An Unofficial Patriot

There was but one bite gone from the biscuit which lay on the blue coat. Music and sentiment had triumphed over appetite and the young corporal dozed off, asleep now with the letter still in his hand and the noisy players about him. In the distance Griffith and his escort were returning. Suddenly a shot rang out in the clear air! Then another and another! The men were on their feet in an instant. The General was hastily adjusting his field-glass, but in the moonlight it was but slight help. He could see, as the smoke cleared away, six men instead of four. So much he could make out, but no more. One was being lifted on to a horse. All were dismounted. There was activity in the camp. Hasty preparations were made to send a relief party. Who was shot? What did it mean? Was there an ambush? Was the Guide deceived as to the safety of this position? Would they have to fight or retreat? Had the Guide been killed? Had some angry native seen and assassinated Griffith? The officers consulted together hastily and orders were given, but the little procession was slowly approaching.

They were not pursued. At least there was not to be a battle – and there had been a capture, but who was killed? The Government Guide? Two were walking – were they the assassin and his companion? When the little procession reached the picket line it halted and there was some readjustment of the body they were carrying, stretched between two horses, where it lay motionless except as others lifted it. Beside it walked another figure not in the federal uniform. Tall, lank, grim, and limping painfully, with a blood-stain on the shoulder and a bullet hole in the hat. The sharpshooters had done their work – but who was it —what was it that lay across those two horses that they were leading? The whole camp was watching and alert. Cards, quoits, letters had disappeared. At last they could see that the Body was not Griffith. He still sat astride his splendid chestnut horse and the relief party were talking to him. The procession moved to the General's tent. Griffith looked pale and troubled. The sharpshooters were radiant. The Body was lifted down, and its long pendant beard was matted and massed with blood.

The pride, the joy, the ambition of Whiskers Biggs was brought low at last! He was breathing still, but the feeble hand essayed in vain to stroke the voluminous ornament and ambition of his life. The hand hung limp and mangled by his side. The General questioned the other prisoner in vain. He pointed to Griffith and preserved an unbroken silence. Griffith spoke to him aside. The prisoner turned slowly to the commander:

"I'll tell him. Few words comprehend the whole." Then he lapsed into silence again and nothing could induce him to speak. The General threatened, coaxed and commanded in vain. The imperturbable mountaineer stood like one who heard not. All that the sharpshooters could tell was soon told. Some one had fired from ambush, apparently at Griffith. They had returned the fire instantly. Then they had found this man who was dying and the other one beside him. "I know this man, General," said Griffith. "He says that he will talk to me alone. May I – shall I – "

"He'll talk to me, God damn him! or he'll get a dose of – Did you fire at our men?" he demanded of the mountaineer. Lengthy Patterson shifted his position to relieve his wounded leg. He gazed stolidly, steadily, expressionlessly before him, and uttered not a sound. His gun had been taken from him, and his hands seemed worse than useless without this his one and only companion from whom he never separated. The hands moved about in aimless action like the claws of some great lobster.

"It will go a good deal easier with you, you infernal idiot, if you'll out with your story, tell your side of it How'd this thing happen?"

Lengthy glanced sidewise at the Body as it lay on the ground. "Friend of mine," he said, and lapsed into silence again.

"Will you tell me, Lengthy?" asked Griffith. "Will you tell me in the presence of the General? It would be better for us both if you will. I wish – "

"'Twill?" asked Lengthy giving Griffith a long, slow look. "Better fer yoh?"

"Yes," said Griffith, half choking up. He thought he had solved the problem of why, with these two mountaineer marksmen as their antagonists none of their party had been shot in the encounter. "Yes, better for me. Do you care for that, Lengthy?" The woodsman gave another long look at Griffith, and then pointed with his thumb at the figure on the ground.

"I done hit. Whis aimed t' kill yoh. Few words comp – " Griffith grasped the great rough, helplessly groping hands in his. "I thought so, I thought so," he said brokenly.

"And you stood by me even – He was your friend, and – " Griffith's voice broke.

In the pause that followed Lengthy was staring at the form on the ground.

"Yes. Whis wus a frien' er mine; but Whis tuck aim at yoh. Few-words-comprehends-th'-whole!" The last sentence seemed to be all one Word. Griffith was still holding the great hands.

"Did you know I was with Northern troops, Lengthy? Did you know – ?"

"Knowed hit wus you. Didn't keer who t'other fellers wus. He tuck aim. Seed whar he wus pintin' – Few words – "

"Are you a Union man, Lengthy?"

"Naw."

"Rebel, are you?" asked the General, sharply. There was a profound silence. The mountaineer did not even turn his head.

"I asked you if you were a rebel, God damn you! Can't you hear?" shouted the General thoroughly angry. "I'll let you know – "

"Are you on the Confederate side, Lengthy?" began Griffith. The mountaineer had not indicated in any way whatever that he had heard any previous question. "Naw," he said slowly and as if with a mental reservation. The General shot forth a perfect volley of oaths and questions and threats, but the immobility of the mountaineer remained wholly undisturbed. There was not even the shadow of a change of expression on the bronzed face.

"What the General wants to know – what I want to know is, Lengthy, which side are you on? Are you – "

"On youm."

"On Davenport's side against the world!" remarked a staff officer aside, smiling. The mountaineer heard. He turned slowly until the angle of his vision took in the speaker.

"On his side agin the worl'. Few words – "

The rest was drowned in a shout of laughter, in which the irascible Commander joined. Griffith's eyes filled. Lengthy saw – and misinterpreted. He forgot the wound in his leg, and that his trusty gun was his no more. He sprang to Griffith's side.

"On his side agin the hull o' yuh!" he said, like a tiger at bay. The sorely tried leg gave way and he fell in a heap at Griffith's feet.

"Here! Quick! Get the surgeon. We forgot his wounds. He is shot in the leg and here – " Griffith was easing the poor fellow down as he talked, trying to get him into a better position. Some one offered him a canteen. The surgeon came and began cutting the boot from the swollen leg.

"Do everything for him, Doctor – everything you would for me," said Griffith hoarsely. "He killed his friend and risked his own life to save me. He – "

His voice broke and he walked away into the darkness. Presently Lengthy opened his eyes and asked feebly, "Whar's the Parson?"

"Who?"

"The Parson."

"Oh," said the surgeon kindly, "you want the Chaplain. Oh, you're not going to die! You're all right! You've lost a lot of blood and stood on that leg too long, but – "

"Whah's Parson Dav'npoht?"

A light dawned upon the surgeon. He had never thought of Griffith as a clergyman only as he had heard it laughed over that the General swore so continuously in his presence. He sent for Griffith. When he came Lengthy saw that his eyes were red. He motioned the others to go away. Then he whispered, "Th' other fellers – our soldiers – th – "

"You mean the Confederate troops, the Southern men?" asked Griffith, and Lengthy nodded; "Jest over yander. Layin' fer ye."

"I looked everywhere for smoke, Lengthy. I didn't see any signs of camp fires. I – "

"Jest what me an' Whis was doin' fer t'other side when we seed ye. Hain't got no fires. Hain't goin't' make none."

"Do you mean that you were doing a sort of scout or advance duty for the reb – the Confederates, when you met us, Lengthy?"

He nodded. "Jest thet."

"You were to go back and tell them about – "

"We wus. Saw you. Didn't go. Him 'n me qua'l'd 'bout – "

"About shooting me?"

Lengthy nodded again. "He aimed at ye. I got him fust." There was a long pause.

"Do you want to go back to your camp, Lengthy, if – "

"Naw."

Presently he said: "They's mo' o' them then they is o' you alls."

Griffith grasped his idea. "You think we better leave here? You think they will attack?"

"Kin leave me layin' here. They'll git me – 'n' him;" he pointed with his thumb again toward the friend of his life – the body that lay awaiting burial on the morrow.

"Would you rather go with us?" began Griffith, and the swarthy face lightened up.

"Kin you alls take me?"

"Certainly, certainly, if you want to go. We won't leave you. The General – "

"Hain't goin' with him. Goin' 'th you."

"All right, all right, Lengthy. You shall go with me and you shall stay with me."

The mountaineer turned his head slowly. The narcotic the surgeon had given was overcoming him. He did not understand it, and he was vainly struggling against a sleep which he did not comprehend.

"You – alls – better – light – out. They is mo' o' them and – they – is mad – plum – through. Few – words – com – com – "

The unaccustomed effort at linguistic elaboration exhausted him, and, together with the sleeping potion, Lengthy was rendered unconscious of all pain, and an hour later he was borne on a stretcher between two horses as the engineer's party silently retraced its steps and left the camp deserted and desolate with its one silent occupant lying stark in the moonlight, with its great mass of matted beard upon its lifeless breast.

CHAPTER XVII

"At first happy news came, in gay letters moiledWith my kisses, – of camp life and glory."Browning.

The fall and winter wore on. Spring was near. Griffith wrote to Katherine daily and mailed his letters whenever and wherever it was possible. His personal reports of progress went with regularity to Mr. Lincoln, and an occasional note of congratulation or thanks or encouragement came to him in reply. Meantime the Army of the Potomac did little but wait, and the armies of the South and West were active. Letters from the boys came to Katherine with irregular regularity. Those from Howard were always brief and full of an irresponsible gurgle of fun and heroics. He had been in two or three small fights, and wrote of them as if he had enjoyed an outing on a pleasure excursion. He said in one that when he was on picket duty he had "swapped lies and grub" with the picket on the other side. "He tried to stuff me with a lot of fiction about the strength of their force – said they had not less than ninety thousand men in front of us ready to lick us in the morning. I told him that I'd just happened by accident to hear our roll called, and it took two days and a night to read the names of our officers alone. He was a crack liar but I reckon we got off about even. He had the worst old gun I ever saw. It came out of the ark. He admired mine, and it was a tip-top Enfield, but I told him it was just an old borrowed thing (the last of which was true) and that my own was nearly as big as fifty of it and would shoot ten miles. He kicked at me and laughed, but I didn't tell him I was a gunner in a battery. A battery is a jim-dandy of a place. I get to ride all the time. That suits me right down to the ground. I haven't had a scratch yet and I'm not afraid I'll get one." His letters rattled on in some such fashion whenever he remembered or exerted himself enough to write at all. They developed in slang as the months went by, and Katherine smiled and sighed.

Beverly's letters kept up their old tone, and he tried in every way he could think of, to cheer his mother. He had wholly recovered, he said, from his wounds, and was now with Grant in Tennessee. He described the long moss on the trees, and wrote: "We are moving now toward Corinth. That is the objective point. I was transferred a month ago to Grant's army, and so, unless Roy has been transferred since you wrote me last, I'll get to see him in a few days, I hope. That will be good. It seems as if we boys had traveled a pretty long road in the matter of age and experience since we were at home together. I'm glad to hear of Roy's promotion – the handsome fellow! And so it was for conspicuous bravery at Fort Donaldson, was it? Good! Good! Ah, we can be proud of Roy, mother. And he got only a little flesh-wound in it all, and did not have to go to the hospital at all! What lucky dogs we boys are, to be sure. I hope father is home with you by this time. Of course, I understand the ominous silence and inaction in Virginia – in the army of the Potomac – as only a few of us can. But I do hope that father will do all the President asked of him, and get home before they undertake to act upon the information he is enabling them to gather. Yes, yes, mother, I know how terribly hard he took it, and how silently heroic he is and will be, God bless him! But after all, mother mine, your part is about the hardest of all to bear. I think of that more and more! To sit and wait! To silently sit and wait for you know not what. To take no active part! Oh, the heroic patience and endurance that must take! But don't worry about us. The fact is that we are not in half so much danger as you think. When one comes to know how few, after all, of the millions of rounds of ammunition that are fired, ever find their mark in human flesh, one can face them pretty courageously. We were talking it over in camp the other day – a lot of the officers. I really had had no idea what a safe place a battle-field is. It seems that out of 7260 balls fired, only ten hit anybody, and only one of those are serious or fatal! Just look at the chances a fellow has. Why he doesn't seem to be in much more danger than he is that a brick will fall on him as he walks the streets, or that he'll slip and break his neck on the ice. Doesn't seem so very dangerous, now, does it, mother? Now, I want you to remember those figures, for they are correct. Then you remember that I got my three – which is more than my share of balls, in the very first fight I was in; so you see I'm not likely to get any more. Roy had one, so his chance to catch any more is poor; and as for Howard – well, somehow or other, I never feel the least anxiety about Howard. He'd pull through a knot-hole if the knot was still in it. He is so irresistibly, irresponsibly, recklessly indifferent. But at all events, mother, don't worry too much. My only anxiety, now, is to hear that father is at home again; both for your sake and for his. Ye gods! what a terrific sacrifice the President demanded of him! And what a stubborn heroism it has taken to make father do it, – with his temperament and feelings, – a heroism and patriotism beyond even the comprehension of most men. Give little Margaret the enclosed note, please. I don't know that she can read it, but I wrote it as plain as I could on this shingle. We are moving pretty steadily now. We stopped to-day, to let the supplies catch up. We start again in an hour or so. We are all ready now.

"I never cease to be glad that you have old aunt Judy, and that she continues such a comfort, – and trial. Give her my love, and tell the gentle and buxom Rosanna, that if she were in this part of the country she'd 'see the loikes av me' at every turn. Soldiers are thicker than peas in a pod, and she'd not have 'to go fur t' foind the loikes av me' multiplied by ten thousand, all of whom 'become their soger close' quite as truly as did the undersigned when the admiration of Rosanna for me blossomed forth in such eloquence and elaboration of diction. This seems rather a frivolous letter; but I want you to keep up good heart, little mother. It won't – it can't – last much longer, and just as soon as father gets home, I, for one, shall feel quite easy again. I hope he is there by this time, with his part all done. The last letter I got from him, he thought it would not take much longer to do all they expected him to do, now. Dear old father! His last letter to me was an inspiration and a sermon, in living (as he is), without the least bit of preaching in it. He doesn't need to preach. He lives far better than any creed or than any religion; but – "

Katherine broke off and pondered. Was Beverly still reading Thomas Paine? If he were to be killed! What did he believe? "Lives far better than any creed or than any religion," what did he mean? Had Beverly become openly an unbeliever in creeds and religions? The thought almost froze her blood. She fell upon her knees and wept and prayed – not for her son's life to be spared from the bullets of the enemy, as was her habit, but that the "shafts of the destroyer" might spare his soul! Her cup of anxiety and sorrow was embittered and made to overflow by the sincerity of a belief which was so simple, and knew so little of evasion, that the bottomless pit did, indeed, yawn before her for this son of her youth.

"Save him! save him!" she moaned aloud, "if not from death, at least from destruction, oh, God of my salvation!"

The terrors which should follow unbelief had been long ago, in her rigid Presbyterian home, made so much a part of her very nature, that the simple, cheerful, happy side of Griffith's religion, which had been uppermost all these years, had not even yet, in cases of unusual stress, obliterated the horror of Katherine's literal belief in and fear of an awful hell, and a vengeance-visiting God for those who slighted or questioned the justice or truth of a cruel revelation of Him. A great and haunting fear for Beverly's soul eclipsed her fear for his life, and Katherine's religion added terrors to the war that were more real and dark and fearful than the real horrors that are a natural and legitimate part of a cruel, civil contest. The "comforts," to a loving heart and a clear head, of such a religion, were vague and shadowy; indeed. Its certain and awful threats were like a flaming sword of wrath ever before her eyes. To those who could evade the personal application of the tenets of their faith, who could accept or reject at will the doctrines they professed, who could wear as an easy garment the parts they liked, and slip from their shoulders the features of their "revelation" to which the condition of their own loved ones did not respond, there might be comfort. But to Katherine there was none. Her faith was so real and firm, that it did not doubt a literal damnation, nor could she read from under the decree those she loved, simply because she loved them. An eternal decree of suffering hung over her first-born, the idol of her soul! The awful burden of her religion was almost more than she could bear in these days of fear and loneliness, stimulated as it was by the ever-present threat and shadow of death for the lamb that had strayed, even so little, from the orthodox fold. Her days were doubly burdened by the new anxiety, shadowed by the real, and haunted by the agony of fear for the imaginary, danger to her son. In her dreams, that night, she saw him stand before an angry and avenging God, and she awoke in a very panic of delirium and mental anguish. Great beads of moisture stood upon her brow. "Save him! save him! oh, God of our salvation!" she cried out, and little Margaret stirred uneasily in her bed.

"Wat dat, honey? Wat dat yoh say, Mis' Kate!" called out Judy from her cot in the next room. "Did yoh call me, Mis' Kate?"

"No, no, aunt Judy, I had a bad dream. I – "

The old woman hobbled in. "Now, des look aheah, honey, des yoh stop that kine er dreams, now. Dey ain't no uste t' nobody, an' dey des makes bad wuk all de way 'roun'. An' 'sides dat dey ain't got no sense to'em, nohow." Poor old aunt Judy, her philosophy was deeper and truer than she knew or than her mistress suspected; but the sound of her kind old voice comforted Katherine as no philosophy could.

"Dar now, honey, yoh des lay right down dar'n' go to sleep agin. Yoah ole aunt Judy des gwine ter stay right heah twell yoah skeer gits gone. Dar now, dar now, honey, dem kine er dreams is all foolishness. Dey is dat! Now, I gwine ter set heah an' yoh des whorl in an' dream sompin' good 'bout Mos Grif, dat's what you do! Aunt Judy gwine ter set right heah by de bed. Dar now, honey! Dar now, go sleep."

CHAPTER XVIII

"Into the jaws of death,Into the mouth of hell."Tennyson.

It had rained in torrents. The stiff day of the muddy roads was ankle deep. Roy's regiment in camp near the Tennessee river was whiling away its time as best it could. It was generally understood that they were to be Joined in a day or two by reinforcements, and then march on to Corinth. Roy knew that Beverly was to be with the expected command. The young lieutenant – a first lieutenant now – was proud and eager. He thought it would be a fine thing for him and Beverly to fight side by side. He meant to show Beverly that he was no longer a boy. A soft silken mustache had come to accent his fresh complexion, and he was as handsome and tall and graceful and erect as a young soldier need be. He carried himself with peculiar grace, and he was an inch taller than Beverly, now. He hoped that he would be taller than his brother, and he walked very erect, indeed, as he thought about it. Then he smiled to himself and said half aloud, "He will be here to-morrow, and I shall give him a great welcome – and a surprise." This was his last thought as he turned on his side, and fell into a soldier's dreamless sleep, in spite of rain and mud, in spite of noise and confusion, in spite of danger and anxiety.

It was the night of the fifth of April. Roy had planned to appear very splendid to his brother on the morrow. He had shaved freshly and brushed his uniform, and rubbed up his new shoulder straps. His sword was burnished, and the boy had smiled to himself many times as he worked over these details, to think how vain he was, and how anxious that Beverly should look pleased and proud when he should see him at his best. He seemed to have slept only a little while when there straggled into his consciousness the sound of a shot, then another and another; then a sudden indescribable noise and confusion roused him wholly. He sprang to his feet.

The gray of the dawning day was here. Bugles were sounding. Confusion, noise, action was on all sides. The camp had been surprised! The enemy was upon them! Grape, canister and Enfield balls tore through the tents. Shells burst; the first vision that met his eyes as he rushed forth, was a horse of one of their own batteries, struggling, moaning, whinnying pitifully with both fore-legs torn away, and the cannon half overturned. An onrushing force of Confederates shouting in triumph. As his own regiment tried to form in line, three terrified horses tore past dragging their fellow, and what was left of the dismantled cannon. They were wounding each other cruelly in their mad frenzy of pain and fright. They fell in one mass of struggling, suffering, panic-stricken flesh into the river and drowned, with their harness binding them together, and to the wreck of their dismantled burden. Everything was confusion. Each regiment was doing its best to form and repulse the terrible onslaught. The surprise had been complete. The scouts had been surrounded and captured, and the pickets killed or driven in at the first charge which had awakened the sleeping camp. The horrors, the disasters and the triumphs of Shiloh had begun!

There was no time to think. Action, alone, was possible – the intuitive action of the soldier. The men formed as best they could, and fought as they fell back, or as they advanced a step, with dogged determination to retrieve lost ground. Some were driven into the river, and when wounded, fell beneath its waves to rise no more. The intrepid Confederates followed up their first dash with persistent determination, in spite of the forced march which had preceded the surprise, and in spite of hunger and uncertainty when their supplies might come. They aimed at nothing short of capture. Then supplies would be theirs without delay. But every foot of ground was being stubbornly contested. Now a gain was made, now a loss. Both sides were fighting with that desperation which makes certain only one thing as the issue of the battle – the certainty of an awful carnage. At Such a time it does not seem possible, and yet it is true, that a sense of reckless humor finds place and material to feed its fancy. A good-natured badinage held possession of many of the men.