every mother’s son of us,” I said as I turned my face toward him to
see what was the matter. A glance explained it all. The old horse, in
twisting about, had knocked over a rotten stump and uncovered a yellow
jackets’ nest, that held a half bushel, it looked to me, of the maddest
jackets I had ever seen. They had sampled the legs of Mike’s horse
several times, but when they began to swarm up and pop it to him on his
thighs and sides, the old fellow could stand it no longer and bolted
straight forward through the brush, kicking, snorting, squealing like a
mustang, and inside of fifty yards of where we were standing jumped into
the open road.
Mike and his steed were about the busiest pair just then I ever saw; the
old horse was kicking, squealing, stamping, plunging and biting in his
frantic efforts to get rid of his tormentors, while Mike was giving his
whole time, and undivided attention, to swearing and sticking on. He made
no effort to guide him, but by the luckiest chance on earth the horse
turned up the road, instead of down towards the enemy.
It was evidently a startling apparition that thus suddenly appeared in
the road in front of the Federal cavalry, for they came abruptly to a
halt, and for a moment seemed undecided as to what it was, or what to
do, for the old horse had his busiest end towards them and they could
see, what must have appeared to them, a dozen or more horses’ tails
flirting up and down, around and around in the air (for the old brute
was swinging it vigorously and with lightning rapidity), and a countless
number of heels and legs flying out of this cloud of horse hair in all
directions. At the same time a shapeless bundle of something gray, was
bouncing about on top, for Mike in his gymnastic exercise in holding on
assumed many inconceivable attitudes, all of which were enveloped in a
thin yellow cloud that certainly was not dust, and out of which came
curses, groans, squeals, and snorts. The old horse did everything but
lie down to rid himself of the torture. Finally he made up his mind to
run, and such running—a streak of lightning would have been distanced
at the rate he went. He looked as if he was literally flying and would
only touch the earth at intervals long enough to sling his heels out in
vicious kicks, first on one side and then the other. At this part of the
performance Mike would bounce up a frightful distance, but always managed
to come down on the neck, back, or side of his horse. I never in my life
saw such running, and can truthfully say no circus ever gave a greater
variety of styles in riding.
As soon as the horse stretched out into a run, and the enemy could see
what it was in front of them, they unslung their carbines, fired a volley
at Mike and a half dozen or them darted out at full speed after him. As
they passed I heard one fellow call out:
“Look at the damned rebel how he rides, will you?” And a sergeant mounted
on a big gray horse shouted:
“It’s Anderson himself, boys, come on!” and he drove the spurs in the
sides of his horse.
They were too intent on catching, as they thought, the noted captain and
expert rider in front of them, to notice us in the brush, but being quite
familiar with their methods, I was satisfied they would at once throw
out flankers to prevent an ambush, so I moved back promptly to a safe
position, and after following and watching them for several miles, and
getting all the information desired, finally locating them on the proper
road, all of which I reported to the colonel from time to time by sending
a man back, I rejoined the command myself just in time to take a part
in the wind-up of a sharp little fight that was claimed a draw by both
sides. We held the ground, but the enemy was drawing off in good order
down the road they had advanced on. We lost some men and had killed and
captured some of theirs. Amongst the latter I recognized the sergeant,
on the big gray horse, who had been so intent that morning on capturing
Mike, thinking it was Anderson. He was battered up a little, had caught a
pistol ball in his bridle-arm and evidently from the cut on his head had
been knocked off of his big gray in the skirmish by some of our fellows.
Mike and I were standing by while his wounds were being dressed by our
surgeon. He happened to be a countryman of Mike’s, and with that never
failing, but indescribable bond of sympathy that the gallant sons of the
Emerald Isle always have for each other, it matters not under what sky
or flag they meet, they were soon engaged in an animated, but amicable
discussion as to the merits of the two respective armies. With the
truthfulness of a saint depicted on his countenance, Mike made the most
startling and exaggerated statement concerning the strength and resources
of our troops, and turning toward Captain Anderson, who had just walked
up, he said: “I’ll l’ave it to Cap’n Anderson if I’m not right.”
At the mention of Anderson’s name and rank, the prisoner turned quickly
and with much curiosity expressed in his face, critically eyed, over
and over, the light but sinewy figure of the noted captain and skillful
rider. Anderson noticed that he was being closely scrutinized, but
without knowing any special cause therefor, he nodded pleasantly at the
captive trooper and remarked: “That was a pretty sharp rap some of our
fellows gave you over your head, sergeant.”
“Right ye are, Cap’n,” he replied, “but it’s meself that would be afther
takin’ tin times as many, only to have caught ye this mornin’, whin we
chased ye down the road.”
I had not yet mentioned to the captain any of the minor details of my
morning’s work, so he knew nothing of Mike’s adventure with the hornets,
for that worthy gentleman, when he joined the command at the end of his
wild ride, had simply reported that we had met the Yankees unexpectedly
at a bend in the road and they had chased him some distance, but that
I, with the rest of the men, was yet in the brush and would get all of
the information wanted. The other men that I sent in afterwards, had
reported direct to the colonel and were at once sent off by him to hurry
up different detachments consequently, Mike’s last feat in horsemanship
had not yet gained circulation.
Anderson looked at the prisoner when he made the above statement, and
shook his head doubtfully. Mike looked at me and shook his head slyly.
“You are mistaken, my man,” said Anderson. “I admit I have had to show
you my heels occasionally, but it was not on the cards to-day. That don’t
look like it, does it?” he added, as he pointed down the road to the
cloud of dust that marked the retreat of our late adversaries.
The sergeant was not to be denied, however, for he had seen him, as he
thought, with his own eyes and had shot at him; lowering his voice to a
half whisper he said:
“Faith, Cap’n, and it’s no shame to ye that ye run, for didn’t we have
the howl command at our back? But it’s a beautiful rider ye are to be
sure; it’s yourself that can tache the best one that iver sthradled a
horse, and Jim Sullivan would give a month’s pay to see ye do it again
and take a dozen more knocks like this on his head besides.”
Anderson turned to me with a look of bewilderment on his face and asked:
“What is the fellow talking about? What does he mean?”
“Ask Mike,” was all I could say, for I was convulsed with suppressed
laughter. With a sly wink at Anderson and a droll look on his dusty,
smoke-begrimed face, Mike replied:
“To be sure, Cap’n, it was meself that did the thrick on horseback this
mornin’ the fellow is sp’aking of, jist for me own devarsion, and to show
the bloody divils how ye have taught your men to ride as well as fight.”
And he gave another confidential and assuring wink at Anderson.
“Why, of course—certainly, Mike—certainly,” said Anderson, anxious to
confirm any statement Mike would make, but not yet certain of his ground.
“It’s the blissid truth I’m afther tilling ye, Jim Sullivan, if that’s
yer name,” continued Mike, turning to the sergeant, with a face as
serious as a Quaker’s prayer meeting, “whin I say I’m the poorest rider
in the company, bad luck to the old horse for the same, but as ye had the
least bit of a taste this mornin’ of what I can do in the saddle, whin
I’m a mind to, jist scratch yer head and think what the cap’n and the
rest of the boys can do whin they thry.”
The sergeant looked with open-eyed astonishment from Anderson to Mike,
then grasping the latter’s hand with a proud look on his face he said:
“It’s ould Ireland, me lad, that can bate the world. Ye may be a poor
rider in your company, but ye can make the best man in the ould Fifth
(his regiment) ashamed of himself in the saddle, and by the same token
some of’m were rocked, whin babies, in horse troughs for cradles.”
The captain and myself left Mike and his countryman discussing horses and
how to ride them, but we were satisfied Mike would change the subject as
soon as possible, for he knew no more about either than a Digger Indian
does of the Greek alphabet.
It was not long after this before Mike had his “innings” on our friends
in blue, although he did not come out as scathless as in the two scrapes
above mentioned.
Our pickets reported a body of Federal cavalry advancing towards LaGrange
from Helena, on the St. Francis road. Our regiment was badly scattered,
having to picket some twelve or fifteen miles of country, but at the
sounds of “boots and saddle” a hundred and forty or fifty men “fell in,”
and with the colonel at our head we went trotting through LaGrange to
meet the enemy.
Some two or three miles below the little village, the road ran through
one of those large cotton plantations common in that section, with a high
rail fence on either side. In the woods just at the end of this lane
there was a thick, heavy growth of young paw-paws. Dismounting Weatherly,
who had in the meantime been promoted to a captaincy, and thirty-five or
forty of his men, were placed in ambush along the road with instructions
to open fire on the enemy as soon as they came up. The colonel took
the rest of the command, skirted the plantation and came to the lane a
half mile further down and in their rear. We had scarcely reached this
position and formed in the timber before Weatherly’s guns opened. We
swung by fours out into the lane and with a yell went at them under full
speed, Colonel Dobbins and Captain Anderson (the latter’s company being
in front), leading the charge on the right and left of the column. The
road was as open and level as a billiard table, every man was driving the
steel in his horse, and we were going at racing speed. The rear companies
of the Federal squadron promptly wheeled to meet us and poured a steady
fire from their carbines on us as we came up. I happened to be one of
the first fours and was within a few feet of the colonel, when I saw him
glance over his shoulder, slacken his speed somewhat, throw up his hand
and call to Captain Anderson: “Let the men close up!” At the rate we had
been coming, we were necessarily badly strung out, and the Federals were
standing solid across the entire road, not more than seventy-five yards
from us.
I pulled up my horse slightly and had half turned my head to look back,
when, like a red streak, a trooper dashed by me. There was no mistaking
the rider. The reins were flying loose, the old horse’s blood was up, and
so was Mike’s. He couldn’t have stopped him if he would and he wouldn’t
if he could, for “Charge” to Mike meant “go in” whether there was one
man or a thousand at his back. He was unslinging his gun for action as
he passed (a double-barrel shotgun loaded with buck and ball, and, by
the way, the best weapon cavalry could be armed with in those days for
close work). I had only time to notice this before our rear had closed
up and the colonel again gave the order to charge. The delay was only
the fractional part of a second, but Mike was then flying fifty yards
in front of us. I saw two puffs of smoke fly over his shoulder and he
disappeared in the cloud. The next instant we were “mixing with ’em.”
The action was short, sharp and fierce, the Federals using the sabre, we
six-shooters, and was too hot to last long. Their rear gave way, we went
through, joined Weatherly, and never gave them time to reform until they
were driven inside of their lines.
I was hurrying back to the place where I had last seen Mike, when I came
up on our surgeon gouging into a poor fellow after a ball and inquired if
he had found Mike.
“Yes.”
“Dead?”
“No, but wounded and on ahead in an ambulance.”
I didn’t have an opportunity to see him until some time after midnight.
I found him stretched out on some straw, with others, in a barn that had
been converted into a hospital. His head was swathed in bandages and
looked as big as a half bushel. His face was so swollen he could not see,
and the poor fellow was delirious.
From the surgeon I learned that Mike had marched a couple of prisoners
up to him, saying: “Take charge of ’em, Doc,” when he keeled over at his
feet with an empty six-shooter in his hand. An examination showed that
his head had been terribly beaten; the cuts were to the skull in five
different places.
I afterwards learned from Mike, as soon as he was able to crawl out and
suck his cob pipe, that after emptying both barrels of his gun, he did
not have time to draw his pistol before he was wedged in the Federal
column, and clubbing his gun, he was “knocking the spalpeens” right and
left, when some “dirty blackguard” struck him over the head, knocking
him from his horse. In falling he was caught between the horses of a
couple of Federal troopers, his arms pinned to his sides as the horses
were crowded together in the lane, and the last thing he remembered they
were beating a tattoo on his head. When he recovered consciousness he
was lying in the timber and two Federal soldiers were standing close
by, their command gone and they undecided whether to try and escape or
surrender. Mike decided the question for them. Struggling to his feet and
taking a pistol from the ground, having lost his own, doubtless in his
tumble, he promptly ordered them to throw up their hands, which they did,
and were marched back as above stated. Neither Mike nor his prisoners
knew at the time that the pistol he pointed at them was empty.
Mike was a great favorite with the colonel, who, like the rest of us,
would occasionally joke him about his riding. Shortly after the incident
just mentioned Mike was out sunning himself. The colonel passed by and
began to rig him about letting his horse run away in the charge, and
carry him into the Yankee lines. “Run away, is it,” said Mike. “Och,
colonel, now it’s yerself that’s fond of a joke. Whin we swung out in the
lane ’n ye told us to charge, if ye had jist tipped me a wink, and said,
‘Mike, me lad, I don’t mane it, I’m only joking,’ me head would be as
sound this minit as your own.”
The laugh was on the colonel, and he enjoyed it most heartily.
Dear old Mike! He answered the last “roll call” only a few years ago, and
“passed over the river.”
The first time I met him after the war was at the general reunion of the
U. C. V. Association in this city in 1897. I had gone to the headquarters
of the Arkansas veterans looking for him, and learned he was out looking
for me. There were a number of the old company present, and as I stood
chatting with them about the old days, some one remarked, “Yonder comes
Kelley now.” Looking up the street we saw him coming, with his hat off,
mopping the perspiration from his face.
“Let’s see if he will know him, boys,” said one, as they clustered around
me.
“Find him, Mike?” one of them asked, as he came up.
“No, bad luck to it; but I’ve been hot on his thrail these two hours
past, ’n have nearly run the legs uv me off intirely. The little devil is
as hard to catch now as he was thirty years ago, when he was riding that
old gray horse,” he answered, as he threw himself down in the shade with
a grunt of disgust.
There was a general laugh, but my heart was in my throat, and I did not
join in until the others had ceased. In an instant he was on his feet.
“I would know that laugh in a thousand,” he exclaimed, looking eagerly
around. I pushed my way through and stood before him.
The steel-gray eyes I had so often seen flash defiance in the face of
death were dim with tears as his hand clasped mine, and when I felt his
arm around my shoulder, his bearded cheek against mine, there were drops
that were not perspiration falling from my own face.
Maudlin sentiment of two old men, you say? Yes, if you choose to call it
such; but a sentiment formed and welded together over and over and over
again in the fiery crucible of battle and one that death alone can break.
Crop Residue and Its Benefit to the Soil
BY WILLIAM DENNISON, FARGO, N. D.
How varied, great and wonderful are the blessings which a beneficent
Creator showers universally upon this cosmos of ours for the benefit of
mankind, and is it not strange that a majority of us fail to see these
blessings, which are everywhere before our eyes? One of these blessings
which the tillers of the soil are the recipients thereof, and which very
few of them recognize, is the beneficial results derived therefrom. That
is the importance of crop residue as a help in maintaining the fertility
of the soil. Nature is a great economist—she allows nothing to go to
waste. Everything is turned to some account in the grand, economic plan.
Even the stubble which is left after the grain is harvested, there is a
use for it. Yet many of our farmers fail to see it. The farmers in the
great wheat-raising states of the Northwest burn up their straw stacks
when they want to plow the land for another wheat crop. This ought not
to be. Nature has an important use for this crop residue. It ought to be
returned to the land as manure. It was prodigality on their part to have
sold the fertility of their land in the wheat. But it was compounding the
offense when they burned up their crop residue. Because the axiom is,
the more crop, the more crop residue, and the more crop residue the more
dead vegetable matter to be oxidized. But for this wise provision made by
an all-wise Creator, humanity would long since have perished with hunger
from off the face of the earth. We do not wish to give out the impression
that crop residue alone will maintain the fertility of the land, but to
convey the idea of the importance of crop residue as a help in delaying
the period when land which has been under cultivation for years, without
manure (which is the rule in the United States) ceases to be profitable
to cultivate.
“It is a fact both of scientific interest and of great practical
importance, that the enrichment of a soil with nitrogen is confined to
certain limits, which can, with great difficulty, be exceeded. The
limit varies according to the conditions in which the soil is placed. A
familiar instance of the limit is afforded by a pasture.
“We have seen when the arable land is laid down in grass an accumulation
of nitrogen takes place in the surface soil. This accumulation may be
slow or rapid, according to the treatment of the field, but in the case
of an ordinary meadow the accumulation does not pass a certain point.
After a certain number of years no further rise in nitrogen appears in
the soil, although the external conditions of the meadow remain precisely
the same as they were when the former accumulation of nitrogen took
place. The influence of crop residue, Prof. Warington says, “where the
ammonium salts were applied without ash constituents the produce was the
smallest, and so was the nitrogen in the soil, and this nitrogen, like
the crops, was a diminishing quantity. Where superphosphate was supplied
with the ammonia the crop was considerably increased, and so was the
nitrogen of the soil, which has shown little change in sixteen years.
Where the ammonia was used with a full supply of phosphate and potash the
produce was the largest; the nitrogen, too, of the soil was largest, and
shows a tendency to rise.” “We see here at once a relation between the
amount of the crop and the rise or fall of the nitrogen in the soil. The
quantity of nitrogenous matter in a surface soil can only be maintained
when the crop grown on the soil reaches a certain annual amount. There
is, in fact, an annual waste of the nitrogenous capital of the soil, and
if the proportion of the nitrogen of the soil is to be maintained there
must be an equal annual addition of fresh nitrogenous organic matter.
This is furnished to the soil in the form of crop residue, consisting of
dead roots, leaves and stubble of a former crop, and the dead matter of
weeds. When this crop residue is of large amount, as in the cultivation
of red clover or in any case of green manuring, or when smaller residues
are left untouched by the plow and allowed to accumulate, as in the case
of a pasture, the conditions for an increase in the nitrogen of the soil
are present. When, on the other hand, the crop residue is nil, as in
the case of a bare fallow, or very small, as upon unmanured land, there
is either none, or an insufficient replacement of the annual loss of
organic matter in the soil, and the nitrogen of the soil consequently
falls.” “The proportion of nitrogen in a soil can only be maintained when
the supply of ash constituents (phosphates and potash) is sufficient to
furnish the necessary amount of crop and crop residue.”
The nitrogenous organic matter contained in soils is for the most part
an insoluble substance, a fact of the greatest importance for the
maintenance of the fertility of the soil. While in this condition it is
of little use to the higher order of plants among which our ordinary
crops are included. To become available as plant food, it must be
oxidized and rendered soluble, but as soon as this step is effected it
becomes liable to be lost by drainage. Not many years ago we would have
been satisfied in explaining the oxidation which occurs in soil as due
to a simple contact with oxygen. We now take a different view of these
changes. We know that the organic matter of a soil is split up and
oxidized by means of living agents. A fertile soil is, in fact, teeming
with life of many kinds. Many of these living agents are quite invisible
to our eyes, and yet are performing changes on a great scale, upon the
accomplishment of which the growth of our food crops depends.
The living agents which attack the organic matter of soil may be classed
as (1) animal life—worms and insects; (2) fungi; (3) bacteria. The
worms, beetles, larvae, etc., in a surface soil feed on the recently
dead vegetable matter left by the crop or weeds which previously had
possession of the soil. The carbon of this vegetable food is oxidized in
their bodies and exhaled as carbonic acid, while the nitrogen is excreted
in simple forms of combination. The fungi also feed on the nitrogenous
organic matter of soil; carbon is oxidized in their cells and exhaled as
carbonic acid, while their dead nitrogenous tissues restore to the soil a
great part of the nitrogen which they had assimilated.
The conditions which favor the complete oxidation effected by bacteria
are aeration of the soil by tillage, the presence of a suitable amount of
water and of calcium carbonate, and a high temperature.
It has been mentioned above of the natural limits to the accumulation of
nitrogen in the soil. Prof. Warington thinks he can now perceive some of
the causes of such limits.