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Lou's deception had worked. Her look, manner, and toughness had not betrayed her gender. She didn't have to act. She just had to be herself and not be noticeable or talkative. Her moon time had not come yet and she was a little anxious about it but in the last two years that monthly event had not been much of a bother. Besides, Mama Bear knew her medicine. The pouch of herbs her grandmother had prepared was hung around her flat stomach, centered above her butt under her drawers.
Alex came bouncing up to the farriers, "Lou, Lou, you heard? We're moving. There have been more stars whirling around General Joe's tent then stars on a clear winter night. Generals by the names of Phillip Roddey, I think he's with us, and a Stephen D. Lee have been in long loud sessions with the general and the major. That Lee is uppity as hell. Word is that he's old money, cotton brokers or doctors, from South Carolina. Granddaddy John L. would call him 'trash aristocracy'. This guy is chief of an independent cavalry bunch over in west Mississippi, I guess. They've been ordered over here to serve with us for whatever's next. Boys say this General Lee never saw a fight he could not go head-on into. Lots of work for the sawbones and gravediggers in his command. Lee tried to bully General Joe but General Joe stood right up to him, and I mean up to him, and wouldn't bulge. Lordy, Lou, that little gamer is something. Reminds me of my cat, Tiger. Remember Tiger? Little old runt of the litter, but by the time he was two-years-old, he had put every dog and other cat in the valley on notice. Lordy, no truck from nobody, either one of them. We're going to be OK with him."
"Alex, looks like he's been all over the place in the time we've been here. I've seen him and his big black hat a half dozen times, I bet, checking out the men, corral and the farrier work," Lou confirmed.
"I heard the major told Lt. Muskgrove, 'Joe Wheeler is the gamest little banty I've ever seen in uniform,' Alex reported. "And then Major Stevenson said, 'The general ain't afraid of nothing or nobody.' Just like my little 'Tiger'!"
Alex paused, looked at his sister's tired, dirty and gangly face, "Ain't it something, Lou, we're going to see the elephant - that's what the old hands call going to battle for the first time." Alex stopped looking mystified. "Mighty strange that saying. Wonder where it came from?" The query got no response.