“You’d better,” Caudell warned him. “That’s just what you could draw from a regimental court. If they haul you before Forrest, now—” He let the words hang. Liles turned a faint green. Having met the new Confederate commander for eastern North Carolina, he figured he might hang if he violated an order Forrest was charged with enforcing.
Judge Joyner picked up his hammer and stood aside. George Lewis stepped out of the front row of the crowd to take his place. Lewis wore a gray civilian jacket and a shirt to which a three-barred stand collar had been hastily sewn. Must be none of his old uniforms fits anymore, Caudell thought, smiling a little.
Lewis said, “I am ordered by General Forrest, and authorized by Governor Vance, to recall to duty Company D, 47th North Carolina Infantry, for a period not to exceed 180 days, said company to serve as military police for Nash County and perform such other duties as may be duly assigned by proper military authority.”
Mollie squeezed Nate’s hand again. He wondered if that meant she intended to rejoin the Castalia Invincibles herself. He was afraid it did. She’d returned from Richmond wearing a wig that nearly matched the dark curls he’d shorn so she could go there in disguise. She wore it in public all the time. If she took it off, she could easily play the man once more.
Caudell wished she wouldn’t. The two of them had stayed together since she’d got back from Richmond. He feared she would take up her old ways if she found herself among so many men. But he feared even more that she would be hurt or killed if she took up a rifle again. His memories of combat were too recent and too horribly vivid for him to make light of its risks, as he had before he signed up with the Invincibles in 1862.
But if she wanted to put the uniform back on, how the devil was he supposed to stop her?
Lost in his own worries, he’d missed some of what Lewis was saying. He started listening again: “—report here for duty tomorrow at noon. Wear your uniforms if you have them still; we’ll give out armbands to everyone who doesn’t. And we’ll furnish weapons.”
“Repeaters?” someone asked eagerly.
“That’s right. If you’re going to soldier, you’ll carry soldiers’ weapons. I said that loud and clear down in Raleigh.” Lewis puffed out his already massive chest, as if to say it was only through his political pull that the Castalia Invincibles had obtained AK-47s. More power to him if that was so, Caudell thought. Lewis went on, “Get word to anybody you know who lives in the county but isn’t here in town today. We may give a few days’ grace, but we won’t stand for deserters.”
Caudell stuck up a hand. Lewis pointed at him. He said, “What do we do if we run into Rivington men? God only knows what’s going on north of here. That proclamation’s dated the fifteenth, but here it is the twenty-sixth, and it’s only just now got here.”
“I know it.” George Lewis’s face was rounder now than when he’d last led the Castalia Invincibles, but no less determined. “We aren’t called up to go after the Rivington men; we’re supposed to be military police. But if you see one of the bastards, shoot him. They’ve wrecked the railroad track up near Weldon, and they’ve torn down all the telegraph lines they can get to. Far as I can see, Nate, we’ve got ourselves a little war here.”
All through the town square, heads bobbed up and down. Nate nodded with the rest. As far as he could see, it looked like a little war, too. Probably the only thing keeping it from turning into a big war was that there weren’t enough Rivington men to make it one. But even a few would be ungodly hard to get rid of. Uneasily, he remembered the armor Benny Lang had worn under his mottled clothes. It had turned a Minié ball; would it stop a round from an AK-47? He had no way of knowing, but he thought it likely.
Lewis waved to show he was done. Cornelius Joyner went back inside the courthouse. Singly and by small groups, people began drifting out of the square, talking as they went. Caudell started to say something to Mollie. She beat him to it: “I already know what you’re gonna tell me, Nate. I don’t wanna have to hear it.”
He spread his hands in front of him. “But, Mollie, it isn’t right. It—”
“Why ain’t it? I’m as good a soldier as any o’ them others, ain’t I?” Her voice was low but very determined. “You know damn well I am, Mister Nate Caudell. ‘Sides, I reckon all this is part my fault—leastways, Marse Robert made an almighty much about that book I brung him. That was your idea, too, remember? Wouldn’t hardly be right, makin’ a mess and then not helpin’ put it back together.”
“But—” Caudell kicked helplessly at the dirt. Mollie had ruined half the argument he’d had in mind, but only half. Trouble was, he knew no safe way to say the other half.
Mollie did it for him. “You’re worried I’ll go back to whorin’ again, I reckon,” she said. He could only nod. He felt his face grow red. Mollie shrugged. “Can’t say for certain I won’t. But if I do, Nate, then you won’t have to have nothin’ more to do with me, an’ that’ll be that.” She set her hand on his arm. “I don’t want it to end that way, I swear I don’t.”
“I don’t, either. It’s just—oh, hell.” Caudell kicked the dirt again, Foolish to take Chances, he thought—would you use a one—time drunk to guard a whiskey barrel? Well, maybe, if you were sure he’d changed his ways. Was he sure about Mollie? He knew he wasn’t, and knew he couldn’t say so, not unless he wanted to kill the still-fragile bond between them.
He also knew he had only to say a couple of words to Captain Lewis to keep her out of the muster…but that would cost him Mollie; too. He scowled fiercely, first at the street and then at Mollie. She wrinkled her nose in reply. “Hell of a thing,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“Here I am not even back in the army yet, and I’ve already lost a fight.”
The tunic with the first sergeant’s stripes still fit. It was ragged, but it had been ragged four years ago, too. Caudell wore one of his regular pairs of pants and his black felt hat. He laughed at himself as he headed for the square. He didn’t look much different from the way he had when he’d got home from the war. No, come to think of it, he’d been missing a hat then.
Some of the men who joined him in front of the courthouse still had their old tunics, some didn’t. Only one or two wore proper forage caps. They were a motley band, but hardly more so, Caudell reflected, than when they’d paraded through Richmond in triumph.
The men stood around in little groups, talking about fights they’d seen. George Lewis walked through the square, exchanging banter with them and checking their names off on a list. Not far from Caudell, he paused in perplexity. “I don’t recall your serving with the 47th, sir.”
Henry Pleasants grinned at him. “No reason you should, Captain. I was with the 48th—48th Pennsylvania, that is.” He tapped the silver oak leaf on the Union shoulder strap he’d sewn to his checked flannel shirt.
Lewis’s eyes widened. He could read Northern badges of rank, though they differed from those the Confederacy used. Quietly, he said, “I mean you no disrespect, Lieutenant Colonel—you’re Pleasants, aren’t you? I’ve heard of you—but only those who served with the Castalia Invincibles have been summoned to duty.”
“I don’t claim the rank, Captain Lewis, nor seek to raise trouble,” Pleasants said. “I would happily join you as a private, so long as I may join. This is my country now, and Lee my President—and if anyone tries to foully murder him, how may I call myself a man unless I help hunt the villains out?”
“Hmm.” Lewis rubbed his chin. “You speak smoothly enough, that’s certain. Did you command that regiment?”
“Till Bealeton, yes, but as I say, I know I have no rank in the Confederate army.” Pleasants waved his hand. “Put it to your. other men. If they say no, I’ll go home and tend my farm. If they say yes, you’ll have one more soldier.”