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That can’t be right. The war is over. Besides, this is Oregon. She eased around the tree until she could see to the top of the ridge.
Directly above her, a dozen men in colorful shirts and faded blue trousers stood in a circle. Most had unkempt hair hanging beneath their battered hats. Many had untrimmed beards. Three or four leaned on the handles of shovels.
Their voices ceased as a man taller than the rest marched up. He carried himself ramrod straight. She knew without a doubt he was a soldier.
The circle opened for him, and Meggy spied a rough-hewn coffin. She eased forward for a closer look, watched the tall man take a book from his shirt pocket and begin to read.
Tom cleared his throat, scanned the men gathered at the freshly dug grave site and opened his Bible. He ran his forefinger down the page, stopped at the Twenty-third Psalm. Raising his eyes, he opened his mouth.
“The Lord is my…”
Swede Jensen snatched off his red-and-yellow knit cap and bowed his head.
A flutter of something black through the trees caught Tom’s eye. It vanished behind a thick fir tree, then reappeared. A hawk? He couldn’t be sure. The summer sun was so intense the air shimmered.
Not a hawk. Too low. Something wrapped up like a cocoon—a bear, maybe? The back of his neck prickled.
Whatever it was plodded up the hill toward him at a steady pace. No, not a bear. A bear would pause and sniff the air. Not an Indian, either. Only a white man would walk incautiously forward in a straight line.
He squinted as the figure moved out of the shadows of the fir grove. Not a man. A woman! All in black from boots to veiled hat, with a shawl knotted about her shoulders. Something in the tilt of her head…
For one awful moment he thought it was Susanna. A knife slipped into his heart and he snapped the Bible shut. Handing it to O’Malley, he started down the hill.
She did not look up. Her leather shoes scrabbling on the steep rocky slope, she kept walking, dragging a satchel in one hand and a bulging sack in the other. She didn’t slow down until she almost ran into him.
“My stars, where on earth did you come from?”
Tom’s eyebrows rose. “More to the point, ma’am, where in hell did you come from?”
She let go of the satchel, and it plopped onto the ground with a puff of dust. “The supply wagon from Tennant. The driver brought me out on condition that I deliver this.” She thrust the sack toward him.
Tom accepted the bag and peered inside.
“It contains six bars of soap, a dozen lemons and two bottles of spirits. He said it would hold you until next week.”
“Only two bottles?”
She nodded. “One is for medicinal purposes. And six bars of—”
“Lemons?”
“Mr. Jacobs said they were to combat scurvy.”
Tom stared at her. Her eyes were a curious shade of gray-green, almost the color of tree moss.
“Besides delivering Mose Jacobs’s scurvy remedy, what are you doing out here?”
Her spine went rigid as a tent pole. “I am calling on Mr. Peabody. Walter Peabody.”
“Why?” Tom said carefully.
“It is a personal matter, sir. Between Mr. Peabody and myself. If you would be so kind as to conduct me—”
“Peabody’s dead.”
Her face went the color of chalk. “I beg your pardon?”
“An accident. His ax slipped and he bled to death.”
The stricken look on her face sent a band of cold steel around his chest.
“But…” Her voice wobbled. “He can’t be! We were to be married. I came all the way from South Carolina to marry him.”
“I’m real sorry, ma’am. We’re just burying him this morning.”
“I see.” She swallowed and lifted her chin. “Yes, I do see.”
Tom stood rooted before her, wondering why he couldn’t speak.
“May I…view his remains? You see, we never met. I have no idea what he…” She pressed her lips together.
He could not bear to look at her face. Except for her unsmiling mouth and her pallor, she could be any pretty young woman out for a Sunday walk. He’d seen Union soldiers with less composure.
Tom hesitated. His left eyelid began to twitch. Lifting the travel satchel from the ground, he pivoted away from her. “Come with me.”
Meggy followed him up the hill, his low, tersely spoken words sending a swarm of butterflies into her stomach. She stepped on the hem of her dress, stumbled over protruding tree roots as she tried to keep up with his long-legged stride. Where the ground leveled out near a stand of fir trees, he stopped short. “Coffin’s over there, next to the grave. Best hurry before we nail it shut.”
Her heart hurtled into her throat. She had seen bodies before. Old men. Young men. Federal soldiers as well as Confederate. Why was she so frightened now?
She took a step forward. In the coffin before her lay a slight man with pale-gold hair and mustache, a narrow chin and thin lips.
She stood absolutely still. It was a mistake to look at him, but she couldn’t help herself. Walter Peabody would have been her husband, had he lived. She had traveled all the way from Seton Falls to be this man’s wife. And now…now…
Now she was not only unmarried, she was also in a fix, stranded out here alone among a bunch of exceedingly rough-looking men. Yankee men. And she had not one single penny in her pocket.
“Seen enough?” A low voice spoke at her back.
“Oh. Oh, yes, I expect so. Thank you. I—”
“Okay, Swede, close it up.”
“Sure thing, Tom.” The big man dropped the lid on the box.
Meggy’s legs turned to jelly, and she looked away.
Then a steadying arm pressed under her elbow. “Name’s Michael O’Malley, ma’am. I’m thinkin’ you’d be Miss Hampton?”
She nodded at the russet-haired man. He wore a wash-worn Union Army shirt, faded stripes still intact, and wide red suspenders. A Yankee. She started to pull away, but she was so unsteady on her feet she could not stand alone. She let him guide her to the edge of the grave, where the bearded Swede was nailing down the coffin lid. Each blow of the man’s hammer sent a tremor through her body.
Whatever would she do now? Walter had paid her train fare, but the stagecoach to Tennant had taken all of her meager savings. Here she was, in a godforsaken wilderness with no money and no prospects.
The tall man, Tom, opened the Bible and cleared his throat. “The Lord is my shepherd….”
Meggy’s throat tightened. Poor Walter! Cut down in the prime of his life, with no kin to mourn for him except her.
“He leadeth me beside…”
She moved her lips silently over the words of the psalm. Would Walter Peabody rest in peace among Yankees?
“Yea, though I walk through the valley…”
She opened her mouth and joined in. Tom shot her a glance over the top of the plain wood coffin. The look on his face stopped her breath.
Eyes as sharp as a steel saber cut into her. The blue was so intense her mind conjured the morning glories she’d planted against the back fence of the parsonage. Dear Lord, he looked so angry!
“…in the house of the Lord forever. Amen.” He slapped the Bible shut. “Funeral’s over.”
Meggy gasped. “Oh, surely not,” she blurted. “Should we not…” She racked her brain. With him looking at her that way, his mouth hard, his jaw muscle working, every thought she had flew right out of her head.
“…sing?” she supplied at last. “Perhaps a hymn?”
He pinned her to the spot with those eyes, like two blue bolts of lightning. “No damned hymns.” His voice spit the words.
Her frame stiffened from her toes to the top of her head. “Why not?”
“Peabody was a good man. A bit soft, but no hypocrite. I won’t sully a decent burial by mangling some hymn none of us can remember.”
She stared at him so long her eyes began to burn. And then, still holding his gaze, she opened her mouth and began to sing. “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound….”
The Swede chimed in, then another voice. Mr. O’Malley and two more joined in, and finally everyone was singing.
Except for the tall man with the Bible.
Defiantly, Meggy began the second stanza. “I once was lost, but now am found….”
He stood rigid as a rifle barrel until the song ended, then stuffed the Bible in his belt and reached for the shovel stuck in the loosened earth. The Swede and another man with straight black hair that hung past his collar hefted the coffin into the waiting grave.
A shovelful of dirt plopped onto the pine box, and Meggy’s heart constricted. North or South, the sound of earth on a coffin lid was the same. By the time the war ended, she’d attended enough burials to last a lifetime.
She struggled to think clearly as the dirt clods rained down. Walter Peabody had been her last hope. With all the males in Seton Falls under the age of 16, or over 60 or dead, she’d come west out of desperation. She wanted a husband. Children.
But now she was neither grieving sweetheart nor bereaved widow, but still plain Mary Margaret Hampton, oldest of six sisters and a spinster at twenty-five.
Numb with disbelief, she bent her head, clasped her hands under her chin and closed her eyes. Lord, it’s me again. I entreat you to give this man, Walter Wade Peabody, a place in your kingdom where he may rest in peace. It isn’t his fault he left this world in an untimely manner. I assure you, his intentions were entirely honorable. Amen.
When she opened her eyes, the tall man with the Bible was gone.
“Miss Hampton?” A hand touched her elbow. “Colonel’d like to see you. First tent left of the cookhouse, yonder.” The red-haired sergeant pointed to an unpainted wood shack, twice as long as it was wide, on the other side of a clearing. Smoke poured out the chimney at one end.
“The cookhouse, yes, I see it.” Her mind felt fuzzy, as if her head were stuffed with cotton bolls. She started up the hill behind Mr. O’Malley.
When they reached the tent, her guide rapped twice on the support pole and pushed aside the flap. Through the opening she spied the tall man lounging on a tumbled cot, his feet propped on a makeshift plank desk, which rested on two thick log rounds.
“Here she is, Colonel.”
The tall man stood up, his dark hair brushing the canvas ceiling. Mr. O’Malley stepped away from Meggy and lowered his voice. “You read that letter yet, Tom?”
“Not yet. Fetch us some coffee, will you?”
“Colonel, I wish you’d read—”
“Coffee, Mick. Pronto.”
The sergeant gestured to the neatly made-up cot on the opposite side of the tent. “Have a seat, ma’am. Won’t be a minute.” The flap swished shut.
Meggy remained standing. “I’m sure I should not be here, sir. This is a gentleman’s private quarters.” She stared at a coal-black raven in a cage hung from the tent pole.
Tom chuckled. “Not private. And I’m not a…Anyway, sit down. This won’t take long.”
With reluctance Meggy perched on the edge of the cot. The warm air inside the tent was thick with the smell of leather and sweat. Man smells. Not unpleasant, just…different. Strong. Pungent, her sister Charlotte would have said. Charlotte wrote poetry.
Tom settled on the unmade cot opposite her, repropped his boots on the plank desk and looked her over with a penetrating gaze. “What do you plan to do, now that Peabody’s…gone?”
Meggy’s mind went blank. “Do?”
“Ma’am, you can’t marry a dead man.”
The sergeant bustled in with two chipped mugs of something that looked dark and sludgy. He handed one to Meggy and set the other near the colonel’s crossed boots. “There’s no cream. Fong churned it all into butter.”
Meggy removed her gloves and took a sip of the lukewarm brew. It tasted like the coffee she had concocted out of dried grain and sassafras root during the war. She sipped again and choked. Worse. This tasted like chopped-up walnut shells mixed with turpentine.
O’Malley sidled closer to Tom and bent over the desk. “Read that letter yet?”
Tom downed a double gulp of the coffee. “Nope.”
“If I was you, Colonel, sir, I might do that right now.” He gestured at Tom’s shirt pocket.
Meggy rose at once. “Forgive me, sir. I must not keep you from your business.”
“Tom, for the love of God, read the damn letter! Beggin’ your pardon, ma’am.”
Tom glared at his sergeant, then dug in his pocket and withdrew a folded paper. It crackled as he spread it flat. Meggy found herself watching. There was something odd about the way Mr. O’Malley danced near Tom’s shoulder, grinning at her.
Tom scanned the words, then drew his black eyebrows into a frown. “That son of a gun,” he muttered. “I wonder when he found the time?”
“Might explain why Peabody looked so peaked the last few months. Must’ve come off the peeling crew and worked half the night on his own, I’m thinkin’.”
Meggy looked from one to the other. What were they talking about?
