How The West Was Won Part 9

"What will we do? Open a gambling house?"

"A married man should spend his evenings at home," Cleve objected. "How about a music hall? You can sing and dance, anda"" "Nothing doing," she interrupted. "A married woman should spend her evenings with her husband."

Worried, she looked up at him. "But Cleve, how long will twelve hundred dollars last? We can't just sit at home anda"" "Lil, have you seen, really seen San Francisco? It's ugly and small and full of fleas, and it burns down every five minutes, but each time they rebuild it gets bigger and finer. It's alive, Lil, alive and kicking and nothing can stop it! It makes a man want to get into the action, to build something, to start somethinga"a steams.h.i.+p line, a railroad, something that will help that baby city growa"" "On twelve hundred dollars?"

"Men have started on less. Besides, Gabe French is therea"he is operating a freight line to the Nevada mines. He's always liked me, and I think I could buy a working interest.

"As a matter of fact, pa always wanted me to go into the s.h.i.+pping business. We could start with s.h.i.+pping and freight, and put our profits into real estate." "Real estate? In California? Do you think we could make any money that way?"

"Some day somebody will. If we can just hang on long enough ... it's possible."

Part 3a"THE WAR.

Before the War Between the States, the settlers trickled West by hundreds, after it, they went by thousands. It was the Union that finally opened the West, a free, united nation where all men were equal, where each had his right to his own. The open land beckoned, offered the vastest empire man could desire, providing the s.p.a.ce and riches needed for the accomplishment of the nation's manifest destinya

Chapter 12.

Eve Rawlings stood on the wide veranda shading her eyes to look along the road toward town. A rig was coming, but it was still too far away to make out who it was, but these days every rig stirred fear within her. She glanced toward the field where Zeb was plowing, with Jeremiah following behind, planting corn. Her boys worked well together, and she was glad, for they were different in so many respects. Since the war began she had worried, not so much because of anything that had happened, but for fear of what might happen, and had happened in other families.

Right down the road a piece two boys had split, one going off to join the Union forces, the other south to join up with the Confederacy. Families all over Ohio, Illinois, Tennessee, and Kentucky had seen their sons and fathers go opposite ways, or brothers divide their allegiance.

The twenty years during which she and Linus had lived on the place had been happy ones. Looking at her boys plowing the field, she thought back to that terrible day when they landed after the calamity at the fallsa"her father and mother gone, Lilith lost somewhere upstream, and Sam wounded. It had seemed the utmost in despair, and yet from that moment her happiness had begun. True, she had lost her parents, and it was long before she recovered from that blow, but Lilith and Zeke had showed up. She would have known that Lilith, the strongest swimmer among them, would get to sh.o.r.e. And then to top it off, Linus had returned.

Now the rattle of the buggy lifted her eyes to the road again and she saw Peterson driving into the yard, wearing a uniform. The stab of fear was very sharp, and when she glanced toward the boys they had already tied up the team and were running across the furrows toward the yard. "Why, Mr. Peterson!" she said. "Whatever are you doing in uniform?" "Militia's been sworn in, Mrs. Rawlings. I am Corporal Peterson now. *Fraid this is the last time you'll see me for a spell ... Letter herea"all the way from Californy."

"It must be from Lilith." Quickly, she ripped open the letter. "Mr. Peterson ... Corporal ... can you wait just a minute? I may want to answer this one right away."

"I was sort of hopin' Zeb would come with us," Peterson said. "He's about the best shot around herea"most as good as his pa."

"His father went when the first bugle blew. Isn't one Rawlings enough?" Zeb vaulted the split-rail fence and walked up to the porch, grinning at Peterson. "Say, now! You look mighty fittin' in that uniform!" He picked up the gourd dipper and dipped it into the bucket standing in the coolness of the porch. The cold water dripped from the gourd into the bucket as he started to drink.

"Zeb," Eve said, "your Aunt Lilith says there is no war in California, and they don't believe there will be. Business is good, and there are a lot of opportunities for a young man.

"Listen to this: *There's talk of building a railroad east, and with his business connections what they are, Cleve believes he will be in on the ground floor. We would welcome Zeb if he wishes to comea"* " "Ma," Zeb asked suspiciously, "did you write to her about me? Did you?"

"Not exactly, buta""

"Did you?"

"I only told her you didn't like farming any more than your pa did." "Ma," Zeb said persuasively, "you've got a wrong idea about this war. It ain't goin' to be so bad. And you know pa's havin' the time of his lifea"" "Mrs. Rawlings," Peterson interrupted, "I got it from the Captain himselfa"we won't be gone any time at all. Them easterners had trouble at Bull Run, but when us westerners. .h.i.t them Johnny Rebs they'll run like rabbits." "Why?" Eve asked coldly.

"It's simple! Them eastern soldiers are all city boys, ribbon clerks and the like. Us westerners, we cut our eyeteeth on a gun barrel. We'll give them Johnny Rebs what for, now don't you worry!"

"Ma," Zeb said, "pa left it up to you whether I joined up or not, but you know how he really felt."

"Mrs. Rawlings," Peterson argued, "there ain't much glory trompin' behind a plow. I'd sure hate to think I'd missed my chance. Think how it's goin' to be for the boy ... everybody gone but him."

It was no use. From the beginning she had known it was no use. When Linus had gone she had hoped that Zeb would be willing to stay on at home, but deep in her heart she knew such hope was wasted. It was in him to go, and go he would. She shared none of their optimism. She was nothing if not a realist, and she could see clearly, all too clearly what might lie ahead. She had listened to some of the southerners talk, and she knew their fierce pride, their certainty of victory. They were qualities not easily to be given up. "Thank you for waiting, Corporal, I guess there is no hurry about answering this letter. Thank you again."

"You mean I can go?" Zeb asked excitedly.

"There will be things to do, Zeb. We've got to plan."

Peterson winked at Zeb. "So long, Mrs. Rawlings. Be seein' you, Zeb."

Zeb turned quickly and hurried after his mother. "Ma?" "We'll have to get your underwear washed and your socks darned. Do they give you a uniform?"

"I reckon."

"But maybe they won't give you any s.h.i.+rts. Take that one off and I'll wash it.

The other two are clean but they ain't ironed yet."

"Mothera""

She turned quickly, her eyes wide. "Why did you call me that? It's always been ma, before."

"I don't know," he replied seriously; "seemed all of a sudden ma wasn't enough, somehow."

"You'll be wanting to cast some bullets," she said, fighting back the tears. "You an' your pa always favored makin' your own. You'd best cast a lot of them, Zeba"I don't think those Johnny Rebs are any more inclined to run than you'd be. Don't you forget that most of them were raised just like you and Jeremiah.

They'll be good boys, and they'll shoot straight." She must keep busy. That had always been the answer. If she was busy enough she would not have time to think. After they had buried pa and ma down by the rock she had worked hard, worked so hard that Linus had to stop her a time or two, but the work proved a blessing.

She turned to the window and paused for a long minute, looking at the green hills, and up the fine meadow where the cattle grazed. Beyond it was the wood lot where the trees had never been touched. Right at the start Linus had set that piece to one side, so to speak, and would never let anybody touch a stick of it except to gather fallen branches after a storm. That was for wild game, a refuge where not even Linus himself would hunt, a full section of timberland left just as nature intended it, as wild as the first day a white man set foot on the land.

The neighbors thought him foolish, but he would have it so. "It's for the game," he would say; "they need a place in which to breed, a safe place. Besides," he would add, "the country is fillin' up with folks, and soon none of them will know how it was when we first saw it. I think we owe it to the land to keep this piece just like it was."

Had she had the right to take Linus from the wild, free life he lived? And was not her sense of guilt impelling her to let Zeb go off to the wars? Was it not that she felt she had tied one man down to the land, and so must free the other? Linus had not been unhappy, she knew that, and yet how many times had she caught him looking off into distance with that strange, longing look in his eyes? How many times had he gone off into the wilderness among the wild things? And Zeb was like him.

A time or two she had wondered if Linus would ever come back. Like the time he went after the clubfoot bear. That bear was known wherever men gathered, a great old bear, far larger than any seen around that part of the country, and mean. She heard talk of him from the first, and so had Linus. Folks of an evening would set by the fire and talk of the clubfoot bear almost like it was superhuman or something. It came and it killed ... one winter it was their white-face calf. And the following spring it was two pigs. He killed the Hennington boy ... hardly a boy, for he was all of eighteen. That Hennington boy wanted the name for killing that clubfoot bear, and he took after him. It was days before they found him, and it looked plain enough there on the ground ... he had followed the bear and the bear laid for him. Linus had heard Indians talk of bears in the far north, up Alaska way, that would lay for a man, but in the Ohio country it didn't seem right. No Indian would hunt the clubfoot bear, and after he destroyed the Simpson hounds n.o.body wanted any piece of that bear.

Then he killed a colt Linus set store by, and Linus taken down his old rifle. Zeb wanted to go, but Linus would have none of it. He walked away with that springy woodsman's walk of his and it was nigh two months before he came in from the woods.

He was gaunt and rail-thin, his eyes hollow like he'd been spooked, but he was as happy as she'd ever seen him. And he took that clubfoot out of his pack and laid it on the step. That paw looked bigger than any natural bear would be likely to have, and the Indians and settlers came and stood around and stared at it like they couldn't believe their eyes. But pa had trailed the clubfoot bear, trailed him far into the deep woods and killed him. n.o.body ever got all of that story from Linus, but for months he would start suddenly awake from a sound sleep and grab for his rifle, which he kept close by. For Linus it had been a wild and strange thing, that hunt for the clubfoot bear, and toward the end it was a hunt of man for bear and bear for man, and one time he came up on that bear just a-settin' waitin' for him. The bear set there starin' at him, lookin' right into his eyes the way no animal ever does look into a man's eye, and that bear looked into him like he wished to see what manner of man had hunted him so long and so consistent. Even the bear was ganted up, pa said, there at the end.

It was a long time later before he could put lead into him. That time the bear just looked at him, and before pa could unlimber his rifle, why that old bear taken off into the brush, just faded away.

Finally, on a sandy stretch of beach along the lakea"one of those Great Lakes you hear tell ofa"with a raw, cold wind blowing in off the water, they met and settled it between them. That bear tried to lay for pa, but pa had been studying his tricks too long, and he was not following right down the trail, but off to one side.

He and the bear, they had seen each other at the same time, and when pa ups with his rifle, the bear came for him. That clubfoot never had seemed to slow him down none, but pa put a slug into him before the bear got to him. The slug hit hard, but it didn't slow the clubfoot bear, so pa drawed his pistol and fired into his mouth and the bear hit him a swipe that laid pa's shoulder open, then came for him, and pa got another slug into him, and that stopped the bear. Pa out with his knife with his left hand and his tomahawk with his right, and when the bear, stopped by that last bullet, reared up and came for him, pa fetched the bear a clout with that tomahawk and then jumped away. He saw then that a bullet of his had broken the bear's shoulder, but that bear wasn't figuring to run, no more than Linus.

Linus came at him with a knife, because the bear had wound up atop of his rifle, and Linus was bleeding from that laid-open shoulder. Linus got the knife into him, though, and ripped up the bear's jugular, and then he backed off and fell down, all done up and losin' blood, and there they sat, facin' each other on that windy stretch of sand, two old wild ones.

"There at the end," Linus said, "that bear looked almost pleased it was me that done it. We understood each other, him an' me. Had he lived on, some tenderfoot might have shot him accidental, and shamed him in bear heaven." Zeb had grown up on that story, and it was only one of many stories told about Linus Rawlings.

Eve's parents, Zebulon and Rebecca Prescott, who were buried out there in the shadow of the great rock, would have been proud of her boys. She said it to herself, and then frowneda"she was wrong to call them boys, or to even think of them in that way. They were men, and did the work of men. Moreover, reluctant as she might be to see Zeb go, it was time for him to try his strength against the world.

Two days later she watched him trudge away up the road, carpetbag in hand. She had struggled to control herself while Zeb could see her, for he was having a hard time of it, without her tears. After all, Zeb had never been away from home except on short hunting trips with his father. When he at last disappeared around the bend, the tears came.

Jeremiah put his hand on her shoulder. "We'll get along, ma. I'll work hard, and I won't be lookin' over the fence all the time the way Zeb was." There was no criticism in the remark, for the two boys had loved and respected each other. It was only the truth. Jeremiah was much like Rebecca, st.u.r.dy, hard-working, and serious-minded, although not without a touch of poetry in him, too. But his poetry was of the earth, and he loved the good soil and all he could bring from it. He was a man who treated a farm like a mistress, and the farm responded accordingly.

"You go up to the house, son, and start the fire for supper. You go on." He turned away, knowing where she would go now, for Eve Prescott Rawlings turned always along the same path during her moments of trial. She went to stand beside the graves of her parents and the two children she had lost, for these as much as the house up yonder represented her home. They were the graves of her people. Edith lay there, Edith who lived almost seven years and then died of pneumonia; and Samuel, who saw only one Christmas and one New Year's Day, and did not quite reach his first birthday.

Standing alone now beside the graves in the twilight of the evening, she spoke aloud. "What else could I do, pa? He is Linus's son, and somehow he's always seemed more of Linus's blood. Maybe that's why I love him so. But you've got to help me pray, pa ... you've got to help me pray." Captain Linus Rawlings lay face down in the orchard studying the situation before him. The peaches were in bloom, and along the creeks there were thickets of redbud, their darkly handsome branches cl.u.s.tered with magenta blossoms. It was Sunday evening, April 6th, and what he had seen that day he would like to forget, but he knew he would never forget it. Of the two armies who came together near the little church called s.h.i.+loh, eighty per cent were green troops, commanded by officers who were, for the greater part, without battle experience, and committed to the n.o.ble but foolish adage that soldiers should "stand up and fight man-fas.h.i.+on."

The lesson that Was.h.i.+ngton had tried to teach Braddock was still, after one hunderd years, unlearned by the military. And the fault lay on both sides, and with all the commanding generals.

Sherman had informed Grant there were only twenty thousand Rebel soldiers facing him. Actually, there were forty thousand. The untrained, poorly commanded troops had walked into a slaughterhouse.

Perhaps never in the history of the world had there been so many officers a.s.sembled who knew more about the art of war and less about fighting. For there is a difference, and the difference is written in blood. Battles are initiated by generals; they are won by company, platoon, or squad actions, and it is an Alice-in-Wonderland feature of all armies that soldiers are taught hours of meaningless maneuvers on the drill field until they move with beauty and precision ... almost as well as a group of chorus girls. n.o.body ever thinks to teach them to fight. That they must learn in the field, if they survive long enough to learn. Linus had learned and he had survived, but he had learned against the Plains Indians, perhaps the greatest fighting men the world has known.

Now he lay carefully studying the terrain before him. He had been given a mission, and he intended to carry it outa"with as little loss of life as possible.

His company lay scattered among the trees behind him, sixty-six men in all, including a few stragglers from other outfits who had survived the destruction of less ably commanded units. They liked the tall, quiet, former mountain man and they understood his way of fighting.

Throughout the long day, Linus had led his men with care, using every bit of available cover, aimed rifle-fire, and made slow but persistent advance. Occasionally they had dug in to await a more favorable moment to go forward. As a result, their casualties had been low.

His had been one of the detachments that stopped General Cleburne's advance across the c.o.c.klebur meadow when Cleburne lost a third of his brigade in the face of murderous rifle-fire. Zeb had been right in thinking, as Corporal Peterson had, that the superior marksmans.h.i.+p of the western boys would make the difference.

Turning on his elbow, Linus gave the arm-signal that brought up his men, and they came into position by crawling through the gra.s.s, taking no chances. Rising from the gra.s.s he led them now, for time was of the essence, in a long skirmish line across the field and into the trees. The knoll they had been directed to occupy and hold against the coming day lay just before them. Grant was patching up his front line and the knoll was a key point. Linus moved warily. The knoll was believed to be unoccupied, but he was not one to take chances.

What led the enemy to charge, he never knew, but suddenly they came out of the trees, running fast, bayonets held low down. They didn't come yelling, but came with no sound but the swish of their feet in the gra.s.s. Had the charge come a few minutes later, with the distance much less, it could have meant complete destruction for Linus' men. As it was, there was time. Dropping to one knee, Linus shouted, "Fire at will!" And even as his voice broke from his throat he laid his pistol on the chest of a big soldier with a shock of corn-yellow hair, and squeezed off his shot. The man toppled forward to his knees on the slope, then over on his face.

Around Linus all his men were firing up the slope into the charging men, coolly and with precision and with fearful destruction. Then the charging ranks, ripped by the red tongues of rifle-fire, closed with his own men, and for brief minutes there was a fierce, silent, deadly struggle among the soft beauty of the peach blossoms. Men fell, shedding the bright crimson of their blood upon the gra.s.s under the trees, their bodies lying like thick gray compost upon the ground. Here and there a rudely shaken tree dropped its pink petals on the fallen men.

Above them the sky was painted scarlet and rose with the sun's last rays, and around them shadows huddled under the trees, or reached out to touch the dying men with tentative fingers.

Linus fired, then fired again. A soldier fired at him and missed, then charged with the bayonet. From somewhere off to one side a bullet struck Linus, and he felt its impact but took it standing. The soldier with the bayonet came on, and Linus fired. He saw the man's chest suddenly blossom with crimson, and as he fell, the charging soldier threw his rifle like a spear. The hard-thrown bayonet took Linus full in the chest and went in to the guard; then the heavy b.u.t.t of the rifle fell to the ground, ripping Linus' chest as it fell.

Linus caught hold of a tree branch and turned to Sergeant Kelly. "Occupy the knoll, Sergeant. Hold it until relieved."

"Captain, you ... you ..."

"Tell my wife ... tell Eve ..." His voice weakened and died, and he toppled over to one side, the bayonet still clinging to his chest by just the tip. He could smell the warm earth, the gra.s.s, and somewhere far off he heard a voice calling, a voice like Eve's, calling him to supper. He clutched the gra.s.s with his fingers and dug deep. Distantly, somebody seemed to say, "You're going to see the varmint, Linus. The varmint!" Faces ... so many faces. He felt hands turning him onto his back. A voice said, "He's hard hit."

"Bridger," his voice rang out, loud and clear, "you're a liar. I'll be up ..." His voice trailed off into a mumble, while the sergeant crouched beside him under the redbud. "That's prime fur," Linns said, almost casually; then plaintively, "Eve? ... Eve?"

A soldier knelt beside the sergeant. "What's he sayin'?"

"Callin' on Eve. His wife more'n likely."

"Sometimes it ain't their wives they call on," the soldier said cynically.

Linus opened his eyes and saw clearly. "Sergeant! The Hill!" Then more calmly: "You must occupy the hill, Sergeant."

"Yes, sir!" Kelly sprang to his feet and started on, calling to the men. Linus lay quietly upon the gra.s.s, fully conscious. His momentary delirium had pa.s.sed. He looked up at the sky where clouds floated with the last touch of sunset upon them, and then he seemed to fall, down, down, down into a black, swirling pit, with water at the bottom.

"I've seen the varmint," he said aloud. "I've seen the varmint!" Over him then, for a brief while, there loomed a great shadow. It might have been the shadow of a tree, but had there been eyes to see, it might have looked like a huge bear, a bear that looked down upon him with a curious understanding, for death comes to the hunter as well as the hunted. Above him, and not two hundred yards away, Sergeant Kelly clung to the earth. He had occupied the hill. The men were arranged in a careful perimeter of defense, and each had dug a shallow trench in which to shelter himself. The sergeant was worried ... had he done everything he could? What else might Linus have done? He was not worried about his men; he was worried about himself, for there is no burden like the burden of command.

By candle- and lantern-light in s.h.i.+loh Meeting House the surgeons worked. About them lay the wounded, the dying, and the dead, helter-skelter, on the floor, on cots, and in the pews themselves. Men cried out in the half-light that reeked of chloroform.

The surgeons worked with quiet desperation, saving a life here, seeing one pa.s.s there, saving an arm or a leg, or amputating one. It was b.l.o.o.d.y, it was awful, and it was filled with shuddering cries of pain and the anguished sobs of men who would never walk again, or see.

Litter-bearers dumped the body of Linus Rawlings upon one of the b.l.o.o.d.y tables.

The surgeon lifted an eyelid and shook his head. "You wasted your time, boys." The stretcher-bearers rolled the body from the table and immediately another was put in its place.

Throughout the night the lantern-bearers searched the field of s.h.i.+loh for the dead, sifting the chaff of ruined bodies for those who might yet live, or those whom it was possible to identify. Some lay sprawled grotesquely upon the gra.s.s, others were heaped together like debris washed upon some strange beach. Among the dead the lantern-bearers prowled and peered, each a dark Diogenes searching with his lantern among many now honest men. Here and there they recovered valuables, letters, occasional weapons capable of further use, or other prized possessions. Some of these would be sent home to relatives, some kept by the finders.

Sometimes the searchers called out as they wandered among the human flotsam. "Anybody here from the 12th Michigan? The 36th Indiana? Who's from Dirge's Sharpshooters? 16th Wisconsin, answer here!" Their chants became a weird litany to the dead, but one by one the lanterns vanished as the searchers grew weary of the thankless task.

Yet the voices did not go entirely unheard. Zeb Rawlings heard them, and slowly, using his one good arm, be pushed himself into a sitting position. For a moment he stared about in confusion. It was dark and cold, and something was wrong with his arm or his shoulder.

He felt for his rifle but it was missing. All he had left was his bayonet and his canteen. Catching hold of a tree, he pulled himself to his feet, watching the lantern-bearers weaving their macabre ballet among the dead. He heard their questing voices, and occasionally a faint reply. Nearby a plaintive voice cried out in the darkness: "Water! Water! Will somebody give me water?" The voice was close by, the lanterns far off. Stumbling, Zeb went to the wounded man and knelt beside him. "Here y'are soldier. It ain't much, but you're welcome."

The man drank in eager gulps, emptying the canteen. "I sure thank y'," he gasped hoa.r.s.ely. "Hate to take your last drop, but that there was mighty fine." "I'll send somebody," Zeb promised. He moved off across the field toward a group of men who were digging a ma.s.s grave. He could hear the sound of their shovels as he approached, and he saw two stretcher-bearers lowering the body of a man to the ground near the edge of the grave. He told them of the wounded man. As they turned away, he started off, and the light from their lantern fell across the face of the dead man on whom Zeb had already turned his back. It was his father. It was Linus Rawlings.

Chapter 13.

Carrying his empty canteen, Zeb Rawlings made his way through the trees. The smell of death mingled with the scent of peach blossoms and the cool dampness of night.