Chapter 14
He put the lemon down. "Captain Cleave, I very particularly wish to know what are General Banks's instructions from Was.h.i.+ngton. Were Jarrow here he would find out for me, but I have sent Jarrow on other business. I want to know within four days."
There was a moment's stillness in the room; then, "Very well, sir," said Cleave.
"I remember," said Jackson, "that you sent me the scout here. He does good service. He is at your disposal for the next few days." Drawing ink and paper toward him, he wrote a few lines. "Go to the adjutant for anything you may need. _Captain Cleave on Special Service._ Here, too, is the name and address of a Catholic priest in Frederick City. He may be depended upon for some readiness of mind, and for good-will. That is all, I think. Good-night, captain. In four days, if you please. You will find me somewhere between Martinsburg and the river."
"You spoke, sir," said Cleave, "of a captured dispatch from General Kelly. May I see it?"
Jackson took it from a box upon the table. "There it is."
"Do you object, sir, to its reaching General Banks?"
The other retook the paper, glanced over it, and gave it back. "No, not if it goes by a proper courier."
"Has the former courier been sent to Richmond?"
"Not yet." He wrote another line. "This, if you wish to see the courier."
"That is all, sir?"
"That is all, captain. Within four days, near Martinsburg. Good-night."
The two soldiers saluted and left the room, going softly through the hall, past the door where the aide was now studying the Capture of Andre and out into the moonlight. They walked down the long board path to the gate, unlatched this, and turned their faces toward the camp. For some distance they were as silent as the street before them; then, "If ever you had taught school," said Allan, "you would know how headings out of reading books and sentences that you set for the children to copy have a way of starting up before you at every corner. _The Post of Honour is the Post of Danger._ I can see that in round hand. But what I can't see is how you are going to do it."
"I want," said the other, "one half-hour quite to myself. Then I think I'll know. Here's the picket. The word's _Bethel_."
The Stonewall Brigade was encamped in the fields just without the town.
It was early in the war and there were yet tents--long line of canvas "A's" stretching in the moonlight far over the rolling ground. Where the tents failed there had been erected tiny cabins, very rude, with abundant ventilation and the strangest chimneys. A few field officers were quartered in the town and Jackson had with him there his permanent staff. But captains and lieutenants stayed with the men. The general of them all ruled with a rod of iron. For the most part it swayed lightly, with a certain moral effect only over the head of the rank and file, but it grew to a crus.h.i.+ng beam for the _officer_ who did not with alacrity habitually attend to his every duty, great or small. The do-nothing, the popinjay, the intractable, the self-important, the remonstrant, the _I thought, sir_--the _It is due to my dignity, sir_--none of these flourished in the Army of the Valley. The tendencies had been there, of course; they came up like the flowers of spring, but each poor bloom as it appeared met an icy blast. The root beneath learned to send up to the sky a st.u.r.dier growth.
Company A, 65th Virginia, numbered in its ranks men who knew all about log cabins. It was well lodged, and the captain's hut did it credit.
Richard Cleave and Allan, entering, found a fire, and Tullius nodding beside it. At their step he roused himself, rose, and put on another log. He was a negro of sixty years, tall and hale, a dignified master of foraging, a being simple and taciturn and strong, with a love for every clod of earth at Three Oaks where he had been born.
Cleave spoke. "Where is Lieutenant Breckinridge, Tullius?"
Tullius straightened himself. "Lieutenant Breckinridge is at the colonel's, sah. An' Lieutenant Coffin, he's at the Debatin' Society in Company C."
Cleave sat down before the pine table. "Give Allan Gold something to eat, and don't either of you speak to me for twenty minutes." He propped his head on his hands and stared at the boards. Allan seated himself on a box beside the fire. Tullius took from a flat, heated stone a battered tin coffee-pot, poured into an earthenware cup some smoking mixture, and brought it to
Miriam, she done mek 'em fer us."
Cleave spoke from the table. His voice was dreamy, his eyes fixed upon the surface before him as though he were studying ocean depths.
"Tullius, give me a dozen coffee berries."
"Er _cup_ of coffee, you mean, Ma.r.s.e d.i.c.k?"
"No, coffee berries. Haven't you any there?"
Tullius brought a small tin box, tilted it, and poured on the table something like the required number. "Thar's all thar is." He returned to his corner of the fire, and it purred and flamed upon the crazy hearth between him and the scout. The latter, his rifle across his knees, now watched the flames, now the man at the table. Cleave had strung the coffee berries along a crack between the boards. Now he advanced one small brown object, now retired another, now crossed them from one side to the other. Following these manoeuvres, he sat with his chin upon his hand for five minutes, then began to make a circle with the berries.
He worked slowly, dropping point after point in place. The two ends met.
He rose from the table. "That's all right. I am going to brigade headquarters for a little, Allan. Suppose you come along. There are some things I want to know--those signals, for instance." He took up his hat and sword. "Tullius, you'll have Dundee saddled at four o'clock. I'll see Lieutenant Breckinridge and the colonel. I won't be back until after taps. Cover the fire, but wait up for me."
He and Allan went out together. Tullius restored the coffee berries to the tin box, and the box to the cupboard, sat down by the fire, and fell again into a nodding dream of Three Oaks, of the garden, and of his grandchildren in the quarter.
CHAPTER X
LIEUTENANT McNEIL
The Williamsport ferry-boat came slowly across the Potomac, from the Maryland to the Virginia side. The clear, deep water lay faintly blue beneath the winter sky, and the woods came so close that long branches of sycamore swept the flood. In that mild season every leaf had not fallen; up and down the river here the dull red of an oak met the eye, and there the faded gold of a willow.
The flatboat, a brown shadow beneath a creaking wire and pulley, came slowly to the southern side of the stream. The craft, squat to the water and railed on either side, was in the charge of an old negro. Cl.u.s.tered in the middle of the boat appeared a tall Marylander in blue jeans, two soldiers in blue cloth, and a small darky in a s.h.i.+rt of blue gingham.
All these stared at a few yards of Virginia road, shelving, and overarched by an oak that was yet touched with maroon, and stared at a horseman in high boots, a blue army overcoat, and a blue and gold cap, who, mounted upon a great bay horse, was waiting at the water's edge.
The boat crept into the shadow of the trees.
One of the blue soldiers stood watchfully, his hands upon an Enfield rifle. The other, a middle-aged, weather-beaten sergeant-major who had been leaning against the rail, straightened himself and spoke, being now within a few feet of the man on horseback.
"Your signal was all right," he said. "And your coat's all right. But how did your coat get on this side of the river?"
"It's been on this side for some time," explained the man on horseback, with a smile. "Ever since Uncle Sam presented it to me at Wheeling--and that was before Bull Run." He addressed the negro. "Is this the fastest this boat can travel? I've been waiting here half an hour."
The sergeant-major persisted. "Your coat's all right, and your signal's all right, and if it hadn't ha' been, our sharpshooters wouldn't ha'
left much of you by now--Your coat's all right, and your signal's all right, but I'm d.a.m.ned if your voice ain't Southern--" The head of the boat touched the sh.o.r.e and the dress of the horseman was seen more closely.--"Lieutenant," ended the speaker, with a change of tone.
The rider, dismounting, led his horse down the yard or two of road and into the boat. "So, Dandy! Just think it's the South Branch, and come on! Thirty miles since breakfast, and still so gaily!"
Horse and man entered the boat, which moved out into the stream.
"I was once," stated the sergeant-major, though still in the proper tone of respect toward a lieutenant, "I was once in Virginia for a month, down on the Pamunkey--and the people all said 'gaily.'"
"They say it still," answered the rider. "Not so much, though, in my part of Virginia. It's Tuckahoe, not Cohee. I'm from the valley of the South Branch, between Romney and Moorefield."
The heretofore silent blue soldier s.h.i.+fted his rifle. "What in h.e.l.l--"
he muttered. The sergeant-major looked at the Virginia sh.o.r.e, looked at the stranger, standing with his arm around his horse's neck, and looked at the Williamsport landing, and the cannon frowning from Doubleday's Hill. In the back of his head there formed a little picture--a drumhead court-martial, a provost guard, a tree and a rope. Then came the hand of reason, and wiped the picture away. "Pshaw! spies don't _say_ they're Southern. And, by jiminy! one might smile with his lips, but he couldn't smile with his eyes like that. And he's lieutenant, and there's such a thing, Tom Miller, as being too smart!--" He leaned upon the rail, and, being an observant fellow, he looked to see if the lieutenant's hand trembled at all where it lay upon the horse's neck. It did not; it rested as quiet as an empty glove. The tall Marylander began to speak with a slow volubility. "There was a man from the Great Kanawha to Williamsport 't other day--a storekeeper--a big, fat man with a beard like Abraham's in the 'l.u.s.trated Bible. I heard him a-talking to the colonel. 'All the Union men in northwestern Virginia are on the Ohio side of the mountains,' said he. 'Toward the Ohio we're all for the Union,' said he. 'There's more Northern blood than Southern in that section, anyway,' said he. 'But all this side of the Alleghenies is different, and as for the Valley of the South Branch--the Valley of the South Branch is a hotbed of rebels.' That's what he said--'a hotbed of rebels.' 'As for the mountain folk in between,' he says, 'they hunt with guns, and the men in the valley hunt with dogs, and there ain't any love lost between them at the best of times. Then, too, it's the feud that settles it. If a mountain man's hereditary enemy names his baby Jefferson Davis, then the first man, he names his Abraham Lincoln, and shoots at the other man from behind a bush. And _vice versa_. So it goes. But the valley of the South Branch is old stock,' he says, 'and a hotbed of rebels.'"
"When it's taken by and large, that is true," said the horseman with coolness. "But there are exceptions to all rules, and there are some Union men along the South Branch." He stroked his horse's neck. "So, Dandy! Aren't there exceptions to all rules?"
"He's a plumb beauty, that horse," remarked the sergeant-major. "I don't ride much myself, but if I had a horse like that, and a straight road, and weather like this, I wouldn't ask any odds between here and Milikenville, Illinois! I guess he's a jim dandy to travel, Lieutenant--"
"McNeill," said the Virginian. "It is lovely weather. You don't often have a December like this in your part of the world."
"No, we don't. And I only hope 't will last."
"I hope it will," a.s.sented McNeill. "It's bad marching in bad weather."
"I don't guess," said the sergeant-major, "that we'll do much marching before springtime."
"No, I reckon not," answered the man from the South Branch. "I came from Romney yesterday. General Kelly is letting the men build cabins there.
That doesn't look like moving."