Then again, better to mind his business. After all, he had private thoughts aplenty, and a secret or two that he wouldn’t have liked to share.

* * *

The land they traveled over was relatively level, but there were forests of cottonwood, pine and birch on all sides, and when Evangeline looked back, the Springwater station was a tiny log cubicle, with wisps of smoke curling from the two chimneys. A part of her longed to return to the shelter of that small, warm structure, where she and Abigail would be safe, but her reasonable side reminded her that no place was really safe. In Pennsylvania—of all places—men had shot and bayoneted each other in cornfields, sundered heads and arms and legs with cannon fire. The two great armies, colliding at Gettysburg in the first, smothering-hot days of July 1863, had left blood and suffering, spoiled crops and shattered hearts in their wake, physical and material destruction of unimaginable proportions. The carnage wreaked upon minds and spirits was greater still.

Evangeline closed her eyes against images that would never really leave her. After the battle, Union and Rebel soldiers alike had been brought to the surrounding towns for whatever care they might get, since the field hospitals were overflowing with wounded. She, along with other women from her small community, had done what she could to help, changing bandages, taking down letters to loved ones, but mostly just sitting by helplessly, holding some dying boy’s hand. It had struck her more than once, as it did now, that when a man’s clothes are soaked through with blood, it was impossible to tell one uniform from another.

She did not speak until the station had disappeared behind a bend in the trail, then, facing many cold hours in Scully’s company, not to mention a lengthy winter, she decided to initiate a conversation. Reasoning that then was as good a time to settle the question as any, Evangeline sat up very straight, folded her gloved hands in her lap, and began. “June-bug told me you were a soldier. In the war, I mean.”

His blue-green eyes, twinkling with something resembling mischief only moments before, narrowed a little as he regarded her, and his mouth looked almost hard. Then, he collected himself, smiled, and touched the brim of his hat in acknowledgment. “Yes, ma’am,” he said.

“Under General Lee.”

“Yes, ma’am. Under General Lee.”

It was like picking burrs off a wet cat, engaging Scully Wainwright in a simple conversation. Evangeline had yet to decide whether that was a good thing or a bad one. “I’m sure you’re aware that my husband—that I—”

“That you were a Yankee?” Scully asked, his eyes merry again. “Don’t you worry, ma’am. I don’t see myself holding that against you. A person can’t help being born north of the Mason-Dixon line, now can they?”

Evangeline felt as though she’d been put firmly in her place, even though there was nothing of rancor in Wainwright’s tone or countenance. She squared her shoulders. “Yet you came here,” she pointed out. Her very breath seemed to freeze before her, in the crisp, diamond-clear air.