Sergeant Brett zimmer's Arc

Chapter 4 of 5

Brett walked back to the trees with the food sacks and the woman's warning in his head. Joel and Peter waited with the horses. The basset hound lifted its long ears from Joel's saddle. Brett dropped the sacks and said what the woman told him. Union riders were asking about three men on stolen-looking horses. Every ford north had eyes. "They're not looking for men," Brett said. "They're looking for these coats." He plucked at his blue sleeve. "We ride like this, the first farmer we pass points them right at us." Joel frowned. He was younger, and he still trusted the uniform. "It's what we are. Take it off and we're spies. They hang spies." "We're already hunted," Brett said. "The coat doesn't protect us here. It marks us." Peter stood apart, thin and worn, saying nothing at first. He had thanked the old woman three times at supper. Now he stepped between the brothers. "Sergeant's right," he said quiet. "I don't want to hang. But I don't want to swing from a Union rope for looking like a thief either." Brett went back to the porch and knocked again. The old woman opened the door. Behind her the black-and-white dog pushed its nose out. Brett asked for clothes. Anything plain. Anything not blue. She looked at him a long moment. Then she waved him inside. She led him past a front room to a tall dark window. Colored glass ran across the top. Bottles and books crowded the sill below. She opened a chest under it and lifted out a folded coat, a shirt, a pair of worn trousers. Her son's clothes. "He won't need them," she said. Her voice did not shake, but her hands did. She found two more sets from a peg by the stove and a neighbor's washing she'd kept. Farm clothes. Brown wool and gray cotton. Brett carried the bundle to the trees. They changed by the horses in the dark. Brett folded his blue coat and pushed it deep into a sack. Joel held his own a moment longer, then rolled it tight. Peter pulled a rough shirt over his head and breathed out slow. In plain clothes they looked like three tired men riding home. Not soldiers. Not the wanted riders on the patrol's list. But the horses had not changed. Brett looked at them and his stomach dropped. Cavalry mounts. Broad-chested, army-branded, standing in tight line the way trained horses do. No farmer owned three like these. The old woman had said it plain that morning. The riders asked about the horses too. Brett pulled the last strap tight and swung up. The coats no longer marked them. The horses still did. "Mount up," he said. "We find a place to swap these horses, or we don't get near a ford."