The Guns of Bull Run Part 8

Harry felt the chill down his spine again. These were great matters. He had looked upon no light event in the harbor of Charleston that day. He and Arthur lingered on the wall, watching that trailing black dot on the horizon, until it died away and was gone forever. The blue figures on the walls of Sumter had disappeared within, and the fortress stood up, grim and silent. Beyond lay the blue sea, shimmering and peaceful in the wintry sunshine.

"I suppose there is nothing to do but go back to Madame Delaunay's," said Harry.

"Nothing now," replied St. Clair, "but I fancy that later on we'll have all we can do."

"If not more."

"Yes, if not more."

Both boys were very grave and thoughtful as they walked to Madame Delaunay's most excellent inn. They realized that as yet South Carolina stood alone, but in the evening their spirits took a leap. News came that Mississippi also had gone out. Then other planting states followed fast. Florida was but a day behind Mississippi, Alabama went out the next day after Florida, Georgia eight days later, and Louisiana a week after Georgia. Exultation rose high in Charleston. All the Gulf and South Atlantic States were now sure, but the great border states still hung fire. There was a clamor for Virginia, Kentucky, Maryland and Missouri, and, though the promises from them came thick and fast, they did not go out. But the fiery energy of Charleston and the lower South was moving forward over all obstacles. Already arrangements had been made for a great convention at Montgomery in Alabama, and a new government would be formed differing but little from that of the old Union.

Now Harry began to hear much of a man, of whom he had heard his father speak, but who had slipped entirely from his mind. It was Jefferson Davis, a native of Kentucky like Abraham Lincoln. He had been a brave and gallant soldier at Buena Vista. It was said that he had saved the day against the overwhelming odds of Santa Anna. He had been Secretary of War in the old Union, now dissolved forever, according to the Charleston talk. Other names, too, began to grow familiar in Harry's ears. Much was said about the bluff Bob Toombs of Georgia, who feared no man and who would call the roll of his slaves at the foot of Bunker Hill monument. And there was little weazened Stephens, also of Georgia, a great intellect in a shrunken frame, and Benjamin of the oldest race, who had inherited the wisdom of ages. There would be no lack of numbers and courage and penetration when the great gathering met at Montgomery.

These were busy and on the whole happy days for Harry and St. Clair. Harry drilled with his comrade in the Palmetto Guards now, and, in due time, they were going to Montgomery to a.s.sist at the inauguration of the new president, whoever he might be. No vessel had come in place of the Star of the West. The North seemed supine, and Sumter, grim and dark though she might be, was alone. The flag of the Stars and Stripes still floated above it. Everywhere else the Palmetto flag waved defiance. But there was still no pa.s.sage of arms between Sumter and its hostile neighbors. Small boats pa.s.sed between the fort and the city, carrying provisions to the garrison, and also the news. The Charlestonians told Major Anderson of the states that went out, one by one, and the brave Kentuckian, eating his heart out, looked vainly toward the open sea for the help that never came.

Exultation still rose in Charleston. The ball was rolling finely. It was even gathering more speed and force than the most sanguine had expected. Every day brought the news of some new accession to the cause, some new triumph. The Alabama militia had seized the forts, Morgan and Gaines; Georgia had occupied Pulaski and Jackson; North Carolina troops had taken possession of the a.r.s.enal at Fayetteville, and those of Florida on the same day had taken the one at Chattahoochee. Everywhere the South was acc.u.mulating arms, ammunition and supplies for use-if they should be needed. The leaders had good cause for rejoicing. They were disappointed in nothing, save that northern tier of border states which still hesitated or refused.

Harry in these days wondered that so little seemed to happen in the North. His strong connections and his own good manners had made him a favorite in Charleston. He went everywhere, perhaps most often to the office of the Mercury, controlled by the powerful Rhett family, among the most fiery of the Southern leaders. Exchanges still came there from the northern cities, but he read little in them about preparations for war. Many attacked Buchanan, the present President, for weakness, and few expected anything better from the uncouth western figure, Lincoln, who would soon succeed him.

Meanwhile the Confederate convention at Montgomery was acting. In those days apathy and delay seemed to be characteristic of the North, courage and energy of the South. The new government was being formed with speed and decision. Jefferson Davis, it was said, would be President, and Stephens of Georgia would be Vice-President.

The time for departure to Montgomery drew near. Harry and Arthur were in fine gray uniforms as members of the Palmetto Guards. Arthur, light, volatile, was full of pleased excitement. Harry also felt the thrill of curiosity and antic.i.p.ation, but he had been in Charleston nearly six weeks now, and while six weeks are short, they had been long enough in such a tense time to make vital changes in his character. He was growing older fast. He was more of a man, and he weighed and measured things more. He recognized that Charleston, while the second city of the South in size and the first in leadership, was only Charleston, after all, far inferior in weight and numbers to the great cities of the North. Often he looked toward the North over the vast, intervening s.p.a.ce and tried to reckon what forces lay there.

The evening before their departure they sat on the wide piazza that swept along the entire front of the inn of Madame Delaunay. Colonel Leonidas Talbot and Major Hector St. Hilaire sat with them. They, too, were going to Montgomery. Mid-February had pa.s.sed, and the day had been one of unusual warmth for that time of the year, like a day in full spring. The wind from the south was keen with the odor of fresh foliage and of roses, and of faint far perfumes, unknown but thrilling. A sky of molten silver clothed city, bay, and forts in enchantment. Nothing seemed further away than war, yet they had to walk but a little distance to see the defiant flag over Sumter, and the hostile Palmetto flags waving not far away.

Madame Delaunay appeared in the doorway. She was dressed as usual in white and her shining black hair was bound with the slender gold fillet.

"We are going away tomorrow, Madame," said Colonel Talbot, "and I know that we cannot find in Montgomery any such pleasant entertainment as my young friends have enjoyed here."

Harry was confirmed in his belief that the thread of an old romance still formed a firm tie between them.

"But you will come back," said Madame Delaunay. "You will come back very soon. Surely, they will not try to keep us from going our ways in peace."

A sudden thrill of pa.s.sion and feeling had appeared in her voice.

"That no one can tell, Julie," said Colonel Talbot very gravely-it was the first time that Harry had ever heard him call her by her first name-"but it seems to me that I should tell what I think. A Union such as ours has been formed amid so much suffering and hardship, courage and danger, that it is not to be broken in a day. We may come back soon from Montgomery, Julie, but I see war, a great and terrible war, a war, by the side of which those we have had, will dwindle to mere skirmishes. I shut my eyes, but it makes no difference. I see it close at hand, just the same."

Madame Delaunay sighed.

"And you, Major St. Hilaire?" she said.

"There may be a great war, Madame Delaunay," he said, "I fear that Colonel Talbot is right, but we shall win it."

Colonel Talbot said nothing more, nor did Madame Delaunay. Presently she went back into the house. After a long silence the colonel said:

"If I were not sure that our friend Shepard had left Charleston long since, I should say that the figure now pa.s.sing in the street is his."

A small lawn filled with shrubbery stretched before the house, but from the piazza they could see into the street. Harry, too, caught a glimpse of a pa.s.sing figure, and like the colonel he was sure that it was Shepard.

"It is certainly he!" he exclaimed.

"After him!" cried Colonel Talbot, instantly all action. "As sure as we live that man is a spy, drawing maps of our fortifications, and I should have warned the Government before."

The four sprang from the piazza and ran into the street. Harry, although he had originally felt no desire to seize Shepard, was carried along by the impetus. It was the first man-hunt in which he had ever shared, and soon he caught the thrill from the others. The colonel, no doubt, was right. Shepard was a spy and should be taken. He ran as fast as any of them.

Shepard, if Shepard it was, heard the swift footsteps behind him, glanced back and then ran.

"After him!" cried Major St. Hilaire, his volatile blood leaping high. "His flight shows that he's a spy!"

But the fugitive was a man of strength and resource. He ran swiftly into a cross street, and when they followed him there he leaped over the low fence of a lawn, surrounding a great house, darted into the shrubbery, and the four, although they were joined by others, brought by the alarm, sought for him in vain.

"After all, I'm not sorry he got away," said Colonel Talbot, as they walked back to Madame Delaunay's. "There is no war, and hence, in a military sense, there can be no spies. I doubt whether we should have known what to do with him had we caught him, but I am certain that he has complete maps of all our defenses."

Harry, with Arthur and many others whom he knew, started the next day for Montgomery. Jefferson Davis had already been chosen President, and Alexander H. Stephens Vice-President, and Davis was on his way from his Mississippi home to the same town to be inaugurated. In the excitement over the great event, so near at hand, Harry forgot all about Shepard and his doubts. He bade a regretful farewell to Charleston, which had taken him to its heart, and turned his face to this new place, much smaller, and, as yet, without fame.

Harry, Arthur, and their older friends began the momentous journey across the land of King Cotton, pa.s.sing through the very heart of the lower South, as they went from Charleston to Montgomery. Davis and Stephens would be inaugurated on the 17th of that month, which was February. But the Palmetto Guards would arrive at Montgomery before Davis himself, who had left his home and who would cross Mississippi, Alabama, and a corner of Georgia before he reached the new capital to receive the chief honor.

Trains were slow and halting, and Harry had ample opportunity to see the land and the people who crowded to the stations to bring news or to hear it. He crossed a low, rolling country with many rivers, great and small. He saw large houses, with white-pillared porticos, sitting back among the trees, and swarms of negro cabins. Much of the region was yet dead and brown from the touch of winter, but in the valleys the green was appearing. Spring was in the air, and the spirits of the Palmetto Guards, nearly all of whom were very young, were rising with it.

The train drew into Montgomery, the little city that stood on the high banks of the Alabama River. Here they were in the very heart of the new Confederacy, and Harry and Arthur were eager to see the many famous Southern men who were gathered there to welcome the new President. Jefferson Davis was expected on the morrow, and would be inaugurated on the day following. They heard that his coming was already a triumphal progress. Vast crowds held his train at many points, merely to see him and listen to a few words. Generally he spoke in the careful, measured manner that was natural to him, but it was said that in Opelika, in Alabama, he had delivered a warning to the North, telling the Northern states that they would interfere with the Southern at their peril.

Harry and Arthur, despite their eagerness to see the town and the great men, were compelled to wait. The Palmetto Guards went into camp on the outskirts, and their commander, Colonel Leonidas Talbot, late of the United States Army, was very strict in discipline. His second in command, Major Hector St. Hilaire, was no whit inferior to him in sternness. Harry had expected that this old descendant of Huguenots, reared in the soft air of Charleston, would be lax, or at least easy of temper, but whatever of military rigor Colonel Talbot forgot, Major St. Hilaire remembered.

The guards were about three hundred in number, and their camp was pitched on a hill, a half mile from the town. The night, after a beautiful day, turned raw and chill, warning that early spring, even in those southern lat.i.tudes, was more of a promise than a performance. But the young troops built several great fires and those who were not on guard basked before the glow.

Harry had helped to gather the wood, most of which was furnished by the people living near, and his task was ended. Now he sat on his blanket with his back against a log and, with a great feeling of comfort, saw the flames leap up and grow. The cooks were at work, and there was an abundance of food. They had brought much themselves, and the enthusiastic neighbors doubled and tripled their supplies. The pleasant aroma of bacon and ham frying over the coals and of boiling coffee arose. He was weary from the long journey and the work that he had done, and he was hungry, too, but he was willing to wait.

All the troops were South Carolinians except Harry and perhaps a dozen others. They were a pleasant lot, quick of temper, perhaps, but he liked them. Their prevailing note was high spirits, and the most cheerful of all was a tall youth named Tom Langdon, whose father owned one of the smaller of the sea islands off the South Carolina coast. He was quite sanguine that everything would go exactly as they wished. The Yankees would not fight, but, if by any chance they did fight, they would get a most terrible thrashing. Tom, with a tin cup full of coffee in one hand and a tin plate containing ham and bread in the other, sat down by the side of Harry and leaned back against the log also. Harry had never seen a picture of more supreme content than his face showed.

"In thirty-six hours we'll have a new President, do you appreciate that fact, Harry Kenton?" asked young Langdon.

"I do," replied Harry, "and it makes me think pretty hard."

"What's the use of worrying? Why, it's just the biggest picnic that I ever took part in, and if the Yankees object to our setting up for ourselves I fancy we'll have to go up there and teach 'em to mind their own business. I wouldn't object, Harry, to a march at somebody else's expense to New York and Philadelphia and Boston. I suppose those cities are worth seeing."

Harry laughed. Langdon's good spirits were contagious even to a nature much more serious.

"I don't look on it as a picnic altogether," he said. "The Yankees will fight very hard, but we live on the land almost wholly, and the gra.s.s keeps on growing, whether there's war or not. Besides, we're an outdoor people, good hors.e.m.e.n, hunters, and marksmen. These things ought to help us."

"They will and we'll help ourselves most," said Langdon gaily. "I'm going to be either a general or a great politician, Harry. If it's a long war, I'll come out a general; if it's a short one, I mean to enter public life afterward and be a great orator. Did you ever hear me speak, Harry?"

"No, thank Heaven," replied Harry fervently. "Don't you think that South Carolina has enough orators now? What on earth do all your people find to talk about?"

Langdon laughed with the utmost good nature.

"We fire the human heart," he replied. "'Words, words, empty words,' it is not so. Words in themselves are often deeds, because the deeds start from them or are caused by them. The world has been run with words. All great actions result from them. Now, if we should have a big war, it would be said long afterward that it was caused by words, words spoken at Charleston and Boston, though, of course, the things they say at Boston are wrong, while those said at Charleston are right."

Harry laughed in his turn.