oked tree overhanging the brook. He settled
beside them on the well-seasoned timbers of the old tree house to
rummage through his saddlebags.

The platform had been there a long time--before Chickamauga and the Ohio
Raid, before the first roll of drums in '61. Drew pulled a creased shirt
out of the bags and sat with it draped over one knee, remembering....

Sheldon Barrett and he--they had built it together one hot week in
summer--had named it Boone's Fort. And it was the only thing at Red
Springs Drew had really ever owned. His dark eyes were fixed now on
something more than the branches about him, and his mouth tightened
until his face was not quite sullen, only shuttered.

Five years ago--only five years? Yes, five years next month! But the
past two years of his own personal freedom--and war--those seemed to
equal ten. Now there was no one left to remember the fort's existence,
which made it perfect for his present purpose.

The warmth of the sun, beating down through yet young leaves, made Drew
brush his battered slouch hat to the flooring and luxuriate in the heat.
Sometimes he didn't think he'd ever get the bite of last winter's cold
out of his bones. The light pointed up every angle of jaw and cheekbone,
making it clear that experience--hard experience--and not years had
melted away boyish roundness of chin line, narrowed the watchful eyes
ever alert to his surroundings. A cavalry scout was wary, or he ceased
to be a scout, or maybe even alive.

Shirt in hand, Drew dropped lightly to the ground and with the same
dispatch as he had cared for his horse, made his own toilet, scrubbing
his too-thin body with a sigh of content as heartfelt as that the roan
had earlier voiced.

The fresh shirt was a dark brown-gray, but the patched breeches were
Yankee blue, and the boots he pulled on when he had bathed were also
the enemy's gift, good stout leather he'd been lucky enough to find in a
supply wagon they had captured a month ago. Butternut shirt, Union pants
and boots--the unofficial standard uniform of most any trooper of the
Army of the Tennessee in this month of May, 1864. And he had garments
which were practically intact. What was one patch on the seat nowadays?

For the first time Drew grinned at his reflection in the small mirror he
had been using, when he scraped a half week's accumulation of soft beard
from his face. Sure, he was all spruced up now, ready to make a polite
courtesy call at the big house. Th