The Sword of Antietam: A Story of the Nation's Crisis

Dick gazed at one and then at the other. There was his great grandfather, Paul Cotter, a man of vision and inspiration, the greatest scholar the west had ever produced, and there facing him was his comrade of a long life-time, Henry Ware, the famous borderer, afterward the great governor of the state. They had been painted in hunting suits of deerskin, with the fringed borders and beaded moccasins, and raccoon skin caps.

These were men, Dick’s great grandfather and Harry’s. An immense pride that he was the great-grandson of one of them suddenly swelled up in his bosom, and he was proud, too, that the descendants of the borderers, and of the earlier borderers in the east, should show the same spirit and stamina. No one could look upon the fields of Shiloh, and Manassas and Antietam and say that any braver men ever lived.

He drew his chair into the middle of the room and sat and looked at them a long time. His steady gazing and his own imaginative brain, keyed to the point of excitement, brought back into the portraits that singular quality of intense life. Had they moved he would not have been surprised, and the eyes certainly looked down at him in full and ample recognition.

What did they say? He gazed straight into the eyes of one and then straight into the eyes of the other, and over and over again. But the expression there was Delphic. He must choose for himself, as they had chosen for themselves, and remembering that he was lingering, when he should not linger, he closed and fastened the window, slipped out at the kitchen window and returned to his horse.

He remounted in the road and rode a few paces nearer to Pendleton, which still lay silent in the white moonlight. He had no doubt now that many of the people had fled like his mother. Most of the houses must be closed and shuttered like hers. That was why the town was so silent. He would have been glad to see Dr. Russell and old Judge Kendrick and others again, but it would have been risky to go into the center of the place, and it would have been a breach, too, of the faith that Colonel Winchester had put in him.

He crushed the wish and turned away. Then he saw the white walls of Colonel Kenton’s house shining upon a hill among the pines beyond the town. He was quite sure that it would be deserted, and there was no harm in passing it. He knew it as well as his own home. He and Harry had played in every part of it, and it was, in truth, a second home to him.

He rode slowly along the road which led to the quiet house. Colonel Kenton had all the instincts so strong in the Kentuckians and Virginians of his type. A portion of his wealth had been devoted to decoration and beauty. The white, sanded road led upward through a great park, splendid with oak and beech and maple, and elms of great size. Nearer the house he came to the cedars and clipped pines, like those surrounding his mother’s own home.

He opened the iron gate that led to the house, and tied his horse inside. Here was the same desolation and silence that he had beheld at his own home. The grass on the lawn, although withered and dry from the intense drought that had prevailed in Kentucky that summer, was long and showed signs of neglect. The great stone pillars of the portico, from the shelter of which Harry and his father and their friends had fought Skelly and his mountaineers, were stained, and around their bases were dirty from the sand and earth blown against them. The lawn and even the portico were littered with autumn leaves.

Dick felt the chill settling down on him again. War, not war with armies, but war in its results, had swept over his uncle’s home as truly as it had swept over his mother’s. There was no sign of a human being. Doubtless the colored servants had fled to the Union armies, and to the freedom which they as yet knew so little how to use. He felt a sudden access of anger against them, because they had deserted a master so kind and just, forgetting, for the moment that he was fighting to free them from that very master.

All the windows were dark, but he walked upon the portico and the dry autumn leaves rustled under his feet. He would have turned away, but he noticed that the front door stood ajar six or eight inches. The fact amazed him. If a servant was about, he would not leave it open, and if robbers were in the house, they would close it in order not to attract attention. It was a great door of massive and magnificent oak, highly polished, with heavy bands of glittering bronze running across it. But it was so lightly poised on its hinges, that, despite its great weight, a child could have swung it back and forth with his little finger. Henry Ware, who built the house after his term as governor was over, was always proud of this door.

Dick ran his hand along one of the polished bronze bars as he had often done when he was a boy, enjoying the cool touch of the metal. Then he put his thumb against the edge of the door, and pushed it a little further open. Something was wrong here, and he meant to see what it was. He had no scruples about entering. He did not consider himself in the least an intruder. This was his uncle’s house, and his uncle and his cousin were far away.

The door made no sound as it swung back, and soundless, too, was Dick as he stepped within. It was dark in the big hall, but as he stood there, listening, he became conscious of a light. It proceeded from one of the rooms opening into the hall on the right, and a door nearly closed only allowed a narrow band of it to fall upon the hall floor.

Dick, believing now that a robber had indeed come, drew a pistol from his pocket, stepped lightly across the hall and looked in at the door.

He checked a cry, and it was his first thought to go away as quietly as he had come. He had seen a man in the uniform of a Confederate colonel, sitting in a chair, and staring out at one of the little side windows which Dick could not see from the front, and which was now open. It was his own uncle, Colonel George Kenton, C. S. A., his gold braided cap on the window sill, and his sword in its scabbard lying across his knees.

But Dick changed his mind. His uncle was a colonel on one side, and he was a lieutenant on the other, and from one point of view it was almost high treason for them to meet there and talk quietly together, but from another it was the most natural thing in the world, commanded alike by duty and affection.

He pushed open the door a little further and stepped inside.

“Uncle George,” he said.

Colonel Kenton sprang to his feet, and his sword clattered upon the floor.

“Good God!” he cried. “You, Dick! Here! To-night!”

“Yes, Uncle George, it’s no other.”

“And I suppose you have Yankees without to take me.”

“Those are hard words, sir, and you don’t mean them. I’m all alone, just as you were. I galloped south, sir, to see my mother, whom I found gone, where, I don’t know, and then I couldn’t resist the temptation to come by here and see your house and Harry’s, which, as you know, sir, has been almost a home to me, too.”

“Thank God you came, Dick,” said the colonel putting his arms around Dick’s shoulders, and giving him an affectionate hug. “You were right. I did not mean what I said. There is only one other in the world whom I’d rather see than you. Dick, I didn’t know whether you were dead or alive, until I saw your face there in the doorway.”

It was obvious to Dick that his uncle’s emotions were deeply stirred. He felt the strong hands upon his shoulders trembling, but the veteran soldier soon steadied his nerves, and asked Dick to sit down in a chair which he drew close beside his own at the window.

“I thank God again that the notion took you to come by the house,” he said. “It’s pleasant and cool here at the window, isn’t it, Dick, boy?”

Dick knew that he was thinking nothing about the window and the pleasant coolness of the night. He knew equally well the question that was trembling on his lips but which he could not muster the courage to ask. But he had one of his own to ask first.

“My mother?” he asked. “Do you know where she has gone?”

“Yes, Dick, I came here in secret, but I’ve seen two men, Judge Kendrick and Dr. Russell. The armies are passing so close to this place, and the guerillas from the mountains have become so troublesome, that she has gone to Danville to stay a while with her relatives. Nearly everybody else has gone, too. That’s why the town is so silent. There were not many left anyway, except old people and children. But, Dick, I have ridden as far as you have to-night, and I came to ask a question which I thought Judge Kendrick or Dr. Russell might answer—news of those who leave a town often comes back to it—but neither of them could tell me what I wanted to hear. Dick, I have not heard a word of Harry since spring. His army has fought since then two great battles and many smaller ones! It was for this, to get some word of him, that I risked everything in leaving our army to come to Pendleton!”

He turned upon Dick a face distorted with pain and anxiety, and the boy quickly said:

“Uncle George, I have every reason to believe that Harry is alive and well.”

“What do you know? What have you heard about him?”

“I have not merely heard. I have seen him and talked with him. It was after the Second Manassas, when we were both with burial parties, and met on the field. I was at Antietam, and he, of course, was there, too, as he is with Stonewall Jackson. I did not see him in that battle, but I learned from a prisoner who knew him that he had escaped unwounded, and had gone with Lee’s army into Virginia.”

“I thank God once more, Dick, that you were moved to come by my house. To know that both Harry and you are alive and well is joy enough for one man.”

“But it is likely, sir, that we’ll soon meet in battle,” said Dick.

“So it would seem.”

And that was all that either said about his army. There was no attempt to obtain information by direct or indirect methods. This was a family meeting.

“You have a horse, of course,” said Colonel Kenton.

“Yes, sir. He is on the lawn, tied to your fence. His hoofs may now be in a flower bed.”

“It doesn’t matter, Dick. People are not thinking much of flower beds nowadays. My own horse is further down the lawn between the pines, and as he is an impatient beast it is probable that he has already dug up a square yard or two of turf with his hoofs. How did you get in, Dick?”

“You forgot about the front door, sir, and left it open six or seven inches. I thought some plunderer was within and entered, to find you.”

“I must have been watched over to-night when forgetfulness was rewarded so well. Dick, we’ve found out what we came for and neither should linger here. Do you need anything?”

“Nothing at all, sir.”

“Then we’ll go.”

Colonel Kenton carefully closed and fastened the window and door again and the two mounted their horses, which they led into the road.

“Dick,” said the colonel, “you and I are on opposing sides, but we can never be enemies.”

Then, after a strong handclasp, they rode away by different roads, each riding with a lighter heart.

CHAPTER XII. THROUGH THE BLUEGRASS

Dick’s horse had had a good rest, and he was fighting for his head before they were clear of the outskirts of Pendleton. When the road emerged once more into the deep woods the boy gave him the rein. It was well past midnight now, and he wished to reach the army before dawn.

Soon the great horse was galloping, and Dick felt exhilaration as the cool air of early October rushed past. The heat in both east and west had been so long and intense, that year, that the coming of autumn was full of tonic. Yet the uncommon dryness, the least rainy summer and autumn in two generations, still prevailed. The hoofs of Dick’s horse left a cloud of dust behind him. The leaves of the trees were falling already, rustling dryly as they fell. Brooks that were old friends of his and that he had never known to go dry before were merely chains of yellow pools in a shallow bed.

He watered his horse at one or two of the creeks that still flowed in good volume, and then went on again, sometimes at a gallop. He passed but one horseman, a farmer who evidently had taken an unusually early start for a mill, as a sack of corn lay across his saddle behind him. Dick nodded but the farmer stared open-mouthed at the youth in the blue uniform who flew past him.

Dick never looked back and by dawn he was with the army. He found Colonel Winchester taking breakfast under the thin shade of an oak, and joined him.

“What did you find, Dick?” asked the colonel, striving to hide the note of anxiety in his voice.

“I found all right at the house, but I did not see mother.”

“What had become of her?”

“I learned from a friend that in order to be out of the path of the army or of prowling bands she had gone to relatives of ours in Danville. Then I came away.”

“She did well,” said Colonel Winchester. “The rebels are concentrating about Lexington, but the battle, I think, will take place far south of that city.”

Before the day was old they heard news that changed their opinion for the time at least. A scout brought news that a division of the Confederate army was much nearer than Lexington; in fact, that it was at Frankfort, the capital of the state. And the news was heightened in interest by the statement that the division was there to assist in the inauguration of a Confederate government of the state, so little of which the Confederate army held.

Colonel Winchester at once applied to General Buell for permission for a few officers like himself, natives of Kentucky and familiar with the region, to ride forward and see what the enemy was really doing. Dick was present at the interview and it was characteristic.

“If you leave, what of your regiment, Colonel Winchester?” said General Buell.

“I shall certainly rejoin it in time for battle.”

“Suppose the enemy should prevent you?”

“He cannot do so.”

“I remember you at Shiloh. You did good work there.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“And this lad, Lieutenant Mason, he has also done well. But he is young.”

“I can vouch for him, sir.”

“Then take twenty of your bravest and most intelligent men and ride toward Frankfort. It may be that we shall have to take a part in this inauguration, which I hear is scheduled for to-morrow.”

“It may be so, sir,” said Colonel Winchester, returning General Buell’s grim smile. Then he and Dick saluted and withdrew.

But it did not take the colonel long to make his preparations. Among his twenty men all were natives of Kentucky except Warner, Pennington and Sergeant Whitley. Two were from Frankfort itself, and they were confident that they could approach through the hills with comparative security, the little capital nestling in its little valley.

They rode rapidly and by nightfall drew near to the rough Benson Hills, which suddenly shooting up in a beautiful rolling country, hem in the capital. Although it was now the third day of October the little party marked anew the extreme dryness and the shrunken condition of everything. It was all the more remarkable as no region in the world is better watered than Kentucky, with many great rivers, more small ones, and innumerable creeks and brooks. There are few points in the state where a man can be more than a mile from running water.

The dryness impressed Dick. They had dust here, as they had had it in Virginia, but there it was trampled up by great armies. Here it was raised by their own little party, and as the October winds swept across the dry fields it filled their eyes with particles. Yet it was one of the finest regions of the world, underlaid with vitalizing limestone, a land where the grass grows thick and long and does not die even in winter.

“If one were superstitious,” said Dick, “he could think it was a punishment sent upon us all for fighting so much, and for killing so many men about questions that lots of us don’t understand, and that at least could have been settled in some other way.”

“It’s easy enough to imagine it so,” said Warner in his precise way, “but after all, despite the reasons against it, here we are fighting and killing one another with a persistence that has never been surpassed. It’s a perfectly simple question in mathematics. Let x equal the anger of the South, let y equal the anger of the North, let 10 equal the percentage of reason, 100, of course, being the whole, then you have x + y + 10 equalling 100. The anger of the two sections is consequently x + y, equalling 100 – 10, or 90. When anger constitutes 90 per cent., what chance has reason, which is only 10 per cent., or one-ninth of anger?”

“No chance at all,” replied Dick. “That has already been proved without the aid of algebra. Here is a man in a cornfield signaling to us. I wonder what he wants?”

As Dick spoke, Colonel Winchester, who had already noticed the man, gave an order to stop. The stranger, bent and knotted by hard work on the farm, hurried toward them. He leaned against the fence a moment, gasping for breath, and then said:

“You’re Union men, ain’t you? It’s no disguise?”

“Yes,” replied Colonel Winchester, “we’re Union men, and it’s no disguise that we’re wearing, Malachi White. I’ve seen you several times in Frankfort, selling hay.”

The farmer, who had climbed upon the fence and who was sitting on the top rail, hands on his knees, stared at him open-mouthed.

“You’ve got my name right. Malachi White it is,” he said, “suah enough, but I don’t know yours. ‘Pears to me, however, that they’s somethin’ familiar about you. Mebbe it’s the way you throw back your shoulders an’ look a fellow squah in the eyes.”

Colonel Winchester smiled. No man is insensible to a compliment which is obviously spontaneous.

“I spent a night once at your house, Mr. White,” he said. “I was going to Frankfort on horseback. I was overtaken at dusk by a storm and I reached your place just in time. I remember that I slept on a mighty soft feather bed, and ate a splendid breakfast in the morning.”

Malachi White was not insensible to compliments either. He smiled, and the smile which merely showed his middle front teeth at first, gradually broadened until it showed all of them. Then it rippled and stretched in little waves, until it stopped somewhere near his ears. Dick regarded him with delight. It was the broadest and finest smile that he had seen in many a long month.

“Now I know you,” said Malachi White, looking intently at the colonel. “I ain’t as strong on faces as some people, though I reckon I’m right strong on ‘em, too, but I’m pow’ful strong on recollectin’ hear’in’, that is, the voice and the trick of it. It was fo’ yea’s ago when you stopped at my house. You had a curious trick of pronouncin’ r’s when they wasn’t no r’s. You’d say door, an’ hour, when ev’body knowed it was doah, an’ houah, but I don’t hold it ag’in you fo’ not knowin’ how to pronounce them wo’ds. Yoh name is Ahthuh Winchestuh.”

“As right as right can be,” said Colonel Winchester, reaching over and giving him a hearty hand. “I’m a colonel in the Union army now, and these are my officers and men. What was it you wanted to tell us?”

“Not to ride on fuhthah. It ain’t mo’ than fifteen miles to Frankfort. The place is plum full of the Johnnies. I seed ‘em thah myself. Ki’by Smith, an’ a sma’t gen’ral he is, too, is thah, an’ so’s Bragg, who I don’t know much ‘bout. They’s as thick as black be’ies in a patch, an’ they’s all gettin ready fo’ a gran’ ma’ch an’ display to-mo’ow when they sweah in the new Southe’n gove’nuh, Mistah Hawes. They’ve got out scouts, too, colonel, an’ if you go on you’ll run right squah into ‘em an’ be took, which I allow you don’t want to happen, nohow.”

“No, Malachi, I don’t, nor do any of us, but we’re going on and we don’t mean to be taken. Most of the men know this country well. Two of them, in fact, were born in Frankfort.”

“Then mebbe you kin look out fo’ yo’selves, bein’ as you are Kentuckians. I’m mighty strong fo’ the Union myself, but a lot of them officers that came down from the no’th ‘pear to tu’n into pow’ful fools when they git away from home, knowin’ nothin’ ‘bout the country, an’ not willin’ to lea’n. Always walkin’ into traps. I guess they’ve nevah missed a single trap the rebels have planted. Sometimes I’ve been so mad ‘bout it that I’ve felt like quittin’ bein’ a Yank an’ tu’nin’ to a Johnny. But somehow I’ve nevah been able to make up my mind to go ag’in my principles. Is Gen’ral Grant leadin’ you?”

“No, General Buell.”

“I’m so’y of that. Gen’ral Buell, f’om all I heah, is a good fightah, but slow. Liable to git thar, an’ hit like all ta’nation, when it’s a little mite too late. He’s one of ouah own Kentuckians, an’ I won’t say anything ag’in him; not a wo’d, colonel, don’t think that, but I’ve been pow’ful took with this fellow Grant. I ain’t any sojah, myself, but I like the tales I heah ‘bout him. When a fellow hits him he hits back ha’dah, then the fellow comes back with anothah ha’dah still, an’ then Grant up an’ hits him a wallop that you heah a mile, an’ so on an’ so on.”

“You’re right, Malachi. I was with him at Donelson and Shiloh and that’s the way he did.”

“I reckon it’s the right way. Is it true, colonel, that he taps the ba’el?”

“Taps the barrel? What do you mean, Malachi?”

White put his hands hollowed out like a scoop to his mouth and turned up his face.

“I see,” said Colonel Winchester, “and I’m glad to say no, Malachi. If he takes anything he takes water just like the rest of us.”

“Pow’ful glad to heah it, but it ain’t easy to get too much good watah this yeah. Nevah knowed such a dry season befoah, an’ I was fifty-two yeahs old, three weeks an’ one day ago yestuhday.”

“Thank you, Malachi, for your warning. We’ll be doubly careful, because of it, and I hope after this war is over to share your fine hospitality once more.”

“You’ll sho’ly be welcome an’ ev’y man an’ boy with you will be welcome, too. Fuhthah on, ‘bout foah hund’ed yahds, you’ll come to a path leadin’ into the woods. You take that path, colonel. It’ll be sundown soon, an’ you follow it th’ough the night.”

The two men shook hands again, and then the soldiers rode on at a brisk trot. Malachi White sat on the fence, looking at them from under the brim of his old straw hat, until they came to the path that he had indicated and disappeared in the woods. Then he sighed and walked back slowly to his house in the cornfield. Malachi White had no education, but he had much judgment and he was a philosopher.

But Dick and the others rode on through the forest, penetrating into the high and rough hills which were sparsely inhabited. The nights, as it was now October, were cool, despite the heat and dust of the day, and they rode in a grateful silence. It was more than an hour after dark when Powell, one of the Frankforters, spoke:

“We can hit the old town by midnight easy enough,” he said. “Unless they’ve stretched pretty wide lines of pickets I can lead you, sir, within four hundred yards of Frankfort, where you can stay under cover yourself and look right down into it. I guess by this good moonlight I could point out old Bragg himself, if he should be up and walking around the streets.”

“That suits us, Powell,” said Colonel Winchester. “You and May lead the way.”

May was the other Frankforter and they took the task eagerly. They were about to look down upon home after an absence of more than a year, a year that was more than a normal ten. They were both young, not over twenty, and after a while they turned out of the path and led into the deep woods.

“It’s open forest through here, no underbrush, colonel,” said Powell, “and it makes easy riding. Besides, about a mile on there’s a creek running down to the Kentucky that will have deep water in it, no matter how dry the season has been. Tom May and I have swum in it many a time, and I reckon our horses need water, colonel.”

“So they do, and so do we. We’ll stop a bit at this creek of yours, Powell.”

The creek was all that the two Frankfort lads had claimed for it. It was two feet deep, clear, cold and swift, shadowed by great primeval trees. Men and horses drank eagerly, and at last Colonel Winchester, feeling that there was neither danger nor the need of hurry, permitted them to undress and take a quick bath, which was a heavenly relief and stimulant, allowing them to get clear of the dust and dirt of the day.

“It’s a beauty of a creek,” said Powell to Dick. “About a half mile further down the stream is a tremendous tree on which is cut with a penknife, ‘Dan’l Boone killed a bar here, June 26, 1781.’ I found it myself, and I cut away enough of the bark growth with a penknife for it to show clearly. I imagine the great Daniel and Simon Kenton and Harrod and the rest killed lots of bears in these hills.”