High Noon
Eventide

Chapter 1
February 20
1862

“Among the interesting thing in camp are the boys.”
-Rutherford B. Hayes

It was the coldest damned winter he’d ever had the displeasure of living through.

There was something in the air, here. He could smell it. It smelled like dirty ice and wet pine and that dead, motionless scent that hovered over the ground just before a heavy snow. Jasper wrinkled his nose at it. Every breath was like inhaling a cap full of frozen water deep into his lungs; it singed his mouth and throat and burned all the way down, made his chest ache if he held it in too long, let it pool there, and even when he didn’t hold it in at all. Moving brushed the still air across his face and caught it fire; sitting still let it smolder there just as painfully. He sighed, and his breath streamed out like an angry steam engine. He wished he could whistle.

“Lieutenant, sir?”

He didn’t look up. He’d heard the door to his cabin creak open, the crunch of boots on the old, packed snow outside; the voice hadn’t startled him. He tucked his arms tighter against his chest and continued to watch his breath collect on the smudged windowpane, pretending instead to be staring through it.

“Yes?”

There was a soft shuffle as the private—Rogers, by the sound of his voice—stepped into the freezing cabin. He huffed. “My, sir, you could just about skate around on the air in here, it’s so cold. Why don’t you come join us out by the fire? Cole sent me to see what you was up to.”

“Tell Cole to come himself, if he’s so curious,” Jasper quipped, but he was grinning, and no longer oblivious to the dark-haired man waving to him from outside. He would have built a fire of his own in the grate near the corner, but then all of his men would have tried piling inside with him, and he knew from experience that that was not a very pleasant or comfortable situation. Even now, the place still smelled strongly of feet.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to order that directly, sir,” Rogers snorted. “Lazy coon hasn’t paced himself more’n an arm from that fire since dawn.”