The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come Part 25

A chuckle rose behind them. A lame colonel was limping past.

"I got your courier," he said.

"I sent no courier," said Morgan.

"It was Forbes who wanted to charge 'em," said Dan.

Again the Colonel chuckled.

"The Yankees ran when you did," he said, and limped, chuckling, away.

But it was great fun, those moonlit nights, burning bridges and chasing Home Guards who would flee fifteen or twenty miles sometimes to "rally." Here was a little town through which Dan and Richard Hunt had marched with nine prisoners in a column-taken by them alone-and a captured United States flag, flying in front, scaring Confederate sympathizers and straggling soldiers, as Hunt reported, horribly. Dan chuckled at the memory, for the prisoners were quartered with different messes, and, that night, several bottles of sparkling Catawba happened, by some mystery, to be on hand. The prisoners were told that this was regularly issued by their commissaries, and thereupon they plead, with tears, to be received into the Confederate ranks.

This kind of service was valuable training for Morgan's later work. Slight as it was, it soon brought him thirty old, condemned artillery-horses-Dan smiled now at the memory of those ancient chargers-which were turned over to Morgan to be nursed until they would bear a mount, and, by and by, it gained him a colonelcy and three companies, superbly mounted and equipped, which, as "Morgan's Squadron," became known far and near. Then real service began.

In January, the right wing of Johnston's hungry hawk had been broken in the c.u.mberland Mountains. Early in February, Johnston had withdrawn it from Kentucky before Buell's hosts, with its beak always to the foe. By the middle of the month, Grant had won the Western border States to the Union, with the capture of Fort Donelson. In April, the sun of Shiloh rose and set on the failure of the first Confederate aggressive campaign at the West; and in that fight Dan saw his first real battle, and Captain Hunt was wounded. In May, Buell had pushed the Confederate lines south and east toward Chattanooga. To retain a hold on the Mississippi valley, the Confederates must make another push for Kentucky, and it was this great Southern need that soon put John Morgan's name on the lips of every rebel and Yankee in the middle South. In June, provost-marshals were appointed in every county in Kentucky; the dogs of war began to be turned locals on the "secesh sympathizers" throughout the State, and Jerome Conners, overseer, began to render sly service to the Union cause.

For it was in June that Morgan paid his first memorable little visit to the Bluegra.s.s, and Daniel Dean wrote his brother Harry the short tale of the raid.

"We left Dixie with nine hundred men," the letter ran, "and got back in twenty-four days with twelve hundred. Travelled over one thousand miles, captured seventeen towns, destroyed all Government supplies and arms in them, scattered fifteen hundred Home Guards, and paroled twelve hundred regular troops. Lost of the original nine hundred, in killed, wounded, and missing, about ninety men. How's that? We kept twenty thousand men busy guarding Government posts or chasing us, and we're going back often. Oh Harry, I AM glad that you are with Grant."

But Harry was not with Grant-not now. While Morgan was marching up from Dixie to help Kirby Smith in the last great effort that the Confederacy was about to make to win Kentucky-down from the yellow river marched the Fourth Ohio Cavalry to go into camp at Lexington; and with it marched Chadwick Buford and Harry Dean who, too, were veterans now-who, too, were going home. Both lads wore a second lieutenant's empty shoulder-straps, which both yet meant to fill with bars, but Chad's promotion had not come as swiftly as Harry had predicted; the Captain, whose displeasure he had incurred, prevented that. It had come, in time, however, and with one leap he had landed, after Shiloh, at Harry's side. In the beginning, young Dean had wanted to go to the Army of the Potomac, as did Chad, but one quiet word from the taciturn colonel with the stubbly reddish-brown beard and the perpetual black cigar kept both where they were.

"Though," said Grant to Chad, as his eye ran over beautiful Dixie from tip of nose to tip of tail, and came back to Chad, slightly twinkling, "I've a great notion to put you in the infantry just to get hold of that horse."

So it was no queer turn of fate that had soon sent both the lads to help hold Zollicoffer at c.u.mberland Gap, that stopped them at Camp d.i.c.k Robinson to join forces with Wolford's cavalry, and brought Chad face to face with an old friend. Wolford's cavalry was gathered from the mountains and the hills, and when some scouts came in that afternoon, Chad, to his great joy, saw, mounted on a gaunt sorrel, none other than his old school-master, Caleb Hazel, who, after shaking hands with both Harry and Chad, pointed silently at a great, strange figure following him on a splendid horse some fifty yards behind. The man wore a slouch hat, tow linen breeches, home-made suspenders, a belt with two pistols, and on his naked heels were two huge Texan spurs. Harry broke into a laugh, and Chad's puzzled face cleared when the man grinned; it was Yankee Jake Dillon, one of the giant twins. Chad looked at him curiously; that blow on the head that his brother, Rebel Jerry, had given him, had wrought a miracle. The lips no longer hung apart, but were set firmly, and the eye was almost keen; the face was still rather stupid, but not foolish-and it was still kind. Chad knew that, somewhere in the Confederate lines, Rebel Jerry was looking for Jake, as Yankee Jake, doubtless, was now looking for Jerry, and he began to think that it might be well for Jerry if neither was ever found. Daws Dillon, so he learned from Caleb Hazel and Jake, was already making his name a watchword of terror along the border of Virginia and Tennessee, and was prowling, like a wolf, now and then, along the edge of the Bluegra.s.s. Old Joel Turner had died of his wound, Rube had gone off to the war and Mother Turner and Melissa were left at home, alone.

"Daws fit fust on one side and then on t'other," said Jake, and then he smiled in a way that Chad understood; "an' sence you was down thar last Daws don't seem to hanker much atter meddlin' with the Turners, though the two women did have to run over into Virginny, once in a while. Melissy," he added, "was a-goin' to marry Dave Hilton, so folks said; and he reckoned they'd already hitched most likely, sence Chad thar-"

A flash from Chad's eyes stopped him, and Chad, seeing Harry's puzzled face, turned away. He was glad that Melissa was going to marry-yes, he was glad; and how he did pray that she might be happy!

Fighting Zollicoffer, only a few days later, Chad and Harry had their baptism of fire, and strange battle orders they heard, that made them smile even in the thick of the fight.

"Huddle up thar!" "Scatterout, now!" "Form a line of fight!" "Wait till you see the shine of their eyes!"

"I see 'em!" shouted a private, and "bang" went his gun. That was the way the fight opened. Chad saw Harry's eyes blazing like stars from his pale face, which looked pained and half sick, and Chad understood-the lads were fighting their own people, and there was no help for it. A voice bellowed from the rear, and a man in a red cap loomed in the smoke-mist ahead:

"Now, now! Git up and git, boys!"

That was the order for the charge, and the blue line went forward. Chad never forgot that first battle-field when he saw it a few hours later strewn with dead and wounded, the dead lying, as they dropped, in every conceivable position, features stark, limbs rigid; one man with a half-smoked cigar on his breast; the faces of so many beardless; some frowning, some as if asleep and dreaming; and the wounded-some talking pitifully, some in delirium, some courteous, patient, anxious to save trouble, others morose, sullen, stolid, independent; never forgot it, even the terrible night after Shiloh, when he searched heaps of wounded and slain for Caleb Hazel, who lay all through the night wounded almost to death.

Later, the Fourth Ohio followed Johnston, as he gave way before Buell, and many times did they skirmish and fight with ubiquitous Morgan's Men. Several times Harry and Dan sent each other messages to say that each was still unhurt, and both were in constant horror of some day coming face to face. Once, indeed, Harry, chasing a rebel and firing at him, saw him lurch in his saddle, and Chad, coming up, found the lad on the ground, crying over a canteen which the rebel had dropped. It was marked with the initials D. D., the strap was cut by the bullet Harry had fired, and not for a week of agonizing torture did Harry learn that the canteen, though Dan's, had been carried that day by another man.

It was on these scouts and skirmishes that the four-Harry and Chad, and Caleb Hazel and Yankee Jake Dillon, whose dog-like devotion to Chad soon became a regimental joke-became known, not only among their own men, but among their enemies, as the shrewdest and most daring scouts in the Federal service. Every Morgan's man came to know the name of Chad Buford; but it was not until Shiloh that Chad got his shoulder-straps, leading a charge under the very eye of General Grant. After Shiloh, the Fourth Ohio went back to its old quarters across the river, and no sooner were Chad and Harry there than Kentucky was put under the Department of the Ohio; and so it was also no queer turn of fate that now they were on their way to new head-quarters in Lexington.

Straight along the turnpike that ran between the Dean and the Buford farms, the Fourth Ohio went in a cloud of thick dust that rose and settled like a gray choking mist on the seared fields. Side by side rode Harry and Chad, and neither spoke when, on the left, the white columns of the Dean house came into view, and, on the right, the red brick of Chad's old home showed through the dusty leaves; not even when both saw on the Dean porch the figures of two women who, standing motionless, were looking at them. Harry's shoulders drooped, and he stared stonily ahead, while Chad turned his head quickly. The front door and shutters of the Buford house were closed, and there were few signs of life about the place. Only at the gate was the slouching figure of Jerome Conners, the overseer, who, waving his hat at the column, recognized Chad, as he rode by, and spoke to him, Chad thought, with a covert sneer. Farther ahead, and on the farthest boundary of the Buford farm, was a Federal fort, now deserted, and the beautiful woodland that had once stood in perfect beauty around it was sadly ravaged and nearly gone, as was the Dean woodland across the road. It was plain that some people were paying the Yankee piper for the death-dance in which a mighty nation was shaking its feet.

On they went, past the old college, down Broadway, wheeling at Second Street-Harry going on with the regiment to camp on the other edge of the town; Chad reporting with his colonel at General Ward's head-quarters, a columned brick house on one corner of the college campus, and straight across from the Hunt home, where he had first danced with Margaret Dean.

That night the two lay on the edge of the Ashland woods, looking up at the stars, the ripened bluegra.s.s-a yellow, moonlit sea-around them and the woods dark and still behind them. Both smoked and were silent, but each knew that to the other his thoughts were known; for both had been on the same errand that day, and the miserable tale of the last ten months both had learned.

Trouble had soon begun for the ones who were dear to them, when both left for the war. At once General Anderson had promised immunity from arrest to every peaceable citizen in the State, but at once the shiftless, the prowling, the lawless, gathered to the Home Guards for self-protection, to mask deviltry and to wreak vengeance for private wrongs. At once mischief began. Along the Ohio, men with Southern sympathies were clapped into prison. Citizens who had joined the Confederates were p.r.o.nounced guilty of treason, and Breckinridge was expelled from the Senate as a traitor. Morgan's great raid in June, '61, spread consternation through the land and, straightway, every district and county were at the mercy of a petty local provost. No man of Southern sympathies could stand for office. Courts in session were broken up with the bayonet. Civil authority was overthrown. Destruction of property, indemnity a.s.sessments on innocent men, arrests, imprisonment, and murder became of daily occurrence. Ministers were jailed and lately prisons had even been prepared for disloyal women. Major Buford, forced to stay at home on account of his rheumatism and the serious illness of Miss Lucy, had been sent to prison once and was now under arrest again. General Dean, old as he was, had escaped and had gone to Virginia to fight with Lee; and Margaret and Mrs. Dean, with a few servants, were out on the farm alone.

But neither spoke of the worst that both feared was yet to come-and "Taps" sounded soft and dear on the night air.

CHAPTER 23.

CHAD CAPTURES AN OLD FRIEND

Meanwhile Morgan was coming on-led by the two videttes in gray-Daniel Dean and Rebel Jerry Dillon-coming on to meet Kirby Smith in Lexington after that general had led the Bluegra.s.s into the Confederate fold. They were taking short cuts through the hills now, and Rebel Jerry was guide, for he had joined Morgan for that purpose. Jerry had long been notorious along the border. He never gave quarter on his expeditions for personal vengeance, and it was said that not even he knew how many men he had killed. Every Morgan's man had heard of him, and was anxious to see him; and see him they did, though they never heard him open his lips except in answer to a question. To Dan he seemed to take a strange fancy right away, but he was as voiceless as the grave, except for an occasional oath, when bush-whackers of Daws Dillon's ilk would pop at the advance guard-sometimes from a rock directly overhead, for chase was useless. It took a roundabout climb of one hundred yards to get to the top of that rock, so there was nothing for videttes and guards to do but pop back, which they did to no purpose. On the third day, however, after a skirmish in which Dan had charged with a little more dare-deviltry than usual, the big Dillon ripped out an oath of protest. An hour later he spoke again:

"I got a brother on t'other side."

Dan started. "Why, so have I," he said. "What's your brother with?"

"Wolford's cavalry."

"That's curious. So was mine-for a while. He's with Grant now." The boy turned his head away suddenly.

"I might meet him, if he were with Wolford now," he said, half to himself, but Jerry heard him and smiled viciously.

"Well, that's what I'm goin' with you fellers fer-to meet mine."

"What!" said Dan, puzzled.

"We've been lookin' fer each other sence the war broke out. I reckon he went on t'other side to keep me from killin' him."

Dan shrank away from the giant with horror; but next day the mountaineer saved the boy's life in a fight in which Dan's chum-gallant little Tom Morgan-lost his; and that night, as Dan lay sleepless and crying in his blanket, Jerry Dillon came in from guard-duty and lay down by him.

"I'm goin' to take keer o' you."

"I don't need you," said Dan, gruffly, and Rebel Jerry grunted, turned over on his side and went to sleep. Night and day thereafter he was by the boy's side.

A thrill ran through the entire command when the column struck the first Bluegra.s.s turnpike, and a cheer rang from front to rear. Near Midway, a little Bluegra.s.s town some fifteen miles from Lexington, a halt was called, and another deafening cheer arose in the extreme rear and came forward like a rushing wind, as a coal-black horse galloped the length of the column-its rider, hat in hand, bowing with a proud smile to the flattering storm-for the idolatry of the man and his men was mutual-with the erect grace of an Indian, the air of a courtier, and the bearing of a soldier in every line of the six feet and more of his tireless frame. No man who ever saw John Morgan on horseback but had the picture stamped forever on his brain, as no man who ever saw that coal-black horse ever forgot Black Bess. Behind him came his staff, and behind them came a wizened little man, whose nickname was "Lightning"-telegraph operator for Morgan's Men. There was need of Lightning now, so Morgan sent him on into town with Dan and Jerry Dillon, while he and Richard Hunt followed leisurely.

The three troopers found the station operator seated on the platform-pipe in mouth, and enjoying himself hugely. He looked lazily at them.

"Call up Lexington," said Lightning, sharply.

"Go to h.e.l.l!" said the operator, and then he nearly toppled from his chair. Lightning, with a vicious gesture, had swung a pistol on him.

"Here-here!" he gasped, "what'd you mean?"

"Call up Lexington," repeated Lightning. The operator seated himself.

"What do you want in Lexington?" he growled.