Cheryl Reavis - Harrigan's Bride

“Cap,” La Broie said from the doorway, and Thomas had no idea how long he’d been standing there. He held up his hand to keep La Broie from advancing. He didn’t want Abiah any more distressed than she already was, and he didn’t want La Broie to hear her confessions—if he hadn’t already.

Thomas got up and walked to the door. “What?”

“There’s a little garden on the south side of the house. The sun shines there most of the day, I reckon. The ground ain’t froze. I’m about to put the lady under. Is she all right?” he asked, looking past him to where Abiah lay.

“No.”

“We ain’t got much time, Cap,” La Broie said unnecessarily.

Thomas drew a quiet breath and looked back at Abiah. She was lying very still now, and he didn’t want to disturb her. He didn’t want her to be afraid if she woke up alone, either.

He walked to the bedside. “Abby?”

She opened her eyes.

“I’ll be back.”

She shook her head, the tears once again sliding out of the corners of her eyes. “No. Go from…here, Thomas—”

“I’ll be back,” he said again.

“Please! I want you to go—”

“Try to sleep.”

“She understands how things are, Cap,” La Broie said on the way downstairs, but Thomas made no reply.

He carried Miss Emma out of the house himself. La Broie had gotten the grave dug quickly, a skill Thomas supposed he had had to learn as a professional soldier. And it was La Broie who spoke over the grave.

“The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God,” he said. “And there no torment shall find them. Amen.”

Thomas stood looking at the raw mound of earth. “Amen,” he said, earnestly hoping that that was the case for Miss Emma. And his mind was already working on the problem at hand. He had to get Abiah out of here—and he had no place to take her.

“You don’t have to wait for me, Sergeant,” he said.

“Yes, sir, Cap,” La Broie answered, but he made no attempt to leave.

“I want you to go back and tell the major you couldn’t find me.”

“You want me to lie to Major Gibbons?” La Broie said, as if such a thing would never, ever have crossed his mind.

“I do,” Thomas said. “And try to make it as good as the one you told him when you came out here.”

“You’re going to stay here with the lady upstairs, Cap?”

“No, I’m taking her with me,” Thomas said, stepping around his sergeant to get back into the house.

“Moving her might kill her, Cap,” La Broie said. “If she’s in a bad way.”

“What do you think leaving her here alone will do?”

“You planning on riding back to our lines with her, just like that, sir?” La Broie said. “That is, if you can get her back across the river.”

“In lieu of a better plan, yes.”

“Ain’t there somebody you could get to stay with her?”

“Yes,” Thomas said. “Only I don’t know who it would be at the moment. I’ll have to worry about that when I get to Falmouth.”

“ If you get to Falmouth,” La Broie said. “Reb patrols are out, sir.”

“There’s a truce long enough to bury the dead. I’m going to have to rely on that. Well, go on, man. You have your orders.”

“Begging your pardon, Cap,” La Broie said, still following along. “But we ain’t exactly on the battlefield at the moment, now are we? If we run into one of them Reb patrols, they’re going to think we’re ransacking the place and then there’s going to be hell to pay. And besides that, I have put in a lot of hard work breaking you in, sir—if you don’t mind me saying so—and I ain’t a bit happy thinking I’m going to have to start over with another captain. Hard telling what kind of jackass they’d put in your place.”

“La Broie, do you know how close you are to insubordination?”

“No, sir. It’s high praise I’m giving and not insubordination at all, sir. You have turned yourself into a good, sensible officer…” The rest of the sentence hung in the air unsaid.

Until now.

“Thanks to you, you mean,” Thomas said.

“It was my pleasure, sir,” La Broie said, almost but not quite smiling.

“Get going,” Thomas said. “I mean it.”

He went back upstairs. Abiah seemed to be asleep. He opened the armoire and searched until he found her portmanteau, but then immediately disregarded it as too awkward to carry. He took a pillow slip instead and went from drawer to drawer, dumping in things he barely bothered to identify—stockings, undergarments, a frayed wool shawl, a hairbrush.

There was a sudden commotion downstairs. He swore and drew his revolver, trying to identify the source.

“Cap!” La Broie yelled, and Thomas ran to the landing. The sergeant had ridden his mount into the front hall and he was leading Thomas’s bay. Both horses were having trouble getting their footing and both were wild-eyed at the straight chairs and small tables crashing around them.

“Hand your lady down, sir!” La Broie yelled. “The sons of bitches are almost here!”

Thomas ran back to do just that. Abiah was trying to get out of bed. He gave her no explanation of any kind. He grabbed her and the pillow slip and a quilt, leaving everything else behind and carrying her bodily out of the room. Halfway down the stairs, he handed her roughly over the banister to La Broie and tossed the pillow slip after her. The sergeant’s mount pranced and reared at the loose-flowing quilt, but La Broie held him in.

“Hurry, sir!”

Thomas mounted the bay with some difficulty, then took Abiah out of La Broie’s arms. She was completely limp, and he could hardly hold on to her.

“I’m going to let them see me, Cap,” La Broie said. “I’ll meet up with you at the river—”

He gave Thomas no time to approve or disapprove the plan as he urged his captured horse back out the front door and leaped in a great arc off the porch.

What’s happening? Abiah kept thinking. She tried to follow the conversation around her, but it made no sense.

“Will you kindly shoot this man, Sergeant La Broie? My hands are full.”

“My pleasure, Cap. Or if you want him skinned alive and roasted over a hot fire with a stick—”

Abiah winced at the specifics.

“—I can do that, too, sir.”

“No. No, a ball between the eyes will do. You’ll have to excuse the sergeant here. He’s just come from the West. They handle things a bit differently out there. You and I are more apt to just kill a man outright when he irks us. But where the sergeant comes from, they like to savor the demise. Who was it you learned that from, Sergeant?”

“Apaches, sir. And, of course, the—”

“All right! I’ll take you across,” a third voice said. “You Yankees are damned attached to your whores, is all I got to say—”

There was scuffling then. Abiah cried out.

“Abby,” Thomas’s voice said close to her ear. She tried to answer him and couldn’t. Then she lost his voice and the others in a wave of soft, white nothingness.

It was raining when she heard voices again. She could feel the raindrops beating down on her face.

“I’ve got no room here, Captain.”

“Well, make room, damn it!”

“Where? We’ve got more wounded men than we can handle! You wouldn’t want to leave her here, even if there was a place for her. Who would take care of her, sick as she is? Look, why don’t you try one of the churches? Maybe there’s somebody there who can take her in.”

And then they were riding through the darkness again.

“I think you better let me take her, Cap,” a man’s voice said. “You go get Major Gibbons satisfied so he don’t have you shot. I’ll see to your lady.”