Brings the Lightning (The Ames Archives Book 1) (5 page)

His father laughed. “I’ll do that. They’ll be glad to have them. You’re not going to stay for the wedding?”

“I reckon not, Pa. I need to move on.”

“I wish you wouldn’t, but I guess I understand. If you’re leaving your horses here, I’ll have Mose drive you to Nashville in our wagon. It’s a three-day journey.” He raised an eyebrow. “You said the horses were ‘spoils of war’?”

Walt shook his head. How could he tell his father that he’d taken them from men he’d killed? “Yeah, but I’d rather not go into it, Pa.”

His father sighed again. After a moment, clearly trying to get off potentially dangerous ground, he smiled and said, “Your Ma always said I was too curious for my own good. Now, will you please trim that great big bush of a beard and get a haircut? I hardly recognized you. You look like the heathen offspring of a broom and a mop!”

Walt laughed. “All right, Pa. I’d been planning on doing that anyway. I’ll get Katie to trim my hair and beard, then have them more properly seen to in Nashville. I’ll have to ask a barber to shave me. I lost my razor somewhere in Virginia last year, and never got round to buying another.”

He extended his glass as his father offered the stone jug.
At least I’ve seen Pa, and made him happy. If I get stuck out west, it may be a long time before I can get back here—and with him lookin’ so poorly, I may never see him again.
It was a painful thought.

―――――

Two days later Walt rode the three miles to Mrs. Eliot’s farm. She was weeding her vegetable garden as he rode up, and straightened as she turned to greet him. As a teenaged boy he’d had an adolescent admiration for her, but always thought of her as an older lady. Seeing her now, he realized she wasn’t all that old. At most, she’d be around thirty—perhaps even younger than that.
She
really is a good-looking woman,
he thought to himself as he regarded her slim, trim, petite figure.
She’s prettier’n I remembered.

“Good morning, Mrs. Eliot. I don’t know if you remember me—Walter Ames?”

“Why,
Walter!
Of course I remember you! I didn’t recognize you with a full beard like that, though. It’s so good to see you again—and such a surprise! We heard you were dead!” She hurried over, placing her hand on his leg as she looked up at him with a beaming smile. “Get down off that horse so I don’t have to stare up at you like this!”

He did so, grinning. “Thanks, Ma’am.”

“Oh, forget that ‘Ma’am’ business! You’re a grown man now, and I’m not an old maid yet. My name’s Rose.”

“Thank you… Rose. It’s hard to say your name after calling you ‘Mrs. Eliot’ or ‘Teacher’ in school.”

She laughed. He liked her smile. “Come inside. I’ll get us some lemonade, then you must tell me everything that’s happened to you since you went off to the war.”

He couldn’t help but notice, as she fetched two glasses of lemonade from the kitchen, that the house had almost no furniture left. She’d clearly sold off most of her possessions to make ends meet. He sat down at the small table with her and tried to describe his years in Virginia, glossing over the bloodshed and the bitter memories, making her laugh with his tales of Southern gentlemen who turned out to be somewhat less than gentlemanly, more often than not.

“Oh, those rascals!” she agreed, smiling. “We had them in Louisiana too. There were some good ones, but some really bad apples as well.”

“What brought you up here from Louisiana?”

“I met Jack in ’55 when he came down to New Orleans on business. He married me and brought me here to his farm. Sadly, we didn’t have long together. He died in ’58 when we had that terrible buggy accident.” She sighed. “I’m going to be sad to leave here. It was first his farm, and then our home, but I guess it’s time.”

He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Actually, that’s why I’m here. You see, I thought I might pay your taxes for you, so you could stay here.”

Her eyes filled with tears. “Oh, Walt, that’s so
kind
of you!—but I couldn’t. I really couldn’t take your money like that.”

“It ain’t my money. I ran into some Yankee bushwhackers in Kentucky who were robbing Southern boys on their way home. When the dust cleared, I came away with all they’d stolen from others. There wasn’t no one to return it to, so I kept it. I’m heading west soon, so I’ll use some of it to buy an outfit for myself before I hit the Plains, but that won’t take all of it. I figure some of it might help you. It seems right somehow to use Yankee thieves’ gold to pay a Southern lady’s Yankee taxes.”

She laughed. “When you put it like that, it does seem fitting, doesn’t it? However, I really don’t want you to do that, Walt. It’s time for me to move on. I should have enough left over from the sale to buy a ticket to St. Louis. I have a friend there who runs a school. She’s promised me a job teaching there, and I can stay with her until I find a place of my own.”

Walt’s eyes lit up. “I’m heading for St. Louis too. I’m taking the riverboat there from Nashville, then crossing Missouri to Kansas City. They’re building up the old Smoky Hill Trail through Kansas to Colorado Territory. I reckon to try my hand out there and see where it takes me. How about this? Let me buy your ticket to St. Louis. That way you can save your money for when you get there. We can travel together next week, if you’d like an escort. In order to keep people from talking, you can say you’re my aunt, and I’ll be your nephew.”

“Why, that’s so
kind
of you, Walt! I’d hate to be a burden, but if you’re sure this is Yankee gold and not your own money, why, what can a Southern lady do but thank you most sincerely?” She giggled, pink with excitement, and he couldn’t help laughing with her.

“I’ll be glad to help you. Mose will be driving me to Nashville in our wagon. It’s a three-day journey. We’ll collect you here a week from today, and overnight in Smithville and Lebanon on the way. We’ll find a good hotel in Nashville while we shop for our needs and wait for the riverboat. I’ll pay for your rooms, of course—or rather, that Yankee gold will.”

“That sounds wonderful, but I really don’t deserve so much help, or so much of your money.” She looked positively guilty.

He shook his head firmly. “I owe it to you, Rose, and that’s a fact. That fine handwriting you taught us at school stood me in good stead writing out notes and reports and dispatches. Being able to write a neat hand kept me alive as a courier, instead of being put into a line regiment where more people died. This is a way for me to thank you for keeping me from ending up like my brother.”

“I was so sorry to hear about him, Walt—and about your mother.” She was silent for a moment, then she smiled. “I’m glad to know my teaching helped you, and I’m glad to hear you still speak so well. I’ve met a number of soldiers whose speech has relapsed terribly. They used to be well-spoken young men, but now their accent and vocabulary have become quite common.”

He flushed. “You’re right, of course, but don’t judge them too harshly. We all found ourselves living in army camps alongside people of all grades of education, or none. That tended to drag everyone down to the lowest level, instead of raising them to the highest. I was guilty of that, too, until my Company’s commanding officer pulled me up about it. He pointed out that I was obviously an educated man, but if I carried on the way I was going, no one would ever know that. I tried to smarten up, and made a point of trying to read good books to feed my mind—although they were hard to find—and speak better, too. That helped me earn promotion to corporal later that year, and sergeant the year after. There was even talk earlier this year of commissioning me as a lieutenant, but the war ended before that could happen.”

“I’m sure your abilities had a lot more to do with your advancement than your speech.”

He shrugged. “It was probably more the casualties in our ranks.”

She nodded, and her eyes softened. “I’m awfully proud of you, Walt. I’m a Southern woman through and through, and I’ll be forever grateful to you for taking a stand for all of us. I’m really sorry we lost, but you did your best. That’s all anyone could ask. Now you’ve come home, and you’re willing to spend some of that liberated Yankee money to help me make a fresh start. That’s so generous, so kind, I really don’t know how to thank you.”

“You can start by giving me some more of this lemonade. We didn’t get any in the army. I’ve missed it.”

Smiling shyly, she took his glass through to the kitchen.

―――――

A few days later he went to the cave and retrieved his guns and the gold. He spent his last day at home cleaning all the weapons and packing them carefully into a blanket roll and a carpetbag.

“I’ve never seen you take so much trouble over anything before, son,” his father said half-teasingly as he watched him.

“I never had to rely on tools to save my life before the war, Pa. I learned early on that if you look after your guns, they’ll look after you. I used to help our unit armorer when I wasn’t scouting or carrying messages. I learned a lot from him.”

“Ever thought of setting up shop as a gunsmith?”

“I’ve thought about it, but I don’t know enough. I’m familiar with all the weapons we used, and some other guns, but there are a lot more out there. If I want to be a proper gunsmith I’ll have to learn how to make a gun from scratch. That’s a tall order. Gunsmiths usually serve an apprenticeship for several years.”

“At least you know enough to be useful. That’s more than some self-styled gunsmiths I’ve known!”

“Do you know any shops around here that might be open to trading guns?”

“There’s a place in Nashville run by a man named Josiah Fitch. When I needed my shotgun repaired, Jim Webber suggested I take it to him. He did a good job for a fair price. You can tell him I sent you, and use Jim’s name too if you want.”

“I’ll do that. Thanks, Pa. By the way, are you still using Grandpa’s muzzle-loader?”

“Yes, I am. It’s still good enough for deer.”

“Would you like this Spencer cavalry carbine? It holds seven rounds, and shoots accurately out to a hundred and fifty yards. It hits hard.”

“Why, sure, son, but only if you don’t need it for your trading. Can you spare it?”

Walt grinned. “Of course I can. I took all my guns from the Yankees, or traded for them with other fellers who took them from the Yankees, so it’s not like I paid cash for them.”
I guess you could say I paid for them in hot lead,
he added silently to himself. He handed the rifle to his father, along with two boxes of cartridges. “I’d get more ammunition soon, if I were you. These have been bounced around on horseback for months, in all sorts of wind and weather. I don’t know whether they’re all still reliable.”

“I’ll get some next time I’m in town. Thank you, son.”

“Don’t tell Katie’s Jim where you got it. I’m not supposed to have brought any weapons back from the war.”

Walt turned his attention to the Green River knife he’d taken from the youngest bushwhacker. It had been sharpened so often that it had been ground down to only about half its original width. The tip had been broken off at some point, and the stub of the blade re-shaped. It was now only about four inches long, with a five-inch home-made wooden handle attached to the tang with screws instead of the original rivets.

“Looks like that’s been ground down to a nub,” his father observed as he watched Walt unscrew the handle and throw away the pieces.

“It can still be useful. I met a fellow in Mosby’s Rangers who had what he called a hide-out knife. It looked something like this. He took off the handle, cut down the tang and wrapped it in twine. He made a sheath for it in the back of his belt, so it couldn’t be seen at all. He was taken prisoner by the Yankees one time, and used it to help him escape. It struck me as a good idea.”

His father made a face. “I hope you never need it that way.”

“It can be used for a lot of things, not just war.” Walt reached for a sheet of sandpaper and began removing dirt and rust from the naked tang of the blade. “In Nashville I’ll order a belt with an inside sheath to hold this. It might come in handy someday. You never can tell.”

“No,” his father said slowly. “I suppose you never can.”

―――――

They were up with the dawn the following morning. Walt loaded his baggage into the rear of the wagon while Mose waited on the seat, holding back the team. At last he turned to his father.

“I’ll write, Pa, I promise. Now that we’ll be using a civilian Post Office instead of the field postal service, maybe we might even get our letters through once in a while.”

“I’d like that, son. As soon as you let us have an address, we’ll write back to you.”

They embraced, then Walt hugged his sister. “Be happy, Katie. I hope my horses serve you as well here on the farm as they did me. Look after them for me.”

“We will—but
oh!
We’re going to miss you, Walt! Do write, and come home and visit sometime!”

“I’ll try. We’ll see.” He hugged her again, and whispered in her ear, “When I’m gone, take Pa with you and look under the pillow on my bed. All right?”

She nodded and murmured, “All right. What’s there, Walt?”

“You’ll see.” He released her, and said more loudly, “Tell that Jim of yours to treat you right, or there’ll be a reckoning.”

He winked to take the sting out of his words, shared one more heartfelt embrace with his father, then swung up onto the wagon seat beside the driver. “All right, Mose. Let’s go get Mrs. Eliot.”

“Yassuh. Giddap there!”

Walt waved to his father and sister, then turned to look ahead as the team clip-clopped down the road. He smiled to himself, thinking of his father’s and sister’s reactions when they found the ten double eagles he’d left beneath his pillow, along with letters for each of them. He hoped his gift would help to make up, in some small measure, for his renewed absence.

The wagon began to round a bend. Walt glanced back, and watched his childhood home pass out of sight behind the trees. He knew he was cutting himself off from his past by leaving it, and his family, behind.
So be it,
he thought sadly.
It wasn’t the same when I came back as it was when I left. Guess the war changed me more than I thought. I’ll put down new roots somewhere else… but not yet. Not yet.