How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion Part 5

"George, the general was pretty hot last night, but he was to blame about the mistake in the location, and he says he is going to try and get you a commission as lieutenant."

* A few weeks ago I met a member of my old regiment, who is traveling through the South as agent for a beer bottling establishment in the North. He was with me when we built the corduroy bridge twenty-two years ago. As we were talking over old-times he asked me if I remembered that bridge we built one day in Alabama, in the wrong place, and moved it during the night. I told him I wished I had as many dollars as I remembered that bridge. "Well," said my comrade, "on my last trip through Alabama I crossed that bridge, and paid two bits for the privilege of crossing. A man has established a toll-gate at the bridge, and they say he has made a fortune. I asked him how much his bridge cost him, and he said it didn't cost him a cent, as the Yankees built it during the war. He said they cut the timber on his land, and when he got out of the Confederate army he was busted, and he claimed the bridge, and got a charter to keep a toll- gate." My comrade added that the bridge was as sound as it was when it was built. He said he asked the toll-gate keeper if he knew the bridge was first built a mile away, and he said he knew the timber was cut up there, and he wondered what the confounded Yankees went away off there to cut the timber for, when they could get it right on the bank. Then my comrade told the toll-gate keeper that he helped build the bridge, the rebel thanked him, and wanted to pay back the two bits. Some day I am going down to Alabama and cross on that bridge again, the bridge that almost caused me to commit suicide, and if that old rebel-for he must be an old rebel now--charges me two bits toll, I shall very likely pull off my coat and let him whip me, and then as likely as not there will be another war.

I felt faint, but I said, "How can he recommend a star idiot for a commissioned office?"

"O, that is all right," said, the colonel, "some of the greatest idiots in the army have received commisssions." As he spoke the rebels began to sh.e.l.l the place where the pontoon bridge was being built, and I went hunting for a place to borrow an umbrella to hold over me, to ward off the pieces of sh.e.l.l. Then a battery of our own opened on the rebels, so near me that every time a gun was discharged I could, feel the roof of my head raise up like the cover to a band box. It was the wildest time I ever saw. Cavalry was swimming the river to charge the rebel battery, sh.e.l.ls were exploding all around, and it seemed to me as though if I was to lay a pontoon bridge I would go off somewhere out of the way, where it would be quiet. Finally my regiment was ordered to swim the river, and we rode in. The first lunge my horse made he went under water about a mile, and when we came up I was not on him, but catching hold of his tail I was dragged across the river nearly drowned, and landed on the bank like a dog that has been after a duck I shook myself, we mounted and without waiting to dry out our clothes we went into the fight, before I could realize it, or back out. Scared! I was so scared it is a wonder I did not die. That was more excitement than a county fair.

Bullets whizzing, sh.e.l.ls shrieking, smoke stifling, yelling that was deafening. It seemed as though I was crazy. I must have been or I could never, as a raw recruit, with no experience, have ridden right toward those guns that were belching forth sulphur and pieces of blacksmith shop. I didn't dare look anywhere except right ahead. All thought of being hit by bullets or anything was completely out of my mind.

Occasionally something would go over me that sounded as though a buzz saw had been fired from a saw mill explosion. Presently the firing on the rebel side ceased, and it was seen they were in retreat. I was never so glad of anything in my life. We stopped, and I examined my clothes, and they were perfectly dry. The excitement and warmth of the body had acted like a drying-room in a laundry. Then I laid down under a fence and went to sleep, and dreamed I was in hades, building a corduroy bridge across the Styx, and that the devil repremanded me for building it in the wrong place. When I awoke I was so stiff with rheumatism that I had to be helped up from under the fence, and they put me in an ambulance with a soldier who had his jaw shot off. He was not good company, because I had to do all the talking. And in that way we moved towards the enemy.

CHAPTER XII.

I am Instructed to Capture and Search a Female Smuggler-- I Protest in Vain--The Terrible Ordeal--Beauty Behind the Pulpit--Pills, Plasters, Quinine--The Pathetic Letter-- We Meet Under Happier Stars.

It was at this time that the hardest duty that it was my lot to perform during my service, fell to me, and the only wonder to me is that I am alive today to tell of it. If I ever get a pension it will be on account of night sweats, caused by the terrible and trying work that was a.s.signed to me. One day the colonel sent for me, and I knew at once that there was something unusual in the wind. After seating myself in his tent he opened the subject by asking me if I wasn't something of a hand to be agreeable to the ladies. I told him, with many blushes, that if there was one thing on this earth that I thought was nicer than everything else, it was a lady, and that a good woman was the n.o.blest work of G.o.d. He said he was on to all of that, but it wasn't a good woman that he was after. That startled me a little. I had heard the officers had a habit of fooling around a good deal with certain females, and I told the colonel that any duty that I was a.s.signed to I would perform to the best of my poor ability, but I could not go around with the girls as officers did, because I couldn't afford it, and it was against my principles, anyway. He showed me a picture of a beautiful woman, and asked me if I would know her if I saw her again. I told him I could pick her out of a thousand. He said she was a smuggler. She had a pa.s.s from a general, who seemed to be under her influence to a certain extent, for some reason, and went in and out of the lines freely. The general didn't want to order her arrest, because she would squeal on him, but he wanted her arrested all the same, and the idea was to have some corporal in charge of a picket post take the responsibility of arresting her without orders, refuse to recognize her pa.s.s, take the quinine and other medicines, and money away from her, and then be arrested himself for exceeding his authority. He said they wanted a corporal who had every appearance of being a big-headed idiot, and yet who knew what he was about, who knew something about women, and who could do such a job up in shape, and never let the woman know that the general or anybody had anything to do with her arrest. The idea was to catch her in the act of smuggling quinine through the lines to the rebels, by the act of a fresh corporal who took the matter into his own hands, and who claimed that the pa.s.s she had from the general was a forgery. When the general could, when the woman was brought before him, be indignant at the corporal for insulting a woman, and order him arrested, and he could also go back on the woman, and have her sent away, after which he would release the corporal, and perhaps promote him, and all would be well. It was as pretty a scheme as I ever listened to, and I consented to do the duty, though I wouldn't do it again for a million dollars. The colonel told me to take four men and go to a particular place on an unfrequented road, near a school house, and put out a picket. The female would be along during the afternoon, on horseback, and when she showed her pa.s.s, one of the men must take hold of her horse and hold him, while I kicked about the pa.s.s, made her dismount, and searched her for quinine. I turned ashy pale when the colonel said that, and I said to him:

"Colonel, for heaven's sake don't compel me to search a woman. I have a family at home, and they will hear of it. My political enemies will use it against me at home when I run for office, after the war. Let me bring her here to your tent, and you search her."

"No, that would spoil all," said the colonel. "We want her searched right there at the little school house, by a corporal without apparent authority, and every last quinine pill taken off of her. If she was brought here she would cry, and rave, and we should weaken, because we know her, and have been entertained at her house. You are supposed to be a heartless corporal, with no sentiment, no mercy, no nothing, just a delver after smuggled quinine. Besides, I too, have a family, and I don't want to search no females. By the way, one of the general's start saw her last night, and drew the cartridges from her revolver, and put in some blank cartridges. If the worst comes, she will draw her revolver on you, and perhaps fire at you, but there are no b.a.l.l.s in her revolver, so you needn't be afraid."

"But suppose she has two revolvers," I asked, "and one is loaded with bullets?"

"I don't think she has," said the colonel. "But we have to take some chances, you know. Now go right along. Treat her like a lady, disbelieve everything she says and insist on searching her. The general says she wears an enormous bustle, and probably that is full of quinine. Use your judgement, but get it all. Pretend to be an ignorant sort of a corporal who feels that the success of the war depends on him, act as though you outranked the general, and tell her you would not let her pa.s.s with that quinine if the general himself was present. Just display plenty gall and when you have go the quinine, bring the girl here, and I will abuse you, and you take it like a little man, and all will be well. If she bites and scratches, some of you will have to hold her, but the best way will be to argue with her, and persuade her by honied words, to come down with the quinine. Go!"

"One word, colonel, before I go," I said. "About how many men should you think it would take to hold this woman? You suggested three, but if one holds her horse, it seems to me, from my knowledge of female kicking, biting and scratching, that I would need one man for each arm and foot, one to hold her head and choke her, if necessary, and one with a roving commission to work around where he would be apt to make himself useful.

What do you say if I take five men!"

"All right, take six," said the colonel. "One may be disabled, or have his jaw kicked off, or something. But don't detail anybody to search her. Do that yourself, and do it like a gentleman. And above all things, do not let her kanoodle you with soft words and looks of love, because she is full of em. If she can't scare you, with her indignation at the outrage of arresting and searching her, she will try to capture you and make you love her. You must be as firm as adamant. Now hurry up."

I picked out six men, four of whom were young Americans, rather handsome, and very polite, regular mashers.

Then I had an Irishman named Duffy, and a German named Holzmeyer, who was a butcher. We went out on the road, to the school house, and I put the Irishman on picket, and instructed the German about taking the horse by the bridle at the proper time. Then the rest of us got behind the school house and waited. For two hours we waited, and I had a chance to think over the situation. Here I was, putting down the rebellion, laying for a woman, who was loaded. At home, I was a polite man, and full of fun, a person any lady might be proud to meet and talk with, but here I was expected to do something, for thirteen dollars a month, to put down the rebellion, which there was not money enough in the whole state of Wisconsin to hire me to do. Was it such a crime to carry a little quinine to a sick friend? Suppose a rebel was sick with ague, and I had quinine, would I see him shake himself out of his boots and not give him medicine? No, I would divide my last quinine powder with him. So would any soldier. If it was not treason to give one rebel a quinine powder, when he was sick, why should it be treason to take along enough for a whole lot of sick rebels? Did our government want to put down the rebellion by keeping medicines away from a sick enemy? Were we to gloat over the number of rebels who died of disease, that we could save by sending them medicines? It seemed to me, if I was in command of the army, instead of arresting women for carrying medicine to their sick brothers, I would load up a wagon with medicine and send it to them, and say, "Here, you fellows, fire this quinine down your necks, and get well, and then if you want to fight any more, come out on the field and we will give you the best turn in the wheel-house." It seemed to me that would be the way to win the enemy over, and that they would be thankful, take the medicine, get well, and then say, "Boys, these Yankees are pretty good fellows after all. Let's quit fighting, and call it quits."

But I was not running the war, and had got to obey orders, if I broke heartstrings and corset strings. I would have given anything to have got out of the job. The idea of arresting a woman and searching her, and seeing her cry, and have her think me a hard-hearted wretch, was revolting, and I found myself wishing she would take some other road.

May be she looked like somebody that I knew at home, and may be she had a big brother in the Confederate army who would look me up after the war and everlastingly maul the life out of me for insulting his sister. I made up my mind if anything of that kind happened I would tell on the general and the colonel, and get them whipped, too.

"Phat the divil is it coming," said the Irishman. "Corporal of the guaod, the quane of all the South is coming down the road, riding a high stepper. Phat will I do, I dunno?"

"Stop her," I yelled with my teeth chattering.

"Halt right fhere yez are," said the Irishman, with a look on his face that showed he was--well, that he was an Irishman, and had an eye for beauty. The German had taken the horse by the bit, and I stepped out from behind the school house.

Great heavens, but she was a beautiful woman, and she sat on her horse like a statue. I had never seen a more beautiful woman. She was a brunette, with large black eyes, and her face was flushed with the exercise of riding.

She smiled and showed two rows of the prettiest teeth that ever were put into a female mouth, and one ungloved hand, with which she handed me the pa.s.s had a dimple at every knuckle, and was as white as paper, and soft as silk. I know it was soft, because it touched my red, freckled hand when I took the pa.s.s. I did not blame the general for being in love with her, or for wanting to saw off the unpleasant duty of breaking up her smuggling, on to a poor orphan like me. She said:

"Captain, I have a pa.s.s from the general, to go through the lines at any time, unmollested."

"It is no good," I said, examining it. "This pa.s.s is evidently a forgery."

"But, my dear captain," she said, with a smile that I would give ten dollars for a picture of, "The pa.s.s is not a forgery. I have used it for months."

"I am not a dear captain, only a cheap corporal," I said, with an attempt to be at my ease, which I wasn't.

"There has been at least a wagon load of quinine smuggled through the lines on this pa.s.s, and it has got to stop; you cannot go."

"The d.i.c.kens you say," said she as she drew her revolver, and sung out, "let go that horse," and firing at the German.

"Kritz-dunnerwetter," said the German, as he got down by the horse's fore feet, and held on to the bridle, "vot vor you choot a man ven he holt your horse?"

"Madame," I said, "your revolver is loaded with blank cartridges, and you can do no harm. Try another one on the Irishman."

"Hold on," said the Irishman, "and don't experiment on a poor man who has a wife and six children. Shoot the corporal."

But I had reached up and taken the revolver from her, and she was weak as a kitten. Her nerve had forsaken her, and when I told her to dismount she was like a rag, and had to be helped down. If she was beautiful before, now that she had started her tear mill, she was ravishingly radiant, and I felt like a villain. She leaned on my shoulder, and it was the loveliest burden a soldier ever held. I seated her on the steps of the schoolhouse, and I thought she would faint, but she didn't. She was evidently taken by surprise, and wanted a little time to think it over, and form a plan. So did I. As I looked her over, and thought what I was expected to do, I wondered where it would be best to commence. She began to recover, smiled at me and asked me to have the other soldiers go away, so she could talk with me. I wished she wouldn't smile like that, because it unnerved me. She asked me what I was going to do with her, what caused me to suspect her, if I would not believe her if she told me she was not a smuggler, if I had orders to arrest her, and all that. I said, "Madame, my orders are to arrest all quinine smugglers, and you are one. I am Hawkshaw, the detective. For months I have shadowed you, and I know you have concealed about your person a whole drug store.

In that innocent looking bustle I feel that there is quinine for the million. Your heaving bosom contains, besides love for your friends and hatred of your enemies, a storehouse of useful medicines, contraband of war. In your stockings there is much that would interest the seeker after the truth, your corset that fits you so beautifully is liable to be full of revolver cartridges, while in your shoes there may be messages to the rebels. I shall search you from Genesis to Revelations, and may the Lord have mercy on both of us. To begin, please let me examine the hat you have on."

With some reluctance she took off a sort of half-stovepipe hat, and covered her face with her handkerchief while I looked into it. I found a package of newly printed confederate bonds, and a quant.i.ty of court plaster. That settled it. She cried a little, and wanted to go into the schoolhouse. I went in with her, and two of my soldiers.

I told her that it was a duty that was pretty tough, but it was necessary for her to disrobe, as I must have every article she had. She cried, and said if I searched her, or molested her, I would do it at my peril, and that I wouldn't know how to go to work to take off her clothes, anyway, and that I ought to be ashamed of myself. I told her I felt as ashamed as any gentleman could, and though I knew little about the details of the female apparel, I had some general ideas about bustles, polonaise, socks, skirts, and so forth, and while I might be awkward, and uncouth, and nervous, as long as there were b.u.t.tons to unb.u.t.ton, hooks to unhook, and safety-pins to unpin, I thought I could eventually get to the quinine, if she would give me time, and I did not faint by the wayside, but my idea was that it would save all trouble, her modesty would not receive a shock, nor mine either, if she would go behind the little pulpit in the schoolhouse, out of sight of us, take off her clothes, and hand them over the pulpit to us to examine. She said she would die first, besides, she knew we would peek around the pulpit at her. I was getting very nervous, and perspiring a good deal, and wishing it was over, and I swore, upon my honor, that if she would go behind the pulpit and disrobe, she should be as safe from intrusion as though she was in her own room. She swore she would not, and I went up to her to commence unraveling the mystery. Her dress hooked up in the back, which I always _did_ think a great nuisance, and I began to unhook it. I wondered that she stood so quietly and let me unhook it, but after it was unhooked from the neck to the small of her back, and I was wishing I was dead, she said:

"There, now that you have got my dress unhooked, a feat I never could accomplish myself, I will go behind the pulpit and take off my dress, if you will promise not to look, and that you will help me hook up my dress when this cruel quinine war is over."

I told her by the great Jehosephat, and the continental congress, I would help her, and that I would kill anybody who looked, and she went behind the schoolhouse pulpit, where a country preacher, very likely, preached on Sundays, and bent over out of sight, and it wasn't half a minute before she handed the dress over to me. In the pockets I found several papers of some kind of medicine, and a few small bottles, sealed up with red sealing-wax.

"Now, the bustle, please, I said, in a voice trembling with emotion.

"Take your old bustle," she said, as she whacked it on the top of the pulpit.

Well, if anybody had told me that a bustle could be made to hold stuff enough to fill a bushel-basket, I would not have believed it. We filled three nose-bags, such as cavalrymen feed horses in, with paper packages and bottles of quinine. There were thirty bottles of pills, and salves and ointments, and plasters.

"This is panning out first rate," I said, with less emotion. The emotion was somehow getting out of me, and the affair was becoming more of a mercantile transaction. It was like a young druggist going from the side of his beloved, to the drug store, to take an inventory. "Now hand out that other lot."

She evidently knew what I referred to, for she handed out over the pulpit a package just exactly the shape of what I had supposed, in my guileless innocence, was a portion of the female form. That is, I had suspected it was not all human form, but didn't know. That was also full of medicines, of which quinine was the larger part, though there was about a pint of gun caps.

"Speaking about stockings," I said, "please take them off and hand them over."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Two very long stockings, came over the pulpit 185]

She kicked about taking off her shoes and stockings, and said no gentleman would compel a lady to do that. I said I would wait about two minutes, and then, if it was too much trouble for her to take them off, I would come around the pulpit and help. Bless you, I wouldn't have gone for the world, as I was already more than satisfied with what I had found. She said I needn't trouble myself, as she guessed she could take off her shoes without my help. I heard her unlacing her shoes, and pretty soon two dainty shoes and two very long stockings, came over the pulpit, the heel of one shoe hitting me in the ear. As I picked up the shoes I heard the crumpling of a letter behind the pulpit, and I told her I must have all the messages she had. She said it was only a letter to one she loved. I told her I must have it, and she handed it over. I read, "My darling husband," and handed it back, saying I would not pry into her family secrets. She began to cry, and insisted on my reading it, which I did. It was to her husband, an officer in the Confederate army, and was about as follows:

"My Darling Husband:--This life of deception is killing me.

I want to do all in my power to help our cause, but I am each day more nervous, and liable to detection. The Yankee officers are frequently at our house, and I have to treat them kindly, but it is all I can do to keep from crying, and I am expected to laugh. I fear that I am suspected of smuggling, as the subject is frequently brought up in conversation, and I feel my face burn, though I try hard not to show it. I think of you, away off in Virginia, with your armless sleeve, our children in New Orleans, and I wonder if we will ever be united again. O, G.o.d, when will this all end. I have no fault to find with the Federal troops. The officers are very kind and through one fatherly general I am allowed to pa.s.s into our lines. I feel that I am betraying his kindness every trip I make, and only the urgent need that our dear boys have for medicines could induce me to do as I do. After this trip I shall go to New Orleans,{*} where I fear Madge is sick, as shew as not at all well the last I heard from her. Pray earnestly, my dear husband, every day, as I do, that this trouble may end soon, some way, and I beg of you not to have a feeling of revenge in your heart towards your enemies, on account of the loss of your arm, as there are thousands of federals similarly afflicted. I shall love you more, and I will wrap your empty sleeve about my neck, and try never to miss the strong arm that was my support. Adieu.

"Your loving wife."

That letter knocked me out in one round. I had begun to enjoy the unpacking of the smuggled goods, and the discomfiture of my female smuggler, but when I read that loving letter, breathing such a Christian spirit, and thought of the poor wife-mother behind the pulpit unravelling herself, I was ashamed, and I said to myself, "she shall not take off another rag. So I handed back the letter and the dress, and all of the things she had taken off, and I said: