The Men of Pride County: The Rebel Read Free Page A

ever-present. The pay is rotten, a miserly sixteen dollars a month for most of you, and you’ll earn every nickel of it ten times over. So don’t thank me for taking you out of this hellhole. You haven’t seen hell yet. But you will. You will.”
    A rousing speech sure to win these sullentroops over. Her father was not one to sugar-coat any given situation. He was forcing them to swallow a bitter pill while saying it was for their own good as they choked on it. She found herself studying the Rebel major, watching for any sign of response. His whiskered features might well have been slashed from stone. Juliet smiled. He probably thought, just as his men must think, that they’d endured the worst life could offer. How quickly they’d discover they were wrong!
    As if he felt her interest, the major’s steely gaze cut over to where she sat, bundled in a rented hack. Though protected from the weather, she felt vulnerable to the sudden penetrating cold of his stare. A tremor raced through her, but instead of a chill, she was suffused by heat, a confusing warmth of response and unbidden reaction.
    Confusing because she wasn’t one to be intimidated by a man. She’d grown up in the army and considered herself the mental and in many cases the physical equal of a man in uniform. Not understanding her own emotions, she looked away, embarrassed, then back, angered that she should feel guilty. But she no longer had his attention. It was riveted on her father. A strange shiver rattled her sensibilities. The man unsettled her. And for that reason, she disliked the Confederate officer before they’d exchanged a single word.
    “I’ve told you what you have to look forward to,” her father said with his typicalbrusqueness. “Now, there’s something I want from each of you. I would have you swear allegiance to our United States of America and will take your word as gentlemen that you will not raise your hand against her for the duration of this war and that you will carry out the duties placed upon you by our Federal government, for which, in return, you will be paroled from this prison.”
    Juliet expected the Southerners to balk and they did. Rebellion, resentment, and open defiance flared in their hollowed eyes, in the tight flexing of their stubbled jaws, in the fisting of their hands.
    Her father ignored the signs of approaching mutiny with a calm demand. “Major Banning, I would have an oath from you and your fellow officers, then you may turn the task over to your sergeant to relay to the rest of your men.”
    He wasn’t going to do it. Juliet read refusal in the prideful narrowing of his glare and knew a moment of relief.
    “Major?”
    At her father’s prompting, other emotions played over the lean and dangerously set features, strong emotions that challenged and humbled an inherent arrogance. She saw in that raw moment the cost of bowing to her father’s command: a sacrifice of conscience, the crushing of loyalty and honor beneath the heel of desperate circumstance, the bending of an independent will for the good of many.And for just that instant, she felt sympathy for the proud soldiers and their conviction-torn leader.
    “Major?” her father repeated.
    A tense pause was followed by the reluctant lift of Banning’s right hand. The gesture was repeated by his two captains. Clearly, fiercely, they spoke the words binding themselves to the very nation they’d parted from with bloodshed and bitterness. Then the same oath was spoken by the enlisted men, their sentiments more apparent, their phrases more grudging. Juliet listened. And didn’t believe a word.
    They were traitors. They would go back on their vows the first chance they got.
    How on earth were they all going to survive the trip to New Mexico?
    But her father appeared satisfied with the pledges of loyalty, for he turned to his aide and ordered, “Secure the release of these men from the prison commandant. I want them bathed, clean shaven, issued uniforms,