THE DEACON COMMITS A CRIME AGAINST HIS CONSCIENCE.
"YOU are the father of that boy in the far end of the tent," said the
Surgeon coming up to the Deacon, who had stepped outside of the tent to
get an opportunity to think clearly. "I'm very glad you have come, for
his life hangs by a thread. That thread is his pluck, aided by a superb
constitution. Most men would have died on the field from such a wound.
Medicine can do but little for him; careful nursing much more; but
his own will and your presence and encouragement will do far more than
either."
"How about Shorty?" inquired the Deacon.
"Shorty's all right if he don't get a setback. The danger from the blow
on his head is pretty near past, if something don't come in to make
further complications. He has been pulled down pretty badly by the low
fever which has been epidemic here since we have settled down in camp,
but he seems to be coming out from it all right."
"I've come down here to do all that's possible for these two boys. Now,
how kin I best do it?" asked the Deacon.
"You can do good by helping nurse them. You could do much more good if
there was more to do with, but we lack almost everything for the proper
care of the wounded and sick. We have 15,000 men in hospital here, and
not supplies enough for 3,000. When we will get more depends on
just what luck our cavalry has in keeping the rebels off our line of
supplies."
"Show me what to do, give me what you kin, and I'll trust in the Lord
and my own efforts for the rest."
"Yes, and you kin count on me to assist," chimed in Shorty, who had
come up. "I won't let you play lone hand long, Deacon, for I'm gittin'
chirpier every day. If I could only fill up good and full once more on
hardtack and pork, or some sich luxuries, I'd be as good as new agin."
"You mean you'd be put to bed under three feet of red clay, if you were
allowed to eat all you want to," said the Surgeon. "There's where the
wind is tempered to the shorn lamb. If you could eat as much as you want
to eat, I should speedily have to bid good-by to you. For the present,
Mr. Klegg, do anything that suggests itself to you to make these men
comfortable. I need scarcely caution you to be careful about their food,
for there is nothing that you can get hold of to over-feed them. But
you'd better not let them have anything to eat until I come around again
and talk to you more fully. I put them in your charge."
The Deacon's first thought was for Si, and he bestirred himself to do
what he thought his wife, who was renowned as a nurse, would do were she
there.
He warmed some water, and tenderly as he could command his strong,
stubby hands, washed Si's face, hands and feet, and combed his hair.
The overworked hospital attendants had had no time for this much-needed
ministration. It was all that they could do to get the wounded under
some sort of shelter, to dress their wounds, and prepare food. No well
man could be spared from the trenches for hospital service, for the
sadly-diminished Army of the Cumberland needed every man who could
carry a musket to man the long lines to repel the constantly-threatened
assaults.
The removal of the soil and grime of the march and battle had a
remarkably vivifying effect upon Si. New life seemed to pulse through
his veins and brightness return to his eyes.
"Makes me feel like a new man, Pap," he said faintly. "Feels better than
anything I ever knowed. Do the same to Shorty, Pap."
"Come here, Shorty, you dirty little rascal," said the Deacon, assuming
a severely maternal tone, at which Si laughed feebly but cheerily, "and
let me wash your face and comb your hair."
Shorty demurred a little at being treated like a boy, and protested that
he could wash himself, if the Deacon would get him some warm water; but
he saw that the conceit amused Si, and submitted to having the Deacon
give him a scrubbing with a soapy rag, giving a yell from time to time,
in imitation of an urchin undergoing an unwilling ablution. Si turned
his head so as to witness the operation, and grinned throughout it.
"I think you'd both feel still better if you could have your hair cut,"
said the Deacon, as he finished and looked from one to the other. "Your
hair's too long for sick people, and it makes you look sicker'n you
really are. But I hain't got no shears."
"I know I'd feel better if I was sheared," said Shorty. "Hain't neither
of us had our hair cut since we started on the Tullyhomy campaign, and I
think I look like the Wild Man from Borneo. I think I know a feller that
has a pair o' shears that I kin borry."
The shears were found and borrowed. Then ensued a discussion as to the
style of the cut. The boys wanted their hair taken off close to their
heads, 'but the Deacon demurred to this for fear they would catch cold.
"No, Si," he said; "I'm goin' to cut your hair jest like your mother
used to. She used to tie one of her garters from your forehead down
across your ears, and cut off all the hair that stuck out. I hain't any
garter, but I guess I kin find a string that'll do jest as well."
"There," said the Deacon, as he finished shearing off the superabundant
hair, and surveyed the work. "That ain't as purty a job as if your
mother'd done it, but you'll feel lighter and cleaner, and be healthier.
If hair was only worth as much as wool is now, I'd have enough to pay
me for the job. But I must clean it up keerfully and burn it, that the
birds mayn't git hold of it and give you the headache."
The Deacon had his little superstitions, like a great many other
hard-headed, sensible men.
"Well, Mr. Klegg," said the Surgeon, when he made his next round,
"I must congratulate you on your patients. Both show a remarkable
improvement. You ought to apply for a diploma, and go into the practice
of medicine. You have done more for them in the two or three hours than
I have been able to do in as many weeks. If you could only keep up this
pace awhile I would be able to return them to duty very soon. I have an
idea. Do you see that corn-crib over there?"
"The one built of poles? Yes."
"Well, I have some things stored there, and I have been able to hold it
so far against the soldiers, who are snatching every stick of wood they
can find, for their cabins, or for the breastworks, or firewood. I
don't know how long I'll be able to keep it, unless I have personal
possession. I believe you can make it into a comfortable place for these
two men. That will help them, you can be by yourselves, you can take
care of my things, and it will relieve the crowd in the tent."
"Splendid idea," warmly assented the Deacon. "I'll chink and daub it,
and make it entirely comfortable, and fix up bunks in it for the boys. I
know they'll be delighted at the change. I wonder where Shorty is?"
The Deacon had just remembered that he had not seen that individual for
some little time, and looked around for him with some concern. It was
well that he did. Shorty had come across the haversack that the Deacon
had brought, and it awakened all his old predatory instincts, sharpened,
if anything, by his feebleness. Without saying a word to any body, he
had employed the time while the Surgeon and Deacon were in conversation
in preparing one of his customary gorges after a long, hard march.
He had broken up the crackers into a tin-cup of water which sat by his
side, while he was frying out pieces of fat pork in a half-canteen.
"My goodness, man!" shouted the Deacon, spring ing toward him. "Are you
crazy? If you eat that mess you'll be dead before morning."
He sprang toward him, snatched the half-canteen from his hand, and threw
its contents on the ground.
"That stuff's not fit to put into an ostrich's stomach," he said. "Mr.
Klegg, you will have to watch this man very carefully."
"Can't I have none of it to eat?" said Shorty, dejectedly, with tears of
weakness and longing in his eyes.
"Not a mouthful of that stuff," said the Surgeon; "but you may eat some
of those crackers you have soaked there. Mr. Klegg, let him eat about
half of those crackers no more."
Shorty looked as if the whole world had lost its charms. "Hardtack
without grease's no more taste than chips," he murmured.
"Never mind, Shorty," said the Deacon, pityingly; "I'll manage to find
you something that'll be better for you than that stuff."
The Surgeon had the boys carried over to the corncrib, and the Deacon
went to work to make it as snug as possible. All the old training of
his pioneer days when literally with his own hands, and with the rudest
materials, he had built a comfortable cabin in the wilderness of the
Wabash bottoms for his young wife came back to him. He could not see a
brick, a piece of board, a stick, or a bit of iron anywhere without the
thought that it might be made useful, and carrying it off. As there were
about 40,000 other men around the little village of Chattanooga with
similar inclinations, the Deacon had need of all his shrewdness in
securing coveted materials, but it was rare that anybody got ahead of
him. He rearranged and patched the clapboards on the roof until it
was perfectly rain-tight, chinked up the spaces between the poles with
stones, corncobs and pieces of wood, and plastered over the outside with
clay, until the walls were draft proof. He hung up an old blanket for a
door, and hired a teamster to bring in a load of silky-fine beech leaves
which, when freshly fallen, make a bed that cannot be surpassed. These,
by spreading blankets over them, made very comfort able couches for Si,
Shorty and himself.
Then the great problem became one of proper food for the boys. Daily
the rations were growing shorter in Chattanooga, and if they had
been plentiful they were not suited to the delicate stomachs of those
seriously ill. Si was slowly improving, but the Deacon felt that the
thing necessary to carry him over the breakers and land him safely on
the shores of recovery was nourishing food that he could relish.
He had anxiously sought the entire length of the camp for something
of that kind. He had visited all the sutlers, and canvassed the
scanty stocks in the few stores in Chattanooga. He had bought the sole
remaining can of tomatoes at a price which would have almost bought
the field in which the tomatoes were raised, and he had turned over the
remnant lots of herring, cheese, etc., he found at the sutler's, with
despair at imagining any sort of way in which they could be worked up to
become appetizing and assimilative to Si's stomach.
"What you and Si needs," he would say to Shorty, "is chicken and fresh
'taters. If you could have a good mess of chicken and 'taters every day
you'd come up like Spring shoats. I declare I'd give that crick bottom
medder o' mine, which hasn't it's beat on the Wabash, to have mother's
coopful o' chickens here this minute."
But a chicken was no more to be had in Chattanooga than a Delmonico
banquet. The table of the Major-General commanding the Army of the
Cumberland might have a little more hardtack and pork on it than
appeared in the tents of the privates, and be cooked a little better,
but it had nothing but hardtack and pork.
The Deacon made excursions into the country, and even ran great risks
from the rebel pickets and bushwhackers, in search of chickens. But
the country had been stripped, by one side or the other, of everything
eatable, and the people that remained in their cheerless homes were
dependent upon what they could get from the United States Commissary.
One day he found the Herd-Boss in camp, and poured forth his troubles to
him. The Herd-Boss sympathized deeply with him, and cudgeled his brains
for a way to help.
"I'll tell you what you might do," he said at length, "if you care to
take the risk. We're goin' back with some teams to Bridgeport to-morrow
mornin'. You might git in one of the wagons and ride back 10 or 15 miles
to a little valley that I remember that's there, and which I think looks
like it hain't bin foraged. I was thinkin' as we come through the other
day that I might git something goo'd to eat up there, and I'd try it
some day. No body seems to 've noticed it yit. But it may be chock full
o' rebels, for all I know, and a feller git jumped the moment he sets
foot in it."
"I'll take my chances," said the Deacon. "I'll go along with you
to-morrer mornin'."
The Deacon found that a ride in a wagon was not such an unqualified
favor as he might have thought. The poor, half-fed, overworked mules
went so slowly that the Deacon could make better time walking, and he
was too merciful to allow them to pull him up hill.
The result was that, with helping pry the stalled wagons out and work in
making the roads more passable, the Deacon expended more labor than if
he had started out to walk in the first place.
It was late in the afternoon when the Herd-Boss said:
"There, you take that path to the right, and in a little ways you'll
come out by a purty good house. I hain't seen any Johnnies around in
this neighborhood since I've bin travelin' this route, but you'd better
keep your eye peeled, all the same. If you see any, skip back to the
road here, and wait awhile. Somebody 'll be passin' before long."
Thanking him, the Deacon set out for the house, hoping to be able to
reach it, get some fowls, and be back to Chattanooga before morning. If
he got the chickens, he felt sanguine that he could save Si's life.
He soon came in sight of the house, the only one, apparently, for miles,
and scanned it carefully. There were no men to be seen, though the house
appeared to be inhabited. He took another look at the heavy revolver
which he had borrowed from the Surgeon, and carried ready for use in the
pocket of Si's overcoat, and began a strategic advance, keep ing well
out of sight under the cover of the sumachs lining the fences.
Still he saw no one, and finally he became so bold as to leave his
covert and walk straight to the front door. A dozen dogs charged at him
with a wild hullabaloo, but he had anticipated this, and picked up a
stout hickory switch in the road, which he wielded with his left hand
with so much effect that they ran howling back under the house. He kept
his right hand firmly grasping his revolver.
An old man and his wife appeared at the door; both of them shoved back
their spectacles until they rested on the tops of their heads, and
scanned him searchingly. The old woman had a law-book in her hand, and
the old man a quill pen. She had evidently been reading to him, and he
copying.
The old man called out to him imperiously:
"Heah, stranger, who air yo'? An' what d'yo' want?"
The tone was so harsh and repellant that the Deacon thought that he
would disarm hostility by announcing himself a plain citizen, like
themselves. So he replied:
"I'm a farmer, and a citizen from Injianny, and I want to buy some
chickens for my son, who's sick in the hospital at Chattanoogy."
"Injianny!" sneered the old man. "Meanest people in the world live in
Injianny. Settled by scalawags that we'uns run outen Tennessee bekase
they'uns wuz too onery to live heah."
"Citizen!" echoed the woman. "They'uns heap sight wuss'n the soldjers.
Teamsters, gamblers, camp-followers, thieves, that'll steal the coppers
off en a dead man's eyes. I had a sister that married a man that beat
her, and then run off to Injianny, leavin' her with six children to
support. All the mean men go to Injianny. Cl'ar out. We don't want
nobody 'round heah, and specially no Injiannians. They'uns is a pizun
lot."
"Yes, cl'ar out immejitly," commanded the old man. "I'm a Jestice of the
Peace, and ef you don't go to wunst I'll find a way to make yo'. We've a
law agin able-bodied vagrants. Cl'ar out, now."
"Come, have a little sense," said the Deacon, not a little roiled at
the abuse of his State. "I'm just as respectable a man as you dare be.
I never stole anything. I've bin all my life a regler member o' the
Baptist Church strict, close-communion, total-immersion Baptists. All I
want o' you is to buy some o' them chickens there, and I'll give you a
fair price for 'em. No use o' your flaring up over a little matter o'
bizniss."
"I don't believe a word of hit," said the woman, who yet showed that
she was touched by the allusion to the Baptist Church, as the Deacon had
calculated, for most of the people of that section professed to be of
that denomination. "What'll yo' gi' me for them chickens?"
The bargaining instinct arose in the Deacon's mind, but he repressed it.
He had no time to waste. He would make an offer that at home would be
considered wildly extravagant, close the business at once and get back
to Chattanooga. He said: "I'll give you a dollar apiece for five."
[Illustration: "HE TOOK ANOTHER LOOK AT HIS HEAVY REVOLVER." 254]
"Humph," said the woman contemptuously. "I don't sell them for no dollar
apiece. They'uns 's all we got to live on now. If I sell 'em I must git
somethin' that'll go jest as fur. You kin have 'em at $5 apiece."
"Betsy," remonstrated the old man, "I'm afeard this 's wrong, and as a
Magistrate I shouldn't allow hit. Hit's traffickin' with the inemy."
"No, hit hain't," she asserted. "He's not a soljer. He's a citizen, and
don't belong to the army. Besides, he's a Baptist, and hit hain't so bad
as ef he wuz a Presbyterian, or a shoutin' Methodist. Most of all, I'm
nearly dead for some coffee, and I know whar I kin git a pound o' rayle
coffee for $10."
The Deacon had been pondering. To his thrifty mind it seemed like a
waste to give a crisp, new $5 bill for such an insignificant thing as a
chicken. Like Indiana farmers of his period, he regarded such things
as chickens, eggs, butter, etc., as "too trifling for full-grown men
to bother about. They were wholly women-folks' truck." He fingered the
bills in his bosom, and thought how many bushels of wheat and pounds of
pork they represented. Then he thought of Si in the hospital, and how a
little chicken broth would build him up. Out came five new $5 bills.
"Here's your money," he said, thumbing over the bills clumsily and
regretfully.
The old woman lowered her spectacles from the top of her head, and
scrutinized them.
"What's them?" she asked suspiciously.
"Why, them's greenbacks Government money the very best kind," explained
the Deacon. "You can't have no better'n that."
"Don't tech hit! Don't have nothin' to do with it!" shouted the old
man. "Hit's high treason to take Federal money. Law's awful severe about
that. Not less'n one year, nor more'n 20 in the penitentiary, for a
citizen, and death for a soljer, to be ketched dealin' in the inemy's
money. I kin turn yo' right to the law. Ole man, take yo' money and
cl'ar off the place immejitly. Go out and gather up yo' chickens, Betsy,
and fasten 'em in the coop. Go away, sah, 'or I shell blow the horn for
help."
"I wuz talkin' 'bout Confederit money," said the woman, half
apologetically. "I wouldn't tech that 'ere stuff with a soap-stick. Yo'd
better git away as quick as yo' kin ef yo' know what's good for yo'."
She went into the yard to gather up her flock, and the Deacon walked
back into the road. When out of sight he sat down on a rock to meditate.
There was not another house in sight anywhere, and it was rapidly
growing dark. If he went to an other house he would probably have the
same experience. He had set his heart on having those chickens, and he
was a pretty stubborn man. Somehow, in spite of himself, he parted the
bushes and looked through to see where the woman was housing her fowls,
and noted that it was going to be very dark. Then he blushed vividly,
all to himself, over the thoughts which arose.
"To think of me, a Deacon in the Baptist Church, akchelly meditatin'
about goin' to another man's coop at night and stealin' his chickens?
Could Maria ever be made to believe such a thing? I can't be lieve it
myself."
Then he made himself think of all the other ways in which he might get
chickens. They all seemed impossible. He turned again to those in the
coop.
"Nothin' but measly dunhills, after all dear at a fip-and-a-bit, and
yet I offered her a dollar apiece for 'em. If she'd bin a real Christian
woman she'd bin glad to 've given me the chickens for as sick as man as
Si is. Gracious, mother'd give every chicken on the place, if it'd help
a sick person, and be glad o' the chance. They're both tough old rebels,
anyhow, and their property oughtter be confiscated."
He stopped and considered the morals of the affair a little further,
and somehow the idea of taking the fowls by stealth did not seem so
abhorrent as at first. Then, everything was overslaughed by the
thought of going into camp with the precious birds, of cleaning one and
carefully stewing it, making a delicate, fragrant broth, the very smell
of which would revive Si, and every spoonful bring nourishment and
strength.
"Mebbe the army's demoralizin' me," he said to himself; "but I
believe it's a work o' necessity and mercy, that don't stand on nice
considerations. I'm goin' to have five o' them chickens, or know the
reason why."
As has been before remarked, when Deacon Klegg made up his mind
something had to happen. It was now quite dark. He took one of the $5
bills out of his breast pocket and put it in a pocket where it would
be handy. He looked over at the house, and saw the old man and woman
sitting by the fire smoking. He picked up the hickory withe to keep off
the dogs, and made a circuit to reach the chicken-coop from the rear of
the house. The dogs were quarreling and snarling over their supper, and
paid no attention to him, until he had reached the coop, when they came
at him full tilt.
The Deacon dealt the foremost ones such vicious blows that the beasts
fell as if they had been cut in two, and ran howling under the house.
With a quickness and skill that would have done credit to any veteran
in the army, he snatched five chickens from their roosts, wrung their
necks, and gathered them in his left hand. Alarmed by the noise of the
barking and yelping, the old couple flung open the door and rushed out
on the porch with shouts. The open door threw a long lane of bright
light directly on the Deacon.
"Blow the horn, granddad blow the horn," screamed the woman. Her husband
snatched the tin horn down from the wall, and put all his anger into
a ringing blast. It was immediately answered by a shot from a distant
hill. Still holding his game in his left hand, the Deacon pulled the $5
bill out of his pocket with his right, walked up to the porch, laid it
at the woman's feet and put a stone on it.
"There's full pay for your dumbed old dunghills, you cantankerous
rebel," said he, as he disappeared into the darkness. "Go into the
house and pray that the Lord may soften your heart, which is harder than
Pharaoh's, until you have some Christian grace."
When he reached the road he could hear the sound of hoofs galloping
toward the house. He smiled grimly, but kept under the shadow of the
trees until he reached the main road leading to Chattanooga, where he
was lucky enough to find a train making its slow progress toward the
town, and kept with it until he was within our lines.