Clockwiser (21 page)

No wonder Lucinda fell hard and fast.

It was like he read my mind.

“Tell Lucinda I’m sorry I didn’t have a chance to say a proper goodbye. She’s a very beautiful girl, and I’m very glad to have met her.”

“I will, Willie.”

Nate reached out his hand. “You’re a good man.”

I threw myself at Willie, not caring at all about nineteenth century protocol and squeezed him hard. “Goodbye, Willie.”

I couldn’t hold my sobs back as we walked through the growing darkness toward Boston. I wiped my nose on the back of my dress sleeve, not caring at all how unattractive I must’ve been.

It was the first time Nate and I had been alone since our fight. His jaw worked as he walked, and I wondered what he was thinking. I lifted my skirts in an effort to keep up to his long strides, wondering if he was waiting for me to apologize. But for what? I never did anything wrong. He was the one who got his knickers in a knot over Chase and his flowers, making it into this big ugly thing. He was the one who should apologize.

We heard the clip-clop of horses and the rattle of a carriage coming from behind. Nate pulled me off the road to hide behind a clump of trees until it passed by, and then we both ran after it. With one hand pulling up my skirts, I followed as we jumped on the back bumper. Stow-away skills were a must for my line of work.

Thankfully it was dusk, and the road was empty with the exception of this carriage. Our freeloading went unnoticed. Unfortunately, carriages in this time didn’t come with shock-absorbing suspension, and by the time we were pulled over the bridge, my body was fully shaken. Men were lighting the oil lamps that lined sections of main roads so when Nate and I hopped off, we had to take extra care to keep to the shadows.

“We need to find the army base,” I said.

Nate shook his head. “Tim won’t be there.”

“How do you know?”

“It’s August 29th. The 13th Massachusetts is at Bull Run.”

“How do you know this?”

Nate turned his head and shrugged. “I’ve become a student of nineteenth century history recently, specializing in the years leading up to and including the Civil War. For obvious reasons.”

He’d been doing his homework.

He softened his voice and continued, “The first day of fighting has already happened.”

I felt my knees give out. “We’re too late?”

He paused. “I don’t know.”

“There’s another day of battle tomorrow,” he added. “We need to get to Virginia.”

Right. But how to do that with no money and not enough time?

“As lovely as you are in that nightgown, Casey,” Nate’s eyes settled on me, “I’m wondering if it’s the right look for what we need to do next.”

I lowered my voice. “You think I need to go back to
Mr. Casey
?”

Nate smirked. “It would be to your own benefit, but I think you’re going to find it harder to pull off.”

“I can kill the wiggle.”

His smirk reached his eyes. “But you can’t kill the curves.”

I felt a blush forming and suppressed a giggle. It’d been a while since we’d engaged in playful bantering and it made me feel good. Maybe our fight was over, just fizzled out like a popped balloon.

“I’d be more comfortable in pants anyway,” I said. “You got a plan?”

“As much as I hate to do it,” Nate pointed to a clothes line on a nearby property and took off before I could say anything. He unpinned a pair of trousers and a shirt. After I’d changed, I made him go back and pin my dress on the line in exchange.

“Here’s a cap,” Nate said, handing me one he’d swiped off the rocker on the front porch.

I twisted my hair into a knot on the top of my head and pulled the hat on.

“The train station is in the south end,” I said.

“We’ll have to hop it,” Nate said, as we started walking.

My heart skipped at the thought. I’d jumped a few carriages in my time, but hopping a train was a whole other thing. They were bigger and faster for starters, but I didn’t have a choice. I had to do it if I wanted to find Tim. So we crouched in the bushes waiting for the next Baltimore and Ohio train headed south to Virginia.

“The Confederates blew up a number of bridges on this line,” Nate said. “The Feds have fixed some of them, but it doesn’t go as far as it used to.”

I suddenly felt like the student here. I was sure I’d read about this somewhere along the way, but I’d forgotten.

I heard the whistle, and my heart started pounding. I imagined losing my footing and getting sucked underneath and sliced in two. Not a pretty picture.

“It looks fairly simple in the movies,” Nate said, trying to reassure me.

“The movies make everything seem simple.”

“Ready?”

I nodded and swallowed hard. The
chug, chug
of the steam engine grew louder. At least steam-drawn trains were slow compared to their modern counterparts.

When it reached us we started running. Nate grabbed onto a ladder that ran down the side of one of the cars.

“Run, Casey! Take my hand!”

I wasn’t much of a sprinter, but I pushed my long legs as hard as they would go. For a moment I freaked, thinking I’d miss Nate’s hand, and we’d be separated again. But in the last second I felt his strong grip, and my feet left the ground, landing finally on a lower rung.

I felt like laughing and crying.

Nate wedged the car door open and pulled me inside. It was dark and loaded with boxed supplies heading for the front.

I dropped to the floor of the car and rolled on my back. It took me a long moment to catch my breath.

“We did it,” I finally said.

Nate crawled over and lay beside me. It felt good to feel the warmth of his bare arm against mine. “That’s something I never thought I’d do in my life-time,” he said.

I turned to face him, holding his gaze. “I’m glad you’re with me.”

He threaded his arm under my head. We both smelled bad and looked less than optimal, and lying on the hard bumping surface of the car floor was nowhere close to romantic, but it was comforting all the same.

He squeezed my hand and kissed me lightly on the lips. “I’m glad, too.”

Our fight was officially over, for now. We hadn’t worked anything out, but it was obvious by Nate’s posture that he’d called a truce. As long as Chase lived next door, there could be tension between us over it, but we weren’t there right now. And I didn’t want to think about Chase anymore. We were soothed by the rocking rhythm of the train, and even though I hadn’t meant to close my eyes, I fell asleep.

I awoke in the morning, dying of thirst and starving to death. Yeah,
death and dying
were not the best adjectives to use when you were on a train taking you to a war zone. The nice thing was I woke up with Nate’s arm stretched over me. I hated to lift it off, but I wanted to dig through the packages on the train now that enough day-light shone through the slits in the wood for us to see.

Mostly I found ammunition. Crate after crate of gun powder and bullets and I worried that we’d be eating explosives for breakfast. Then I came across a crate full of crackers. I grabbed one and took a bite and almost broke a tooth.

“What the heck?”

“What’s going on?” Nate’s sleepy voice carried across the box car.

“I’m looking for food.”

I saw him sit up and rub his neck in the half-light. “Find anything?”

“Some kind of rock hard cracker.”

“I read about those,” he said. “Hard tack. Tasteless but last forever.”

I handed him one. “Better start gumming.”

I kept digging, hoping to find bottled water somewhere, but no such luck. “Water must be in another car.”

“I imagine we’ll be stopping soon,” Nate said, still working his cracker. “We’ll have to jump off and disappear before anyone sees us.”

I sat against a crate and dug into my cracker. The rocking of the car rubbed the edge of the crate into my shoulder blade. I shifted, trying to find a more comfortable position.

“We could’ve checked,” Nate said. “You know, if we’d had time.”

“Checked what?”

“On Tim. On line.”

Oh. If he’d died here or not, for sure. They obviously had record of a Timothy Donovan, if that picture was to prove anything.

“There’s still time to find him and get him home.” Right? I refused to believe anything else.

“Sure,” he said, but he diverted his eyes from mine.

My heart stalled at the notion that Nate might be doubtful, but I didn’t challenge him.

He’d taken time recently to check on the stats.

“How many casualties?” I asked.

His eyes darted up to catch mine. “What?”

“How many soldiers died in this battle?”

His eyes dropped back to his cracker.

“Nate?”

“A lot.”

A lot? “How many?”

He swallowed, nearly gagging on cracker bits. “Over thirteen thousand Union soldiers.”

A dark, syrupy fear spread through my body. “That’s a lot.” Was Tim among them?

Nate was right about us stopping soon, and it wasn’t long before the train started to slow. Nate cracked the side door open. “Ready?”

I followed him out onto the ladder, hanging on tight. The force of the wind whipped our faces and the grassy green of the ground blurred beneath us. As soon as the train was slow enough we jumped off and rolled into the weeds.

I shouted out in pain.

“Casey!”

“It’s okay.” I breathed through the throbbing. “I just landed on my shoulder wrong.”

“We need to get out of view.” Nate lifted me up, and I winced.

We stayed low and scrambled into the trees as far away from the train as we could. I leaned up against the white bark of a birch tree.

“Casey?” Nate eyed me with concern.

“I’m fine.” I had to be fine. We were running out of time. “It’s just a bruise.”

We hiked until we came across a little stream where we both dropped to our knees and scooped water into our mouths.

“I think we’re in Virginia,” Nate said after he’d had his fill.

I followed his gaze where it landed on a road marker to our right.
Richmond 50
was carved into the side.

“Fifty miles?” I said.

“We don’t have to get to Richmond.”

Nate splashed his face with water and pulled the bottom of his shirt up to dry it. I refused to let his six-pack distract me.

“How long will that take us to walk?” I said, drying my own face.

“If we average three miles an hour, about fifteen hours.”

I pulled myself to my feet. “We better get going then.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

TIM

Timmm-othh-yyyy

I heard my name. It sounded tinny and stretched out like it was coming from the other side of a long tunnel.

Ow.

My cheeks burned, first one then the other, accompanied by a slapping sound. I heard a groan leave my dry, cracked lips.

“Timothy, thank God you’re alive.”

My eyelids stuck to my eyeballs and scratched like sandpaper. I couldn’t see the owner of the voice.

I was too stiff to move, like a dried up twig with no give. Someone poured water in my mouth. I was aware of my head being lifted so I could drink, but my only focus was to swallow hard and fast.

“Easy, you don’t want to choke.”

I knew the voice now.

“Joseph?” It came out thick like I had a sock in my mouth.

“Yeah, it’s me.”

I flopped back to the ground and now that I was conscious, my body shot all its messages to me at once. Flames ran up my left leg.

“My leg,” I groaned, through gritted teeth.

“You’ve been shot. It looks bad.” Then he yelled over my head. “Over here! Another one over here!”

I mumbled, “I thought you fainted at the sight of blood?”

Joseph shrugged. “I’m getting used to it. Good thing or I’d be fainting every two minutes.”

“What’s happening?” The words felt like marbles in my mouth.

“The battle’s moved south and is winding down.” Joseph’s eyes scanned the landscape. “We’re picking up our dead and wounded.”

“How long have I been out?”

“Since yesterday, I imagine. You didn’t come back to camp last night. We thought we lost you, too.”

Too? My chest constricted as I remembered James.

“James is gone,” I whispered.

Joseph confirmed it by nodding. I barely recognized his face with all the dirt and grime smeared over it. His eyes were just a couple of white orbs staring at me through the dimming day-light.