In the Gate City of the South the Confederate Veterans were
reuniting; and I stood to see them march, beneath the tangled
flags of the great conflict, to the hall of their oratory and
commemoration.
While the irregular and halting line was passing I made onslaught
upon it and dragged from the ranks my friend Barnard O'Keefe, who
had no right to be there. For he was a Northerner born and bred; and
what should he be doing hallooing for the Stars and Bars among those
gray and moribund veterans? And why should he be trudging, with his
shining, martial, humorous, broad face, among those warriors of a
previous and alien generation?
I say I dragged him forth, and held him till the last hickory leg
and waving goatee had stumbled past. And then I hustled him out
of the crowd into a cool interior; for the Gate City was stirred
that day, and the hand-organs wisely eliminated "Marching Through
Georgia" from their repertories.
"Now, what deviltry are you up to?" I asked of O'Keefe when there
were a table and things in glasses between us.
O'Keefe wiped his heated face and instigated a commotion among the
floating ice in his glass before he chose to answer.
"I am assisting at the wake," said he, "of the only nation on earth
that ever did me a good turn. As one gentleman to another, I am
ratifying and celebrating the foreign policy of the late Jefferson
Davis, as fine a statesman as ever settled the financial question of
a country. Equal ratio--that was his platform--a barrel of money for
a barrel of flour--a pair of $20 bills for a pair of boots--a hatful
of currency for a new hat--say, ain't that simple compared with W.
J. B.'s little old oxidized plank?"
"What talk is this?" I asked. "Your financial digression is merely
a subterfuge. Why were you marching in the ranks of the Confederate
Veterans?"
"Because, my lad," answered O'Keefe, "the Confederate Government in
its might and power interposed to protect and defend Barnard O'Keefe
against immediate and dangerous assassination at the hands of a
blood-thirsty foreign country after the Unites States of America
had overruled his appeal for protection, and had instructed Private
Secretary Cortelyou to reduce his estimate of the Republican
majority for 1905 by one vote."
"Come, Barney," said I, "the Confederate States of America has been
out of existence nearly forty years. You do not look older yourself.
When was it that the deceased government exerted its foreign policy
in your behalf?"
"Four months ago," said O'Keefe, promptly. "The infamous foreign
power I alluded to is still staggering from the official blow dealt
it by Mr. Davis's contraband aggregation of states. That's why you
see me cake-walking with the ex-rebs to the illegitimate tune about
'simmon-seeds and cotton. I vote for the Great Father in Washington,
but I am not going back on Mars' Jeff. You say the Confederacy has
been dead forty years? Well, if it hadn't been for it, I'd have
been breathing to-day with soul so dead I couldn't have whispered
a single cuss-word about my native land. The O'Keefes are not
overburdened with ingratitude."
I must have looked bewildered. "The war was over," I said vacantly,
"in--"
O'Keefe laughed loudly, scattering my thoughts.
"Ask old Doc Millikin if the war is over!" he shouted, hugely
diverted. "Oh, no! Doc hasn't surrendered yet. And the Confederate
States! Well, I just told you they bucked officially and solidly and
nationally against a foreign government four months ago and kept me
from being shot. Old Jeff's country stepped in and brought me off
under its wing while Roosevelt was having a gunboat painted and
waiting for the National Campaign Committee to look up whether I had
ever scratched the ticket."
"Isn't there a story in this, Barney?" I asked.
"No," said O'Keefe; "but I'll give you the facts. You know I went
down to Panama when this irritation about a canal began. I thought
I'd get in on the ground floor. I did, and had to sleep on it, and
drink water with little zoos in it; so, of course, I got the Chagres
fever. That was in a little town called San Juan on the coast.
"After I got the fever hard enough to kill a Port-au-Prince nigger,
I had a relapse in the shape of Doc Millikin.
"There was a doctor to attend a sick man! If Doc Millikin had your
case, he made the terrors of death seem like an invitation to a
donkey-party. He had the bedside manners of a Piute medicine-man and
the soothing presence of a dray loaded with iron bridge-girders.
When he laid his hand on your fevered brow you felt like Cap John
Smith just before Pocahontas went his bail.
"Well, this old medical outrage floated down to my shack when I sent
for him. He was build like a shad, and his eyebrows was black, and
his white whiskers trickled down from his chin like milk coming
out of a sprinkling-pot. He had a nigger boy along carrying an old
tomato-can full of calomel, and a saw.
"Doc felt my pulse, and then he began to mess up some calomel with
an agricultural implement that belonged to the trowel class.
"'I don't want any death-mask made yet, Doc,' I says, 'nor my liver
put in a plaster-of-Paris cast. I'm sick; and it's medicine I need,
not frescoing.'
"'You're a blame Yankee, ain't you?' asked Doc, going on mixing up
his Portland cement.
"'I'm from the North,' says I, 'but I'm a plain man, and don't care
for mural decorations. When you get the Isthmus all asphalted over
with that boll-weevil prescription, would you mind giving me a dose
of pain-killer, or a little strychnine on toast to ease up this
feeling of unhealthiness that I have got?"
"'They was all sassy, just like you,' says old Doc, 'but we lowered
their temperature considerable. Yes, sir, I reckon we sent a good
many of ye over to old _mortuis nisi bonum_. Look at Antietam and
Bull Run and Seven Pines and around Nashville! There never was a
battle where we didn't lick ye unless you was ten to our one. I knew
you were a blame Yankee the minute I laid eyes on you.'
"'Don't reopen the chasm, Doc,' I begs him. 'Any Yankeeness I may
have is geographical; and, as far as I am concerned, a Southerner is
as good as a Filipino any day. I'm feeling to bad too argue. Let's
have secession without misrepresentation, if you say so; but what I
need is more laudanum and less Lundy's Lane. If you're mixing that
compound gefloxide of gefloxicum for me, please fill my ears with it
before you get around to the battle of Gettysburg, for there is a
subject full of talk.'
"By this time Doc Millikin had thrown up a line of fortifications on
square pieces of paper; and he says to me: 'Yank, take one of these
powders every two hours. They won't kill you. I'll be around again
about sundown to see if you're alive.'
"Old Doc's powders knocked the chagres. I stayed in San Juan,
and got to knowing him better. He was from Mississippi, and the
red-hottest Southerner that ever smelled mint. He made Stonewall
Jackson and R. E. Lee look like Abolitionists. He had a family
somewhere down near Yazoo City; but he stayed away from the States
on account of an uncontrollable liking he had for the absence of
a Yankee government. Him and me got as thick personally as the
Emperor of Russia and the dove of peace, but sectionally we didn't
amalgamate.
"'Twas a beautiful system of medical practice introduced by old Doc
into that isthmus of land. He'd take that bracket-saw and the mild
chloride and his hypodermic, and treat anything from yellow fever to
a personal friend.
"Besides his other liabilities Doc could play a flute for a minute
or two. He was guilty of two tunes--'Dixie' and another one that
was mighty close to the 'Suwanee River'--you might say one of its
tributaries. He used to come down and sit with me while I was
getting well, and aggrieve his flute and say unreconstructed things
about the North. You'd have thought that the smoke from the first
gun at Fort Sumter was still floating around in the air.
"You know that was about the time they staged them property
revolutions down there, that wound up in the fifth act with the
thrilling canal scene where Uncle Sam has nine curtain-calls holding
Miss Panama by the hand, while the bloodhounds keep Senator Morgan
treed up in a cocoanut-palm.
"That's the way it wound up; but at first it seemed as if Colombia
was going to make Panama look like one of the $3.98 kind, with dents
made in it in the factory, like they wear at North Beach fish fries.
For mine, I played the straw-hat crowd to win; and they gave me a
colonel's commission over a brigade of twenty-seven men in the left
wing and second joint of the insurgent army.
"The Colombian troops were awfully rude to us. One day when I had my
brigade in a sandy spot, with its shoes off doing a battalion drill
by squads, the Government army rushed from behind a bush at us,
acting as noisy and disagreeable as they could.
"My troops enfiladed, left-faced, and left the spot. After enticing
the enemy for three miles or so we struck a brier-patch and had to
sit down. When we were ordered to throw up our toes and surrender
we obeyed. Five of my best staff-officers fell, suffering extremely
with stone-bruised heels.
"Then and there those Colombians took your friend Barney, sir,
stripped him of the insignia of his rank, consisting of a pair
of brass knuckles and a canteen of rum, and dragged him before a
military court. The presiding general went through the usual legal
formalities that sometimes cause a case to hang on the calendar of a
South American military court as long as ten minutes. He asked me my
age, and then sentenced me to be shot.
"They woke up the court interpreter, an American named Jenks, who
was in the rum business and vice versa, and told him to translate
the verdict.
"Jenks stretched himself and took a morphine tablet.
"'You've got to back up against th' 'dobe, old man,' says he to me.
'Three weeks, I believe, you get. Haven't got a chew of fine-cut on
you, have you?'
"'Translate that again, with foot-notes and a glossary,' says I. 'I
don't know whether I'm discharged, condemned, or handed over to the
Gerry Society.'
"'Oh,' says Jenks, 'don't you understand? You're to be stood up
against a 'dobe wall and shot in two or three weeks--three, I think,
they said.'
"'Would you mind asking 'em which?' says I. 'A week don't amount to
much after you're dead, but it seems a real nice long spell while
you are alive.'
"'It's two weeks,' says the interpreter, after inquiring in Spanish
of the court. 'Shall I ask 'em again?'
"'Let be,' says I. 'Let's have a stationary verdict. If I keep on
appealing this way they'll have me shot about ten days before I was
captured. No, I haven't got any fine-cut.'
"They sends me over to the _calaboza_ with a detachment of coloured
postal-telegraph boys carrying Enfield rifles, and I am locked up in
a kind of brick bakery. The temperature in there was just about the
kind mentioned in the cooking recipes that call for a quick oven.
"Then I gives a silver dollar to one of the guards to send for the
United States consul. He comes around in pajamas, with a pair of
glasses on his nose and a dozen or two inside of him.
"'I'm to be shot in two weeks,' says I. 'And although I've made a
memorandum of it, I don't seem to get it off my mind. You want to
call up Uncle Sam on the cable as quick as you can and get him all
worked up about it. Have 'em send the _Kentucky_ and the _Kearsarge_
and the _Oregon_ down right away. That'll be about enough
battleships; but it wouldn't hurt to have a couple of cruisers and a
torpedo-boat destroyer, too. And--say, if Dewey isn't busy, better
have him come along on the fastest one of the fleet.'
"'Now, see here, O'Keefe,' says the consul, getting the best of a
hiccup, 'what do you want to bother the State Department about this
matter for?'
"'Didn't you hear me?' says I; 'I'm to be shot in two weeks. Did you
think I said I was going to a lawn-party? And it wouldn't hurt of
Roosevelt could get the Japs to send down the _Yellowyamtiskookum_
or the _Ogotosingsing_ or some other first-class cruisers to help.
It would make me feel safer.'
"'Now, what you want,' says the consul, 'is not to get excited. I'll
send you over some chewing tobacco and some banana fritters when I
go back. The United States can't interfere in this. You know you
were caught insurging against the government, and you're subject to
the laws of this country. To tell the truth, I've had an intimation
from the State Department--unofficially, of course--that whenever
a soldier of fortune demands a fleet of gunboats in a case of
revolutionary _katzenjammer_, I should cut the cable, give him all
the tobacco he wants, and after he's shot take his clothes, if they
fit me, for part payment of my salary.'
"'Consul,' says I to him, 'this is a serious question. You are
representing Uncle Sam. This ain't any little international
tomfoolery, like a universal peace congress or the christening of
the _Shamrock IV_. I'm an American citizen and I demand protection.
I demand the Mosquito fleet, and Schley, and the Atlantic squadron,
and Bob Evans, and General E. Byrd Grubb, and two or three
protocols. What are you going to do about it?'
"'Nothing doing,' says the consul.
"'Be off with you, then,' says I, out of patience with him, 'and
send me Doc Millikin. Ask Doc to come and see me.'
"Doc comes and looks through the bars at me, surrounded by dirty
soldiers, with even my shoes and canteen confiscated, and he looks
mightily pleased.
"'Hello, Yank,' says he, 'getting a little taste of Johnson's
Island, now, ain't ye?'
"'Doc,' says I, 'I've just had an interview with the U.S. consul. I
gather from his remarks that I might just as well have been caught
selling suspenders in Kishineff under the name of Rosenstein as to
be in my present condition. It seems that the only maritime aid I am
to receive from the United States is some navy-plug to chew. Doc,'
says I, 'can't you suspend hostility on the slavery question long
enough to do something for me?'
"'It ain't been my habit,' Doc Millikin answers, 'to do any painless
dentistry when I find a Yank cutting an eye-tooth. So the Stars and
Stripes ain't lending any marines to shell the huts of the Colombian
cannibals, hey? Oh, say, can you see by the dawn's early light the
star-spangled banner has fluked in the fight? What's the matter with
the War Department, hey? It's a great thing to be a citizen of a
gold-standard nation, ain't it?'
"'Rub it in, Doc, all you want,' says I. 'I guess we're weak on
foreign policy.'
"'For a Yank,' says Doc, putting on his specs and talking more mild,
'you ain't so bad. If you had come from below the line I reckon I
would have liked you right smart. Now since your country has gone
back on you, you have to come to the old doctor whose cotton you
burned and whose mules who stole and whose niggers you freed to help
you. Ain't that so, Yank?'
"'It is,' says I heartily, 'and let's have a diagnosis of the case
right away, for in two weeks' time all you can do is to hold an
autopsy and I don't want to be amputated if I can help it.'
"'Now,' says Doc, business-like, 'it's easy enough for you to get
out of this scrape. Money'll do it. You've got to pay a long string
of 'em from General Pomposo down to this anthropoid ape guarding
your door. About $10,000 will do the trick. Have you got the money?'
"'Me?' says I. 'I've got one Chili dollar, two _real_ pieces, and a
_medio_.'
"'Then if you've any last words, utter 'em,' says that old reb. 'The
roster of your financial budget sounds quite much to me like the
noise of a requiem.'
"'Change the treatment,' says I. 'I admit that I'm short. Call a
consultation or use radium or smuggle me in some saws or something.'
"'Yank,' says Doc Millikin, 'I've a good notion to help you. There's
only one government in the world that can get you out of this
difficulty; and that's the Confederate States of America, the
grandest nation that ever existed.'
"Just as you said to me I says to Doc; 'Why, the Confederacy ain't a
nation. It's been absolved forty years ago.'
"'That's a campaign lie,' says Doc. 'She's running along as solid as
the Roman Empire. She's the only hope you've got. Now, you, being a
Yank, have got to go through with some preliminary obsequies before
you can get official aid. You've got to take the oath of allegiance
to the Confederate Government. Then I'll guarantee she does all she
can for you. What do you say, Yank?--it's your last chance.'
"'If you're fooling with me, Doc,' I answers, 'you're no better
than the United States. But as you say it's the last chance, hurry
up and swear me. I always did like corn whisky and 'possum anyhow.
I believe I'm half Southerner by nature. I'm willing to try the
Klu-klux in place of the khaki. Get brisk.'
"Doc Millikin thinks awhile, and then he offers me this oath of
allegiance to take without any kind of a chaser:
"'I, Barnard O'Keefe, Yank, being of sound body but a Republican
mind, hereby swear to transfer my fealty, respect, and allegiance
to the Confederate States of America, and the government thereof
in consideration of said government, through its official acts
and powers, obtaining my freedom and release from confinement and
sentence of death brought about by the exuberance of my Irish
proclivities and my general pizenness as a Yank.'
"I repeated these words after Doc, but they seemed to me a kind of
hocus-pocus; and I don't believe any life-insurance company in the
world would have issued me a policy on the strength of 'em.
"Doc went away saying he would communicate with his government
immediately.
"Say--you can imagine how I felt--me to be shot in two weeks and my
only hope for help being in a government that's been dead so long
that it isn't even remembered except on Decoration Day and when Joe
Wheeler signs the voucher for his pay-check. But it was all there
was in sight; and somehow I thought Doc Millikin had something up
his old alpaca sleeve that wasn't all foolishness.
"Around to the jail comes old Doc again in about a week. I was
flea-bitten, a mite sarcastic, and fundamentally hungry.
"'Any Confederate ironclads in the offing?' I asks. 'Do you notice
any sounds resembling the approach of Jeb Stewart's cavalry overland
or Stonewall Jackson sneaking up in the rear? If you do, I wish
you'd say so.'
"'It's too soon yet for help to come,' says Doc.
"'The sooner the better,' says I. 'I don't care if it gets in fully
fifteen minutes before I am shot; and if you happen to lay eyes on
Beauregard or Albert Sidney Johnston or any of the relief corps,
wig-wag 'em to hike along.'
"'There's been no answer received yet,' says Doc.
"'Don't forget,' says I, 'that there's only four days more. I don't
know how you propose to work this thing, Doc,' I says to him; 'but
it seems to me I'd sleep better if you had got a government that
was alive and on the map--like Afghanistan or Great Britain, or
old man Kruger's kingdom, to take this matter up. I don't mean any
disrespect to your Confederate States, but I can't help feeling that
my chances of being pulled out of this scrape was decidedly weakened
when General Lee surrendered.'
"'It's your only chance,' said Doc; 'don't quarrel with it. What did
your own country do for you?'
"It was only two days before the morning I was to be shot, when Doc
Millikin came around again.
"'All right, Yank,' says he. 'Help's come. The Confederate States of
America is going to apply for your release. The representatives of
the government arrived on a fruit-steamer last night.'
"'Bully!' says I--'bully for you, Doc! I suppose it's marines with a
Gatling. I'm going to love your country all I can for this.'
"'Negotiations,' says old Doc, 'will be opened between the two
governments at once. You will know later to-day if they are
successful.'
"About four in the afternoon a soldier in red trousers brings a
paper round to the jail, and they unlocks the door and I walks out.
The guard at the door bows and I bows, and I steps into the grass
and wades around to Doc Millikin's shack.
"Doc was sitting in his hammock playing 'Dixie,' soft and low and
out of tune, on his flute. I interrupted him at 'Look away! look
away!' and shook his hand for five minutes.
"'I never thought,' says Doc, taking a chew fretfully, 'that I'd
ever try to save any blame Yank's life. But, Mr. O'Keefe, I don't
see but what you are entitled to be considered part human, anyhow.
I never thought Yanks had any of the rudiments of decorum and
laudability about them. I reckon I might have been too aggregative
in my tabulation. But it ain't me you want to thank--it's the
Confederate States of America.'
"'And I'm much obliged to 'em,' says I. 'It's a poor man that
wouldn't be patriotic with a country that's saved his life. I'll
drink to the Stars and Bars whenever there's a flagstaff and a glass
convenient. But where,' says I, 'are the rescuing troops? If there
was a gun fired or a shell burst, I didn't hear it.'
"Doc Millikin raises up and points out the window with his flute at
the banana-steamer loading with fruit.
"'Yank,' says he, 'there's a steamer that's going to sail in the
morning. If I was you, I'd sail on it. The Confederate Government's
done all it can for you. There wasn't a gun fired. The negotiations
were carried on secretly between the two nations by the purser of
that steamer. I got him to do it because I didn't want to appear in
it. Twelve thousand dollars was paid to the officials in bribes to
let you go.'
"'Man!' says I, sitting down hard--'twelve thousand--how will I
ever--who could have--where did the money come from?'
"'Yazoo City,' says Doc Millikin: 'I've got a little saved up
there. Two barrels full. It looks good to these Colombians. 'Twas
Confederate money, every dollar of it. Now do you see why you'd
better leave before they try to pass some of it on an expert?'
"'I do,' says I.
"'Now let's hear you give the password,' says Doc Millikin.
"'Hurrah for Jeff Davis!' says I.
"'Correct,' says Doc. 'And let me tell you something: The next tune
I learn on my flute is going to be "Yankee Doodle." I reckon there's
some Yanks that are not so pizen. Or, if you was me, would you try
"The Red, White, and Blue"?'"