Our camp was in the heart of Copiah County, Mississippi, a mile or so
west of Gallatin and about six miles east of that once robber-haunted
road, the Natchez Trace. Austin's brigade, we were, a detached body of
mixed Louisiana and Mississippi cavalry, getting our breath again after
two weeks' hard fighting of Grant. Grierson's raid had lately gone the
entire length of the State, and we had had a hard, vain chase after
him, also.
Joe Johnston's shattered army was at Jackson, about forty-five miles to
northward; beleaguered Vicksburg was in the Northwest, a trifle farther
away; Natchez lay southwest, still more distant; and nearly twice as far
in the south was our heartbroken New Orleans. We had paused to
recuperate our animals, and there was a rumor that we were to get new
clothing. Anyhow we had rags with honor, and a right to make as much
noise as we chose.
It was being made. The air was in anguish with the din of tree-felling
and log-chopping, of stamping, neighing, braying, whooping, guffawing,
and singing--all the daybreak charivari beloved of a camp of
Confederate "critter companies." In the midst of it a chum and I sat
close together on a log near the mess fire, and as the other boys of the
mess lifted their heads from their saddle-tree pillows, from two of them
at once came a slow, disdainful acceptance of the final lot of the
wicked, made unsolicited on discovering that this chum and I had sat
there talking together all night. I had the day before been wheedled
into letting myself be detailed to be a quartermaster's clerk, and this
comrade and I were never to snuggle under the one blanket again. The
thought forbade slumber.
"If I go to sleep," I said,--"you know how I dream. I shall have one of
those dreams of mine to carry around in my memory for a year, like a
bullet in my back." So there the dear fellow had sat all night to give
me my hourly powders of reassurance that I could be a quartermaster's
clerk without shame.
"Certainly you can afford to fill a position which the leader of Ferry's
scouts has filled just before you."
But my unsoldierly motive for going to headquarters kept my misgivings
alive. I was hungry for the gentilities of camp; to be where Shakespeare
was part of the baggage, where Pope was quoted, where Coleridge and
Byron and Poe were recited, Macaulay criticized, and "Les
Misérables"--Madame Le Vert's Mobile translation--lent round; and where
men, when they did steal, stole portable volumes, not currycombs. Ned
Ferry had been Major Harper's clerk, but had managed in several
instances to display such fitness to lead that General Austin had lately
named him for promotion, and the quartermaster's clerk was now
Lieutenant Ferry, raised from the ranks for gallantry, and followed
ubiquitously by a chosen sixty or so drawn from the whole brigade. Could
the like occur again? And could it occur to a chap who could not
comprehend how it had ever occurred at all?
By and by we breakfasted. After which, my precious horse not having
finished his corn, I spread my blanket and let myself doze, but was soon
awakened by the shouts of my companions laughing at me for laughing so
piteously in my sleep.
"Would I not tell my dream, as nice young men in the Bible always did?"
"No, I would not!" But I had to yield. My dream was that our General had
told me a fable. It was of a young rat, which seeing a cockerel, whose
tail was scarcely longer than his own, leap down into a barrel, gather
some stray grains of corn and fly out again, was tempted to follow his
example, but having got in, could only stay there. The boys furnished
the moral; it was not complimentary.
"Well, good-bye, fellows."
"Good-bye, Smith." I have never liked my last name, but at that moment
the boys contrived to put a kindness of tone into it which made it
almost pleasing. "Good-bye, Smith, remember your failings."
Remember! I had yet to make their discovery. But I was on the eve of
making it.
As I passed up the road through the midst of our nearly tentless camp I
met a leather-curtained spring-wagon to which were attached a pair of
little striped-legged mules driven by an old negro. Behind him, among
the curtains, sat a lady and her black maid. The mistress was of
strikingly graceful figure, in a most tasteful gown and broad Leghorn
hat. Her small hands were daintily gloved. The mules stopped, and
through her light veil I saw that she was handsome. Her eyes, full of
thought, were blue, and yet were so spirited they might as well have
been black, as her hair was. She, or fate for her, had crowded thirty
years of life into twenty-five of time.
For many a day I had not seen such charms of feminine attire, and yet I
was not charmed. Every item of her fragrant drapery was from the world's
open market, hence flagrantly un-Confederate, unpatriotic,
reprehensible. Otherwise it might not have seemed to me that her thin
nostrils had got their passionateness lately.
"Are you not a New Orleans boy?" she asked as I lifted my képi and drew
rein.
Boy! humph! I frowned, made myself long, and confessed I had the honor
to be from that city. Whereupon she let her long-lashed eyes take on as
ravishing a covetousness as though I had been a pretty baby.
"I knew it!" she said delightedly. "But tell me, honor bright,"--she
sparkled with amusement--"you're not regularly enlisted, are you?"