The Broken Soldier's Frontier Ride

Chapter 1

The deep booming of a cannon shook the ground and sent the cornstalks shivering. Ben Hale was shivering, too, as he hid among them. He listened to the sounds of war around him. The shouting. The steady pop-pop-pop of gunfire. The moans and screams that inevitably followed.

Somehow, this wasn’t what he thought he’d signed up for. He was a courier, not a soldier. His only job was to deliver messages, not to find himself caught between the front lines, terrified that the wrong person would find him.

He patted the special oilcloth pouch attached to his belt to make sure the folded piece of paper was still there. It was only the tiniest bit of reassurance, but it was all he could get.

He’d memorized it, just in case he somehow lost the paper. That was part of what had made him so good at this job, so valued by the soldiers and leaders he worked for.

The Yanks have set a trap for the reinforcements. They’ll be slaughtered if they come through the pass. Reroute immediately.

Short and simple. A message that would surely earn him the praise of the commander who heard it. Ben would save hundreds of lives if only he could get that message to Confederate command.

Another boom sent him crouching further into the ground, the hard stalks pressing in on him from either side. Ben crunched his eyes shut and pressed his hands over his ears, but he couldn’t drown out the knowledge of what those cannons could do.

Men missing limbs, lying in cold sweat on their bedrolls as the flies gathered around them. Gangrene setting in. Doctors hurrying from one tent to the next, their bone saws still bloody from the last patient.

Nurses in red-stained aprons, their faces grim as they murmured untrue assurances. Soldiers who folded up and buttoned the empty arms and legs of their uniforms before limping home.

The medical tents were bad enough, but the battlefields when the fighting was over were no better. Bodies and body parts were strewn over the trampled grass. If he walked through the area, the ground would jingle with the sound of spent bullets.

The vultures moved in so swiftly that Ben was sure they understood exactly what was happening below them as they wheeled through the sky.

Ben’s heart pounded. His breath came too quickly. The world spun around him even though the earth was steady under his feet.

He had to go. He couldn’t stay there and die. The tents were just on the other side of the cornfield. He’d seen them just before he’d ducked for cover.

But it was a huge field. The low, rippling hills of green might as well have been an entire ocean, and Ben wasn’t sure he could make it to a safe harbor.

He’d already traveled so far. His uniform was tattered, and the soles of his shoes were nearly worn through. A few acres of farm field wasn’t that much of a distance, not considering the ground he’d already covered. He’d gone for picnics that were farther than that.

That was when war didn’t blaze around him, the cannonballs blasting into the earth, into buildings, into men. That was when he knew that life was difficult and rough, but he hadn’t yet understood the cruelty of men and weapons.

There was a time before the war, but it felt as far away from him as the command tents he had to get to.

His ankles groaned at him, sore from squatting so long. If he didn’t get up soon, Ben felt as though he never would.

Taking inventory, he once again touched his pouch and felt the soft crinkle of the folded paper. His revolver sat on his right hip. Ben whisked it out of the holster to check the ammunition, even though he already knew it was full. He hadn’t had to use a single one.

His knife waited on his left hip, a weapon that’d come in handy nearly every day.

He’d cut his food with it, at least when there was enough food that he could get a decent meal. A few decent dishes often came his way when a particularly pleased general would treat him like a king for delivering a message that was vital to the war effort.

Then there was the rosary around his neck, held there by a thin leather thong. Ben pulled it out of the collar of his shabby shirt. The silver of the cross had tarnished, but that was just as well. He didn’t want to call attention to such an item when the men all around him were so desperate.

What are you going to do, Ben? You’re nearly grown. It’s time to decide what the rest of your life will look like.

He carried the rosary around his neck, but he carried Sister Matthews’ voice in his mind.

She’d been a stern nurturer, a woman who believed in strict bedtimes and who stood solidly in her Christian principles.

But Ben knew the softer side of her, as well, the side of her that was the closest thing he’d ever had to a mother.

I could be a soldier. Soldiers were noble, and they had purpose. They kissed their loved ones goodbye and marched off to war. They had brothers-in-arms. They were men.

Plenty of men have gone off to fight, and most of them don’t return. I haven’t spent all these years raising you just so you could die on a battlefield. You can do more than that, Ben.

As he crouched in the cornfield, unable to continue his mission, Ben wasn’t so sure. He’d gone against Sister Matthews’ wishes, and yet he still hadn’t become a soldier. He wasn’t one of the men fighting or shooting. He had only to deliver a message.

Just deliver the message.

Ben tucked the rosary safely under his clothes and slowly straightened his legs. He kept his back bent forward so that his head couldn’t be seen above the corn as he stretched his ankles and wiggled his knees. He took a deep breath and let it go, pushing away all his fears.

Smoke billowed over his head, and more gunfire rippled nearby. Danger was all around him. If he went the wrong direction, someone would be there waiting to kill him.

They’ll all die if I don’t do this.

The corn had been planted close, to make as much use out of the ground as possible in a time when so much food was needed but men weren’t home to tend their farms. The closely planted crop created a line directly in front of him, a path that would lead him straight to his destination. He had only to follow it.

Another boom of cannon fire sent him running. Leaves smacked him in the face, their edges turning brown and hard as summer crept toward fall. His shoulders caught on the stalks.

The firm, tent-like roots of the corn grabbed at his feet, trying desperately to send him flying into the dirt. Ears of corn broke off, not yet ripe and wasted as they fell to the ground.

He was moving. He was going to make it. Ben’s heart lightened. His breath came too fast, making him dizzy, but that was fine. His feet flew over the ground, and as he came over a small rise, he could see the command tents in the distance.

Safety lay there, waiting for him in the tent of a commanding officer. He’d get to rest. He’d be fed. He might even get a pat on the shoulder when the importance of the message was understood. Ben could be one of the heroes of the war.

He stumbled. Ben looked down as the ground rose up, but then he brought his left foot forward and caught himself.

The leaves continued to slap him, but it felt as though they were pushing him onward instead of holding him back.

A narrow farm road stretched across the center of the field, little more than a dusty dirt track.

Anything outside of the tall stalks was dangerous, but Ben was fast. Hadn’t the other boys at St. Thomas always told him so?

He’d be across the road in a flash, such a brief moment that nobody would know he was there.

As he hurtled forward, about to bound across the farm road, a figure appeared. He stood on that dusty track, looking smug and triumphant in his blue uniform as he raised his rifle and thrust the bayonet forward.

The bright, sharp, bayonet stabbed toward him, but Ben couldn’t stop his momentum. He was throwing himself directly at the very thing that would kill him. Only a few seconds of his life remained, and he used it to look into the eyes of the Union soldier.

They were dark and menacing. A bright glee danced in them, delighted as he was in knowing he was about to kill one of his enemies.

He was well-fed and ready to fight, nothing like the hollow-eyed soldiers Ben had seen in plenty of camps.

He was a man who hadn’t yet been defeated and probably never would.

Ben had heard of such men. The Union soldiers would creep as close as they could to the Confederate command tent. They weren’t there to fight like men, nor did they kill any true soldiers. No, they were only there to intercept the couriers.

Their sole purpose was stopping any messages from getting through, to degrade the communications among the Confederates so badly that they no longer knew what was happening.

That was why the army had readily taken Ben when he’d come to enlist. That was why they hadn’t questioned his age or where he’d come from. They needed young, fast runners because so many of them were getting slaughtered.

He was about to be one of them.

Just as the tip of the bayonet caught the sun and gleamed in his eyes, promising a painful death, Ben’s feet shoved to the side.

Roots caught at his feet. Stalks slapped him hard, trying to push him back towards inevitable death.

The leaves that had once urged him on only slid uselessly past as the soldier gritted his teeth and made his stab.

The bayonet hit the dirt, punctuated with the soldier’s grunt.

Ben tumbled onto the farm road. He was clear of the stalks, but he was no safer. He couldn’t get his feet underneath him, so he scrambled backwards as the Union man thrust the blade toward him once again.

With a speed that surprised even Ben, he dodged once again. The bayonet grazed his left side, just above his hip. It scraped against the hilt of his knife, but it stabbed uselessly into the earth instead of into his guts.

The soldier grunted as he lifted it, swinging his weapon high over his head.

Ben had been terrified of facing down a musket barrel, but that was nothing compared to both the barrel and a bayonet at once.

He could die by the blade or by the bullet.

Ben had to get to his feet. He had to run.

He had to scream. He could do none of that.

His body refused to cooperate, and the soldier came at him like a brilliant nightmare.

“Not going to waste a bullet on a little brat like you,” the solider said as he took one last stab.

Ben rolled to the side, but he wasn’t fast enough. The bayonet pierced him just above his waistband. He felt it searing through his skin and tunneling through his insides until it held him to the earth like a pinned butterfly.

Pain blistered through his body. It drove his breath from his lungs. His heart beat so fast that it echoed as thunder in his ears. Blood surged out of the wound and soaked his clothes.

Panic bloomed in his chest as the man tried to lift it free of Ben’s body. Ben grabbed the gun, terrified of what it would leave behind if yanked free but equally scared of leaving it in. The seconds ticked by slowly as he watched the soldier’s thick finger reach for the trigger.

His own arm moved, bending back of its own volition. Ben’s right hand wrapped around the grip of his revolver. He’d already undone the strap when he’d checked the bullets. The gun that he’d never had reason to use was right there, waiting for him.

Ben jerked it free. It shook in his hands. It was too heavy. He fumbled with it, his fingers slick with blood. His own blood, crimson in the sunshine.

The soldier’s face changed. His lips closed over his gritted teeth, and his fierce eyes widened in surprise.

He was a man who’d just discovered the snake he’d tried to kill could bite back, and yet he wasn’t giving up.

Yanking the bayonet from Ben’s abdomen, he braced himself for the second and final puncture.

Ben’s vision darkened. His head spun as his blood leaked into the earth beneath him. His gun exploded in his hand. His weak, bloody fingers wouldn’t keep a grip on it, and the revolver spun off into the corn behind him.

Backlit by the sun, the soldier flung his hands out to his sides as the front of his neck erupted. A shower of blood rained down onto Ben as the soldier fell to his knees.

He clawed uselessly at the massive wound in his neck as it sprayed his life source across the corn, the red showing dark and brown against the green leaves. He fell forward, his face slamming into the dirt.

Ben heard screaming all around him, punctuated by the cannons and guns, a symphony of battle. It was violent, terrified screaming. The cry of a dying animal, a tortured animal. It was only the rawness in his throat that made him realize the screaming was his own.

This was it. This was how he was going to die. His message would never be delivered.

His death would cause the deaths of hundreds of others, but would anyone even know? Would they ever find his carcass out there among the corn? Or would some farmwife stumble across his bones when she came to harvest food for her children?

Pain ricocheted from his wound and echoed through his body. The horror was too much to contain as his blood leaked from him and mixed with that of the dead soldier who lay next to him. Whichever side gained ground that day, it was fertilized with the blood of all who’d sacrificed themselves.

And for what? Why did I do this? What did I achieve? Nothing, nothing, nothing.

And then the nothingness consumed him and turned the daylight into the blackness of night.