Ride Proud, Rebel Part 37

"But your horse!"

Boyd grinned. "Looky here, Drew, more'n half of this heah Reb army is footin' it home. I guess I can cross two little states without it finishin' me off--leastwise I reckon anyone who has toughened it out with General Forrest can do that much."

Drew turned the spurs around in hands which were a little shaky. "We got Croaker, and we'll take turns ridin'. No, two states ain't too far for a couple of troopers, specially if they have them a good stout mule into the bargain!"

A hot copper sun turned late Kentucky May into August weeks ahead of season. Thunder muttered sullenly beyond the horizon. And a breeze picked up road dust and grit, plastering it to Croaker's sweating hide, their own unwashed skin.

"Better ... ride...." Licking dust from his lips, Drew watched the weaving figure on the other side of the mule with dull concern. They were steadying themselves by a tight grip on the stirrups, and Croaker was supporting and towing them, rather than their steering him.

Boyd's head lifted. "Ride yourself!" He got a ghost of his old defiance into that, though his voice was hardly more than a harsh croak of whisper. "I ain't givin' in now!"

He leased his stirrup hold, staggering forward a step or two, and would have gone face-down on the turnpike if Drew had not made a big effort to reach him. But the other's weight bore him along, and they both sprawled on the road. Croaker came to a halt, his head hanging until he could have nuzzled Drew's shoulder.

They had made a brave start from Alabama, keeping up with the company they joined until they were close to the Kentucky-Tennessee border. Then a blistered heel had forced Drew into the rider's role for two days, and they had fallen behind. The rations they had drawn had been stretched as far as they would go. Even though there were people along the way willing to feed a hungry soldier, there were too many hungry soldiers.

The farther north they traveled there was also a growing number of places where a blue coat might be welcome, but a gray one still signified "enemy."

Drew moved, and raised Boyd's head and shoulders to his knee. If he could summon enough energy to reach the canteen hanging from Croaker's saddle.... Somehow he did, recklessly spilling a cupful of its contents on Boyd's face, and turning road dust into flecks of mud which freckled the gaunt cheeks.

"Ain't goin' t' ride--" Boyd's eyes opened and he took up the argument again.

"Well," Drew lashed out, "I can't carry you! Or do you expect to be dragged?"

Boyd's face crumpled and he flung up his arms to hide his eyes.

"All right."

With the aid of a sloping bank and an effort which left them both weakly panting, Boyd was mounted and they started their slow crawl once more.

"Drew!"

He raised his head. Boyd had straightened in the saddle and was pointing ahead, though his outstretched hand was shaking. "We made it--there's home!"

Beyond was the green of trees, a whole line of trees curving along a gravel carriage drive. But somehow Drew could not match Boyd's joy. He was tired, so tired that he was aware of nothing really but the aching weariness of his body.

They turned into the drive, the gravel crunching into his holed boots while the tree shadows made a green twilight. Croaker came to a stop, and Drew's eyes raised from the gravel to the line of one step and then another. His gaze finally came to a broad veranda ... to someone who had been sitting there and who was now on her feet, staring wide-eyed back at the three of them. Then the gravel came up in a wave and he was swallowed up in it and darkness--

The sun, warm through the window, awoke a glint of reflection from the top of the chest of drawers where rested a round cord of bullion with two ta.s.sels and a pair of fancy spurs. The wink of light was reflected again from the mirror before which Drew stood.

"Jefferson's shirt has long enough sleeves, but all these billows!"

Cousin Merry's tongue clicked against her teeth in exasperation. Her hand was in the middle of Drew's back, gathering up a good pleating of linen, but he still had extra folds of cloth to spare over his ribs.

Four days of rest and plenty of food was not sufficient to restore any padding to his frame. "You certainly grew one way, but not the other!"

Boyd, established in the big chair by the window, laughed.

"I could take a few tucks," Drew offered.

"_You_ could take a few tucks!" Her astonished face showed in the gla.s.s above his shoulder.

"Oh, I'm not too bad with a needle. Did you note those neat patches on my breeches--?"

"I noted nothing about those breeches; they went straight into the fire!

Such rags...."

"Miss Merry, ma'am--" small Hetty showed an eager face around the corner of the door--"Majuh Forbes and Missus Forbes--they's downstairs."

Drew faced away from the mirror. "Why?" he demanded with almost hostile emphasis.

Meredith Barrett untied the strings of her sewing ap.r.o.n. "Hetty, tell Mam Gusta to set out some of the English biscuits and make tea." Then she turned back to face Drew. "Why, Drew? Rather--why not? They're your kin, and I think that Marianna feels it deeply that you came here and not to Red Springs. Not to go home...."

"Home?" There was heat in that. "You, if anyone, know that Red Springs was never really my home. And Forbes is an officer in the Union Army.

This is no time for a Reb to camp out in his house. My grandfather wanted the place to be just Aunt Marianna's, didn't he?" He paused by the chest of drawers, his hand going out to the spurs, the gold cord.

Three years--in a way a small lifetime--all to be summed up now by a slightly tarnished cord from a general's hat, a pair of spurs a young Texan had jauntily worn.

But it _was_ a lifetime. He was not a boy any more, to have to endure his elders making decisions for him. His future was his own, and he had earned the right to that. Drew did not know that his face had hardened, that he suddenly looked a stranger to the woman who was watching him with concern.

"Please, Drew, you mustn't allow yourself to be so bitter--"

"Bitter? About Red Springs, you mean? Lord, I never wanted the place. I hate every brick of it, and I think I always have. But I don't hate Forbes or Aunt Marianna if that's what you're afraid of. It's just that I have no place there any more."

Her mouth tightened. "But you have! You owe it to Marianna to listen to her now. This is important, Drew, more important than you can guess. No, Boyd--" her gesture checked her son as he arose from the chair--"this is none of your affair. Come with me, Drew!"

He picked up a borrowed coat, also much too wide for him, pulled it on over the bunchiness of his shirt, and followed her, swallowing what he knew to be a useless protest.

The parlor was as bright with sun as the upper room had been. As Drew entered a pace or two behind Cousin Merry, the officer in blue strode away from the hearth to meet them. But Aunt Marianna forestalled her husband's greeting, rising suddenly from a chair, her crinoline rustling across the carpet. She held out her hands, and then hesitated, studying Drew's face, looking a little daunted, as if she had expected something she did not find. The a.s.surance she had displayed at their last meeting on the Lexington road was missing.

"Drew?"

He bowed, conscious that he must present an odd figure in the ill-fitting clothing of Meredith Barrett's long dead husband.

Major Forbes held out his hand. "Welcome home, my boy."

My boy. Consciously or unconsciously the major's tone strove to thrust Drew into the past, or so he believed. The major might almost be considering Drew an unruly schoolboy now safely out of some sc.r.a.pe, welcome indeed if he would settle down quietly into the conventional mold of Oak Hill or Red Springs. But he was no schoolboy, and at that moment the parlor of Oak Hill, for all its luxury and warmth, was a box sealing him in stifling confinement which he could no longer endure.

Drew held tight control over that resurgence of his old impatience, knowing that his first instinct had been right: the old life fitted him now no better than his coat. But he answered civilly:

"Thank you, suh."

His proper courtesy apparently rea.s.sured his aunt. She came to him, her hands on his shoulders as she stood on tip-toe to kiss his cheek. "Drew, come home with us, dear--please!"

He shook his head. "I don't belong at Red Springs, ma'am. I never did."

"Nonsense!" Major Forbes put the force of a field officer's authority into that denial. "I do not and never did agree with many of Alexander Mattock's decisions. I do so even less when they pertain to your situation, my boy. You have every right to consider Red Springs your home. You must come to us, resume your interrupted education, take your proper place in the family and the community--"

Drew shook his head again. The major paused. He had been studying Drew, and now there was a faint shadow of uneasiness in his own expression. He might be slowly realizing that he was not fronting a repentant schoolboy rescued from a piece of regrettable youthful folly. A veteran was being forced against his will to recognize the stamp of his own experience on another, if much younger, man.

"What are your plans?" he asked in another tone of voice entirely.

"Drew--" Major Forbes waved aside that tentative interruption from Cousin Merry.