Near Enough to Home pt. 1

Perhaps the most striking thing about Canada is that it is not part of the United States.

–J. Bartlet Brebner

Sanderson stumbled forward through a universe of misery. His lungs ached as he struggled to keep them filled, his mouth blocked by the gag his captors had stuffed there; wind-blown Kentucky rain stung his eyes, and with his hands bound behind him he could not wipe them clear; his feet chafed and bled where the cheap, ill-fitting American boots cut them. It wasn't enough that these Federal prisoners had cold-cocked him and dragged him along as a hostage to aid their escape; they'd stolen his boots, too—and them just broken in to where they were comfortable—and replaced them with shoddy atrocities that were almost worse than being barefoot. Don't give up, he told himself. If you give these men a reason they'll kill you, and then you'll never find Scott.

"Keep moving, you redcoat bastard." A hand thumped him between the shoulder blades, driving him forward until he stumbled. A branch slapped him in the face; blinded by the rain and the moonless night, he felt his way forward, fighting to keep his balance, until he was sure it was bush and not a tree trunk he was about to step into. Then he fell forward, thrashing and kicking about as he did. Thin branches scratched his face, but the pain was worth it so long as his captors didn't figure out what he was doing.

* * * *

Night was giving way to dawn when Sanderson went into the bushes next. Again he was pushed, and this time the man who pushed him clipped him on the side of the head before shoving him sideways. When Sanderson came to his senses, it was to hear the tail end of a scream for mercy, and the sickening crunch that ended it.

He struggled to his feet, working at the rope that bound his wrists in an effort to keep the rain from shrinking it. As he struggled upward, thorny branches whipped across his face, drawing blood. One of the thorns caught a tip of the gag; when he drew his head back, the gag stayed behind.

Emerging from the bush, Sanderson saw the Federal soldiers who'd captured him gathered in a loose semi-circle around a mule that stood patiently in the middle of a muddy road. He didn't know Kentucky very well, but he knew his captors were moving north, to get away from the Confederate army; that mad it likely this was the road between Bardwell and Wickliffe. Two bodies in Confederate white lay in the mud; heavy stones beside the shattered skulls made eloquently clear to Sanderson the source of the sound he'd just heard. None of the Federals even looked at the bodies now; they were talking amongst themselves and pointing at something behind the mule

The sergeant who was the ringleader was pointing, too—with the heavy old Colt he'd taken from Sanderson along with his boots. The man thumbed back the Colt's hammer. Not with my gun, Sanderson thought; not yet. He struggled with the rope that bound him. A five-shot Currie stingy-pistol was tucked into a special holster in the small of his back; the Federals, being content with the obvious, had stopped searching him when they'd removed the Colt. If he could get his hands free, they'd regret their carelessness.

"We can use the mule, I guess," the sergeant said. "Since we already got us a hostage who can walk, I don't see much use for you, though." He aimed the pistol; Sanderson gave up on getting his hands free and rushed forward. "Nothing personal, colonel," the sergeant said, and then Sanderson hit him from behind and to the side. The two men splashed into the mud.

The others were on Sanderson before he could do anything else; not that he'd had any plan beyond disrupting the murder long enough to give the other man a chance to escape. When the Federals had stopped beating on him, though, Sanderson saw that he'd made a critical error in his original assumption: Escape had never been a possibility for the man he'd tried to save.

The colonel the sergeant had been speaking to was lying on a crude sort of travois, a blanket suspended between poles thrust under the horse's harness. A bandaged stump at the end of his left leg where the foot should have been explained the sergeant's remark about a hostage who could walk. Sanderson was astonished to see that the colonel wore a Federal uniform. Why would these men want to kill one of their own officers?

"Damn," the sergeant said as he got to his feet. "I ought to kill you for that, Englishman. Pity we need you to get across the river."

"I told you before," Sanderson said, "I'm not—" The last word exploded from him as the sergeant kicked into his ribs with enough force to knock him over sideways.

As he fought to get air into his agonized lungs, Sanderson heard the sergeant mutter, "Goddamned barrel's full of mud," and shove the colt back into its holster. "Guess we'll have to do him like we done the others."

"If what you want is to get across the river to home, I'm worth more to you alive than I am dead."

Sanderson looked up. the colonel had struggled upright, in order to be able to look the sergeant in the eye. The colonel's face was pale and sweating; no doubt he'd got a fever from the amputation. Even if he'd been healthy, though, this colonel would have been one of the more ugly men Sanderson had ever seen. Tall and impossibly thin, he looked more like a corpse than many dead men. His face was long and angular, and so raw-edged and bony it looked as though it had been carved with an axe. Huge ears gave him a look that suggested to Sanderson a sort of elongated gorilla. The man's eyes were dark and sunken, and though there was something almost mesmerizing about them, Sanderson attributed that to the fever-gleam.

"I'm a fair man," the sergeant said with a smile that gave the lie to his words. "I'll give you a chance to explain yourself."

"I'm being paroled. The Confederates are letting me go home, instead of sending me to a prison." The colonel's voice was pitched high for such a tall man. "I guess they don't consider me a threat anymore." He looked down at the bandaged stump. "You"—the colonel paused just long enough that Sanderson, at least, was  aware of the irony—"...gentlemen... want to get across the river. I assume that you would be interested in the boat that's waiting for me."

"Waiting for you where?"

"Ah," said the colonel. "That's what you'll keep me alive to find out."

* * * *

"You're a Canadian?" the colonel asked. They had stopped for a rest in a small clearing in the woods somewhere northeast of Wickliffe. After introducing himself, the colonel had thanked Sanderson quietly for his attempt at intervention; while the words and voice were pitched low, Sanderson felt the power behind them nevertheless.

"I'm from St. Louis, yes," Sanderson said. He worked at his bonds, but in spite of his efforts the cord had shrunk in the rain, and all he was getting for his efforts was bloody wrists. They'd bound the colonel, too—more to keep him from helping me, Sanderson guessed, than because they think he's really a threat. "I believe you're the first man I've met since crossing the river who hasn't called me an Englishman. Thank you for that."

"You'll have to forgive my countrymen their ignorance," the colonel said. The rain had stopped a while back, but the woods were still soaked; the colonel's uniform was so wet the blue wool looked almost black. "Canada is a relatively new concept to us, and by and large my countrymen are slow to adapt to new concepts that they consider an inconvenience. Besides, until forty-eight you were Englishmen, at least legally."*

"Do you have any idea why these men are doing this?" Sanderson asked. "Surely they'd have been exchanged soon."

"That assumes they were taken on the field of battle," the colonel said drily.

"You mean they might be deserters? But they were in a Confederate prison enclosure when they took me." Sanderson flushed with embarrassment at the memory.

"Their presence in a prisoner camp is not guarantee they actually took part in the fighting at Bardwell," the colonel said. "The situation has been somewhat chaotic this week." That was an understatement, Sanderson knew. The Federal army had been destroyed at Bardwell, and he'd heard that only a few thousand had made it back across the Ohio River into Illinois and Indiana. If the Confederates invaded Illinois or captured Washington—and either looked possible now—there was a good chance the war might be over before 1852 gave way to 1853.

"Might I inquire just what you were doing in that prisoner camp? Our escorts here"—the colonel nodded sarcastically at their guards—"called you a redcoat. You're not in uniform, though, so you're not a Canadian military observer. In that duster you might be any farmer. You're not a spy, are you?"

"No, sir. I'm with the Northwest Mounted Police."

"So how did they know to call you a redcoat?"

"I had a pass, signed by the Confederate military attache in St. Louis. I'm looking for a fugitive who'd joined your army under a false name."

"You show an admirable determination," the colonel said. "This fugitive must have done something particularly horrible."

Scott had left their mother in tears, but Sanderson didn't feel like sharing that fact with the colonel, so he simply nodded. "I'm anxious to get him back," he said.

"I see," the colonel said, and smiled. "Is he a murderer? Or is it some more political crime?"

"I'm not at liberty to talk about that," Sanderson said, after what he knew was too long a pause. He saw the colonel's appraising glance, and was grateful when one of the deserters appeared to kick him to his feet.

*This should have read British rather than Englishmen, but this is how it was in the original publication and all reprints.