A Snow Country Christmas (The Carsons of Mustang Creek #4)(50)
Wicked interest flashed in the man’s eyes, as he fumbled open the case and saw the tin-types inside, one of Caroline and Jacob, taken on their wedding day, looking traditionally somber in their finest garb, the other of Caroline, with an infant Rachel in her arms, the child resplendent in a tiny, lace-trimmed christening gown and matching bonnet.
Caroline had sewed every stitch of the impossibly small dress and beribboned bonnet, made them sturdy, so they could be worn by all the children to follow.
No, Jacob cried inwardly, hating his helplessness.
“Well, now,” the man murmured. “Ain’t this a pretty little family? Maybe I’ll just look them up sometime, offer my condolences.”
Had he been able, Jacob would have killed the bummer in that moment, throttled the life out of him with his bare hands, and never regretted the act. Although he struggled with all his might, trying to gather the last shreds of his strength, the effort proved useless.
It was the worst kind of agony, imagining this man reading the letters, noting the return address on each and every envelope, seeking Caroline and Rachel out, offering a pretense of sympathy.
Taking advantage.
And Jacob could do nothing to stop him, nothing to protect his wife and daughter from this monster or others like him, the renegades, the enemies of decency and innocence in all their forms.
With the smile of a demon, the bummer snapped the case closed and reached for his rucksack, ready, at last, to flee.
It was then that a figure loomed behind him, a gray shadow of a man, planted the sole of one boot squarely in the center of the thief’s back, and sent him sprawling across Jacob’s inert frame.
The pain was instant, throbbing in every bone and muscle of Jacob’s body.
“Stealing from a dead man,” the shadow said, standing tall, his buttery-smooth drawl laced with contempt. “That’s low, even for a Yank.”
The bummer scrambled to his feet, groped for something, probably his rifle, and paled when he came up empty. Most likely, he’d dropped the weapon in his eagerness to rob one of his own men.
“I ought to run you through with this fine steel sword of mine, Billy,” the other man mused idly. He must have ridden ahead of his detachment, dismounted nearby, and moved silently through the scattered bodies. “After all, this is a war, now, isn’t it? And you are my foe, as surely as I am yours.”
Jacob’s vision, unclear to begin with, blurred further, and there was a pounding in his ears, but he could make out the contours of the two men, now standing on either side of him, and he caught the faint murmur of their words, a mere wisp of sound.
“You don’t want to kill me, Johnny,” the thief reasoned, with a note of anxious congeniality in his voice, raising both palms as if in surrender. “It wouldn’t be honorable, with us Union boys at a plain disadvantage.” He drew in a strange, swift whistle of a breath. “Anyhow, I wasn’t hurtin’ nobody. Just makin’ good use of things this poor fella has no need of, bein’ dead and all.”
By now, Jacob was aware of men and horses all around, though there was no cannon fire, no shouting, no sharp report of rifles.
“You want these men to see you murder an unarmed man?” wheedled the man addressed as Billy. “Where I come from, you’d be hanged for that. It’s a war crime, ain’t it?”
“We’re not ‘where you come from,’” answered Johnny coolly. The bayonet affixed to the barrel of his carbine glinted in the lingering smoke and the dust raised by the horses. “This is Virginia,” he went on, with a note of fierce reverence. “And you are an intruder here, sir.”
Billy—the universal name for all Union soldiers, as Johnny was for their Confederate counterparts—spat, foolhardy in his fear. “I reckon the rules are about the same, though, whether North or South,” he ventured. Even Jacob, from his faulty vantage point, saw the terror behind all that bluster. “Fancy man like you—an officer, at that—must know how it is. Even if you don’t hang for killin’ with no cause, you’ll be court-martialed for sure, once your superiors catch wind of what you done. And that’s bound to leave a stain on your high-and-mighty reputation as a Southern gentleman, ain’t it? Just you think, sir, of the shame all those well-mannered folks back home on the old plantation will have to contend with, all on your account.”
A slow, untroubled grin took shape on the Confederate captain’s soot-smudged face. His gray uniform was torn and soiled, the brass of his buttons and insignia dull, and his boots were scuffed, but even Jacob, nearly blind, could see that his dignity was inborn, as much a part of him as the color of his eyes.
“It might be worth hanging,” he replied, almost cordially, like a man debating some minor point of military ethics at an elegant dinner party far removed from the sound and fury of war, “the pleasure of killing a latrine rat such as yourself, that is. As for these men, most of whom are under my command, as it happens, well, they’ve seen their friends and cousins and brothers skewered by Yankee bayonets and blown to fragments by their canon. Just today, in fact, they saw General Jackson relieved of an arm.” At this, the captain paused, swallowed once. “Most likely, they’d raise a cheer as you fell.”
Dimly, Jacob saw Billy Yank’s Adam’s apple bob along the length of his neck. Under any other circumstances, he might have been amused by the fellow’s nervous bravado, but he could feel himself retreating further and further into the darkness of approaching death, and there was no room in him for frivolous emotions.