The Last Full Measure Read Online Free Page A

worry. He bade me to be good and to mind David. He said he would be back. Then he mounted his horse and was gone.
    On Tuesday, the thirtieth of June, mounted Confederate officers appeared on the crest of Seminary Ridge.

CHAPTER FOUR
    E ARLY ON TUESDAY morning, the last day of June, Sam came bursting through the back door just as we were about to have breakfast.
    "Everyone's coming into the streets!" he told us. He set down the bucket of milk he had in hand. He had just milked our cow, Daisy.
    "You ain't listening to me. People all up and down the street are out of their houses," Sam persisted.
    "I heard you." David got up, took the milk pail, and set it on the side of the sink. "What for?"
    "You mean you don't know?" Sam looked at David as if my brother were the village idiot. "General John Buford's division is coming. Up Taneytown Road. Least six thousand of 'em! Yankees!" He turned to leave.
    "Just a minute there!" David's voice halted him.
    Sam stopped in his tracks. "Yessir?"
    "Where you going? I'm responsible for you while you're here. I can't just let you run off."
    I felt a glow of satisfaction, hearing my brother use on Sam the same tone he'd used on me.
    "But all the boys are in the streets," Sam protested, "to bring water for the Yankee horses. And the girls"—here he smirked at me—"are bringing the soldiers water, milk, beer, and cake."
    "I don't care what others are doing," David said sternly. "Did you finish your morning chores?"
    "Yessir."
    "Water our horses?"
    "You just got one now," Sam reminded him snottily.
    David frowned at him warningly. "Don't sass me, boy. I know I just have one. You sass me, I'll take a riding crop to you, and I don't give a tinker's damn what your sister says."
    "Sorry, sir. Didn't mean to sass you," Sam said quietly. "I even saddled your horse like you wanted."
    David becalmed himself. But why did he want his horse saddled? What was he about this morning?
    "Can I go now?" Sam inquired politely. "I won't go far. Just wanna see the Yankees, sir, is all. Be back in an hour."
    Satisfied by the submissive tone, David nodded. "Be careful," he warned. "Don't go beyond our street."
    Sam was gone before the sentence was finished.
    By now, of course, the faint tones of joy that had all along been drifting toward us from outside our windows were distinct sounds of celebration.
    I wanted, more than I wanted to take my next breath, to go outside, but I knew better than to ask. Why bother? Only to earn myself a stern no?
    But I did give my brother an appealing look, which he was expecting.
    There it was, once again in a flash, some of the old harmony between us. We had shared something almost magical once, something I'd never had with either Joel or Brandon, though they were both wonderful brothers to me.
    That pleasing agreement of emotion that David and I had enjoyed, that had allowed us to be in tune with each other's needs with no words or warning. It had been something our senses became aware of in an instant.
    It happened now.
    He knew, without my asking, what I wanted.
    "All right," he said, "but you're not to budge from my side."
    And so we went out onto the front steps to join the crowds up and down the street who waited the arrival of General John Buford. The Yankees, come to our aid.
    They were cavalry, all of them.
    David told me that Buford had skirmished of late with Confederate James Longstreet. David kept track of every battle of the war. I don't know where he got his intelligence from, but he also told me that the Confederates who'd come to town were dressed poorly with no shoes on their feet. And the only reason they'd come this way was because they'd heard there was a warehouse hereabouts full of shoes.
    He also said that Buford was a cavalry commander who used horses to get his men to where he wanted them to be, then had them dismount to fight.
    As they came thundering down the street, young girls, most of whom I knew, made offerings, tankards of refreshment.
Water?
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