Defy the Sunset: Li'l Bud Book 2

By William Reynolds

Sent north from the war-ravaged battlefields of Virginia to learn photography under the tutelage of Matthew Brady in New York City, Ruth Danson encounters new dangers more lethal than any she has ever imagined. Torn between her heart's desire to return to the cavalry of Mosby's Rangers and the man she loves, Private William Jay Lytell, and a newer and perhaps more compelling lure found in the green eyes of the handsome, ever charming, and always sinister businessman, R.J. Flaherty, Li'l Bud must decide before forces she cannot control overwhelm her . A guest in the house of the famed actor, Edwin Booth, Ruth is captivated by the glitter of the city with its theaters and elegant restaurants and the growing presence of Flaherty, a man who will go to any length to get what he wants.

Evading Pinkerton's detectives who shadow her believing she is a spy for the Confederacy; protected by a man employed as an agent by the Confederacy; Li'l Bud finds herself more and more drawn back to what she believes might be safer ground than the suffocating world of the big city , the blood-soaked landscape of Virginia.

It's the winter of 1865 and Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee are preparing for what both know will be the final battle when spring arrives. William Jay has left Mosby and now rides with the cavalry of the Army of Northern Virginia, craving as much action as he can find to keep his heart from the ache of missing his Li'l Bud. Will Ruth remain in New York ensnared by the alluring world of R.J. or will she ride south where a pair of Colt .44s, a chestnut filly she calls Princess, and the arms of William Jay await her?

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Sep 19, 2014
• ISBN: 9781491746974

Book preview

PROLOGUE

She pressed her back against the door, and released a huge sigh as soon as the train lurched forward, pulling out of the New Brunswick, New Jersey station. Her eyes quickly roamed over the coach, searching for anyone who remotely resembled the Pinkerton detectives she was nearly certain she had lost on the platform with the help of her escort. His plan for them to depart the train on which they had arrived from Philadelphia, double back to it as if they were resuming their journey, and then exit on the far side, racing around the rear across the platform for the New Brunswick train, was sheer brilliance in her eyes. A tiny smile appeared on her face. She nudged her escort.

Wade, I think we’re home-free, she clutched her canvas bag to her chest.

He nodded. Take a look through the first window across the aisle.

It’s them; all three of them! Li’l Bud’s smile broadened.

The three Pinkertons appeared agitated, confused, knowing they had been given the slip by her. One pointed to the departing train. The other two looked and then nodded their agreement to whatever their leader spoke.

Her escort led her to some seats at the far end of the car away from the four other occupants. After they sat, she asked him to return her .44 Colt, which he did, reluctantly.

You know they’re going to contact someone at the New York end of this trip, don’t you? He shook his head. That gun is a violation of your safe-conduct pass.

Yes, it is, and so is their attempting to follow me and no doubt try to arrest me on some trumped-up charges. She stowed the heavy Colt inside her canvas bag, but kept one hand on it. They don’t believe I am going to learn photography with Mathew Brady. I don’t know what they think I’m doing, but they just won’t accept the fact I am out of the war. She squeezed her lips tight. Her eyes were fierce with anger. I’ve ridden with Colonel Mosby for nearly…

Her escort put a finger against her lips. You need to keep your voice down and not use names like that. He looked back over his shoulder. He felt better when the other passengers appeared to be preoccupied with their newspapers or else were sleeping.

Okay, but I fought since ’63 and now that’s all over. She looked pleadingly at her tall escort, a young man recently discharged from the Union army. He had gladly agreed to be her escort to New York where he would then board a train to his home in Pennsylvania. She appeared feisty, was definitely pretty, and her company would be relaxing, possibly exciting. He actually felt honored.

Did you ever think they might consider your photography story to be nothing but a ruse? He raised his eyes, recognizing that even he wasn’t too sure of her real motives.

A ruse? She laughed. Oh that’s rich. A ruse for what?

Well, he thought for a few seconds, how about you’re really an agent, a spy for the Confederacy heading north for, he looked to the ceiling of the car, for the purpose of burning the city. He winked at her. You know, I hear tell some Rebs tried just that last year.

Li’l Bud sat back and laughed. You have a wonderful sense of humor, Mister Day! She looked slowly around as if she was about to reveal the details of a grand conspiracy. A spy; yes, that’s it, on a secret mission for you-know-who. She slapped him on a knee. I’ll tell you one thing is for sure. It is going to be one interesting time in New York City; a memorable adventure I wish you could see.

They both laughed and chided each other with increasingly wilder plots, plans, and conspiracies. Ruth Danson wished it was Jay sitting opposite, but that day would come. She laughed aloud again.

I can’t wait to get to that big Yankee city. Oh this is going to be a wild time.

PART ONE

New York City

CHAPTER 1

COBBLESTONES AND TRENCHES

Silver drapes of moonlight unfurled to kiss Ruth Danson’s fluttering eyelids. Her dark brown eyes eased open to the light that filtered through the white curtains and fell across the crook of her left arm. Small dots of reddish-brown freckles interspersed with strands of light brown hair on her arm filled her vision. She raised her head from her left forearm and blinked several times. Ruth smiled as she stretched her arm in front of her, and rubbed it with her right hand to restore the circulation. She yawned and then smiled when she thought of her William Jay. She wondered if Jay was watching the moon in Virginia right this moment, as she was in the sky over New York City. The warmth in her heart told her he was doing just that, thinking of his Li’l Bud.

She pushed the chair away from the mahogany desk, and stood up to stretch when the sharp flash of light from a struck match caught her attention. Ruth peered through the single window of her room to the north side of Twentieth Street and the fenced-in gardens of Gramercy Park. She watched the flickering yellow flame dip into and then rise from the bowl in response to pipe holder’s puffing. The gas lamps that rose above the high black iron fence on the perimeter of the park illuminated the pipe smoker in a bath of soft yellow light that elongated and exaggerated his shadow on the sidewalk. The man’s creeping specter changed length and shape with each of his movements, reminding Ruth of the distorted images she’d seen in the peculiar mirrors at the Barnum Museum the previous Sunday. It was also the first time she’d noticed that men were following and watching her.

Damn Pinkertons, she growled. Ruth knew either they were the same men who had tried to follow her ten days ago on the train ride from Philadelphia to Jersey City on New Year’s Day; or they were local agents based in New York City. In either case, she knew the Yankees had found her.

Ruth peered through the lacey white curtains. She watched as a second man arrived, and immediately urged the pipe smoker to move further away from the gas lamps. His animated movements and gestures showed her he was agitated by the smoker’s incautious action in revealing his position first when he lit his pipe, and then by standing too close to the gas lamps. Twice she saw the new arrival point toward her window. She smiled.

Fools, she whispered, with wry amusement, if you think I hadn’t seen you before tonight.

It was not just on Sunday, when Edwin Booth had taken Ruth, his mother Mary, and his three-year-old daughter, Edwina, to visit P. T. Barnum’s American Museum on Lower Broadway, that she’d spotted the Pinkertons. Several nights after she had arrived as a guest at the home of the world famous Shakespearean actor, Edwin Booth, Ruth, while she sat on one of the benches scattered throughout the park, had caught sight of a man watching her through the fence surrounding the gardens of Gramercy Park. The man’s looks weren’t those of a casual admirer or potential suitor with a smile on his face, but rather the humorless, surreptitious glances of a suspicious, and possibly dangerous observer. Ruth thought she had evaded the Pinkertons with some help from her escort, Corporal Wade Day of the Union army’s Pennsylvania Ringgold Cavalry, when they’d engineered a double-switch between trains at the New Brunswick, New Jersey station, but she now realized her suspicions were correct.

Ruth glanced over to a corner of her room. Slumped against the octagonal mahogany night table on the right side of her bed was her gray-green canvas satchel. Inside was her revolver, an 1860 Army Colt .44 that she carried when she’d ridden with Confederate Colonel John Singleton Mosby’s 43rd Battalion of Virginia Cavalry, better known and feared by the Union Army of the Potomac as Mosby’s Rangers.

Ruth again glanced through window. Both men held the upturned collars of their long dark coats tight around their necks to ward off the cold wind. How would you detectives like it if I trotted outside and pointed my .44 at both of you? Her brown eyes flared in anger.

Photography, she snarled. I’m here to learn how to use a camera. She hooked her thumbs inside the waistband of her gray twill pants. Everyone wanted me out of the war, she whispered, and now I’m out of it. Ruth took a deep breath and glared down at the men. Leave—me—alone! she said through clenched teeth.

The two men had moved away from the park gate in a too-late attempt to escape the glowing yellow lights of the gas lamps. The scant shadows in which they stood provided only partial obscurity as she could still see them talking to each other, and looking up at her second-story window. Her long slender fingers traced the outline of the raised bronze initials, CSA— Confederate States of America—on the oval buckle of her wide black belt. Her eyes narrowed, and her mouth stretched into a sarcastic grin.

I could arrange to get back into your war, if that’s what you’d like. As soon as the words were out, she realized she had no idea how she could manage such a feat. She smirked. "You should know, if I believe it’s necessary, I will find a way to leave here and rejoin Mosby."

Ruth raised her arms over her head, and stretched them as far as she was able toward the white-painted ceiling. Damn you people, she said with a mixture of anger and frustration. Her brown eyes returned to the desk and the flickering candle that glowed through the milk-glass globe. She watched its soft light dance on the white linen letter paper on which she’d been writing before she had rested her head on her arms and fallen asleep. Ruth sat on the spindle-backed chair and pulled it closer to the rectangular desk.

She read what she’d written in the upper-left corner of the letter, Wednesday, January 11, 1865 Gramercy Park, New York City. With her left hand, she traced the outline of her salutation: My Dearest William Jay. It was all she’d written before she fell asleep. It was her tenth letter, one for each day, since she’d arrived in the city. The previous nine letters she kept in the center draw of the desk. This one she’d also add to the packet followed by the eleventh, twelfth, and however many more she’d write for as long as she and Jay were apart. She had no hope of mailing them without an address. Ruth chuckled at the thought of addressing them to William Jay Lytell, astride his beautiful shiny bay, Southern Thunderbolt, with Mosby’s Rangers, somewhere in Virginia. She shook her head at the silliness of her thoughts. Even if she did have an address, Ruth was sure the Union army was not going to begin operating a private courier service for Li’l Bud and William Jay.

Ruth picked up her black pen and dipped the gold nib into the ink jar she’d placed near the top edge of the letter. As she touched the pen to the paper, she reached across the desk with her left arm and parted the curtains. The Pinkertons were still across the street, shifting their feet and rocking their bodies from side-to-side, no doubt feeling the biting effects of the cold night. She smiled and looked down at the writing paper and noticed that her pen had left a black blob of ink just below her greeting. Ruth stared at it, feeling her eyes drawn into a deep abyss from which no light escaped. A strong dizzy feeling swept over her, a lightheadedness that spun her mind into an uncontrolled whirling darkness blacker than any night she’d known.

Images of soldiers, dark silhouettes outlined against a moonless sky, crept into view of her mind’s eye. Small groups of three and four men marched across her mental stage, one group behind the other, their heads and shoulders barely visible above the jagged edge of the trench through which they hurried in silence. Brief sparks of light from the crackling embers of dying campfires glinted from the dark barrels of the rifles they cradled in their arms.

Ruth shook her head to clear this whirling sensation. She blinked several times to refocus her vision and pull her mind back from what she knew were ghost-like images of Confederate soldiers astir in the death-filled landscape of Virginia. She pushed her chair away from the desk and stood, her chest heaving from a shortness of breath born in the misty fog of her reverie.

Jay, she whispered, almost expecting to hear him respond. She turned to left and faced the mirror on the wall above the dressing table. Jay, I belong by your side, no matter what happens.

Ruth looked at her reflection in the mirror. She untied the black ribbon from her ponytail, and shook her auburn-streaked brown hair until the ends swept the top of her narrow shoulders. Continuing to watch herself, unsmiling and pensive, she opened the buttons of her faded-white long-sleeved muslin shirt, dropped it onto her bed, and then pulled her thin camisole over her head. She poured some water from a pitcher into the white porcelain washbasin that rested on the center of the table. She dipped her hands into the basin, and soothed her face with the cool water before looking back into the mirror. The coolness of the water sent a refreshing shiver through her slender five-foot seven-inch body as she rubbed her neck and shoulders. She watched her slow moving hands cover and caress her small, firm breasts. She tilted her head back, closed her eyes, and imagined the touch of Jay’s hands on her body. She recalled the tingling sensations she’d felt when he’d counted the freckles on her shoulders with his lips. Her body swayed with the sensory remembrance of the warm waves of arousal that had washed over her when his hands had first touched her breasts. Ruth’s fingertips slid down to her waist but it was Jay’s hands, hard and yet gentle, that she felt opening her belt buckle, undoing her pant buttons, and sliding her gray trousers down to her ankles. She opened her eyes, and saw her lips pressed lightly together, a dreamy look of longing for him smiling back at her from the mirror.

It isn’t fair, she shook her head, it’s just not right, Jay; not right at all. Ruth turned her back to the mirror, and picked up the long white cotton nightshirt that lay folded on her bed. She slid her arms through the sleeves, raised the shirt over her head, and let the garment cascade down to her knees with caressing, clinging warmth. You in Virginia and me here, she continued her monologue while walking back to the desk, just doesn’t feel right. She opened the center draw of the desk. I’m sorry I allowed Mosby to convince me to come here. Ruth removed a thin packet of letters from the draw. I want to be back in Virginia riding with you, Jay.

She held the thin packet of nine letters, and ran her fingers along the narrow light-purple ribbon that tied them together. Mary Booth had seen Ruth caressing the letters late one afternoon, and without Ruth having asked, Mary later returned with the purple ribbon. Mrs. Booth hadn’t asked a single question, but had smiled with that unspoken acknowledgement and understanding common in woman-to-woman communication; one that always left most men baffled.

A dolorous expression stole over Ruth’s face. Deep feelings of loneliness, that inner sense of being lost and drifting alone in an unfamiliar world, gripped her. Ruth pressed the packet of letters against her bosom, closed her eyes, and dreamt of the day when she and Jay would sit near a hearth’s fire and read the letters together. She imagined the expressions that would color his face as they read her accounts of her trip to New York, and her everyday life in the cold Yankee city. Ruth quivered with images of Jay cuddling against her while they read. She embraced these waves of future memories for several minutes until a strong and determined idea brought her back to the present.

If Mr. Booth didn’t have any news over the next few days as to when Mathew Brady would return to his New York photo gallery from his latest trip to the battlefields of Virginia, she told herself, and if Brady’s assistant, Alexander Gardner, was unable, or unwilling to begin training her in the art of photography, then she was going to leave this damnable Yankee city. She would return to Virginia, somehow, someway, despite John Mosby, his Rangers, the Pinkertons, or the entire Federal army.

She sighed in frustration. Oh Jay, what are we going to do? She returned the packet of letters to the desk drawer, and took out the small wooden star Jay had carved for her last Christmas. She closed her hands around it and raised it to brush against her lips. She felt his heart beating in the star with a throbbing that stoked her own heart-fire into an unquenchable burning for him.

The plinking of sleet against her window once again diverted her attention to the Pinkertons. Ruth rose from the chair, leaned across the desk, and parted the curtains with both hands.

The two detectives were pacing back and forth on the sidewalk in a futile effort to find some warmth in what had turned into a cold, wet, winter night. The Pinkerton closest to the main entrance gate to the park spotted her at the window, and motioned with his right arm for his partner to join him. They spoke a few quick words, and then one of them began crossing the street toward her house. He stepped down from the curb, and stopped as a westbound two-horse drawn carriage clattered past him over the wet cobblestones. He then raced across the street, disappeared from her view beneath the overhang of the second-floor balcony.

You idiots must think I’m planning on going out tonight. Ruth smirked in tight-lipped defiant amusement. Ha, she laughed at their late-night farce. She glanced at the candle on the desk, then back to the window, and smiled. So long as you think I’m awake, and ready to run right outside for God-only-knows-what-reason, then I think it’s only fair for me to play along with your game.

She walked to her room door and listened for any sounds from the downstairs hallway near the front door that would tell her if the out-of-view Pinkerton was going to attempt to gain entrance to the house. It was quiet. She knew Edwin Booth’s daughter was asleep as was Mrs. Booth who rarely waited for Edwin to return home from his nightly performance as Hamlet. The Pinkertons won’t try to gain entrance to the house, she thought, but will stay outside until they see her room light go out, and assume she’s gone to bed for the night. Ruth’s small face brightened with an impish grin.

She crossed the room to the night table and grabbed her canvas satchel. If you want to play games, she chuckled, then let’s play games. She took out her .44 Colt, and walked back to the desk. She glanced once through the window, and then moved the glass lamp toward the center of the desk making sure the Pinkertons had a clear view of her illuminated room. I hope you Yankees freeze to death.

Ruth turned down the bed covers, fluffed the two large down-filled pillows, and put her revolver beneath them. She slid beneath the covers, pulled them up to her neck, and rolled onto her left side. She kissed the wooden star she held in her right hand. Slowly, she closed her eyes. Enjoy the evening, boys, she chuckled, hoping the sleet turned to snow, and buried the Pinkertons in a drift. Ruth slid deeper under the covers, images of William Jay snuggling close to his Li’l Bud, keeping her warm.

CHAPTER 2

WILLIAM JAY

Jay hunched down into his thigh-length gray wool coat and raised his collar to keep the cold breeze off his neck. He sat back against a thick oak tree mingled among some tall pines, wrapped his arms around his tented legs, and rested his forehead on his knees. The snow had stopped falling during the last hour, but the clouds remained thick, gray, and ominous. After two days of a steady wind-driven rain, the temperatures in the Shenandoah Valley had plummeted well below freezing, hardening the muddy ground beneath a thick blanket of snow. Only a light dusting of snow, however, had penetrated the canopy of the tall dense pines beneath which Jay had taken shelter from the storm.

Jay’s thoughts turned to Ruth Danson, his Li’l Bud. His pangs of hunger and thoughts about the war disappeared when the warmth of her smile filled him with a dreamy light-headed sensation. He could almost smell the soft scented fragrance of lavender soap in her brown hair as he had on that summer afternoon back in ’64 when they’d rested together along the banks of the Shenandoah River…

The sudden snort of a horse struck Jay’s ears like a clap of thunder. He raised his head from his knees in a flash. The sight of a lone Yankee rider staring and searching in his direction no more than forty yards to his right froze Jay in position. Jay looked past the rider to avoid eye contact. Staring at the Yankee would be the same as watching a person sleeping—sooner or later, the sleeper will awaken with the uneasy feeling of someone watching them. Jay didn’t move except to allow his blue eyes to roam over the snowy terrain though his arms ached to draw the pair of .44 Colts he wore around his waist. Although he saw only the lone scout, Jay knew other Yankees could be in the area, maybe right now closing in behind him from the south. All of his senses sharpened, alert for the slightest intrusion of sound. A whispering voice, the hard crunching of snow beneath a horse’s step or the boot of a soldier, even the quiet creaking of saddle leather wouldn’t escape his notice. His body coiled; his muscles taut and powerful with every sinew poised to spring into action like a startled snake. Unwilling to risk any movement unless danger left him no alternative, Jay knew he could remain motionless for as long as was necessary.

The Union scout halted his chestnut horse when he saw snow fall from several pine boughs exposing their green nakedness against a backdrop of white no more than forty or fifty yards south of his position along the west bank of the slushy, ice-laden Shenandoah River two miles below Front Royal. His dark eyes narrowed as he adjusted the chinstrap of his blue forage cap, scratched his thick scraggly black beard with his right hand, and squinted to pierce the perimeter of the woods, and discover who or what had disturbed the snow-laden boughs. Thin wisps of frosted breath meandered skyward from his nose. With the reins tightly gripped in his left hand, the Yankee scout moved his left arm across his chest and steadied his Sharps carbine on his forearm. He sighted along the barrel at the drooping green boughs. He took several short breaths to steady his aim. His right index finger caressed the trigger.

This sole rider was one of several scouts who were part of Union General George Armstrong Custer’s hard-riding, devastating cavalry division of General Phil Sheridan’s Army of the Shenandoah. His mission, the mission of all the Union scouts in January of 1865 throughout the Valley and east of the Blue Ridge Mountains across central and northern Virginia, was to locate bands of Confederate Colonel John Singleton Mosby’s guerrillas, and identify and punish their civilian supporters. Mosby’s men continued to wreak havoc and destruction on Union lines of supply and communication; their railroad tracks, cars, and engines; and multiple trestles and bridges throughout the northern Shenandoah Valley; in the passes of the Blue Ridge Mountains; and across that northern part of Virginia from the Blue Ridge to the outskirts of Washington City, known as Mosby’s Confederacy. Phil Sheridan’s plan was to enable his cavalry to be in position to rapidly respond to any location where his scouts found Mosby’s men, then attack, pursue, and kill them without hesitation.

The scout carefully scanned the landscape, his ears attuned for the slightest sound. He was highly alert and nervous, but determined to locate the rider of the horse he’d been tracking in the new-fallen snow for close to a mile, until the horse’s tracks had suddenly vanished along the west bank of the Shenandoah River. When the snow had fallen from the trees, he was convinced he’d again found his prey. He was aware that Custer had confiscated most of the horses his cavalry had found stabled on the farms that he’d ordered burned in the summer and fall of ’64, and for this reason, he discounted the possibility that the rider he searched for was a civilian. He knew he was on the trail of one of Mosby’s Rebels, a bushwhacker who could right now be drawing a bead on him from the sanctuary of the woods.

He kept his eyes riveted on the pines as an uneasy feeling caused his neck to ache. The scout released a large breath of frosty air through his snow-speckled beard. His chest heaved with several deep breaths as his anxiousness began to wane. He lowered his left forearm slowly, bringing his Sharps carbine to rest across his lap. Once again, he searched the terrain with dark squinting eyes before tightening the knot of the blue wool scarf he’d tied over his cap, down over his ears, and beneath his chin. He released one last foggy breath of frustration, and urged his chestnut to the north, away from the woods. He walked his horse cautiously through the powdery snow that covered thin and treacherous patches of ice, his carbine poised to deliver a killing shot.

Jay, his blue eyes narrowing beneath the brim of his black-plumed black hat, watched each step the Yankee’s horse took; each step that opened more distance between the two of them. With measured deliberateness, Jay crawled into a prone position behind a fallen snow-encrusted gnarled limb of rotted oak. A pair of twisted branches provided a V-shaped perch that helped Jay to steady the cold barrel of his carbine in their juncture. He laid his hat on the limb, sighted along the top of the Spencer’s twenty-two inch black barrel, and aligned the sights on the base of the Yankee’s neck. Jay fondled the trigger with the tip of his right index finger, feeling the curving contour of the cold metal. When he saw the scout pause and begin to rub the back of his head with a yellow-gloved hand, a sly smile creased Jay’s face. The distance was still under one hundred yards which was well within the carbine’s range of accuracy for someone who was as proficient with weapons as Jay was and had been since he’d first learned how to walk. He held his breath, knowing the scout was beginning to sense the flight of the lethal projectile that was about to end his life. The carbine became a part of Jay; an extension of his body no less attached to him than were his arms. He pictured the bullet exiting the dark spiraled tunnel of the carbine in a flaming explosion the scout wouldn’t live long enough to hear, but Jay knew in his mind that the shot would come from him, from inside of him, and not from the lethal tooling of a gunsmith. The rifle was a tool, an instrument turned deadly only by the intent of the man using it. Jay suddenly released his breath and took his finger off the cold metal trigger. He lowered his head to rest against the walnut stock of the carbine. Jay rubbed his forehead against the wooden stock for several moments before grasping the weapon with both hands and rolling onto his back. He sprawled on the light dusting of snow and stared at the gray sky through an opening in the snow-flecked green canopy. His mouth was as dry as cotton with a lump in his throat that hindered swallowing.

I can’t do it, he whispered. He thought about the sound of the shot, the explosion that would reverberate through the mountains with sharp echoes that not even the blankets of snow would mute and keep from alerting any Yankees in the area. Jay shook his head. He knew this thought was defensive—a way for him to ignore the real reason why he’d failed to pull the trigger. One after another, conflicting thoughts began to pile up in his mind. It was not war but murder to shoot the enemy in the back in a one-on-one encounter such as this. On the other hand, a foe left alive could become a fatal danger to him in the future. Jay squeezed his eyes closed. The Yankee no doubt had a family that loved him; a wife who prayed for her husband’s safety; and children who longed for their father’s return.

For a split second, Jay felt a pain behind his eyes as the imagined sounds of children crying ripped through his head. Within seconds, these sounds gave way to a fiercer, sharper pain. It was a vision of his Li’l Bud lying dead on the hard blood-stained snow that gripped him.

Jay flung himself forward onto his stomach and back to his sharpshooter’s perch. He aimed his carbine at the Yankee scout. A cold sweat broke out on his furrowed forehead. His hands began to tremble. He looked up from the carbine’s sight, and saw that the scout had turned back toward him, and in fact, had closed the distance between them to about sixty yards before he once again stopped.

Jay grabbed his hat, stood up, and kept his carbine pointed toward the ground. He looked directly at the Yankee who instantly spotted him just inside of the shadows of the tree line, and swung his carbine around. The scout hesitated when he saw Jay’s weapon was not threatening him. Both men looked at each other over the snowy landscape. The scout knew that Jay could have killed him very easily. Jay knew the Yank could fire and bring him down before he had the chance to raise his carbine to fire. The same question occupied each man’s mind. They were enemies; it was a war; why not kill the other, and have done with it?

Jay stepped back closer to where he had tied his horse. Puzzled by this, the stone-faced scout moved his chestnut a few steps closer. He watched as Jay stretched his right leg behind him and up over an outcropping of rocks and fallen branches. When his left leg followed, Jay stood a few feet higher on the incline of the woods closer to a more densely clustered area of trees. The scout raised his carbine level with his burly chest. Jay stopped when he saw the scout’s movement.

Here, boy, Jay angled his head to the right toward Southern Thunderbolt, his big muscular bay who stood fifteen feet behind him between two oak trees. He kept both his eyes focused on the scout while he listened to Thunderbolt walking up behind him.

The scout’s eyes narrowed when he saw the large bay approach Jay. What are you up to, Reb? He kept his finger cocked on the trigger. I could drop you right now before you get on that nag. Another short burst of frosted breath escaped through his beard into the winter air. He tensed and gritted his teeth when he saw Jay place his left foot in the stirrup and slowly mount the horse.

Jay held his Spencer across his lap Let’s move out of here nice and easy, he whispered to Thunderbolt. He watched the scout while easing Thunderbolt over some fallen logs and branches. An eerie stillness was all that filled the space between both of them as they each took the measure of the other. Jay smiled and waved his hat high in salute to the Yankee.

Well, I’ll be damned, the scout laughed at the sight of the black plume on Jay’s hat waving in the breeze. I was right, he shrugged inside of his coat. I’ve was tracking one of Mosby’s Rangers. The scout switched the carbine into his left hand and brought his yellow-gloved right hand to the brim of his blue forage cap. He returned Jay’s salute, then reached forward and rubbed his chestnut’s dark-brown mane. His body relaxed as the tension slipped away from him. Two more days, boy, and then we’re done with this war; home to see the missus and my little ones in Ohio.

Seeing the dissipation of the once feared forces of the Confederacy in the Shenandoah Valley, Union General Ulysses Simpson Grant recalled some of his troops from the Valley in early January to bolster the Army of the Potomac, entrenched opposite Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s diminished, but still dangerous Army of Northern Virginia.

The Confederate soldiers, suffering from the effects of hunger and a severe shortage of clothing and shoes worsened by the harshness of the particularly frigid Virginia winter, faced the Yanks from ice and mud-filled trenches, and from behind log barricades. Their lines snaked over the grounds in a long arc from the outskirts of their capital city of Richmond on the north side of the James River, across the James and Appomattox Rivers for twenty-three miles south to the city of Petersburg and their vital railroad supply lines. It was along this front that General Lee’s lines curved south and west of the city to a stream called Hatcher’s Run. It was siege warfare with 60,000 Confederate soldiers entrenched against General Grant’s powerful host of over 100,000 fighting men.

Grant’s intelligence operatives kept him informed with daily reports concerning the growing number of Confederate soldiers who were deserting and crossing into the Union lines with complaints of hunger, a lack of warm clothing, and a general feeling that their cause was hopeless. Although the numbers weren’t known to Grant’s spies, an increasing number of Confederates were simply dropping their weapons, quitting the army, and striking out for their homes under cover of darkness. However, due to the horrible losses suffered by the Union’s Army of the Potomac the previous spring in Virginia’s Wilderness—over 60,000 men in May and June 1864—plus the fact that the lines of the Army of Northern Virginia bristled with a lethal array of guns and artillery, Grant wanted more troops. He wanted as many troops as he could get to crush the Rebels with an all-out spring offensive. With Confederate activity fading in the Shenandoah Valley, Grant kept his sharp dark eyes on an opportune moment to bring General Phil Sheridan’s 10,000 cavalry from the Shenandoah Valley to Petersburg for the final assault.

While Grant and his staff focused on Lee’s main army, and Confederate President Jefferson Davis concentrated on finding a strong enough army to block Union General Sherman’s northward advancing troops in South Carolina, General Tom Rosser, Confederate cavalry chief in the Valley, attacked a Union force during a fierce winter storm in Beverly, West Virginia. With less than 300 raiders, the Confederate cavalry had managed to capture twice their number along with scores of provisions to send to Lee and his starving army. Carelessness and complacency on the part of the Union forces had permitted this, and Grant realized it was still too early to order Sheridan to join him outside the Rebel lines at Petersburg.

As the U.S. House of Representatives debated the abolition of slavery with the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and as the Confederate raider, CSS Stonewall, sailed from Copenhagen, Denmark bound for Quiberon Bay, France, Jay readied himself to bed down for the night.

He’d ridden deep into the woods on the western slope of the Blue Ridge Mountains northeast of Front Royal after his morning encounter with the Yankee scout. He’d a feeling the Yankee scout wouldn’t report their encounter, but he needed to exercise caution in finding a secure place, just in case his feelings were wrong. Jay also needed a spot where he could rest and come to grips with the ambivalent feelings that had kept him from killing the Yank. If he was going to feel this way every time he crossed paths with a Yankee, he admonished himself, then why not just quit the war and ride away? Jay had no answer to his dilemma.

A gentle sighing breeze wandered through the thick pines, oaks, and hickory trees that cloaked Jay’s safe haven. He arranged a cluster of pine boughs on the ground to buffer him against the cold and provide a soft bed for the night. He set his gray blanket roll down on the boughs to use as a pillow, stretched out to his full six-foot length on the springy pines, and covered himself with his black oilcloth rain slicker. A fire was what he really wanted, but starting one in this area was too risky. The thought pained him. This once peaceful area along the slopes of the Blue Ridge and down into the scenic tranquility of the Shenandoah Valley was the land of his childhood home. It was the area Jay would always call home, no matter where he lived; no matter that it had become a land controlled by his enemy.

Jay reached inside of his threadbare gray overcoat and took out the calico angel doll he kept in his inside pocket against his heart. He held it against the left side of his face, and thought back to last Christmas Eve when Li’l Bud had given it to him at midnight. She had made it from the blouse that Confederate General Ambrose Powell Hill had sent to her for the help she’d given him, enabling his Third Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia to escape a Yankee trap after the Confederate debacle at Gettysburg in July 1863.

Jay stared into the impenetrable darkness of the woods. He recalled how Li’l Bud had recounted her running fight with a detachment of Federal cavalry north of Front Royal. He smiled at the sound of her voice filling his head. He listened to the excitement that had been in her voice when she’d told him of how she’d captured a leather pouch from one of the Yankees she’d killed in that fight. He closed his eyes and visualized her as she’d raced south up the Valley astride Princess, her sleek and swift running white-faced chestnut filly until she’d suddenly come upon the long columns of A. P. Hill’s Confederate soldiers as they’d prepared to ford the Shenandoah River, and head for the passes in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

The pouch had contained a Yankee dispatch that had pinpointed the disposition of the Yankee cavalry and their supporting infantry in General Hill’s area. This intelligence coup had enabled Hill to forestall the Yankee forces, and had prevented them from overwhelming his troops during their mid-river crossing.

Jay held the angel under his nose. His heart and breath quickened at the smell of Ruth’s scent that lingered in the material. He waited for the tears to come, but his blue eyes remained dry. A swath of light filtered down through the tall trees illuminating the foot of Jay’s bed. He gazed upwards in time to see the full moon blink through a small opening in the northward moving clouds. He smiled at thoughts of Li’l Bud perhaps watching the same moon, but his smile was forced, vacant, and lacking the familiar warmth that had never before failed to comfort him on the few occasions when they’d been apart. Jay sat up, raised and bent his legs, and rested his head on his knees. He squeezed the calico doll against his chest, and waited for Li’l Bud warmth to comfort him, but only a cold emptiness gnawed at him.

The sweet melancholy strains of Lorena played in his memory, but the notes of the song were flat, lackluster, and devoid of the enchantment for which he’d hoped. He lay down on his pine bed. Laureen, he whispered her name aloud, Laureen Ruth Danson. It was her full name and though she rarely used it and preferred Ruth after her maternal grandmother, Ruth Mildred or Gram, as she affectionately called her, Jay had never failed to hear the musical flourish of her name when the soldiers gathered around their campfires to sing of their own Lorenas waiting for them back home.

In the silent and tranquil forest on the west slope of the Blue Ridge Mountains beneath a full moon, in the wintry sky over the snow-covered Shenandoah Valley, a nocturnal setting conducive to the fires of romance, Jay felt only a stark cold emptiness in his heart. Each time he closed his eyes to recall images of Li’l Bud, a hazy gray vacancy filled his mind. All of their shared warmth, their special moments together, even an image of the plateau where they’d first kissed near Ashby’s Gap over four years ago, before the war had begun, none of these memories brought forth the warmth and comfort he craved. The loving warmth that had once flowed from his heart to his mind without any conscious effort on his part, now refused his summons. The thick clouds embraced the full moon, and covered Jay with a veil of sleep.

Jay sat upright with a start. He looked into the darkness, but saw nothing move. He heard the absence of sound where not even the night wind with its kisses whispered through the trees. A hazy, milky, undulating image began to take shape not ten feet in front of him. He saw Li’l Bud’s shape outlined against the dark forest. She was dressed in a gown of unknown color; her hair in large curls; her eyes wide and gleaming; her face radiant. The luminous quality of her smile brightened the area around