An Unoficial Patriot Part 10

"Beverly.

"N. B.--I don't often read my letters over, but if I hadn't read this one I shouldn't be so certain as I am now that if I were my own father and should receive this c.o.c.k-sure piece of advice from my eldest hopeful, I'd--well, I'd tan him well, verbally. But since I have the good luck to be the eldest of the _very_ best and most considerate father in this wide world, I don't expect anything of the kind to happen to me; but if it does, I'll swallow it like a little man--and take my revenge (in a scorching editorial) on some other fellow's father who votes for Bell.

"Meekly,

"B."

Mr. Davenport--as was his habit--read the letter aloud to the family, but he smiled anxiously at Roy's merry comments.

"Beverly is in a bad place to be reckless with his English, just now.

That editorial on Breakers Ahead seemed to me to go a good deal too far.

I'm glad he says he will not fight if there should be a war--which G.o.d forbid."

"I would, then!" remarked Roy. "I'd get up a company right here in college. Lots of the boys declare they'd go."

Mr. Davenport looked at his son over his gold-bowed gla.s.ses. There was a suspicious twinkle in his eyes and a twitching of the lips. There was a long pause before he spoke. This son of his had always seemed to Griffith younger than he was.

"How old are you, Roy?" he asked in a spirit of fun. "You'd make a tremendous soldier, now, wouldn't you?--just out of short clothes?"

"I'm older than Bev. was when he left college. I'm twenty. Young men make the best soldiers anyhow. I heard Governor Morton tell you that the last time he was here, and besides----"

"Tut, tut, tut, boy, you attend to your lessons! Twenty! Is that so, Katherine? Is Roy twenty?"

Griffith took his gla.s.ses in his hand and held them as if he were trying to magnify the boy in order to see him, and with his other hand tweaked his upper lip as if searching for a mustache. Roy accepted the joke and stretched himself up to his tallest, and from his inch of advantage over his father he put down a patronizing hand on Griffith's head and said, "Bless you, my children, bless you." Griffith changed the direction of his gla.s.ses and searched the ceiling with that gratified smile fathers have when they realize that a son really exceeds them in anything.

Katherine was laughing at the byplay of the two. Suddenly Griffith turned to his youngest son: "Howard, how old are you? I suppose you will vote this time, and go to war and do no end of great and rash things."

"No, I'll stay at home and nurse the baby. That's the kind of a fellow I am," flung back this petulant one, and the door banged behind him.

"Don't tease Ward," said Katherine. "His temper seems to grow faster than he does just these last two years, and--"

"Highty-tighty! He'd better take a reef in it. If I'd behaved that way with my father he would have prescribed a little hickory oil. How old _is_ Howard? Fourteen? Growing too fast by half--but his temper does seem to keep up with the rest of him, I must say. Go and hitch up the century plant, Roy. I want to drive out to the farm. Want to go'long?

Don't. Well, do you, Kath'rine? No? Well, then I guess I'll have to take Margaret. She won't go back on me like that. It'll do her good and she can play with those two peewees of Miller's, while he and I look over the stock and drive about the place a little. Fan's colt was lame the last time I was out. I don't believe the strawberry patch is going to do well this year, either. Did I tell you what a fine fat calf the brindle's is? You'd laugh to see it. It winks at you exactly as if it understood a joke."

The old phaeton--otherwise the "century plant"--dashed up to the door.

The combination was especially incongruous. Hitched to it was a great, gray, fiery Arabian stallion. The one-time circuit rider had not lost his love for a good horse, and his little stock farm on the outskirts of the town was the joy of his life. He sadly missed the beautiful valley of his youth, but at least these fields were his. No blue mountains loomed up in the distance, but the beech and maple trees were luxuriant.

Mountain stream and narrow pa.s.s there were not, but a pebbly brook, in which were minnows, ran through the strip of woods, and Griffith still enjoyed the comradeship of bird and beast and fish. He had named the stallion Selim, after the love of his youth, and no one dared drive him but himself. He took up the lines and called back to Roy as Selim dashed off, "I'll leave Selim and bring Fannie in, so your mother and you can drive to-morrow. 'Bye, Howard! Be a good boy!" he called, as he caught a glimpse of the boy at the corner of the house.

"So'll the devil be a good boy! Just wait till that war comes! They'll see!" he growled, as the "century plant" disappeared. There floated back on the air, "Joy to the world, te, te, turn, turn. Yea, yea, there, Selim! Whoa! Yea! yea! Let earth receive her King! Te, te, turn." The "century plant" and Selim disappeared around the corner, and the fife and drum corps which had startled the horse, drowned all other sounds, and for Howard, all other thoughts. He did not stop to reach the gate. He vaulted over the fence and joined the procession and the refrain of the school-boys who gave words to the music--"on a rail! And we'll ride old Abe, and we'll ride old Abe, and we'll ride him to the White House on a rail!" The boy dropped into the step and the rhythm with a will. He forgot to be sullen.

CHAPTER XII.

_"The shears of destiny."_--Shakespeare.

War! war! war! The great election was over. The bitterness of faction and of section had only intensified. The inevitable had at last come.

Mobs, riots, and confusion followed threats, and at last the shot that struck Fort Sumter echoed in every village and hamlet in the country.

The beginning of the struggle with arms to adjust the differences between two irreconcilable doctrines--two antagonistic social and economic policies--had culminated. The adjustment must, indeed, now come. "Seventy-five thousand troops for three months!" The President's call rang out, and almost before the echo died away the quota was full. The young, the adventurous, and the hot-headed, supplemented the patriotic and sprang into line. To these it was to be a three months'

camping-out lark. Of course the South would back down at the show of armed strength and firm resistance to disunion. The martial spirit, the fighting instinct inherent in the race--that legacy from our brute ancestry--was fanned into flame like fire in a summer wind. College cla.s.ses were depleted. Young lads hastened to force themselves into the ranks. Drum and fife and bugle sounded in every street. LeRoy Davenport was one of the first to enlist. The company of college boys elected him their second lieutenant, and they left at once for Camp Morton to be ready to march to the front at the first order for troops from the west.

He looked very fine and soldierly and handsome in his uniform, and with the straps upon his shoulders. Beverly wrote that he should stick to his editorial chair. He slept in the office, to be ready to receive and write up every sc.r.a.p of news the moment it came. He wrote a series of fiery editorials, denouncing the "outrage on the flag at Fort Sumter."

An anonymous letter was pushed under his office-door warning him to desist. He published the letter and appended to it a more vigorous article than before. That night, as he lay on the bed in the little back room of the office, he thought he detected a strange odor. He went softly to the window and looked out. The moon was just rising on the river. His little row-boat, in which his fishing and pleasure trips were taken, bobbed idly up and down on the waves just under the corner of the building. The strange odor grew stronger and more distinct in character.

He began to suspect that he understood it. He opened the door into the front room and pa.s.sed on to the compositors' room. He was sure now that it was the smell of smoke and oil-soaked cloth. His first impulse was to open the front door and shout fire, but he remembered Lovejoy's fate and paused. He stepped to the front window and turned the old slats of the heavy green blinds so that he could see out into the narrow street.

There were three forms crouching near the door. He thought he saw the gleam of steel. Flames had begun to creep under the door and from the compositors' room. Suddenly the flimsy pine part.i.tion burst into a sheet of flame. He knew that to open the front door was to meet death at the hands of desperadoes. He caught up the only implement of defense he saw--a pair of great, sharp, clipping-shears, and started for the door.

He intended, at least, to mark his man so that others could deal with him afterward. Suddenly he remembered that he could drop from the back window into the river. If they had not taken his oars he could escape.

The room was as light as day now, and he knew that to hesitate was to be lost. He dropped the curious weapon he had in his hand, and ran to the back room. The only rope there was the support of the old-fashioned bed. He hastily unwound it and fastened it to the bed-post nearest the window. He wanted to make the drop as short as possible, lest the splash of the water attract the men from the front of the house. He smiled when he climbed into the boat and found the oars safely in its bottom. In an instant he was pulling gently, softly, slowly out into the stream. He could almost hear the beating of his own heart Then in the moonlight a shot rang out on the clear air, and a sharp crack, as the ball struck the side of the boat, told him that he was discovered. No need for caution now! Need only for haste and strength! He pulled with all his young vigor--with the stroke of an accustomed hand. The sky was livid with the flames from his burning office--the dream and hope of his first manhood was melting before his eyes. "G.o.d d.a.m.n'em!" he said, between his set teeth, as two more shots followed him, "they won't dare stay longer now--and I'm out of range. G.o.d d.a.m.n'em!" He let the oars fall by his side. He could see numbers of men running about now, shouting, swearing, vainly trying to check the flames. Some one yelled, "Shoot again, he's in that skiff!" He heard and understood that the victim was being made out the culprit. The would-be a.s.sa.s.sins were covering retreat. He decided that it would not be safe to pull back to the Missouri side just then. He would land on the Kansas sh.o.r.e. Morning found him near a small village. He landed and made his way directly to the newspaper office.

It was one of his own exchanges, and a free-soil paper like his. He told his story, and the editor made a lurid article out of it and called for his townsmen to gather in a public meeting. He issued an extra, and Beverly was the hero of the hour. Rough frontiersmen--some of whom had seen his paper--looked at the slender stripling and volunteered to cross the river and "clean out the town." They called on Beverly for a speech.

They were bent upon making him a leader. The war fever was in the frontier blood. He began his speech in a pa.s.sion of personal feeling, but ended in an appeal for volunteers, "not to fight _my_ battle, not to avenge my wrong, not to repair my loss, but to fight this great battle for liberty and freedom in the great northwest! It seems we will have to fight for the freedom of speech and press, as well as for free soil! I will be frank: I had not intended to enlist in this war. I had hoped to do more good by argument than I could hope to do by arms. I had hoped to see the end of it at the end of the three months for which the President called for troops; but I do not stand on that ground any longer.

Yesterday, as you all know, there was issued a new call for five hundred thousand more men! I want, now, to be one of the first of those, and I shall enlist for three years or for ten years or as long as this war lasts; and I don't want to come out of it alive if I have got to come out into a country where free speech is throttled and a free press burned up! I shall enlist, I tell you, and since I had to fly to Kansas for protection, I hope that Kansas will enroll me as _her_ son, and if it may be, as her very first volunteer!"

The idea took the fancy of his listeners. "Raise a regiment!" "I'll go with you!" "Three cheers for the editor!"

They were given with a will, and the enthusiasm for himself put a new idea into his head.

"I am only twenty-three years old," he said laughing, "and not much bigger than the right arm of some of you great, fine, muscular fellows; but if you are willing to trust me, I would ask nothing better than to take the lead of such a body of men. If enough of you will enlist here and now, I'll go with you as private or as captain. I'll take the lead and the responsibility, or I'll follow any better qualified man you may name, and we'll go up to the capital and offer ourselves as the first Kansas volunteers for this war!"

Almost before he had spoken the words cheer after cheer rent the air.

Men signified their willingness to enlist, and before night on the first day he had spent on Kansas soil he found himself marching toward the capital at the head of one hundred determined, rough, strong, fearless frontiersmen to ask for a commission as their captain, and for arms and ammunition for his men.

Mr. Davenport was surprised that day to receive this dispatch:

"Am elected Captain, Company A. First Kansas Vols. Will write.

"Beverly."

They could not imagine at home why Beverley should be in a Kansas company, but when the _Gazette_ came that night with an account of the burning of the obscure newspaper-office out in Missouri, they understood, and Katherine felt faint and sick when she realized that two of her boys had gone to fight against her people. She knew that her own brothers and nephews would all be on the other side, and that Griffith's were there too. Griffith had gone with Roy's company to Camp Morton and had sorrowfully consented to his enlistment; but if war there must be and if his son must go, Griffith felt that he was on the right side. He held back, himself, from the idea that fighting was necessary, even yet.

At the very worst, it would all be over very soon, he thought, and he hoped and believed that a few demonstrations of determination on the part of the Government would undoubtedly settle the matter without any real or serious fighting. He was unalterably opposed to a division of the Union, and he believed that the South would see its mistake on that question and reconsider it. But as State after State seceded, his perplexity deepened. He and Katherine had all these years kept up a fond and constant correspondence with the old home friends and kinsmen, several of whom, from time to time, had visited them. All these had felt that Griffith had made a grievous mistake in following the course he had taken, but until now no real bitterness had resulted. Now, all letters ceased. They had heard, somehow, in the old home, that Griffith's sons had enlisted in the Union army--to fight against them! That was more than they could bear. Even before the line of communication was finally closed against letters, theirs had ceased to come--and Katherine understood. Many a night she sobbed herself to sleep.

"How terrible this all is, Griffith! How terrible! Why should they fight over it? Why don't they let the slave states go, if they want to, and be one government, and the others be free states and another government--as Canada and we are, or as Mexico and we?"

Griffith had tried to explain the difficulties and the inevitable clashing of interests that would be forever resulting--the constant and eternal clashing. He pointed out that no country would allow itself to be divided. He read to her long arguments in support of the maintenance of the Union; but she said:

"Yes, I see it is desirable if all want it so; but if they do _not_, why--why--I wouldn't fight to compel them to stay with me if they want to go. You never do that way with your children, Griffith, you know you don't. You never did try to conquer one of them and force him to think your way. You always felt that way about freeing the slaves, too. You said you did not judge for other people--only for yourself. And when you saw how terribly hard it was to do it, and that most people could not do as you did even if they wanted to--you always said that you did not blame them in the least."

"I say so yet. I know all that; but governments are very different. Some one has got to decide for others. If they didn't, everything would go to smash in very short order. I suppose I am a good deal of a coward.

I can't bear to judge for other people. But I do believe in maintaining this government at any and all cost--but I'd leave slavery alone in the South. I wouldn't let it spread. That is Lincoln's policy now. He said so in his message--his inaugural. If it will stay where it is, he says he won't disturb it--and that suits me; but if it will not----"

"Well, it won't," put in Howard. "I heard Governor Morton say so in his speech last night. He said that this fight had all along been really to extend and not to retain slavery, and when that was lost then the South proposed to smash the Union. That's exactly what he said; but, 'We'll rally round the flag, boys, we'll rally once again,'" he sang, and banged the door behind him.

That night Howard disappeared. He had ran away, sworn that he was eighteen years old and enlisted under another name, as a gunner in a battery! It was ten days before a trace of him was found. Then he was on his way to the front whence news had come thick and fast of skirmishes, battles and tremendous preparations for a terrible and b.l.o.o.d.y struggle.

Excitement was at fever heat. The streets were crowded with soldiers fend echoed with martial music night and day. War, indeed, was upon them, and fair July was here.

CHAPTER XIII.--THE OTHER SIDE OF WAR.