Part 60 (1/2)
”Dat you shall, Honey. De name er Gawd, ter see Miss Jennie Barton settin' here in dis dirty road!”
He helped them climb to seats on the top of his load. Jennie found a berth between a flour barrel and mattress, while Mandy sat astride of an enormous bundle of bed clothes. Lucy scrambled up beside the driver.
The hot sun was pouring its fierce rays down without mercy. The old negro pulled a faded umbrella from beneath his seat, raised it, and handed it to Jennie with a grand bow.
”Thank you, uncle. You certainly are good to us!”
”Ya.s.sam--ya.s.sam--I wish I could do mo', honey chile. De ve'y idee er dem slue-footed Yankees er sh.e.l.lin' our town an' scerin' all our ladies ter death. Dey gwine ter pay fur all dis 'fore dey git through.”
Three miles out they began to overtake the main body of the fugitives who escaped at the first mad rush. Hundreds of bedraggled women and children were toiling along the dust-covered road in the blistering sun, some bare-headed, some with hats on, some with street clothes, others with their morning wrappers just as they had fled from their unfinished breakfast.
Little girls of eight and ten and twelve were wandering along through the suffocating dust alone.
Jennie called to one she knew:
”Where's your mother, child?”
The girl shook her dust-powdered head.
”I don't know, m'am.”
”Where are you going?”
”To walk on till I find her.”
Her mother was wandering with distracted cries among the crowds a mile in the rear looking for a nursing baby she had lost in the excitement.
Jennie's eyes kindled at the sight of faithful negroes everywhere lugging the treasures of their mistresses. She began asking them what they were carrying just to hear the answer that always came with a touch of loyal pride.
”Dese is my missy's clothes! I sho weren't gwine let dem Yankees steal dem!”
”Didn't you save any of your own things?”
”Didn't have time ter git mine!”
They came to a guerilla camp. Men and horses were resting on either side of the road. Some of them were carrying water to their horses or to the women who cooked about their camp fires. The scene looked like a monster barbecue. These irregular troops of the South were friends in time of need to-day.
They crowded the road, asking for news and commenting freely on the sh.e.l.ling of the city.
A rough-looking fellow pushed his way to Jennie's cart.
”When did they begin firin'?”
”Just after breakfast.”
Yesterday she would have resented the familiar tones in which this uncouth illiterate countryman spoke without the formality of an introduction. In this hour of common peril he was a Knight entering the lists wearing her colors.
He didn't mince words in expressing his opinions.
”It's your own fault if you've saved nothing. The people in Baton Rouge must have been d.a.m.ned fools not to know trouble wuz comin' with them gunboats lyin' thar with their big-mouthed cannon gapin' right into the streets. If the men had had any sense women wouldn't a been drove into the woods like this--”
”But they had no warning. They began to sh.e.l.l us without a minute's notice--”