|Our story draws to a close. We have brought Harry and Jack to the banks
of the great river, and there we will leave them. The army of General
Curtis had terminated a most arduous campaign. Since leaving Rolla in
February, six months before, it had marched more than six hundred miles,
much of the way through a thinly-settled and inhospitable region, with
bad roads, unbridged streams, and all the difficulties of locomotion in
a new country. It had fought several minor engagements and skirmishes,
and engaged in a battle of three days' duration--that of Pea Ridge--out
of which it emerged victorious after combating with a force three times
as great as its own. It had performed some of the best marching on
record, and its men were ready to go through another campaign of the
same sort, only asking for a brief rest and for sufficient good food
to restore their accustomed strength. And the reader may be sure
that nothing was kept from them that was within the power of the
quartermasters to give, and the camps in and around Helena were a scene
of feasting and rejoicing, such as that quiet town on the Mississippi
had never before known.
Harry and Jack were quite as ready as any one else for a good rest, and
did not hang back when there was a prospect of something nice to eat.
As they strolled through the streets and along the levee of Helena they
built many castles in the air, and pondered upon what they had been
through since they left their homes a twelve-month before.
“Wonder how many miles we've traveled?” said Harry. “I leave out of
the calculation the railway and steamboat traveling, and only include
horseback riding and on foot.”
“I don't know, I'm sure,” replied Jack. “Let's figure it up as best we
can, and see how it comes out.”
They proceeded to figure it, but frankly acknowledged that the job was
a difficult one, on account of their numerous scouting expeditions, many
of which they could n't remember at the moment. Altogether they thought
it must have been not far from a thousand miles up to the time they made
their last departure from Rolla. The army, as we have seen, had marched
six hundred miles from Rolla to Helena, and as the boys had made many
scouting and other expeditions around Pea Ridge, Forsyth and Batesville,
they thought it not unfair to add four hundred miles to the total of the
army's movements, making two thousand miles altogether.
“Just think of it!” exclaimed Jack. “Two thousand miles! Why, that's
two-thirds the distance, about, from New York to San Francisco. It's a
big lot of traveling, especially when it's been done on the quarter-deck
of a horse, and sometimes under very hard circumstances. We've been many
times in peril of our lives, passed through a great many privations,
been cold and wet and hungry, but for all that, here we are as healthy
as a couple of young tigers, ready for the next adventure that turns
up.”
“Yes, that's so,” replied Harry; “and I suppose you don't want to go
home just now, do you?”
“Not I,” was the ready response; “but we 'll see what our folks say
about it, and also what the general says.”
“We haven't had any letters for a long time,” said Harry, “and
furthermore we have n't sent any, for the very simple reason that the
mails could n't get either to or from us. We've been buried in the
wilderness as much as though we had been in the middle of Africa.”
“Yes,” replied Jack; “and that reminds me of something I heard General
Vandever saying this morning. He had a newspaper which somebody brought
down on a steamboat from Memphis, and I heard him telling General
Washburne that the newspapers were full of articles about us, and there
was a great deal of anxiety concerning General Curtis and his army.”
“Then he laughed,” continued Jack, “and said they were speaking of us
as 'The Lost Army.' Nothing had been heard from us for such a long time
that they were afraid we'd been lost and could n't get back again, or
perhaps the rebs had killed or captured us all.”
“Well, we have n't been lost very much,” said Harry, with what may be
called an audible smile. “We've always known where we were, and whenever
the enemy attacked us he had reason to know that we knew. But, I say,
Jack, that gives me an idea.”
“What is that?”
“Why, if we ever write a story of our campaigns that 'll be a good
name for it. We 'll call it 'The Lost Army,' and it 'll be a first-rate
title.”
“That's so,” Jack answered, “and it will be quite as truthful as many
titles of books I've seen. Very often when you read a book there's very
little in the pages of the volume that seem to have been suggested by
what you find on the title-page.”
“Just so,” said Harry, “and a man will have to read clear through to
the last chapter before he finds out what The Lost Army was. And when
he does find out he 'll agree with us that we have n't been going round
getting lost very much.”
We had the permission of the youths to give the account of their
experiences in the southwest, and have taken it, title and all. This is
why our story has been called as the reader has seen.
Helena continued to be a permanent military post from that time onward,
but the rebels did not attempt to disturb it, for the double reason that
their force of troops on the west of the Mississippi was small, and no
good could come from a raid on the town when they would not be able
to hold it more than a few hours, only until gun-boats could arrive to
drive them away. General Curtis was ordered to St. Louis to take command
of the Department of the Missouri, and operate against the rebels that
were making things somewhat lively in the neighborhood of Springfield
and Fayetteville. A portion of the troops that had composed The Lost
Army remained at Helena, but the greater part were ordered to join the
corps that made the second attack on Vicksburg and ultimately succeeded
in reducing that important stronghold of the rebellion.
Two or three weeks after the arrival of General Curtis at Helena word
was received of a party of rebels some twelve or fifteen miles away in
a northerly direction. Two companies of the Third Wisconsin Cavalry went
to look for the enemy, and were accompanied by our young friends.
They found the enemy, and very unexpectedly too, for they ran into an
ambuscade; but happily the aim of the rebel rifles was so bad that
only two or three men were injured. Then the unionists “went in,”
and thrashed the rebels, compelling them to retreat after the loss
of several of their number. Harry and Jack had each a prisoner to his
credit, though it is proper to say that they were not captured in fair
fighting. The way of it was this:
After the fighting was over the youths dismounted to look over the
ground and pick up anything that might be of value or would indicate
to what company or regiment, if any, the men they had been engaged with
belonged. They had done this on several occasions to advantage, and in
the latter part of their campaigning it was a rule to which they adhered
whenever circumstances permitted.
While they were inspecting the scene of the skirmish, Harry came to a
large tree which proved on examination to be hollow. He remarked to Jack
that it was a good place for a man to hide in, to which Jack replied
that it would hold half a dozen or more if they did n't mind a little
crowding.
“Who knows but that some of those fellows hid there when they found we
were getting the best of'em,” said Harry. “Suppose we investigate that
tree.”
Jack agreed to it, and they approached the tree, cocked their pistols
and pointed them up the hollow into the darkness.
“Come down out of that,” said Harry, in a commanding tone, “or we 'll
shoot daylight into you.”
There was no response, and Harry was about to turn away when Jack, more
in fun than with any expectation of finding anybody, called out:
“Come down, I say. You 'll have just five seconds to come in.”
“I'm a-coming,” said a weak voice from the darkness, much to the
surprise of the boys, and a moment later down slipped a forlorn looking
“Butternut,” who was evidently greatly frightened.
“Surrender!” shouted Harry, “and tell the rest of'em to come right
away.”
“There's only one more feller there,” said the prisoner, who surrendered
by throwing his hands in the air and dropping his shotgun on the
ground. The summons was renewed, and down came the “one more feller” and
surrendered after the same fashion; and this was the way their prisoners
were taken.
“Not quite as meritorious a performance as capturing them in open
fighting,” said Harry; “but then it's like hooking a fish in the side
instead of catching him in the regular way by the mouth--he counts just
the same.”
During their stay at Helena Harry and Jack made themselves useful in
looking after the negroes that flocked there for protection, and they
were sometimes derisively mentioned by their comrades as managers of the
Freed-men's Bureau. But they took the satire good-naturedly and went
on with their work, which consisted of aiding in the distribution of
rations, making lists of the negroes as fast as they came in, assigning
them to different parts of the camp, helping them to their free-papers,
drafting out all who were able to work, and sending them to the levee to
aid in unloading steamboats, or into the forests in the neighborhood of
Helena, where they were employed to cut wood. At every opportunity they
endeavored to instill into the negro-mind the idea that freedom did
n't mean idleness, and insisted that the best way of making this
fact understood was to put the negro at work, even if work had to be
manufactured for him.
Consequently when there was nothing else to be done, Harry would take
the negroes who were under his orders and set them to throwing up a
fortification around the camp. When it was completed he pretended to
wish to change something about it, and thus the earth of which it was
composed was handled over several times in succession.
The last we saw of our young friends in the camp at Helena they were
looking on and listening one Sunday evening when the negroes were having
a religious meeting. Several negro preachers harangued the assemblage in
their quaint and forcible way. Prayers were offered, and three or four
hymns were sung with great fervor, all the congregation joining, and
fairly making the woods ring with their voices.
THE END.