Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier Page B

glad to see the war done and their boys come walking up the road. Ada asked if there was any news from either of the boys, the two Swanger sons being off to the fighting. But they’d heard not a word in many months and knew not even what state they were in.
    The Swangers had opposed the war from the start and had until recently remained generally sympathetic with the Federals, as had many in the mountains. But Esco had grown bitter with both sides, fearing them about equally now that the Federals were ranked up just over the big mountains to the north. He worried that they would soon come looking for food, take what they want, and leave a man with nothing. He’d been in to the county seat recently, and it was all over town that Kirk and his bluecoats had already started raiding up near the state line. Came down on a family and looted their farm at grey dawn, stole every animal they could find and every bit of portable food they could carry, and set fire to the corncrib in parting.
    —Them’s the liberators, Esco said. And our own bunch is as bad or worse. Teague and his Home Guard roaring around like a band of marauders. Setting their own laws as suits them, and them nothing but trash looking for a way to stay out of the army.
    He’d heard the Guard had rousted a family out into their yard at dinnertime. Owenses from down about Iron Duff. Teague claimed they were known to be lovers of the Federals and suspected members of the Red String Band and that whatever hoard of treasure they had must fall forfeit. First they took the house apart and then they prodded around in the yard with their sabers to see if they could find soft dirt from fresh digging. They slapped the man some, and later his wife. Then they hanged a pair of bird dogs each by each, and when that failed to get the man’s attention, they tied the woman’s thumbs together behind her back and hoisted her up by them with a cord thrown over a tree limb. Hauled on it till her toes just touched the ground. But the man still wouldn’t say word one, so they took her down and set the corner of a rail fence on her thumbs, but that didn’t faze the man either.
    The children were wailing and the woman was down on the ground with her thumbs still under the fence corner screaming how she knew her man had hid the silver service and the hoard of gold pieces they had remaining after the hard times of the war. She didn’t know where he’d buried it, she just knew he had. She first begged him to tell, then she begged the Guard to have mercy. Then, when Owens still refused to talk, she begged them to kill him first so she could at least have the satisfaction of watching.
    About that time one of the Guard, a white-headed boy called Birch, said he believed they maybe should stop and leave, but Teague leveled a pistol at him and said, I’ll not be told how to treat the likes of Bill Owens and his wife and the young’uns. I’ll go to the Federals before I’ll live in a country where I can’t deal out to such people what they deserve.
    —In the end, Esco concluded, they didn’t kill nobody and they didn’t find the silver. Just lost interest and headed off down the road. The wife left Owens on the spot. Came to town with the children and is living with her brother and telling the tale to whoever’ll listen.
    Esco sat for a time leaned forward in the chair with his forearms on his knees and his hands hanging loose from their wrists. He seemed to be studying the porch boards or gauging the wear of his boot leather. Ada knew from experience that, were he outside, he would spit between his feet and then stare at the spot in evident fascination.
    —This war’s something else, he said in a minute. Every man’s sweat has a price for it. Big flatland cotton men steal it every day, but I think sometime maybe they’ll wish they’d chopped their own damn cotton. I just want my boys home and out hoeing the bottomland while I sit on the porch and holler Good job every time that