An Unoficial Patriot Part 16

"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 ma.s.s of matted beard upon its lifeless breast.

CHAPTER XVII.

_"At first happy news came, in gay letters moiled

With 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 fas.h.i.+on 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, G.o.d 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 b.a.l.l.s 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 b.a.l.l.s, 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 G.o.ds! 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 s.h.i.+ngle. 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, G.o.d 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 h.e.l.l, and a vengeance-visiting G.o.d 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 d.a.m.nation, 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 G.o.d, 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, G.o.d 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' n.o.body, 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 h.e.l.l."_

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.