Ned Ferry and I never saw Squire Wall's again. When our hand-car the
next morning landed us in Hazlehurst the news of Gettysburg and
Vicksburg was on every tongue, in every face, and a telegram awaited
Ferry which changed his destination to Meridian, a hundred miles farther
to the east. He kept me with him at Hazlehurst for two days, to help him
and the post-quartermaster get everything ready to be moved and saved if
our cavalry should be driven east of the Jackson Railroad. But it was
not, and by and by we were sundered and I went and became at length in
practical and continuous reality one of Ferry's scouts--minus Ferry. Oh,
the long hot toils and pains of those July and August days! the
scorching suns, the stumbling night-marches, the aching knees, the
groaning beasts, the scant, foul rations, the dust and sweat, the blood
and the burials. To be sure, I speak of these hardships far more from
sympathy than from experience, so much above the common lot of the long
dust-choked column was that of our small band of scouts. After July our
brigade operated mainly in the region of the Big Black, endeavoring,
with others, to make the enemy confine his overflow meetings to the
Vicksburg side of that unlovely stream. How busy our small troop was
kept; and what fame we won! On a certain day we came out of a dried
swamp in column and ambled half across a field to see if a brigade
going by us at right angles in the shade of a wood at the field's edge
might be ours. It was not, though they were Confederates; but one of its
captains was sent out toward us with a squadron to see who we might be,
in our puzzling uniform, and when, midway, he made us out and called
back to his commander, "Ferry's scouts!" the whole column cheered us. I
feel the thrill of it to this hour.
How busy we were kept, and how much oftener I wrote to Ferry, and to
Camille, than to my mother. And how much closer I watched the trend of
things that belonged only to this small story than I did that great
theatre of a whole world's fortunes, whose arches spread and resounded
from the city of Washington to the city of Mexico. In mid-August one of
Camille's heartlessly infrequent letters brought me a mint of blithe
news. Harry and Cécile were really engaged; Major Harper, aunt Martha,
General Austin, Captain Ferry and Charlotte had all written the distant
father in his behalf, and the distant father had capitulated.
Furthermore, Captain Ferry's latest letter to Charlotte had brought word
that in spite of all backsets he was promised by his physician that in
ten days more he could safely take the field again. But, best of all,
Major Harper, having spent a week with his family--not on leave, but on
some mysterious business that somehow included a great train of pontoon
bridges--had been so completely won over to Charlotte by her own sweet
ways that, on his own suggestion to his sister, and their joint
proposition, by correspondence, to Ferry, another group of letters,
from Miss Harper, the Major and the General, had been sent to the
Durands in New Orleans--father, mother, and grandmother--telling them
all about Charlotte; her story, her beauty, her charms of manner, mind,
and heart. And so, wrote my correspondent, the Wall household were
living in confident hope and yet in unbearable suspense; for these
things were now full two weeks old, and would have been told me sooner
only that she, Camille, had promised never to tell them to any one
whomsoever.
A week later came another of these heartlessly infrequent letters. Mr.
Gregory, it said,--oh, _hang_ Mr. Gregory!--had called the previous
evening. Then followed the information that poor Mr. Gholson--oh, dear!
the poor we have always with us!--had arrived again from camp so wasted
with ague as to be a sight for tears. He had come consigned to "our
hospital," an establishment which the Harpers, Charlotte and the Walls
had set up in the old "summer-hotel" at Panacea Springs, and had
contrived to get the medical authorities to adopt, officer and--in a
manner--equip. They were giving dances there, to keep the soldiers
cheerful, said the letter, in which its writer took her usual patriotic
part, and Mr. Gregory--oh, save us alive! And now I was to prepare
myself: the Durands had got the bunch of letters and had written a
lovely reply to Captain Ferry, who had sent it to Charlotte, claiming
her hand, and Charlotte had answered yes. If I thought I had ever seen
her beautiful or blithe, or sweet, or happy, I ought to see her now;
while as for the writer herself, nothing in all her life had ever so
filled her with bliss, or ever could again.
Ferry did not arrive, but day by day, night by night, we stalked the
enemy, longing for our Captain to return to us. Quinn was fearless,
daring, indefatigable; but Quinn was not Ferry. Often we talked it over
by twos or fours; the swiftness of Ferry's divinations, the brilliant
celerity with which he followed them out, the kindness of his care;
Quinn's care of us was paternal, Ferry's was brotherly and motherly. We
loved Quinn for the hate and scorn that overflowed from his very gaze
upon everything false or base. But we loved Ferry for loving each and
every one of us beyond his desert, and for a love which went farther
yet, we fancied, when it lived and kept its health in every insalubrious
atmosphere, from the sulphurous breath of old Dismukes to the
carbonic-acid gas of Gholson's cant. We made great parade of recognizing
his defects; it had all the fine show of a motion to reconsider. For
example, we said, his serene obstinacy in small matters was equally
exasperating and ridiculous; or, for another instance,--so and so; but
in summing up we always lumped such failings as "the faults of his
virtues," and neglected to catalogue them. Thinking it all over a
thousand times since, I have concluded that the main source of his
charm, what won our approval for whatever he did, however he did it, was
that he seemed never to regard any one as the mere means to an
end--except himself.
If this history were more of war than of love--and really at times I
fear it is--we might fill pages telling of the brigade's September and
early October operations in that long tongue of devastated country which
narrowed from northeast to southwest between Big Black on our front and
the Tallahala and Bayou Pierre behind us. At Baker's Creek it had a
bloody all-day fight, in which we took part after having been driven in
upon the brigade. It was there that at dusk, to the uproarious delight
of half the big camp, and with our Captain once more at our head, for he
had rejoined us that very morning, we came last off the field, singing
"Ned Ferry's a-comin' down de lane."
On a day late in October our company were in bivouac after some hard
night-riding. Some twenty-five miles west of us the brigade had been
resting for several days on the old camp-ground at Gallatin, but now
they were gone to Union Springs. Ferry, with a few men, was scouting
eastward. Quinn awaited only his return in order to take half a dozen or
so of picked fellows down southward and westward about Fayette. Between
ten and eleven that night a corporal of the guard woke me, and as I
flirted on my boots and jacket and saddled up, said Ferry was back and
Quinn gone. I reported to Ferry, who handed me a despatch: "Give that to
General Austin; he has gone back to Gallatin--without the brigade--to
wait--with the others"--his smile broadened.
"Captain,"--I swallowed a lump--"what others?"
"Well,--all the others; Major Harper, Colonel Dismukes, Harry Helm,
Squire Wall, Mrs. Wall, the four Harper ladies, and--eh,--let me see, is
that all?--ah, no, the old black man and his daughter, and--eh,--the
two little mule'! that's all--stop! I was forgetting! What is that
fellow's name we used to know? ah, yes; Charlie Toliver!" In a moment he
sobered: "Yes, all will be yonder, and I wait only for Quinn to get back
in the morning, to come myself." In the fulness of his joy he had to
give my horse a parting slap. "Good-night! good-bye--till to-morrow!"
I galloped away filled with an absurd foreboding that he was too sure,
which may have come wholly from my bad temper at being started too late
to see our ladies before morning. However, at two that night, my saddle
laid under my head, and haversack under the saddle, I fell asleep with
all Gallatin for my bedchamber, the courthouse square for my bed, the
sky for my tester, the pole-star for my taper, hogs for mosquitoes and a
club for a fan.