Miss Prentice.

Wars end only when all parties are exhausted. There are no victors in war. ‘War is Hell,’ as William Tecumseh Sherman had said. It is ‘hell’, mostly because it should be, and had to be. And he made sure that it ‘was’, hell, with his plundering, pillaging, and burning. It would not do for it to become a pleasant distraction. Nonetheless, after a couple of generations, when men forgot what war was like, then history would repeat itself. It always did.

The war might have ended, but Forrester began killing again.

He felt that he had no choice.

The main war had ended with Lee’s surrender, but the difficulties did not end. For some, they were just beginning. There was still violence, and too many undisciplined, resentful, and uncontrolled men, scavenging and posing other dangers as they tried to survive and make their way home.

In many ways it was a more dangerous time, as the nation; uncomfortably united once more, through 'force of arms', heaved a collective sigh of relief and went about nursing its wounds and trying to pick up the pieces; but it would take generations to recover from that, and to get over the bitter hatred, and the loss of so many young men.

The dangers had not lessened. They had just changed. One could see groups of war-weary men making their way home. Fortunately, the river provided some food, as well as a highway, and there were crops beginning to grow that they could scavenge.

They kept away from others, as far as they could. Everyone was nervous. No one trusted anyone else at that time, and a man could get shot all too easily if he interfered in what should not concern him, or strayed where he should not have been.

One Union soldier, Joseph Forrester, an officer, or so his uniform—wrapped away behind him and out of sight—once proclaimed, was returning home. He was heading south, back to Mississippi. He did not travel without care, and he did not openly flaunt his earlier affiliation where it might be difficult to know who was friend, or who was enemy. Every man was an enemy until you knew otherwise, and even then, one should be cautious. The killing would not end for some time, and he did not want to be one of those last casualties, out of carelessness.

Others were hunting him, now, even as they fled, after what he had done to them over the last few days, just as he was hunting them. Following them. Choosing his moment.

The war had trained him to do what he was now doing, and to do it well, despite the war having ended. It was a lopsided venture, with one man hunting so many, and though the odds were strongly against him, he had the advantage of determination and the conviction that what he was doing was not only right, but necessary.

He was slowly reducing their numbers as the opportunity was presented. He worked from the dark and from ambush when they least expected it, though now, they did expect it.

They did not know who he was, nor why he persisted so doggedly in what he did, risking being killed, though they did know, deep in their souls.

They had also hidden their identities too, getting rid of their chevrons from their coats and their characteristic caps. Feelings still ran high on both sides.

He had followed them for longer than they knew and had watched them. They were all heading in the same general direction.

Home. Wherever, and whatever that was.

In the beginning, he had seen nothing to concern him for some time. He kept back from them; they were Confederates, striving to get back home.

They had started out as a group of more than twenty men, louder, and more careless than they should have been, and angry at the way they had been cheated of victory by Lee’s surrender. They had been ready to continue fighting. The war might be over, but the killing still went on, only, less openly. There were those who would not give up so easily, however, and had no intention of surrendering. Like the group that Forrester was following.

They had continued their indiscriminate killing of those who came into their path, endeavoring to cover their trail.

Forrester first learned of it when he heard a shot some distance ahead of him and came across signs in the road to indicate that a horse had become scared. In the bushes to the side was the body of an older man. He had been shot through the heart and robbed of everything of value.

That was when he became more cautious and turned from observer to hunter. They had killed others, too, but he had not known that this group of wandering marauders had been responsible, at the time. He did now.

They lost two of their group before they were even aware that they had gone. There was no shot fired and no loose horses to give warning, but two men, those bringing up the rear, would never rejoin them. It was assumed that they had fallen behind or had gone off in a different direction.

That night, Forrester passed by them silently and set himself up on a small ridge, well back from the road where it turned away from him, and rested, waiting for them. He might get off only two shots before they scattered, learning where he might be, but he would make those two shots count, as he had learned to do, and then wait for them again where they would least expect him.

About mid-morning they appeared, strung out. He counted. There were twenty of them. One or two had left that group earlier. He let them all pass and head away from him, mostly in a line. He raised his Henry rifle and waited for at least two of them to be in line behind each other and then fired. He did not wait to see what effect his shot might have, but reloaded and fired again at a third, and then at a fourth.

They did not know where the shots were coming from as they scattered off to the side, leaving five men in the road—three of them badly wounded, if not dead—and a couple of pack mules, standing, before they wandered off and started to graze. Having men shot around them was something they were getting used to.

The men could not be sure where the shots had come from in their haste to escape, and the sounds had not told them anything until a third and fourth man had dropped.

In the confusion, Forrester retreated back down the ridge to his horses, crossed the stream, and then rode to get ahead of them before they had chance to regroup. They now certainly knew about him and would be more cautious, but they would assume he was behind them, when they thought about it.

They would not sleep well that night, knowing that they were being hunted.

He knew that if he stayed out of their way for a day or two, they might become careless again. He would not miss any opportunity, however. Any straggler would never catch up with them again, though his horse might, and there would be no sound of a gunshot to warn them. A man might die just as easily from an arrow or two at short range, as a bullet.

He heard a shot behind him. They’d decided that one of their wounded could not keep up with them and would slow them down, or was unlikely to survive his wound.

After two days of that, they began to relax once more and became one group again, thankful to have left danger far behind them. That was when they encountered a different kind of trouble and made yet another fatal blunder.