“Take point out on the road. Just like some stubborn Yankee to try and cut away a nice little catch like this.”
“Yes, sir.” Drew merely sketched a salute; discipline was always free and easy in the Scouts.
The day was warm. He was glad he had managed to find a lightweight shirt back at the warehouse in town. If they didn’t win Lexington to keep, at least all of the raiders were going to ride out well-mounted, with boots on their feet and whole clothing on their backs. The Union quartermasters did just fine by Morgan’s boys, as always.
Shawnee’s ears went forward alertly, but Drew did not need that signal of someone’s approaching. He backed into the shadow-shade of a tree and sat tense, with Colt in hand.
A horse nickered. There was the whirr of wheels. Drew edged Shawnee out of cover and then quickly holstered his weapon, riding out to bring to a halt the carriage horse between the shafts of an English dogcart.
He pulled off his dust-grayed hat. “Good mornin’, Aunt Marianna.”
Such a polite greeting—the same words he would have used three years ago had they met in the hall of Red Springs on their way to breakfast. He wanted to laugh, or was it really laughter which lumped in his throat?
Her momentary expression of outrage faded as she leaned forward to study his face, and she relaxed her first half-threatening grip on her whip. Though Aunt Marianna had never been a beauty, her present air of assurance and authority became her, just as the smart riding habit was better suited to her somewhat angular frame than the ruffles and bows of the drawing room.
“Drew!” Her recognition of his identity had come more slowly than Boyd’s, and it sounded almost wary.
“At your service, ma’am.” He found himself again using the graces of another way of life, far removed from his sweat-stained shirt and patched breeches. He shot a glance over his shoulder, making sure they were safely alone on that stretch of highway. After all, one horse among so many would be no great loss to his commander. “You’d better turn around. The boys’ll have Lady Jane out of the shaft before you get into Lexington if you keep on. And the Yankees are still pepperin’ the place with round shot.” He wondered why she was driving without a groom, but did not quite dare to ask.
“Drew, is Boyd here with you?”
“Boyd?”
“Don’t be evasive with me, boy!” She rapped that out with an officer’s snap. “He left a note for Merry—two words misspelled and a big blot—all foolishness about joining Morgan. Said you had been to Red Springs, and he was going along. Why did you do it, Drew? Cousin Merry…after Sheldon, she can’t lose Boyd, too! To put such a wild idea into that child’s head!”
Drew’s lips thinned into a half grimace. He was still cast in the role of culprit, it seemed. “I didn’t influence Boyd to do anything, Aunt Marianna. I told him I wouldn’t take him with me, and I meant it. If he ran away, it was his own doin’.”
She was still measuring him with that intent look as if he were a slightly unsatisfactory colt being put through his paces in the training paddock.
“Then you’ll help me get him back home?” That was more a statement than a question, delivered in a voice which was all Mattock, enough to awaken by the mere sound all the old resistance in him.
He nodded at the Lexington road. “There are several thousand men ahead there, ma’am. Hunting Boyd out if he wants to hide from me—and he will—is impossible. He’s big enough to pass a recruiter; they ain’t too particular about age these days. And he’ll stay just as far from me as he can until he is sworn in. He already knows how I feel about his enlistin’.”
Her gloved hands tightened on the reins. “If I could see John Morgan himself—”
“If you could get to Lexington and find him—”
“But Boyd’s just a child. He hasn’t the slightest idea of war except the stories he hears…no idea of what could happen to him, or what this means to Merry. All this criminal nonsense about being a soldier—sabers and spurs, and dashing around behind a flag, the wrong flag, too—” She caught her breath in an unusual betrayal of emotion. And now she studied Drew with some deliberation, noting his thinness, itemizing his shabbiness.
He smiled tiredly. “No, I ain’t Boyd’s idea of a returnin’ hero, am I?” he agreed with her unspoken comment. “Also, we Rebs don’t use sabers; they ain’t worth much in a real skirmish.”
She flushed. “Drew, why did you go? Was it all because of Father? I know he made it hard for you.”
“You know—” Drew regarded a circling bird in the section of sky above her head—“some day I hope I’ll discover just what kind of a no-account Hunt Rennie was, to make his son so unacceptable. Most of the Texans I’ve ridden with in the army haven’t been so bad; some of them are downright respectable.”
“I don’t know.” Again she flushed. “It was a long time ago when it all happened. I was just a little girl. And Father, well, he has very strong prejudices. But, Drew, for you to go against everything you’d been taught, to turn Rebel—that added to his bitterness. And now Boyd is trying to go the same way. Isn’t there something you can do? I can’t stand to see that look in Merry’s eyes. If we can just get Boyd home again—”
“Don’t hope too much.” Drew was certain that nothing Marianna Forbes could do was going to lead Boyd Barrett back home again. On the other hand, if the boy had not formally enlisted, perhaps the rigors of one of the General’s usual cross-country scrambles might be disillusioning. But, having tasted the quality of Boyd’s stubbornness in the past, Drew doubted that. For long months he had been able to cut right out of his life Red Springs and all it stood for; now it was trying to put reins on him again. He shifted his weight in the saddle.
“He’s been restless all spring,” his aunt continued. “We might have known that, given an opportunity like this, the boy would do something wild. Only the waste, the sinful waste! I can’t go back and face Merry without trying something—anything! Can’t you…Drew?”
“I don’t know.” He couldn’t harden himself to tell her the truth. “I’ll try,” he promised vaguely.
“Drew—” A change in tone brought his attention back to her. She looked disturbed, almost embarrassed. “Have you had a hard time? You look so…so thin and tired. Is there anything you need?”
He flinched from any such attack on the shell he had built against the intrusion of Red Springs, for a second or two feeling once more the rasp across raw nerves. “We don’t get much time for sleep when the General’s on the prod. Horse stealin’ and such keeps us a mite busy, accordin’ to your Yankee friends. And we have to pay our respects to them, just to keep them reminded that this is Morgan country. I’ll warn you again, Aunt Marianna, keep Lady Jane out of Lexington today—if you want to keep her.” He gathered up his reins. “Boyd told me about Grandfather,” he added in a rush. “I’m sorry.” And he was, he told himself, sorry for Aunt Marianna, who had to stay at Red Springs now, and even a little in an impersonal way for the old man, who must find inactivity a worse prison than any stone-walled room. But it was being polite about a stranger. “Major Forbes…he’s all right?”
“Yes. Only, Drew—” Again the urgency in her voice held him against his will, “Boyd.…”
He was saved further evasion by a carrying whistle from down the road, the signal to pull in pickets. Pursing his own lips, he answered.
“I have to go. I’ll do what I can.” He set Shawnee pounding along the pike, and he did not look back.
If he were ever to fulfill his promise to locate Boyd, that would have to come later. Quirk’s horse catch delivered, the scouts were on the move again, on the Georgetown road, riding at a pace which suggested they must keep ahead of a boiling wasp’s nest of Yankees. There was an embarrassment of