When This Cruel War Is Over Read Online Free PDF

doctor.
    In spite of his size—he was barely five feet—Yancey was known in more than one town along the river as a lothario. Before the war, he and fellow bachelors Gentry and Conway had made frequent trips to Louisville and Cincinnati, where they found ladies of the evening eager to assuage their unwed status.
    â€œAre you aware that Miss Todd is more or less pledged to my nephew, Adam Jameson?” Andrew Conway said. “He’s a colonel in Morgan’s cavalry. If I were you, Major, I’d sleep with a loaded pistol on my night table. Those boys have crossed the Ohio once. They might do it again, anytime.”
    â€œRisks are a soldier’s stock in trade, Mr. Conway,” Paul said.
    â€œI would say Janet Todd is worth more than a little risk,” Colonel Gentry said.
    Paul was about to agree when Conway replied with a smile that was almost a sneer. “Come on, Henry. You above all should know what a Kentucky girl can do to a man.”
    â€œThey’re very good at breaking hearts,” Gentry said. “I’m sure Major Stapleton knows that’s part of the risk.”
    Had a Kentucky woman broken Gentry’s heart? For the first time Paul felt some respect—and even a little sympathy—for this mutilated man. Although Gentry had welcomed Paul into his home and been unfailingly cordial, he spent most of his time in a cellar office getting drunk. He had revealed little or nothing about his personal life, except a boyhood friendship with Abraham Lincoln.
    â€œI like to think broken hearts are like battlefield
wounds,” Paul said. “Eventually they heal. And they leave behind a certain vibration of glory.”
    â€œGlory!” Conway said. “You must be the last man in this war who believes in that old horse, Major.”
    â€œNot at all,” Henry Gentry said. “I still believe in it. Especially the kind that’s left behind by a broken heart.”
    â€œUnbelievable,” Dr. Yancey said to Andrew Conway. “Amelia’s still got her hooks into him.”
    The recruiting rally was over. The crowd in the courthouse square had dwindled by half. No one seemed to be going anywhere near the Gentry store, just off the square on Main Street, where Colonel Schreiber waited to pay recruits $400 in federal greenbacks—more than a year’s salary for a field hand. Although no shots had been fired, the Democrats had unquestionably won the battle.
    It’s not your fault. Paul’s Gettysburg wound whispered. It’s that idiot in the White House.
    â€œSergeant,” Paul said to Moses Washington. “Get the men back to camp on the double and saddle up fifty horses. We’ve got some deserters to catch before we can celebrate Independence Day.”
    A shadow of uneasiness in the sergeant’s eyes suggested he was aware of the incongruity of chasing deserters on the Fourth of July. Major Stapleton was more concerned about the mockery he was certain to hear in Janet Todd’s sultry southern voice when she asked him about his latest adventure on behalf of the federal government’s quest for victory in this apparently endless war.

THREE
    IN THE DARK, DANK ICEHOUSE on Rose Hill, the next plantation down the Ohio from Hopemont, Janet Todd’s body servant, Lucy, crouched beside Aunt Rachel, a wrinkled gray-haired slave who was reading aloud the letter to Colonel Adam Jameson by the light of a flickering candle. “Read it one more time,” Lucy said. “I wants to get it word for word.”
    Aunt Rachel was shaking all over; whether from the cold or fear it was hard to tell. But she began reading the letter for the third time. “Faster,” Lucy said.
    Lucy had asked Miss Janet to teach her to read. But Colonel Todd said no, no, no and no. Niggers who learned to read ran away. Aunt Rachel had learned to read thirty years ago. She was the last slave Mrs. Conway, the old mistress of Rose Hill, had taught