Cat on the Scent

            “If you’re shot you have to fall down with your head to the side so you can breathe, with your firearm in your hand a bit away from your body. There are other rules but that’s the only one I remember. And they decide who will be injured, who will die, and who will survive. That’s if it’s a general reenactment. If it’s a true battle reenactment, like Sharpsburg, the men take on the identities of real soldiers. They have to fall in the exact spots where the real soldiers were hit.”

            “Strange,” Miranda muttered.

            “Rules for dying?” Harry stooped over to pick up Pewter, who had slowed.

            “The obsession with violence. The obsession with that war, especially. No good ever came of it.” Miranda shook her head.

            Harry disagreed with her. “The slaves were freed.”

            “Yes,” Miranda said, “free to starve. The Yankees were hypocrites. Still are.”

            Sarah, raised in Connecticut, smiled tightly. “I’m going back to get my lord and master’s canteen. I’ll see you at the battle.” She turned and ran as fast as pantaloons, a hoop skirt, and yards of material would allow. Her bonnet, tied under her neck, flapped behind her.

            Harry and Miranda reached the beautiful oak tree. Fair had given them tickets for seats on a small reviewing stand. They took their places.

            “Follow me!” Mrs. Murphy joyfully commanded as she scampered to the base of the tree, sank her razor-sharp claws in the yielding bark, and climbed high.

            Pewter, a good climber, was on her tail.

            Tucker, irritated, watched the two giggling felines. She couldn’t see anything because everywhere she turned there were humans.

            Harry shaded her eyes, glancing up at the cats, who sat on a high, wide branch, their tails swishing to and fro in excitement. She nudged Miranda.

            “Best seats in the house.” Miranda laughed.

            Tucker returned to Harry, sitting in front of her. “I can’t see a thing,” the peeved dog complained.

            “Hush, honey.” Harry patted Tucker’s silky head.

            A low drumroll hushed everyone. A line of Union cannons ran parallel to Route 653. The Confederate cannons, fourteen-pounders, sat at a right angle to the Union artillery. The backs of the artillerymen were visible to the crowd. As both sides began firing, a wealth of smoke belched from the mouths of the guns.

            In the far distance Harry heard another drum. Goose bumps covered her arms.

            Miranda, too, became silent.

            “Do you think if Jefferson Davis had challenged Abe Lincoln to hand-to-hand combat they could have avoided this?” Pewter wondered.

            “No.”

            Pewter didn’t pursue her line of questioning; she was too focused on all she could see from her high perch. The tight squares of opposing regiments fast-stepped into place. On the left the officer in charge of his square raised his saber.

            Ahead of the squares both sides sent out skirmishers. For this particular reenactment, the organizers had choreographed hand-to-hand combat among the skirmishers. As they grappled, fought, and threw one another on the ground the cannons fired now with more precision, the harmless shot soaring high over everyone’s heads.

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            Harry coughed. “Stuff scratches.”

            Miranda, hanky to her nose, nodded.

            As the drumbeats grew louder the crowd strained forward.

            They could hear officers calling out orders. The Union regiment at the forefront stopped as the Confederates, still at a distance, moved forward.

            “Load,” called out the captain.

            The soldiers placed their muskets, barrels out, between their feet. As the officer called out further loading orders, they poured gunpowder down the barrels and rammed the charges home.

            “Ha!” Pewter was watching Fair, struggling with his frightened horse.

            Mrs. Murphy, knowing Fair was a fine rider, didn’t find it quite as funny as Pewter did. “I don’t think anyone knows how to get the horses used to this noise and the sulphur smell.”

            Fair’s big bay shied, dancing sideways. At the next volley of cannon fire the horse reared up, came down on his two forelegs, and bucked straight out with his hind legs, a jolting, snapping, hell of a buck. Fair sat the first one but the succeeding ones, spiced up with a side-to-side twisting action, sent him into the sweet grass with a thud. The horse, no fool, spun around, flying back toward the hunter stables. Fair, disgusted, picked himself up, then looked around, realized he was in a battle, and ran over to join his unit.

            Sir H. Vane-Tempest, on the front corner of the first regiment, grimly stared into the billowing smoke. Archie Ingram was farther back in the square, as was Blair Bainbridge. Ridley Kent marched in the second unit behind them.