The next time I saw her was at the three-wheeled chuck wagon, where she was ladling out some stew. "Well, Sarah," I said with downcast eyes, "looks to me like we'd better go for a walk..."

"All right," she smiled, clinking the spoon down and wiping her hands on Private Tristani-Firouzi's apron. Although there were soldiers all around, and trouble clouding our tomorrows, everything seemed so quiet and peaceful just then. Pretty soon we were slowly ambling between the pickets and the camp fires.

"Do you like me, Jack?" she asked, her black eyes shining beneath her veil of locks.

"I'm smitten with you, Sarah," I grinned all foolish. "Powerfully smitten. My oh my you are pretty, you are! I never seen nothing like you. You're so sweet and symmetrical, an' yet so strong, proud, and chipper - you are a regular down-to-earth angel. You are so much more alive and kicking then those dainty dolls back in Baltimore - "

" - I ain't never been to no city, Jack. I don't know how to dress like no fancy lady, I can't hardly spell, I never seen no telegraph pole nor silky tablecloth. I don't know them new dances, those fancy ballroom dances, though I can jig, stomp, and polka as well as any woman from I don't care where, even if she hails from Paris!" She flipped her hair from her smoldering, hot-coal eyes. "I can skin a rabbit in the dark. I can stitch up any old cut, be it from thorn, knife, or bear. I know herbs an' flowers an' birdcalls an' Injun hand-signals. I know sixteen different kinds of poker. I can shoot straight as a whistle, and ride - swim, too - as good, long, an' hard as anyone. One time back at Camp Annex Agonies I raced against Sam Walker, and won, too, though no one saw it, and Sam won't admit it in a thousand years. I can make soap, moonshine, an' love like no camp-wife you ever had, I swear!"

She took my hand in hers and tugged it hard, till I met her lips, so sweet and sublime, like shimmering air after a thunderstorm.

"Sarah, you are something special. But I'm just a boy who was born in a barn," I apologized. "I can swim the dog-paddle," I offered, and added, after a moment's thought, "and I read a bunch of books!"

"Oh, Jack, I never met nobody who read a bunch of books."

"Really? Well, I even got six - no, seven - of `em at home."

"Seven, really? A library! Why Jack Borginnis, you are a scholar! What was the name of one of `em? What was the last one you read up?"

I was glad to tell her:"It was - Napoleon and His Generals."

"Oh, that sounds like a fine book!"

"Oh, Sarah, it is! I'd read it to you if I had it with me." Then all the air started blibbering out of my balloon.

"What's the matter, Jack?"

"What good is being a scholar if all my books are so far away. I wanted to take `em, but they wouldn't let me - they got a tyrannical weight-limit for Ballooners, you know. Now I wish I hadn't taken my Andy Jackson medals." (I'd just gone and lost them to a wager with Sergeant Weigart during the transit, anyhow.) " - Sarah, won't you get tired of me, since not counting my library there's nothing special about me - ?"

"Jack...I like you special," said Sarah in a hushed voice, right in my ear. I shivered.

We rolled around awhile. Sarah's hair tickled my face. We rolled this way and that. Sarah told me by and by that her mama was half Apache, and she never knew her own papa. She was always lonesome inside, born lonesome. She left her mama when she was ten, because she didn't get on with her mama's new man, who was a mean drunk. When she was fourteen, she became a camp-wife to her first soldier; now it was six years later and was a permanent auxiliary to the Seven Infantry, a steady Cotton Baler camp-wife, though the husbands came and went. This sort of camp-marriage was a different kind of creature than a city-marriage, but all in all when you balanced it out there was less fuss and more fun.

Pretty soon we were talking about getting hitched, just like that, camp style. The war was coming, we could feel it. We had to hurry up, I felt, and she said. She said, "I got to shed my old husband like a snake gots to shed her skin to grow." Then I thought about how I first saw her, catching that snake, and about how much I respected her, and I felt bad.

Then I confessed. "Sarah, I have to tell you, that if you are going to marry me it is only fair you know I am - I mean, I was - an awful bad sinner."

She shrugged like I said the dumbest fool thing. "I wasn't raised in no convent meself, Jack."

"No," I said shamefully. "I'm a bad sinner..." I sure wanted to tell her but I choked on my tongue, which was kind of twisting around like an Ericsson Screw. So I just spat out my tongue and said, "I can't tell you exactly, but... - There was an accident back in Camp Greenhorn. There's blood on my hands. I am sorry." I waited for her to change her tune.

"Don't be sorry to me," she said, and looked up at the Milky Way, and the earth plowing into it like a big balloon-ram of war. "That's between you and your creator." Then she retied the bows of her dress, and took my arm. "I been in scraps meself. One time I had to cut my ma's man's ear off - Another time, when I was about fourteen, I had to lay my husband's hide full of rock salt before he'd go away and stay away - " Her eyes got sorrowful and far away. "That's why I can't stay married long," she warned.

This alarmed me. "What do you mean, Sarah?"

"Cause I'm barren."

I didn't say anything. Then I challenged, "How do you know?"

"I'm barren as a corn-cob witch. I know I am. It ain't even a question no more. I'm a corn-cob witch. I can't make you a family, Jack, not never. So I can't and just won't stay married. No one can make me, neither. A camp marriage don't use a preacher, and without a preacher it ain't fixed in the stars. I'll be your camp-wife awhile and then later on I'll go away. I'd rather jest be everyone's pal then one feller's forever-wife. Since I'm barren I've made the Cotton Balers my family. You can call me a whore if you want to, won't be the first time, and I don't care. Whore's don't got fancy-lady airs. They own up to their sinnin' ways; sinnin' is natural so they's more honest. Whore's earn their keep, too. I earn my keep as a seamstress and cook so don't think I ain't proud and free like an eagle, and got claws, too, for those who try to cut my feathers - I got a shiny new Colt repeater, Sam Walker gave it to me - so you got your warnin', Jack. What do you say? Do we hitch our teams to one wagon for a spell?"

"Well, Sarah... I don't quite understand all your wild notions... I thought that once you fell in love, everything would turn out all right..."

"Jack Borginnis, I love you so much right now. Is it enough?" She stared at me awful serious and plain.

"I love you too, Sarah. I never loved any Chesapeake gal like you."

"That's `cause thar ain't no gal like me nowheres!" she laughed, twirling out her skirts joyfully. "All the boys tell me that!"

Her camp-husband was a fellow in the 2nd Artillery, a foreign-born named George Dalwig, but he had come down with a bad case of correctional bucking and gagging on account of having his hands in his pockets and slouching. If you've never been "bucked" it only means to get yourself tied up more or less like a dead buck deer, with your hands tied over your knees and a stick shoved in over your arms and under your legs, and sitting in that position for a day or two. Although he didn't slouch any more, and didn't touch his fingers anywhere near his raggedy pockets, he did limp when he marched now, and some said he lost all his patriotism. Anyways Sarah had no trouble divorcing him. She didn't even have to take her Colt out of her apron.

It was a simple ceremony in the Infirmary Tent involving a witness, a bible and a bottle. McKnight, the orderly, went outside without comment, because although he was a nice fellow, he was a reverend, and felt obligated to disapprove. Sarah put her hand on the bible and said, "George! I ain't your wife no more."

Then we passed the bottle; for I was the witness; then George was my witness in my getting hitched.

Afterwards there was a good old foot-stomping bucket-thumping fiddle-sawing hootenanny. Then I wrote it down in the regimental books, because no women were allowed in the camp unless they were wives. (Whores didn't count, being kind of invisible in plain sight, but they all left with the rest of the army.) So with Sarah and Mrs. Frederickson blushingly looking on, I wrote it in Lieutenant Frederickson's register, slowly, carefully, using my best handwriting:

It sure looked fine.

I was mighty proud to be her husband. But although we linked up shy to shy, out other sides kept yanking to break loose again - her wild side, and my criminal side.

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