Prologue

1862

Shiloh, Tennessee

“Move!” Jay Cassidy shouted as a whistle tore through the already hellish battle noise. His heart pounded, his mouth filled with the acrid taste of gunpowder and smoke.

The twelve-pound cannon shot tore through the tops of the spinney pine trees like the fist of God; Jay saw it as a flash of darkness, a storm of destruction, before it hit further up the slope with a deafening roar.

The shot was wild, and had been a good way up the line when it hit, but for a moment Jay’s ears rang with tinnitus as the ground shook. The twenty-six-year-old man hit the floor, his black calfskin boots scrabbling against the leaf litter of an early spring ground already turned to mush by rain and madness. Jay found a spruce still standing and set his back to its trunk as his ears continued to ring, then shot a glance back up the line.

“Albert! Rogers, Montaigne!” Jay shouted at his fellow soldiers, but only heard the crack and report of opposing Union fire as the enemies’ forces attempted to finish what their cannon had started.

His group had been trying to cross the creek, heading up the far side to where they were sure they could outflank one of the Union positions, but the enemy had surprised them.

“That was a twelve-pounder,” Jay muttered, sliding from the safety of cover as he crabbed along the tree line above the creek bed and heading along the line to look for his missing fellow Confederate soldiers.

The Union forces couldn’t have dragged a twelve-pound cannon up through the mud of the creeks. This place, north of Shiloh and the Pittsburgh Landing, was riddled with hills and small streams, each feeding into the broad Tennessee river to their east. One of the Union’s two armies had already converged at the Landing, but it would be impossible for them to pull up their heavy artillery this far south, wouldn’t it? How had they done it?

The Tennessee River.

With a sickening lurch, Jay realized what must have happened. Hadn’t old General Beauregard said that the northern armies had gunboats? There was a real threat they could bring them up the Tennessee river.

Gunboats. Twelve-pounder cannons.

“Rogers! Montaigne!” Jay called again, just as a cry echoed through the broken trees. Smoke drifted over the creek, obscuring his view, but Jay threw himself towards the noise, skidding to a halt when he saw a shape in Confederate gray attempting to rise from the rocks and tree roots.

“Albiers, head down! Where are the others?” Jay slid to his compatriot’s side, his Sharps M1863 rifle in one hand as he checked the mists. No movement yet. That could be a good sign or a terrible one; the Union troops might just be waiting for the shelling to stop before they moved in.

Still, it was like his mammy always said—he would accept any bit o’ luck he could get right about now.

“Hells, it hurts, Cass!” Albiers was younger than Jay, and pain had drained the color from his face, making him look all of twelve years old—no age to be out here in the muck holding a rifle. He should be at least eighteen, but Jay had met plenty of soldiers who had lied on their sign-up forms for a chance to defend the South. Most couldn’t even read or write, signing an X beside their names instead.

“You’re alright, lad. You’re still breathing and moaning, so you gotta be mostly alright.” Jay knew it was better to give a man hope sometimes than it was to tell them how bad it could get. Heaven alone knew that they’d all see that soon enough.

“Montaigne, Rogers—they got out. I saw them heading back for the hills.” Tears streamed down Albiers’ pale cheeks. “That was before that hellhound hit.” He nodded to where the cannon had struck.

Jay’s lips pursed in a thin line. He knew that a man’s mettle was thin at times; why, he’d spent plenty of nights terrified in this terrible campaign himself, but of one thing he was certain.

You don’t leave your fellows behind. You go as a group. You look after your brothers.

“I’ll be chatting to them about that once we get you back to camp.” Jay looked down to see an ugly red stain spreading down the left leg of Albiers’ breeches. He cursed under his breath, pulling a bandage from one of his side pouches and tying it around the young soldier’s wound, good and tight.

Albiers hissed at the rough care, and his hands clutched desperately at Jay’s jacket. Jay huddled under a stand of thin trees that clutched at the hillside, Albiers’ jacket feeling coarse in his grip. Too many people had gripped Jay’s coat like this over the few years he’d been a soldier, almost all of them young; each time they did, he was reminded of even younger, smaller clutching hands . . .

Jay recalled Rosa, his sister, who had passed from the whooping cough at all of seven years old. Jay had tended Rosa himself when his parents came down with the same sickness that awful winter some twelve years ago.

“You’re gonna be fine, kid. C’mon. There’ll be stew and the general’s pheasant waiting back at camp, right?” That earned Jay the ghost of a smile from the younger soldier. His rounded, almost pudgy face had only the beginning scruff of a ginger beard fuzzing his jawline. In a few years, his face would strengthen, but for now he still resembled a child.

The pheasant was a small in-joke among the soldiers; it wasn’t a very funny one, but even bad jokes helped to keep morale up. General Beauregard, it was said, had been given a pheasant someone had found near Shiloh, and instead of putting it on his plate, the general had ordered it caged and kept ‘for when we win.’

At the moment, winning seemed a good ways away. Jay grimaced. Not one, but two Union armies converged at Pittsburgh Landing, and Beauregard’s plan to split and flank them was fast becoming a fantasy—especially if the Union had managed to bring their gunboats up the river.

“Up!” Jay let Albiers cling to his shoulders, one arm flung over the shoulder of Jay’s heavy woolen great cloak as he turned, aiming his rifle down the creek behind them.

Pheet!

He saw movement through the smoke and fog below as a shadow moved between the boulders that littered the stream’s edge. Jay heard the telltale tear of a bullet pelting through the morning air and saw the flicker of Union blues as a hidden enemy soldier took his shot.

Jay Cassidy didn’t flinch, even as he heard another bullet’s whine. If you can hear them, they ain’t meant for you. That was something one of the older soldiers had told him, and Jay had found it to be true. He sighted, pulled the trigger, and the bluecoat went down with a lurch.

Suddenly, as if his shot had restarted the battle, Jay heard shouting and the splash of water as Union forces advanced, crossing the creek. The northern patrol was staging a counter attack.

“Hell-spit. Move it!” Jay didn’t waste time on his rifle, flinging it to one side as he drew his revolver and turned, dragging the injured Albiers back up the southern side of the creek.

“There, Cass! On your right!” Albiers called, and Jay swiveled, shoving Albiers forward a few paces, and fired. His revolver was a solid Smith and Wesson six-shooter, and Jay was a good shot. He fired at the emerging blur of blue below them, then turned, firing again on his left. He heard a pained grunt and a splash as another Union soldier hit the ground.

Jay grabbed the stumbling Albiers and forcing him forward up the steep creek hill, turning to fire only when they’d reached the top. His third and fourth shot took the next two soldiers completely off their feet.

“Move it now, Albiers, move!” Jay held on to the back of the boy’s coat as they fled through the trees, skidding and sliding down the opposing creek banks until the sound of pursuit had faded.

Jay didn’t stop, though, and he didn’t give Albiers a chance to think about how close he’d come to being bayoneted—or worse—not until he’d pulled the young soldier back to the forward camp and passed him into the hands of the first army surgeon he could find.

***

A grim voice cut through the tent as Jay looked up. “Good work out there, Lieutenant.” A man stood at the tent flap, letting in cook smoke and the groaning of the wounded.

Jay blinked, then frowned. He wasn’t one to offer much praise to someone with a higher rank, no matter how many medals they had on their chest. In his twenty-six years, he’d found that many of his superior officers were there by dint of luck, and they didn’t deserve his adoration for that.

Still, Jay was surprised to see Captain Caldwell himself standing there. Caldwell was a thin sort of a man, putting Jay in mind of a Puritan or Methodist, all sharp lines and hard stares. The only exuberance that the captain allowed himself was an impressive walrus mustache, which was wider than his face.

He also sported a broken arm. That’s new. It must have happened in the battle.

“Sir.” Jay moved to stand and salute, but the older man waved him back down with his good hand, wincing a little as he adjusted his sling.

“At ease, Lieutenant. The hour is late, and we haven’t got time for all that jumping and hopping.” Caldwell gave him a flicker of a sad smile.

Jay was grateful for the seat, but he knew the captain was right; this moment’s respite wouldn’t last long. The camp was in the process of packing up, the supplies being thumped onto the backs of carts and lines of soldiers already starting to weave their way back up to the old road. The last few hot meals—what food they still had—were being doled into tin cups, and those who couldn’t walk were being treated. Heaven alone knew if they’d be carried by cart, or if a deal would be offered with the advancing Union armies.

The Confederates had lost the Battle of Pittsburgh Landing. Though the fighting still raged a couple miles to the north, that much was plain to see. The Union armies had been too entrenched, too numerous, and their gunboats too fierce. Within a couple hours, this camp would be nothing but churned earth and smoldering firepits.

Still, the captain had found time to come find Jay Cassidy.

“I heard what you did out there. Held the line so our men could get back, and under cannon fire—no mean feat.”

Jay winced. “Well, it wasn’t quite like that, Sir—”

“That’s what people are saying, and that’s what I heard. I can see how you made Lieutenant so fast. You have experience before all this?”

Jay shrugged. “A bit, Sir. I was sheriff for my little town east of Austin. Mostly because no one else was willing to do it.”

That part was mostly true; none of the others in town had wanted the job. However, it was more accurate to say no one else could have done the job as well as Jay could, and everyone had known it. Maybe losing his family so young had given him a sense of what was right, what a man needed to do. When the call came, Jay had already faced the worst life could give him, and he wasn’t going to stand by and do nothing.

In truth, Jay guessed he’d became sheriff for his mother and sister. When Old Bull Watson, the previous sheriff, had died of a heart attack right on Main Street, Jay had been promoted straight up because there was no one else to do it. Jay had been twenty-four years old by then, and had tended his sister, then his mother, after his father had died of the coughing sickness.

‘If there’s no one else to do the lookin’ after, then I guess it means it’s you.’ The words Jay’s father spoke before he’d passed had burned their way into his heart. His town had been vulnerable, and Jay had been the one standing—so, as any man worth his salt would do—at least, in Jay’s estimation—he’d done what needed to be done. The townsfolk had wanted him to take the job, no one else had as steady a mind as Jay Cassidy.

“They’re lucky to have you, Lieutenant. If you keep this up, I can see you making captain soon.” Caldwell offered a thin-lipped smile.

But Jay knew that the war was looking precarious. The Confederates were being run out of Shiloh, with the Union hot on their heels. Who knew what the next campaign would bring?

“However I’m called, Sir,” Jay said seriously, and he meant it.

The captain looked at him a moment longer, then nodded and made to turn.

“Make sure you get yourself a good woman when all this is done, Lieutenant Cassidy. A good man like you deserves a good family,” Caldwell said in his educated, high-pitched Southern drawl before he left.

Jay already had a good woman. The best. His hand moved to his breast pocket and tugged at a dog-eared scrap of stiff paper. It was an actual photograph he’d had taken down in Austin. It displayed the image of a beautiful young woman, her dark hair piled up behind her ears but with stray fronds framing her eyes, like always.

“Elma,” Jay breathed, savoring the delicate arch of his wife’s eyebrow, the crook of her smile.

Elma Harrington was the best thing that had happened to him; in fact, the strong-willed only daughter of Edward and Wilma Harrington was the best thing that had ever happened to Austen—at least in Jay’s estimation. She was tough and independent, and knew how to pitch a tent and tame a bolting horse just as well as sew or sing. The thought of her waiting for him so many miles away, under the same moon, gave him the courage to be the man he was today.

Chapter One

1865

Clarksville, Texas

My love, my dearest heart,

Thank you for your letter. Please know that every day I ache to see your face again, but it is your courage and your bravery that helps me through each day. I fill my days as we always have, tending the animals, mending fences, fetching water and firewood, and my spirit is bolstered knowing that I am doing these things for us so that when you return home we, indeed, have a home.

The horses are in good health, and this spring gone we were gifted with three new foals! I have had to call on young Ben from the Wattington’s farm to help with their keep, which he is happy to do for a pot of stew and some of the garden’s excess to take back to his mother. Life is hard, and I would rather your strong hand and steady ways here at my side, but I must admit to life also being good, in a way. All the things I wish to share with you! The patch of sweetgrass on the western rise, the golden sunsets from our window, the way the brown mare is so silly in the mornings!

I must sound foolish, and I fear that I am filling your time with silly matters. Now that the war is finally over I look to the north every morning, every afternoon, praying for your speedy return . . . But I know that this business is arduous, and that you must be a good example to your men. That is why I chose you, and why I love you, because you have the strength of God and character and, quite simply, that you are You, Jay Cassidy.

Know that I am yours, as you are mine, and I wait for you faithfully, painfully, and lovingly,

Elma

Jay’s hand trembled a little as he read Elma’s latest letter, standing by the pole of yet another Union camp tent, many miles and many years away from the terrible events of Shiloh. Impulsively, he raised the paper and pressed it to his mouth and nose, certain that he could still detect a lingering trace of her: lavender and Rosewater, her favorite, home-made scents.

Four years. Four long, grueling years of bloodshed and marching and fighting, and now finally the end was in sight.

In fact, the end had already come. General Lee had waved the white flag before Union General Ulysses S. Grant, a chain of surrenders from other Confederate armies and divisions had followed. The war hadn’t ended all at once, but Jay had seen it coming.

The Confederates were just too outgunned. What they had in passion and spirit they lacked in ammunition, and they’d been running a losing campaign for the final year and a half of the war.

But wars never end tidily, and nor do they end happily, Jay discovered when he was dispatched with the remainder of much of the Tennessee and Virginia armies to a vast staging post outside of Clarksville that quickly became a tent city catering to some fifteen thousand men.

A voice called to him as Jay folded the paper. “Lieutenant?” Waving from the side of a cart already loaded with wooden boxes and supplies was a ghost from his past.

“Albiers!” Jay stowed his letter carefully in the breast pocket of his service uniform before trudging through the dusty, cracked ground to clap his old friend in a brisk hug.

Albiers Johannas walked with a limp now, but he’d regained his color and humor in the year since Jay had last seen him. Jay noted the sash of an army messenger, which was either a joke or a kindness, as Albiers clearly couldn’t run fast; however, it also meant he wouldn’t be manning any front lines.

“Major wants you—First Division command tent,” Albiers said quickly, slapping his friend on the shoulder.

“Major?” Jay blinked. He’d never met the major.

“Caldwell got promoted right after the ‘Battle of Shiloh,’ as they’re calling it!” Albiers laughed. He’d filled out a little, Jay was pleased to see. His beard fuzz still looked as though it might blow away with a stiff breeze, but he was fast becoming a man.

“But it’s over, right? It’s finally over! You looking forward to that ranch of yours?” The younger man hung at Jay’s side as the pair walked past the lines of carts and bustling soldiers towards the command tent.

“You bet, Albiers. You should drop by, y’know, when this is all done. We’d have use for a good man,” Jay promised him, earning a sudden embarrassed look from Albiers.

“Ah, well, sir, if you put it like that I will . . . but I seem to have myself a little tie up here. There’s a lass in Clarksville, Mary Ellen, and we’ve become kinda acquainted . . .” He smiled sheepishly.

God help you. Albiers still looked all of sixteen, though for all he’d seen, he was surely a man now. Jay was happy for him all the same, so he congratulated his friend and told him to seek out the Cassidy Ranch if he ever came through Austin.

“There’ll always be food and a place to rest your head—you and Mary Ellen,” Jay said, then ducked under the flap of the First Division command tent.

Jay was immediately struck by how busy it was. He’d never seen so much brass in one small space, and he wondered for a moment if he was supposed to salute every darn one—he’d likely be here until sundown if he did. They wore deep black, double-breasted great coats compared to Jay’s much lighter steel-gray jacket.

However, the dejected colonels, brigadiers, captains, and even generals were deep in their arguments and discussions, consumed with the task of dismantling the second-largest military force in all of America. The United States of America, Jay corrected himself.

“Ah, Lieutenant Cassidy, there you are!” Jay found himself once again confronted with a figure from his past.

“Major Caldwell.” This time, Jay did salute. The now-major no longer had his arm in a sling, but he held it awkwardly across his side, with all the hallmarks of a badly-set bone. Either that, or the long trail conditions and poor rationing hadn’t allowed his body to fully heal. He was still a thin, austere-looking man for all that. Caldwell wore a darker uniform now, a major’s deep, midnight blue with bright brass buttons, and flecks of white and gray now graced his walrus mustache.

“At ease, Lieutenant. We never did make you a Captain, did we?” Caldwell said a little sourly, earning a dry laugh from Jay. He’d never wanted the rank, in truth. It was hard enough to be the man that the twenty-five soldiers of his patrol needed, let alone the hundred or more he’d lead if he rose higher.

“Well, I’m sorry for it—and that I can’t even give you a proper medal.—but know this: I have been following your career. I heard of the lives you saved at Five Forks, and in the Valley Campaigns.”

Jay blinked. Those were names he never wanted to hear again. It was all too easy to hear the pounding of guns and screams of the desperate, the maddening confusion that had hung over the battlefields like thick palls of smoke.

“I, uh, I just try to look after my men, Sir,” Jay murmured.

Caldwell regarded him quietly for a long moment. At first, Jay was sure he was going to say something, offer his condolences, but the moment passed. There was no need to for condolences; both men knew the horrors of what they had been through.

“Well, that is, in part, why I asked for you. As you know, we have more soldiers arriving all the time. We’re getting them on the rails, shipping them out home as fast as we can, because we can’t say how long the peace will last with some fifteen or twenty-five thousand sore soldiers in one place. The Union is getting itchy, and I need these men to have a life.”

Jay nodded.

“However, we have a lot of wounded. We’re dispatching them on carts to nearby towns, anywhere they want to go, but it’ll take time. At least three thousand can’t even walk right now, by today’s figures.”

Jay’s heart fell. These were men who needed treatment, needed help. Many had lost limbs, and many—like Albiers—might never walk right again. As eager as Jay was to go home, how could he leave so many behind?

“Is this an order, sir?” Jay’s heart thumped as he thought of Elma, waiting so patiently for all these years.

“No!” Caldwell shook his head vigorously. “Absolutely not. There will be no official discharge, either, but we’re asking for volunteers to help organize the wounded. We need men who can lead, organize teams, have a good way with the men.”

Jay found himself nodding. It made sense. The armies had to disband—and as quickly as possible, for the Union would grow wary if they took too long at it. The more angry soldiers they had wandering the countryside, the more hazardous the situation became.

All anyone wants to do is to return home. Jay’s heart settled. He already had a loving home and a woman to return to.

But how many of these men had that? Jay thought of all the young soldiers, just like Albiers Johannes, that he’d seen in his career. A whole load of them would probably leave the service of a defeated army with nothing but a chit for last month’s salary—if that. Heaven knew if that line of credit would hold out, now that the Union had won the war.

Jay felt a surge of guilt. He was lucky to have a town back home, a loving wife, a house, and a small ranch that he’d built from the ground up. Yes, life out beyond Austen could be tough, but the people there were good. They’d pulled together, looked after him when his family had passed, and he’d done the same in return as sheriff.

The young soldiers around him, so many of them torn apart and ruined either in body or mind—or both—might not have anything to return to at all.

“If there’s no one around to help out, then that means . . .” Jay muttered.

“What’s that, Lieutenant?” Caldwell eyed him, but Jay shook his head.

“Nothing sir—just something my Pops once said to me.” Jay smiled. He knew the right thing to do, and he had the skills to see that it was done.

“I volunteer, sir. I’ll do what it takes—organize the carts, send messengers ahead to the local hospitals, get medical tents set up.”

Caldwell broke into a smile of relief. “I knew I could count on you, Lieutenant. It’ll only be a few weeks, I promise.”