The Short Line War Part 1

The Short Line War.

by Merwin-Webster.

CHAPTER I

JIM WEEKS

James Weeks came of a fighting stock.

His great-grandfather, Ashbel Weeks, was born in Connecticut in 1748; he migrated to New York in '70, and settled among the Oneida Indians on the Upper Mohawk. It was the kind of life he was built for; he sniffed at danger like a young horse catching a breath off the meadows. He did not take the war fever until St. Leger came up the valley, when he fought beside Herkimer in the ambush on Oriskany Creek. He joined the army of the North, and remained with it through the long three years that ended at Yorktown; then he married, and returned to his home among the half-civilized Oneidas.

His oldest son, Jonathan, was born in '90. He grew like his father in physique and temperament, and his migrating disposition led him to Kentucky. The commercial instinct, which had never appeared in his father, was strong in him, so that he turned naturally to trading. He began in a small way, but he succeeded at it, and ama.s.sed what was then considered a large fortune.

In 1823 he moved to Louisville, and interested himself in promoting the steamboat traffic on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. As the business developed, Jonathan Weeks's fortune grew with it. His only son, who was born in 1815, was sent to Harvard; he spent a very merry four years there, and a good deal of money. He fell in love in the meantime, and married immediately after his graduation. Not many months after his marriage he was killed by the accidental discharge of a rifle, and, shortly after this, his widow died in giving birth to a son.

The care of the child devolved entirely upon Jonathan, the grandfather. He a.s.sumed it gladly, even eagerly, and his whole existence soon centred about the boy, and James--for so they had named him--became more to him than his son had ever been. It grew evident that he would have the Weeks build, and, by the time he was fifteen, he was as lean, big-boned, awkward a hobbledehoy as the old man could wish. His grandfather's wealth did not spoil him in the least; he was the kind of a boy it would have been difficult to spoil.

He had no fondness for books, but it is to be doubted if that was much of a grief to his grandfather. He was good at mathematics,--he used to work out problems for fun,--and an excellent memory for certain kinds of details enabled him to master geography without difficulty. The great pa.s.sion of his boyhood was for the big, roaring, pounding steamboats that went down to New Orleans. His ambition, like that of nearly every boy who lived in sight of those packets, was to be a river pilot, and he was nearing his majority before he outgrew it.

He was twenty-two years old when he fell in love with Ethel Harvey. She was nineteen when she came home from the Eastern school where she had spent the past five years, and she burst upon Jim in the first glory of her womanhood. When she had grown an old woman the young girls still envied her beauty, and wondered what it must have been in its first bloom.

Small wonder that Jim fell in love with her; it was inevitable.

He first saw her, after her return, on a bright June morning as he was strolling down the path from his grandfather's house to the street. She was riding her big bay mare at a smart gallop, but she pulled up short at sight of him, and drawing off a riding gauntlet held out her hand. From that moment Jim loved her. The old man was coming down the path, but seeing them there together, he paused, for they made a striking picture.

Her little silk hat sat daintily on her hair, which would be rebellious and fluffy; the dark green riding habit with its tight sleeves revealed the perfect lines of her lithe figure, which swayed gracefully as the mare pawed and backed and plunged, impatient for the morning gallop. She seemed quite indifferent to the protests of the big brute, and talked merrily to Jim, who stood looking up at her in bewildered admiration. At last she shook hands again and rode away, and Jonathan Weeks walked back into the house with a satisfied smile. "They'll do," he said.

It looked as though they would. Through the short happy weeks that followed, Ethel did not ride alone. Together they explored the country lanes or left them for a dash straight across the fields, taking anything that chanced to be in the way. In their impromptu races, which were frequent, Ethel almost always won; for racer though he was, Jim's sorrel found the two hundred and eight pounds he carried too much of a handicap.

So the days went by, and though nothing was said about it, they talked to each other, and thought of each other, as lovers do.

But all the while there was growing in Ethel's mind an intuition that something was wrong. She had not an a.n.a.lytical mind, but she became convinced that though she might learn to understand Jim, he could never understand her. It was not only that she was the first woman who had come into his life, though that had much to do with it. But he was a man without much instinct or imagination; he took everything seriously and literally, he could not understand a whim. And when she saw how her pretty feminine inconsistencies puzzled him, and how he failed to understand the whimsical, b.u.t.terfly fancies she confided to him, she would cry with vexation, and think she hated him; but then the knightly devotion of his big heart would win her back again, and her tears would cease to burn her cheeks, and she would tell herself how unworthy she was of the love of a man like that. But the trouble was still there; Ethel grew sad, and Jim, more than ever, failed to understand. The old man watched, but said nothing.

One evening Jim took her out on the river. It was the summer of '61, when the North was learning how bitter was the task it had to accomplish.

Kentucky was disputed ground and feeling ran high there; little else was thought of. Jim had been talking to her for some time on this all-absorbing topic while she sat silent in the stern, her hand trailing in the water. Finally he asked why she was so quiet.

"I think this war is very stupid," she said. "Let's talk about"--here she paused and her eyes followed the big night boat which was churning its way down the river--"about paddle-wheels, or port lights, or something."

Jim said nothing; he had nothing to say. She went on:--

"Don't you think it is tiresome to always mean what you say? I hate to tell the truth. Anybody can do that."

"I thought," said Jim, "that you believed in sincerity."

"Oh, of course I do," she exclaimed impatiently, and again Jim was silent.

The next day he took her for a drive and it was then that the end came.

They had been having a glorious time, for the rapid motion and the bright suns.h.i.+ne had driven away her mood of the night before and she was perfectly happy; Jim was happy in her happiness. The half-broken colts were fairly steady and he let her drive them and turned in his seat so that he could watch her. As he looked at her there, her head erect, her elbows squared, her bright eyes looking straight out ahead, Jim fell deeper than ever in love with her. The colts felt a new and unrestraining hand on the reins, and the pace increased rapidly. Jim noted it.

"You'd better pull up a little," he said. "They'll be getting away from you."

"I love to go this way," she replied, and over the reins she told the colts the same thing, in a language they understood. Suddenly one of them broke, and in a second both were running.

"Pull 'em in," said Jim, sharply. "Here--give me the reins."

"I can hold them," she protested wilfully.

Then, without hesitation and with perfectly unconscious brutality, Jim tore the reins out of her hands, and addressed himself to the task of quieting the horses.

It was not easy, but he was cool and strong, and the horses knew he was their master; nevertheless it was several minutes before he had them on their legs again. During that time neither had spoken; then Jim waited for her to break the silence. He was somewhat vexed, for he thought she had deliberately exposed herself to an unnecessary peril. But she said nothing and they finished their drive in silence.

At her door he sprang out to help her to alight, but she ignored his offered aid. Though she turned away he saw that there were tears in her eyes.

"Ethel," he said softly, but she faced him in a flash of anger.

"Don't speak to me. Oh--how I hate you!"

Jim seemed suddenly to grow bigger. "Will you please tell me if you mean that?" he said slowly.

"I mean just that," she answered. "I--I hate you." She stood still a moment; then she seemed to choke, and turning, fled into the house.

To Jim's mind that was the end of it. She had told him that she hated him.

The fact that there had been a catch in her voice as she said it weighed not at all with him; that was an unknown language. So he took her literally and exactly and went away by himself to think it over.

He was late for dinner that night, and when he came in his grandfather was pacing the dining room. But Jim wasted no words in explanation.

"Grandfather," he said, "I think if you won't need me for a while I'll enlist to-morrow."

"I can get along all right," said the old man, "but I'm sorry you're going."

The older man was looking at the younger one narrowly. Suddenly and bluntly he asked:--

"Is anything the matter with you and Ethel Harvey?"

Jim nodded, and without further invitation or questioning he related the whole incident. "That's all there is to it," he concluded. "The team had bolted and she wouldn't give me the reins; so I took them away from her and pulled in the horses. There was nothing else to do."

"And then she said she hated you," added Jonathan, musingly. "I reckon she hasn't much sense."

"It ain't that," Jim answered quickly. "She's got sense enough. The trouble with her is she's too d.a.m.ned plucky."

A few days later he was a private in the Nineteenth Indiana Volunteers. He made a good soldier, for not only did he love danger as had his great-grandfather before him, but he had nerves which months of inaction could not set jangling, and a const.i.tution which hards.h.i.+p and privation could not undermine.

The keenest delight he had ever known came with his first experience under fire. He felt his breath coming in long deep inhalations; he could think faster and more clearly than at other times, and he knew that his hands were steady and his aim was good. Somehow it seemed that years of life were crowded into those few minutes, and he retired reluctantly when the order came.

His regiment was in the Army of the Potomac, and the story of its waiting and blundering and magnificent fighting need not be told again in these pages. Jim was one of thousands of brave, intelligent fighters who did not rise to the command of a division or even of a regiment. He was a lieutenant in Company E when the Nineteenth marched down the Emmittsburg Pike, through Gettysburg and out to the ridge beyond, to hold it until reenforcements should come.

They fought there during four long hours, until the thin line of blue could hold no longer, and gray ranks under Ewell and Fender had enveloped both flanks. Then sullenly they came back through the town, still firing defiantly, and cursing the help that had not come. It was during this retreat that Jim was. .h.i.t, but he did not drop. Somehow--though as in a dream--he kept with his regiment, and it was not until they were rallied in the cemetery on the other side of the town that he pitched forward and lay quite still.

Everybody knows how the Eleventh Corps held the cemetery through the two b.l.o.o.d.y days that followed. But Jim was unconscious of it all, for he lay on a cot in the Sanitary Commission tent, raving in delirium. And the surgeons and nurses looked at him gravely and wondered with every hour why he did not die.

But, as one of his comrades had said, "it took a lot of pounding to lick Jim Weeks," and in a surprisingly short time he was strong enough to be taken home.