"PAP," said Si, as they were riding back, comfortably seated on a load
of corn-fodder, "now that it's all over, I'm awfully scared about you. I
can't forgive myself for runnin' you up agin such a scrape. I hadn't no
idee that there wuz a rebel in the whole County. If anything had
happened you it'd just killed mother and the girls, and then I'd never
rested till I got shot myself, for I wouldn't wanted to live a minute."
"Pshaw, my son," responded his father rather testily; "you ain't my
guardeen, and I hope it'll be a good many years yit before you are. I'm
mighty glad that I went. There was something Providential in it. I'm a
good deal of a Quaker. I believe in the movin's of the spirit. The
spirit moved me very strongly to go with you, and I now see the purpose
in it. If I hadn't, them fellers might've got the bulge on you. I seen
them before any o' you did, and I fetched down their head devil, and I
feel that I helped you a good deal."
"Indeed you did," said Shorty earnestly. "You ought to have a brevet for
your 'conspicuous gallantry in action.' I think the Colonel will give
you one. You put an ounce o' lead to particularly good245 use in that
feller's karkiss. I only wish it'd bin a little higher up, where it'd a
measured him for a wooden overcoat."
"I'm awful glad I hit him jest where I did," responded the Deacon. "I
did have his heart covered with my sights, and then I pulled down a
little. He was pizen, I know; but I wanted to give him a chance to
repent."
"He'll repent a heap," said Shorty incredulously. "He'll lay around the
house for the next six months, studyin' up new deviltry, and what he
can't think of that secesh mother o' his'll put him up to. Co. Q, and
particularly the Hoosier's Rest, is the only place you'll find a
contrite heart and a Christian spirit cultivated."
"That reminds me," said Si; "we hain't licked the Wagonmaster yit for
throwin' cartridges down our chimbley."
"Blamed if that ain't so," said Shorty. "I knowed I'd forgotten some
little thing. It's bin hauntin' my mind for days. I'll jest tie a knot
in my handker chief to remember that I must tend to that as soon's we
git back."
"I'm quite sure that I don't want another sich a tussle," meditated the
Deacon. "I never heerd any thing sound so murderin' wicked as them
bullets. A painter's screech on a dark night or a rattler's rattle
wuzzent to be compared to 'em. It makes my blood run cold to think o'
'em. Then, if that feller that shot at me had wobbled his gun a little
to the left, Josiah Klegg's name would 've bin sculped on a slab o'
white marble, and Maria would 've bin the Widder Klegg. I wish the war
wuz over, and Si and Shorty246 safe at home. But their giddy young pates
are so full o' dumbed nonsense that there hain't no room for scare. But,
now that I'm safe through it, I wouldn't 've missed it for the best cow
on my place. After all, Providence sends men where they are needed, and
He certainly sent me out there.
"Then, I'll have a good story to tell the brethren and sisters some
night after prayer meetin's over. It'll completely offset that story
'bout my comin' so near gittin' my head shaved. How the ungodly247
rapscallions would've gloated over Deacon Klegg's havin' his head shaved
an' bein' drummed out o' camp. That thing makes me shiver worse'n the
whistlin' o' them awful bullets. But they can't say nothin' now. Deacon
Klegg's bin a credit to the church."
They were nearing camp. The Captain of Co. Q ordered:
"Corporal Klegg, take your wagon up that right-hand road to the
Quartermaster's corral of mules, and bring me a receipt for it."
Si turned the wagon off, and had gone but a few hundred yards, when he
and Shorty saw a house at a little distance, which seemed to promise to
furnish something eatable. He and Shorty jumped off and cut across the
fields toward it, telling the Deacon they would rejoin him before he
reached the picket-line, a mile or so ahead.
The Deacon jogged on, musing intently of the stirring events of the day,
until he was recalled to the things immediately around him by hearing a
loud voice shout:
"Stop, there, you black scoundrel! I've ketched ye. I'm gwine to blow
your onery head off."
He looked up and saw a man about his own age, dressed in butternut
homespun, and riding a fine horse. He wore a broad-brimmed slouch hat,
his clean-shaven face was cold and cruel, and he had leveled a double-
barreled shotgun on a fine-looking negro, who had leaped over from the
field into the middle of the road, and was standing there regard ing him
with a look of intense disappointment and248 fear.
I'm Gwine Ter Kill Ye, Right Here 246
"You devil's ape," continued the white man, with a torrent of profanity,
"I've ketched ye jest in the nick o' time. Ye wuz makin' for the Yankee
camp, and 'd almost got thar. Ye thought yer 40 acres and a mule wuz
jest in sight, did ye? Mebbe ye reckoned y'd git a white wife, and be an
officer in the Yankee army. I'm gwine to kill ye, right here, to stop
yer deviltry, and skeer off others that air o' the same mind."
"Pray God, don't kill me, massa," begged the negro. "I hain't done
nuffin' to be killed foh."
"Hain't done nothin' to be killed for!" shouted the white man, with more
oaths. "Do ye call sneakin' off to jine the enemy and settin' an example
to the other niggers nothin'? Git down on yer knees and say yer prayers,
if ye know any, for ye ain't a minnit to live."
The trembling negro dropped to his knees and be gan mumbling his
prayers.
"What's the matter here?" asked the Deacon of the teamster.
"O, some man's ketched his nigger tryin' to run away to our lines, an's
goin' to kill him," answered the teamster indifferently.
"Goin' to kill him," gasped the Deacon. "Are we goin' to 'low that?"
"'Tain't none o' my business," said the teamster coolly. "It's his
nigger; I reckon he's a right to do as he pleases."
"I don't reckon nothin' o' the kind," said the Deacon indignantly. "I
won't stand and see it done."
"Better not mix in," admonished the teamster. "Them air Southerners is
pretty savage folks, and249 don't like any meddlin' twixt them and their
niggers. What's a nigger, anyway?"
"Amounts to about as much as a white-livered teamster," said the Deacon
hotly. "I'm goin' to mix in. I'll not see any man murdered while I'm
around. Say, you," to the white man; "what are you goin' ter do with
that man?"
"Mind yer own bizniss," replied the white man, after a casual glance at
the Deacon, and seeing that he did not wear a uniform. "Keep yer mouth
shet if ye know when y're well off."
"O, massa, save me! save me!" said the negro, jumping up and running
toward the Deacon, who had slipped down from the fodder, and was
standing in the road.
"All right, Sambo; don't be scared. He sha'n't kill you while I'm
around," said the Deacon.
"I tell ye agin to mind yer own bizniss and keep yer mouth shet," said
the white man savagely. "Who air ye, anyway? One o' them sblinkin'
nigger-stealin' Abolitionists, comin' down here to rob us Southerners of
our property?"
He followed this with a torrent of profane denunciation of the "whole
Abolition crew."
"Look here, Mister," said the Deacon calmly, reaching back into the
wagon and drawing out a musket, "I'm a member o' the church and a
peaceable man. But I don't 'low no man to call me names, and I object to
swearin' of all kinds. I want to argy this question with you, quietly,
as between man and man."
He looked down to see if there was a cap on the gun.250
"What's the trouble 'twixt you and this man here?"
"That ain't no man," said the other hotly. "That's my nigger bought with
my money. He's my property. I've ketched him tryin' to run away tryin'
to rob me of $1,200 worth o' property and give it to our enemies. I'm
gwine to kill him to stop others from doin' the same thing."
"Indeed you're not," said the Deacon, putting his thumb on the hammer.
"Do you mean to say you'll stop me?" said the master, starting to raise
his shotgun, which he had let fall a little.
"Something like that, if not the exact words," an swered the Deacon
calmly, looking at the sights of the musket with an interested air.
The master resumed his volley of epithets.
The Deacon's face became very rigid, and the musket was advanced to a
more threatening position. "I told you before," he said, "that I didn't
allow no man to call me sich names. I give you warnin' agin. I'm liable
to fall from grace, as the Methodists say, any minnit. I'm dumbed sure
to if you call me an other name."
The master glared at the musket. It was clearly in hands used to guns,
and the face behind it was not that of a man to be fooled with beyond a
certain limit. He lowered his shotgun, and spoke sharply to the negro:
"Sam, git 'round here in front of the hoss, and put for home at once."
"Stay where you are, till I finish talkin' to this man," commanded the
Deacon. "Are you a loyal man?" he inquired of the master.251
"If ye mean loil to that rail-splittin' gorilla in Washington," replied
the master, hotly; "to that low-down, nigger-lovin', nigger-stealin'—"
"Shet right up," said the Deacon, bringing up his gun in a flash of
anger. "You sha'n't abuse the President o' the United States any more'n
you shall me, nor half so much. He's your President, whom you must honor
and respect. I won't have him blackguarded by an unhung rebel. You say
yourself you're a rebel. Then you have no right whatever to this man,
and I'm goin' to confiscate him in the name o' Abraham Lincoln,
President o' the United States, an' accordin' to his proclamation of
emancipation, done at Washington, District o' Columbia, in the year of
our Lord eighteen hundred and sixty-three and of our Independence the
87th.
"Now, you jest turn your hoss around and vacate these parts as quick as
you can, and leave me and this colored man alone. We're tired o' havin'
you 'round."
The master was a man of sense. He knew that there was nothing to do but
obey.