Part 19 (1/2)

They ”got” them, killing many, and the next morning, on looking from my window, I saw the victors ride into the courtyard, many of them with their captives tied neck and heels, like bags of corn, over the cruppers of the horses. A nice night's ride they must have had! But the choice was between death and being cruppered, and they preferred the latter to coming a cropper. Strange that the less a man has to live for the more he clings to life.

The general thought that if he gave us a corporal and four men, and if we were well armed, that we _might_ go out on the Bole Jack road and return unharmed, ”unless we met with any of the great gangs of bushwhackers.”

But he evidently thought, as did General Whipple, who did not heed a trifle by any means, that we were going into the lion's jaws. So the next morning, _equo iter ingredi_, I rode forth. I had some time before been appointed aide-de-camp to Governor Pollock, of Pennsylvania, with the rank of colonel, and had now two captains and a corporal with his guard. It was a rather small regiment.

We heard grim stories that morning as to what had taken place all around us within almost a few hours. Three Federal pickets had been treacherously shot while on guard the night before; the troops had surprised a gang of bushwhackers holding a ball, and firing through the windows, dropped ten of them dead while dancing; two men had been murdered by --- --- and his gang. This was a noted guerilla, who was said to have gone south with the Confederate army, but who was more generally believed to have remained in hiding, and to have committed most of the worst outrages and murders of late.

At the first house where we stopped in the woods there lay a wounded man, one of the victims of the dance the night before. The inmates were silent, but not rude to us. I offered a man whisky, but he replied, ”I don't use it.” We rode on. Once there was an alarm of ”bushwhackers.” I should have forgotten it but for the memory of the look of Baldwin Colton's eyes, the delighted earnestness of a man or of a wild creature going to fight. He and his brother had hunted and fought guerillas a hundred times, perhaps much oftener, for it was a regular daily service at the front. Once during a retreat, Baldwin (eighteen or nineteen years of age) fell out of rank so often to engage in hand-to-hand sword conflicts with rebel cavalrymen, that his brother detached four to take him prisoner and keep him safe. Daring spirits among our soldiers often became very fond of this kind of duelling, in which the rebs were not a whit behind them, and two of the infantry on either side would, under cover of the bushes, aim and pop away at one another perhaps for hours, like two red Indians.

I have forgotten whether it was with extra whisky, coffee, or money that we specially gratified our corporal and guard; but Baldwin, who was ”one of 'em,” informed me that they enjoyed this little outing immensely, just like a picnic, and had a good time. From which it may be inferred that men's ideas of enjoyment are extremely relative. It could not have been in the dodging of guerillas--to that they were accustomed; perhaps it was the little extra ration, or the mystery of the excursion, for they were much puzzled to know what I wanted, why I examined the road and rocks, and all so strangely, and went into the very worst place in all the land to do so. Baldwin Colton himself had been so knocked about during the war, and so starved as a prisoner in Southern hands, that he looked back on a sojourn in that _ergastulum_, Libby Prison, as rather an oasis in his sad experiences. ”It wasn't so bad a place as some, and there was good company, and always _something to eat_.” The optimist of Candide was a Mallock in mourning compared to this.

That night we came to somebody's plantation. I forget his name, but he was a Union man, probably a _very_ recent acquisition, but genial. He had read the _Knickerbocker_, and knew my name well, and took good care of us. In the morning I offered him ten dollars for our night's lodging, which was, in the opinion of my two captains, stupendously liberal, as soldiers never paid. Our host declined it like a Southern planter, on the ground that he never sold his hospitality. So I put the money into the hand of one of his pretty children as a present. But as we rode forth we were called back, and reminded that we had forgotten to pay for the _soldiers_! I gave another five-dollar greenback and rode away disgusted. And at the gate a negro girl begged us to give her a ”dalla”

(dollar) to buy a fish-line. It all came from my foolish offer to pay.

Grat.i.tude is a sense of further benefits to be bestowed.

The place where the oil had been seen was near a conical rocky hill called Grindstone k.n.o.b. We examined carefully and found no trace of it.

The geology of the country was unfavourable, much flint and conglomerate, if I remember, and wanting in the signs of coal, shales, &c., and ”faults” or ravines. I may be quite wrong, but such was my opinion. No one who lived thereabout had ever heard of ”ile.” Once I asked a rustic if any kind of oil was found in the neighbourhood in springs. His reply was, ”What! _ile_ come up outer the ground like water! H---! I never heard of sitch a thing.” _There was no oil_.

At the foot of Grindstone k.n.o.b was a rather neat, small house, white, with green blinds. We were somewhat astonished to learn from a negro boy, who spoke the most astonis.h.i.+ngly bad English, that this was the home of Mas' --- ---. Yes, this was the den of the wolf himself, and I had no doubt that he was not far off. There was a small cotton plantation round about.

We entered, and were received by a good-looking, not unladylike, but rather fierce-eyed young woman and her younger sister. It was Mrs. ---.

The two had been to a lady's seminary in Nashville, and played the piano for us. I felt that we were in a strange situation, and now and then walked to the window and looked out, listening all the time suspiciously to every sound. It was easy enough for Mrs. ---, the brigand's wife, to perceive from my untanned complexion that I had not been in the field, and was manifestly no soldier. ”_You_ look like an officer,” she said to Captain Colton, ”and so does _that_ one, but what is _he_?” meaning me by this last. We had dinner--roast kid--and when we departed I gave the dame five dollars, having the feeling that I could not be indebted to thieves for a dinner.

We had gone but a little distance when we saw two bushwhackers with guns, and gave chase, but they disappeared in the bushes, much to the grief of our men, who would have liked either to shoot them or to bring them in.

Then the corporal told us that while we were at dinner's ”faithful blacks” had informed his men that ”Mas' had been at home ever since Crismas”; that at eleven o'clock every night they a.s.sembled at the house and thence went out marauding and murdering.

I paused, astonished and angry. It was almost certain that the bushwhacker had been during dinner probably in the cellar under our feet.

The guerillas had great fear of our regular soldiers; two of the latter were a match at any time for half-a-dozen of the former, as was proved continually. Should I go back and hang --- up over his own door? I was dying to do it, but we had before us a very long ride through the Cedar Barrens, the sun was sinking in the west, and we had heard news which made it extremely likely that a large band of guerillas would be in the way.

That resolve to go actually saved our lives, for I heard the next day that a hundred and fifty of these free murderers had gone on our road just after us. This fact was at once transferred to the Northern newspapers, that ”on --- a hundred and fifty bushwhackers pa.s.sed over the Bole Jack road.” Which was read by my wife and father, who knew that on that very day I was on that road, to their great apprehension.

I never shall forget the dismal appearance of the Cedar Barrens. The soil was nowhere more than two inches deep, and the trees which covered it by millions had all died as soon as they attained a height of fifteen or twenty feet. Swarms of ill-omened turkey-buzzards were the only living creatures visible ”like foul _lemures_ flitting in the gloom.”

Riding over the battlefield the Coltons and Paxton pointed out many things, for they had all been in it severely. At one place, Major Rosengarten, a brother of my old Paris fellow-student, had had a sabre- fight with a rebel, and they told me how Rosengarten's sword, being one of the kind which was issued by contract in the earlier days of the war, bent and broke like a piece of tin. Hearing a ringing sound Baldwin jumped from his horse, picked up a steel ramrod and gave it to me for a cane.

As we approached Murfreesboro' I met a genial, daring soldier, one Major Hill, whom I had seen before. He had with him a hundred and fifty cavalry. ”Where are you going so late by night?” I said.

He replied, ”I am after that infernal scoundrel, --- ---. My scouts have found out pretty closely his range. I am going to divide my men into tens and scatter them over the country and then close in.”

”Major,” I replied, ”I will tell you just where to lay your hand at once, heavy on him. Do you know Grindstone k.n.o.b and a white house with green windows at its foot?”

”I do.”

”Well, be there at exactly eleven to-night, and you'll get him. I have been there and learned it from the n.i.g.g.e.rs.”

”Well, I declare that you are a good scout, Mr. Leland!” cried the Major in amazement. ”What can I do to thank you?”

”Well, Major Hill,” I said, ”I have one thing to request: that is, if you get ---, don't parole him. _Shoot him at once_; he is a red-handed murderer.”

”I _will_ shoot him,” said the Major, and rode forth into the night with his men. But whether he ever got --- I never knew, though according to the calculations of the Coltons, who were extremely experienced in such matters, ”Ma.s.sa ---” had not more than one chance in a thousand to escape, and Hill was notoriously a good guerilla-hunter and a man of his word.