Walk in Hell

"I believe it," A

"Can't be worse than Army red tape," Tom said as he swung down from the horse. He looked fit and dashing and alert; his right hand never strayed far from the pistol on his hip. The scar on his cheek wasn't pink and fresh any more.

He also wore two stars on either side of his stand collar. "You've been promoted!" A

He gave a little bow, as a French officer might have done. "Lieutenant-Colonel Colleton at your service, ma'am," he said. "My regiment happened to find a hole in the Yankee lines up on the Roanoke, and they pushed forward half a mile at what turned out to be exactly the right time." He touched one of the stars signifying his new rank, then the other. "Each of these cost me about a hundred and fifty men, killed and wounded."

Slowly, A

A lot had changed here, too. He strode up to her and gave her a brotherly embrace, but his eyes remained on what had been the family mansion. "Those sons of bitches," he said in a flat, hard voice, and then, "Well, from what I hear, they paid for it ten times over."

"Maybe not so much as that," A

He nodded. "For one thing, we're ru

"This one's smashed, but it's not dead," she said. "Cassius is still out in the swamps by the river, and the militiamen they've sent after him and his friends haven't been able to smoke them out."

"He's the kind of nigger I wish we had in the Army," Tom said. "He'd make one fine scout and sniper."

"Unless he decided to shoot at you instead of the damnyankees," A

She'd succeeded in embarrassing him. "I didn't want to worry you," he replied, which went a long way toward explaining the circumstances under which he'd won it. The Order of Lee was the Army equivalent of Roger Kimball's Order of the Virginia: only one step down from the Confederate Cross.

"I've been worried from the beg-" A

Julia came up to them then, her baby on her hip. "Mistuh Tom, we got yo' cabin ready fo' you."

"That's good," he answered. "Thank you." He spoke to her in a tone slightly different from the one he would have used before the war started, even if the words might have been the same then. In 1914, he would have taken the service completely for granted; now, he spoke of it as if she was doing him a favor. A

Tom went back to his horse, detached the saddlebags and bedroll from the saddle, and carried them while he walked after Julia. In 1914, a Negro would have dashed up to relieve him of them. If he missed that level of deference, he didn't show it.

And, before he went into the cabin, he asked, "You're not putting anyone out so I can stay in here, are you?"

"No, suh," the serving woman answered. "Ain't so many folks here as used to be."

"I see that." Tom glanced over at A

"You do what you have to do," she said, at which he nodded again. Before the war, that hard logic had meant nothing to him. The Roanoke front had given him more than rank and decorations; he understood and accepted the ways of the world these days. As soon as Julia went out of earshot, she continued, in a lower voice, "We made a bargain of sorts-they do the work that needs to be done, and I make sure nobody from St. Matthews or Columbia comes around prying into what they did during the rebellion."

"You said something about that in one of your letters," Tom answered, remembering. "Best you could do, I suppose, but there are some niggers I wouldn't have made that bargain with. Cassius, for one."

"Even if you'd want him for a soldier?" A

"Especially because I'd want him for a soldier," her brother said. "I know a dangerous man when I see one."

"I have no bargain with Cassius," A

"That's so," Tom agreed. "And he'll have friends among the hands here. Sis, I really wish you weren't out here by your lonesome."

"If I'm not, this place goes to the devil," A

"If the choice is between being being rich and being a beggar, that's one thing, Sis," he said. "If the choice is between being a beggar and being dead, that's a different game." His face, its expression already far more stern than it had been before the war, turned bleak as the oncoming winter. "That's what the Confederate States are looking at right now, seems to me: a choice between being beggars and being dead."

He walked up into the cottage. A

"No," A

"And it makes one," her brother answered bitterly. "I pray to God we can hold the ground we gained, too. We need every man in the CSA at the front, and we need every man in the CSA working behind the lines so the men at the front have something to shoot at the damnyankees. If everybody could be two places at once twenty-four hours a day, we'd be fine."

"That's why the president wants to give the blacks guns," she said.

"I understand." He sounded impatient with her, something he'd rarely done…before the war, that endlessly echoed phrase. "We've put them in the factories to make up for the white men who've gone. Maybe we can put enough women in to make up for the niggers. Maybe."

She didn't want to argue with him any more. "Supper soon," she said. "Come over to my cottage and we'll talk more then. Get yourself settled in for now."

"For now," he repeated. "I've got to catch the train day after tomorrow." He sighed. "No rest for the weary."