A Bride For The Asking -- (on hold)

Chapter 10--The Prodigal Son

The steamboat whistle’s three short blasts warning it was pulling away from the dock startled Lieutenant Matthew Alonzo McFarland so much he jerked, causing his crutches to slide sideways off of the railing.  If he hadn’t been glaring at the ghost from his past, Rose McGregor, who was returning his glare with interest, he wouldn’t have let his crutches go sliding to the deck, ignored.  

The steamboat whistle had drawn her attention backwards, as if jerked by strings, when it gave those startling blasts.    For a moment a yearning look of regret crossed her features like the delicate fluttering of butterfly wings.  If it hadn’t been for that yearning look backwards, she would never have spotted him standing there at the rail.

Matthew had carefully avoided her the entire trip.  He should have waited until they were around the bend to come to the railing.  He realized that now.  However, the longing to at least glimpse something familiar from the Yankton landing had been too strong.   Now he was trapped in her green gaze just when he thought all danger of discovery was past.  

He studied her features.  She was older now, of course.  Maybe eighteen.  Her face was longer, more mature.  She had slimmed up until she was willow thin.  But none of that mattered.  He would have recognized her anywhere.  In fact, he could never forget that girl’s face if he lived to be a hundred. Nor, he was sure, would she forget his. 

She was the one girl on earth he had cause to hate.  Her shotgun blast had cost him his leg.  On the other hand, Matthew was the one man on earth she had cause to hate.  He had killed her unarmed uncle in front of her very eyes. 

Even though it had been an accident, Matthew would live with the memory of killing an unarmed civilian the rest of his days—and nights.  She would live with the scars and memories no fourteen year old girl should ever have.   He and Rose McGregor were two people in this world who should never have to meet again. 

“Here’s your’n crutches, by the by,” said a bearded, buckskin-clad mountain man beside him.  He held out the crutches to Matthew, and spit over the side of the boat in a long brown arc that seemed to please the mountain man with its distance.

Matthew took the crutches with a grimace that served as his smile.  He had forgotten all about them once he had spotted Rose McGregor with Ike.  “Thank you, kindly,”  he acknowledged grudgingly.

Matthew managed to tamp down the rage inside him even as he stared at the badly-scarred wooden crutches.  It was about time for another pair, he thought with a frown, as he nodded at the man and turned back to watch the bank of the river sliding by.  His surfeit of memories came sliding right along by, as well. 

Matthew usually managed to keep his memories and his temper caged like wild animals in the very back of his mind, but seeing the girl had brought the war all back to him like it was yesterday instead of four years ago. 

In 1862, Matthew, along with all the other young men his age, were being pressured to volunteer for the Union Army rather than being drafted.  No one but his Uncle George, and Professor Agassiz himself knew Matthew had lied about his age when he had enrolled at Harvard.  When his best friend, Tolliver Johnson graduated in 1862, sixteen year old Matthew McFarland, enlisted as private in the Massachusetts volunteer infantry alongside his friend, Tolliver Johnson.

Through no choice of their own, Matthew and Tolliver both wound up serving together under Major General Oliver Otis Howard who led the right wing in Sherman’s “March to the Sea.”  Maj. Gen. Howard’s corps marched down the Macon road, destroying everything in the Union Army’s path.  They met little resistance along the way and there were very few civilian casualties.  Who could have known then what was about to transpire in his life?