenants
upon him sharply. Even Buzzy began to be worried and, still
counting himself a privileged character, he lost no time in
making his anxiety vocal.

  "IIow come you don't yell loud at them black trash, Cap'n
Billy? Their guns is dirty and they don't even keen They say
if the white C:ap'll don't keen how come they got to worry?
Cap'n Billy, pretty

[ 96 ]

soon I got to whop some of them no-good soldiers. They
talkie' that the Cap'n don't want 'em to shoot good, so they
won't shoot no Rebels."

  "Why should they shoot Rebels, Buzzy?" William was
always patient with Buzzy, knowing how precariously thin was
the mulatto boy's loyalty to the army and how difficult Buzzy
would be to catch if he decided to arrange his own personal
separation from a military career. Also Buzzy's desertion
would undoubtedly involve the Mark]and family, and so far,
while so much suspicion boiled in the country, William was
grateful that the Marklands had been able to continue in at
least partial obscurity.

  "They say we got to shoot Rebels, if they try to vote,"
argued Buzzy, "or if they mess with us Colored or the army.
They say we ought to shot Mist' King when he come down
here messin' around after that Lutie woman. You reckon
somebody goin' to shoot Mist' King, if he come backs Maybe
I better git back home and tell Miss Annie not to let Mist'
King come to town no morel"

  "He's not likely to come again, Buzzy. He got hurt pretty
bad. Boss Boone won't let him come again."

  "Boss Boone" Buzzy drew on twenty years of
experience "ain't never told his boys much they put to their
mind. You know Mist' Jack and Mist' King do what they
please to do and don't give no nevermind to nobody. I could
go back home easy could I git me a horse."

  "I could put you in the guardhouse too, but I'd hate to do
it," said William tersely. Buzzy was lucky, he was thinking,
Buzzy still considered that he had a home. He was forever
arguing that he was needed there, that once Boss Boone got
over his big mad about losing that jughead horse Buzzy had
ridden off to the army, Boss Boone would be glad to have a
stout boy to help around the stable.

  A few days later Buzzy tried a new approach to the same
old theme. "Miss' Morgan, he done come to town," he
announced one afternoon. "Mist' Morgan tell me a lot of
white trash done tore up that house where Mist' King been
livin' with that Oliver gal, set it afire too. Mist' Morgan and
Boss Boone put the fire out and killed two of them white
shinnies too. Boss Boone browed one man's haid plumb off
with his ole bear gun."

  William worried more than a Iittle about that. Guerrilla
bands were loudly labeled as Confederate scum by the radical
element in power, but there were shrewd rascals out for
advantage who knew how to use these lawless skulkers for
personal gain. If the two men who had been

[97]

killed had friends or connections in high places there could
be trouble brewing for the Confederate Marklands.

  He warned Buzzy solemnly. "Don't talk about this in camp,
you hear? Don't go bragging that Boss Boone killed
anybody. You could get the place raided the house burned
and Boss Boone hung."

  "You tell Mist' Morgan not to talk then, Cap'n. Mist'
Morgan messin' round them ole Yankees all the time."

  "You're a Yankee, Buzzv, a Yankee soldier. And I'm a
Union officer," William reminded him.

  "Just the same," insisted Buzzy sadly, "them ole Yankees
and ginny soldiers ain't our kind of folks."

  "A retrogressed Yankee," William gave Buzzy a sidelong
punch. "You eat their grub, Buzzy, and take their pay. The
least you could do would be to be loyal to the flag."

  "I done followed that flag too far already, Cap'n," sighed
Buzzy. "Halfway 'round this here world and gittin' shot at.
Whyn't that ole flag go home and let us soldiers git some
rest and good vittles? Ain't you sick of ole beans and corn
beef, Cap'n? They be boilin' 'lasses pretty soon down home.
Wish I could git me some of them good ole 'lasses on a
biscuit."

  "I know a place where they make good biscuits." William
toyed rashly with a mad idea. "slave you any old clothes,
Buzzy? Old wornout regular farm clothes? Pants and a
ragged shirt?"

  "Ain't got no breeches but these here. Gittin' raggedy too.
Shoes gittin' raggedy. All that fours left and by squads right
we got to do all the time. What you want. Cap'n Billy? Want
some hen roost robbed? I find me some ole clothes. Find me
a washin' hangin' on a fence some dark night."

"You'd get shot at. You're not black enough, Buzzy."

"If I burn me a charred stick I git black enough."

  "You could always put the clothes back when you got
through with them," mused William, thinking aloud, letting
reckless impulse run away with discretion. "You know that
little brown house about a block from the courthouse?
Where a preacher used to live?"

"Gal live there, don't she?" Buzzy asked boldly.

"A girl lives there, yes.'

"Seen you ridin' by, three-four times. Scen her wavin' at
you."

"She only waved once."

  "She waved. You ain't looked back. Sittin' up too straight,
hat pull down, big Yankee Cap'n, stmttin'. I seen you, Mist'
Billy."

"All right, you yellow scoundrel, you saw me." A warm glow
was run

[ 98 ]

ning swiftly through William's blood. "She makes good
biscuits. If a poor hungry Colored boy, with no home any
more on account of the bad war, should knock on that door
and say he was hungry she might slip him a biscuit."

"And then," said Buzzy, "I slip her the note."

"Buzzy, you are a diplomat and a man of brilliant intellect."

"You ain't never leached me them big book words, Mist'
Billy."

  "You're smart enough without any more teaching. When is
the next pitch dark night when it would be safe to raid a
clotheslines"

  "Moon wane right now, be dark till midnight next week.
Cap'n, if I wear them clothes in the daytime some rigger's
goin' to see me and cut my throat."

  "You won't need to wear them in the daytime. You can put
them back inside of an hour."

  "And if that ginny lieutenant see me, he put me in the
guardhouse," persisted Buzzy.

  "We'll see that you don't get into the guardhouse, Buzzy."
William grew wistfully reminiscent. "We've always been stout
friends, haven't we, Buzzy?" He was happy. Some of his
harrowing doubts, the uncertainties that had annoyed him
were miraculously lessened. She had waved at him. I le would
not himself consider the dismal possibilities. That Aunt Ella
might slam the door in Buzzy's face. That having received his
surreptitious bills t-doux Angela might crumple it up and
throw it in the fire. That even if she read the note, which he
was now frantically composing in his mind, nothing else might
happen, ever.

  Too well he knew that never would he be welcomed in that
little brown house. The words not meant for his ears, spoken
by that halfdrunk dirty politician had never died in William's
mind. His mother was a lady. Now I reckon she won't let him
darken her door. Would there ever be a door he would be
welcome to darken, here in his own country, the land where
he had been born? Was he a fool to hope? William buried his
face in his hands. Fuzzy looked disturbed. His pale face with
the lavender shadow);, the lips, only a little shaped to
Negroid fullness, quivered.

  "Cap'n Billy," he said, sorrow in his voice, the deep, mystic,
halfincredulous sorrow of the rejected. "Cap'n Billv, I got to
say this. I ain't never goin' say it again. know how you feel,
but you know and I know who is my pappy "

"Dammit! No!" shouted ~ illiam, springing up.

  "Don't git mad, Cap'n, don't git mad," pleaded Buzzy. "Ain't
no use to git mad. What I'm train' to say is how come I
always know

[99]

what you want me to do? How come I know what you
thinkin' when you don't tell me? How come I got to go
where you go? How come you git hurt, I hurt too? Because
part of you is the same as part of me, Cap'n."

"Shut up! Get on away from me and shut up."

  "Yessuh, but you better sit down, Captn, or you fall down
and all them folks up yonder on the courthouse steps they
see you fallin' and they say there that Yankee Cap'n drunk
again." Buzzy pushed William back to the bench, handed
him his canes. "I'm goin' now, Cap'n Billy."

  "Come back here," ordered William sharply. "Now what
was all that fool talk about knowing how I feel?"

  "That gal. That little white gal." Buzzy's teeth flashed in an
impudent grin. "Whyn't you git you some unarmy clothes,
Cap'n, and knock on that door yourself? You want me to
rob some white folks' clothesline for you? Look, Cap'n, why
don't I go back home and git your clothes? All them good
clothes you done had to wear 'fore we went off to war, all
them stylish pants and coats with silver buttons on and fancy
shirts? Boy, did you strut, Mist' Billy! Ain't no more stylish
white man than you ride out to court the gals then. I can git
'em. 'Nerve, she steal 'em out for me."

  "They're probably not there any more, Buzzy. Miss Annie
has likely given them away or the other boys are wearing
them."

  "Ain't nobody ever wore your pants. They all taller than
you. Only one on the place could wear your ole pants was
me," Buzzy recalled.

  It was true. Of all the slim, long-legged Marklands William
had been the shortest, standing just a fraction under six feet.
Even Morgan had topped him by half a head, and Jack and
King had each loomed almost a head taller. Miss Annie's
smallness had striven to impress itself upon one of her
children but had not succeeded.

  "I couldn't go into a house unless I was invited and knew
I would be welcome, Buzzy. And I wouldn't be welcome in
that house," he said.

  "Them ole ladies, they look at all us boys like we trash in
the mud!" growled Buzzy. "Mighty few white folks give us a
friendly look. One ole man he spit on my fools. I ain't told
him he git put in jail if he do that but that sergeant say, next
one spit on me, let him know."

  "You've let me know. Now forget about it. Things are bad
enough without stirring up trouble."

  "When I find them clothes I let you know, Cap'n, but if I
git in trouble you got to git me out. That ole guardhouse
ain't got no good bed nor nothin'. Just a ole plank got to be
scrubbed off with lye all the time."

[ 100 ]

  "Haven't I always taken care of you, Buzzy? Just as you've
taken care of me?" demanded William.

  "You ain't had to do no courtin'for me, Cap'n. That
diff'unt. That kind of complicated."

  William got his canes braced and heaved himself erect.
Hating his handicap, he knew that he should be grateful that
the military let him remain in command. Sam Hood had
fought the final, calamitous battles of the Confederacy
one-legged in the saddle, and there had been Union officers
who refused retirement because of maiming wounds, but
William suspected that it was his tactful handling of Negro
troops that kept him on the Federal payroll. The Lieutenant
from Brooklyn frankly admitted that he could not tell one
black man from another, that they changed their adopted
names every roll call, answered for each other and laughed at
the officers behind their backs.

  "You must remember that for several generations they have
had no names, Lieutenant," William had placated. "There is
no legal way for a Negro to acquire a name so he chooses
one that piques his fancy. If he gets tired of it, there's no law
to compel him to keep it unchanged."

"That mulatto boy has the same name as you, Captain."

"He was my property before the Proclamation."

"How did it feel to own another human being, body and
soul?"

  "I fought to free Buzzy," William said. "Does that answer
your question?"

"Hard to figure you out, you Southerners."

  Now, gripping his canes in sweated palms, William looked
at the crowd that was gathering about the courthouse door.
"What goes on over there?" he asked a passing man.

  "Tax sale," the other snarled. "The radicals are bent on
ruining all the decent people in this county and running us all
out of the state."

  William limped quickly nearer. Most of the crowd were
strangers, newcomers into conquered territory, dry-eyed,
thin-lipped speculators, eager to witness the rape of a
province, ready to profit by it. In the background other
shabbier citizens glowered and growled among themselves:
the local property owners, the "Secesh," despised and
menaced by the men in power in Tennessee.

  Already the clerk, a sheaf of papers in his hand, was
beginning to rattle off in an almost unintelligible singsong the
boundary "calls" of property seized for unpaid taxes. The
bidding was slow, the customers cautious.

"That piece ain't on no good road. Never make a profit on it."

[101]

 "Bid a dollar an acre. Land's worth that just to hold the
earth together."

 William watched as property on which men had spent their
lives, black men, white men, was sold for sums so low as to
be fantastic. Then the clerk began another description. Six
hundred acres. Buildings fair. Land arable. Past due taxes,
five hundred and sixty dollars.

 "This here farm the estate of the deceased Colonel Carter
Oliver. Sole heir to date, Mrs. Winifred Oliver Markland."

 "That's the place guerrillas burnt," a man said to William.
"Ain't been worked since the war. Gone to sprouts and sedge
grass. Bid fifty dollars!" he shouted.

"Fifty dollars an acre?" questioned the clerk.

"Hew fifty dollars for the whole durn property."

"One hundred dollars," called out William recklessly.

"Raise you fifty," came another voice.

 When the sale was completed, no more bids being offered,
Captain William Markland of the United States Army was
the tentative owner, for a price of two hundred and fifty
dollars, of the old Oliver place.

 "What you figure to do with that piece of bramble and
sassafras?" inquired the first bidder. 'Give you a profit of fifty
dollars on it right

IIOW.

"There's still the right of redemption," William reminded
him.

 "Ain't much chance of that. Secesh property. Even if they
get the money together, which ain't likely, court throws the
case out. Happens all the time."

"Maybe I'll live there," said William with a dry grin.

Now, he was thinking heavily, King would hate him more
than ever.

~ Thirteerl.

   rHE EIGHT MEN WHO RODE UP TO 'I'HE GATE
WERE ALL KNOWN TO BOONE

Markland. Three were men of some respectability, quiet
men who had made no secret of their Union sympathies
before the war. The others were hard-faced, political
l~angers-on of the type numerous now in the county.
One, a man named Jeff Nichols who had been an itinerant
large doctor, was now sheriff of the county.

[ 102 ]

  Boone was turning the grindstone for Jack to put an edge
on a plowpoint, with Boone-boy standing on tiptoe pouring
water over the stone from an old coffee pot, when the riders
halted outside the gate.

They did not dismount. The horse-doctor sheriff raised a
shout.

"Open this gate, Markland. This is the law!"

  Jack put the plowpoint down and walked with truculent
stiffness toward the group. Boone wiped his sweated hands on
his breeches, gave a quiet order to the child.

"Get in the house, Boone-boy! Go find your mamma."

"What those men want, Grampa? What they come here for?"

  "I don't know. Go find your mother. You keep to the
house," ordered Boone, striding toward the gate.

  "Open this gate, Boone," ordered the sheriff. "Gitthat chain
unlocked before we bust it. We're ridin' in."

  Boone pushed his dusty old hat back. "What you want here,
Jeff7" he asked with a tinge of contempt. "I've got no colts to
be gelded nor critters with colic."

  "This ain't no critter business, Boone. This here is law
business," barked the sheriff.

  "You've got a warrant I suppose, to come on our property?"
demanded Jack.

  "We've got warrants, eight of 'em. Loaded and holstered.
We're searching this place, Boone, unless you're willing to
give up that boy of yours, peaceable. Mought as well give him
up because we're going to take him, peaceable or not. You
unlockin' this chain or do we bust down the gate7"

  Boone came near to the gate. Jack was taut with rage and
it dismayed and angered him even more to see his father's
calm and almost indifferent attitude.

  Boone was saying, "I got four boys, Jeff. And a little shaver
seven years old. Or are you looking for some Colored fellers
None here any more, just two old Nigra women."

  The sheriff ignored this. "Gimme that there!" he ordered a
man who rode beside him, a slack-jawed countryman with an
evil face. Slack-jaw took a short-handled hatchet from his
saddle, pulled his horse around and neatly chopped free the
hasp that held the gate chain. Then he got down, dragged the
gate back and the eight rode into the yard.

  "This him, Sheriff7" asked another man, crowding his horse
against Jack and forcing him back against the fence.

[ 103 ]

 "All look alike," said Nichols. "You King Markland? King's
the one we come for."

 "King?" demanded Jac k. "What do you want with King?
A gang of crazy Nigras cut him all to pieces a while back.
He's still laid up in bed."

 "None of those Nigras got hurt, Jeff, but they beat my boy
and trampled him, like to have killed him," Boone said.
"Some of your Union officers saved him, saved him from
being beat to death and his throat cut. You can ask them.
King's been Iying up in bed for two weeks, his mother
nursing him."

 "Figured you'd lie for him, Boone. Figured you'd hide him
out." l'he sheriff had alighted and stood braced, belligerently,
his hands Oil the butts of two heavy pistols.

 "I ain't hiding King. Why should I hide him? He ain't done
anything. What you picking on King for, Jeff? He never did
any violence to anybody. He's Iying up yonder in his own
bed, got a bad rising in his side, been there going on three
weeks now. Been a mighty sick boy."

 "I reckon," drawled Nichols, with contemptuous irony,
"that them two dead men the wild hogs rooted up over
yonder on King's wife's place just died quiet and natural
with no violence being done to 'em?"

 "I reckon," put in the slack-jawed man angrily, "that Bart
Hoople, was my wife's first cousin from down in Lincoln,
reckon he just naturally browed out his own brains. Got
tired of livin' and buried hisself over yonder in that plotted
held. Sounds reasonable!"

Boone drew himself up haughtily. Jack shouted a warning.

"Pa!"

 But Boone did not heed. "I browed that feller's brains
out," he announced. "They were guerrillas, twenty of 'em.
Mounted and riding out to burn and destroy. They attacked
us Jack and me. We went over to help King out on his
Flowing, him being sick so long. They looted the house and
set it ahre. We defended ourselves. Any man would defend
himself if he was attacked by a gang like that."

 SO, he left Morgan out of it, Jack was thinking with a
tinge of bitterness. Pa drags me into it but he leaves Little
Brother in the clear.

 Aloud he said, "How were we to know they were kin to
decent people? Decent people don't start in to loot a house
and then set fire to it."

"Ain't burnt. It's standing right there," argued Nichols.

 "It's not burnt because we put out the Ore, and we buried
those dead men after all the rest rode off and left them
Iying where they fell,"

L 104 ]

stormed Jack. "You county officers up for guerrilla raiders
now, Nichols7"

 "My wife's kin ain't no guerrilla!" shouted Slack-jaw. "If he
was there he was on business."

 "You said you found him there. Ilis business was smashing
up everything that couldn't be carried off and then burning
the rest. Fine business for any man's kin to be mixed up in,"
snarled Jack.

 The sheriff looked a trifle uncertain and disgusted. "Looks
like we can't never learn you Secesh that the war's over," he
said sadly.

 "When mounted outlaws ride the country, burning and
robbing, the war's not over!" Boone shouted. "A man's got a
right to defend himself if he's fired on, no provocation at all.
I figured we did them men a kindness when we buried 'em,
when all the others left 'em where they fell. I killed that man
at a hundred yards with an old bear gun that belonged to my
pappy, and I'm telling you straight, Jeff Nichols, that you'd
have done the same if they rode through your place and took
shots at you, vou minding your own business."

 "Want we should tie 'em up, Sheriff7" asked a
red-whiskered man. "Don't look like you could take 'em
peaceable."

 The sheriff pursed his lips, gnawed his mustache. "I reckon
you know I got to take you in, Boone?" he said, unhappily.
"It's my legal duty. It'll be better for everybody if you go
along peaceable."

 "You can't take us without a warrant," defied Jack, his face
tight and livid with impotent fur,. Desperately he was
remembering his rifle, hid in the oatbin a hundred feet away.
Remembering other times of violence down in the valley of
the Tennessee River, on the bloodied hills of Alabama and
Tennessee. Tight places, outnumbered, surrounded, where he
had met an enemy bent on his destruction and had fought
free. Always he had fought free. All the Marklands had
fought themselves free. Had all that bitter conflict been
endured only to bring him home to be dealt with violently
and unjustly by a gang of political scalawags bent on winning
favor by the destruction of the enemies of other scalawags in
high places? "You come here properly. with a legal warrant,
and we might listen to you," he said coldly.

 "I told you we fetched all the warrants we need. Looks like
we got to use 'em." The sheriff drew his pistol. Instantly every
man in the crew drew a weapon. A dozed guns were levered
at the Marklands standing gray-faccd and unanned in the
slanting sunlight.

 Abruptly Jack sprang, caught the top rail of the fence,
swung his legs in air and kicked the red bearded man in the
face. The man wend down like a poled ox and a half-do7cn
startled shots went wild split

[ 105 1

tering the planks of the barn, and the rails of the fence. Jack
found himself pulled down, heavy feet pressing his shoulders
to the ground and as he fought he blinked up through sweat
and glared into the angry face of his own father.

 "Lie still, you hot-headed fool!" ordered Boone. "You
could have got us both killed."

 "Turn me loose!" yelled Jack, writhing sidewise, beating
with furious fists on his father's knees. "Turn me loose, I tell
you."

Boone Markland jerked his son upright.

"Turn him loose, Boone. We can handle him," ordered the
sheriff.

 "I'll handle my own get, Nichols!" Boone gave Jack a hard
cuff on the side of the head. "He ll come peaceable."

 The red-beard, sloshed into furious awareness by a thrown
bucket of water, charged through the group. "Lemme at
him!" he screamed, kicking Boone aside. "Lemme at the son
of a bitch!"

 He slammed a flat blow at the side of Jack's head with a
pistol turned menacingly on Boone. "I ll deal with you too,
you damned old Secesh traitor!"

 But Boone was too quick. With bone-breaking strength he
had the ruffian's arm twisted behind his back, shoving him
backward.

 "I'm trying to keep down trouble, you crazy fool," he raged.
"All right, Nichols, if you're in command here and got any
guts to do your job, take us into town!"

 "Tie him up that young one," ordered Nichols
importantly. "You aim to come quiet, Boone, or do I have
to rope you like a steers"

 "I've got to tell my wife," said Boone. "Maybe there'll be a
judge in town with a smattering of brains, or has justice been
hamstrung forever in Tennessee?"

 "You'll be lucky if the judge ain't minded to hang the both
of you," snapped Nichols. "That young squirt of yours,
resisting an officer in the performance of his duty. Rope that
feller good, boys. I got to go along with Boone to the house."

 Behind him Boone was aware that Jack's limp body, tied
hand and foot, was being flung across the saddle of a stolid
horse. Miss Annie, pale as chalk, was waiting at the door.

 "Jeff Nichols, you should be ashamed of yourself!" she
stormed at the sheriff. "As many times as I've had a good
meal cooked for you here on this place. You bring my folks
back here safe, you hear? Fighting your own neighbors like
they were wild Indians! Mr. Markland, I rolled up some
clean shirts and underwear for you and put some corn bread
and sweet potatoes in. You'll get hungry before you get
home."

[ 106 ]

  Dimly Boone noted the stark, terrified eyes of Winnie, Sue
with all the flame of her coppery temper blazing from her
face, Boone-boy's appalled, big-eyed terror. Boone-boy came
rushing up and gave the sheriff a savage kick on the shin.

"You hurt my papa, you olc devil Yankee you!" he screamed.

  Gently Boone lifted the child and put him into his mother's
arms. Gently he bent and kissed his wife.

"We'll be back," he promised. "Don't you worry."

  Afterward, riding a jolting nag led by another man he tried
to remember how long it had been since he had kissed Miss
Annie. Her face had felt cold and tight as glass.

  They slogged the dusty, deserted road in silence. Before
they reached the river Jack had come to and leaned, retching
and moaning, against his father's body. Three men turned off
at the bridge.

"Reckon you won't need us no more, Sheriff. About feedin'
time."

  They rode away without a backward look and Boone's eyes,
following them, held no malice or resentment. Countrymen,
ignorant, fanatic, prejudiced, impressed into a scurvy job by
a petty official. For the four who remained alongside, sorry
scoundrels, he had only contempt.

  "I got to lock your boy up, Boone," Nichols said when they
approached the center of town. "He ain't minded to act
peaceable. But you can stay to my house till the prosecutor
decides whether you can get bail or not."

  "I'm not leaving my son, sick and stunned like he is,"
declared Boone indignantly. "You lock me up with him."

  The sheriff sighed. "Well, if you say so, but remember I
tried to make things easier for you. Not that you ain't guilty
of murder by your own admission, but there's circumstances
ain't proved and I don't like unproved circumstances. Rear up
in the middle of a trial and knock your case all to hell."

  "What you're meaning is, if they hang me you don't want
any part of it on your conscience," drawled Boone. "You right
sure you got any conscience, Jeff, or did you swap it off to
Brownlow's radical mob for that tin badge to wear on your
shirt?"

  "I told you, I was trying to do the right thing!" barked the
harassed horse doctor. "If you got no appreciation for decent
treatment it's no skin off my rump."

  There was only one bunk in the odorous cell into which the
Marklands were shoved, Jack reeling blindly and held erect
be his father's

[10, ~

strong grip. Boone laid his son flat on the sorry cot and
turned back as the door swung shut u ith a heavy clang.

  "If you're feeling so magnanimous all of a sudden, Jeff," he
shouted, "send a doctor to tend this boy. Might be that blow
cracked his skull. His eyes don't look right."

  "Save us a length of rope," jeered the red-bearded deputy,
standing, grinning and still wet, in the corridor. "Leave him
die where he lays, old man, and he'll be puffier to bury."

  There was a bucket half-full of stale water in the cell and
Boone took off his sweated shirt, dipped and wrung it out
and pressed the cool, wet cloth over the dark swelling on
Jack's head. His eyes were already closed and he licked his
lips and gagged and muttered incoherently. Boone clenched
his fists and beat them impotently on his own chest, snarling
words that would have appalled Miss Annie. He shook the
bars of the door, roaring maledictions like a wounded lion,
and the prisoners in other cells began yelling too.

"Cuss 'em, old man! Cuss their rotten, rigger-loving gutsl"

  Then a quavering voice from the next cell was lifted
shrilly. "That you in there, Boone Markland?"

"It's Boone Markland,' Boone answered, startled. "Who are
you?"

  "John Lawson, Boone. Your neighbor. Thought I
recognized your bellowing. What you locked up for?"

"Sheriff figures I shot Abe Lincoln."

  "You never did it, Boone. I shot Abe. Blowed his brains
plumb out of that gorilla head," chortled Lawson. "Then a
low-down carpetbagger thief took title to my place and tried
to run me off. I filled his breeches full of buckshot. Hit him
where his brains were, like they learned us down in Lincoln
County. Who'd you kill, Boone?"

  "I killed one looting skunk and directly I get out of here
I'll kill a few more," stormed Boone recklessly. "They half
killed a boy of mine. He's laying here now, plumb out of his
head."

  "Well, you got you a boy." Lawson choked a little, as
though helpless fury strangled him. "You can look at him.
You don't have to think about him flung out on some hill
somewhere for the buzzards to pick at like my Milo. Or
drownded in a bloody muddy river like my Johnny. Got
browed up down to Mobile. You ain't had your land took
away from you like me, land where my grandpappy fit the
Cherokee and died with an arrow through his gizzard. You
ain't got no cause to bellyache. Might be they'll hang both of
us but the world's gone to the devil anyway. Ain't much
inducement to keep living, breathing the same air as
Brownlow, not to mention Seward and Sherman

[ 108 ]

and that whole pack of contumacious, contemptible,
Judas-cursed radicals."

A deputy tramped in and stood truculently, hands on gun
butts.

 "Shut up in there, you mess of goddammed yap-mouthed
Rebels! Shut up before I come in there and learn you not to
low-rate your betters."

 Boone MarkLand sat down u eerily on the single stool. It
was rickety, one leg loose, and teetered perilously. l le buried
his head in his hands and let desolation take him. T axes. He
had not thought of taxes. For years, when he had money he
paid up, sometimes as much as a fiveyear levy. No land had
ever been sold at the courthouse door, no decent Tennessean
would bid on the property of a citizen in distress. Now they
had forged this new weapon with which to cudgel and destroy
men already vanquished.

 Lawson's place, a rich, well tended river farm, seized from
him for a few paltry dollars. Lawson had never owned slaves
but his sons had fought for the Confederacy. Maybe at this
moment Boone's own home was in peril. He had deeded it to
Annie when King was born, handing her the deed grandly his
gift in payment for his two strong, handsome sons.

 The thought was anguish and Boone bit back the bitter
groans that pressed up from the pain in his breast. Then Jack
stirred.

"Pa?" he muttered. "That you, Pa?"

  "It's me, son." Boone went to the bunk, wiped Jack's
sweated face with the still-damp sleeve of the shirt. "You lie
still. You got hit on the head."

  "Where are we?" Jack tried to raise his head, closed his
eyes again and moaned. Boone felt the swollen place on the
boy's scalp gingerly. It throbbed under his fingers and a little
blood stained them.

  "We're in jail, Jack. Locked up like felons by white-trash
deputies, with them cussing us through the bars. This is the
peace, Jack. The peace you fought for."

  "We never fought for an, Yankee peace, we fought against
it," muttered Jack. "My mouth is mighty dry, Pa."

  "There's no water here fit hi drink. A hog wouldn't drink
it." Boone went to the door and shook the bars till they
rattled. "There's a sick man in here needs a drink of riveter,"
he shouted when the red-bearded deputy appeared.

  The man grinned maliciously. "Want water do you, Reb?
All right, here's water. Drown yourself in it." He seized a
bucket that stood on a bench outside the cell, lifted it and
flung the water through the bars.

[ 109]

Boone was drenched and much of it splashed on the cot where
Jack lay. Boone did not speak. Hi stood and glared till the
snickering tormentor backed off, flinging bask, "That'll learn
you, you old devil you!"

"Some time," Boone said then, slow and deadly, "I'll see you
again."

 "Dance pretty when you do, old man," taunted the
red-beard. "You'll be dancing on air, Markland, and there
won't be no fiddles playing."

~ Fourteen ~

IT WAS ONE OF THOSE VERY DARK NIGHTS THAT
coME LATE, BEFORE THE birth of the autumn-brigllt
harvest moon. The stars were very few and far, and all about
the earth was shrouded in purple-black secrecy, aloof and
hostile, full of small stirrings and cracklings.

 The gelding was nervous and snorted as he ambled the
dim road. Sue patted his neck and spoke low and soothingly
to him, holding a tight rein. Once when an owl swung down
silently, a movement, a whisper of feathers on the air close
to her head, the horse shied and Sue had to clutch the
saddle horn quickly, almost dropping the rifle.

 She and Boone-boy had dug the gun out of the oatbin in
the dark, loaded it in the dark, blowing the dust from the
muzzle. She hoped it would fire if she neede l it and not
burst in her hand. At least she was confident that the gelding
was not gun shy. There had been shooting when Morgan
rode him to Winnie's place the day of the guerrilla raid,
surely enough gunfire then to accustom any animal to the
noise of shots. Thinking of Morgan made her skin prickle
and anger burn in her throat and stiffen her hands.

 Just when he was needed most Morgan had not come
home at all. Hour after hour they had waited, terrified, Miss
Annie a bloodless wraith pacing from window to window,
King groaning and cursing on the couch where he lay, still
hot and weak with a low fever. When he had been trampled
in that Ncgro melee some filth had gotten into a wound and
it still drained, fetid and angry, in spite of Miss Annie's
poultices and bandages. a hey had waited, listening and
tense, Winnie running to the door every few minutes to stare
through the darkness down the road, but still M organ had
not come.

[ 110]

 "If he's in town he has heard about it by now," grumbled
King. "They couldn't drag somebody like Pa off to jail without
everybody hearing about it."

 "You don't even know that they took them to jail," Winnie
cried. "And you certainly didn't make things any easier for
them if they are in jail now, you stirring up all that trouble in
town."

 "Oh, shut up," King muttered wearily. "I told you a hundred
times I was drunk. No man knows what he's doing when he's
drunk."

 "You knew!" shrilled Winnie, white-lipped. "Yelling that
slut's name out for everybody to hear."

"Who said I yelled her name?" He rose on an elbow, livid
with fury.

  "Buzzy said so. He was there. He ran and brought your
brother to save you from being killed. Buzzy told Mammy
Dory you were yelling for that Lutie and her man was going
to cut your throat. And Mammy Dory told me," announced
Winnie triumphantly.

  "Hush up, both of you!" ordered Sue, bluntly. "Miss Annie
has enough trouble without you two fighting all the time. Miss
Annie"  she turned to the little woman who still stood at the
window as though she had been frozen there "I'd feel better
if we had a gun in the house. Do you know where Pa
Markland would have a gun hidden?"

  "I knowl" piped up Boone-boy, whom nobody had been able
to persuade to go to bed.

  "Last I knew they were in a bale of cotton in the old
cistern," King said, "but Pa must have taken them out. They
had guns over at our place."

  "I know," persisted the child. "In the oats! I saw my papa
hide a rifle in the oats."

  "Come along then, Boone-boy." Sue moved with alacrity,
thankful for something definite to do. "I'll drop you over in
the bin and you hunt us out a gun."

  "Barrel down, boy," reminded King. "Don't pull a gun out
by the barrel."

  "I know about guns," declared Boone-boy loftily. "I can
break 'em and load and everything. Grampa showed me."

  "You'll need a lantern." Winnie started for the rear of the
house but Sue interposed.

  "No no light. I don't want to show a light out there. And
you lock the door after us. Come on, son."

"You're going alone? Out in that awful dark?" asked Winnie.

  Boone-boy looked scornful. "My mama's not skeert. She's
not skeert of anything."

[ 111 ]

  It was while she was crouched in the pitch black quiet of
the stable with Boone-boy rustling and grunting beyond the
plank wall of the bin that Sue knew what she had to do.

  "I found one," whispered the boy excitedly. "Shotgun. Take
it easy, Ma, by the stock."

  "Find another," ordered Sue, lifting the heavy weapon and
feeling abruptly inadequate with the cold weight of it in her
hands.

  He dug up the rifle next and Sue took it from him, waited
till he scrambled out, then stood both guns against the
planks of the bin.

  "Now," she whispered conspiratorially. "You help me
saddle that gelding. I'm going to get help for Grampa and
your daddy and I'll take the rifle, but don't you tell your
grandmother till I'm gone, you hear?"

  "You going to find Uncle Morgan? Uncle Morgan will get
my pa and Grampa away from those bad men, won't he?
Lemme go with you, Mama," he begged.

  "No, you have to stay here and take care of your
grandmother and Winnie because Uncle King's too sick.
Help me get that saddle down and stay away from that colt's
heels."

  "Aw, I know how to act around a horse," complained the
boy in disgust. "If that geld wasn't so tall I could put the
bridle on myself. Those stirrups will be too long for you, Ma.
If I had a light I could shorten 'em."

  "Never mind, I'll manage. I've been riding horses since I
was smaller than you. I won't get thrown."

  The gelding blew out and swelled himself up when the
girth was tightened, and Boone-bov pummeled his hard body
with his fists till the animal relaxed and gave a resigned sigh.

  "Grampa kicks 'em. My legs ain't long enough," he said.
"Pull that throat latch tight, Mama."

  "I am pulling it," panted Sue, "but he wants to lick my hair.
Shove that keg over here, Boone-boy, so I can get on. Now
you take that shotgun to the house and tell Uncle King I've
gone for help. You won't be afraid?"

  "Hell, not" scorned her son, shouldering the heavy gun.
"Does anybody come messing around this place I'll blow his
head off."

  "Don't you dare fire that gun, Boone-boy! It would kick
you clear across the yard. And don't be using bad words
either. Prop that door back, then get going. I'll wait out here
till you're safe inside."

  "If Grampa had had this ole gun I'll bet those mean
Yankees wouldn't never have hurt my daddy," declared the
child as he trudged toward the house.

[ 112]

 Sue rode out of the yard. The gate had not been fixed since
the sheriff's gang had forced it, and she walked the gelding
out to the road, then urged him into a jolting canter. She
rode astride, her skirt bunched up over her knees and she
knew that that would be a scandal by daylight. She recalled
that by carriage the town was at least four hours distant, but
now the nights were longer and there was always the chance
that she might meet Morgan on the road. Just what Morgan
could do in the desperate situation was a bit vague in her
mind but waiting long in that dread-haunted house with Miss
Annie wearing a death's-head face and Winnic whimpering
and complaining had been intolerable. At least it was a relief
to be out alone in the dark with only the soft notes of
late-nesting mocking birds and the occasional grunt of a
wandering groundhog in her ears.

 Along the road the old rail fence, once overgrown fragrantly
with honeysuckle and trumpet vine, was nearly all torn away,
burned by the two armies that had ravaged this countryside.
The skeleton stones of a blackened chimney dim against the
sky were all that was left of a farmhouse where two
Confeclerate spies had hidden, according to a lurid story.
Union cavalry had overrun the place and burned the buildings
and there had been a day of panic on the Markland place
when the riders in blue were reported less than four miles
away. Musing on that memory Sue suddenly pulled the rein
so hard that the gelding snorted and stopped dead still.

 Cavalry. Union cavalry. Billy! Captain William Markland of
the United States Army. Why hadn't she thought of Billy?

 If anyone had a chance to extricate the Marklands from
their desperate situation it would be Billy. Not Morgan, who
by his Confederate record would be assumed to be as guilty,
as vulnerable to persecution as Boone Markland and Jack.
Sue slammed her heels hard into the horse's flanks and urged
him into a jarring lope. Her skirts flew up and down, the pins
tumbled out of her hair so that the snood blew away and curls
fell over her shoulders and across her face.

 It came to her like a breath of icy wind that King's
misadventure had happened at night near that garrison camp,
that she could be running into danger and it might be wiser
to wait for day, so she slowed her mount and let him amble
quietly while she watched the eastern sky for some pale hint
of approaching morning.

 A star was burning very brightly there now, and a slow, cool
breeze began stirring the grass and weeds in the neglected
fields along the road. There was a sharp smell of cool water
and she knew by the moist suck of the gelding's hoofs that
she was nearing the river, remembered

[ 1 13 ]

that the road ran close to the river's edge for a mile or two
before it reached the outskirts of the town.

 She smelled apples then and surmised that she was passing
an old orchard, and suddenly from the trees a bird began to
sing and far off an excited rooster crowed. She pulled the
horse into the deeper shadow of the apple trees7let him
reach and nip at the lower branches but held the rein taut
so that he could not get his head down. It seemed hours
before a wan, sickly greenish light began to seep thinly over
the landscape, not bright enough to let forms come clear but
at least it diluted the shadows. Then a pale, lime-green line
shimmered along the softly rolling land to the east and Sue
began putting her dishevelment into some kind of order,
shifting to perch sideways in the saddle, smooth her rumpled
skirts. Her hair was hopeless so she twisted it into a plait
down her back oblivious of the curling tendrils that fluffed
around her cheeks and ears.

 The light grew brighter and trees and bushes took on
definite form. In a farmyard up a slope a little way a lantern
winked in the hulking shadows of buildings that had escaped
the shattering of war. Birds twittered, flying about excitedly,
and her horse dragged down a lowhanging apple from the
tree overhead and crunched it, slobbering and jerking the
bit, flinging drops of moisture back on her restraining hands.
She clucked to hirn, pulled his head up, but he was reluctant
to leave, backing and nuzzling the branch, hunting more
apples. She hit him hard on the head with the long end of
the rein, tugged him around and headed him back to the
road.

 There he broke into a brisk trot, scenting the river and
wanting water, and she let him go, guiding him down to the
edge of the stream where the bank was firm. Hearing him
drink made her thirsty herself but she did not dare get down
for fear she would not be able to mount again. Her stomach
began to hurt hollowly too, reminding her that none of the
Marklands had been able to eat after Sheriff Nichols'
invasion. Minerva had cooked supper but even Boone-boy
had picked nervously at his food, frightened and upset by
the tension of the others.

 I hope Billy can get me a cup of coffee when I find him,
she was thinking adding uneasily, if I find him. She knew
that he had been in town when King was attacked but nearly
three weeks had gone by since then and the troops might
have been moved on. She caught herself praying as she rode
slowly into the outskirts of the town. Lord, let him be here,
make hen listen. But what if Boone Markland and Jack
refused to accept help from William? Sue had heard the
bitter

[ 114]

words when Billy had saved King from that vengeful mob and
knew their continuing angry resenbacnt. Morgan had silenced
them then. She hoped Molgan would be available now.

  That brought another confused, angry thought. Where was
Morgan, where did he go, where did he stay, when time after
time he failed to come homer Always he had a jaunty,
insolently evasive excuse, always he brought home
money won at cards, so he claimed. Morgan had been a
Confederate soldier. Why was he tolerated, why could he ride
boldly into the radical camp and return unmolested when
Jack and King had both been beaten? Morgan had better help
and he had better have some answers ready when she saw
him again.

  She had no idea where the troops were camped but from
Morgan's report of King's escapade she knew they could not
be too far from the shanty town, the scrabble collection of
makeshift huts and shelters where the gangs of dislocated,
homeless Negroes had gathered. That sorry rendezvous of
confusion and misery would be on the outskirts of the town
so Sue avoided the main streets and skirted around the
established area by back lanes and alleys, stared at sullenly by
a few early rising blacks and poor whites, smelling hungrily
the odors of frying bacon that seeped from the scattered
hovels she passed.

  Would there be tents and a flag, sentries to challenge her,
deny her the right to see the Captain? She had a hazy idea of
the military, having seen little of it save the few detachments
of Confederate cavalry that had appeared at the Marl;land
farm, been royally entertained and given the best of
everything, and who then usually repaid that hospitality by
requisitioning more horses, more hay and grain.

  She glimpsed the shack town then, huddled on a slope
above the river, crazy shelters of slabs and rough planks,
ragged tents with rusty stovepipes jutting from the rear. Dark
figures moved in that noisome jungle and she nervously urged
the horse into a trot, almost running down a man in army
breeches and a soiled undershirt who was trotting ahead of
her on the road jerking on the sleeves of a Federal uniform
jacket as he trotted along. He jumped, turned, rolled big eyes
at her and yelled.

"Miss Sue! Miss Sue!"

  "BuzzyI" It was a cry, a sob of relief, a hysterical outburst
that released her tension and terror. "Buzzy! Oh, Buzzy, it's
you."

  She reined the gelding in and Buzzy came alongside and
laid a hand on the saddle leather.

  "Miss Sue, what you doing here?" he asked anxiously. "This
here ain't no place for a lady like y out"

[ 115 ]

 She was sobbing so muc h that she could hardly speak, and
her whole body shook with a nervous chill. This was
Buzzy part of home, Buzzy who had belonged till the war
worked its savage destruction to home ties and loyalties.
"Buzzy it's Boss Boone and Mister Jack. The sheriff came
yesterday and took them both and they beat Jack
unconscious. I rode all night to find Billy your Captain
Billy."

 Buzzy's wide eyes bulge d even wider. With one agile leap
he sprang up behind her.

 "Git along, Miss Sue. (fit goin' you boss! We find the
Cap'n. Mist' Morgan too. Miss Sue, they got Boss Boone in
that jail? They got white folks in that jail, they say they goin'
to hang some what killed some Unions. I heared it. Niggers
hears all the white folks' talk. Turn here, Miss Sue. I reckon
I got to wake up Cap'n. Reckon he ain't feelin' so good. Last
night they had a big fight."

"What kind of a fight, Buzzy?"

 "Just a cuss and hit fight. Not no guns. Mist' Morgan and
Cap'n Billy fightin'. The officers took Captn Billy's gun,
didn't want him to hurt nobody he was so mad. Mist'
Morgan got his nose busted bloody all over. They never
knowed Boss Boone got took. They too busy fightin' each
other. Right yonder," Buzzy pointed, "that ole house where
Cap'n Billy stay at. Miss Sue, you let me go in and git him
up first."

 "But why were they fighting, Buzzy? Because Billy went
with the Union?"

 "No'm, don't reckon. They was fightin' over some li'l ole
white gal. And it shore was a mean fight."

0 Fifteen ~

SHE WAS IN TERRIBLE DISC:RACE.

 Neither her mother nor Aunt Ella would speak to her
when they went to bed long past midnight, although her
mother had turned at the last and given her a sad,
reproachful look. Earlier, Angela had stormed at them, all
the green fire in her eyes alight and blazing, scarlet cheeks
flaming.

"Why are you blaming me?" she demanded. "Can I help it if
what

6 1

men do doesn't please you? I've known Morgan Markland
ever since we were in school. You thought it was fine when
he first came calling here, all dressed up and riding a fine
horse. You said he was one of our Confederate heroes, you
even made tea and brought in those poor little dry cakes. You
said it was like old times having gentlemen come calling
again."

  "When he came calling like a gentleman of course we
approved," stated Aunt Ella icily. "But that other one, that
Yankee in his vile uniform. You were very sly about that,
Miss. We should have known  that flour on the doorstep."

  "You ate it," reminded Angela maliciously. "You were very
glad to eat it. And before that he saved me from being
abused by a Colored soldier, and he brought me home safe
from the Harpers' when you know very well I might have
been attacked."

  "If we had known it was Yankee flour it would have gone
into the street along with his later Insulting donations,"
snapped her aunt. "That was deceit and you were a party to
it, young lady. So were those notes that came by the back
door, that you hid till your mother got possession of that last
one. A disgusting, familiar note from a Yankeel And the boy
W]10 brought them was no poor, hungry lost slave, he was
one of their abominable soldiers. I found that out. I took the
trouble to find out. And I spoke a piece of my mind to that
captain. He knows exactly what I think of his outrageous
conduct."

  "For which piece of insolence fortunately you are not in jail
this minute," flared Angela.

  "The ideal" Aunt Ella flounced her black alpaca, making all
her petticoats rattle. She had to boil corncobs to starch them
now but starch them she did, picking up the dirty cobs in the
henhouse, scrubbing and boiling them. "They would never
dare put a Southern lady in jail. Not for trying to protect an
innocent and ignorant girl from vile attentions."

  "I resent that word, Aunt Ella! Nobody ever offered me any
vile attentions. William Markland was a gentleman and so
was his brother."

  Her mother spoke up then, more with gentle sadness than
with rancor. "You will admit that there was much conduct
tonight, Angela, that could hardly be called the behavior of
gentlemen7 Morgan Markland coming here, decidedly under
the influence "

  "The fellow was drunk!" snorted Ella. "Definitely,
disgustingly drunk. The house reeks yet of alcohol and his
filthy tobacco. And no

[ 117]

gentleman would use the language he employed when he
walked out that door.t'

  "After you invited him out the door, sister," reminded Mrs.
Wood. "I do not condone his actions in the least. For the
son of a well-born and prominent family he was certainly
guilty of indelicate conduct."

  "Boasting, in this house, the home of a man who gave his
life at Shiloh for the Cause boasting that he had spent a
whole day playing cards with radical scum like that Josh
Fletcher and Doctor Grimes. Men whom no decent person
would condescend to recognise on the street."

  "Morgan was boasting that he had won their money, Aunt
Ella," Angela suggested. "He thought he was doing
something praiseworthy. He called it despoiling the
Philistines."

  "It was contamination, even breathing the same air with
such creatures. I sorrow for his mother. And then to shout
profanity profane insults to a respectable, delicately reared
girl like you from our very doorstep " Ella paused,
panting with indignation, her face stiffly grey except for two
purple patches on her cheekbones, her eyes looking ready to
come plumping out of their sockets.

  "He wasn't insulting me," defended Angela, permitting
herself a nervous giggle at the sight of Aunt Ella, all swelled
lip and ready to explode. "He meant it for a compliment."

  "Profanity never complimented any one, daughter. I can
imagine what your dear father would have to say about that."

  "Morgan said that I was his girl and that he'd come to
see me any time he goddam pleased," quoted Angela
impudently. "And that was what made his brother Willialll
mad."

  "Watching this house. It has gone on before. Oh, I ve
noticed. Even before that yellow boy started coming to the
back door on one flimsy pretext or another. Claiming to be
separated from his family and hungry. When I think of the
bread you wasted on that wretch when all the time the army
was feeding him. Giving you sly looks so you'd manage to
smuggle in the note he was carrying and slip it into your
bosom. Shameless utterly shameless!"

  "They were very nice notes, gentlemanly and polite. And
you needn't order me to give them to you, Aunt Ella, or you
either, Mother, as I shall never do it." Angela's eyes blazed
defiantly.

  "I don't know what to think of you, Angela," sighed her
mother. "Deceiving us. Seeing this Yankee "

  "Ike was born right here in this county. Anyway we've all
got to be Yankees now. There's no Confecleracy anv more.
It's dead and the

[ 118]

dead ought to be buried buried and forgotten!" cried the
girl. "Oh, I know you think that's heresy, especially you, Aunt
Ella keeping that silly little flag in your bosom."

 "Don't you dare defame our flag," shrilled Ella. "You
callous, immoral creature Yes immoral, Carrie, for no one
with morals and honor could possibly say the things your
insolent daughter is saying. Thank Providence your poor
father never lived to see this tragic day."

 "If he had lived," said Angela coldly, "he would have been
the first person in this town to take the oath of loyalty to the
Union. He didn't want the Union destroyed. It grieved him
to his heart and you both know it. You were the ones who
thought Jefferson Davis was a god, not he. He said, and I
heard him, that Davis was a weak, deluded man, that it was
tragic that the South must depend upon men whose minds
were confused, and obstinate in their wrong-headed
confusion. Events," stated the girl, with a flare of her dead
father's gift for pungent phrase, "have proved how right my
father was in his thinking. Even his death was the result of
their stubborn stupidity and hollow pride."

 "Angela, Angela," mourned her mother. "You must not say
such things. What if you should be heard outside this houses
Don't disgrace your father's memory with such reckless
remarks."

 "If he were alive he'd be making the same remarks himself,"
persisted Angela. "Maybe even from the pulpit."

 "How can you sit there, Carrie Wood, and listen calmly to
such words from your own child's lips?" fumed Ella, pacing
the floor. "No doubt you are quoting your friend, the Union
Captain, Angela. Treason to the South, the South that bred
him, is not so strange and appalling coming from a traitor to
his own family. Why doesn't he go home when he has a
mother less than eighteen miles away7 Because she
repudiates him, as does every loyal Southerner in Tennessee."

 "Because everything that has happened has proved that
William Markland was right, and all the rest of his family
wrong," argued the girl stubbornly. "People are never forgiven
for being right never."

 "At least I don't see how he can be forgiven for picking a
horrid fight with his own brother right in our front yard," said
her mother. "He has made us all objects of shame and
embarrassment before our neighbors."

 "William hit Morgan because Morgan swore in my hearing,"
Angela said. "And if William hadn't hit Morgan I think that
you would have slapped him yourself, Aunt Ella. You were
certainly mad enough to do it."

[ 1 19 ]

  "I assure you, Miss," said Ella stiffly, "that I had no desire
to engage in an unseemly brawl. MN only wish was to get
the drunken creature out of this house, get back inside and
lock the door before we suffered further humiliation. I
should have gone instead and fetched the sheriff and had
them both locked up. If either of them ever sets foot on
these premises again that is exactly what I shall do."

  Angela gathered up her skirts and tossed her head.
"Then," she said, her chin set grimly, "I shall have to meet
them elsewhere. I've already made up my mind that if i'm
ever to meet any men at all that's exactly what I shall have
to do."

  "You are utterly depra\ ed," flared Ella. "Carrie, say
something! Are you going to sit there and snivel and let
your only child challenge your authority in such bold
fashion?"

  Mrs. Wood rose wearily and picked up a candle. "I think
that too much has been said already. Angela is angry IIOW.
We will all be able to think more calmly in He morning. I
for one am going to bed before the SUII comes up."

  "I shall not be able to c lose nly eyes," snapped her sister.
"I shall sit here and read the Prayel Book and pray for this
wicked, misguided child as her father would do if he had
been spared."

  "I think," said Angela, "that my father would have thought
it an exciting fight. Except that Morgan wasn't able to stay
on his feet very long and most likely IIOW has a beautiful
black eye. Those Marklands always did fight like tigers even
when they were small boys. I suppose that's the reason they
came safely through the war."

  She marched away to her own room and closed the door
firmly. She was still tingling a little and aghast at her own
temerity, but there was a kind of wild singing in her blood
and a humming in her ears. He was jealous jealous!
William had been jealous, furious because his younger
brother had been received in the house. The fact that
Morgan had been drinking was only an excuse. William had
been jealous and he had wanted to hit Morgan for being
there at all. Two men, fighting over me, sighed Angela
deliciously, falling back on her bed and kicking her heels in
the air in gay abandon.

  And she had warned them, those good, grey guardian
women. She had challenged them to restrict her any longer.
She had been dreadful hilt it had been exhilarating and now
she was all aquiver with the hcadv stimulus of her rebellion
~ONV she would walk out boldly aloTlc Old if she saw
Captain Marlilalld on his usual bench in the courthouse
Nard some sundo\~:ll she wolllcl stop and spear; to hilll
and let who

cascd glare conclellluat on.

l idol

  She would even, if she could manage it, go and take the
oath of allegiance to the Union. She was not sure whether
young people were allowed to swear allegiance, but she would
find out. She was young and the young marched with the
living, accepted what was unavoidable, what was true, rather
than huddling in secret to bewail the past in sackcloth and
ashes. A past that was forever dead now, except that women
like Aunt Ella would never let it die. For years, she knew,
women like her aunt would be weeping over the corpse of
that lost Cause they refused to bury. Weaving wreaths of
sentiment and tears, exaggerating every glory, fief cely
denying every error and deluded mistake.

  Morgan Markland had said that he expected things to get
worse before they got better. There were too many scalawags
in power, too many men violently inclined, both black and
white. Violence understood and respected only violence, he
had said blandly, and Aunt Ella, grimly chaperoning her
niece, had nodded passionate agreement. Aunt Ella believed
that the South should have repudiated the surrender, should
have stood firmly for secession no matter how cravenly it was
deserted by its own army. Morgan had advanced a bit of
resentment on his own at that point.

  "It was the South who deserted the army, Miss Crabtree.
We were eager to fight, but where were the weapons and the
ammunition? We were barefooted and hungry. General Lee
fought Richmond for supplies harder than he fought Useless
Grant. They could have balls for the officers and banquets,
with the leavings of the feasts generously carried to the
hospitals where wounded men lay on cold floors without even
blankets to cover them, but the army lay out in the mud fed
on wormy bacon and parched cow and half the time the
cartridges we got wouldn't even fit our guns."

  "You do not look underfed, Sergeant Markland," Miss Ella
had stated firmly.

  "I fought under a foraging commander. Old Nate F'orrest
robbed one Yank supply train after another. It was after the
surrender that things got tough. One of my brothers had a
hard time recovering after he walked home from Alabama.
Some time we'll see an end of persecution and a decent
government in this state, but not yet."

  "A horse-doctor sheriff! Drunken scalawags in our
legislature," snorted Miss Ella. "What car you do about
outrages like that wlle

they juggle the law so that you cannot even vote?"

  "There are, Miss Crabtree," Morgan had quoted then,
"more ways to kill a cat than choking it on butter."

[ 1_1 ]

 He was, Angela was thinking now, Iying on her bed and
staring into the sultry dark, somehow fascinating in his
handsome insolence. There was an undismayed jauntiness
about him, a brisk, sardonic recklessness quite different from
William's patient gentleness. William was always talking
patience, that all things passed, that the ugliness would end,
but there had been times, riding home from the Harper
farm, when she had wondered if he really believed what he
said so confidently. The Marklands were reputed to be
fire-eaters, all, and she had wondered if William's attitude
was not a bit spiritless until last night.

 Last night, striding in at their gate, rigid with fury against
his own brother, he had certainly fought spiritedly enough.
Only Aunt Ella's strident threat to call the sheriff, and the
intervention of two other officers, had cooled the enraged
battling of the pair. Then William had coolly lifted the
prostrate Morgan and, helped by the mulatto boy who had
been his messenger before, had loaded Morgan on his horse
and led the animal away. He had been followed by a ragtag
trail of black soldiers and town loafers, and Angela now
admitted to herself that it had all been pretty horrible, that
she could not in fairness blame Aunt Ella for her ire nor her
mother for shedding reproachful tears at being thus
humiliated.

 But no girl who had lived through four years of manless
loneliness, uncourted and sternly chaperoned, could fail to
be thrilled at having two handsome and dashing young
blades fighting over her. The question that kept Angela
Wood awake till broad day flared in at the windows
was which was the right one? Would there be an answer to
that puzzle in her mind? Would there be a sign? How had
her own mother known when quiet George Wood came
along that he was the right man for her heart?

 Her mother had run away to marry the poor young
preacher from Alabama whom Grandfather Crabtree
thought highly unsuitable for his daughter. If she herself
decided to run off with one Markland or the other, certainly
her mother could have little to say.

 Of course Aunt Ella would fume and storm but who would
listen to Aunt Ella? Aunt Ella was nothing but a sour old
maid. Nobody would listen to her, certainly not Angela, if
she were far away and married to a Markland. But which
Markland? The sun blazed in at the window but still she had
no answer to that question.

[ 122 ]

Sixteen

BUZZY SLID OFF' THE SADDLE BEFORE A HIGH,SHABBY OLD HOUSE.

 "You let me go in first, Miss Sue. You let me go in and
wake 'em up. Mist' Morgan ain't had no clothes on when we
put him in that bed."

"Morgan's in there? You said that they were fighting."

  "Yessum. Cap'n and me fetch him back here and wash him
up. He ain't felt so good. Somebody," he stated soberly,
"done slipped Mist' Morgan some mighty poor liquor. He
ain't acted the way he do, if he be himself."

  "Hurry, Buzzy. Mister Jack had a hard blow on the head.
If he's over there in that jail he may need a doctor."

  "Anyhow they ain't hung nobody yet. They rings that
courthouse bell when they fixin' to hang somebody." Buzzy
bounded up on the battered porch of the house the army had
taken over to quarter the white officers.. The door was
locked but he shook it twice, up and down and sideways,
kicked the lower panel and it swung open. Behind him he
could see Miss Sue slumped wearily in the saddle. The
gelding sagged too, head down, one hip high, sweat a brown
patch under the saddle blanket.

  In a room to the left the two Marklands lay stretched on
army cots. Their clothing, Union blue and a young planter's
nattier apparel, was smug over the back of a chair. but
William's pistol belt was carefully hung at the head of his cot.

  Buzzy went to the bunk and shook it hard. "Cap'n Billy!
You gotta wake up. Us gol: trouble, bad trouble!"

  William blinked, scrubbed his eyes and swung his bare legs
off the bed. He looked dazedly at his brother, stretched out
on the opposite bunk, rubbed a hand over his forehead and
groaned, "Oh, my God."

  Buzzy kept on shaking. "It ain't him, Cap'n. Mist' Morgan
ain't the trouble. It Boss Boone and Mist' Jack. They done
been took."

  "What?" William jumped up, lithe and pale in his
underwear, dark hair standing in disorder on his head.

  "Miss Sue out there," persisted Buzzy. "She done rode all
night to fetch you. Sheriff come yisti'day, Miss Sue say, took
Boss Boone and Mist' Jack. Sheriff say they done shot
somebody."

L 1Z3 ]

  "Hand me my breeches," ordered William. "Easy. Don't
drop everything out of the pockets. Who did the sheriff say
Pa and Jack shot?"

  "Miss Sue don't know. She just heard a little bit.
Somebody knocked Mist' Jack down with a pistol, she say,
and he ain't knowed nothin' when they drug him off. Miss
Sue thinks they in jail. Might be they git hung, Capon, but
ain't no bell rung."

  "Not even reveille yet. Where have you been? How'd you
find Miss Sue?" demanded William, twisting into his clothes.

  "I been down the road courtin' a gal, Cap'n. Seen Miss
Sue on the road when I was hurryin' back to camp. She
mighty wore out and hungry, Cap'n, but she say for me to
fetch you to git Boss Boone and Mist' Jack out of that jail."

  "Wake that fellow up," said William, pulling on his boots
and waving one toward the other c of. "Maybe he knows
something about this."

  "Reckon he sober by now, Cap'n? I don't want Little
Brother fightin' me." Buzzy advanced timorously toward the
bunk where Morgan lay sprawled on his back. "His eye
mighty swore up, Cap'n. Nose too."

  "Wake him up and fetch a pan of water for him to wash
up. He won't fight anybody. Not today." William was grim.

  "Yessuh, Cap'n." Buzzy laid a gingerly hand on Morgan's
naked shoulder. "Mist' Morgan! Mist' Morgan! Cap'n say
you wake up now. We got trouble."

  Morgan jerked, gasped, choked, and his lips fluttered.
"Whu whuh  whuh " He tried to sit up, fell back again,
then rolled erect and glared through bloodshot eyes. "What
the hell?" he shouted.

  "Get on your feet. Wash your face," ordered William,
buckling his belt. "Pa and Jack are in trouble. Sue rode all
night to tell us."

  Morgan pressed his hands over his eyes and moaned.
"God, my head! Where am I, anyway?"

  "In my quarters," said William coldly. "We brought you
here last night after you'd made an unmitigated ass of
yourself. Get your clothes on. Sue's out there waiting."

  "Sue? How'd Sue get here? And what did you hit me with,
Billy? My head's ready to bust." Morgan groped about,
Buzzy handing him his garments, a piece at a time.

  "It that bust-haid whisky hit you, Mist' Morgan," said the
boy. "Cap'n Billy, he knock you down but he don't tromp
you none. You got that sleeve on the wrong arm. Here, let
me turn it round. That a

[ 124 ]

party eye Cap'n hung on you,' Buzzy giggled. "Gals sho' goin'
to know you been in a fight."

 "The old lady threw me out," raged Morgan. "The
desiccated, wheyfaced old virgin. Keeps that girl shut up like
that house was a convent. You didn't have to hit me just
because she threw me out, Billy."

 "I hit you because you were drunk and foul-mouthed
around my girl," stated William sternly.

"Your girl! By gad, sir "

 "Get your pants on and shut up. Then you take Sue
somewhere, get her some coffee and find out what the
trouble is. Take care of her horse, too. Buzzy and I have to
show at roll call, then I'll meet you and we'll see what has to
be done. No damned radical sheriff can keep our father in
jail," stormed William, slapping on his hat so hard the gilded
acorns jingled.

 "Who the hell do you think you're giving orders to?"
demanded Morgan angrily. "I'm not in your goddam army.
And how come you've turned rebel all of a sudden?"

 "Oh, quit acting the fool, boy," snapped William wearily.
"The Marklands are in trouble. You're a Markland. I'm a
Markland. It's our trouble. Sue's been sitting out there nearly
half an hour now. She had the guts to ride all night to tell us,
and she's not even a Markland. Button your breeches and get
a move on."

 "Some day we'll settle whose girl that is," Morgan flung
after the military pair as they went out. Then he grew
thoughtful. Pa in jail, and Jack too. Light seeped slowly into
Morgan's numbed brain. Somebody had found those bodies,
too hastily buried on the old Oliver place. Some member of
that looting gang of marauders had gotten the ear of the
sheriff. But I was in that, he remembered, if I had been at
home they'd have taken me too.

 A bit of broken mirror was propped against the shelf that
served William as a washstand. Morgan regarded himself
dubiously in its cracked surface. Lord, what a mess! He had
been summarily disciplined by his older brothers in earlier
years but no Markland had ever hung an eye like that on him
before.

 He scrubbed his face and smacked back his hair with wet
palms, buttoned his jacket with a shrug, kicked the door open
and went out. The slanting morning sunlight made him blink
and grimace as it smote his inflamed eyeballs but he put
arrogance in his stride as he stalked out to the tree-shaded
street where Sue still sat, leaning wearily forward in the
saddle.

She said, "Hello, Morgall, Billy told me you'd look after me
and

[ 1~' ]

this horse He's mighty tired and so am I. Help me down.
They told me to sit right here till you came."

  He held up his arms and she slid into them, her legs
quivering under her. "You were mighty brave to come alone,
Sue," he said. "Tell me what happened as we walk along. I'll
get your horse taken care of and you too." He thrust an arm
through the bridle rein and the tired gelding followed them
as they walked the grassy strip at the edge of the street. Sue
held up her skirts with one hand, clutching Morgan's elbow
with the other.

  "I don't know all of it. We were in the house when
Boone-boy came tearing in yelling that some bad men said
Grandpa had killed a man and they were going to take him
off and hang him. There were eight of them, but that Jeff
Nichols was the only one I recognized. Miss Annie gave him
the rough edge of her tongue when they took your father
away and Nichols looked mighty shamefaced and hangdog
about the business."

  "It's that raid at Winnie's place," said Morgan. "Jack was
right. We should never have left those dead men on that
land. He wanted to dump them somewhere along the road
but Pa talked him out of it. He said it would get us into
trouble but it seems trouble caught up with us anyway "

  "You were in that as much as Jack was," Sue reminded
him. "Jack fought them but somebody hit him an awful blow
on the side of the head with a gun. He was limp as a rag
when they took him away."

  "Been better if he hadn't fought back," Morgan said. "We
have to fight 'em, Sue, but we have to be smart about it."

  "Like you?" She was acid. "Hide out and let somebody else
take the blame?"

  "I wasn't hiding," argued Morgan. "I was carrying on secret
operations that you wouldn't understand, Susie, my gal. Very
profitable operations Helps Miss Annie no end, the way I
operate."

  "But you're here and Jack is Iying over there in that jail.
At least I hope he's there, and I understand this
much from Buzzy's report your secret operation involved
some girl, and you must not have done too well at that."

  "I was doing all right till that strutting Fed brother of mine
tangled himself into it. No, Susie, no girl is mixed up in my
operations. It's a kind of club. Some of us young fellows who
want back what the Yanks took away from us. We lure them
into our lair and take it back painlessly, for us. Wait here,
while I get this nag fed and watered in that

[ 126 ]

stable. How did you ride all night on Pa's old saddle? Why
didn't you put on proper gear?"

 "It was dark and we were in a hurry. Boone-boy and I got
the guns out of the bin and I took the first saddle we got our
hands on. Hurry, Morgan, I'm beginning to be scared. All
those people are staring at me."

 William found them in the dingy dining room of the little
hotel where Morgan had ordered breakfast for Sue and
himself. It was a scanty meal consisting only of grey
slablikebiscuits, fried salt pork and two eggs swimming in
grease, but the coffee was hot and strong and Sue felt her
weariness relaxing a little.

 With William came two other white officers in blue and at
the door Buzzy waited, all his brass and buttons shining.
William's dark face was set in formal military firmness above
the gilt emblems on his collar. He made a little bow, some of
the old Markland mockery showing in the dry twist of his lips.

 "My sister, Mrs. Andrew Jackson Markland," he said to his
companions. "Lieutenant Perry, Lieutenant Gore. You've met
Sergeant Morgan Markland already, I believe."

 "To our loss," declared Lieutenant Gore. "If Sergeant
Markland could be imprisoned indefiniecly it would
contribute to the morale of the United States Army and also
improve my personal finances."

 William pulled up some chairs for the three of them. Sue
felt uneasy. There were people about, there were turned
heads and whispers. People were wondering about these
Marklands, passionate Confederates as they were known to
be, drinking coffee with officers of the garrison company.
And a Negro garrison too, she was thinking unhappily.

 "Now," William began, "I have to know all the facts about
this fracas Pa and Jack were mixed up in. I have to know
what happened before I make a sortie on that jail."

"It wasn't just Pa and Jack,' Morgan said. "I was there too."

"And King?"

  "Not King. He's still got a bad rising under his arm from
that fight he had over here when the Nigras rushed him. It
gives him a fever every night and he gets dizzy and can't walk
or ride."

"Those men who were killed who actually killed them?"

  "Could have been me," said Morgan. "We were all shooting.
But I think Pa got one with that heavy old gun of his. They
were looting the place, just a gang of guerrilla hoodlums on
horseback."

"Now hear this," said William sternly. "When I talk to the
sheriff,

[ 127]

Pa didn't kill anybody. (~an you remember that, Brother
Morgan? You didn't kill anybody. Nor Brother Jack. You'd
better remember that or I'll black your other eye."

  "They killed themselves then and just lay down in the
furrow and buried themselves, not wanting to be a trouble
to anybody," drawled Morgan cynically. "They were
guerrillas, I tell you. We had a right to defend King's
property when he couldn't protect it himself."

  "The army," stated William sternly, "is stationed here to
protect all property and to preserve the peace."

  "Like hell!' Morgan. Then in a slightly startled voice,
"Billy  you can't "

  "You would be even 1~ ss attractive with two black eyes,"
declared his brother, rising to his feet. "Now come along
with us. And if you are questioned you will simply answer
that those men were looting and committing depredations in
that house."

  "They tried to burn it. We put out the fire. Look here,
Billy, you can make me :hold my tongt~e but what are you
going to do about Pa? He won't keep quiet. He'll brag and
defy those fellows. You know Pa."

  William drew on his cloves. They were very clean, Sue
noted, and she wondered W}10 washed them for him. Did
Buzzy do it, or was it that girl Fuzzy had babbled about, the
girl for whom William had blacked his brother's eye ?

  "We'll take care of Pa." he was saying. "Sue, you stay here.
Stay off the street till we come buck." And they were gone,
one of the lieutenants handing some money to the landlord
as they went out the door.

  Sue finished the eggs, her own plate and Morgan's, then
leaned her chin on her hand and sank into weary
drowsiness7 her bright hair drooping over her fingers.

  When the three officers, followed by Morgan, entered the
sheriff's office they found only a dirty deputy, half asleep in
a chair, his feet propped on the window sill. lye informed
them that the sheriff had not come in yet.

  "Out late last night roundin' up some murderin' Rebs.
What you want with left, Captain? ''m in charge here till Jeff
comes back. Might not come all day if he gets a call off
some place. You tell me your business, I'll see what can I d,'
for you."

  "I'll tell my business to Jeff Nichols," said William stiffly.
"You know where he is. Get u ord to him to meet me at his
jail in thirty minutes."

  "Look here, Captain"--the deputy's muddy heels crashed to
the floor "you're in command out yonder but you don't run
this here

[ 128 ]

courthouse nor the jailhouse no ither. 'Penllessee ain't under
no martial law."

 "It could be,'' remarked William. "If it's established that tile
civil authorities can't keep the peace and control these bands
of marauders, President Johnson would declare martial law
in Tennessee, even if Governor Brownlow refused to
co-operate."

 "Yah, reckon old Andy would be plumb pleased to put this
state under the army jest to spite 13rownlow," conceded the
deputy. "But we ain't had no trouble so fur keepin' the peace.
Got a whole jail full of disturbers locked up back yonder now.
You listen you can hear them yellin'. Ain't fed 'em yet. Act
just like critters when they ain't been fed."

 William's face tightened grimly. "Didn't you hear me say I
want to see the sheriff right now? Send somebody to find
him, unless you want me to put an order out. I doubt if
Nichols would appreciate being brought back in custody by a
squad of troopers."

 The dirty man scowled and spat. "Now wait, young feller,
you ain't foolin' me none. I been around this here county a
long time. You're one of Boone Nlarkland's wiltl boys and
that feller there's another of 'em. And ole Boone is one of
them Secesh we got locked up back yonder. If you got some
trick worked out to get your pappy loose after he done
confessed to a cold-blooded murder I kin tell you right now
you can save your breath and bile. You may run them scabby
riggers out yonder but you soldiers ain't running this county.
Not while there's men around with guts to see you don't do
it."

 "I didn't come here to argue with you, fellow," said William.
"I came to see the sheriff. Looks like I'll have to send a squad
after him. I'm no defeated Confederatt to be persecuted by
you bullies. My authority in this area comes from the
Secretary of War in Washington. and I mean to exercise it."

 The deputy growled in disgust. "All you Marklands always
was a lot of biggity blabber mouths, fording it over other
people. Put a uniform on any one of you and there ain't no
enduring him. Eph!" He removed his quid, opened his mouth
and shouted, "You, Eph!"

 A Negro came in the door and leaned against it. "Yeah," he
said. "What you all want?"

 "Find Jeff and git him in here. I got no patience to deal
with no Markland, Fed or Rebel. Alhls did make theirselves
believe they was sons of God instead of the kind of sons they
is!"

 "Easy, Morgan," warned William, as Morgan's jaw muscles
tightened and his fists knotted. "Don't waste ammunition on
one stinking little target."

[ 129]

 "Let him hit me,77 urged the deputy. "Whole litter of
Marklands back there in them tanks would suit me fine.
Looks like somebody put that young dude through the corn
sheller already. Nobody ever fetched an eye like that home
from a Sunday school picnic.77

 Cautiously the two lieutenants ranged themselves
alongside Morgan7 put a firm grip on his elbows.

 "Let the army take over7son777 advised Lieutenant Gore.
"Nothing gained by starting a ruckus with civilians.77

"I'll smash his filthy Iying mouth for him777 muttered
Morgan.

  "Turn him loose7" ordered the deputy. "Let him try it. I
got plenty men can handle any Markland ever whelped."

  Jeff Nichols broke the tension then, walking in calmly7 hat
on the back of his head. He spat out the straw he was
chewing and looked the group over casually.

  "What goes on here?77 he asked7 with studied
indifference. "What do you officers wanted

  "We want the Marklands7 Sheriff777 stated William with
military crispness. "Both of them. They happen to be military
prisoners on parole7 and they are in custody of the army till
released. You've got no right to hold them.77

  "Looks like you got one already777 drawled Nichols.
"How'd we miss him, Pete? He was into it, like as not. Must
have been hid out."

  "He's under military detention, as you can see7" said
William. "Now I want the others. Fetch out Boone Markland
and his son7 Jackson.7'

  Nichols scratched himself. "You're a Markland yourself,
Captain. This here has got the smell of fish about it. I ain't
turnip' no prisoners over to you. Not till I got a damn good
reason."

  "Too ball," William shrugged elaborately. "Nothing to do
but bring a force here and raid your jail. I have orders to
put under arrest any guerrilla outlaws in this area. I found
these men at the scene of a guerrilla raid and put them
under parole till I could investigate their story of being
innocent victims of an attack. My orders come from
Washington, and as I suppose you know7 they supersede the
civil authority. Morgan Markland7 you were present when
the guerrilla band raided the old Oliver place on the
twenty-third of September. You were armed and firing, as
you admitted to me. Two men were killed there. State to the
sheriff who killed those two men."

  The pressure on Morgan's elbow increased to the point of
agony. He had a moment of wrathful bewilderments then
something in his brother's face gave him his cue. He almost
grinned.

[ 130]

  "rIhe army shot those men Captain," he answered. "When
they refused to surrender, you and Your troopers opened
fire and two men were killed."

e Seventeen e

BOONE MARKLAND WOULD NOI SIT DONVN. HE
PACED THE NEAT, MONASTIC room that was William's
quarters, his great body quivering with fury.

 I le had been led, stumbling, fuming and protesting between
the two lieutenants to this place and bring seen in the custody
of Union officers on the street had been a worse outrage to
Boone than being taken to jail by a county posse. Jack h ad
been half carried by Buzzy and two stout troopers and laid on
a cot. Now Sue sat beside him sponging the dark, savage
bruise on his head with a damp cloth. Leaning against the
wall Morgan stood silent, Till wearing the ghost of a grin.

 The drama, the trickery, the magnificent bluff had appealed
to the brash, outlaw strain in Morgan. That this was a Union
victory did not dismay him. He was beginning to concede that
Billy was not too bad a Markland, that the same streak of
reckless bravado was in him, uninhibited by the Union blue.

 Boone kept shouting, "I tell you I won't go along with it.
Making a fool and a liamDut of me in front of a gang of
scurvy rascals and an ignorant lout of a hog doctor like Jeff
Nichols. I shot that feller and I saw the ball hit him and
smash his skull just like I've seen it hit a bear many a time.
You " he whirled on William angrily, "you're the liar.
Making out you were there, letting on you put Jack and me
on parole. Where's the rest of the gang? Why ain't you
brought them in? 'l~hat's what people are going to start
asking. Not that I give a damn if it ruins you. I disowned you
the day you rode off to fight for the Union!"

 Sue's eyes blazed. "Billy saved the two of you and he saved
King from being killed! You admit it may ruin him, yet he
took that chance to keep his own people from being dragged
through a rotten farce of a trial, and like enough from being
hung. If you can't appreciate that, Pa Markland, You can at
least hold your tongue and not abuse your own son. I'm
grateful to Billy for getting Jack out of that filthy jail and I
wouldn't care if he wa i Ulysses Grant or Sherman or even
old Brownlow himself."

[ 1 31 ]

"They'd have had to give us fair trial, Sue7"muttered Jack.

 "Hah!" snapped Sue. "A fair trial in their rotten court with
a riggedup jury and a whole mob of shinnies bought and
paid for to swear lies against you. You talk like a fool. If
they didn't hang you you'd be run out of Tennessee like a
lot of poor people we know about already. Everybody knows
that Brownlow's sworn he won't stop till he's run every
Confederate out of this state."

 Boone was not mollified.. He turned his ire upon his
youngest son. "You!" he barked. "Standing up there Iying in
your teeth like a dirty politician, letting on I never fired that
gun."

 "Worse than that, Pa.' Morgan was apparently
unperturbed. "I mace 'em believe you didn't even own a gun.
I had to own the rifle for there it was, hung on the saddle
Sue rode over here. I told 'em I fired it and that was the
truth. I did fire it and I reckon I killed one of those men.''

 "That ain't the way you made it out," argued Boone. "You
let it lay where Billy laid it, that the army was there and
wasn't satisfied with our story that we was defending our
own family's property."

 "Confederate property, Pa," Morgan reminded him. "You
know it can't be legally defended, nominally defended at any
rate in Brownlow's state."

 "Any man's property can be defended. That's in the Bill of
Rights," put in Jack, "but I reckon Abe Lincoln knocked out
The Bill, too, when he scuttled the Constitution. Hold your
hand on that spot, Sue, and press hard. It keeps my head
from aching so bad."

"He ought to have a dot for," worried Sue.

 "I'll have a doctor for him," William said. "The best we can
find around here."

 "I reckon " Jack struggled to sit up but Sue's pressing
hands restrained him, "I reckon you intend to keep us locked
up." He glared angrily from two swollen eves and his lips
drew taut in a bitter grimace.

 "You have to stay in custody, all of you," said William.
"Otherwise the sheriff's gang will pick you up again and that
time I might not be able to free you. So unless you are
willing to obey my orders I'm helpless to do anything for
you."

 "But what about Miss Annie? She's there alone, nobody
but King and him sick, and Winnie's worse than nobody,"
Sue reminded him.

 "I shall make arranger nts to send you all home under
military protection and surveillance. But it can't be done
quickly and you'll have to be patient. Remember, this is all
a rash operation, desperately undertaken for the honor of
the Marklands. I'm taking risks myself,

[ 132 ]

but I'd be a sorry Markland it I could stand back and let my
father and brothers be hauled up in a makeshift, loaded court
and charged with murder."

 BooneMarkland squared himself. "We're all Marklands
here. All but Sue "

"Sue's a better Markland than any of us," stated William.

  "Could be. Could be. But I say it now and I say it plain,
William Breen Markland. I'd rather take my chances in court
than be beholden to any Yankee alive son or no son. And
since 'sixty-one you're no son of mine."

  "Pa Markland, you're an ingrate," said Sue. "Open that
door, Buzzy, and let Jeff Nichols take him. Morgan will swear
he fired that old blunderbuss, if that's what he wants, he'll
swear he killed that Hooper fellow. You could be thinking
about Miss Annie a little. You could be remembering how
she's feeling instead of sitting here mouthing a lot of foolish
abuse. What would it do to Miss Annie and Booneboy too, if
something awful happened to you?"

  "She'd rather see me hung dead than a traitor to the
South," said Boone, but it was apparent that he was halfway
trying to convince himself. The pain of the turmoil ridged his
face and made his mouth quiver a little. Sue went to him and
took his hand.

  "Don't you see, Pa, that we couldn't bear it if dreadful
things happened to you? Not any of us. Not Billy, though you
do set yourself to despise him. We're Marklands and the
Marklands are a clan. Maybe we're all mad and stubborn and
wrong, maybe we fight among ourselves and work ourselves
up to hurt each other, but if anybody outside threatens any of
us then we're a clan all roused up to fight like tigers to
defend any Markland alive."

  "Good girl," said William. "That puts it on record for all of
us, Pa. Now let's move. You need something to eat and Jack
must have some attention."

  Jack sat slumped on the cot, his head in his hands.
"Damned if I go along with this," he growled. "You can take
us now because you've got men and guns to do it, Bill
Markland, but there have been a lot of rash Yanks who've
tried it before and nobody ever held a Markland for long
when he wasn't willing to be held."

  "You didn't,~vant to be in Jeff Nichols' jail," his wife
reminded him. "I didn't see you come charging out of there
till you had help, my fine bragging husband."

  "All this gets us nowhere," declared William wearily. "Pa,
you have to go along with me without argument. I'm sorry,
but that's the way

[ 133 ]

it has to be. You've got to lie kept under guard for your own
protection. Morgan, you stay with Jack and Sue till I come
back with a litter and some bearers.'7

  "I can walk," shouted Jack. "I won't be carried to your
rotten guardhouse nor worked on by any of your Yankee
doctors. I can walk and I'm walking out of here right now
and taking my wife with me. If Morgan wants to act the fool
and go along with your crazy scheme and Pa too, that's their
business. You've got a horse here, Morgan? You sure didn't
come afoot from home. Sue brought the gelding. Let's move
and see if gallant Captain Markland of Sheridan's Cavalry
has the guts to stop us. Maybe he'll have us shot down in
cold blood the way he claims he shot the raiders on King's
place. Come on, Sue. Give me a hand."

  "No!" screamed Sue, flying to him as he tried to get to his
feet. She held him desperately as he wavered. "Morgan, help
me," she said, as Jack's knees buckled and he collapsed
limply on the floor.

  "Lay him flat. Keep his head down," ordered Boone as his
younger sons tried he lift their unconscious brother. "He's
fainted, that's all. Get some water, somebody."

  "He must have had a concussion," William remarked, when
they had straightened Jack's legs and covered him with a
blanket. "I'll get the doctor. He mustn't move. I'll station a
guard here so that nobody will bother you till I get back.
Sue, Buzzy's waiting outside. Call him in, will you)?"

  Buzzy's eyes rolled nervously as he eased through the
half-opened door, his rifle trailing. These were all his white
folks but around them was such an atmosphere of tension,
distrust and resentment that Buzzy could feel it pressing on
his dark hide as so many times back in those war-torn
Virginia thickets he had sensed the chill, creeping blanket of
fear.

  There was Cap'n Billy, gray-faced and stiff and very
military and over against the wall was old Boss Boone,
glaring at Billy, wearing the thunderous face Buzzy had
flinched before so often, way back home. Miss Sue and Mist'
Morgan were fussing over Mist' Jack who looked half dead
to Buzzy's frightened eyes. Miss Sue was crying and dabbing
water on Mist' Jack's face while Mist' Morgan rubbed his
hands, hands that looked mighty dry and cold to Buzzy.

  "He daid?" he got out in a gulping whisper. Then he
ducked his head from old habit. "Howdy, Boss Boone," he
mumbled, backing against the wall also from old habit,
waiting for Boss Boone to hurl some hot blast of wrath at
him.

[ 134 ]

  William took the rifle from the yellow boy's uncertain
hands, inspected bolt and load, handed it back with military
abruptness.

  "You are to guard this door, Private Markland," he ordered
brusquely. "No one is to leave this room till I and the other
officers return, you understand?"

  Buzzy gulped again, managed a wobbly semblance of
standing at attention. "Yes, sub, Cap'n sub." Then he added
anxiously, "Mist' Jack he ain't daid?"

  "He's not dead. I'm getting the doctor. And no talking from
you while you're on duty."

  "Yes, sub, (,ap'n sub." Buzzy squared himself militantly
against the door, jerking his cap lower over his eyes, and for
a long minute he tried not to look at Boss Boone's scowling
and flushed countenance. Boss Boone, he suspected, was
getting all browed up ready to call him a yellow bastard and
order him to put down that gun and get away from that door.
Buzzy tightened every muscle waiting for the old man to start
yelling at him, determined at all costs to stand his ground.
Wasn't he free? Wasn't he a soldier of the United States
Army and wasn't there a law that said nobody better start any
meanness with a uniformed man in blue or the army would
deal with him bad and sudden?

  But Boone Markland did not speak. He only grunted, a
sound eloquent of contempt and rage then he set himself
down on a hickory chair as though his legs were plumb tired
and wouldn't hold him up any longer.

It was Sue who said hesitantly, "Buzzy?"

  Buzzy swallowed hard. "You heard the Cap'n, Miss Sue. I
cain't talk to nobody."

  "Oh, this is all silly and stupid," she said. "Our own family,
our own people. Look, Morgan he's moving his eyelids. He's
coming to."

  Buzzy took one forward step anxiously, remembered his
duty and stiffened again at the door. The sun was getting high
and beginning to glare in at the uncurtained windows, where
only tattered remnants of blinds hung askew, fly-specked and
rain-stained. Outside was the pungent smell of October, of
leaves getting ready to call the summer ended, of ripe com
and apples fragrant on the trees. Back home it would be a
good time, Buzzy thought, mist on the ground and persim-
mons ripening, possums running at night and foxhounds
baying in the light of a swollen autumn moon.

  Suddenly Buzzy felt like cutting a pigeon wing and yelping
gleefully, hoping that Cap'n Billy would send him home.
Doggone, that would

[ 135 ]

be a great day! Corn poneagain like 'Nerve knew how to
make its crusty and brown and greasy around the edges.

  Secretly he nursed a hope that Cap'n Billy would let him
take Miss Sue home, and would keep Boss Boone under
guard here some place for a good long time. Back with Miss
Annie Buzzy could really enjoy himself although there
would still be Mist' King but it might be a good long spell
before Mist' King would get on foot again and meanwhile
Buzzy could tend Miss Annie's cow and hens and eat
'Nerve's good corn bread and pot liquor. Thinking about it
the boy leaned his shoulders hard against the door and
almost dozed off. He had had a wild night yonder in the
scrabbling settlement where the dislocated Negroes had
their shacks and likely he would be in the guardhouse right
now if the Marklands hadn't gotten into a mess with the law.
It was his name spoken sharply that snapped him alert again
and made him grip his weapon tighter.

  "Buzzy!" Morgan, long silent, now spoke commandingly. "I
think I'll just take that gun away from you and walk out the
door."

  Buzzy's eyeballs bulged and his teeth clamped till he could
hardly force his voice through his rigid lips.

  "No, sub, Mist' Morgan. Don't you do that, suh. I don't
want to shoot nobody but I put on guard and got orders and
I got to shoot if anybody try to take my gun."

  "The Captain didn't order you to shoot anybody," pursued
Morgan, a glint of gleeful mischief in his eyes. Buzzy knew
that shine of old. When Mist' Morgan git that devil grin in
his eyes a nigger had better run. Buzzy had an inspired
spasm of inventiveness.

  "'Tain't no good, Mist' Morgan. Some more us boys
outside. Do they take you you git flang in the guardhouse
right quick."

  "He's Iyfl~g," remarked Boone at the window. "There's
nobody outside."

  "They ain't showin' thcirselves. They right clost to this
door," improvised Buzzy desperately. "We got to perfect you,
Mist' Morgan. If you git outside that sheriff git you again
and then can't nobody git you a-loose."

  "He's right, Morgan," said Sue. "Let the boy alone. Let
Billy handle this. Billy knows what he's doing."

  "All Billy knows is he's getting a vindictive sort of
satisfaction keeping us shut in here," said Morgan, his
moment of reluctant admiration for his brother forgotten. "It
must be his idea of an elegant joke. First he beats me up.
Then with my help, I'll admit he ruins us by implying to
Jeff Nichols that we've been under suspicion, and on parole,
of

[ 136 ]

all goddamcraz.y ideas. If Jeff wasn't the ignorant old rascal
he is he'd never have swallowed that gulf.. You may be able
to see some trace of family loyalty in it but I can't any more.
We disowned him for taking up with the Union, now he
salves his injured vanity by humiliating

us.

 "The humiliation," said Sue hotly, "happened when I saw my
husband and your father dragged off like criminals by that
posse. I suppose it wasn't a humiliation to your father to be
locked up all night in that filthy jail? Why" she flung out her
hands "do you always think the worst of your brother?"

 "So far the worst seems to be what meets the eye," Morgan
said, moving slowly along the wall, so deliberately that Buzzy
gripped his weapon tighter and hot water came into his
mouth. "He got Pa and Jack away from Nichols, he put on
that show so he could hold all three of us. What gives you
any idea he's going to let us go home free? It would tickle his
pride mightily to keep us shut up somewhere the rest of the
summer. Buzzyl" He raised his voice in peremptory com-
mand. "Give me that gun before I take it away from you and
brain you with it."

Almost Buzzy screamed. "No, Mist' Morgan, no!"

 "Grab it!" ordered Boone Markland, plunging forward, huge
and clumsy as a bear.

 Buzzy gave another scream, animal-shrill with panic. Sue's
sharp cry tore the air as Morgan plunged.

 The gun, wavering frantically in the Negro boy's tense
fingers, went off with a hollow sort of thud. Boone clutched
his belly.

"Son of a bitchl" he yelled as he toppled sideways.

 Morgan clutched at Buzzy as the gun fell smoking to the
floor, but Buzzy tore free and was out the door, running
wildly, all the raw terror in his being putting file into his
heels.

~ Eighteen ~

BETWF.EN THEM JACK AND KING MARKr AND
CARRIED THEIR MOTHER DOWN the slope from the
family burial plot. Already up there among the cedar trees
sympathetic neigllbors were shoveling damp clods into the
raw, new grave.

[ 137]

 Miss Amlie was grey and limp, her dark eyes sunk in great
hollows in her little heart-shaped face. Her sons made a
cradle of their hands and she leaned against King's shoulder,
clutching his coat, her small feet dangling pathetically.
Behind them Sue and Winnie led a scared and silent
Boone-boy between them; the thin, sad procession of the
Marklands, all who remained on the place to mourn the
master.

 Three days ago Morgan had disappeared. Morgan and the
stallion, the best and fastest horse left to them, had vanished
suddenly in the night. All the weeks while his father lay
fevered and sickened from the bullet wound in his
ston-~ach, Morgan had paced the house like an angry
panther. The others could almost see the violence growing
within him till it fairly poisoned the air they breathed.

 Now the Negroes whispered fearfully that Mist' Morgan
Markland had gone off to find and kill Buzzy, that Morgan
had been seen in one squalid settlement after another. That
he was half drunk and crazy and that sooner or later he
would be found Iying beside the road with his throat cut
from ear to ear.

 That had been in late November, now December was
upon the earth with a sky like a leaden blanket and cold
winds swirling little spits of snow against the horizon.

 Through the long days while Boone Markland was slowly
dying, through all the wretchedness of blood and pus and
moans and bitter curses, Miss Annie had stood like a rock,
a tiny, valiant figure, refusing discouragement, defying death,
exaggerating every sign of improvement, insisting that Boone
would be back on his feet by planting time. Wasn't he
stronger than any of his sons? King had had the strength to
recover from the fetid abscess on his ribs and Jack was
almost himself again although he still suffered violent
headaches and there were days when he shook with chills
and seemed a bit vague and dazed in spite of Miss Annie's
quinine, blue mass or other remedies. But now Boone was
dead after Iying for a week in a stupor, and abruptly all the
strength had gone out of her. They had almost seen it go in
that moment when Boone shuddered away his last breath,
running out of her like wine from a glass overturned, leaving
only a pallid crystal emptiness and dark and bitter dregs in
her deep eyes.

 They reached the kitchen door and Boone-boy, glad to be
released from formality, ran ahead to open it.

 "Go ahead, Sue," orders d King. "Fix her bed. We'll lay
her down to rest."

His mother lifted her head and her voice came, as from far
away but

[ 138]

crisp and firm. "I saw him. IJp there on that hill. There were
three of them, on horses and he was one. Billy I saw Billy!"

  Over the top of her head Jack and King looked at each
other bleakly. Their mouths drew tighter as they edged past
each other to enter the door.

  Miss Annie raised her voice sharply and brought her palm
down with a brisk smack on King's head. "Answer me!" she
snapped. "It was Billy, wasn't it? He came to see his father
buried and he stayed far off but it was Billy, I know it."

  "You lie down now, Miss Annie," Jack said, as they reached
her bed. "You lie still and rest and Sue will have 'Nerve fetch
you a cup of tea."

  She would not relax but lifted herself on her elbows and
brushing aside Sue's hands she kept her eyes like gunsights
on her two tall sons.

  "Leave my bonnet alone, Sue," she ordered. "You two pay
attention to what I say. ][ want him to come here. Billy has a
right to come here to his own home."

  "He wouldn't come, Miss Annie," argued King desperately.
"After what happened to Pa, Billy wouldn't show himself on
this place."

  "You notice that he stayed behind the boundary fence,"
muttered Jack, bending to unlace his mother's worn little
shoes. They were scuffed very thin and there was damp grave
clay on the heels.

  Miss Annie sniffed. "That's all ugly, hateful nonsense. Sue
said Pa's getting shot was an accident She said Buzzy got
scared when Pa and Morgan started after him and it was an
accident the gun went off."

  Jack straightened with a rasping sigh. Pain was riding him
with an iron spur, his head rang with it, his eyeballs were dry
and hot. There were times when agony flashed like flame
over his body so that his tongue tasted of copper and every
nerve screamed protest.

  "Mama" with an effort he colored the old childhood name
with gentleness "it was no accident that Billy put a Nigra to
stand guard over Pa and Morgan and me. A Nigra that we'd
raised here on the place and had never been able to teach
any sense at all. A Nigra with a loaded gun. And it was no
accident that Billy gave that boy orders not to talk to us or let
one of us go out the door. Sue heard him. I was sick and
didn't hear him give that order but Morgan did, and Pa too.
Billy 'had some wild notion of holding us till things cooled
down and Morgan went along with it at first, then he got
tired of it and got his temper up and wanted to get out of
that place."

  "Billy was trying to keep you all in that room to keep you
clear of Jeff Nichols and his hot-head deputies," argued Sue.
"It was no wild

[ 139 ]

notion and it would have all worked fine if Morgan hadn't
acted the fool and got Pa all stirred up. Now Morgan's
acting the fool again and likely he'll get himself killed by
some bad Negroes if the Yankees don't catch him up in
something and jail him."

  "Oh hush, Sue," begged Winnie, tearfully. "Such dreadful
talk before your mother when she's already had all she can
bear."

  "Go get her some hot tea then," directed Sue, bluntly.
"That will help her feelings more than you standing there
bawling."

  Winnie burst into sobs, then ran out and King said, "Leave
her alone, can't you? She can't help being tenderhearted.
Maybe Miss Annie ought to put her feet in hot water. Her
hands feel like ice."

  "I'm not sick," said his mother. "It's in my heart, the
hurting. Deep, where no medicine ever can cure it. Hate
makes wounds that no remedy will ever ease. And you boys
keep that hurt in my heart burning, keeping your brother
away, away from his dying father and his grieving mother."

  "Mama," said Jack, "nobody kept Billy away. He didn't
even offer to come. He sent us all home with some of his
troopers to help with Pa, and white officers riding guard on
us. And after that we never saw him again. You know that
Pa never did forgive Billy for taking up with the Union. Over
and over Pa said that Billy was no son of his. He said it to
Billy's face. We heard him. Sue heard him "

  "I was ashamed," Sue said. "Ashamed of all of you. I told
your father I was ashamed. It was Morgan's fault that day,
getting your father all stirred Up. There was a devil in
Morgan. There has always been a devil in Morgan.
Sometimes I think there's a devil in every Markland alive.
Get on out of here now, you two, and let me get her quiet
so she can get some sleep."

  "I can't sleep," protested her mother-in-law. "I'll just lie
here seeing him up there on that hill in that blue uniform.
He had his hat off and he looked so handsome."

  "You're going to sleep, Miss Annie Markland, if I have to
give you laudanum." Sue was grim. "You're going to forget
all this misery and nobody is going to remind you. You know
Pa Markland wouldn't want you grieving yourself to a
shadow. Look at you now. Not an ounce of flesh on your
poor little bones." Sue pushed the men out and slammed the
door. "I'll see she drinks some hot tea," she told them, "and
maybe after a while I can get that old black dress off of her
and get her to sleep. King," she said abruptly, "if you're so
concerned about Winnie. why don't you take her home
where she belongs? You've got provender over there and
there's no call for vou to stay here any longer

[ 140]

now poor Pa Markland is out of his suffering. We can get
along and food is getting scant here, you know that."

  King looked uneasy. Always his had been a dominant,
determined nature, inclined to impulses that were not always
wise, truculent under frustration, but now he was uncertain
and troubled.

  "She won't go," he said. "She's afraid. Ever since that
guerrilla gang came over there she's had a horror of the
place. I can go and fetch some stuff from over there, trouble
is I don't know where the old man hid most of it. The old
Colonel was crazy as a coot before he got killed and he
buried stuff all over tile place. I'll hitch the mules and drive
over this afternoon. Lord knows what's happened there since
Pa and Jack were over. Maybe they've already come back and
burned the house."

  "We'd have heard about it," Jack said. "Those wandering
Nigras that slip in and out of Mammy Dory's house would
have brought word of it. That will be a good place when it's
worked right, King. And you're better off than we are here,
at least you've got a span of mules left."

  "If they live through the winter. They were old and
broken-down long ago or the army would have got them.
What puzzles me is, what happened to all the money Colonel
Oliver was supposed to have had. Winnie says her own father
ran through a lot of it, and she thinks the Colonel gave the
rest to the Confederacy, but he was supposed to be rich
once." King was gloomy.

  "Pa was supposed to be rich once too." Jack pressed his
fingers over his aching eyeballs. They felt hot and bulging and
there was a pushing pain in the back of his neck. "God," he
groaned, "you reckon I'm going to be tormented by this thing
forever7 Fight through a war and then get my brains addled
by a low-down lout of a deputy sheriff?"

  "A good stiff drink would ease you," advised his brother.
"Winnie said Morgan had some corn hid out in that press in
his room. Could be a dram or two left."

  "I hate to get on that stuff. Look what it did to you and it
makes Morgan wild. Where the derail do you reckon that
scudder went, anyway? Mad as a tinker, never has given a
cuss for anything or anybody."

  "He'll come back," said King. "Morgan always shows up
better off than anybody. He won't kill Buzzy. He won't even
find him. Billy got Buzzy far away quick, is my notion."

  The old Oliver place still stood intact when King drove up
the slope through the cedars in the bleak afternoon, but
desolation lay over it like a blight. The front door of the
house was open and as King en

[ 141 ]

tered the rancid odor of charred wood was still strong in the
halfstripped, echoing rooms. Beds had been torn up and
feather mattresses slit, every drawer and cupboard was open
and some of Winnie's clothes lay about trampled on the
dusty floor. The garments she had been washing on that
fateful day when King had had his erratic urge to leave lay
about the kitchen in dried lumps, some greened with mildew.

 "Lord, what a mess," lying groaned aloud as he surveyed
the scene. Sue would know what to do about it but Winnie
would be pathetically helpless, full of apologies and
self-reproaches, content with her own inadequacy. Why
hadn't he married Sue, King was wondering. His fault, for
she had been halfway in love with him before she turned to
his brother. That was because of Lutie, and what had he
wanted with that yellow slut? W by was she lurking about in
the back of his mind now, making him feel resentful against
his wife, making this ravaged house that had been Winnie's
suddenly abominable?

 Abruptly he went charging through the rooms in a petulant
sort of fury, gathering up Winnie's scattered clothes, wadding
them in dirty bundles, kicking the mildewed garments out
the open door, tossing the rest into the wagon. When his
irritation had worked itself out he remembered that he had
come to retrieve some of the provisions the old Colonel had
squirreled away in weird hiding places.

 In the old root cellar, screened behind rotting bales of hay,
were a few jars and crocks of lard and old apple butter,
melded on top, and some jars of preserves tuning brown.
Two or three times he had raided this cache, now he went
back to it half expecting to find it had been already looted.
The plank doors had been thrown back, one or two bales
were overturned, but obviously the alarm had occurred
before the outlaws had had time to explore thoroughly.

 He carried what was worth saving to the wagon, getting
himself well smeared with black c oDwebs from the musty
cave, closed the door of the house and headed for home. On
the way he pondered the idea of selling the place, certain
that Winnie in her present mood would raise no objection.
Northern radicals, he knew, were drifting into the state
buying up distressed properties or taking them for unpaid
taxes.

 Taxes! That thought brought a jerk of panic. Why hadn't
he thought about taxes? Likely the old Colonel in his senile
condition had entirely overlooked the taxes. Certainly the
property had earned nothing since the war with which to pay
off any obligation.

 Darkness had fallen when he drove into the yard at home.
Jack was just emerging from the barn, and inside it Sue was
perched on a milking stool beside the one Markland cow.
She pushed back her

L14~]

bonnet and got up wearily as King led the mules in, chain
traces jingling.

  "She's slowly going dry," Sue said, giving the cow a gentle
whack on the rump and looking ruefully into the bucket. "She
should have freshened last spring. How did you find things,
King7"

  "Bad. Everything gone to wrack and ruin. I brought home
a little stuff lard and so on. Sue, I just realized we've
forgotten one thing that could ruin us all. We forgot about
taxes. They're selling people out for taxes all over the
country."

  Sue grasped his arm so abruptly that some of the milk
slopped on her skirt. "King, don't tell Jack. He's in a bad
state. His head is killing him, so I sent him in and told him
to go to bed. Don't mention taxes tonight, please. Sometimes
I m frightened about Jack, afraid there's some pressure we
don't know about. Afraid it might drive him out of his mind."

  "You go along, Sue, I'll tend to everything out here." He
gave her a reassuring pat. "Tomorrow I It ride into town and
find out how Pa's affairs stand how we all stand. I should
have remembered about taxes long ago but Pa always ran
everything, he never talked about business, not to me at any
rate."

  "You won't get into trouble in town, King? I couldn't stand
any more trouble, and just one more blow would kill Miss
Annie. She's frail as a moth right now."

  "I'll keep clear of trouble, I give you my word. Send
Boone-boy out here, he can help me unload the wagon."

  "'Nerve will be glad to have some lard again," she sighed as
she headed for the house.

  When supper was finished and Winnie and Sue had settled
themselves before the fire, Sue contriving a patch for a pair
of her son's breeches, Winnie's pale hands Iying as usual
useless in her lap, King tossed a log on the andirons.

  "I'm going to tell Miss Annie I'm going into town in the
moming," he said, brushing dust from his coat. "She knows
there are things about this estate that have got to be set right.
Maybe she's worrying about them and it will free her mind to
know that she has people to look after her."

  "She slept a little, then she cried some, but she wouldn't eat
any supper," Winnie said.

  "I'll come too." Sue laid down her work. "I don't suppose
you could finish this, could you, Wimlie? NO, I reckon you
couldn't."

"I'd try but I'd make an awful botch of it," Winnie sighed.

[ 143 ]

  "She sewed the buttons on my shirt on the inside," King
said, with a kind of tired resignation.

  "I know I'm a burden!" cried Winnie. "But I do try I do!
It's not my fault I was never trained to do anything."

  "You're not old. You can still leant,'' Sue said. "And for
goodness' sake don't start crying. At least you could be
pleasant to look at if you can't do anything else."

  Winnie's eyes flashed sparks. "You stand there and let her
pick at me all the time," she flung at her husband. "You
could at least defend your own wife."

  "Oh, my Lord, Winnie, forget yourself for a minute, can't
you?" fumed King. "Sue's carrying the whole load now and
she's got a sick husband to worry about too."

  "She has a drunken husband," shrilled Winnie. "I know a
drunken man when [ see one. He was stumbling drunk when
he went up those stairs before supper. I lived with drunkards
all my life, I know when a man is drunk."

  "I hope he was," retorted King. "I hope Jack was blind,
stinking drunk. I can't think of any happier state right now
than being drunk and dead to the world."

  "Well, don't you try it," warned Sue. "It's all ours to carry
now, King, the whole burden of the Marklands. You know
it's no use depending on Morgan for anything."

  "Miss Annie spoiled hen rotten. The rest of us picked on
him because she kept him a baby too long. It made him rash
and crazy. She's awake. Light the lamp, Sue." He went in
and sat on his mother's bed, taking her chilly hand in his big
palm. "I'm going into town tomorrow, Miss Annie," he told
her. 'I'II go in and see to all Pa's business affairs. Now he's
gone somebody has to attend to things. Do you know where
he kept his papers?"

  "In that bottom drawer in that big chest over yonder."
Miss Annie raised herself, holding his arm. "King, you'll see
Billy? You'll tell him I want him to come home?"

  "If you say so, Mama, but I'm telling you again it won't be
any use. First thing ] have to find out is how things stand
about this place the taxes and all that."

  "Taxes?" She sat up very straight, her eyes brightening with
some of their old determined are. 'Sue, look in my press and
fetch me that old black reticule. The one with the beads on
it."

  When Sue had brought it and moved the lamp nearer the
bed Miss Annie rummaged busily among old letters and
scraps of paper in the

[ 144]

faded old bag. "There!" she cried triumphantly, pulling out a
document. "The receipt! I hid it. I was afraid to let your
father know I had it. He was so stubborn and so bitter."

 King stared at the tax paper bewildered. "This says you're
all paid up, Miss Annie. Even for this vear. How did Pa ever
pay it?"

 "He didn't pay it." There was a shine of almost malicious
glee in her eyes. "He couldn't have paid it. And I never saw
any money after I married your father. Billy paid those taxes.
He sent me that paper by Buzzy, that time Buzzy brought
King's horse home after King got beaten by those Nigras."

 "That's one worry ended, anyway," Suc remarked. "They
can't sell this place out from mlder us at the courthouse
door."

 King was silent. He handed the receipt back to his mother,
who tucked it away again, still wearing her small, dry smile.

 "Showing off again," King muttered to Sue, when they had
left the room. "Like riding up here to Pa's burying."

 "He saved you all," flared Sue. "Sometimes I think there's
no decent gratitude in any Markland alive. We could never
have paid it. Almost five hundred dollars. We couldn't even
have paid five dollars. You know that, King Markland."

 But King's dark sullenness did not relent. In moody silence
he examined his father's papers and he was still at it when
the women went wearily to bed. When Sue rose at dawn he
was already gone and Winnie worried that he had not come
to bed at all.

 He returned very late to find Sue and Winnie still up. He
stalked in, his face thunderous, and flung a crumpled piece
of paper into Winnie's lap.

 "The Carter Oliver property you inherited is gone, Mrs.
Markland," he announced with vicious emphasis. "It was sold
for taxes in July."

 "Sold?" gasped Winnie. "You mean somebody bought
it somebody else owns my grandfather's place?"

 "It was bought," he clipped out the words, "by Captain
William B. Markland. For two hundred and fifty dollars!"

"Billy?" cried Sue. "Did you see him?"

 "No, I didn't see him. They've moved out. The whole
stinking troop has been moved out. If I had seen him, by
God, I think I'd have broken his neck!"

[ ]~- ]

Nineteen

THE MEETING IN THE MA TRY COUNTY
COURTHOUSE HAD BEEN GOING ON for two hours
when Morgan Markland slipped in and dropped into a rear
seat. Outside a raw wind was blowing down from the higher
plateau where winter snow lay rotting, and Morgan realised
on his long ride east that he had been a fool to leave home
without his heavier clothing. Halfway he was convinced that
he had been a fool to leave home at all, that the fury that
had driven him had been a piece of the same odd madness
that had possessed him at times, destroying his control and
driving him into reckless and often dangerous flight.

 It had beset him in the army and three times when the
outcome of some skirmish enraged him he had caught
himself pounding hell-forleather away from his outfit,
tearing through the country, once finding himself inside the
enemy lines. He had always returned, contriving some suave
and ingenious excuse, resolved never to give way to the
stupid frenzy again, but when the wild impulse came he
never seemed to have the power to resist. No one at home
knew how he had fled from that bloody battle outside
Nashville, outraged and insane over General Sam Hood's
tragic blunders, how far he had wandered wearing the
borrowed blue uniform, until news of Johnston's surrender
sifted through the Union lines.

 For weeks after that he had passed himself off as a Union
private separated from his command. It had been a rash
adventure and the daredevil in Morgan had gloated over the
ease with which it had been possible to deceive tough
officers and even tougher troopers of the line.

 It was the sight of his father Iying there, gasping and
vomiting blood, of his white-faced mother devotedly standing
watch over Boone Markland's slow dissolution, that had
made the whole scene at home abruptly intolerable. That
the other Marklands accepted it with what to his mind
seemed stupid and cowardly patience, had inflamed him to
the point where the only relief was escape.

 Back in his seething brain had been a desperate
determination to find and somehow wreak v engeance on
the two who had brought about this misery. Riding through
the night he had had only one idea, to find

[ 146 ]

his brother William and the Negro, Buzzy, and shoot them
both dead. But although he had ridden as far west as
Memphis, then south into Mississippi, although he had
questioned a score of Union officers, he had never been able
to locate the post to which William's company had been
transferred.

  Of Buzzy there were a hundred rumors, but no facts. With
the amiable facility he knew so well, freed Negroes were
eager to supply glib and erroneous information. The ones in
town who knew Buzzy were wary, evasive, loud with
assurances that Buzzy had taken himself far away. He had
killed a white man, hadn't he? Shot Boss Boone Markland,
hadn't he? A Colored boy who shot a white man wasn't going
to linger around to make known his contrition for that act.
He was going to put the big road under his feet and mighty
fast.

  Undoubtedly, with the canniness of his race, Buzzy would
eventually find William again. But now, resting his tired legs
and aching loins on a hard bench in the courthouse at
Columbia, Morgan was certain that his chances of finding
NATilliam's vanished command had become slim.

  He had not been idle all this time. He had worn good
clothes when he left home, he had expropriated the best
horse, the handsomest saddle and bridle. All the circuitous
route of his travels he had stopped at decent taverns, because
there the officers and the Northerners who had come south
to pick the pathetic bones of the conquered were to be found.
There was always a game to be gotten into, usually to the
profitable advantage of an ex-Confederate soldier with a
jaunty manner, a casual approach and fingers swift as
lightning.

  He had money in his pocket now, the trouble was that
there was little to buy with it. No new breeches to replace the
fawn-colored pair he had worn so perilously thin. At
Memphis he had found his former commander, General Nate
~ orrest, and made himself known, but old Nate was so busy
building up a shipping business he had no time and little
desire to reminisce.

  By that time Morgan's fierce drive to go charging over the
country was beginning to abate. Now, two hundred miles
eastward, he was growing anxious. Three weeks away, the
thought of what might have happened at home was starting
to gnaw at him. His father might have died or even his
mother, frail little spark that she was. Indomitable courage
had always possessed her but Morgan knew how fiercely a
burning spirit could erode physical stamina. When he had
been at his bravest and most belligerent, when he had fought
most savagely. there had always been a kind of physical
collapse afterward. He had

[ 147]

seen whole companies, exhausted by that letdown aftermath,
fall to the ground shaking with bone-racking chills.

 Certainly they were thinking hard things of him at home.
His mother would defend him if she were able, but he knew
Jack and King. He had had twenty years of Jack and King,
their blasting sarcasm, their scorning blows, their heavy
boots. Even William and Buzzy yowling, "Titty Baby!"
Because of these torments that had tried him from childhood
his prob. ctive shell of arrogance had hardened like glass in
Mine till there W.IS now an untouchable aloofness about
him. Now the unease came from within.

 He had been impressed into attending this meeting today
by the men with whom he had played cards all night.

 "Old Gid Pillow's going, to preside," sneered a Union
officer, "and it will be a spectacle seeing grim old Gideon
talking on the side of Andrew Johnson and peace and
order."

 "They're all singing the same tune now," put in a cotton
buyer. "War's over. Everybody forget the whole thing. We're
good boys now, even if we were out to blow all you fellows
to hell last year. Let us back in the Union, hang Brownlow,
and let us all vote and go on beating up riggers."

 "Look at the way things are going in Kentucky," said a
captain from Indiana. "Confederates practically taking over.
Every man who fought with Robert E. Lee a hero every
Union man a thieving skunk. You'd swear it was secession
over again. As for Andy Johnson with his piddling attitude,
placate the rebel states, get 'em all back in the Union, no
revenge, no persecution I say to the devil with him! If those
radicals up in Congress don't boot him out of there the army
ought to go up to Washington and do it."

 "What's the purpose of the meeting?" Morgan tried to
maintain the fable he had fostered in this town, to assure
anyone who was dubious about him that he was as good a
Brownlow man as any of them. "What do the rebels want to
promote cowl"

 "Old A. O. P. Nichol~on's going to make a speech. He'll
call on everybody to support Johnson, forget all past
animosities and urge all the Confederates to admit they were
licked fair and accept the fact and get busy being patriots.
Not all the speeches that can be brayed over the whole
country will save Andy Johnson."

 "The scheme is to get Johnson to intervene in Tennessee,"
remarked another local man. "They know he and Brownlow
hate each other like two polecats in the same bag, and these
fellows would like to see martial law in this state, all
Rrownlow's elections and legislation declared

[ 148 ]

void and their own treasonable conservatives put into power.
Curious business, seeing men like Gid Pillow and Nicholson
and Neill Brown  red-hot Confederates all of
them supporting Johnson while Brownlow and his crowd are
itching to break with the President and support the element
in Congress that is out to get him impeached."

  The courthouse was chilly. ~\ big, rusty iron stove on one
side roared and crackled and every now and then a man rose
from his seat nearby and heaved in another chunk of wood,
making a great clatter with the poker. The stovepipe glowed
red-hot half its tilted length and Morgan forgot to listen to
the oratory wondering what would happen if that shaky
length of sheet iron came clanging down, scattering sparks
and soot. He made bets with himself as to which of the
listeners sitting near would jump for the windows, which
sprint for the door and who of all the group would be
cool-headed enough to avert a conflagration. But although
the speaking went on with rising emphasis and emotion the
pipe stood intact. Slim feathers of smoke leaked from some
of its joints and swirled languidly about the four slightly
lopsided and smoke-grimed kerosene lamps of the suspended
chandelier.

  Abruptly Morgan jerked erect and asked himself what he
was doing in this place. What did he car what happened to
Andrew Johnson or William Brownlow? They were the men
in power; Johnson by the fortuitous accident of tragedy,
Brownlow by fiercely aggressive determination. They enjoyed
the emoluments of power so let them be content with the
risks and responsibilities. Johnson voiced a fatuous kind of
mercy for a conquered people and because of it stood now in
peril of repudiation. Brownlow had a heart of granite. He
proclaimed himself a man of God, but Morgan knew
Brownlow's God was the avenger of the Old Testament.

  All the grim tales Morgan had heard, half listened to,
repeated gloatingly by the Union men he had been consorting
with, suddenly emerged out of the vagueness of his thinking
and became menacing, personal and cleadly. Tales of
Confederates ruthlessly thrust out of their homes, stripped of
everything, arrested, turned out practically naked in a hostile
world what reason to believe that the Marklands had
escaped? Just because they had been lucky till now did not
mean that their luck would hold forever.

  He slipped out of the building, flipped a dime to the boy
who had been holding his horse and sprang into the saddle,
wincing a little as his threadbare seat hit the icv leather.

  An officer with a thick brown beard that smelled of
chewing tobacco came up and laid a hand on a stirrup.

[ 149]

 "Well, what did that yawpingcrowd in there decide? Are
they going to march on Washington to keep old Andy in the
White House?"

 "Same old gulf," said Morgan. "Like all politics, more wind
than bullets."

 "Be around tonight? You ought to give me a chance to win
my money back."

 "Sorry, ['m pushing on. Getting a bit worried about my
family." Morgan pulled up the stallion's head, gave him a
prod with his heel and cantered away.

 Almost a hundred miles to go. Once he had ridden almost
that far in one frenzied day and night when the Confederate
Cause was crashing down in the final dust- of dissolution.
Then his horse had been shot under him by a Union sniper,
and for days he had walked. Too many days. Never, he had
vowed, would he ever walk again so long as a beast with
four legs remained afoot in the country.

 On the road he met a train of wagons and pulled aside to
let them pass. The animals that drew the outfits were mixed,
a span of oxen trailing in the rear, horse s and mules
slogging slowly ahead. The driver of the lead wagon halted
his team.

"Howdy, Neighbor!" he called. "How far are we from water?"

 "Not far," Morgan told him. "I forded a shallow creek
three miles back. Where you from, Mister?"

 "From up in Sumner C ounty. Heading for Texas, I
reckon, if we can hold out that far. Had a good feed and
grain business up home but this year there wasn't any crop
to speak of and them Yanks up in Nashville taxed me out of
business. Them two wagons behind me lost their farms. We
figure we can't be no worse off in Texas, if we get there.
Where you heading, boys"

 "Home. Up Harpeth way. You think those oxen back there
will make it to Texas7"

 "Outlast: my team, likely. Don't take much feed for an ox.
Just so he gets him a cud and can lie down to chew it, he'll
live to a good old age. That span belongs to a
widow-woman. Lost three boys fighting with Longstreet and
Johnston and outlaws killed her husband and burnt their
house. She's tough and she's got a twelve-year-old boy
tougher than she is. They'll make it to Nacogdoches if they
have to travel afoot. She's got kin there, she says."

"Any news from up your ways"

 "Nothing different. Everything the same. Brownlow riding
a castiron horse in a red-hot saddle, anybody don't agree
gets trampled.

[ 150]

Maybe the same in Texas but might be some warmer there.
This sets in to be a cold winter. Well, goodbye and good
luck."

 "Thanks. Same to you." Morgan waited in the saddle,
touching his hat politely as the other wagons ground slowly
by, the frosty ruts crunching under the wheels.

 The woman who drove the last wagon, sitting high under
the bowed top, had a worn and embittered face, and the thin
lad who walked beside the oxen, whacking their bony rumps
with a goad, gave Morgan an envious look.

"Mighty fine to be ridin' the road, you ole Yank you," he
snarled.

 "Take it easy, fellow," Moigan grinned. "I'm no Yank. I
fought with Forrest's Seventh Tennessee Cavalry."

 "What did ye get licked fur?" shrilled the boy. "Whyn't you
no-good Johnnies run them Yanks clear to Pennsylvany so
Ma and me could stay home?"

"We tried, son. We busted ourselves trying."

"You ain't busted. You've got a hoss."

 Morgan rode on faster, not looking back. Those wagons had
sharpened a panic unease in him, and he met others as he
drew near to the ford of Duck River. Some halted to talk and
the complaint was always the same. Taxed out, run out, lost
my business, lost my farm. "Won't be anybody left in
Tennessee that was for the Confederacy, if Brownlow and his
gang have their way."

 Morgan caught himself watching the road anxiously till
darkness fell. After that, if he saw a campfire burning in some
sheltered spot, he rode by calling a halloo.

"Lost my folks," he would explain when a stranger answered.

 They wouldn't start out in winter, he told himself. Not
unless they had to, not unless they had nowhere to go. All the
next day, after a brief uneasy nap under a rock face he
warmed with a fire, he felt the panic riding with him. Then
the panic took to itself abruptly another point with which to
goad him. Angela. Angela Wood!

 That little brown house, he was certain, had been the
property of the church. If some strange new preacher came
down from the north Mrs. Wood and her sister and Angela
would have to move. He had to know what had happened to
Angela so he headed into town first instead of turning south
on the homeward road.

 There was something vaguely hostile in the atmosphere of
the place as he let the stallion trot along the almost deserted
streets. A wintry wind had risen and was sending blackened
and broken leaves skirting in the gutters and sanded paths
before the low buildings. There were

[ 151 ]

no Negro soldiers lounging about, and but few townspeople.
They hurried bent against the wind or averted their faces as
though the sight of a young man riding a fine horse was
somehow a hurtful offence.

 At the hotel no one appeared to take his horse so Morgan
hitched him to a tree and strode inside.

 "How about some food and a bait of oats for my horse?"
he asked the man who slumped half asleep in an armchair
behind the desk.

 When the man lifted his head Morgan saw that he was a
stranger. The stranger reached for the shabby book.

"Who are your What s your name? Where's your horse?"

"Where's Murphy? He knows me."

 "Moved out," said the other. "Moved day after Christmas.
I run this place now. Name's Greene. Where's your horse?
Take him back to the stable and maybe somebody there will
feed him. Write your name here."

 Morgan pushed the book away. "No, I think I won't. I'll
move on." He turned and stalked out. Definitely he was not
going to write a name in that book, a name undoubtedly
already inscribed on the radical blacklist. A name that Jeff
Nichols or one of his hard-mouthed deputies would be
delighted to read there.

 The courthouse looked shabby and neglected' the door
shut. Around that door weather-stained posters flopped
drearily in the wind, each one a public notice of some
family's distress. He had an itch to see what names were
written on those placards, but he had no wish to venture into
Jeff Nichols' lair. The small brown house was only a block
away and he rode up boldly and tied his horse to the fence.

 There was a stir of white curtain at the front window as he
went up the path, and even before he knocked the door was
opened and Angela reached both hands and drew him
quickly inside.

 "Oh, Morgant" she exclaimed. "Where have you been? I
was sure you must :have gone off to Texas or somewhere.
Come back to the fire. Oh, Aunt Ella here's Morgan come
back."

 Miss Ella Crabtree stood like an iron-grey sentinel in the
door to the inner room where he glimpsed a feeble fire.

 "I see," she said grimly. "After what happened on your last
visit, Mister Markland, I am surprised at your boldness in
coming here again."

 "I was worried." Morgan mustered all his easy charm. "So
many people have been in trouble lately, I had to know that
you were all right. As for that affair, Miss Crabtree, I
present my profound apologies and assure you that it will
never happen again."

[ 1 52 ]

 "I'm sure it will not happen again," snapped the spinster,
"because you will not again be welcomed to this house."

 "Oh, but he will!" cried Angela, cheeks flaming. "Morgan
will be welcome in this house so long as I am in it, Aunt Ella.
If you don't like it, you can be the one to leave." She turned
abruptly and put both hands on his shoulders. "Morgan, I've
made up my mind. I will marry you any time you say!"

~ Twenty.

THE STUNNED LOOK ON MORGAN S FACE
COMMUNICATED ITSELF TO MISS Ella. She sniffed
loudly and disdainfully.

  "Nonsense!" she snapped. "[his man has no intention of
marrying you, Angela Wood."

  Morgan looked down into the eyes of the girl who was
almost in his arms. What he saw there, desperation, a raw
anguish, desolation, moved him to put his arms around her
quivering shoulders. She was a pretty thing, even in her
dowdy, made-over dress of some elderly grey stuff and she
was the gir] he had been dreaming about for forty miles of
road, well, thirty miles anyway.

  "Certainly I intend marrying Angela if she will have me,
Miss Crabtree. I've just come a long WJy from the west to
ask for her hand, again," he added tactfully.

  Miss Ella went to the inner door and raised her voice.
''Carrie! Come in here and tell your daughter we'll have none
of this foolishness."

  Angela gave Morgan a quick push. "Outside!" she
whispered. "We can't talk here."

"You'll need a coat."

  "No matter." She hurried him out and slammed the door
behind her. "We have to get away from here. Is that your
horse?"

  "He's tired. I've ridden from Columbia since noon yesterday
and he can't go much further. Wait I'll lift you into the
saddle. I'll lead him. He won't be frisky." He swung her up,
stripped off his own coat and handed it to her. "Put this on.
Weather doesn't bother me since the war. Now, where do we
go?"

[ 1 53 ]

  "Anywhere, away from here. I know Father's church. The
back door isn't locked. Luxton's guerrillas broke the lock
when they came through here."

  The little church stood back in a small hickory grove on a
bare trampled piece of ground littered now with torn paper
and dry, drifting leaves. Angela opened a door into a bleak,
chilly space behind the pulpit. The floor was strewn with
scattered pages torn from the big Bible and in one corner
someone had made a bed of hay and dry leaves covered with
a ragged Confederate overcoat.

  "Whenever I come in here I'm thankful my father is dead,"
she sighed, shivering. "They kept horses in here once when
some cavalry scouts came through. Mother and I cleaned it
up after that but when we knew Father wouldn't come back
we didn't care any more. Sit down, Morgan. And don't look
so bewildered and so trapped. You don't have to marry me"

  He frowned. "But what if I want to marry you?" he
demanded, dropping beside her on the bench.

  "You don't want to marry me. You were being very gallant
and you came in the nick of time and carried it off pretty
well even if I did sort of take your breath away."

  "Why not let me decide what I want to do?" he protested.
"It was a bit sudden, I admit, and I don't think I came up to
the mark exactly, but you said you had made up your mind."

  "I had to say it. You were a savior. A white knight riding
up at the fatal moment to rescue me from being pushed into
something dreadful, something I can't even bear to think
about. I had to be bold and abrupt and very likely you're
sitting there despising me for being so forward and cheap
and throwing myself at you, without a word of warning."

  "I could never despise you, Angela. You know that." He
reached for her hand but she drew it away gently.

  "No," she said. "Not now. Not till you hear the rest. We
have to go away, Morgan. The church wants the parsonage.
There's a minister coming from Indiana the first of the year,
and he has to live in it. So Aunt Ella has decided that she
and Mother are going back to Alabama. There are still some
relatives down there and one of them, a cousin, has some
money she is willing to lend to Aunt Ella for transportation.
Aunt Ella is sure she can get a job teaching school down
there and pay this cousin back and she thinks that Alabama
is still the South and that there won't be so many Yankees
down there."

"Doesn't she know that carpetbaggers and Yankee
missionaries are

[ 1 54 ]

flocking into Alabama? Things are worse there than here,
from what I've heard traveling around."

 "It would be no use to tell her, she wouldn't believe it. She
says Alabama was Southern when they left there, that she
came to this half-Union state just on account of Mother, and
now that the Union is in control she won't endure it any
longer."

 "I hope she doesn't delude herself that the Confederates
control Alabama." Morgan picked a long sliver from the
bench and began to break it into small pieces.

 "She dreams up things and then believes them. You can't
change her mind and she has Mother completely intimidated,
and now that she has this money promised "

"So now she plans to drag y ou all off to Alabama!"

"NO, not all of us. Just my mother."

 "And what did she decide was going to happen to you?
Before I rode up on my white charger, I mean?" asked
Morgan angrily.

"I am to stay here and be married."

 "But when I appeared, an available candidate, I was
informed very coldly that I was not welcome in your housel"

 Angela drew a long breath. "You weren't a candidate. Not
an acceptable candidate. You see, the bridegroom has already
been chosen."

"By you?"

 "Not by me. Would I have hurled myself at you in such
hysterical relief if I had picked somebody else?" she asked.

 "Then who is this buzzard they've picked out for you? I
gather you aren't too happy about it."

 She gave a shudder, leaning against him a little. Her hand,
on his, was cold as ice. "It makes me shiver even to think
about him. Not that he isn't a gentleman or he was when
men had the opportunity to be gentlemen. It's Mrs. Harper's
brother, Morgan. Her old bachelor brother. He's forty at least
and kind of fat. But he was with General Longstreet's army
and that makes him a hero in Aunt Ella's eyes, even though
L,ongstreet never did really win any victories. But he wants
to marry me and he still has money and a house so Aunt Ella
thinks it's a wonderful chance to get me settled for the rest
of my life so she and Mother won't have to worry."

 "Why, the old goat!" snarled Morgan. "How does he know
he'll keep his money and his house if he fought with
Longstreet? No Confederate is actually safe or his property
either so long as these radicals run the country."

"Oh, he protected himself. He took the oath, though Aunt
Ella

[ 155 ]

doesn't know it. She'd think that was black treason to the
South, but he very cleverly assured her that he was safe from
being molested. And you know Aunt Ella "

  "I don't know Aunt Ella!" Morgan snapped. "All I've had
from Aunt Ella so far is one withering blast after another.
She doesn't want to know me and she has fought to keep
you from knowing me."

  "Aunt Ella believes what she wants to believe. Even if she
suspects the truth about Elmo that's his name,
Morgan Elmo Shinn."

  "Great C'aesar! Old Elmo Shinn! Why, I've seen him
around all my life, always sidling and showing that toothy,
oily smile of his. Courting favor with people like old Josh
Fletcher and Squire Armitage. He used to be a slave trader.
Does your Aunt Ella know that?"

  "Oh, he gave that up long ago, he says. Of course he'd
have to when there weren't any slaves any more. Now he
buys horses and mules when he can find any and sells them
to farmers who have lost all their stock."

  "Broken-down old army stuff, no doubt. Requisitioned all
over the country and worn out in the service. He'll fatten
them up a little and get a high price, and the first time a
farmer tries to plow with one of Elmo's mules it will drop
dead in the furrow," sneered Morgan. "Once a tricky trader,
always a trickster And your Aunt Ella thinks he's a
gentleman?"

  "He fought for the South. She thinks anybody who fought
for the South is a hero," said Angela.

"I fought for the South and to her I'm not a hero, I'm a
scoundrel."

  "It was all right, Morgan, till you came to call when you'd
been drinking," Angela told him sadly.

  "I'm betting that Elmo likes his dram as well as the next
man. Anvway, he's old enough to be your father. Can't they
find a Confederate hero, at least heroic enough to suit Aunt
Ella, somebody your age?"

  "They haven't found anyone. They say all the young men
are so wild now since the war and that a settled, older man
will make a better husband. Anyway I have to give Elmo his
answer right away because they can't keep the house much
longer and Aunt Ella expects the money to arrive from
Alabama any day now. And Mother reminds me that Elmo
was a member of Father's church, that he gave fifty dollars
every year."

"Slave-trade money, dirty money, the hypocrite."

  She shivered again, moving closer. "Of course my mother
only wants what is best for me. I'll soon be twenty years old.
She wants to see me cared for and secure, so she says.
Anyway I'd surely hate to get to be an

[ 1 56 ]

old maid like Aunt Ella. She ~ ould have married an older
man, Mother told me. He was a widower with a fine
plantation down in Alabama but he had four children and
Aunt Ella had dreams about a romantic young lover so she
said no to this widower and then no young man ever asked
her. So now she's bitter and warped. And do you know
Morgan, Aunt Ella's not really old. She's only thirty-eight."

  Morgan's laughter barked, so that a rat busily gnawing away
somewhere in the frame walls of the church scurried and
squeaked.

  "Perfect solution!" he exclaimed. "Marry Aunt Ella to Elmo
Shinn. Then everybody lives happily ever after."

  "But what becomes of Mother and me?" She was plaintive.
"Aunt Ella will have the money we haven't any. That cousin
can't afford to lend it to someone who might never pay it
back. Aunt Ella has made it very clear that she has arranged
all this very cleverly to take care of all our futures7 and
Moths r's helpless to disagree. So Mother says we're lucky
Aunt Ella is so resourceful and it's fortunate a substantial and
respectable man like Elmo Shinn wants to marry me. So I
suppose I shall have to say yes. There's nothing else to do!"

  Morgan Markland drew a long breath. A small, reluctant,
warning knot tightened in his stomach, he felt a backward,
restraining pull of nerves. This is a trap, shrilled a small voice
in his brain, this is what King blundered into impulsively, now
King is bound and disillusioned and miserable. And yet hele
was a girl, desirable, wistful, softly feminine, a girl in trouble.
Morgan told himself that he was a Southern gentleman but
all the time the same inner voice was urging him not to be a
fool.

  Damn it, why couldn't ski/ have been born with a squint eye
or buck teeth and stringy hair? Why did her body have to be
so tender and appealing, her eyes so full of bewilderment and
heartbreak? Morgan set his jaw hard and tightened his hands
into aching fists. He struggled to drag words out of his throat,
casual words, something comforting but definitely
noncommittal, something that would let him walk out that
door yonder still free, but free also from nagging twinges of
conscience or uneasy memories of the desolation and dread
in her eyes.

  Some words came out. Raggedly' as though jerked out like
lengths of iron chain, tearing at his throat, hoarsely, because
caution was still trying to strangle them.

  "There's something you can do, Angela." He heard his voice
sounding strange and gleefully malicious to his ears, gloating
over him because here was the trap and it was hurling him
into it, because he

[ 1 57 ]

was a Markland and a Southerner and a maid in distress had
blue eyes with tears in them. "There is something you can
do. You can say you'll really marry me!"

  Snick! The trap was sprung. Morgan felt a cold wave wash
over him. Angela gave a little shudder, and although it was
intended to be maidenly and delicate, he sensed a kind of
ecstatic relief behind her small protest.

  "Oh, no! I couldn't. You don't want to marry me, Morgan.
You're just being gallant, trying to save me from Elmo
Shinn."

  "And you don't want to be saved from Elmo Shinn?" One
small chink of light, the way of escape opening a fraction of
an inch. Then it closed again with a finality as solemn as a
tolling bell. No hope, fellow, you got yourself into this.

  She gave another quivering shudder, drawing into herself,
tucking her hands into her sleeves. Her fingers were blue, he
noted, and so were her lips. The old shack of a church was
like an icehouse.

  "It would be like being saved from a fiery dragon," she
whispered. "It's the way the heathen offered their maidens
to Moloch and Baal. It is the same, isn't it, except that those
maidens died and I'd have to go on living with him. He has
hairy wrists and ankles horrible!"

  "I have hairy wrists." Morgan thrust out an arm. "Most
men do. In the army the men with no hair on their bodies
seemed to get hit first, or if they got sick they died."

  "You don't have to marry me, Morgan," she said quickly.
"I didn't bring you here to put a noose around your neck."

  "You didn't7" He laughed, not very mirthfully. "I'd have
said that that noose got flung over my head two seconds
after I knocked on your door. Didn't you make a bold
statement that you had decided to marry me?"

  "Now you're angry at me!" she choked. "Don't you see that
it was  all put on, Morgan? I had to get back at Aunt Ella.
I had to show her she wasn't running my life. I wanted to
shock her and she was certainly shocked. She doesn't know
right now what to think or do. Neither does Mother. Poor
Mother. I hate to oppose her but I had to show them that
they couldn't just push me into a marriage that I hated."

  "But where are you now7" He got up, limbering his frigid
feet, thrusting his hands into his pockets. "You say you won't
marry me and that you won't be pushed into marrying old
Shinn. And they say they can't take you with them to
Alabama. NYhat's left to do, Angela?"

  She buried her face in her hands. "Oh, I don't know. I
don't know what to do. You don't love me, Morgan, you
know you don't. You're

[ 1 58 ]

half angry at me this minute for getting you into this. You're
making a grand generous gesture, but all the time you're
thinking it's a stupid thing to do."

  "Stop deciding what I'm thinking." He was brusque. "The
point is, what are you thinking? If you're thinking that you're
willing to marry me to escape from Elmo and your aunt, then
why drag out the argument? I have to tell you that I'm not
much of a bargain. I drink and I gamble and I fought with
Forrest so I'm one stripe below a polecat here in this county.
I haven't any money mighty little anyway."

  "Oh, stop low-rating yourself, Morgan Markland. Any girl
would be honored to marry you, if she thought you wanted
her. If you loved her," she added faintly.

  "Love. That's a word with two handles. Nothing one-sided
about it. If it's lopsided everything spills out and it's all
wasted." He was getting in deeper and deeper but now he did
not care too much. Not with her eyes on his face like dew-wet
flowers, her lips half open and tremulous, her hands
trembling in her lap.

  "You're trying to make me say it," she cried. "It's not fair!
You want me to say that I fell in love with you the first time
I saw you. You want all the advantage, you men. Well, I
won't say iti"

  "Has Elmo said that he loves you?" It was almost a taunt
but Angela was too upset to notice the cynical note.

  "Oh, no." She was quick. "He was very formal and very
pompous. He asked Mother first and then he asked me for
the honor of my hand in marriage. He told me he'd be good
to me and that I would want for nothing so long as he lived."

  "So I come along and tell you that I might not be good to
you and you may want for a lot of things, especially if I get
arrested or chased off to Texas."

  "I wouldn't care!" she exclaimed. "Mother came to
Tennessee with my father in a wagon, with one bed and a
washboard."

  He dropped down beside her on the bench and put an arm
around her shivering shoulders. She cuddled against him
crying softly into his shirt.

"What can we do?" she whimpered.

  "Get married, I suppose." T le pushed her hair back from
her damp face and kissed her forehead casually. "If Aunt Ella
isn't on her way here already with a posse and a shotgun."

  "She'd never think of this place. Though she might if she
saw your horse out there, Morgan. We'd have to run away."

"And no place to run." He };issed her again, finding it more
delecta

[ 159 ]

ble this time as sue responded eagerly. "There's home. But
I don't know what's going on there. I've been away nearly
three weeks. My mother has two daughters-in-law there
already, but it's a big house. When do we run?" He tweaked
a lock of her hair, drawing her head back so he could kiss
her again, a prolonged and ardent kiss. "We can't wait
around till that preacher from Indiana gets here, that's
certain."

  "I'm afraid to go back home. I don't know what they'd do.
They might even lock me up."

  "Not after you're definitely married, they won't. There's
old Squire Armitage. I've played poker with the Squire, he'd
fix us up if we can catch him when he's sol,er. Then there
would be nothing they could do but put a curse on us, and
who's afraid of that7" he teased.

  She giggled. "Nobody. Morgan, I want to see Aunt Ella's
face. I can't wait to see it when we tell her."

  "I can live a long and happy life if I never see Aunt Ella's
face again. Here, put your arms in these sleeves. You're cold
as ice. After we get this business over we'll go and get your
clothes."

  "Oh, Morgall, you said you wouldn't be good to me and
here you are taking care of me already."

  "Because it appears to the naked eye that you haven't got
the sense to take care of yourself." He buttoned the coat up
to her chin. She flapped the dangling sleeves over her hands
and giggled like a child again. Then she turned g rave.

"You're the one who'll catch his death of cold. In that thin
shirt."

  "There were some cold days down around Huntsville when
I didn't even have a shirt. Let me count my money, gal." He
jingled some silver in his palm and flipped one gold piece in
the air and caught it again. "It appears that the Philistines
must be despoiled again shortly. All right, come along. We'll
find the Squire and get the deadly deed over."

  "Morgan, you're sure? Sure you won't be sorry?" she
begged anxiously.

  "If I disappear some foggy dawn you'll know I've taken a
few days off to be sorry. Pin up your hair. Don't be a
straggly bride."

  She obeyed meekly, adoring him with her eyes. It was
Morgan all the time, her shaken heart was assuring her. It
couldn't have been Billy. No, not BiLly. But what if Billy
had not vanished so suddenly? No matter. I'm marrying
Morgan. Not Elmo Shinn with his hairy hands and greedy
eyes. Morgan. Morgan Markland of the Harpeth Marklands.

  Morgan Markland brought his bride into his mother's
house in the middle of the night. A cold and hostile night
with spits of gritty snow in the air.

[ 160]

 King, opening the door, nightshirt stuffed into his
breeches, black hair standing on end, exclaims d, "Good
God!"

 Miss Annie, in a faded wrapper, kissed the scared bride
and hurried out to brew a pot of tea and poke up the fire.

They told Morgan then that his father had been dead for
two weeks.

~ Twenty One ~

THE TENNESSEE RIVER, PUSHING TO JOIN THE
OH10 UNDER THE MUDDY bluffs of western Kentucky,
was swollen and sullen with the winter rains on this cold
dawn of a Fcbruary morning.

 On the sloping shores where water had run down and
frozen in little pools of glassy ice a few shanties huddled, with
rusty stovepipes thrust up through the roofs, or leaning stick
chimneys. A plank landing thrust out from the reedy bank,
and it was from this landing that the ragged soldier had
leaped aboard while the grunting, grumbling deck hands
tossed wood aboard.

 The boat was a mongrel craft not too long converted from
its earlier military function. What had been an Eads gunboat
built to carry war up the Cumberland or the Tennessee was
now stripped down into a carrier of hogs or lumber or of
casionally, as now, a transport for shifting troops. The soldiers
had come aboard at Johnsonville, at what Forrest had left of
that river landing. There were sixty of them, all more or less
dispirited, all but this newcomer, this ragged scarecrow of a
straggler who, as soon as he was safely aboard and the boat
had shoved off again, began patting juba with his feet and
humming gaily through his teeth.

 "What you so happy 'bout, Bright Boy7" demanded an
ink-black corporal with bloodshot maroon eyes. "What you
coin' back here anyhow7 You git loose, whyn't you stay looser
Ain't you heared what the white folks gain' dot Ain't you
healed us is gittin' sent out west to fight Injuns7"

 Private Buzzy Markland did a dance step, his disreputable
shoes flapping.

 "I done found my Cap'n Billy," he gloated. "I walk a million
miles and I don't git sump'n t' eat for 'bout a hunnerd days,
I reckon. Folks

[ 161 ]

say, Boy, yo' outfit long gone from here, you ain't never
goin' catch up, but I catch up. I find my Cap'n."

"You a deserter. You lucky you ain't been shot 'fore now."

 "I ain't no deserter. I got put on special detail. That's what
the Cap'n tell me, special detail. 'I?ore I gits loose from that
detail you boys done got moved on."

"If you ain't a deserter you a straggler anyhow," argued the
corporal.

 "I ain't no deserter. I come back, didn't I? I walked and I
begged rides from white folks movie', I even drove an ole
cow 'bout forty miles. I'm plumb bound to find my Captn
Billy and praise be, if I done find him!"

 "Cap'n ain't pay you no mind," growled the corporal. "Ain't
pay nobody no mind since we come aboard this yere ole
piece of a boat. Jest stand there starin' at the river."

 "He pay me mind do I walk up smart and salute," insisted
Buzzy. "You see."

 "He bust you in the head with that pistol, he do right.
Shacklin' all over the country like some ole Johnny Reb
straggler."

 "You watch, he don't bust me no place. You watch." Buzzy
tightened his belt, buttoned what buttons remained on his
tom and weather-stained jacket, snapped his cap over his
eyes and strutted aft to where the officers sat hunched in
cold misery on a wind-swept bench. He faced the tall dark
figure at the end, saluting sharply.

 "Private Buzzy Markland reportin' aboard, sub!" he
announced in a voice that had a faint quiver of uncertainty
in it.

 The tall captain jumped to his feet. "Great Scott! Buzzy!
Where did you come from?"

 "Dickson County, Temlessee, sub, where at you
special-detail me, Cap'n suh."

"How did you get here? How did you find us?" persisted
William.

  "Cap'n, 1 run and I swum and I clum, but I find you. I
bound to find you," gloated Buzzy.

  "Come over here." William got him by the elbow, led him
to a sheltered spot on the lee side of the cabin. "Now tell me
what became of you after you fired that gun?"

  Buzzy turned a pale lavender and his eyes clouded and
closed till they were mere damp slits in his pallid face.

  "Cap'n, that wasn't no way my fault! Mist' Morgan he
come at me to take my gun away and Boss Boone he come
at me and I'm scairt and I bolt that gun too tight and it go
off," panted Buzzy. "So then I run and hid out I hid out a
good long spell. Then I started out to find you.

[ 162 ]

You leave a wide track, Capon Billy. Boy know how to trail,
a army ain't hard to find."

"You know that Boss Boone is dead, Buzzy?"

  A little ripple of terror convulsed and paled Buzzy's face.
"No!" he cried.

  "Boss Boone died and you killed him, Buzzy. Maybe it
wasn't your fault. Most likely it was mine, leaving you there
alone while I went for the doctor. I knew Morgan and I knew
my father. Violent men. All the Marklands violent men."
William seemed to be talking to himself.

  "You sho' you' pappy dead, Mist' Billy7" Buzzy asked
imploringly. "Boss Boone a mighty strong ole man. Don't look
like one little ole bullet kill him."

  "I saw him buried," William said, "the day our orders came
to move. The lieutenants rode out with me. Buzzy, you and
I are outlaws now. We can never go home."

"You reckon they hang me, Cap'n Billy?"

  William shook his head. "You were in uniform under
orders. They were in my custody. The law, such as it is, is on
your side. They won't hang you. They won't hang me, but
there may be times before we die that we'll wish they had
hung us to free us from our own consciences."

  "I ain't never wish I been hung, Cap'n. Man git shot that
military, that honorable, but gittin' hung is a mighty trashy
way to die," philosophized Buzzy. "I sho' am sorry 'bout Boss
Boone. He one fine ole man. I sho' do hate it that that ole
gun go off. These here ole guns we got now is all wore out
anyhow. Wore out in the war before we gits 'em. Been a good
new gun it ain't gone off sudden and hurt Boss Boone. You
been home, Mist' Billy? You seen Miss Annie? She mighty
grieved, I reckon."

  "I saw her at the grave. I didn't go close. They carried her
down the hill. Jack and King carried her."

"Mist' Morgan, he still mighty mad at me, I reckon."

  "He wasn't there. He shoved up at the post, I heard later
but I'd been called in to headquarters then and you were
gone," William said.

  "After that gun go off and I see Boss Boone grab his belly
and yell I got long gone, Mist' Willie. I run so fast I catch
myself mighty near to Nashville with my heels smokin7 'fore
I stop. What we do now, Cap'n?"

  "We're being landed at Cairo. Then we'll be sent down the
Mississippi River to a new post. You've got no equipment, I
see." William studied the ragamuffin figure. "I'll try to get you
fitted out when we

[ 163 ]

land. You're still in the anny. You enlisted for two years.
Get back up there with the other troops."

 "Got to be in the army," sighed Buzzy. "Do I go home
Mist' King, he shoot me and Miss Annie bust a skillet over
my haid. You femme have a gun, Cap'n? Git me a good gun
do you find one. It that ole gun's fault Boss Boone got
killed."

 Soon after William heard laughter at the bow where the
Negro troops huddled, squatting on deck away from the
searching winter wind. With lighthearted adaptability Buzzy
was already forgetting all that was tragic in an abrupt
transition from gloom to gaiety. The blame had been fixed.
The gun was at fault. But for that old gun Boss Boone
would not have died.

 William went below to the steamy, low-ceilinged cuddy
where the company equipment had been dumped, dug out
the dilapidated carpetbag that held the company records,
spread the sheets out on a table mlder the swaying dimness
of a lantern. Buzzy's record had to be corrected, brought up
to date. With his knife William scratched out the words
"Absent Without Leave" and "Presumed to Have Deserted"
and wrote on the lines "On special assignment, Captain's
orders. Completed and returned to ranks, February 18th,
1866."

 All his life now William was certain he would have the job
of protecting Buzzy from himself, of keeping him out of
trouble with women and the law, refereeing his fights,
patching his wounds. Even if this company were broken up
and scattered through the other regiments of the present
standing anny he knew that somehow he would have to keep
Buzzy near him, to keep him out of trouble. And it came to
him that there could be times when he himself would be
thankful for one devoted friend. When their term of service
ended, what then? Unless he re-enlisted he would be adrift
in a lonely world. A fierce nostalgia for home began to press
upon him. Never to go back again, never to see Miss Annie
again, or Sue. loo this he had sentenced himself and Buzzy.

 The torment was that he had been sincerely trying to save
them, those wild and valiant Marklands, save them from
themselves. He had blundered and likely there would be no
forgiveness, only unending resentment. Not from Miss Annie
perhaps, and not from Sue, who had been so ready to stand
against the others and defend him, but certainly from his
brothers he could expect no quarter.

 King and Morgan were both unreasonable and violent in
their hatreds. Jack was slower but at times even more
deadly, more obdurate. He had had a few brief interludes of
casual friendliness with Morgan in town but that had been
only recklessness attracting recklessness, and

L164]

now that would be ended. King was unpredictable. There was
his sudden impulsive marriage to Winnie Oliver, certainly
unplanned, a flash of arrogant gallantry, now no doubt
regretted. William had heard enough from the Marklands
during that confused and stormy morning in his own quarters
in town to know that Winnie was already listed as a family
liability.

  Suddenly William struck tire table hard so that the ink
jumped and spattered from the bottle. Winnie! Winnie Oliver
Markland. Not till this moment had he remembered that
paper he possessed, that tax deed to Winnie Oliver
Markland's inherited property. All along it had been his
determination to return the document, resigning all claim to
the place, though even now he was not sure how he should go
about it legally and he did not know how to find out. But he
knew that it had to be done immediately. Undoubtedly King
had already learned the truth, and another outrage was being
charged up to the black sheep of the Marklands.

  He rummaged through his gear, came up with the creased
and rumpled paper, and read it through carefully. The law
provided for a period of redemption with penalties and
interest attached, but from what he had seen of the old Oliver
place on his last visit to the neighborhood there was little
hope in his mmd that King would ever be able to raise any
money to redeem it.

  Still it was a good property and now, William was
thinking, it could be his own, a home again, a foothold in the
country where he had been born. Most men would argue that
to surrender it would be stupid, yet he knew that he had to
do it. He hunted out a long manila envelope, and signing his
name on the tax deed, slid it into the enclosure. Then, getting
paper and pen, he began a letter.

"My dear Brother Kingman "

  He stopped there, thought better of the idea, tore the page
up, and wrote:

My dear Sister Winifred:

 I have not had the opportunity to welcome you into the
family but I congratulate my Brother on winning so fair a
helpmate. I have no wedding gift for you but last Summer
while at the Court House on business I had the good fortune
to be able to prevent your Property, inherited from your
Grandfather, from being sold at Public Outcry for unpaid
taxes. The Document I enclose surrender) all claim I may
have upon this Property which is henceforth your Possession,
your Heirs and Assigns forever. Your Husband will know
what steps to take to clear the Title. I shall be in the field for
eight months moving at the direction of the Commander in
Chief,

[ 165 ]

so I leave that detail to Kingman, who I am sure will attend
to it Properly. I should have sent this Document to you
sooner but have been on the move for some time.
Respectfully yours, Dear Madam,

William Breen Markland, Captain, USA.

 He added his regiment and company numbers, also the
headquarters address; not that he expected any reply but this
was business and needed the stamp of official dignity. Then
he limped up the steps to the afterhousewhere the mailbag
hung, ready to be locked and tossed ashore when they
stopped briefly at Paducah. He dropped the envelope in,
turned his back quickly. At least he had done the decent
thing. Most of his pay for three years of fighting and part of
his winnings from those Yankee card sharks had gone to
make his family secure from the ravening carpetbaggers. He
did not regret it. His only hope was that he had not bought
more resentment with that money. Obligation, unwillingly
acquired, he knew could be a bitter burden.

 None of the troop were allowed ashore at Paducah and this
produced considerable rebellion and some bitter complaints.
Kentucky resented and rejected Colored troops, and had
entered into agreement with Washington that none would be
stationed within the state.

 "They didn't secede in 'sixty-one," grumbled Lieutenant
Gore. "Now they're turning the whole state into a
Confederate province. If Robert E. I.ee showed up in
Frankfort they'd elect him governor right now by public
acclamation."

 "They feel the way they do because so many dishonest and
tyrannical Union men were put in command here," declared
Lieutenant Perry. "We've got to keep these boys aboard
somehow, Captain, for two days and nights, till the transport
gets here to take them down river. You'd better watch that
blabber-mouth yellow boy of yours or he'll slip ashore and
some young Secesh blood just home from Appomattox will
slit his throat for him."

 Very likely, William was certain, every Colored soldier
aboard knew by now that Buzzy had killed a white man.
Buzzy would be the big man, ignoring restrictions. Buzzy was
as difficult to contain as quicksilver. He called the boy into
his official cubbyhole and issued an order.

 "Buzzy, I'm making an aide out of you. Hereafter, till we
start down river you'll stay close to me, obey my orders, run
my errands and sleep where I sleep."

 Buzzy looked dashed. "Cap'n Billy, you fixin' to git my haid
bash in some of these dark nights? Boys up yonder won't like
it, do you make aide out of me, with stuff on my sleeve and
wearin' a sword."

L 166 ]

 "You'll get no braid on your sleeve and no sword. You're
under detention, Buzzy,for being absent without leave for
weeks. You'll shine my boots, take care of my equipment,
fetch me my meals and do whatever I tell you to do."

"Mist' Willie, ain't you forgetting I'm free."

 "You're a private in this army! I'm your commanding
officer. Stand at attention when I speak to you."

"Yes, sub! Cap'n sub!"

 "Now go out and pass the word that any boy who slips off
this boat at night will probably be found floating face down
in the river in the morning, with a bullet in his head or his
throat cut." William was grim.

Buzzy's shoulders sagged and his lips pushed out.

 "Mist' Willie," he said plaintively, "I done beg you to git me
out this ginny army. Ain't no good place for nobody to be,
you or me neither."

 William looked at the boy long and sadly, the same bleak
homesickness making an ache within him that lay liquid and
bereft in the Negro boy's eyes.

 "Where would we go, Buzzy?" he asked, expecting no
answer. "Where would we got"

~ Twenty Two ~

IT WAS SPRING WHEN WrEr.IAM RECEIVED THE
LETTERS.

 The company had moved south into Mississippi, to a small
town not far from the river, where a railroad was being
projected into Alabama. They arrived on a rawlyy March day,
chilly and dispiriting, and there was nothing about the place
to raise their spirits or give them any confidence whatever in
the wisdom of the officials at Washington.

 "We're supposed to guard the construction of this damn
railroad," grumbled Lieutenant Gore. "But where the devil is
the railroad? If they've even begun grading for one, the
roadbed's sunk deep in the mud by this time."

 "See that low black embankment up yonder? That's the
railroad," said the other lieutenant. "There'll be timbers and
steel dumped off somewhere on the water front and we're
supposed to keep the stuff

[167]

from being stolen and carted away before the engineers get
here. Mean\vhile"--he pulled a boot out of the sucking mud
with a hollow sound  "how do NyOU keep a tent peg from
floating away by itself before you get a rope tied to it?"

  "You write a letter to the War Department, Lieutenant,"
William said. "Maybe by next October you'll get an answer."

  "Sixteen boys showed up on sick call this morning," said
Gore. "The minute it gets hot down here there'll be insects
to eat us alive and like enough yellow jack and smallpox and
every other foul disease. Why did we fight to drag country
like this back into the Union anyway? Who wants it? A
dozen Negroes to every white man, and not one of them
wants to work, whip or black. How are they going to get a
grade on that roadbed? Black women carrying dirt on their
heads in baskets, the way they do in China'"

  "We don't have to build it, Lieutenant, we just have to
protect it. But we've no snap job at that, for those few
railroad ties they've got stacked up down yonder are going
to look mighty good to some fellow w ith no sills under his
shanty, or a barn burned down. Mount four men on guard
down there, Lieutenallt Gore, with orders to shoot in the air
if anybody c omes prowling."

  "If those boys get scared they're likely to shoot up their
own tents, or get some of us in the back and run," growled
Perry. "It was never like this up on the Rappahannock."

  "We weren't educated about mud at West Point either,"
complained Gore. "But we fought a whole damn war in the
mud, far as I can remember."

  Buzzy had a complain r too. It rained, and the tents
leaked. The blankets we re sodden, and mildew attacked
boots and equipment over

Tligllt.

 "And how come these riggers down here don't know we
won the war, Cap'n?" he fretted.

 "They're just poor dislocated Colored people, Buzzy,"
William explained. "Keep your mouth shut, don't go
bragging, attend to your duty and you'll have no trouble."

 "Up home," the boy sighed, "it plowin' time. Boy, I'd sho'
like to git my bare fools in a furrow again, see a ole mule
floppin' his tail, Miss Anllie's chickens followin' along to
pick up the grubs. You reckon Mist' Morgan ever learn how
to hold a prow? Mist' Morgan he ain't never liked to git
hisself sweated up much and spoil his good clothes."

"When you're hungry vou can learn fast, Buzzy."

L ,68 ]

 "Dis here ole Mississippi mighty cold for springtime. 130tl1
your blankets they git wet, Cap'n.'

"Hang them by the fire then and dry them Ott."

"Yes, sub." Fuzzy shuffled <sullenly to obey.

 Some day, William was certain, he would look about for his
reluctant aide and Buzzy would not be there. The boy had
already demonstrated his ability to travel swiftly over the
country and arrive at his objective and now all his talk was of
the Harpeth country, of home. That there might be violent
Parklands there waiting to deal harshl~-with him obviously
did not cloud Buzzy's nostalgic dream.

 The mail call came at noon on a sunny Saturday. Buzzy
sped as usual to worm his way into the line. He had never yet
received a letter and William doubted if Buzzy could read
one if he got it, his brief haymow education having proceeded
only halfway through the primer. but he was always eagerly
optimistic. This day his eyes glittered and bulged a little as
the mail clerk put two envelopes into his hands.

"Captain's mail. Don't drop them in the mud."

 "No, sub." Buzzy stuffed the missives inside his coat, and
sent mire flying as he ran back to the Captain's tent. "Mail,
Cap'n," he announced with a flourish.

 William took the envelopes, both soiled and worn from
muscle handling and forwarding through military channels.

"From home, Cap'n?" asked Buzzy eagerly.

"We'll see." William slit one envelope with his knife.

  A paper slid out into his hand, the folded document, the
same tax deed he had mailed weeks ago to Winnie Markland.
A small scrap of paper had been pinned to it with a rusted
pin and the few Torch scrawled on this fragment leaped at
William in all the anger with which they had been written. He
recognized his brother's angular hand.

  "You wanted this bad enough to steal it." King had written.
"Keep it and be damned."

  "Bad news, C'ap'n Billy?" Buzzy ventured, seeing the dark
spasm of hurt fury tighten William's face. "That from home?
Thev still mad at us back home?''

  "Still mad at us, Btlzzy." W illiam tore Kings insulting
message into bits, but put the deed carefully away in his
dispatch case.

  He cut the flap on the other envelope. The handwriting
sent blood pounding warmly through his rigid muscles. lIis
mother! She had signed herself formally, Annic LOH Breen
Markland.

But there was no formality in the letter.

[ i(91

My darling Boy: [Miss Annie had written, hastily, crookedly,
obviously with homemade ink] I am writing this in the loom
house and I don't know how l will get it in the Mail. The
boys [here something was scratched out messily as though
Miss Annie had begun some revelation that she had later
repented] the boys don't go to town often. We only have the
Colts now and one old mewel. [Smelling, William
remembered, had always been a bit of a mystery to his
mother] The other mewel dyed. We let Jack take the Geld
and buggy. I just hope it holds together till they get where
they are going. I was shurely glad to find out where I could
send a Letter. You write to your Mama now and let me no
if you get this Letter. All as well as common only Mammy
Dory dyed last winter. We shurely miss your Pa and
Boone-boy. The Girls are fine only Morgan's wife in a family
way. You write to your Mama who loves you. No use this
War going on forever. Your loveing Mother, Annie Lou
Breen Markland.

 A tight lump strained to the point of tears in William's
throat. He traced the rambling, smeary lines tenderly with a
forefinger. Pokeberry ink! flow many times had he seen his
mother stew up the juicy berries that he and Buzzy brought
in in vinegar and whisky, straining the fluid carefully through
a fold of cloth? The one steel pen in the house had always
been sacred to his father's laboriously posted farm and slave
books. When William went away to school and had a pen of
his own in a fine green holder he had felt very important.

 Buzzy was studying his face anxiously. "What Miss Annie
say?" he asked. "That from Miss Annie ain't it?"

 William read the letter again frowning a little. "I can't
understand some of it, Buzzy. She writes about Jack taking
the gelding and the buggy and that they miss Boone-boy.
Jack must have moved out."

"Mist' Jack and Mist' King ain't been gittin' along good?"

 "She doesn't say. But she does say something about
Morgan's wife " Morgan's wife! A stab of unease struck at
William's heart. A picture of that moon-washed October
night came back to haunt him. Of Morgan reeling out of
that parsonage with Miss Ella Crabtree's outraged shrilling
following him, of that confused and embarrassing fight, of
Morgan yelling at him next morning, "Your girl by gad,
sir "

 Angela! Why, he demanded of himself, hadn't he written
to Angela? In the chaos of turmoil and trouble, his father
shot, Buzzy disappearing, hot angry quarrels with Jack and
Morgan before he had sent them home, he had not even had
an opportunity to get word to Angela, or to tell her goodbye
when his orders to move had come.

He had been too tormented with worry and remorse over his
father's

[ 170]

suffering and death to think about his own concerns. Now, if
Angela had married his brother on a rebound, it was, William
berated himself, no more than he deserved. But that she had
been halfway in love with him William was almost certain.
There had been so little chance to talk to her, no opportunity
to be with her at all. Those grey dragons, her mother and
aunt, had seen to that.

 Buzzy interrupted this painful thinking again, inquiring
wistfully, "That all Miss Annie write in that letter? Mist' Jack
done moved and Mist' Morgan git married? Who he git
married to?"

"I don't know, Buzzy. I hope he didn't steal my girl."

"One I tote all them notes to?"

 "My mother didn't say who Morgan had married. But she
did say that your grandmother had died."

 Buzzy gnawed a protruding lip. "She pretty ole, my
grandmaw. I ain't never told her goodbye and now she daid.
Now we ain't got nobody much, is we, Cap'n?"

"We've got ourselves, Buzzy. I've got you and you've got me."

 "I bet Miss Annie wish I'd come home," stated the boy
boldly. "I bet she see me walkin' in that ole kitchen door right
now she yell 'Buzzy, you lazy dog, you git me some lightwood
kindlin' right now! That what she'd say."

 William nodded grimly. "And then when King came in and
saw you there he'd order you off the place and out of sight
and tell you if you didn't move fast Morgan would shoot you."

 Buzzy puckered his brow quizzically. "If I rub down his
horse and shine up his loots good, Mist' Morgan change his
mind," he said shrewdly. "Mist' Morgan ain't never liked to git
his good clothes dirty. Got him a wife now, reckon he won't
be ridin' round so wild no more. drinkin' end gamblin'."

 "He'd better not," snapped William with sudden ferocity.
"He d better treat her well or by God I ll throttle him!"

 "You got to go home to do that, Cap'n," Buzzy said
hopefully. "Whyn't we both of us go home? This ain't no war
army no more. It's a sit-around, draw-ration, shoot-crap,
grumble army. Boys all tryin' to pick fights, officers all
homesick. Jest form fours, count off, police up this here
area."

"It's still the army. You wanted it. You got it. Do your best
for it."

 "Eleven dollars a month," brooded the boy sourly. "It don't
last but one day. What they got us down in this ole
Mississippi for, anyways?"

 "Because the people in Washington need us here to guard
this railroad construction."

[ 171 ]

  "Who in Washin'ton. Lintum daid, all them big generals
gone home. General Sherman and General Grant, they don't
care where we at. You reckon they even know we alive,
Cap'n Billy7"

  "Probably not," admitted William. He was knowing now the
sting of hurt conceit. If Morgan had married Angela, then he
himself had been nothing more to her than a passing fancy,
a handsome officer, a whim with which to defy her female
jailers, a sop to her girlish vanity.

  But what had he had from her after all, beyond casual
friendliness7 A chance meeting or two, a passing smile or
wave of the hand. And she had had from him a long silence.
She could not be blamed if she had wearied of being
ignored. Why was he harrowing himself before he knew the
truth7 And how was he to know7 He could not write, except
to his mother, and his Markland pride would not let him ask
whom Morgan had married, although to Miss Annie that
would appear the natural thing to do. He could imagine
Morgan's gleeful gloating, if he had scored a victory over
Brother Billy, when that brother evidenced any sign of
resentment.

  It was a relief when marching orders came late in April,
shifting the company again, this time to a post in Georgia.

  All the Southern state; were beginning to seethe with fury
at the carpetbag governments. To be an ofhcer of a garrison
post was to be a hateful kind of police officer, ordered to
keep white men from the polls, uphold the freedmen in their
insolences, be respectful to the radicals and their cheap
arrogant politicians.

  William despised the assignment and grew short-tempered,
even with Buzzy, who wore an, increasingly withdrawn and
secret air, said little, and bore himself with disturbing
circumspection.

  It was no surprise to Captain William Markland to
discover on a date May morning that P-ivate Bllzzy
Markland had disappeared.

               Twenty Three
BY T}IE TIME TEIEY REACHED Tlll'. SOUTII FORK OF
T}iE FORKED DEER RrVER

the gelding had begun to limp a little. The left rear tire of
the buggy developed a jingle and Boone-boy had
commenced to fret peevishly.

 "Whyn't we stay home Mama?" he whimpered. "What we
want to come here fort"

[ 172]

 Sue had a patient answer ready, although the reply had no
roots in her heart. She had hated leaving the Markland place
as much as Boone-boy, she had even wept about it, but
always in secret. Jack was discouraged enough already,
gloomy enough, without having her tears added to his
burdens.

 "Because there were too many people there, Boone-boy,"
she told him. "Because the farm won't grow enough food to
feed so many of

us.

  "Why didn't Uncle King go away then and Uncle Morgan?
Why I got to have so many aunts? Why didn't Uncle King go
home and take Aunt Winnie with him? I don't like aunts that
cry all the time."

  "Uncle King and Aunt Winnie lost their home," Sue
explained for the tenth time. "And Uncle Morgan and your
Aunt Angie have no place to go. Papa does have a place to
go. A place where he can get land for us to live on, and work
to do. Papa is going to help cut timber and build a railroad.
We'll have a nice home some day, and you'll like Texas."

  "I won't like it. Why do he have to sleep outdoors all the
time? I don't like that lid ole tent. I like my bed in
Grandma's house," persisted the boy.

  "I liked my bed there too," admitted his mother. "And I
liked chairs to sit on and a stove to cook on, but I want to go
where Papa wants to go and Papa wants to go to Texas."

  "Uncle Morgan says they got wild Indians in Texas. And
bears. A big ole bear could come in our tent some night and
eat me up."

  "Papa would shoot any bear that bothered us and then we'd
have bear meat to eat and a big warm bearskin to sleep
under. You and I would scrape the skin and play we were
real Indians," prattled Sue, trying to drown under a rivulet of
words the piteous crying in her own heart. I'm afraid. Oh, I'm
afraid. Oh, Miss Annie, why did you let us go? Couldn't you
see this strangeness in your son, growing and growing? His
odd moods, the frightful headaches, the agony that paralyzes
all his senses, the darkness that comes over him when the
pain strikes?

  She knew well that nothing Miss Annie could say would
have changed Jack's grim determination. Not after Morgan
had brought

wife into the house. Jack had been stiff and difficult after
that, saying little to the family but grumbling loudly to Sue
after they had closed the door of their room.

 "Stays away not caring if his father lived or died and then
comes galloping in as lighthearted as if he'd won the war,
bringing a wife along for us to feed and Miss Annie to wait
on."

[ 173 ]

 "She's a good little thing," Sue defended. "She tries to help
all she can." But inwardly she was thinking: Morgan doesn't
love that girl. Somehow, like King, he was trapped into this
marriage.

 Morgan had treated his wistfully eager young wife with an
amused, gay, often cynical manner that bewildered even his
mother. He would leave her without a farewell and return
jauntily, offering no explanation, no excuse. Always he
brought food home in his saddlebags, or he tossed a ten
dollar gold piece nonchalantly into his mother's lap. He
brought whisky home too and that frightened Sue since Jack
and King drank with Morgan in the stable. Whisky made
Morgan more sardonic, given to biting remarks that stung
even though the others laughed at them; it made King sullen
and Jack grew unpredictable, even after one drink. After she
had found her husband Iying face down in the barn twice,
Sue grew resigned to the migration and in the end she had
been a little glad to get away from the Markland house.

 But not from Miss Annie, who had worn a stricken face
and an air of tragic resignation, and not from tearful old
Minerva. From the continual tension brewing between the
brothers, threatening to erupt any hour into quarreling and
violence.

 Morgan had in the end supplied them with some money a
loan, Jack insisted. And King had finally agreed that Jack
should have the gelding and the buggy. Miss Annie had
offered more blankets than the rig would hold and she and
Minerva and Angela had cooked for days.

 "It's cool yet. Things will keep," she argued. "But I do wish
you had a wagon. So much here you could take with you."

 "Too slow, Jack says," Sue explained. "It's six hundred
miles to where Jack wants to go. Nh ith a horse and buggy
we can drive it in four weeks, he thinks, even resting the
horse on Sundays."

 "King says," put in Winnie, "that he never heard of this
lieutenant from East Texas that Jack thinks is going to help
him get located when you get there. And you know, Sue,
that King and Jack were in the same regiment all through
the war. You don't think it could be a delusion or
something7 You know there are times when Jack isn't well,
exactly himself since he got that blow on the head."

 Sue bristled. Winnie could always stir a flare of antagonism
in Sue although for her mother-in-law's sake and to keep
peace she strove loyally to control it. Wimrie could do it just
by being Winnie. Always limp and undependable, always the
pessimist, thinking of no one but Winnie.

"Jack," Sue retorted stiffly, "may have times when pain
masters him

[ 174 ]

but he would never drag his family all that distance following
a dream."

 "So many people going off to Texas," said Miss Annie. "Just
last week the Lawsons, the last of our good neighbors. That
poor man and all those girls and no son to help him."

 "But they had a covered wagon," said Winnie. "Jack and Sue
will have to sleep on the ground."

 "Jack slept on the ground through the war," argued Sue.
"I'm as strong as he is. Whatever Jack can bear I can bear too
and so can Boone-boy."

 But it had not been easy. Now here at the Forked Deer
River they were only a little more than a hundred miles on
their way and already six days had passed. There was that
clinking tire now. Tonight the buggy would have to be
unloaded and backed into a stream and left there all night so
the wheel would swell. Then, as laboriously again in the
morning, it must be dragged out again and all the food and
clothing and blankets, damp with spring dew, packed away.
But thus far the banks of the river had been high and rocky,
the water fast and turbulent, and although Jack got down and
walked, searching, he found no sign of a ford.

 Dusk was beginning to thicken, the greening fragrant dusk
of spring, when he resumed from his last exploration,
sweating, gray-faced and angry.

 "Looks like we'll have to follow this damn river all the way
to the Mississippi. White water and deep everywhere I've
sounded."

 "Can we drive the horse right across the Mississippi?" asked
Booneboy.

 "A river a mile wide and a mile deep? Sounds likely doesn't
it?" snapped Jack.

"How would the child know if no one tells him?" interposed
Sue.

 "Going on eight years old. Goes to school. Well, I've told
him. Does he have to ask questions all the time?"

 "Little boys can't learn unless they ask questions," said
Boone-boy. "Grandma says so."

 "Might as well camp here." Jack took the bridle to lead the
gelding off the dimly visible road. "Too dark to go on. At
least there's water if I can get down to it without breaking a
leg."

 "I can get down, Papa," volunteered Boone-boy. "I won't
break a leg but I can't carry that big ole bucket."

"You stay with your mother," ordered Jack. "I don't want to
be

[ 175 ]

fishing you out of that river in the dark. Hunt some wood
for a fire while you can still see."

  "If there was a snake I might not see him but I could still
see a bear or an Indian." Boone-bov was jauntily brave. But
his mother was not brave at all.

  Even when the fire leaped red and the smoke-blackened
kettle steamed over it, when the April moon came up
delicately riding a chiffon cloud on her silver keel, when the
mocking birds sang deliriously in the great trees bordering
the river, Sue could not shake off a chilly oppression that
made every shadow a menace, every bird a homesick
reminder of happier days.

  The river clucked, sucked, snarled and splashed over the
rocks that impeded it. It was, she decided, rightly named.
Down from the higher ground of the Cumberlands these
waters plunged like frightened forked deer, but surely there
would be quieter levels ahead as the land sloped gently
toward the greatest river of them all. They had crossed the
Tennessee on a crude ferry, hastily built of pine logs and
slabs by some free Negroes, poled across by the power of
their Clark bodies. It had taken all Jack's strength to keep
the nervous gelding from plunging off the shaky craft into
the stream. What would it be like when they essayed the
crossing of the vast Mississippi? And once on that distant
shore, what then? Would there be any roads at all through
Louisiana? Spring, she knew, was a time of bottomless mud,
quagmires, holes filled with roily water on almost any road,
and Louisiana was reported to be a land of bayous, many
small streams and swamps. Lying in the little tent `.~n a
blanket Sue caught herself digging her fingers into the earth
as though she would tear from it the answer to all the
apprehensions and anxieties she had never put into words,
lest she tear away what valiance was left in her husband's
spirit or put fresh fears into the heart of her staunch little
son.

  The next day dragged off from a late start. They had to
move slowly because of the gelding's strained leg and the
loose tire that threatened to fall off the rim at any moment.
Jack stumbled and slid to the edge of the river, fetching
water up for the horse, and came back with his breeches
dripping mud and his face like thunder. The road followed
the stream for four miles with no break in the high banks
and no slowing of the current. It was past noon when they
reached a little village where a rusty cannon lay tilted on
broken wheels beside the single street.

  The few houses had doors standing open and Negro
children stood in them, staring, half naked. A litter of young
pigs scurried squealing

[ 176]

across the road, causing the horse to shy nervously. When a
tall mulatto in a faded pair of Union breeches came
shambling near, his bare feet making squishing noises in the
mud, Jack reined up.

"Where do we cross this river, Mose?" he asked loudly.

 The Negro drew himself up with chilling dignity. "Name
ain't Mose, white man. Mah name William T. Sherman,
Junior."

"All right, Sherman, which way to a ferry or a ford?"

 "Mister Sherman to you, white man," was the frigid reply,
"and there ain't no ferry. We fords this here river five miles
north and she mighty high right now."

 Sue sat clutching Jack's elbow, begging him by silent
pressure not to let his temper rise. Boone-boy sat hunched
very small beside her.

 "Where can I find a white man?" demanded Jack. "Any
blacksmith in this town?"

 The Negro shook his head "Ain't any blacksmith. Ain't any
white people neither. Just us free (~olored."

 "But there must have been some white people here?" Sue
said, keeping her tone polite. "Those houses "

 "They left, Madam," stated Sherman pompously. "They
done head out for parts unknown. Seven families, all head
out."

 "Drive on, Jack, please," she begged. "There are bound to
be people further along this road."

 "I'll have to pour some water on that wheel. Would one of
your Colored citizens lend a man in distress a few buckets of
water?" he asked the mulatto, acidly.

"Well yonder," the man shrugged a shoulder, ambled away.

  "For Heaven's sake don't he so sarcastic!" Sue protested.
"There's no slavery now and we're far from home and
helpless."

  "Mister Sherman!" snarled Jack. "I'd Mister him!" He
unslung the bucket from the rear axle, rummaged a
blackened kettle out of their packed possessions, handed it to
the boy. "Here, make yourself useful. Move. The quicker we
get out of this dead and gone place the better."

  "But why dic1 all the white people go away, Papa?"
Boone-boy trotted after Jack. "Over there is a pretty, big
house but black people are living in it."

  "Why did we move away?" countered Jack. "Because the
Yankees won the war. Because they're trying to take over the
country and make the black man a king and the Southerner
a slave."

  "Will we be slaves in Texas, Papa? I don't want to be a
slave. Buzzy's daddy was a slave and Grampa sold him down
the river. Mammy Dor told me so. Can they sell us if we
get to be slaves, Papa?"

~ 177 ]

 "We won't be slaves in Texas. Pour that water slow now
and don't waste it. It's going to be hot today. That wheel will
dry out fast." Jack sloshed the borrowed water anxiously.
The sun was mounting to its zenith and mist rose from all
the pools and reeds along the river's edge. The horse
slumped in the harness, resting his lame leg. Black children,
wearing only brief faded shirts, hung about, their big dark
eyes curious. The gelding pawed and stamped as a horsefly
nipped him and the little Negroes scattered like partridges.
Boone-boy laughed to see them run and was scolded by his
mother.

 "We mustn't anger these people," she said. "There are
many of them and only three of us."

 "But why don't they like us?" Boone-boy puzzled as they
drove on. "'Nerve's black and she liked me. Mammy Dory
liked me. She used to hug me all the time till she got too fat
and sick."

 "They've been taught not to like us by wicked white
people." Sue strove to explain what was still not clear in her
own mind. "Wicked people from up north who wanted
Negroes to like them and hate us."

 "Damn YankeesI" Boone-boy quoted his uncles bluntly.
"We ought to get some guns and chase them clear into the
ocean."

 "We tried that," said Jack. "Did you see that Parrott gun
Iying wrecked beside the road back there. I was there the
time we abandoned that gun when we were chasing the
Yanks north after Shiloh."

 The boy's eyes widened. "You were here? In the war?
Right here on this road, Papa?"

 "Right here. Riding a good horse then. Gray Knight. He
was brother to The Count, that bay that Billy stole when he
went off with the Union."

 "Billy didn't steal that horse any more than you stole Gray
Knight," Sue argued. "They were your own horses. Pa
Markland gave them to you."

 "Pa would never have let a horse go to the Union cavalry
and you know it. Billy left in the night and Buzzy with him."

"Where's Gray Knight now, Papa?"

 "Probably a heap of bones in a gully picked clean by the
buzzards. He broke a leg when we were retreating from
Franklin, and I had to leave him where he fell."

 The bad wheel was quieter now, the gelding stepped out
a little faster under Jack's urging. He still favored his lame
hind leg, not resting his weight upon it, lurching one-sidedly
when he trotted.

 "Did you look at his shoe?" Sue asked, further on. "He still
limps mighty bad."

[ 178 ]

 "Shoe's all right. When that rock rolled under him back
there a way, he must have strained a tendon. He ought to be
taped up and kept off it, but we can't stop now. I should have
brought along some of Pa's liniment. Ranse used to bandage
'em and cure 'em in three days."

"Suppose he gets so he can't travel?"

  "Suppose he keeps on traveling," Jack flared back. "He's got
to travel. We're not even out of Tennessee yet. We'll have to
cross part of Mississippi and some of 1 ouisiana. God, when
I was riding this country with Forrest I never expected to
come limping back!"

  It was two days later when they had crossed south into
Mississippi that Sue saw black people working in a vast field
of cotton, hundreds of Negro men, it seemed.

  "Jack, look!" she cried. "Soldiers are out there in that field
with those hands. Union soldiers."

  "Freedmen's Bureau," he 1-old her. "They have to feed all
those Nigras so they lease them out to landowners, then they
have to appeal to the army to help 'em keep the Nigras at
work." He laughed. "That's their Yankee freedom for you.
Ever see a soldier standing over one of Pa's hands, over
Ranse or Phoebus or Buzzy with a gun? Well, they wanted it,
now they've got it."

  An elderly man with lieutenant's stripes stood near the
road, regarding them curiously, and a little way down the
field a very young boy in blue poised his gun nervously.

  "Yankees," whispered Boone-boy, aghast. "Will they hurt us,
Mama7"

  "No, they won't hurt us. And they won't let those black
men hurt us, either."

  But hardly had she spoken than the terror happened. So
suddenly that Sue could never quite order it all in her mind
afterward. The shouting, the terror, as all at once there was
a gustily breathing swarm of black humanity climbing over
them, the whistle and slash of Jack's whip as he laid it about
him, the struggle and grunts and curses and blows as he was
pulled to the ground. Boone-boy snatched the whip from his
father's hand, raining blows on sweated black faces where
yellow eyeballs glared. Jack was still on his feet, fighting, and
the soldiers were shouting and running. The Negroes wanted
the horse. There were six of them, hug`, sweaty, fiercely
belligerent.

  Sue struck at the dark hands that tried to drag her out of
the buggy. She kicked and screamed, and was vaguely aware
of the aging officer

[ 179 ]

laying about him with the flat of a pistol, of the shouting
coming nearer and yelled commands and loud jeers and
running feet.

 The boyish soldier was not to blame. All that anguished
way home she told herself that the young soldier was not to
blame. They had been trying to protect her, to break up the
sudden savage melee, control those maddened men who saw
a way of escape and were fiercely determined to possess it.
The young soldier had been little more than a boy,
frightened by a fearful responsibility, confused and excited.
His first shot dropped a black ruflian, blood spurting from
a wound in his shoulder.

 The second shot, poorly aimed, went wild. In a sick daze
Sue saw Jack, saw him falling, a crimson fountain welling
from his neck.

 The Negroes ran then, some of the soldiers pounding
after. The boy in blue stood shaking, his still smoking gun
trembling in his hands, staring down, white-faced, eyes
bulging, mouth slack.

"You fooll You crazy fool!" the Lieutenant was shouting at
him.

 "I'm sorry, lady," gulped the boy in a voice that broke and
squeaked with horror. "God, I'm sorry!"

 She was on her feet in the mud of the road and the green
lushness of the spring morning whirled around her. Then a
sweet, kind blackness closed in and the day and its ghastly
terrors vanished as she felt herself crumpling.

~ Twenty Four ~

ALWAYS AFTERWARD WHEN THE MARKEANDS
WERE BITTER SUE REMINDED them that the Union
soldiers had been kind.

  There was the Lieutenant with his graying hair and tired,
troubled face. She was aware of him standing over her as she
sat, dazed and trembling in the road with Jack's head in her
lap, blood still oozing on her dress.

  "This is a dreadful thing, Madam," he was saying. "If you
will allow us to help you "

  "You killed him. You killed my papa!" Boone-boy flew at
the officer with flailing fists and choking sobs. "You damn
ole Yankee you."

"I know, son," the Lieutenant restrained the boy gently,
lifting him

[ 180]

in his arms. "It was an accident and the army is sorry. Private
Wilson there was only trying to help you, to keep those
frantic Colored men from killing you all. They wanted to take
your rig away from you and they would have killed you all to
do it. Now, we will be glad to help you, Madam " He bent
again over Sue, who did not look up at him.

 She was trying to press Jack's eyelids down, to cover those
dark, dead eyeballs staring so reproachfully at the sky. "Give
her some water, Corporal," ordered the Lieutenant.

 Someone had unhitched the gelding and tied the horse to
a tree. He stood, head hanging listlessly, lame foot off the
ground. Someone put a canteen to Sue's lips and she sipped
it obediently, looking up with startled eyes to see so many of
them. Blue and brass like Billy, like Buzzy. Blue and brass
brought terror, brought death.

 "I have to take him home," she said faintly. "I have to take
my husband home."

 "Yes, Ma'am." The Lieutenant snapped his fingers, still
holding the child, Boone-boy's head nuzzled into his shoulder.
"Get a blanket!" he ordered. "Lay him over there in the
shade."

 The soldiers jumped to obey. They carried Jack to the
shelter of a great gum tree, laid him gently on a blanket and
covered his face. Boone-boy struggled down and followed
after, tear-smeared, stunned The Lieutenant lifted Sue, set
her on the seat of the buggy and wiped the blood from her
hands with his own handkerchief.

 "We'll see that you get home, Ma'am," he promised. "And
please remember that this was an unfortunate accident. See
that boy over there against that tree bawling into his cap?
That's the boy who fired the shot. He was aiming at Slat big
black who was pulling you out of the buggy. Your husband
moved suddenly and unexpectedly into the line of fire. He's
sorry, Ma'am. Private Wilson's about heartbroken over this
business."

Sue looked hard at the graving man, her dazed vision
clearing.

 "You're from the South!" she said abruptly. "From the
South and wearing thatl" Blue and brass. The colors of
trouble.

 "Yes, Ma'arn, I'm from Grcene County, Tennessee. A lot
of Greene County people are for the Union. That's Andrew
Johnson's county."

 "My husband was a Confeclerate captain," she said. "You
knew that, didn't you?"

 "No, Ma'am, there was no way for us to know. To our boys
you were just some travelers in distress. They were doing
what they could to protect you when this mischance occurred.
There have been a great many travelers in distress, Ma.'am,
Tennesseans like yourself. I haven't

[ 181 ]

enjoyed seeing the way things are going in my state. Now I
want to help your if you will permit me."

 "I have to go home. I have to take my husband home."
Her voice rose a bit, hysterically. "Where is my little boy?"

 "He's here, Ma'am. Tile boys are looking after him. I've
sent back to our garrison post for a wagon. Where is your
home, Ma'am?"

 "A long way. A long, long way." Like a monotonous chant
her sorrow beat upon one note. "A long way and the horse
went lame."

 "I know. He can't travel any further on that leg. We'll find
you another horse. We'll see that you get home."

 "By the river. The Harpeth River. The Marklands," Sue
murmured. "My husband rode with Forrest. His brothers
too. All but one. One blue one. Blue and brass like you
Trouble for the Marklands. Trouble in blue and brass."

 "Watch her," ordered the Lieutenant, motioning to a
trooper. "I'll ride back and get another horse."

 Dully she watched the gray-haired man ride off. Under the
tree Jack lay very flat, the blanket over his face, and back in
the cotton field the Negroes worked in frightened haste,
cutting their eyeballs around to watch uneasily as soldiers
paced the limits of the field.

 Who had won, was the cry in her heart? Who had won
this war? Not this sad-eyed officer or the boy snuffling into
his cap, not those black men, so disillusioned, once so
certain of power and money and freedom, now so frustrated.
Not the desolate people who had fled that village they had
passed through where the shattered gun lay rusting in the
road. Did nobody win wars? Was it all noise and boasting,
bugles and banners, thousand upon thousands of marching
men all valiant and all mad? Mad with dreams of
glory and where was glory? Gray Knight's bones bleaching
in a gully? Jack Iying there, dead eyes searching an
unanswering sky? There was blood on her dress. She dabbed
at it impatiently, getting her fingers stained again and sticky.

 This is the way he came home before, she thought later as
the army wagon turned into the narrow road that led to the
river and the Markland place.

 This is the way Jack came home before, Iying prone in the
bed of a Union wagon drawn by a Union mule. There were
two mules hitched to this wagon and the soldier on the seat
beside her was very polite and respectful to the dead.
Bchind them a strange, tall roan horse with a bony rump
pulled the buggy, with another trooper driving and Boone-
boy sitting beside him. The army had repaired the wheel,
supplied the roan horse, the crude wooden casket in which
Jack lay. There was

[ 182]

even a flag. A little ragged flag. the Stars and Bars, that the
Lieutenant had given to Sue.

 "Captured it at Cold Harbor, Ma'am," he said. "Thought
maybe you'd like to have it for your husband."

 "And where are you from, soldier?" she asked her driver on
the second day.

"Kentucky, Ma'am. Morgan County."

 All valiant and all mad! And who were they, the great ones,
the powerful ones, with the musical voices and the proud
words, who were they who could charm men, inflame them,
make them drunk with the dry wine of promised glory? Who
had blown the trumpets till all the walls of sanity and sense in
the land fell down? Shod hoofs, galloping, galloping. Bugles
singing, a blood song, intoxicating as alien wine. Jack had
worn a red sash when he rode off to war. She had cut it from
the widths of a dance dress, hemmed it on her fingers, tears
making the eye of the needle dim. So he came home once
in rags and today in thin, worn hunting pants and a borrowed
shirt, frayed at all the edges.

 She saw the house ahead and suddenly she could hardly
bear the sight of it. Miss Annie! How to deal little Miss Annie
this last frightful blow? King. King would see only the blue
and brass, the enemy. And so would Morgan, the
unpredictable. She plucked at the driver's sleeve.

 "Let me out at the gate. I'll walk," she said. "Our people
were Confederate. I'll have to explain to them how kind you
have been to us."

 "No, Ma'am." The soldier shook his head. "Captain's orders.
I'm to deliver you and the body to your door."

 I'll tell a lie, she decided. I'll say that Negroes killed Jack,
that the troops were protecting us. There mustn't be any more
trouble. They were kind and it wasn't that poor boy's fault. I'll
tell a lie. God will forgive me.

 But she remembered then that it would be no use. There
was Booneboy, who had seen the horrid fight, seen the
shooting. Boone-boy would babble out the truth and if she
tried to warn him beforehand it would only confuse him and
make matters worse. She would let this soldier from Kentucky
explain to King and Morgan, she decided, sinking back into
an aching apathy of acceptance. The soldier had been blunt
and taciturn but he had been considerate all the way. These
men were the victors, she kept trying to remember, as Billy
had warned her last summer so long ago so drearily long
ago.

 She knew a surge of relief when the door of the house
opened and only women came running out. Miss Annie first,
twisting her hands in

[ 183 ~

her apron, behind her Willnie tiptoeing daintily over the dry
grass, then Angela and black Minerva.

 Miss Annie did not faint nor wail. She seemed to freeze,
graying into stunned rigidity as she clutched at Sue's hands,
pulled Boone-boy close. "I knew it!" she cried, flat-voiced,
like a woman in a trance. "I knew it. Three days ago I told
them Jack's in trouble, I told them. Somehow :[ knew it.
Something told me."

 "The Union soldiers were very kind," Sue said woodenly,
as she would say it so many times, again and again. "But for
them we should all have been killed, probably, and our horse
stolen."

 "Oh, Sue how horrible for you," cried Winnie when the
story had been told. "You were so brave to live throllgll such
a ghastly experience."

 "She lived through it because she is brave," Angela said.
"Come along in, dear. Minerva shall make you some good
hot coffee." Angela put an arm around Sue, and gathered
Miss Annie close. "You too, Mrs. Markland. Can you
gentlemen menage?'' she asked the soldiers.

 "Yes'm. I'll back the wagon around," said Kentucky. "But
you you get her inside. The mother too. She's wore out.
Bad business for a woman. We done our best for her."

"I'm sure you did, and we all thank you," said Angela
graciously.

 But before the door closed Winnie was querulous. "How
could you, Angela? Calling them gentlemen? Those awful
Yankees! It was all their fault. I just know it was their fault.
If King was here "

 "Thank goodness he's not here," said Angela, "or Morgan
either. Sit down, Sue, let me have your bonnet. Hurry,
Minerva, get the kettle hot. Mrs. Markland, your hands are
like ice. Rub them for her, Winnie. I'd better direct those
men. I suppose the pallor?"

"Angela in your condition?" protested Winnie.

"Oh, loot-her my condition! Don't be silly, Winnie."

 "Get Boone-boy inside," croaked Sue. "And those
men some coffee "

 Angela came back. "lioone-boy won't come. Ile's helping.
Mrs. Markland, they asked me would there be a pair of
wooden horses in the barn?"

"I'll go." Miss Annie jumped up but Angela pushed her back
gently.

 "No. Boone-boy will know. lIe can show them. You're to
stay here, both of you. Afterward, w hen the boys come, we
can see about clothes and all that. I'll go with Boone-bov to
the barn."

 "I can c ut some flowers," volunteered Winnie. "The flags
and Isaster flowers are in bloom. There ought to be some
flowers "

[ 134]

  "Yes, Winnie' by all means cut some flowers," said Angela
patiently. "You sit still, Mrs. Markland, and when Minerva
brings some coffee you drink it. You too, Sue."

  "She's good," sighed Miss Aullie, when the two went out.
"Angela's good and Winnie means well.'

"The boys where are they?'

  "King's back in the south pasture mending a fence and
Morgan just went off somewhere yesterday. He hasn't come
back yet. He said he'd heard about a brood mare down
toward Summertown, he thought he could arrange some kind
of trade. Sue, tell me I have to know. All of it." Her small
brown hands were shaking again, plucking at her apron.
Tears lay in the dry wrinkles on her cheeks.

  "It was all so horrible, Miss Amlie!" Sue began to cry again.
"All those black men swarming over us it makes me sick to
remember. Jack fighting them and the soldiers running and
shooting and then Jack fell and there was so much blood "

  Minerva bumped a tray down on a nearby table. "Miss Sue,
you hush!" she ordered. "Git yourself all tore up and Miss
Annie looks about to faint. Drink this here hot coffee IIOW.
You all drink every drop. We got enough troubles."

  "I don't know if I can swallow. They tried to make me eat
on the road but it seemed like every bite would choke me."

  "You kin swallow. Just gulp it down but don't scald
yourself, Miss Sue." Minerva leaned to peer out a window.
"Oh, misery," she moaned, throwing her apron over her face.
"'mother corpse gittin' toted into this house! Done had three
burying IIOW since Christmas, countin' Mis' Dory."

  Angela came back presently. "I sent Boone-boy to find
King, Sue," she said. "He was so upset I thought a run in the
sun would do him good. The soldiers are leaving. I asked
them to wait and have some coffee but they said they were
supposed to report back as soon as possible. They put that
strange horse up in the stable and drove away in the wagon.
I hope Morgan gets back tonight. But King will know what to
do about clothes for Jack and those things."

  "Morgan has to come back tonight!" cried his mother. "He
has to come. He didn't see his father buried. I don't see why
Morgan has to be always dashing off somewhere. The war
made them all so restless." She got to her feet weakly,
bracing herself on the arms of her chair. "Angela, I want to
see him. [ want to see my poor boy."

Angela pulled her mother-in-law into a restraining embrace.
"Please

[ 185 ]

 no, Mrs. Markland. Not yet. Not till the boys come. Not
till they have him dressed and ready. You mustn't see him
now."

  "I'm strong. I can bear it. No matter what they did to him
he's still my first-born son."

  "Jack wouldn't want you to see him as he is now, Mrs.
Markland," insisted Angela. She was feeling a little uneasy
in her stomach since she had looked at her brother-in-law's
body, his drawn face, the ghastly wound, the shabby, pathetic
clothes he wore. Old women were always whispering that a
mother could mark her expected child if she looked on
dreadful sights. Angela flat hands on her rounding body.
This was her baby hers, and nothing must happen to it.

  For weeks she had realized that Morgan had an indifferent
attitude toward being a father. He had been at first
incredulous, then amused, and of late more than a little
irritated by her condition, and she saw less and less of him.
The baby would be hers and it would be a girl, Angela was
determined. Almost hourly she sent up a prayer that was
half an ultimatum to Hcaven. Make my child a daughter. No
more Markland men. No more violence, no more arrogance.
She shall be a daughter and she will be mine as Morgan has
never been, will never be, mine. Never would Morgan
Markland be possessed by anyone, perhaps because he had
never been able to possess himself.

  It was a relief to the Markland women that the Union
soldiers were gone when King came striding in, red-faced
and hot-eyed with fury and consternation. Then it all had to
be told again, though Boone-boy had babbled the gory tale
all the way back from the south pasture. Sue repeated all
that she remembered, doggedly insisting that the army had
been kind. But King was determined to believe the whole
affair had been deliberate.

  "They couldn't kill Jack at Shiloh or on any of a hundred
campaigns we rode. They had to get him on a little country
road, unarmed and helpless."

  "They didn't know Jack was a Confederate. Not till I told
them," Sue protested. "Then it didn't make any difference.
That Lieutenant even gave me a flag for him, a little
Confederate flag."

  "Very noble! Where's the damn flag? I'll burn it to ashes,"
roared King.

  "You will not!" screamed Boone-boy. "It's my papa's flag
and he's going to have it."

  "What have we got here?" sneered King. "A young traitor?
You want your father to have a captured flag a flag that's
likely been abused, jeered at, spit upon?"

[ 186 ]

 "He's going l:o have it. Right by his halld.'' Boone-boy
stood his ground, giving his uncle glare for glare.

 "Listen, King," cried Sue desperately. "Those troops didn't
have to bother with us. They could have let those Negroes
beat Jack and throw me out of the buggy and make off with
all we had. They could have left me there with no husband
and no horse, to get home the best way I could."

 "It was their doing that you had a dead husband," persisted
King, his obstinacy unshaken.

 Angela's eyes began to blaze. "King, shut up!" she ordered.
"We'll hear no more of this from you or Morgan either, if he
ever comes home. You come upstairs with me right now and
find Jack's clothes and help me make the poor boy
presentable so his mother can look at him."

 "Angela you can't " cried Winllie, who had shrunk back,
frightened, at King's irate outburst.

 "Why can't I? And you come along too, Miss. It will take all
three of us. And don't start sniffling, Winnie Markland! It's
high time you grew up and now is as good a time as any to
begin."

 Angela herself was surprised when the two obeyed, King
morose and Winnie white-faced, walking on tiptoe up the
stairs. It was Winnie who washed the blood from Jack's head
and body under Angela's stern eye. Winnie's hands shook and
she slopped the water and covered her eyes while King
arranged a bandage over the ragged wound in Jack's throat.
When they were finished and Jack lay, still and decently clad
in one of King's good coats and a white shirt of Morgan's,
trousers hastily pressed by Minerva and some shoes that once
he had danced in, ages before, it was Winnie who brought a
white rose and laid it gently by the dead face:. Then she fled
weeping and Angela let her go without protest.

 "He looks all right now, King," Angela said. "That was really
a respectable coffin they sent him home in."

 "The devil you say!" King snarled and pointed. "Look over
there." On the end, burned into the raw pine board was a
charred USA. "Had to put their mark on him at the bitter
end," he growled.

 "You can bring your mother in now," she said, ignoring his
remark, "and then you'd better ride and see about a minister
and some people to help with the grave."

 "There's nothing to ride," King reminded her. "Morgan took
the stud and that colt's not broken to the saddle. What
happened to the gelding?"

[ 187 ]

 "He went lame and Sue had to leave him, but they gave
her another horse. He's in the stable."

 "Some old broken-down plug. Damn it, Angela, can't you
keep Morgan at home? Always chasing off on the only good
mount on the place!"

 "How," Angela flung out her hands "do you hold a
Markland? How do you hold quicksilver? Or the wind? With
chains7 There has never been a chain forged that's strong
enough!"

 They buried Jack Markland on a breathlessly beautiful
morning in spring. Mocking birds sang in the old trees and
over the ground pink wild roses swarmed with bees, hovering
over every bloom.

 Annie Breen Markland clung to the arms of her two
daughters-inlaw, and Sue held her small son in a
passionately loving embrace. King stood alone, still wearing
a dark and brooding look.

Morgan was not there.

Tiredly Five

FOR A DAY AND A NIGHT HUNGER HAD GNAWED AT HIM.ON THE
MORNING of the last day he scrambled wearily up a rough
slope grown to briars and found a few wild strawberries half
hidden in the wiry grass. He lay on his stomach hitching
himself along, searching with dirty fingers for the tiny globes
of sweetness but somehow they did not ease the aching void
in his belly.

 He had had pockets full of stolen hardtack when he
slipped out of the camp and now he turned all his pockets
inside out searching for any lingering crumb. A bluejay,
balancing on a blackberry briar, tilted and swayed and
scolded at him. Buzzy lifted his head on his elbow and
tossed a pebble at the bird.

 "Git on away from here, you ole jayhawker you! All my
guts cussin' one another, ain't no time to fool with you."

 He knew exactly how far he had to go. With Billy
Markland he had hunted this terrain over many times, with
homemade bows and slingshots before Billy was old enough
to be trusted with a gun. Buzzy remembered every rabbit
and woodchuck hole, every quail cover on the ragged
hillside. Just over the fence yonder he had run down a stray

[ 188 ]

yearling calf for Boss Boone and ridden the critter back to
the barn, heels drumming on its hard ribs. He should come
in sight of the house soon. He should have been here
yesterday, and he would have been, but for the riders.

 Those riders last night had upset his plan of travel, his
getting over the country in darkness and hiding by day.
Suddenly, on the road he had heard the thud of trotting
horses, the creak of saddles, and abruptly out of the night
gloom they had appeared, looking to Buzzy's startled eyes
more than twenty feet tall. There must have been a dozen of
them although he was too frightened to count. They sat very
tall in the saddle and had no faces at all, only white stuff that
gave them a ghastly, ghostly look.

 They had a Colored man with them, Iying across a horse
led by one of the riders. Every man in the group was robed,
the white stuff hanging below his stirrups, and even the
horses had white over their heads. Buzzy, struck cold with
horror, had dived into the undergrowth and lay there
breathless while the spectral cavalcade ambled by. But he had
heard voices, and one voice pricked at a raw spot of dread
within him, because it was the voice of Morgan Markland.

 Lying quaking, pressed flat against the ground, Buzzy
wondered what Mist' Morgan was into, riding in the dark all
dressed up like a ha'nt? That it was bad business the limp
body slung across a horse made plain, but Buzzy did not
concern himself with the fate of that captured Negro, his own
fear being too acute for concern about some other black
man's trouble. He had stayed hidden till all sight and sound
of the riders had disappeared, then on feet winged by terror
he had fled till he reached this ground he knew, but dread
still had a hold upon him.

 It looked now as though things were not going to be too
good at home. All the way from Georgia, running, hiding,
pilfering, begging when he could among his own color,
starving when all else failed, he had been blithely confident,
fatuously dreaming about Miss Annie, his Miss Annie. Miss
Annie, he had told himself, would be glad to see a boy come
back to tote wood and wrestle the churn. With his easy gift
for minimizing sinister possibilities he had put King and
Morgan out of his mind, remembering only that Boss Boone
was dead and Jack gone, and he had comforted himself that
the wound that had killed Boss Boone was the fault of that
old wore-out gun and not his own.

 Now here was the possibility that Mist' Morgan might not
be of a mind to let things lie that way. Buzzy decided to be
cagey about show

[ 189 ]

ing himself till he learned just how things stood. There were
empty houses in the quarters to hide in, and although his
grandmother was dead he felt he could depend on Minerva
to feed him, stealing out food under her apron, maybe
slipping a word to Miss Annie that Buzzy was back.

  His uniform jacket, buttonless and worn to rags, he had
discarded before he crossed the mountains. His pants were
thin and his shoe soles flapping. He looked like any one of
hundreds of homeless freedmen and though he knew he was
a deserter from the army, none of the military he had
encountered had paid any attention to him. The danger lay
from here on The Markland men were the danger and unless
he was shrewd and quick and ingratiating Buzzy suspected
that he could end up flung across a horse with arms dangling
limply like that poor boy he had seen last night. Definitely
he wanted no men ghoulishly shrouded in white to be
dealing that way with him.

  Slipping from one thicket to another and along the
overgrown fence, he got in sight of the barns and the
clustering cabins, seeing no one. The place looked mighty
run-down and poor-folksy and Boss Boone would have
bellowed with rage to see so many thistles going to seed in
the pastures. All the more reason his white folks needed
help, if only they could be persuaded to accept it in peace.

  There was hay ready to cut and corn sadly in need of
hoeing, and although Buzzy acutely loathed the feel of a hoe
in his hand, and a mowing blade could give a man a bad
backache, no good farm should go to ruin because the
Markland boys had never rightly learned how to work hard
in the sun. Mist' Morgan, riding that good stud boss around
at night on some kind of low-down meanness, Boss Boone
would have roared about that too.

  There was a stone war], swarmed over by a trumpet vine,
and Buzzy drew back from that a little, knowing what lay
beyond and shrinking from it. Then his eye cau,,~ht the
glimmer of newly turned earth among the Markland graves.

  There were old stones. leaning a little, moss-greened, that
marked where Boss Boone's people lay and there was a slab
of wood already winter-greyed with words burned upon it,
that would be Boss Boone himself. But who lay under that
fairly fresh mound of soil? Pain surged up through Buzzy's
veins, putting iron claws on his throat and stinging his eyes.

"Miss Annie!" he choked. "Miss Annie, she daid?"

  Miss Annie could have died without Cap'n Billy's knowing.
Buzzy resisted the impulse to go charging off down the
slope, back to Georgia

[ 190]

where Cap'n Billy was bereft, all unaware. Then prudence
stayed him and he dropped behind the wall and lay still. To
go back meant the guardhouse at least; they might even shoot
him against a wall. He had talked himself out of that
escapade in the winter but now he felt that his luck with the
military had run out.

  His misery was increased by the faint smell of frying meat
drifting up the hill, but he knew that he had to wait for
darkness, while his belly tore at him with wolf's teeth and
growled so much it almost betrayed his hiding place. He saw
a sassafras bush near the comer of the wall and worming
toward it pulled off some of the greener leaves and chewed
them, but their sweet spiciness made a sick feeling in his
stomach. He dared not crawl across the slope to the spring.
Then he heard the voices.

  Two voices. Boone-boy's sharp, quick chatter and what
was Booneboy doing here7 Hadn't he gone off with Mist'
Jack and Miss Sue, as the Captain had read in that letters
With Boone-boy came a woman that Buzzy did not know, a
yellow-haired woman. Peering through the vine he pondered
who she could be, till he remembered that Mist' King had
married Mist' Carter Oliver's gal. Cap'n Billy had told him

so.

 "Look, Aunt Winnie," Boone-boy was babbling, "that little
bush you planted for my papa has got green buds on it
already."

 Buzzy, creeping nearer, saw the yellow-haired woman bend
and stir the soil on the new grave with a stick.

"Poor Jack," she said, aloud. "Poor, poor Jack."

  Buzzy breathed in relief. Not Miss Annie, then, but Mist'
Jack lay in that new grave. Mist' Jack must have gone off
some place and come home to die.

  "What we plant for the dead always grows, Boone-boy,"
Winnie was saying. "But I can't plant flowers for my papa. I
don't even know where he's buried."

  In his thankfulness that Miss Annie was not dead, Buzzy
stirred a little and Boone-boy looked with alerted sharpness
across the walled space. Then he went back to his solemn job
of filling two vases with water from a slopping bucket he
carried. "Just a ole rabbit," he remarked. "If I had me a gun
['d git him. I'll cut the stickers off these roses for you, Aunt
Winnie."

  "There will be enough for your grandpa too." She gathered
up the branches of pink bloom. "We'll make them both pretty,
then maybe your mama will come out to see them."

"She won't." Boone-boy opened a knife. "She says she can't
bear to

[ 191 ]

look at graves. But it's kind of nice up here, I think, except
in winter when these ole cedars get kind of spooky. Mammy
Dory used to say ha'nts come out at night to sit on this wall.
I know that ain't so. If my papa could come up out of there
he wouldn't sit on no wall, he'd come down to the house
and sit with us."

"Mammy Dory was only trying to scare you."

 "Uncle Billy said she used to scare him and Buzzy. Buzzy
got scared easy. He believed in ha'nts and conjures and
things."

 "I suppose he still gets scared when he remembers that he
killed your grandfather," Winnie said grimly.

 Buzzy flattened himself even lower. So they were still mad
at him. Could it be that he must just go on being homeless
and hungry the rest of his life? Then he pricked up his ears
again.

 "Aunt Winnie," Boont-boy was saying, "whyn't you ever go
homer Don't you ever want to go home and live in your own
house again?"

 Winnie straightened and through a peephole Buzzy saw
her face tighten and grow hard. "I haven't any home,
Boone-boy. My home was sold. Your Uncle Billy bought it.
It's your Uncle Billy's house now."

"He won't live there. l le's a soldier. A Yankee soldier."

 "He won't always be a soldier. Some time he'll be out of
the army and be old and be glad to have a home. I don't
want to live there ever again. I was never happy in that
house, Boone-boy. I would have been glad if those guerrillas
had burned it to the ground. I hate itl" Her voice rose
sharply. "I hall the place. I'll always hate itI"

 They went away then, the bucket bumping against
Boone-boy's brown, thorn-scratched legs. Buzzy inched
himself up after a little, measured the distance to the next
screen of bushes, and ran for it. A new thought was boiling
about in his head, already a little light from long hunger.
Cap'n Billy had a house. That Oliver gal had said so. It was
Cap'n Billy's house, he had bought it. Some day he would
come back to it.

 Buzzy did not wait for darkness. He fled, fleet as a fox
across the north pasture, smashing down thistles and sedge
grass with pounding shoes, snagging his shirt tail on briars
and jerking angrily loose.

 At the far gate where the narrow dirt road ran he slowed
and dropped under a cedar tree to get his breath. The road
was unchanged. Every rut and rock and leaning post he
remembered. Even the tumblebug, rolling his ball of mud
determinedly along the washed-out track was an old friend.
Once he and Billy had enjoyed the childishly cruel joke of
turning a tumblebug around to see how far the stupid insect

[ 192 ]

would push his mud ball before he discovered that he was
headed away from his hole.

 On this road Buzzy knew a Negro cabin where sometimes
in the past he had been made welcome. He got up and
trudged on till he came to the fence that enclosed it, relieved
to see wood smoke feathering from the chimney and more
smoke in the yard where the blackened washpot swung and
steamed. He walked boldly in at the leaning gate.

"Howdy, Mis' Drusy," he croaked, dry-throated. "How you?"

  The old woman turned, heavy stick in hand. "Who you?"
she demanded. "Git away from hyarI"

  "Mis' Drusy, you know me. I'm Rinda's boy. Mis' Dory my
grandmaw. I'm Buzzy just got home from the war."

  "Mis' Dory daid. She about a hunnerd years old and she
daid. You Mis' Dory's kin why ain't you clown yonder7
Marklands down yonder."

  "I'm Union," Buzzy said. "They all Confederate down there.
All but Mist' Billy. Captn Billy, he a big Union soldier, Union
captain. I' been fightin' the war alongside Cap'n Billy."

  Drusy flung a billet of wood on the fire. She was old now,
Buzzy saw, shrunken and grey like an old, dead tree, with
wisps of lank hair straggling about her ears, but her eyes still
held a jetty fire.

  "You don't look like no soldier to me," she sniffed. "All
raggedy, ale tore-up shoes on your fonts. Got no gun neither.
You look like chain gang to me. Dirty chain-gang rigger.
Dogs after you?"

"What dogs?"

"Chain-gang dogs what they catch 'em up with."

  "I ain't no chain gang. Never see no chain gang," Buzzy said
angrily. "I done walked all the way from Georgy and ain't et
nothin' but ole sassafras and stuff, and I about daid." He let
himself collapse dramatically on the ground against the cabin
wall, rolling his eyes at her piteously. "You ain't got no li'l ole
piece of bread layin' around, has you, Mis' Drusy?"

  She shrugged a bony shoulder and the gnarled lines of her
face softened. "You git yonder and wash!" she ordered. "I
ain't feedin' no dirty shackle-hound somebody like you is. I
ought to douse you in this here washpot, your head look full
of bookers."

  Buzzy flew. His flapping shoes impeded him and he kicked
them off and flung them contemptuously into the fire. "Ole
no-good army shoes! Wasn't never no good. Mis' Drusy, you
a good Christian woman to feed a hungry boy."

"Shut your mouth, rigger, so you can wash 'round it!" she
snapped.

She gave him cold bread and a dollop of greens, and he
mopped the

[ 193 ]

tin plate clean and captured every crumb that fell on his
sodden breeches.

 "How come you come back hyar?"Drusy inquired. "If you
been in the Union army, ain't none of them Secesh
Marklands goin' to let you stay on their place."

 "I ain't staying on their place. I got me a place, Cap'n Billy
Markland's place. I'm goin' there and wait for Cap'n Billy to
git loose from that army."

"What place you got, you lyin' black boy?"

"Place up yonder. Mist' Carter Oliver's place."

 "That place belong to Mist' King. He done married up
with Mist' Carter Oliver's gal. Mist' King, he the meanest
Markland there is. He run you off that place mighty quick."

 "Mist' King ain't gOill' to run me off no place. Cap'n Billy
done bought that place. Miss Winnie, she says so. I Feared
her down yonder at the graveyard. We got us a home now,
me and Cap'n Billy, if he come home."

 "White men done tore that place all up. Been shootin' and
killin' up there. If Mist' King don't git you, them Kluxers'll
git you."

"What that?"

 ''Ku-Khlxers. Rides around at night. They done got plenty
a'ready. White and nigger too. Run some off. Run my Lutie
off. Tied her up and whup her and run her clear to Ohio,"
Drusy said.

"I seen 'em. They don't sheer me none."

 "If they tie you up in the woods and flog you they sheer
you. You keep quiet and lay low, boy. You always was too
biggity and brashmouth," she advised.

 He had bragged manfully, but when he approached the old
Oliver place at dusk it frightened him. The door was
unlocked. He pushed it open and tiptoed into the empty,
echoing hall. In the front pallor a bird flew out sudden!:
from the gaping mouth of the fireplace and Buzzy had to
hunt a stubby broom and chase it out, birds being mighty
bad luck in a house. Cautiously he explored, holding his
breath whenever he entered a dusty, disordered room. There
were candles and some lamps with a little oil left in them
but he was afraid to make a light. Not yet, not till he had
established his proprietary rights a bit more firmly in his own
mind.

 Some clothing was left strewn around the upper rooms and
Buzzy pre-empted a fairly decent pair of trousers and a shirt,
but all the boots left were too small. "Mist' Carter Oliver, he
got too little fools," he said sadly.

[ ~94]

  His luck held through a hot May and June. No one came
near to protest his occupancy or order him off the place.
With the canniness of a pack rat he rummaged the buildings,
finding buried silver and once a whole side of meat. This he
traded to Drusy for the hot meals she fed him and sometimes
he worked her garden patch or cut her wood. In the
overgrown Oliver garden he dug some onions that had come
up and under them he found a keg of soft soap. With this he
cleaned the house and everything in it, sweeping and
scouring, even washing the smoke-stained walls and windows.

  "All fixed up now, if Cap'n Billy come home." He talked to
himself as he worked, and he was muttering angrily, berating
the squirrels who had built a nest in the library chimney when
he found the money.

  It came tumbling down in a shower of grass, sticks, ashes
and soot, flat bundles of paper money tied with leather
thongs and the whole wrapped in an old saddle blanket,
squirrel-chewed and sooty.

  Buzzy stared at it, snatched up a bundle and fingered the
big, flat gray-and-yellow bills. "We rich!" he cried aloud.
"Captn Billy and me, we rich!"

  Some of the bills fell to pieces when he tried to brush away
the ashes, but he hoarded every scrap and packed them again
in a flat bundle that he could hide in his bed.

  There had been words on the money and he could read a
few of them.

  "Bank of Mobile." A man s scribbled signature. Buzzy
spelled it out laboriously.

"Judah P. Benjamin. Who lie?''

e Twenty Six e

KING MARKLAND BAD BEEN TROUBr ED AT ~
THAT SUMMER OF 1866 BY an uneasy awareness that he
felt a growing concern, verging on tenderness, toward his
younger brother's wife.

 As the hot, golden days of September grew shorter he
began to suspect that he was not hiding too well this feeling
he had for Angela, nor the increasing irritation he harbored
toward Morgan, whose neglect of his wife had become
habitual.

[ 195 ]

  It was not Winnie's small acid jabs that worried him. He
was used to her prickly jealousies that even at times included
his mother. Any lukewamm affection he had had for Winnie
had cooled long since into a patient, occasionally
exasperated, tolerance. He let her have her way, paid no
attention when she tried peevishly to nag and dictate to him.
It was Sue's occasional probing glances and frowns, and a
nervous sort of concern he could see increasing in his
mother's manner, that warned him that he was letting his
interest in Angela become obvious and that sooner or later
there would be trouble.

  "You don't pull out chairs for me or take the water bucket
out of my hands," Winnie complained. "Just because that
little chit waves her eyelashes at you "

  "You're not having a baby," King snapped back.
"Somebody has to take care of the poor girl."

  "It's not your baby," Wim1ie slashed, creeping as far from
him as she could in the big bed. "Let her husband take care
for her."

  "He'd better," growled King. "He'd better stay home from
now on. There will be com to gather too and I'm not doing
that by myself."

  "He won't stay home and you know it. Tearing around
drinking and gambling and probably worse, night after night."

  King made no answer. He knew now where Morgan went
at night. He had found the robe and masks hidden in the
oatbin and had bullied the truth cut of Morgan. That tax
collector in the county to the west who had been tied up and
flogged and left bleeding in the woods all night. The
carpetbagger who had seized the Lawson farm from its
owner, taken from his bed and carried off stark naked, to be
tossed off a horse fifteen miles from home.

  "The Philistines," Morgan laughed in King's face. "We're
educating them."

  "You know what will happen if they catch you," King
protested. "Brownlow will have you all hung and you've got
a wife, and in a few weeks you'll have a child, to think
about."

  "You take care of Angela very nicely, dear brother."
Morgan had flashed his saturnine grin as he said it and there
had been a glint of dry malice in his eyes. How much he
suspected King had no way of knowing. With Morgan vou
never knew. "You can be a godfather to the brat but it had
better look like me."

  "I'll smash your filthy mouth," King had blazed then but
again Morgan had only laughed.

  "Gallant lad! Don't be a dramatic fool. Do you think I
don't know my little Angela? No melter anyway. All
Marklands look alike."

[ 196 ]

 "You stay close," warned King. "It could be any time now
and she doesn't look very strong to me."

 "October, if she counted right on her notched stick."
Morgan pulled down his saddle.

 "You're wearing that horse out too," fumed King. "A good
stud  only decent piece of stock we've got left but you'll ride
him till he's worthless."

 "In a good cause. Besides, he likes it, don't you, boys who's
going to head up our organisation? We're having an election
over at Pulaski next week and we're electing old Nathan
Bedford Forrest himself as head of the Klan. When this state
is restored to decent law and order and all those dirty
radicals put down you can thank us boys, Brother Kingman."

He rode off and King stalked back to the house, angry and
unratified..

 Angela's body might be growing shapeless but her face kept
its bright look of courage, a kind of forced gaiety that twisted
King's vulnerable heart. Angela mothered Miss Annie, who
had grown tremulous and a little vague from the impact of so
much trouble and she petted and encouraged Sue who could
not seem to rouse herself from a dull lethargy that the
Mark]ands respected as grief, but which had a hidden anger
at its root, a simmering resentment Sue nursed against the
blows life had dealt her.

 Sue had been born eager and had grown to womanhood
thirsting for the one great love girls dream about, secretly
hungry to be adored, ultimately restraining her volatile heart.
Still, living was an emptiness when no man would ever look
at her approvingly any more with the glow of desire in his
eyes. She was a Markland widow as was Miss Annie, and to
Sue all that la' ahead of her was an endless monotony of
being patient and respectable and good.

 She did not resent Angela as Winnie did, but Winnie
resented every one now but Miss Annie and Boone-boy.
Winnie had lately fixed a kind of pale affection on the boy
and Angela reminded Sue that this was because Winnie
needed a child of her own, which compassionate remark only
made Sue jerk her dry, disdaining lips straighter. Sue was the
one who saw through King, saw the change that softened his
dark, impatient face when he looked at Angela, marked the
way he tried to protect the girl from anything that could hurt
or trouble her. Sue told herself that she pitied King; that she
could be sorry even for Morgan if he were married to Winnie,
though the Lord knew that arrogant, self-suflicient Morgan
needed no one to be sorry for him.

[ 197 ]

 The weather was hot and dry and Miss Annie worried as
the water in the cisterns grew low. "We'll need plenty when
we have a baby in the house," she fretted, watching the sky
anxiously, frowning with disappointment when every
promising cloud drifted away offering no ram.

 With the one remaining mule and the sad old roan horse
King gathered the harvest, bullying Morgan into helping now
and then. Boone-boy, grown sober with responsibility, went
about the smaller chores, and of late Winnie had begun to
help him, carrying feed to the hens and gathering the eggs.

 "The spring's getting low," King worried one night late in
September. "May have to start driving the stock to the creek
for water and the creek is low too."

 "You could haul some barrels from the river," suggested
his mother. "Your father had to do that in the dry fall of
'sixty-four when you were all in the army."

 "Reckon I could do that tomorrow," King said. "You can
come along, boy. You're big enough to tote a bucket."

"I did," said Boone-boy eagerly. "On the road to Texas."

 He fell quiet, seeing a cloud move over his mother's face.
Sue had walled in that tragic journey in her mind, locked a
door against it. Even a chink entering that barrier brought
bitter ice back into her eyes.

"We'll load the barrels tonight." King got up. "Where's
Morgan?"

"Mist' Morgan already rode out that gate," Minerva said.

 King muttered angrily, then relented, seeing Angela's
distressed face. "Not your fault, gal," he said. "You were
right. No way to hold a Markland if he wants to be loose."

 She followed him out into the yard. "But it's different now,
King!" she cried, catching at his sleeve. "It isn't just a few of
them, it's "

 "I know," he laid a quick hand on her. "Don't talk," he
warned. "Not even to me."

 "What is it?" asked Winnie, coming up behind them. "What
is it she musn't talk about?"

 "Morgan's foolishness," replied King quickly. "We don't
need any more trouble in this house. Come along,
Boone-boy. We'll see how many barrels we can find that will
hold water. We'd better decide, too, how many we can load
without breaking that old wagon."

 The boy trudged after him, but inside the barn he fumed
and closed the door. "Uncle King," he said in a
conspiratorial whisper, "I know about Uncle Morgan. About
that white stuff he hides in the oatbin."

[ 198 ]

 Swiftly King laid a hand on the boy's lips. "Keep quiet," he
ordered, low. "Don't talk about that to anybody or you could
get your Uncle Morgan killed.''

 The boy struggled free. "I ain't told anybody. Nobody but
you. I was hunting for the rifle, thought maybe I could shoot
me a rabbit and I found that white thing. Uncle King," his
voice sank portentously, "it's got eyeholes in it. And a horse
thing with eyeholes too."

 King pulled the boy down beside him on a handy box.
"Listen, son, does your Uncle Morgan know you found that
stuff?"

 "No, sir, I never told anybody. I was too scared. Not till I
just told you."

 "Mind now, Boone-boy, nobody must know about this but
you and me."

"And Uncle Morgan. Not even Aunt Angela?"

 "Not even Aunt Angela." But King feared that Angela knew
or suspected something already. Had Morgan been bragging,
as he was prone to do when he had had too many drinks?
Was Angela tormented with that dread too? Damn him,
damn him, the hurt in King's heart snarled. "You see, boy,"
he went on quickly, "there are a lot of wicked people trying
to make things bad now for all of us. Black people and white
people."

"Like those men that killed my papa."

 "Just like them. But the sheriffs and the judges and the
soldiers are all on their side now."

"Uncle Billy too? He's a soldier."

 "He has to be on their side because he's a Union soldier.
And the Union is running everything and what they want is
to make things mighty hard and mean for anybody who was
for the South. So somebody has to fight the bad ones, but it
has to be done in secret. No names ever spoken, no talking
about it anywhere. The bad men have to be shown that they
can't abuse and cheat us forever so your Uncle Morgan and
some other men ride out at night and warn them to leave us
alone." King finished his exposition and saw by the wan
lantern light that the boy's eyes were glittering.

 "I wish I was big enough to ride and have eyeholes. Why
don't you ride, Uncle King?"

"Ride what?" countered his uncle.

 "Yeah, that ole roan horse is pretty slow and got no wind.
They'd catch you right off," conceded the boy. "I bet the
mean people get plenty scared when they see all those riders
coming, all looking like ha'nts."

[ 199 ]

  "You keep mighty quiet this IIOW," warned King. "It's our
secret. Corne on and help me load these barrels. I reckon
we can haul four of 'em without the wheels breaking down
on us. Take us all day. I hat mule can't move off a slow
crawl."

  It was late when King slept, muscle weary, and dawn had
not yet broken when there came a pounding at his door.

  "King," Sue's voice called through the panels. "You'd
better get up. Miss Annie says you'd better come downstairs.
It's Angela."

  King groaned, opening the door a crack. He was trembling
nervously. "All right. I'll be right down."

  "What is it?" Winnie sat up, lighted the candle,
straightening the ribbon-trimmed cap she wore over her hair.

  "It's Angela." King jabbed his arms into the sleeves of his
shirt. "You go back to sleep. I'll have to go for a doctor, and
none nearer than town."

"But it's Morgan's business to take care of his wife."

  "He's gone." All the way to Pulaski, King suspected. "Go
back to sleep." He pounded out, taking the stairs two steps
at a time.

  A bed had been put UK' in Miss Annie's room for Angela
and as he crossed the hall a low moan came from that room.
He almost collided with Minerva, scurrying with a steaming
kettle. The door opened to admit her to a room full of
lamplight and the sharp odor of camphor. His mother came
out then, her face grey and tense.

  "It's been since midnight," she said. "I called Sue down
after an hour or two. I think we're going to need help, son.
We never have had a birth on this place without Mammy
Dory to do everything. I don't know what: to do or Sue
either, and Minerva is so scared she drops everything."

  "I can get Doctor Grimes or that other Doctor Carson,"
said King. " I'hat is, if I can persuade either one of them to
come out here. But you know how slow that old roan is,
take at least eight hours to ride to town and back."

  "I had four children," sighed Miss Annie, "but I just lay
there and let Mammy Dory do for me. The same with Sue
and Boone-boy. And of course Winnie "

  "Winnie would be less use than nobody," said King,
brusquely. "I'll saddle the roan."

  Minerva came out, twisting her hands in her apron. "She
jest too little kitty," she whimpered, "or that young one too
big. She done chawed her lips till they bleed."

[ 200]

 "I'd give her some laudanum, but there isn't any left,"
sighed Miss Annie. "I used it all trying to help your father's
suffering."

 "There used to be women," began King, and saw Minerva's
maroon eyes brighten.

 "That Drusy she been a midwife long time ago. Then she
git to drinkin', now she got to wash and iron for a livin'."

 "I know Drusy." King felt quick relief. "I'll fetch her first,
then I'll ride to town. How about whisky, Mama? Morgan's
got some hid in the stable."

 "I don't know if she'd take it or not. Sometimes it makes
them have fever."

 "I'll git a knife," stated Minerva. "Put a knife under her bed
to cut them pains."

 The roan had only one gait a lurching, bone-jarring trot.
King was aching in every joint when he lode into Drusy's
bare yard. The sun had barely risen but Drusy was out,
scattering corn to her chickens. She gave him an unfriendly
glare.

"I tote you to stay away from hyar, Mist' King Markland."

 He swung down, he even took off his hat. "We've got
trouble, Drusy," he said. "My mother needs you."

 "Marklands always got trouble," she snorted. "Marklands,
they ole trouble hisself."

 "It's Morgan's wife. Her time's come. She's having a bad
time and Miss Annie sent me to fetch you. She said you'd
know what to do" King said, very humbly. "Fetch whatever
you need, Drusy. You can ride behind me."

 She shook the last grains from the pan. "Ain't said I'm
comin'. Ain't done no birthin' in a long time." She was crisp.

 "Listen, Drusy," King found himself pleading, a trifle
startled at his own meekness. "Angela's no Markland. She's
a nice little girl and she s young and suffering bad. You ve
got to come. We'll pay you."

 "What you pay?" She was still aloof. "Some old fady dress
or old pot got a leak in it? Confedrut money maybe? I ain't
workin' for that."

 "Morgan will pay you. Harcl money. Get your things, Dmsy.
I've got to ride to town yet and fetch a doctor."

 "If you git a doctor you don't need me. Mist' Morgan
Markland. he can't pay me nothin'. He bad trouble. He one
of them that run my Lutie plumb off to Ohio. I know what
Mist' Morgan Markland do.

She lifted a bony shoulder, started for the door.

 "Drusy," King's voice cracked with desperation. "You've got
to come. My mother will pay you. She's got hard money."

[ 201 ]

"She got five dollars7"

 "Yes, she's got five dollars." King hoped that this was true.
"Hurry up, Miss Annie needs help right away."

"Got to git me a clean dress," she argued, on the doorstep.

 King sighed in relief, then let his breath out in a startled
exclamation as a figure shambled in at the gate, a barefoot,
ragamuffin shape carrying a hoe and a rusty bucket half full
of sweet potatoes.

"Good God!" King exploded. "Buzzy!"

 Buzzy squeaked, dropped the bucket and turned to run,
sending the hoe flying.

"Come back here," ordered King.

 Buzzy halted, scraping his bare feet in the dust. "Mist'
King," he wailed, "I ain't done nothin'."

"What the devil are you doing here?"

 "Been here all summer," said Drusy at the door. "I told
him you'd run him off."

"Where', Billy?" demanded King.

 Buzzy came a step nearer, braced, ready to duck or flee.
"I don't know, Mist' King. I ain't seen Cap'n Billy since way
last spring. Not since us down yonder in Georgy."

 "He stayin' at that place up yonder. Oliver place," put in
Drusy. "He keep tellin' me Mist' Billy Markland own that
place. He jest a Iyin' nogood yellow boy. I told him you run
him off if you find out."

 "Mist' Billy do so own that place!" persisted Buzzy. "Miss
Winnie, she say so. :[ heated her. [)own yonder at the
graveyard. Miss Winnie say Captn Billy buy that place and
she ain't goin' back there no more." Buzzy was almost
tearful.

 King frowned at him uncertainly. "You've been hiding up
there ever since you shot my father?"

 "No, sub, Mist' King. I' been in the army till li'l while back.
Mist' King, it wasn't no way my fault Boss Boone git shot.
Mist' Morgan come at me and Boss Boone come at me and
I hold that ole gun too tight and it go off. I like hi die when
I see Boss Boone git shot." Tears were pouring down the
boy's face now. "You goin' run me off, Mist' King? You
coin' shoot me?"

"I ought to shoot you. I ought to break your worthless neck."

  Morgan would do it, swiftly, unthinkingly, savage for
sudden vengeance, disdaining consequences. And why had
he himself gone so suddenly soft, :King was wondering
angrily? The Marklands were violent men. He opened and
closed his hands, panting, trying to drag forth the fury that
should be consuming him. What was it that weakened him,

[ 202 ]

made him aware of a kind of compassion for this shivering
creature, this boy who had been his father's slave?

  Something had softened him. He felt a kind of disgust for
this softness, and a shamed sort of tenderness too, knowing
in secret that it was the same softness that lay in a girl's
heart-shaped face.

  "Miss Winnie tell you you could stay up there at that
place?" He bridged the silence awkwardly.

  Buzzy was swift to sense advantage. This was reprieve.
Mist' King stood there itching to do him violence and
somehow could not. He beamed.

  "No, sub!" he cried eagerly. "I'm hidin' down at the
graveyard and she there and she tell Boone-boy that place
b'long to Captn Billy, so I git along up there. I clean it all up
good, waitin' for Cap'n Billy to come home. You goin' run
me off, Mist' King?"

  King relieved the embarrassment of his own indecision by
yelling at Drusy. "Get a move on will you, Drusy? There's a
girl down there needs help mighty bad."

  Drusy shrugged and disappeared into the cabin and Buzzy
moved nearer, cautiously, bending to pick up the scattered
potatoes, to retrieve the hoe. "I tends Mis' Drusy's garden,"
he explained. "She let me eat here some. What you fixin' to
do with me, Mist' King?"

  A sudden rash impulse moved King. There was danger.
There was Morgan, the unpredictable. He shrugged this
aside, hoping that in this emergency he could handle Morgan.

  "Know what I'm going to do with you?" he demanded,
grimly. "I'm going to send you down home right now. They
need help down there. Miss Annie needs help. I've got to
ride to town. You get on down there and do whatever Miss
Annie tells you to do."

  Buzzy's eyes gleamed and a grin split his face. Then it
darkened again. "Mist' Morgan come, he shoot me!"

  "Morgan's not there now. [f he comes, you lay low till I talk
him round. Get going. Nobody's had time to milk or fetch in
wood or "

  Buzzy bumped down the bucket, cracked his heels together.
"Mist' King, I be there before you is." he yelled and was gone
like a wisp of yellow smoke.

  On the way, pounding hard heels on the dry, crackling sod
of the pastures, Buzzy remembered about the money. His
conscience nagged him. Probably it was Miss Winnie's money.
Maybe he ought to tell Miss Winnie about it, but what if she
took the money and bought the place away from Cap'n Billy?
Then they would have no home again.

[ 203 ]

 He decided to say nothing about the money till Cap'n
Billy came back. And straightway, be cause so much else
was happening, he forgot all about it.

               Twenty Seven

M ORGAN MARKLANDSDAUGH]ER WAS THREE DAYS or D WHEN HER
FATHER returned.

  Angela Lay white and spent, her eyes sunk in purple
shadows, but she could smile again.

  "I'm glad she's a girl," she said. "I'm going to name her for
her grandmother. She's going to be a second Amlie Lou
Markland."

  Miss Annie glowed happily although she was so exhausted
she tottered when she walked and caught herself weeping for
no reason at all. She and Sue agreed with the doctor, who
had finally arrived at the last moment, that Angela had had
a mighty hard time, but to Winnie, who had crept like a
wraii h through the house, the two days had been sheer
horror.

  "If that; the way people are born there shouldn't be any
more of them, ever," she declared, tearfully.

  King felt wrung-out and heart-torn too, but he had had to
keep a stoic face and guard against any emotional outburst
that could betray the torturing anxieties he suffered. He
looked at the baby, when at last Minerva put her on display
robed in yards of white stuff that trailed almost to the floor,
and poked at her fat, creased wrist and an ear like a shell
under a fringe of black hair. Another Mark]and. Same proud
brows, same promise of an aggressive nose. In a few years
this Annie Lou Markland would grow into a haughty beauty.

  "Lord, what a houseful of women I've got on my hands!"
King had laughed with labored lightness. Then, worn by his
long vigil, he dropped on the old couch in the front room
and fell instantly asleep.

  On the third night the house was very still, the lamp
burned low and the old clock in the hall had struck one
when there was the soft sound of a horse outside and the
front door was cautiously opened.

  Buzzy, Iying awake in his grandmother's cabin, heard the
horse and scrambled out of bed, grabbing in the dark for his
breeches. Dread

[ 204 ]

made his fingers stiff and clamped his throat with iron
fingers. Mist' Morgan! Mist' Morgan had come back.

 After five blissful days of being at home, petted and scolded
by Miss Annie, fed by Minerva, everybody acting like he'd
never been gone at all, now Mist' Morgan had to come
busting back and Buzzy would have to hide out again. And
today was the day he was to help Mist' King and Boone-boy
haul water from the river. Buzzy scrabbled into a shirt,
crouching low against a crack in the wall, waiting to hear the
creak of the stable door that meant that Morgan was putting
up his horse. But the door did not creak.

 King was slow to waken. Morgan was shaking him when at
last King dragged himself up from the dark well of exhausted
slumber into which he had sunk.

"What the " he mumbled, dragging his eyes open.

 "Keep still," hissed Morgan. "Don't wake anybody. Get up
and help me. I've got to get away."

"What?" King's feet hit the floor with a thud.

 "They're after me," Morgan rasped. "Hurry up. I've got to
be on my way. They laid for us at the county line, some
troops and some of Jeff Nichols' deputies. Surrounded three
of us, riding home with those damn robes bundled up on our
saddle s. I shot one. I've got to get away. No use to hide.
Nichols will search this place. I wasn't masked. Some of them
knew me."

 "Why the devil did you come home then?" demanded King.
"You knew they'd follow you tear up the place. We've got
a sick woman here, your wife. You've got a new daughter. Or
don't you give a damn about that either7"

 "So she had a girl, did she7" Morgan lifted a sardonic
eyebrow. "Well, that's what she wanted. Are they all right7"

 "She had a bad time. Doctor said it was a wonder she
pulled through. There's been no rest in this house since
Monday. Where do you plan to go7" King was on his feet,
listening tensely.

 "They're far behind me, but I've got to hurry. I want food
and all the money you can get together. A blanket and
another shirt or two. For God's sake, King, move!" Morgan
cried. "I don't know where I'm going. Not Texas California
maybe." He fairly pushed King out to the kitchen where he
quickly gathered up all the food available and stuffed it into
a saddlebag. "Any coffee left7 Wrap some up for me, some
salt and flour too. Dammit, I bought most of this stuff, I'm
entitled to it!"

[ 205 ]

 "You're leaving going God knows where, not telling her
goodbye or Miss Annie either?" King was incredulous.

 "You tell them for me. No time to lose." Morgan took
down the old blue sugar bowl where Miss Annie kept her
little hoard of money, turned it upside down, grumbled as a
few coins fell out. "She ought to have more money than
that."

 "She had to pay the doctor and Drusy. You weren't here
to take care of your own family," growled King. "Now they'll
come pounding in here, frightening everybody, making
trouble for all of us."

 "They probably won't get here till daylight. They'll come
by the road. I took off across the fields. I'll leave the same
way. Get the other stuff for me and put out that light. Any
more money anywhere7"

"Where would I get money?"

 Five minutes later Morgan was gone, like a shadow into
the pitch darkness, and Buzzy crouching in the corner heard
him go. Somebody after Mist' Morgan, sure. Won't never
catch him.

 King, sitting in the dark listening, was thinking the same
thing. Union cavalry had never been able to catch Morgan.
The Markland men! Angela had said she wanted no more of
them. They belonged to a lost race now, the gallant,
strutting, insolent, dangerous young blades who had manned
the jaunty cavalry regiments in the war and who now, if they
had come home at all, could find no place in life for them-
selves. Four Markland men, and of them only he was left,
sitting alone and listening tautly for the pounding hoofs of
his brother's pursuers.

 Morgan had killed a man, so he said. But how many had
they all killed in the hysterical passion of that fratricidal
war? How many dead to be counted against four Markland
men? They should stink of death, all of them, reek of it till
women turned from them in horror. And no ending no
ending. Morgan would be a marked and hunted man from
now on, if ever he set foot on home soil again. He could
endanger them all. And Buzzy. Buzzy was a deserter, King
knew. If the troops came he would have to hide Buzzy.

 Abruptly, in a kind of sick revulsion, he got up and lighted
the lamp. A rifle was hidden in the cupboard by the chimney
where it had lain since Sue brought it back; from Mississippi.
King took it out, slid the bolt, took out the load and
dropped it into a vase where three limp peacock feathers
drooped. Then savagely he broke the weapon across his
knee. Now if angry men came he would not be tempted to
use it. An end to killing! An end to blood! There had been
too much of that already.

In the kitchen he was removing every trace of Morgan's
hasty de

[ 206 ]

parturewhen a soft tap sounded on the door. He opened it a
guarded crack and heard nervous breathing and a whisper.

"Mist' King7"

 He pulled Buzzy quickly inside. "Go back to bed," he
ordered. "You didn't hear anything, understand? You haven't
heard a thing."

"Miss' Morgan, he "

 "he's gone and you didn't hear him come, you didn't hear
him go. Got that through your head?"

 "Yes, sub, I ain't heard nothin'." Buzzy's teeth were
chattering. "Who after him, Mist' King?"

 "We don't know. We don't know anything. He didn't come
here. We haven't seen him. We don't know where he went,
remember."

 "No, sub, Mist' King, I ain't seen Mist' Morgan since Boss
Boone git shot." No lie, Buzzy's limber conscience assured
him. He hadn't seen Morgan on the road that dark night. He
had seen a ghostly shape and heard a voice, that was all.

 "Stick to it. And don't wall your eyes and blubber your lips
so the sheriff thinks you're Iying and beats the truth out of
you."

"Yes, suh."

"Reckon Minerva heard him?" King asked anxiously.

 "If she do, she ain't talkie' no more than me. You want me
to pass her the word?"

"I'll warn Minerva if there's any need. Get gone now and lay
low."

  "Yes, sub." Buzzy flew on soundless feet. But as he
burrowed into his musty tick he felt puzzled. This here now
Mist' King, he sure was changed. Mist' King was actingg like
a different man. Not yelling or cussing nobody, speaking soft
and firm like Miss Annie. Something had happened to Mist'
King to take the big mad out of him. Maybe that little ole gal
Miss Angela got had sweetened up Mist' King. Buzzy
approved of Miss Angela although she had disappointed him
by marrying Morgan after all the trouble he'd had, toting
notes for Cap'n Billy. Mist' Morgan, he decided, he takes
what he wants and makes no never mind for nobody. Now,
likely, he'd get caught up in this meanness, whatever it was,
and get hung.

  King announced very early that there would be no water
barrels hauled to the river that day. Boone-boy, who had
piled out of bed before day ready for the expedition, was
indignant and disappointed and voiced his feelings loudly to
Buzzy.

  "Uncle King says he's got to grease the wagon. What you
keep looking off down the road and listening all the time for,
Buzzy? I know.

[ 2o7 ]

You're scared Uncle Morgan will come home and shoot you.
You're scared, Buzzy, I can tell."

 Buzzy, maneuvering the new calf's head into a bucket by
the ears, wore a queer, quiet face. "Anybody gets skeert of
bein' shot."

 "I wouldn't let Uncle Morgan shoot you. I'd get me that
ole gun of Grampa's out of the oats and make him leave
you alone."

"Where at a gun?" Buzzy showed the whites of his eyes.

  "I know where it's at. Big ole gun that'll kick you clean
across this lot. Grampa killed bears with it. Killed a man
too. Blew his head plumb off.''

  "You stay away from that ole gun!" ordered Buzzy sharply.
"We got enough troubles."

  "That little ole baby Aunt Angela got is sure a trouble,"
agreed the boy. "Bawling all the time, and somebody got to
rock her. Grandma makes a fuss every time there's a little
bitty noise. Girl baby too. Been a boy he might be some
good but girls ain't worth nothin'."

  But to King Markland, harried and taut on that hot windy
day, the second Annie Lou was worth her weight in
diamonds. She kept the women occupied, even l\Iinerva, so
that there were no questions for which he had no answers.
The tormented unease was his alone, his and Buzzy's. Buzzy,
wearing a withdrawn face, put the jack under the wagon
wheel without being told and stood by ready with the paddle
laden with black grease from the bucket. When Boone-boy
ran back to the house at his mother's call, Buzzy bent low
and murmured, "Reckon they done catch him already, Mist'
King? They'd been ridin' in here long time ago if they ain't
catch him up yet."

  "We'll just have to wait, Buzzy. And quit watching that
road. You'll get the women suspicious."

  "Reckon if they catch him they just hang him, Mist' King.
Mist' King, you turnip' that hub nut backwards! You let me
do that."

  "No, I've got to keep busy. I'll have to tell the women
sometime before long. Miss Annie will miss her little bit of
money."

  "She bound to think I stole it," worried Buzzy. "Minerva
already yellin' at me, I steal all her bread. I ain't said
nothin'."

  "Could be they've picked up his trail but haven't caught
him. He might head north into Kcntucky," King said dully.

  "That horse mighty fast. Mist' Morgan smart too. They
ain't goin' to catch him easy."

  It was Sue who faced King later that day. She followed
him out to the pasture fence, calling after him. He turned,
halter in hand, and

[ 208 ]

from the look on her face he knew that now there could be
no more evasion.

 She came to stand beside him. "Something's wrong, isn't it,
King? It's Morgan. He should have come home long since.
Something went wrong, it's written all over your face."

 "I hope Miss Annie hasn't seen it in my face. Or Angela,"
he said lamely. "Your eyes are too sharp, Sue."

 "Miss Annie's all taken up with the baby, but Angela's
worried. Her eyes look mighty haunted."

 King felt his burden lift a little. This was Sue and Sue was
fearless, she had good sense. She would help with his
mother, with Morgan's wife. He laid his arms wearily along
the fence and she put a hand on his elbow.

 "Whatever it is, don't try to carry it alone," she said. "If it's
bad news I've borne bad news before."

"Morgan was here last night. They were after him. He shot a
man."

"Some brawls"

 "No, no brawl. It was this organisation, this thing the
hot-heads have got together that they call the Klan.
Riders masked riders, with General Forrest at the head of
it. Masked men riding at night to frighten Nigras and punish
radicals and carpetbaggers. Morgan had been at a meeting in
Pulaski and on the way back a sheriff's gang jumped some of
them. They had their robes with them. Brownlow has
threatened to hang any man caught with a robe, so Morgan
shot his way out and came here. I helped him pack some
stuff. He left on the run and God knows when he'll come
back," King croaked, relieved that now it was out.

 "I missed that blanket from the foot of his bed. It has been
folded there all summer. And Minerva was fussing at Buzzy
for eating all her cold bread."

 "I thought they'd follow him here. I've been waiting all day
for them to come riding in. It has been hell trying to think
what I'd tell Angela and Miss Annie."

"But they haven't come so you think they caught him?" she
asked.

  "I don't know what to think. I thought they'd come anyway.
They'd know he had help. They might take me too for
helping him escape. But still they haven't come."

  Sue looked off across the sun-seared pasture where grazed
the one colt left of all the proud MaTkland horses.

  "You didn't help him, King," she said then. "If they come,
you didn't even see Morgan. I helped him."

[ 2~ ]

"Sue, you can't do that!"

 "I will do it. They won't arrest a woman. I'll swear that you
and everybody else were sound asleep that I didn't know
he was wanted by the law. I'll make them believe me, and
you keep quiet, you hear?"

 "I won't let you do it." He laid an arm around her
shoulders. They were shaking a little and her throat
quivered.

 "You can't stop me. If y on I'll swear you are Iying. I will.
What could they do Miss Annic, those helpless women and
children, if they took you away? It can't happen. What
would become of all of us if you were taken?"

 "Save that question for left Nichols. I can't answer it. I can
only go on wondering what happt ned to Morgan," King
said.

 Her face changed again, drew quickly into a mask of
bitterness. "Whatever happens, he deserves it! That little
baby he didn't even see her. He didn't even tell his wife he
was going, or where. Nor the mother who has always adored
him so much. I can't care what happens to Morgan, King."

 "We'll have to tell Angcla something, but let's put it off as
long as we can and let her get a lithe stronger. I'm glad
you're with me, Sue. It was tough going it alone."

 She stood for a little, still looking far off, her slim body as
taut as a bowstring, her chin up. Then she faced him
abruptly.

 "King, you don't ever have to carry it alone. You have a
brother. There's Billy. He'll be out of the army this winter.
He said as much in that letter he wrote to Winnie. King, you
know in your heart that Billy was only trying to help when
he took title to Winnie's place. The war's over. Why keep all
the stubborn, stupid antagonisms alive7"

"He can have the damn place," growled King. "I told him so."

 "Tell him to come home then and take it over and lift
some of this load you're carrying. Even if Morgan comes
back and how can he if he shot somebody and has that to
answer for? you know Morgan. Not to be depended upon,
ever. More of a liability than a help. If he had any sense or
any feeling of responsibility would he have taken all these
silly risks, just for the fun of it, just for showing what a
reckless hellion he is7 That's all it's ever been with Morgan
and you know it. That's all the war meant to him, brash
Morgan Markland showing off, galloping around on a fast
horse, quick with a gun."

"He still has a gun. Lord knows where he got it," worried
King.

"You write to Billy, King. Tell him to come home," she
urged.

"No, that's for Miss Annie to do. He wouldn't come if I
wrote."

[ 210 ]

  "He saved your life once. You don't like remembering that,
do you?" she countered acridly.

  "I remember. Sue, you'll have to tell Angela something.
Just tell her he had to leave. She needn't know any more
now," he said.

  "If he doesn't come back she'll know I was Iying. If I tell
her anything," she insisted, "it will be the truth. It will be
bitter but it will be kinder that way."

  "I suppose you're right." He pulled himself up to the top
rail, swung over the fence. "I'm going to catch that colt. He
ought to be broken to ride. You could talk to Miss Annie
about Billy if she wants to write to him "

  "She does write. She hides down in the loom house and
writes long letters, but she never gets a chance to mail any of
them. She's afraid of you, King. She wouldn't dare ask you to
mail a letter to Billy."

  "Afraid of me?" He stopped still, frowning. "Miss Annie's
not afraid of anybody. She's told us all off plenty of times."

  "I reckon she thinks you'd never mail a letter to him, King,"
she said soberly. "You're the one who's afraid. Afraid of
being kind, of being generous and gentle. You think it would
be weakness. It never occurred to you, it never occurred to
your father or Jack or Morgan either, for that matter that
there can be strength in kindness. In trying to understand
other people, helping other people, forgiving their weak-
nesses. For you, for all the Markland men, strength has
always meant conquering something, beating down whatever
stood in your way. All but Billy. Billy was never like that.
That's why you could never understand Billy."

  He slid the halter rope absently through his fingers, looking
a trifle stunned. "Why I do know how to be kind," he
protested. "Look at the Olivers. I married her, didn't I? And
what did I get? A dead and alive kind of life, that would
drive most men crazy."

  "That wasn't kindness. That was just another Markland
trick. Showing off. You never loved her. You don't even hate
her. What does she have from your Less than nothing. No
understanding, mighty little patience, no tenderness at all. A
woman can starve on that."

  "She doesn't want anything from me, only to be let alone,"
he said bitterly. "Sue, you could write to Billy. You write and
I'll ride in and mail the letter."

But in the end it was King who had to write the letter.

  Three weeks went by and inevitably Miss Annie and Angela
had to be told. Between Sue and King they softened the blow
for Angela as much as they could. Morgan had had to leave
the country suddenly on

[211 ]

account of a political trouble. When he found a place where
he could start over he would send for her and the baby. Miss
Annie's optimism came to the fore immediately.

 "Likely he's already in California. He'll send for his family
as soon as he can. Nothing bad will happen to Morgan. They
say California is a good place, people are getting rich there."

 Sue was stiffly silent. Where Morgan was concerned, she
was thinking, what was bad happened to other, innocent
people.

Miss Annie was obdurate however about writing to Billy.

 "You drove him away, you Markland men," she cried.
"Now you can get him back. You demeaned him, everything
he tried to do, even saving my home for me. You can write
the letter yourself, Mister Kingman Markland. Now that you
need your brother you can be humble for once and ask him
to come home. And you can do it right now. I'll make some
fresh ink. Buzzy!" She raised her voice. "Fetch me some
fresh pokeberries. Right now."

  Twenty Eight

WILLIAM MARKLAND WAS NOT YET
TWENTY-SEVEN YEARS OLD, BUT already there were
touches of silver in the dark wings of hair that swept back
from his temples. Now that his wounded knee had finally
stiffened he walked with a hitch and a limp but he could still
sit tall in the saddle.

 Smoke was drifting warm and grey from the chimney of
the old Oliver house as he rode up the brushy hill on a
bleak March afternoon. Buzzy would have a fire roaring and
in the kitchen there would be a rabbit stew simmering. Buzzy
spent his time these wet chilly days contriving rabbit traps.
"I figure to plant us some garden sass come spring and ain't
havin' all my truck et up by hoppin' tails."

 As he rounded the last clump of cedars William saw an
old roan horse hitched to the Markland buggy in front of the
house. Obviously his mother and Sue had come visiting.
William had tried to persuade his mother and Sue to come
and live with him now that he had a house, but Miss Annie
refused to leave her home and William understood the
impropriety of suggesting that Sue should come without her.

[ 212 ]

 On his occasional visits to the home place he saw Angela,
but she was withdrawn and aloof, whether from defensiveness
or resentment he did not know. She did not relent, no matter
how casually friendly his approach and she was obviously not
going to allow William to forget that however shabbily
Morgan had treated her she was still his wife.

 "She's always planning how she'll travel with the baby when
he sends for her," Sue told William. "It's pitiful when there
hasn't been a word from him in months."

 William smiled to himself as he tied The Count to the
porch. Undoubtedly, Sue and Miss Annie would be in the
house looking over his shirts, scrubbing out cupboards and
scolding amiably about the way two old bachelors kept house.
As he mounted the steps he expected the door to crash open
and Boone-boy to come bounding out, but when he entered
it was King who stood waiting in muddy boots and their
father's old sheepskin-lined coat.

 "Looks like snow," King said without further greeting. "I
made a fire and waited for you. Buzzy told 'Nerve last night
you'd gone into town."

 William moved gratefully to the blaze. "This weather makes
my game leg ache. Sit down, King. Buzzy," he shouted, "put
up my horse."

 Buzzy came pelting through the hall, pulling on a shabby
coat that had once been worn by stylish young Carter Oliver
the Third. "Yes, sub, Captn. Ain't no more corn, Cap'n."

 "He'll do on hay but wet it down, you hear?" William stood
so near to the fire that his damp clothing began to steam.
"After six years in cold barracks and leaky tents I'm just
beginning to get warm again. There's a little whisky
somewhere. I could do with a drink. King, how about you?"

 "It'll help out the weather, [ reckon." King was always a bit
stiff and self-conscious around his brother although he
struggled to relax.

 They got out the bottle in silence, poured two glasses and
pulled chairs closer to the fire.

 "Thought I'd come up and see if you'd heard anything in
town," King said, after a little. "I thought maybe somebody
might talk to you."

 William jabbed at a smoking log with the poker. "She's still
waiting and hoping, is she?" he asked. "You've had no news,
I suppose. You ever hear what happened that night?"

 "I'm a Confederate veteran." King's voice rasped a little.
"I've been in town only once since he left. That was when I
went in to mail that letter to you in October. I didn't tarry
then. I thought like enough they'd be after me too for helping
him get away, so I didn't talk to anv

['13 ]

body or ask any questions. All I heard was some sour-faced
Republicans muttering behind my back."

  William relaxed, the whisky warming him. He had come
back in February and for a time he had feared that the stiff
formality between himself and King would never be eased,
although the women had been friendly enough and Sue and
his mother were both obviously happy to see him again. But
now the guarded look that King had worn for weeks was
beginning to soften on his face.

  "I got the story in bits and pieces," William began
presently. "Morgan had friends in town. A lot of people
liked him, he was easy and never what you could call
passionately Confederate like the rest of you. Old Squire
Armitage seemed to be actually fond of him. He married
Morgan and Angela. Lately the Squire has had a shabby
deal from some of the radicals in power and he was willing
to talk. I'd played poker with him a time OT- two when we
were stationed here and he seemed to trust me, so he talked
and laughed about what went on the night Jeff Nichols and
some of his gang set out to capture Morgan."

  "I've been uneasy all winter, waiting for Nichols to come
down on me like a ton of bricks." King drained his glass.
"The way he came crashing in down home when they took
Pa and Jack. God, Billy, can you realize that they're both
gone now? Hard for me to make myself believe it
sometimes. All right if I have another? This has been a hard
winter."

  "Help yourself. But lock that cupboard and bring me the
key. I've got a moral responsibility to keep Buzzy out of
trouble."

  "How are you going to keep the army from nabbing him?
That worried me some after he came home."

  "I arranged for his dishonorable discharge before I gave
up my commission. He doesn't know it, it would hurt his
pride, but they could never hold him unless they locked him
up indefinitely. Most of the Negro boys we had were
homesick and undependable, more of a liability to the
service than a help."

  "Get on with your story," urged King. "I have to get home
before dark."

  "Well, when Jeff and his crowd caught Morgan and those
other lads that night, Morgan, the hot-headed fool, started
shooting and got away. Some trooper who was with the
posse got winged in the shoulder but nobody was killed,"
William said.

  "Miss Annie would be glad to hear that. She likes to think
we all went bravely through a war without killing anybody."

"If we had been in the same areas we might have killed each
other,"

[ 214]

remarked William. "And if Morgan hadn't gone charging off
that night, he would have been rescued. About fifty of them,
all masked, caught up with Jeff's posse, overpowered them,
roped them up and took them all back to town where they
locked them all up in the jail. Then, so the Squire says, they
rode round and round that jail till nearly noon, silent and
solemn as a parade of ghosts and nobody dared molest them.
Had every Negro in town scared green and hiding under a
bed. Some troopers rode the country for a while hunting
Morgan and the others but they didn't find them."

 "If he still believes he killed a man he won't come back,"
said King. "Not for years anyway."

 "Nichols, I heard, is scared and plenty meek. They'll throw
him out next election, so the Squire thinks. A sheriff who gets
laughed at is a liability. How did it happen that you stayed
clear of the Klan business, King?" William asked.

 "After Jack got killed I was alone. No depending on
Morgan for anything. I had four women and two young ones
on my hands," King reminded his brother.

 "So you decided to bury the past along with Abe Lincoln
and old Stonewall and Beauty Stuart there was a soldier,
King. He gave us more trouble than all the rest of your army
put together. And your man Forrest operated about as
savagely down in this part of the country, I've heard."

 "He's heading up this Klan thing now. I can't think that's
the answer7" admitted King.

 "Violence will never be an answer." William got to his feet.
"So," he smiled, "you decided to let me come home. Still think
it was a weak thing to dot~d that I was doing something
weak and expedient to come?"

 King rose too, stood almost a head taller than his brother.
"I won't deny that there was a time when I hated your guts,"
he said quietly. "And for about a month when Pa was dying
Morgan was hunting you to shoot you dead. I don't know it
was Sue, I reckon, who made me see it was kind of stupid.
After all, you believed in what you did and so did I. Events
proved my belief was doomed not to win. There was mighty
little left only that we were all still Marklands. Anyway you
had a legal right to come, Billy."

 "I'm making it definitely legal, King. That was my principal
reason for going to town today. I'm buying this place from
Winnie. The Squire is drawing up the papers. She agreed to
the arrangement when I talked to her Sunday."

[ 21 5 ]

"You didn't to do that. I told her so."

  "I wanted to do it. May take me years to pay her for it but
I'll pay. And Winnie can take anything out of this house she
wants."

  "I've never been able to get her to come since those
guerrillas were here," said King. "The place scares her to
death for some reason. But this" he fumbled for words "is
mighty decent of you, Billy. After "

  William smiled again. "The last of the Marklands. You and
I. Shall we let the war end, for the Marklands?"

  King drew a relieved breath. Amenities did not come easy
for him. He shifted quickly to the practical where he felt
secure.

  "Billy, I've been thinking. This is horse country. Once Pa
had some of the best horses ever raised in Tennessee.
You've still got The Count. I Ie's going on for eight now but
he was old Baron's grandson, last of a good bloodline. If we
could get hold of a couple of mares "

  "Know where we can find any?" interrupted William, glad
of the commonplace again, edgingg away from emotion.

  "Billy, realize this I'm at a disadvantage. You boys are
top dog now. I'm a damned Rebel, ripe to be skinned, a
credit to the man who cheats me." Anger flicked scarlet for
an instant over King's face. "I've got one good colt. Almost
three years old now. All that's left of old Ouke's strain. I'll
sell or trade him but if I try it I'll be robbed and no
recourse. You'll have to handle any deal, and maybe he'll
bring enough to buy some mares and w e'll be back in the
horse business."

  "I'll make some inquiries around," said William. "You'd
better stay and eat. Buzzy's got a good stew cooking from
the smell of it."

  "Sorry, got to hurry. It's almost dark. Sue will be out trying
to do all the chores with nobody to help her but Boone-boy.
That's one grand gal, Sue."

  "You should have married her, King. You could have had
Sue once," William reminded him.

  "I know. My own foolishness. Now " he did not finish.
"You could marry Sue, Billy," he said abruptly.

William stared, startled. "Me?"

  "Why not? She's been a widow almost a year now." King
hesitated briefly, then held out his hand. William took it and
pressed it hard. "The last surrender," said King sadly, then
shrugged his shoulders and strode out.

  William walked back to the kitchen. Buzzy was waiting
there, bigeyed with intention.

  "Cap'n," he began breathlessly. "You want to buy some
horses, I know where there's a lot of money!"

~ 216 ]

"Been listening at keyholes, have you? Where's any lot of
money?"

 "You wait. I'll show you." Fuzzy pounded up the stairs,
came thmldering down again with a soiled and sooty bundle.
"Look, Cap'n! I done found it up the chimney in that li'l
room where the old books is."

 "And you've been hiding it all this time, knowing that it was
Miss Winnie's moneys" demanded William.

 "Yes, suh. I knows. I just forgit when you come home.
Reckon Miss Winnie give me some for finclin' it, Cap'n?"

 William fingered the grimy bills sadly. He counted one
pack and estimated the value of the others. At least fifty
thousand dollars! Poor defrauded Winnie! Poor deluded
South!

 "It's nobody's money, Buzzy," he said soberly. "True, it was
good money once. Back in 'sixty-three, maybe, when that
poor old man probably exchanged all he had for it. He must
have given good gold coin for it. It's rebel money, Fuzzy. You
couldn't buy a forkful of hay with it, much less a horse."

 "Rebel money? Ain't no good at all, Cap'n?" Buzzy's face
was a stark mask of woe.

 "No good at all. Worse than no good. In this state with
things as they are it's risky to own it, much less to spend it.
And you couldn't spend it. Nobody would give you a rusty
pin for all there is here."

 "What I do with it? All that there wouldn't even buy one
ole horse, Cap'n?"

 "Not even a dead horse, Buzzy. It's filthy now. Toss it into
the fire. It's tragic that: Miss Winnic hasn't got what that
money cost her grandfather. She could have bought half this
county now if she had it and all the horses to be found
anywhere. All wasted as so much was wasted."

 Buzzy went sadly to where the log fire still burned hot in
the fireplace and heaved the dusty bundle into the flames. It
smoldered slowly.

 "Don't even bum good!" he grumbled. "That ole Judah man
he make mighty sorry money."

[ 217 ]

Twenty Nine

Al: r. Tr~ROUGH THAT LUSH ANn suRGEoNrNG
SPRING W~TAM WAS haunted and a little troubled by
King's casual, half-joking remark about his marrying Sue.

 When Sue had married into the Markland family, a
volatile spark of a redhead at seventeen, William had
indulgently regarded his brother's wife as a restless little
coquette, married too young, but he had watched her settle
down and grow in strength and self-discipline. That her
self-control may have masked a cheated sort of loneliness
had never occurred to him until now.

 Looking back over the years before the war William could
see now that Jack had been possessive, with quick angers
and an impatient attitude, but had Jack ever really been the
lover Sue's hungry heart yearned for? That she had been
entirely faithful, William was certain.

 Trouble had brought out the strength in Sue, and along
with it a refining and inflexible goodness that had grown into
a power upon which all the Marklands depended. William
caught himself watching her, whenever he returned to the
home place, seeing his mother's dependence upon Sue, the
way King relied upon her, her quiet ignoring of Winnie's
spoiled temperament and tearful moods, her gentle under-
standing with Angela. In Sue's dark time of trouble it had
been Angela's gentle patience that had brought Sue out of
her dour broodings, and now Sue strove to reinforce Miss
Annie's continuing determination to await cheerfully a
reunion with Morgan about which William himself was
dubious.

 Angela had grown stronger but her courage and gaiety had
not returned. William suspected often when he saw her that
Angela had spent a tearful night, but because she was so
continually on guard against him he kept his attitude casual
and remote. It was Boone-boy who finally brought matters
to a climax in William's mind.

 Boone-boy had attached himself to Buzzy in the weeks
before William's return. Now as the days lengthened in June
Boone-boy was continually running away from the Markland
place to come flying barefoot across the fields. He followed
William and Buzzy over the

[ 218 ]

pastures where the two new mares grazed, followed watchfully
by The Count. He even shouldered a hoe to help chop out
thistles and sprouts before they had a chance to bloom.

 Buzzy grumbled at field work but Boone-boy was a dogged
hand helping Buzzy spread lime and parts green on his young
plants in the garden patch, dropping corn in the furrows that
King and William turned with the slow mule and the old roan
horse. He helped Buzzy rig his traps and bait a ragged piece
of undergrowth with old wheat they scraped out of the
bottom of a bin to entice quail to nest there. Boone-boy's
pointed, dark little face was growing almost as dark as
Buzzy's, and his slim body was taut with muscles that he loved
to display.

 "I'm most a man ain't I, Uncle Billy?" he gloated. "When
can I ride that Count horse, Uncle Billy?"

 "You stay away from that horse," ordered William. "A stud
can be savage when he has mares in the lot with him or when
he's penned up alone."

 William was seeing himself again in Boone-boy, seeing that
skinny small boy who had tagged after Buzzy, taunting old
Baron through the bars, climbing every tree on the home
place. And Buzzy approved of Boone-boy.

"He mighty smart, Cap'n. I le do most as much work now as
me."

  "Part of the time he does more than you," William said. "He
hoed two rows of corn yesterday before you finished one."

  "Cap'n," Buzzy sighed, peeling onions for another stew. "We
ought to git us some field riggers. Miss Annie, she raise me
to be a house rigger. I don't like this field-hand business too
good."

  "She didn't raise me to be a field hand either," William
pointed out. "I happen to like eating. Nobody eats these times
unless they work. You don't hear me grumbling because the
sun is hot, do your And where would we get any field hands?
How would we feed them if we had any? It's mighty slim
scratching here sometimes just for the two of us."

  "Them Freedom riggers, they git paid, Cap'n. Four bits a
day they "its."

  "You want to work for the FreedmeIl's Bureau, Buzzy?
You're free. There's the road. You can take off down the
road any time you feel like it."

  "Who goin' carry water for them horses, if I hit the road?
Who goin' wash your shirts and cook you sump'n t' eat?"
whined Buzzy.

"All right, you've got a point there. I'll pay you fifty cents a
day.

[219]

Next fall if we sell some corn or if we get a good colt later
that will bring a decent price. You make a mark yonder on
that wall every day you do a full day's work and in the fall
we'll reckon up and see how much I owe you," agreed
William.

 "Hot damI"exulted Buzzy, flying to the hearth for a
charcoal stick to mark with. "Now I buy me a solid purple
shirt. Maybe git me a pair of yellow shoes too."

 Boone-boy, intrigued by Buzzy's bookkeeping arrangement,
had to have a marking place on the wall too. "But if you pay
me any money, Uncle Billy, I ain't buying no yellow shoes
with it. I'm buying me a colt."

 "A Markland!" William gave the boy a playful scuff on his
shaggy head. "Another real Mar}:land. Maybe that Flossy
mare will have twin colts. If she does, one of 'em is yours."

"You goin' to give me a colt too, Cap'n7" Buzzy asked
eagerly.

  "I'm paying you, remember? You can buy your own colt.
But it will cost more than a pair of yellow shoes. And mind
this if a boy who hires out to the Freedmen's Bureau
doesn't work, he gets fired. Any time you get to loafing on
us here, you can lose your job," teased William.

  Buzzy looked aghast for a moment till he detected the
twinkle in William's eye. "Cap'n, you know mighty well you
ain't never goin' fire me. We been together ever since we a
infant baby, you and me."

  "I know where there's a saddle." Boone-boy was excited.
"Down home hanging up high. It's all dusty and mildewed
but I know how to soap it good, Uncle Bflly."

"Fine. Get it ready for when you get around to breaking
your colt."

  If William and Buzzy w ere pleased with Boone-boy's
shifting loyalty however, it was becoming evident that Sue
was not.

  The roan horse, weary from a day in the field, became a
familiar sight plodding up the hill ahead of the Markland
buggy at dusk, with Sue sitting sternly in the seat.

  "I don't know what to do with him," she complained, the
fourth time Boone-boy was dragged, protesting loudly, away
from Buzzy's intriguing activities in the kitchen. "He's
jealous of that baby, Billy. Always he was Miss Annie s pet,
now little Annie gets all her attention. It's fine for Miss
Annie, it keeps her from worrying, but I don't think it's so
good for Angela. It gives her more time to brood. What do
you believe happened to Morgan, Billy? He must have been
killed somewhere."

L220]

 "He wasn't killed. Not around here at least. I found out
that much. Morgan got clear away."

 He could not tell Sue of the rumors he had picked up in
town. He had not yet fold King, debating whether it would be
wise, whether King's impulsive and undisciplined tongue
might not some time let the rumor loose to hurt Angela still
more. He had not mentioned the artillery major who had
lately returned from Memphis with a story about the newly
rehabilitated steamboats that were being put into service on
the Mississippi.

 "Rode one of them north from Port Gibson, Captain, and
there was a gambler on board I thought for a few minutes
was you. A little taller than you, I noted later, but as far as
looks go he could have been your twin brother. Crew told me
he'd been going up and down the river every trip."

 "Poor Angela," Sue said now. "Not really married and not
free. You were in love with her once, weren't you, Billy? She
told me a little, then I remembered you and Morgan having
a fight about her that awful night they took Pa and Jack to
jail."

 "That was long ago, Sue," William said evenly. "A very long
time ago. She married Morgan."

 "Come along, Boone-boy,' ordered his mother patiently.
"King says I'm going to have to put hobbles on him, to keep
him at home."

"Why don't you let him stay?" asked William.

  "Let me stay, Mama," begged the boy. "I work. I help.
Don't I, Uncle Billy? I work right along with Buzzy and
Uncle Billy's going to give me a colt if Flossy has twins."

  Sue's eyes brimmed suddenly. "But he's all I've got," she
cried. "All my people my husband, all gone. There's nobody
else that belongs to me any more but Boone-boy! Don't you
love me any more, son? Is that the reason you run away from
me all the time?"

  "I don't run away from you," insisted the boy. "I just like
being up here with Unclc Billy and Buzzy. There ain't any
aunts up here nor any baby yelling. Mama, I know" his face
brightened and he danced a little step "you come and stay
here too. You come and live with us men."

  Sue's sudden flush of flaming color startled William.
Suddenly he saw how pretty she was, with her hair like a
wreath of coppery fire around her head, her amber-green
eyes and the rich glow in her cheeks.

  "I couldn't do that, Boone-hoy." She got him by the arm
hastily. "It wouldn't do at all. Now, you scamper out and get
in that buggy and

[221 ]

the next time I have to come here after you I'll bring a big
switch, you heart"

 William raised an interposing hand, as the boy darted out
the door. "That isn't such a wild thought, Sue," he said
gravely. "You could come here "

 "Stop, William! I won't listen." She tried to laugh, giving
her hair a quick push back, and he noticed there were tears
in her eyes.

 "There may be a time when you'll listen," he persisted.
"Next time  I'll bring Boone-boy home. The Count needs
to be ridden now and then or he'll get insolent too and
above himself like all the Marklands."

 "That Miss Sue, she a mighty fine woman," commented
Buzzy, when the buggy had rattled off down the hill and
William had walked back into the kitchen. "Miss Sue, she
had a hard time too. Mist' Jack, he your brother, but you
knows and I knows that Mist' Jack git mad mighty easy."

"Jack is dead," said William. "Let him rest."

 "Yes, sub, Cap'n sub! But if you git married to Miss Sue,
we git us a cook. I don't cook so good."

"Hold your tongue, boy!"

"Yes, sub!"

 Buzzy held his tongue but he grinned slyly into the pot he
was stirring. He grinned still wider when on Sunday he was
ordered to press a pair of Nh'illiam's prewar trousers and
observed his captain ruefully surveying a Buzzy-ironed shirt.

 Cap'n goin'courtin' end he don't even know he is,
chuckled Buzzy to himself. Hot dam, you ole skillet, I'll git
shut of you yet.

[ 222 ]