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cup of coffee.
    I lay awake for a while staring at the ceiling, thinking of Marvelous sleeping under the blanket David had so tenderly wrapped around her in the church belfry, so high up, and Mr. Cameron sleeping under the blanket David had wrapped around him in a corner of our cellar, so far down.
    The thought gave me a sense of comfort. And then I minded Pa, wondering where he was sleeping tonight. And
if
he was sleeping. And my mind wandered to my horse, Ramrod. Was she resting on warm, sweet hay, with her stomach filled with oats? Or was she starving someplace on some rough terrain, with scratches on her, and scars from some soldier's rough spurs, thinking of me and waiting for me to come and rescue her?
    "God does not visit us with troubles we do not have the strength to survive," Jennie Wade used to tell me. She said that thought used to get her through the bad times.
    Were these bad times for her now? Did she grieve over the fight we'd had as I did? Was she sorry? Did she miss our friendship? At the end of the day when Sam came home, did she ask him what had gone on at our house?
    I knew she still loved David. How could she even think of marrying another man when she still loved David? Was part of my brother's bitterness born out of the fact that he, too, still loved Jennie?
    Could I keep my own counsel and not tell David that Jennie still loved him? Did I have the obligation to tell him that? Didn't my loyalty belong to Josie, whose love was not fickle?
    I cried myself to sleep.
    ***
    I N THE MORNING I was hurled awake by the sound of gunfire.
    I jumped out of bed, threw on my clothes, and ran downstairs.
    Again, from the front windows, I saw people coming out of their homes all up and down the street. Josie was setting the table for breakfast. David was out back, yelling at Sam for something. Mama was with him.
    Immediately, I went out on the front stoop.
    "They're fighting," Mrs. Broadhead yelled at me from her front stoop across the street. "They're starting to kill each other!"
    I could see soldiers up at the end of our street, in bunches, could hear the sound of musketry, dogs going crazy with frenzied barking, the whinnying of horses.
    "Well, that's what they've come for, isn't it?" David's voice, behind me. His hands roughly gripping my shoulders and pulling me inside. "To kill each other?"
    He yelled it across the street at Mrs. Broadhead as he pulled me inside, then slammed and locked the door.
    ***
    T HE FACT WAS , our cow was gone.
    Daisy, the sweetest creature known to mankind, after my Ramrod, had been stolen in the night by some demonic Rebel who'd come sneaking about.
    That was what David had been scolding Sam for outside when I'd come down this morning. Sam had taken the brunt of it.
    He'd neglected to lock the barn door.
    "It isn't as if," Mama said at breakfast, once she'd stopped crying about Daisy, "the Rebs couldn't have broken through the lock and taken her anyway, David."
    David was adamant. Once he laid blame it stayed on the accused. For the rest of your born days. "Yes, but it would have made too much noise, them breaking in. This way it was easy for them. It makes me madder 'n hell making things easy for them."
    "We've got to get a dog," I said. We hadn't had a dog since our Beau died, half a year ago now. He was all the dog we'd needed, a faithful watchdog, companion, and friend. He'd been fifteen and died of old age. "Pa said we could get another one," I reminded my brother.
    "This isn't the time," he told me. "Not yet."
    This is exactly the time
, I wanted to snap back. Instead I said, "Do you think the Rebs will use Daisy for milk? Or kill her for meat?"
    The minute the words were out of my mouth I wished I could reach out and grab them back. Mama broke into a new freshet of crying.
    David slapped his hand down on the table. "Did you
have
to say that?"
    "I'm sorry, no. I'm sorry, Mama." I got up and hugged her around the shoulders. "I'm sure they need fresh milk more than anything. Please