CHAPTER 7

NOISES

The feeling haunted Cassie into the night. She couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Mama had told Cassie not to fret too much over the scrap of cloth. “If your deserter was out there, sugar, don’t you know Myron would’ve found him? That little bit of cloth has likely been hanging in the brambles for months.” Mama was worried more, she said, about them not finding Maybelle.

But Cassie kept seeing in her mind that awful glint in the deserter’s eyes and hearing him say in his gravelly voice, “Home … where might that be?” She kept thinking of the buttons, too, the buttons that were just alike. How could those be only a coincidence? And how could it be only a coincidence that so many things—the ash cake, the hen, the britches—had started to go missing all at the same time?

Cassie knew deep down that it wasn’t reasonable to imagine the deserter was behind the disappearances. The deserter wouldn’t stop at taking one ash cake, anymore than he would stop at taking one hen. That scalawag would take everything, just like Mama said. Maybe another no-good soldier was responsible.

Still, Cassie couldn’t get the deserter out of her head, and she couldn’t sleep. Usually the nighttime noises that carried in through the open window soothed her; now they did nothing but play on her nerves. The yrp-yrp of the crickets sounded as loud as pots clattering, and the boroop-baroop of the frogs from the pond seemed as loud as a rooster crowing in her bedroom.

Through the usual noises, though, Cassie heard something else: the click, click of Hector’s toenails on the wooden floor downstairs. That was strange, because Hector never roamed about after the family had gone to bed. He always stayed put in his place by the hearth until Mama let him outside in the morning. Cassie thought it was even stranger now that Hector should be up, since it was only today that he had gotten to the point where he could walk at all.

Something must be worrying him, Cassie thought. Maybe he was hurting, or maybe he was still shook up over the deserter just like she was. Since she couldn’t sleep anyway, Cassie decided to go downstairs and sit awhile with Hector.

Cassie slipped out from under the quilts, careful not to jiggle the bed. The mattress rustled, and Emma stirred, but she didn’t wake up. Heavy breathing drifted from the other side of the curtain—Philip and Ben, asleep. Cassie crept down the stairs to the front room.

She was immediately glad she had. Poor Hector, for some reason, had gotten up and gone to the door, and then collapsed. Now he was lying on the floor whimpering. Cassie rushed to her dog. “You poor thing,” she said tenderly. She lifted Hector to his feet. “You need to go out? Come on. I’ll take you.”

She opened the door for Hector and followed him out onto the top step. She’d have to help Hector down the stairs, she knew. She went on down and snapped her fingers for him to come.

But Hector didn’t make a move to follow. Instead he stood with his nose in the air, sniffing. Then he cocked his one good ear, and a low growl rumbled in his throat.

Cassie felt a stab of alarm. What did Hector hear? She strained her own senses, peering out into the dark yard, listening hard for any sound above the cadence of the crickets and the frogs. Nothing.

Yet there must be something out there somewhere, something Cassie in the darkness couldn’t see. At least not from where I’m standing, Cassie thought, struck suddenly by the idea to climb the tall magnolia tree beside the house. From the top she should be able to see clear to the barn.

Holding her apprehension at bay, Cassie swung her-self up into the magnolia’s branches and climbed, easily scaling the limbs that spread like a ladder up the trunk. The magnolia’s thick, waxy leaves sprawled all around her, enveloping her.

Then Cassie drew in a sharp breath. Footsteps on the ground below! All her powers of reasoning flew out of her head, replaced by pounding fear. She held her breath, not daring to move …

“What in tarnation you doing up in that tree?”

Cassie breathed again. It was only Philip, staring up at her, along with the muzzle of his musket.

“Quit pointing that gun at me,” Cassie said.

“You’re dang lucky I didn’t shoot you, girl. Heard something stirring around out here, come down and found the door wide open, Hector growling—wasn’t sure what I’d find up this tree. Git yourself down from there before you fall.”

“Will you hush? I was trying to see what Hector was flustered about.”

“From up a tree? In the dark?”

“I thought …” Cassie couldn’t finish. Philip made her actions seem foolish.

Then, in an instant, Cassie’s embarrassment was forgotten. “Philip! Did you hear that?” she said.

“You mean Hector?”

Hector was growling in earnest now, but that wasn’t what Cassie was talking about. “No. It came from the barn.”

Philip cocked his head. “Yeah. Sounds like Birdie braying.”

Cassie hustled down the tree so fast her thigh got jabbed by a broken limb. “What you think is worrying her? Same thing’s worrying Hector?”

“Could be. Wind’s rising. Could be they smell a polecat.”

“Yeah, could be,” Cassie said, almost in a whisper.

“Could be a noise spooked ’em.”

“Yeah, but why didn’t we hear it?”

“Could be something else spooked ’em.” He hesitated. “Like a person.”

Cassie suddenly felt queasy.

A cloud moved in front of the moon. Now Cassie could barely see Philip’s face, but the white of his nightshirt stood out. His sleeves billowed in the breeze. He started walking.

Cassie was alarmed. “You ain’t … You ain’t going down there?”

“Got to, Cass.” Jacob’s name for her. It jarred Cassie hearing it from Philip’s lips. But she wasn’t annoyed—not at all. It felt almost … comforting.

“Why?” she said.

At first Philip didn’t answer. Then he said, very quietly, “Who else is there to go?”

Yeah, thought Cassie. Who else is there?

Not Pa, not Jacob. Just Philip … and her.

“I’m going with you,” she said. Cassie latched on to Philip’s arm and followed him down the hill to the barn. The wind whipped her gown, curling it around her legs. She tried not to shiver. Philip might mistake it for fear.

At the barn they stopped. Its dark, gaping doorway—only an open passageway, really, with stalls on either side—leered at them, as if daring them to go in. Cassie couldn’t see a thing inside, but Birdie was still raising a ruckus. June was bellowing, too. Something was wrong.

Suddenly Philip stepped forward into the murky darkness of the barn. Panic seized Cassie, and she yanked back on Philip’s nightshirt. “Don’t go in,” she begged in a whisper. “Let’s get Myron first.”

“Don’t be a goose,” Philip said, under his breath. “If there is somebody in there, by the time we run way over to Myron’s, they’ll be long gone, with Birdie and June in tow. We gotta go in.”

Philip started into the barn. Cassie took a deep breath and followed. Inside, she stopped and waited for her eyes to adjust to the heavier darkness. Philip had stopped just ahead of her. Finally hulks and shapes in the dark shadows of the barn began to come into focus. And there, she was sure she saw something, something scrunched up in the corner of an empty stall. It didn’t look like anything really, nothing alive, anyway. Maybe it was only a sack of feed, or an overturned washtub.

Philip was walking again, slowly, toward the stall. Cassie took a few hesitant steps behind him, then stopped abruptly. Had the thing in the stall moved? Cassie was afraid to breathe. She thought she’d seen it move, but maybe her eyes were just playing tricks on her.

Except that, then, the thing spoke. “Don’t shoot,” it said. It unscrunched and stood up. The thing was a tall, skinny boy, about the size of Philip.

“What you doing in our barn?” Cassie demanded.

“Just wanted a warm place to sleep. Ain’t up to no mischief.” The boy’s voice was husky, his accent strange. “I’ll be off before daylight.” Then he took a step forward. “Ya got anything to eat?”

At that moment, the moon slid out from behind the cloud and gilded the walls of the barn with light. Cassie’s and Philip’s shadows fell in front of them, and the boy’s features jumped into clarity: a thin face, forehead jutting out over large, dark eyes, partially covered by a mass of matted hair.

But what jumped out at Cassie most of all in the moonlight were the clothes hanging in shreds from the boy’s shoulders. Because those clothes were dark blue—the remains of a Federal army uniform.

Philip spoke first. “What d’you know, Cassie? We done found ourselves a Yankee.”