High Hearts by Rita Mae Brown Page A

this earth, that believed in Fate so as to explain their misery. Not her. Di-Peachy was too arrogant and too young to know that Lutie wanted to give her something. She was also too rational to know that Lutie could see around corners.

APRIL 19, 1861
    Geneva rode through the night. She pressed on toward Culpeper even as the cold dew drenched her and the horses. She had to get far enough away from Albemarle County so that when she enlisted, no one would recognize her. At sunup, exhausted, she spied a run-in shed. After unsaddling Dancer and Gallant and giving them enough rope to contentedly graze, she crawled in the shed with her blanket and went to sleep.
    “My father could sleep through the day like that. Don’t know how you can do it.”
    “Huh?” Geneva awoke.
    “Said, ‘Don’t know how you can do it.’ Me, I’m up at the crack of dawn. Fly out of bed like a barn swallow.” He dismounted by swinging his right leg over his horse and dropping to the ground.
    Blinking, Geneva beheld a scrawny fellow somewhere between thirty and fifty. His age would be anybody’s guess. A half-bald head encircled by a ring of curly brown hair gave him a jovial appearance. “Who are you?”
    “Banjo Cracker. Yourself?”
    “Gen—James, James Chatfield.” She took the first name that popped into her head, the name of her deceased little brother.
    “Good morning, James. Kin I call you Jimmy?”
    “Yes.” Geneva squinted at him. “I rode through the night. I don’t usually sleep this late myself.”
    “See your cap has cavalry colors. Aim to enlist, do you?”
    “Yes, sir, I sure do.”
    He smiled broadly. “Me, too. You’re a green little sprig. Don’t rightly know if they’ll join you.”
    Geneva threw off the blanket and stood up. She towered over Banjo. “They’ll join me.”
    Banjo measured from her toes to her head with his eyes. “Mebbe yes and mebbe no. You’re a big ’un, but you’re still a young ’un.”
    “I’m as good as anybody and better than most!”
    He laughed. “All right, boy, don’t git your feathers ruffled. I see your vanity is cut to your size. I hope they do take you.”
    She walked over to her saddlebags. Lutie had packed cheeses, smoked sausages, and bread. Geneva tore into the sausage, then remembered her manners and offered Banjo a bite.
    “Thank you, no.” He shifted to get his weight on his left leg. “I’d be joining the cavalry, too, but as you kin plainly see, I’m no gentleman. By the look of your horses I kin see that you are.”
    Geneva was taken aback by this. “Mr. Cracker,” she sputtered, “a gentleman is a gentleman from his heart. Money’s not so important.”
    He howled with laughter. “The world don’t think like you do, son. You ran away from home else you’d have a servant with you,” he slyly observed.
    Geneva was beginning to realize how hastily she had left. No wonder Lutie had let her go. She thought she’d be unmasked in the first twenty-four hours. It was only forty degrees, yet she started to sweat. “Well, I did go off in kind of a hurry.”
    “So I gathered. Afraid your momma would stop you?”
    “Well … uh …”
    “Don’t worry, I’m not going to send you back.” Geneva breathed obvious relief, making him laugh all the harder. “I do have a terrible price though.”
    She automatically put her hand in her pocket.
    “No, not that kind of price. First off, you write to yourmomma and tell her you’re safe and sound. You kin write, can’t you?”
    “Of course I can write.”
    “Well, I can’t, so don’t get flat righteous about it. Second, you and I enlist together and you tell the officer that I’m your hired man. They’d go for that. You get what you want, and I get to be in the cavalry.”
    She pondered this. “I’ll do it.”
    He shook her hand. “Agreed!”
    She turned to go back through her saddlebags and found a church almanac and a Bible which Lutie had slipped in. She pulled it out.
    “Now mebbe I’ll learn