Chapter IV: Part 4

And yet, as I said at the beginning, we were all well used to seeing men killed.

BILLY GOODWIN

I never have known whether Billy Goodwin was a brave man or not.

He was certainly not afraid of anything; but the absence of fear from his composition was so complete that I was always in doubt whether he was entitled to credit for never yielding to that emotion.

His fearlessness seemed like the color of his sandy hair and his pale blue eyes--something over which he had no control.

At Cold Harbor, in 1864, when an artillery duel was going on, plus a tremendous sharp-shooter fire, Billy, with his back to the enemy, lazily lounged upon the breastworks. All the rest of us were crouching behind them.

I remember as an incident that he was eating a sandwich. It was composed of two halves of a hard-tack biscuit and a slice of raw pickled pork--his entire rations for the day. He was carefully holding his hand under his chin, in order to save all the crumbs. We weren’t wasting crumbs in those days.

A lieutenant, who had already been mentioned in orders for gallantry, cautiously pushed up his head to peer over the breastworks on which Goodwin was sitting. Billy placed his hand upon the prematurely bald head of the lieutenant, shoved him down, and said: “Keep below the dirt, or you’ll get a bullet through your billiard ball. Don’t you know this is no time to be exposing yourself?”

I have elsewhere celebrated Billy. In doing so I have suggested that, while he had a high sense of personal duty, he had no sense whatever of personal danger.

On that terrible 30th of August, 1864, when the mine was exploded at Petersburg, Goodwin was detailed to act as courier for General Lee and General Beauregard.

A Northern negro soldier had broken somehow out of the crater and through the lines. He rushed madly into headquarters. He struck frantically at General Lee with his bayonet. General Beauregard parried the blow with his sword. The negro turned and ran out of the door. Beauregard, in his excitement, called out to Goodwin, “Go and kill that man!”

Stepping quickly, as was his custom, Billy gave pursuit. A few moments later he returned. He presented himself in all his superb length of limb. He gave the military salute to General Beauregard. When that officer asked: “What is it, orderly?” Billy replied: “I beg respectfully to report that I have killed that man in accordance with orders.”

That was Billy. As a soldier he was a good kind. He obeyed all orders without questioning them. He did all his duties as he understood them. But, as I have said, I have never been able to determine whether he was really a brave man, or whether he was merely a man so constituted as to be insensible to personal danger.

But I will say this for Billy, which may help to decide this point,--

We were marching from Spottsylvania to Cold Harbor. We marched for fifty-six hours at the double quick. Now and then we had to fight at the quadruple quick. We had no food. We had no sleep. We had no rest.

Near the end of this tremendous strain Billy came to me under a tree, where I was snatching a five minutes’ repose. He said, with an air of great mystery: “I’ve got a coon for my mess. I bought it of a nigger back there. So I don’t want this piece of corn-bread. I wish you’d take it. I know you’re hungry.”

We did not readily accept food from each other in those days, lest we starve each other.

I struggled to resist this proffer, but Billy insisted on that coon as satisfying all his personal wants. At last, therefore, I accepted the three or four ounces of powder-grimed corn-bread which he pressed upon me.

I learned afterwards that Billy had lied.

There wasn’t any coon.

MANASSAS

I call it Manassas.

That is the name we Southerners gave it. We won that battle more completely and more conspicuously than any other battle was won by either side during the Civil War.

It is the right of the victor always to name the action. We named it Manassas. In the North it is called Bull Run.

We reached Manassas after two days and nights of ceaseless marching, at ten o’clock on the evening of the 20th of July, 1861.

We knew that trouble was at hand; otherwise Stuart would not have swung us at such a breakneck speed across the mountains from the valley to this point. We were six hundred strong.

Six hundred young Virginians, cradled in the saddle, and who had shot wild turkeys as soon as we were able to digest them. There was another battalion of cavalry present, under Colonel Radford, numbering perhaps three hundred men. But the story had gone forth in the Northern army that we were thirty thousand of the finest horsemen ever known since the days of the Mamelukes.

That story had its part in creating the panic at Manassas.

I believe we were good horsemen. There were men among us who might have given the Mamelukes points, both in horsemanship and in the use of the sabre. But if our nine hundred men had been the thirty thousand reported, we should have thundered into Washington on the night of Sunday, July 21, 1861, and would have ended the war then and there, in spite of the presidential stupidity which feared that “aggression” might anger a people with whom we were at war.

We lay that night in an open field, each man having his horse tethered to his left arm, and each man booted, spurred, sabred, and pistolled for instant action.

The bugle sounded no reveille that morning. A shell from the enemy’s camp, which fell in the midst of the regiment, saved the bugler the trouble.

With a laugh, which was almost a chuckle, Stuart called out: “That’s ‘boots and saddles,’ boys,” and in an instant we were on our horses.

The first great battle of the war had begun.

It was not until noon, or nearly that, that the cavalry had any real work to do. I didn’t look at my watch, but it must have been about noon when Stuart swept us at a tremendous pace through a regiment or two of Zouaves, and back again over the same ground. I saw no Zouaves for the reason that there was too much dust to see anything; but it was understood when the charge was over, that we had driven them back. And half a dozen empty saddles in our own ranks attested the fact that they had not been driven back without a stubborn and manly resistance.

A little later, we cavalrymen were ordered up to the support of some batteries that had temporarily run out of ammunition. Our reputation as Mamelukes sufficed at that point to prevent a charge, so that our real work in the battle did not begin until the panic in McDowell’s army set in.

Then Stuart rose in his stirrups and shouted at the top of his voice: “They’re licked, boys! They’re licked! They’re licked!”

Then hastily he rattled off orders. The substance of them was that we were to divide the cavalry into squads of ten and twenty men each, and proceed at once in pursuit.

“If there aren’t officers, and non-commissioned officers enough, let anybody command a squad. This is business.”

As the several squads started at a gallop after the enemy, Stuart called out to each: “Attack any force you find. There is no cohesion left among ’em.”

In that command he struck the key-note of the whole situation. Seasoned soldier that he was, he knew that without cohesion, soldiers are helpless, and numbers count for nothing.

We plunged forward across every ford and along every road that led from Bull Run towards Centreville. At every point we found “chaos come again.”

A squad of ten men, armed only with sabres and pistols, but backed by the Mameluke tradition, would call out to eighty or a hundred fully armed infantry: “Throw down your arms, or we’ll put you to the sword! Throw down your arms, or we’ll put you to the sword!”

The panic-stricken men would obey the order instantly, disregarding the fact that with a single volley they might have swept the insolent squad instantly out of existence.

It was not merely that the army was panic stricken. It was encumbered at every step by a multitude of embarrassing picnickers,--a multitude of men and women who had come out from Washington to see us exterminated and to join in a triumphal march to Richmond. These people had brought out with them more superfluous provisions than our army had eaten for a fortnight. They abandoned their luxuries in the middle of the road and ran. They left champagne enough unopened for a regiment to swim in. They fled precipitately, adding at every step by their own insensate fear to the panic that had already overtaken the troops.

Men cut horses out of vehicles that held helpless women, and madly mounting them abandoned their charges and their duties, in order to escape a present and impending danger to themselves. Fortunately for their charges, the Southerners were not making war on women.

Every woman was instantly assured of her own personal safety. Every horse that was left behind was hitched at once to a vehicle, and the vehicle loaded with women was started under an assurance of safe conduct towards Washington. When the supply of abandoned horses fell short, it was made good by animals from our batteries, and now and then by the riderless horse of one of the Mamelukes who had received a mortal wound.

Along the roads we found many dead men, for whose deaths no coroner would have been able to account--men utterly destitute of wounds, who had died clearly either of fright, or of exhaustion, or of both.

At Cub Run, an ambulance or a caisson broke down on the bridge and obstructed it. The obstruction almost instantly caused a congestion of two or three thousand panic-stricken soldiers and picnickers on the hither side of the stream.

Then came Kemper with his guns. He was as black as a negro with powder smoke. His cannoneers were equally begrimed. From the top of a hill, not more than two hundred yards distant,--pistol-shot range,--he opened fire with canister. The effect upon the crowd was instantaneous and almost startling. Its constituent members dispersed as a covey of partridges does when a shot-gun is fired into its lurking place. Some of them ran up the creek. Some of them ran down the creek. Some of them plunged into the creek, and crossed or drowned, as the case may be.

It was just then that Stuart rode up and cried out: “We’ll go into Washington to-night, boys. And my headquarters will be at Willard’s Hotel.”

It was just then also that couriers came, bearing the paralyzing presidential order to stop the pursuit at Cub Run.

It was just then that the despondency of the Mamelukes began.

A little later it rained.

MY LAST NIGHT ON PICKET

My period of service in the cavalry was about to expire. I was not tired of the cavalry service; on the contrary, I was very much in love with it. Any full-blooded man must have been so under such leadership as Stuart’s.

But for reasons pertaining to Joe, I had sought and obtained a transfer to the artillery.

Joe was just sixteen.

The infantry regiment in which he had gone out had been so cut to pieces in a fierce fight that it was dissolved. Joe and a bullet-riddled flag were about all there was left of it.

Therefore Joe had enlisted in a battery of artillery. He was as brave a fellow as is made, and as cantankerous and self-assertive as a brave boy is apt to be. I felt it necessary to be with him to keep him from being unnecessarily killed or court-martialled, and to exercise over him that mature, paternal influence which the superior age of twenty-one justified.

This was my last night of cavalry service. It was late autumn in 1861. The company was ordered on picket at Fairfax Court House. The enemy was very urgent just then, and gave us a good deal of trouble on the picket lines.

I was ordered to a post underneath a very broad and low spreading tree, so that when I sat upon my horse I was not visible from the thicket in front, and would not have been even if it had been broad daylight.

That thicket was full of sharp-shooters, and when I went on post about seven o’clock in the evening, I was instructed to preserve absolute silence in self-protection, and warned that it would probably not be possible to relieve me until morning.

My mare was a restless creature at ordinary times, but she had learned the whole art of picket duty. If I had been anywhere else, she would have champed the bit, and pawed the ground, and snorted in her restlessness. Standing there at night, with a bullet whistling over her head every minute or two, she was as still as the traditional mouse.

I sat there all night on her back with pistols drawn, and in a silence such as nobody but a picket thus placed ever maintains.

Just as the day was dawning, or rather just as the gray in the eastern sky began to suggest the possibility of dawn, a sergeant crawling on his belly approached me from the rear. In a whisper I called out, “Who goes there?” He, also in a whisper, let me know his identity. He had come to order my withdrawal from the post.

Not until we had reached a point a hundred yards in the rear was anything further said. There I found the company drawn up in line with Charlie Irving at its head.

“Many shots from the thicket?” asked Charlie.

“Two or three to the minute,” I answered, “throughout the night.”

“All right,” he replied, “we’ll scoop those fellows in; they’re getting to be obnoxious.”

Then in a low tone he told us precisely what we were to do, and we were to do it without further orders. He was to lead, of course, but he wanted to give as few commands as possible, in order to make his movement successful.

Silently we moved off over the soft turf to the left. Crossing the road below the thicket we struck a gallop and quickly surrounded the space occupied by the sharp-shooters. It was the work of but a few minutes to close in upon and capture them. Two of our saddles were emptied in the operation, and five of the sharp-shooters were left unburied in the brush; the rest we took with us to headquarters, another company having replaced us on picket.

Among the prisoners was one little fellow, apparently not over fifteen or sixteen years of age. His features were clear cut and delicate and his clothing was worn as if it had belonged to somebody else.

When we had got well to the rear and the daylight was broad, Charlie Irving looked at the little fellow and said: “How old are you, my boy?”

“Twenty-two,” he replied, “but I’m a girl.”

That girl was sent back under a flag of truce. We didn’t know what else to do with her.

GRIFFITH’S CONTINUED STORY

It was in the early summer of 1864. We were in the trenches at Spottsylvania.

It had been raining continuously all day, with now and then a heavy downpour, just to remind us that a little rain ought not to matter to old soldiers. By the use of fragments of fence rail and such other sticks as we could secure to stand upon, we managed to avoid sinking below our ankles into the soft, red, Virginian mud.

It was a little after two o’clock in the morning, but we were all awake and on duty. For it was not General Grant’s purpose at that time to allow us much of repose. We had stood in the trenches and in the rain all day, and we must stand in the trenches and in the rain all night, and as much longer as it might please the enemy to keep us there.

The night was one of the blackest I have ever known. There was no possibility of sending couriers anywhere, and all orders had, therefore, to be passed from mouth to mouth up and down the lines.

Every few minutes a great downpour of bucketfuls would come; and, worse still, every now and then the enemy would rush forward in the darkness and come upon us at pistol-shot range without notice.

It was Ulysses S. Grant we were fighting, and that was the line on which he was going to “fight it out, if it took all summer.”

We felt the need of entertainment, so somebody called out to a sergeant: “Tell us a story.”

“No, no,” said Johnny Garrett, “let Griffith tell a story, for he never finishes, and this is a long night.”

The suggestion was applauded and insisted upon. Whether Griffith blushed or not, it was much too dark to see; but after a little chaffing he consented to tell the story. Just as he began Billy Goodwin, who always wanted to gamble on everything, offered to bet three to one that he would never finish.

“Shut up, Goodwin,” said Johnny Garrett, “and let him begin, anyhow. If he don’t get through by the middle of the night, I’ll negotiate the bet with you.”

Thereupon Griffith began.

“Well, ’taint much of a story--only a bear story.”

“Bet two to one he never gets to the bear,” said the incorrigible Goodwin.

“Be quiet, will you?” cried some one at the right of the company. The man next to him mistook this adjuration for a command sent down the line; so, to the astonishment of everybody to the left of us, the word was passed from mouth to mouth: “_Be quiet, will you! Be quiet, will you! Be quiet, will you!_”

“Well,” said Griffith, “’twas about six year ago, or maybe seven. No, lemme see--’twas the same year that Jim Coffee married Mirandy Adams. Must have been eight year ago, I s’pose.”

Just then came the order down the line: “Perfect silence! Enemy advancing!”

The next minute a line of bayonets broke out of the fog in front of us, and a flaring fire blazed forth in our faces. The charge upon us was a determined one, and for full three minutes it required all our efforts to repel it. After that the artillery silenced all conversation by pouring a shower of shot and shell into the retiring assailants.

“Still ready to make that bet,” said Billy Goodwin. But Griffith began again undaunted. He was a phlegmatic person, whose mind was never driven from its not very large purposes by any shock--even that of a shower of canister.

“Well, as I wuz a-sayin’, it wuz about six or eight year ago--it don’t really matter, I s’pose, how long ago it wuz--”

“No,” said Billy Goodwin, “let her rip.”

“Well, as I wuz a-sayin’--” Just then the enemy charged again.

Griffith had captured a Henry rifle two days before, in the battle of the Wilderness, and it was loaded with fourteen ball cartridges. With that deliberation which characterized him in everything, he delivered those fourteen shots in the face of the enemy, who by that time had retired. Then he turned and began to fill the magazine of his rifle again, saying: “Well, you see, as I wuz a-sayin’, Peter Coffee he taken a cawntract for a bridge over Tye River. Now Peter always pertended that he knew how to lay out bridge work. Of course I knew better. I’d been to Fletcher Massie’s school with him, and I knew just how little ’rithmetic he knew. Fletch, he carried me through the rule o’ three, and you can’t lay out bridge work till you’ve _bin_ through the rule o’ three.”

The day was dawning, and just then came an order for us to move to the right, the extreme right, four or five miles away. We marched at once. Grant was making his celebrated move by the left flank.

When we got into position, it was necessary to throw up such earthworks as we could with our bayonets, using fence rails for revetments. This occupied us during most of the day, and scattered as we were, we were not able to listen to the remainder of Griffith’s story.

That afternoon, to our surprise, we received a ration of three-quarters of a pound of flour to each man. When we had baked it, I happened to go by Tom Booker’s position and saw him eating the entire cake. Tom looked at me pitifully as I remonstrated with him for eating three days’ rations in advance, and he said with tears in his voice if not in his eyes: “I know it, but I’m go’n’ t’ fill my stomach once, if I starve for it. I _wish_ I was a woman or a baby.”

A few minutes later came the order to move; our battery was at that time unhorsed. It had been planned to leave it in the rear, because its guns could not be moved for lack of horses, but with one voice the men had demanded the privilege of taking rifles and going with the battalion as sharp-shooters.

On this march the battalion was the rear guard of the army, and our rifle-armed battery was the rear guard of the battalion.

For fifty-six hours we marched without food or sleep, pausing every fifteen minutes to fight awhile, and then double-quicking to catch up.

There was no chance for Griffith in all this. But when we got to Cold Harbor, and went into the works, Billy Goodwin at a favorable moment insisted that he should resume his story.

“You see I’ve got three bets on it,” said Billy.

Just then a grape-shot passed through George Campbell’s foot, and distracted our attention for a time. Then came General Field, who ordered us to burn a barn in front that was full of sharp-shooters. The first two or three shots from the battalion did the business. The sharp-shooters ran with all their might across a thousand yards of space, while we poured upon them the sharpest rifle fire we could deliver. Some of them got to cover, and some of them didn’t.

It was not till we moved to Bottom’s Bridge that Griffith had a chance to resume his story. There we were all sick from having eaten boiled potato vines, for lack of other food. Being too ill to go to sleep, we demanded a continuation of the story.

“Well, as I wuz a-sayin’,” said Griffith, “I’d gone clean through the rule o’ three in Fletch Massie’s school, and Peter Coffee he knew it. As I told yuh, he’d taken the cawntract to lay out this bridge work; so he got his wife to write to me to come up and do the ’rithmetic. Well, just as I wuz startin’ up, Bill Linsey says to me,--you know he kept a store down there at Arrington, he says to me, says he, ‘Griffith, there’s a runlet o’ cider that’s got twenty gallon in it. Can you lif’ it?’ I says, ‘Yes, I can lif’ it and drink out o’ the bung, if you’ll let me drink es much es I please.’ I lifted it and took a big swallow of the sweet stuff, then I says, ‘I can carry it up the mountain,’ says I, and he says, says he, ‘On your back?’ says he, an’ I says, ‘Yes, on my back,’ says I. An’ he says, says he, ‘Well, you can have it ef you’ll agree to carry it up the mountain on your back, and not take no lift frum nobody.’”

Just then a battery, three thousand yards away, opened on us, and we had to run to cover, every man of us with his hands on his stomach, in physical memory of the potato vines. Our guns were not in position, and all we could do was to ensconce ourselves behind big trees. As the artillery fire kept up, General Alexander rode to this point of the lines and ordered up three batteries of rifled cannon; by the time they had finished their little controversy with the enemy, we had recovered from the potato tops sufficiently to go to sleep. So Griffith’s story was to be “continued in our next.”

Our “next” came only after we got to Petersburg. There our battery took charge of the mortars of the army. Griffith was one of the men I selected when asked to volunteer for a particularly perilous mortar service. He might or might not be able to tell a story, but he could stand fire as well as any man I ever knew.

About four o’clock one morning, when we had been engaged in a fierce bombardment all night, the fire ceased for a time, and Billy Goodwin demanded the rest of that bear story.

“You see I’ve got seven bets on that story,” said Billy, “and I don’t want to win any man’s money unfairly. One bet is that he won’t ever get to the bear, and I don’t want to take any man’s money without givin’ him a chance.”

“Well, wait a minute,” I replied, “till I start up the fire; we’ve got to have some breakfast.”

The fire was out.

“Somebody must go up,” I said, “to the next fort and get a chunk of fire. It won’t do to get fire by shooting a mortar,”--which was our usual way,--“because if we do that, we’ll start this bombardment again.”

“I’ll go,” said Griffith, “and then I’ll tell the rest of that story.”

There was a fearful hail of bullets between the two forts. The cannon were silent, but the musketry fire was incessant. Griffith started off, crouching as he went up the path so as to expose as little as possible of his person.

That was the last I ever saw of him.

As he was borne off on the litter, he sent word to me that he “hoped I hadn’t any bets on that bear story.”

A CHEERFUL SUPPER OF CHEERS

As Commissary it was Haskell’s business to see to it that we had plenty to eat; but the seven days’ fights below Richmond were on, and Haskell was, first of all, a fighter,--a thing uncommon in Commissaries and Quartermasters.

Instead of attending to his pork and meal wagons in the rear, he went to the front.

There he was active in a degree that commanded the respect of his general. He interested himself so much in the movements of troops, and in the controversy with the enemy, that he forgot all about the wagons.

In this service he had his right arm shot off by a cannon-ball.

When night came, and we wanted something to eat, there was a good deal of growling because we had nothing. But when the story was told of how our Commissary had fought, and how he had lost an arm in the fighting, a fellow with more humor than appetite got up and cried: “I move that we sup on three cheers and a tiger for the Commissary that fights.”

The three cheers were given.

As soon as his wound was healed, Haskell was made a major and placed in command of the battalion.

There may have been many better Commissaries than Haskell, but there were no better fighting majors.

HOW THE TAR HEELS STUCK

The sergeant-major sat there on his horse in the drenching rain. There was nothing to do but to endure. The three days of fighting in the Wilderness in that early summer of 1864, and the three nights of sleeplessness had considerably undone his nerves.

But for the first time in his life he realized that he had a hope at least for an opportunity. He had a lieutenant’s command. He hoped for a chance to make himself a lieutenant, in fact. With two guns, twenty-six men, and twenty-four horses under his command, and wholly detached from his battery, he had hope, that gray foggy morning, that he might have an opportunity. Yet here he was, standing behind a hill, soaking wet, and with no apparent prospect.

Three times the infantry had been ordered forward to the top of that hill. Three times they had been swept away as with a broom.

The hill was clearly untenable.

Then came General Alexander.

“Have you nerve, courage, backbone? Do you want an opportunity?”

The sergeant-major answered, “Yes.”

“Then take your guns to the top of that hill and STAY THERE.”

The sergeant-major gave the necessary orders, and advanced at once, feeling that he and his men were lambs sent to the slaughter.

When he appeared on top of the hill, twenty batteries and ten thousand riflemen opened upon him. But his orders were to “stay there,” and the sergeant-major wanted to be a lieutenant.

His horse sank under him at the first fire. His men went down like grass before the scythe.

But he STAYED THERE.

About that time a North Carolina general rode up to his brigade and called aloud: “Men, are you going to allow these guns to be captured? They say we North Carolinians have tar on our heels; let’s show them that tar _sticks_. Forward! March!”

Five minutes later that hill was occupied by three thousand North Carolinians, the tar on whose heels STUCK. Half a dozen more batteries were ordered up, and the young sergeant-major was directed to move his guns by hand to the rear.

_By hand._ Because of his twenty-four horses only two remained alive; while there were only thirteen left out of his twenty-six men to handle the guns by hand. This is what we called “life” in the Confederate army.

“LITTLE LAMKIN’S BATTERY”

For twenty-four hours I had had a man on my mind.

He had been court-martialled and was sentenced to be shot. He was in the guardhouse.

I know of no good reason why I should have objected to his execution; he certainly deserved all that he was to get. But I had been his counsel before the court-martial, and it is never a pleasant thing for a lawyer to have his client executed.

He belonged officially to me. I had assumed a responsibility for him, and I felt that it would not be fully discharged if he should be led out and shot.

I had known Beavers for a very brief time; but as his counsel I had learned much from him in confidence as to his career. He was a person of elective affinities. It was his habit to desert. He had served on both sides and in many capacities. He always fought well on whichever side he might happen to be serving. As a gambler, he always “played his game for all it was worth.”

Why he had deserted back and forth in this way without any cogent reason, I never knew. I used to think sometimes that he had done so at first just to try how a new style and color of uniform might suit his particular kind of beauty. His beauty was not in itself conspicuous.

I learned from him incidentally that his various reasons for desertion from one side to the other had not been of a kind that would have controlled the action of a less fastidious man.

On one occasion he had deserted because he smelt mutton from the camp-kettles of the enemy. He had a predilection for mutton.

I learned that he returned to us once, because one night, when he was not quite himself, a comrade had put him to bed and reversed the order of his blankets. Beavers explained to me with great particularity that a certain gray blanket had been placed on top of a certain brown one. He could not be expected to remain with a regiment under such conditions.

At last he had been caught in the act of deserting. He had been tried, and, in spite of such legal acumen as I could bring to bear, had been convicted, sentenced, and the next day but one was to be shot.

Now that he was sure to die, he seemed to make no more of the fact than of any other indifferent thing. I do not mean that he was careless of his fate. He took everything seriously. But facts were to him facts, and he did not worry over them. He did not think it worth while.

So when he was sentenced to death, he adjusted his blankets in the proper order so that he might not have a nightmare, and slept the sleep of the contented.

With all my contempt for Beavers I was sorry that he was to die. There was something in the reckless character of the man that appealed to me. Something that made me feel that it was a pity that this abundant life should be extinguished by a rifle shot.

I had been thinking all night. I had thought of every argument in his favor. I had searched my mind to see if any point had been neglected. Early in the night I had gone to Beavers, and asked him for the aid of suggestion--suggestion that might lead to information. But here again his habits balked me. He said: “I’m gambling in this case on your brains.”

I might myself have been willing to do that, but I was gambling with Beavers’s life for a stake.

Beavers was of course just that kind of man, whom a self-respecting person feels it his duty to despise; but somehow I could not quite despise Beavers. His coolness appealed to me strongly. His bravado seemed a sort of bravery. His readiness to meet the consequences, and pay the penalties of his own misdeeds, was a thing hard to distinguish from heroism.

He had no principles, of course. He did not pretend to have any. But he had certain methods of thought which seemed to serve him in lieu of principles.

It was just before dawn. I had not slept. As I lay in my tent with the flaps thrown back, all that was discernible was the rather spectral-looking tented city with its precise white rows. I had become so nervous, staring through the dark at the place where I knew the tent pole to be, that at last I turned out for good. I tightened my belt. It was our habit to sleep in our clothes--for reasons.

The first gray of the morning touched the camp, and looking down the row I saw a fragile figure moving from one tent to another, and pausing occasionally in uncertainty. At first I could not be certain whether it was a woman or not. Finally the figure straightened up and stood looking towards the guardhouse; it was that of a woman.

I had not seen a woman in two months.

The camp was silent with that quietude that is so impressive just before the dawn.

After staring at the guardhouse for a moment, while I stood staring at her, the woman turned her eyes and we stood looking at each other. After halting a moment she came staggering up the narrow lane between the two rows of tents, making a peculiar, nervous movement with her hands, but saying nothing. She stood for a few moments a little way from the tent door, clasping and unclasping her hands.

I saw that she was ill. She reeled up against the tent pole, and would have fallen had I not caught her by the arm. I seated her on a log, all the seat there was. After a moment she revived a little, and said in a faint voice, “Beavers.”

At that moment reveille sounded. The woman was too evidently ill for me to leave her. I sent a sergeant to attend the roll-call. I directed our cook to provide the woman with coffee and food.

Then I questioned her a little. She had walked twenty-two miles over railroad ties.

She was Beavers’s wife.

She said to me: “You are his counsel, I believe?”

“Yes,” I replied, “and I have done everything I could to save him.”

“No, you have not,” she answered. “You have not made the point that he was never legally enlisted as a soldier, I’ll warrant! He’s over forty-five and can’t be conscribed. He was pardoned out of the penitentiary on condition that he should enlist, but the court-martial had no proof of that. There’s nothing whatever to show that he’s a soldier; and if he ain’t a soldier, he can’t be punished for desertion. I’ve come to tell you, for he would never think of it.”

I jumped to my feet. I called a sentinel, and told him to take the woman to the guardhouse and make her as comfortable as possible. I mounted my horse and galloped to the station. I roused the telegraph operator two hours before his time. He was a sleepy fellow, but he was accustomed to taking imperative messages out of hours. I gave him this one to the war department:--

Beavers to be shot to-morrow morning. No proof whatever he was
ever soldier. If not soldier, could not have deserted. Too old for
conscript law, and no proof of enlistment except Governor Letcher’s
telegram. Telegram not under oath, not legal testimony. Witness not
subjected to cross-examination. As counsel, I demand stay in this
man’s case.

I rode back to the guardhouse, and found that a new member had been added to the battery. The company was known as Lamkin’s Battery.

We named the new member “_Little_ Lamkin’s Battery,” to distinguish it, I suppose, from the big one.

Beavers sat all that morning with his wife’s hand in his, and Little Lamkin’s Battery in his arms.

He said it looked like its mother. He’d “gamble on that.”

Not until within an hour of the time appointed for Beavers’s execution did there come a reply from the war department. But when it came it was thoroughly satisfactory. It read thus:--

Legal points conclusive. Release Beavers and restore him to duty.
Duplicate sent to General Walker.

Soon after that Beavers deserted, blankets and all, to “the other enemy”--that was his form of speech, not mine.

The next time I saw him was under peculiar circumstances.

In July, 1865, I went on board the steamer _Morning Star_, at Portland, four miles below Louisville, Kentucky.

I was two or three hours in advance of the sailing of the boat. Only a few people were scattered about the front of the cabin. I went to the clerk, paid for my room and passage, and pocketed thirty dollars in change. A moment later the porter came in with my trunk. I put my hand in my vest pocket to get the dollar due him, but found my thirty dollars gone.

I had all the feelings which a man always has when he finds that his pocket has been picked--which include the feeling of helplessness.

There was on board a brigade of troops going South. They were late enlisters, who had seen none of the fighting. The men were on the deck below, of course. The officers, though their transportation orders called only for deck passage, were by courtesy permitted in the cabin. There were a dozen or twenty of them, mainly rough lumbermen, or something of that kind. They evidently wanted to see a fight. So they concluded to pick that fight with me.

One of them came up to me where I was reading a novel, and began the trouble by saying: “You’re a rebel.”

“No,” I replied. “I was a rebel while the rebellion lasted, but I have taken the oath of allegiance, and am at present a loyal citizen of the United States.”

“Well, you _were_ a rebel,” he said, with more offence in his tone than in his words; “and I want to know what you are doing here in the North.”

“I’m not in the North,” I replied; “but in the middle of a river that separates the North from the South.”

By this time half a dozen others of the crowd had gathered in front of me with angry faces. It was manifestly their purpose to make trouble, and I saw no use in trying to ward it off. They were planning a fight; and whether it was to be a safe one or not, it seemed to me a good time to begin it.

I sprang to my feet and faced them. I was utterly unarmed, while they carried their weapons. I grasped a chair as the only means of defence at hand, and with remarks which are better not repeated, perhaps, told them to come on.

Just at that moment a stateroom door opened behind me, and two warm hands thrust two pistols into my grasp. The next moment a stalwart figure, armed in the same way, stood beside me, and, presenting two pistols, called out: “Hands up, gentlemen! The first man that moves dies. You’re twenty to two of us, but--”

Some language followed.

The men threw up their hands.

Without taking his eyes off his adversaries or lowering his weapons, my comrade called out: “Mr. Clerk, send for the captain.”

When the captain came, my comrade reported that these men had made an unwarranted assault upon an inoffensive passenger, and said: “They have no business in the cabin, anyway. As a first-class passenger, I call on you to send ’em below, where they belong.”

The captain was willing enough. He had been three times arrested during the war for aiding “rebel sympathizers.” A minute later these officers had become deck passengers.

Then I turned to my deliverer, and to my astonishment he was Beavers. He had grown stout, and was resplendent in a suit of clothes with checks so broad that it might easily have taken two persons to show the pattern; otherwise he was the same old nonchalant, reckless Beavers, ready to gamble upon any chance and to pay his losses though the payment might be with his life.

I made my identity known to him of course. He replied immediately: “Why, of course, I reckonized you long before this thing occurred, and I have been trying to get an excuse for speaking to you. Because you see when you came aboard in mufti I didn’t know who you was, and so I lifted thirty dollars out of your clothes. I wouldn’t have done it if I’d a’ known it was you, and now I want to hand it back. I could just as easily have picked that other fellow’s pocket--the one that picked the quarrel with you. I never go back on my friends, never! And I’ve never forgot how you got me out of that scrape.”

He handed me back the thirty dollars and I thanked him. He said: “Don’t mention it.” He added, though I never knew what he meant by it: “I’ll square the whole thing with that other feller. He’s got more’n thirty dollars in _his_ wad.”

I naturally felt a little warm towards Beavers. I owed him my life. Therefore when he suggested some alcoholic celebration of the incident I compromised on a cigar. However little you may esteem a man, it is difficult to snub him a few minutes after he has saved your life.

Beavers went to the baggage-master and said something to him which I didn’t hear. The baggage-master shook his head in dissent.

“Oh, that’s all right,” said Beavers; “it’s five dollars to you, old man.”

“Oh, well, that’s different,” said the baggage-master, and two minutes later Beavers was searching one of his trunks. Presently he came up with a wad of papers in his hand and we returned to the cabin. There he spread out some architectural designs for a gorgeous monument, and said: “Look at that. That’s the design of the monument I’ve just put up over that wife of mine. She was a mighty good sort, and I’ve spent good money to give her a proper send-off. I’ve paid five thousand dollars to the architect for the design, and fifteen thousand dollars to have it built. You see business is good with me just now. I’ve got a faro bank at Louisville and another at Evansville and two at Cairo, and another at St. Louis, and three at Memphis and one at Vicksburg, and two at New Orleans. As for me I _run the river and make what there is in it_.”

Suddenly a thought occurred to him.

“By the way,” he said, “you remember about Little Lamkin’s Battery? Well, he’s on board.” Beckoning to a negro nurse, he said: “Bring that little rascal here.”

A few minutes later the nurse returned, having a peculiarly bright, three-year-old boy in charge, whom I greeted as an old friend. After talking with the little chap for a few moments I turned to Beavers and said: “What are you going to make out of him, Beavers?”

“Something better than his father is,” he replied, “for his mothers sake; and that reminds me you’re just out of the war and you’ve got your way to make. It won’t do for you to know _me_. If you ever meet me goin’ up and down the river, I’ll cut you dead and don’t you say nothing.”

CURRY

Curry was our mess cook.

He was a great rascal, but one of the best cooks in the world. And besides he was discriminative in his rascality. He never did any dishonest thing towards us; but he was capable of any conceivable crime, if he could commit it in our behalf.

He was a pure-blooded negro of the brown or semi-copper-colored variety. He was without a trace of beard, as that variety of negro usually is. His voice was a falsetto.

His devotion was dog-like. If the state of South Carolina held anything that his mess needed, and there was any conceivable way in which it could be got, he got it. Frankly without morals,--unless devotion to his mess was a moral sentiment,--and illimitable in resource as he was, he generally so managed matters that we should live well.

We would buy a pig or a lamb, and have a fore quarter for dinner. The next day Curry would give us a hind quarter. The next day another fore quarter; and so on until that member of the mess who had a statistical mind would begin to reflect that there are really only four quarters to an animal, while we had had from fifteen to twenty quarters from this one. Then Curry would be summoned, and indignantly asked: “Where have you been getting all this meat we have been eating?”

The question never disturbed Curry in the least. He was always ready with the answer: “I buyed it from one man, sir.”

When asked who the man was, he never knew. And when questioned as to payment, he always assured us that the “one man, sir,” was coming that afternoon for his money.

The “one man, sir,” always came that afternoon. His charge was always the same: $2.50 in Confederate currency, or something less than twenty-five cents in real money.

The pretence was a bit flimsy, but it answered Curry’s purpose. His mess was well fed, and he was not caught in his raids upon the pig-pens and sheep-folds thereabouts.

Curry was a slave, and we hired him from the estate to which he belonged as a chattel. One day we were ordered to move from South Carolina to Virginia. Curry came to us and asked to be taken with us. When we explained to him that we could not legally take him out of the state, he deliberately proposed to run away in order to go with us. Having no alert perception of the difference between crime and good conduct, he could not see why we should not abet him in this proposed violation of law. But when we made it clear to him that, for reasons inscrutable to his mind, we could not permit him to go with us out of the state, he fell into melancholy.

That night we had some roast pig for dinner; and Curry had not “buyed it from one man, sir.”

The only reply he would make to our questionings was: “I done got it fur de mess, sir. De mess has been good to me.”

* * * * *

Early next morning--the day on which we were to leave--the enemy landed below, and we were ordered forward to meet them. As we unlimbered in battery and opened fire, Curry rode up on an antique mule, stolen for the occasion from the battery blacksmith. Leaping from his steed he went to the gun that was most short-handed, took a vacant place, and began fighting like an artilleryman. When the head of the mess rode up to him and said: “What are you doing here, Curry?”

His reply was: “Ise takin’ a hand.”

The fight was hot for ten minutes. At the end of it poor Curry lay stretched upon the grass--a bullet through his chest. One of us went to him and said something--no matter what. He looked up and said: “I can’t go wi’ de mess to Virginy. You’ll have to take some no ’count nigger. But Ise fought wi’ de mess anyhow, and you’ll find de res’ o’ dat pig hangin’ up de chimbly.”

GUN-BOATS

A gun-boat went aground one night in an inlet off Chisholm’s Island, near Port Royal, South Carolina.

As soon as the news came to us, we set out to attack her.

We marched all night, and in the early gray of the dawn we reached the palmetto-studded island. The gun-boat had, in the meantime, got off the bar on the high tide, and was riding quietly at anchor, four hundred yards from the nearest available point on the shore.

I had command of two field pieces. Captain Elliot, the chief of artillery, ordered me to inspect the vessel and “act according to circumstances.” He said: “If you find her too strong to be attacked with field guns, retire quietly across the island. If you find her not too strong, attack her, and I will send you any reinforcements necessary.”

I took Joe with me.

We crawled up to the brink of the stream, and took a good look in the gray morning light.

But that look didn’t tell either of us anything. Neither of us knew enough about naval architecture and armament to have the slightest idea whether the boat out there in the stream was formidable or otherwise.

“Well, what do you think, Joe?” I asked. “I don’t think,” he answered; “I don’t know anything about it; but my notion is that we’d better give her a shot or two, anyhow.”

“Well, the way I look at it,” said I, “is this: Elliot and those other fellows know, and we don’t. They’ll see her from some point of view. If they think her not formidable, and we don’t attack, they’ll blame us. If we attack, and she proves too formidable--well, we’ve got good horses and we can run. Order up the guns, Joe.”

A minute later we opened fire with two twelve pounders. By one of those freaks of extraordinarily good luck, which so often save men from disaster in war, our first shot severed the gun-boat’s rudder post. Our second shell passed through her boiler and exploded in her furnace; not only setting fire to her, but with the escaping steam driving the men from the gun decks. This left her with only one available gun--a swivel on the poop.

But that was a sixty-four pound howitzer, one or two shots from which would have swept us off that island like so much dust. Our good luck continuing, however, that gun burst at the first fire.

The ship had been a formidable, heavily armed gun-boat, carrying several eight-inch rifles; but she had been destroyed by two field pop-guns. She slipped her cables, and drifted around the point with fire bursting from every port hole. We quickly limbered up and galloped to another point of attack.

We found the ship’s company escaping over the sides in the boats and rowing for the marsh beyond. We opened upon them at short range, sank several of the boats, and then shelled the marsh for scatterers.

When I learned later from Captain Elliot how formidable that ship had been, I was filled with a great contempt for gun-boats. I was anxious to get a chance at a gun-boat every morning before breakfast.

I got it presently. With that same section I was ordered a few days later to Combahee Ferry. There was a gun-boat there. My orders were the same as before.

This gun-boat was a little, low, insignificant looking sloop. She seemed to me almost contemptibly easy game. I galloped my guns to within four hundred yards of her, and ordered them in battery.

We opened fire. The gun-boat for a time paid no attention to us. But by the time that we had thrown three or four shells at her, she lazily undertook to attend to our case, in much the same way that a man brushes a pestilent fly from his nose.