Free High Hearts by Rita Mae Brown

a uniform. The facings of his frock coat were bright yellow. Henley’s cuffs and collar were a soft blue.
    “Little sister, you’ll catch your death!”
    She raced over and kissed him, and then turned to her father, stiffly bent over. “Daddy, why are you wearing light blue on your sleeves and collar when Nash and Sumner are in yellow?”
    “Theoretically, I’m in the infantry. They’re in the cavalry.”
    “Just remember, I’m an engineer in the service of the cavalry!” Sumner burst with enthusiasm.
    Geneva lifted her face up to her father, who seemed in his uniform as gray as the sky. “You won’t fight, will you?”
    “Only if I have to, sweet lamb. But don’t fret over it. Look at me. I’m fifty. My eyes aren’t too sharp, and I’ve been given strict orders to find and transport provisions. I think I’ll be denied the whiff of gunpowder.” Slight regret laced his deep, resonant voice.
    Bumba gave Nash a leg up and then joined Sumner’s servant with the string of extra horses and the two pack mules.
    Henley gravely instructed his daughter. “See to your mother. You are her strength now.”
    “Yes, Daddy.” She bowed her head. The tears wouldn’t hold back.
    “Geneva, we’ll all be back by fall. Don’t cry. This is the most exciting thing to happen to me in my entire life! I wish you could come too!” Sumner thought this viewpoint consoling.
    Her eyes glittered. “So do I.” She put her hand on her husband’s boot. Supple, he leaned down and kissed her one last agonizing time.
    “What’s to become of us?” she cried.
    Nash said gently, “Some things are in the hands of God. We’re like dice thrown on the plains of destiny.” With that he wheeled and trotted away, not looking back. Henley and Sumner followed. Geneva watched until the mist and the snow swallowed them up. Half-frozen, she went back into the house and cried until she thought she’d throw up.
    * * *
    As the men rode toward town, other men joined them, riding down the long country roads from their estates. Poorer residents of Albemarle County walked toward the train station. Sumner, joyous, chattered with friends, then mindful that he would soon be separating from his father, rejoined Henley and Nash who headed this scraggly, ever swelling column. The sun, pale and loitering, offered no warmth. The snow slowed. Sumner reached in his greatcoat and pulled out Darling Fanny Pan Cake. He cut a plug of this Myers Brothers tobacco and popped it into his mouth.
    “Sumner, gentlemen smoke tobacco. They don’t chew it,” Henley chided.
    Sumner, now in the army, such as it was, didn’t feel like taking any more orders from his father. “It calms my nerves. Besides, how can I get a light on horseback?”
    Henley frowned. “What do you have to be nervous about, my boy? You have no rank, and therefore, you have no responsibility.”
    Stung, Sumner replied, “If I earn a rank, I’ll accept it. We all decided to go in as privates.”
    Henley couldn’t fathom why most of the sons of good families chose this path. Any man who had attended military school automatically received a junior officer’s rank. Any man formerly in the United States Army retained his rank. In Henley’s day, a scion enlisting could depend upon automatically being granted a lieutenancy. Now it was fashionable to be on the bottom of the heap. He shrugged his shoulders and ignored his son.
    Sumner, determined not to let his father whittle him down, pressed on. “I’ll finish this war as a captain, the hard way.”
    Henley turned slightly in his saddle to look at the set face chewing his Darling Fanny Pan Cake. “I hope so.” The braid of colonel gleamed on his sleeve and so did the three stars on his narrow collar band. Henley, not a military man, gladly accepted his status as senior officer. He needed weight in order to force some of these tight farmers and sly merchants to comply. He assumed that the government, once settled, would commandeer the