The Fire Within. Lynda Trent
to walk far on it, but if Union troops had passed the house once, they might do so regularly. If he could make it to the road and away from the house, someone might see him.
He reached the door and paused to catch his breath. Caleb hated feeling so weak. His muscles were trembling and he had only walked a few feet. He was beginning to realize how badly he was hurt and that his concern of never healing properly might be well-founded. He had been there almost two weeks and he couldn’t see much improvement at all in his leg. Up until now he had thought Megan was exaggerating his condition.
Caleb opened the door and a blast of cold air hit his face and slicked through his heavy wool jacket. He had no coat and wouldn’t steal one of Megan’s quilts for warmth. Especially since that would make him easier to see.
The porch steps were particularly difficult and he half fell down them. For a moment he held to the porch and caught his breath as waves of pain ripped through him. Had he pulled the wound open again? He looked at his leg, but it wasn’t bleeding. Limping painfully, he started across the yard.
Megan couldn’t get away until everyone had exhausted their questions and suggestions and agreed that there was nothing they could do to get Seth back or to ease his suffering. More than once she had started to tell them about the prisoner in her cabin, but she was too afraid they would lynch him first and think later. No, this was the only way she could help Seth, and she was determined that nothing would undermine her plan.
She took a loaf of bread from her mother, who seemed to be the only one other than Bridget who was thinking about Megan’s feelings. Bridget hugged her and patted her shoulder, her blue eyes glistening with unshed tears. Megan nodded. The women in her family were silent when they were most emotional.
Holding the bread under her arm, Megan started the climb to her cabin. Her thoughts were on Seth and his miserable conditions. Were the Confederate prisons as bad? Megan didn’t know and she knew not to pose the question to anyone in the Hollow. It would seem traitorous to suggest their own men were as inhumane to their prisoners as were the Yankees. All the same, Megan wondered.
As soon as she topped the ridge, she saw Caleb struggling up the road ahead. She let one of Owen’s expletives escape her lips and she ran to him. “What are you doing out of bed?” she demanded once she was beside him.
He ignored her and tried to drag himself farther up the road.
“What are you trying to do? Kill yourself?” She darted in front of him. “Look at you! You’re as pale as a sheet!” Without giving him opportunity to argue, she slipped his arm around her shoulders and turned him back in the direction of the cabin. “You must be as crazy as a bedbug to try to walk to Raintree in your condition. What if you fell on that leg?”
He didn’t answer, and when she looked up at him, she saw a white line of pain around his lips. “You must be purely crazy!” she muttered.
After several long minutes, she had him back inside the cabin. “Don’t you know someone could have seen you?” she demanded as she helped him back to his bedroom.
“That was the general idea,” he finally answered. “I was hoping to see Union troops.”
“You would have a long way to go before that happened. It’s a wonder no one from the settlement decided to walk me home. The only people around here are Confederate and they would rather shoot you than not.”
“Then the emergency wasn’t Union soldiers in the area?” He braced himself on the doorframe to the bedroom.
“No, it wasn’t. It was a letter from Seth. Can you stand here while I put a fresh sheet on the bed? Of course you can. You were bent on walking to Raintree, weren’t you?” She left him at the door and stripped the sheets from his bed. “Of all the fool things for you to do!”
She moved quickly, but he was trembling visibly by the time she had his bed ready. She helped him limp to it and sit on the raised pallet. “Your skin looks like a wax candle!” She was deeply concerned. “Why are you being so quiet? You’re never quiet.”
“I’m hurting like hell,” he said through clenched teeth, “and I’m right back where I started.”
“And you’re staying here, too.” She helped him take off his jacket and the trousers that were binding his leg, but left him his underlinen. A fine sheen of sweat lay on his pale skin. He wasn’t lying about the pain. Did it usually take gunshot wounds so long to start healing? Megan couldn’t ask anyone and Caleb apparently didn’t know either.
When he was lying in bed and able to relax through the pain, he said, “You say you got another letter from Seth?”
Megan hesitated. “His parents did. They let me read it.”
He looked at her. “He wrote them, not you?”
“It doesn’t mean anything.” Megan bent to pick up the sheets she had taken from the bed. “Most likely he didn’t have two pieces of paper or he was in a hurry to send it out. Besides, he knows his mother worries more than most would.”
“Surely he enclosed a message for you.”
She glanced at him. He seemed genuinely curious. “Now you’re talking too much again. I guess that means you’re feeling better.” She left the room and took the sheets out to the service porch in back.
She sat on the back steps, despite the cold, and hugged her knees to her chest. Why hadn’t Seth at least sent her a greeting? How long would that have taken? For that matter, why had he sent the letter at all? Didn’t he know it would upset his family and only make his mother worry more? How like Seth to think only of himself.
Megan hated these thoughts but she knew they were true. Seth had always put himself first. Even that night in the clearing when they had made love the first and only time. He must have known then that he was considering joining the army and he had taken her anyway, even if a baby might have been the consequence. What on earth would she have told her parents and everyone else in the settlement? Sex before marriage was strictly forbidden, even to couples who were engaged. But Seth had wanted her and he hadn’t thought beyond that.
For the first time, Megan let herself think of her future if she backed out of marrying Seth. For one thing, she would probably have to give up her cabin and move back in with her parents. It made more sense for Bridget and Patrick to have the cabin than for her to stay there alone. Megan liked being away from the others, even if it was lonely or even frightening at times. Cabins were too difficult to build and the men’s time was too precious for her father to be willing to build Bridget and Patrick another one.
Megan rested her chin on her knees. On the other hand, if she married Seth, would she be happy? She was rather surprised to realize she had never thought about that before. Like everyone else in Black Hollow, she had always assumed she would marry him. Her future had been more or less ordained since she was twelve or so. The only real surprise had been that she and Seth had waited so long to announce their intentions of marrying. Did that mean he had reservations as well? Megan had certainly never thought of that. Maybe he didn’t love her at all, but was simply taking the easy route.
The chilling wind crept into her and Megan got up shivering. She knew her thoughts were more the cause of her trembling than was the temperature. These were thoughts she should never have had. Not when she was living in the cabin, using the things from her hope chest and waiting for Seth’s return. She would be shunned if she backed out now. Assuming, of course, that Seth returned at all. He had said in his letter that men were dying around him every day.
She went into the house and finished peeling the potatoes to boil. Doing routine work helped. It was harder to think when she had to keep her mind on the sharp knife and her fingers.
“Megan?” Caleb called.
“What is it?” She dropped the potatoes into boiling water and went into the room.
“Who drew these pictures?”
She looked at the sketches she had hung from