"A girl, you say?"
"Yes, sir"-the soldier hesitated-"and a very pretty one, too. She came over the mountain alone and on foot through this darkness. She pa.s.sed the pickets on the other side-pretending to be a sheep. She had a bell in her hand." Chad smiled-he knew that trick.
"Where is she?"
"She"s standing guard for me."
The picket turned at a gesture from Chad and led the way. They found no Melissa. She had heard Chad"s voice and fled up the mountain. Before daybreak she was descending the mountain on the other side, along the same way, tinkling her sheep-bell and creeping past the pickets. It was raining again now and her cold had grown worse. Several times she had to m.u.f.fle her face into her shawl to keep her cough from betraying her. As she pa.s.sed the ford below the Turner cabin, she heard the splash of many horses crossing the river and she ran on, frightened and wondering. Before day broke she had slipped into her bed without arousing Mother Turner, and she did not get up that day, but lay ill abed.
The splashing of those many horses was made by Captain Daniel Dean and his men, guided by Rebel Jerry. High on the mountain side they hid their horses in a ravine and crept toward the Gap on foot-so that while Daws with his gang waited for Chad, the rebels lay in the brush waiting for him. Dan was merry over the prospect:
"We will just let them fight it out," he said, "and then we"ll dash in and gobble "em both up. That was a fine scheme of yours, Jerry."
Rebel Jerry smiled: there was one thing he had not told his captain-who those rebels were. Purposely he had kept that fact hidden. He had seen Dan purposely refrain from killing Chad Buford once and he feared that Dan might think his brother Harry was among the Yankees. All this Rebel Jerry failed to understand, and he wanted nothing known now that might stay anybody"s hand. Dawn broke and nothing happened. Not a shot rang out and only the smoke of the guerillas" fire showed in the peaceful mouth of the Gap. Dan wanted to attack the guerillas, but Jerry persuaded him to wait until he could learn how the land lay, and disappeared in the bushes. At noon he came back.
"The Yankees have found out Daws is thar in the Gap," he said, "an" they are goin" to slip over before day ter-morrer and s"prise him. Hit don"t make no difference to us, which s"prises which-does it?"
So the rebels kept hid through the day in the bushes on the mountain side, and when Chad slipped through the Gap next morning, before day, and took up the guerilla pickets, Dan had moved into the same Gap from the other side, and was lying in the bushes with his men, near the guerillas" fire, waiting for the Yankees to make their attack. He had not long to wait. At the first white streak of dawn overhead, a shout rang through the woods from the Yankees to the startled guerillas.
"Surrender!" A fusillade followed. Again:
"Surrender!" and there was a short silence, broken by low curses from the guerillas, and a stern Yankee voice giving short, quick orders. The guerillas had given up. Rebel Jerry moved restlessly at Dan"s side and Dan cautioned him.
"Wait! Let them have time to disarm the prisoners," he whispered.
"Now," he added, a little while later-"creep quietly, boys."
Forward they went like snakes, creeping to the edge of the brush whence they could see the sullen guerillas grouped on one side of the fire-their arms stacked, while a tall figure in blue moved here and there, and gave orders in a voice that all at once seemed strangely familiar to Dan.
"Now, boys," he said, half aloud, "give "em a volley and charge."
At his word there was a rattling fusillade, and then the rebels leaped from the bushes and dashed on the astonished Yankees and their prisoners. It was pistol to pistol at first and then they closed to knife thrust and musket b.u.t.t, hand to hand-in a cloud of smoke. At the first fire from the rebels Chad saw his prisoner, Daws Dillon, leap for the stacked arms and disappear. A moment later, as he was emptying his pistol at his charging foes, he felt a bullet clip a lock of hair from the back of his head and he turned to see Daws on the farthest edge of the firelight levelling his pistol for another shot before he ran. Like lightning he wheeled and when his finger pulled the trigger, Daws sank limply, his grinning, malignant face sickening as he fell.
The tall fellow in blue snapped his pistol at Dan, and as Dan, whose pistol, too, was empty, sprang forward and closed with him, he heard a triumphant yell behind him and Rebel Jerry"s huge figure flashed past him. With the same glance he saw among the Yankees another giant-who looked like another Jerry-saw his face grow ghastly with fear when Jerry"s yell rose, and then grow taut with ferocity as he tugged at his sheath to meet the murderous knife flashing toward him. The terrible Dillon twins were come together at last, and Dan shuddered, but he saw no more, for he was busy with the lithe Yankee in whose arms he was closed. As they struggled, Dan tried to get his knife and the Yankee tugged for his second pistol each clasping the other"s wrist. Not a sound did they make nor could either see the other"s face, for Dan had his chin in his opponent"s breast and was striving to bend him backward. He had clutched the Yankee"s right hand, as it went back for his pistol, just as the Yankee had caught his right in front, feeling for his knife. The advantage would have been all Dan"s except that the Yankee suddenly loosed his wrist and gripped him tight about the body in an underhold, so that Dan could not whirl him round; but he could twist that wrist and twist it he did, with both hands and all his strength. Once the Yankee gave a smothered groan of pain and Dan heard him grit his teeth to keep it back. The smoke had lifted now, and, when they fell, it was in the light of the fire. The Yankee had thrown him with a knee-trick that Harry used to try on him when they were boys, but something about the Yankee snapped, as they fell, and he groaned aloud. Clutching him by the throat, Dan threw him oft-he could get at his knife now.
"Surrender!" he said, hoa.r.s.ely.
His answer was a convulsive struggle and then the Yankee lay still.
"Surrender!" said Dan again, lifting his knife above the Yankee"s breast, "or, d.a.m.n you, I"ll-"
The Yankee had turned his face weakly toward the fire, and Dan, with a cry of horror, threw his knife away and sprang to his feet. Straightway the Yankee"s closed eyes opened and he smiled faintly.
"Why, Dan, is that you?" he asked. "I thought it would come," he added, quietly, and then Harry Dean lapsed into unconsciousness.
Thus, at its best, this fratricidal war was being fought out that daybreak in one little hollow of the Kentucky mountains and thus, at its worst, it was being fought out in another little hollow scarcely twenty yards away, where the giant twins-Rebel Jerry and Yankee Jake-who did know they were brothers, sought each other"s lives in mutual misconception and mutual hate.
There were a dozen dead Federals and guerillas around the fire, and among them was Daws Dillon with the pallor of death on his face and the hate that life had written there still clinging to it like a shadow. As Dan bent tenderly over his brother Harry, two soldiers brought in a huge body from the bushes, and he turned to see Rebel Jerry Dillon. There were a half a dozen rents in his uniform and a fearful slash under his chin-but he was breathing still. Chad Buford had escaped and so had Yankee Jake.
CHAPTER 27.
AT THE HOSPITAL OF MORGAN"S MEN
In May, Grant simply said-Forward! The day he crossed the Rapidan, he said it to Sherman down in Georgia. After the battle of the Wilderness he said it again, and the last brutal resort of hammering down the northern b.u.t.tress and sea-wall of the rebellion-old Virginia-and Atlanta, the keystone of the Confederate arch, was well under way. Throughout those b.l.o.o.d.y days Chad was with Grant and Harry Dean was with Sherman on his terrible trisecting march to the sea. For, after the fight between Rebels and Yankees and Daws Dillon"s guerilla band, over in Kentucky, Dan, coming back from another raid into the Bluegra.s.s, had found his brother gone. Harry had refused to accept a parole and had escaped. Not a man, Dan was told, fired a shot at him, as he ran. One soldier raised his musket, but Renfrew the Silent struck the muzzle upward.
In September, Atlanta fell and, in that same month, Dan saw his great leader, John Morgan, dead in Tennessee. In December, the Confederacy toppled at the west under Thomas"s blows at Nashville. In the spring of "65, one hundred and thirty-five thousand wretched, broken-down rebels, from Richmond to the Rio Grande, confronted Grant"s million men, and in April, Five Forks was the beginning of the final end everywhere.
At midnight, Captain Daniel Dean, bearer of dispatches to the great Confederate General in Virginia, rode out of abandoned Richmond with the cavalry of young Fitzhugh Lee. They had threaded their way amid troops, trains, and artillery across the bridge. The city was on fire. By its light, the stream of humanity was pouring out of town-Davis and his cabinet, citizens, soldiers, down to the mechanics in the armories and workshops. The chief concern with all was the same, a little to eat for a few days; for, with the morning, the enemy would come and Confederate money would be as mist. Afar off the little fleet of Confederate gunboats blazed and the thundering explosions of their magazines split the clear air. Freight depots with supplies were burning. Plunderers were spreading the fires and slipping like ghouls through red light and black shadows. At daybreak the last retreating gun rumbled past and, at sunrise, Dan looked back from the hills on the smoking and deserted city and Grant"s blue lines sweeping into it.
Once only he saw his great chief-the next morning before day, when he rode through the chill mist and darkness to find the head-quarters of the commanding General-two little fires of rubbish and two ambulances-with Lee lying on a blanket under the open sky. He rose, as Dan drew near, and the firelight fell full on his bronzed and mournful face. He looked so sad and so n.o.ble that the boy"s heart was wrenched, and as Dan turned away, he said, brokenly:
"General, I am General Dean"s son, and I want to thank you-" He could get no farther. Lee laid one hand on his shoulder.
"Be as good a man as your father was, my boy," he said, and Dan rode back the pitiable way through the rear of that n.o.ble army of Virginia-through ranks of tattered, worn, hungry soldiers, among the broken debris of wagons and abandoned guns, past skeleton horses and skeleton men.
All hope was gone, but Fitz Lee led his cavalry through the Yankee lines and escaped. In that flight Daniel Dean got his only wound in the war-a bullet through the shoulder. When the surrender came, Fitz Lee gave up, too, and led back his command to get Grant"s generous terms. But all his men did not go with him, and among the cavalrymen who went on toward southwestern Virginia was Dan-making his way back to Richard Hunt-for now that gallant Morgan was dead, Hunt was general of the old command.
Behind, at Appomattox, Chad was with Grant. He saw the surrender-saw Lee look toward his army, when he came down the steps after he had given up, saw him strike his hands together three times and ride Traveller away through the profound and silent respect of his enemies and the tearful worship of his own men. And Chad got permission straightway to go back to Ohio, and he mustered out with his old regiment, and he, too, started back through Virginia.
Meanwhile, Dan was drawing near the mountains. He was worn out when he reached Abingdon. The wound in his shoulder was festering and he was in a high fever. At the camp of Morgan"s Men he found only a hospital left-for General Hunt had gone southward-and a hospital was what he most needed now. As he lay, unconscious with fever, next day, a giant figure, lying near, turned his head and stared at the boy. It was Rebel Jerry Dillon, helpless from a sabre cut and frightfully scarred by the fearful wounds his brother, Yankee Jake, had given him. And thus, Chadwick Buford, making for the Ohio, saw the two strange messmates, a few days later, when he rode into the deserted rebel camp.
All was over. Red Mars had pa.s.sed beyond the horizon and the white Star of Peace already shone faintly on the ravaged South. The shattered remnants of Morgan"s cavalry, pall-bearers of the Lost Cause-had gone South-bare-footed and in rags-to guard Jefferson Davis to safety, and Chad"s heart was wrung when he stepped into the little hospital they had left behind-a s.p.a.ce cleared into a thicket of rhododendron. There was not a tent-there was little medicine-little food. The drizzling rain dropped on the group of ragged sick men from the branches above them. Nearly all were youthful, and the youngest was a mere boy, who lay delirious with his head on the root of a tree. As Chad stood looking, the boy opened his eyes and his mouth twitched with pain.
"h.e.l.lo, you d.a.m.ned Yankee." Again his mouth twitched and again the old dare-devil light that Chad knew so well kindled in his hazy eyes.
"I said," he repeated, distinctly, "h.e.l.lo, you d.a.m.ned Yank. d.a.m.nED Yank I said." Chad beckoned to two men.
"Go bring a stretcher."
The men shook their heads with a grim smile-they had no stretcher.
The boy talked dreamily.
"Say, Yank, didn"t we give you h.e.l.l in-oh, well, in lots o" places. But you"ve got me." The two soldiers were lifting him in their arms. "Goin" to take me to prison? Goin" to take me out to shoot me, Yank? You ARE a d.a.m.ned Yank." A hoa.r.s.e growl rose behind them and the giant lifted himself on one elbow, swaying his head from side to side.
"Let that boy alone!" Dan nodded back at him confidently.
"That"s all right, Jerry. This Yank"s a friend of mine." His brow wrinkled. "At any rate he looks like somebody I know. He"s goin" to give me something to eat and get me well-like h.e.l.l," he added to himself-pa.s.sing off into unconsciousness again. Chad had the lad carried to his own tent, had him stripped, bathed, and bandaged and stood looking down at him. It was hard to believe that the broken, aged youth was the red-cheeked, vigorous lad whom he had known as Daniel Dean. He was ragged, starved, all but bare-footed, wounded, sick, and yet he was as undaunted, as defiant, as when he charged with Morgan"s dare-devils at the beginning of the war. Then Chad went back to the hospital-for a blanket and some medicine.
"They are friends," he said to the Confederate surgeon, pointing at a huge gaunt figure.
"I reckon that big fellow has saved that boy"s life a dozen times. Yes, they"re mess-mates."
And Chad stood looking down at Jerry Dillon, one of the giant twins-whose name was a terror throughout the mountains of the middle south. Then he turned and the surgeon followed.
There was a rustle of branches on one side when they were gone, and at the sound the wounded man lifted his head. The branches parted and the oxlike face of Yankee Jake peered through. For a full minute, the two brothers stared at each other.