which served him as a temporary pillow
and was aware of the smell of mule, strong, and the smell of a wood
fire, less strong, and last of all, of corn bread baked in the husk,
and, not so familiar, bacon frying--all the aromas of camp--with the
addition of food which could be, and had been on occasion, very
temporary. Squinting his smarting eyes against the sun's glare, Drew sat
up. With four days of hard riding by night and scouting by day only a
few hours behind him, he was still extremely weary.

Boyd squatted by his side, a folded sheet of paper in his hand.

"... letter ..."

Drew must have missed part during his awakening. Now he turned away from
the sun and tried to pay better attention.

"From who?" he asked rustily.

"Mother. She got the one you sent from Meridian, Drew! And when Crosely
went home for a horse she gave him these to bring back through the
lines. Drew, your grandfather's dead...."

Odd, he did not feel anything at all at that news. When he was little he
had been afraid of Alexander Mattock. Then he had faced out his fear and
all the other emotions bred in him during those years of being Hunt
Rennie's son in a house where Hunt Rennie was a symbol of black hatred;
he had faced up to his grandfather on the night he left Red Springs to
join the army in '62. And then Drew had discovered that he was free. He
had seen his grandfather as he would always remember him now, an old man
eaten up by his hatred, soured by acts Drew knew would never be
explained. And from that moment, grandfather and grandson were
strangers. Now, well, now he wished--for just a fleeting second or
two--that he did know what lay behind all that rage and waste and
blackness in the past. Alexander Mattock had been a respected man. As
hardly more than a boy he had followed Andy Jackson down to New Orleans
and helped break the last vestige of British power in the Gulf. He had
bred fine horses, loved the land, and his word was better than most
men's sworn oaths. He had had a liking for books, and had served his
country in Congress, and could even have been governor had he not
declined the nomination. He was a big man, in many ways a great and
honorable man. Drew could admit that, now that he had made a life for
himself beyond Alexander Mattock's shadow. A great man ... who had hated
his own grandson.

"This is yours...." Boyd pulled a second sheet from the folds of the
first. Drew smoothed it out to read:

My dear boy: