particularly when we ask them to confide in us? I should be ashamed of
you, Monsieur’—you know she always calls me ‘Monsieur’ when she is
displeased with me—‘if I did not understand. The human people do not
know the animals—how trustful they want to be if only we would let
them. We set traps for them, we deceive them in a hundred ways, and
that is why they distrust us. I did read a few days ago—you smile,
Monsieur; I should say, I read the other day—that the wild creatures
are selfish, that they care for us only as a source of food supply.
That is not true, as that squirrel shall teach you. It is true that all
the wild creatures are _hungry all the time_. There is not food enough
for all of them, and so when we offer them food, they come to us, even
in fear. They have many of their young to feed, and their supplies are
very scant. That is why they congregate around houses where there is
waste thrown out. But oh, Monsieur, many hundreds of them do starve to
death in the long winters. You notice that in the spring there are a
dozen robins on the lawn; in the early summer, when they have brought
forth their broods, there are scores and hundreds of them. But in the
next spring there are only the dozens again. The rest have perished
of cold and hunger. I have been reading Mr. Darwin’s book, and I know
that this is the universal law of progress, of advancement by the
struggle for existence, and the survival of the fittest under the law
of heredity. But it is very cruel. That isn’t what I wanted to say. I
wanted to show you that even the wild creatures—hungry as they always
are—have affection. I am going to make that squirrel come to me and
sit on my shoulder without giving him any food as a temptation. You
shall see. After that, I will give him plenty to eat.’
“And she did. She wheedled the squirrel till he came down his tree,
crossed the lawn, and invaded her lap. It was only then that she gave
him the peanuts with which she had filled her pockets. I tell you that
girl is a born scientist, and that her knowledge is wonderful. Did it
ever occur to you that the squirrels and birds that seem so happy here
in the Wyanoke grounds are habitually in a state of starvation?”
Just then Evelyn came walking toward the porch. The mare was closely
following her, and a squirrel perched upon one shoulder, while a robin
clung to the other. She had pockets in her gown—she insisted upon
pockets—and from these she fed the wild creatures. Upon getting a nut,
the squirrel leaped to the ground, and upon receiving a bit of bread,
the robin flew away.
“You see,” said Kilgariff, “how coldly selfish and calculating your
wild creatures are. The moment they get something to eat, they quit
your hospitality.”
“Not so, Monsieur,” the girl answered. “They have their babies to feed.
They will come back to me when that is done,” and they did.
“Touch the squirrel,” she said to Kilgariff, “and he will fasten his
long teeth in your flesh. But I may stroke his fur as much as I please.
That is because he has made friends with me. And see! The robin is a
wild bird. His first instinct is to keep his wings free for flying. Yet
I may take him thus”—possessing herself of the bird—“and lay him on
his back in my lap, so that his wings are useless to him, and he does
not mind. It is because he knows me for his friend and trusts me. Ah,
if only people would learn to know the wild creatures and teach them
the lesson of love!”
Kilgariff felt like saying, “I know no such teacher of that lesson as
you are,” but he refrained, and so it fell to Dorothy afterward to
say:—
“Not many people have your gift, dear, of making other creatures love
them.”
“But you have it,” the girl answered enthusiastically. “Oh, how I do
love you, Dorothy!”
[Illustration: _“I MAY STROKE HIS FUR AS MUCH AS I PLEASE.”_]
XI
ORDERS AND “NO NONSENSE”
WHEN General Grant, with one hundred and twenty thousand men, sat down
before Petersburg and Richmond and called for reinforcements as a
necessary preliminary to further operations, his plan was obvious, and
its ultimate outcome was nearly as certain as any human event can be
before it has happened.
Richmond lies on the north bank of the James River. Petersburg lies
on the Appomattox River twenty-two miles due south of Richmond. Each
river is navigable up to the gates of the city situated upon it, so
that in besieging the two cities from the east, General Grant had an
uninterrupted water communication over which to bring supplies and
reinforcements at will. His line of fortifications stretched from a
point on the north of Richmond, eastwardly and southwardly to the
James River, and thence southwardly, with a westerly trend, to a point
south of Petersburg. A rude outline map, which accompanies the text,
will give a clearer understanding than words can.
A glance at the map will show the reader three lines of railway upon
which Richmond depended for communication with the South and for
supplies for Lee’s army. All of them lay south of the James River.
Grant’s problem was to break these three lines of railway, and thus
to compel Richmond’s surrender or evacuation. If he could break the
Weldon railway first, and the others later, as he purposed, his vastly
superior army at the time of Richmond’s evacuation could be easily
interposed between Lee and any point farther south to which the
Confederate commander might plan to retreat.
That is what actually happened eight months later, with Lee’s surrender
at Appomattox Court House as the outcome of this successful strategy.
In the meanwhile, Lee, with less than forty thousand men, was called
upon to defend a line more than thirty miles long against an enemy
whose numbers were three or four times his own, and whose capacity of
reinforcement was almost limitless.
[Illustration: Sketch Map showing Lee’s and Grant’s lines about
Richmond and Petersburg]
Still more important was the fact that Lee must stand ready, by day and
by night, to defend every point on this long line, while his adversary,
with the assistance of ships and railroads in his rear, could
concentrate irresistible forces at any point he pleased and at any
time he pleased, without the knowledge of the Confederate commander.
To the military on-looker it appeared easy for Grant to break through
Lee’s lines whenever he pleased, by hurling an overwhelming force with
irresistible momentum against any part of the attenuated thread that he
might elect, breaking through with certainty and entire ease.
Such would have been the case but for the splendid fighting quality of
that Army of Northern Virginia which was struggling almost literally
in its “last ditch.” Time after time Grant massed his forces and threw
them with all his might against the weakest points he could find in
Lee’s defensive lines, only to be baffled and beaten by a fighting
force that was absolutely unconquerable in its obstinate determination.
But Grant had other arrows in his well-stocked quiver. His enormous
superiority in numbers, and his easy ability to manœuvre beyond his
adversary’s sight or ken, made it possible for him continually to
extend his lines to the left; pushing south and west, and compelling
Lee to stretch out his already slender line to the point of hopeless
thinness.
Grant could one day assail the defences below Richmond on the north
side of the James River in vastly superior force, and the next morning
at daybreak hurl five men to Lee’s one against the works defending the
Weldon Railroad, thirty miles or more to the south.
Yet even under these conditions the brilliant Confederate strategist
not only held his own, but detached from his all too meagre force a
strong column under Early, and sent it to sweep the valley of Virginia,
invade Maryland, and so far threaten Washington as to compel Grant
either to send forces for the defence of the Federal capital or to
forego for the time being the reinforcements which he was clamorously
demanding for the strengthening of his lines at Petersburg.
Captain Marshall Pollard’s battery was included in the detail of
troops made for this final and despairing invasion of the country north
of the Potomac; and when the battery marched, Sergeant-major Owen
Kilgariff rode by the side of his captain, ready for any duty that
might fall to his lot.
The wound in his neck was not yet well, or even nearly so, but he
was quite regardless of self in his eagerness to bear his part, and
so, in spite of all the warnings of all the doctors, he had rejoined
his command at the first moment in which he was strong enough to sit
upright in the saddle.
Captain Pollard had but one commissioned officer with him on this
dare-devil expedition, and that one officer was shot in the first
skirmish, so that Owen Kilgariff, non-commissioned officer that he was,
was second in command of the battery.
Early’s column swept like a hurricane down the valley, and like a
cyclone burst upon Maryland and Pennsylvania. It marched fearlessly
wherever it pleased and fought tremendously wherever it encountered a
foe. Its invasion of the North at a time when Grant with three or four
men to Lee’s one was beleaguering the Southern capital, was romantic,
gallant, picturesque, startling. But it did not accomplish the purpose
intended. It was Grant’s conviction that Washington City could take
care of itself; that the authorities there had force enough at command,
or within call, to meet and repel a Confederate invasion, without any
assistance from him. He, first of all Federal generals, acted upon this
conviction, and refused to weaken his lines at Petersburg and Richmond
by sending any considerable forces to defend Washington against Early.
Grant had little imagination, but he had a great fund of common sense.
Only one considerable action was the outcome of this expedition. In
a minor encounter on the day before the battle was fought, Captain
Marshall Pollard lost a leg, thus leaving his sergeant-major, Owen
Kilgariff, in command of the battery, reduced now to four guns, with
only four horses to each piece or caisson.
At Monocacy, Kilgariff fought the guns at their best, and by a dash of
a kind which artillery is neither armed nor expected to make, captured
two Federal rifled guns, with their full complement of horses. In his
report he spoke of this feat of arms only as “an opportunity which
offered to add two guns to the battery and to raise the tale of horses
to the regulation number of six to each gun and caisson.”
But that night General Early sent for Kilgariff, in response to that
non-commissioned officer’s request that a commissioned officer should
be sent to take command of the battery.
“I don’t see the necessity,” said Early, in his abrupt way. “I don’t
see how anybody could fight his guns better than you have done. Get
yourself killed if you want somebody else to command Pollard’s battery.
So long as you live, I shall send nobody else. How does it happen that
you haven’t a commission?”
“I do not covet that responsibility,” Kilgariff answered evasively.
“Well, that responsibility will rest on your shoulders from this
hour forth, till the end of this campaign, unless you escape it by
getting yourself killed. I shall certainly not send anybody else to
command your battery while you live. From this hour I shall regard you
as Captain Kilgariff; and when I get myself into communication with
General Lee or the war department, I’ll see that the title is made
good.”
“Thank you, General,” answered Kilgariff. “But I sincerely wish you
wouldn’t. I have already received and rejected one commission as
captain, and I have declined a still higher rank offered me.”
“What an idiot you must be!” squeaked Early in his peculiar, falsetto
voice. “But you know how to fight your guns, and I’ve got a use for
such men as you are. You may do as you please after this campaign is
over, but while you remain under my command you’ll be a captain. I’ll
see to that, and there’ll be no nonsense about it, either.”
An hour later, an order, officially signed and certified, came to
Kilgariff. It read in this wise:—
SPECIAL ORDER NO. 7. Sergeant-major Owen Kilgariff, of Captain
Pollard’s Virginia Battery, is hereby ordered to assume command of
said Battery as Acting Captain, and he will exercise the authority of
that rank in all respects. He is ordered hereafter to sign his reports
and orders as “Captain Commanding,” and all officers concerned are
hereby directed, by order of the Commanding General, to recognise
the rank thus conferred, not only in matters of ordinary obedience
to orders, but also in making details for court-martial service and
the like. This temporary appointment of Captain Kilgariff is made in
recognition of peculiarly gallant and meritorious conduct, and in due
time it will be confirmed by the War Department. In the meanwhile
Captain Kilgariff’s rank, commission, and authority are to be fully
recognised by all persons concerned, by virtue of this order.
This order was duly signed by General Early’s adjutant-general, as by
his command.
There was nothing for Kilgariff to do but obey an order so peremptory,
from a commander who was not accustomed to brook opposition with
patience. Kilgariff’s first thought was to send through the regular
military channels a written protest and declination. But an insuperable
difficulty stood in the way. Under Early’s order, he must sign that
document not as “Sergeant-major,” but as “Captain.” Otherwise, his
act would be of that contumacious sort which military law defines as
“conduct subversive of good order and military discipline.”
But aside from that consideration was the fact that General Early had
sent Kilgariff a personal note, in which he had written:—
I have issued an order in your case. Obey it. I don’t want any damned
nonsense.
Kilgariff was too good a soldier to protest further while the campaign
under Early should continue. He meant to ask excuse later, but for the
time being there was nothing for him to do except assume the captain’s
rank and command to which Early had thus peremptorily assigned him.
XII
SAFE-CONDUCT OF TWO KINDS
AS Early was slowly making his way back into the valley of
Virginia—fighting wherever there was a force to be fought—there came
a messenger to Owen Kilgariff one night a little before midnight. He
bore a slip of paper on which these words were written:—
Come to me quickly. I am mortally wounded, and it is very necessary
for me to see you before I die—not for my sake, for you’d rejoice
to see me in hell, but for the sake of others and for your own
sake—though for yourself you don’t often care much. I’m in a
farm-house hospital three miles south of Harper’s Ferry on the
Martinsburg road. My messenger will guide you. The Federals have
possession, of course, but the bearer of this note has a safe-conduct
for you. Of course, this might be a trick, but it is not. On the word
of a gambler (and you know what that means) I am playing fair this
time. You are a brave enough man to risk this thing anyhow. Come!
This note bore no signature, but Owen Kilgariff knew the hand that had
written it. That handwriting had sent him to jail once upon a time. He
had not forgotten. He was not given to forgetting.
He summoned the messenger who had brought him the note.
“You have a safe-conduct for me, I believe?” he asked.
“Yes, Captain,” and he produced the document.
“How did you manage to pass our picket lines? Did you come under a flag
of truce?”
“No. That would have taken time, and there is no time to be wasted.
Major Campbell is terribly wounded. I live in these parts. I ain’t a
soldier, you know. So I slipped through the lines.”
For a moment Kilgariff regarded the fellow with indignant contempt.
Then the indignation passed, and the contempt was intensified in his
expression. Presently he said:—
“You low-lived, contemptible hound, I can’t make up my mind even to
be angry with you. You and your kind are the pest in this war. You
haven’t character enough to take sides. You serve either side at will,
and betray both with jaunty indifference. Now listen to me. Within
twenty-four hours I shall see Major Campbell, who sent me this note.
But I shall not go to him under the safe-conduct you have brought.”
With that, Kilgariff tore the paper to bits and scattered its fragments
to the night wind.
“I shall order you sent to the guard-house and manacled, until General
Early shall have decided what to do with you. He doesn’t like your
sort.”
The man fell at once into panic and pleaded for his life.
“Oh, what will become of me?” he piteously moaned.
“I really don’t know,” answered Kilgariff, quite as if the question
had related to the disposition to be made of some inanimate object.
“General Early may have you shot at sunrise, or he may decide to hang
you instead. I don’t at all know, and after all it makes no real
difference. The one death is about as painless as the other, and as
for the matter of disgrace, of course you are hopelessly incapable
of considering that. Perhaps—oh, well, I don’t know. General Early
may conclude to turn you loose as a creature too contemptible to be
seriously dealt with.”
“God grant that he may!” said the man, with fervour, as the guards took
him away.
A minute later Kilgariff mounted his horse, Wyanoke—a special gift
from Dorothy—and rode hurriedly to General Early’s headquarters; it
was after midnight, but with this army sleeplessly “on service” very
little attention was given to hours, either of the day or of the night.
So, after a moment’s parley with a sentinel, Kilgariff was conducted to
General Early’s presence, under a tree.
It was not Kilgariff’s habit to grow excited. He had passed through too
much for that, he thought. But on this occasion his perturbation of
spirit was so great that he had difficulty in enunciating his words.
“General,” he said, “I want a little cavalry force, if you please. I
want to capture one of the enemy’s hospitals and hold it long enough
for me to have a talk with the most infamous scoundrel who ever lived.”
“Calm yourself, Captain,” said Early. “Have a little apple brandy as a
tonic. Your nerves are shaken.”
Kilgariff declined the stimulant, but at Early’s earnest solicitation
he sat down upon a stump, and presently so far commanded his own spirit
as to go on with what he had to say.
“One of those contemptible border wretches got himself smuggled through
our lines to-night. I don’t know how. He brought me a note from the
most infamous scoundrel I ever knew, together with a safe-conduct
under which I could sneak into the enemy’s lines and talk with the
fellow, who is mortally wounded. I tore up the safe-conduct and sent
the emissary to the guard-house with the comfortable assurance that his
case would be submitted to you, and that you would pretty certainly
order him shot or hanged according to the gravity with which you might
regard his offence. I hope you’ll let him go. He is so poor-spirited a
cur that he will suffer a thousand deaths to-night in dreading one for
to-morrow. However, that isn’t what I want to speak with you about. I
want a cavalry force of a company or two. I want to raid that hospital
before morning and talk with that rascal in the interest of others
whose fate he may hold in his hands.”
“Do you plan to kill him?”
“Of course not. He is wounded unto death. And besides—well, General,
he isn’t of our class.”
“I quite understand—not a man you could ‘call out.’”
“Distinctly not—although he has a major’s commission.”
“Oh—if you want a colonel’s or a brigadier-general’s, you shall have
it,” broke in Early, full of the enthusiasm of fight.
“No, General,” answered Kilgariff, with an amused smile; “I have
always found it possible to fight anybody I pleased without raising
the question of rank. You know, a private, if he is a man of good
family, may slap a major-general’s jaws in our army, in full certainty
that his escapade will bring a challenge rather than a citation
before a court-martial. No. I want to talk with this man before he
dies. He sent me a safe-conduct, as I have already said. That was a
gracious permission from the Federal authorities for me to see him. I
have a very pronounced prejudice against the acceptance of gracious
permissions from the Federal authorities. So I have come to ask for a
squadron of cavalry, to which I will add a couple of guns, in order
that I may capture that post, enter its hospital, and have my talk with
its inmate without anybody’s permission but yours, General.”
The humour of the situation appealed strongly to Early, as it did also
to Major Irby of the Virginia Cavalry, who was sitting near by. That
officer was a man of few words, but he carried an unusually alert
sabre, and his sense of humour was uncommonly keen.
“If you don’t mind, General,” he said, in his quiet fashion, “I should
like to ‘sit in’ the captain’s game.”
“Do it!” said Early. “Take three companies and two of Kilgariff’s guns,
and let him show the fellow that he carries his own safe-conduct at his
back.”
Things were done promptly and quickly in those stirring times, and five
minutes after Early had spoken his words of permission, Major Irby
moved at the head of three companies of cavalry and two of Kilgariff’s
guns—the two so recently captured from the enemy, and selected now by
way of emphasising the jest.
A dash, a scurry, and every picket post south of Harper’s Ferry was
swept out of sight.
XIII
KILGARIFF HEARS NEWS
AS soon as Major Irby had possessed himself of the hospital and the
region round about, he gave orders to throw out pickets a mile or so
in every direction, in order to guard against surprise. He posted
Kilgariff’s guns on a little hill, where their fire could sweep all
of the roads over which an advance of the enemy was possible. Then he
ordered the officer of the guard to post a strong line of sentinels
around the house itself, which served as hospital, and to send a
corporal’s guard into the building with orders to dispose themselves as
Kilgariff might direct.
Kilgariff, who had stripped the chevrons off his sleeves, and sewed
a captain’s three bars on his collar in obedience to General Early’s
order, immediately entered the house and made his way to the separate
room in which Campbell’s cot had been placed. Kilgariff turned to the
corporal of the guard, and commanded:—
“Place two sentinels in that outer room. Order them to see to it that
there is no eavesdropping. You understand?”
“Perfectly, Captain.”
There is this advantage about military over other arrangements, that
they can be absolutely depended upon. The sentinel who has “orders” is
an autocrat in their execution. He has no discretion. He enters into
no argument. He parleys with nobody, whatever that somebody’s rank
may be. He simply commands, “Halt”; and if the one advancing takes
one other step, the sentinel fires a death shot at short range and
with absolutely certain aim. Killing, on the part of a sentinel whose
command of “Halt” is disregarded, is not only no crime in military
law—it is a virtue, a simple discharge of peremptory duty. And the
sentinel himself, if ordered to stand twenty feet away from a door,
stands there, not encroaching upon the distance by so much as a foot,
under pain of punishment “in the discretion of a court-martial,” as the
military law phrases it.
So, when Kilgariff entered the room in which the man who had ruined his
life lay wounded, in answer to that man’s summons, he knew that his
conversation would be neither interrupted nor overheard in any word or
syllable of it. The absoluteness of military law and practice forbade
that, even as a possibility.
Kilgariff advanced to the man’s bedside, took his seat upon a camp
stool, and without the remotest suggestion of a greeting in his voice
or manner, abruptly said:—
“I am here. What do you want?”
“I was sure you would come,” answered the man; “the safe-conduct—”
“I tore that up the moment I received it,” answered Kilgariff.
“But why? It was valid.”
“For any other officer in our army, yes,” answered Kilgariff; “but not
for me, as you very well know. Anyhow, I preferred to come under the
safe-conduct of Southern carbines and cannon and sabres. Never mind
that. Go on. What do you want?”
The man winced and groaned with pain as he turned himself a little on
his cot in order to face his interlocutor. Presently he said:—
“I’m shot through the groin with a canister ball. It is a wound unto
death, I suppose.”
“Yes? Well? What else? I did not come to ask after your health.”
“Of course not. I mention my condition only as a man who flings a
card upon the table at a critical moment exclaims, ‘That’s a trump.’
You see, the things I want to say to you are in the nature of an
ante-mortem statement, and I want you to understand that, so that you
may believe all I have to tell you.”
“I understand,” said Kilgariff. “You are precisely the sort of man,
who, after lying and cheating all his life, would tell the truth in a
dying statement, if only by way of cheating the Day of Judgment and
playing stacked cards on the Almighty. Go on.”
But before the man could speak again, Kilgariff added:—
“As a still further stimulus to truth-telling on your part, let me make
a few suggestions. You are completely in my power. If I choose, I can
have you taken hence to General Early and introduce you to him as a man
who accepted a commission in the Confederate Army and then deserted
to the other side and deceived the authorities there into giving him
a commission to fight the cause he had solemnly sworn to support. You
know what would happen in such a case.”