Excerpt of By Any Other Name by Lori Austin

Julia Colton stood in the doorway of her home, caught between two worlds. On one side lay the dream--sunshine and warmth, the scent of earth and grass and water, life and freedom. On the other side lay reality--shadows and damp, the smell of herbs and medicine and sickness, death and drudgery.

Guilt flooded her, as it always did when she began to feel sorry for herself. Her life at least held the promise of life. Julia glanced back at the still shape upon the bed. Her mother’s life held only the certainty of death.

“Mama, I’m going down to the creek to get some fresh, cool water. It’ll help the fever.”

The shape on the bed shifted, moaned, then swallowed the sound of pain, of weakness. Elvira Colton’s gray, bone-thin face appeared from the nest of blankets, and her feverish eyes met those of her daughter.

“Go on ahead, darlin’, I’ll just sleep awhile. Why don’t you take a little time in the sun? I’ll rest better if I’m alone.”

Julia gave a quick nod and grabbed the bucket from its resting place next to the door. Then she turned away and plunged into the sunshine before her mother saw the tears spill from her eyes.

Mama would not sleep. The pain and the fever would not let her. At times she fell into an exhausted state that resembled death, and when she awoke she was always weaker than before. Whenever Julia urged her to rest, her mother would only say, “I’ll be restin’ for eternity soon enough,” and since Julia could not argue with that, she did not argue with Mama at all.

Mama had been bedridden since Julia was a little girl. The combination of too many births, too close together, had weakened her. Then a few years back while the boys and her husband had been off harassing the Kansas folk, she’d been caught in a burning cabin. Though Julia had awoken and dragged her mama outside before they both died, Mama’s lungs were burned from the smoke, and the doctor said it was only a matter of time until they gave out completely. Julia had never forgiven herself for sleeping too deep that night, nor forgiven the hell sent Jayhawkers for burning the cabin in the first place.

Her mother’s admonition to take a little time in the sun only made Julia’s guilt throb harder and hotter in her stomach. Mama knew she’d been aching to get outside, and in her typical, selfless way, had given Julia a reason to go. Though she should stay inside and do what she could for Mama, as she’d been doing since she was old enough to do for anyone beyond herself, Julia took the gift of freedom and ran with it to the creek.

The day was a sure-fire keeper. Too early in the year to bring the stifling heat common to a Missouri summer, instead a cool breeze that smelled of new grass and just sprung flowers rippled the shiny surface of Colton Creek. Julia put down the bucket and stepped closer to the water. Clear as glass, she watched fish shadows dance above the multi-colored bottom rocks.

“Ho, there!” The distant call of her father to the plow horses made her start and jerk her head in that direction. With her four brothers gone and joined the renegade Confederate militia, more commonly known as Bushwhackers, her father had more work than he could handle.

Not that he begrudged his sons the fight. The Coltons had been Jayhawker haters since the word was invented, and since the immigrant Irish, abolitionist Murphy’s had gone and bought the Kansas land on the other side of Colton Creek, Sam Colton’s hatred had become an obsession.

There’d been arguments and fistfights whenever he and the elder Murphy met up, not to mention malicious mischief on both their farms attributed to each other and sniper fire blamed upon the same. Not that her father had ever been an easy man, but he’d become downright uneasy in the four years since the Murphy’s arrived. He would not be happy if he found Julia malingering at the creek when she should be tending her mama.

Julia reached for the bucket, then hesitated. Mama had asked her to stay awhile, and her father was too busy to leave the field before sundown. He’d only come looking for her if she didn’t bring him his dinner when the sun stood straight up noon.

She glanced at the sky. She had at least an hour before then.

With a rare show of rebellion, Julia turned her back on the bucket, pulled off her shoes and stockings, hoisted her skirts and stepped into the water.

“Eeek.” A short, sharp squeal of surprise escaped her lips when the water, still cold from the winter melt off, captured her feet. But after the initial shock she began to enjoy the tingle of the cold and the lap of the waves against her calves. Her toes scrunched into the smooth stones, and the fish flitted just ahead of her as if leading her onward to a secret, special place.

Mama said Julia was a dreamer. The life she led made her so. Mama, once a teacher in the East, had brought trunks of books along when she’d married father and come to Missouri. Julia blessed those books everyday. Without them she would never have learned anything about the world outside their cabin, and though that world was fiction, what she read gave her something to think about other than sickness and death.

She and her mama read those books over and over until they knew every line, every word, every character, and sometimes they talked about those imaginary folk as if they were their best friends.

Julia became so enthralled with the game she played with the fish, she didn’t realize she was no longer alone until she laughed at the antics of a particularly brave fish and someone laughed with her.

Her head jerked up. A gasp stuck in her throat. Her heart began to thud with uncertainty, then fear. A man sat on the opposite bank of the creek--the Kansas side-- and from the look of his clothes and his guns and his horse, he was a Jayhawker-- renegade Union militia.

Trouble.