The Crossed Sabres Read Free Page B

Tom with his powerful blows. Finally, when Tom refused to go down, Spence began to huff, drawing up great gasps of air. Tom stayed away, and the power of his blows began to tell.
    Both men were bloody, and Tom knew that his body would be bruised for days where Spence had hammered on his ribs. But there was a blind anger in him that matched that in Spence, and the two of them struck again and again. But it couldn’t last, and finally Tom caught Spence with a hard right hand just over the eyebrow. Tom felt his hand collapse and knew he’d broken a bone, but it was the end of the fight, for Grayson went down and lay absolutely still save for his chest that rose and fell rapidly.
    “Get in the house!” Tom commanded Marlene, and after one wild look at his bloody face, she wheeled and ran away. Tom stood there, gasping for breath, aware of the pain that was beginning to run along his body.
    Standing there looking down at Spence, he knew nothingcould ever be the same between them. And sorrow for all the good times that could never come again with this man was a keen blade of regret in him. Finally Spence opened his eyes, and when they focused, Tom got such a look of hatred that he hardly recognized the man.
    Grayson got to his feet painfully, then without a word, turned and walked to the buggy. Tom tried to call out, but knew it was hopeless. He had seen Spence like this before, harsh and unforgiving, but never had felt the weight of his anger personally. He watched helplessly as the man got into the buggy, after several unsuccessful tries, then drove off without a single word or look. Then he turned and went into the house, and as he tended to his own hurts, he realized that something had gone out of his life forever. The war and all it implied had worn upon him; now the loss of his best friend weighed heavily on Tom Winslow, and he felt sad that this day marked the end of all things.

CHAPTER TWO
    The Fires of War
    Fort Sumter’s smoke-stained flag drooped from a broken flagstaff as ninety exhausted men marched out to their ships, drums beating and colors flying. They were angry, hungry, and tired men, but their backs were straight as they marched.
    General Beauregard, wearing a hussar sword with a gilded hilt—the gilded metal of the guard twisted into lovelocks and roses—watched them go. Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard with his dark, handsome face, posed there, feeling the thrill of victory.
    But the fall of Fort Sumter was like a stone falling into a still pond, the ripples spreading over North and South.
    In Washington, Abraham Lincoln waited, pacing up and down the White House halls in nightshirt and carpet slippers. He had been called many names, including an ape and a buffoon. The crude small-time politician, a comparative failure at forty, was thrust into the presidency by a series of almost comical political events. His cabinet included Seward and Chase, who hated each other, each believing he should be president instead of Lincoln. When one of Lincoln’s aides protested against the disrespect these men showed toward Lincoln, the president smiled, saying, “When I was a boy, if I had just one pumpkin to bump in a sack, it was hard to carry, but if you could get two pumpkins, one in each end of the sack, it balanced things up. Seward and Chase will do for my pair of pumpkins.”
    In the North, Abraham Lincoln grew tired and discouragedas he faced a task no man could survive. Often he wondered about Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy. He said once, “Davis was born only forty miles from my own birthplace. He got the start of me in age and raising. I guess if you set out to pick one of us two for president, you’d pick him, nine times out of ten.”
    In the South, Jefferson Davis was as tired as Lincoln. He looked much like John Calhoun, stern and austere. He was brilliant, but his brittle temper and caustic manner prevented him from drawing men to him. His cabinet included Judah B. Benjamin, the