first, the lady of the house (a rather stout female, with a coarse voice
and red face) had lost neither children nor relatives in the war, but
nevertheless cherished a holy hatred of Yankees. When she learnt that we
were of that despised race, and had come into her house to buy
something, her wrath became terrific. It even overpowered the
irresistible effrontery of the navy. Two of our Captains, who between
them had never failed to win the Texan fair, assayed her, but the humor
of the one and the blandishments of the other were sent spinning about
their ears. “Josiah,” she said to her abashed husband, while she
quivered with rage, “don’t sell them anything, the nasty beasts, I
didn’t know I hated them so. Don’t sell the beasts a thing. Corn-meal is
too good for them.” He, poor man, said “no,” but when our two naval
commissaries got him alone, they made mince-meat of his scruples in no
time. He hurriedly shovelled a bushel of potatoes into their bag,
received his five dollars, and begged them to leave by the side door, as
most convenient and least exposed to observation.
At the other of these houses, the woman had lost two sons in battle.
When she learnt that some of her visitors were enemies and prisoners,
she only hastened to express her pity. She spread her simple board with
all that her larder contained, and made them sit down. Of some little
articles, such as milk and butter and eggs, she literally gave them all
she had. Other things that they wished to purchase, she sold—she offered
to give, but they forced the money upon her. And when they rose to go,
she expressed again her sympathy, and hoped that God would be with them,
and comfort them, and send them deliverance.
When we were fairly across the river, and well drenched, the rain
stopped, and the freezing north wind began to blow. Colder and colder it
grew; and when we passed from the woods to the last prairie we were to
see, we had to face a gale. We struggled against this for miles, until,
late in the afternoon, there appeared, on the other side of the plain, a
little stage-house, and beyond it timber of scraggly trees, small and
scattered. It was a poor place to bivouac, but the scarcity of water in
this arid country leaves travellers little choice of camping grounds. We
halted, therefore, in this bleak spot, and speedily came to the
conclusion, that it would be “the coldest night yet.” The stove was
unloaded as usual, and “put up;” its pipe, lashed to a sapling to keep
it from blowing away, and some stove wood chopped. Our indefatigable
_chef_ then assumed command, and, despite wind and cold, proceeded to
roast a lovely loin of delicate pork, purchased of the good woman of the
morning, and to serve it up at the proper time with delicious brown
crackling and entrancing hot gravy. Before that rapturous moment came
there was much work to be done. The wood had to be dragged some
distance, for the trees were sparse, and on such a night the fire must
be fed with no sparing hand. The water had to be carried, and it was a
half-mile distant and at the bottom of a well two hundred feet deep. A
tedious job was this, and one that seemed as though it would never end.
The pails, the tea-kettle and the iron-pot were all mustered and carried
to the well, but others were there before us, and we had to wait our
turn. Very slowly the bucket came creeping up while we stood shivering
in the wind, and when it appeared it was half empty, and a dozen pails
were waiting to be filled before the first of ours. At last when
tea-kettle, pot and pails were full, and we were nearly perished, we
picked them up and navigated them through the thick brush-wood and
against the bitter wind till the ungloved hands were nearly frozen to
the iron handles, and the stiff arms ready to drop off. Then, too, our
_chef_, like all great artists in that most useful art, was cross, and
asked indignantly why we had not come back sooner—if it was so pleasant
down at that well that we must stay there all day—if we did not know
that nothing could be done without water—if we could not understand that
the lovely loin of pork was well-nigh spoilt already. We, who were
hewers of wood and drawers of water, bore all this meekly and explained.
Our _chef_, though an amateur, was about as reasonable as an
accomplished female of the same profession, and would hear no
explanation. He knew that if _he_ had gone _he_ would have found a way
to get it. We secretly expressed to each other sympathy for scullions,
waiters, and other unfortunate persons having business relations with
cooks—we crouched down by the fire and thawed our frozen fingers—and
then the _chef_ sent us back to the well for more water.
“Now spread the night her spangled canopy,
And summon’d every restless eye to sleep.”
The stove was down and ready to be repacked—the water pails (refilled)
stood close before the fire—the stove box, the mess-chest and the
shelter-tent again were united for a wind-break—all our night work was
done, and there was no reason why we should not sleep. No reason but
this bitter north wind, before which the flames of all the surrounding
fires leaned down and the sparks flew level along the ground. And those
fires, too, seemed trivial and feeble; the logs that were piled upon
them were as heavy as two men could lift, yet were not large enough for
such a night as this. Again and again we woke, aching with the cold; and
again and again, after crouching over the fire, we returned wearily to
our blankets and sought to steal, ere the reveille, a little rest.
“The purple morning left her crimson bed,
And donn’d her robe of pure vermilion hue,
Her amber locks she crowned with roses red
In Eden’s flowery gardens gathered new.”
And we resumed the march with blue noses and frosted beards. The wagons
rumbled over the frozen ground as upon a rock; the horses shivered and
shook more pitiably than their riders. There was unwonted courtesy
amongst us. “Do try my mule a little while.” “No, I thank you; I could
not think of depriving you of him _this_ morning.” And then the owner,
not to be outdone, would dismount, and run along behind his mule with
much stamping of the feet and beating of the hands. Comparatively happy
then were those wealthy individuals who owned gloves, or who wore
something thicker than a summer blouse. Yet the biting air wrought its
own cure among the foot passengers and gave them an exhilaration that
beat down its benumbing pain; the thread-bare, ragged and half-naked
crowd, shivering in summer clothing, uttered no whinings, but bravely
pushed along, rejoicing that broken boots and tattered garments still
held together, and wishing only that they could keep on against the
north wind, till they reached the North. Less happy were the few who,
seated in the old hack, rode glum and testy with upheaved shoulders and
stiff necks, and mile after mile spoke never a word.
Thus, after seven hours’ steady marching, we turned from the road and
went down into a little hollow where a small rill furnished us with
water, and good large trees with firewood. Here the members of our mess,
partly to make up for the previous night, and partly in the hope of
attaining comfort, built a fire, which (among themselves) gave to the
place the name of the “Camp of the Big Fire.”
We were first on the camping ground, and chose our tree, a dry oak more
than two feet across the stump. Giving due notice to all that they had
better stand from under, the commander of the “Sachem” swung a strong
axe against it till it fell. The two largest logs were chopped off, each
twelve or fourteen feet long. Skids were cut and laid, and every man,
provided with a stiff handspike, lifted and strained till the largest
log was raised, “cut round,” rolled, re-rolled and placed against its
own stump as a brace. The skids were then hauled out and relaid; and the
second log was brought opposite to the first. The skids were next made
into an inclined plane, and we, by stout pushing, rolled the second log
up this bridge until it rested on top of the first. We then had a solid
wooden wall nearly five feet high. In front we placed huge andirons of
logs as thick as a man’s body. On these we rolled smaller logs, and
piled limbs and small wood until the whole sloped down from the top of
the wall to a line six or seven feet distant from its base. We worked
until the whole tree was in the pile. Then we set fire to it. It kindled
slowly, but burnt gloriously. There was no rolling out of our blankets
that night to put wood on the fire. We could feel our wooden wall
throwing its rays down upon us as we lay before it on the frozen ground.
It let no heat pass through, for while one side was a mass of red-hot
embers the ice had not melted from the other. We slept until the bugle
called us in the morning, and then found that a little rolling together
of half-burnt logs and a slight shaking up of unfinished brands gave us
a splendid fire to breakfast by.
Thus we went on, until upon the twelfth day of our march we passed
through the little town of Tyler and approached Camp Ford. We felt some
curiosity as to the appearance and comfort of this new abode. The
question put to travellers whom we met always brought the reply that the
prisoners were in houses quite comfortable. In houses prisoners might
well be comfortable—much better to have houses than the dismal barracks
of Camp Groce. At last the road wound round a little knoll, covered with
pine and scraggly oak and disclosed the camp. We saw on a side-hill a
barn-yard of a place, encompassed by a stockade fence fifteen feet high.
Within, partly burrowed and partly built, was an irregular group of log
shanties, small, dark and dirty. A naval friend stood at my side, who
had been confident that we should find everything to our liking, and
whose motto was “Nothing is too good for prisoners.” I glanced at him
and saw that, since I last looked, his countenance had grown
immeasurably longer. A lieutenant of my regiment was on the outside of
the stockade waiting to welcome me. He was a young and neat New-Yorker
when I last saw him, but his dress now consisted of a pair of ragged
trowsers and an old woolen shirt without arms.
“What kind of times have you fallen upon, Mr. L?” I asked.
“Not very good, Colonel,” he replied, rather dolefully, and then
brightening added, “But we have very good quarters—_at least for
prisoners_!”
My naval friend looked at the lieutenant sternly and with disgust. He
never forgave that speech.
The roll was called. We were marched forward. The gate opened and
admitted us to seven months more of imprisonment. Within every thing
looked gloomy and squalid. My own officers I hardly recognized; the
others bore in their dress and mien the unmistakable marks of hardship
and destitution. A Captain in my regiment came up, and after the usual
greetings invited me into his “shebang” and to dinner. I walked in and
looked around, I fear with some disgust. A dodger had just been turned
out of its pan and cut up.
“I can’t stay to dinner, Captain,” I said; “we have a wagon to unload;
but I’ll try a piece of the dodger.”
I took a piece and walked out. The gentlemen of the “shebang” said
nothing. But afterward there was a story told of the affair. It was
this:
“The dodger was the whole of the dinner.”
IX.
A DINNER.
The prisoners at Camp Ford were poor. They even thought themselves too
poor to borrow. They possessed no supplies to sell; and in manufactures
they had not risen above carved pipes and chessmen. They lived on their
rations and cooked those rations in the simplest manner. Half of them
had no tables, and more than half no table furniture. The plates and
spoons did treble duty, travelling about from “shebang” to “shebang” (as
they called the hovels they had built) in regular succession.
We rated them soundly about their condition, and asked them why they had
lived thus; to which they responded by asking us how they could have
lived otherwise. We lectured them severely on their not having begged,
and above all, on their not having borrowed; and they answered, meekly,
that no one would lend them. We lent them money, but they received it
timidly, and expressed fears that they would not be able to re-pay it,
and doubts as to whether there was anything to buy. “Nobody ever had
anything to sell,” they said, “about Tyler.”
A few days had passed in the work of improving our “shebang,” and we sat
one night around the fire moodily, talking over the state of our
affairs. We were in the midst of the Christmas holidays, and the
contrasted scenes of home pressed rather heavily upon us, and made the
present, perhaps, seem darker than it really was.
“Something must be done,” said some one, “to raise these fellows up.
They are completely _down_, and if we don’t get them up, why they will
pull us down too.”
“I never saw such fellows,” said a naval prisoner. “They could have got
clothing from the Confederates just as easily as we did. Here we come
in, thin and pale and weak, and find them healthy and hearty, and yet
all down in their boots. They don’t seem to have done anything to keep
themselves alive but cook, and not much of that.”
“_That’s_ the remedy,” said a third. “You’ve hit it by accident. ‘COOK’
is the word. Let us give a dinner-party and astonish them.”
“A dinner-party! We _should_ astonish them, so that we’d never hear the
last of it.”
“Well, why not? Didn’t some of us ‘celebrate’ the Fourth at Brashear?
and didn’t we have a Thanksgiving dinner at Camp Groce? I have great
faith in dinners. Why can’t we have a New Year’s dinner here?”
“For the best of all reasons, because there’s nothing to eat. There we
had milk and eggs and potatoes and onions and a turkey, and——”
“The turkey was a windfall, and didn’t come till we had determined to
observe the day, and Dillingham had issued his proclamation.”
“And pumpkin and pecan nuts, and beef.”
“Well, I’m sure we have beef.”
“Yes, we have, look at the stuff, look at it,” and our friend pointed to
a dark, dry-looking, fatless lump, that hung from a rafter. “We have got
_beef_, and we have got flour, and sugar, and bacon, and those are all.”
“Something may turn up if we resolve on it.”
“‘Something may turn up!’ Yes, it may, and when it turns up, we’ll give
a party.”
All agreed to this common sense conclusion, except two obstinate members
of the mess, and they were Lieutenant Dane, of the signal corps, and
myself.
On the morrow (the thirtieth of December) we went to the gate, presented
our compliments to the sergeant of the guard, and informed him that
private business with Colonel Allen, commanding, etc., required a
personal interview. The sergeant communicated the fact to a gentleman in
butternut, who took his rifle and strolled leisurely over to
head-quarters with us. The Colonel smiled pleasantly, and as he wrote
out the pass, said in a well-bred way, that he never doubted the honor
of his prisoners, though he sometimes had a little fear of their
discretion, and that when he was applied to by gentlemen who would be
discreet in their intercourse with the country people, it afforded him
great pleasure to let them out on parole.
The lieutenant and I returned to our quarters, and hung around our necks
a couple of canteens and three or four haversacks; we took a basket and
bag, received with gravity sundry bits of ironical advice, and then
presenting to the sergeant of the guard our pass, stepped out of Camp
Ford on parole.
The road carried us into the woods. At the end of half a mile we
descended a hill, crossed a little brook, and found ourselves close upon
the white house and negro-cabins of a plantation. At the door we
encountered a sour-faced, respectable man, with whom we were soon
engaged in the following delightful dialogue:
“Good day, sir.”
“Good day.”
“Have you any dried fruit to sell?”
“No.”
“No apples?”
“No.”
“Nor peaches?”
“No.”
“Any eggs?”
“No.”
“Any chickens?”
“No.”
“Couldn’t you spare some potatoes?”
“No.”
“Nothing to sell for cash, at the highest of prices?”
“No.”
“Good day, sir.”
“Good day.”
It was two miles of dull walking to the next house. A plain-looking old
woman appeared and invited us in. As ill-luck would have it, her two
sons had been captured at Arkansas Post. Still more unluckily, the two
sons, when ill, had been placed in different hospitals, and some surgeon
with petty tyranny had refused to let the one brother visit the other.
We explained that there were fools in both armies, who treated their own
soldiers in the same way. But the old lady said she would forgive
everything but that. _That_ was unnecessary cruelty. She then heaped
coals of fire upon our unoffending heads by presenting to us a pumpkin,
and by authorizing her chief contraband, who bore the fruitful name of
“Plenty,” to sell us from his own private stores a bushel of sweet
potatoes. Leaving these treasures till we should return, we went on.
At the third house we had the same conversation over that we enjoyed at
the first, and as we turned back into the road it began to rain. “Shall
we go back or go on?” was the question. “How far did they say it was to
the next house, two miles?” “Yes, two miles. If we go on we shall be
wet, perhaps frozen. But no matter; that is better than going back and
acknowledging a failure. Come on.”
Three miles more, and we came to another house, owned by another old
lady. Everything about it was rigidly in order and stiffly neat. There
was a startling combination of colors in her parlor; for the floors were
unpainted, the walls were white, the ceiling blue, the wainscoting red,
and the blinds green. Again we were told that there was nothing to sell.
But luckily, at the first item on our list, the old lady’s black
overseer came in, and being an intelligent contraband, pricked up his
ears and asked, what the gentlemen wanted to pay for dried peaches. We
inquired what price he asked for them. He reckoned that he had ’bout a
peck, and that a peck in these times ought to bring $5; and we thought
that $5 was precisely the sum we ought to pay for a peck of peaches.
This purchase being happily effected, we ran over the list, but to every
item our sable friend “reckoned not,” till we mentioned milk. At that
liquid name, a thought evidently struck him. He hadn’t no milk, but he
had vinegar—cider-vinegar—he made it his own self, and he reckoned that
in these times it ought to bring $1 a quart. We forthwith entrusted him
with every canteen, to be filled full of this precious, and indeed,
unrivalled fluid. We then re-applied to the old lady to know whether she
really couldn’t sell us _something_. But no, not even our free-handed
expenditures and the absence of all Yankee cuteness in us, could bring
forth the old lady’s stores.
As we retraced our steps we noticed a small log-house near the road, and
a middle-aged woman barbecuing beef under a little shed. “Let us try
here,” one of us said; and we went up to the fence and asked for eggs.
The woman thought she had a few, and civilly invited us to come in out
of the rain. We went in, and found that the house consisted of but one
room, and all looked wretched and forlorn. Nearly a dozen eggs were
produced, and then the woman bethought herself of a certain fowl that
might as well be sold, and set her eldest boys to catch him. A great
cackling presently announced the fate of the fowl, and the boys, coming
in out of breath, informed us that they had run him down. He was a
vagabond-looking young cock, who, any one would swear, ought to come to
an untimely end, and I felt a moral pleasure as I tied his legs and
popped him into the basket.
And now we had the task of walking six miles back in the rain. As we
mounted a rocky ridge we noticed near the road some sumach. The sumach
had been so scarce at Camp Groce that we thought this a prize. Setting
down our baskets, therefore, we went to work picking sumach, and as we
filled our haversacks, we talked of the dinner.
“The last haul is a prize, Colonel,” said Lieutenant Dane. “The vinegar
is a treasure, and the peaches are worth their weight in Confederate
notes. How many shall we ask to dine with us?”
“Yes, it settles the question of dinner. After such luck as this we must
go on. I think we can squeeze in six on a side, and one at each
end—fourteen in all.”
“Fourteen! Well, now, the question is what shall we have? So far our
luck is of a very small pattern—a very small pattern indeed. Ten eggs
and one chicken of themselves won’t make much of a dinner for fourteen
men.”
“The fact is, we must make this dinner chiefly out of our own brains.
Give it the whole weight of your mind; think intensely, and see if you
can’t hit on a way to make a dish or two out of chips.”
“Here’s this sumach—what would you make of it?”
“Look at it philosophically. Analyse it: TASTE—_acid_; COLOR—_red_. Now
what is there that is acid and red?”
“There are currants for one thing, and there’s something else, I’m
sure—oh, cranberries.”
“Then we must make currants and cranberries out of sumach. But for my
part I’m greatly distressed about this wretched fowl—what can we do with
him?”
“We might boil him, though he is young and will do to roast.”
“What are you thinking of?—one small fowl on a table before fourteen
hungry men; ridiculous!”
“Yes, and these healthy fellows have got fearful appetites. They eat
like alligators. When they draw three days’ beef they devour it in one,
for fear (as they say) that somebody might steal it. Can’t you make a
salad of him such as you used to send over to us at Camp Groce? Do you
know when we first came there we all thought the dressing was real?”
“Let us see—we have vinegar, to be sure, and some red peppers. But there
is not time now to _manufacture_ the mustard, and then we have no milk
or butter to make the oil from. No! it’s very sad, but we can’t have
chicken salad!”
“Well, the haversacks are full, so we may as well go on. It rains harder
than ever, and that low piece of road will be over our boots in mud and
water. I wonder if we shall find the potatoes and pumpkin all safe?”
Our friend “Plenty” duly delivered to us those vegetables when we
reached his cabin. Now, a couple of officers trudging along in the mud
on a rainy day, laden with a bag of potatoes, a big pumpkin, a couple of
overloaded baskets, and several haversacks and canteens, cannot present
a very elegant or dignified appearance; nevertheless, a tall man mounted
on a ragged-looking steed, and wearing his head stuck through a hole in
the middle of his blanket, after the fashion of a Mexican poncha,
accosted us as “gentlemen,” and in most courteous terms desired to know
whether this was the road to Marshall. He gave just one quick, keen
glance that travelled all over us, and rested for a single instant on
our shoulder straps.
“I perceive, gentlemen,” said he, without the slightest diminution of
courtesy, “that you belong to the other side.”
I nodded an assent.
“And that you are officers?”
I nodded again.
“I presume you are prisoners then, and here on parole?”
Now, wearing a United States uniform at that time in Texas by no means
proved that a man was in the United States service; it only indicated
that he was a soldier. So many prisoners were in _their_ butternut, and
so many Confederates in _our_ uniform that a Texan eye rarely looked
behind the coat to distinguish the kind of soldier it covered. When,
therefore, our tall friend said, “You are on the other side,” and added,
“you are officers,” it was plain to us that he had made the close
acquaintance of our troops in some other way than through the
newspapers.
“I perceive that you are an old soldier,” I said in reply. “And I do not
think you are a Texan. Allow me to ask where you are from?”
“I belong to the 1st Missouri Cavalry,” said he, “and I am from
Missouri.”
“From Missouri!” I exclaimed. “Why, I was in service there myself during
the first year of the war.”
The tall man and I looked steadily at each other in mutual astonishment.
The same thoughts were passing through our minds, and he expressed them
first and best by saying:
“You know, sir, that if you and I had met this way in Missouri, that
first year of the war, only one of us would have walked away, and maybe
neither.”
“Yes,” I said, “the war was very bitter there.”
“It was that. No man could have made me believe then that I could ever
meet an enemy with the same friendly feelings I have for you,
gentlemen.”