Ah. Without turning, Powell detected a blur of color moving near. "Explains what, sir?"
"Your speech. I thought I heard Charleston in it — yet not quite." For a moment or two, Huntoon could think of nothing else to say. In desperation, he exclaimed, "Grand party —"
"I didn't introduce myself for the purpose of discussing the party." Stung, Huntoon's grin grew sickly. "To be candid, I am organizing a small group to finance a confidential venture which could prove incredibly lucrative."
Huntoon blinked. "You're talking about an investment —?"
"A maritime investment. This damned blockade creates fantastic opportunities for men with the will and wherewithal to seize them."
He bent closer.
After all the disheartening turns the evening had taken, Ashton at last found some pleasure in the sight of the attractive stranger speaking with her husband. How lamentable James looked beside him. Was the gentleman as prosperous as appearances suggested? As virile?
She hurried toward them. Having punished her, James was now prepared to be polite.
"My dear, may I present Mr. Lamar Powell of Valdosta and the Bahamas? Mr. Powell, my wife, Ashton."
With that introduction, he made one of the worst mistakes of his life.
20
Charles tied Ambrose Pell's bay to the top fence rail. Light rain was falling on him, the bald farmer, and the disappointing horse he had ridden twelve miles to see. The distant Blue Ridge was lost in mist as dreary as his spirits.
"A gray?" Charles said. "Only the musicians ride grays."
" 'Spect that's why I still got him," the farmer replied. "Sold off all my others quick — though if you want to know, I mislike doin' business with you buttermilk cavalry boys. Couple of 'em rode through here last week with papers saying they was Commissary Department men."
"How many chickens did they steal from you?"
"Oh, you know them boys?"
"Not personally, but I know how some of them operate." The thievery, officially called "foraging," contributed to the bad reputation the cavalry had already acquired, as did the widespread belief that all mounted soldiers would use their horses to ride away from a battle. There was an even chance that the men who had visited the farmer had presented papers they themselves had forged.
"About the horse —"
"Already told you the price."
"It's too high. But I'll pay it if the gray's any good."
Charles doubted it. The two-year-old gelding was a plain, undistinguished animal; small — about fourteen hands high — and certainly no more than a thousand pounds. He had the shoulders and long, sloping pasterns of a good racer. But you didn't see many gray saddle horses. What was wrong with this one?
"They don't let you boys ride 'less you can find your own remount, ain't that it?" the farmer asked.
"Yes. I've been minus a horse and hunting a replacement for two weeks. I'm temporarily in Company Q, as the saying goes."
"They give you anything for providin' your own mount?"
"Forty cents a day, food, shoes, and the services of a farrier, if you can find one sober." it was a stupid policy, no doubt invented by some government clerk who had ridden nothing friskier than his childhood hobby-horse. The more Charles saw of army politics, camp life, the new recruits, the less easy it became to decide whether the Confederate Army was comic or tragic. Some of both, probably.
"How'd your other horse die?"
Nosy old grouch, wasn't he? "Distemper." Dasher had succumbed eleven days after Charles first noticed the symptoms. To this hour he could see the bay lying sad-eyed in the isolation the disease required. He had kept her covered with every blanket he could buy or borrow, and while they hid all the ugly abcesses, they couldn't hide her swollen legs or mask the stench of the creamy pus flowing from the lesions. He should have shot her, but he couldn't do it. He let her die and wept with sorrow and relief, off by himself, afterward.
"Um," the farmer said with a shiver. "Strangles is a dirty end for a good animal."
"Just as soon not talk about it." Charles disliked the farmer, and the man had taken a dislike to him. He wanted to conclude the business. "Why haven't you sold the gray? Cost too much?"
"Nah, the other reason. Like you say — only the band boys want grays. I heard you boys try to make the colors match so's one bunch can be told from another."
"That's the theory. It won't last long." His search was proof. "Look, you don't find many horses for sale in this part of Virginia. So what's wrong with him? He's broken, isn't he?"
"Oh, sure, my cousin broke him good. That's where I got him — off my cousin. I'll be straight with you, soldier —"
"Captain."
The farmer didn't like that. "He's a good, fast little thing, but something about him doesn't please. Two other boys like you looked him over and found him kind of plain and, well, disagreeable. Maybe it's the Florida blood." Instantly, Charles perked up. "Is he part Chickasaw?" "Ain't got nothing to prove it, but my cousin said so." Then the gray might be a find. The best Carolina racers combined the strains of the English thoroughbred and the Spanish pony from Florida. Charles realized he should have suspected Chickasaw blood when he saw the gray frisking in the pasture as he rode up. "Is he hard to ride?"
"Some have found him so, yessir." The farmer was growing tired of the questions. His belligerence told Charles to hurry up and decide; he didn't care which way. "Has he got a name?" "Cousin called him Sport."
"That could mean lively, or it could mean an animal too different to be any good."
"I didn't ask about that." The farmer leaned over and blew a gob of saliva into the weeds. "You want him or not?"
"Put that headstall on him and bring him over here," Charles replied, unfastening his spurs. The farmer went into the pasture, and Charles observed that Sport twice tried to bite his owner while the headstall was being placed. But the gray followed tractably when the man led him to the fence.
Charles walked to Ambrose Pell's bay and pulled his shotgun from the hide sheath he had cut and stitched together. He checked the gun quickly. Alarmed, the farmer said, "What the hell you fixin' to do?" "Ride him a ways."
"No saddle? No blanket? Where'd you learn to do that?" "Texas." Tired of the old man, Charles gave him an evil grin. "When I took time off from killing Comanches." "Killing —? I see. All right. But that shotgun —" "If he can't handle the noise, he's no good to me. Bring him closer to the fence."
He barked it like an order to his men; the farmer instantly became less troublesome. Charles climbed to the top of the fence, slid over, and dropped down on the gelding gently as he could. He wrapped the rope around his right hand, already feeling the gray's skittish resistance. He raised the shotgun and fired both barrels. The sound went rolling away toward the hidden mountains. The gray didn't buck, but he ran — straight toward the fence at the far side of the pasture.
Charles gulped and felt his hat blow off. Raindrops splashed his face. All right, he thought, show me whether your name signifies good or bad.
The fence rushed at him. If he won't jump, I could break my damn neck. With his light mane standing out above the fine long line of his neck, Sport cleared the fence in a clean, soaring leap, never touching the top rail.
Charles laughed and gave Sport his head. The gray took him on one of the wildest gallops he had ever experienced. Over weedy ground. Through a grove where low limbs loomed, and he ducked repeatedly. Up a steep little hill and down to a cold creek; the water driven up by their crossing would finish the soaking the rain had begun. It occurred to Charles that he wasn't testing the gray; the gray was testing him.