The Rebel and The Lady

By George M. Goodwin

Three and a half years as a Confederate soldier and another year and a half in a prisoner of war stockade had made Jack Salter wonder at times if he'd even survive. When the war was over he was released and made a bee line for home. Vicksburg Mississippi. The only family he had left a cousin named Odell had taken care of his few possessions, a pair of mules and an old wagon while he was gone. After trying to talk his cousin into it without luck, Jack said goodbye to him and Vicksburg and headed west. Just west no place in particular.
He found all he hoped for out there and more when he meets a young widow and her son and falls in love. Will a Mississippi farm boy and ex-soldier be enough for them.
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pale Horse Publications
• Release date: May 31, 2024
• ISBN: 9798227147387

George M. Goodwin

George was born in 1960 in Jefferson County Alabama. The fifth of nine children, eight boys and one girl. The family was raised poor, but not poorly raised. At home, George was taught morals, ethics and respect. Reading, writing and arithmetic at school. Love, honor and obedience to God at church. He grew up on John Wayne movies, country music and the writings of Louis L' Amour, Robert Louis Stevenson, H.G. Wells and Jules Verne.  

Book preview

1

Ifinished putting some few supplies in the back of that ole wagon and climbed into the seat. I took the reins in hand and urged my mules John and Jill to step out. My name is Jack Salter. Folks around Vicksburg where I called home had ask me for years why was it I called my mules John and Jill instead of Jack and Jill like the kids rhyme. I’d never really had an answer for em but today I had one for em. Because there was room for only one stubborn ass named Jack on this trip. It was now March of 1866. I’d spent all of the last three months just walking and making my way home from just south of Pittsburgh Pennsylvania. I’d been in a Union prisoner of war camp up there for a year and a half before that. Most of us had been turned loose shortly after the war ended. A double handful of the men had been caught while robbing and killing civilians. These men were to be hanged. The rest of us was turned out with a paper stating we had been released, A canteen of water and one day’s ration.  Outside the prison walls was a pile of rifles and other weapons that had been taken when us prisoners was brought in. We was told once the gate closed to grab one in order to eat on our way home. I walked away from there with a rifle much older than mine had been, six loads of powder and shot, and a belt knife as dull as a school marm’s sense of humor. I never slowed up or even looked back.

I headed straight for home, where I was born and raised, down in Vicksburg Mississippi. On the western border of the state. I walked every day from sunup ‘til nearly sun down. Leaving me only enough light to maybe get something for my supper.

Some days, I almost felt like but setting down ‘til the good lord came for me. But by morning hungry or not I got up and walked on. I just didn’t know how to quit I reckon. Now Vicksburg was a considerable old town even before the war started. Having been settled back around 1811. The town I’d left and the one I’d came back to was a far different place.

None to mind though as I wasn’t planning to stay on there no how. A cousin of mine and as far as I knew the only living blood kin had him a place in the woods over by the river. That was if the yanks hadn’t found him and burned him out. That last mile of walking had me sweating. Not so much from the heat, but the fear that they’d found him. Burned him out or maybe even killed him. I had very little left in the world, but what it was I’d cached at his place before joining the fighting. My two mules and my wagon and what few belongings I had was left with him. Soon enough, I saw that luck had been with us both. He was there and saw me coming up the road to his cabin and stood up.

2

After shaking hands and a pull from his jug, I asked about Yankee soldiers.

He said he’d never so much as seen any blue belly’s close enough to get a shot at anyway. Odell took a little explaining. He was really a cousin to my ma, but a little older than her even. I’d growed up calling him Uncle Odell, but about the time I left to go fight for some reason, it became just Odell. I guessed I was getting too old to call him Uncle anymore. Since me and him was the last of our git, in these parts anyway, I tried to talk him into going west with me.

No sir, he said. I been right here my whole sixty-one years and I ain’t a fixing to leave here ‘til the good Lord calls me home.

The mules were in fine shape. A little older, but I reckoned about then the whole country was. I’d got them mules when