Free Juliet's Moon by Ann Rinaldi Page B

doctor, just a new bandage.
    "Only place you'll get that is in the doctor's surgery," he told me. "So let's go."
    "Well, then, I want Martha with me."
    "You're a sassy little piece." He sounded a lot like Seth, so I forgave him and went along, leaving Martha to the reins of the horse and our place in the caravan.
    I do believe that the doctor was in his cups. I had never really seen Seth in his cups, but of course it is general knowledge in these parts that the measure of a man can be taken by the way he holds his liquor. They say Seth can hold his like a first-rate gentleman. This doctor could not. But what can you expect from anybody from the North?
    That is to say, he was not totally drunk. He could function as a physician, I will not dispute that, but still his hands shook and his words were somewhat slurred as he unwound the bandage from my head.
    "Damned nasty business, the collapse of that building," he told me, as if I didn't already know. "And as for Quantrill's response, the burning of Lawrence, why the
New York Daily Times
called all of them 'fiends incarnate.'"
    Then, "You're going to have a scar on your forehead the rest of your life, girl. Do you still get dizzy?"
    "I get the mumblefuddles," I told him.
    He sighed. "That's good enough for me." He rewrapped my head, gave me some clean bandages, then some powders to take, and sent me on my way.
    I suppose the mumblefuddles are the same in the North as well as the South.
We speak a common language,
I thought.
It's really unfair to be killing each other.

    M ARTHA AND I traveled for two days in our new wagon. The horse, named Precious, was middling passable. The roads were rutted. Sometimes the dust from all those wagon wheels choked us. Sometimes what choked us was the smoky haze that hung in the air from the landscape that still burned as we went along. At night, when the caravan stopped, it got almost cold and we huddled together in our cloaks. September days were still hot. Skies were still a hard blue and the landscape all around us was aglow with colorful wildflowers, but I saw none of it.
    I only knew that I wanted to go home, to stop playing this childish game now, to call it quits. I would have given an arm to see Seth come casually riding over the horizon, and on pulling up to where I was sleeping say, "Hey, Juliet, you up? Come on, I've got something to show you."
    I cried at night. I couldn't help it. I was mindful of Martha trying to shush me, of her enfolding me in her arms, of the terrible cuts and sores inside my soul. Finally on the second night, I asked her, "Martha, where are we going? Where are we going to go?"
    She had no answer for me except "Something will come up, Juliet. Something will happen to save us. Have faith."
    On that second night as I went back to sleep, tears staining my face, something did happen.
    We were kidnapped.

Chapter Seventeen
    I WAS SLEEPING fitfully when a hand came over my mouth and I heard a man's voice in my ear. "Don't be afraid. Don't scream. We're going to take you away from here."
    Next to me I heard Martha struggling. Then Seth's voice. "It's all right, girls. We've come to take you away."
    Martha becalmed herself. So did I. Next thing you know, I was lifted in somebody's strong arms, but not Seth's. It was a moonless night. "My pillowcase," I whispered, "it has all my things."
    I was allowed to retrieve it, and I suppose Seth let Martha have hers. Then we were whisked away into the nearby woods, soundlessly. There was a stream. They waded through it. I assumed that the man carrying me was a guerrilla. I could feel the stitching on his shirt. A few more yards and I heard horses nickering. I could smell them, and the leather saddles. Then I was lifted and put onto the back of one and my rescuer mounted and picked up the reins and quieted his mount. "Easy, girl."
    "Hello, Juliet, how you doin'?"
    "Seth!" I managed a sob.
    "Hush, no crying here, girl. Let's go, Bill."
    So it was Bill Anderson, Martha's older