Free Trail Angel by Derek Catron Page B

how many times we have to piss in the night.” A look of alarm passed over his face. “Excuse my language, ma’am. I’ve been living among uncouth soldiers for too long.”
    â€œYour language is not alien to me.” Annabelle liked how he called her “ma’am” even though he was older than her father. His manners reminded her of Southern gentlemen. “Once I can sleep better, I think I might come to enjoy our travels.”
    â€œIs it bad dreams that bother you?” the Colonel asked.
    Annabelle shifted. “Why would you think that?”
    â€œThey are common enough these days.”
    She wondered if he spoke of the war in general or Josey Angel. Annabelle rarely saw the young scout among the wagons. He usually rode ahead and showed up only to report to the Colonel before riding away again. His long absences did not remove him from Annabelle’s mind, but she resisted asking the Colonel about him. Instead she asked, “Do bad dreams keep you awake?”
    â€œMe?” He chuckled. “When you reach my age, you stop worrying about your dreams. You’re just grateful to still have them.”
    Annabelle stretched, feeling refreshed despite her abbreviated sleep. The camp would stir soon. Light appeared long before the sun, and the emigrants took advantage of every minute in the cool morning. Rising from her seat by the fire, she bid the Colonel a good day. “I may as well start getting dressed.”
    â€œI should go, too.” He tipped his hat and rose with some difficulty on knees that seemed to waggle.
    Shaking the dust from her quilt, Annabelle watched distant lightning strikes flash on the horizon. She hoped the sight didn’t portend another storm. The lights reminded her of the shelling in Charleston, carried her back to another time. It had been months since she last dreamed of her husband. Richard had been so angry in her dream. She wasn’t sure why. For selling the family land? For giving him up for dead? There were too many possibilities, some she even blocked from her mind.
    Annabelle remembered the day he left, so handsome in his uniform, his wide shoulders gilded with fringed epaulets, a plumed hat making him look even taller in the saddle. He wore a red sash about his waist and carried his father’s sword and pearl inlay revolver. The sun shone and he looked the very image of Southern gallantry.
    Yet it wasn’t until he disappeared from view that Annabelle permitted a smile. Couldn’t restrain it, really. If she’d been troubled by guilt at the moment, the feeling disappeared in the relief at his departure. She might have felt differently if she’d known he wasn’t coming back. That moment of pleasure left her no defense against his anger in her dream.
    â€œYou never came home,” she said in the dream.
    â€œI’ve been here all along,” her husband responded. He reached toward her in the dream, and she pulled back, tripped, her leg jolting for balance with a sudden movement that woke her.
    It’s better to be awake if that’s what sleep brings. That he should hold such sway over her after all this time proved how deeply he wounded her. He had been dead nearly two years now. She would never know precisely how long. The uncertainty made her envy widows who received accounts of their husband’s deaths. As difficult as those letters were to read, at least they delivered a sense of finality. The women grieved and moved on. Annabelle never had that. She imagined Richard’s death a thousand ways, sometimes, in her darkest moments, wishing him the pain in death he had thrust on her in life.
    Such thoughts always wracked her with remorse and left her more vulnerable to the nightmares. He had come to her, angry, his comely face twisted into a mask of hatred she had never understood.
    No. That wasn’t right. She understood why he hated her. Perhaps the mystery was in how much. Where was the