that mule. I mauled the mule, and the more I pounded the slower it went. There was never a more deliberate mule in the world. I forgot all the solemn thoughts that possessed me at the grave, and tried to talk to the mule like a mule-driver, but the animal just fooled along, as though there was no especial hurry. Occasionally I could hear bullets 'zipping' along by me, and the rebels were yelling for all that was out. O, how I did wish I had my old race horse that the chaplain had beat me out of. In my first engagement my horse was too fast, and there was danger that I would catch my friend, the rebel, and I complained of the horse. Now I had a mule that was too slow. What I wanted was a 'middling' horse, one that was not too confounded fast when after the enemy, and one not so all-fired slow when being pursued. The Johnnies were coming closer, but we were only half a mile from town. Would they chase us clear into town? At that critical moment the blasted mule stopped short, never to go again, and began to kick. What on earth possessed that fool mule to take a notion to stop right there and kick, is more than I shall ever know, but it simply kicked, and I felt that my time had come. The Union soldiers that were being chased by the Confederates passed me, and told me I better light out or I would be captured, but I couldn't get the mule to budge an inch. It just kicked. The good Lord only knows, what that mule was kicking at, or why it should have been scheduled to stop and kick at that particular time, when every minute was precious. I saw the rebels very near me, and as it was impossible to get the mule to go a step farther, I raised the large, flat, white-washed picket which I had torn on the cemetery fence to maul the mule with, in token of surrender, and the Confederate boys surrounded me, though they kept a safe distance, after my mule had kicked in the ribs of one of their horses. The rebs had gone about as far towards the town as it was safe to go, and and they knew the whole garrison would be out after them pretty soon, so they laughed at me for being armed with a whitewashed picket, and asked me if I expected to put down the rebellion by stabbing the enemy with such things. I told them I had been burying a nigger. One of my captors run the point of his saber into my mule, to stop its kicking, and then he said to his comrades, "Boys, we came out here with the glorious prospect of capturing a Yankee general and his staff, and instead of getting him, we have broken up a nigger funeral and captured the gospel sharp, armed with a picket fence, and a kicking mule. Shall we hang him for engaging in uncivilized, warfare, by stabbing us with pickets poisoned with whitewash, or shall we take the red-headed slim-jim back with us as a curiosity." The boys all said not to hang me, but to take me along. I saw that it was all day with me this time. I felt that I was helping put down the rebellion rapidly, as I had been a soldier four weeks, been captured twice, and not a drop of blood had been spilled. The rebels started back, with me and my mule ahead of them, and they kept the mule ahead by jabbing it with a saber occasionally. I felt humiliated and indignant at being called slim-jim, sorrel-top, and elder. They seemed to think I was a preacher. I stood it all until a cuss reached into my pocket and took my meershaum pipe and a bag of tobacco, filled the pipe and lit it, then I was mad. I had paid eight dollars of my bounty for that pipe, and I said to the leader: "Boss, I can stand a joke as well as anybody, but when you capture me, in a fair fight, you have no right to jab my mule with a saber, or call me names. I am a meek and lowly soldier of the army of the right, and want to so live that I can meet you all in the great hereafter, but by the gods I can whip the condemned galoot that stole my meershaum pipe. You think I am pious, and a non-combatant, but I am a fighter from away back, and don't you forget it." The young man who seemed to be in command told me to dry up, and he would get my pipe. He went and took it away from the one who had stolen it, filled it and lit it himself, and said it was a good pipe, and then he passed it around among them all. We moved on at a trot, and were getting far away from my regiment, and I realized that I was a captive, and that I should probably die in Andersonville prison. I looked at the dozen stalwart rebels that were riding behind me, and knew I could not whip them all with one picket off the cemetery fence, and so I resolved to remain a captive, and die for my country, of scurvey, if necessary. I turned around in my saddle to ask if it wasn t about time for me to have a smoke out of my own pipe, and as I looked up the road we had come over I saw a large body of our own cavalry, coming like the wind toward us. I said nothing, but my face gave me away. I looked so tickled to see the boys coming that the rebels noticed it, and they looked back and saw the soldiers in pursuit, they yelled, "The Yanks are coming!" put spurs to their horses, stabbed my mule and told me to pound it with the picket, and hurry up, and then they passed me, and away they went, leaving me in the road alone between them and my own soldiers, I yelled to the leader to give me back my pipe, and I can hear his mocking laugh to this day, as he told me to "go to hell." This made me mad, and drawing my picket I dashed after the retreating rebels, knowing that the men of my regiment would soon overtake me, and they would think I had chased the rebels three miles from town, armed only with a picket off the fence, and saved the garrison from capture. The thing worked to perfection, and when our command came up, the horses panting and perspiring, and the boys looking wild, the captain in command asked me how many there was of em, and I told him about forty, and he said I had done well to drive them so far, and he charged by me after them. I yelled to the captain to try and kill that long-legged rebel on the sorrel horse, and get my meershaum pipe, but he didn't hear me. I hurried along as fast as I could, but before I caught up, there was a good deal of firing, and when I got there flankers were out in the woods, and there was sorrow, for three or four boys in blue had been killed in an ambush, and the rebels had got away across a bayou. As I rode up on my mule, with the picket still in my hand, I saw the three soldiers of my regiment lying dead under a tree, two others were wounded and had bandages around their heads, and for the first time since I had been a soldier, I realized that war was not a picnic. I could not keep my eyes off the faces of my dead comrades, the best and bravest boys in the regiment, boys who always got to the front when there was a skirmish. To think that I had been riding right amongst the rebels who had done this thing but a few minutes before, and never thought that death would claim anybody so soon. I wondered if those rebels were not sorry they had killed such good boys. I wondered, as I thought of the fathers and mothers, and sisters of my dead companions, whether the rebels would not sympathize with them, and then I thought suppose our fellows had not been killed, and we had killed some of the Confederates, wouldn't it have been just as sorrowful, wouldn't their fathers, mothers and sisters have mourned the same.

Then I made a resolve that I would never kill anybody if I could help it; I even decided that if I should meet the rebel that had my meershaum pipe, I would not fight him to get it. If he wasn't gentleman enough to give it up peaceably, he could keep it, and be darned. Just then some of our skirmishers came in carrying another dead body, and we were all speculating as to which one of our poor boys had fallen, when we noticed that the dead soldier had on a gray suit, and it was soon found that he was one of the Confederates. He was laid down beside our dead boys, and I don't know but I felt about as bad to see him dead, as it was possible to feel. It is true he had told me, half an hour before, when I asked him for my pipe, to go to hades, but I did not have to go unless I wanted to. And he was gone first. I saw something sticking out of the breast pocket of the dead Confederate, and could see that it was my pipe. Then I thought of the foolish remark I made to the captain, to kill that long-legged rebel and get my meershaum. God bless him, I didn't want anybody to kill him for a bad smelling old pipe, and I wondered if that remark would be registered up against me, in the great book above, when I didn't mean it. I tried to make myself believe that my remark did not have any influence on the man's fate. He just took his chances with his comrades, and was killed, no doubt, and yet it was impossible to get the idea off my mind that I was responsible for his death. Anyway, I would never touch the confounded old pipe again, and if I ever heard of his mother or sister, after the war was over, I would stand by them as long as I had a nickel. An ambulance was sent for and the dead and wounded were placed in it, and we went back to town, a sad procession. There was no need to detail any mourners for this occasion, and there was no straggling for watermelons. Everybody was full of sorrow. The next day there was a Union funeral in that Southern town, and the three Union boys were laid side by side, while a little, to one side my Confederate was buried, receiving the same kind words from the chaplains. As a volley was about to be fired over the graves, I picked a handful of roses, buds and blossoms, from a rose bush in the cemetery, and went to the grave of the Confederate and tenderly tossed them upon the coffin. The horse doctor saw me do it, and in his rough manner said,

"What you about there? It ain t necessary to plant flowers on the graves of rebels.

"O, no, it isn't necessary, I said, as the volley was fired over the graves, but it will make his mother or his sister feel better to know that there are a few roses in there, and it won't hurt anybody. I will just play that I am the authorized agent of that Confederate soldier's sister.

"O, all right if you say so, said the horse-doctor, as he drew the sleeve of his blue blouse across his eyes, which were wet. The last volley was fired, and the soldiers returned to camp, leaving the dead of two armies sleeping together. As I went in the chaplain's tent and sat down to think, the chaplain handed me something, saying:

"Here's your pipe. They found it on that Confederate soldier that captured you."

I pushed it away and said, "I don't want it. I have quit smoking."



CHAPTER VI.

I Capture "Jeff"—I Get Back at the Chaplain—The Chaplain Arrested—Off on a Raid—I Meet the Relatives of the Dead Confederate—My Powers of Lying are Brought into Play.

The winding up of the last chapter of this history, with its sad incidents, deaths and burials, was unavoidable, but it shall not occur again. The true historian has got to get in all the particulars. I think I never felt quite as downhearted as I did the day or two after the skirmish, when our boys were killed. It had seemed as though there was no danger of anybody getting hurt, as long as they looked out for themselves, but now there was a feeling that anybody was liable to be killed, any time, and why not me? Of course the old veterans of the regiment were the ones who would naturally be expected to take the brunt of the battle, but there was a habit of sending raw recruits into places of danger that struck me as being mighty careless, as well as very bad judgment. Then there were great preparations being made for an advance movement, or a retreat, or something, and my mind was constantly occupied in trying to find out whether it was to be an advance or a retreat. If it was an advance, I wanted to arrange to be in the rear, and if it was a retreat, it seemed to me as as though the proper place for a man who wanted to live to go home, was in front. And yet what chance was there for a common private soldier to find out whether it was an advance or a retreat. Finally I decided that when the regiment did start out, I would manage to be about the middle, so it wouldn't make much difference which way we went. When that idea occurred to me I pondered over it a good deal and told the chaplain, and he said it was a piece of as brilliant strategy as he had ever heard of, and he was willing to adopt it, only being a staff officer it was necessary for him and me to ride with the colonel, and the colonel most always rode at the head, though his place was about the middle. He said he would speak to the colonel about it. It made my hair stand to see the preparations that were being made for carnage. Ammunition enough was issued to kill a million men, and the doctors were packing bandages and plasters, and physic, and splints and probes, until it made me sick to look at them. When I thought of actual war, my mind reverted to my mule, the kicking brute that was no good, and I decided to get a horse. I had got so, actually, that I could hear bullets whistle without turning pale and having cold chills run over me, and it seemed as though a horse was none too good for me, so I went to the colonel and told him that a soldier couldn't make no show on a kicking mule and I wanted a horse. I told him I supposed, as chaplain's clerk. I should have to ride with him and his staff on the march, and he didn't want to see as nice a looking fellow as I was riding a kicking mule that would kick the ribs of the officers horses, and break the officers legs. The colonel said he had not thought of that contingency. He had enjoyed seeing me ride the mule, because I was so patient when the mule kicked. He said they used that mule in the regiment to teach recruits to ride. A man who could stay on that mule could ride any horse in the regiment, and as I had been successful, and had displayed splendid mulemanship, I should be promoted to ride a horse, and he told the quartermaster to exchange with me and give me the chestnut-sorrel horse that the Confederate was shot off of. I went with the quartermaster to the corral, turned out my mule, and cornered the beautiful horse that had been rode so proudly a few days before by my friend, the rebel. It took six of us to catch the horse, and bridle and saddle him, and the men about the corral said the horse was no good. He hadn't eaten anything since being captured, and his eyes looked bad, and he wanted to kick and bite everybody. I told them the poor horse was homesick, that was all that ailed him. The horse was a Confederate at heart, and he naturally had no particular love for Yankees. I remembered that once or twice when I was riding with the rebels, after they captured me, the young fellow on this horse patted him on the neck and called him "Jeff", so I knew that was his name, so I led him out of the corral away from the other fellows, where there was some grass growing, and made up my mind I would "mash" him. After he had eaten grass a little while, looking at me out of the corner of his eyes as though he didn't know whether to kick my head on, or walk on me, as I sat under a tree, I got up and patted him on the neck and said, "Well, Jeff, old boy, how does the grass fit your stomach?"

You may talk about brute intelligence, but that horse was human. He stopped eating, with his mouth full of grass, looked astonished at being addressed by a stranger without an introduction, and turned a pair of eyes as beautiful and soft as a woman's upon me, and then began to chew slowly, as though thinking. I rubbed his sleek coat with, my bare hands, and did not say much, desiring to have Jeff make the first advances. He looked me over, and finally put his nose on my sleeve, and rubbed me, and looked in my face, and acted as though he would say, "Well, of course this red-headed fellow is no comparison to my dead master, but evidently he's no slouch, and if I have got to be bossed around by a Yankee, as he is the only one that has spoken a kind word to me since I was captured, and he seems to know my name, I guess I will tie to him," and the intelligent animal rubbed his nose all over me, and licked my hand. I rubbed the horse all over, petted him, took up his feet and looked at them, and spoke his name, and pretty soon we were the best of friends. I mounted him and rode around and it was just like a rocking chair. That poor, dead Confederate had probably rode Jeff since he was a kid and Jeff was a colt, and had broken him well, and I was awfully sorry that the original owner was not alive, riding his horse home safe and sound, to be greeted by his family with loving embraces. But he was dead and buried, and his horse belonged to me, by all the laws of war. And yet I had not become a hardened warrior to such an extent that I could forget the hearts that would ache at his home, and I made up mind that horse would be treated as tenderly as though he was one of my family. I rode Jeff around for an hour or two, found that he was trained to jump fences, stand on his hind feet, trot, pace, rack, and that he could run like a scared wolf, and everything the horse did he would sort of look around at me with one eye as much as to say, "Boss, you will find I have got all the modern improvements, and you needn't be afraid that I will disgrace you in any society." I was fairly in love with my new horse, and, except for a feeling that I was an interloper with the horse, and sorry for the poor boy that had been shot off him, I should have been perfectly happy.

The chaplain had got in the habit of wearing a nice, blue broadcloth blouse which I had brought from home, which had two rows of brass buttons on it. I had paid about twenty dollars of my bounty for the blouse, and had found that the private soldiers did not wear such elaborate uniforms in active duty, so I kept it in the chaplain's tent. I thought if I was killed and my body was sent home, the blouse would come handy. The chaplain wore it occasionally, and he said any time I wanted to wear any of his clothes to just help myself. An order had been issued to move the following day, with ten days' rations, and some of the boys asked for passes to go down town and have a little blow-out before we started. They wanted me to go along, and so I got a pass, too. We were to go down town in the afternoon and stay till nine o clock at night, when we had to be in camp. I saddled up Jeff and looked for my blouse, but it was gone, the chaplain having worn it to visit the chaplain of some other regiment, so I took his coat and put it on, as he had told me to. The coat had the chaplain's shoulder-straps on, but I thought there would be no harm in wearing it, so about a dozen of us privates started for town to have a good time, and I with chaplain's-straps on. It was customary, when soldiers went to town on a pass, to partake of intoxicating beverages more or less, as that was about the only form of enjoyment, and I blush now, twenty-two years afterward, to write the fact that we all got pretty full. It seemed so like home to be able to go into a saloon and drink beer, good old northern beer, and who knew but tomorrow we would be killed. So we ate, drank, and were merry. One of the boys said when the officers got on a tear, they would ride right into billiard saloons, and sometime shoot at decanters of red liquor behind the bar, and he said a private was just as good as an officer any day, and suggested that we mount our horses and paint the town. We mounted, and rode about town, racing up and down the streets, and finally we came to a billiard saloon, and half a dozen of us rode right in, took cues out of the rack, and tried to play billiards on horse-back. It was a grand picnic then, though it seems foolish now. My horse Jeff would do anything I asked him, and when I rode up to the bar and told him to rear up, he put both fore feet on the bar, and looked at the bartender as much as to say, "set up the best you have got."

The chaplain's shoulder-straps gave the crowd a sort of confidence that everything was all right, and after exhibiting in a saloon for a time, there was something said about horse-racing, and I said my horse could beat anything on four legs, so we adjourned to the outskirts of town for a race, followed by half the people in town. We had a horse-race, and Jeff beat them all, and wherever I went the crowd would cheer the chaplain. They said they liked to see a man in that position who could unbend himself and mix up with the boys. There never was a chaplain more popular than the "Wisconsin preacher" was. It did not occur to me that I was placing the chaplain in an unfavorable position before the public, by wearing his coat. Nothing occurred to me, that day, except that we were having a high old time. Finally, after dark, one of our boys got into a row with a loafer in a saloon, and picked the loafer up and tossed him through the window, to the sidewalk. This was very wrong, but it couldn't be helped. There was a great noise, cries for the provost guard, and we knew that the only way to get out of the scrape honorably, would be to get out real quick, so we mounted and rode to our camp. My horse was the fastest and I got home first, unsaddled my horse and went to the tent, took off the chaplain's coat and hung it up carefully, and was at work writing a letter, and thinking how my horse acted as though he had been on sprees before, he enjoyed it so, when I heard a noise outside, and it was evident that the provost guard had followed us to camp, and were making complaint to the colonel about our conduct down town. Finally the guard went away, and shortly the colonel and the adjutant called at our tent and inquired for the chaplain. I told them the chaplain had been away most of the day, and had not returned. The colonel and the adjutant winked at each other, and asked me if he wasn t away a good deal. I told them that he was away some. They asked me if I never noticed that his breath had a peculiar smell. I told them that it was occasionally a little loud. They went away thoughtfully. Now that I think of it I ought to have explained that the peculiarity of the chaplain's breath was caused from eating pickled onions of the sanitary stores, but it did not occur to me at the time. After a while the chaplain came back, asked me if anybody had died during the day, took a drink of blackberry brandy for what ailed him, and we retired. The next morning there was a circus. The little town boasted, a daily paper, and it contained the following:

"The community is prepared to overlook an occasional scene of hilarity among the Federal soldiers stationed in this vicinity, but when a gang of roysterers is led by a chaplain, as was the case yesterday, all right-minded people will be indignant. It is said by our informant that the chaplain of a certain cavalry regiment was the liveliest one of the crowd, that he rode into a billiard room, caused his horse to place its forefeet on the bar, and that he played a better game of billiards on horseback than many worldly men can play on foot. It is the duty of the commanding officer to discipline his chaplain. The chaplain also beat the boys several horse races while in town, and they say he is a perfect horseman, and has one of the finest horses ever seen here, which he probably stole."

I had a boy bring me a paper every morning, and I read the article before the chaplain awoke, and destroyed the paper. Early the next morning the colonel sent for the chaplain, placed him under arrest, and the good man came back to the tent feeling pretty bad. I asked him what was wrong, and he said he was under arrest for conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman. He said charges were preferred against him for drunkenness and disorderly conduct, horse-racing, playing billiards on horse-back, riding his horse into a saloon and trying to jump him over the bar, and lots of things too numerous to mention. I felt sorry for him, and told him I had been fearful all along that he would get into trouble by going away from me so much, and associating with the chaplains of the other regiments, but I had never supposed it would come to this.

"Wine is a mocker," said I, becoming warmed up, "and none of us can afford to tamper with it. With me, it does not make so much difference, as I have no reputation but that which is already lost, but you, my dear sir, think of your position. Go to the colonel and confess all, and ask him to forgive you," and I wiped my eyes on my coat sleeve.

"But I was not drunk," said the chaplain, indignantly. "I was not in a saloon, and never saw a game of billiards in my life. I was over to the New Jersey regiment, talking with their chaplain about getting up a revival, among the soldiers," and the good man groaned as he said, "it is a case of mistaken identity."

"Bully, elder," said I. "If you can make the court-martial believe you, you will be all right, and you will not be cashiered. But it looks dark, very dark, for you. May heaven help you."

The chaplain was worried all the morning, and the officers and men joked him unmercifully. At noon the chaplain was released from arrest, as we were to move at four p. m., and he begged so to be allowed to accompany the regiment. The colonel told him he could be tried when we got back, and he was happy. There was a great commotion as the regiment broke up its camp and got ready to move. There was the usual crowd of negresses who had been doing washing for the soldiers, to be paid on pay day, and we were going away, no one knew where, and no one knew when we would meet pay day. There were saloon-keepers with bills against officers, and standing-off creditors was just about as hard in the army as at home. I couldn't see much difference. But finally everything was ready, the ammunition wagons, wagon train of stores, and a battery of little guns, about three pounders, had been added. I didn't like the battery. It seemed to me hard enough to kill our fellow citizens with revolver balls, without shooting them with cannon. At 4 p.m. the bugle sounded "forward," and with the clanking of sabers, rattling of hoofs and wagons, we marched outside the picket line, past the cemetery where my deceased friends were buried, and were going towards the enemy. The chaplain and myself were riding behind the colonel, when the colonel asked the good man to ride up to a log that was beside the road, and make his horse put his forefeet upon it, as he did on the bar in the saloon. I felt sorry for the chaplain, and I rode up to the log, and had Jeff put his feet up on it. Then I rode back and saluted the colonel and told him it was I who had done the wicked things the chaplain was accused of, and I told him how the chaplain was using my coat, so I put on his, with the shoulder straps on, and all about it. He laughed at first and then said, "Then you are under arrest. You may dismount and walk and lead your horse until further orders." I dismounted, like a little man, and for five miles I walked, keeping up with the regiment. Finally the colonel sung out, "gallop, march," and I got on my horse. I reasoned that the order to gallop was "further orders," and that as he knew I couldn't very well gallop on foot he must have meant for me to get on. We galloped for about ten miles, and were ordered to halt, when I dismounted and led my horse up to the colonel, and saluted him. "Well, you must have had a hard time keeping up with us on foot," said he. I told him it rested me to go on foot. We were just going into camp for the night, and the colonel said, "Well, as you are rested so much from your walk, you may go out with the foraging party and get some feed for your horse and the chaplain's." I was willing to do anything for a quiet life, so I fell in with a party of about forty, under a lieutenant, and we rode off into the country to steal forage from a plantation, keeping a sharp lookout for Confederates who might object. I guess we rode away from camp two or three miles, when we came to a magnificent plantation house, and outhouses, negro quarters, etc. The house was on a hill, in a grove of live oaks, and had immense white pillars, or columns in front. As we rode up to the plantation the boys scattered all over the premises. This was the first foraging expedition I had ever been with, and I thought all we went for was to get forage for our horses, so I went to a shock of corn fodder and took all that I could strap on my saddle, and was ready to go, when I passed a smoke house and found some of the boys taking smoked hams and sides of bacon. I asked one of the boys if they had permission to take hams and things, and he laughed and said, "everything goes," and he handed me a ham which I hung on to my saddle. Then the lieutenant told me to go up in front of the house and stand guard, and prevent any soldier from entering the house. I rode up to the house, where there was an old lady and a young married woman with a little girl by her side. They were evidently much annoyed and frightened, though too proud to show it, and I told them they need have no fear, as the men were only after a little forage for their horses. The old lady looked at the ham on my saddle and asked me if the horses eat meat, and I said, "No, but sometimes the men eat horses." I thought that was funny. The young woman was beautiful, and the child was perfectly enchanting. They were on the opposite side of the railing from me, and my horse kept working up towards them, rubbing his nose on the pickets, and finally his nose touched the clasped hands of the mother and child. The little girl laughed and patted the horse on the nose, while the mother drew back. It was almost dark and the horse was almost covered with corn fodder, but the little girl screamed and said:

"Mamma, that is Jeff, papa's horse!"

The mamma looked at me with a wild, hunted look, then at the horse, rushed down the steps and threw her arms around the neck of the horse and sobbed in a despairing manner:

"O, where is my husband? Where is he? Is he dead?

"My son, my son!" cried the old lady.

"Bring me my papa, you bad man!" said the little child, and I was surrounded by the three.

Gentle reader, I have been through many scenes in my life, and have been many times where it was not the toss of a copper whether death or life was my portion, and I had some nerve to help me through, but I never was in a place that tried me like that one. I had been captured by the father of this little child, the husband of this beautiful, proud woman, the son of this charming old lady. I had seen him brought in, dead, had seen him buried, and had thrown a bunch of roses in his grave. Now I was surrounded by these mourners, mourners when they should know the worst. Cold chills run all over me, and cold perspiration was on my brow.

"Is he dead?" they all shouted together.

I hate a liar, on general principles, and yet there are times when a lie is so much easier to tell than truth. I did not want to be a murderer, and I knew, by the dreadful light in the eyes of that lovely wife, as she looked up at me from the neck of the horse, her face as white as snow, that if I told the truth she would fall dead right where she was. If I told the truth that blessed old lady's heart would be broken, and that little child's face would not have any more smiles, during the war, for mamma and grandma, and, with a hoarse voice, and choking, and trying to swallow something that seemed as big as a baseball in my throat, I deliberately lied to them. I told them the young man who rode this horse had been captured, after a gallant fight, unharmed, and sent north. That he was so brave that our boys fell in love with him, and there was nothing too good for him in our army, and that he would be well taken care of, and exchanged soon, I had no doubt, and bade them not to worry, but to look at the discomforts and annoyances of war as leniently as possible, and all would be well soon.

"Thank heaven! Take all we have got in welcome," said the old lady, as a heavenly smile came over her face. "My boy is safe."

"O, thank you, sir," said the little mother, as a lovely smile chased a dimple all around her mouth, and corraled it in her left cheek, while a pair of navy-blue eyes looked up at me as though she would hug me if I was not a Yankee, eyes that I have seen a thousand times since, in dreams, often with tears in them.



"You are a darling good man," said the little girl, dancing on the gravel path. The mother blushed and said,

"Why, Maudie, don't be so rude;" and there was a shout:

"Fall in!"

The lieutenant rode up to me and asked, as he noticed the glad smiles on the faces of the ladies, if this was a family reunion, and, apologizing for being compelled to raid the plantation, we rode away. I was afraid they would mention the news I had brought them, and the lieutenant would tell the truth, so I was glad to move. I was glad to go, for if I had remained longer I would have cried like a baby, and given them back the horse, and walked to camp. As we moved away, I took out my knife and cut the string that held the smoked ham on my saddle, and had the satisfaction of hearing it drop on the path before the house. I could not give back the husband of the blue-eyed woman, the son of the saintly Southern mother, the father of the sweet child, but I could leave that ham. As we rode back to camp that beautiful moonlight night, I did not join in the singing of the boys, or the jokes. I just thought of that happy home I had left, and how it would be stricken, later, when the news was brought them, and wondered if that fearful lie I had been telling, them was justifiable, under the circumstances, and it it would be laid up against me, charged up in the book above. That night I slept on the ground on some corn fodder and dreamed of nothing but blue-eyed mamma's and golden-haired Maudie's and white-haired angel grandmothers.



CHAPTER VII.

"Boots and Saddles"—"I am the Colonel's Orderly"—Riding Fifty Miles on an Empty Stomach—The Chaplain Appears—I am Wounded by a Locomotive and a Piece of Coal—I Nearly Kill an Old Man.

When our foraging party got back to camp, and I unloaded the corn fodder from my horse, I was about as disgusted with war as a man could be. The faces of those people I had met at the plantation rose up before me, and I could imagine how they would look when they heard that the Confederate soldier who was their all, was dead. I hoped that they would never hear of it. While I was thinking the matter over, and grooming my horse, the chaplain came along and took nearly all the fodder I had brought in, and fed it to his horse, and asked me where the chickens and hams, and sweet potatoes were. I told him I didn't get any. Then he spoke very plainly to me, plainer than he had ever spoken before, and told me that fodder for horses was not all that soldiers got when they went out foraging. He said I wanted to snatch anything that was lying around loose, that could be eaten. I asked him if the government did not furnish rations enough for him to live comfortably, in addition to the sanitary stores. He said sometimes he yearned for chicken. Then I told him his salary was sufficient to buy such luxuries. He was hot, and talked back to me, and told me he didn't propose to be lectured by no red-headed private as to his duties, or his conduct, and he wanted me to understand that I was expected to forage for him as well as myself, and not to let another soldier come into camp with a better assortment of the luxuries afforded by the country, than I did. He said that he picked me out as a man that would fill the bill, and do his duty. I told him if he had selected me from all the men in the regiment as being the most expert sneak thief, he had made a mistake, and I would be teetotally d——d if I would go through the country stealing hens and chickens for any chaplain that ever lived, and he could put that in his pipe and smoke it. It was pretty sassy talk for a private soldier to indulge in towards a chaplain, but I was so disgusted to hear a man who should discountenance anything unsoldierly, talk so flippantly about taking from the women and children of the country what little they had to live on, because we had the power, their men folks being away in the army, that I got on my ear, as it were. I told him that I was not much mashed on war, and hoped I would never have to fire a gun at a human being, but now that I was into the business, I would fight if I had to, or do any duty of a soldier, but I would be cussed if I would rob henroosts, and he didn't weigh enough to compel me to. Then he said I could go back to my company, as he didn't want a man around him that hadn't sand enough to do his duty. I asked him if I hadn't better wait till after supper, it being after dark, but he said I could go right away, and he would have another man detailed to take my place. I was discharged, because I struck against stealing hens. I saddled my horse, took my share of the fodder, and started for my company to return to duty as a soldier. On the way to my company I saw a half a dozen soldiers, covered with mud, and their horses covered with foam, ride up to the colonel's tent, and I stopped to see what was the matter. A sergeant gave the colonel a dispatch, which he tore open, read it, looked excited, and then he turned to 'me and said, "Ride to every commanding officer of a company and say with my compliments, that 'Boots and Saddles' will be sounded in ten minutes, and every man must be in line, mounted, within five minutes after the call is sounded, then come back here." Well, I was about as excited as the colonel, and I rode to every captain's tent and gave the command. Some of the captains, who were just sitting down to supper, asked, "What you giving us," thinking it was some foolishness on my part. One captain said if I came around with any more such orders he would run a saber through me and turn it around a few times; another said to his lieutenant, "That is the chaplains idiot, that the boys play jokes on; some corporal has probably told him to carry that message."

I got all around the companies, and went back to the colonel, and told him that I had delivered his invitation, but the most of the captains sent regrets in one way and another, and one was going to jab me with a saber. He called the bugler, and told him to blow "Boots and Saddles," and in five minutes to sound, "To Horse;" then he turned to me and said, "You will be my orderly tonight, and you will have the liveliest ride you ever experienced. Buckle up your saddle girth and lead my horse out here." I told the colonel I should have to buckle up my own belt a few holes, as I hadn't had any supper, when he told his servant to bring me out what was left of his supper, which he did, one small hard tack. I eat pretty hearty, and let my horse fill himself all he could on corn stalks, and in a short time the bugle calls were echoing through the woods, men were saddling up and mounting, and picking up camp utensils in the dark, and swearing some at being ordered out in that unceremonious manner when they had got all ready to have a night's rest. There was not near as much swearing as I had supposed there would be, but there was enough. The chaplain came rushing up to where I was with his coat off, and asked me what was the matter, and the colonel having gone to the major's tent, I answered him that we were going to have the liveliest ride he ever experienced, and not to forget it, and that probably before morning we would have the biggest fight of the season.

"Come and help me catch my horse," said the chaplain, "I turned him loose so he could roll over, and he has stampeded."

"Go catch your own horse," said I with lofty dignity, "and steal your own chickens. I am serving on the start of the commanding officer, sir. I am the colonel's orderly."

I thought that would break the chaplain all up, but it didn't. "The devil you say," remarked the chaplain, as he went off in the darkness, whistling for his horse. Gentle reader, did you ever ride on horseback fifty miles in one night, on an empty stomach, after having ridden thirty miles during the day? If you never have accomplished such a feat, you don't know anything about suffering. O, to this day I can feel my stomach freeze itself to my backbone. We started soon after orders were given on a gallop, and if we walked our horses a minute during the whole night, I did not know it. We marched by "fours," but I had the whole road to myself, as I rode behind the colonel. I wanted to know where we were going and what for, and once, when the colonel fell back to where I was, while he was taking a drink out of a canteen, I said, "This is a little sudden, ain't it?" My idea was to draw him out, and get him to tell me all about the destination of the expedition, and its object. The colonel got through drinking, and as he knocked the cork into the canteen, he said, "Yes, this is a little spry." That was all he said, and evidently he wanted me to draw my own inference, which I did. Pretty soon the orderly sergeant of the company that was on the advance, directly behind the colonel, rode up to me and asked me if I had any idea where we were going. He said he had seen me talking with the colonel, and thought maybe he had told me the programme. He added that he thought it was a shame that men couldn't be allowed a little rest. I told him that I had just been talking with the colonel about it, but I had no authority to communicate what he said. However, I would assure the orderly that we were going to have the liveliest ride he ever experienced. I knew I was safe in saying that, and the orderly remarked that he had about come to that conclusion himself, and he left me. I had never expected to rise, on pure merit, to that proud position of colonel's orderly, and I made up my mind if that night's ride did not founder me, or drive my spine up into the top of my hat, or glue the two sides of my empty stomach together, so they would never come apart, that I would try to conduct myself so that the commanding officers would all cry for me and want me on their starts. I argued, to myself, as we rode along, that the position of colonel's orderly could not be so very unsafe, as it did not stand to reason that a colonel would go into any place that was particularly dangerous, as long as he could send other officers. I knew that colonels in action should ride behind their regiments, and wondered if this colonel knew his place, or would he be fool enough to go right ahead of his men? I was going to speak to him about it, if we ever stopped galloping long enough, but everything was jarred out of my head.

A fellow can think of a good many things, riding on a gallop at night, and I guess I thought of about everything that night. There were few interruptions of the march. There were about four stops, two being caused by horses falling down and being run over by those behind them, and two by carbines going off accidentally. One man was dismounted and run over by half the horses in the regiment, and when he was pulled out from under the horses he asked for a chew of tobacco, and saying he was marked for life by horse shoes, he kicked his horse in the ribs for falling down, climbed on and said the procession might move on. He was all cut to pieces by horse's hoofs, but he was full of fight the next morning. Another soldier had his big toe shot off by the accidental discharge of a carbine, and when the regiment stopped, and the colonel asked him if he wanted to stop there and wait for an ambulance to overtake him, he said, not if there is going to be a fight. I don't use a big toe much, anyway, and if there is a fight ahead, I want to be there, if I haven't got a toe left on my feet. The colonel smiled and said, all right, boy. I never saw fellows who were so anxious to fight, and I wondered how much money it would take to induce me to go into a fight when I was crippled up enough to be excused. Along toward morning everybody felt that we were so far into the enemy's lines that there must be some object in the long ride, and the probabilities of a fight seemed to be settled in every man's mind. Up hill and down we galloped, until it seemed to me I should fall off my horse and die. About half an hour before daylight the command was halted, and the officers of each company were sent for, and they surrounded the colonel, separated from the men, and he said: "There is a town ahead, about four miles, garrisoned by confederate troops. We are to charge it at daylight, drive the enemy out the other side of town, kill as many as possible, and when they go out they will be attacked by another Union regiment that has been sent around to the rear. There is a railroad there, and a bridge across a river, Confederate stores of ammunition, provisions, cotton, etc. The stores are to be burned, the railroad bridge destroyed, the track torn up, engines, if there are any, are to be ditched, and everything destroyed except private residences. You understand?" The officers said they did, and they went back to their companies and ordered the men to get a bite to eat. When the officers had gone I was pretty scared, and I said, "Colonel, suppose the rebels do not get out of that town." The colonel was chewing a hard-tack when he answered. Daylight was just streaking up from the East, and he held a piece of the hard-tack up to the light to pick a worm out of it, after which he answered: "If they don't get out, we will, those of us who are not killed. I always like to eat hard-tack in the dark, then I can't see the worms." To say that I was reassured would be untrue. I admired a man who could mingle business with pleasure, as he did when talking of possible death and worms in hard-tack, but death was never an interesting subject to me. I wanted to talk with the colonel more, and asked him if colonels often get killed, and if an orderly was exactly safe in his immediate vicinity, but he leaned against a tree and went to sleep, and I stood near, as wide awake as any man ever was. I wondered whose idea it was to send us fifty miles into the Confederacy to destroy provisions and railroads.

Did they suppose the Confederates didn't want anything to eat. I thought it was a mean man or government that would burn up good wholesome provisions because they couldn't eat them themselves. And who owned this railroad that was going to be torn up? Why burn a bridge that probably cost several hundred thousand dollars. As I was thinking these things over and finding fault with the persons responsible for such foolishness, the chaplain, who had not showed up during the night, came up to where I was, without any hat, leading his horse, which was lame. The first thing he asked me how I would trade horses. They all wanted my Jen, but he was not in the market. The chaplain said he had caught up with the regiment about midnight, and had rode at the rear, with the horse-doctor. He said this expedition was foolish, and had no object except to try the endurance of the horses and men. I told him that we were going to have a fight in less than an hour, and burn a town, and probably we would all be killed. The chaplain turned pale and looked faint.

I had read about hell, and seen pictures of it, from the imagination of some eminent artist, but the hell I had read of, and seen pictured, was not a marker to the experience of the next three hours. In a few minutes the colonel woke up, and the regiment mounted and moved on. An advance guard was put further out than before, with orders to charge the rebel picket almost into town, and then hold up for the rest of us. As we neared the town it was just light enough to see. The advance captured the picket post without a shot being fired, and moved right into town, followed by the regiment, and we actually rode right into the camp of the boys in gray, and woke them up by firing. They scattered, coatless and shoeless, firing as they ran, and in five minutes they were all captured, killed, gone out of town, or were in hiding in the buildings. Then began the conflagration. Immense buildings, filled with goods, or bales of cotton, were fired, and soon the black smoke and falling walls made a scene that was enough to set a recruit crazy. A train came in just as the fire was at its greatest, and a squad of men was sent to burn it, and the colonel told me to go and capture the engineer and bring him to the headquarters.



I rode up as near to the engine as my horse would go and told the engineer I wanted him. He turned a cock somewhere, and a jet of steam came out towards me that fairly blinded me and the horse, and I couldn't see the engine any more. My horse turned tail, the engineer threw a lump of coal and hit me on the head, and I went away and told the colonel the engineer wouldn't come, and beside had scalded me with steam, and hit me with a lump of coal. The colonel said the engineer could be arrested for such conduct. Pretty soon the train was on fire, and one of our boys clubbed the engineer, got on the engine and run it on to a side track and ditched it, and brought the engineer up to headquarters, where I had quite a talk with him about squirting steam and throwing lumps of coal at peaceable persons. Then the railroad, bridge was set on fire, and it looked cruel to see the timbers licked up by flames, but when the burning trestle fell into the river below, it was a grand, an awful sight. I came out of the fight alive, but with a lump on my head as big as a hen's egg, so big I couldn't wear my hat, and a firm determination to whip that engineer who threw the lump of coal when I could catch him alone. We cooked a late breakfast on the embers of the ruins, and after eating, I noticed a sign, "Printing Office," in front of a residence just outside the burnt district, and asked permission to go there and print a paper, with an account of the fight, and the destruction of the town. Permission was granted, and I went to the office and found an old man and two daughters, beautiful girls, but intensely bitter rebels. The old man was near eighty years old, and he said he could whip any dozen yankees. I told him I would like to use his type and press, but he said if I touched a thing I did it at my peril, as he should consider the type contaminated by the touch of a yankee. The girls felt the same way, but I talked nice to them, and they didn't kick much when I took a "stick" and began to set type. I worked till dinner time, when they asked me to take dinner with them, which I did. During the conversation I convinced them that I was practically a non-combatant, and wouldn't hurt anybody for the world. I worked till about the middle of the afternoon, when I noticed that the girls, who had been up on the house, looked tickled about something, and presently I heard some firing at the edge of the town, some yelling, more firing, bugle calls among our soldiers, and finally there was an absence of blue coats, and I looked for my horse, and found the old man leading him away. I halted the old man, and he stopped and told me that the Confederates had come into town from the East and driven our cavalry out on the other side, and I would be a prisoner in about five minutes, and he laughed, and the girls clapped their hands, and I felt as though my time had come. I had never killed an old man in my life, but I made up my mind to have my horse or kill him in his traces, so I drew my revolver and told him to let go the horse or he was a dead man. It was a question with me whether I could hold my hand still-enough to kill him, if he didn't let go the horse, and I hoped to heaven he would drop the bridle. He looked so much like my father at home that it seemed like killing a near relative, and when I looked at the two beautiful daughters on the gallery, looking at us, pale as death, I almost felt as though it would be better to lose the horse and be captured, then to put a bullet through the gray head of that beautiful old man. How I wished that he was a young fellow, and had a gun, and had it pointed at me. Then I could kill him and feel as though it was self-defense. But the rebels were yelling and firing over the hill, and my regiment was going the other way on important business, and it was a question with me whether I should kill the old man, and see his life-blood ebb out there in front of his children, or be captured, and perhaps shot for burning buildings. I decided that it was my duty to murder him, and get my horse. So I rested my revolver across my left forearm, and took deliberate aim at his left eye, a beautiful, large, expressive gray eye, so much like my father's at home that I almost imagined I was about to kill the father who loved me. I heard, a scream on the gallery, and the blonde girl fainted in the arms of her brunette sister. The sister said to me, "Please don't kill my father." He was not ten feet from me, and I said, "Drop the horse or you die." The old man trembled, the girl said: "Pa, give the man his horse," the old man dropped the bridle and walked towards the house. I mounted the horse and rode off towards the direction my regiment had taken, thanking heaven that the girl had spoken just in time, and that I had not been compelled to put a bullet through that noble-looking gray head. The face haunted me all the way, as I rode along to catch my regiment, and when I overtook it, and rode up to the colonel, and asked him what in thunder he wanted to go off and leave me to fight the whole southern Confederacy for, he said, "O, get out! There were no rebels there. That was the Indiana regiment that started out day before yesterday, to get on the other side of the town. The fellows were shooting some cattle for food. What makes you look-so pale?" I was thinking of whether a man ever prospered who killed old people.



CHAPTER VIII.

Three Days Without Food!—The Value of Hard Tack—A Silver Watch for a Pint of Meal—I Steal Corn from a Hungry Mule— The Delirium of Hunger—I Dine on Mule—I Capture a Rebel Ram.

After overtaking my regiment, and enjoying a feeling of safety which I did not feel in the presence of that violent old man who laid savage hands on my horse, and the girls, I began to reflect. Of course the old man was not armed, and I was, but how did I know but those Confederate girls had revolvers concealed about their persons, and might have killed me. To feel that I was once more safe with my regiment, where there was no danger as long as they did not get into a fight, was bliss indeed, and I rode along in silence, wondering when the cruel war would be over, and what all this riding around the country, burning buildings and tearing up railroad tracks amounted to, anyway. I didn't enlist as a section hand, nor a railroad wrecker, and there was nothing in my enlistment papers that said anything about my being compelled to commit arson. The recruit-officer who, by his glided picture of the beauties of a soldier's life, induced me to enlist as a soldier, never mentioned anything that would lead me to believe that one of my duties would be to touch a match to another man's bales of cotton, or ditch a locomotive belonging to parties who never did me any harm, and who had a right to expect dividends from their railroad stock. If I had the money, that was represented in the stuff destroyed by our troops that day, I could run a daily newspaper for years, if it didn't have a subscriber or a patent medicine advertisement. And who was benefitted by such wanton destruction of property. As we rode along I told the colonel I thought it was a confounded shame to do as we had done, and that such a use of power, because we had the power, was unworthy of American soldiers. He said it was a soldier's duty to obey orders and not talk back, and if he heard any more moralizing on my part he would send me back to my company, where I would have to do duty like the rest. I told him I was one of the talking backest fellows he ever saw, and that one of my duties as a newspaper man was to criticise the conduct of the war. Then he said I might report to the captain of my company. It seemed hard to go into the ranks, after having had a soft job with the chaplain, and again as colonel's orderly, but I thought if I got my back up and showed the captain that I was no ordinary soldier, but one who was qualified for any position, that maybe he would be afraid to monkey too much with me. I knew the captain would be a candidate for some office when the war was over, and if he knew I was on to him, and that I should very likely publish a paper that could warm him up quite lively, he would see to it that I wasn't compelled to do very hard work. So I rode back to my company and told the captain that the colonel and the chaplain had got through with me, and I had come back to stay, and would be glad to do any light work he might have for me. The captain heaved a sigh, as though he was not particularly tickled to have me back, and told me to fall in, in the rear of the company. I asked if I couldn't ride at the head of the company. He said no, there was more room at the rear. I tried to tell him that I was accustomed to riding at the head of the regiment, but he told me to shut up my mouth and get back there, and I got back, and fell in at the tail end of the company, with the cook and an officer's servant, and the orderly sergeant came back and wanted to know if the company had got to have me around again. Here was promotion with a vengeance. From the proud pinnacle from which I had soared, as chaplain's clerk, and colonel's orderly, I had dropped with one fell swoop to the rear end of my company, and nobody wanted me, because I had kicked against stealing hens in one instance, and burning buildings and tearing up railroads in the other. We rode all day, and at night laid down in the woods and slept, after eating the last of our rations. I slept beside a log, and before going to sleep and after waking, I swore by the great horn spoons I would not steal anything more while I was in the army, nor do any damage to property. In the morning the soldiers had scarcely a mouthful to eat, and an order was read to each company that for three or four days it would be necessary to live off the country, foraging for what we had to eat. I asked the captain what we would do for something to eat if we didn't find anything in the country to gobble up. He said we would starve. That was an encouraging prospect for a man who had taken a solemn oath not to steal any more. I told the captain I did not intend to steal any more, as I did not think it right. Then he said I better begin to eat the halter off my horse, because leather would be the only thing I would have to stay my stomach. The first day I did not eat a mouthful, except half of a hard-tack that I had a quarrel with my horse to get. In throwing the saddle on my horse, one solitary hard-tack that was in the saddle-bag, fell out upon the ground, and the horse picked it up. I did not know the hard-tack was in the saddle, and when it fell upon the ground I was as astonished as I would have been had a clap of thunder come from the clear sky, and when the horse went for it, my stomach rebelled and I grabbed one side of the hard-tack while the horse held the other side in his teeth. Something had to give, and as the horse's teeth nor my hands would give, the hard-tack had to, and I saved half of it, and placed it in the inside pocket of my vest, as choice as though it were a thousand dollar bill.

I have listened to music, in my time, that has been pretty bad, and which has sent cold chills up my back, and caused me pain, but I never heard any bad music that seemed to grate on my nerves as did the noise my horse made in chewing the half of my last hard-tack, and the look of triumph the animal gave me was adding insult to injury. Several times during the day I took that piece of hard-tack from my pocket carefully, wiped it on my coat-sleeve, and took a small bite, and the horse would look around at me wickedly, as though he would like to divide it with me again. People talk about guarding riches carefully, and of placing diamonds in a safe place, but no riches were ever guarded as securely as was that piece of hard-tack, and riches never took to themselves wings and new, regretted more than did my last hard-tack. Each bite made it smaller, and finally, the last bite was taken, with a sigh, and nothing remained for me to eat but the halter. Some of the boys went out foraging, and were moderately successful, while others did not get a thing to eat. The country was pine woods, with few settlers, and those that lived there were so poor that it seemed murder to take what they had. One of the men of our company came back with about two quarts of corn meal, that night, and I traded him a silver watch for about a pint of it. I mixed it up in some water, and after the most of the men had fallen asleep, I made two pancakes of the wet meal, and put them in the ashes of the camp-fire to bake, but fell asleep before it was done, and when I woke up and reached into the ashes for the first pancake, it was gone. Some Union soldier, whom it were base flattery to call a thief, had watched me, and stole my riches as I slept, robbed me of all I held dear in life. With trembling hands I raked the ashes for my other pancake, hopelessly, because I thought that, too, was gone, but to my surprise I found it. The villain who had pursued me as I slept, had failed to discover the second pancake, and I was safe, and my life was saved. I have seen a play in a theater in which a miser hides his gold, first in one place, then in another, looking to the right and to the left to see if anybody was watching him. I was the same kind of a miser about my pancake. If I hid it in the woods I might fail to find the place, in the morning, where I had hid it, and besides, some soldier that was peacefully snoring near me, apparently, might have one eye on me, and commit burglary. If I put it in my pocket, and went to sleep, I might have my pocket picked, so I concluded to remain awake and hold it in my hands. There appeared to be nothing between me and death by starvation, except that cornmeal pancake, and I sat there for an hour, beside the dying embers of the campfire, trying to make up my mind who stole my other pancake, and what punishment should be meted out to him if I ever found him out. I would follow him to my dying day. I suspected the captain, the colonel, the chaplain, and six hundred soldiers, any one of whom was none too good to steal a man's last pancake if he was hungry. To this day I have never found out who stole my pancake, but I have not given up the search, and if I live to be as old as Methuselah, and I find out the fellow that put himself outside my pancake that dark night in the pine woods, I will gallop all over that old soldier, if he is older than I am. That is the kind of avenger that is on the track of that pancake-eater. I sat there and nodded over my remaining pancake, clutched in my hands, and finally started to my feet in alarm. Suppose I should fall asleep, and be robbed? The thought was maddening. I have read of Indians who would eat enough at one sitting to last them several days, and the thought occurred to me that if I ate the pancake my enemies could not get it away from me, and perhaps it would digest gradually, a little each day, and brace me up until we got where there were rations plenty. So I sat there and deliberately eat every mouthful of it, and looked around at the sleeping companions with triumph, laid down and slept as peacefully on the ground as I ever slept in bed.

There may be truth in the story about Indians eating enough to last them a week, but it did not work in my case, for in the morning I was hungry as a she wolf. The pancake had gone to work and digested itself right at once, as though there was no end of food, and my stomach yearned for something. I walked down by the quartermaster's wagons, about daylight, and there was a four-mule team, each with a nose bag on, with corn in it. The mules were eating corn, unconscious of a robber being near. At home, where I had lived on good fresh meat, bread, pie, everything that was good, nobody could have made me believe that I would steal corn from a government mule, but when I heard the mules eating that corn a demon possessed me, and I meditated robbery. I did not want to take all the corn I wanted from one mule, so I decided to take toll from all of them. I went up to the first one, and reached my hand down into the nose bag beside the mule's mouth and rescued a handful of corn, then went to another to do the same, but that mule kicked at the scheme. I went to two others, and they laid their ears back and began to kick at the trace chains, so I went back to my first love, the patient mule, and took every last kernel of corn in the bag, and as I went away with a pocket full of corn the mule looked at me with tears in its eyes, but I couldn't be moved by no mule tears, with hunger gnawing at my vitals, so I hurried away like a guilty thing. While I was parching the corn stolen from the mule, in a half of a tin canteen, over the fire, the chaplain came along and wanted to sample it. He was pretty hungry, but I wasn't running a free boarding house for chaplains any more, and I told him he must go forage for himself. He said he would give his birthright for a pocket full of corn. I told him I didn't want any birthright, unless a birthright would stay a man's stomach, but if he would promise to always love, honor and obey me, I would tell him where he could get some corn. He swore by the great bald headed Elijah that if I would steer him onto some corn he would remember me the longest day he lived, and pray for me. I never was very much, mashed on the chaplain's influence at the throne, but I didn't want to see him starve, while government mules were living on the fat of the land, so I told him to go down to the quartermaster's corral and rob the mules as I had done. He bit like a bass, and started for the mules. Honestly, I had no designs on the chaplain, but he traded me a kicking mule once, and got a good horse of me, because I thought he wanted to do me a favor. As he was familiar with mules, I supposed he would know how to steal a little corn. Pretty soon I heard a great commotion down there, and presently the chaplain came out with a mule chasing him, its ears laid back, and blood in its eyes. The chaplain was white as a sheet, and yelling for help. Before I could knock the mule down with a neck-yoke, the animal had grabbed the chaplain by the coat tail, with its mouth, taking some of his pants, also, and perhaps a little skin, raised him up into the air, about seven feet, let go of him, and tried to turn around and kick the good man on the fly as he came down. We drove the mule away, rescued the chaplain, tied his pants together with a piece of string, cut off the tail of his coat which the mule had not torn off, so it was the same length as the other one, and made him look quite presentable, though he said he knew he could never ride a horse again. It seems that instead of reaching into the nose bag, and taking a little corn, he had unbuckled the nose bag and taken it off. I told him he was a hog, and ought to have known better than take the nose bag off, thus leaving the mule's mouth unmuzzled, while the animal was irritated. He accused me of knowing that the mule was vicious, and deliberately sending him there to be killed, so rather than have any hard feelings I gave him a handful of my parched corn.

A few Sundays afterwards I heard him preach a sermon on the sin of covetousness, and I thought how beautifully he could have illustrated his sermon if he had turned around and showed his soldier audience where the mule eat his coat tail. Soon we saddled up and marched another day without food. Reader, were you ever so hungry that you could see, as plain as though it was before you, a dinner-table set with a full meal, roast beef, mashed potatoes, pie, all steaming hot, ready to sit down to? If you have not been very hungry in your life, you can not believe that one can be in a condition to see things. The man with delirium tremens can see snakes, while the hungry man, in his delirium, can see things he would like to eat. Many times during that day's ride through the deserted pine-woods, with my eyes wide open, I could see no trees, no ground, no horses and men around me, but there seemed a film over the eyes, and through it I could see all of the good things I ever had eaten. One moment there would be a steaming roast turkey, on a platter, ready to be carved. Again I could see a kettle over a cook-stove, with a pigeon pot-pie cooking, the dumpings, light as a feather, bobbing up and down with the steam, and I could actually smell the odor of the cooking pot-pie. It seems strange, and unbelievable to those who have never experienced extreme hunger or thirst, that the imagination can picture eatables and streams of running water, so plain that one will almost reach for the eatables, or rush for the imaginary stream, to plunge in and quench thirst, but I have experienced both of those sensations for thirteen dollars a month, and nary a pension yet. It is such experiences that bring gray hairs to the temples of young soldiers, and cause eyes to become hollow and sunken in the head. Today, your Uncle Samuel has not got silver dollars enough in his treasury to hire me to suffer one day of such hunger as to make me see things that were not there, but twenty-two years ago it was easy to have fun over it, and to laugh it off the next day. When we stopped that day, at noon, to rest, the company commissary sergeant came up to the company, with two men carrying the hind quarter of an animal that had been slaughtered, and he began to cut it up and issue it out to the men. It was peculiar looking meat, but it was meat, and every fellow took his ration, and it was not long before the smell of broiled fresh meat could be "heard" all around. When I took my meat I asked the sergeant what it was, and where he got it. I shall always remember his answer. It was this:

"Young man, when you are starving, and the means of sustaining life are given you, take your rations and go away, and don't ask any fool questions. If you don't want it, leave it."

Leave it? Egad, I would have eaten it if it had been a Newfoundland dog, and I took it, and cooked it, and ate it. I do not know, and never did, what it was, but when the quartermaster's mule teams pulled out after dinner, there were two "spike teams;"—that is, two wheel mules and a single leader, instead of four-mule teams. After I saw the teams move out, each mule looking mournful, as though each one thought his time might come next, I didn't want to ask any questions about that meat, though I know there wasn't a beef critter within fifty miles of us. I have had my children ask me, many times, if I ever eat any mule in the army, and I have always said that I did not know. And I don't. But I am a great hand to mistrust.

It was on this hungry day, when filled with meat such as I had never met before that I did a thing I shall always regret. The captain came down to the rear of the company and said, so we could all hear it. "I want two men to volunteer for a perilous mission. I want two as brave men as ever lived. Who will volunteer? Don't all speak at once. Take plenty of time, for your lives may pay the penalty!" I had been feeling for some days as though there was not the utmost confidence in my bravery, among the men, and I had been studying as to whether I would desert, and become a wanderer on the face of the earth, or do some desperate deed that would make me solid with the boys, and when the captain called for volunteers, I swallowed a large lump in my throat, and said, "Captain, here is your mule. I will go!" Whether it was that confounded meat I had eaten that had put a seeming bravery into me, or desperation at the hunger of the past few days, I do not know, but I volunteered for a perilous mission. A little Irishman named McCarty spoke up, and said, "Captain, I will go anywhere that red headed recruit will go."

So it was settled that McCarty and myself should go, and with some misgivings on my part we rode up to the front and reported. I thought what a fool I was to volunteer, when I was liable to be killed, but I was in for it, and there was no use squealing now. We came to a cross road, and the captain whispered to us that we should camp there, and that he had been told by a reliable contraband that up the cross road about two miles was a house at which there was a sheep, and he wanted us to go and take it. He said there might be rebels anywhere, and we were liable to be ambushed and killed, but we must never come back alive without sheep meat. Well, we started off. McCarty said I better ride a little in advance so if we were ambushed, I would be killed first, and he would rush back and inform the captain. I tried to argue with McCarty that I being a recruit, and he a veteran, it would look better for him to lead, but he said I volunteered first, and he would waive his rights of precedence, and ride behind me. So we rode along, and I reflected on my changed condition. A few short weeks ago I was a respected editor of a country newspaper in Wisconsin, looked up to, to a certain extent, by my neighbors, and now I had become a sheep thief. At home the occupation of stealing sheep was considered pretty low down, and no man who followed the business was countenanced by the best society. A sheep thief, or one who was suspected of having a fondness for mutton not belonging to him, was talked about. And for thirteen dollars a month, and an insignificant bounty, I had become a sheep thief. If I ever run another newspaper, after the war, how did I know but a vile contemporary across the street would charge me with being a sheep thief, and prove it by McCarty. May be this was a conspiracy on the part of the captain, whom I suspected of a desire to run for office when we got home, to get me in his power, so that if I went for him in my paper, he could charge me with stealing sheep. It worked me up considerable, but we were out of meat, and if there was a sheep in the vicinity, and I got it, there was one thing sure, they couldn't get any more mule down me. So we rode up to the plantation, which was apparently deserted. There was a lamb about two-thirds grown, in the front yard, and McCarty and myself dismounted and proceeded to surround the young sheep. As we walked up to it, the lamb came up to me bleating, licked my hand, and then I noticed there was a little sleigh-bell tied to its neck with a blue ribbon. The lamb looked up at us with almost human eyes, and I was going to suggest that we let it alone, when McCarty grabbed it by the hind legs and was going to strap it to his saddle, when it set up a bleating, and a little boy come rushing out of the house, a bright little fellow about three years old, who could hardly talk plain. I wanted to hug him, he looked so much like a little black-eyed baby at home, that was too awfully small to say "good bye, papa" when I left. The little fellow, with the dignity of an emperor, said, "Here, sir, you must not hurt my little pet lamb. Put him down, sir, or I will call the servants and have you put off the premises." McCarty laughed, and said the lamb would be fine 'atin for the boy's, and was pulling the little thing up, when the tears came into the boy's eyes, and that settled it. I said, "Mac, for heaven's sake, drop that lamb. I wouldn't break that little boy's heart for all the sheep-meat on earth. I will eat mule, or dog, but I draw the line at children's household pets. Let the lamb go." "Begorra, yer right," said McCarty, as he let the lamb down. "Luk at how the shep runs to the little bye. Ah, me little mon, yer pet shall not be taken away from yez," and a big tear ran down McCarty's face. The boy said there was a great big sheep in the back yard we could have, if we were hungry, and we went around the house to see. There was an old black ram that looked as though he could whip a regiment of soldiers, but we decided that he was our meat. McCarty suggested that I throw a lariet rope around his horns, and lead him, whiles, he would go behind and drive the animal. That looked feasible, and taking a horse-hair picket rope off my saddle, with a slip noose in the end, I tossed it over the horns of the ram, tied the rope to the saddle, and started. The ram went along all right till we got out to the road, when he held back a little. Mac jabbed the ram in the rear with his saber, and he came along all right, only a little too sudden. That was one of the mistakes of the war, Mac's pricking that ram, and it has been the source of much study on my part, for twenty-two years, as to whether the Irishman did it on purpose, knowing the ram would charge on my horse, and butt my steed in the hind legs. If that was the plan of the Irishman, it worked well, for the first thing I knew my horse jumped about eighteen feet, and started down the road towards camp, on a run, dragging the ram, which was bellowing for all that was out. I tried to hold the horse in a little, but every time he slackened up the ram would gather himself and run his head full tilt against the horse, and away he would go again. Sometimes the ram was flying through the air, at the end of the rope, then it would be dragged in the sand, and again it would strike on its feet, and all the time the ram was blatting, and the confounded Irishman was yelling and laughing.



We went into the camp that way, and the whole regiment, hearing the noise, turned out to see us come in. As my horse stopped, and the ram was caught by a colored man, who tied its legs, I realized the ridiculousness of the scene, and would have gone off somewhere alone and hated myself, or killed the Irishman, but just then I saw the captain, and I said, "Captain, I have to report that the perilous expedition was a success. There's your sheep," and I rode away, resolved that that was the last time I should ever volunteer for perilous duty. The Irishman was telling a crowd of boys the particulars, and they were having a great laugh, when I said:

"McCarty, you are a villain. I believe you set that ram on to me on purpose. Henceforth we are strangers."

"Be gob," said the Irishman, as he held his sides with laughter, "yez towld me to drive the shape, and didn't I obey?"



CHAPTER IX.

Bacon and Hard-tack—In Danger of Ague—In Search of Whisky and Quinine—I Am Appointed Corporal—I Make a Speech—I Am the Leader of Ten Picked Men—I Am Willing to Resign.

The next day we arrived at a post where rations were plenty, and where it was announced we should remain for a week or two, so we drew tents and made ourselves as comfortable as possible. It did seem good to again be where we did not have to depend on our own resources, of stealing, for what we wanted to eat. To be able to draw from the commissary regular rations of meat, tea, coffee, sugar, baker's bread, and beans, was joy indeed, after what we had gone through, and we almost made hogs of ourselves. There was one thing—those few days of starvation taught us a lesson, and that was, when ordered on a trip with two days' rations, to take at least enough for six days, especially of coffee and salt pork or bacon. With coffee and a piece of old smoked bacon, a man can exist a long time. I remember after that trip, wherever I went, there was a chunk of bacon in one of my saddle-bags that nobody knew anything about, and many a time, on long marches, when hunger would have been experienced almost as severe as the time written about last week, I would take out my chunk of bacon, cut off a piece and spread it on a hard-tack, and eat a meal that was more strengthening than any meal Delmonico ever spread. It was at this post that the boys in the regiment played a trick that caused much fun throughout all the army. There were a few men in each company who had the chills and fever, or ague, and the surgeon gave them each morning, a dose of whisky and quinine. It was interesting to see a dozen soldiers go to surgeon's call, take their "bitters," and return to their quarters. The boys would go to the surgeon's tent sort of languid, and drag along, and after swallowing a good swig of whisky and quinine they would walk back to their quarters swinging their arms like Pat Rooney on the stage, and act as though they could whip their weight in wild cats. I got acquainted with the hospital steward, and he said if the boys were not careful they would all be down with the ague, and that an ounce of prevention was worth more than a pound of cure. I thought I would take advantage of his advice, so I fell in with the sick fellows the next morning, and when the doctor asked, "What's the matter?" I said "chills," and he said, "Take a swallow out of the red bottle." I took a swallow, and it was bitter, but it had whisky in it, more than quinine, and the idea of beating the government out of a drink of whisky was pleasure enough to overcome the bitter taste. I took a big swallow, and before I got back to my quarters I had had a fight with a mule-driver, and when the quartermaster interfered I had insulted him by telling him I knew him when he carried a hod, before the war, and I shouted, "Mort, more mort!" until he was going to lather me with a mule whip, but he couldn't catch me. As I run by the surgeon's tent, somebody remarked that I had experienced a remarkably sudden cure for chills. The whisky was not real good, but as I had heard the hospital steward say they had just put in a requisition for two barrels of it, to be prepared for an epidemic of chills, I thought the boys ought to know it, so that day I went around to the different companies and told the boys how to play it for a drink. There are very few soldiers, in the best regiment, that will not take a drink of whisky when far away from home, discouraged, and worn out by marching, and our fellows looked favorably upon the proposition to all turn out to surgeon's call the next morning. I shall never forget the look on the face of the good old surgeon, as the boys formed in line in front of his tent the next morning. The last time I saw him, he was in his coffin, about five years ago, at the soldier's home, and a few of the survivors of the regiment that lived here had gone out to the home to take a last look at him, and act as mourners at the funeral. He looked much older than when he used to ask us fellows the conumdrum, "What's the matter?" but there was that same look on his white, cold face that there was the morning that nearly the whole regiment reported for "bitters."

There must have been four hundred men in line, and it happened that I was the first to be called. When he asked me about my condition, and I told him of the chills, he studied a minute, then looked at me, and said, You are bilious, David, give him a dose of castor oil. I know I turned pale, for it was a great come down from quinine and whisky to castor oil, for a healthy man, and I kicked. I told him I had the shakes awfully, and all I wanted was a quinine powder. I knew they had put all their quinine into a barrel of whisky, so I was safe in asking for dry quinine. The good old gentleman finally relented on the castor oil, and told David to give me a swallow of the quinine bitters, but there was a twinkle in his eye, as he noticed what a big swallow I took, and then he said, "You will be well tomorrow; you needn't come again." I dropped out of the ranks, with my skin full of quinine and whisky, and watched the other fellows.

There were men in the line who had never been sick a day since they enlisted, big fellows that would fight all day, and stand picket all night, and who never knew what it was to have an ache. And it was amusing to see them appear to shake, and to act as though they had chills. Some of them could not keep from laughing, and it was evident that the doctor had his doubts about there being so many cases of chills, but he dosed out the quinine and whisky as long as there was a man who shook. As each man took his dose, he would show two expressions on his face. One was an expression of hilarity at putting himself outside of a good swig of whisky, and the other was an expression of contempt for the bitter quinine, and an evident wish that the drug might be left out. When all had been served, they lingered around the surgeon's quarters, talking with each other and laughing, others formed on for a stag quadrille, and danced, while a nigger fiddled. Some seemed to feel as though they wanted some one to knock a chip off their shoulders, old grudges were talked over, and several fights were prevented by the interference of friends who were jolly and happy, and who did not believe in fighting for fun, when there was so much fighting to be done in the way of business. The old doctor walked up and down in front of his tent in a deep study. He was evidently thinking over the epidemic of ague that had broken out in a healthy regiment, and speculating as to its cause. Suddenly an idea seemed to strike him, and he walked up to a crowd of his patients, who were watching a couple of athletes, who had just taken their quinine, and who had put on boxing gloves and were pasting each other in the nose. "One moment," said the old doctor. The boys stopped boxing, and every last "sick" man listened respectfully to what the old doctor said; "Boys," said he, "you have got it on me this time. I don't believe a confounded one of you have got ague at all. You 'shook me' for the whisky. After this, quinine will be dealt out raw, without any whisky, and now you can shake all you please." Some one proposed three cheers for the boys that had made Uncle Sam stand treat, and the cheers were given, and the boys separated to talk over the event. The next morning only the usual number of sick were in attendance at surgeon's call. The healthy fellows didn't want to take quinine raw.