CHAPTER 5
After the fight at the bridge, the scouts didn’t run into any more trouble. A couple times they heard hoofbeats coming along the road and quickly found places where they could pull the wagons off into the trees. Yankee cavalrymen galloped past without even slowing down, never realizing how close the Confederates were.
The riders could only be Yankees. Nobody else would be out and about at night. The people who lived in the area were huddled in their houses and cabins, hoping and praying they wouldn’t be slaughtered before morning by the northern invaders.
Luke thought about his ma and Kirby and Janey back on the farm. There had been fighting in Missouri, although not as much as in the east, and widespread bloody raids by guerrilla forces on both sides. He hoped none of the violence had come near the Jensen family farm.
By morning the Confederates were several miles north of Richmond. As the sun came up, Potter and Casey found a cave-like opening under a rugged bluff topped with trees, and Dale and Edgar drove the wagons into it at Colonel Lancaster’s command. There was room for the horses under the bluff, too.
“We’ll stay here today,” the colonel said. “Traveling in daylight is too risky while we’re still this close to Richmond. When we swing west and then south we’ll be less likely to run into the Yankees, so we can stay on the road more and make better time then.”
Based on what he had seen so far, Luke had doubts of Lancaster’s ability to be in charge of the mission, but he agreed with the colonel’s decision. They were all tired and needed some rest, and it would be better for them to lie low for a while.
They made an unappetizing breakfast of hardtack and salt jowl. No coffee. Luke wasn’t sure how long it had been since he’d had real coffee, but it hadn’t been anytime recently, that was for sure. They took turns sleeping while two men stood guard at all times.
When it was Luke’s turn to watch, he was paired with Ted Casey. They hunkered in some brush near the wagons, and the first thing Casey did was reach for a tobacco pouch and papers in his shirt pocket.
Like stopped him with a hand on his arm. “You can’t roll a quirly.”
“Why not?” Casey asked with a frown.
“Because the smell of tobacco smoke can travel a pretty good distance. The road’s only about a quarter mile away. You don’t want some smart Yankee coming along, smelling your smoke, and getting curious enough to come over here and take a look around.”
Casey let out a disgusted snort, but he shrugged and put away the pouch. “If they was smart, they wouldn’t be Yankees.”
“They probably think the same thing about us Confederates,” Luke pointed out.
“Don’t start talkin’ about how they just think they’re doin’ the right thing and how we shouldn’t hate ’em because of that.”
“They’re not doing the right thing,” Luke said with conviction. “They invaded our homes. Of course we have to fight them. But the ones I really hate are the politicians from both sides who kept prodding and poking at each other until they felt like they had to start a war over something that could have been settled without one.”
“What are you talkin’ about?” Casey asked.
“Did you know that more than twenty years ago, some congressmen from the South were already talking about ending slavery? Their plan was to get rid of it in stages, so the southern economy wouldn’t be ruined in the process. If the northern politicians had just gone along with that idea, by now a lot of the slaves would be free, maybe even all of them, and there wouldn’t have been any need for this war. But the Northerners turned it down flat. They’d already started making speeches about how all the slaves had to be freed at once, or they wouldn’t go along with it.”
Casey gave him a dubious squint. “I never heard nothin’ about anything like that. You’re makin’ it up.”
Luke shook his head. “Nope. I read about it in an old newspaper I came across once.”
“You know how to read, eh?”
“My ma saw to that. And once I learned, I had a liking for it.”
That was true. As a boy and a young man, he had read every book and newspaper he could get his hands on. Unfortunately, in the part of the country where he’d grown up, reading material wasn’t all that common.
But some of the settlements had schools, and whenever he could, Luke would ride over to one of them, sneak in, and “borrow” whatever books he could find. He always took them back once he’d finished reading them, so he didn’t consider it stealing. He was just doing whatever he had to in order to feed his thirst for knowledge.
One of the few good things about the war was that churches across the South had donated Bibles for the troops, so Luke got the chance to read the Good Book from cover to cover, more than once.
Sometimes he came across other books, usually in abandoned houses. He’d nearly always had some sort of volume of prose or poetry tucked away in his gear, and he read them until they fell apart from exposure to the elements.
He didn’t have a book with him at the moment, but maybe once they got to Georgia he could scrounge up a few. He had read some plays by an Englishman named Shakespeare, and he had a hankering to read more.
“I don’t understand it,” Casey said. “I thought those Yankees were so all-fired anxious to have the slaves freed, and now you’re tellin’ me they turned down a chance to have that happen and went to war instead.”
“The politicians in Washington raised a big stink about slavery because they didn’t want folks up north thinking too much about the way we were starting to develop more industry here in the South. All those rich men who own factories up there didn’t like that. They didn’t like the contracts our businessmen were starting to make with businesses in England and other places in Europe, either.”
Luke grunted disdainfully, then went on. “The way they saw it, we weren’t supposed to do anything except grow the crops. They’d do everything else the country needed and rake in all the money. They stirred up a bunch of well-meaning people who had real doubts about slavery and got them to fight a war over it. But if you want the truth, all you have to do is look around. You don’t see any factories still standing in the South, do you?”
Casey frowned as if thinking about the question hurt his head. “It’s all about states’ rights. That’s what we’re fightin’ for.”
At this point, all we’re really fighting for is survival, Luke thought. But he said, “It’s true the North tried to trample on the rights of our sovereign states, but consider this . . . the Southern businessmen building those factories and making those contracts with the British wanted the money from those things as much as the Northern industrialists didn’t want them to have it.”
“So what you’re sayin’ is the politicians and the fellas with a lot of money on both sides have got us fightin’ each other because they want to keep rakin’ it in?”
Luke shrugged. “Draw your own conclusions, Casey. All I’m saying is the whole situation is a lot more complicated than what most folks think. One side yells about slavery and the other side yells about states’ rights, but like nearly everything else in life, most of it always comes back to money.”
Casey nodded slowly, as if the implications of what Luke had said were sinking into his brain. After a moment, he said, “You know what we need to do?”
“What’s that?”
“We need to get our own hands on some of that money the varmints are fightin’ over.”
Luke laughed softly. “Men like you and me don’t get rich, Casey. It’s just not in the cards. And I don’t really care. If this war was over tomorrow, I’d go back home and be mighty happy to do it. My family’s farm isn’t much, but if we have faith and work hard enough, it’ll take care of us.”
“There’s better ways to get rich. Easier ways.” And with that, Casey turned his head to stare hard at the wagons.
Luke stiffened as he saw where the man was looking. A harsh note came into his voice. “You can forget about that. That gold belongs to the Confederacy. Thinking otherwise is the same thing as committing treason.”
Casey shook his head and said hastily, “You’ve got me all wrong, Jensen. I’m not thinkin’ anything except I’ll be glad when our turn at guard duty is over so I can get me some more sleep.” He yawned, but Luke wasn’t sure if it was genuine. “It was a hard night, and I’m still tired.”
“It was a hard night,” Luke agreed, thinking about the encounter with the mob in Richmond and then the fight with the Yankee patrol at the bridge.
Casey grinned as he poked a fist against Luke’s upper arm.
“Your problem is you got too many thoughts in that head of yours. A man’s brain ain’t built to work that hard, Jensen. Me, all I think about is whiskey and women and killin’ Yankees, and that’s plenty.”
“I figure it’ll be a while before we get any whiskey or women,” Luke said, “but it wouldn’t surprise me if you get your fill of killing Yankees before this is all over.”