Free Crossing by Gilbert Morris Page B

“You must trust me,” she said firmly. “I know, and certainly Zemira knows. She was the best midwife in the community.”
    “Huh?” Daniel said, bewildered.
    “Never mind. Just go downstairs, stay calm, and wait.”
    Yancy and his father went downstairs and waited, but they certainly were not calm. They paced in the parlor, they paced in the dining room, and finally they went out and paced on the veranda. The night was beautiful, with a full silver moon and a spangling of stars spanning the sky. They didn’t notice. The only thing they noticed was when they accidentally ran into each other, and then they muttered distractedly, “Uh, sorry.” They even ran into poor Hank a couple of times, who was sitting at the top of the steps, watching them blundering around with worried eyes.
    In the still night, they heard a baby’s cry. It was eleven minutes to eleven.
    Esther’s step sounded on the stairs, and they rushed into the house like mad bulls.
    “Come on up,” she said, smiling widely. “They’re fine.”
    They ran up the stairs and then, slowing down and almost tiptoeing, they went into the bedroom.
    Rebecca sat up in bed. She looked tired, and her hair was dripping with sweat, but she smiled. “Look, Daniel! Just look! Isn’t she beautiful?”
    “She … she? It’s a girl?” Daniel murmured, standing by the bed. “Thank the Lord! She’s—all right?” he asked Esther anxiously.
    Zemira soundlessly came up to stand beside him. She beamed down at the baby. “She’s perfect, just perfect. She reminds me of—of—” She choked slightly, then finished in a low voice, “Of you, of course, Daniel. Of you.”
    The baby was awake and seemed to stare right up at her father. She had reddish blond hair and light blue eyes, just like Daniel. Most babies just look like babies, but Yancy thought that she did indeed resemble Father.
    Becky held her up for Daniel to hold. He took her as if she were the most precious thing in the world. “A little girl … a girl … Oh, thank you, wife.”
    “Thank you, husband. So what shall we call her?”
    “Well, we did talk about that. I know it’s kind of a mouthful, but I still like it. Callie Josephine? Callie after my grandmother and Josephine after your grandfather Joseph?”
    “Callie Josephine it is,” Becky said, settling wearily back into her pillows. “What do you think about your new sister, Yancy?”
    It gave Yancy a warm feeling for Becky to call the baby his sister instead of his half sister. Over the last two years he had come to love Becky, though he could never call her Mother. But this did give him a tie to the baby, for them to name her after his great-grandmother Callie. Grandmother had told him a lot about her mother. She had been a strong, loving woman.
    Yancy answered, “Well, she’s—uh, little. And she’s all red. But she’s got pretty-colored hair, like Father’s.”
    Becky laughed. “The red will go away, and she’ll have a beautiful complexion, just like her grandmother Zemira. And yes … “ she finished softly, “she is very much like her father.”

Part Two: The Prelude, 1858

CHAPTER SIX
    T hree cadets scurried across the compound, headed for the classroom building. They were fifteen minutes late. They were students of Virginia Military Academy, better known as VMI. This institution was joined to Washington College in the small Virginia town of Lexington.
    Sandy Owens, a tall, lanky boy of fifteen with hazel eyes and the sandy reddish hair that his nickname would indicate, led the three. Behind him was Charles Satterfield, a short, stocky fifteenyear-old with jet black hair and warm, brown eyes. Peyton Stevens, the third member of the group, was a handsome blond boy with china blue eyes and the look of aristocracy about him. He was sixteen but could have passed for eighteen. He wasn’t as flustered as the other two boys, knowing he wouldn’t be in a great deal of trouble since his father was a senator and had gotten him out