Faith by Lyn Cote Page B

ammunition belts over their heads, Dev and his company chose to swim their horses across. They must get to the other side and root out the snipers or make them flee.
    Grant needed the cavalry to be his eyes, needed them to relay information about Pemberton’s actions. Grant must halt the enemy. Or they’d suffer a siege in the steamy heat of a Mississippi summer. Dev nearly despaired.
    Then he thought of Faith. He saw her again, moving among the wounded to the point of collapse. Quick action could save lives. Determination flooded him. “Spread out! And keep your heads down!”

    VICKSBURG, MISSISSIPPI
    MAY 23, 1863
    Grant hadn’t prevented the Rebs from reaching Vicksburg. The dreaded siege had begun. Now the noise of the daily artillery barrage aimed at the city ceased for the evening meal. The pattern had been set. Three times a day the almost-constant barrage halted for meals.
    A numbed Faith, her senses battered, sat in the hospital mess tent on a hard bench and tried to drink yet another cup of wretched coffee. The Union forces surrounding a besieged Vicksburg   —what they and no doubt the Confederates had dreaded most.
    As usual she sat at the colored table with Honoree and the workers hired from the contraband camp. She refused to observe the degrading separation.
    “How long this shellin’ gon’ last?” asked the large laundress Faith had hired near the Jackson depot.
    “As long as it must to break the Rebs in Vicksburg and take control of the Mississippi,” Honoree replied.
    “The Confederates won’t be able to get any help from the West, then, or any trade through New Orleans,” Faith added.
    The others at the table nodded solemnly.
    In the two days after the Confederates had reached the cover of Vicksburg, General Grant had attempted to rush them, shake them from the city while they were demoralized from their defeat. The onslaught had failed at dreadful cost. Thousands more soldiers had been killed or wounded.
    Restless, Faith rose, unable to sit any longer. “I must walk.” She gripped Honoree’s shoulder and then hurried from the tent, her feet carrying her exactly where she should not go. Her need to see the colonel overcame her good sense. And as she thought she would, she found the colonel tending his own horse in the makeshift corral near the rear of the encampment.
    She watched him from outside the fence rigged around the horses. Other cavalrymen were also grooming their horses. She knew she should leave. She was revealing much of what she felt just standing here gazing at his deft movements, listening to his quiet, one-sided conversation with his horse. She leaned the side of her head against a post, unable to pull herself away.
    Then he saw her.
    The sudden glad recognition in the change of his expression burned through her like rays from the Mississippi sun. “Miss Cathwell.”
    “Colonel.”
    “What do you need, miss?”
    She had no answer for him. She needed to speak to him, to be with him. She must not allow this. But she had come anyway.
    Then the evening barrage started up again and she couldn’t help herself. Tears welled in her eyes. She turned away and began to hurry somewhere, anywhere else.
    Within seconds, the colonel caught up with her. He claimed her arm and halted her. He leaned close to her ear and declared, “I will walk with you if you please.”
    Again she knew she should make her excuses and return to her tent and rest. But she could not. Something within her craved this man’s company and she could not refuse him. She nodded, not meeting his gaze.
    He offered her his arm, and she slipped a hand into the crook of his elbow. He smelled of leather and horse, a pleasant aroma that reminded her of home. For a moment the scent drew her back to Sharpesburg as a young girl, helping her father groom their horses in the barn, standing close to him, happy in his loving presence. As she clung to the colonel’s strong arm, feeling him close, she was able to draw a full