Free Enemy Women by Paulette Jiles

over their bare hands and kicked at the snow. Adair knew that they had denounced her.
    She said, Let go of me. I don’t want you holding on to me like that.
    You are under arrest.
    But I never did anything. Adair’s voice was ragged, and her mouth was dry. She tried to jerk away from the soldiers who had hold of her arm, but this caused her to drop the tavern hat with the half a pie in it. One of the soldiers, a young man with a round pink face, let go of her arm and reached down to hand it back to her. Are you Lieutenant Colonel Miller?
    Yes.
    Well, sir, you are going to have to account for this. For arresting me. And everything you stole. You are going to have to account for this.
    She tried to pull loose again but this time the guards had taken a harder grip on her arms.
    Lieutenant Colonel Miller said, You are giving aid and comfort to the enemy and information as well.
    No I didn’t, she said. I’d like to know who said that. Adair wasbecoming reckless. Where’s my father? And you have to account for our horses, you have to write down what you took.
    The soldiers to either side of her held on to her, and looked from her to the lieutenant colonel.
    This state is under martial law, said Miller. The Militia is here to enforce it.
    Well, what is marshal’s law? said Adair. You explain to me what marshal’s law is.
    The U.S. Constitution is suspended, Miller said. I am responsible for the security and peace of this region.
    I don’t know what you call peace, but you all beat up my father and took him away. I may be confused about the term.
    Shut up, young woman, said Lieutenant Colonel Miller.
    And you are thieves, you are thieves.
    Shut up, said Miller.
    Before they put her on the train to St. Louis she told Little Mary and Savannah to get to the Daltons, back down the Trace to the crossing of the Black River. She gave them the four silver shillings and the rest of her pie. The two girls held hands and stared, bereft, carrying the remnants of their bacon and cornmeal. Adair told them to go there and stay and be good and to help Mrs. Dalton in every way and to pray every night for this family. She said she would escape and come back to them, and send word to them that she was coming. They seemed very dubious about this, and beneath the doubt lay terror. They held each other and did not cry in front of the Union soldiers.
    Then she was put into a truck car with three other women on a train north to St. Louis. Three guards sat in the pile of hay with them. Adair had never been on a train before, nor had the other women. They did not speak to one another for the soldiers would not allow it. The steam whistle shrieked so that Adair had to put her hands over her ears. The train began to move, jerking forward. They were all thrown sideways in concert, as if this aggregation of strangers had just become an accomplished dance team.
    The wind and snow came in the open door of the truck car and as they went on the straw flew more thickly so that the women had to put their shawls across their faces. Adair held her tavern hat against her chest and wrapped her shawl over her head. The straw was peppered with fleas and manure and it was blowing up into her face. She watched out the open door as the forests tore past them at thirty miles an hour, through deep slashes in the hills that were still raw and red, and over trestles high above the Saint Francis River and the Meramec. The tunnel of limbs they sped through raked at the sides of the car, and steam drifted back.
    Adair was silent with amazement. Things had evaporated so quickly she hardly had time to study on it. The other women in the car seemed to her very passive and resigned to being shipped somewhere like cows. Like creatures in bondage, and one of them glanced at Adair and then away again and her face was humble and whipped looking, and Adair wondered how the woman had got beaten down into that state, if it could happen to her as well. She put her fingertips across her