The coach driver poked his head into the vehicle while Ashton was engaged in her prolonged farewell. He had a big fan-shaped beard, white, and a beaded vest that looked as if it had once been rinsed in vegetable soup.
"How many of you folks rid in a Concord 'fore this?" Only one hand went up. "Wal, she's mighty comfortable, as you'll soon find out. But if you're travelin' the whole way to Santa Fe, I got to warn you that we hit some mighty twisty roads. Gits so bad some places, the horses kin eat out of the luggage boot."
Having delivered his standard joke for tourists, he tipped his hat, climbed to the box, and began separating the various reins of the four-mustang hitch.
Impatiently, Ashton pushed Huntoon away. "I must go."
"Godspeed, my love," he said, handing her into the coach. She managed to squeeze into the last place on the rear-facing front seat, leaving two laggards, a middle-aged drover in poor but clean clothes and a sleazy drummer with a sample case, to take the hard drop seats in the middle.
She examined the envelope. He had written Ashton on the front and closed it with three large drops of wax. He certainly did want his request honored if he sealed it that carefully. She dropped the letter in her reticule and then, despite the prospect of the rough roads, foul food, and verminous sleeping accommodations en route, began to feel quite cheerful. She suspected it wouldn't be long before circumstances required her to open the letter.
Handlers flung the last valises in the boot and lashed down the tarpaulin. The dispatcher blew a final sour call on his dented trumpet. Lamar Powell linked his arm with Huntoon's and waved with his lacquered stick.
Ashton waved back merrily. From Powell's jaunty air and confident smile, she knew she was absolutely right about the letter.
On several occasions George had reason to step down into a rifle pit or enter a bombproof. Each time the muck and stench nearly made him sick. Along the lines he frequently saw ears plugged with wadding, protection against the noise of the seige guns. He saw illness, boredom, fear all stewed together, with the dirt of Virginia sprinkled on for garnish. If the filth and squalor were this bad on the Union side, what must conditions be like on Orry's? And if this was Professor Mahan's newstyle warfare, he pitied his son's generation and those beyond.
The siege wore away men's sanity and decency. Occasionally he heard reports of acts of friendliness between those on opposing sides; some trading of coffee, tobacco, newspapers. But most of the time, only two things passed between the facing enemies: small-arms fire and vicious taunts. He was glad he had joined the Military Railroad Corps. He doubted he could have withstood a post on the line — the responsibility for ordering seventeen-year-olds to picket duty in the contested, shell-pocked strip between the rifle pits, there perhaps to die.
A morning in January found him underneath a trestle spanning a gully on the City Point line. He was surveying repairs his crew had made on one of the trusses. Well satisfied, he suddenly noticed the icicles along the edge of the trestle. They were dripping.
"So," he muttered to himself. The winter was ending. Maybe the spring would bring a surrender. He prayed that would be the case. He had come to hate the regular letters from Wotherspoon, cheerfully reporting the enormous profits Hazard's was still earning from war production. The bank was doing equally well.
Above him, mauls rapped steadily. His head started to ache. He climbed the muddy side of the gully, shielding his eyes against the sunshine till he found the man he wanted.
"Scow? I'm going over to that creek for a drink. Be right back."
"Good enough, Major," the black said to George's retreating back.
George unhooked his tin cup from his belt, using his other hand to loosen the flap of his holster. The creek, out of sight of the rail line, meandered within a few hundred yards of the Confederate salient. But it was Sunday — early — so he didn't anticipate any danger.
Patches of snow were melting and shrinking on both sides of the creek. The water rushed with a frothy, springlike sound. George thought he heard a suspicious noise in thick woods on the far side, so he waited behind a big maple for a moment or two. Seeing nothing, he moved down the bank, there squatting to dip his cup. He had it at his mouth when a man stepped from behind a tree on the other side.
George dropped the cup, spilling the water. His hand flew toward his side arm. The reb, in a kepi and torn butternut coat, swiftly raised his right hand, palm outward.
"Hold on, Billy. All I want is a drink, like you."
Holding his breath, George remained crouched with his hand near his revolver. The reb was about his age, though considerably taller, with a sickly mien enhanced by raw sores on his close-shaven white cheeks. The reb held his rifle carelessly, the barrel pointed toward the sky.
"Just a drink?" The reb nodded. "Here." George picked up his cup and tossed it across the creek. The impulse was so sudden he didn't quite understand it.
"Thank you very much." The reb walked, or, rather, limped, down to the water's edge. Shooting one more swift glance at his enemy — the reb's eyes were greenish, like a cat's, George observed — he laid his rifle on the ground. He crouched, dipped the cup, whirled it around to rinse it, threw the contents out, and refilled it to the brim. George smiled a little.
Loudly, greedily, the reb drank. The thudding mauls of the work crew seemed miles away. If this turned out to be some kind of ambush — more men lurking in the trees — George doubted he would survive it. Unexpectedly, that served to relax him. He pushed his forage cap back while trying to spot an insignia or any indication of rank on the reb's uniform. He couldn't. He assumed the man was a picket.
Suddenly, flashing in the sun, the cup came sailing back. "Thank you once again, Billy." George caught the cup, dipped it, and drank. The reb stood up and fastidiously wiped his lips with one finger. "Where is your home?"
Rising, too, George hooked the cup on his belt again. "Pennsylvania."
"Oh. I was hoping it might be Indiana."
George thought he detected an accent, though it was an indefinable one, not heavily Southern. "Why's that?"
"My brother lives there. He moved from Charlottesville to a small farm outside Indianapolis eight years ago. He belongs to a volunteer infantry regiment; I do not know which one. I thought perhaps you might be acquainted with him. Hugo Hoffman, two f’s.
"Afraid not. The Union Army's pretty big."
Hoffman didn't respond to George's smile. "Much bigger than ours."
"It must be hard, having a brother on our side. But I know it isn't uncommon. There are cousins fighting each other — and friends. My best friend in the whole world is a colonel in your army, as a matter of fact."
"What is his name?"
"Oh, you wouldn't know him. He's in Richmond, at your War Department."
"What is his name?"
Stubborn Dutchman, George thought. "Main, as in Main Street. His first name is Orry."
"But I do know him. That is, I have heard of him." George was openmouthed. "I remember because it is not a common name. There was a Colonel Orry Main on General Pickett's staff throughout most of last fall."
George could barely speak. "Was?"
"He was ambushed and shot by a wounded man he was trying to succor — a cavalryman from your side." Resentment crept in; Hoffman's green eyes were less friendly. "The incident has been widely circulated as proof of the barbarity of General Grant's troops."
"You say he was shot. You don't mean he was —?"
"Killed? Of course he was. Why else would anyone repeat the story? Well, Billy, the drink was refreshing, and I have enjoyed the conversation. I regret I am the one to inform you about your friend. I must go now. This business won't last much longer, I think. I hope I am not hurt before it stops. I hope you are not either. I am sorry about your friend." He tipped his grease-blackened kepi. "Good-bye."