Free Triumph by Heather Graham Page A

appreciated they might have been during the really tragic battles when tens of thousands of men fell in a single day.”
    She shrugged. “I don’t know what good I would have been elsewhere. I learned everything I know from ...” She hesitated, not wanting to give herself away in any manner.
    “She learned from her brother, the best surgeon in the field!” Trey McCormack provided.
    Still watching her, the Yank slowly smiled. “The best surgeon in the field! And who might that be, Private?”
    “Don’t you tell him, Trey! I don’t want this man knowing my name, and certainly not that of my brother. I don’t want my brother—”
    “Or yourself?” the Yank suggested, interrupting her.
    “I don’t want my brother jeopardized in any way!” she finished.
    “But Miss Ti—”
    “Trey!”
    “Yes, ma’am.” The Yankee didn’t force the point, but still she felt uneasy, aware that he was studying her, perhaps seeing more than she wanted him to see.
    “What now?” she asked him.
    “We wait for Gilly to get back with the poultice.”
    “I can make the poultice. I’m as familiar with the healing qualities of mosses and molds as most physicians.”
    “More so than most, I imagine,” he said.
    “Are you a physician yourself?”
    He shook his head, hesitating slightly. She realized he had decided not to reveal too much about his own identity. “I have a witch doctor or two in my background.”
    “What?”
    “Never mind. Like you, I’ve learned from experience.”
    Gilly came back in then, breathing hard, but carrying the moss and the mushrooms in his mess plate.
    “They need to be mashed together ...” the Yankee began.
    “Truly, I do this well. Let me make the poultice,” Tia said. “Gilly, you can help me. Bring them just outside. Bring your mess plate.”
    Gilly did as she had ordered. He knelt down by her side when she found a fallen log to use as a worktable.
    “Gilly, don’t turn around and look back as I talk to you, do you understand?”
    “Don’t turn around?”
    “Gilly, we’ve got to take him by surprise somehow.”
    “Take him by surprise? But he hasn’t come to hurt us.”
    “Gilly! He’s a Yankee officer—he isn’t coming through to applaud us on medical technique!”
    “But Tia, he just saved Stuart’s life.”
    “Yes, and I’m grateful for that, though if we hadn’t been running, Stuart might not have ripped his previous stitches so badly! The point is, Gilly, we can’t chance letting him leave, going for help, and bringing a score of men to take us in.”
    “A score of Yankees—”
    “The state is riddled with them now, Gilly! They’ve decided that we are to be taken, that we are a danger. Troops are amassing to the north of the state, west of Jacksonville and St. Augustine. We know that they’ve decided on making a real movement against us here. Trust me, please, Gilly, if he leaves here, he might come back with plenty of reinforcements!”
    “And how do we stop him?”
    “By surprise, somehow by surprise!”
    “Have you taken note of his weapons?”
    “Yes, of course, and I’m sure he’s adept at using them. We need to divert his attention, and you’ll have to take him from the back. It will be our only chance.”
    “You want me to shoot a man in the back? I don’t care if this is war, Miss Tia. That’s cold-blooded murder. There are still such things as honor in this world, and if we survive the war, no matter who wins it, I’m still going to have to live with myself.”
    She stared at the very young man who seemed to know his own purpose so well. “I understand. I’m really not suggesting cold-blooded murder, though how our actions out in the field aren’t murder, I don’t know. You don’t have to kill him. Taken by surprise, he can be knocked out. We can leave him hog-tied and immobile and we can move west again, hook up with Dixie’s troops, and then, our wounded will have a far better chance of survival!”
    “Leave him tied? There’s