AFTER DAWS DILLON--GUERILLA
Once more, and for the last time, Chadwick Buford jogged along the
turnpike from the Ohio to the heart of the Bluegrass. He had filled his
empty shoulder-straps with two bars. He had a bullet wound through one
shoulder and there was a beautiful sabre cut across his right cheek. He
looked the soldier every inch of him; he was, in truth, what he looked;
and he was, moreover, a man. Naturally, his face was stern and
resolute, if only from habit of authority, but he had known no passion
during the war that might have seared its kindness; no other feeling
toward his foes than admiration for their unquenchable courage and
miserable regret that to such men he must be a foe.
Now, it was coming spring again--the spring of '64, and but one more
year of the war to come.
The capture of the Fourth Ohio by Morgan that autumn of '62 had given
Chad his long-looked-for chance. He turned Dixie's head toward the
foothills to join Wolford, for with Wolford was the work that he
loved--that leader being more like Morgan in his method and daring than
any other Federal cavalryman in the field behind him. In Kentucky, he
left the State under martial sway once more, and, thereafter, the
troubles of rebel sympathizers multiplied steadily, for never again was
the State under rebel control. A heavy hand was laid on every rebel
roof. Major Buford was sent to prison again. General Dean was in
Virginia, fighting, and only the fact that there was no man in the Dean
household on whom vengeance could fall, saved Margaret and Mrs. Dean
from suffering, but even the time of women was to come.
On the last day of '62, Murfreesboro was fought and the second great
effort of the Confederacy at the West was lost. Again Bragg withdrew.
On New Year's Day, '63, Lincoln freed the slaves--and no rebel was more
indignant than was Chadwick Buford. The Kentucky Unionists, in general,
protested: the Confederates had broken the Constitution, they said; the
Unionists were helping to maintain that contract and now the Federals
had broken the Constitution, and their own high ground was swept from
beneath their feet. They protested as bitterly as their foes, be it
said, against the Federals breaking up political conventions with
bayonets and against the ruin of innocent citizens for the crimes of
guerillas, for whose acts nobody was responsible, but all to no avail.
The terrorism only grew the more.
When summer came, and while Grant was bisecting the Confederacy at
Vicksburg, by opening the Mississippi, and Lee was fighting Gettysburg,
Chad, with Wolford, chased Morgan when he gathered his clans for his
last daring venture--to cross the Ohio and strike the enemy on its own
hearth-stones--and thus give him a little taste of what the South had
long known from border to border. Pursued by Federals, Morgan got
across the river, waving a farewell to his pursuing enemies on the
other bank, and struck out. Within three days, one hundred thousand men
were after him and his two thousand daredevils, cutting down trees
behind him (in case he should return!), flanking him, getting in his
front, but on he went, uncaught and spreading terror for a thousand
miles, while behind him for six hundred miles country people lined the
dusty road, singing "Rally 'round the Flag, Boys," and handing out
fried chicken and blackberry-pie to his pursuers. Men taken afterward
with typhoid fever sang that song through their delirium and tasted
fried chicken no more as long as they lived. Hemmed in as Morgan was,
he would have gotten away, but for the fact that a heavy fog made him
miss the crossing of the river, and for the further reason that the
first rise in the river in that month for twenty years made it
impossible for his command to swim. He might have fought out, but his
ammunition was gone. Many did escape, and Morgan himself could have
gotten away. Chad, himself, saw the rebel chief swimming the river on a
powerful horse, followed by a negro servant on another--saw him turn
deliberately in the middle of the stream, when it was plain that his
command could not escape, and make for the Ohio shore to share the
fortunes of his beloved officers who were left behind. Chad heard him
shout to the negro:
"Go back, you will be drowned." The negro turned his face and Chad
laughed--it was Snowball, grinning and shaking his head:
"No, Mars John, no suh!" he yelled. "It's all right fer YOU! YOU can
git a furlough, but dis nigger ain't gwine to be cotched in no free
State. 'Sides, Mars Dan, he gwine to get away, too." And Dan did get
away, and Chad, to his shame, saw Morgan and Colonel Hunt loaded on a
boat to be sent down to prison in a State penitentiary! It was a
grateful surprise to Chad, two months later, to learn from a Federal
officer that Morgan with six others had dug out of prison and escaped.
"I was going through that very town," said the officer, "and a fellow,
shaved and sheared like a convict, got aboard and sat down in the same
seat with me. As we passed the penitentiary, he turned with a yawn--and
said, in a matter-of-fact way:
"'That's where Morgan is kept, isn't it?" and then he drew out a flask.
I thought he had wonderfully good manners in spite of his looks, and,
so help me, if he didn't wave his hand, bow like a Bayard, and hand it
over to me:
"'Let's drink to the hope that Morgan may always be as safe as he is
now.' I drank to his toast with a hearty Amen, and the fellow never
cracked a smile. It was Morgan himself."
Early in '64 the order had gone round for negroes to be enrolled as
soldiers, and again no rebel felt more outraged than Chadwick Buford.
Wolford, his commander, was dishonorably dismissed from the service for
bitter protests and harsh open criticism of the Government, and Chad,
himself, felt like tearing off with his own hands the straps which he
had won with so much bravery and worn with so much pride. But the
instinct that led him into the Union service kept his lips sealed when
his respect for that service, in his own State, was well-nigh
gone--kept him in that State where he thought his duty lay. There was
need of him and thousands more like him. For, while active war was now
over in Kentucky, its brood of evils was still thickening. Every county
in the State was ravaged by a guerilla band--and the ranks of these
marauders began to be swelled by Confederates, particularly in the
mountains and in the hills that skirt them. Banks, trains, public
vaults, stores, were robbed right and left, and murder and revenge were
of daily occurrence. Daws Dillon was an open terror both in the
mountains and in the Bluegrass. Hitherto the bands had been Union and
Confederate but now, more and more, men who had been rebels joined
them. And Chad Buford could understand. For, many a rebel
soldier--"hopeless now for his cause," as Richard Hunt was wont to say,
"fighting from pride, bereft of sympathy, aid, and encouragement that
he once received, and compelled to wring existence from his own
countrymen; a cavalryman on some out-post department, perhaps, without
rations, fluttering with rags; shod, if shod at all, with shoes that
sucked in rain and cold; sleeping at night under the blanket that kept
his saddle by day from his sore-backed horse; paid, if paid at all,
with waste paper; hardened into recklessness by war--many a rebel
soldier thus became a guerrilla--consoling himself, perhaps, with the
thought that his desertion was not to the enemy."
Bad as the methods of such men were, they were hardly worse than the
means taken in retaliation. At first, Confederate sympathizers were
arrested and held as hostages for all persons captured and detained by
guerillas. Later, when a citizen was killed by one of these bands, four
prisoners, supposed to be chosen from this class of free-booters, were
taken from prison and shot to death on the spot where the deed was
done. Now it was rare that one of these brigands was ever taken alive,
and thus regular soldier after soldier who was a prisoner of war, and
entitled to consideration as such, was taken from prison and murdered
by the Commandant without even a court-martial. It was such a death
that Dan Dean and Rebel Jerry had narrowly escaped. Union men were
imprisoned even for protesting against these outrages, so that between
guerilla and provost-marshal no citizen, whether Federal or
Confederate, in sympathy, felt safe in property, life, or liberty. The
better Unionists were alienated, but worse yet was to come. Hitherto,
only the finest chivalry had been shown women and children throughout
the war. Women whose brothers and husbands and sons were in the rebel
army, or dead on the battle-field, were banished now with their
children to Canada under a negro guard, or sent to prison. State
authorities became openly arrayed against provost-marshals and their
followers. There was almost an open clash. The Governor, a Unionist,
threatened even to recall the Kentucky troops from the field to come
back and protect their homes. Even the Home Guards got disgusted with
their masters, and for a while it seemed as if the State, between
guerilla and provost-marshal, would go to pieces. For months the
Confederates had repudiated all connection with these free-booters and
had joined with Federals in hunting them down, but when the State
government tried to raise troops to crush them, the Commandant not only
ordered his troops to resist the State, but ordered the muster-out of
all State troops then in service.
The Deans little knew then how much trouble Captain Chad Buford, whose
daring service against guerillas had given him great power with the
Union authorities, had saved them--how he had kept them from arrest and
imprisonment on the charge of none other than Jerome Conners, the
overseer; how he had ridden out to pay his personal respects to the
complainant, and that brave gentleman, seeing him from afar, had
mounted his horse and fled, terror-stricken. They never knew that just
after this he had got a furlough and gone to see Grant himself, who had
sent him on to tell his story to Mr. Lincoln.
"Go back to Kentucky, then," said Grant, with his quiet smile, "and if
General Ward has nothing particular for you to do, I want him to send
you to me," and Chad had gone from him, dizzy with pride and hope.
"I'm going to do something," said Mr. Lincoln, "and I'm going to do it
right away."
And now, in the spring of '64, Chad carried in his breast despatches
from the President himself to General Ward at Lexington.
As he rode over the next hill, from which he would get his first
glimpse of his old home and the Deans', his heart beat fast and his
eyes swept both sides of the road. Both houses: even the Deans'--were
shuttered and closed--both tenantless. He saw not even a negro cabin
that showed a sign of life.
On he went at a gallop toward Lexington. Not a single rebel flag had he
seen since he left the Ohio, nor was he at all surprised; the end could
not be far off, and there was no chance that the Federals would ever
again lose the State.
On the edge of the town he overtook a Federal officer. It was Harry
Dean, pale and thin from long imprisonment and sickness. Harry had been
with Sherman, had been captured again, and, in prison, had almost died
with fever. He had come home to get well only to find his sister and
mother sent as exiles to Canada. Major Buford was still in prison, Miss
Lucy was dead, and Jerome Conners seemed master of the house and farm.
General Dean had been killed, had been sent home, and was buried in the
garden. It was only two days after the burial, Harry said, that
Margaret and her mother had to leave their home. Even the bandages that
Mrs. Dean had brought out to Chad's wounded sergeant, that night he had
captured and lost Dan, had been brought up as proof that she and
Margaret were aiding and abetting Confederates. Dan had gone to join
Morgan and Colonel Hunt over in southwestern Virginia, where Morgan had
at last got a new command only a few months before. Harry made no word
of comment, but Chad's heart got bitter as gall as he listened. And
this had happened to the Deans while he was gone to serve them. But the
bloody Commandant of the State would be removed from power--that much
good had been done--as Chad learned when he presented himself, with a
black face, to his general.
"I could not help it," said the General, quickly. "He seems to have
hated the Deans." And again read the despatches slowly. "You have done
good work. There will be less trouble now." Then he paused. "I have had
a letter from General Grant. He wants you on his staff." Again he
paused, and it took the three past years of discipline to help Chad
keep his self-control. "That is, if I have nothing particular for you
to do. He seems to know what you have done and to suspect that there
may be something more here for you to do. He's right. I want you to
destroy Daws Dillon and his band. There will be no peace until he is
out of the way. You know the mountains better than anybody. You are the
man for the work. You will take one company from Wolford's regiment--he
has been reinstated, you know--and go at once. When you have finished
that--you can go to General Grant." The General smiled. "You are rather
young to be so near a major--perhaps."
A major! The quick joy of the thought left him when he went down the
stairs to the portico and saw Harry Dean's thin, sad face, and thought
of the new grave in the Deans' garden and those two lonely women in
exile. There was one small grain of consolation. It was his old enemy,
Daws Dillon, who had slain Joel Turner; Daws who had almost ruined
Major Buford and had sent him to prison--Daws had played no small part
in the sorrows of the Deans, and on the heels of Daws Dillon he soon
would be.
"I suppose I am to go with you," said Harry.
"Why, yes," said Chad, startled; "how did you know?"
"I didn't know. How far is Dillon's hiding-place from where Morgan is?"
"Across the mountains." Chad understood suddenly. "You won't have to
go," he said, quickly.
"I'll go where I am ordered," said Harry Dean.