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Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, a fiction by George W. Peck |
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Chapter 15. His Pa At The Reunion... |
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_ CHAPTER XV. HIS PA AT THE REUNION. THE OLD MAN IN MILITARY SPLENDOR-- TELLS HOW HE MOWED DOWN THE REBELS--"I AND GRANT"--WHAT IS A SUTLER?--TEN DOLLARS FOR PICKELS!--"LET US HANG HIM!"--THE OLD MAN ON THE RUN--HE STANDS UP TO SUPPER--THE BAD BOY IS TO DIE AT SUNSET
"Yes, he wore all the badges he could get, the first day, but after he blundered into a place where there were a lot of fellows from his own regiment, he took off the badges, and he wasn't very numerous around the boys the rest of the week. But he was lightning on the sham battle," says the boy. "What was the matter? Didn't the old soldiers treat him well? Didn't they seem to yearn for his society?" asked the grocery man, as the boy was making a lunch on some sweet crackers in a tin cannister. "Well, they were not very much mashed on Pa. You see, Pa never gets tired telling us about how he fit in the army. For several years I didn't know what a sutler was, and when Pa would tell about taking a musket that a dead soldier had dropped, and going into the thickest of the light, and fairly mowing down the rebels in swaths the way they cut hay, I thought he was the greatest man that ever was. Until I was eleven years old I thought Pa had killed men enough to fill the Forest Home cemetery. I thought a sutler was something higher than a general, and Pa used to talk about "I and Grant," and what Sheridan told him, and how Sherman marched with him to the sea, and all that kind of rot, until I wondered why they didn't have pictures of Pa on a white horse, with epaulets on, and a sword. One day at school I told a boy that my Pa killed more men than Grant, and the boy said he didn't doubt it, but he killed them with commissary whiskey. The boy said his Pa was in the same regiment that my Pa was sutler of, and his Pa said my Pa charged him five dollars for a canteen of peppersauce and alcohol and called it whiskey. Then I began to enquire into it, and found out that a sutler was a sort of liquid peanut stand, and that his rank in the army was about the same as a chestnut roaster on the sidewalk here at home. It made me sick, and I never had the same respect for Pa after that. But Pa, don't care. He thinks he is a hero, and tried to get a pension on account of losing a piece of his thumb, but when the officers found he was wounded by the explosion of a can of baked beans, they couldn't give it to him. Pa was down town when the veterans were here, and I was with him, and I saw a lot of old soldiers looking at Pa, and I told him they acted as though they knew him, and he put on his glasses, and said to one of them, "How are you Bill?" The soldier looked at Pa and called the other soldiers, and one said, That's the old duffer that sold me the bottle of brandy peaches at Chickamauga, for three dollars, and they eat a hole through my stummick. Another said, 'He's the cuss that took ten dollars out of my pay for pickles that were put up in _aqua fortis_. Look at the corps badges he has on.' Another said, 'The old whelp! He charged me fifty cents a pound for onions when I had the scurvy at Atlanta.' Another said, 'He beat me out of my wages playing draw poker with a cold deck, and the aces up his sleeve. Let us hang him.' By this time Pa's nerves got unstrung and began to hurt him, and he said he wanted to go home, and when we got around the corner he tore off his badges and threw them in the sewer, and said it was all a man's life was worth to be a veteran now days. He didn't go down town again till next day, and when he heard a band playing he would go around a block. But at the sham battle where there were no veterans hardly, he was all right with the militia boys, and told them how he did when he was in the army. I thought it would be fun to see Pa run, and so when one of the cavalry fellows lost his cap in the charge, and was looking for it, I told the dragoon that the pussy old man over by the fence had stolen his cap. That was Pa. Then I told Pa that the soldier on the horse said he was a rebel, and he was going to kill him. The soldier started after Pa with his sabre drawn, and Pa started to run, and it was funny you bet." "The soldier galloped his horse, and yelled, and Pa put in his best licks, and run up the track to where there was a board off the fence, and tried to get through, but he got stuck, and the soldier put the point of his sabre on Pa's pants and pushed, and Pa got through the fence and I guess he ran all the way home. At supper time Pa would not come to the table, but stood up and ate off the side board, and Ma said Pa's shirt was all bloody, and Pa said mor'n fifty of them cavalry men charged on him, and he held them at bay as long as he could, and then retired in good order. This morning a boy told him that I set the cavalry man onto him, and he made me wear two mouse traps on my ears all the forenoon, and he says he will kill me at sunset. I ain't going to be there at sunset, and don't you remember about it. Well, good bye. I have got to go down to the morgue and see them bring in the man that was found on the lake shore, and see if the morgue keeper is drunk this time." _ |
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