"HURRAH FOR BULL RUN!"
Having decided that he would waste too much time if he turned from his
course to punish the Union men who had persecuted his recruits, the
captain "kept lumbering right along," and on the afternoon of the next
day came within sight of the town in which his regiment had been
encamped when he left it to start on his scout; but there was not a
tent, a wagon or a soldier to be seen about the place now, and a citizen
who came out to meet him, brought the information that the regiment had
moved South to join Rains and Jackson, who were marching toward Neosho,
a short distance from Springfield: and at the same time he gave the
captain a written order from his colonel to join his command with all
haste.
"If we had known this before, we might have kept company with your
friend Tom," said the captain, as he faced the squad about after a
fashion of his own and started them on the back track. "Both sides
seemed to be concentrating in the southwestern part of the State, and
there's where the battle-ground is going to be."
"Not all the time, I hope," said Rodney.
"Of course not. We'll drive the enemy back on St. Louis, and wind up by
taking that city. General Pillow will march up from New Madrid to
co-operate with us, and perhaps he will stop on the way to take Cairo. I
hope he will, to pay those Illinois chaps for robbing the St. Louis
armory."
This was a very pretty programme but the captain thought it could be
easily carried out, and the very next day he heard a piece of news which
caused him to make several additions to it. As the squad was moving past
a plantation house an excited man, who was in too great a hurry to get
his hat, rushed down to the gate flourishing a paper over his head and
shouted, at the top of his voice:
"Hurrah for Jeff Davis! Hurrah for Johnston! Hurrah for Bull Run and all
the rest of 'em!"
"What's up?" inquired the captain, reining in his horse.
"Here's something that one of Price's men slung at me yesterday while he
was riding along," replied the planter, opening the gate and placing the
paper in the officer's eager palm. "Aint we walking over 'em roughshod
though, and didn't I say all the while that we were bound to do it? A
Northern mechanic has got no business alongside a Southern gentleman."
"Have we had a fight?" asked the captain. "I wonder if my regiment was
in it."
"No, I don't reckon it was," answered the man, with a laugh. "You see it
happened out in Virginny, a few miles from Washington. I wish I might
get a later paper'n that, for I calculate to read in it that our boys
are in Washington dictating--"
"Hey--youp!" yelled the captain, who began to understand the matter
now.
"Price's men whooped and yelled worse'n that when they went by
yesterday," said the man, jumping up and knocking his heels together
like a boy who had just been turned loose from school. "That's Davis's
dispatch right there. He went out from Richmond to watch the fight, and
got there just in time to see the Yankees running."
The officer, who was worked up to such a pitch of excitement that the
paper rustled in his trembling hands, glanced over the black headlines
to which the planter directed his attention, and then read the dispatch
aloud so that his men could hear it. It ran as follows:
"Night has closed upon a hard-fought field. Our forces were victorious.
The battle was fought mainly on our left. Our forces were fifteen
thousand; that of the enemy estimated at thirty-five thousand."
"And when the Yankees got a-going," chimed in the planter, clapping his
hands and swaying his body back and forth after the manner of a negro
who had been carried away by some sudden enthusiasm, "they never
stopped. It was such a stampede that their officers couldn't do nothing
with 'em. The soldiers who were running away from the battle met the
civilians who were riding out from Washington to see it, and the two
living streams of humanity, one going one way and t'other going t'other
way, got all mixed up together; and all the while there were our
batteries playing onto 'em and our cavalry riding through 'em and
sabering first one and then another, till--Hey--youp! I'll be doggone if
I can seem to get it through my head, although I have read it more'n a
hundred times."
This astounding intelligence almost took away the breath of the men who
listened to it. Of course they had known all the while that whipping the
North was going to be as easy as falling off a log, but to have their
opinions confirmed in this unexpected way almost overwhelmed them. They
knew it was bound to come, but they hadn't looked for it so soon. They
gazed at one another in silence for a moment or two, and then the shout
they set up would have done credit to a larger squad than theirs. The
planter, who really acted as though he had taken leave of his senses,
joined in, laughing and shaking his head and slapping his knees in a way
that set Rodney Gray in a roar. It was a long time before the captain
could bring his squad to "attention."
"There's a good deal more in this paper," said he, "and if you will let
me have it, I should like to read it to the boys when we go into camp.
We belong to Price, and want to catch up with the men who went by here
yesterday."
"Then you'll have to skip along right peart," replied the man. "That's
the way they were going stopped long enough to drink my well 'most dry,
and then went off in a lope. As for the paper, take it along. You don't
reckon there's any chance for a mistake, do you?"
"Not the slightest. President Davis knew what he was doing when he sent
that telegram to Richmond."
"But fifteen thousand against thirty-five thousand," said the planter,
whose excitement had not driven all his common sense out of his head.
"That's big odds, and it kinder sticks in my crop. Well, good-by, if you
must be going, and good luck to you."
"It doesn't stick in my crop," replied the captain. "I knew we could do
it, and we'll whip bigger odds than that, if they keep forcing war upon
us. Don't you know that the man who looks for a fight generally gets
more than he wants? Forward! Trot!"
Never before had Rodney Gray been thrown into the company of so wild a
set of men. If such a thing were possible, they were wilder than those
his Cousin Marcy found on his train when he boarded it at Barrington on
his way home. The first rational thought that came into his mind was:
What a lucky thing that Tom Percival was well out of the way when this
news came! Tom would have betrayed himself sure, for he never could have
pulled off his hat and shouted and whooped with any enthusiasm when he
heard that the cause in which he believed, and for which he was willing
to risk his life, had met with disaster. At length the captain, who
appeared to have been awed into silence, said slowly:
"I, too, would like to see a later paper than this. If it is true that
the Federals were utterly routed and thrown into such confusion that
their officers could do nothing with them, our victorious troops must
have followed them into Washington, and I shouldn't wonder if they were
there at this moment, dictating terms of peace to the Lincoln
government."
The paper that had been given him, proved to be a copy of the _Mobile
Register_. As the captain talked he ran his eye rapidly over its
columns, and finally found an editorial containing a piece of news that
caused him to halt his squad and face his horse about.
"Here's something I want to read to you," said he. "Come up close on all
sides so that you can hear every word of it. You know that our governor
proposed that Missouri should remain neutral, and that a conference was
held at the Planter's House in St. Louis to talk the matter over. This
is what General Lyon said in reply to the governor's proposition, Now
listen, so that you may know who is to blame for the troubles that have
come upon us:
"'Rather than concede to the State of Missouri the right to demand that
government shall not enlist troops within her limits, or bring troops
into the State whenever it please, or move its troops at its own will, I
would see every man, woman and child in the State dead and buried. This
means war.'
"What do you boys say to that?" continued the captain.
"I say that if the Yankees want war we'll give them more than they'll
care to have," answered one of the squad; and all his comrades yelled
their approval. "Now while you're reading, captain, suppose you read
about that big battle. Let's hear just how bad our fifteen thousand
whipped the Yankee thirty-five thousand."
The officer complied and read an account of the battle of Bull Run,
which was so highly sensational and so utterly unreasonable, that Rodney
Gray's common sense would not let him believe, more than half of it. He
hoped and believed that the Southern soldiers had gained a glorious
victory over the Lincoln hirelings; but that there could have been so
great a difference in the size of the contending armies, did not look
reasonable. But the captain put implicit faith in the story.
"It seems that the Federal success in the beginning of the fight was
owing to their overwhelming numbers," said he. "But the men on our side
were gentlemen who could not be driven by a rabble, and of course they
were bound to win in the end. But here is an article that may be of more
interest to us. It is entitled. 'The Situation in Missouri.' You know
that Governor Jackson went to Jefferson City and issued a proclamation
calling the people to arms, and that Lyon came up the river on
steamboats and routed him from there and from Booneville, too. You know
all about it, because you were there and so was I. Well, the Northern
papers think that that was a blow that secured Missouri to the Union,
and that thousands, who have been hesitating which side to take, will
now enlist to put down the rebellion. _Rebellion!_ Remember the word.
That's what the Lincoln hirelings call the efforts of a free people to
maintain their freedom. But listen to what the _Register_ has to say on
this point:
"The Northern soldiers prefer enlisting to starvation. But they are not
soldiers, least of all to meet the hot-blooded, thorough-bred, impetuous
men of the South. They are trencher-soldiers who enlisted to make war
upon rations, not upon men. They are such as marched through Baltimore,
squalid, wretched, ragged, half-naked, as the newspapers of that city
report them; fellows who do not know the breech of a musket from its
muzzle; white slaves, peddling watches; small-change knaves and
vagrants. These are the levied forces which Lincoln arrays as candidates
for the honor of being slaughtered by gentlemen such as Mobile sends to
battle. Let them come South and we will put our negroes to the dirty
work of killing them. But they will not come South. Not a wretch of them
will live on this side of the border longer than it will take us to
reach the ground and drive them off.'
"Can we at the front be whipped while our friends at home keep up such
heart as that?" cried the excited captain, pulling off his cap and
flourishing it over his head with one hand, while he shook the paper at
his men with the other. "Three cheers for brave old Missouri, and
confusion to everybody who wants to keep her down."
"Everybody except Tom Percival," thought Rodney, as he threw up his cap
and joined in to help increase the almost deafening noise that arose
when the officer ceased speaking. "Whatever happens to anybody else I
want Tom to come out all right."
After this short delay the squad rode on again, and along every mile of
the road they traversed they found people to cheer them and hurrah for
the great victory at Bull Run. There were no signs of Union men anywhere
along the route, but the blackened ruins they passed now and then
pointed out the sites of the dwellings in which some of them had
formerly lived. Those ruins had been left there by some of Price's men
scouting parties like the one with which he was now riding. Rodney had
always thought he should like to be a scout, but if that was the sort of
work scouts were expected to do, he decided that he would rather be a
regular soldier. He wouldn't mind facing men who had weapons in their
hands, because that was what soldiers enlisted for; but the idea of
turning women and children out into the weather, by burning their houses
over their heads, was repugnant to him. There was one piece of news he
and the captain did not get, although they asked everybody for it. No
one could tell them for certain that the victorious Confederates had
gone into Washington and dictated terms of peace to the Lincoln
government. There were plenty who were sure it had been done, but they
had received no positive information of it. The only news they heard on
which they could place reliance was that Price had withdrawn from
Neosho, and effected a junction with Jackson and Rains at Carthage. That
was a point in the captain's favor, for instead of being obliged to make
a wide detour to the east and south of Springfield, he turned squarely
to the west toward Carthage, and saved more than a hundred miles of
travel, as well as the risk of being captured by a scouting party of
Yankee cavalry.
The squad reached Carthage without seeing any signs of Siegel's
troopers, who were supposed to be raiding through the country in all
directions, and when Rodney rode into the camp, which was pitched upon a
little rise of ground a short distance from the town, he remarked that
he had never seen a stranger sight. The camp itself was all right. The
tents were properly pitched, the wagons and artillery parked after the
most approved military rules, and all this was to be expected, since the
commanding general was a veteran of the Mexican war; but the men looked
more like a mob than they did like soldiers. There were eight thousand
of them, and not one in ten was provided with a uniform of any sort. The
guard who challenged them carried a double-barrel shotgun, and the only
thing military there was about him, was a rooster's feather stuck in the
band of his hat.
"They're a good deal better than they look," said the captain, when
Rodney called his attention to the fact that the sentry "slouched"
rather than walked over his beat, and that he didn't know how to hold
his gun. "They are not very well drilled yet, but they'll fight, and
that is the main thing. Think of Washington and his ragamuffins at
Valley Forge the next time you feel disposed to criticise the boys."
"Where is the enemy?" inquired Rodney.
"He is supposed to be concentrating twenty thousand men at Springfield,
thirty-five miles east of here." replied the captain. "When McCulloch
gets up from Arkansas we'll have a little more than fifteen thousand.
But that's enough. We'll be in St. Louis in less than a month. That
victory at Bull Run will nerve our boys to do good work when they get at
it. Now where shall I go to find my regiment? The colonel is the man I
want to report to."
While the captain was looking around to find an officer of whom he could
make inquiries, there was a loud clatter of hoofs behind, and a moment
afterward a spruce young fellow, handsomely mounted and wearing a
uniform that Rodney Gray would have recognized anywhere, dashed by and
held on his way without once looking in their direction.
"There he is now," exclaimed the captain, before Rodney had time to
speak. "Oh, sergeant!"
The horseman drew up and turned about just as Rodney's hand was placed
upon his shoulder. The greeting was just such a one as any two boys
would extend to each other under similar circumstances, and so we need
not say any more about it. Rodney and Dick Graham were shaking hands at
last, and two brothers could not have been more delighted.
"How in the world did you get through St. Louis without being put in
jail, and where did you pick him up, captain?" were the questions Dick
asked when he recovered from his surprise. "Lyon is between us and St.
Louis, but we manage to get our mail pretty regularly--Heard about Bull
Run? Wasn't that a victory though? Fifteen thousand against thirty-five
thousand! When we were at school, captain--"
"Where's the regiment?" interrupted the latter. "I am ordered to report
to the colonel at once."
"Over there," replied Dick, sweeping his right arm around the horizon so
as to include the whole camp on that side of the street. "Come on, and I
will show you the way. When we were at school the Union boys made sport
of us rebels because we shouted ourselves hoarse over the victory in
Charleston Harbor, and declared that we ought to be ashamed of ourselves
for it. Five thousand men against fifty-one was not a thing to be proud
of. But they couldn't say that now if they were here. We won a fair
fight on the field of Bull Run, although the enemy outnumbered us more
than two to one. I say we are going to repeat the good work right here
in Missouri."
"Are you Confederate?" inquired Rodney.
"Not much. I'm State Rights. That's me."
"And you'll not be ordered out of your State?"
"I may be ordered but I won't go. That's me. Seen Jeff Thompson's last
proclamation? In it he calls Lyon's Dutchmen Hessians and Tories, and
says our first hard work must be to drive them from the State. After
that has been done, then we'll decide whether or not we want to join the
Confederacy."
"If the Governor of Louisiana had talked that way I would not be here
now," said Rodney. "He tried to swear us into the Confederate service
against our will, and that broke up the company. I have as much to tell
you as you have to tell me, and I propose that we postpone our talking
until we can sit down somewhere and have it out with no fear of
interruption. Do you suppose I can get into your company?"
"I suppose you can," replied Dick, with a laugh. "When the captain sees
your writing he will make you orderly so quick you will never know it."
"Then he'll never see any of my writing," said Rodney, earnestly. "If
you so much as hint to him that I know a pen-point from a pen-holder,
I'll never forgive you. Captain Hubbard's men wanted to make me company
clerk, but I couldn't see the beauty of it, and so they elected me
sergeant. But I don't want any office now. I want to remain a private so
that I will have a chance to go with you if you are sent out on a scout.
But bear one thing in mind," he added, in a lower tone, "you needn't
order me to burn any houses, for I'll not do it."
"I am down on all such lighting myself," replied Dick, with emphasis.
"If we ever go out together I will show you as many as half-a-dozen
houses that would be ashes now if it hadn't been for me, and one of them
covers the head of one Thomas Percival--when he is at home."
Dick thought Rodney would be much surprised at this, but he wasn't. All
he said was:
"Does Tom know it?"
"I don't suppose he does, or his father, either; but I have the
satisfaction of knowing that I have done something to strengthen the
friendship that existed between Tom and myself while we were at
Barrington. You will know how hard a time I had in doing any thing for
the Percivals when I tell you that Tom is suspected of belonging to a
company of Home Guards."
"Suspected, is he?" said Rodney, with a knowing wink. "Is that all you
know about him? He's captain of a company he raised himself, and rode
all the way alone to St. Louis to ask Lyon if he could join him. He was
afraid to trust the mails. He told me that the Vigilance Committees had
a way of opening letters from suspected persons, and he didn't want to
run any risks."
"Well now, I am beat," said Dick, who had listened to this revelation
with a look of the profoundest astonishment on his face. "But how does
it come that you know so much more about him than I do? Have you been
corresponding with him?"
"I never heard a word from him from the time I left Barrington until I
met him at Cedar Bluff landing in a nest of Confederates. Tom was a
prisoner, was known to be Union, accused of being a horse-thief and in a
fair way of being hung; but he got out of the scrape somehow, and I hope
is safe at home by this time."
"Well, well," repeated Dick, growing more and more amazed. "So do I hope
he is safe at home, and if he got within a hundred miles of Springfield
I reckon he is. The country is full of Federal cavalry, and how your
squad came through without being molested is more than I can understand.
You will find the colonel in this tent, captain," said he, dismounting
and drawing some papers from his pocket. "I must report too, for I have
been on an errand for him. I'll be out in a minute, Rodney."
Dick followed, the captain into the colonel's tent, and Rodney sat on
his horse and looked around while he awaited his return. He thought of
what the captain had said regarding the Continentals at Valley Forge,
but did not see that there could be any comparison drawn between the two
armies. Price's men seemed to be well clothed, provisions were plenty,
and as for their arms, they had an abundance of them such as they were,
and a charging enemy would find their double-barrel shotguns bad things
to face at close quarters. But a few months later the comparison was a
good one. During the "little Moscow retreat," after the battle of Pea
Ridge (which Van Dorn's ambition led him to fight contrary to orders),
along a route where there were neither roads nor bridges, through a
region from which the inhabitants had all fled, leaving the country "so
poor that a turkey buzzard would not fly over it," with no train of
wagons, or provisions to put in them if there had been, and no tents to
shelter them from the cold, biting winds and sleet and snow--when Rodney
Gray found himself and companions in this situation he thought of the
Continentals, and wondered at the patriotism that kept them in the
ranks. But it wasn't patriotism that kept Price's men together. It was
_fear_ and nothing else.
But this dark picture was hidden from Rodney's view as he sat there on
his horse waiting for his friend Dick Graham to come out of the
colonel's tent. The martial scenes around him, the military order that
everywhere prevailed, the companies and regiments drilling in the fields
close by, the inspiriting music that came to his ears--these sights and
sounds filled him with enthusiasm; and if any one had told him that the
time would come when he would think seriously of deserting the army and
turning his back upon the cause he had espoused, Rodney Gray would have
been thunder struck. But the time came.