Brave Deeds of Union Soldiers Part 13

[Ill.u.s.tration: Attacking the Inner Traverses of Fort Fisher]

The last words were drowned in a tremendous Rebel yell as they saw the bluejackets break and retreat out of range. The Confederates, however, had cheered too soon. In manning the sea-wall they had weakened too much the defenses on the landward side and the word was given for all three brigades to attack at once. The color-bearers of all the regiments ran forward like madmen, headed by the officers and all sprinting as if running a two hundred and twenty-yard dash. The officers and the color-bearers of all three brigades reached the outer lines almost at the same time. With a rush and a yell they were up over the outer wall and forming inside for the attack on the inner traverses which yet remained. It was desperate work and the hardest fighting of the day was done around these inner bomb-proofs, each one of which was like a little fort in miniature. The crisis came when the first brigade was barely keeping its foothold on the west end of the parapet while the enemy which had repulsed the bluejackets were moving over in a heavy column to drive out Curtis' panting men. It was at this moment that the boy-general Pennypacker showed himself the hero of the day. He had already carried the palisades and the sally-port and had taken four hundred prisoners and then wheeled and charged to the rescue of Curtis'

exhausted men. Ahead of them was the fifth traverse which must be stormed and crossed before Curtis' men could be relieved. Already the men were wavering and it was a moment which called for the finest qualities of leadership. Pennypacker himself seized the colors of the 97th Pennsylvania, his old regiment, and calling on his men to follow, charged up the broken side of the fifth traverse. His troops swarmed up after him side by side with the men of the 203d Pennsylvania and the soldiers of the 117th New York, but Pennypacker was the first man to fix the regimental flag on the parapet and shouted to Colonel Moore of the other Pennsylvania regiment:

"Colonel, I want you to take notice that the first flag up is the flag of my old regiment."

Before Colonel Moore had time to answer, he pitched over with a bullet through his heart and Colonel Bell was killed at the head of his brigade as he came in. The gigantic Curtis was fighting furiously with the blood streaming down from his face. Just at that moment, at the head of his men, General Pennypacker fell over, so badly wounded that never from that time to this was a day to pa.s.s free from pain. His work was done, however. His men fought fiercely to avenge his fall, broke up the enemies' intended attack, freed the first brigade and all three forces joined and swept through the traverses, capturing them one by one until the last and strongest fort of the Confederacy had fallen.

The only remaining gateway to the outer world was closed. After the fall of Fort Fisher, it was only a few months to Appomattox. One of the bloodiest and most successful a.s.saults of the war had succeeded.

General Grant ordered a hundred-gun salute in honor of the victory from each of his armies. The Secretary of War, Stanton, himself, ran his steamer into Wilmington and landed to thank personally in the name of President Lincoln the brave fighters who had won a battle which meant the close of the war.

General Pennypacker was to survive his wounds. This was the seventh time that he had been wounded in eight months. At the close of the war he was made colonel in the regular army, being the youngest man who ever held that rank, and was placed in command of various departments in the South and was the first representative of the North to introduce the policy of conciliation. Later on he went abroad and met Emperor William of Germany, the Emperor of Austria and Prince Bismarck and von Moltke, that war-worn old general, who shook hands with him and said that as the oldest general in the world, he was glad to welcome the youngest.

So ends the story of a great battle where a boy showed that he could fight as bravely and think as quickly and hold on as enduringly as any man. What the boys of '64 could do, the boys of 1915 can and will do if ever a time comes when they too must fight for their country.

CHAPTER XVI

MEDAL-OF-HONOR MEN

To-day in the world-war that is being waged in two hemispheres among twelve nations, we hear much of the Victoria Cross and the Iron Cross, and the decoration of the Legion of Honor, those tiny immortal symbols of achievement for which men are so willing to lay down their lives and which are cherished and pa.s.sed on from father to son as a heritage of honor undying. Not since gunpowder sent armor, swords, spears, arrows, bows, catapults and a host of other outworn equipment to the sc.r.a.p-heap has the method of warfare been changed as it was in the year 1914.

Battles are now fought in the air and under the water and armies move forward underground. Automobiles and power-driven cars, trucks and platforms have succeeded the horse. Aeroplanes have taken the place of cavalry. Vast howitzers carried piecemeal on trucks, which can run across a rougher country than a horse, have made the strongest fortress obsolete. Bombs which kill every living thing within a circle one hundred and fifty yards in diameter, vast cylinders of gas which turn the air for miles into a death-trap, airships which can drop high-power explosives while invisible beyond the clouds, aerial and submarine torpedoes which can be automatically guided by electric currents from vessels miles away, guns that send vast sh.e.l.ls a mile above the earth to carry death and destruction to a point twenty miles away, concealed artillery equipped with parabolic mirrors and automatic range-finders which can shoot over distant hills and mountains to a hair's breadth, and destroy concealed and protected bodies of men, rifles which shoot without noise and without smoke, machine-guns that spray bullets across a wide front of charging men as a hose sprays water across the width of a lawn, wireless apparatus which send messages thousands of miles across land and sea, all these and hundreds of other devices would be more of a mystery to Grant and Lee and the other great commanders of the Civil War than the breech-loading magazine rifles and artillery and iron-clads of their day would have been to Napoleon. The warfare of to-day is farther removed from the period of the Civil War of half a century ago than the Napoleonic wars were from those of Hannibal over a thousand years before.

Methods have changed, but men are the same to-day as they were when they first built that great tower on the plain of Shinar. The eternities of life are still with us. Brave deeds, acts of self-sacrifice, truth, honor, courage, unselfishness still stand as in the days of old. Every man or woman or child, small or great, can achieve such deeds. At the end of this chronicle of the brave deeds wrought by our fathers and grandfathers in a war which was fought for an ideal, it is most fitting that the boys and girls of to-day should read what was done by commonplace men as a matter of course. From the great list prepared by the War Department of the United States of those whom their country have honored have been selected a few stories of the way different men won their Medal of Honor.

In 1864 General Sherman was in the midst of his great march to Atlanta.

Grant had begun the campaign against Lee's army which was to end at Richmond, while to Sherman was given the task of crushing his rival, Joseph E. Johnston. Inch by inch the whole of that march was fought out in a series of tremendous battles. One of these was the hard battle of New Hope Church in sight of Kenesaw Mountain. The battle was fought as a successful attempt on the part of Sherman to turn the flank of Johnston's position at Alatoona Pa.s.s. During the battle, Follett Johnson, a corporal in the 60th Infantry, did not only a brave, but an unusual deed. While his company was awaiting the signal to take part in the battle which was raging on their left, they were much annoyed by the deadly aim of a Confederate sharp-shooter concealed in an oak tree a quarter of a mile away. Every few minutes there would be a puff of smoke and the whine of a minie bullet, too often followed by the thud which told that the bullet had found its billet. When at last the sixth man, one of Johnson's best friends, was fatally wounded through the head, Johnson made up his mind to do his share in stopping this sharp-shooting permanently. Unfortunately he was only an ordinary shot himself, but he crawled down the line and had a hasty conference with one of the best shots in the regiment.

"You get a good steady rest," said Johnson, "and draw a bead on that oak tree. I'll kind of move around and get the chap interested and when he gives you a chance, you take it."

The Union sharp-shooter agreed to carry out his part of the bargain.

Johnson suddenly sprang to his feet and ran in a zigzag course to a position farther down the line. A bullet from the watcher in the tree shrieked close past his head.

"Lie down, you fool," shouted his captain. "Are you trying to commit suicide?"

"Captain, we're fishing for that fellow over in the tree," returned Johnson. "I'm the bait."

"Well, you won't be live-bait if you keep it up much longer," said his captain as Johnson again took another run while a bullet cut through his coat hardly an inch from his side. Johnson did keep it up, however.

Now he would raise his cap on a stick and try to draw the enemy's fire in safety. Again he would suddenly spring up and make divers disrespectful gestures toward the sharp-shooter in his tree. Sometimes he would lie on his back and kick his legs insultingly up over a little breastwork that had been hurriedly thrown up. One bullet from the Confederate marksman nearly ruined a pair of good boots for Johnson while he was doing this, taking the heel off his left boot as neatly as any cobbler could have done. The hidden marksman, however, commenced to show the effect of this challenge by this unknown joker. Little by little he ventured out from behind the trunk of the tree in order to get a better aim. By the captain's orders no one fired at him in the hopes that he would give the watching Union sharp-shooter a deadly chance. At last his time came. Johnson started his most ambitious demonstration. He suddenly stood up in front of the breastworks in an att.i.tude of the most irritating unconcern. Yawning, he gave a great stretch as if tired of lying down any longer, then he kissed his hand toward the sharp-shooter and started to stroll down the front of the line, first stopping to light his pipe. The whole company gave a gasp.

"That will be about all for poor old Folly," said one man to his neighbor and every minute they expected to see him pitch forward. His indifference was too much for the Confederate. Emboldened by the absence of any recent shots, he leaned out from behind the sheltering trunk in order to draw a deadly bead on the man who had been mocking him before two armies. This was the chance for which the Union sharp-shooter had been waiting. Before the Confederate marksman had a chance to pull his trigger there was the bang of a Springfield rifle a few rods from where Johnson was walking and the watching soldiers saw the Confederate sharp-shooter topple backward. The rifle which had done so much harm slipped slowly from his hand to the ground and in a minute there was first a rustle, then a crash through the dense branches of the oak as the unconscious body lost its grip on the limb and pitched forward to the ground forty feet below. Johnson's captain was the first man to shake his hand.

"It takes courage to fish for these fellows sometimes," he said, "but it takes braver men than I am to be the bait."

Nearly thirty years later this occurrence was remembered and Corporal Johnson awarded the medal of honor which he had earned.

Another man who drew the enemy's fire in order to save his comrades was John Kiggins, a sergeant in one of the New York regiments. It was at the battle of Lookout Mountain on November 24, 1863. The terrible battle of Chickamauga had been fought. The Union Army had been reduced to a rabble and swept off the field, except over on the left wing where General George H. Thomas with twenty-five thousand men dashed back for a whole afternoon the a.s.saults of double that number of Confederates and earned the t.i.tle which he was henceforth to bear of the "Rock of Chickamauga." The defeated army, followed afterward by General Thomas'

forces, withdrew to Chattanooga, that Tennessee battle-ground surrounded by the heights of Missionary Ridge and Lookout Mountain.

Here the Union forces were invested on all sides by the Confederate Army under General Bragg. The supplies of the Union Army gave out. The Confederates commanded the Tennessee River and held all of the good wagon-roads on the south side of it. The Union Army was nearly starved.

General Rosecrans had never recovered from the battle of Chickamauga.

Not only was his nerve shattered, but he seemed to have lost all strength of will and concentration of purpose. General Grant, who had just been placed in supreme command of all the military operations in the West, decided to place Thomas in command of the Army of the c.u.mberland in place of the dispirited Rosecrans. He telegraphed Thomas to hold Chattanooga at all hazards.

"We'll hold the town until we starve," Thomas telegraphed back.

When Grant reached Chattanooga on October 23d, wet and dirty, but well, he realized as he saw the dead horses and the hollow-cheeked men how far the starving process had gone. Although he was on crutches from injuries received from a runaway horse, yet his influence was immediately felt throughout the whole army. He was a compeller of men like Napoleon and, like him, had only to ride down the line and let his men see that he was there in order to accomplish the impossible. He at once sent a message to Sherman, who was coming slowly along from Vicksburg. His messenger paddled down the Tennessee River in a canoe under a guerrilla-fire during his whole journey and handed Sherman a dispatch from Grant which said, "Drop everything and move your entire force toward Stevenson." Sherman marched as only he could. When his army reached the Tennessee River he laid a pontoon bridge thirteen hundred and fifty feet in length in a half day, rushed his army across, captured all the Confederate pickets and was ready to join Grant in the great battle of Chattanooga. General Hooker marched in from one side on November 24th and fought the great battle of Lookout Mountain above the clouds, through driving mists and rains and on the morning of November 25th the stars and stripes waved from the lofty peak of Lookout Mountain. The next day eighteen thousand men without any orders charged up the almost perpendicular side of Missionary Ridge and carried it, and the three-day battle of Chattanooga was ended in the complete defeat of Bragg's army and the rescue of the men whom he thought he had cornered beyond all hopes of escape.

It was during this first day's battle in the mist on Lookout Mountain that Kiggins distinguished himself. The New York regiment, in which he was a sergeant, had crawled and crept up a narrow winding path, dragging their cannon after them up places where it did not seem as if a goat could keep its footing. They had already come into position on one side of the higher slopes when suddenly a battery above them opened fire and the men began to fall. Through the mists they could see the stars and stripes waving over this upper battery, which had mistaken them for Confederate soldiers. They were shielded from the Confederate batteries by a wall of rock, but it was necessary to stop this mistaken fire or every man of the regiment would be swept off the mountain by the well-aimed Union guns. Sergeant Kiggins volunteered to do the necessary signaling. He climbed up on the natural wall of rock which protected them from the Confederate batteries and sharp-shooters and waved the Union flag toward the battery above him with all his might.

They stopped firing, but evidently considered it simply a stratagem and wigwagged to Kiggins an inquiry in the Union code. It was necessary for Kiggins to answer this or the fire would undoubtedly be at once resumed. Unfortunately he was a poor wigwagger and as he stood on the wall, he was exposed to the fire of every Confederate battery or rifleman within range. The perspiration ran down his face as he clumsily began to spell a message back to the battery above. Over his head hummed and whirled solid round shot and around him screamed the minie b.a.l.l.s from half-a-dozen different directions. Once a shot pierced his signaling flag right in the middle of a word. He not only had to replace the flag, but he had to spell the word over again which was even worse. The whole message did not take many minutes, but it seemed hours to poor Kiggins. His life was saved as if by a miracle. Several bullets pierced his uniform, his cap was shot off his head and when the last word was finished, he dropped off the wall with such lightning-like rapidity that his comrades, who had been watching him with open mouths, thought that at last some bullet must have reached its mark. Kiggins, however, was unharmed, but made a firm resolve to perfect himself in wigwagging. We have no record whether he carried out this good resolution, but his unwilling courage saved his regiment in spite of his bad spelling and won for himself a medal of honor.

It was at the end of that terrible Wilderness campaign of Grant's which in a little more than a month had cost him fifty-four thousand nine hundred and twenty-nine men, a number nearly equal to the whole army of Lee, his antagonist, when the campaign was commenced. Grant's first object in this campaign was to destroy or capture Lee's army. His second object was to capture Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy.

A special rank of Lieutenant-General had been created for him by President Lincoln with the approval of the whole country. His victory at the dreadful battle of Shiloh, his successful siege of Vicksburg and his winning above the clouds the battle of Chattanooga, had made the silent, scrubby, commonplace-looking man, with the gray-blue eyes, who never talked but acted instead, the hope of the whole nation. In this campaign, Grant's one idea was to clinch with Lee's army and fight it as hard and as often as possible. He fought in the wilderness, tangled in thickets and swamps. He fought against strong positions on hilltops, he fought against entrenchments defended by masked batteries and tremendous artillery. He fought against impregnable positions and although he lost and lost and lost, he never stopped fighting. Lee had beaten McClellan and Pope and Burnside and Hooker, all able generals, who had tried against him every plan except that which Grant now tried, of wearing him out by victories and defeats alike. Grant's army could be replenished. There were not men enough left in the Confederacy to replace Lee's army. It was a terrible campaign and only a president of Lincoln's breadth of view and only the supreme confidence which the American people have in a man who fights, no matter how often he is beaten, kept Grant in command. If, after the b.l.o.o.d.y defeats in the Wilderness and at Spottsylvania or at Cold Harbor, he had turned back like any of his successors would have done, undoubtedly his past record would not have saved him the command. It was like the celebrated battle between Tom Cribb, the champion of England, and Molineaux, the giant black, in the eighteenth century for the championship of the world.

Again and again and again Cribb was knocked down by blows so tremendous that even his ring generalship could not avoid them. Battered and b.l.o.o.d.y he always staggered to his feet and bored in again for more.

Molineaux at last said to his seconds, "I can't lick a fellow like that; the fool doesn't know when he is beaten." It was so with Grant and Lee. Grant never knew when he was beaten. Lee's generalship could knock him down, but could not keep him back, and the Confederate leader realized himself that sooner or later some chance of war would give Grant the opportunity for a victory from which the Confederate Army could not recuperate.

Cold Harbor was the last of this series of defeats which helped wear out Lee's army and ended in its capture and the occupation of Richmond.

At the time, however, it was bitter to be borne by the millions of men and women and children who were hungering and thirsting for a victory of the Union arms. Marching and fighting and fighting and marching every day for a month, Grant was almost in sight of the spires of the Confederate capital. About six miles outside the city Lee had taken his last stand at Cold Harbor. He held a position of tremendous natural strength and had fortified and entrenched it so that it was practically impregnable. Grant tried in vain to flank it. On June 30th he ordered an a.s.sault in front. Against him was the flower of the Confederate Army commanded by the best general of the world and securely entrenched in a position than which no stronger was ever attacked throughout the whole war. Grant first gave his command to attack on the afternoon of June 2d, but then postponed it until the early morning of June 3d. Officers and men alike knew that they were to be sacrificed. All through the regiments men were pinning slips of paper, on which were written their names and addresses, to the backs of their coats, so that their dead bodies might be recognized after the battle and news sent to their families at the North. The battle was a short one. The second corps of General Hanc.o.c.k, one of the bravest and most dashing of all of Grant's generals, was shot to pieces in twenty-two minutes and fell back with three thousand of its best men gone, including most of its officers.

All along the line the story was the same. At some places the Union men were beaten back without any difficulty and at other spots they penetrated the salients, but were driven back. Attack after attack was in vain against the generalship of Lee, the bravery of his men and the almost impregnable strength of his position.

Eugene M. Tinkham, of the 148th New York Infantry, was in that corps directly under the eye of Grant himself which attacked and attacked the Confederate position throughout that b.l.o.o.d.y morning, only to be driven back each time with tremendous losses. The 148th Infantry, in which Tinkham was a corporal, charged right up to the very mouth of the guns.

Flesh and blood could not stand, however, against the volleys of grape and canister which ripped b.l.o.o.d.y, struggling lanes right through the ma.s.ses of the charging men. As the corps of which Tinkham's regiment was a part was stopped by the wall of dead and wounded men piled up in front of them, the Confederates with a fierce Rebel yell charged over the breastworks on the confused attackers. For a minute the New York regiment held its own, but were finally slowly forced back fighting every foot to the shelter of their own rifle-pits. There they made a stand and the Confederate sally stopped and the men in gray dashed back to their own fortifications. In this charge, Tinkham received a bayonet wound through his left shoulder while a jagged piece of canister had ripped through his left arm. Not until he found himself back in the rifle-pit, however, did he even know that he was wounded. His bayonet and the barrel of his rifle were red clear up to the stock and he did not at first realize that the blood dripping from his left sleeve was his own. It was only as he lay on the dry sand and saw the red stain beside him grow larger and larger that he realized that he was hurt.

One of the few men who had returned with him stripped off his coat, cut away the sleeve of his shirt and made a couple of rough bandages and extemporized a rude tourniquet from the splinters of one of the wheels of a battered field-piece which had flown into the pit. When that was over, Tinkham lay back and shut his eyes and felt the weakness which comes over a man who has lost much blood. To-day there was not the tonic of victory which sometimes keeps even wounded men up. He had seen his comrades, men with whom he had eaten and slept and fought for over two years, thrown away, as it seemed to him, uselessly. He was yet to learn, what the army learned first and the country last, that Grant was big enough and far-sighted enough to know that some victories must be wrought from failure as well as success. This was one of the hammer-strokes which seemed to bound back from the enemy's armor without leaving a mark, yet the impact weakened Lee even when it seemed that he was most impervious to it. It was absolutely necessary to Grant's far-reaching plans that Lee be fought on every possible occasion. Whether he won or lost, Grant's only hope lay on keeping Lee on the defensive. None of this, of course, could a wounded corporal in a battered, beaten and defeated regiment realize. All he knew was that his friends were gone, that he was wounded and, worst of all, had been forced to again and again retreat. He shut his eyes and there was a sound in his ears like the tolling of a great bell. It seemed to swell and rise until it drowned even the rattle and roar of the battle which was still going on. When Tinkham opened his eyes everything seemed to waver and quiver before him. Suddenly there came a short, thin, wailing sound which cut like a knife through the midst of the unconsciousness which was stealing over him. It was the cries of two wounded men lying far out in the field over which he had come. Tinkham raised his hand and strained his eyes. He could recognize two of his own file, men who a moment before had been by his side and who now lay moaning their lives away out on that sh.e.l.l-swept field. Tinkham listened to it as long as he could. Then he set his teeth, scrambled to his feet and in spite of his comrades who thought that he was delirious, climbed stiffly over the edge of the rifle-pit and began to creep out between the lines toward the wounded men. At first every motion was an agony.

He was weakened by the loss of blood and he could bear no weight on his left arm, yet there was such a fatal storm of bullets and grape-shot whizzing over him that he knew that, if he rose to his feet, there would be little chance of his ever reaching his friends alive. Slowly and doggedly he sidled along like a disabled crab. Sometimes he would have to stop and rest. Many times bullets whizzed close to him and cut the turf all around where he lay. As soon as he had rested a few seconds, he would fix his eye on some little tuft of gra.s.s or stone or weed and make up his mind that he would crawl until he reached that before he rested again. It was a long journey before he reached his goal. On the way he had taken three full canteens of water from silent figures which would never need them more. When at last he reached the men, they recognized him and the tears ran down their faces as they called his name.

"G.o.d bless you, Corporal," said one; "it's just like you to come for us."

Tinkham had no breath left to talk, but he gave each wounded man a refreshing drink from the canteens. Both of them were badly, although not fatally, wounded. One had a shattered leg and the other was slowly bleeding to death from a jagged wound in his thigh which he had tried in vain to staunch. Tinkham bandaged them up to the best of his ability and started to drag them both back to safety. With his help and encouragement, each of them crawled for himself as best he was able. It was a weary journey. During the last part of it, however, he was helped by other volunteers who were shamed into action by seeing this wounded man do what they had not dared. All three recovered and lived to take part in the latter-day victories which were yet to come.

Tinkham was but one of the thousands of brave men who risked their lives to save their comrades. There was Michael Madden who at Mason's Island, Maryland, was on a reconnaissance with a comrade within the enemy's lines. His companion was wounded. A number of the enemy's cavalry started out to cut off the two men who were at the same time exposed to concentrated fire from the enemy's sharp-shooters. Madden picked his comrade up as if he had been a child, hoisted him to his back and ran with him to the bank of the Potomac, and plunged off into the water. Swimming on his back, he kept his comrade's head up and crossed the river in safety with the bullets hissing and spattering all around him.

Then there was Julius Langbein, a drummer-boy fifteen years old. In 1862 at Camden, N.C., the captain of his company was shot down.

Langbein went to his help, but found that unless he received surgical treatment, he could not live an hour. Unstrapping his drum, he ran back to the rear and found a surgeon who was brave enough to go out to the front with him and under a heavy fire give first-aid to the wounded officer. Then the two carried the unconscious captain back to safety.

It is a brave man that can rally himself in a retreat. Usually men go with the crowd. Once let the tide of battle begin to ebb and a company or a regiment or a brigade commence a retreat, it takes not only unusual courage, but also unusual will-power for any single man to stand out against his fellows and resist not only his own fears, but theirs. Such a man was John S. Kenyon. At Trenton, S.C., on May 15, 1862, the whole column of his regiment, the 3d New York Cavalry, was retreating under a murderous fire from the enemy. Kenyon was in the rear rank. The retreat had started at a trot, had increased to a gallop and finally the whole column was riding at breakneck speed away from the shot and sh.e.l.l which crashed through their ranks. At the very height of their speed a man riding next to Kenyon was struck in the right shoulder by a grape-shot. The force of the blow pitched him headlong from the saddle. He still held to his reins with his left hand with a death-grip and was dragged for yards by his plunging, snorting horse. Kenyon was just ahead and knew nothing of the occurrence until he heard a faint voice behind him calling breathlessly, "Help, John, help!" He looked back and saw his comrade nearly fifty yards behind lying on the ground. Already his fingers were loosening their grip on the rein and the blood was flowing fast from the gash on his shoulder.

Behind him the Confederate cavalry came thundering along not a quarter of a mile away while the ma.s.sed batteries behind them swept the whole field with a hail of lead and steel. John hesitated for a minute and for the last time he heard once more the call of help, this time so faint that he could hardly hear it above the din of the battle. With a quick movement, he swung his horse to one side of the column.

"Don't be a fool, John," shouted one of the men ahead; "it's every man for himself now. You can't save him and you'll only lose your own life."

It was the old plausible lie that started when Satan said of Job, "Skin for skin, all that a man hath will he give for his life." It was a lie then and it is just as much a lie to-day.

"Greater love hath no man than that he lay down his life for his friend," said our Master. Every day when the crisis comes we see men who will do that. Kenyon was one of these men. As he said afterward, "I should never have been able to get Jim's voice out of my mind if I hadn't stopped."

It only took an instant to cover the distance from the column to the wounded man. Kenyon reached him just in time to catch the riderless horse which had at last freed his bridle from the weak grip of his wounded master. Kenyon swung himself to the ground and holding the two plunging horses with his right hand, pulled his friend to his feet and with a tremendous effort finally hoisted him into his saddle again. By this time the pursuing cavalry was within pistol-shot and the revolver bullets began to sing around the heads of the two men.

"You hang on to your saddle, Jim," said Kenyon, "and I'll take care of your horse."

Bending low in his saddle, he dug his spurs deep into his horse's sides, at the same time keeping his grip on the reins of the other horse and in a few minutes the two were back again in the rear of the retreating column. All through the retreat Kenyon stuck to his comrade and finally landed him safely in the field-hospital in front of which the Union Army had thrown up entrenchments which stopped all further pursuit.