Free High Hearts by Rita Mae Brown Page A

railroads. He also needed authority over engineers, switchmen, and the riffraff that ran the trains. Rank was his only protection.
    Sumner, so like his sister in many ways, bore no resemblanceat all to Geneva when it came to responsibility. Sumner, groomed to inherit a great house and a great stable, dallied with ladies of Richmond. He was happier throwing up a rough bridge over a friend’s creek or dancing all night than learning the rigor of scientific breeding and the management of an estate. Why Henley had to sit on him for three months just last year to get him to go to Kentucky to buy yearlings. Geneva, on the other hand, soaked up horse genealogies. Henley only had to tell her once. Her gift as a rider was the most remarkable talent Henley had ever seen. A pity Geneva was a woman. She couldn’t race, but she could train them at home. That was some consolation. He thought about changing his will before leaving today, but Sumner and Geneva loved one another. He found no fault with his son there. Sumner was a devoted brother. The children would never fight over the disposition of their inheritance. Sumner would care for Lutie if anything happened to him. God knows, the boy loved his mother. Natural, he supposed. Fathers and sons look out the same window but don’t see the same tree.
    Nash noticed the sudden pallor on Sumner’s face under his father’s scrutiny. The loud and cheerful arrival of Greer Fitzgerald, Jennifer Greer Fitzgerald’s son, turned his attention away from the Chatfields. Greer rode up and down the line of men, shouting, whooping, slapping hands. He stopped short of Henley and saluted, then rode a trifle more quietly.
    When they reached the outskirts of town, Henley bid his son, son-in-law, and friends good-bye. The men assigned to cavalry units, not yet named or numbered, turned north and rode toward Culpeper. Nash grumbled that they could have been loaded on a train; after all, this was 1861. The Culpeper train station was at least two days away, even riding at a reasonable pace.
    Henley split off and rode into the town, which was buzzing with morning activity. At the station he handed over his mount to Timothy, one of the young stable boys he had brought along with him, and told him to return home to Lutie. He gave the boy money to buy a large box of sweets for Lutie. Timothy, a reliable twelve-year-old, would spare the candied peaches but demolish the chocolate. Henley, remembering Timothy’s weakness, rewarded him with two dollars to thoroughly indulge himself. The boy, thankful, pressed Henley’s hand and wished him a safe journey.
    The small train station crawled with young men in various, ill-coordinated uniforms. Noise bounced off the walls. Henley accepted a few salutes with the air of one accustomed to deference. Their urgency for excitement would be fulfilled within twenty-four hours. Henley knew these boys would be loaded on a train headed for Harper’s Ferry. A secret communication from John Letcher, the governor, informed Henley about this. This was a courtesy due him as one of the senior officers in Albemarle. The legalities and formalities of secession as well as declaring war were not yet on paper, but Letcher, an intelligent man, grasped the importance of seizing the arsenal at Harper’s Ferry. The South’s supplies of ball, cannon, gunpowder, and artillery were nil. Letcher said, “Go.” These boasting, high-spirited young men were going to do just that, unbeknownst to them. The authorities in Richmond tapped out false telegrams declaring the destination of the train as the Portsmouth Navy Yard.
    When Henley finally boarded a train heading east for Richmond, he looked back at the youths crowded on the platform and wondered who would be alive tomorrow night. He slumped in his seat. He lied to his wife. He knew the war would never be over by the fall. Henley had spent too much time in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia not to understand what Northern industrial might would