The Angel Of Devil's Camp. Lynna Banning

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