SAMPLE THE STORY BY READING CHAPTER ONE

The drums were muted. The rifles were arranged in tent-like formations, making a small forest beside the little dirt road that wound through the devastated farmlands toward Lynchburg. Men sat on the ground, often with their heads between their knees, sunk in an apathy of despair. 

One man alone was standing, beside his gray horse. Tears dimmed his eyes, and from time to time he slapped at his thigh with a pair of worn gloves. He wore the gray Confederate uniform of Stuart's cavalry division—what was left of them—and when he moved, his saber clanged in its housings. 

Major John Chittenden was a tall man, gaunt with long starvation, but there was pride in him like a flame. His back was straight, and though hunger gnawed in his middle, he would not give in to it. There would be time enough to eat. 

He waited patiently, as did the others. The orders had come. Today, General of the Armies of the Confederacy, Robert E. Lee, was about to offer his sword in surrender to that Johnny-come-lately, Ulysses S. Grant. 

There was disbelief in John Chittenden. Oh, he had heard the orders. They were here at Appomattox to admit defeat, to acknowledge that they had been beaten by those armies of the North which Grant commanded. 

It ate in Chittenden, that defeat. They had not been beaten by men but by the manufacturing ability of the North, which had poured guns and cannon into this war between the States until the South could no longer meet them in battle with any hope of success. 

And so Lee—aged beyond his time—was riding here today to offer up his sword to Grant. 

Anger gurgled in his throat as John Chittenden turned his head to study the little courthouse. He had seen it often before, on those raids with Jeb Stuart, but in those days it had been only a courthouse, without any other meaning to its four walls. Now it was a symbol of the battles that the South had won but which had drained them of their manhood. 

Tears washed hotly into his eyes. 

He was not a man to accept defeat lightly. He could not joke about it, could not pass it off with a wave of the hand and go back to that other life he had known, on his family plantation in Alabama. Yet today, he was a beaten man. 

The growl was low in his throat, yet a man who sat before him heard it and turned his head. "Nothin' we can do, Major." 

"I can,” he said shortly. “I can." 

The man looked surprised. “Ain't figurin' on murderin' Grant, are you?” 

Chittenden smiled faintly. He would cross sabers with a man in the heat of battle, or shoot him in the face during a cavalry charge. But murder? No. And yet the urge to kill was strong inside him. For the past four years he had killed men. It had become a habit. 

Now, when Lee came riding to surrender to Grant, there would be an end to killing. Life would take up its old patterns. There was cotton to be planted, repairs to be made to the plantation buildings, mint juleps to be sipped in the evenings under the big trees. 

Irritation stirred in him. That way of life was over. A plantation owner needed slaves to do such menial tasks, and there were no more slaves. Alone, he could never do what had to be done to bring the plantation back to its glory years. 

A dust cloud drew his attention. Lee was riding in. And, from the other side, Grant was coming, too. 

Major John Chittenden watched, his despair alive with in him. No! Don't do it! something inside him screamed. We can still fight, still win. 

Ah, but that was only his courage crying out. 

Without men, it was impossible to carry on a war. And in the past few months, over a hundred thousand men had deserted the South, had fled to their homes or westward where they would not be known. 

He waited numbly. He watched as Lee and Grant went into the courthouse. He knew what would happen. Lee would turn over his sword, would sign the documents of surrender. The war would be ended. 

Rasping a curse, his eyes filled with tears, Major John Chittenden drew out his saber, looked down at its gleaming length. How many men had he killed with this steel? He did not know. And now the time of killing was ended. 

He brought his blade across his knee and snapped it. 

The men around him lifted their heads, staring. One of them said, “We know how you feel, Major." 

No man knew how he felt. No man could understand the bitterness inside him, even the hate. He tossed the broken halves of his saber to the ground, turned and put a foot into the stirrup of the gray horse. 

He rose into the saddle, sat a moment, running his eyes over the men who were spread out before him, the remnants of what had once been an invincible army. 

“Stay if you want, to let them gloat over you. I'm not. I'm riding out." He swung the gray, touched it with a toe. 

At first he went slowly, letting the gray pick its own pace. The tears stung his eyes, but he did not lift a hand to brush them away. He would let the wind do that. Nor would he ride like a beaten man, but rather with his back straight and his chin tilted upward, as though he himself were the conqueror. 

All that day he rode, until toward nightfall he found himself deep into Tennessee. Everywhere he rode, he saw evidences of the war. Plantations had been burned to the ground. He passed half-starved men and women. There were freed slaves, too, wandering aimlessly, not knowing what to do in this strange new world. 

Once two men who had been lurking at the side of the road came toward him, rifles in their hands. He had little for them to rob, but there were still a few gold coins in his pocket, and so he put his hands to the Dragoon Colts where they hung in the saddle holsters and lifted them out into the open. 

The men shied away from him, disappeared in the underbrush. 

He rode more carefully after that, until as the moon was rising, he saw a lighted farmhouse. At a safe distance, he hallooed the building. 

Two men came out, rifles in their hands. 

“I'm looking for supper and a bed,” he called. “I'm willing to pay for them.” 

“Come ahead, then.” 

The men were farmers. Each had lost a son in the war, one at the second Bull Run, the other at Gettysburg. There were little children and two women, worn and weary with working in the fields. 

They welcomed him, eager for news. He ate the little they had to offer, potatoes and beans,
but it tasted good to him. His sharp eyes saw the evidences of their poverty, the worn table, the broken chairs that had been mended, the scrawniness of the children. When he paid them with a gold piece, their eyes widened. 

He saw also that they had not enough beds to go around, and so he carried a blanket into the fields and lay down with the moon above him. He had slept like this for the past five years. It was nothing new. 

When morning came he shot a big jackrabbit and brought it in for breakfast. 

He rode south and west the next day, cantering along the dirt roads, hungry for a sight of his Alabama home. There was a deep silence all about him, the quiet of empty land and high mountains rising all about. The sun was warm on him, and that was good, for there was a coldness in his belly. 

What would it be like, back on the plantation, on that lovely spot that his great-grandfather had built and named The Manor? The slaves would be gone, of course. The slaves had been freed. 

Yet his mother and father should be there. And possibly his brother Robert, too. Robert had been two years younger than he. He might have gone off to war. He had not heard from any of them-no word, no letters-in a long time. 

He ate his meals where he could, he fished from the banks of little streams and he ate his catches as might a wolf, bolting down the fish lest someone should come and take them away from him. He slept lightly, often waking in the middle of the night. 

He did not push the horse, he let it take its own pace. Yet there was an urgency inside him, an eagerness to see the vast cotton fields, to hear the Negroes singing as the moon rose. The memories inside him were softened with time, overlaid with a bitterness that was an acknowledgment of defeat. 

It took him five days to travel the five hundred miles which ended when he drew rein at the top of a hill and stared downward at the land that had belonged to his family. He sat his saddle, and inside him he felt again that stab of bitterness, of anguished defeat. 

Where the Manor had lifted its seven chimneys to the skies, there remained only blackened wood and the stones of the great house that had withstood the fire. The fields were unkempt, no one labored in them, the undergrowth covered everything. What he was looking at was desolation. 

He sat the saddle a long time, unmoving. 

Where were his mother and his father? Where was his younger brother? Where were the many slaves they had owned? 

He saw no movement, no sign of life. 

Slowly he let the gray walk downward toward that empty ruin. Under the lines of big oak trees he walked the horse, along that once-grand entrance to The Manor where his father had been want to drive his buggy at such a fast clip, where he himself had played long ago when he had been young with the world itself. 

Before what remained of the big hall he drew rein and came out of the saddle. For a moment he stood, drawing a deep breath, and then he walked forward in between the fire-blackened halls and the rooms. He saw the big stone fireplace, the section of wall where his father had kept his books. There were no upper storys to the house. They had disappeared with the flames that had eaten them. 

His foot kicked a chunk of blackened wood. It stirred. up clouds of ashes. He watched them settle about his hip high riding boots, and the taste in his mouth was as bitter as those gray ashes.

There was nothing here for him. Nothing. 

He turned and moved out into the open, and found his gaze drawn toward a distant hillside, toward the iron fence that ran about the family graveyard. 

Chittenden moved toward that fencing. 

The fence gate sagged on its hinges. He pushed it aside, moved along the stone-flagged walk now overgrown with weeds, and as he walked, he studied the gravestones. There were two new ones. 

He moved toward them and stood with his hat in his hand, eyeing those flat stone slabs. Harriet T. Chittenden: May 1, 1809—July 7, 1863. And beside it, another slab. Charles J. Chittenden: April 23, 1804-July 19, 1864. 

They were dead, then. There was an end to hope. 

The breeze sprang up and touched him, making him shiver. It was not the coldness of that wind that bothered him; rather, it was a realization that his life as he had always known it was at an end. 

Chittenden turned and put his eyes across the fields. There lay the wealth of his family, and the fields were overgrown, useless for lack of cultivation. He turned from the graves and walked slowly back along the little path. 

He put on his cavalry hat and walked toward his horse. He would stay here no longer, with the ghosts of what he had known. Instead, he would seek a new life, a life that was out there somewhere, waiting for him. 

But where? 

He made his camp that night on what had been the front lawn of The Manor. He had no food to eat, but that was nothing new to him. In the past year he had starved along with the other soldiers of the Confederacy. He would tighten his belt another notch, and tomorrow he would ride southward. 

Somewhere there had to be a place in the world for him. As he sat before the little fire he had made, memory stirred inside him. He had heard something spoken of over a campfire. Now what was it? There was a land to the south where they still had slavery, a land where a man with ambition might carve out another manor house for himself. 

Where was it? He scowled, concentrating, hugging his knees. Yes. Brazil. In South America. It was a young and growing country, where a man with pride might well find himself a niche in which to fit. 

He let memory ride his thoughts. Here where he sat, hungry and sorrowful, there had been lawn parties long ago. He had kissed his first girl under the magnolia trees eastward of the house, he had ridden his first horse as a child out there where the stables once stood. 

He thought of the girls he had known, the men and the women. With a smile, he recalled how his father always put aside gold pieces when times were good. He had hidden them away in the house, and he had never touched them. 

"When things get bad,” he used to say, "we'll always have this to fall back on.” 

He could almost hear his father's voice right now. Chittenden stiffened. 

He knew where his father had kept that gold! Once he had seen him, inadvertently, as Father was putting five bright new gold pieces in a tin box. 

His heart hammering, he rose to his feet. Could that gold still be there? He had about seven dollars in his pockets right now. Not much of a stake for a man who wanted to leave the country and seek his fortune elsewhere. 

He walked across the lawn and into the wreck of the house. He walked carefully, not wanting to fall over a broken beam or a tangle of what had once been a hard wood floor. He came and stood before the fireplace and his eyes ran over it. 

Now where had that stone been? His father had put hands to it, lifted it out. Chittenden touched those stones, ran fingers over them. 

It took him almost an hour, but in the end, he discovered that, with a little force, there was one large stone that he could budge. He found a bit of rusted iron and worked it along the edges of that stone, in the crack where there was mortar. 

He lifted out the stone and placed it on the ground. Then he stared at the black opening before him. Was that strongbox still there? Or had the scoundrels who burned The Manor found that secret hiding place and taken the box from it? Perhaps his own father had had a need for that gold, for some reason. 

Hesitating, he thrust out his hand.

His fingertips touched cold metal. 

Chittenden sighed. He put his hands around the metal box and drew it out. It was heavy, so heavy it almost fell from his grasp. 

He lowered the box to the broken flooring and fumbled with its catch. The catch was old and rusted. It broke in his powerful hands. 

Chittenden stared downward, breathing hard. 

The box was filled with gold coins. He lifted a handful, studying them. Each was a brand new double eagle, worth twenty dollars. There were so many here, he could scarcely count them, but he felt certain he had a small fortune in his possession. 

He lifted the box and carried it out into the moonlight. It was not an easy task, for the gold was heavy, but its weight made him understand that he was not the penniless adventurer he had felt himself to be until now. 

With this fortune, he could take ship and travel to Brazil, perhaps even buy himself some property and raise cotton. Lifting his saddlebags, he began to fill them with the golden eagles. 

He chuckled as he worked. He had a fortune in his hands, yet he desperately needed a meal. He would have traded one of these twenty-dollar gold pieces for a bit of meat and bread. 

When the saddlebags were filled, he took the tin box and carried it toward the little stream that ran off to one side of the house. He tossed the box into the water, watched it fill and sink. 

In a sense, he was burying his past with the burial of that metal box in the creek. It wrote the finish to his life as a Southern gentleman. From now on, he was nothing but an adventurer. 

Slowly he walked back to his saddlebags. He sat beside them, running his left hand over them, feeling the hardness of the coins under the worn leather, until sleep finally came to him. 

When he woke the next morning, he was ravenous. There had been a tavern, years ago, at the juncture of the road that led to Opelika. He would ride there, learn if it was still standing, and buy himself a breakfast that would make eyes pop. After that, he would ride south to Mobile. 

He saddled the gray, put foot in the stirrup. The heavy saddlebags lay in back of the cantle, tied down with piggin strings. His hands went to the holsters of the Dragoon Colts, he made certain their butts were ready to his hands. Now that he carried a fortune with him, he must be doubly alert to any danger. 

He rode through the morning mists, and as he rode, he began to sing softly to himself. The North had conquered the South, but he himself was unconquered. His future lay before him. It depended on his skill and courage what that future was going to be. 

His hands touched the walnut handles of the Dragoon Colts. They were good revolvers. They had been a gift from his father when he had set off to fight the war. He had tested these guns in the woodlands behind the mansion, just before he had ridden away to join Jeb Stuart. He had learned their use until they were to him like an extra pair of hands. 

He was very accurate with these guns. He felt he would be lost without them. He let his memory roam as he rode, seeing once again the blue-coats facing him as his cavalry charge swept them away at South Mountain and again at Catlett's Station, where they had fought with Pleasanton's command. 

There were other times during the war. He had fought with Stuart wherever that officer's guile told him he was needed. At Gettysburg, at Centerville, at Chickamauga. When Stuart had been mortally wounded at Yellow Tavern, it had been Major John Chittenden who had taken command and withdrawn his cavalry toward Ashland. 

But now it was all over, all the killing, all the screams of badly wounded men in agony, all the long riding and the nights sleeping on the hard ground. It was time to forget the war, time to pick up the pieces of his life, to mold them into a happier future. 

He was so lost in memory and in his contemplation of his future, that he almost did not hear the scream that came to him on the morning wind. Alert to the slightest sound, he reined in the gray even as his right hand dropped to the Dragoon Colt. 

He sat silently, eyes straining. 

The fields stretched away on all sides, past stone fences that bordered the road. For a moment, he told himself he must be mistaken. That was not a scream he had heard. It could not be. Everything around here seemed so peaceful. 

Then it came again, sharp and vibrant. 

Major John Chittenden put spurs to his horse. He took him over the low stone wall and along the meadow, clumps of dirt flying backward from under those galloping hooves. He could make out a building up ahead, a number of buildings, as a matter of fact, and memory stirred once again inside him. 

He knew this plantation toward which he was racing. It had a name. What was it? Yes. The Sycamores. It was owned by good friends of his parents, named Walker. He had visited it from time to time, in those days before the war. There had been a girl he had seen, but he could not remember her name. 

He came across the lawn at the gallop, and now the Dragoon Colts were in his hands. Like this, he had led many a cavalry charge for Stuart, with the riders coming behind him and giving the rebel yell. There were no men behind him, but— 

A man in a blue uniform was standing before the main house. He was laughing, with a bottle in his hand that he put to his mouth, tipping back his head to drink. 

Chittenden lifted the Colt in his right hand and his finger began its tug on the trigger. Then at the last minute he eased his pull and lowered the gun. 

“Easy, boy," he whispered, and the gray slowed its headlong gallop to a walk. 

The war was over. The sight of a blue uniform did not mean that whatever man was inside it was an enemy. His knees slowed the horse to a halt. Sitting easily in the saddle, knowing that he was unobserved for the moment, Chittenden waited. 

He heard the scream again. It was coming from inside the house, and it was a woman screaming. 

Chittenden lifted his guns. 

It was then that two other men in blue came out through the front door of the house, and between them was a naked woman. 

Chittenden stared and his mouth went dry. It had been a long time since he had seen a naked woman. His eyes ate at her flesh, at the nipples of her breasts and at the golden hairs of her pubescence. She had long yellow hair that fell almost to her buttocks, but he did not look at that. It was the sight of her body that momentarily paralyzed him. 

The man with the bottle said, “Come on, boys. Bring her down here so we can all enjoy her." 

"Please, no. Please!" the girl was sobbing. 

One of the men with her gave her a slap across her buttock. The blow drove her stumbling down the front steps of the mansion. She stumbled and fell headlong on the grass. 

The man with the bottle raised it again and drained it of liquor. Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he walked toward the girl. 

“You be good to us and we'll see you get something to eat,” he laughed. “We got food. Plenty of it. But none for you unless you can give us some entertainment.” 

He bent and caught the girl by her long golden hair and lifted her up to her feet. She shrank away from him, but by now the other two men were beside her, and they put their hands on her flanks and on her buttocks. 

Chittenden roused himself. He toed the gray to a walk and came up on them as the girl was trying to struggle between the hands of all three men. 

“Let her go,” Chittenden said. 

They broke apart at sight of him, dropping their hands to the revolvers in holsters at their side. 

One man said, “Well, if it ain't Johnny Reb himself. We got us another rebel to kill, boys." 

He was lifting out his gun when Chittenden fired. The bullet took him in the throat, tore away half his neck. The man took a backward step and fell. 

The others hand their guns out now, they were firing at him. Chittenden heard the sound of the bullets whistling past him as he triggered his left-hand gun and saw a second man drop. 

He shot the third man between the eyes. 

The girl had stood there as though 'paralyzed, staring from him to the Union soldiers. As Chittenden watched, she folded up and dropped to the ground. 

Chittenden dismounted and walked toward the men. He studied them, one after the other. Two were dead, the third man was badly wounded. He would likely be dead come nightfall. 

Holstering his Colts, he moved toward the girl, bending to pick her up in his arms and carry her toward the house. He scowled as he stared down into her face. She was a pretty thing, with a wide red mouth and startlingly long golden eyelashes. 

Chittenden frowned. He wanted to ride out of here as fast as the gray could take him. He did not intend to stay around and see that this girl was protected from other wandering Union soldiers. 

He needed to reach Brazil as fast as possible. 

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