Libby asked, “You still runnin’ from the same soldiers? Or maybe a new bunch now?”

“You don’t see me runnin’, do you?”

“I’ll bet we would if some soldiers were to come ridin’ over that hill yonder.”

James could not deny that, but he tried not to dignify it with an answer. “I sure don’t want to be any trouble to you, ma’am. But Sly Shipman here, he got hurt on account of me.”

Libby declared, “I sure can’t say I’m surprised.”

Mrs. Caldwell led the way to a room at the end of the log building. James knew by the look of it that her sons slept there. “Libby,” she ordered, “you go fetch some hot water and clean cloth. I’ll fix this poor young man’s dressin’.” She frowned. “Looks like it hasn’t been changed in a day or two.”

James said apologetically, “We been movin’, ma’am.”

When Libby brought the water and cloth, her mother ordered her to go busy herself in the kitchen. A girl her age had no business seeing a young man’s body naked from the waist up. It wouldn’t be seemly. James was relieved; a little of the girl’s barbed comment was enough to serve him from now to Christmas. He and Caldwell removed Shipman’s badly abused cotton shirt and then the bandages that the Reverend Fairweather had put on. James shook involuntarily at sight of the wound. It still looked angry and dark, though it had improved from the last time he had seen it. He said, “The preacher was afraid he might get blood poisonin’.”

Mrs. Caldwell answered, “Since he hasn’t already, it’s not likely he will. But you’ll need to keep the wrappin’ clean.”

She set about cleaning and rebandaging the wound. “Now, young man,” she told Shipman, “We’ll get a good supper into you after a bit, and you’ll look and feel a lot better.”

“I feel better already,” Shipman told her gratefully. “If ever a time comes that I can do you a favor—” He turned to James. “We got any of our goods left?”

“Nothin’ but a jug or two of Kentucky whiskey that I kept in case somethin’ comes up.”

“It’s come up. Fetch it.”

They ate supper. James sat across the table from Libby Caldwell and tried to ignore her gaze, which remained on him during most of the meal. She seemed to be appraising him as if he were a lame mule at a crossroads sale yard.

After supper Caldwell took out an old fiddle he said had been made forty or fifty years ago by his grandfather. The oldest son fetched a homemade stringed instrument not quite like any James had ever seen, but it had a fair to middling twang. Another son had a primitive instrument known as a recorder, whittled from wood. They began to play. Mrs. Caldwell and the rest of the youngsters joined in. Even Libby sang, after a bit. Her singing was much more pleasant than her talk, James thought, for it had a nice lilt and a clarity that reminded him of his sister Heather, back home. Most of the songs were hymns he had heard often in Tennessee. He sang along when he could remember the words and hummed when he could not. Shipman’s pale face seemed to brighten to the music, though he did not sing. James figured Shipman did not know the songs. He probably had not been exposed to much church music—or much church, for that matter.