The elder woman sniffed. "If there's a horse in the country couId haul a buggy through a storm like this, we ain't got it, child," she answered.
"But you do agree that he's Josiah Hedges?" Grace asked.
"Not you nor me can be sure of that, Grace," came the reply. "Neither of us ever saw a wanted poster for that feller. All we know is that the stranger keeps rambling about Jamie and a farm."
"He's wanted in two states, mother," Grace pointed out. "He killed a man called Rhett in that very yard out there and then he shot a man named Tombs in Kansas."
Margaret Hope was sweating as the fire burned hotter and she drew the back of her hand across her shining forehead. "I ain't disputing that a man named Hedges done that," she said. "And you could very well be right that the stranger is that very man. But he ain't in no fit state to cause any more trouble for awhile. He ain't even been through his crisis yet."
"But he's getting better."
Margaret nodded. "Yes, he is, child. Nature will have her way and try to drive him to his limit when she figures he's least likely to fight it. But he's stronger already and he'll win."
Grace sighed and went to the window, rubbing at the smear of condensation with a clenched fist. By pressing her face hard against the damp pane she could just make out the oak tree with the mound and grave marker beneath it. When she had last looked, the rain had veiled every feature more than a few feet from the cottage.
"I believe it's brightening a little," she opined.
"About time it did," her mother answered.
"As soon as it stops, I'm going to town." The girl's tone was brittle, challenging.
"We'll see. Now get those peas shelled, child. Then attend to the bedroom fire."
Grace took a final look out into the yard, feeling that the tree and the grave beneath it became sharper in outline as she watched. Then she returned to the pre-mealtime chores. She wanted desperately for the stranger to be taken away from the house, for every second he remained, naked and helpless a few feet from her, she felt her emotions drawn towards him with a powerful, invisible force.
In the next room, unaware of the ambivalence his presence aroused in the mind of Grace Hope, Edge approached the high point of his fever as the angels of death gathered. It was not the first time they had hovered above him.
CHAPTER SIX
HEDGES was heading a six-man patrol over the Blue Ridge, out of the Shenandoah Valley. It was mid-July now and the Virginia summer was proving it could be as hot as that which turned the wheat from green to gold in Iowa. The men who rode in a column behind Hedges—Forrest, Douglas, Bell, Scott, Seward and a youngster named Haskins—were valuable, if in a muttering key, in their low opinion of the heat and the harsh pace set by the newly promoted captain. Hedges chose to ignore their complaints, recognizing the need for them to express their discontent and deciding that harsh words provided a harmless outlet for their resentment.
And resentment there was in full measure among the men comprising D Troop for although they saw in their new captain qualities of leadership far superior to those Jordan had possessed, he had proved just as much a disciplinarian as his predecessor. More so, in fact, because he was not content simply to insure the men were smartly turned out. Hedges insisted on regular attention to the horses and supervise daily drill parades and target practice.
It was said by the men of D Troop, that when next the enemy was engaged they would be sitting ducks, blinded by the gleam of buttons and shine of their horse harness. Certainly, as the patrol started down the eastern slope of the Ridge, the men and their mounts had never looked so clean and well turned out, with shaven jaws incongruously pale minus the protection of several days' growth of beard.
D Troop was one of a number of units which had been dethatched from McClellan's army and ordered to push eastwards in all haste, towards a point known as Manassas Junction on the southwest bank of a Potomac River tributary called Bull Run. Intelligence reports indicated that a Confederate general named Beauregard had massed an army of some twenty thousand men in the area, squarely across the railroad route between Washington and the rebel capital of Richmond.
The splintering of McClellan's army into small units, with instructions to take separate routes across the mountains and thus attract less attention from rebel agents, had been synchronized with the movement of thirty-five thousand Union soldiers south from Washington towards Manassas Junction.
The briefing session had been as disorganized and handled as incompetently as every other aspect of the war so far. But from the maps he had seen spread upon McClellan's table, Hedges gathered that a rather unbalanced pincer-movement was planned, with the scattered troops coming down from the mountains to harass Beauregard's left flank while the army moving out of Washington under General McDowell hit hard at the front. He could recognize the basic soundness of such a plan but was concerned at the lack of co-ordination and his speed over the Blue Ridge was aimed at reaching Manassas before the battle commenced, perhaps enabling him to confer with McDowell's staff on tactics.
Buildings ahead, captain."
It was Corporal Douglas, riding immediately behind Hedges, who jerked the officer from his thoughts, drawing his attention to a small settlement in front of them. Hedges raised his hand to halt the patrol and narrowed his eyes as he examined what lay ahead. The purpose of the patrol, some two miles in advance of the main body of the troop, was to blaze a trail across the mountains, preferably in secrecy and therefore finding detours round habitations. They had several times swung wide of a direct path to avoid isolated farms and small villages, but the detours had all used up valuable time. As Hedges examined this new obstacle to their progress, he had to weigh the possible dangers it held against the certain delay in taking a longer route.
"Hell Captain, we ain't seen a reb since we chased them off Rich Mountain," Forrest called from the end of the line.
"And Virginia ain't seceded from the Union," Douglas put in. "Civilians won't give us no trouble."
Hedges was well aware of these points and as Douglas completed his contribution, the captain nodded. "We go in slow and careful," he said, not taking his eyes off the large farmhouse, its barns and the surrounding huts of the field workers. "You keep your eyes open and your weapons at the ready. But I don't want no shooting unless we're attacked first."
He didn't turn to see what reaction his instructions had drawn, but heeled his horse forward, down a narrow bridle path and on to the wide shelf upon which the farm was spread out. Trees, thinly placed, provided inadequate cover for a few yards, but then the path forded a shallow stream and cut a course between two fields of maize, taking them into wide open space.
"Hey, Captain?" Just above a whisper.
"Yeah, Forrest." Hedges didn't turn around.
"Where's the people?"
"You noticed that, too.
Smart." Seward giggled: "Maybe they heard we was coming and took it on the lam."
"Or maybe they're holed up and got us in their gun-sights," Scott suggested.
"Happy guy." Bell.
"It's past noon," Hedges muttered. "Eating time."
Bell clicked his tongue against his teeth and rubbed sweat from his forehead. "I like that better."
They had covered half the distance to the first building; a barn separated from the fields by a wire fence with a five-bar gate where the pathway intersected it. With workers in the fields and smoke rising from the big house chimney the farm would have appeared idyllic and innocent in the bright, early afternoon sunshine. The atmosphere of desertion which clung to it impregnated the very air with a sense of the ominous.