Free The Widow of the South by Robert Hicks

lost it through foreclosure. He’d resigned himself to simply holding on until the war ended, when he would be able to put the whole of his rolling farm into cultivation: the green sea of corn and tobacco and clover would return, the orchards would be groomed, and the Herefords and Shorthorns would be able to live well again. He was a colonel in name only, an honorific bestowed upon him when he bought uniforms and supplies for the Confederate company that mustered out of Franklin. The money he’d borrowed had gone to clothe and arm men, many of whom had been killed and buried in places far away from Franklin. That’s where much of his debt was—moldering in the ground in graves already forgotten. To John McGavock the word
colonel
had come to mean “debtor.”
    They’d been riding in the general direction of the house for a few minutes when off to the left they saw something moving in the tree line. Horses.
    John stopped to look harder. He saw a flash, then another flash, and then he heard the report of a repeater. He looked over at Theopolis, who had withdrawn under the shadow of his broad straw hat, as if he could disappear. When he looked back again, he saw a rider astride a piebald mare step out from the woods. From a half mile distant, John could see the man push his blue campaign hat back and scratch his forehead. He seemed to be trying to lock eyes with John.
    At any other moment on any other day this encounter would not have troubled him very much. The Yankee presence in the county had become something he’d learned to tolerate, something that had evolved from a terror to a nuisance. He’d suffered their occasional inspections, their disrespect, their veiled taunts. He had even taken their meaningless loyalty oath, as had most everyone else in the county. He prayed for their defeat even as he accepted their occupation.
    But today, if Theopolis was correct about what was happening back at the house, the presence of Yankees on his property posed a threat. If they were following him, and God knows why they would, he could not lead them back to a confrontation at his house. He had escaped the war thus far, and he would not have it unfold on his doorstep in front of his family.
    He turned east, away from home, and began picking his way across the field.
    “We is expected at the house.” Theopolis’s voice quavered.
    John cut him off. “Be quiet, boy, and come on.”
    Out of the corner of his eye he saw three more men saunter out of the woods to join the first. John reckoned they were scouts. They looked like they’d been riding hard, not like the well-fed and content men who had manned the quiet garrison at Franklin. Their appearance foretold something new.
    John and Theopolis managed to ride most of the way across the field, headed for another road that would take them across the creek and back toward town, before the scouts took up the chase and spurred their rides on, closing quickly. Just as John and Theopolis entered the woods, they heard gunfire. Three bullets whipped through the brush around them, one after the other. John dug his heels into his mare to make a run for the bridge. The limbs of young redbud saplings slapped at his face, raising welts.
    But old Zack rushed for no man, damn the gunfire. Theopolis began to kick and punch the mule, but it was no good, and when John looked around, he realized he would have to turn back. He wrenched Zack’s head around and came to a skidding, stumbling stop. Behind them he saw the scouts appear on the brink of the tree line and crash into the woods behind them. One lingered behind and raised his rifle.
    “Get down,” John yelled, and waved his hands at Theopolis, who began to slip off the mule on the side opposite their pursuers. A bullet slammed against old Zack’s withers, and Theopolis could feel the vibration of lead against bone just as he fell to the ground and rolled into the brush. Zack screamed and turned on his rear legs, colliding with a tree and