Keeping Secrets (10 page)

Danny stood, and Peg was surprised once again at how fast he had grown. “I bet you’re taller than Mike now,” she said.

“I was already taller by an inch when he came through St. Joe two years ago.” Danny suddenly grinned and said, “I’ve got a better idea than skipping stones. I set up targets at the edge of the woods. I’ll show you what a good shot I am.”

Peg reluctantly trailed after Danny as he got his rifle from the house and led her to the practice area. “You don’t have to show me,” she complained. “I believe you.”

“I’m really good,” he bragged. “I want you to see.”

Danny found Peg a place to stand, behind him and
far enough away so that the crack of the rifle wouldn’t hurt her ears. He raised his rifle and sighted on a tattered round-ringed target that had been nailed onto the broad trunk of an oak tree.

“Take that, you bushwhackers!” Danny grunted and squeezed the trigger.

Peg watched a small piece of cloth near the center of the target rip as the bullet struck it. Sickened, she clutched her stomach.

Danny turned to face her, pride shining in his eyes. “Got him!” he said. “One less Reb.”

“Don’t do that, Danny!” Peg shouted. “It’s only a target! It’s not a Reb!”

“Someday it will be a Reb,” Danny said. “As soon as I enlist to fight for the Union.”

“You can forget that!” Peg insisted. “You’re not going to shoot Rebs! You’re not going to war!”

“I’m older than Mike was when he enlisted.”

“He was too young! He’s still too young. And so are you.”

“I won’t be thirteen forever.”

“The war’s going to end soon. Everybody says so.”

“Then everybody’s dreaming.”

“Oh, Danny!” Peg wailed. Maybe it was her own fear. Maybe it was remembering Mike’s eyes when he returned from battle. But like a dark spirit that hovered over Danny, a terrible premonition caught and shook her. “If you go to war you’ll be killed! I know it! You will!”

Danny sighed. “I wouldn’t have brought you here if I’d known you’d act like such a baby. Don’t you see, Peg? I have a duty to my country. I love the Union. I want to help protect it.”

“But not by fighting!”

“Yes, by fighting.”

“But there are other ways to help the Union.”

“You don’t understand,” Danny said. He turned his back to her, reloaded his rifle, and aimed once again at the target.

Peg watched in misery as the bullet hit its mark.
“You don’t understand,”
Danny had said, ignoring all that she’d told him. What had happened to Danny, who’d always been so close to her? He’d built a wall without a door, and she couldn’t come through. Hugging her shoulders, Peg waited silently until Danny had finished his show of marksmanship.

“You have to admit I’m a good shot,” he said.

Peg nodded. “Yes, you are.”

Carrying his rifle in the crook of one arm, Danny grinned and put his other arm around Peg’s shoulders. As they walked back toward the house he squinted up at the sun and said, “It should be near to three o’clock. Miss Hennessey will come to get you before long.”

Peg leaned close to him, frantic that the time was almost up. “I’ll be back soon,” she said. “Miss Hennessey will invite me to travel with her again when she comes to visit her sister. She promised.”

“Good!” Giving her shoulder a squeeze, Danny said, “Because of the Union patrols, Buchanan County’s been quiet lately. While you were on the road you probably met up with a patrol, didn’t you?”

“One,” Peg said and turned her face so that Danny couldn’t see her eyes. “Miss Hennessey had a letter of safe passage given to her by our provost marshal, so the sergeant let us through.”

I can’t tell Danny the rest of what happened
, Peg thought.
He wouldn’t understand.
With a start she realized that she had built a wall, too—a wall that she wouldn’t allow Danny to break through.

“We’ve heard that the patrols have been hard on
some of the people who resisted when Missouri was put under martial law,” Danny said, “but they keep down the bushwhackers—at least, they have locally. I hear there are still plenty of skirmishes in southern Missouri, especially in the border counties.”

There was so much pride in Danny’s voice as he spoke of the Union patrols that Peg was glad she hadn’t told him about the soldier who had stolen Miss Hennessey’s money. She doubted that Danny would even believe it had happened.

Peg scarcely had time to brush the grass and tangles from her hair and securely tie on her sunbonnet before Miss Hennessey arrived.

They left with a carton containing two jars of Ennie’s special sweet cucumber pickles, a sack of fresh eggs, and a fat loaf cake.

“Give these to your dear mother with my greatest affection,” Ennie told Peg, who tried not to grin. Peg had no doubt that Ennie really did like Ma, but wasn’t that only because Alfrid had married Ennie, instead of following the plan Peg and Danny had once worked out to bring Ma west as Alfrid’s bride?

On the return trip Miss Hennessey seemed happier and more relaxed. “It did me a world of good to see my sister again,” she told Peg. “Nellie hasn’t changed a bit. She’s always so cheerful, no matter how difficult things may be.”

“You mean like not having any livestock?” Peg blurted out.

“I told you their stay in this area will be short.”

Embarrassed, Peg’s face grew hot. “I know. It’s just that, well, on a farm I expected a dog to run out to meet us, and one didn’t, so then I listened, and I couldn’t hear chickens, and …”

As Peg’s voice trailed away Miss Hennessey nodded.
“You’re very observant and you’re right. Louis once had a fine house and good stock, but he has no plans to farm again—at least not until the war is over.”

“Was his livestock stolen?”

“Yes, and his house burned.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry, too, but I’m grateful that their lives were spared.”

“Where were they when this happened?”

“In southern Missouri, near the Arkansas border.”

“Bushwhackers?”

“Yes. One of the rebel gangs.” A note of bitterness crept into Miss Hennessey’s voice. “In Missouri it’s hard to be pro-Union, and it’s hard to be pro-southern. If it’s not the bushwhackers, it’s the military patrols.”

Peg squirmed on the buggy seat, wishing it were softer. “Why don’t your sister and her husband leave Missouri?”

“They will, some day.” She sighed before she answered, “I’ll go, too. Maybe to California … I’ve always wanted to see San Francisco.”

As the horse and buggy clopped and clattered around a bend, through the trees Peg caught a quick glimpse of Union blue. “A patrol!” she whispered. “Just up ahead.”

“Thank you,” Miss Hennessey answered calmly. She flicked the horse’s reins, her hands firm and back straight, as though nothing out of the ordinary could possibly happen, and continued chatting to Peg; but her voice changed to the same light conversational tone that some of Ma’s friends used when they stopped by for a cup of tea.

“I understand that San Francisco is a vital, energetic town with great potential for trade by both sea and rail,” she said.

But all Peg could think about was the little silvery handgun hidden in Miss Hennessey’s reticule and the bearded soldier who had stolen some of Miss Hennessey’s money.

Peg tensed as the sound of horses’ hooves increased and the patrol rode into view, but she sighed with relief when she saw it was a different group of soldiers. The bearded thief was nowhere in sight.

Miss Hennessey obediently pulled the horse to a stop on the patrol leader’s orders and smiled at him. “My daughter and I have a letter of safe passage from General John Bassett,” she said. “Would you like to see it, Sergeant?”

“Corporal,” he barked. As she reached into her reticule, he said, “Just hand over your bag, ma’am. I’ll get the letter myself.”

“As you wish,” Miss Hennessey said. She immediately handed him the reticule, but Peg held her breath.

The gun! He was going to discover the gun!

The corporal’s fingers explored the small bag, but he pulled out the letter, not the handgun. Peg’s breath came out in a whoosh of relief. Obviously, the handgun wasn’t in the reticule. Where was it?

The corporal squinted, and his lips moved as he slowly read the letter. “From what I can make out,” he finally said, “you live in St. Joe and have been down to River Road to see your sister.”

“That’s correct,” Miss Hennessey said. She smiled at him shyly.

He folded the letter and stuck it back inside the reticule, handing it to Miss Hennessey.

We can go now!
Peg thought with relief. Even though she was Union, too, as were most of their friends in St. Joe, Peg had had enough of Union patrols.

But one of the soldiers had leaned from his horse to peer into the buggy. “Box of something back here,” he said to the corporal.

As he pushed at the box Peg shouted, “Watch out for the eggs! They’ll break!”

“Ma’am, you and your little girl climb down from the buggy,” the corporal said. “We’re goin’ to do a search. Nothin’ special. It’s routine.”

“A search for what?” Miss Hennessey asked.

The corporal didn’t answer. As she stood by the buggy with Miss Hennessey, Peg watched with wide eyes as one soldier examined every single egg, accidentally cracking two of them. As he opened the pickle jars and plunged his fingers inside, Peg grimaced in disgust. She’d been looking forward to munching on the sweet, crispy pickles, but now she wouldn’t touch them! Two of the soldiers crawled in and out of the buggy, examining the seats, the canopy, and even the underside. Another soldier checked the trappings on the horse. What if Miss Hennessey had hidden her gun somewhere in the buggy? The soldiers would find it!

But they came up empty.

“Perhaps I could help you, if you’d only tell me the purpose of your search,” Miss Hennessey said.

But without a word, the corporal motioned to her to get back into the buggy. When she and Peg had seated themselves, he handed Miss Hennessey the reins and said, “You can go now.”

Stirring up a choking cloud of dust, the soldiers dug their boots into their horses’ flanks and galloped off.

Peg squinted and rubbed the dust from her eyes. “I thought they’d find your gun,” she said.

Miss Hennessey smiled. “I realized I had been reckless
in keeping it inside my reticule,” she told Peg. “It’s safely tucked into the pocket of my skirt.”

Peg twisted to look down the road in the direction the soldiers had ridden. “What will we do if one of them rides back to rob you, like last time?”

“I don’t think we’ll have that problem again.”

Peg settled back and began to relax. “What were they looking for?”

“The corporal wouldn’t tell us,” Miss Hennessey answered.

“Can you guess?”

Miss Hennessey stared straight ahead, her eyes on the road, as she answered, “I haven’t the vaguest idea.”

Peg stole a quick glance at Miss Hennessey’s profile, which was calm and impassive and told her nothing. Miss Hennessey’s answer had made perfect sense. Peg had heard her ask the corporal why the buggy was being searched.

So why, Peg wondered, did she have the strange feeling that Miss Hennessey
did
know what the soldiers were looking for?

10
 

M
A WAS ELATED
with Ennie Swenson’s gifts, until Peg blurted out, “Don’t eat the pickles. One of the soldiers in a Union patrol stuck his dirty, grimy hand in them.”

“For goodness sakes, why?” Ma asked. She stared at the jar of pickles as though something awful were about to lift the lid and spring out.

Miss Hennessey chuckled indulgently. “He was a very young, overly conscientious corporal, who was probably looking for something sinister like smuggled-out lists of troop dispatchments. Would you believe his soldiers actually searched the buggy?”

Ma was about to speak, but Miss Hennessey quickly said, “But I’m grateful for the patrols on the road. We met up with one going and another one coming. Thanks to the presence of our Union soldiers I felt perfectly safe.”

“Yes,” Ma said, but she didn’t look entirely convinced. The kettle began steaming, so Ma took it from the fire and filled the teapot.

Miss Hennessey pulled out a kitchen chair and sat down. Elbows on the table, she rested her chin in her hands as she said, “The sergeant of the first patrol was an unlettered man. I could tell he was going to follow every rule in the book, down to the smallest detail. The way he frowned as he read General Bassett’s letter of safe passage, then studied Peg, alerted me to the fact that he was going to demand a similar letter for Peg.”

She reached for the cup of tea Ma handed her and sighed. “All I could think was that we’d be turned back, and after all this time I wouldn’t see my sister Nellie. I was frantic!” She leaned toward Ma. “What would you have done, Noreen?”

“Well,” Ma said, taken by surprise. “I—I suppose I would have tried to explain, and—”

“An explanation wouldn’t have meant anything to a man like that. If it weren’t listed in the rules he’d memorized, he wouldn’t have known what to do with it.”

Again, Miss Hennessey paused and waited for Ma to speak.