“But Jack, you're just a Captain and I'm the General. I order you not to go. He tried to smile, . . . .These orders, he whispered, come from the Commander in Chief.”

“I said, Well, looks like he's pretty ornery. I wonder where he gets it?"Jack just shrugged and kissed my cheek, and then whispered in my ear, He gets it from his mother.”

“One thing I know, whispered Savannah, is that if he was quiet, and you were quiet, and neither of you minded it, then you are in love.”

“And he likes to torment me, and laughs when I get upset when he does. No, of course not. I do not love Jack Elliot. He is low and coarse and a soldier, and not the kind of man I want to spend my life with.”

“We attended church Sunday as a family, and it was an even balance as to who was harder to keep still, the four Elliot children or Captain Elliot himself. Jack kept up a stream of secretive winks at me in a most suggestive fashion, which made me blush despite the fact that I desperately tried to maintain my composure. Two year old Suzanne squirmed in my lap but was still for him, so he bounced her quietly on his knee. The boys, true to their deeply spiritual natures, snored softly through the entire sermon, and April sat still but looked out the windows, bored and restlessly shifting in her seat.”

“We have talked about Suzy and about her last days, but it's as if our lives stopped then and there. If I say anything to him about feeling lonesome, he goes outside and does some little chore. I can't tell if he is secretly blaming me, or himself, or just too full of pain to talk. That was the one thing we could always do together. I wish for the old days. I wish for the struggling days and the days of Geronimo, and the days of birthing Charlie with no one but Jack to help me. How happy and in love we were then. I want to be in love again, but all I feel is darkness and shadows. Everything is changed and different”

“He plunges into the middle of them and it is a frightening thing. He must be fierce and wicked and brave all at the same time. I'm glad he's on our side.”