The Colonel's Lady Read Online Free

his head. He beat some dust from his sweat-streaked blouse and some more from his trousers, then he jerked erect as stiff as a board and became an entirely different man, a soldier.
    He about-faced as though he had been jerked half around by a pair of huge hands. “Forward! Ho-o-o!” Skiborsky marched at rigid attention all the way across the parade, to headquarters, the rest of us straggling along behind. Morgan was smiling faintly in amusement. “A goddamn tin soljer!” I heard him mutter under his breath.
    Skiborsky's head snapped around to eyes-right. “Lock that jaw, trooper.”
    “I'm no goddamn trooper,” Morgan said. “Not yet.” Skiborsky's mouth was a thin grim line, but I could see that fierce grin of his looking out from behind his eyes. “You will be,” he snapped. “You will be!” And I thought I heard him add, “Even if I have to kill you.”
    We marched straight up to the headquarters porch, where a captain was waiting. He smiled faintly as Skiborsky went through the motions of bringing us to attention again, saluting, turning the recruits over to the officer.
    “I suppose all of you want to enlist,” the captain said mildly, after Skiborsky had marched off toward the barracks. “We might as well get started.”
    We went inside, where four enlisted troopers sat at desks, looking at us vaguely, without curiosity, without interest of any kind. They all began to reach for official-looking enlistment forms.
    “Answer all questions,” the captain said. “After that's done there will be a medical examination and then I'll swear you in.” The captain got behind a desk and found a form and motioned to me. “I'll take you over here. We have to get this done before retreat or you won't be able to draw arms and supplies. Name?”
    “Matthew Reardon.”
    He wrote it down. “Age?”
    “Thirty-two.”
    He looked up to get the color of my hair and eyes and approximate height and wrote down what he saw. “Previous military experience?”
    Without thinking, I said, “Four years.”
    “Rank last held?”
    I paused for a moment, and then decided that it didn't make any difference one way or another.
    “Captain.”
    His eyebrows came up at that, but he wrote it down. “Organization?”
    “Thirty-sixth Alabama Horse.”
    He put his pencil down and sat back and studied me. He said quietly, “We already have several men out of the Confederate Army. They're good fighters mostly, the same as the rest of our soldiers. Some of them, though, can't seem to remember which war they're fighting, or who is the enemy.” Then his eyes moved up and looked at mine. “When a man comes to Larrymoor, it's usually because he is afraid to go anywhere else. What are you afraid of, Reardon?”
    We locked gazes for a moment. I had a feeling that he wasn't so interested in what I said, he just wanted to watch my eyes while I said it.
    “The usual things that men are afraid of,” I said finally. “Death and insecurity and, of course, the fear of being afraid.”
    He smiled. “I was afraid you were going to say 'nothing.' If you had, I would have sent you back to Tucson with the next supply train.” He fumbled in his breast pocket and came out with a ragged, dry cigar, and rolled it around between his fingers. All cigars, I thought, would be ragged and dry in this country. “Why do you want to enlist at Larrymoor?” he asked.
    “The cavalry is what I know.”
    He sighed, indicating that he hadn't expected much of an answer to that one.
    “Have you any idea of what it's going to be like here?”
    “Yes.”
    “How long did you say you'd served with the Thirty-sixth Alabama?”
    “Four years.”
    “Then you ought to know enough to answer like a soldier.”
    “Four years, sir.”
    “That's better.” He smiled again, quietly, the way he talked. In the back of my mind I had been dreading the minute when I would have to say “sir” to a Yankee officer. It wasn't as bad as I'd expected it to be.
    “The