The Andre Norton Megapack - 15 Classic Novels and Short Stories

places where a blue coat might be welcome, but a gray one still signified “enemy.”
    Drew moved, and raised Boyd’s head and shoulders to his knee. If he could summon enough energy to reach the canteen hanging from Croaker’s saddle.… Somehow he did, recklessly spilling a cupful of its contents on Boyd’s face, and turning road dust into flecks of mud which freckled the gaunt cheeks.
    “Ain’t goin’ t’ ride—” Boyd’s eyes opened and he took up the argument again.
    “Well,” Drew lashed out, “I can’t carry you! Or do you expect to be dragged?”
    Boyd’s face crumpled and he flung up his arms to hide his eyes.
    “All right.”
    With the aid of a sloping bank and an effort which left them both weakly panting, Boyd was mounted and they started their slow crawl once more.
    “Drew!”
    He raised his head. Boyd had straightened in the saddle and was pointing ahead, though his outstretched hand was shaking. “We made it—there’s home!”
    Beyond was the green of trees, a whole line of trees curving along a gravel carriage drive. But somehow Drew could not match Boyd’s joy. He was tired, so tired that he was aware of nothing really but the aching weariness of his body.
    They turned into the drive, the gravel crunching into his holed boots while the tree shadows made a green twilight. Croaker came to a stop, and Drew’s eyes raised from the gravel to the line of one step and then another. His gaze finally came to a broad veranda…to someone who had been sitting there and who was now on her feet, staring wide-eyed back at the three of them. Then the gravel came up in a wave and he was swallowed up in it and darkness—
    The sun, warm through the window, awoke a glint of reflection from the top of the chest of drawers where rested a round cord of bullion with two tassels and a pair of fancy spurs. The wink of light was reflected again from the mirror before which Drew stood.
    “Jefferson’s shirt has long enough sleeves, but all these billows!” Cousin Merry’s tongue clicked against her teeth in exasperation. Her hand was in the middle of Drew’s back, gathering up a good pleating of linen, but he still had extra folds of cloth to spare over his ribs. Four days of rest and plenty of food was not sufficient to restore any padding to his frame. “You certainly grew one way, but not the other!”
    Boyd, established in the big chair by the window, laughed.
    “I could take a few tucks,” Drew offered.
    “ You could take a few tucks!” Her astonished face showed in the glass above his shoulder.
    “Oh, I’m not too bad with a needle. Did you note those neat patches on my breeches—?”
    “I noted nothing about those breeches; they went straight into the fire! Such rags.…”
    “Miss Merry, ma’am—” small Hetty showed an eager face around the corner of the door—“Majuh Forbes and Missus Forbes—they’s downstairs.”
    Drew faced away from the mirror. “Why?” he demanded with almost hostile emphasis.
    Meredith Barrett untied the strings of her sewing apron. “Hetty, tell Mam Gusta to set out some of the English biscuits and make tea.” Then she turned back to face Drew. “Why, Drew? Rather—why not? They’re your kin, and I think that Marianna feels it deeply that you came here and not to Red Springs. Not to go home.…”
    “Home?” There was heat in that. “You, if anyone, know that Red Springs was never really my home. And Forbes is an officer in the Union Army. This is no time for a Reb to camp out in his house. My grandfather wanted the place to be just Aunt Marianna’s, didn’t he?” He paused by the chest of drawers, his hand going out to the spurs, the gold cord. Three years—in a way a small lifetime—all to be summed up now by a slightly tarnished cord from a general’s hat, a pair of spurs a young Texan had jauntily worn.
    But it was a lifetime. He was not a boy any more, to have to endure his elders making decisions for him. His future was his own, and he had earned the right to that. Drew did not know that his face had hardened, that he suddenly looked a stranger to the woman who was watching him with concern.
    “Please, Drew, you mustn’t allow yourself to be so bitter—”
    “Bitter? About Red Springs, you mean? Lord, I never wanted the place. I hate every brick of it, and I think I always have. But I don’t hate Forbes or Aunt Marianna if that’s what you’re afraid of. It’s just that I have no place there any more.”
    Her mouth