SAMPLE THE STORY BY READING CHAPTER ONE

THE GIRL CROUCHED NAKED in the reeds along the river bank, her fine muslin pantaloons crumpled into a ball in her hands. Twice she tried to cast them up onto the bank with the rest of her clothes but could not. I shall die of shame, of utter, absolute shame! she told herself. Across the hundred feet of water the measured steps of the Union sentry came crisp and clear to her ears. 

"Fiddlesticks," she muttered under her breath, and threw them. 

She had made the gesture and was proud of it. Now she could swim unencumbered across the Opequan River to the other end of the wooden bridge where the Yankee rifleman paced so slowly. Underfoot the mud oozed between her toes. The brush of cattails at her white hips and full thighs sent a shiver down her back as she took one step, then another. 

The water rose above her knees to mid-thigh, then to her hips. Fortunately there was no moon. The July night was still and hushed so that the water made a faint gurgle as she walked. Twice she paused to listen, hearing only the steady steps of the sentry and the rhythmic purr of crickets humming in the meadow grass. 

"Five miles," she whispered between clenched teeth. "Only five more miles to Colonel Tom's camp and my mission's done." 

To ride those five miles she must pass over the bridge that spanned the river at this point and proceed along the Shepherdstown road to the meadow where Colonel Tom Jackson was bivouacked. When the water was above her hips she slid forward and began to swim, not the dog paddle of most Southern womenfolk but the more vigorous overhand stroking a man might use. In her earlier years Belle Boyd had been something of a tomboy and to this day she could still scandalize Eliza, her slave, by her unpredictable actions. 

The thought of Eliza made her smile faintly. If it were not for the grippe which bedded her, Eliza would be making this journey. And would have been left stranded on the western side of the bridge. The swimming woman could not imagine Eliza harming even a Yankee sentry. 

A frog croaked off to her left. The stars glittered high above, reflected in the smoothly flowing waters which held her so buoyantly. It was not a far swim so almost before she was prepared for it her feet felt mud beneath them and she was standing, rising upward into the July night like a fabled naiad. 

The night air was cold on her wet flesh. Her breasts seemed to swell, jutting out so boldly the girl blushed. Even her nipples were rigid in protest at their exposure. She waded slowly toward the bank beneath the bridge timbers, hearing the steady pacing of the blue-clad Federal trooper. 

Her eyes hunted in the shadows. Twice she bent and twice her fingertips went over rocks only to slip away because of their size and weight. 

“There must be one here somewhere—ah!” 

Her fingers closed around a large, rough stone. It weighed about a pound and had jagged edges. She lifted and carried it as she mounted the bank and slipped out from behind the bridge, wincing as the pebbles dug into her tender soles. 

The sentry had his back to her. By peeping between a timber beam and a wooden strut she was able to gauge the exact moment when he would turn away. She counted his paces, sinking down as he neared her. When he about-faced and headed back in the opposite direction was the moment to attack. 

His heel scrunched gravel. His body swung about.

The girl rose to her feet and ran forward.

“Yankee,” she called softly. "Yankee man!” 

The soldier turned, bringing his rifle down from his shoulder—how his eyes bulged as he saw her leap naked for him!—and stood a long moment in frozen stupefaction. Too late he saw the rock in her hand. Too long he had stared at the jouncing breasts and quivering thighs. 

She struck hard. 

The rock hit him full in the face, across the bridge of his nose and the middle of his forehead. The splaaaat was loud in the still night, so loud that even as he sank down she instinctively crouched and turned her eyes back and forth, searching the long dirt road that led on to Shepherds town and the pine forests that bordered it. There was no other sound. They seemed alone in the world. 

The Union Army was encamped across the Potomac, more than a dozen miles beyond the bridge. Sentry change was not due for another hour at least. By that time she would be safe behind Confederate lines. Still, she must not dawdle. 

She knelt and went through his haversack, finding only a dirty handkerchief and some socks. Belle scoffed at herself for the melodramatic notion that there might have been important papers. How her father would have laughed at her romantic illusions if he had been at home and not off somewhere with the 2nd Virginia Infantry! 

What can you expect of a girl seventeen years old? 

Belle shook her head so vigorously that some of her reddish chestnut hair came undone. Her father would be proud of her for her daring and courage. For Belle Boyd, that was enough. 

She ran back across the bridge and into the field of meadow grass and clover where she had left her clothes. Shivering in the cool breeze she thrust one slim white leg into the pantaloons and then the other. Biting her full lower lip, she considered the corset-cover and corsetiere which must go on under riding habit of green cambric. 

"No. They'll only take time and hamper me," she decided. 

Lifting the dress high she slipped it over her shoulders and wriggled it down about her hips. A moment longer she took, to thrust her feet into fashionable riding boots before running through the grass toward her bay mare. 

A foot in the stirrup, a dance step as the mare sidled, and then she was mounting upward and reining the horse toward the bridge. A toe sent him into a canter. 

His hoofs made rolling thunder on the loose bridge plankings and a muted thudding in the hard-packed dirt of the Shepherdstown road. Belle rode low in the saddle with the mane whipping her cheeks. Again and again her toes hammered hard against the silken sides of the mare until the animal was flying. 

Belle Boyd rode into the Confederate camp a little before dawn on the morning of July 2, 1861. She was tired and disheveled but there was an eager excitement in her which revealed itself in flushed cheeks and a proudly rigid back. In this day and age properly brought-up young ladies did not gallop through the night to bring information to soldiers. They stayed at home and knitted or crocheted or busied themselves with butter churns and taffy pulls. 

Belle knew she was as proper a young lady as ever graced a finishing school. Born in Martinsburg, Virginia—with the magnificent expanse of the Shenandoah Valley spreading southward—she was the daughter of Benjamin Reed Boyd and his wife, Mary Rebecca Glenn. Early in life she had been taught deportment and correct conduct, as well as her reading, writing and arithmetic. The curtsy had become as much a part of her life as the hoop skirt and crinoline. Yet there was a streak of rebellion in young Belle which aroused her ardent sympathies for the cause of the gray-clad soldiers who were marching off these days to de fend their right to secede from the Union of the United States. 

During her early childhood she had often climbed the silver maples around the two-story house in Bunker Hill, where the Boyds lived, and gone swimming in the stream flowing past the old mill. Once she hit a bigger boy who was bullying a neighbor's child. Another time she jumped from a bedroom window in her flimsy nightgown to pluck apples from a nearby tree. 

Belle thought of those days as she swung down from her mare in answer to the challenge of the Confederate sentry, a boy younger than herself who handled his long squirrel gun with an air of keen competence. Those years of tomboy playing had strengthened her body, given her the ability to spend long hours in the saddle, to run almost as fast as a man, to aim and fire a pistol. For that she was eternally grateful. 

"Colonel Jackson,” she said. “I must see Colonel Jackson.”

“Petey,” the boy cried out, not turning his head. 

An older man rose from the underbrush, came striding forward. He wore a nondescript uniform of white shirt and black woolen trousers tucked into mended boots. A flop brim black hat shielded his eyes from the rising sun. A cap and-ball pistol was tucked into his rope belt. 

"I'm Isobel Boyd of Martinsburg. I've information for the colonel.” 

“’Bout what, ma'am?”

"About General Patterson's Union troops."

The air of somnolence fell away from the man. He put a hand to his jaw and scratched, nodding vigorously. "You take 'er in to see Old Jack, Joey. I'll stay an' walk patrol fer ye.” 

She followed the boy, lifting her green skirt with dainty fingers, aware that her feet and ankles were bare in the dusty riding boots and that the lace edges of her pantaloons showed vividly white and intensely feminine beneath the swaying cambric. 

This camp on the lower fork of the Potomac—Jackson was newly out of Harper's Ferry, where he had been replaced as commanding officer by Joseph E. Johnston—was a model of efficiency. Patrols walked smartly. Campfires were small. The tents were neat, the men orderly and respectful as they eyed her. 

Joey spoke to an officer standing before the tent that served as headquarters for the Colonel. The officer stared hard at Belle, then swung about on a heel and lifting a flap of the tent, moved into its cool interior. 

"Lady outside says her name is Boyd, sir —"

“Belle Boyd? Of Martinsburg?"

"I believe so, sir. I —" 

"Send her in, Withers. Send her in at once! She's more valuable to me than a four-man scout patrol. Skip, man!” 

Belle smiled faintly. She had come to know Tom Jackson through her correspondence with him, delivered by Eliza. Her heart was beating in queer fashion, knowing she was about to meet at last this mathematics professor whom some believed to be a great cavalry captain. 

On curiously reluctant feet she entered the tent. The flap fell behind her and she found herself staring at a big man hooking suspenders over woolen-clad shoulders. 

Tom Jackson was close to six feet tall, seemingly gaunt but physically strong. His bright blue eyes smiled at her above an unkempt beard as he reached for his gray jacket. He was a West Pointer and had been regular army for a long time, fighting in the Mexican War at Cerro Gordo, at Padierna with Magruder's battery, and at bloody Churubusco. He had come out of retirement as a mathematics professor at V.M.I. to command the First Brigade. 

"My dear Miss Boyd," he smiled with honest pleasure, "I'm delighted to make your personal acquaintance. Your slave girl Eliza —" 

He broke off, looking faintly alarmed. “It doesn't matter about a slave but you stand in great personal danger, here in camp. As a spy you”—he coughed behind an uplifted hand,— “you might be stood up before a firing squad or even—harrump!" 

Belle laughed delightedly. “My dear Colonel Jackson! My slave girl lies in a sickbed at this moment, suffering from the grippe. I had to bring you the news myself that General Patterson is advancing southward toward your position here and is less than ten miles distant at this moment." 

"My orders were not to risk an all-out engagement, no more than a reconnaissance in force," he growled angrily, swinging about to a leather coffer, opening it to unroll a map, which he spread on a rickety table. 

"I watched them myself from close by the Baltimore and Ohio tracks yesterday afternoon," she told him earnestly. "As you know, the Federals are moving on Martins burg. We all pray you can hold them back, sir.” 

“With enough men I might. Stuart's out now on a scout detail. Patterson has several regiments of Pennsylvania Volunteers and a lot more artillery than we have." 

For an instant terror touched Belle with a coldness along her spine. Federals in Martinsburg? Troops in blue taking over her beloved little town? Drunken brawls and insults to the ladies would be daily occurrences. And then her chin firmed and her cheeks flushed. 

"Of course, Colonel. I—I understand, sir." 

Jackson regarded her out of deep-set, sunken eyes. He bowed, almost formally. "I'm sure you do, Miss Boyd. Now I think it's time you were getting back home. We have work to do if we're going to make contact with Patterson's Yankees.” 

She curtsied and turned toward the tent flaps. 

Jackson moved suddenly. "Miss Boyd, a moment. A friend of yours from Martinsburg originally, I believe—is in camp. Captain Parker, Captain John Parker." 

Belle swung around, breathless. “Captain Johnny! Here?” 

The tall man in the gray jacket smiled. "He's serving with Jeb Stuart as an officer in his horse artillery. He must be somewhere about. I'll have him escort you home.” 

"Colonel, I couldn't think of it. If you're going to fight Yankees, you'll need every last man you have." 

"I'm afraid your notion of a reconnaissance in force is a little exaggerated," Jackson chuckled. "No, no. I can spare him, if only to reward you for bringing me news of General Patterson.” 

He bowed and went through the tent flaps, speaking to his orderly. Belle clasped her hands and whirled about, taking two or three steps just as she and Johnny Parker had danced them in Washington last winter, at Secretary of War John B. Floyd's mansion. 

Captain Johnny, here in camp! She could hardly believe it, dreaming a little as she dance-stepped, remembering the days of her girlhood when Johnny Parker had been sweet on her-how they swam together in Happy Creek and climbed apple trees during the summer months to munch on big Baldwins and sometimes Johnny's mother would take them in the Parker buggy to the fair—and how she'd thought him the most wonderful boy on earth. 

Last winter he had been a cadet at West Point and in Washington on holiday vacation. She herself had been five months out of school, Mount Washington Female College in Baltimore. Oh, they'd had a time of it, those few December days together. They realized they were made for each other, and that someday there would be a fine wedding in Martinsburg with Johnny as groom and with Belle as a beautiful bride. 

She put her palms to her cheeks, recalling the first time he had kissed her—the first time it counted, that is, as grownups and not children—riding back from an afternoon soiree to Willard's Hotel in a hansom with the buffalo skin robe over their legs lending a sense of intimacy. Firm lips on hers and his hands sliding up her arms and around her back, urging her closer so that she could feel her breasts growing hard against his chest and her lower body becoming strangely warm and feverish. Between kisses, he had murmured words of praise for her beauty. 

"It was wicked of me," she whispered, deliciously, "very wicked!” 

She giggled suddenly, remembering that kissing had not been all Johnny had done to her that night. Once while adjusting the lap robe about her legs his palm had brushed her thigh through her dress and for a brief instant had slipped upward along her calf from ankle to knee. And she had let him! What was worse, she'd enjoyed it! 

"I'm a shameless baggage," she told herself. 

Then she heard footfalls outside, and stood with her hands clasped before her, teetering on her toes. The tent flap lifted— 

"Johnny," she breathed. "Johnny Parker!” 

He was tall and handsome in his officer's gray, with the sword clanking at his side and his gloves tucked into his belt. Only twenty-three years of age, he was one of Stuart's youngest officers. He paused for an instant in the tent opening, devouring her with his eyes, his uncut yellow hair tumbling out from under his forage cap. Then he was striding forward, long legs eating the distance between them, his strong young arms going out to her, drawing her in against him. 

“Belle! This is a surprise! What in the world are you doing here?” 

Belle tried to pull free. "Johnny, behave! If Colonel Jackson—" 

His mouth closed down on her lips and Belle felt herself lifted until she stood on tiptoe, her softness straining against his youthful hardness from knees to shoulders. She could not have stirred a muscle if she'd wanted to, and after the first frantic moment of surrender she discovered it was very pleasant to be held in Johnny Parker's arms and to be kissed to breathlessness. 

"Johnny-you devil!” she breathed at last.

"Ah, Belle—you know how very much I love you!" 

She tried to look stern but found herself giggling up at him. He was such a handsome young rebel in that gray uniform! In these early days of the war life was one constant round of gaiety and lightheartedness where gallantry and passion went hand in hand. And there was no more gallant gentleman in the Confederacy than Captain John Parker. 

The gawkiness of his boyhood in Martinsburg was gone before the powerful musculature of young manhood. His early promise of good looks had blossomed into a grinning confidence-how her fingers itched to smooth the lock of curly yellow hair escaping from his forage cap!-which made her smile tenderly. She remembered organizing a party of folks from Martinsburg to visit Harper's Ferry back in March. Everyone had brought picnic lunches; she had shared hers with Johnny. 

They had reminded each other they were secretly engaged. 

She wept a little when they parted and he kissed the tears from her cheeks, assuring her that there would be no real war. When the North saw the rebels meant business, they'd talk terms fast enough! Their parting would be for just a little while. Then they could be married. It sounded very simple, the way he explained it. 

Now his hands captured her hands so his lips could caress their smooth fingers. “We ride at once, my love. The colonel wants you out of his way.” 

A sudden idea made Belle tingle. "Johnny! Could we watch?” 

“Watch? Watch what?” he asked blankly.

"The battle, silly. Oh, Johnny, could we?" 

She stepped against him, looking up pleadingly. For the first time, Belle remembered that all she wore beneath her riding habit was a pair of thin white pantaloons. She knew Johnny was aware of her lack of attire, too, because the hunger for her was plain in his eyes. 

"Please, Johnny? Please?” She squirmed against him with little movements of her thighs and hips. 

Captain Parker was young and Belle Boyd was a beautiful girl. As his eyes devoured her, he found his heart pumping with furious excitement. His hands gripped her sides. Just below them lay the rounded wonder of her hips. His fingers itched to caress them. 

"You know it's impossible," he protested hoarsely.

"Just for me?" she pouted. "Please with sugar?” 

Her mouth was so near, so red and soft and sensuous, that Captain Parker could only draw her closer. To his de light her lips grew soft and loose under his. His hands slipped downward and closed on firm but yielding flesh. 

"Promise, darling?" she breathed.

"I—promise! If there's a way, I'll find it!” 

They drew apart as a dry cough sounded outside the tent. Belle called a merry, “Come in, Colonel!” 

Jackson flashed them an understanding smile. “Miss Boyd, a rider from Stuart has just arrived confirming the news you brought. That you arrived appreciably ahead of him has given me time to alert my command for the march toward Falling Waters." 

Belle smiled graciously. "Thank you, Colonel.” 

"Just one more thing, Miss Boyd. These letters you send me by your maid—take care to disguise them well or the Feds will be knocking your door down one of these mornings to hang you for a spy.” 

Belle lifted her chin. "I'll have died in good cause, Colonel.” 

The captain sighed and Colonel Jackson laughed. "Better to live and serve the South another day. All I ask is that you be careful.” 

Belle curtsied and Johnny Parker held out his arm to escort her out of the tent and to her bay mare. An orderly stood eyes front and back rigid beside Captain Johnny's horse, a big black stallion hung with gray shabrack and a red leather artillery saddle. 

Then they were cantering stirrup to stirrup through the camp, past the tents and orderly rows of stacked rifles. A troop of cavalry went by at the gallop, sabers bouncing and sword chains rattling. 

"Do you really think there'll be a battle, Johnny?" Belle asked eagerly. "Colonel Jackson said he wasn't to fight, not really. Just a reconnaissance in force, whatever that is." 

"Jackson hasn't enough strength to come to grips with Patterson so he does the next best thing. He scouts him with enough force to fight if pressed. But his action will be merely a harassing one." 

Belle sat up straighter in the saddle. "If he doesn't stop the Yankees, they'll move into Martinsburg, Johnny. That's where I live, you know. It won't be very pleasant with all those blue-coats around.” 

He reached over and squeezed her hand reassuringly. 

Now they were moving past a series of open fields below the Smithfield road. Falling Waters lay straight ahead, hazy through the sunlit mist which fell on the forest glades and on the ears of corn standing tall in this summertime of the year. The morning sun was hot on their shoulders and a tiny trickle of perspiration began to move down Belle's spine, staining her riding habit. 

Parker reined his big black off the side of the road, waving her to follow. “Up ahead”—he gestured at a dust cloud mushrooming beyond a bend in the road where a rail fence made a geometric pattern—"are the Yanks, moving this way.” 

Belle pointed across the fields. "Johnny, there's a ridge up yonder. Scanlon Ridge, they call it. We might be able to see from there."

“That's where we're headed. Come along." 

They took the green fields at a run, clumps of dirt and grass flying under-hoof They were full in the sunlight, easy targets for a Yank Minié ball, had the scouts been within firing range, but by the time Belle saw the blue-coated horsemen rounding the distant bend they were inside the shelter of the pine forest. 

The captain's eyes were glinting with eagerness as he watched the blue columns approach along the Valley Pike, marching with a steady rhythm that held grim confidence in every stride. He touched his sword, and grinned when he caught Belle watching him. “Give anything for a detail of horse soldiers right now. Scatter those bluebellies fast enough, you bet." 

At a sign from him they toed their mounts into a run, moving upward along a lane between blueberry thickets to a knoll where a lonely oak stood in solitary splendor, its trunk and branches bent and gnarled from the fury of a thousand storms. Parker took up his stand beneath the high branches and swept an arm in a half-circle. 

“There it is Belle—all spread out for you.” 

The land fell away sharply just below the ridge, grading off into undulations of open fields and meadows. The road was a narrow white ribbon between the fields and fences, and the Union soldiers marching along it seemed to crawl. Far to the south Belle could make out a thin line of gray creeping forward just as slowly. She wanted to cry out, to urge them to seek cover. 

At that moment Jackson's men melted off the road toward a farmhouse and a barn which lay in a little hollow beyond the fences. A single cannon came trundling along at their rear. Horsemen went galloping off to disappear in the pines. 

Now the Union Army also veered off the road, spreading wide, coming on in half a dozen narrow blue lines. Rifle fire burst from the kneeling Southerners. The Union line buckled, reformed, came on again. Now the rebel rifles in the barn and house began to spit red flames. The Federals swung about in a flanking movement. 

Parker was standing in his iron stirrups, the peak of his gray forage cap tugged down to shield his eyes. "Old Jack'll be drawing back right soon, Belle. Not to withdraw would mean a general engagement, General Johnston doesn't want that. Not yet." 

Colonel Kenton Harper was in command of the Virginia volunteers in and around the farmhouse. Belle could see him, a rigid figure on a roan horse, swinging an arm and shouting orders. Then gray-clad figures began to leave the house and barn, running fast and bent over. They were moving into an apple orchard—here and there Belle could make out fallen Union soldiers lying at the edge of the trees—firing at will as they withdrew. 

"Jackson'll fight a rear-guard action now," Parker said excitedly. 

A single cannon began to roar, firing up the road where the Yanks were advancing at a trot. As the shells burst the blue-clad men sought cover in thick underbrush and ditches. Down among the trees of the orchard, Belle could see any number of hand-to-hand fights going on. In the shadow of a big chestnut tree one of Jeb Stuart's cavalrymen was fighting a saber duel with a Yank horseman. On the other side of the field two Union troops were holding rifles to their shoulders, firing into the orchard. Even as she stared one of the soldiers dropped his Springfield and putting his hands to his face began staggering about blindly. 

Belle felt pity stab into her. He was an enemy but he was a human being. A little of the glory of the battle drained out of her. She shook her head, not knowing why men must fight these wars, not knowing whether to be glad or sorry she had stayed to see the fighting. 

Johnny Parker leaned close. "Jackson's falling back to ward Martinsburg, Belle. Time for us to be riding." 

She nodded, waiting until his broad gray back was to her before brushing away the tears in her eyes. Last night she had ridden on her first mission to help the Confederate States of America. This morning she had just witnessed the fruits of that mission in death and pain and bloodshed. 

There was no turning back, she realized with thudding heartbeat. She had committed herself to this life of fast gallop and soldier camps, of seeing cavalrymen duel with sabers and soldiers screaming with half their faces shot away. A cold chill ran with her blood. For better or worse, she had made her choice. 

It was late in the afternoon when they came in sight of the Opequan. Dark clouds were gathering in the sky and it began to look like rain. Captain Parker reined in and a scowl darkened his normally pleasant features as he pointed ahead. 

"A Yankee cavalry patrol, Belle. There!” 

She saw them at once, splashing through a shallow ford in the river. Fear for her companion rose like a thick tide in her throat. She herself could ride alone for Martinsburg but Captain Parker was now cut off from his command. Her fears were confirmed by his next remark. 

"They're on scout duty. They're beating practically every bush between here and Kearney village.” 

"You think they'll see us? Oh, Johnny—you mustn't be taken prisoner. What can we do? Is there any chance to make a run to Martinsburg?”

"Not much,” he growled, biting at his lower lip. "Belle, there's a crossroads tavern a few miles down the road. The man who owns it is a friend of mine. He can hide me out in the cellar, but you—" 

She tossed her head pertly. “I can take a room, can't I? I'll be a—a widow lady traveling north to visit relatives.” 

His grin was infectious. "You don't mind?” 

"Mind? It's fun, Johnny—outwitting a patrol of Billy Yanks!” 

With a laugh she followed him through the trees and out across a meadow. They took a stone fence side by side and swerved to plant their horses' hoofs on a narrow cow-path that ran between two ridges. 

In the distance they heard a sudden shout. 

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