Read Online Alias Dragonfly by Jane Singer - Free Book Online Page B

lost most of the spectators who’d settled in for their Sunday picnic. I imagined them now sprawled, full of food, on the ridge, pitching marbles and chicken bones down into the trees.
    F inally we came to a point overlooking a stone bridge with a running stream about a mile away. Puffs of smoke and artillery fire echoed loudly. Was my father down there? Hurt? Dying? I was beyond worried for him.
    We were no longer alone. Clustered about, with mouths agape, were gentlemen in stovepipe hats.
    Jake pulled up alongside them. “What have you seen?” he asked. I waited for their reply, my heart in my throat.
    “They rage! Our boys will triumph, you see?” one man said. “Down there are the Union brigades, crushing the Rebels like locusts.”
    Jake pulled out a pair of field glasses. I grabbed them away.
    For several hours we watched a massive tangle of men and weapons, impossible to tell one from the other. Sometimes they crashed together, exploding in fire and smoke. Then a sprawling line of others raced into the fray. I could hear the cries of the soldiers and the ungodly screams of horses. My own cry of “Papa!” melted into the air. Jake Whitestone tumbled and almost fell. I grabbed hold of his hand to steady him.
    “A soldier in the know just passed this way,” a man said. “He reports victory is ours, surely. The Rebels have fallen back into the trees, chased hard by General McDowell’s diversion troops, against Beauregard’s left flank. Just there below!”
    “Yep!” said another man. “If the Rebs don’t reinforce, the day is ours. God bless the boys of the Seventy-ninth New York, the Second New Hampshire, and the Twenty=second Massachusetts!”
    The Englishman Russell, full of starch and strut, appeared again. This time he raced to the edge of the ridge like a charging bull. He must have followed us. “Bully day is saved!” he crowed. “Heard that Rebels and Yanks, all of them unused to being enemies, are swarming each other like bees.”
    Then he jumped back into his carriage that was filled with reporters. “Washington City will be in celebration, no need to fear,” one of them shouted. “On to telegraph the world!”
    “It’s over?” I asked, praying it was over.
    “Maybe,” said Jake.
    “I want to go back to the city, to wait for my father. I know he’ll find me,” I said, willing myself to believe it. “Are you coming?” I grabbed his jacket.
    “No!” He said, his face set. “I have to stay.”
    “I’m going now!”
    “Then go!” Jake shot back, “and see how far you get.”
    “Love the killing? Or fear the victory? Which side are you on, Jake Whitestone?” He let go of me then, and I fled through the crowd.
    I looked around to see if I could hitch a ride on one of the carts and carriages that pitched and groaned all around me. I grabbed hold of the sideboard of an old cart driven by Negroes. It was piled with rakes, pitchforks and bales of hay. I threw myself in.
    As it rumbled and teetered down the hill, I spotted Jake Whitestone limping toward two Confederate soldiers, their horses lathered, nearly falling. What was he doing with those Rebels? Jake Whitestone held out a hand to one of them, shook it, and walked up to a small tent. The entrance was jammed with men in civilian clothes scribbling on pads of paper. And Jake Whitestone was smiling.

Nine
     
    I’d landed in the cart on a pile of blankets, nearly squashing a small boy burrowed underneath them. He yelped in surprise, his eyes wide at the sight of me. A young man freed the child, all the while aiming a pitchfork at me.
    “Please! I mean no harm,” I shouted.
    “Dropped on my boy like that? Git out this wagon!” The pitchfork was moving closer to my face.
    “Let her be, Johnny,” an old man said. He was missing an arm, a sleeve tucked and sewn over the empty place. “Poor ragged thing, what ken she do to us?”
    The little boy piped up. “I ain’t hurt, Pa. She don’t have much weight on her.”
    “I