Fight for Glory (My Wounded Soldier #1) (27 page)

He nodded then. “That
means you will,” he said quoting me now. He
laid
down
and in less than a minute I could hear his soft snores.

And me, I was
just staring at him, his face so like hers in the light from the fire. For just
a fleeting minute I thought, what have I gotten myself in for? Was this little
whelp gonna murder me in my sleep?

And how could I,
mean son of a bitch that I could be, keep such a promise as eternal kindness?

I was already
messing this up.

End of Book One.

Enjoy this
Sample Chapter of
My Wounded Soldier Book
Two: Fight for Love

Illinois,
1866

Tom
Tanner

Chapter
One

Once we hit the
fields of home and the red-winged black birds rose singing, and the chill fall
winds blew against us, I felt the water rush over the dam. That’s how it was
for me.

Johnny was no
longer squirming, bent to saddle even after these few days. For now, the core
of him settled into the leather, his boots finding purchase in stirrup, and the
roll of the horse’s gait. Somewhere on the line with William and me God’s hand
had stilled him. Well, we generally rode quiet.

We hit those
stubbled fields and the smell of manure meant the barns were scraped clean, and
the torn earth yielding its flesh to the sun and the cold while the creatures
in its layers settled deep once more. We hit those flat rolling plains green
with winter wheat, could hide a swale a man could stand in, and him coming
toward you like he was rising out of the earth. We hit those places, and the
deer gleaned fat, and the antlers pushed out of the bucks, they were new, they
were old, they were the wild things of home.

Lord God, my
heart spread in me, and I felt the toil of my people then like I hadn’t been
able to when I come home from the war, from the bricks, the baking, the clay,
the red that stained me like its own kind of blood, though the bricks meant
building and not dying, but me I’d been dead inside.

The horses felt
the change and picked it up then, hope in their steps, end of the line in their
rumps and tails, noses seeking out the sweet feed and the hay already served
for them on the big dinner fork.

If she were here
for me, there could be no more I would want. No, I wasn’t God. I was a small
man with enormous needs, and the new crisp certainty of hope. I meant it when I
told her I was glad I lived. It fired me now. It was my time.

We galloped the
last, the house in view,
the
barns. Seth ran out, down
the porch stairs, and Johnny fell on him, right out of the saddle, and Seth
swung him round, and carried him on his back.

They’d been
eating dinner looked like for Pa still wore his bib, and held his spoon, and he
came down to us, and Ma followed, her apron bunched in her hands and her
spectacles crooked, and her smile so wide. I lit off my horse and she was
already bent over holding Johnny to her. Then she stood and they was around me
like I could not inspire before, maybe never, but I was a door now, come on in.

We were not given
to display but we felt it…oh God too deep I think. “Where is Gaylin?” I said. “Have
you heard about Jimmy?”

They had moved to
William, and Ma cried on him, and he did not look miserable at all, but he was
patient with her like always. “He is gone to Springfield. It’s been terrible,” she said,
tears flowing.

“It will work its
way,” Pa said to her. To me, “He would not come home. We have heard the stories
now. They have brought Jimmy home on the train. Me and Ma have just returned
from visiting them in town,” he said.

Seth was on me
then. No words, a crushing hug, and I felt it in his back, the heave of relief.
I knew he carried the work of both farms, but he would only feel grateful for I
had no doubt he served something greater than his own sense of justice.

“Allie is with
him,” Ma said. “They got married. They wanted to wait for your homecoming…but
her place is with him. And he surely needs her. We can see it…have seen it a
long time comin’. So Seth married them last Sunday.”

I nodded. “Marryin’
folks?” I said to my brother. “Well, Addie and I…we are man and wife,” I said.

Well, Ma did perk
up. I thought she would squeeze the marrow. She could not stop the tears or
sobbing now. Pa was patting me and patting her. Lord, it was getting tight, but
I figured they’d waited a long time to step close, and me marrying was close to
the second coming, and if we produced some grandchildren in addition to Johnny
and Janey, it was the second coming.

When they backed
off a little, and Seth had shaken my hand and Johnny was talking rat-a-tat, all
the quietness we’d worked in him during our journey home leaked back out, I
said to Ma, “How does Jimmy fare?”

“He has lived. Such
a piece of wood flushed out of that wound. No wonder it hasn’t closed. But the
fever is light now, sometimes gone all together, and he sits in the sun and
Allie makes them leave him alone, but you should see how they come…reporters
and marshals, even the army. He is counting the minutes until you return home,
though. He has told the stories…you are the one, he says, the hero who saved
them all.
And William and Michael.
And Gaylin…Lord. He
is driven that you should all be celebrated. He goes on about the reward. He
has dictated a stack of reports. He will ruin what is left of his health to see
this to the end we fear.”

“He will ruin his
health if he does not do this, Ma. Don’t fear for him. He has faced the worst
and lived. Wait until he sees the black. He thinks him lost,” I said.

“Yes,” Ma said
looking at the beast, “it haunts his dreams, that horse. It is his luck…his
voo-doo Pa says.”

Pa ran his hand
over Black’s ugly scar. William led them off then, to the barn to be cared for
before we lit out, Johnny and Seth on his heels.

I told them
quickly about the encounter in the woods. I was already the old man in the
story, and it’s like my whole life went galloping past and I saw how it would
be, heard myself just like that one time when I knew I would tell it and folks
would listen. Well, I would see long days then if it was true.

Ma had feared the
cholera in St. Louis,
but I had seen no signs of it. They wanted to hear, but other than the time it
took for a quick meal and to leave the boy in their good care, I felt William’s
pull to move on.
For we could not yet rest.

But Johnny came
before we set out. “Help on…our farm,” I said. “And go to school.”

He tried to
protest the school part. “Wish I could go with you and William.”

“Your job is
here. No less important. You be the man ‘til I return. Your ma comes home, you
step in.”

“Yes Sir,” he
said. And though I longed to hear him call me Pa, Sir was something. So it was.

We rode for Greenup
then, on our own mounts, leading the rest. Ma said Lenora was there with Jimmy
and Allie. Mose had come for her, and he was mad, but Pa had reasoned with him
and he had gone home. He’d left word under no conditions was William to sneak
in and marry her, but he was to face Mose first to be reconciled. That meant
Mose setting the terms and William bowing the knee.

William had said
nothing to this, but he rode pensive, sometimes hopping from one horse to
another, riding bareback, taking the lead. We did not speak a word all the way
to town.

Jimmy had him a
frame house behind the jail. It would be Allie’s too now. William led the way. We
were seen on the street, but since it was a Thursday, most were in their
labors.

Well, he was on
the porch the way Ma said, sunning
himself
, shirt
rolled up, pants loosened and down enough to show the puckered mouth of that
wound despite the chill. Allie had hung a blanket from the eave and he sat
behind it, but with the wind, he had no care
who
saw,
the afternoon rays on him and him a great believer in the healing power of the
sun. He was snoring…and Lord he could. I studied him for a bit, and Allie flew
out the door. The black was there, his big head moving the blanket like he
smelled Jimmy clean across town and he’d been gunning this way that’s for sure.

Well Jimmy opened
his eyes at all the commotion, and saw that black. “Am I dreaming?” he asked
Allie. Then to me, “Am I Tom?”

I shook my head. He
struggled up, and she put herself under his arm and helped him take the steps,
just the first two or so. Then she stepped away and handed him a cane, and he
came the rest of the way, a grin on his face. He threw an arm around me, and I
helped him take the few steps into the yard round the porch railing so he could
get to the horse. His hand went right to the scar, but not for long. That horse
nosed all over him, and he just stood there and let him do it, his eyes closed.
“I had me a dream,” he said low.

“You tell me
Garrett was in it…and light…and the four horses of the apocalypse, I’m gonna
kick your britches,” I said.

He threw his arm
back around me then, and squeezed, no wish to cry in front of us all…I reckon,
for we’d had much of his tears. Allie clung to him, to me. “Long road,” he said
when he could. It surely was.

“How’d that posse
do?” I asked to lift the temper.

He stepped back
and laughed, always running to thin, but he’d lost some meat, and his hand
shook as he ran the back of his fingers along his well trimmed beard. “Bimes
got himself shot in the butt…a bit of confusion on Finstermeyer’s part…but they
had them a good ride and lots of excitement. Having sashes made to commemorate
it, and every time I give the story I make sure and blow ‘em some smoke.”

We laughed a
little. I looked at my sis, and she carried pain over him, but the love…how had
I not seen it? I smiled at her…first time in so long. What a little beauty she
was.

“Ma told me you
married this dowager,” I said to her.

She blushed then,
giggling like the girl she still was. He pulled her in and crushed her against
him, the other hand on the cane. “Can’t believe she’d have me,” he said. “I’ve
never been good enough for her,” he told me. “You didn’t have to convince me of
that.”

I shook my head. “I
just…well, had to get used to it. You might not be the worst husband…she’ll
show you how it should be. All those things you know you don’t know…and they
are vast, you know they are…she knows ‘em.”
Then I
back-handed him on the shoulder.
“Just make sure you keep listenin’
cause I know how you get,” I swallowed then. Lord I was not going to cry like a
damn baby,
then
I said to her, “He gets stubborn you
know where to find me.”

William still sat
his horse. “Pard,” Jimmy said to him. I let go of Jimmy and let the horse at
him, so I could put both arms around Allie. I lifted her and swung her back and
forth like when she was little. I saw Lenora in the doorway then. I nodded to
her, even as I kept my face bent over my sis.

Allie pulled back
and looked in my eyes. “You’re happy,” she said. “I didn’t know what you would
be with all that happened.”

“I…am happy. I’m
married too.
My Addie.”

She hugged me all
over again.
New tears.

“He’s married,”
she called to Jimmy and he stumped back over to me. I put out a hand and we
shook. “Well ain’t you the sneaky bastard,” he said. “Bet they didn’t write a
story about your wedding ring.”

Allie proudly
held her finger up. “It was in the loot,” she said, using Jimmy’s word, I knew.

I kissed her hand
and swung her round. We were laughing, and he went back to Black, putting his
forehead against him.

“How’s he doin’?”
I whispered to her.

She nodded at me,
running her hand over my jaw. “Without you…I wouldn’t have him. I wouldn’t have
a lot of things,” she said, kissing my cheek.
“My big brother
the hero.”

I held that
little hand that had been touching me with love. I felt blessed.

I saw them then.
Lenora and William.
She had gone to him in the yard, him
sitting on that horse. I wondered why. He’d been waiting for her.

She was taller
than most, but thin and womanly. Her dress was white with lines of small blue
roses. She was light-skinned, he was darker. She was always fetching, and Mose
guarded her fierce, and well he should. Her long
hair,
was glossy black and always gathered almost regal it seemed. Well she held
herself like the Queen of Sheba. I always wondered William had the nerve to go
for her, but it had been her.
Always.
And he could get
them, like I said before.

So there she was
now, her big eyes on him. He never got excited. But he was interested and
showing it, and for him that was the same. He moved that horse two steps closer
to her. Side-steps, the horse thinking he was dancing it was so light. Lenora
raised her arms to him. William, still wearing his hat, took his foot from the
stirrup. He took her hands and she stepped up, then he slid his hands along her
until they rested at her little waist, and he turned her and settled her in
front of him on the saddle and his damn lap, her legs and skirts to the side. Well
Mose would kill him just for that but William didn’t look like he gave a shit.

It had been a
swift and beautiful move, leave it to him. He had his arms around her, holding
the reins, her looking at him, him looking at her.
Didn’t
matter to him that we were gaping.
Allie had gasped even. Jimmy was
doing this low chuckle.

But William
slowly turned that animal and let it high-step to the street. She moved one arm
around him.
Her still looking at him like he was the most
fascinating thing God ever made.
Once they were in the street he picked
it up a little. And off they went.

“Now where….” I
said.

“Mose is gonna
split his liver,” Jimmy said.

“Let him split,”
Allie said. “Lenora has replaced her mother long enough.”

We both looked at
her, for she had spoken firmly, as my ma was wont to do.

I raised a brow
at Jimmy. “Told you she knew,” I said.

But before I
could call to William not to go far
cause
we needed to
make a plan and get to Springfield, he was gone. I wanted to get this done and
get home to Addie and I knew he was in a marrying mood judging by the looks of
things. I’d never seen him lay it out like that. For him…that was a
declaration.