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A CAPTAIN IN THE RANKS
A Romance of Affairs
by
GEORGE CARY EGGLESTON
Author of "DOROTHY SOUTH," "RUNNING THE RIVER," "THE MASTER OF
WARLOCK," Etc.
[Illustration: "You have saved the Railroad." Page 336.]
A. L. Burt Company,
Publishers, New York
Copyright, 1904,
by
A. S. Barnes & Co.
TO
Mable
_On her wedding day, I dedicate this story with affection_
September 8, 1904
PREFACE
This story is intended to supplement the trilogy of romances in which I
have endeavored to show forth the Virginian character under varying
conditions.
"Dorothy South" dealt with Virginia life and character before the
Confederate war.
"The Master of Warlock" had to do with the Virginians during the early
years of the war, when their struggle seemed hopeful of success.
"Evelyn Byrd" was a study of the same people as they confronted certain
disaster and defeat.
The present story is meant to complete the picture. It deals with that
wonderful upbuilding of the great West which immediately followed the
war, and in which the best of the young Virginians played an important
part.
The personages of the story are real, and its events are mainly facts,
thinly veiled.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I THE FINAL FIGHT 1
II ALONE IN THE HIGH MOUNTAIN 18
III THE NEW BIRTH OF MANHOOD 29
IV A PRIVATE IN THE ARMY OF WORK 38
V THE BEGINNING OF A CAREER 42
VI A CAPTAIN IN THE ARMY OF WORK 48
VII THE "SIZING UP" OF GUILFORD DUNCAN 59
VIII ON DUTY 64
IX ONE NIGHT'S WORK 70
X ALLIANCE, OFFENSIVE AND DEFENSIVE 87
XI THE WAYS OF GUILFORD DUNCAN 100
XII BARBARA VERNE 107
XIII A BATTLE AND AN ACQUAINTANCE 119
XIV A SOCIAL ADVANCE 129
XV THE COMING OUT OF BARBARA 141
XVI A NEW ENEMY 146
XVII AN OLD FRIEND 160
XVIII DICK TEMPLE'S PLANS 168
XIX DICK TEMPLE'S STORY 175
XX IN THE SUMMER TIME 181
XXI AN INTERVIEW WITH NAPPER TANDY 188
XXII UNDER THE HONEYSUCKLES 198
XXIII CAPTAIN WILL HALLAM IN THE GAME 202
XXIV BARBARA'S ANSWER 214
XXV TEMPLE AND TANDY 224
XXVI A PACT WITH BARBARA 242
XXVII MRS. HALLAM HEARS NEWS 254
XXVIII THE BIRTH OF A GREAT RAILROAD 265
XXIX A SCRAP OF PAPER 274
XXX THE MYSTERY OF TANDY 285
XXXI ONLY A WOMAN 293
XXXII THE RIDDLE EXPLAINED 298
XXXIII AT CRISIS 304
XXXIV A CHEER FOR LITTLE MISSIE 316
XXXV THE END OF A STRUGGLE 323
A CAPTAIN IN THE RANKS
I
THE FINAL FIGHT
[Illustration]
The slender remnant of Lee's artillery swung slowly into position a few
miles west of Appomattox Court House. Wearily--but with spirit
still--the batteries parked their guns in a field facing a strip of
woodland. The guns were few in number now, but they were all that was
left of those that had done battle on a score of historic fields.
Lee had been forced out of his works at Richmond and Petersburg a week
before. Ever since, with that calm courage which had sustained him
throughout the later and losing years of the war, he had struggled and
battled in an effort to retreat to the Roanoke River. He had hoped there
to unite the remnant of his army with what was left of Johnston's force,
and to make there a final and desperate stand.
In this purpose he had been baffled. Grant's forces were on his southern
flank, and they had steadily pressed him back toward the James River on
the north. In that direction there was no thoroughfare for him. Neither
was there now in any other. Continual battling had depleted his army
until it numbered now scarcely more than ten thousand men all told, and
starvation had weakened these so greatly that only the heroism of
despair enabled them to fight or to march at all.
The artillery that was parked out there in front of Appomattox Court
House was only a feeble remnant of that which had fought so long and so
determinedly. Gun after gun had been captured. Gun after gun had been
dismounted in battle struggle. Caisson after caisson had been blown up
by the explosion of shells striking them.
Captain Guilford Duncan, at the head of eleven mounted men, armed only
with sword and pistols, paused before entering the woodlands in front.
He looked about in every direction, and, with an eye educated by long
experience in war, he observed the absence of infantry support.
He turned to Sergeant Garrett, who rode by his side, and said sadly:
"Garrett, this means surrender. General Lee has put his artillery here
to be captured. The end has come."
Then dismounting, he wearily threw himself upon the ground, chewed and
swallowed a few grains of corn,--the only rations he had,--and sought a
brief respite of sleep. But before closing his eyes he turned to Garrett
and gave the command:
"Post a sentinel and order him to wake us when Sheridan comes."
This command brought questions from the men about him. They were
privates and he was their captain, it is true, but the Southern army was
democratic, and these men were accustomed to speak with their captain
with eyes on a level with his own.
"Why do you say, 'when Sheridan comes'?" asked one of Duncan's command.
"Oh, he will come, of course--and quickly. That is the program. This
artillery has been posted here to be captured. And it will be captured
within an hour or two at furthest, perhaps within a few minutes, for
Sheridan is sleepless and his force is not only on our flank, but in
front of us. There is very little left of the Army of Northern Virginia.
It can fight no more. It is going to surrender here, but in the meantime
there may be a tidy little scrimmage in this strip of woods, and I for
one want to have my share in it. Now let me go to sleep and wake me
when Sheridan comes."
In a minute the captain was asleep. So were all his men except the
sentinel posted to do the necessary waking.
That came all too quickly, for at this juncture in the final proceedings
of the war Sheridan was vigorously carrying out Grant's laconic
instruction to "press things." When the sentinel waked the captain,
Sheridan's lines were less than fifty yards in front and were pouring
heavy volleys into the unsupported Confederate artillery park.
Guilford Duncan and his men were moved to no excitement by this
situation. Their nerves had been schooled to steadiness and their minds
to calm under any conceivable circumstances by four years of vastly
varied fighting. Without the slightest hurry they mounted their horses
in obedience to Duncan's brief command. He led them at once into the
presence of Colonel Cabell, whose battalion of artillery lay nearest to
him. As they sat upon their horses in the leaden hailstorm, with
countenances as calm as if they had been entering a drawing room, Duncan
touched his cap to Colonel Cabell and said:
"Colonel, I am under nobody's orders here. I have eleven men with me,
all of them, as you know, as good artillerymen as there are in the army.
Can you let us handle some guns for you?"
"No," answered Colonel Cabell; "I have lost so many guns already that I
have twenty men to each piece." Then, after a moment's pause, he added:
"You, Captain, cannot fail to understand what all this means."
"I quite understand that, Colonel," answered Duncan, "but as I was in at
the beginning of this war, I have a strong desire to be in at the end of
it."
The Colonel's cannon were firing vigorously by this time at the rate of
six or eight shots to the minute from each gun, but he calmly looked
over the little party on horseback and responded:
"You have some good horses there, and this is April. You will need your
horses in your farming operations. You had better take them and your men
out of here. You can do no good by staying. This fight is a formality
pure and simple, a preliminary to the final surrender."
"Then you order me to withdraw?" asked Duncan.
"Yes, certainly, and peremptorily if you wish, though you are not under
my command," answered Colonel Cabell. "It is the best thing you can do
for yourself, for your men, for your horses, and for the country."
Duncan immediately obeyed the order, in a degree at least. He promptly
withdrew his men to the top of a little hillock in the rear and there
watched the progress of the final fight. His nerves were all a-quiver.
He was a young man, twenty-five years old perhaps, full of vigor, full
of enthusiasm, full of fight. He was a trifle less than six feet high,
with a lithe and symmetrical body, lean almost to emaciation by reason
of arduous service and long starvation. He had a head that instantly
attracted attention by its unusual size and its statuesque shape. He was
bronzed almost to the complexion of a mulatto, but without any touch of
yellow in the bronze. He was dark by nature, of intensely nervous
temperament, and obviously a man capable of enormous determination and
unfaltering endurance.
He had not yet lost the instinct of battle, and it galled him that he
must sit idly there on his horse, with his men awaiting his orders,
simply observing a fight in which he strongly desired to participate. He
could see the Federal lines gradually closing in upon both flanks of the
artillery, with the certainty that they must presently envelop and
capture it. Seasoned soldier that he was, he could not endure the
thought of standing still while such a work of war was going on.
Seeing the situation he turned to his men, who were armed only with
swords and pistols, and in a voice so calm that it belied his impulse,
he said to them:
"This is our last chance for a fight, boys. I am going into the middle
of that mix! Anybody who chooses to follow me can come along!"
Every man in that little company of eleven had two pistols in his saddle
holsters and two upon his hips, and every man carried in addition a
heavy cavalry saber capable of doing execution at close quarters. They
were gentlemen soldiers, all. The cause for which they had battled for
four long years was as dear to them now as it ever had been. More
important still, their courage was as unflinching in this obvious climax
and catastrophe of the war they had waged, as it had been at Bull Run in
the beginning of that struggle, or in the Seven Days' Fight, or at
Fredericksburg, or Chancellorsville, or Gettysburg, or Cold Harbor.
Duncan had not doubted their response for one moment, and he was not
disappointed in the vigor with which they followed him as he led them
into this final fight. As they dashed forward their advance was quickly
discovered by the alert enemy, and a destructive fire of carbines was
opened upon them. At that moment they were at the trot. Instantly Duncan
gave the commands:
"Gallop! Charge!"
With that demoniacal huntsman's cry which is known in history as the
"Rebel Yell," the little squad dashed forward and plunged into the far
heavier lines of the enemy. There was a detached Federal gun there doing
its work. It was a superb twelve-pounder, and Duncan's men quickly
captured it with its limber-chest. Instantly dismounting, and without
waiting for orders from him, they turned it upon the enemy with vigorous
effect. But they were so fearfully over-matched in numbers that their
work endured for scarcely more than a minute. They fired a dozen shots,
perhaps, but they were speedily overwhelmed, and in another instant
Duncan ordered them to mount and retire again, firing Parthian shots
from their pistols as they went.
When he again reached the little hill to which he had retired at the
beginning of the action, Duncan looked around him and saw that only
seven of his eleven men remained. The other four had paid a final
tribute of their lives to what was now obviously "The Lost Cause."
By this time the fight was over, and practically all that remained of
the artillery of the Army of Northern Virginia was in possession of the
enemy.
But that enemy was a generous one, and, foreseeing as it did the
surrender that must come with the morning, it made no assault upon this
wandering squad of brave but beaten men, who were sadly looking upon the
disastrous end of the greatest war in human history.
Captain Duncan's party were on a bald hill within easy range of the
carbines of Sheridan's men, but not a shot was fired at them, and not so
much as a squad was sent out to demand their surrender.
Night was now near at hand and Guilford Duncan turned to his men and
said:
"The war is practically over, I suppose; but I for one intend to stick
to the game as long as it lasts. General Lee will surrender his army
to-night or to-morrow morning, but General Johnston still has an army
in the field in North Carolina. It is barely possible that we may get to
him. It is my purpose to try. How many of you want to go with me?"
The response was instantaneous and unanimous.
"We'll all stick by you, Captain, 'till the cows come home,'" they
cried.
"Very well," he answered. "We must march to James River to-night and
cross it. We must make our way into the mountains and through Lynchburg,
if possible, into North Carolina. We'll try, anyhow."
All night long they marched. They secured some coarse food-stuffs at a
mill which they passed on their way up into the mountains. There for a
week they struggled to make their way southward, fighting now and then,
not with Federal troops, for there were none there, but with marauders.
These were the offscourings of both armies, and of the negro population
of that region. They made themselves the pests of Virginia at that time.
Their little bands consisted of deserters from both armies, dissolute
negroes, and all other kinds of "lewd fellows of the baser sort." They
raided plantations. They stole horses. They terrorized women. They were
a thorn in the flesh of General Grant's officers, who were placed in
strategic positions to prevent the possible occurrence of a guerrilla
warfare, and who therefore could not scatter their forces for the
policing of a land left desolate and absolutely lawless.
In many parts of the country which were left without troops to guard
them, at a time when no civil government existed, these marauders played
havoc in an extraordinary way. But the resoluteness of General Grant's
administration soon suppressed them. Whenever he caught them he hanged
or shot them without mercy, and with small consideration for
formalities. In the unprotected districts he authorized the
ex-Confederates, upon their promise to lend aid against the inauguration
of guerrilla warfare, to suppress them on their own account, and they
did so relentlessly.
During the sojourn in the mountains, in his effort to push his way
through to Johnston, Guilford Duncan came upon a plantation where only
women were living in the mansion house. A company of these marauders had
taken possession of the plantation, occupying its negro cabins and
terrorizing the population of the place. When Duncan rode up with his
seven armed men he instantly took command and assumed the _rôle_ of
protector. First of all he posted his men as sentries for the protection
of the plantation homestead. Next he sent out scouts, including a number
of trusty negroes who belonged upon the plantation, to find out where
the marauders were located, and what their numbers were, and what
purpose they might seem bent upon. From the reports of these scouts he
learned that the marauders exceeded him in force by three to one, or
more, but that fact in no way appalled him. During a long experience in
war he had learned well the lesson that numbers count for less than
morale, and that with skill and resoluteness a small force may easily
overcome and destroy a larger one.
He knew now that his career as a Confederate soldier was at an end.
Federal troops had occupied Lynchburg and all the region round about,
thus completely cutting him off from any possibility of reaching General
Johnston in North Carolina. He had no further mission as a military
officer of the Southern Confederacy, but as a mere man of courage and
vigor he had before him the duty of defending the women and children of
this Virginia plantation against about the worst and most desperate type
of highwaymen who ever organized themselves into a force for purposes of
loot and outrage.
He sent at once for the best negroes on the plantation--the negroes who
had proved themselves loyal in their affection for their mistresses
throughout the war. Having assembled these he inquired of the women what
arms and ammunition they had. There were the usual number of shotguns
belonging to a plantation, and a considerable supply of powder and
buckshot. Duncan assembled the negroes in the great hall of the
plantation house and said to them:
"I have seven men here, all armed and all fighters. I have arms enough
for you boys if you are willing to join me in the defense of the ladies
on this plantation against about the worst set of scoundrels that ever
lived on earth."
Johnny, the head dining-room servant, speaking for all the rest,
replied:
"In co'se we is. Jest you lead us, mahstah, and you'll see how we'll do
de wu'k."
Then Duncan armed the negroes, every one of whom knew how to use a gun,
so that he needed not instruct them, and he led them forth with his own
seasoned soldiers at their head.
"Now then," he said, "we are going to attack these fellows, and you know
perfectly well that they are a lot of cowards, and sneaks, and
scoundrels. If we are all resolute we can whip them out of their boots
within a few minutes. Either we must do that, or they will whip us out
of our boots and destroy us. I do not think there is much doubt about
which is going to whip. Come along, boys."
The marauders had established themselves in four or five of the negro
quarters on the plantation, and in a certain sense they were strongly
fortified. That is to say, they were housed in cabins built of logs too
thick for any bullet to penetrate them. Four of these cabins were so
placed that a fire from the door and the windows of either of them would
completely command the entrance of each of the others. But to offset
that, and to offset also the superiority of numbers which the marauders
enjoyed, Guilford Duncan decided upon an attack by night. He knew that
he was outnumbered by two or three to one, even if he counted the
willing but untrained negroes whom he had enlisted in this service. But
he did not despair of success. It was his purpose to dislodge the
marauders in a night attack, when he knew that they could not see to
shoot with effect. He knew also that "He is thrice armed who knows his
quarrel just."
Cautioning his men to maintain silence, and to advance as quickly as
possible, he got them into position and suddenly rushed upon the first
of the four or five negro quarters. Knowing that the door of this house
would be barricaded, he had instructed some of the negroes to bring a
pole with them which might be used as a battering ram. With a rush but
without any hurrah,--for Duncan had ordered quiet as a part of his plan
of campaign,--the negroes carried the great pole forward and instantly
crushed in the door. Within ten seconds afterwards Duncan's
ex-Confederate soldiers, with their pistols in use, were within the
house, and the company of marauders there surrendered--those of them who
had not fallen before the pistol shots. This first flush of victory
encouraged the negroes under his command so far that what had been their
enthusiasm became a positive battle-madness. Without waiting for orders
from him they rushed with their battering ram upon the other houses
occupied by the marauders, as did also his men, who were not accustomed
to follow, but rather to lead, and within a few minutes all of those
negro huts were in his possession, and all their occupants were in
effect his prisoners.
At this moment Guilford Duncan, who had now no legal or military
authority over his men, lost control of them. Both the negroes and the
white men seemed to go mad. They recognized in the marauders no rights
of a military kind, no title to be regarded as fighting men, and no
conceivable claim upon their conquerors' consideration. Both the negroes
and the white men were merciless in their slaughter of the marauding
highwaymen. Once, in the _mêlée_, Guilford Duncan endeavored to check
their enthusiasm as a barbarity, but his men responded in quick,
bullet-like words, indicating their idea that these men were not
soldiers entitled to be taken prisoners, but were beasts of prey,
rattlesnakes, mad dogs, enemies of the human race, whose extermination
it was the duty of every honest man to seek and to accomplish as quickly
as possible.
This thought was conveyed rather in ejaculations than in statements
made, and Guilford Duncan saw that there was neither time nor occasion
for argument. The men under his command felt that they were engaged in
defending the lives and the honor of women and children, and they were
in no degree disposed to hesitate at slaughter where so precious a
purpose inspired them. Their attitude of mind was uncompromising. Their
resolution was unalterable. Their impulse was to kill, and their victims
were men of so despicable a kind that after a moment's thought Guilford
Duncan's impulse was to let his men alone.
The contest lasted for a very brief while. The number of the slaughtered
in proportion to the total number of men engaged was appalling. But this
was not all. To it was immediately added the hasty hanging of men to the
nearest trees, and Guilford Duncan was powerless to prevent that. The
negroes, loyal to the mistresses whom they had served from infancy, had
gone wild in their enthusiasm of defense. They ran amuck, and when the
morning came there was not one man of all those marauders left alive to
tell the story of the conflict.
* * * * *
In the meanwhile Guilford Duncan, by means of his men, had gathered
information in every direction. He knew now that all hope was gone of
his joining Johnston's army, even if that army had not surrendered, as
by this time it probably had done. He therefore brought his men
together. Most of them lived in those mountains round about, or in the
lower country east of them, and so he said to them:
"Men, the war is over. Most of you, as I understand it, live somewhere
near here, or within fifty miles of here. As the last order that I shall
ever issue as a captain, I direct you now to return to your homes at
once. My advice to you is to go to work and rebuild your fortunes as
best you can. We've had our last fight. We've done our duty like men.
We must now do the best that we can for ourselves under extremely
adverse circumstances. Go home. Cultivate your fields. Take care of your
families, and be as good citizens in peace as you have been good
soldiers in war."
There was a hurried consultation among the men. Presently Sergeant
Garrett spoke for the rest and said:
"We will not go home, Captain Duncan, until each one of us has written
orders from you to do so. Some of us fellows have children in our homes,
and the rest of us may have children hereafter. We want them to know, as
the years go by, that we did not desert our cause, even in its dying
hours, that we did not quit the army until we were ordered to quit. We
ask of you, for each of us, a written order to go home, or to go
wherever else you may order us to go."
The Captain fully understood the loyalty of feeling which underlay this
request, and he promptly responded to it. Taking from his pocket a
number of old letters and envelopes, he searched out whatever scraps
there might be of blank paper. Upon these scraps he issued to each man
of his little company a peremptory order to return to his home, with an
added statement in the case of each that he had "served loyally,
bravely, and well, even unto the end."
That night, before their final parting, the little company slept
together in the midst of a cluster of pine trees, with only one sentry
on duty.
The next day came the parting. The captain, with tears dimming his
vision, shook hands with each of his men in turn, saying to each, with
choking utterance: "Good-by! God bless you!"
Then the spokesman of the men, Sergeant Garrett, asked:
"Are you going home, Captain Duncan?"
For twenty seconds the young Captain stared at his men, making no
answer. Then, mastering himself, and speaking as one dazed, he replied:
"Home? Home? On all God's earth I have no home!"
Instantly he put spurs to his horse, half unconsciously turning toward
the sunset.
A moment later he vanished from view, over the crest of a hill.
II
ALONE IN THE HIGH MOUNTAINS
The young man rode long and late that night. His way lay always upward
toward the crests of the high mountains of the Blue Ridge Range.
The roads he traversed were scarcely more than trails--too steep in
their ascent to have been traveled by wagons that might wear them into
thoroughfares. During the many hours of his riding he saw no sign of
human habitation anywhere, and no prospect of finding food for himself
or his horse, though both were famishing.
About midnight, however, he came upon a bit of wild pasture land on a
steep mountain side, where his horse at least might crop the early grass
of the spring. There he halted, removed his saddle and bridle, and
turned the animal loose, saying:
"Poor beast! You will not stray far away. There's half an acre of grass
here, with bare rocks all around it. Your appetite will be leash enough
to keep you from wandering."
Then the young man--no longer a captain now, but a destitute, starving
wanderer on the face of the earth--threw himself upon a carpet of pine
needles in a little clump of timber, made a pillow of his saddle, drew
the saddle blanket over his shoulders to keep out the night chill,
loosened his belt, and straightway fell asleep.
Before doing so, however,--faint with hunger as he was, and weary to the
verge of collapse,--he had a little ceremony to perform, and he
performed it--in answer to a sentimental fancy. With the point of his
sword he found an earth-bank free of rock, and dug a trench there. In it
he placed his sword in its scabbard and with its belt and sword-knot
attached. Then drawing the earth over it and stamping it down, he said:
"That ends the soldier chapter of my life. I must turn to the work of
peace now. I have no fireplace over which to hang the trusty blade. It
is better to bury it here in the mountains in the midst of desolation,
and forever to forget all that it suggests."
When he waked in the morning a soaking, persistent, pitiless rain was
falling. The young man's clothing was so completely saturated that, as
he stood erect, the water streamed from his elbows, and he felt it
trickling down his body and his legs.
"This is a pretty good substitute for a bath," he thought, as he removed
his garments, and with strong, nervous hands, wrung the water out of
them as laundresses do with linen.
He had no means of kindling a fire, and there was no time for that at
any rate. Guilford Duncan had begun to feel the pangs not of mere
hunger, but of actual starvation--the pains that mean collapse and
speedy death. He knew that he must find food for himself and that
quickly. Otherwise he must die there, helpless and alone, on the
desolate mountain side.
He might, indeed, kill his horse and live for a few days upon its flesh,
until it should spoil. But such relief would be only a postponing of the
end, and without the horse he doubted that he could travel far toward
that western land which he had half unwittingly fixed upon as his goal.
He was well up in the mountains now, and near the crest of the great
range. The Valley lay beyond, and he well knew that he would find no
food supplies in that region when he should come to cross it. Sheridan
had done a perfect work of war there, so devastating one of the most
fruitful regions on all God's earth that in picturesque words he had
said: "The crow that flies over the Valley of Virginia must carry his
rations with him."
In the high mountains matters were not much better. There had been no
battling up there in the land of the sky, but the scars and the
desolation of war were manifest even upon mountain sides and mountain
tops.
For four years the men who dwelt in the rude log cabins of that
frost-bitten and sterile region had been serving as volunteers in the
army, fighting for a cause which was none of theirs and which they did
not at all understand or try to understand. They fought upon instinct
alone. It had always been the custom of the mountain dwellers to
shoulder their guns and go into the thick of every fray which seemed to
them in any way to threaten their native land. They went blindly, they
fought desperately, and they endured manfully. Ignorant, illiterate,
abjectly poor, inured to hardship through generations, they asked no
questions the answers to which they could not understand. It was enough
for them to know that their native land was invaded by an armed foe.
Whenever that occurred they were ready to meet force with force, and to
do their humble mightiest to drive that foe away or to destroy him,
without asking even who he was.
It had been so in all the Indian wars and in the Revolutionary struggle,
and it was so again in the war between the States. As soon as the call
to arms was issued, these sturdy mountaineers almost to a man abandoned
their rocky and infertile fields to the care of their womankind and went
to war, utterly regardless of consequences to themselves.
During this last absence of four years their homes had fallen into
fearful desolation. Those homes were log cabins, chinked and daubed,
mostly having earthen floors and chimneys built of sticks thickly
plastered with mud. But humble as they were, they were homes and they
held the wives and children whom these men loved.
All that was primitive in American life survived without change in the
high mountains of Virginia and the Carolinas. In the Piedmont country
east of the Blue Ridge, and in the tide-water country beyond, until the
war came there were great plantations, where wealthy, or well-to-do, and
highly educated planters lived in state with multitudinous slaves to
till their fertile fields.
West of the Blue Ridge and between that range and the Alleghenies lay
the Valley of Virginia, a land as fruitful as Canaan itself.
In that Valley there dwelt in simple but abundant plenty the sturdy
"Dutchmen," as they were improperly called,--men of German descent,--who
had pushed their settlements southward from Pennsylvania along the
Valley, establishing themselves in the midst of fertile fields, owning
few slaves, and tilling their own lands, planting orchards everywhere,
and building not only their houses, but their barns and all their
outbuildings stoutly of the native stone that lay ready to their hands.
That region was now as barren as Sahara by reason of the devastation
that Sheridan had inflicted upon it with the deliberate and merciless
strategic purpose of rendering it uninhabitable and in that way making
of it a no-thoroughfare for Confederate armies on march toward the
country north of the Potomac, or on the way to threaten Washington
City.
The little mountain homesteads had been spared this devastation. But
their case was not much better than that of the more prosperous
plantations on the east, or that of the richly fruitful Valley farms on
the west. In war it is not "the enemy" alone who lays waste. Such little
cribs and granaries and smoke houses as these poor mountain dwellers
owned had been despoiled of their stores to feed the armies in the
field. Their boys, even those as young as fourteen, had been drawn into
the army. Their hogs, their sheep, and the few milch cows they
possessed, had been taken away from them. Their scanty oxen had been
converted into army beef, and those of them who owned a horse or a mule
had been compelled to surrender the animal for military use, receiving
in return only Confederate treasury notes, now worth no more than so
much of waste paper.
Nevertheless Guilford Duncan perfectly understood that he must look to
the impoverished people of the high mountains for a food supply in this
his sore extremity. Therefore, instead of crossing the range by way of
any of the main-traveled passes, he pushed his grass-refreshed steed
straight up Mount Pleasant to its topmost heights.
There, about noon, he came upon a lonely cabin whose owner had reached
home from the war only a day or two earlier.
There was an air of desolation and decay about the place, but knowing
the ways of the mountaineers the young man did not despair of securing
some food there. For even when the mountaineer is most prosperous his
fences are apt to be down, his roof out of repair, and all his
surroundings to wear the look of abandonment in despair.
Duncan began by asking for dinner for himself and his horse, and the
response was what he expected in that land of poverty-stricken but
always generous hospitality.
"Ain't got much to offer you, Cap'n'," said the owner, "but sich as it
is you're welcome."
Meanwhile he had given the horse a dozen ears of corn, saying:
"Reckon 't won't hurt him. He don't look 's if he'd been a feedin' any
too hearty an' I reckon a dozen ears won't founder him."
For dinner there was a scanty piece of bacon, boiled with wild mustard
plants for greens, and some pones of corn bread.
To Guilford Duncan, in his starving condition, this seemed a veritable
feast. The eating of it so far refreshed him that he cheerfully answered
all the questions put to him by his shirt-sleeved host.
It is a tradition in Virginia that nobody can ask so many questions as a
"Yankee," and yet there was never a people so insistently given to
asking questions of a purely and impertinently personal character as
were the Virginians of anything less than the higher and gentler class.
They questioned a guest, not so much because of any idle curiosity
concerning his affairs, as because of a friendly desire to manifest
interest in him and in what might concern him.
"What mout your name be, Cap'n?" the host began, as they sat at dinner.
"My name is Guilford Duncan," replied the young man. "But I am not a
Captain now. I'm only a very poor young man--greatly poorer than you
are, for at least you own a home and a little piece of the mountain top,
while I own no inch of God's earth or anything else except my horse, my
four pistols, my saddle and bridle and the clothes I wear."
"What's your plan? Goin' to settle in the mountings? They say there'll
be big money in 'stillin' whisky an' not a-payin' of the high tax on it.
It's a resky business, or will be, when the Yanks get their-selves
settled down into possession, like; but I kin see you're game fer resks,
an' ef you want a workin' pardner, I'm your man. There's a water power
just a little way down the mounting, in a valley that one good man with
a rifle kin defend."
"Thank you for your offer," answered Duncan. "But I'm not thinking of
settling in the mountains. I'm going to the West, if I can get there.
Now, to do that, I must cross the Valley, and I must have some
provisions. Can you sell me a side of bacon, a little bag of meal, and a
little salt?"
"What kin you pay with, Mister?"
"Well, I have no money, of course, except worthless Confederate paper,
but I have two pairs of Colt's 'Navy Six' revolvers, and I'd be glad to
give you one pair of them for my dinner, my horse's feed, and the
provisions I have mentioned."
"Now look-a-here, Mister," broke in the mountaineer, rising and
straightening himself to his full height of six feet four. "When you
come to my door you was mighty hungry. You axed fer a dinner an' a hoss
feed, an' I've done give 'em to you, free, gratis, an' fer nothin'. No
man on the face o' God's yearth kin say as how he ever come to Si
Watkins's house in need of a dinner an' a hoss feed 'thout a gittin'
both. An' no man kin say as how Si Watkins ever took a cent o' pay fer a
entertainin' of angels unawares as the preachers says. Them's my
_principles_, an' when you offer to pay fer a dinner an' a hoss feed,
you insults my _principles_."
"I sincerely beg your pardon," answered Duncan hurriedly. "I am very
grateful indeed for your hospitality, and as a Virginian I heartily
sympathize with your sentiment about not taking pay for food and
lodging, but----"
"That's all right, Mister. You meant fa'r an' squa'r. But you know how
it is. Chargin' fer a dinner an' a hoss feed is low down Yankee
business. Tavern keepers does it, too, but Si Watkins ain't no tavern
keeper an' he ain't no Yankee, neither. So that's the end o' that
little skirmish. But when it comes to furnishin' you with a side o'
bacon an' some meal an' salt, that's more differenter. That's business.
There's mighty little meal an' mighty few sides o' bacon in these here
parts, but I don't mind a-tellin' you as how my wife's done managed to
hide a few sides o' bacon an' a little meal from the fellers what come
up here to collect the tax in kind. One of 'em found her hidin' place
one day, an' was jest a-goin' to confisticate the meat when, with the
sperrit of a woman, that's in her as big as a house, she drawed a bead
on him an' shot him. He was carried down the mounting by his men, an'
p'r'aps he's done got well. I don't know an' I keers less. Anyhow, we's
done got a few sides o' bacon an' a big bag o' meal an' a bushel o'
salt. Ef you choose to take one o' them sides o' bacon, an' a little
meal an' salt, an' give me one o' your pistols, I'm quite agreeable. The
gun mout come in handy when I git a little still a-goin', down there in
the holler."
"I'll do better than that," answered Duncan. "I'll give you a pair of
the pistols, as I said."
"Hold on! Go a leetle slow, Mister, an' don't forgit nothin'. You
preposed to gimme the p'ar o' pistols fer the bacon an' meal an' salt,
_an'_ fer yer dinner an' hoss feed. I've done tole you as how Si Watkins
don't never take no pay fer a dinner an' a hoss feed. So you can't offer
me the p'ar o' pistols 'thout offerin' to pay fer yer entertainment of
man an' beast, an' I won't have that, I tell you."
"Very well," answered Duncan; "I didn't mean that. I'll give you one of
the pistols in payment for the supply of provisions. That will end the
business part of the matter. Now, I'm going to do something else with
the other pistol--the mate of that one."
With that he opened his pocket knife and scratched on the silver
mounting of the pistol's butt the legend: "To Si Watkins, in memory of a
visit; from Guilford Duncan, Cairo, Illinois."
Then handing the inscribed weapon to his host he said:
"I have a right to make you a little present, purely in the way of
friendship, and not as 'pay' for anything at all. I want to give you
this pistol, and I want you to keep it. I don't know where I am going to
live and work in the West, and I don't know why I wrote 'Cairo,
Illinois' as my address. It simply came to me to do it. Perhaps it's a
good omen. Anyhow, I shall go to Cairo, and if I leave there I'll
arrange to have my letters forwarded to me, wherever I may be. So if
you're in trouble at any time you can write to me at Cairo. I am as poor
as you are now--yes, poorer. But I don't mean to stay poor. If you're in
trouble at any time, I'll do my best to see you through, just as you
have seen me through this time."
III
THE NEW BIRTH OF MANHOOD
Half an hour later the young man resumed his journey westward, passing
down the farther slopes of the mountain.
"Wonder why I wrote 'Cairo' as my address," he thought, as his trusty
horse carefully picked his way among the rocks and down the steeps. "I
hadn't thought of Cairo before as even a possible destination. I know
nobody there. I know absolutely nothing about the town, or the
opportunities it may offer. I'm not superstitious, I think, but somehow
this thing impresses me, and to Cairo I shall go--if only to receive Si
Watkins's letter when it comes," he added with a smile.
Then he began a more practical train of thought.
"I've food enough now," he reflected, "to last me scantily for a few
days. During that time I must make my way as far as I can toward the
Ohio River at Pittsburg or Wheeling or Parkersburg. When I reach the
River I must have money enough to pay steamboat fare to Cairo. There is
no money in these parts, but West Virginia is practically a Northern
State, and there are greenbacks there. I'll sell my remaining pistols
there. A little later I'll sell my horse, my saddle, and my bridle. The
horse is a good one, and so is the saddle. Surely I ought to get enough
for them to pay my way to Cairo."
Then came another and a questioning thought:
"And when I get to Cairo? What then? I've a good university education,
but I doubt that there is a ready market for education in any bustling
Mississippi River town, just now. I'm a graduate in law, but Heaven
knows I know very little about the profession aside from the broad
underlying principles. Besides, I shall have no money with which to open
an office, and who is going to employ a wandering and utterly destitute
stranger to take charge of his legal business?"
For the moment discouragement dominated the young man's mind. But
presently there came to him a reflection that gave new birth to his
courage.
"I'm six feet high," he thought, "and broad in proportion. I'm in
perfect physical health. I have muscles that nothing has ever yet tired.
Between the wilderness and Appomattox I have had an extensive experience
in shoveling earth and other hard work. I'm in exceedingly good
training--a trifle underfed, perhaps, but at any rate I carry not one
ounce of superfluous fat on my person. I am perfectly equipped for the
hardest kind of physical work and in a busy western town there is sure
to be work enough of that kind for a strong and willing man to do. I
can at the very least earn enough as a laborer to feed me better than
I've been fed for the four years of war."
Curiously enough, this prospect of work as a day laborer greatly cheered
the young man. Instead of depressing his spirits, it for the first time
lifted from his soul that incubus of melancholy with which every
Confederate soldier of his class was at first oppressed. Ever since
Grant had refused in the Wilderness--a year before--to retire beyond the
river after receiving Lee's tremendous blows, Guilford Duncan and all
Confederates of like intelligence had foreseen the end and had
recognized its coming as inevitable. Nevertheless, when it came in fact,
when the army of Northern Virginia surrendered, and when the Confederacy
ceased to be, the event was scarcely less shocking and depressing to
their minds than if it had been an unforeseen and unexpected one.
The melancholy that instantly took possession of such minds amounted to
scarcely less than insanity, and for a prolonged period it paralyzed
energy and made worse the ruin that war had wrought in the South.
Fortunately Guilford Duncan, thrown at once and absolutely upon his own
resources, thus quickly escaped from the overshadowing cloud.
And yet his case seemed worse than that of most of his comrades. They,
at least, had homes of some sort to go to; he had none. There was for
them, debt burdened as their plantations were, at least a hope that some
way out might ultimately be found. For him there was no inch of ground
upon which he might rest even a hope.
Born of an old family he had been bred and educated as one to whom
abundance was to come by inheritance, a man destined from birth to
become in time the master of a great patrimonial estate.
But that estate was honeycombed with hereditary debt, the result of
generations of lavish living, wasteful methods of agriculture, and
over-generous hospitality. About the time when war came there came also
a crisis in the affairs of Guilford Duncan's father. Long before the war
ended the elder man had surrendered everything he had in the world to
his creditors. He had then enlisted in the army, though he was more than
sixty years old. He had been killed in the trenches before Petersburg,
leaving his only son, Guilford, not only without a patrimony and without
a home, but also without any family connection closer than some distant
half-theoretical cousin-ships. The young man's mother had gently passed
from earth so long ago that he only dimly remembered the sweet nobility
of her character, and he had never had either brother or sister.
He was thus absolutely alone in the world, and he was penniless, too, as
he rode down the mountain steeps. But the impulse of work had come to
him, and he joyfully welcomed it as something vastly better and
worthier of his strong young manhood than any brooding over misfortune
could be, or any leading of the old aristocratic, half-idle planter
life, if that had been possible.
In connection with this thought came another. He had recently read Owen
Meredith's "Lucille," and as he journeyed he recalled the case there
described of the French nobleman who for a time wasted his life and
neglected his splendid opportunities in brooding over the downfall of
the Bourbon dynasty, and in an obstinate refusal to reconcile himself to
the new order of things. Duncan remembered how, after a while, when the
new France became involved in the Crimean war, the Frenchman saw a
clearer light; how he learned to feel that, under one regime or another,
it was still France that he loved, and to France that his best service
was due.
"That," thought Guilford Duncan, "was a new birth of patriotism. Why
should not a similar new birth come to those of us who have fought in
the Confederate Army? After all, the restored Union will be the only
representative left of those principles for which we have so manfully
battled during the last four years--the principles of liberty and equal
rights and local self-government. We Confederates believe, and will
always believe, that our cause was just and right, that it represented
the fundamentals of that American system which our forefathers sealed
and cemented with their blood. But our effort has failed. The
Confederacy is eternally dead. The Union survives. What choice is left
to us who followed Lee, except to reconcile ourselves with our new
environment and help with all our might to preserve and perpetuate
within the Union and by means of it, all of liberty and self-government,
and human rights, that we have tried to maintain by the establishment of
the Confederacy? We must either join heart and soul in that work, or we
must idly sulk, living in the dead past and leaving it to our
adversaries to do, without our help, the great good that, if we do not
sulk, we can so mightily help in doing."
He paused in his thinking long enough to let his emotions have their
word of protest against a reconciliation which sentiment resented as a
surrender of principle.
Then, with a resolute determination that was final, he ended the debate
in his own mind between futilely reactionary sentiment and hopeful,
constructive, common sense.
"I for one, shall live in the future and not in the past. I shall make
the best and not the worst of things as they are. I have put the war and
all its issues completely behind me. For half a century to come the men
on either side will organize themselves, I suppose, into societies whose
purpose will be to cherish and perpetuate the memory of the war, and to
make it a source of antagonism and bitterness. Their work will hinder
progress. I will have nothing to do with it. I am no longer a
Confederate soldier. I am an American citizen. I shall endeavor to do my
duty as such, wholly uninfluenced and unbiased by what has gone before.
"Surely there can be no abandonment of truth or justice or principle in
that! It is the obvious dictate of common sense and patriotism. During
the war I freely offered my life to our cause. The cause is dead, but I
live. I have youth and strength. I have brains, I think, and I have
education. These I shall devote to such work as I can find to do, such
help as I can render in that upbuilding of my native land which must be
the work of all Americans during the next decade or longer!
"Good-bye, Confederacy! Good-bye, Army! Good-bye, Lost Cause! I am
young. I must 'look forward and not backward--up and not down.'
Henceforth I shall live and breathe and act for the future, not for the
past! Repining is about the most senseless and profitless occupation
that the human mind can conceive."
At that moment the young man's horse encountered a huge boulder that had
rolled down from the mountain side, completely blockading the path. With
the spirit and the training that war service had given him, the animal
stopped not nor stayed. He approached the obstacle with a leap or two,
and then, with mighty effort, vaulted over it.