Like most regiments raised to fight in the Second American Revolution, the 47th North Carolina had always done without much military formality. “By God, I’ll do just that,” Lewis said. He raised his voice: “Invincibles, shalt we admit to our number Henry—it is Henry, isn’t it?—Pleasants, who had the misfortune to spend the war wearing a blue coat rather than our good Confederate gray?”
Nate Caudell spoke up at once: “Hell, yes, let him in. If he’s crazy enough to want to live here, he’ll fit right into this company.”
“Thanks, Nate—I think,” Pleasants said, laughing.
“Sure, let him in,” Dempsey Eure said. “The more we have, the less for each of us to do.” Four years of peace had not diluted his soldier’s pragmatism.
But Kennel Tant shook his head.” Don’t want to let no damn Yankees into this here company.” Several other Invincibles echoed that, some of them profanely.
The men argued back and forth for a few minutes. Then George Lewis said, “All right, we’ll have a show of hands. All those for letting Henry Pleasants join us—? Those against—?” Looking around, Caudell saw that Pleasants had won the vote. Lewis saw the same thing. He turned to Pleasants. “All right, Private, I’ll put your name on the list.” More softly, he added, “I may pick your brains every so often, too.”
Henry Pleasants came to attention, saluted. “As the Captain wishes.”
“You’re under my orders too now, Henry,” Caudell said, touching the stripes on his sleeve.
“Now there’s an appalling notion,” Pleasants said with an exaggerated shiver. “Captain Lewis, may I please reconsider?”
“I’ve already written your name. Do you want me to have to scratch it out and make my list untidy?”
“Oh, I suppose not,” Pleasants allowed. “Just keep me away from this wild man here.”
“I love you too, Henry,” Caudell said. He might have gone on teasing with his friend, but suddenly he had no heart for it. Mollie Bean had just walked into the square. She was wearing gray.
Caudell hoped someone, anyone, would speak up and greet her by her right name. It would take only one voice. Then captain Lewis would have to send her away, and she would stay safe. Several of the men who lived in town stared first at Mollie, then at Caudell. They knew the two of them had taken up with each other. But no one said a word.
Mollie went up to Lewis, gave him a crisp salute. “Melvin Bean reportin’, sir.”
“Bean.” He went down his list, checked off the name. Then he took a longer look at her, snorted laughter. “Good God, Bean, haven’t you managed to raise a beard yet?”
Several Invincibles let out strangled coughs. Mollie turned red.
Hope soared in Nate. Then he saw that George Lewis’s plump cheeks were on the pink side, too. Why, you son of a bitch, he thought—you’ve known all along. The only thing Lewis might not have known, since he’d spent most of the time since the war down in Raleigh, was that Mollie and Caudell were together.
Now, though, something about Mollie besides her smooth cheeks caught the captain’s notice. “It says here you’re from Rivington.”
“Yes, sir, that’s so,” she said, nodding.
“You’re about the only one from the company who is. I’ll make you acting corporal, put you next in charge of skirmishers after Nate here. Most of the fighting right now is north of Rivington, but along with breaking up stills and such, I want us to see how closely we can approach the town from this direction. Maybe Forrest will want to hit the Rivington men two ways at once, and that’s something he’ll need to know. Does that suit you?”
“Yes, sir.” She walked over to stand by Caudell, grinned up at him. “That suits me right fine.” If Lewis hadn’t known they were together, he did now.
Nate wanted to kick her. He wanted to pick her up and shake her, to see if he could get some sense into her that way. He wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. Captain Lewis had ordered the two of them to work together, which was wonderful.
But he’d also given them the most dangerous job the company would have to do, a job that wasn’t even properly its responsibility. Caudell wondered if he ought to squawk about that. He ended up just standing there, feeling foolish.
He saw more than one soldier eyeing the way Mollie stayed at his side. He hoped they got the message she wasn’t available—and he hoped she wasn’t. Maybe, he thought hopefully, jealousy would make someone give her away and force Captain Lewis to notice officially that she was a woman. But no one said a word.
Lewis said, “Come on inside the courthouse and get. Your rifles.”
Dempsey Eure whooped. “I’d sooner get my hands on a repeater again than—damn near anything.” He was looking at Mollie, too, but with a twinkle in his eye that made it impossible for Caudell to get angry at him.
The AK-47s leaned against the courthouse wall in a row neater than the Castalia Invincibles were likely to form. Cornelius: Joyner, an Invincible himself, stood guard over them with a pistol. One by one, Lewis handed each of his men a rifle and three banana clips heavy with cartridges.
Caudell hadn’t touched a firearm since he left the army. His hands, he discovered, still knew what to do. The smell of oil and metal and powder that came from the rifle, the sensuously mechanical glide of the charging handle as he pushed it back to expose the open chamber, made him see the army’s old Virginia campground almost as vividly as he did the courthouse where he stood. By the murmurs that rose from his comrades, they also had memories flooding back.
The only memories Henry Pleasants had of AK-47s were unpleasant ones. “I’m glad I’ll be on the right end of one of these things for a change,” he said. “Somebody’ll have to show me what to do with it, though.”
“Easy enough to learn.” Dempsey Eure had mischief in his voice. “Especially getting the bolt back in.”
“I have a feeling, Sergeant, that you’re trying to lead me down the primrose path,” Pleasants said.
“Me?” Eure was the picture of affronted innocence.
“Sir, if you like, I’ll take Henry with me and teach him what he needs to know,” Caudell said to Captain Lewis.
“All right,” Lewis said. “Teach him quickly, though. You, Bean, and the rest of a squad will head up toward Rivington tomorrow morning. Check the farms you come across, certainly, but I want to know where the Rivington men have their pickets out. As I said before, that’s important military information. Send a man back with the word before sunset tomorrow, or at once if you come under fire.”
“Yes, sir.” Caudell knew Lewis was giving him the option of using Henry Pleasants as his messenger if the Pennsylvanian had trouble getting the hang of the AK-47. Maybe he would do that. On the other hand, if bullets started flying, maybe he would send Mollie Bean back to Nashville to tell Lewis what they’d run into. She wouldn’t like that, but she would have to go: she was only acting corporal, while he was a first sergeant.
The conclusion would have made him happier if he’d managed to forget how free and easy Confederate soldiers were apt to be about obeying orders they didn’t care for.
“There’s nothin’ you could call a straight road between here and Rivington,” Mollie said early the next morning. The smell of brewing coffee took Caudell back to the war, though this cup came from the Liberty Bell instead of being hastily cooked above a little campfire.
Henry Pleasants methodically stripped his AK-47, reassembled it, then stripped it again. “This is an astonishing weapon,” he said, the third time he’d said that this morning and at least the dozenth since he’d got the rifle. “Whoever invented it was a genius, to get so many new things right and put them all together.” He’d said that about a dozen times, too.