The Female Smuggler Episode Makes Me Famous--I am Sent Forth
in Women's Clothes--My Interview with the Bad Corporal--A
Fist Fight--The Rebellion is Put Down Once More--I Reveal My
Identity.
It was not twenty-four hours before the news spread all over my
regiment, as well as several other regiments, that a certain corporal
had captured a female smuggler, while on picket, had searched her on the
spot and found a large quantity of quinine and other articles contraband
of war, and there was a general desire to look upon the features of a
man, not a commissioned officer who had gall enough to search a female
rebel, from top to toe, without orders from the commanding officer, and
I was constantly being visited by curiosity-seekers, who wanted to know
all about it. Of course it was not known that I had been ordered to do
as I did, and they all wondered why I was not made an example of; and
many privates, corporals and sergeants wondered if they would get out
of it so easily if they should do as I did. There were a great many
women passing through the lines, and I am sure many soldiers decided
that the first woman who attempted to pass through would get searched.
It was talked among the men, and for a day or two a lady would certainly
have stood a poor show to have rode up to a picket post with a pass to
go outside. The soldiers had so long been away from female society
that it would have been a picnic for them to have captured a suspicious
looking woman who was pretty. I was pointed out, down town, as the
man who captured the woman loaded with quinine, and women with rebel
tendencies would look at me as though I was a bold, bad man that ought
to be killed, and they acted as though they would like to eat me. But
I tried to appear modest, and not as though I had done anything I was
particularly proud of. The next evening the colonel sent for me and said
he had got something for me to do that required nerve. I told him that
my experience in putting down the rebellion had shown me that the whole
thing required nerve. That I had been on my nerve until my nerves were
pretty near used up, and I asked him if he couldn't let some of the
other boys do a little of the nervous work. He said he had one more
woman job that he would like to have me undertake.
I was sick of the whole woman business, and told him I did not want to
be aggravated any more; that arresting women and searching them, was
nothing but an aggravation, and I wanted to be let out. He said in this
case I would not have to arrest anybody of the female persuasion, but
that I would have to be arrested, and that it would be the greatest joke
that ever was. I told him if there was any joke about it he could count
me in. Then he went on to say that my success with the female smuggler
had excited all the boys to emulate my deeds, and they were all laying
for a female smuggler, and that he feared it wouldn't be safe for a
woman to be caught on the picket line. There had got to be a stop put to
it, and he and the general had thought of a scheme. He said there was
a corporal in one of the companies who had made his brags that he would
arrest the first female that came to his picket post, and search her for
smuggled goods, and they wanted to make an example of him. He asked me
if I wasn't something of a boxer, and I told him for a light weight I
was considered pretty good. Then he asked me if I could ride on a side
saddle. I told him I could ride anything, from a hobby to an elephant.
He said that was all right, and I would fill the bill. Then he went
into details. I was to go to the town with him, and be fitted out with
a riding habit of the female persuasion, false hair, side saddle, and
a bustle as big as a bushel basket. That I was to ride out on a certain
road, where the corporal would be on picket with two men. He would stop
me, and search me, I was to cry, and beg, and all that, but finally
submit to be searched, and after the corporal had got started to search
me, I was to haul off and give him one “biff” in the nose, another if it
was necessary to knock him down, paste one of the men in the ear, if he
showed any impudence, jump on my horse and come back to town, and leave
the corporal to find his mistake.
I didn't half like the idea of dressing up in such a masquering
costume, but of course if I could help put down the rebellion that
way, it was my duty to do it, and besides, I had a grudge against that
corporal, anyway, because he called me a “jay” and a “substitute,” and
a “drafted man,” when I came to the regiment. The colonel took me to the
residence of a lady friend who rode on horseback a good deal, and as he
let her into the secret, she helped fix me up. All I had to do was
to remove my cavalry jacket, and she put the dress on over my head. I
always supposed they put on these dresses the same as men put on pants,
by walking into them feet first, but she said they went over the head.
I felt as though my pants were going to show, but she gave me some
instructions about keeping the dress down, and I began to feel a good
deal like a woman. The dress fit me around the waist as though it was
made for me, and when it was all buttoned up in front I felt stunning.
She and the colonel made a bustle out of newspapers, and a small sofa
cushion of eider down was placed where it would do the most good. After
the dress was all fixed, she got a wig and put it on my head, and a hat,
with a feather in it, and then pinned a veil on the hair, so it reached
down to my rose-bud mouth. Then she took a powder arrangement and
powdered my face, put on a pair of long gauntlets which she usually
wore, and told me to look in the glass. When I looked into the glass I
almost fainted. The deception was so good that it would have fooled the
oldest man in the world.
The colonel said he was almost inclined to fall in love with me himself,
and he did put his arm around me and squeeze me, but I didn't notice
any particular feeling, such as I did when his lady friend was fooling
around me. That was different. Well, I was an inveterate smoker at that
time, so I took my pipe and a bag of tobacco, and put it in a pocket of
the dress, and some matches, and we went out doors. The colonel took
my tiny number eight boot in his hand and tossed me lightly into the
saddle, then he mounted his own horse and we rode around the suburbs
of the town, so I could get used to the side-saddle. I got him to stop
behind a fence and let me have a smoke out of my pipe, and then I told
him I was ready. He gave me a pass, and told me to go out on the road
the corporal was on, and if he let me pass out of the lines to go on
to a turn in the road, where a squad of our men were on a scout, and
to report to the officer in charge, who would bring me in all right, by
another road, but if the corporal attempted to search me, to do as I had
been told to do. After I had knocked the corporal down, if I would give
a yell, the officer who was outside would come and arrest us all
and bring us to headquarters, where the colonel could reprimand the
corporal, etc. I threw a kiss to the colonel and started out on the
road. It was about a mile to the picket post, and I had time to reflect
on my position. This was putting down the rebellion at a great rate.
I was an ostensible female, liable to be insulted at any moment, but I
would maintain the dignity of my alleged sex if I didn't lay up a cent.
I put on a proud, haughty look, full of purity and all that, and as I
neared the picket post, I saw the corporal step out into the road, and
as I came up he told me to halt. I halted, and handed him my pass, but
he said it was a forgery, and ordered me to dismount. I turned on the
water, from my eyes, and began to cry, but it run off the bad corporal
like water off a duck.
“None of your sniveling around me,” said the vile man. “Get down off
that horse.”
“Sir,” I said, with well feigned indignation, “you would not molest a poor
girl who has no one to defend her. Let me go I prithe.”
I had read that, “Let me go I prithe,” in a novel, and it seemed to
me to be the proper thing to say, though I couldn't hardly keep from
laughing.
“Prithe nothing,” said the corporal. “What you got in that bustle?”
said the corporal.
“Bustle,” I said, blushing so you could have touched a match to my face.
“Why speak of such a thing in the presence of a lady. I want you to let
me go or I shall think you are real mean, so now. Please, Mr. Soldier,
let me go,” and I smiled at him and winked with my left eye in a manner
that ought to have paralyzed a marble statue. “O, what you giving us,”
said the vile man. “Get down off that horse and let me go through you
for quinine. Do you hear?”
I was afraid if he helped me down he would see my boots or pants, which
would be a give-away. So I gathered my dress in my hands and jumped down
in pretty good shape. I had sparred with the corporal several times in
camp, and I knew I could knock him out easy, and I made up my mind that
the first indignity he offered me I would just “lam him one. It was all
I could do to keep from pasting him in the nose, when I first landed on
the ground, but I had a part to play, and it would not do to go off half
cocked. So I looked sad, pouted my lips, and wondered if he would kiss
me, and feel the beard where I had been shaved.
“Now, shuck yourself,” said he.
“Do what? I asked, with apparent alarm.
“Peel,” said he, as he put his hand on my back,
“Sir,” I said with my eyes flashing fire, and my heart throbbing, and
almost bursting with suppressed laughter, “you are insolent. I am a poor
orphan, unused to contact with coarse men. I have been raised a pet, and
no vile hand has ever been laid upon me until you just touched me. If
you touch me I shall scream. I shall call for help. What would you do,
you wicked, naughty man.”
“Unbutton,” said he as he pointed to my dress in front. “Call for help and
be darned. You are a smuggler, and I know it.”
“O, my God,” said I, with a stage accent, “has it come to this? Am I to be
robbed of all I hold dear, by a common Yankee corporal. Has a woman no
rights which are to be respected? Am I to be murdered in cold bel-lud,
with all my sins upon my head. O, Mr. Man, give me a moment to utter a
silent prayer.”
“O, hush,” said he, “and hold up your hands. There ain't going to be any
bel-lud. All I want is to go through you for quinine.”
“Spare me, I beseech you,” I said, as I held up my hands, and got in
position to knock him silly the first move he made. “I am no walking
drug store, I am a good girl.” Around my awful form I draw an imaginary
circle. “Step but one foot within that sacred circle, and on thy head I
launch the cu-r-r-r-se of Rome, Georgia.”
[Illustration: Gave a yell that could have been heard a mile 203]
“Let up on this Shakespeare, and get to busiess, said the corporal, as
he reached up to my neck to unbutton the top button of my dress. He was
looking at my dress, and wondering what he would find concealed within,
when I brought down both fists and took him with one in each eye, with a
force that would have knocked a mule down. He fell backwards, and gave a
yell that could have been heard a mile. Then one of his men started for
me and I knocked him in the ear, and he fell beside the corporal. The
other man was going to come for his share, when the officer who had been
stationed outside the lines rode up with his men and asked what was
the matter. The soldier-who was not hit said I had assassinated the
corporal. The officer said that was wrong, and women who would go around
killing off the Union army with their fists ought to be arrested. Just
then the corporal raised up on his elbow and tried to open two of the
blackest eyes that ever were seen. Turning to the officer, he said:
“That woman is a smuggler, and she struck me with a brick house!
“Ancient female,” said the officer, looking at me and laughing, “why do
you go around like a besum of destruction, wiping out armies, one man at
a time. You ought to be ashamed of myself, and you should be muzzled.
“Don't call me a female,” said I, in my natural hoarse voice. “That is
something that I will not submit to.”
The corporal looked up at me with one eye, the other being almost closed
from the effects of the fall of the brick house. He looked as though
he smelled woolen burning, as the old saying is. The officer said he
guessed he would take us all to headquarters, and inquire into the
affair. The corporal said that there was nothing to inquire into. That
this female came along and insisted on going outside of the lines, and
when he asked her, in a polite manner, to show her pass, she struck him
down with a billy, or some weapon she had concealed about her person.
“You are not much of a liar, either,” said I, jumping on to my horse
astraddle, like a man.
The corporal looked at me as though he would sink, but he maintained
that he had done nothing that should offend the most fastidious female.
The corporal and his men mounted, and we all started for headquarters. I
rode beside the officer, and the corporal was right behind me. After we
had got started I pulled out my pipe, filled it, lit a match as soldiers
usually do, though it was quite unhandy, and began to smoke. As the
tobacco smoke rolled out under my veil, from the alleged rosebud mouth,
the scene was one that the corporal and the most of the men had never
thought of, though the officer was “on” all right enough. The corporal
could hardly believe his eyes, or one eye, for the other one had gone
closed. I was a fine enough looking female as we rode through the
regiment, except the pipe, which I puffed along just as though I had no
dress on. As we rode up to the colonel's tent, it was noised around that
a scout had captured a daring female rebel, and she had almost killed a
corporal, and the whole regiment gathered around the colonel's tent.
“What is the trouble, corporal?” asked the colonel of my black-eyed
friend.
“Well this woman wanted to go outside, and when I objected, she knocked
me down with a rail off a fence.”
“And you offered her no indignity?” the colonel asked.
“Not in the least,” said the corporal.
Then the colonel asked me to tell my story, which I did. The corporal
said it was a lie, but the other man, whom I did not hit, said I was
right.
“Can you disrobe, before these soldiers, without getting off your
horse?” asked the colonel, looking at me.
I told him I could and he told me to proceed. I pulled the hat and hair
off first and appeared with my red hair clipped short. I then I threw
the dress over my head, and appeared in my cavalry pants, all dressed,
except my jacket and cap, which the colonel handed me, having brought it
from the house where I put on the dress. I put on the jacket, wiped the
powder off my face, and the corporal said:
“It's that condemned raw recruit.”
All the boys took in the transformation scene, and then the colonel told
them that he wanted this to be a lesson to all of them, to let all women
who came to the picket posts, or anywhere, who had passes, alone, and
not think because one woman had been caught smuggling, that all
women were smugglers. In fact he wanted every soldier to mind his own
business. Then he dismissed us, and we went to our quarters. On the way,
the one-eyed corporal touched me on the arm, and he said:
“Old man, you played it fine on me, but I will get even with you yet.”