Chapter 19

Smile, Fortuna!

He slept. Woke up, drank one, two sips from his canteen, ate a small amount of the grub he found in the saddle bags, probed at his red-swollen leg, listened to the buzzing quiet of the forest, then fell back into slumber. At times he woke to moist darkness, then to blazing hot brightness.

And he dreamt. Dreamt of a big ranch house surrounded by giant pine trees; of cattle, huge herds of cattle grazing on rich, green pastures; of horses in a corral, and of himself, breaking a wild sorrel. Dreamt of people: men on horses, women in a busy street, ranch hands, a sheriff with a silly moustache and friendly eyes, a doctor with a soothing voice, an old lady with a frilly dress who said “young chap” to him; of sky blue eyes under a ten-gallon hat, of an infectious giggle, and of a strong, reassuring hand on his shoulder.

He wasn’t always sure if he was dreaming or waking, found himself often reaching out into empty air to keep an image from fading away, a person from leaving, or even a sound from decaying, devastated at the loss of a happy memory: the touch of a soft hand or the sense of being where he belonged. Other times he was relieved to find himself able to leave a particularly horrid vision and wake up in his green refuge.

Once or twice he thought he heard the rustle of underbrush, the distant sound of shouts, hoof beats, gunfire. But whether in his dreams or in reality, of that he couldn’t be sure—and in all honesty he didn’t care, either. Whenever he was completely lucid and aware of his whereabouts, the air around him was warm and quiet and the grass beneath him soft and pleasantly fragrant. And that was all he needed, all he desired.

He lost track of how much time passed by. Not being able to accurately distinguish dream from reality made counting the changes from light to darkness and back useless anyway. He let himself drift, caring just for the most basic of needs, and felt his sense of security grow as he slowly metamorphosed into a somewhat natural component of the woods. His presence didn’t seem to disturb the forest’s balance anymore—he felt indiscernible.

Eventually he woke up to crisp morning light, alert and fully aware of his surroundings, of the fact that he, indeed, was not dreaming anymore. He pried himself free of the blanket in which he must have entangled his legs during one of the more violent dreams and, stretching his arms and back, sat up. The persistent ache in his shoulders and neck had abated, the pain in his leg subsided to a tolerable level. His weariness had given way to a sensation of cautious optimism. To say he was well and rested would have been an exaggeration, but he was feeling…capable of dealing with himself and the world again.

Determining that his first concern had to be his well-being, for everything depended on his ability to function, he made a quick survey of his provisions. Bernadette had stocked the saddle bags well: there were strips of beef jerky, some apples, a half-empty packet of hardtack. He must have lived on the other half those past few days—which explained the almost empty canteen, and the dryness in his mouth.

He sighed, then resigned himself to a breakfast of hardtack and apple. The biscuit didn’t get any softer or juicier, but it seemed to go down easier when combined with bites of the sour fruit. He had visions of flapjacks covered in honey and then of two men sitting at a dinner table, a pile of pancakes between them. “Hey, Joe, gimme another pancake” and “Joe” threw one, exactly hitting the other’s held-out fork. He remembered the men’s faces from his dreams, they seemed familiar…he couldn’t put his finger on it, not quite, not yet, but he was sure…very sure that he was close to it.

Sloshing the water in the canteen, he decided to use some of the sparse leftovers to clean the wound on his leg. The bandage was crusted with a yellowish clot, and he had to dampen it to be able to pull it off without causing new damage. The upper leg was still slightly swollen, warm to the touch and a little red. The newly grown skin on the huge wound area was tender, discoloured in vivid red and angry violet, and in some places broken-up and seeping clear fluids. Dr. Mabbs had said that it wouldn’t get much better, that with time the colouring would fade into a more natural shade of pink, and the breaks would heal, but that the cratered expanse of scar tissue would remain for ever. All he could hope for, so the doctor had said sounding almost pleased, was that the skin would become more elastic eventually, softer, less taut, less irritable, and perhaps—perhaps—a little more even.

With a fresh, moistened bandage Adam carefully sponged the secretions away, then redressed the wound. Buttoning up his trousers, he smiled wryly. There certainly were more pressing matters concerning him at the moment than the disfiguration of his leg: find water to refill his canteen, for example, find food before he ran low on vittles, find a way back to the road, find the strength to make it to Gettysburg.

The first would be easily achieved. This part of the county was crisscrossed with rivers, creeks, and brooks—it was what made it green and lush. On his way through the forest Adam had stumbled through countless small rills, and he was sure that whatever way he chose he’d come across another streamlet soon. Finding food would be more of a problem. His provisions wouldn’t last forever, he had no gun to shoot game—and he couldn’t make it another 120 miles on a diet of blackberries.

The road…the road had to be east. He’d left it turning west, which meant he had to go east to get back to it. The sun was still rising, there was no question where east was. Piece of cake.

And finding strength? He nearly laughed. Strength. A man had to do what a man had to do, and that was that, wasn’t it? Strength. What little of it he’d built up those last few days at the hospital had been exhausted by his frantic flight through the forest, and the sleep after he’d collapsed hadn’t given him much back, even though he must have rested for two days at least. For all that he had thrown off that all-consuming fatigue, after conducting the simple tasks of eating and refreshing his bandage, his hands were already trembling from the strain and he felt sweat prickling under his clothes. No, there wouldn’t be much strength for him to find—rather than on strength he would have to depend mostly on determination.

Now he did laugh. He winced at the croaky sound, but he laughed. Determination. Determination he possessed in abundance.

“Promise me you’ll come back.”

“You know I can’t promise that.”

“Then promise me you’ll try.”

“I will. I promise.”

Yes, determination. He had promised her. Back then, as they had parted, and over and over again in his dreams. He closed his eyes and saw the image again, that one memory that had arisen in his dreams time and again, had pushed itself forward to the front of his mind, and had always imbued him with love, with desire, need, lust: Juliet, standing naked with her emerald ball gown pooled around her feet and her hair flowing down her back, her chest heaving, her eyes dark with want; her creamy, almost translucent skin an alluring promise of softness and her half smile an invitation to take—and to be at home.

“I will,” he said out loud. “I promise.” And then he shouted it into the woods: “I will!”

***

Over the day, however, he wore out almost all he had, drew upon his last reserves—both of strength and determination. Racing his horse through the greenery until its collapse had gotten him deep into the forest, and making the way back on his own two feet—or three, as he thought wryly, since the cane should be counted, too—naturally took him much longer. He tried to pace himself, made sure to take a rest, eat, and drink from the newly filled canteen whenever he was slowing down, whenever his leg protested too much, whenever he found himself meandering along rather than walking straight on. As the day advanced, though, he felt his energy waning. It took more and more effort to get up again, to stay upright, to put one foot before the other, to ignore the ever-present pain.

But…the road. He wanted to make it back to the road, at least back to the road—no matter how far that might be. Orientating by the sun, he hoped he was heading straight to the road. He did not encounter his dead horse on the way—a fact of which he was shamefully grateful—but considering the heedless zigzag he’d taken after he’d lost his mount it wasn’t surprising. And yet, coming across the carcass would at least have confirmed he was going in the right direction.

The road, he started to chant inwardly at some point, always in time with his strides. The road, the road, the road. It kept him going, kept his steps steady, kept his mind distracted from the fact that he was bone tired. The road, the road, the road. The road, the road, the road. The road, the road, the road…

In the end he nearly didn’t notice finding the road. The sun stood low already, the trees cast long shadows: dusk was approaching fast, and Adam decided he’d gone far enough for that day. Road or no road, he was done in. He had to find a spot with a soft mattress of grass and a sheltering bush, somewhere to rest safely, to stay the night, to restore his energy, his strength—and his determination—and then move on the next morning.

He’d just spotted the perfect place when he heard the shot. Suppressing the urge to bolt back into the depths of the forest, he let himself slide to the ground and then lay still and listened.

The shot had come from not too far off, yet there hadn’t been the impact of a bullet anywhere close to him. Whoever had fired had not aimed at him. He had not been discovered.

Where there was a gun, though, there was a person, and where there was a person there possibly was a trail, a path to the road—or even the road itself. And so he braced himself on arms and knees, and carefully crept towards the direction from which the shot had come. He covered only a few yards, then paused and listened, crept onwards, paused and listened again.

Then he heard a man crying out in pain, and godless swearing.

Getting back on his feet and into a crouch, Adam squinted into the green. He saw shadows behind the bushes, silhouettes, colours that didn’t belong to the woods. As he cautiously moved closer to those shadows, he made out more voices, faintly lamenting, from people in pain, in distress. Then there was begging: “Massa, please” and a bark: “Shut up, vermin! Shut up, or I’ll end yer misery jest here’n—Goddamn it!” The curse merged into another howl of agony.

Eventually there was only a thick shrub separating Adam from the source of the voices. Leaving the saddlebags on the ground behind the bush, he drew himself up, clasped the knob on his cane tightly, stepped out of the greenery into the open and found that he, indeed, had come upon the road.

Before him, a wagon lay tilted onto its side, the tail of the broken tongue looming into the air, its dark silhouette a stark contrast to the waning day’s purple lit sky. Pieces of broken wheels were shattered over the dusty road; remnants of a fractured axle, two almost identical fragments, lay at a tidy right angle to each other next to the cart. The wagon’s bottom was burst, the side planks smashed.

The only thing still intact was the iron cage the wagon had carried. It lay amidst the wreckage, its bars still shaping a stout cube, its door still closed, its lock still shut. In the cage Adam saw people. Three men, two women, bleeding from cuts and scrapes. One woman was cradling her arm to her chest, the other was trying to staunch the blood flow from a wound on one of the men’s cheek with a scrap of her ragged skirt’s hem. They all were staring at Adam, wide-eyed.

He made a movement towards the cage and the people—Lord, who puts humans into a cage? Oh, he knew who did such things, knew it darn well, didn’t he?—but was stopped in his tracks by a barked order.

“Hold it.”

He froze, then turned slowly to the other end of the wagon’s remains. There was a horse, dead on the road—not another dead horse! shot through Adam’s mind—apparently shot by the driver of the cart, who lay on the ground with one leg bent in an unnatural angle: clearly broken, most probably hurting like hell.

For all the driver’s apparent misery, Adam found it hard to sympathise with him. And that sentiment wasn’t exactly diluted by the fact that the injured man had levelled his rifle at him.

He raised his hands. “I’m unarmed,” he said, astonished at how steady his voice sounded. “I just want to help.”

The rifle didn’t waver. “Where ya come from?”

Waving the cane vaguely in the direction from which he’d come, Adam gave the man a wry smile. “Outta the woods,” he said. “Been hunting. Horse threw me.”

“Huntin’? With that there thing?” The rifle made a short movement to the cane and back to Adam.

“Was all I could get a hold of—shoulda grabbed my gun, but…” He shrugged.

The man nodded, but didn’t drop the rifle. He looked at Adam through narrowed eyes. “You ain’t from hereabouts, are ya? You ain’t soundin’ like no Virginian.”

So much for trying to blend in. Better try something else, Cartwright. “Wasn’t born here.”

“You don’ say’.” The rifle was once more adjusted. It pointed directly to Adam’s heart.

He drew a deep breath, trying to ignore the chill that went down his spine, then frowned at the man. “Listen, do you want me to help you or do you want some chit-chat? If it’s the latter I’ll have to pass. I’m not in the mood to tell you my life story right now. I went out to bring down a little game this morning, dang horse spooked, I got thrown and I’ve spent the rest of the day hobbling through the scenery. Now I’d really like to see that I make it home before nightfall. So, take your pick.”

The rifle was lowered, then laid on the ground. Within easy reach, but at least not pointed at his chest anymore. “Hold yer horses, fella. Just wanta be sure yer one of our’n, with all them Bluebellies so close by now.”

Adam raised a questioning eyebrow and made a gesture towards the leg. As the man nodded his approval, he knelt down and carefully peeled the torn, bloodied pant away from the injured limb.

“What Bluebellies?” he said while assessing the damage. He didn’t need to be a doctor to see the shank bone was broken—not with its ends protruding through the skin.

“Them Yanks down at Culpeper? Didn’t ya hear?” The man hissed when Adam touched a sensitive spot, but continued to talk through clenched teeth. He spoke hurriedly, without pausing longer than it took to squeeze out a short groan or a choked cry, and apparently with no intention of stopping, lest he be tempted to concentrate his attention on what was being done to his leg. “They done made headquarters there after that battle three days ago.” Jerking his head towards the cage, he snorted. “That’s why them niggers o’er here all agettin’ lose. Thinkin’ they can get to Culpeper afore abody catch them.” He laughed. “Weren’t countin’ on ole Tiberius Quake, though. I catch them all…”

Adam stopped paying attention. He set out to treat the break: tore the pant leg further open—Those are trousers, Adam, the other are…unmentionables, admonished the indignant alto voice inside his head—cleaned the wound as thoroughly as possible, selected some pieces of wood from the wagon debris that he could utilise for splints. He worked mechanically, as if he’d done it before, without thinking about what to do next—which was just as well, because his thoughts were occupied with digesting what he’d just heard.

Things whirled in his head, ideas and hopes, facts and wishes. The Union Army was now headquartered at Culpeper. How far was he from Culpeper? Twenty miles, perhaps less? A day’s march, not more. Heck, his corps had covered more than twenty miles a day on the way to Gettysburg, marching under a scorching sun and wearing thick army coats and heavy accoutrements. Of course, he’d been fully able-bodied then…but now he’d have to carry only his own weight, and he’d walk in the cool of the night.

Could it be? Could it really be that in the end fortune was favouring him?

He turned his attention back to Quake. “I’ll have to set the bone straight. This’ll…hurt.”

“Oh, yeah, and everthing ya done so far was jest a cakewalk.” Quake snatched a small piece of wood from the ground and, stuffing it into his mouth, nodded. He managed to squeeze a “Gerron with it” past the bit—and then passed out with a short cry as the bone snapped back into its proper position.

Adam let go of the foot at which he’d been carefully pulling. He put the rifle out of Quake’s reach, yanked the man’s belt from his waist, and bound his hands with it. He searched Quake for the keys to the cage and took them to the prisoners, handing them one of the men.

“Can you manage?”

“Yes, mas—”

“Adam. My name’s Adam.”

The man hesitated and searched Adam’s face for a moment, then he nodded. “Toby,” he finally said, pointing at his chest.

“Right, Toby, see you get your people out here, I have to…” He gestured back to Quake.

“Help him?” There was mystification in Toby’s voice, doubt, and caution.

“Well, I can’t let him lie here with his leg busted and bleeding, can I? He’d likely die.”

“He’s a slave hunter.”

“And?”

“How can you free us and let him live?”

“He won’t be able to come after you, will he? There’s no need to kill him.”

“Are you one of them, too?”

“I’m a fugitive, just like you. A Federal, on the way back to my corps.”

“Then why…?”

“Killing him won’t make the South change their ways, will it?” He was glad Toby didn’t point out that as a Union soldier, Adam had been doing just that: killing individuals to make a society change its ways.

He returned to the still-unconscious man to splint and dress the broken leg. Searching for something to use for a bandage, he tugged at his shirt first, but decided it was too filthy. The slave hunter’s own clothes, shabby as they were, would serve the purpose better.

As he secured the splints with strips torn of Quake’s shirt, Adam was overcome with another memory…

”In and out, slick and clean.” He was using one of his shirt sleeves to bandage a wound on his brother’s leg.

“Adam, I ain’t never gonna tease you again about wearing them clean shirts,” Hoss said.

And he couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow and come back, “The only reason I wear them is because I knew you gonna get shot one day.”

Then his other brother, Joe, was skidding around a boulder, joining them—both in shooting at some rustlers and in teasing each other mercilessly.

He had brothers. Good Lord, he had brothers. Those two men…Hoss and Joe…brothers, his brothers. And Pa…they’d been rescued by Pa in the end. And it was there, all there, crystal clear in his mind.

The feeling, the relief was almost dizzying.

With a soft touch to his shoulder, Toby brought him out of his reminiscence. “Thank you…friend. We better be on our way now. Won’t be long before they find Quake here, and we—”

Shaking his head, Adam interrupted the man. “It’s almost night. No one travels this road in the dark. Quake won’t be found until morning—and we’ll be in Culpeper by then already.”

“We?”

“We. We’re headed the same way, aren’t we?”

Toby nodded. “Yes, sure…”

“Then we should be staying together. If you want me with you, that is.”

“Sure.” He cast a glance over his shoulder, back to where the others stood waiting. One woman was helping the other putting her arm into a sling; the two men were watching him, apparently anxious to go. As he looked back at Adam, he nodded again, then broke into a grin. “Sure.”

They didn’t speak much after that. Adam fetched his saddlebags from where he’d left them in the bushes, they settled Quake somewhere at the roadside, providing him with Adam’s blanket and a half-full canteen they’d found in the remains of the cart.

One of the women gave him a shy smile as he distributed half of what was left of his provisions promising the rest for later; the other touched his hand and then, briefly, his cheek. “God blessuns.”

The men accepted the food wordlessly. Their eyes, however, spoke volumes as they hungrily wolfed it down.

And then they set off. Walking one after the other, a small band of tired, worn, yet determined figures. They hadn’t gone long when Adam felt someone lifting the saddlebags from his shoulder. He turned around and saw Toby’s smiling face.

“Let me carry that for you,” the man said.

Adam frowned. “You don’t have to. You’re not…”

“I know. But I’d like to.” Toby clapped on his shoulder. “Bear you one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ, says the Good Book.”

Adam didn’t argue. He was exhausted, hurting, kept upward only by sheer willpower: he was grateful to share the burden. With every step his load seemed to get lighter, his future brighter. Less than twenty miles to Culpeper, less than twenty miles. What could possibly happen in less than twenty miles?

Well, anything and everything. Fortune had been a very fickle lady lately. But then again, he was used to dealing with erratic ladies, wasn’t he?

__________
Here is the rule to remember in the future, when anything tempts you to be bitter:
not, “This is a misfortune” but “To bear this worthily is good fortune.” ~ Marcus Aurelius

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