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How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion, a fiction by George W. Peck |
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Chapter 26 |
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_ CHAPTER XXVI I Strike Another Soft-Snap, Which is Harder Than Any Snap Heretofore--I Begin Taking Music Lessons, and Fill Up a Confederate Prisoner With Yankee Food. The last two chapters of this stuff has related to early experiences, but now that it is probable the chaplain has got over being mad at my trading him the circus-horse, I will resume the march with the regiment. For a month or more I had been waiting for my commission to arrive, so that I could serve as an officer, but it did not arrive while we were at Montgomery, and we started away from that city towards Vicksburg, Miss., with a fair prospect of having hot work with strolling bands of the enemy. I was much depressed. It had got so they didn't seem to want me anywhere. It seemed that I was a sort of a Jonah, and wherever I was, something went wrong. The chaplain wouldn't have me, because he had a suspicion that I was giddy, and full of the devil, and I have thought he had an idea I would sacrifice the whole army to perpetrate a practical joke, and he also maintained that I would lie, if a lie would help me out of a scrape. I never knew how such an impression could have been created. The colonel said he would try and get along without me, the adjutant didn't want any more of my mathematics in his reports and the brigade commander said he would carry the brigade colors himself rather than have me around, as I would bring headquarters into disgrace some way. So I had to serve as a private in my own company, which was very hard on a man who had tasted the sweets of official position. O, if my commission did not come soon I was lost. After we had marched a couple of days it began to look as though we were liable to have a fight on our hands. Every little while there would be firing in advance, or on the flanks, and things looked blue for one who did not want to have any trouble with anybody. One morning when we were cooking our breakfast beside a pitch pine log, a little Irishman, who was a friend of mine, as I always lent him my tobacco, said: "There will be a fight today, and some wan of the byes will sleep cold tonight." A cold chill came over me, and I wondered which of of the "by's" would draw the ticket of death. The Irishman noticed that I was not feeling perfectly easy, and he said, "Sorrel top, wud yez take a bit of advice from the loikes of me?" I did not like to be called sorrel top, but if there was any danger I would take advice from anybody, so I told him to fire away. He told me that when we fell in, for the march of the day, to arrange to be No. 4, as in case we were dismounted, to fight on foot, number four would remain on his horse, and hold three other horses, and keep in the rear, behind the trees, while the dismounted men went into the fight. Great heavens, and that had never occurred to me before. Of course number four would hold the horses, in case of a dismounted fight, and I had never thought what a soft thing it was. It can be surmised by the reader of profane history, that when our company formed that morning I was number four. We marched a long for a couple of hours, when there was some firing on the flanks, and a couple of companies were wheeled into line and marched off into the woods for half a mile, and the order was given to "prepare to fight on foot." It was a momentous occasion for me, and when the three men of our four dismounted and handed the bridle reins to me, I was about the happiest man in the army. I did not want the boys to think I was anxious to keep away from the front, so I said, "Say, cap, don't I go too?" He said I could if I wanted to, as one of the other boys would hold the horses if I was spoiling to be a corpse, but I told him I guessed, seeing that I was already on the horse, I would stay, and the boys went off laughing, leaving about twenty-five of us "number fours" holding horses. Now, you may talk all you please about safe places in a fight, but sitting on a horse in plain sight, holding three other prancing, kicking, squalling horses, while the rest of the boys are behind trees, or behind logs, popping at the enemy, is no soft thing. The bullets seemed to pass right over our fellows on foot, and came right among the horses, who twisted around and got tangled up, and made things unpleasant. I was trying to get a stallion I was holding to quit biting my legs, when I saw my little Irishman, who had steered me on to the soft snap, dodge down behind his horse's head, to escape a bullet that killed one of the horses he was holding, and I said, "This is a fine arrangement you have got me into. This is worse than being in front." He said he believed it was, as he backed his other horses away from the dying horse, but he said as long as they killed horses we had no cause to complain. There was a sergeant in charge of us "number fours," and he was as cool as any fellow I ever saw. The sergeant was a nice man, but he was no musician. He was an Irishman, also, and when any bugle-call and when any bugle-call sounded he had to ask some one what it was. There was a great deal of uncertainty about bugle-calls, I noticed, among officers as well as men. Of course it could not be expected that every man in a cavalry regiment would be a music teacher, and the calls sounded so much alike to the uncultivated ear, that it was no wonder that everybody got the calls mixed. In camp we got so we could tell "assembly," and "surgeon's call," and "tattoo," and quite a number of others, but the calls of battle were Greek to us. The bugle sounded down in the woods, and the sergeant turned to me and asked, "Fhat the divil is that I dunno?" I was satisfied it was "To horse," but when I saw our fellows come rushing back towards the horses it looked as though the order was to fall back, and I suggested as much to the sergeant. He thought it looked reasonable, too, and he ordered us to fall back slowly toward the regiment. We didn't go so confounded slow, and of course I was ahead with my three horses. The sergeant heard the captain yell to him to hold on, and he got the most of the "fours" to stop, and let the boys get on, but the little Irishman and myself couldn't hold our extra horses, and they dragged us along over logs and through brush, the regiment drew sabers to "shoo" the horses back, waived their hats, my horse run his fore feet into a hole, fell down, and let me off over his head, the other horses seemed to walk on me, I became insensible, and the next thing I knew I was in an ambulance, behind the regiment, which was on the march, as though nothing had happened. I felt of myself to see if anything was broke, and finding I was all right I told the driver of the ambulance I guessed I would get out and mount my horse, but he said he guessed I wouldn t, because the colonel had told him if I died to bury me beside the road, but if I lived to bring me to headquarters for punishment. The driver said the boys whose horses I had stampeded, wanted to kill me, but the colonel had said death was too good for me. Well, nobody was hurt in the skirmish, and about noon we arrived at a camping place for the night, and the ambulance drove up, and I was placed under guard. It seems the sergeant had laid the whole thing to me. He had admitted to the colonel that he didn't know one bugle call from another, and he supposed I did, and when he asked me what it was, and I said it was to retreat, he supposed I knew, and retreated. The colonel asked me what I had to say, and I told him I didn't know any bugle call except get your quinine, get your quinine. That when I enlisted there was nothing said about my ability to read notes in music, and I had never learned, and couldn't learn, as I had no more ear for music than a mule. I told him if he would furnish a music teacher, I would study hard to try and master the difference between "forward and back," but that it didn't seem to me as though I ought to be held responsible for an expression of opinion, however erroneous, when asked for it by a superior officer. I told him that when the bugle sounded, and I saw the boys coming back on a hop, skip and jump, it seemed to me the most natural thing in the world that the bugle had sounded a retreat. That seemed the only direction we could go, and as my natural inclination was to save those horses that had been placed in my charge, of course I interpreted the bugle call to mean for us to get out of there honorably, and as the only way to get out honorably was to get out quick, we got up and dusted. The colonel always gave me credit for being a good debater, and he smiled and said that as no damage had been done, he would not insist that I be shot on the spot, but he felt that an example should be made of me. He said I would be under arrest until bed time, down under a tree, half a mile or so from headquarters, in plain sight, and he would send music teachers there to teach me the bugle calls. I thanked him, in a few well chosen remarks, and the guard marched me to the tree, which was the guard-house. I found another soldier there, under arrest, who had rode out of the ranks to water his horse, while on the march, against orders, and a Confederate prisoner that had been captured in the morning skirmish, a captain of a Virginia regiment. The captain seemed real hurt at having been captured, and was inclined to be uppish and distant. I tried two or three times to get him into conversation on some subject connected with the war, but he wouldn't have it. He evidently looked upon me as a horse-thief, a deserter, and a bad man, or else a soldier who had been sent to pump information out of him. I never was let alone quite as severely as I was by our prisoner, at first. But I went to work and built a fire, and soon had some coffee boiling, bacon frying, and sweet potatoes roasting, and when I spread the lay out on the ground, and said, "Colonel, this is on me. Won't you join me?" I think he was the most surprised man I ever saw, He had watched every move I made, in cooking, with a yearning such as is seldom seen, and he probably had no more idea that he was going to have a mouthful of it, than that he should fly. His eyes might have been weak, but if he had been a man I knew well, I should have said there were a couple of tears gathering in his eyes, and I was quite sure of it when the flood broke over the eye-lid dam, and rolled down among the underbrush whiskers. He stopped the flood at once, by an effort of will, though there seemed a something in his throat when he said, "You don't mean it, do you, kernel?" I told him of course I meant it, and to slide right up and help himself, and I speared a great big sweet potato, and some bacon, and placed them on a big leaf, and poured coffee out in the only cup I had. He kicked on using the cup, but I said we would both drink out of it. He said, "you are very kind, sir," and that was all he said during the meal. But how he _did_ eat. He tried to act as though he didn't care much for dinner, and as though he was eating out of courtesy to me, but I could tell by the way the sweet potato went down in the depths of my Confederate friend, and by the joyous look when a swallow of coffee hit the right place, that he was having a picnic. When we were through with dinner and the guard and the other prisoner were cooking theirs, he said, "My friend, I do not mind telling you now that I was much in need of food. I had not eaten since yesterday morning, as we have been riding hard to intercept you gentlemen, sir. I trust I shall live long enough to repay, you sir." I told him not to mention it, as all our boys made it a point to divide when we captured a prisoner. He said he believed his people felt the same way, but God knew they had little to divide. He said he trembled when he thought that some of our men who were prisoners in the south were faring very poorly, but it could not be helped. "Suppose I had captured you," he said, with a smile that was forced, "I could not have given you a mouthful of bread, until we had found a southern family that 'had bread to spare.'" I told him it was pretty tough, but it would all be over before long, and then we would all have plenty to eat. I got out a pack of cards, and the confederate captain played seven-up with me, while we smoked. Presently nine buglers came down to where we were, formed in line, and began to sound cavalry calls in concert. I knew that they were the music teachers the colonel had sent to teach me the calls. The confederate looked on in astonishment, while they sounded a call, and when it was done I asked the chief bugler what it was, and he told me, and I asked him to sound something else, which he did. My idea was to convince the prisoner that this was a part of daily routine. He got nervous and couldn't remember which was trumps; and finally said we might talk all we pleased about the horrors of Andersonville, but to be blowed to death with cavalry bugles was a fate that only the most hardened criminals should suffer. The confederate evidently had no ear for music more than I had, and he soon got enough. However the buglers kept up their noise till about supper time, when they were called on. I got another meal for the confederate, and he seemed to be actually getting fat. The colonel of my regiment came down to where we were, and said, "You fellows seem to be doing pretty well," and then he had a long talk with the rebel prisoner, invited him up to his tent to pass the night, apologized for the concert he had been giving us, explained what it was for, told me I could go to my company if I thought I could remember a bugle call in the future; the captain shook hands with me and thanked me cordially, and we separated. He was exchanged, the next day, and I never saw him for twenty-two years, when I found him at the head of a manufacturing enterprise in his loved Virginia, and he furnished me a more expensive meal than I did him years before, but it didn't taste half as good as the bacon dinner in Alabama under the guard-house tree. _ |
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