Short, little chapter ;)
Susannah POV
When I came into the tent, I found Eliza crying all alone. "Eliza! My dear friend, what is wrong?" I questioned. She sobbed and I came to her, and knelt down beside her, letting the shoulder of my dress soak up her tears. "M-my br-brother… he has been killed by I-Indians in Minnesota!"* I felt a wave of sadness come over me as she thrust the letter she had been clutching onto towards me. I did not want to read it, for the fear that any day my brother could die and I would probably never know unless a similar letter found me. I consoled her, and she calmed down quite a bit. She drank some coffee and ate a few bites off of a biscuit before I urged her to get some sleep. The other women came in, ignoring us as usual. I told them that Eliza's brother had died, and what had happened. Mary and Jeanette seemed sorry and Lisa even gasped.
I sat while they gossiped and sewed and even chimed in a few times when their topics interested me. I also wanted to become closer with them since I was to stay with them rather than find my way home. We talked of poetry, which led us to love, a topic I was not so comfortable with. My becoming silent after we had chatted did not go unnoticed. "Susannah, do you have nothing to say on this topic?" asked Liza. Jeanette scoffed, "She nearing twenty years old and is neither courting anyone, nor married. What would she have to say?" I did not like Jeanette very much, but I spoke up, "I have been in love before and was asked to marry, but it was not right." This satisfied them and they went back to their sewing. I thought about how I might be falling in love right now with Major Davis, but how we can't be together, either. I couldn't be with a Confederate and I doubt he would want to be with someone loyal to the Union.
I walked over to the small bookshelf kept in the corner of our tent and selected a book of poems. I read through the ones about nature, and then I proceeded to the poems centered on love. I quickly realized that those ones did not make me feel better, so I skipped past them. There was one poem that brought me to tears about a noble group of warriors that sacrificed themselves for their country and their cause and I prayed that a similar poem would never be written about any men fighting in this war.
*The Sioux uprisings in Minnesota did happen around this time, and many whites and Indians were killed. 303 Native American men were sentenced to death because of their "crimes" (really just an act of war) but President Lincoln pardoned 265 of them (thank goodness). 38 were hanged and it was the largest mass execution the country had seen and is still the 1st or 2nd largest today.