Enemy Women

Enemy Women Plot Summary

Introduction

# Shadows of Loyalty: A Journey Through War's Divided Heart November 1864. The Missouri Ozarks bled under a war that had devoured sons and fathers, leaving the countryside a graveyard of broken dreams. Eighteen-year-old Adair Colley pressed her face against the frosted window, watching blue-coated raiders drag her father into the darkness while flames consumed their barn. The dun horse Whiskey screamed as they led him away, his golden coat catching the firelight one last time before vanishing into the night. What followed would test every fiber of her being. Torn from everything she had ever known, Adair would find herself caged in the stone corridors of a Union prison, branded as a Confederate spy for the crime of loving her family. Yet in those darkest hours, she would discover something unexpected blooming in the shadows—a forbidden love with her Union captor that would burn brighter than the flames consuming her homeland, giving her the strength to survive and the courage to hope for a future beyond the ashes of war.

Chapter 1: The Raid: Loss of Home and Father

The riders appeared like vultures against the November sky, their Federal blue faded to the color of old bruises. Captain Tom Poth led his Union Militia up the frozen road with the casual brutality of men who had grown tired of war's niceties. Judge Marquis Colley emerged from his house with hands raised, spectacles glinting in the pale light, a mild man who had tried to keep his family neutral in a conflict that no longer recognized such luxuries. "What unit did you join?" Poth demanded, his breath steaming in the cold air. "I never joined any military unit," the judge replied, his voice steady despite the rifles pointed at his chest. "You have no business with me." But neutrality was a currency the war no longer accepted. The soldiers set about their work with methodical cruelty, loading wagons with corn and bacon, shooting dogs and scattering chickens. Their laughter echoed across the frozen yard like the cries of carrion birds feasting on the dead. Adair fought desperately for Whiskey, her hands locked around the dun horse's halter as a soldier tried to drag him away. The horse reared and struck, his black mane flying, his changeable coat shifting from gold to gray in the winter light. But a rifle butt to her shoulders sent her sprawling, and she could only watch as they tied her beloved gelding to their wagon alongside her father's tall bay. The beating came without warning. Captain Poth raised the wagon spoke and brought it down across Judge Colley's face with sickening force. Blood sprayed across the frozen ground as bone shattered. Again and again the spoke fell, until the old man hung limp in his captors' arms, his face a streaming mask of red. They threw him into their wagon like a sack of grain and rolled away into the gathering storm, leaving behind only smoke and the taste of ash in the November air. Standing in the ruins of her world, Adair felt something fundamental break inside her chest. The girl who had watched the sunrise from her bedroom window was gone, replaced by someone harder, someone who understood that survival required a different kind of strength. The war had finally reached their remote valley, and it had taken everything.

Chapter 2: Prison Walls and Interrogation Rooms

The women's prison in St. Louis was a monument to human misery, its stone walls echoing with the cries of the desperate and forgotten. Adair found herself thrust into the General Ward, a fetid chamber where thirty women lived like animals in their own filth. The matron, Mrs. Buckley, ruled with iron fists and a talent for cruelty that would have impressed the devil himself. "You are accused of giving information to Rebel spies," the provost marshal informed her, his tin-colored eyes reflecting no warmth. Behind him stood the Upshaw family, refugees who had traded her freedom for their own safety, their faces wearing the satisfied expressions of people who had found someone else to feed to the machine. The General Ward was ruled by Cloris, a stout woman with fists hardened by years in the silver mines. She demanded tribute from every newcomer, and when Adair refused to open her carpetbag, Cloris struck with the speed of a striking snake. But Adair had not survived eighteen years in the Missouri wilderness to be cowed by a prison bully. She seized a burning stick from the fire and swung it like a club, flames exploding in showers of sparks as it connected with Cloris's arm. "Come on, then," Adair snarled, holding the makeshift weapon like a sword. "If you want anything I got, come and take it." The other women stepped back, recognizing something dangerous in this black-eyed girl from the Ozarks. Even Cloris, nursing her burned arm, seemed to reconsider her approach. In this place where humanity had been stripped away layer by layer, Adair had drawn a line that would not be crossed. But the real test of her resolve was yet to come, walking toward her down the prison corridor in the form of a tall Union major with hazel eyes and the bearing of a man who carried secrets like stones in his pockets. Major William Neumann entered her world like a crack of light in the darkness, and nothing would ever be the same.

Chapter 3: Confessions and Unexpected Affection

Major William Neumann entered the interrogation room like a man walking to his own execution. At thirty-one, he had seen enough of war to know that his current assignment—extracting confessions from imprisoned women—was the kind of duty that stained a man's soul. But when Adair Colley was brought before him, something shifted in the careful architecture of his professional detachment. She sat on the yellow damask sofa with the poise of a queen in exile, her black hair braided like a crown, her dark eyes taking his measure with unsettling directness. When he offered her his mirror and brush, she accepted with the grace of someone receiving tribute rather than charity. As she combed out her long hair by the warmth of the parlor stove, humming a Scotch air, Neumann found himself forgetting the papers on his desk. "What are you going to do with your life after you get out of here?" he asked, his voice rougher than intended. "I have dreamed of raising horses," she replied, and in those words he heard echoes of his own longing for something beyond the war's reach. "But I guess I'm supposed to find somebody and get married." The confession she wrote was not what he expected. Instead of military intelligence, she gave him fairy tales and memories, transforming her harsh world into something luminous and strange. She wrote of her mother fading away like ruined silk, of her horse Whiskey with his coat that shifted colors like taffeta in the light. She wrote of Snow White and the huntsman, of mirrors and transformations, weaving a spell that left Neumann staring at the pages long into the night. "This isn't going to get anybody anywhere," he told her when she was brought back to his office. "Knights of the Golden Whiskey Jug? How did you invent this?" But even as he spoke, he was falling under the influence of her strange magic. In the warm room with its maps of unknown territories, they talked of the western lands beyond the war's reach, of valleys where a person could build a life from nothing but hope and determination. And when he finally kissed her in the prison courtyard, the white sheet billowing between them like a flag of surrender, Neumann knew he had crossed a line from which there would be no retreat.

Chapter 4: Escape from St. Louis

The fever came like a tide, washing over Adair in waves of heat and delirium. In the prison sickroom, she drifted between waking and dreams, her body fighting the consumption that had taken root in her lungs. Major Neumann sat beside her bed, his face tight with worry as he felt the fire burning in her skin, knowing that his time with her was running out like sand through an hourglass. "I have to get home," she whispered, her voice barely audible above the sounds of the city beyond the barred windows. "There is nothing at home, Adair," he replied, taking her burning hand in his. "Are you going to live in a cave?" But he knew she would never stay in St. Louis, never be content to wait out the war in some officer's parlor while her family remained scattered to the winds. So he gave her what he could: fifty dollars in gold, a forged pass, and instructions for escape that could cost him his commission if discovered. His own orders had come through—he was being transferred to Mobile, to the siege that was consuming the Gulf Coast like a slow fire. "You're going to have to get aboard a southbound boat," he said, pressing the coins into her palm. "You'll be stopped everywhere, searched before you get on and afterward. Hide these things in different places." The night of her escape, Adair stood on a barrel in the prison courtyard, wearing Mrs. Buckley's stolen dress like silk armor. The matron's petticoats billowed around her in the wind, and for a moment she looked like an avenging angel preparing to take flight. The guard with one arm grinned up at her from the street, his hand extended for the gold coin that would buy his temporary blindness. "There is something down the street that needs your attention," she said, her voice shaking with fever and fear. "Well, I had better go see about it," he replied, pocketing the coin. "Good luck, girl." And then she was walking down the streets of St. Louis, free but alone, her heart hammering against her ribs as she waited for the shouts and gunshots that never came. Behind her, the prison walls receded into the smoky darkness, and ahead lay the uncertain promise of home.

Chapter 5: A Perilous Journey South

The road south from St. Louis was a river of refugees, all flowing away from the war's epicenter like survivors fleeing a great fire. Adair walked among them in her stolen finery, the brass-colored silk dress dragging in the mud, the lilac hat with its plaster cherries marking her as surely as a target painted on her back. Every step was a gamble, every encounter a potential betrayal. The fever never left her completely, ebbing and flowing like a tide that would not be turned. In Valles Mines, she consulted a steam doctor, a gray-haired man who spoke of consumption as if it were a living enemy that could be negotiated with rather than conquered. He gave her powders and dietary advice, instructions for taking the sun and maintaining a calm mind, but Adair knew that her only real medicine lay at the end of the road. At Rouenne, exhaustion finally claimed her. She collapsed in the parlor of a grand old house, her strength finally spent, and dreamed of fire tongs walking up stairs to claim her soul. When she woke, she found herself in the care of Lila Spencer and her daughter Rosalie, two women whose kindness came with a price she had yet to understand. The sight of him grazing in the field behind the Spencer house hit Adair like a physical blow. Whiskey, her beloved dun gelding, thin and scarred but unmistakably alive, his black mane catching the March sunlight like spun silk. The tiger stripes on his legs were faded now, his golden coat dulled by poor care and hard use, but when he saw her approaching the fence, he lifted his head with a jerk of recognition that sent her heart soaring. "My God," she whispered, tears streaming down her face as she ran her hands over his familiar contours. "What have they done to you?" The Spencers claimed the horses were legally acquired, bought from Federal forces and fattened for resale. But Adair knew stolen goods when she saw them, knew the careful way Lila watched her face for signs of recognition. These women were part of the vast network of thieves and profiteers who fed on the war's chaos, buying and selling the plunder that flowed north from the ravaged countryside. That night, as she lay in the borrowed bed listening to the women's whispered conversations, Adair began to plan. They spoke of Hildebrand's gang, of stolen horses and murdered men, of survival by whatever means they could manage. In the morning, she would take back what was hers and leave this place of false kindness behind.

Chapter 6: Whiskey Found: Reunion with a Loyal Friend

The theft was almost too easy. While Lila and Rosalie Spencer walked to town to hire help for their garden, Adair gathered her few possessions and prepared to reclaim what was hers. She had learned much in her months of captivity and flight, lessons in deception and survival that would have horrified the innocent girl who had once lived peacefully in the Ozark hills. Whiskey came to her call like a prayer answered, his ears pricked forward with an intelligence that spoke of their old partnership. She had no saddle, no bridle, only a makeshift halter fashioned from rope, but the horse understood what was asked of him. As she led him from the pasture, the other stolen animals watched with dull eyes, too broken to attempt escape themselves. The confrontation came sooner than expected. Rosalie Spencer appeared in the barn doorway, her face twisted with rage at the sight of Adair leading Whiskey toward the gate. She raised a coach whip, the same one she had used to beat the horse into submission, but Adair was no longer the frightened girl who had entered this place. "That's my horse," Adair said quietly, her hand steady on Whiskey's halter. "He was stolen from my family's farm, and I'm taking him home." "You're nothing but a thief and a liar," Rosalie spat, advancing with the whip raised. "I'll see you hanged for this." But when she brought the whip down, Whiskey reared and struck, his hooves flashing in the morning light. Rosalie stumbled backward, her face pale with sudden fear, and in that moment Adair swung up onto the horse's back. They burst from the barn like a thunderbolt, Whiskey's hooves drumming against the packed earth as they raced toward the road. Behind them, shouts erupted from the Spencer house. A rifle cracked, and splinters flew from the gate post as they crashed through it. But they were free now, horse and rider united again after months of separation, racing south through the familiar landscape of home. The war had taken everything else from her, but it would not have Whiskey. Not while she still drew breath. The road stretched before them, dangerous with patrols and bushwhackers, but Adair felt her strength returning with every mile. She had her companion now, and together they could face whatever lay ahead.

Chapter 7: Battles on Different Fronts

While Adair fled through the Missouri wilderness, Major William Neumann faced his own trials in the swamps of Alabama. The siege of Spanish Fort had become a grinding nightmare of artillery and blood, where men died for yards of sandy ground and the screams of the wounded echoed through the pine forests day and night. The Confederate charge came at dawn, ragged men in butternut emerging from the smoke like vengeful spirits. Neumann's horse was shot from under him, and he found himself on foot, facing a barefoot soldier wearing a woman's dress bodice as a shirt, his wide-brimmed hat like a dinner plate in the morning light. The man's revolver was already rising when Neumann fired, the ball taking him in the shoulder and spinning him backward into the sand. The baggage train was jammed in the narrow road, wagons overturned and mules screaming in their traces as Confederate mortars rained down from above. Neumann drew his sword and began cutting the animals free, his left hand already torn by shrapnel, blood streaming down his uniform as he worked. When the mortar struck the commissary wagon, the explosion painted him with flour and gore, and he discovered with detached interest that two of his fingers were simply gone. The surgeon's tent was a charnel house where men learned to live with half their bodies missing. As the doctor threaded his needle to close the stumps where Neumann's fingers had been, the major bit down on a leather strap and tried not to think about the future. How would he hold reins with a crippled hand? How would he embrace Adair when the war finally ended and he could return to claim her? But when the doctor spoke of amputation, of gangrene spreading up his arm like a green tide, Neumann made his choice. He walked out of that tent with his discharge papers in his good hand and his infected arm throbbing like a second heartbeat. The war could have his fingers, his health, even his commission, but it would not have his future. Somewhere in the Missouri hills, a black-eyed girl was waiting for him, and he would find her if it killed him. The siege could continue without him. His real battle lay elsewhere, on roads that led north toward home and hope and the promise of love that had sustained him through the darkest hours of the war.

Chapter 8: Wounds of War and Journeys Home

The countryside they traveled through bore the scars of four years of conflict. Burned houses stood like broken teeth against the sky, their chimneys pointing accusingly at heaven. Fields lay fallow, overgrown with weeds and haunted by the ghosts of better times. But spring was coming to the Missouri hills, and with it the promise of renewal, of life persisting despite all efforts to destroy it. Whiskey carried her faithfully despite his own wounds—a bullet had torn through his hindquarters during their escape, leaving him limping but determined. They traveled mostly at night, following old Indian trails and forgotten roads, two refugees in a land that no longer recognized mercy or compassion. The consumption still burned in Adair's lungs, the fever still came and went like an unwelcome visitor, but she had her companion now, and together they could face whatever lay ahead. When they finally reached the ruins of her family's farm, Adair felt the weight of all her losses pressing down upon her like a physical thing. Strangers lived in her childhood home now, having bought the property for back taxes. The barn where she had played as a child was a blackened skeleton, and her mother's garden was choked with weeds. Everything she had fought to return to was gone, as surely as if it had never existed. But as she sat on the hillside above the farm, watching the sun set over the valley of her birth, she heard hoofbeats on the road below. A lone rider approached, his blue uniform torn and faded, his left hand wrapped in dirty bandages. When he looked up and saw her silhouetted against the dying light, Major William Neumann knew that every mile of suffering had been worth it. Their reunion was wordless at first, two damaged souls recognizing each other across the gulf of all they had endured. His face bore the scars of Confederate bullets, and his left hand was a twisted ruin of missing fingers. She was thin as a rail from months of hardship, her eyes holding depths of sorrow that made her seem older than her years. But when they embraced, the years of separation collapsed into nothing, and they were simply two people who had found each other again in a world gone mad. The war was ending in a series of surrenders and bitter defeats, but for them, the real journey was just beginning. They had survived the worst that conflict could throw at them, had found love in the darkest places, and had emerged scarred but unbroken. The future stretched before them uncertain and fraught with challenges, but they had each other, and that was enough.

Summary

In the end, Adair Colley's journey through the divided heart of Civil War America became something larger than a simple tale of survival. It was a testament to the power of love to transcend the artificial boundaries of politics and nationality, to the resilience of the human spirit in the face of unthinkable cruelty. Her escape from the St. Louis prison and her reunion with Whiskey represented more than just personal victories—they were acts of defiance against a world that would reduce individuals to mere pawns in its grand designs. The romance between Adair and Major Neumann unfolded against a backdrop of unprecedented brutality, their stolen moments of tenderness made more precious by the knowledge that they might be the last. Their love story became a kind of resistance, a refusal to let the war's machinery of hate and division claim their capacity for human connection. As they stood together in the ruins of the old world, they represented something new and precious: the possibility of redemption, of healing, of love transcending the bitter mathematics of victory and defeat. The war had taken everything from them, but it had also given them each other, and in that exchange lay the seeds of a future worth fighting for.

About Author

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Paulette Jiles

Jiles investigates the human experience through her evocative use of language and narrative depth, capturing the intricacies of life with poetic precision. Her writing delves into themes of identity and resilience, reflecting a profound understanding of personal and collective histories. While primarily recognized as a novelist, Jiles's background as a poet enriches her prose with lyrical qualities that enhance her storytelling. This fusion of poetry and narrative creates a unique reading experience that resonates on both emotional and intellectual levels, providing readers with insights into the human condition.\n\nHer method involves weaving together the subtle and the significant, portraying characters who navigate complex emotional landscapes. By doing so, Jiles offers a nuanced exploration of themes such as memory, belonging, and transformation. The reader, therefore, benefits from engaging with stories that not only entertain but also provoke thoughtful reflection on universal human challenges. Her ability to connect deeply with her audience makes her work relevant to those interested in literature that challenges and enlightens.\n\nIn this way, Jiles's contributions as a poet, memoirist, and novelist have left a lasting impact on readers and the literary field. Her early book reflects her skill in blending these roles, making her bio a testament to her versatility and depth as a writer. As an author who deftly intertwines narrative and verse, Jiles continues to inspire a diverse audience with her insightful and captivating prose.

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