Kitabı oku: «Si Klegg, Book 4», sayfa 13

CHAPTER XIX. TEDIOUS CONVALESCENCE

THE DEACON COMMITS A CRIME AGAINST HIS CONSCIENCE

"YOU are the father of that boy in the far end of the tent," said the Surgeon coming up to the Deacon, who had stepped outside of the tent to get an opportunity to think clearly. "I'm very glad you have come, for his life hangs by a thread. That thread is his pluck, aided by a superb constitution. Most men would have died on the field from such a wound. Medicine can do but little for him; careful nursing much more; but his own will and your presence and encouragement will do far more than either."

"How about Shorty?" inquired the Deacon.

"Shorty's all right if he don't get a setback. The danger from the blow on his head is pretty near past, if something don't come in to make further complications. He has been pulled down pretty badly by the low fever which has been epidemic here since we have settled down in camp, but he seems to be coming out from it all right."

"I've come down here to do all that's possible for these two boys. Now, how kin I best do it?" asked the Deacon.

"You can do good by helping nurse them. You could do much more good if there was more to do with, but we lack almost everything for the proper care of the wounded and sick. We have 15,000 men in hospital here, and not supplies enough for 3,000. When we will get more depends on just what luck our cavalry has in keeping the rebels off our line of supplies."

"Show me what to do, give me what you kin, and I'll trust in the Lord and my own efforts for the rest."

"Yes, and you kin count on me to assist," chimed in Shorty, who had come up. "I won't let you play lone hand long, Deacon, for I'm gittin' chirpier every day. If I could only fill up good and full once more on hardtack and pork, or some sich luxuries, I'd be as good as new agin."

"You mean you'd be put to bed under three feet of red clay, if you were allowed to eat all you want to," said the Surgeon. "There's where the wind is tempered to the shorn lamb. If you could eat as much as you want to eat, I should speedily have to bid good-by to you. For the present, Mr. Klegg, do anything that suggests itself to you to make these men comfortable. I need scarcely caution you to be careful about their food, for there is nothing that you can get hold of to over-feed them. But you'd better not let them have anything to eat until I come around again and talk to you more fully. I put them in your charge."

The Deacon's first thought was for Si, and he bestirred himself to do what he thought his wife, who was renowned as a nurse, would do were she there.

He warmed some water, and tenderly as he could command his strong, stubby hands, washed Si's face, hands and feet, and combed his hair. The overworked hospital attendants had had no time for this much-needed ministration. It was all that they could do to get the wounded under some sort of shelter, to dress their wounds, and prepare food. No well man could be spared from the trenches for hospital service, for the sadly-diminished Army of the Cumberland needed every man who could carry a musket to man the long lines to repel the constantly-threatened assaults.

The removal of the soil and grime of the march and battle had a remarkably vivifying effect upon Si. New life seemed to pulse through his veins and brightness return to his eyes.

"Makes me feel like a new man, Pap," he said faintly. "Feels better than anything I ever knowed. Do the same to Shorty, Pap."

"Come here, Shorty, you dirty little rascal," said the Deacon, assuming a severely maternal tone, at which Si laughed feebly but cheerily, "and let me wash your face and comb your hair."

Shorty demurred a little at being treated like a boy, and protested that he could wash himself, if the Deacon would get him some warm water; but he saw that the conceit amused Si, and submitted to having the Deacon give him a scrubbing with a soapy rag, giving a yell from time to time, in imitation of an urchin undergoing an unwilling ablution. Si turned his head so as to witness the operation, and grinned throughout it.

"I think you'd both feel still better if you could have your hair cut," said the Deacon, as he finished and looked from one to the other. "Your hair's too long for sick people, and it makes you look sicker'n you really are. But I hain't got no shears."

"I know I'd feel better if I was sheared," said Shorty. "Hain't neither of us had our hair cut since we started on the Tullyhomy campaign, and I think I look like the Wild Man from Borneo. I think I know a feller that has a pair o' shears that I kin borry."

The shears were found and borrowed. Then ensued a discussion as to the style of the cut. The boys wanted their hair taken off close to their heads, 'but the Deacon demurred to this for fear they would catch cold.

"No, Si," he said; "I'm goin' to cut your hair jest like your mother used to. She used to tie one of her garters from your forehead down across your ears, and cut off all the hair that stuck out. I hain't any garter, but I guess I kin find a string that'll do jest as well."

"There," said the Deacon, as he finished shearing off the superabundant hair, and surveyed the work. "That ain't as purty a job as if your mother'd done it, but you'll feel lighter and cleaner, and be healthier. If hair was only worth as much as wool is now, I'd have enough to pay me for the job. But I must clean it up keerfully and burn it, that the birds mayn't git hold of it and give you the headache."

The Deacon had his little superstitions, like a great many other hard-headed, sensible men.

"Well, Mr. Klegg," said the Surgeon, when he made his next round, "I must congratulate you on your patients. Both show a remarkable improvement. You ought to apply for a diploma, and go into the practice of medicine. You have done more for them in the two or three hours than I have been able to do in as many weeks. If you could only keep up this pace awhile I would be able to return them to duty very soon. I have an idea. Do you see that corn-crib over there?"

"The one built of poles? Yes."

"Well, I have some things stored there, and I have been able to hold it so far against the soldiers, who are snatching every stick of wood they can find, for their cabins, or for the breastworks, or firewood. I don't know how long I'll be able to keep it, unless I have personal possession. I believe you can make it into a comfortable place for these two men. That will help them, you can be by yourselves, you can take care of my things, and it will relieve the crowd in the tent."

"Splendid idea," warmly assented the Deacon. "I'll chink and daub it, and make it entirely comfortable, and fix up bunks in it for the boys. I know they'll be delighted at the change. I wonder where Shorty is?"

The Deacon had just remembered that he had not seen that individual for some little time, and looked around for him with some concern. It was well that he did. Shorty had come across the haversack that the Deacon had brought, and it awakened all his old predatory instincts, sharpened, if anything, by his feebleness. Without saying a word to any body, he had employed the time while the Surgeon and Deacon were in conversation in preparing one of his customary gorges after a long, hard march.

He had broken up the crackers into a tin-cup of water which sat by his side, while he was frying out pieces of fat pork in a half-canteen.

"My goodness, man!" shouted the Deacon, spring ing toward him. "Are you crazy? If you eat that mess you'll be dead before morning."

He sprang toward him, snatched the half-canteen from his hand, and threw its contents on the ground.

"That stuff's not fit to put into an ostrich's stomach," he said. "Mr. Klegg, you will have to watch this man very carefully."

"Can't I have none of it to eat?" said Shorty, dejectedly, with tears of weakness and longing in his eyes.

"Not a mouthful of that stuff," said the Surgeon; "but you may eat some of those crackers you have soaked there. Mr. Klegg, let him eat about half of those crackers no more."

Shorty looked as if the whole world had lost its charms. "Hardtack without grease's no more taste than chips," he murmured.

"Never mind, Shorty," said the Deacon, pityingly; "I'll manage to find you something that'll be better for you than that stuff."

The Surgeon had the boys carried over to the corncrib, and the Deacon went to work to make it as snug as possible. All the old training of his pioneer days when literally with his own hands, and with the rudest materials, he had built a comfortable cabin in the wilderness of the Wabash bottoms for his young wife came back to him. He could not see a brick, a piece of board, a stick, or a bit of iron anywhere without the thought that it might be made useful, and carrying it off. As there were about 40,000 other men around the little village of Chattanooga with similar inclinations, the Deacon had need of all his shrewdness in securing coveted materials, but it was rare that anybody got ahead of him. He rearranged and patched the clapboards on the roof until it was perfectly rain-tight, chinked up the spaces between the poles with stones, corncobs and pieces of wood, and plastered over the outside with clay, until the walls were draft proof. He hung up an old blanket for a door, and hired a teamster to bring in a load of silky-fine beech leaves which, when freshly fallen, make a bed that cannot be surpassed. These, by spreading blankets over them, made very comfort able couches for Si, Shorty and himself.

Then the great problem became one of proper food for the boys. Daily the rations were growing shorter in Chattanooga, and if they had been plentiful they were not suited to the delicate stomachs of those seriously ill. Si was slowly improving, but the Deacon felt that the thing necessary to carry him over the breakers and land him safely on the shores of recovery was nourishing food that he could relish.

He had anxiously sought the entire length of the camp for something of that kind. He had visited all the sutlers, and canvassed the scanty stocks in the few stores in Chattanooga. He had bought the sole remaining can of tomatoes at a price which would have almost bought the field in which the tomatoes were raised, and he had turned over the remnant lots of herring, cheese, etc., he found at the sutler's, with despair at imagining any sort of way in which they could be worked up to become appetizing and assimilative to Si's stomach.

"What you and Si needs," he would say to Shorty, "is chicken and fresh 'taters. If you could have a good mess of chicken and 'taters every day you'd come up like Spring shoats. I declare I'd give that crick bottom medder o' mine, which hasn't it's beat on the Wabash, to have mother's coopful o' chickens here this minute."

But a chicken was no more to be had in Chattanooga than a Delmonico banquet. The table of the Major-General commanding the Army of the Cumberland might have a little more hardtack and pork on it than appeared in the tents of the privates, and be cooked a little better, but it had nothing but hardtack and pork.

The Deacon made excursions into the country, and even ran great risks from the rebel pickets and bushwhackers, in search of chickens. But the country had been stripped, by one side or the other, of everything eatable, and the people that remained in their cheerless homes were dependent upon what they could get from the United States Commissary.

One day he found the Herd-Boss in camp, and poured forth his troubles to him. The Herd-Boss sympathized deeply with him, and cudgeled his brains for a way to help.

"I'll tell you what you might do," he said at length, "if you care to take the risk. We're goin' back with some teams to Bridgeport to-morrow mornin'. You might git in one of the wagons and ride back 10 or 15 miles to a little valley that I remember that's there, and which I think looks like it hain't bin foraged. I was thinkin' as we come through the other day that I might git something goo'd to eat up there, and I'd try it some day. No body seems to 've noticed it yit. But it may be chock full o' rebels, for all I know, and a feller git jumped the moment he sets foot in it."

"I'll take my chances," said the Deacon. "I'll go along with you to-morrer mornin'."

The Deacon found that a ride in a wagon was not such an unqualified favor as he might have thought. The poor, half-fed, overworked mules went so slowly that the Deacon could make better time walking, and he was too merciful to allow them to pull him up hill.

The result was that, with helping pry the stalled wagons out and work in making the roads more passable, the Deacon expended more labor than if he had started out to walk in the first place.

It was late in the afternoon when the Herd-Boss said:

"There, you take that path to the right, and in a little ways you'll come out by a purty good house. I hain't seen any Johnnies around in this neighborhood since I've bin travelin' this route, but you'd better keep your eye peeled, all the same. If you see any, skip back to the road here, and wait awhile. Somebody 'll be passin' before long."

Thanking him, the Deacon set out for the house, hoping to be able to reach it, get some fowls, and be back to Chattanooga before morning. If he got the chickens, he felt sanguine that he could save Si's life.

He soon came in sight of the house, the only one, apparently, for miles, and scanned it carefully. There were no men to be seen, though the house appeared to be inhabited. He took another look at the heavy revolver which he had borrowed from the Surgeon, and carried ready for use in the pocket of Si's overcoat, and began a strategic advance, keep ing well out of sight under the cover of the sumachs lining the fences.

Still he saw no one, and finally he became so bold as to leave his covert and walk straight to the front door. A dozen dogs charged at him with a wild hullabaloo, but he had anticipated this, and picked up a stout hickory switch in the road, which he wielded with his left hand with so much effect that they ran howling back under the house. He kept his right hand firmly grasping his revolver.

An old man and his wife appeared at the door; both of them shoved back their spectacles until they rested on the tops of their heads, and scanned him searchingly. The old woman had a law-book in her hand, and the old man a quill pen. She had evidently been reading to him, and he copying.

The old man called out to him imperiously:

"Heah, stranger, who air yo'? An' what d'yo' want?"

The tone was so harsh and repellant that the Deacon thought that he would disarm hostility by announcing himself a plain citizen, like themselves. So he replied:

"I'm a farmer, and a citizen from Injianny, and I want to buy some chickens for my son, who's sick in the hospital at Chattanoogy."

"Injianny!" sneered the old man. "Meanest people in the world live in Injianny. Settled by scalawags that we'uns run outen Tennessee bekase they'uns wuz too onery to live heah."

"Citizen!" echoed the woman. "They'uns heap sight wuss'n the soldjers. Teamsters, gamblers, camp-followers, thieves, that'll steal the coppers off en a dead man's eyes. I had a sister that married a man that beat her, and then run off to Injianny, leavin' her with six children to support. All the mean men go to Injianny. Cl'ar out. We don't want nobody 'round heah, and specially no Injiannians. They'uns is a pizun lot."

"Yes, cl'ar out immejitly," commanded the old man. "I'm a Jestice of the Peace, and ef you don't go to wunst I'll find a way to make yo'. We've a law agin able-bodied vagrants. Cl'ar out, now."

"Come, have a little sense," said the Deacon, not a little roiled at the abuse of his State. "I'm just as respectable a man as you dare be. I never stole anything. I've bin all my life a regler member o' the Baptist Church strict, close-communion, total-immersion Baptists. All I want o' you is to buy some o' them chickens there, and I'll give you a fair price for 'em. No use o' your flaring up over a little matter o' bizniss."

"I don't believe a word of hit," said the woman, who yet showed that she was touched by the allusion to the Baptist Church, as the Deacon had calculated, for most of the people of that section professed to be of that denomination. "What'll yo' gi' me for them chickens?"

The bargaining instinct arose in the Deacon's mind, but he repressed it. He had no time to waste. He would make an offer that at home would be considered wildly extravagant, close the business at once and get back to Chattanooga. He said: "I'll give you a dollar apiece for five."

"Humph," said the woman contemptuously. "I don't sell them for no dollar apiece. They'uns 's all we got to live on now. If I sell 'em I must git somethin' that'll go jest as fur. You kin have 'em at $5 apiece."

"Betsy," remonstrated the old man, "I'm afeard this 's wrong, and as a Magistrate I shouldn't allow hit. Hit's traffickin' with the inemy."

"No, hit hain't," she asserted. "He's not a soljer. He's a citizen, and don't belong to the army. Besides, he's a Baptist, and hit hain't so bad as ef he wuz a Presbyterian, or a shoutin' Methodist. Most of all, I'm nearly dead for some coffee, and I know whar I kin git a pound o' rayle coffee for $10."

The Deacon had been pondering. To his thrifty mind it seemed like a waste to give a crisp, new $5 bill for such an insignificant thing as a chicken. Like Indiana farmers of his period, he regarded such things as chickens, eggs, butter, etc., as "too trifling for full-grown men to bother about. They were wholly women-folks' truck." He fingered the bills in his bosom, and thought how many bushels of wheat and pounds of pork they represented. Then he thought of Si in the hospital, and how a little chicken broth would build him up. Out came five new $5 bills.

"Here's your money," he said, thumbing over the bills clumsily and regretfully.

The old woman lowered her spectacles from the top of her head, and scrutinized them.

"What's them?" she asked suspiciously.

"Why, them's greenbacks Government money the very best kind," explained the Deacon. "You can't have no better'n that."

"Don't tech hit! Don't have nothin' to do with it!" shouted the old man. "Hit's high treason to take Federal money. Law's awful severe about that. Not less'n one year, nor more'n 20 in the penitentiary, for a citizen, and death for a soljer, to be ketched dealin' in the inemy's money. I kin turn yo' right to the law. Ole man, take yo' money and cl'ar off the place immejitly. Go out and gather up yo' chickens, Betsy, and fasten 'em in the coop. Go away, sah, 'or I shell blow the horn for help."

"I wuz talkin' 'bout Confederit money," said the woman, half apologetically. "I wouldn't tech that 'ere stuff with a soap-stick. Yo'd better git away as quick as yo' kin ef yo' know what's good for yo'."

She went into the yard to gather up her flock, and the Deacon walked back into the road. When out of sight he sat down on a rock to meditate. There was not another house in sight anywhere, and it was rapidly growing dark. If he went to an other house he would probably have the same experience. He had set his heart on having those chickens, and he was a pretty stubborn man. Somehow, in spite of himself, he parted the bushes and looked through to see where the woman was housing her fowls, and noted that it was going to be very dark. Then he blushed vividly, all to himself, over the thoughts which arose.

"To think of me, a Deacon in the Baptist Church, akchelly meditatin' about goin' to another man's coop at night and stealin' his chickens? Could Maria ever be made to believe such a thing? I can't be lieve it myself."

Then he made himself think of all the other ways in which he might get chickens. They all seemed impossible. He turned again to those in the coop.

"Nothin' but measly dunhills, after all dear at a fip-and-a-bit, and yet I offered her a dollar apiece for 'em. If she'd bin a real Christian woman she'd bin glad to 've given me the chickens for as sick as man as Si is. Gracious, mother'd give every chicken on the place, if it'd help a sick person, and be glad o' the chance. They're both tough old rebels, anyhow, and their property oughtter be confiscated."

He stopped and considered the morals of the affair a little further, and somehow the idea of taking the fowls by stealth did not seem so abhorrent as at first. Then, everything was overslaughed by the thought of going into camp with the precious birds, of cleaning one and carefully stewing it, making a delicate, fragrant broth, the very smell of which would revive Si, and every spoonful bring nourishment and strength.

"Mebbe the army's demoralizin' me," he said to himself; "but I believe it's a work o' necessity and mercy, that don't stand on nice considerations. I'm goin' to have five o' them chickens, or know the reason why."

As has been before remarked, when Deacon Klegg made up his mind something had to happen. It was now quite dark. He took one of the $5 bills out of his breast pocket and put it in a pocket where it would be handy. He looked over at the house, and saw the old man and woman sitting by the fire smoking. He picked up the hickory withe to keep off the dogs, and made a circuit to reach the chicken-coop from the rear of the house. The dogs were quarreling and snarling over their supper, and paid no attention to him, until he had reached the coop, when they came at him full tilt.

The Deacon dealt the foremost ones such vicious blows that the beasts fell as if they had been cut in two, and ran howling under the house. With a quickness and skill that would have done credit to any veteran in the army, he snatched five chickens from their roosts, wrung their necks, and gathered them in his left hand. Alarmed by the noise of the barking and yelping, the old couple flung open the door and rushed out on the porch with shouts. The open door threw a long lane of bright light directly on the Deacon.

"Blow the horn, granddad blow the horn," screamed the woman. Her husband snatched the tin horn down from the wall, and put all his anger into a ringing blast. It was immediately answered by a shot from a distant hill. Still holding his game in his left hand, the Deacon pulled the $5 bill out of his pocket with his right, walked up to the porch, laid it at the woman's feet and put a stone on it.

"There's full pay for your dumbed old dunghills, you cantankerous rebel," said he, as he disappeared into the darkness. "Go into the house and pray that the Lord may soften your heart, which is harder than Pharaoh's, until you have some Christian grace."

When he reached the road he could hear the sound of hoofs galloping toward the house. He smiled grimly, but kept under the shadow of the trees until he reached the main road leading to Chattanooga, where he was lucky enough to find a train making its slow progress toward the town, and kept with it until he was within our lines.