The King Hill War Read Online Free PDF

surrendered to shadow, the color began to fade, tone and tint leaving the sky a dark purple. Finally, as if making one last, desperate attempt to assert itself, the sun sent a single golden shaft shooting straight up, only tobe quickly blotted out by the encroaching darkness, and the day was done.
    “Did you enjoy your meal, sir?”
    Hawke, who was sitting at a table in the dining car, had been looking through the window at the light show of the dying day. When the waiter spoke, he turned toward him.
    “Yes, thank you,” he said. “It was quite delicious.”
    “I’m glad you enjoyed it. What time will you want your breakfast table ready?”
    “Eight o’clock, I think.”
    “Very good, sir.”
    As the dishes were cleared away from the table, Hawke left the dining car and returned to his seat in the Pullman car. Some of the beds had already been made and he had to walk a narrow aisle between hanging green, sackcloth curtains to reach the back end of the car.
    Sitting next to the window, Hawke turned up the gimbal-mounted lantern so there was enough light for him to read the letter from Cynthia again. When he finished it, he looked outside at the little patches of projected light that slid along the ballast as the train hurried through the night, recalling the first time he’d met Cynthia. It had also been the first time he met Tamara….
    The more prominent families of Georgia knew each other, if not by actual contact, then at least by reputation. To be a member of the privileged few in one community meant ex-officio entitlement to membership in all.
    Jefferson Tinsdale Hawke was a former member of the Congress of the United States who resigned his seat when Georgia seceded from the Union. He was also owner of one of the largest and most productive plantations in Georgia. Because of that, the Hawke family had full entrée into the top tier of society, not only in Georgia, but all over the South.
    One week after Mason Hawke returned from Europe, where he had been engaged in a grand concert tour playing piano before adoring crowds from London to Berlin, Charles Brubaker, one of the wealthier farmers of the county, hosted a huge barbecue for the regiment. Half a steer and ten hogs were spitted and being turned, slowly, over glowing coals, and the aroma of roasting meat competed with the fragrance of flowers and the ladies’ perfumes. The ladies were all dressed in butterfly-bright dresses, and sporting jewelry that flashed and sparkled at bare throats, in their hair, and on broaches.
    Most of the men, Mason Hawke included, were wearing the gray and gold uniforms of the newly activated Georgia 15th, which, because the regiment was commanded by Colonel Jefferson Tinsdale Hawke, was often referred to as “Hawke’s Regiment.” In the button holes of many of the men’s tunics were snippets of hair—black, brown, blonde, or red—snipped from the lady of their choice.
    Hawke was a newly commissioned second lieutenant, and his brother, Gordon, a captain, in the regiment.
    “Why did Dad make me a lieutenant?” Hawke asked his brother. “What do I know about the military? I’m a pianist. I should be a private.”
    “Does being a pianist make you more qualified to be a private than to be an officer?” Gordon asked in response.
    Hawke shook his head. “Being a pianist doesn’t qualify me for anything, except being a pianist.”
    Gordon chuckled. “There you go, then, little brother,” he said. “Since you aren’t qualified for either position, you may as well be a lieutenant. Trust me, you’ll like it much better. Now, come, I want you to meet someone.”
    Hawke smiled. “What do you mean, meet her? It’s Cynthia Rathbone, isn’t it? We’ve known the Rathbone’s all our life.”
    “Well, yes, but Cynthia isn’t the only one I want you to meet.”
    “What do you mean, not just Cynthia?” Hawke laughed. “Good heavens, Gordon, don’t tell me you have two women.”
    “Not exactly,” Gordon said. “But