Wilderness Run by Maria Hummel Read Free Book Online Page A

learning how to fight instead of hunt. The news came that Laurence had arrived from Boston to join the Second Vermont at the last minute. Bel’s cousin would march alongside farmhands and blacksmiths in a gray uniform faced with green to honor their ancestors in battle, the Green Mountain Boys. Most of the recruits thought they would be back for harvest. They were negligent in their kisses good-bye, their nonchalant waves as they boarded one of the Lindsey trains. They jostled one another for a seat by the door, where they could swing out and feel the wind take them—and then swing back inside to smell the sweat of men, to hear their voices again, far away at first, approaching like rain.

June–July 1861

Chapter Five
    â€œLikely to know your Bible by heart by the time you reach battle,” the accordion player observed, slumped against the hard seat. He was constantly adjusting his cap to a jauntier angle and did so now, turning the brim so that it aimed out the window. “Hey,” cried the accordion player, speaking louder to be heard above the commotion of the car. “You practicing to be a preacher or something?”
    Laurence looked up, covering the book with his hand. The volume of poetry had been banned in Boston, and he had secretly procured a copy from the author’s sister, whose husband ran a hardware shop in Allenton. “It’s not a Bible,” he said hastily.
    â€œWhatever it is, then.” The musician’s blue eyes strayed over the pure silver buttons Laurence’s mother had insisted on stitching on his uniform. “What’s your name again, sir?”
    â€œLaurence Lindsey.”
    â€œJohn Addison.” They shook hands, the other soldier’s grasp firm and lasting a little long, so that Laurence was the first to withdraw. They had been drilling together for two weeks in Allenton, but John Addison had always been flanked by a number of other recruits, who directed their jokes and comments toward his square red-blond head, searching for approval. This he doled out in barking laughs, making the whole company join in, as if all along the men had been waiting for the order to enjoy themselves.
    Laurence quickly found his place as a loner and a bookworm, tolerated by the farm boys but largely ignored. His only friend was an awkward, blushing fellow named Lyman Woodard, who wished, of all things, to be an actor. A staunch abolitionist, Woodard pronounced views diluted straight from Greeley to anyone who would listen. All day, he trailed an eager half step behind Laurence, his blond hair sticking in the corners of his mouth.
    â€œLindsey’s father owns the railroad,” Woodard interjected. Laurence gave him a baleful glance.
    â€œHe and my uncle,” he amended, shoving the book in his haversack and waiting for the onslaught of questions. He considered himself the only boy alive not fascinated by railroads, although he had been once, before he decided he did not admire his father. Now he preferred horses, pausing on avenues to admire their muscled lines and sweet, grassy smell, imagining a world without the loud rumble of wheels and tracks.
    But the usual fury of railroad conversation—where the newest lines were being laid, what the best engines were, and who would win the race to cross the West—did not erupt, and Laurence realized from his comrades’ awed expressions that this was the first trip many had made by locomotive.
    â€œCan he get me a job driving them engines?” asked Pike Rhodes, one of John Addison’s acolytes. He was sitting in a jumble of elbows and knees beside his brother Gilbert, and he scooted forward to the edge of his wooden seat. Redheaded, boy-faced, and adorned with freckled ears that tipped forward in an expression of constant curiosity, Pike Rhodes had already become the object of much good-hearted humor. Now he was staring at Laurence with his mouth agape, body perilously balanced over the