Lynna Banning - The Angel Of Devil's Camp

He sat facing her, speaking to the tall, dark-haired man across the table, the one who had stopped the freckle-faced boys’ scuffle. Tom’s blue eyes steadily surveyed the dark man’s face; Meggy studied Tom.

The colonel was a handsome man, she conceded. The skin of his face and arms was tanned from the sun, his features well proportioned. He wore a red plaid shirt, stuffed into dark-blue trousers. Even his mouth was attractive. For a Yankee, that is. Southern men generally sported mustaches.

The crew laughed and joked as they ate. Tom did neither. He kept his gaze on his men but didn’t join in beyond an occasional word. Many of them eyed the whiskey bottle Tom had set out, and a few even caressed the glass container as they finished their meal and meandered onto the porch for a smoke.

Fong bustled between the huge iron-and-nickel cookstove and the sink, pumping water into food-encrusted pots, shaving in bits of brown soap and setting the utensils aside to soak. Then the cook stood poised in the kitchen doorway, watching for the moment he could swoop down to clear the dirty plates the men had left on the table.

When the main room emptied, Fong shot forward, and Meggy laid her fork aside.

Here was her chance.

Very quietly she pushed back her chair, stood up and glided to the pantry. Inside, barrels of flour, sugar, salt and molasses lined one wall. Woven baskets stuffed with carrots, potatoes, apples and squash teetered on crude plank shelves, and bunches of drying herbs tied together with string hung upside down from nails in the ceiling.

She withdrew the tea towel from her pocket, lifted the first barrel lid and scooped up three handfuls of flour. She dumped it in the center of the towel, gathered up the four corners and then moved to the barrel marked Salt. She sprinkled a pinch on top of the flour, then searched for a container of saleratus. There, on the middle shelf!

She maneuvered the top off the square tin canister, dipped in her thumb and forefinger and added the white powder to the contents of the tea towel.

In the cooler sat a ceramic crock of pale cream-colored butter. Meggy hesitated a long moment. Did she dare? Papa would spin in his grave if he knew I was stealing butter from a cookhouse pantry.

She dug her fingers into the crock, scooped out a slippery handful. I cannot believe I am doing this!

She slid the glob of butter in on top of the flour and wiped her fingers on the towel. “Now,” she breathed. “What else will I need?”

Her gaze fell on a bushel basket of mottled gold apples by the door. Four went into the tea towel; the fifth and sixth she stuffed into her skirt pocket. Sweeping past the sugar barrel, she hesitated for a split second, then halted and plunged in her clean hand. Her fist closed around coarse brown lumps.

Fong’s voice rose from the kitchen like a trumpet call. “Missy help wash dishes?”

Her heart stopped. “Yes, I will,” she called out. She dumped the sugar into her pocket, then jiggled up and down so the lumps would sift down around the apples and collect at the bottom. Satisfied, she dusted off her hands and straightened her skirt.

Stepping out of the pantry, she slipped the bulging tea towel under her knitted black shawl and turned to the pile of pots and pans in the sink. Fong’s black eyes followed her every motion.

Trust me, she begged silently. I will pay you back.

He turned away without a word and dropped an armload of plates into the wide sink. “Fong wash, missy dry.”

He lifted a whistling teakettle off the stove. Steam arose as he emptied the kettle, then pumped cold water into the enamelware dishpan and pointed to a clumsily hemmed flour sack. Meggy snatched it up and stood ready.

The man was a wonder. Plates, mugs, pots and lids flew through the soapy wash water and into the rinse bucket. She wiped as fast as she could but could not keep up with him. Last to be cleaned were four black iron skillets in various sizes. Fong wiped out the grease with a wadded towel and hung them upside down near the stove.

Meggy eyed the smallest pan. Just perfect. But how would she get it out the door? Perhaps some conversation to distract Fong just long enough?

“How long have you worked for Colonel Randall?”

“Long time, missy. Since before war. Before that, on railroad crew. Boss find me and I cook in army, now here at Devil Camp.”

He sent her an inquisitive glance. “Ladies not allowed in camp. Why Colonel Tom let you stay?”

Meggy blinked. “Why, I don’t know, really. I guess he couldn’t very well turn me away, since Mr. Peabody willed me his cabin.”

Fong grunted and splashed the last plate into the rinse water. “Make no difference. Boss not like pretty women. Remind him of young sister.”

His sister! Not a wife or a fiancée? “Colonel Randall is not married, then?” How rude of me. First I turn thief, then inquisitor.

“No woman. Not since sister die.”

“Die! Oh, dear Lord, how did she die?”

Fong scrubbed hard at a tin saucepan. “Soldiers in Richmond hang her.”

Her hands stilled. “Hanged her! How dreadful! Whatever did she do?”

“They say she Yankee spy.”

The plate she was drying clattered to the plank floor. Colonel Randall’s sister had spied for the Yankees? Meggy couldn’t believe her ears. Of course there had been spies; she knew that. But hanging a woman? Why, it was unthinkable!

“So,” she murmured, “that is why he is so unfriendly. Perhaps I remind him of the sister he lost.” Oh, no, it was more than that. The Confederates had hanged the colonel’s sister…and she was a Confederate!

Fong’s face wrinkled into a frown. “You Johnny Reb, missy?”

“Y-yes. From South Carolina.”

The Oriental nodded and plopped another pot into the wash water. “Luck is bad,” he muttered. “Two things Colonel Tom not like—pretty woman and Johnny Reb. Luck very bad.”

Meggy gulped. And here she was, stealing from the colonel’s food supplies. If he found out, he would hang her!

“You go home now, missy. Fong sit up, guard tomatoes from hungry deer.” He brandished a sawed-off broom handle.

As soon as she dried the last pot and suspended it on the rack above the stove, she clutched the tea towel containing the flour mixture and pressed the smallest of the iron skillets into the folds of her skirt. Keeping her back to the cook, she slipped out the screen door and fled down the porch steps.

Behind her she heard the click of the door latch and Fong’s tuneless whistling. The latter blended with the throaty croak of frogs and the scrape of crickets. She stumbled up the path in the dark, felt her way to her own front porch and yanked open the door.

The cabin interior was black as the inside of a chimney. She crept to the bed, found the tin of candles and lit a short, fat one that Charlotte had scented with rose petals. Meggy set it on the counter. The little puddle of light calmed her nerves.

One hour. She needed just one hour.

She dampened her under-petticoat in the water bucket and scrubbed the plank counter. Then, with shaking hands, she poured the contents of the tea towel into the skillet and dug her fingers into the center. Within a few moments the flour and butter mixture was crumbly.

Dumping the lump of dough onto the clean counter surface, she patted it into shape and rolled it between her hands to make a smooth, round ball. When she’d set it on the sill of the open window to chill overnight, she emptied her pocket of the apples and spilled the sugar into the lid of a hand cream container. Then she stripped off her dress and petticoat, sponged her hands and face, puffed out the candle and fell into the bed still wearing her shimmy.

Tom tramped off the cookhouse porch and down the well-beaten path to his tent. He’d left the quart of whiskey in Fong’s care, knowing his cook would guard it as zealously as the tomato patch he’d planted at the start of the season. He’d bet Fong would sit up in his garden all night, the whiskey bottle tucked beneath his tunic.