“Boots and Saddles”--“I am the Colonel's Orderly”--Riding
Fifty Miles on an Empty Stomach--The Chaplain Appears--I am
Wounded by a Locomotive and a Piece of Coal--I Nearly Kill
an Old Man.
When our foraging party got back to camp, and I unloaded the corn fodder
from my horse, I was about as disgusted with war as a man could be. The
faces of those people I had met at the plantation rose up before me, and
I could imagine how they would look when they heard that the Confederate
soldier who was their all, was dead. I hoped that they would never hear
of it. While I was thinking the matter over, and grooming my horse, the
chaplain came along and took nearly all the fodder I had brought in, and
fed it to his horse, and asked me where the chickens and hams, and sweet
potatoes were. I told him I didn't get any. Then he spoke very plainly
to me, plainer than he had ever spoken before, and told me that fodder
for horses was not all that soldiers got when they went out foraging. He
said I wanted to snatch anything that was lying around loose, that could
be eaten. I asked him if the government did not furnish rations enough
for him to live comfortably, in addition to the sanitary stores. He
said sometimes he yearned for chicken. Then I told him his salary was
sufficient to buy such luxuries. He was hot, and talked back to me, and
told me he didn't propose to be lectured by no red-headed private as to
his duties, or his conduct, and he wanted me to understand that I was
expected to forage for him as well as myself, and not to let another
soldier come into camp with a better assortment of the luxuries afforded
by the country, than I did. He said that he picked me out as a man that
would fill the bill, and do his duty. I told him if he had selected me
from all the men in the regiment as being the most expert sneak thief,
he had made a mistake, and I would be teetotally d----d if I would go
through the country stealing hens and chickens for any chaplain that
ever lived, and he could put that in his pipe and smoke it. It was
pretty sassy talk for a private soldier to indulge in towards a
chaplain, but I was so disgusted to hear a man who should discountenance
anything unsoldierly, talk so flippantly about taking from the women and
children of the country what little they had to live on, because we had
the power, their men folks being away in the army, that I got on my ear,
as it were. I told him that I was not much mashed on war, and hoped I
would never have to fire a gun at a human being, but now that I was into
the business, I would fight if I had to, or do any duty of a soldier,
but I would be cussed if I would rob henroosts, and he didn't weigh
enough to compel me to. Then he said I could go back to my company, as
he didn't want a man around him that hadn't sand enough to do his duty.
I asked him if I hadn't better wait till after supper, it being after
dark, but he said I could go right away, and he would have another man
detailed to take my place. I was discharged, because I struck against
stealing hens. I saddled my horse, took my share of the fodder, and
started for my company to return to duty as a soldier. On the way to
my company I saw a half a dozen soldiers, covered with mud, and their
horses covered with foam, ride up to the colonel's tent, and I stopped
to see what was the matter. A sergeant gave the colonel a dispatch,
which he tore open, read it, looked excited, and then he turned to 'me
and said, “Ride to every commanding officer of a company and say with
my compliments, that 'Boots and Saddles' will be sounded in ten minutes,
and every man must be in line, mounted, within five minutes after the
call is sounded, then come back here.” Well, I was about as excited as
the colonel, and I rode to every captain's tent and gave the command.
Some of the captains, who were just sitting down to supper, asked, “What
you giving us,” thinking it was some foolishness on my part. One captain
said if I came around with any more such orders he would run a
saber through me and turn it around a few times; another said to his
lieutenant, “That is the chaplains idiot, that the boys play jokes on;
some corporal has probably told him to carry that message.”
I got all around the companies, and went back to the colonel, and told
him that I had delivered his invitation, but the most of the captains
sent regrets in one way and another, and one was going to jab me with a
saber. He called the bugler, and told him to blow “Boots and Saddles,”
and in five minutes to sound, “To Horse;” then he turned to me and said,
“You will be my orderly tonight, and you will have the liveliest ride
you ever experienced. Buckle up your saddle girth and lead my horse out
here.” I told the colonel I should have to buckle up my own belt a few
holes, as I hadn't had any supper, when he told his servant to bring me
out what was left of his supper, which he did, one small hard tack. I
eat pretty hearty, and let my horse fill himself all he could on corn
stalks, and in a short time the bugle calls were echoing through the
woods, men were saddling up and mounting, and picking up camp
utensils in the dark, and swearing some at being ordered out in that
unceremonious manner when they had got all ready to have a night's
rest. There was not near as much swearing as I had supposed there would
be, but there was enough. The chaplain came rushing up to where I was
with his coat off, and asked me what was the matter, and the colonel
having gone to the major's tent, I answered him that we were going to
have the liveliest ride he ever experienced, and not to forget it, and
that probably before morning we would have the biggest fight of the
season.
“Come and help me catch my horse,” said the chaplain, “I turned him
loose so he could roll over, and he has stampeded.”
“Go catch your own horse,” said I with lofty dignity, “and steal your
own chickens. I am serving on the start of the commanding officer, sir.
I am the colonel's orderly.”
I thought that would break the chaplain all up, but it didn't. “The
devil you say,” remarked the chaplain, as he went off in the darkness,
whistling for his horse. Gentle reader, did you ever ride on horseback
fifty miles in one night, on an empty stomach, after having ridden
thirty miles during the day? If you never have accomplished such a feat,
you don't know anything about suffering. O, to this day I can feel my
stomach freeze itself to my backbone. We started soon after orders were
given on a gallop, and if we walked our horses a minute during the whole
night, I did not know it. We marched by “fours,” but I had the whole
road to myself, as I rode behind the colonel. I wanted to know where we
were going and what for, and once, when the colonel fell back to where
I was, while he was taking a drink out of a canteen, I said, “This is
a little sudden, ain't it?” My idea was to draw him out, and get him to
tell me all about the destination of the expedition, and its object.
The colonel got through drinking, and as he knocked the cork into the
canteen, he said, “Yes, this _is_ a little spry.” That was all he said,
and evidently he wanted me to draw my own inference, which I did.
Pretty soon the orderly sergeant of the company that was on the advance,
directly behind the colonel, rode up to me and asked me if I had any
idea where we were going. He said he had seen me talking with the
colonel, and thought maybe he had told me the programme. He added that
he thought it was a shame that men couldn't be allowed a little rest. I
told him that I had just been talking with the colonel about it, but I
had no authority to communicate what he said. However, I would assure
the orderly that we were going to have the liveliest ride he ever
experienced. I knew I was safe in saying that, and the orderly remarked
that he had about come to that conclusion himself, and he left me. I
had never expected to rise, on pure merit, to that proud position of
colonel's orderly, and I made up my mind if that night's ride did not
founder me, or drive my spine up into the top of my hat, or glue the two
sides of my empty stomach together, so they would never come apart, that
I would try to conduct myself so that the commanding officers would all
cry for me and want me on their starts. I argued, to myself, as we
rode along, that the position of colonel's orderly could not be so very
unsafe, as it did not stand to reason that a colonel would go into any
place that was particularly dangerous, as long as he could send other
officers. I knew that colonels in action should ride behind their
regiments, and wondered if this colonel knew his place, or would he be
fool enough to go right ahead of his men? I was going to speak to him
about it, if we ever stopped galloping long enough, but everything was
jarred out of my head.
A fellow can think of a good many things, riding on a gallop at night,
and I guess I thought of about everything that night. There were few
interruptions of the march. There were about four stops, two being
caused by horses falling down and being run over by those behind them,
and two by carbines going off accidentally. One man was dismounted and
run over by half the horses in the regiment, and when he was pulled out
from under the horses he asked for a chew of tobacco, and saying he
was marked for life by horse shoes, he kicked his horse in the ribs for
falling down, climbed on and said the procession might move on. He was
all cut to pieces by horse's hoofs, but he was full of fight the next
morning. Another soldier had his big toe shot off by the accidental
discharge of a carbine, and when the regiment stopped, and the colonel
asked him if he wanted to stop there and wait for an ambulance to
overtake him, he said, not if there is going to be a fight. I don't
use a big toe much, anyway, and if there is a fight ahead, I want to be
there, if I haven't got a toe left on my feet. The colonel smiled and
said, all right, boy. I never saw fellows who were so anxious to fight,
and I wondered how much money it would take to induce me to go into a
fight when I was crippled up enough to be excused. Along toward morning
everybody felt that we were so far into the enemy's lines that there
must be some object in the long ride, and the probabilities of a fight
seemed to be settled in every man's mind. Up hill and down we galloped,
until it seemed to me I should fall off my horse and die. About half an
hour before daylight the command was halted, and the officers of each
company were sent for, and they surrounded the colonel, separated
from the men, and he said: “There is a town ahead, about four miles,
garrisoned by confederate troops. We are to charge it at daylight, drive
the enemy out the other side of town, kill as many as possible, and when
they go out they will be attacked by another Union regiment that has
been sent around to the rear. There is a railroad there, and a bridge
across a river, Confederate stores of ammunition, provisions, cotton,
etc. The stores are to be burned, the railroad bridge destroyed,
the track torn up, engines, if there are any, are to be ditched, and
everything destroyed except private residences. You understand?” The
officers said they did, and they went back to their companies and
ordered the men to get a bite to eat. When the officers had gone I was
pretty scared, and I said, “Colonel, suppose the rebels do not get out
of that town.” The colonel was chewing a hard-tack when he answered.
Daylight was just streaking up from the East, and he held a piece of
the hard-tack up to the light to pick a worm out of it, after which
he answered: “If they don't get out, we will, those of us who are not
killed. I always like to eat hard-tack in the dark, then I can't see the
worms.” To say that I was reassured would be untrue. I admired a man who
could mingle business with pleasure, as he did when talking of possible
death and worms in hard-tack, but death was never an interesting subject
to me. I wanted to talk with the colonel more, and asked him if colonels
often get killed, and if an orderly was exactly safe in his immediate
vicinity, but he leaned against a tree and went to sleep, and I stood
near, as wide awake as any man ever was. I wondered whose idea it was
to send us fifty miles into the Confederacy to destroy provisions and
railroads.
Did they suppose the Confederates didn't want anything to eat. I thought
it was a mean man or government that would burn up good wholesome
provisions because they couldn't eat them themselves. And who owned this
railroad that was going to be torn up? Why burn a bridge that probably
cost several hundred thousand dollars. As I was thinking these
things over and finding fault with the persons responsible for such
foolishness, the chaplain, who had not showed up during the night, came
up to where I was, without any hat, leading his horse, which was lame.
The first thing he asked me how I would trade horses. They all wanted
my Jen, but he was not in the market. The chaplain said he had caught
up with the regiment about midnight, and had rode at the rear, with the
horse-doctor. He said this expedition was foolish, and had no object
except to try the endurance of the horses and men. I told him that we
were going to have a fight in less than an hour, and burn a town, and
probably we would all be killed. The chaplain turned pale and looked
faint.
I had read about hell, and seen pictures of it, from the imagination of
some eminent artist, but the hell I had read of, and seen pictured, was
not a marker to the experience of the next three hours. In a few minutes
the colonel woke up, and the regiment mounted and moved on. An advance
guard was put further out than before, with orders to charge the rebel
picket almost into town, and then hold up for the rest of us. As we
neared the town it was just light enough to see. The advance captured
the picket post without a shot being fired, and moved right into town,
followed by the regiment, and we actually rode right into the camp of
the boys in gray, and woke them up by firing. They scattered, coatless
and shoeless, firing as they ran, and in five minutes they were all
captured, killed, gone out of town, or were in hiding in the buildings.
Then began the conflagration. Immense buildings, filled with goods, or
bales of cotton, were fired, and soon the black smoke and falling walls
made a scene that was enough to set a recruit crazy. A train came in
just as the fire was at its greatest, and a squad of men was sent to
burn it, and the colonel told me to go and capture the engineer and
bring him to the headquarters.
[Illustration: Engineer threw a lump of coal and hit me 113]
I rode up as near to the engine as my horse would go and told the
engineer I wanted him. He turned a cock somewhere, and a jet of steam
came out towards me that fairly blinded me and the horse, and I couldn't
see the engine any more. My horse turned tail, the engineer threw a lump
of coal and hit me on the head, and I went away and told the colonel the
engineer wouldn't come, and beside had scalded me with steam, and hit me
with a lump of coal. The colonel said the engineer could be arrested
for such conduct. Pretty soon the train was on fire, and one of our boys
clubbed the engineer, got on the engine and run it on to a side track
and ditched it, and brought the engineer up to headquarters, where I had
quite a talk with him about squirting steam and throwing lumps of coal
at peaceable persons. Then the railroad, bridge was set on fire, and
it looked cruel to see the timbers licked up by flames, but when the
burning trestle fell into the river below, it was a grand, an awful
sight. I came out of the fight alive, but with a lump on my head as big
as a hen's egg, so big I couldn't wear my hat, and a firm determination
to whip that engineer who threw the lump of coal when I could catch him
alone. We cooked a late breakfast on the embers of the ruins, and after
eating, I noticed a sign, “Printing Office,” in front of a residence
just outside the burnt district, and asked permission to go there and
print a paper, with an account of the fight, and the destruction of the
town. Permission was granted, and I went to the office and found an old
man and two daughters, beautiful girls, but intensely bitter rebels. The
old man was near eighty years old, and he said he could whip any dozen
yankees. I told him I would like to use his type and press, but he said
if I touched a thing I did it at my peril, as he should consider the
type contaminated by the touch of a yankee. The girls felt the same
way, but I talked nice to them, and they didn't kick much when I took
a “stick” and began to set type. I worked till dinner time, when they
asked me to take dinner with them, which I did. During the conversation
I convinced them that I was practically a non-combatant, and wouldn't
hurt anybody for the world. I worked till about the middle of the
afternoon, when I noticed that the girls, who had been up on the house,
looked tickled about something, and presently I heard some firing at
the edge of the town, some yelling, more firing, bugle calls among our
soldiers, and finally there was an absence of blue coats, and I looked
for my horse, and found the old man leading him away. I halted the old
man, and he stopped and told me that the Confederates had come into town
from the East and driven our cavalry out on the other side, and I would
be a prisoner in about five minutes, and he laughed, and the girls
clapped their hands, and I felt as though my time had come. I had never
killed an old man in my life, but I made up my mind to have my horse or
kill him in his traces, so I drew my revolver and told him to let go
the horse or he was a dead man. It was a question with me whether I
could hold my hand still-enough to kill him, if he didn't let go the
horse, and I hoped to heaven he would drop the bridle. He looked so much
like my father at home that it seemed like killing a near relative, and
when I looked at the two beautiful daughters on the gallery, looking at
us, pale as death, I almost felt as though it would be better to lose
the horse and be captured, then to put a bullet through the gray head of
that beautiful old man. How I wished that he was a young fellow, and
had a gun, and had it pointed at me. Then I could kill him and feel as
though it was self-defense. But the rebels were yelling and firing over
the hill, and my regiment was going the other way on important business,
and it was a question with me whether I should kill the old man, and see
his life-blood ebb out there in front of his children, or be captured,
and perhaps shot for burning buildings. I decided that it was my duty
to murder him, and get my horse. So I rested my revolver across my left
forearm, and took deliberate aim at his left eye, a beautiful, large,
expressive gray eye, so much like my father's at home that I almost
imagined I was about to kill the father who loved me. I heard, a scream
on the gallery, and the blonde girl fainted in the arms of her brunette
sister. The sister said to me, “Please don't kill my father.” He was not
ten feet from me, and I said, “Drop the horse or you die.” The old
man trembled, the girl said: “Pa, give the man his horse,” the old man
dropped the bridle and walked towards the house. I mounted the horse and
rode off towards the direction my regiment had taken, thanking heaven
that the girl had spoken just in time, and that I had not been compelled
to put a bullet through that noble-looking gray head. The face haunted me
all the way, as I rode along to catch my regiment, and when I overtook
it, and rode up to the colonel, and asked him what in thunder he wanted
to go off and leave me to fight the whole southern Confederacy for,
he said, “O, get out! There were no rebels there. That was the Indiana
regiment that started out day before yesterday, to get on the other side
of the town. The fellows were shooting some cattle for food. What makes
you look-so pale?” I was thinking of whether a man ever prospered who
killed old people.