Out of Their Minds

I walked toward the blaze. Jed leaned his musket against a small plum tree and resumed his seat beside the fire.

"We was frying up some sow belly," he said, motioning toward the pan set on a bed of coals raked out from the fire. "If you are hungry, we got plenty of it."

"But you got to be hungry," said one of the others, "or you can't nohow stomach it."

"I thing I'm hungry enough," I said. I came into the circle of the firelight and squatted down. Beside the pan of frying pork sat a steaming coffee pot. I sniffed at its aroma. "It seems that I missed lunch," I said, "and breakfast, too."

"Then maybe you can manage it," said Jed. "We got a couple of extra hardtack and I'll make you up a sandwich."

"Be sure," said the drawling one, "to knock them against something to dislodge the crawlers. Someone that ain't use to it might not like fresh meat."

"Say, mister," said the third one, "looks to me as if you picked up a crease."

I put my hand to my head and the fingers came away sticky.

"Knocked out for a while," I said. "Just came to a while ago. Shell fragment, I suppose."

"Mike," Jed said to the drawly one, "why don't you and Asa wash him up a bit and see how bad it is. I'll pour him a cup of coffee. Probably he could use it."

"It's all right," I said. "It is just a scratch."

"Better have a look," said Mike, "then, when you leave, head down to Taneytown Road. Just south on the road a piece you'll find a sawbones. He can slop some junk on it, keep it from mortifying."

Jed handed me a cup of coffee and it was strong and hot. I took a sip of it and burned my tongue. Mike worked on my head, as tenderly as if he'd been a woman, daubing away with a handkerchief soaked in water from his canteen.

"It's just a crease," he said. "Took off some hide, is all. But if I was you, I'd see me a sawbones."

"All right, I will," I said.

And the fu

"It's all that I can do," said Mike, going back and sitting down. "I haven't even got a clean rag I can wrap around your head. But you find the doc and he'll fix you up."

"Here's a sandwich," said Jed, handing it to me. "I tried to knock the skippers out. I think I got the most of them."

It was an unappetizing-looking mess and the hardtack was as hard as I had read it was, but I was hungry and it was food and I put it down. Jed fixed sandwiches for the others and we all sat munching, not talking because it took a man's full concentration to eat that kind of food. The coffee had cooled enough so that I could drink it and it helped to wash the hardtack down.

Finally we were finished and Jed poured each of us another cup of coffee; Mike got out an old pipe and hunted around in a pocket until he found some crumbled shreds of tobacco with which to load the pipe. He lit it with a brand pulled gingerly from the fire.

"A newspaperman," he said. "From New York, most likely."

I shook my head. New York was too close. One of them might just happen to know a newsman from New York. "London," I said. "The Times."

"You don't sound like no Britisher to me,", said Asa. "They got a fu

"I haven't been in England for years," I said. "I've knocked around a lot"

It didn't explain, of course, how a man could lose his British accent, but it held them for the moment.

"There's a Britisher with Lee's army," Jed said. "Free-mantle or some such name as that I suppose you know „him."

"I've heard of him," I said. "I've never met the man."

They were getting just a bit too curious. Friendly still, of course, but too curious. But they didn't follow it up. There were too many other things they wanted to talk about.

"When you write your piece," asked Mike, "what do you intend to say of Meade?"

"Why, I don't really know," I said. "I haven't thought that much about it. He fought a splendid battle here, of course. He made the Southerners come to him. He played their game for once. A strong defense and…"

Jed spat. "That may all be so," he said. "But he hasn't got no style. Now Mac—there's a man who really had some style."

"Style, sure," said Asa, "but he was always letting us get licked. It feels right good, I tell you, to be on the wi

"I'm sure of it," I said. "Lee will be pulling out tomorrow. Maybe he's pulling out right now."

"Some of the men don't think so," said Mike. "I was talking to some of the Mi

"I don't think so," said Jed. "We broke their backs this afternoon. Hell's fire, they came walking up that hill as if they were on parade. They walked right up to us; they walked right into the ca

"Burnside did it at Fredericksburg," said Asa.

Jed spat. "Burnside wasn't smart. No one ever said he was."

I finished my coffee, swirled the little that was left in the bottom of the cup to stir up the grounds, and tossed it at the fire. Jed reached out and lifted the pot.

"No more, thanks," I said. "I must be getting on."

I didn't want to be getting on. I wanted to stay right where I was and yarn away another hour or so with the three around the fire. The blaze was comfortable and the gully snug.

But I had a deep, underlying hunch that I had best get out when I could. Get away from these men and this battlefield before something else could happen. That bit of flying iron had been close enough. Theoretically, of course, I was in the clear, but I had no confidence in this land, nor in the Referee. The quicker out the better.

I rose to my feet. 'Thanks for the food and coffee. It was something that I needed."

"Where you going now?"

"I think, first of all, I'll hunt up that doctor."

Jed nodded. "I would if I were you," he said.

I turned about and walked away, expecting each second that they would call me back. But they didn't and I went Stumbling down the gully in the dark.

I had a crude, half-remembered map in mind and as I walked I figured out what I would do. Not the Taneytown Road that would keep me too close to the battlefield. I'd cross the Taneytown Road and keep on the east until I hit the Baltimore Pike and I'd follow that southeast. Although just why I bothered, I don't know. One place probably was as good as another in this weird place. I wasn't going any where, actually; I was just moving around. The Devil had said that Kathy was safe, back in the human world again but there had been no hint from him as to how a mar could get back into the human world and I wasn't downright sure that I could believe what the Devil said of Kathy, He was a shifty critter and not one to be trusted.

I reached the end of the gully and came out in a valley, Ahead of me lay the Taneytown Road. There were camp fires here and there and I veered around them. But stumbling through the dark, I fetched up against a warm body that had hair and that snorted at me. I backed away and, squinting, made out it was a horse, tied to a still standing section of a small rail fence.