A Snow Country Christmas (The Carsons of Mustang Creek #4)(51)
“Now, that just ain’t Christian,” protested Billy, conveniently overlooking his own moral lapse.
The captain gave a raspy laugh, painful to hear, and shook his head. “A fine sentiment, coming from the likes of you.” In the next moment, his face hardened, aristocratic even beneath its layers of dried sweat and dirt. He turned slightly, keeping one eye on his prisoner, and shouted a summons into the rapidly narrowing nothingness surrounding the three of them.
Several men hurried over, though they were invisible to Jacob, and the sounds they made were faint.
“Get this piece of dog dung out of my sight before I pierce his worthless flesh with my sword for the pure pleasure of watching him bleed,” the officer ordered. “He is a disgrace, even to that uniform.”
There were words of reply, though Jacob could not make them out, and Jacob sensed a scuffle as the thief resisted capture, a modern-day Judas, bleating a traitor’s promises, willing to betray men who’d fought alongside him, confided their hopes and fears to him around campfires or on the march.
Jacob waited, expecting the gentleman soldier to follow his men, go on about his business of overseeing the capture of wounded blue-coats, the recovery of his own troops, alive and dead.
Instead, the man crouched, as the thief had done earlier. He took up the rucksack Billy had been forced to leave behind, rummaged within it, produced the packet of letters and the leather case containing the likenesses of Jacob’s beloved wife and daughter. He opened the latter, examined the images inside, smiled sadly.
Then he tucked the items inside Jacob’s bloody coat, paused as though startled, and looked directly into his motionless eyes.
“My God,” he said, under his breath. “You’re alive.”
Jacob could not acknowledge the remark verbally, but he felt a tear trickle over his left temple, into his hair, and that, apparently, was confirmation enough for the Confederate captain.
Now, Jacob thought, he would be shot, put out of his misery like an injured horse. And he would welcome the release.
Instead, very quietly, the captain said. “Hold on. You’ll be found soon.” He paused, frowning. “And if you happen to encounter a Union quartermaster by the name of Rogan McBride, somewhere along the way, I would be obliged if you’d tell him Bridger Winslow sends his best regards.”
Jacob doubted he’d get the chance to do as Winslow asked, but he marked the names carefully in his mind, just the same.
Another voice spoke then. “This somebody you know, Captain?” a man asked, with concern and a measure of sympathy. It wasn’t uncommon on either side, after all, to find a friend or a relative among enemy casualties, for the battle-lines often cut across towns, churches, and supper tables.
“No,” the captain replied gruffly. “Just another dead Federal.” A pause. “Get on with your business, Simms. We might have the blue-coats under our heel for the moment, but you can be sure they’ll be back to bury what remains they can’t gather up and haul away. Better if we don’t risk a skirmish after a day of hard fighting.”
“Yes, sir,” Simms replied sadly. “The men are low in spirit, now that General Jackson has been struck down.”
“Yes,” the captain answered. Angry sorrow flashed in his eyes. “By his own troops,” he added bitterly, speaking so quietly that Jacob wondered if Simms had heard them at all.
Jacob sensed the other man’s departure.
The captain lingered, taking his canteen from his belt, loosening the cap a little with a deft motion of one hand, leaving the container within Jacob’s reach. The gesture was most likely a futile one, since Jacob could not use his hands, but it was an act of kindness, all the same. An affirmation of the possibility, however remote, that Jacob might somehow survive.
Winslow rose to his full height, regarded Jacob solemnly, and walked away.
Jacob soon lost consciousness again, waking briefly now and then, surprised to find himself not only still among the living, but unmolested by vermin. When alert, he lay looking up the night sky, steeped in the profound silence of the dead, one more body among dozens, if not hundreds, scattered across the blood-soaked grass.
Just so many pawns in some Olympian chess match, he reflected, discarded in the heat of conflict and then forgotten.
Sometime the next morning, or perhaps the morning after that, wagons came again, and grim-faced Union soldiers stacked the bodies like cordwood, one on top of another. They were fretful, these battle-weary men, anxious to complete their dismal mission and get back behind the Union lines, where there was at least a semblance of safety.
Jacob, mute and motionless, was among the last to be taken up, grasped roughly by two men in dusty blue coats.
The pain was so sudden, so excruciating that finally, finally, he managed a low, guttural cry.
The soldier supporting his legs, little more than a boy, with blemished skin and not even the prospect of a beard, gasped. “This fella’s still with us,” he said, and he looked so startled, so horrified, and so pale that Jacob feared he would swoon, letting his burden drop.
“Well,” said the other man, gruffly cheerful, “Johnny left a few breathin’ this time around.”
The boy recovered enough to turn his head and spit, and to Jacob’s relief, he remained upright, his grasp firm. “A few,” he agreed grudgingly. “And every one of them better off dead.”