Kitabı oku: «Rodney The Partisan», sayfa 17

CHAPTER XVII
RODNEY MEETS A FRIEND

Sergeant Graham first read aloud the account of the second day's fighting at Pittsburg Landing; but of course the fact that Beauregard had sustained a crushing defeat and been forced to retire from Corinth, was carefully concealed. It was to be expected, the paper said, that twenty-five thousand fresh men would turn the tide of battle in favor of the enemy, but even against these overwhelming odds the Confederates had held their own until noon, and then left the field in good order.

"I don't see anything to feel bad over in that account," said Rodney, whose war-like spirit arose every time he heard a glowing story of a fight. "We knew when we went into this thing that the Yankees could raise more men than we could, and we expected to fight against big odds. Now for the conscripts," and when Rodney said this, he thought of Tom Randolph, and hoped that he would be the first Mooreville citizen to "draw a prize."

He thought he could imagine how Tom would look and feel after he had made a campaign with a foot or more of mud under his feet, dripping storm-clouds over his head and not so much as a crumb of corn bread in his haversack, and laughed silently as he pictured him at a smoking camp-fire with a lot of veterans "poking fun" at him. His own term of service would soon expire, and he hoped he should reach home in time to see Tom march out with the first squad of conscripts that left Mooreville; but as Dick proceeded to read the abstract of the Act as it appeared in the paper, all the while pushing the sheet farther and farther from him as his amazement and anger increased, Rodney found that the situation was not quite so amusing as he thought, and that he, Rodney Gray, was in a worse box than his friend, Tom Randolph. It was the first general conscription law of the Confederacy, and "it withdrew every non-exempt citizen, between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five, from State control, and placed him absolutely at the disposal of the President during the war." When Dick had read this far he looked at his comrades to see what they thought of it.

"Why, it's – it's – the Czar of Russia couldn't do worse," exclaimed the first one who recovered control of his tongue. "It's a fraud – a despotic act. Where are our State Rights now, I should like to know?"

"Go on," said Captain Jones, who stood on the outskirts of the group but within hearing distance. "There's worse to come."

Dick Graham, who did not see how anything could be worse, went on with his reading and found that the Act "annulled all contracts made with volunteers for short terms, holding them to service for two years additional, should the war continue so long; and all twelve months' recruits, below eighteen and over thirty-five years, who would otherwise have been exempted by this law, were to be retained in service for ninety days after their term expired."

"Hey – youp!" yelled Dick, dancing about like one demented. "Our own government is ten times worse than the one we are fighting against, and every one of us was a fool for ever putting on a gray jacket. Why didn't they tell us all this in the first place, so that we might know what there was before us? It's a fraud and a cheat and a swindle and a – and a – what are you about?" he added, turning almost fiercely upon his captain, who elbowed his way through the excited group and tried to take the paper from his hand. "I'll not obey the orders of the Richmond government, and that's all there is about it."

"I was going to direct your attention to something else," replied the captain, paying no heed to the sergeant's rudeness. "But since you are so nearly beside yourself I don't suppose you can read it, and so I had better tell you what it is. You say you will not obey the orders of the Richmond government?"

"That is what I said, and I will stick to it," exclaimed Dick. "They have no right – "

"Hold on a bit," the captain interposed.

"They may not have the right but they have the power, and you will have to give in. They offer you inducements to re-enlist for two years. You will be regarded as volunteers, and be allowed the privilege of changing your officers and electing new ones."

This was a big inducement indeed. The men laughed derisively when they heard it.

"If you don't volunteer, but insist on leaving the army when your term of service expires, you will never get out of the camp," continued the captain. "You will be conscripted."

"I don't care if I am," answered Dick, indignantly. "I'll not do duty."

"Then you will be treated as a mutineer and run the risk of being shot without the benefit of a drum-head court-martial," said the captain; whereupon the men backed off, thrust their hands into their pockets and looked at him and at one another. "I tell you, boys, this is no time for foolishness," the captain went on, earnestly. "Ever since Bull Run the Northern people have been showing the mettle that's in them. That defeat got their blood up and they mean business. They have more volunteers than they want. Their armies are growing stronger every day, while ours are growing weaker every hour. To be honest, there isn't half the patriotism now there was among us when these troubles first begun. Desertions are alarmingly frequent, and voluntary enlistments are almost entirely suspended. We must have men to fight our battles, or else surrender our cherished liberties to such Hessians and Tories as Curtis brought against us at Pea Ridge."

"And whipped us with," added one of the men; and the captain couldn't contradict him, for it was the truth. He could only look at him reproachfully.

"'Is Sparta dead in your veins?'" exclaimed the captain, quoting from the speech of Spartacus to his fellow gladiators. "Are you willing to give up whipped and permit a lot of Regicides and Roundheads to put their feet on your necks?"

Taking this for his text the officer spoke earnestly for ten minutes, drawing largely from the fiery editorials of the Southern papers, which he had read so often that he had them by heart, and trying his best to infuse a little of his own spirit into the angry, scowling men who had crowded around him, but without any very flattering success. There was but one thought in their minds – they had been duped by the Richmond government, which had so suddenly developed into a despotism that it was plain the machinery for it had been prepared long before. They could not go home even for a short time to visit their friends after their term of service had expired, and it is no wonder that they felt sore over it. Seeing that he could not arouse their patriotism, the captain next tried to arouse their combativeness.

"On the same day that the battle of Shiloh was decided against us, there was another struggle settled a hundred miles nearer to us," said he. "That too went against us. Island No. 10, the stronghold that was to have kept the enemy from going down the Mississippi, has fallen, and the way is open to Memphis."

"But the Yankees will never get there," exclaimed Rodney. "When I came up the river on the Mollie Able, I heard a man say we had a fleet building there that would eventually take Cairo and St. Louis too."

"I certainly hope he was right, but things don't seem to point that way now," replied the captain.

"That is good news for us in one respect," Dick Graham remarked. "New Madrid must have fallen too, and if that is the case, we'll not be ordered there. It's too late. We'll stay in our own State."

The captain shook his head, and his men knew by the expression on his face that he had something yet to tell them.

"There's where you are wrong," said he. "We are going to Memphis as quick as we can get there, and from Memphis we shall go to Corinth to join the army under Beauregard. I am sorry you boys feel so about it, but I really don't see how you are going to help yourselves. Now brace up and do your duty like men, as you always have done it. I don't want to see any of you get into trouble, but you certainly will if you kick over the traces."

This last announcement was altogether too much for the men, who turned away in a body, muttering the heaviest kind of adjectives, "not loud but deep." When the two boys were left alone with the captain the latter inquired:

"How old are you?"

"Seventeen," growled Rodney.

"Well, you will have to stay in ninety days after your term expires.

Will that make you eighteen?"

"No, it wouldn't; and if it did they would be careful not to say so."

"Then I don't see what reason you have to get huffy over a thing that can't be helped," continued the officer. "We must have men, and if they will not come in willingly, they must be dragged in. We can't be subdued; we never will consent to be slaves. But you two will get out all right."

"We knew it all the while; at least I thought of it," replied Dick, "but I didn't want to mention it while the rest of the boys were around. They are mad already, and it might make them worse to know that we two are better off than they are."

"But I want to tell you that you will make a big mistake if you accept your discharges," the captain went on to say. "You ought by all means to stay in until this thing is settled and the invaders driven from our soil. You'll wish you had when you see the boys come home covered with glory. And then think of the possibilities before you! You are bound to be promoted, and that rapidly. If I had your military education I would not be satisfied with anything short of a colonelcy."

"Well, you may have it, and since you want it, I hope you will get it; but I wouldn't accept it if it were offered to me," answered Dick, turning on his heel. "I'll not serve under such a fraud of a government as this has turned out to be a day longer than I can help. I'll take my discharge as soon as they will condescend to give it to me, and then they can hunt somebody to fill my place. I'll never volunteer again, and sooner than be conscripted I'll take to the woods."

"Now, sergeant, you know you wouldn't do any such thing," said the captain.

"Yes, I would," Dick insisted. "There is a principle at the bottom of this whole thing that is most contemptible; but what more could you expect of men who induced us to enlist by holding out the promise of an easy victory? 'The North won't fight!' This looks like it. We're whipped already."

These were the sentiments of thousands of men who wore gray jackets in the beginning of 1862, but it wasn't every one who dared express them as boldly as Dick Graham did, nor was it every officer who would have listened as quietly as did Captain Jones. Everything went to show that the officers had been drilled in the parts they were expected to perform long before the men dreamed that such a thing as a Conscription Act was thought of; for, as a rule, all discussion regarding the policy of the Richmond government was "choked off" with a strong hand. In some armies, Bragg's especially, the men were treated "worse than their niggers ever were." They dared not speak above a whisper for fear of being shoved into the guard-house; and "when some regiments hesitated to avail themselves of this permission (to volunteer) they were treated as seditious, and the most refractory soldiers, on the point of being shot, only saved their lives by the prompt signature of their comrades to the compact of a new enlistment." Things were not quite as bad as this in Price's army, but still Captain Jones thought it best to tell his men, especially the out-spoken Dick Graham, that they had better be a little more guarded in their language, unless they were well acquainted with those to whom they were talking. They went to Memphis, as the captain said they would, marching over a horrible road and leaving some of their artillery stuck in the mud at Desarc on White River, and from Memphis they went to Corinth forty miles farther on, packed in box cars like sheep, and on top like so much useless rubbish. Their train was rushed through at such a rate of speed that the men on top shouted to the engineer:

"Go it. Let out two or three more sections of that throttle. Run us off into the ditch and kill us if you want to. There are plenty more men where we came from."

Rodney Gray afterward declared that he had never seen a grander sight than Beauregard's camp presented when the troops from the West marched through it, greeted everywhere by the most vociferous cheering, to take their positions on the right. Their arrival brought the strength of the army up to more than a hundred thousand men, and, somewhat to their surprise, they were introduced to their new comrades as "Invincibles." At any rate that was what General Bragg called them in an address which he issued to his soldiers a few days afterward:

"The slight reverses we have met on the sea-board have worked us good as well as evil," was what he said in the vain hope of blinding his troops to the real magnitude of the disaster that had recently befallen the Confederacy. "The brave troops so long retained there have hastened to swell your numbers, while the gallant Van Dorn and invincible Price, with the ever-successful Army of the West, are now in your midst, with numbers almost equaling the Army of Shiloh."

The "slight reverses" to which the general so gingerly referred were the passage of Forts Jackson and St. Philip by Farragut's fleet, the annihilation of the Confederate gunboats and the capture of New Orleans; and these "slight reverses" were almost immediately followed by the defeat of the gunboats that had been building at Memphis, and of which the Confederates expected such great things. But the rank and file of the army were not so easily deceived. They knew well enough that the accounts that came to them through the papers were "doctored" on purpose for them, and were fully sensible of the fact that the loss of these important points, Memphis and New Orleans, were disasters most discouraging. When they were in the presence of those to whom they knew they could speak freely, they sneered at the efforts made by their superiors to belittle the Union victories, and laughed to scorn Mayor Monroe and the "city fathers" for the attitude they had seen fit to assume while Farragut's powerful fleet held the Crescent city under its guns. If the pompous little mayor, by folding his arms and standing in front of that loaded howitzer when the marines came ashore to hoist the Stars and Stripes over the Custom House, desired to show the people of New Orleans and the country at large what a brave man he was, he failed of his object, for the men who had faced cannon on the field of battle had nothing but contempt for him and his antics.

"He has made himself a laughing-stock for all time to come," was what Rodney Gray thought about it. "That was all done for effect, for there was not the slightest danger that the Yankees would fire that howitzer at him while he was going through his monkey-shines. If he is such an awful brave man, why didn't he follow that naval officer to the roof of the Custom House and jerk the Union flag down the minute it was hauled up?"

"Or why doesn't he shoulder a musket and fall in with us?" chimed in Dick. "One short campaign through Missouri mud would take some of that nonsense out of him."

There were a good many in the army who thought that the constant maneuvering and skirmishing that followed during the next few weeks were not kept up because a great battle was expected, but for the purpose of giving the men so much to do that they could not get together and talk over the discouraging news they had recently heard. There was one engagement fought, that of Farmington, which resulted in a victory for the Confederates, and taught them at the same time that they were mistaken in supposing that our troops would not venture so far into the country that they would be out of the reach of help from the gunboats, which had rendered them such important service at the battle of Pittsburg Landing. Of course Rodney and Dick marched and skirmished and fought with the rest, but they didn't care much whether they whipped or got whipped, for the feelings that took them away from home and friends and into the army, had long since given place to others of an entirely different character. They didn't care as much for State Rights and Southern independence as they did once, and if they ever got home again the Richmond government might go to smash for all they could do to save it. Two questions engrossed their minds, and formed the principal subjects of their conversation: Would they be permitted to leave the service when the year for which they enlisted expired; and if so, how was Dick Graham going to get across the river into Missouri now that Memphis had fallen, and the Mississippi as far down as Vicksburg was in possession of the Federals?

In regard to the first question – there was one thing which the boys were afraid would work against them. While nearly all the line officers of the regiment remained with them, the field officers who had come with them from the West had disappeared, some being promoted, some discharged and others being sent to the hospital, new ones had taken their places and a new staff had been appointed.

"And a lovely staff it is," said Dick, expressing the sentiments of every man in his company. "I can see now why that Conscription Act was passed. It was to make room for a lot of government pets, who are too fine to go into the ranks, but who are allowed to come here and shove out veterans when they cannot tell the difference between 'countermarch by file right' and 'right by twos.' Our new colonel doesn't know who we are or what we have done, and cares less; and when we go to him for our discharges, he will throw so much red-tape in our way that we can't get out. That's what I am afraid of."

As to the other question – how Dick Graham was to get over the river – that was something that could be settled when they had their discharges in their pockets. First and foremost Dick would go home with Rodney; and after he had taken a good long rest, and learned all about the means of communication between the two shores (they were positive there must be some regular means of communication, because Dick had received two letters from home since he had joined the Army of the Center), Rodney would take his chances of seeing him safely across the river. But their discharges must be their first care, and they came much easier than they dared hope for. One day Rodney was detailed to act as guard at brigade headquarters, and the first officer to whom he presented arms was one whose face was strangely familiar to him. It was his new brigade commander, and a wild hope sprung up in Rodney's breast. The energetic, soldier-like manner in which he handled his piece attracted the notice of the general, who seemed to be in good humor, and who unbent from his dignity long enough to remark:

"You have been well drilled, sentry."

"Yes, sir; at Barrington Military Academy," replied Rodney, with a good deal of emphasis on the last words.

This had just the effect the boy meant it should have. The general stopped and looked curiously at him, and Rodney, instead of keeping his eyes "straight to the front and striking the ground at the distance of fifteen paces," returned his superior's gaze with interest.

"Haven't I seen you before?" the latter asked at length.

"Yes, sir; aboard the steamer Mollie Able, going up the river a year ago," answered Rodney. "You were Captain Howard then."

The boy had no business to say all this, and no one in the army knew it better than he did. It was his place to wait and be questioned; but he couldn't do it. There was too much at stake – his discharge and Dick's. The general did riot appear to notice this breach of military etiquette. On the contrary he smiled and said, pleasantly:

"I remember you perfectly. You were on your way to join Price, and your presence here proves that you found him. When you are relieved I want to see you."

"Very good, sir," replied Rodney, bringing his piece to a shoulder and resuming his walk. "If that man's word is worth anything," he added, mentally, when the general disappeared in his tent, "Dick Graham and I will be free men when our year and three months are up, and you just say that much to your folks and tell 'em it's confidential. He as good as said that he would do something for me if he could, and now I will try him on; but there's one thing I'll not promise to do: I won't re-enlist until I get a good ready, and if I can help myself, that time will never come."

Rodney walked his beat as if he were treading on air, and wished his friend Dick would happen along about the time he was relieved, so that he might tell him that he believed he had found a powerful friend in their new brigade commander. At the end of two hours, having been relieved from post and obtained the necessary permission from the officer of the guard, Rodney presented himself at the door of General Howard's tent, and sent his name in by the orderly.