CHAPTER 8

YANKEE!

Face-to-face with a Yankee, Cassie thought. Just like the one who put a bullet into Jacob. She could feel Philip beside her, shaking, and knew he was thinking the same thing she was.

Her throat felt tight with anger, but she forced herself to speak. “Appears that way, Philip. Yankee soldier, no less.”

Philip stuck the musket’s muzzle into the Yankee’s chest. “How’d you get here, Yank?”

“You got no need for that gun,” the Yankee said. “You see me. I got no weapon.” He held out his skinny crow-wing arms. “It’s the two of you agin’ the one of me. And you’re armed. I ain’t going nowhere. ’Sides, I ain’t eaten in days. I’m about as strong as a newborn possum. Wouldn’t be no match for you nohow.”

“You’re lying,” Cassie said, for she knew now who had taken the things that had vanished. “You been eating real well. You took my mama’s ash cake off the window-sill a few days back and stole our hen just yesterday.”

“Yeah,” Philip said. “You got some nerve stealing from us, then coming back to bed down in our barn. What was you going to take from us tomorrow?”

“You think I’d come out and steal from Rebs in broad daylight?” the boy said. “I was only passing by a while ago and saw your barn. Thought I’d come in out of the wind and rest a spell. Didn’t mean no harm, believe me.”

Philip snorted. Cassie didn’t swallow the Yankee’s story, either, not for a minute. The boy was the thief; she was sure of it. It made her mad that he wouldn’t own up to it. “Reckon we wouldn’t never believe no Yankee,” she spit out.

Philip was still eyeing the boy up and down. “You come on out here, Yank, where we can see you good,” he said.

The Yankee obeyed but kept talking. “Listen, I know you don’t trust me, but all I’m trying to do is get back home. No more soldiering for me, I swear.”

“You ain’t only a Yank,” Cassie burst out. “You’re yellow. A deserter. A skunk.”

“No,” the boy insisted. “You got me wrong. I didn’t run away. Wouldn’t do that. Rebs took me prisoner at Winchester. Sent me down here to prison in Danville. I rotted there for I don’t know how long, till some of us managed to tunnel out. Now I just want to get along home and see my pa and sisters.”

“Where’s that? Home?” Philip asked. Cassie noticed he had lowered the musket slightly.

“A farm, like this one, in Ohio,” said the boy. “Can I sit? I’m a mite weak.”

Philip gestured toward an overturned washtub in the corner. “Yeah. Sit.”

The boy eased down on the tub like he was sore just to move. Cassie’s anger began to seep away. She had to admit the Yank did look pitiful. His ribs stuck out; his cheeks were hollow. She couldn’t blame him too much, she guessed, for taking the ash cake or even Maybelle. “When was the last time you ate?” she asked him. Besides our hen, she added silently.

“Don’t know ’zactly,” the boy said. “Found some slops in a hog trough a couple of days ago.”

“You ate what the hogs left?” Cassie couldn’t believe anybody could be that hungry.

“Yeah. And was glad to get it. Better than starving.”

“I reckon.” It didn’t seem much better to Cassie.

“What’s your name?” asked Philip.

“Name’s Gus Baer. Yours?”

“I’m Philip Willis. This is my sister Cassie.”

Gus nodded toward Cassie. “Pleased, Cassie.” Then he said wistfully, “You wouldn’t have nothing to eat, would you?”

Cassie thought with a twinge of resentment of the eggs they wouldn’t have with Maybelle gone. But what was the use of going over and over the point with this Yankee? He wasn’t going to admit his thieving, and she had to grant that he hadn’t done her family any real harm, though he very well could have. It was a relief, after all, to know the thief was just some skinny boy, and not the deserter.

Cassie felt herself softening. The boy had taken only what he needed to live, hadn’t he? “We might have something left over from supper we could give you,” she said. “But then you got to be off.”

Philip was nodding his head, agreeing with Cassie. “There was some cornbread left over, I know,” Philip said, “and some field peas. Why don’t you go get him some, Cassie? I’ll stay here and keep Gus company.”

Keep him company? A Yankee? That sounded a little too friendly for Cassie’s taste, and it sure didn’t sound like Philip. What had happened to Philip’s vow to get even with the Yankees for killing Jacob? Cassie couldn’t figure Philip, not at all.

For a minute Cassie stood and eyed Philip. Philip met her gaze. “You going to get him something to eat or not?” Philip said.

Cassie’s temper flared. “Reckon I will. But don’t get too friendly with him, brother. Soon as he eats, we’re sending him on his way. Hear me?”

“Yeah,” said Philip.

But the way Philip looked at Cassie made her very suspicious. What was he up to?

In the kitchen Cassie put beans in a tin cup and took a slab of cornbread from the pie safe, then dropped them both in a poke sack. She chucked in a few dried apples plucked from the string hung over the windowsill. Last, Cassie stopped at the well and filled a gourd with water. The whole time she was thinking about Philip with that Yankee. Philip was acting peculiar, even for Philip, and it worried Cassie.

When Cassie got back to the barn, she found Philip and the Yank chatting as nice as you please. “You’d think they was kin,” Cassie muttered under her breath. It made her mad to think Philip could forget so quickly what the Yankees had done to Jacob.

Cassie strode over to the boy and handed him the food poke. His name might be Gus, but he was still just a Yankee to her. “Here. Eat,” she said. Then to Philip she said, “I want to talk to you—alone.”

“What about?” asked Philip.

“Don’t matter,” said Cassie. She shot her brother a look. “I just want to talk to you.”

Philip gave her another queer look. Then he shrugged and said to Gus, “I’ll be right back.”

Philip followed Cassie to the doorway of the barn, just out of Gus’s earshot. “Now, you want to tell me what in Sam Hill is so important?” Philip said.

“I figured you had something to tell me,” Cassie said. “Like why you’re all of a sudden so fond of Yankees. It’s one just like your Gus who killed our brother. You done forgot that?”

At first Philip didn’t say anything. He glanced back at Gus—nervously, Cassie thought, which struck her as odd. When he finally spoke, his voice was unnaturally loud, and he didn’t answer Cassie’s question at all. “We’re going to help Gus get away, Cassie—take him to one of the Quaker caves and hide him for a spell till I get the planting finished. Then we’re guiding him through the woods and across the river—get him safe away from Confederate troops and headed north.”

Cassie exploded. “Who says we’re going to? What you doing, turning traitor? You can’t help a Yankee soldier escape. We’re still at war, remember? That’s treason, Philip—betraying your own country. And it’s betraying Pa and Jacob, too.”

“No, it ain’t. Think about it. What if somebody had helped Jacob? Some Yankee come pick him up off the battleground and nursed him, instead of leaving him there to die? Maybe he’d still be alive. Might be with us now.”

Cassie stared at Philip, unable to believe her ears. Who would ever think to hear such a speech from Philip? He’d been more bitter toward the Yankees than she had. She couldn’t figure out what had made him change.

But what Philip said made Cassie think. What if some kindhearted Yankee soldier—and it was hard to imagine such a creature—what if some soldier had helped Jacob? Would Jacob be alive today?

Cassie looked back at Gus, who was tearing into the food poke like some wild animal. She sighed. “All right, we’ll help him escape. But only for Jacob’s sake, understand?”

Cassie and Philip took Gus to the creek that night and hid him in the same cave in which Cassie had hid from the deserter. They got him settled, as settled as you could be in a cave, and left him with food enough to last a few days. Though the creek was back to normal now, Cassie cautioned Gus to watch for floods. Philip told him to stay put in the cave, at least during the day. “Last thing you want is to be spotted by Confederate cavalry,” Philip warned.

Going back to the caves gave Cassie a strange feeling—part dread, part nerves, and part plain old fear. All she wanted to do was get Gus settled in and leave. That done, Cassie was anxious to get away from the caves—and from that feeling.

“Let’s go,” she told Philip. Then, without waiting for him, she clambered up the creek bank and plunged into the woods. The clouds had cleared, and the moon was so bright Cassie had no need for the lantern. Yet under the brilliance of the moon, the shadows loomed darker, and the tree trunks shone white. They looked to Cassie like ghosts risen from their graves. The branches crackled in the wind, and an owl hooted from somewhere deep in the woods.

Cassie felt even more disturbed than she had at the caves. She kept thinking about her own words to Philip—That’s treason, betraying your country—and the more she thought about it, the more sure she became that her first instinct had been the right one. The Yankees were their enemies, had been for the last four years. How could she betray her own people—Pa and Jacob included—to help some Yankee boy, a boy who had already shown himself to be a thief and a liar? For all Cassie knew, this boy could have shot at her very own pa. It might be their Christian duty to feed and clothe their enemy, but it was treason to do anything more.

They should go straight back tomorrow, Cassie decided, and turn Gus loose to find his own way home. She just had to convince Philip that she was right.

Cassie was so lost in thought, she never noticed Philip passing her. She only noticed all of a sudden that he was way up ahead.

She yelled to him to wait up, but he wouldn’t stop. He kept right on making tracks toward home, past the springhouse and the weeping willow beside it whose spreading leaves always made Cassie think of a lady dressed for a ball. The willow branches, ghostly silver in the twilight, stirred slightly in the breeze. Cassie shivered. She started running and finally caught up with Philip. She yanked at the tail of his nightshirt sticking out of his britches, but he jerked away.

“Hold on a minute, will you?” Cassie said. “I got to tell you something.”

“Leave me be,” Philip snapped.

“What’s sticking in your craw?” Cassie said angrily. She grabbed hold of Philip’s arm and wouldn’t let go. “You cozy up to that Yank and won’t even talk to your own sister.”

Then he wheeled around, and the gray-pink dawn lighted his face. “Cass,” he said. “You know what we got to do.”

There was an edge to his voice that held Cassie prisoner. “What?” she asked.

“It hit me way back in the barn, before we’d said more’n a few words to him. I’ve got it all planned out. It’s a way we can fight back against the Yankees, for what they did to Jacob. It’s too bad he turned out to be such a nice fellow, but he is a Yankee—”

“Philip, what are you talking about?”

“We got to turn Gus over to our army, Cassie. We got to.”