The Sword of Antietam: A Story of the Nation's Crisis Part 32

"I surely am. It's that cottage among the oaks. It's bigger than it looks from here. Front porch and back porch, too. You go from the back porch straight down to the river. I've swum across the Kentucky there at night many and many a time. My father and mother are sure to be there now, staying inside with the doors closed, because they're red hot for the Union. Farther up the street, the low red brick house with the iron fence around the yard is Jim Powell's home. You don't mind letting Jim have a look through the gla.s.ses, do you?"

"Of course not."

The gla.s.ses were handed in turn to Powell, who, as May had done, took a long, long look. He made no comment, when he gave the gla.s.ses back to d.i.c.k, merely saying: "Thank you." But d.i.c.k knew that Powell was deeply moved.

"It may be, lads," said Colonel Winchester, "that you will be able to enter your homes by the front doors in a day or two. Evidently the Southerners intend to make it a big day to-morrow when they inaugurate Hawes, their governor."

"A governor who's a governor only when he is surrounded by an army, won't be much of a governor," said Pennington. "This state refused to secede, and I guess that stands."

"Beyond a doubt it does," said Colonel Winchester, "but they've made great preparations, nevertheless. There are Confederate flags on the Capitol and the buildings back of it, and I see scaffolding for seats outside. Are there other places from which we can get good looks, lads?"

"Plenty of them," May and Powell responded together, and they led them from hill to hill, all covered with dense forest. Several times they saw Southern sentinels on the slopes near the edge of the woods, but May and Powell knew the ground so thoroughly that they were always able to keep the little troop under cover without interfering with their own scouting operations.

Buell had given final instructions to the colonel to come back with all the information possible, and, led by his capable guides, the colonel used his opportunities to the utmost. He made a half circle about Frankfort, going to the river, and then back again. With the aid of the gla.s.ses and the brilliancy of the night he was able to see that the division of Kirby Smith was not strong enough to hold the town under any circ.u.mstances, if the main Union army under Buell came up, and the colonel was resolved that it should come.

It was a singular coincidence that the Southerners were making a military occupation of Frankfort with a Union army only a day's march away. The colonel found a certain grim irony in it as he took his last look and turned away to join Buell.

A half mile into the forest and they heard the crashing of hoofs in the brushwood. Colonel Winchester drew up his little troop abruptly as a band of men in gray emerged into an open s.p.a.ce.

"Confederate cavalry!" exclaimed d.i.c.k.

"Yes," said the colonel.

But the gray troopers were not much more numerous than the blue.

Evidently they were a scouting party, too, and for a few minutes they stared at each other across a s.p.a.ce of a couple of hundred yards or so.

Both parties fired a few random rifle shots, more from a sense of duty than a desire to harm. Then they fell away, as if by mutual consent, the gray riding toward Frankfort and the blue toward the Union army.

"Was it a misfortune to meet them?" asked d.i.c.k.

"I don't think so," replied Colonel Winchester. "They had probably found out already that our army was near. Of course they had out scouts. Kirby Smith, I know, is an alert man, and anyway, the march of an army as large as ours could not be hidden."

It was dawn again when the colonel's little party reached the Union camp, and when he made his report the heavy columns advanced at once.

But the alarm had already spread about at Frankfort. The morning there looked upon a scene even more lively than the one that had occurred in Buell's camp. The scouts brought in the news that the Union army in great force was at hand. They had met some of their cavalry patrols in the night, on the very edge of the city. Resistance to the great Union force was out of the question, because Bragg had committed the error that the Union generals had been committing so often in the east. He had been dividing and scattering his forces so much that he could not now concentrate them and fight at the point where they were needed most.

The division of the Southern army that occupied Frankfort hastily gathered up its arms and supplies and departed, taking with it the governor who was never inaugurated, and soon afterward the Union men marched in. Both May and Powell had the satisfaction of entering their homes by the front doors, and seeing the parents who did not know until then whether they were dead or alive.

d.i.c.k had a few hours' leave and he walked about the town. He had made friends when he was there in the course of that memorable struggle over secession, and he saw again all of them who had not gone to the war.

Harry and his father were much present in his mind then, because he had recently seen Colonel Kenton, and because the year before, all three of them had talked together in these very places.

But he could not dwell too much in the past. He was too young for it, and the bustle of war was too great. It was said that Bragg's forces had turned toward the southeast, but were still divided. It was reported that the Bishop-General, Polk, had been ordered to attack the Northern force in or near Frankfort, but the attack did not come. Colonel Winchester said it was because Polk recognized the superior strength of his enemy, and was waiting until he could co-operate with Bragg and Hardee.

But whatever it was d.i.c.k soon found himself leaving Frankfort and marching into the heart of the Bluegra.s.s. He began to have the feeling, or rather instinct warned him, that battle was near. Yet he did not fear for the Northern army as he had feared in Virginia and Maryland.

He never felt that such men as Lee and Jackson were before them. He felt instead that the Southern commanders were doubtful and hesitating. They now had there no such leaders as Albert Sidney Johnston, who fell at Shiloh when victory was in Southern hands and before it had time to slip from their grasp.

So the army dropped slowly down eastward and southward through the Bluegra.s.s. May and Powell had obtained but a brief glimpse of their home town, before they were on their way again with a purpose which had little to do with such peaceful things as home.

d.i.c.k saw with dismay that the concentric march of the armies was bringing them toward the very region into which his mother had fled for refuge. She was at Danville, which is in the county of Boyle, and he heard now that the Confederate army, or at least a large division of it, was gathering at a group of splendid springs near a village called Perryville in the same county. But second thought told him that she would be safe yet in Danville, as he began to feel sure now that the meeting of the armies would be at Perryville.

d.i.c.k's certainty grew out of the fact that the great springs were about Perryville. The extraordinary drouth and the remarkable phenomenon of brooks drying up in Kentucky had continued. Water, cool and fresh for many thousands of men, was wanted or typhoid would come.

This need of vast quant.i.ties of water fresh and cool from the earth, was obvious to everybody, and the men marched gladly toward the springs.

The march would serve two purposes: it would quench their thirst, and it would bring on the battle they wanted to clear Kentucky of the enemy.

"Fine country, this of yours, d.i.c.k," said Warner as they rode side by side. "I don't think I ever saw dust of a higher quality. It sifts through everything, fills your eyes, nose and mouth and then goes down under your collar and gives you a neat and continuous dust bath."

"You mustn't judge us by this phenomenon," said d.i.c.k. "It has not happened before since the white man came, and it won't happen again in a hundred years."

"You may speak with certainty of the past, d.i.c.kie, my lad, but I don't think we can tell much about the next century. I'll grant the fact, however, that fifty or a hundred thousand men marching through a dry country anywhere are likely to raise a lot of dust. Still, d.i.c.kie, my boy, I don't mean to hurt your feelings, but if I live through this, as I mean to do, I intend to call it the Dusty Campaign."

"Call it what you like if in the end you call it victory."

"The dust doesn't hurt me," said Pennington. "I've seen it as dry as a bone on the plains with great clouds of it rolling away behind the buffalo herds. There's nothing the matter with dust. Country dust is one of the cleanest things in the world."

"That's so," said Warner, "but it tickles and makes you hot. I should say that despite its cleanly qualities, of which you speak, Frank, my friend, its power to annoy is unsurpa.s.sed. Remember that bath we took in the creek the night we went to Frankfort. Did you ever before see such cool running water, and d.i.c.kie, old boy, remember how much there was of it! It was just as deep and cool and fine after we left it."

"George," said d.i.c.k, as he wiped his dusty face, "if you say anything more about the creek and its cool water this army will lose a capable lieutenant, and it will lose him mighty soon. It will be necessary, too, to bury him very far from his home in Vermont."

"Keep cool, d.i.c.kie boy, and let who will be dusty. Brooks may fail once in a hundred years in Kentucky, but they haven't failed in a thousand in Vermont. You need not remind me that the white man has been there only two or three hundred years. My information comes straight from a very old Indian chief who was the depository of tribal recollections absolutely una.s.sailable. The streams even in midsummer come down as full and cold as ever from the mountains."

"We'll have water and plenty of it in a day or two. The scouts say that the Confederate force at the springs is not strong enough to withstand us."

"But General Buell, not knowing exactly what General Bragg intends with his divided force, has divided his own in order to meet him at all points."

"Has he done that?" exclaimed d.i.c.k aghast. Like other young officers he felt perfectly competent to criticize anybody.

"He has, and it seems to me that when the enemy divided was the time for us to unite or remain united. Then we could scoop him up in detail. Why, d.i.c.k, with an army of sixty thousand men or so, made of such material as ours has shown itself to be, we could surely beat any Southern force in Kentucky!"

"Especially as we have no Lees and Stonewall Jacksons to fight."

"Maybe General Buell has divided his force in order to obtain plenty of water," said Pennington. "We fellows ought to be fair to him."

"Perhaps you're right," said Warner, "and you're right when you say we ought to be fair to him. I know it will be a great relief to General Buell to find that we three are supporting his management of this army.

Shall I go and tell him, Frank?"

"Not now, but you can a little later on. Suppose you wait until a day or two after the battle which we all believe is coming."

The three boys were really in high spirits. Little troubled them but the dryness and the dust. They had tasted so much of defeat and drawn battle in the east that they had an actual physical sense of better things in the west. The horizons were wider, the mountains were lower, and there was not so much enveloping forest. They did not have the strangling sensation, mental only, which came from the fear that hostile armies would suddenly rush from the woods and fall upon their flank.

Besides, there was Shiloh. After all, they had won Shiloh, and the coming of this very Buell who led them now had enabled them to win it.

And Shiloh was the only great battle that they had yet really won.

They camped that night in the dry fields. The Winchester regiment was a part of the division under McCook, while Buell with the rest of the army was some miles away. It was still warm, although October was now seven days old, and d.i.c.k had never before heard the gra.s.s and leaves rustle so dryly under the wind. Off in the direction of Perryville they saw the dim gleam of red, and they knew it came from the camp-fires of the Southern army. Buell had in his detached divisions sixty thousand men, most of them veterans and d.i.c.k believed that if they were brought together victory was absolutely sure on the morrow.

The troops around the Winchester regiment were lads from Ohio, and they affiliated readily. Most of the new men were in these Ohio regiments, and d.i.c.k, Warner and Frank felt themselves ancient veterans who could talk to the recruits and give them good advice. And the recruits took it in the proper spirit. They looked up with admiration to those who had been at Shiloh, and the Second Mana.s.sas and Antietam.

d.i.c.k thought their spirit remarkable. They were not daunted at all by the great failures in the east. They did not discount the valor of the Southern troops, but they asked to be led against them.

"Come over here," said one of the Ohio boys to d.i.c.k. "Ahead of us and on the side there's rough ground with thick woods and deep ravines. I'll show you something just at the edge of the woods. Bring your friends with you."