Recognizing the voice, she answered, “Don’t be a fool Martin, It’s me.”
He lowered his revolver to his side. “I think he’s the only one we got. Four of ’em ran right through the middle of camp, dispatch or something. Must have gotten lost.” He dropped off to check the body. “This one’s alive.”
He didn’t sound too happy about it and Mary knew why. Colonel Mosby had ordered them to hang one prisoner out of the next batch of Union soldiers they took in retaliation for Custer’s “illegal contravention of the laws of war.” Custer had ordered some of Mosby’s men hanged as guerrillas, even when they were clearly captured in uniform. Or at least as much uniform as most Confederate soldiers still had. Still, killing a man in battle was one thing, and hanging a prisoner, no matter how much you supported the Cause, was another entirely. It was a murder of sorts, rather than war, and the Rangers were very disconcerted by the orders.
The other figure, Martin’s brother Joseph, helped him move the prisoner back to the camp while Mary went on ahead to warn the guards so there would be none of the unfortunate confusion of the type that often has soldiers shooting their own.
She knew Captain Barrow would have mixed feelings about her return. He was practical enough to understand her value, but, more than the others, he was astute enough to sense that she was no more on the Confederate side than the early winter storm was.
After hobbling her horse, she began to fold down the small shelter set off to one side past the Captain’s. She usually stayed in sympathetic farmer’s houses, as did they all. When she had to stay in camp, the location of her shelter had become customary after a drunken Ranger had “accidentally” tried to enter her tent. He had been beaten quite bloody, and quite senseless, with a spare horseshoe.
Captain Barrow, Martin, Joseph, and the others were quietly arguing how to have prisoners draw lots for hanging when there was only one prisoner.
She paused, something drawing her to where the prisoner sat slumped against a tree on the edge of the overwatch, the drop off that gave the Partisans a clear view down the draw and into the valley below.
The guard, a boy of sixteen whose name she couldn’t remember, was trying to look fierce and military as he both watched the prisoner and the draw for approaching Union forces.
The Union trooper, wounded in the side of his chest, raised his head at her approach and she felt her heart stop.
He’d aged and his face was scarred and a long furrow ran across the left side of his head, the very top of his left ear clipped neatly off as well.
Behind her, she could hear, as if at the bottom of a well, the argument about drawing lots come to an end and the men getting up to execute their unpleasant duty. They were in a hurry, of course. The three escaped Union troopers might be coming back with a real patrol.
The hollow sound in her ears built. She pulled the tiny gun from the top of her boot, then leaned over the prisoner, pressing the barrel against his left breast. “This is for the best.”