Based on a true memory from the Civil War, a man gives his wife a horse and the choice of one of their children when he returns from the war to find her married to another man

Staring up at the night sky, Jacob thought of his wife Mary and their four children. His good, decent family abandoned so he could fight this senseless war. One whose cause he wasn't even sure of. Why would a man who did not own slaves take up arms to defend other's rights to do so? But he knew it wasn't that simple. If it were, the war would have ended before it began. Fayetteville had been burned by the retreating Confederates when the Union attacked, and he might not have a home to return to.
Jacob stirred and tried not to imagine what his family was enduring, if indeed they still lived. He shuddered. With no word from Mary in months, he feared she and the children weren't safe. There were worse things than death for a pretty woman and her babes.
He wanted to pray, but what to request for his family. Life or death?

This story was recently published in Echoes of the Ozarks, Vol II published by AWOC.com publishing and edited by Louella Turner, Donna Volkenannt and Delois McGrew.