The Mockingbird's Ballad

Mama Sarah took charge. "That's enough John Longstreet. They're alive. Lou's here." She looked deep into Lou's brown eyes and Lou kept her eyes locked on the woman who was her life's touchstone. "She's here and we're going to keep her if I have to tie her to a barn stall with a log chain." She smiled at her granddaughter and turned.

"Well, lets get this girl some food, John L. Quit your questions," Mama Bear ordered her excited husband as she pulled her out of her grandfather's grip and started toward the house, her arm in Lou's.

===

"OK, A. Call the boys to re-assemble," the major said to Alex as he stood high in his stirrups surveying the trail ahead.

The sky was filled with smoke from the two dozen Union supply wagons attacked at daybreak. Alex made the bugle call. The troopers regrouped and moved out.

Later that day, six hours after the small raid, the major sat in a thin woods filled with cedars near McMinnville. He'd made camp there to rest and tend mounts and troopers. Rock outcroppings disturbed the sparsely grassed ground. Taking a long pull from his canteen, he put his near empty container of stale water down. Pulling his notebook from his haversack, he turned to the next unwritten page and wrote: "Sept. 1, 1864, near McMinnville, Tenn. Last week we captured a Yankee command of three companies near McMinnville. Surprising them, they made haste to depart our presence. Left ten wagons, an ambulance and three teams. The general has been urged by some of his officers to take Nashville. Gen'l Joe wanted to come up and around Knoxville to give Sherman's backside a kickin' but we're too few and they are so many. The general was right early on. Them Yankee horse soldiers have been tough opponents over the last two years. Give us both equal mounts and weapons and it is no contest, but when it's two to one and they've got everything they need and we haven't got much more than our bull headedness, well it's . . . . ."

"Sent Lou home two weeks ago when we came by northwest of Chattanooga. Alex and J. N. talked the general into staying. General Joe asked what I thought he should do and I said they'd learned a lot to lose all their education. He laughed and said 'Very well.' Lou wasn't too upset after her brother and cousin told her the family might need her at home with all the excitement in the valley and along the Cumberland from Chattanooga to Nashville."

He paused seeing again briefly that day at the creek and his discovery of Lou's secret. The vision of her disturbed him in a way he'd not been disturbed before. The senoritas in Monterrey were friendly, warm beautiful and generous. He'd known, in the Biblical sense, his share of women since he was 20. He'd like to have shared more time and life with two or three but he's learned he was not the settling kind. The next horizon, trail, duty post always seemed to be more important than trying the civilian life and being in one place with the same person or people. He realized then that he needed new activity - physical and mental - to live like he wanted.